Posts by Julian I-Do-Stuff 136 publicly visible posts • joined 9 May 2008
Category and time/comment count - two lines that just aren't needed: headlines should speak for themselves. And "hrs" since when? No idea when I last refreshed. Date/time if you have to but followed link color change treks me what's new. There's not enough news in my visual field to fill my input buffet. Increase info density and eliminate the vacuous.
ESA's Concurrent Design Facility - where they mess around with mission options* - at Estec may still be driven by Excel. Last thing I'm pretty sure was done with Excel was LISA Pathfinder but I suspect it's still in use.
* Not enough power... bigger solar panels... stronger reaction wheels... not enough room... shrink the batteries... more cooling?... move to the outside... They trade off design options on-the-fly. It's Excel AND cool.
Is there some principle of free speech that says the speaker is not responsible for the consequences of their speech? Free speech: yes. Immunity from liability: no. All assuming that one grants speech add having "casual powers", which it would seem strange to deny. Suppose you are a bomb disposal trainee and I the trainer tell you to dismantle a bomb to see how it works and that it has been defused, but I am lying or mistaken, am I not liable? It was only my statement about safety that encouraged the trainee to proceed.
Designing special purpose UPS to support nuclear reactor mainframe peripherals. Spec said "up to 5 minutes of power"... Hmmm, we thought, if all the power goes off in a nuclear power station - including the primary UPS & backup generators - the fan will be very brown very quickly so we gave them power for 3 hours to sort it out. Mind you, the mainframe was probably long dead by then, but it was unlikely to be *our* fault. Arses properly covered. PS The mainframe also had a battery... for starting.
Or, give or take 10%, 1 layer of books on the entire land surface of the Earth. Why pick China and then a funny multiplier like 13? How about Mongolia 79 layers deep? Anyway, what's the volume?* How about a hybrid unit of 1 Wales in area x 1 Double-decker bus in height? or 1 China x 1 Dollar Coin?
* Actually, what font size are they assuming?
When the CPS has to decide whether there is a "realistic prospect" of conviction, what exactly does it mean... it would be nice to know before they rely on it whether it's reasonable likelihood, balance of probabilities or something else. [Personally, whilst BT may be innocent until proven guilty I tend to think of this case as rather more Not Convicted until Defence Proved Vacuous...]
Who else but The Register could possibly provide such an unrivalled combination of Playmobil re-enactment, PARIS-based tittilation and aeronautical lunacy and journos who care enought about obscure stuff to know that to leave out the Dilmun-Bahrain connection would have been to miss half the fun of the story... as well as in depth IT coverage (occasionally).
... and, of course, readers who quote Josephus.
Trebles all round!
PS If scientists get to be good old fashioned Boffins here, how about a suitable Reg-style epithet for archaeologists? Bone-botherers?
Give the QC a lesson in information theory and/or philosophy and the opinion might change: the electronic part (voice or data) is merely an intermediate between the sender's and recipient's brain - surely a message cannot be "transmitted" (past tense) until it has been "received", which can only occur when all the information content has been extracted.
E.g. I might listen to my voicemail and leave the message undeleted because I didn't take it all in on first hearing. That a message may have been displayed or listened to is no guarantee the message has been "received", and until has been it is still in the process of being transmitted and so is still protected by RIPA.
Keep everything as proof you haven't extracted all the info yet...
A new program folder NOS... (since disappeared!) which contains an Adobe updater (certificates check out) but which helpfully decides to run getPlusHelper as a hidden service under Windows (Vista), thereby giving Unhackme conniptions... RootKit! RootKit! RootKit! (actually Unhackme was much nicer than that... but that's what my brain does when it sees the word RootKit in red).
I suppose I didn't get the Adobe Download Manager with Firefox/Chrome because of NoScript... but of course I got it when fixing up IE8 (which I hardly ever use, but that's no reason not to update it if it's installed)
Service stopped, key removed, file deleted.
Bastards. Just do it simple... how hard can it be???
Logic vs Statistics vs Politics.
Logic: At least one bear has shat in a wood.
Statistics: Surveying the habits of bears (as opposed to the incidence of ursine defecation in woods in general), at the 95% confidence level the presence of bears correlates with the presence of bear shit in bear-occupied woodland.
Politics:Unlicensed bears are fouling sites of outstanding natural beauty.
Party Politics: The (insert name) party is callously, wilfully, and cynically ignoring/exaggerating the issue of bear faeces and environmental degradation and the consequent effects on public health/education/safety/radicalisation of soft toys which we, the (insert name of a. n. other) party cannot condone.
Election Politics: The Bears are Coming!
Most excellent! Good for you.. but how depressing that El Reg's (limited... but it is, after all, a tad OT for IT per se) science coverage is better written and more informative than other online popular science rags.
