* Posts by dr john

63 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jan 2011

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Tech giants set to pay through the nose for nuclear power that's still years away

dr john

Re: "even though once the uranium is gone,"

Given that Uranium is extracted from uranium ore - i.e. certain rocks, why not wait until a uranium mine has become totally uneconomic, then store the waste from used uranium fuel in the deepest part of the mine? This solves the disposal problem by putting it back where it came from.

dr john

Has no one bothered to mention to Google that Rolls Royce Submarines have been making small nuclear reactors for decades?

Why are Google effectively going for accompany with 8 years in the business as opposed to RR with 50 years experience

And RR are not the only company supplying these reactors to navies.

India’s Bharti Enterprises now largest shareholder in UK's BT Group

dr john

you missed out the decimal point in the share price

You had me really excited for a few moments that. If only it was correct... PARTY TIME!

CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor also linked to Linux kernel panics and crashes

dr john

Re: Gluttons for punishment

You mention the airports...

They probably don't have CrowdStrike - just realised how appropriate their name is - on ANY of their terminals. They are probably accessing a big system in the cloud of their own, which is interacting with several other big systems - say each airline, and other airports, who tell them when a plane has taken off to get their arrival times correct. The solution could be for each of these big systems to be duplicated on Windows cloud and a Linux cloud. But think what that would do to their costs, and transferring data between these two systems to keep both up to date and accurate. and which is the definitive one - does it transfer from Windows cloud to Linux cloud, or vice versa, or what?

MariaDB ditches products and staff in restructure, bags $26.5M loan to cushion fall

dr john

Re: LAMP/WAMP

I think you will find that almost every webhosting company offers MariaDB and a few small systems like WordPress used by only 45% of websites world wide, run on MariaDB. And many of WordPress's rivals run on MariaDB to.

So saying MySQL / MariaDB is dead as a door nail might not be totally accurate.

Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed

dr john

It gets things wrong, admits it, then repeats the wrong answer

I asked it a question that confuses normal people - is air that contains water vapour less dense or more dense than normal air, but phrased as the density of moist air compare to dry air. The correct answer is less dense, but it told me it was more dense (I am a chemist, trust me, moist air is less dense as you are adding two volumes of gases with the water vapour being less dense than air.).

I then simplified the question to two gases and emphasised one was less dense than the other, and it gave the correct answer for the mixture's density,. I took it through several examples, and then asked the original question which it got wrong, again. I reminded it of my previous questions and it appologised for getting the opening one wrong. So I asked the question again and it still repeated the wrong answer of more dense. I continually refered it to my previous questions, it continually admitted I was correct and it was wrong, then when asked the original yet again, got it wrong. I repeated this several times until I lost my temper.

I even told it why it was getting the wrong answer - that it was assuming moist air was air containing water drops, not water vapour, and not allowing for the increase in volume when two gases are added together. Again it admitted it had answered wrongly, then when asked yet again replied with the same wrong answer! Very frustrating!

But at least it didn't tell me I was dead.

Used EV car batteries find new life storing solar power in California

dr john

I strongly suspect that the lack of battery recycling facilities, to get at the metals that matter, is not due to the difficulty in doing so, but to the number of batteries that are scrapped per month. If we can exract metals from their ores then they can be extracted from the compounds used in the batteries.

You would not build a recycling plant to handle 50 batteries per month. But if it was 500 per week, you might consider it. What if it was 5000 old batteries per week?? That's 260,000 per year. Once we are all on battery power, recycling batteries for the metals will become economically viable. So a battery would power a car, then get replaced, then act as a power storage unit for the power grid, then finally have its metals extracted, and become a new battery, and enter the cycle again.

1.61 million new cars were registered in 2022. Eventually old cars get recycled. When the old hydrocarbon powered cars die out and we areall mainly electric, that's a lot of batteries, and if an electric car uses two or three power packs in its lifetime, that's a huge number of batteries which will get repurposed then recycled into new ones. And today, lithium is currently $85,500 per ton.

Longstanding bug in Linux kernel floppy handling fixed

dr john

Re: Boeing use(d) them

A friend of mine in the late 80s early 90s had a job servicing 8" floppy drives in building societies which used ancient computers. The cost of getting their custom software re-writen and tested to work on a PC was so great and so risky, they had to keep the drives working for a very long time. He as regularly driving a couple of 100 miles every day to rescue these drives.

Evernote's fall from grace is complete, with sale to Italian app maker

dr john

Well, it works for me!

