Posts by TrumpSlurp the Troll 620 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Mar 2017
All gliders to be tracked; too much information, so ignored. All drones to be tracked; even more too much information so swamping the glider information and also to be ignored. All the tracking information needs to be stored for future analysis or what is the point? Otherwise by the time you realise there was a problem/incident the information has gone. So, infrastructure.
Is this starting to sound familiar?
Sod the down votes this is a proper designer talking.
Loads of detailed comments further down which are really over engineering, but the basic requirement is to have beer available without having to send someone to get it.
Oh, and the obvious fun bit (of the more practical designs) is in the transport of filled glasses without spillage. Pending further information I am assuming that snacks and drinks are self service, so loading the platform is going to be the major development task, not the trundling bit. The beer is also going to be bottled/canned so no glass filling required prior to transport. If the office provider is foolish enough to have a full time barperson then table service is a small part of the role.
Reminds me strongly of the urban legend that NASA spemt millions developing a pen which would write in zero gravity, whilst the Russians used a pencil.
As for lateral thinking, how about a mobile desk which the journo can push/drive to the snacks area and back? Make it a stand up one and work, exercise and refreshment can be combined.
Complicated design can be fun but how many times have developers gone off on one without even reading/receiving the full requirements?
Now even I don't know the password.
I haven't used/needed the account for about 9 years now.
So good luck to anyone who breaks in.
Nothing to see there.
For the commentard asking why you even need an account.
I buy discounted rail tickets on line pre-purchasing.
However I do buy them from a commercial provider, my local rail franchise.
Just the same as if I walked into a station and bought one over the counter.
It is not clear to me what is wrong with this arrangement.
We fly to the Antipodes every few years.
Last but one we flew coach with Cathay Pacific with a stopover in Sigapore.
Never again. Too cramped and too many overweight people.
As you get older and less flexible (and less tolerant) flights much over 4 hours in cramped conditions become intolerable.
Last time, due to short notice, the really cheap seats had gone. We had already decided to fly Premium Economy (like old style Business Class) when we realised that flying Business Class with Malaysian was only a touch more expensive.
First leg outwards was an A380, second leg was an A320. The A380 with a fully reclining bed was bliss. The partial recline in the A320 was OK but not a patch on the A380. Still way better than coach.
One of the best bits was the airport lounges. Eat drink and be merry, followed by priority boarding. We even got whisked through immigration at the other end which we thought was a bit off. Obviously not the target demographic but we expected that at least our luggage would have been sniffed over by the dogs looking for drugs and food.
Heathrow lounge was superb. BC and FC had the same food and drink, just table service in FC.
KL was a depressing pit but large and the champagne was drinkable. Flying back the lounge at Auckland was a joke. A fridge with some tinnies and a bit of a buffet. Like the breakfast room at any bottom budget chain hotel in the UK but worse.
On the pricing I assumed that it was 20% over BC prices.
Anyway, if this was offered on a non-stop flight to Oz or NZ and costed in against a two hop flight then I would certainly consider it. 17 hours in the coach class lottery - absolutely no way! I note that the press flew business class on the inaugural flight apart from one brave soul who booked into coach and was not impressed.
Is this about right due to switching over to purely manual handling by Air Traffic Controllers?
Or perhaps national systems (if they still have them in Europe) couldn't automatically hand over at the border?
Noting the explanation posted upstream that a testing error ditched all the stored flight plans a minor drop in capacity seems pretty damn good!
Struggling for a good car analogy because most things that fail can be fixed/replaced with new or recycled parts.
However let us invent some metal fatigue problem which has a potential to cause a chassis failure in cars over 10 years old which could only be rectified by a new body shell.
How likely is it that the manufacturer would (as some commentards seem to be suggesting) provide a brand new body shell (from a non-existent production line right back to the steel maker) or failing that a brand new car?
Consumer law is unlikely to try and enforce this because the vehicle has lasted a reasonable time. Any compensation would probably be limited to the current trade in value (prior to the discovery of the fault).
So what is the street value of a mid specification Core 2 Duo (or quad) system? That is, processor, memory and motherboard?
If Intel really cared they might do a scrappage deal where if you handed in a motherboard, processor and memory then you would get say 50 UKP off a brand new configuration. Or hand in a complete laptop and get similar off a brand new one.
Restarting a production line for old chips with a different silicon density and different leg count so you can replace chips like for like - that is, several generations where the pin numbers and locations have been deliberately changed to force you to buy a new motherboard with a different socket - is obviously not feasible. What happens to old silicon foundries anyway, when the next generation of fabrication hardware is installed?
