Re: The default way for people to prove their identity
It's kind of a good thing if they get your ID correct when they're trying to deport you as well.
43 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Jul 2008
My first Unix* almost put me off for life. A Hitachi 2050 workstation (68010 based??) that booted up into some windowed Japanese UI. I had to learn the magic combination of characters that would allow me to communicate with it in something a bit like ASCII, and repeat it after every reboot. It was black magic I tell you.
* It was a HI-UX derivative, so probably not really Unix, in the POSIX compliant sense of the word.
My first Unix* almost put me off for life. A Hitachi 2050 workstation (68010 based??) that booted up into some windowed Japanese UI. I had to learn the magic combination of characters that would allow me to communicate with it in something a bit like ASCII, and repeat it after every reboot. It was black magic I tell you.
* It was a HP-UK derivative, so probably not really Unix, in the POSIX compliant sense of the word.
This has been labelled 'venting with flame' on a number of radio control and flashlight interest groups, and it's been fairly well documented among those groups of hobbyists. If there is no 'vent' in your e-cig, torch or other device, then you essentially have a pipe bomb.
Not such a problem if it goes wrong in an RC boat 50 metres across a pond. It's a bigger deal if you're carrying said 'pipe bomb' around in your hand, and a much nastier problem if you stick it in your mouth.
Some of the cheap, rip-off 18650 units I've seen from the far east are outrageous. Take care to buy good batteries, and charge them properly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzzfzGJpUS8
Ah, the voice of sense.
"*FWIW, I take unreasonable exception to the phrase 'go extinct', it just doesn't sound right to me, possibly because the verb 'go' implies motion. I far prefer 'become extinct' or in the case of anthropogenic extinctions, 'be made extinct'."
I agree wholeheartedly. "Go extinct" is a really ugly phrase. I'm pleased I'm not alone.
@El Presidente : This time it's a Link to where you can buy loudspeaker cones from a company that builds Formula 1 cars.
Might that be Tag Mc.Laren? Just a guess. I don't even know if they are still trading. or whether we should talk of TAG, McLaren, Audiolab or IAG.
It's always been the same - Winmark and 3D Mark (back in the day) got abused to hell and back by graphics card manufacturers, and it happens all over other parts of the industry. I even caught one PC manufacturer replacing the cache chips on a hard drive before submitting a system for review. It ain't going away. The only thing benchmarks tell you is how fast a device runs *that* benchmark.
What's with all the 'mights' and 'maybes'? Why don't they get off their podgy behinds and go for a little trip. When they get far enough away they can turn around and have a proper look at whether we're in a 'major spiral arm' or just a little spur.
I don't know...apathetic bloody planet. Can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs etc etc
@TFD - It's got nothing to do with the English language. It's a name, and you can name things whatever you want - in any language you want. Or even in no language at all (like The Moron Formerly Known as Wotzisname). On top of that, it's an acronym, so all bets are off.
He named it to echo the name of some peanut butter or other.
the 'G' is soft, like in Gin.
Suck it up.
@FuzzyTheBear
You started with a 'what if?' then went to a 'just supposin'' and ended with a completely unjustified 'if X happens then Y will happen and that scares me lots'.
There comes a time when all old technology products come to the end of their useful life. XP is old. Live with it. Or do you think that MS should keep supporting it in perpetuity?
If you don't want a product that will have an 'end of support' notice at some point, I'm sure you could find some obscure open source OS that doesn't have any support in the first place. At least you'll know where you stand, eh?
Gee, it's come around again. Anybody remember the 'headcasting' application that once shipped with the Matrox G550 graphics card? This seems to be the great-grandson of that technology, 12 years on. It didn't catch on then, and I'd be surprised if it does this time around.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/789/3
>> If the boffins have access to the data for all the patients taking that drug we should be able to spot/dismiss these things sooner.
You think that they'll give that data back to us? Not a chance.
That's not how it works. More likely they'll use it to formulate a new drug with different side effects, which they will then patent and sell for more than the old drug, all the while denying that there is anything wrong with the old drug.
Big Pharma are not charities. Just because our data the might help them build a new drug, don't expect a payback.
The big problem seems to be that very senior staff in the NHS - including some Chief Execs and Caldicott guardians - don't have the first clue about how to manage and process personal data appropriately. Until and unless they get fined into taking it seriously, there is a danger that they will carry on in ignorance. They seem to understand being hit in the wallet, even if it is we taxpayers that end up with the bill.
I personally know of doctors who are screaming blue murder about data being sent out of trusts without appropriate precautions, and it falls on deaf ears.
"All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal."
Re AC @ 08:15
DAT better than CD? Even when DAT is setup to record at 16bit, 44.1kHz? How does that work?
Even best case you can squeeze 48kHz sampling out of DAT, which extends the frequency response out to (theoretically) 24kHz minus whaterver you need for the filter slope - definitely in bat territory.
Long hours of double blind tests showed me that most people can't hear any difference when you brick wall filter music at 16kHz, so I'm not buying it.
I won't get started on what constitutes any of the various types of compression, but band limited PCM sampling at 16 bit, 44.1kHz isn't compressed in my book. At all.
Still have the T-Shirt. It has "Real World Benchmarks" written across it.
I worked for a number of hardware manufacturers way back, and spent a lot of time in the labs of Ziff Davis, Future Publishing and the others. The dirty tricks used to win benchmark wars were scary. I even found one PC maker had soldered bigger cache chips to hard drives before submitting for review, Graphics card drivers would be created and distributed (to a select few) with the sole aim of being quick in a specific benchmark program (Remember 3D mark anyone?). Then all the 'optimisations' would be removed to get a driver through WHQL testing for shipping machines.
It's a game. The only thing you learn from running a benchmark is how fast that machine runs the benchmark.
/^v.+b$/i
Not sure what's new here - I was running three IBM T221 / Viewsonic 2290 displays (same thing, really) at 3840*2400 pixels each from a single graphics card under Linux more than five years ago. Everybody said "wow", but nobody wanted to buy it...
I don't remember the dot pitch/pixels per inch of the IBM displays, but it's definitely 'a lot'.
It wasn't a moon. Not ANY moon.
Anybody who was paying attention knows full well that the Clangers lived on a small, blue PLANET. Our moon (for those who haven't been paying attention) is not blue, and not a planet. It is in fact cheese coloured, as proven beyond any reasonable doubt by Wallace and Gromit (at least pm seems to be awake).
9/10 for the story, 0/10 for successful investigative journalism.
Paris, because we'd all like to see her moon.
Over and out.
Glenn.