Posts by Danny 2 2209 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2009
"Stretch Your Face" - Tobacco Shirt (Silicon Valley: The Soundtrack)
And no, dreams don't feel real. I often have friends and enemies in dreams, or at least social interactions. In real life I only have TV, this forum and problematic cats.
I do like dreaming though, my internal scriptwriters are often brilliant. Lately though I sometimes wake up out of boredom. GIGO not FOMO.
a high-level code-breaking language capable of creating alphabets beyond the system defined alphabets
That would make a great scifi story plot, if only it wasn't factual.
Alzheimer's, and the other forms of dementia, are always awful for the sufferer - we just observe it as worse when they were obviously intelligent. My friend Attila the Stockbroker lost his mum that way, she was a code breaker at Bletchley Park. My dad was just a teacher, but the pain is the same.
I don't want life expectancy extended, but quality of life extended.
It's worth bearing in mind that there are geographical technical problems in mountainous areas like Glencoe compared to flat rural areas like Norfolk. I'll be impressed if the Glencoe coverage reaches the peaks of the three sisters.
Gee up ma Cuddy
Ma cuddy is ower the dyke;
If ye touch ma cuddy,
Ma cuddy'll gie ye a bite
There were funky China men from funky Chinatown
They were chopping them up
They were chopping them down
It's an ancient Chinese art
And everybody knew their part
From a feigning to a slip
And a kickin' from the hip
Everybody was Kung Fu fighting
Those kids were fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightening
But they fought with expert timing
There was funky Billie Chin and little Sammy Chong
He said, here comes the big boss, let's get it on
We took the bow and made a stand
Started swaying with the hand
A sudden motion made me skip
Now we're into a brand new trip
Asymptomatic infection was common and may have played a role in the spread, the study authors said. Among 136 cases with available information on symptoms, 36 patients -- 26% -- reported no symptoms. Of the 100 who reported symptoms, those most commonly reported were subjective or documented fever, headache and sore throat.
Interestingly, a higher percentage of the youngest children tested positive: 51% among those age 6-10 years, 44% among those age 11-17 years, and 33% among those aged 18-21 years tested positive.
"This investigation adds to the body of evidence demonstrating that children of all ages are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection and, contrary to early reports, might play an important role in transmission," the study authors wrote.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/31/health/georgia-camp-coronavirus-outbreak-cdc-trnd/index.html
"Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me" was actually written by Frank Muir and Dennis Norden for the 1950s radio show Take It From Here. Carry On Cleo stole it and never credited them.
I'm not being pedantic, it seems relevant in the context of intellectual property theft.
Hey! That's demeaning of a wonderful technology suitable for people of all ages, not just children.
I regularly used to spill a quarter bottle of malt on my carpet before I bought an adult sippy glass. Paid for itself in a week, plus you can use it with a facemask on.
I've not went for adult diapers/nappies yet but I am wondering how much time I could save on nights out trailing to the toilet. Astronauts use them so they are literally space age tech.
The mission will also make use of electric cooling ... will use power from solar panelsThermoelectrics, under utilised after all these years. I used to charge my phone from my stove.
codes taped to the side of the desk to be able to insert into the page to format a document like the WP software that our admins had to use then.. (Was it called Wordstar?)I much preferred Wordstar.
I also feel increased software usability was a mistake. Making it easy for idiots to use computers has led to all the QAnon crap, 5G mast arson, Trump's twitter, ad nauseam. We should have kept it difficult - not exclusive just not idiot proof.
The primary reason for investigation into a hack isn't punishment, it's to prevent further hacks.
The failure to prevent the hack may be forgiven; the failure to investigate is both unforgivable and incriminating.
I'm pro Scottish independence, but a year or two ago I helped got a Russian state puppet thrown out of the Edinburgh Chambers of Commerce. Now how on earth did a Russian state puppet get into the Edinburgh Chambers of Commerce? Filthy lucre.
We need the complicit corrupt Lords and MPs named, shamed, blamed and arrested. We need to deport the oligarchs, seize all Russian assets in Londongrad, and arrest all their local money launderers.
That won't happen, obviously. It's telling how Trumpish Johnson is.