Any chance you could explain dimensional compactification in string theory?
Does that mean if I watched it with the sound off it would be "extreme porn".... but not if I turned it on? What if I can't hear? Can I be arrested, charged and convicted for being deaf?
BTW... since it's all above board now, can you get hold of a copy so that we can see just how idiotic the whole situation is (as though any further evidence were necessary....)
everything is lewd... to quote Tom Lehrer a propos censorship.
The bigger problem is, by analogy, that context is relevant... although it is increasingly apparent that the context is ignorable.
I daren't tell you how a bag of flour could be used for terrorist purposes... but, knowing that it *could* be, anyone who fancies doing a bit of home baking is in going to be up the creek without much of a paddling instrument at this rate (yes, the recipe did say "mix metaphors until smooth").
Having once developed and supplied hardware error correcting memory systems to a number of nuclear power stations, and having also monitored the errors rates, there were significant differences between sites though there was no obvious correlation with hardware batches. We put it down to variations in background radiation - maybe Google should look at their local geology and radon etc. levels.
Really - but only about 0.1%... the Guiness ads, that bizarre, late night C4 add for tires that looked like an automotive fetish street party, etc.
In other words: advertisers be creative - be witty, artistic, entertaining, informative... put some brains into it!
And yes, there's also the 0.1% that make me want to shoot (in a non homicidal way of course) those responsible... I can't remember what it said on the tin, but I know they said it did precisely that.
This is appealing but non- [insert word 5 on line 1 of Comment 14 re "Comments on: MoD 'How to stop leaks' guide leaks"]
Good idea in principle - perhaps - but it is likely to require that all referenced legislation is properly digitised and incorporated into the draft - but that would also be a Good Thing (god knows how they do it at present).
With a bit of boolean logic and some structure behind it one might also get better drafted and more sensible legislation. This wingnut says it's the right way to go.. might take while though...
Indeed. It surely - at minimum - requires them to take it away until such time as it is deemed legal or illegal.
Though what the police's role in helping to spare anyone from "causing offence" is unclear - I see hopeful signs there... maybe Mr Plod will intervene to stop e.g. Home Secretary, PM, etc. from causing offence with stupid policies...
"there are cosmologists doing really great inquiry into the origins of the universe. That doesn't have any real benefit to the economy"...
Until string theory ('cos it's good for gravity - but who needs to study that, we all know it sucks), for example, possibly pie-in-the-sky, nonetheless produces mathematics that has ended up having serious applications to condensed matter which might lead to novel, innovative,etc. devices, technologies, etc., etc,. etc. of economic significance.
Yes times are hard, all budgets need to be re-considered and the least meritorious (reluctantly) put aside, but for god's sake don't elevate being economical with scare resources into a guiding principle of research etc.
If the long-term economic process (agricultural - industrial - service...) is indeed leading the most developed nations towards a "knowledge based economy", i.e. where the what is known, in all generality, can be valuably applied on behalf of others, this approach will merely turn artists into craftsmen and then into mere jobbing workmen. Welcome to the future Britain of pure Polish Plumbing in which we do nothing particularly well but we're cheap and available.
How about finally reforming the agricultural subsidy system (slash other waste bucket of your choice) and investing more in a sphere of activity that can only return greater rewards the more you put into it.
If this is a Vision of the Future it's the vision of a cataract ridden, short sighted, blinkered, photophobe.
a propos Queen's Regulations "Guidance to the wise but law to the fool"
Perhaps someone graphically gifted could offer an icon for a purblind, anencephalic civil servant/ minister attempting to blow his/her brains out with an unloaded banana pointing the wrong way.
However, I sense a tremendous business opportunity for providing out-sourced common-sense. Obviously government has none so it would be only sensible to... oh hang on, I think I see a problem....
Anyone know if it is legal to use appropriate force to resist unlawful arrest? Naively I would suppose that an illegal arrest, being not an arrest, just becomes plain assault by a police officer and assault by anyone is surely grounds for reasonable defensive action.
Not sure I would try it even if the answer is yes, but it would be nice to know
< Mine's the seasonally appropriate one
How queer. The employee didn't have a right to work yet Scotland had apparently checked the documents and obviously concluded that she did. So, either she was presented with false documents, or she didn't check the right documents or she did so incompetently thereby demonstrating further (she didn't keep copies) manifest ignorance of the law she herself was responsible for or, if she was not ignorant, gross negligence by virtue of failing to do what she knew she oughta, or simple incompetence.
Equally obviously it's not a resigning matter - she should carefully consider her position then carry on having refocussed her energies on her core competencies. (I am assuming of course that Mr Brown checked the papers of all government ministers etc.)