I have used the free version for 8 - 10 years. It does what I want. It takes notes, lets me copy and paste useful info I need for whatever small project I am working on, copy and paste from almost any source, searches through my notes, syncs with my tablet. When doing small jobs where the invoice is too small to bother sending and will be combined with the next one, I can add time taken per day until it is worth invoicing. It's not perfect, but it works for me as a one-man band. So I don't need the extras in the paid version, I don't need it on a dozen devices, just two (I'd prefer three, but I can live with two), I don't need ten people to access my notes, just me. I don't need huge data requirements each month. I can see how a small business might run into the data limit and need the paid version of course. And if the paid version is getting trickier to use, they might decide to switch apps.

Yes, I've looked at alternatives but there's the learning curve and transfer of data from one system to another. And the possibility that something I do need is not available in an alternative. Because some alternatives are just too simple. I had planned to write my own web-based note-taker many years ago, as it is such a simple thing to do for a single user. And I have even seen simpler versions than I had planned becoming a business and getting sold for nice sums of money. But as Evernote works offline as well as online, I decided to drop my own online-only plans as I sometimes stay at a location with very poor wifi and phone connectivity.

I have no plans at the present moment to close my free account, because it works. It's a shame that they overexpanded their nice paid app and lost customers. I hope the new owners don't scrap the things I like - free being the main one, and advert free of course - and that any updates are well-received by users. However I suspect that the new owners will eventually integrate it into one of their own apps and stop taking new Evernote paid subscriptions after that. Just paid versions of their own systems. Followed by no more free versions. I still recommend Evernote to friends who might move on to the paid version.

And as I use LibreOffice, I'd need to switch back to MS Office to get an unlimited OneNote. Not sure I want to do that - I had a paid MS Office and the company I was working with forgot to update my licence, so I switched to LibreOffice to get work done while waiting, and stayed with it.

Engineer sues Amazon for not covering work-from-home internet, electricity bills

dr john

So how much electricity will you get for not spending that £5 each day?

How does that compare to the power used by a laptop - hint, my charger says it is 65 watts, and I can run it to charge, then unplug and run it for three or four hours with no problems, and often run it for longer before plugging it in again.

How does that compare to what the router uses - can't see a number on it unfortunately.

What does that meal in town cost, compared to cooking at home?

FreeDOS puts out first new version in six years

dr john

I use DOSBox to run my flying logbook using software I was given to review, about 35+ years ago. When I eventually moved from Dos to Windows 3, I didn't want to start again with new software, and kept using the logbook software. When I could no longer open a DOS window in Windows, I tried DOSBox and have continued using it to update my logbook. I have no intention of trying to copy 40 years of flying to a windows program!

DOSBox says it exists so you can play old DOS games, but it should run many other DOS programs too.

Google's Chrome OS Flex could revive old PCs, Macs

dr john

And contrary to the impression anyone reading this set of comments might get, Linux is not the most commonly installed desktop or laptop operating system. Because Joe Average and his partner might not want to remove the existing OS their device came with. If you know how to use the existing OS, why install something different and throw yourself back to be a total beginner, trying to learn lots of new stuff?

Boffins' first take on asteroid dust from Japanese probe: Carbon rich, less lumpy than expected

dr john

Re: Occam's razor, indeed.

You've got it all backwards, haven't you!

A star forms,

A planet or several planets form

One might have an atmosphere that would reduce the effect of radiation on any amino acids, f they were formed at some later stage

The atmosphere, if not initially as good as required, could change of

One or two might be in a stable orbit at the sort of distance that might favour the formation of organic compounds

The organics might form amino acids

The amino acids might form some proteins

These proteins might result in primitive life forming

That primitive life might evolve into more complex life.

In that order, not your stupid order.

And even then, life might not occur. But given the number of galaxies in the universe, the probability is greater than zero. Because we are here.

No need for magical all-powerful entities creating life in their own image. Unless you are just a very naive person who believes in magic.

Config cockup leaves Reg reader reaching for the phone

dr john

Re: Me too...

Missing the WHERE clause - me too...

Every member of a club could no longer access their online accounts. Apart from Anne whose new data had replace everyone else's login data....

After the first few had reported the same problem, I had to search through LOTS of old emails from every member to get their correct details back in place. Not a five minute job. And i hadn't activated the database backup option on the web server. Did that very quickly afterwards.

SpaceX small print on Starlink insists no Earth government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities

dr john

Re: What a surprise

And don't miss Iron sky - The Dictator's Cut

Drone smashes through helicopter's windscreen and injures passenger

dr john

Re: Another reason...

