Phased data?
I recall that in one of the Heinlein books they discussed a trinary computer which used phased data so presumably an optical computer. Would make doing division with Roman Numerals look like childsplay in comparison.
1514 publicly visible posts • joined 6 May 2007
We moved into a house with wobbly floorboards but before I could do anything we had to move back out for a couple of weeks for a complete rewire after the fusebox blew out. Turns out that the previous 'electrician' had run the mains cables through notches in the joists but to ensure they lay flat used bent over nails to hold them down and one of the wobbly floorboards was where the nail sat proud in a notch that was too shallow. The foot traffic over that area cause the wiring to break down and short out. When this was all replaced (and circuit breaker fitted instead of fuse wires) they showed me the stretch of damaged cable. About a foot just had beads of copper instead of wires...we were very very lucky
Had a similar issue with a Ford Fusion where the light came on and after carefully getting it to a mechanic it turned out to be the super-secret Ad-Blue tank behind the read bumper had reached the low limit (was then another £200 for Ford to top it up and clear the flag since only they have the required tools) - shysters
I understand your thinking but it cannot be that open-ended. While I agree that you should be able to take a mobile phone with a broken screen to any repair shop (or buy the parts online and have a go yourself) there would need to be restrictions for some categories of items because of their purpose. You may well be capable of safely changing the brakes on your car but can you safely replace the magnetron in a radiotherapy system? Would you expect the receptionist at a school to be able to replace the fuser in the photocopier etc etc
Small steps are the right approach here to ensure the correct battles are fought to pry manufacturer's fingers from 'our' stuff
I always considered it a shame that people were happy to write really complex applications for their business needs but would use the sample user mail template 'out of the box' and then whinge it was too clumsy/ugly.....Well write your own then, it is actually very very simple
Long time back now but we moved into an old house which still had flash-cap wiring. For those that have never heard of it a carpenter/joiner(chippie) would run 1"x2" timbers with two channels cut into the length. Sparky would then come along and lay in two bare wires and the chippie would come back put a thin cap over it to protect the residents.
Apparently that was determined to not be a safe method to deploy mains round a house
So that classic where the FPU was 'removed' from the main CPU (the Intel 486SX) and could be bought as an extra chip which was essentially the same CPU with the FPU enabled and had an extra pin to take control when FPU work was required.
Awesome marketing that
"People didn't switch to cloud to save money"
In many/most large enterprises the finance decisions are much more subtle than that as which bucket it comes from often rates higher than how big the bill is and moving to cloud simplifies the accounting since it is now just a rental charge rather than capital equipment with support costs and depreciation etc.
The people that actually declare that the company will move to cloud have a limited understanding of the technical side but have listened to the salesmen/accountants and have been assured that it will have no effect on the end-user but will look much nicer on the balance sheet (we have global distributed resources; great uptime blah blah blah). What nobody will mention is the change in stress points since now it is not the ability of the datacentre team to keep all the servers going but all the disparate companies between you and your data who can roll out changes without warning that cause your link to go dark. If it is your datacentre/staff you can send the boys round 'pour encourage les autres' but when it could be any one of six companies who already have your money and consider you a class B customer you may not even be able to get a recorded message when you call them.
Fortunately it was only me that suffered...
Was doing unit test work on a small weather radar display system and had just checked the HT side of the display was running correctly as 15kV. Got the urge for a coffee so made everything safe and wandered off to get one and once back I picked up where I had left off in the test script. Sadly as we all know following a script does not require thinking to be engaged and I was wondering what that tingling was when I realised I was leaning on the HT lead. I know there was hardly any current but even so I was very very lucky
I just wish I could say that I have never heard of that before, but...
It seems the more self-important a person is the more bizarre their thought processes become and I have had to re-educate a number of apparently intelligent people that Trash is a baaaad place to keep 'things I need to work on'. The best way to fix this is to enable a process to flush the Trash every night until they get the hint
Make a reasonable number of attempts to cancel and record any calls. Send an email to the appropriate departments and if no response in two weeks just cancel the direct debit. It is amazing how fast they get in touch if they cannot get into your bank account at which point you bring up all the attempts you have made to follow their processes and please supply the MAC/PAC to move to a different provider
and no, you will not re-enable the DD
I spent some time working in Switzerland which has four official languages and about 427 different keyboard layouts which meant chaos when trying to work over a remote connection as it was impossible the work out what effect a keypress on your local keyboard would have.
