Re: The segway always was a solution looking for a problem
Maybe the Segway has fans 'cos it's permissible to ride one without dressing as a day-glo shrinkwrapped sack of King Edwards and covering oneself in flashing lights.
9435 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007
I can see the business applications now.
The main problem with conventional computing in addressing the needs of business is that whenever you come up with a correct answer that causes some bugger to change the question.
Hopefully a quantum computer will be able to deliver the right answer and the right answer to the new question at the same time.
The root cause is: "Opinions are like arseholes, everybody's got one.".
The problem is that, in the past, many arseholes found no outlet for their opinions, causing blockage. Previous attempts at solving this problem used some variation on the "Speaker's corner" approach which tended to result in a secondary problem, arseholes being pelted with rotting fruit[1] by those listening to the diatribe of rabid cobblers which was invariably on offer.
Twitter solves that problem by allowing opinionated arseholes to publicise their opinions, without actually obliging anyone either to listen or give a toss if they do.
[1] Or, worse still, being elected to government.
Distracting somebody who's supposed to be concentrating on controlling a couple of tonnes of speeding metal in an urban environment is actually a really bloody stupid thing to do and could easily result in some poor bastard becoming inconveniently dead.
Regardless of how the cops delivered the lesson, it needed delivering.
Actually I think you'll find that the first common automotive application of the Hall effect was in distributors, using magnetic triggering to produce exact spark timing at all revolutions[1].
Even called a "Hall effect distributor" to give the game away.
[1] If you work out how many zaps per second there are in a four-pot engine at 3000rpm, you start to understand why an undamped bent spring and cam operating contacts doesn't really cut it in this department.
Well there's an election coming up and campaigning is well under way. That should mean we're currently surrounded by a stupidity field well into the hundreds of megaduhs.
Sounds like the perfect opportunity to indulge in some serious science with high-energy frustrinos.
every 15 minutes through a football game it stops to advertise
1) They are not allowed to do this and they don't. All the action is shown live as it happens. You'd know this if you'd ever watched sport on SKY rather than just making shit up.
2) ITV did do this once accidently (some eejit thumped the play button while cueing up the ads for half-time). They got arseraped by OFCOM for their pains.
Half-time ads are no big deal. That's when you go and make the tea anyway.
Yup, the only reason you even notice is that certain browsers kick up a stink about. As for risk of compromise increases over time, I'd have thought that the efforts of miscreants would be more likely focussed on shiny, new certs where there's more milage in the exploit.
Not too long ago this particular error would be ignored for the irrelevance it is. While the fuss made now is in theory correct, in practice it comes up so often it merely encourages reflex clicking through SSL errors. A Very Bad Thing Indeed.
Ah yes, ARM.
That'll be thing the thing that utterly dominates the mobile world, yes? And of course, most of the pundits reckon mobile devices will kill off everything else[1]. Most countries would cut off their left nut for a slice of that.
[1] It doesn't matter who says this or how often, it's still bollocks.
Why indeed.
Note that one of the few European companies actually turning out content that's natively in English (i.e. going head-to-head with the American suppliers) is the BBC. Which does quite nicely out of US sales.
You have to suspect that the usual French paranoia over "Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialism" is at the root of this somewhere.
And what's definately between Baidu and everywhere else that could easily do this to all passing traffic?
The Great Firewall of China.
There goes the last of the doubt as to who's doing this. If they weren't such a PITA you'd have to laugh at the Chinese government for being repeatedly so shit at misdirection.
Simpler.
Ditch the landing engines, rotating mounts 'n such and just drive the thing into it front end first. There's sweet Fanny Adams by way of gravity involved when approaching an object that size, so the attitude control thrusters should be able to ensure that no more than a gentle bump is felt.
I'm guessing that the reason there is not what happens to the balloon itself, but because driving to where you want to launch the thing with a tank of pressurised Hydrogen in your vehicle has a whole can of worms around permits, vehicle labelling, where you can and cannot go and such associated with it.
Define "unpatched".
What's the maximum allowable time between reporting and a patch being issued before you hang the "unpatched" label on it? You have to allow some, unless the developers have a time machine[1].
You probably need to vary that by fix complexity to keep everyone on their toes, so that needs a definition as well.
[1] Not the "unfair advantage to Apple" sort, the other one.
Oh, I dunno. They only wanted to make a shitload of cash.
I'll take corporate greed over megalomania any day when it comes to who pulls the levers of power.
As for not starting a war, when your endgame's world domination rather than profit you have to be a tad more subtle than that to win.
no pan-Europe licensing or the Americans will take over
U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A!
'Cos somebody needs to open that can of worms and tip out the contents and if this bunch of pillocks won't......
Proof, as if it were required, that the EU regards the original Treaty of Rome as something of an inconvenience these days: 'Free movement of goods and services' remember?