A flying car is an aircraft that can also be driven on the road.

So a separate pilot's licence would be needed. And they are a bit more costly to get than a driving licence.

The reality is that flying cars are a way for a scamming company to raise money for "research", and one such company has made no progress for over 30 years, but probably doesn't want to, it just wants more investors. Although there are a few that are taking things seriously. But the product is usually priced out of most people's range, in the £200k + range. So it will only be really rich kids in daddy's expensive toy that you'd have to worry about. Not the local kids on cheap e-scooters.

Legacy IT kit is behind 80% of UK taxman's pandemic costs, says spending watchdog

dr john

I just submitted my tax return a few days ago.

I saved the summary form, which shows how much I owed, as a pdf.

I paid what it said was owed.

Two days later I logged in and the box about how much I owed was now empty. So the payment had gone through.

Then just out of interest, I clicked on the View your payments section ( a new feature I think).

And digging around in there, I read I was now over £1000 in credit!

Back to the completed return, it still said the tax due was what I had paid!

So I will be on the phone to them tomorrow (Mondays they often seem to be very busy).

I think they need an update!

Facebook appeals ruling that it stole tech. So, Italian judge issues new judgment: Pay 10 times the original fine

dr john

Why didn't Facebook just buy the company?

When offered the software to check before incorporating it into facebook, any honest company would have said that's a great idea and accepted it. Then if their users liked it a lot, the honest and correct action would have been to buy it outright.

To copy it in just two months and change the name is just so immoral! They would never have accepted the smaller company's software for an appraisal if they were already developing their own product!!! These super-rich companies rely on no small company having the resources to fight them in court, especially when they appeal and it requires a second set of lawyer fees. I wouldn't be surprised if facebook appealed again. A sensible court would say no to a second appeal, you lost twice, so pay up. And I suspect any payment would take ages to come through and would be in stage payments.

If a small developer comes up with a good idea they all face a problem if it has to be accepted and built into a global company's systems in that they all risk this sort of problem and the legal fees required to get justice. It has happened many times in the past, and will, unfortunately, will continue for many years.

The judge had the right idea, however, saying the previous compensation was ridiculously low and slapping a times ten payment on them instead. Great for the small guys, peanuts for the global giants. But it will still happen again. That level of compensation will not worry them at all.

I work therefore I ache: Logitech aims to ease WFH pains with Ergo M575 trackball mouse

dr john

Perhaps you heard ambimoustrous from someone who heard me say that decades ago!

Normally I get a strange look when I say it.

dr john

I have been ambimoustrous (my patented word for someone who has no problem using a mouse in either hand) for decades and that greatly reduces the strain on the wrists and tendons. I swap the mouse from hand to hand so often now it just happens automatically. Even if playing a game.

I did get sore fingers and wrist in the 80s from playing computer games which back then could be very mouse intense. Haven't had any problems since I started switching hands.

The big obvious problem with this trackball is that it is a handed device - right hand only operation as far as I can see. So it would bring no relief if someone was sensitive to RSI and did need to swap hands for a rest. And, of course, a left-handed person would be forced to use it with their not dominant hand. I noticed these problems when using a similar trackball someone lent me many years ago, and decided to give it back to him.

NASA hires Nokia to build first 4G network on the Moon as part of plan to boldly go back to lunar surface by 2024

dr john

Oops

I can just see the next generation of moonwalkers out there for the first time, using the 4g network.

Astronaut Fred spots something very interesting some distance away from the lander module and pulls out his mobile phone (hopefully not activated by fingerprint recognition) to report his exciting find.

He lifts the phone up to the side of his helmet and says....

"Damn, didn't spot that communication problem, did they."

Google reveals the wheels almost literally fell off one of its cloudy server racks

dr john

Re: What were they thinking?

Along similar lines to the CO2 racing pallets.

During my first year at uni, in the chemistry lab I spotted a very large shower-head and a long new shiny metal chain next to it.

So I asked what it was for. It's an emergency shower in case you get covered in acid, or catch fire in an explosion or any similar chemistry accident. It dumps one gallon of water per second over you to save you life, says the lab assistant. That's 4.5 litres, 4.5 kg per second.

Being a scientist I obviously asked how do you know it's one gallon per second? And the lab assistant burst out laughing, then eventually explained.