What I never understood though was the way some keys had 4 or 5 different accented characters associate but when I was typing in German "IT ALWAYS KNEW WHICH ONE I WANTED"
Freaked me out every time
I have always wondered at what point 'x years with the company' actually becomes a liability? I know that all roles will be different but most management positions need an awareness that 'we have always done it that way' is not the same as 'optimal approach' and that is something which needs refreshing by finding out how other people approach challenges and processes.
You forgot the 'Help' option which links to the FAQ page containing half a dozen simple questions where they have already got an answer. Those answers will include the 'This is solved in the next release, please contact your Sales representative to ensure you are signed up to our automated update program'.
Most of the games I was keeping hold of my Win10 Gaming system for now play very politely through Steam on my Linux system although I confess I have a Win10 VM for a couple of apps which are too much effort to setup in WINE or similar.
This may not be The Year Of The Linux Desktop but if you are willing to stray from the WinOS herd you will be welcomed with a comforting look'n'feel
quote "Assuming that they can't just lift them off the phone itself"
Perfectly demonstrated by Mythbusters who lifted a fingerprint off a CD case to open a fingerprint coded lock with a bit of sticky-backed plastic and a 100% success
As commented above, fingerprints are one of the weakest form of biometrics which are most easily damaged and stolen.
I'm sure I have put this up on a previous story but some time ago so it is fair to give it another outing.
A sail loft in Cowes on the Isle of Wight was struggling and the manager went round with the accountant and checked every aspect to see how they could save enough to last until the next batch of orders. Eventually the manager announced he was the only spare headcount and he was giving up his job but would be staying on part-time unpaid until things improved. A few months later orders came in and he could start taking a salary again.
Oddly enough the staff would have done anything he asked after that
I had a Ford Focus where the Check Engine light came on so I slowed carefully and stopped then switched off. I waited a few minutes then started the engine again and listened carefully but could hear no unusual noises. I drove gently to my pet mechanic who put it on the diagnostic reader and apparently it was saying to add some AdBlue or whatever it is that goes in the secret tank behind the rear bumper assembly (which requires special tools/fluids and then a re-connect to the diagnostic reader to clear the flag)
Great one there Ford
It also raise the worry about the speedometer accuracy as while it may be able to record distance quite accurately that means nothing once paired with Microsoft Minutes.
Officer - "Do you know what speed I recorded you travelling at?"
Driver - "Well it depends, it may have been 60mph, or 2mph, or 397mph...the needle on the speedo has trouble keeping up with the variations and the digital display only shows 888"
I appreciate that a geo-fence would go straight to names but surely the first step would have been all that wonderful CCTV footage that places (especially banks) have in play. Even the real-world TV shows demonstrate there is enough that law-enforcement can immediately access to allow them to do some basic tracking at which point you have a much smaller sub-set of suspects. Once you add in footage from private companies along the route that could be requested the only hard bit is fitting a name to a face and they all have that wonderful facial recognition software 'on test'
You forgot toothbrush.
OK most are actually Bluetooth [how very ironic] on the latest Braun iO series and while they say it has Bluetooth they seem to neglect to say why but their TriZone really does have Wifi to connect to the remote display to show how well you are cleaning your teeth!!!!
Is it me? I just do not get why you would want to take a simple piece of kit and add a mass of complexity with who knows what vulnerabilities and which shortens the useful life of the kit all to add 'Using a mobile phone' to the features?
As the previous commenters have said, these things should last decades and I would struggle to find a single reason why being able to use a remote control is actually a good thing. OK, a remote for a TV is good but why allow the manufacturer to change the user experience after you have bought it or to track what you choose to watch.
So here is a silly thought, what if the people creating the ChatGPT stuff and the people writing the TurnitIn detector stuff are the same people? They get paid to create the essay and paid to scan it and then they adjust the detection results to maximise their income. One year they lean towards a higher detection rate and the next year they offer an upgraded ChatGPT which squeaks more essays through. Then the next year the detector is upgraded which catches more ChatGPT essays...
They could probably run that for decades before anyone bothered to check