She would however benefit from further training in the use of standard office equipment, including, but not limited to, photocopiers.
Photocopying 101: Arse.
Sir Christopher had in 2007 told the agency to get better legal advice, but at his next inspection last year found the situation unchanged. "When I raised this matter with the Chief Prosecutor he was disappointed that trespass was still occurring," he said.
That explains the huge number of police investigations and pending prosecutions I've read about then...
Oops, sorry, still a bit jet lagged... just got back from Cloud Cuckoo Land, where the government does get prosecuted for apparently breaking the law.
"The Home Office today declined to discuss its legislative plans, citing a policy of never commenting on leaked documents"
So... ignoring any "leak" (could be an H.O. technique to shutting down debate - leak it themselves then say, "Oh, no... we never discuss leaked documents!") do they or don't they intend, are they or aren't they considering...?
Seems a perfectly legitimate question regardless of what prompted it.
"This does not necessarily mean that suspension would be used," the government said.
It should - let them deal with the outcry & mess (immediately and at the ballot box). Wasn't it a Roosevelt who said something like 'The quickest way to the abolition of bad law is rigid enforcement'?
Too much law is selectively applied, and often inappropriately (Anti-Terrorism laws used against Iceland???)
I plead temporary insanity due to a week of Hungarian in-laws.
IF - as is NOT the case - the issue is the uniqueness of data, then my answer was not incorrect
IF - as IS the case - the issue is the uniqueness of the identities of people as defined by biometric data, then I was indeed so far off the point as to be positively retrograde. 1.8 x 10^15, etc. etc. all accepted.
Apologies to author et al. Doing stuff includes making a complete twat of myself - I'm good at that.
(Rarely in the field of iconry has this been more appropriate)
Post 1 - Not enough caffeine
Post 2 - Too much wine?
3rd time lucky?
@Michael H.F. Wilkinson - Re matching, granted. But I was limiting my point to the determination of uniqueness of records... whatever initial set of biometrics are obtained (as opposed to subsequent measurements for *identification*) it's just data, so uniqueness surely could be determined as suggested?
@the rest, not so much missing the point as not bothering to get to it - the arguments against - in my opinion - are much stronger than those for, but when I thought I saw an astronomical misstatement ... the point was really about the author missing the point and introducing spuriously supportive detail.
Still a bit eggy, but I thought at the time I was possibly making an omelette...
"To prove that each [of 60 million people] is represented by a unique electronic identity on the population register, each biometric would have to be compared with all the rest. That would involve making 1.8 x 10^15 comparisons.
Bollocks - I think - except in the most improbable worst case. Hash the identity and do a sort, then look for consecutive duplicates. Quicksort is O(nlogn)... do the math.
Did he actually manage to fail... or is he now the proud recipient of a certificate lauding him for Deferred Success? (I would think actually failing anything these days was an achievement in itself)
PS What happens if a bus doesn't turn up? How long are examinees expected to wait? Or is that Unit 2 - Advanced Time Management... knowing when you're wasting your time?
Looks like the "ssshhhh!" chemical definitions and recommendation are intended to stop someone buying some (possibly?) interesting and (possibly?) readily available substance for inappropriate uses...
But... if you look at the level of chemical knowledge required to understand the rest of the technicalities I'd bet the appropriate post-grad chemists already know about SsshPice, so I'm not quite sure what the point is...
I didn't know about the potential utility of compounds "“structurally derived from 3-(1-naphthoyl)indole or 1H-indol-3-yl-(1-naphthyl)methane by substitution at the nitrogen atom of the indole ring by alkyl, alkenyl, cycloalkylmethyl, cycloalkylethyl or 2-(4-morpholinyl)ethyl whether or not further substituted in the indole ring to any extent , whether or not substituted in the naphthyl ring to any extent.” but now I do know, I'm not sure what I could do with the information, even if I were so inclined.
Told MS back in April there was a security issue with this as I had just found I had a certain ActiveX running despite the KIllBit being set... (but for me it was a good thing... I need that ActiveX).
I just hope they *don't* find a way to disable properly an ActiveX they didn't replace properly with a secure version or I'd be stuffed.
Some obnoxious twats had their car - sorry, mobile sound system - parked 50m from my house making a really terrible racket for a really intolerably long time late/night early one morning ... I cracked and called the police (the local number, not 999).
Please would you come and tell them to turn it down/off?
Sorry Sir, can't do that...
Why on earth not? Apart from actually breaching the peacefulness of the street, how about "behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace?"
Don't have any evidence of that sir.
Well.... put it this way. If you don't come down here pronto *I* am going to breach the peace because of their damn noise...
Be there right away sir!
Those were the days. I bet nicking policeman's helmets is a terrorist offence now too...
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