Every holiday, just before each term started, two technicians would come in with a VERY large plastic bucket, a stop watch and a ladder. Up the ladder goes Techie 1 with the very large bucket and holds it so that the shower-head is well inside the bucket. On the count of three, Techie 2 pulls hard on the chain and starts the stop-watch, pulling the chain at the five second mark to stop the flow. Then they weigh the bucket to get the total flow in five seconds.

And just before the current term started, when the chain was pulled hard, the valve opened, the water came down and the chain as well. Broken off at the very top above the shower-head.

Techie 1 is now at the top of a ladder holding a container that is gaining weight at 4.5 kg per second, soon struggling to keep his balance, while Techie 2 is trying to jump very high to grab the lever that controls the valve, screaming for help, can someone turn off the water supply to the entire lab.

Eventually, Techie 1 fell off, dumping everything over Techie 2 and after several minutes someone found the mains stopcock to switch off the water. The lab was flooded and closed for the afternoon.

But the conclusion was that if the lab caught fire, under the shower was definately the safest place to be! Many of the class would touch the chain occasionally, but none of us dared to pull it.

Russian super-crook behind $20m internet fraud den Cardplanet and malware-exchange forum pleads guilty

dr john

Re: hostage

Time line of events doesn't match her being arrested or sentanced "because" of this guy being charged with fraud.

From this Reg article:

"After exhausting his opportunities to appeal the extradition in the Israeli legal system, Burkov was sent to the US to face trial in November of last year, and has now finally coughed to his crimes."

BUT from the article here https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-meet-mother-us-israeli-woman-jailed-russia-150717266.html

"Issachar was caught with nine grams of cannabis in her checked luggage while transiting from India to Israel at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport last April.

She was convicted in October and jailed for seven-and-a-half years after a court outside Moscow found her guilty of smuggling a "significant amount" of drugs."

So she was arrested seven months before the credit card thief was sent to the US, nine months before he plead guilty. She was convicted and sentanced a month before he was sent to the US, three months before he plead guilty.

So I'm not convinced the cases are related.

Okay 7.5 years for her crime does seem very harsh.

Are you suggesting this is some sort of far in advance plan ?

Virtual inanity: Solution to Irish border requires data and tech not yet available, MPs told

dr john

Re: Lying in the Chamber

As Boris assumes tracking devices would let them track imports, does he actually expect those smuggling stuff to put the required trackers in their goods????

Perhaps its just me, but I think smugglers would be a bit cleverer that that.

Remember that at one time the Irish on both sides of the border imported livestock , got a grant of that, then exported same beasts back to the same source, and got a grant for that too. Luckily they owned farms on either side of border, so the poor beasts didnt have to spend too long inside the truck before going home that same day.

I don't think tracking technology will be misused. I also believe in unicorns.

Oh good. This'll go well. Amazon's Alexa will offer NHS advice

dr john

Googling on a medical problem is better, you get more choices on what to read, can study answers carefully, have several tabs or browser windows open at once for comparing things and re-read bits without repeating the questions, and some of the data sources used will cover bits in more details than others.

Why would any sane person use a search device that only gives the first answer it finds when searching?

I just don't see the attraction of these ask a question devices.

dr john

Re: Why all the criticism?

On Holby City*, I saw an actor looking at one of my web sites to get the (correct) answer to a medical problem she didn't understand !!! I had got the correct diagnosis before she did that.

Unfortunately they used a screen shot with my site's name removed...

I was tempted to ask for a writer's credit and a small fee ;)

Oh, I'm not a medical doctor

* A medical drama on uk tv for overseas readers

Tesla’s Autopilot losing track of devs crashing out of 'leccy car maker

dr john

Re: only idiots will let their cars drive in situations which are not expressly approved

"There is no room left for distractions."

And that includes distractions such as using a hands-free phone. Or talking a lot to passengers.

Research in the late 90s put people in driving simulators on a drive around town, recording the average accident and near miss rate.

Then someone sat behind them and asked questions like Who is the president of America, What's the capital of France. What's 17 - 9, and so on. The increase in accidents and near misses was over 33% !

Okay, it was american research so capital of France was a tricky one...

Humans' brains are single thread processors, no-one can really multitask, we jump back and forth from task to task, concentrating on the one they think is most important. Concentrating on a conversation causes the accidents. More recent research showed that the accident rate in rush hour america (can't remember which cities they studied) was the same before hands-free regulations and a few years after the new regs were put in place were the same.

You've probably seen the lack of multi-tasking when talking to a driver

the words come out okay

and then

......when something

..........distracts them

on...

the road

...

....

.........

their talk

slows......