Free replacement isn't going to happen for reasons above (plus probably many others) and a scrappage scheme to get you to buy the latest i9 is in effect rewarding Intel for designing vulnerable processors.
Some roads in the Moors (Lancashire and Yorkshire) hove these tall wooden poles spaced down both sides of the rosd. Strange until you realise that in snow they are the only thing visible to show where the roads is.
A bit like the withys along tidal channels in rivers. They show you where the channel is at high tide when you can't see the mud inches below the surface.
I may, of course, be in the minority but my experience of large and complicated projects includes RAG status reporting, and deadline roulette.
Everyone knows that they have slip in their project, but they also know that if they report amber status then they will be on a very large naughty step and have nasty things said to them.
Eventually one of the PMs cracks, and admits that they won't meet the delivery date in the plan. After the ritual whipping and an announcement that the delivery date has slipped, suddenly all the other parts of the project realise that quite by chance they have suddenly noticed that they wouldn't have met the original date but can of course meet the new one.
I am getting a strong sense of this from the Brexit progress reporting. Everyone knows that the timescales are impossible but nobody is admitting it. Nobody wants to be held responsible. Everyone is waiting for someone else to crack first.
Of course, the EU may extend, the UK may extend, Parliament may throw a spanner in the works, there could even be another referendum and/or a general election. Who knows, perhaps the horse will sing.
Drunk crawling. Victim of previous accident. Someone who tripped. Recumbent bicycle. Kid sitting on a skateboard.
Speed bump. Log in the road. Bricks, blocks, other obstructions.
An autonomous car has to scan for any and all obstructions ahead, and also be aware of hazards approaching from the sides and rear.
There is no excuse for not detecting someone wheeling a bike. Far smaller targets should be detected and acted on.
Just to add that back in the day with mainframes and exchangeable discs we always (on full backup day once a week) took the full backup to tape, removed the discs, put in fresh disc packs and restored to them.
We always had a proven set of backup tapes plus the discs from a running system.
Three sets of tapes as well.
Tape store, on site disaster store, off site disaster store.
Tell that to the kids of today....
If you must buy wine with a cork closure then there is a nifty little device with an expanding rubber bung and a lever in the top which saves you any hassle trying to get the cork back in.
A quick Google shows many other different design variants on bottle stoppers under 10 UKP.
For those having trouble keeping red wine fresh in the summer, there is a wonderful new appliance called a fridge.
With you all the way on that.
Trying to picture a Microlight with full crash protection to Euro NCAP 5* rating.
Wings? Will it fit in a Lidl parking space?
I really am struggling to visualise a vehicle with the footprint of, say, an Audi A4 which can safely take off and land and also achieve 50 mpg or better on a long run.
Looks like you need the functionality of a helicopter without that big whirly thing that can hurt people extending beyond the vehicle footprint and a failsafe landing system good when the power train has an issue.
I seem to think that the regular servicing requirements for flying things are more onerous than for driving things as well.
As several have already commented, having systems with access to both "secure" and insecure infrastructure is going to cause leakage into the cloud from day 1.
Unless, of course, they are running a secure operating system which will allow you to move documents up a classification (Google to Windows) but not the other way. Even with copy and paste.
This is looking like a two part process. After about a year it will be obvious that everything is in the cloud even though it shouldn't be. Cue a "that was then and this is now" moment with a push to ditch Office.
Concerning that they say that this is part of a strategy to change user behaviour. What can users not do under Google that they can do in Office? First obvious thing is massive complex spreadsheets. Perhaps they hope to stop new ones being developed. I can't see them prising Excel from the cold dead hands of those with mission critical spreadsheets; at least, not without an enormous development team to reimplement them. Non-trivial. Just look at the UK Government IT failures trying to replace old, complex systems which are continually evolving.
It worked really well for a small charity group to run a self managing mailing list.
I am open to an alternative with similar functionality. The real issue seems to be a lack of security combined with a lack of virus scanning. So they need to clean their act up before another system takes their market. There is an obvious need.
I would imagine that the most powerful transmissions from Earth in the last 100 years with everything from visible light to EMP were various atomic explosions starting with Hiroshima and Nagasaki (sp?) and then various above ground tests before people worked out that a pair of dark glasses wasn't sufficient protection against high doses of radiation.
So look for evidence of an emerging atomic age on planets.
Then work out how to differentiate this from "dinosaur killer" impacts by space rocks.
There are reasons why some advanced thinkers are very keen to get us off this rock where we are a sitting target with an historic record of getting belted by a big one on a regular basis.
On my W7 boxen I download the patches then wait a few days/weeks before applying them.
