Posts by Simon Harris 2773 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Mar 2007
From the ESA news page for this mission...
"Exceptionally, no drinking water will be delivered because there is already plenty aboard the ISS. The water tanks will, though, be filled with liquid waste from the Station before departure. "
There are times when single-use does sound like the preferrable option!
ARM assembly code - that's pure luxury...
When I wrote my first Mandelbrot set program, it was on an Acorn Atom, in 6502 assembly code.
Of course, the Atom wasn't exactly blessed with that many screen colours, so I half-toned the output and sent it straight to my printer - ended up with a few poster sized Mandelbrot sets that took days to produce!
It was only when I finished that I realised that there was a carry error in my 32 bit fixed-point multiply routine, and the zones of divergence had curious scalloped edges to them - but the errors turned out to be nicely fractal too!
"Let's all hope that any denizens of the possible, habitable Sunrise Belt of Gliese 581g - or perhaps of 581d, should it in fact be habitable - have failed to evolve beyond the level of pondlife or primitive gibbering tree-dwellers, and as such will not be offended by the Bebo drivel-blast solecism."
It is a little known fact that highly intelligent life actually was discovered on Gliese 581d some years ago, and the Bebo transmissions are actually the first interstellar weapon of mass destruction exactly intended to cause the inhabitants to un-evolve back to the level of pondlife and primitive gibbering tree-dwellers.
"a website is a website, and an app is a discrete chunk of code"
But isn't it the case that so many websites these days are so heavy in Javascript, Java or Flash that once they are cached (specially considering the download times of some Flash apps) they can be considered to be discrete chunks of code running on the end-user's computer?
Under Apple's paradigm, let's say I'm planning a holiday in Monaco and want something snazzy for hitting the casinos, but I don't know exactly what will suit me. So I download the Ralph Lauren app, the Yves St. Laurent app, the Hugo Boss app, the Alexander McQueen app and the Tesco's own-brand collection app and keep flicking between them until I find something I like.... then I realise, oooh lummy, I spent so long twatting around looking for clothes I didn't book my hotel or plane yet... so I download the expedia app, the travelocity app, the lastminute.com app... and go from one to the other looking for the best deal - by now I have filled up my iPhone with clothes and travel apps? Seems like Apple's idea is to want me to have a quarter of the internet inside my phone (of course, the other 3/4 is porn, so I'm not allowed that on my phone!)
Anyway, I get to the hotel, a bit too early, and my room's not ready - no worries, I got a special VIP deal, so I'll chill out in the lounge with a nice long drink 'til it is - bugger! spent so long twatting around downloading apps, the battery's died on me!
As for the suggestion of the local amenities app, should one take its suggestions with a double pinch of salt as to be included the amenities would have to pass both the censorship (and probably financial requirements) of the app writer and the censorship of Apple?
One more point on prior art - with the part of the hotel app for controlling the TV and airconditioning - I used to have an app on my Handspring Visor that could do that years ago!
Got a call from them on Saturday morning asking to speak to me. So I ask who wants to know and an Indian man says he is from 'Windows Operating System' . At this point I ask how they got my number (always my first line since I signed up to the telephone preference service, and they shouldn't be cold calling me anyway!) and he says he got it through 'the international routing system' and that he is calling because my computer has been reporting a large number of errors.
Anyway, having failed to get him to explain satisfactorily how they managed to convert any IP address information into a telephone number, and being somewhat partial to Saturday morning cookery programmes, I'd had enough and told him 'This is a hoax call, and I don't want to continue with it' to which he replied 'Neither do I' and put the phone down.
The creators of this have missed a trick here.
Simply by glueing the artwork onto the front and back covers of a pad of paper, and with the simple addition of an 'iPencil', it comes with apps already built in for making notes, drawing pictures, keeping track of contact details, doing simple calculations....
In fact, just as useful as a real iPad - probably more so since the apps aren't limited to what Apple allows you to use.
"10mm? They have to stick a probe pretty far up your arse to get within 10mm of the device......."
Now that would be a peculiar way to get there - and even if you were to go all the way up and come out of the other end, you'd probably never get within 10mm. Normally pacemakers are implanted just under the skin below the left collar bone. 10mm sounds about in the right ball-park for a transmitter placed on the skin just above the pacemaker.
Interesting paper here: http://www.secure-medicine.org/icd-study/icd-study.pdf
As I understood it from the BBC version of the story, storage was 900 dekatron tubes, which could each hold a single digit. Most dekatrons would store 1 of 10 states, so it's a single decimal digit rather a binary one, so the memory could exist in 10^900 states, which in binary terms can be represented in about 2990 bits, or 373.75 of our modern day bytes.