...up

And then..

goes back to normal when they have solved the driving problem.

Totally ignore your mobile phone when driving, even if you have a hands free device.

Unless your driving a Tesla???

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

dr john

Re: Child-proof reset operation

I have signed in just to say that this is obviously a family of child geniuses!

Brilliant story!

Neptune-sized oddball baffles astroboffins: It has a good atmosphere despite star-lashing

dr john

Re: Horta

The only problem for silicon based lifeforms like Horta is that silicon doesn't form long chains of silicon atoms, so a similar chemistry to carbon lifeforms isn't possible, although perhaps she was made from silicates which are long chains of linked SiO4 groups

Ex-student, 52, suing university for AU$3m after PhD rejection destroyed 'sex drive'

dr john

So he tried to get the entry qualifications for the PhD course, got caught cheating, and didn't get in - that is normal.

He clearly thinks he can just turn up, pay a fee and get in - perhaps he had heard of how rich or famous Americans get their kids into university before the recent cases got well publicised. Sorry, but that's not how it works.

Woman who hooked up with over 15 spectres has found her forever phantom after whirlwind romance and plane sex

dr john

Re: Dear God,

This is where purgatory is

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Purgatory/@51.9087192,-1.35518,13.5z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x4876da73c403d64d:0x261dec584da99635!8m2!3d51.9037532!4d-1.3425153

World's End is nearby too, down the road a bit

https://www.google.com/maps/place/World's+End,+Newbury+RG20+8SB/@51.4895563,-1.32346,13.25z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x4876a53d96aa0e05:0x260eae2ecb827301!8m2!3d51.485418!4d-1.301698

GoDaddy told off for reeling in punters with 'misleading' prices

dr john

Re: Heart Internet are doing this too

Heart Internet was bought by a company that was then bought by...

GoDaddy.

They own so many other companies, you never know you are dealing with them.

I was very happy placing clients with a small hosting company for about 10-12 years, then it was bought by a bigger group, but still okay. Then they were bought by a much much bigger group.

And then GoDaddy bought them!

But you don't know that you are working with GoDaddy as the smaller companies still keep their old names.

UK teen dodges jail time for role in DDoSes on Natwest, Amazon and more

dr john

Pathetically short "sentence"

So he's part of a gang that netted $600,000 , launched 2,000 attacks, sells his services and assists the attackers, and he gets a suspended sentence...

I should get my hands on a server and a copy of the code and get to work straight away.

Oh wait, I'm not a teenager...

I must be a criminal

I will get a jail sentence and it will not be suspended.

Judges like Judge Maurice Greene have no concept of reality. This guy knew exactly what he was doing and pocketed his fees. All in exchange for taking a rehabilitation course. "Please Judge Maurice Greene, I realise the errors of my ways and repent. And next time I will not get caught so easily."

Off-brand tablets look done, but big players are growing

dr john

Re: I want to buy a quality android tablet at a fair price

I struggled to find a high res small Android tablet until I spotted the Asus Zenpad 3 8.0,(Z581KL) with it's hexa core 1.8GHz processor, 2048x1536 pixel 7.9" screen, gps and SD slot. The Amazon models all lacked a gps, and have lower screen res, plus slower processors.

I'd dropped my older tablet and it landed face down on concrete with the padded cover flipping open at just the wrong moment. The quoted repair price for the glass and touch sensor was only a little less than the above new tablet - £220 vs £228. Hard decision - repair or upgrade...

Beats my frozen 2012 Nexus 7 too (it died on the infamous OS update)

Many tablet makers are rushing to produce the cheapest device, quality ones are harder to get now.

OK, we admit it. Under the hood, the iPhone X is a feat of engineering

dr john

Re: "they've missed the more human advancements and ergonomics"

heyrick

"The pinch to zoom basically throws away the edges of the image and scales up the middle. You're no better off than if you just took a normal (un-zoomed) photo and scaled it up with your favourite image editor."

While I agree a phone camera can't match a real camera, to be honest, the fake zoomed final image will be a little bit better than just taking the middle of the image via your fav photo editor.

The camera will shoot in RAW, take the middle bit and convert to your fake zoomed jpg for output. If you just took the original un zoomed jpg it produced and cropped it for the middle bit, when you saved it more jpg artefacts will be added (it's how jpg works) and the quality will be lower overall. You would notice the problem if you then zoomed in on your pc or mac to see some detail you liked in the image.

When people say their phone takes great pictures, they should try comparing them to ones taken be a real camera at the same time - and not necessarily a super expensive pro camera.