I assume Windows Update will ditch any failed patches held locally.
Then again I seem to recall still seeing the pre-release of the February bulk update in the Optional list when I had the real thing ready to apply.
A lot of blowing off hot air about borders.
The UK is perhaps fortunate that most of our borders are sea. We have only one land border with the EU (and yes, it is a border with the EU not just Eire).
It might be productive to look at the land borders between the EU and non-EU countries to see what is the norm.
I do remember that in the western part of central Europe land borders were very soft back in the 1960s. If you wanted a stamp in your passport you had to ask specifically. A decade or so later you just slowed down at the border check point to indicate a willingness to stop, then speeded up again. The border checks were for lorries. So a soft border could work. No real check on small vehicles so people living either side of the border could go and work and shop on the other side. Big parking areas for articulated lorries to do the endless paperwork.
I expect that a significant majority of the country can't remember far enough back to realise which things in daily life are part of being in the EU and which are not. Reality check incoming.
The one thing I do agree with is being outside the Euro. Having a national economy but not being able to devalue your currency to boost exports has screwed at least Greece. Germany especially has bent and broken all sorts of rules to protect their banking industry.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/asteroid-nuclear-bomb.htm
This site doesn't seem too optimistic about the approach of blowing a solid rock into gravel. I assume the difference would be similar to that of being hit at close range by a bullet or a shotgun blast.
The favoured suggestion is to deflect the asteroid using several above surface (stand off) nuclear weapons. On or subsurface blasts just split the rock, and I assume that changes the problem from applying lateral force to a single object to applying lateral force to lots of smaller objects.
First task is to marry your nuclear weapon to a launch vehicle which can get you out into space far enough to meet the rock in time to divert it. AFAIK the current weaponry is designed to go high (but not that high) then fall back. So probably one of the very large cargo rockets.
Edit: Project Orion was a rocket motor driven by repeated nuclear explosions, and had an awesome lift capacity. Perhaps a series of explosions following the same principle would provide enough power to move an asteroid.
I can see that you could have a secure room with two PCs, one connected to the development system and the other connected to the live system. This would allow you to cross check code, log files and the like without having more than an eyeball connecting the two systems. You could test to replicate a fault. You could also have a management centre where secure networks at different levels of security all have a terminal in the same room. Air gapped, but joined in meatspace.
I can even see that you might be using a standard build of PC to reduce unknowns, and that the secure systems might need audio capability.
However infecting both PCs with cooperating malware might be a bit of a stretch. Not impossible for an insider to conceal the code on development so that it is eventually shipped as live but very unlikely with code reviews. The software would also have to be permanently active to be able to work on the rare occasions that the secure room was in use. Even then you still have to exfiltrate the data from the less secure system. This also assumes that the bad actor doesn’t have access to the secure terminal.
So this falls firmly into "am I paranoid enough" territory.
One more thing to consider when trying to prevent the "one in a million" chance.
Could make a good film script, perhaps.
Where are they, and their money reaming leaders, now?
The ones who pushed Agile as fluffy bunny fairy farts which could magically solve all IT problems by producing a web page?
I assume that they are off somewhere being disruptive innovators whilst the poor sods left behind are following some other process. Although I don't recall seing what they are doing post Agile.
Agile in theory has some obvious attractions for software dealing with Government legislation because the requirements are likely to change twice a year with Spring and Autumn statements so a process which takes at least 6 months to write, review and agree system specifications is always going to struggle.
Looking back to more traditional development environments, one way to proceed is to have a requirements freeze so that the developers have enough time to produce a working system before changing the rules.
This does require government bodies to recognise how much they depend on IT to deliver services and that populist short termism can be counter productive to the running of the country. Good luck with that.
This approach also risks giving too much power to the IT departments. Much sucking of teeth each time a change is proposed. Computer says No!
Universal Credit seems to be an attempt to simplify the process and get all the benefits on one system. So yet again theory and practice diverge.
Yet another reason to go to a basic wage for everyone regardless of need. Much money will go to the undeserving but the total cost to the country is likely to be much lower than the time and money spent trying to discriminate. There will, of course, be the additional problem of loads of unemployed from the consultancies who are currently coining it but not delivering. Also their Civil Service friends.
Data Protection versus Freedom of Information.
Reminds me of an old Edward Lear poem about The Dong With A Luminous Nose.
"All fenced about with a bandage stout to prevent the wind from blowing it out. With holes all round to send the light in gleaming rays on the dismal night".
Or near offer.
The data is so protected that only we know what it is. Trust us not to misuse or abuse it.
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