But first we have to investigate the previous crimes to prevent further crimes.
1992~ish, I was driving two Aussies around the Highlands and I pointed out two deer coming over the brow of a hill.
"You don't often see two deer together."
Then a dozen deer came over the hill, and I said, "You are lucky, I've never seen so many deer in the wild."
Then a few thousand deer came over the hill, and I said I would stop talking.
Deer numbers are artificially inflated for blood sports. They spread Lyme disease and devastate forests. Bamby my furry arse.
When I was a kid I read the Satanic Bible
I was bored, got it at the mall in Ohio
When I was older I moved out to the bay
And at a music store, hey, I met Anton La Vey
He was dapper and he had two strippers with him
He played organ with expertise and precision
I got invited to his house in '97
With my friend Becky there was some kind of get together
I didn't go because I had something or other
Then he died that year in late October
And if I'm ever near the corner he lived on
I always think about the day I met Anton
His old Victorian was black as Bondo
They tore it down now a shiny new condo
I worked in Burr Brown's Digital Signal Processing dept in the '80s when they thought they'd cracked facial recognition. It wasn't a product, just a test of the hardware, but they were chuffed. They'd only tested it on themselves though - a scrawny wee white guy with a beard, a scrawny wee white guy without a beard, a big blond viking guy with a beard, a James Bond type, a couple of similarly disparate guys.
They tried it on a blonde female employee and it identified her as the viking guy. I was glad it failed.
Apparently the latest Chinese system can identify people wearing facemasks. And all Chinese people look alike to me. (Not racist. I knew a teacher who was one of two white teachers in an all black Caribbean school. She was short, dumpy and blonde, the other white teacher was a tall, skinny brunette, but the kids always mistook for each other. We aren't as observant as we think we are.)
"Black ashamed" is a once common, though increasingly rare, phrase in working class Scotland that means mortified. It's not racist, it comes from coal miners who hadn't washed, but I wouldn't use it in front of my South African neighbours for fear of causing unnecessary offence. Mortified works.
I recently upbraided my friends wife for describing black people as "n*g n*gs". She replied, "I'm not racist, I had a black friend at school and she never complained when I called her a n*g n*g."
"Aye, because you are an ignorant bully."
So called 'Political Correctness' is really just thoughtfulness, politeness and respect. That works in both directions though, so if someone has used language you find offensive then discuss it, don't demonise. Racism is so irrational and mostly unintentional that it rarely survives discussion.
7 years ago I was looking for a flat in Edinburgh, and an ad on Gumtree said, "only Indians need apply". My first reaction was, that's unfair, illegal, and colonial - what did we ever do to them?
Then I realised that explicit racism had saved me a wasted journey.
The only thing necessary for good to triumph is that evil men do nothing.
Thanks Karl.
I was spraffing away about nothing on a forum decades ago and I got a short reply from a woman in Switzerland who said she had LIS. I asked what that meant, and fours hours later, with intensive effort and the help of her nurse she explained.
It seemed hellish to me, worse than death. She could only move her eyes, only communicate with her eye movements. She said the internet was her lifeline to sanity. Idiotic me said I'm an electronics engineer with time and money, I'll be able to develop something to help her get back some control. Took me 20 seconds to make that worthless promise, took her hours to thank me.
She disappeared days later. That's the thing with LIS, maintaining contact is like clinging to jetsam in the atlantic, eventually you lose hope and let go. I don't think she ghosted me, she just sank.
I don't have a design for a chip to help LIS patients. Maybe eye monitoring is a better way to go over brain monitoring. I just know it is worth pursuing.
I do know there are many far smarter engineers than me at El Reg. I'd suggest this as a worthy project for 40 free open source chips.
There is a book/movie that came out since, "The Diving bell and the Butterfly". You might not find it sympathetic because the author was a fashionista, but it can happen to anyone. One minute you are you, then you are a sack of potatoes.
I get this is a marketing promo but it's still pretty cool. I'll forward it to younger engineers as I'd stopped being cutting edge long before 2001.
My goto idea is medical electronics, a chip to help process brainwaves into electrical output say for controlling a keyboard/ mouse for Locked In Syndrome.