Northumbria Uni fined £400K after boffin's bad math gives students a near-killer caffeine high

dr john

Surely in an experiment like this, the doses would have been pre-calculated and checked. So they knew exactly what they would be feeding them before the experiment even started.

Students 1 and 2 = 0.01g

Students 3 and 4 = 0.05g

Students 5 and 6 = 0.1g

Students 7 and 8 = 0.2g

Students 9 and 10 = 30g

Anyone spot the odd one out?

In the medical experiments where I was a lab rat, the entire protocol was always worked out in advance - except for the take two aspirins and pee occasionally in your plastic bottle for three hours experiment on aspirin metabolism. We ate our aspirins, and all sat watching videos, playing video games, snooker or reading magazines. And hearing stories from the two guys who had been on the early viagra tests, which had an unfortunate result on one poor guy for almost a week apparently, to earn our £30 (it was 15 years ago). Very relaxing. Until the nurse stormed in around the 2.5 hour mark and said "None of you lot have given a single pee sample yet! Drink a cup of water now or we will have no samples at all. And might not pay unless you have a piss soon!"

Two cups of water each and 15 minutes later there were queues at the cubicles - there were 40 or so of us that day.

More than half of punters reckon they can't get superfast broadband

dr john

Why do they think 30mbs is slow

Why do these people imagine they NEED 60mbs? Because they see adverts for 100mbs or are on 30mbs.

In my previous home I happily streamed full hd video on a 10mbs service with almost no buffering, via wifi and a laptop connected to the tv. Or sometimes had the tv on while streaming music (which needs very little bandwidth, contrary to BT's advert showing a party using streaming music and needing their superfast modem and service).

In my current home I took the free upgrade from 30mbs to 50mbs, and then to 70mbs. I can't see any difference at all. But even the 30mbs happily handled the tv streaming while my partner was taking a live webinar on her laptop and I was doing something else on my laptop and tablet.

If you offer some people 100mbs, then everyone on 10mbs or 30mbs THINKS they are on a poor service. They simply have no idea what they actually need. Unless of course they are downloading a pirated copy of a movie and want it to happen quickly.

If they are on a 30mbs service with a large number of homes all connected to the same box in the street, the high contention ratio makes them imagine that 30mbs is a dreadfully slow service. It could in fact be providing the same achieved rate as a 60mbs in the same street.What they really need is better service to the box or more boxes in their street, and then the service to each individual home will improve. Trouble is if the service to the street boxes is improved, the providers up the maximum level they will sell in that street, more people will then take it and the users may not see quite as much of an improvement as they'd expect. It costs money to add more boxes in a street or upgrade the service to a box, so the providers try to recoup the cost by selling the faster services, which negates the upgrade a bit.

Perlan 2: The glider that will slip the surly bonds of Earth – and touch the edge of space

dr john

It's not bumpy, except low down, it's ultra smooth. The wave is laminar flow with a vertical ripple. The glider feels rock solid, and there is less movement than when sitting in it on the ground.

dr john

Re: Sampling pipe stuck out the nose, or new glider...

The air they will be riding did not come from very far below the glider. It's a ripple in the atmosphere, the air being sampled would only have come from a small distance below their current height. It is not rising air from the ground. It's air travelling horizontally having its path disturbed by the mountain.

dr john

Re: 90,000 feet

'glider pilots use meters, kilometers and kilometers per hour.'

'Glider pilots, refusing to integrate with the rest of aviation and being a general nuisance since 1903.'

NOT TRUE

The FAI, which manages ALL sport aviation, uses metres, kilometres and kilometres per hour for all records and achievements . Whether is for a parachute, single engined light aircraft, balloon or glider.

Pilots use whichever units are generally used in their particular country. Whether they pilot powered aircraft, gliders, hot air balloons, whatever.

As for radio communication - if in unrestricted airspace, there is no legal requirement to transmit your position, speed etc on a radio - which radio frequency would we use anyway, and who would we be talking to??? How would we know what frequency you were using to give you that personal touch?

To enter restricted airspace, all aircraft have to report / ask permission. So we conform with the law and speak to the controllers. If we don't speak to you personally, well I can see why from your attitude.

Also note that gliding took place before powered flight eg Lilienthal in the 1890s, Caley in 1849.

Gliders were built by pioneers such as Jean Marie Le Bris, John J. Montgomery, Otto Lilienthal, Percy Pilcher, Octave Chanute and Augustus Moore Herring

When the glider pilots Wright and Wright successfully flew with an engine, it didn't mean all gliding and other aviation had to change and conform with what powered aircraft then wanted to do.