@Rob Crawford: Could this be the snail fungus you were referring to?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWB_COSUXMw
@Sergie Kaponitovicz: The plural of virus in the modern sense is generally accepted to be viruses. The Latin 'virus' seems to be one of those rare nouns that has never been recorded as having a plural, possibly because in the original Latin it appears to refer to poison or venom en mass rather than as something countable.
' Yet here is the Met guidance in respect of s.44: "Officers have the power to view digital images contained in mobile telephones or cameras... provided that the viewing is to determine whether the images... are of a kind, which could be used in connection with terrorism."
Not quite. The Met guidelines make no mention of reasonable suspicion: in effect, they duck the single issue that is at the heart of so much grief. '
As I understand it, 'Reasonable suspicion' applies to Section 43 which is applicable anywhere, whereas under section 44 no suspicion is needed for a stop, but the stop has to be in an area authorised for stoppages under section 44, and within the dates prescribed for authorisation - such authorisation must be made by a senior officer, as stated in the linked act. Interestingly, section 44 appears to state that the stop must be made by a uniformed officer, so presumeably if a plains-clothed officer stops you under section 44, they shouldn't have done!
... and from the article...
"When we spoke to London Underground (LU) last year, they were adamant that people needed permission to take photographs on the Underground, and without a (paid-for) official permit, they were not allowed to do so.
They were very reluctant to be drawn on where the distinction lay between professional filming and ordinary tourist activity - intimating even that it might be unlawful to take photos of illegal activity occurring, such as an assault on LU staff - and it is this refusal to delineate a clear dividing line that gives police the power to intervene pretty much as it suits them."
This attitude by London Underground staff appears to be seriously at odds with their published information. Maybe we should all quote the following when stopped by LU jobsworths for taking pictures for personal use:
From:
https://custserv.tfl.gov.uk/icss_csip/GetDetailInformation.do?entityNum=00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003939&kbname=SDB&newTabtext=Tube
"Do I need permission to film or take photographs on the tube?
If you are just passing through, you shouldn't have a problem taking personal snaps, souvenir shots etc, although you must NOT use flash or lights on any of our platforms.
However, if you want to spend more than 10-15 minutes at any one station videoing or taking photos, or if they are for professional use, you MUST have a permit."
"Still, we think the S1 looks rather snazzy, but what really matters is the size: the S1's about the size of a packet of smokes - 87 x 62 x 15.5mm, according to Reg Hardware's handy ruler - making it eminently pocketable and portable."
About time the fag packet was added to the list of Reg standard units.
<--- because this unit should carry the statutory health warning
GG> I also hate that there is no "mark as READ" option like well practically every other web based e-mail service..
Strange it's not there for you - there is on mine - a drop down menu 'Mark as' just above the list of emails with options 'Read' 'Unread' 'Phishing scam'.
GG> Also I just want to see the message headers if I wanted to see the e-mail I'd open it..
Switch off the preview in the Options menu then - you get a choice of where the preview goes, or no preview at all, so all you get is the list of Sender, Title and Date (or time for recent emails) and you can delete the spam and viruses to your heart's content without ever opening them.
Still unless I've missed it somewhere, it's a pity you can't view the full headers if you want them - bonus! points! to! Yahoo! mail! on! that! one!
The story was just meant to illustrate the catch 22 problem of setting up a Pre-SP2 PC with a standard domestic broadband connection. You needed the connection to get the updates, but the problem the updates were supposed to solve came over the connection before the updates arrived. It wasn't meant as a step by step guide to fixing it, so I skipped to the end of the story with the comment about getting the updates over a more secure connection without filling in all the middle bits about scanning and cleaning up the PC first.
I don't remember there being any nitroglycerine left at that point!
Yup, I remember that happening to me 4 years ago when I got broadband installed at home.
The Telewest technician had just got the cable modem installed, then we plugged in the Pre-SP2 laptop and blam... Windows would shut down with an intrusion before I could even get online for the updates. Unplugged the network connector and of course the computer started up just fine. Needless to say, the technician didn't have a clue what was going on.
Had to take the computer into work to connect to the firewalled network there to get the updates.
"The 8086 was released after the IBM PC-XT (8088, 8 bit bus, 4.77 MHz clock) but preceeded the PC-AT, which used the more modern 286 chip and initially ran at a blistering 8 MHz."
Actually the 8086 was released before the 8088. It's just that when IBM got around to designing the IBM PC, the 8088 was the easier/cheaper option because of the 8 bit data bus.
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