In 1987 or '88 I first visited Coventry and a week later Cologne. Both with historic cathedrals that were bombed out in WWII. On the front of both cathedrals were footballs trapped high in their gothic spires.
It was a surreal coincidence as if the madness of war had been replaced by the Anglo-German football rivalry. Or maybe both balls were where English penalties ended up.
5G is perfectly fine, but I heard that 6G will make you impotent and ugly.
I've been digging this grave, but now that it`s made
I see that black is one hell of a color
Want to break out so I start to shout
But the mortician`s returned to his parlor
Wrapped in my shroud upstairs, the music`s so loud
That I can`t concentrate on my sorrow
Let down my hair and find something to wear
And then dance myself into tomorrow
Black hole
I`m in a hole here and all I can see
Are these grey walls that are closing in on me
Throw me a ladder, lend me an arm
Beam me up Scotty, lift me from harm
Since we are (mostly) all intelligent life here we are biased to intelligent life, but intelligence looks like an evolutionary dead end.
Cockroaches existed before us, will survive us, and they haven't caused any other extinction.
Extraterrestrial life may have arrived on earth and ignored humanity to communicate instead with more sensible species.
Hiya Terry,
The DK effect is solely used by smart folk to label stupid, self delusional folk. Nobody "suffers from it" because few folk think it applies to them or know what it means. Many folk suffer from "imposter syndrome" though, mostly erroneously in my arrogant opinion.
My eldest sister is a moron who has risen to civil service government by bullying. Now in the good old days she would have to pass an intelligence test to get promoted. I think that should be reinstated, and extended to politicians.
To be fair to stupid people, many of them know and acknowledge exactly how stupid they are. The Dunning Kruger effect is universal, nobody can accurately judge their own intelligence.
I know for a fact most posters here are brighter than me, but I like to flatter myself that a couple of regulars are even dumber. "I look up to him, but I look down on him."
I kind of prefer stupid folk, people who I can teach things to and won't humiliate me. I think that was the aim of David Dunning and Freddy Kruger.
14 years ago I was tested for breast cancer. I'd mentioned in passing to my GP that I felt a small lump under a nipple. She felt it, and then asked, "Can I feel your balls?"
Only situation that could sound scary.
I never knew men could get that, but apparently it is deadlier due to lack of soft tissue so I was fast-tracked and sent straight to the hospital for testing.
The doctor stuck a cartoon needle the size of my forearm through my nipple and poked around to get a sample. He had a pretty teenage nurse so I'd steeled myself to look brave, but I screamed and nearly cried.
Then I was sent for a mammogram. I am/was skinny so the nurse had to squeeze my bloody painful nipple between two metal plates.
The worst part though was the wait for the results, which were fine but I burned a few bridges in that time.
My point being no swab test should scare anyone. I also don't mean to discourage anyone from taking a breast cancer test; it is bad but it's better than the alternative
It's the title of an awful '80s horror movie and I both owned it and had the poster on my wall. As a smoker I need to pick my nose just to breathe. Lately I've been wrapping my finger in tissue, but I would welcome a robot assistant.
"How come I can pick my ears but not my nose?
Who made up that rule anyway?"
-Ani DiFranco (1990)
The World Health Organisation, Ani, the Center for Disease Control.
I was sitting in A&E with a nice old woman who had two huge egg sized lumps coming out her forehead. My right hand was twice it's normal size. A friendly neighbourhood drunk saw us and said,"You're the devil! And you are Hellboy!"
Once he went away she smiled over and said, "Horse trainer, kick". I smiled back and replied, "Cat lover, bite".
Horses are so potentially dangerous it's surprising we still use them for crowd control. We wouldn't accept police riding elephants into crowds.
British police started importing German Shepherds from abroad as the local breed was too placid. I was at an action where one protester ran away, which I didn't know was an option, and the MoD plod released a foreign German Shepherd on him. After it was unleashed the first thing it did was to savage a second police dog, then it gave chase. Lucky for him he'd climbed a tree by the time it caught up with him. The pigs of course found this hilarious.