PS do learn how to spell metre and related units...

UK.gov pays four fellows £35k to do nothing for three months

dr john

Revenge

Forgot to say - I got my own back on the accountants in the end.

When I was told that I would be made redundant, they said they'd retrain me in computing for free and give me some part-time work at the same time. But they were very disorganised about the actual date they would make me redundant. It took them 18 months to work out the date!

So over a full year, AFTER being told I was redundant, I did about three months' equivalent full time work, while taking year one of a two year computing course part-time. For FULL pay. Not bad, eh.

And for the next year, I did no work at all, and continued on the part-time course. I also accidentally lied slightly to the new head of department that started that year and asked if they were still going to fund the full three year course I was on, and he said yes. And all this still on FULL pay.

I think I upset some of the lecturers on my computing course, as I was earning more than several of them... while sitting reading their notes.

So from when I last actually did my last bit of full time work for the college, including all the paid holidays in between terms, until the day I was officially no longer employed after my summer holidays, I collected 30 months full pay for three months full-time work. And had the final year of my course funded while no longer working there.

Beat that !

dr john

I came across the reverse of the CRT repairer.

I met a guy who was a salesman, a VERY good one. His basic pay was low but the company had one of those ever increasing bonus schemes after you met the required target, so that as he sold more and more stuff, his percentage bonus was for ever increasing through the year. He became too expensive to employ even though he brought in lots of business.

So they sacked him, hired two guys to replace him, and their 2x basic pay plus 2x small bonus was a lot less than his basic plus huge bonus. For roughly the same amount of sales.

We are talking 17 years ago. His basic was about £12k, his bonuses were typically £40k+ . His replacements were getting bonuses of only about £5k, with a lower basic as they were new staff.

We met on a computing course. I was being made redundant and given retraining. Why was I made redundant??

The bean counters at the college I lectured at had calculated that a course had to pay it's way by having a certain minimum number of students on it (seems sensible you'd say).

As it was a chemistry course I taught we had a fair number of specialist support technicians and equipment to fund. So our target course size was a little bit higher than others (again, seems sensible you'd say).

So I had just moved to this college and three weeks into my new job, busily preparing lectures, a memo came round saying that we had only 14 applicants for year one of our most prestigious course, two short of the target 16. So they were cancelling the course for that year, to save money, and there might be redundancies - last in first out being me!!! And I hadn't even seen a student yet! (Actual redundancy was announced seven years later.)

These accountants are SO clever aren't they, when it comes to saving money! Because all the staff were full timers, all got full pay as normal, had less teaching to do, with one course cancelled to save money and its income lost. Save money???

The inevitable happened of course - from then on, students were reluctant to commit to our college unless they knew that the courses were definitely running, numbers dropped yearly (the accountants eventually reduced our minimum number per course "too avoid redundancies" - actually because they finally worked out they had cost the college money by cancelling courses and paying us to do less).

Eventually the numbers were so low that courses genuinely had to be cancelled and we tried various tricks to re-organise things to keep costs down. We even had staff voluntarily take redundancy, then continuing teaching FOR FREE for one term, gambling that they could come back part time the following year to teach the rest of the course for three terms (but not actually teach for the third term, to make up for the free work they had done). We suspected that this was actually illegal, as we kept quiet about who was teaching for free to help the students, but no-one outside our group knew this and the students benefited. Okay, we KNEW it was illegal, as you can't be made redundant and immediately continue part-time in the same job, and they had a requirement to be re-employed that there was a four month gap between the redundancy and part-time work. Gap being greater than one term, to stop fake redundancies, which was probably sensible you'd say.

For the sake of letting one course run one year with two less students than the accountants wanted, an entire teaching department and all its support staff watched they jobs slowly disappear down the drain, and we saw it coming for several years before the accountants did. We went out in style however - 33% of the degree students got a first in the last year it ran (the students from the cancelled course came back and formed a fair part of that last group), and a few other courses managed 90%+ pass rates in their last year.

Accountants - don't you just love them.

Chrome edges out IE for desktop browser crown

dr john

StatCounter has had Chrome ahead for a long time, since about May 2012. Which matches most of the stats for the web sites I manage.

So this is hardly news.