It's not BS, it's LS and I know it works because I've seen it work. You can buy a sack from a zoo and test it on your horses. Maybe police horses could be trained to overcome their natural terror of lions but I assure you that they aren't.
I looked for a supporting link and found an FT article about using lion dung on a garden to scare away cats.
We are not scarier than lions, evolutionary speaking, not to cats and not to horses.
Lion dung.
Even trained police horses have an instinctual terror of lions. To deter a police horse charge at a protest in Govan they bought lion dung from the zoo and spread it as thin brown line across the road. It worked, the horses wouldn't come anywhere near it.
If you are in a demo next to a police horse, stay close to its haunches. Not behind it or it will kick you, not at the front or the officer will baton you.
It's weird what you learn on demos. I never even knew you can buy lion dung - apparently so nutrient rich that rose bushes thrive in it.
I was a peace protester for a few years, and the cops kept rumbling us in advance or soon after we'd started. My first arrest, that is on me. We didn't have watches so turned on phones to check the time for a synchronised attack. Of course the military base had it's own phone base station. Doh. Didn't even have time to cut the fence.
Next arrest, because I was the only techie I insisted no phones. Arrested before we reached the fence. The angry debrief that followed that fiasco was interrupted by an arrested protesters phone going off - and she took the call. I fell about laughing at the blatant flaw, but she was sweet and so I was blamed.
We held planning meetings for actions, and by then I insisted on no electronics. I left my phone at home. Everyone else brought their phones, but turned them off and left them outside the room. I pointed out that everyone turning off their phone at the same time in the same place was as clear a signal something was up as the police could wish for. I was often called paranoid, when I wasn't being accused of being the leak.
Common sense isn't only surprisingly rare, most folk are actively hostile to it.
@Phil O'Sophical
"Isn't laser printer toner just plastic dust melted on to the paper?"
I don't know now but 28 years ago I was made to investigate the content of black laser printer toner cartridges and it was all carbon and iron. An office worker had complained it burned her skin, and there was no 'rational' reason but the burns were undeniable.
Back then though most of us didn't know about nut allergies and would have mocked the idea.
The solution was to let her avoid the printer.
"Doctor, it hurts when I do this"
"Don't do that"
There are LED type signs on the M8 just as you enter Edinburgh. They have various useful advice, such as 'Don't drink and drive' or 'Don't drive aggressively' or 'Don't drive if you are tired' or 'Check your tyre pressure'.
Dude, you should be telling folk this before they go onto the motorway, not when they are leaving it.
"And since writing device drivers is very difficult"
No, writing device drivers is very easy if you understand the hardware. Far easier than most coding. I mean tying ropes is very difficult if you don't know knots, but if you don't know knots then don't tie ropes for a living.
Yesterday I noticed a chalk pavement drawing on my street, two (outlined) feet then '2m' then two (outlined) feet. And the two pairs of feet were roughly two feet apart, not two metres apart.
I'd like to think this was satirical because that would be very clever, but I suspect local children just don't know what a metre is. When the schools reopen the first lesson should explain lengths. Children can't stay one or two metres apart if they don't know what a metre is.
My pal is a primary school teacher and I've been (half) jokingly suggesting post-lockdown safety measures. Teach them all outdoors and issue ponchos and thermal underwear. Expel every child who is athletic, talented, good looking or intelligent as these children thrive without qualifications.
I love Lewis Grassic Gibbon, but he didn't speak the same language as Mhairi Black. In lowland Scots today the word daftie runs the gamut between idiot and smart-guy. Even as an insult, it's the very mildest of insults.
We Scots have more pejorative words than the Inuit have words for snow, for the same reason - we are surrounded by pejoratives and need to be specific.
At primary school I was called c-nt, cock, fud, fanny, twat, prick et al, and none of us had any idea those words referred to genitalia. They were just generic insults.
I assumed "winter is coming" was a dig at Raab saying 'taking a knee' came from Game of Thrones.
This latest u-turn hardly inspires confidence in the government, but I guess I'll install it. It's sad that I trust Google-Apple on privacy more than my nation.
ETA: I just heard it will still be a government app but based on the Google-Apple model. So no ta.