We bet your firm doesn't stick to half of these 10 top IT admin tips

dr john

At my first university, some of the rival university's students arrived in overalls in a rented van, dismantled the large glass doors to the student union, and drove off with them. No-one questioned this until late in the evening when a ransom note arrived...

dr john

Stupid password policy

Students at a college where I lectured all got a computer account. They used their name or badge ID and a password to log in. To make it easy to pass this on to hundreds of new students during week one, all had the same initial password - the legendary changeme ! They were told change it whenever they logged in without changing it. Now almost everyone did this, and they got email reminders during the first week or two as well. So initially all your data was mine as well, until you set a new password. Risky? Yes, but most got the message. And they had little or no data to worry about at this stage, apart from emails being sent in their name of course.

BUT

They were also told that at regular intervals they must change their password, the commonest interval being during the second-last week of the last term of the academic year. It used to be the end of every term at one point, but that caused too many problems.

And if they didn't change it during the second-last week? Their password was reset to...

Yes, back to changeme - ALL you data, assignments and emails are now my data, assignments and emails!!! A quick delete of a folder by a nasty student taking advantage of this could result in someone they didn't like failing a course!

This was before I took computing courses, and so when I suggested that this was a very risky thing to do, the IT people told me to go away and leave the qualified people to get on with their work.

I kid you not.

Needless to say I often had panicking students coming to my office as they couldn't log in to get their final assignments printed - their "friends" had logged in and changed the password.

Often these passwords would remain as changeme until the new term started.

Aircraft now so automated pilots have forgotten how to fly

dr john

Re: Pilots will soon only be needed for taxiing

Re. AF447 over the Atlantic in 2009

The aircraft was stalled and remained stalled for over three minutes, with the pilot still applying nose up inputs. They totally failed to recognise the stall, as it said in the official report. Angles of attack of up to 40 degrees were recorded in its flight recorder (wings stall at 16-17 degrees AoA). If they had recognised the stall and pitched nose down to recover, it would not have been the disaster it was. Even just looking at the vertical speed indicator would have told them they were stalled.

One airline's safety office (an airline pilot, not a desk operator) has seriously suggested at a safety conference that airline pilots should be given glider flights regularly, as stalling training is very routine and easy to demonstrate in gliders. You can stall the glider 10 or 12 times or more from 3000' with no problems. The total lack of any automated controls means it's manual flying all the time. All stall warning symptoms can repeatedly be demonstrated and the correct recovery demonstrated repeatedly, until it becomes automatic without having to think about it. And for fun you can spin the glider as well ;)

I've flown with a 10,000 hr military pilot who struggled flying the glider, and a Concorde pilot-to-be (the grounding prevented him flying it when his training was finished) as well, who had a lot less problems but didn't go solo. Concorde would have had less automation...

I've had power pilots almost panic when told to do a stall at 1000' in a glider, they are so unfamiliar with stalling.

I know many airline pilots who fly gliders to keep their manual skills at a high level. Depending totally on the computer is not a good idea, and over time the basic handing skills can decrease, as in the unfortunate French incident.

PS It's "I have control" and the acknowledgement is "You have control", not "got her".

BlackBerry Priv: After two weeks on test, looks like this is a keeper

dr john

Tiggity is right - it's a phone

Tiggity got it right.

This is a phone we are talking about, not some life or death option that will affect the future of the universe and world peace. It's a PHONE.

Everything else is an extra, a bonus. I am on my third or fourth smart phone, I only change when the contract needs renewing, and get one with a sharper screen, faster processor and more memory. And the same contract price.

A phone is NOT my main computing device, it just has to work.

My partner just got her first ever smart phone two weeks ago when her antique eight or ten year old Nokia stopped sending texts. £25 it cost her. And do you know, you can phone and text people using it! Truely amazing, eh. You've probably guessed it wasn't an Apple device, something that is simply a veblen item (like that silly watch)

Now I admit that when I get a new phone, once every two years, free with my contract renewal, I look for one that's better than the previous one. But it's not a life or death decision. And it's not something costing £300 - £600 if I were to buy it outright either. That's more than my car cost!

Now go play nicely with your expensive toy.

TalkTalk offers customer £30.20 'final settlement' after crims nick £3,500

dr john

Re: 6 or 12 months

Any one challenged by talk talk to pay the termination fee, as well as saying "Take me to court", should point out that there would be a jury of twelve ordinary people deciding if they should pay their termination fee or receive compensation.

And then clearly say to them "Do you think there are twelve people in the entire country who are not employed by talk talk and who would find in favour of talk talk??"

Another chance to win a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive

dr john

Somehow the cover shot for the fourth book of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series didn't quite go as well as Felicity had expected...

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