Posts by Phil O'Sophical 7402 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Oct 2011
Civil aviation beaurocracies are just slowmoving entities.
Whatever you do, don't suggest that the playmonaut hooks his laptop up to the inflight entertainment system. Things will move unpleasantly fast then...
Anyway, I finally got my tankard today, so I shall raise a glass to PRATCHETT
For a cyclist to be killed by a left-turning lorry implies that the cyclist is in the driver's blind spot, and basic defensive driving/cycling would suggest that an aware rider wouldn't get there at a dangerous moment. To put it another way, if I were riding a bike and approaching a junction, I'd make damn sure not to try and pass the lorry on the left just at the corner.
Like most road "accidents" there's rarely only one party to blame, most of them involve some stupidity or lack of attention on the part of both vehicles involved.
I do find it unbelievable that the BBC has to pay £10 million a year to Sky just so they can broadcast their output on satellite TV
I'm glad you find it unbelieveable, because it isn't true.
The BBC's satellite broadcasting is completely independent of Sky, and is paid for by the BBC. You can watch it without any need to involve Sky. The only thing that the BBC pays Sky for (as has been pointed out) is for Sky to include the BBC programme listings in its programme guide. That's makes sense, when Sky viewers page through the guide to see what's on, it's in the BBC's interest that BBC channels show up as well. Essentially the BBC is paying to advertise on Sky, since there is little incentive for Sky to encourage people to watch BBC1 or BBC Four instead of, say, Sky 1 or Sky Arts.
of course some IDIOT (there are probably nastier words for the manager....) deleted old BBC programmes to save space
Not idiocy but economics. Most of the deletions were because video tape cost a fortune at the time, and after the standard union-agreed 3 (or 4? I forget) re-runs they had to renogotiate repeat fees with each cast member at considerable time and expense before a programme could be shown again. It made perfect economic sense just to wipe and re-use the tapes once the programme had been shown a few times, they had no idea that VHS and DVD would create a future market selling "classic TV" for home viewing.
The British public hated the Poll Tax,
That's a completely unjustified generalization. I know many people (me included) who were very happy with it, it would have cost me much less.
The problem with any tax change is that there are winners and losers, and those who had to pay more of course hated it. Needless to say, they were the vocal ones, you obviously didn't see people out demonstrating because their tax bills went down...
not bundle it into general taxation and pass a bill making proper funding obligatory
Who defines "proper" ? It has to be Parliament as a whole, not Government, and since general taxation is defined by the budget that tends to be a Government matter. If BBC funding became just a line item in the budget it would be very open to abuse by the party in power.
we need International Rescue, but weren't they on he other side
Ah, but who was pulling their strings (literally)?
What do you mean "getting them" ?
You do know that when you watch BBC on a Sky box you're watching exactly the same signal, from exactly the same satellite, as you are when you watch BBC on a Freesat box, or a plain ordinary FTA box? The only thing Sky "gets" is the programme info that goes into the EPG, just as the Radio Times etc. do.
But the most important political aspect of the EU is avoiding war.
That's nonsense. We've avoided war for the past 70 years due to economic prosperity and better communications, as much in spite of the EU than because of it. The last two European wars were driven by individual fanaticism, and there's no sign that an EU would have stopped them if it had existed then.
Indeed, a far more worrying aspect of EU policy is its encouragement and subsidy of regional identities, Basques, Catalans, Scots, Walloons, etc. There's a certain "divide and conquer" logic to that when seen from the Brussels viewpoint, a fragmented large country is much less likely to be able to challenge EU political hegemony than a united one, but in my view it will lead us to a period of permanent instability. Maybe not WW III, but a state of continuous nationalistic guerilla war between regions that aren't big enough to do anything but cause trouble for their neighbours. Little bursts of 15-20 year "troubles" that "only" kill a few tens of thousands each time.
Awarding the EU the Nobel peace prize was a joke that demeaned the whole Nobel system.
why Europeans aren’t buying across national borders much.
Have they looked at shipping costs? They're usually enough to wipe out the small price differences, especially once you think about what will happen if you need to return something because it's unsuitable, or for a warranty repair.
Still, they need jobs for the boys, I suppose. While one bunch are encouraging us to shop locally, reduce food miles, etc. another lot are spending our tax money trying to work out why we don't do more cross-border shopping. D'oh.
how the hell do you let a cert expire that has millions of people hitting it?
My guess is that the certificate was registered to fred.bloggs@instagram.com and no-one though to change that to fred.bloggs@facebook.com, so the reminder email never arrived. Maybe Fred Bloggs didn't even stay after the acquistion?
Talk about Kanute and the tide.
Cnut's demonstration was intended to show his sycophantic followers that he was not all-powerful, and could not command the tide. No-one would have been more surprised than him if the waves had rolled back.
Also, comparing CB to amateur radio is a little bit like comparing a McDonald's burger flipper to a Michelin-starred chef. Both fun in the right circumstances, but the latter has a lot more training and qualifications, and can do a lot more with his kit.
I wonder if there's any correlation between response time to this and in-house/outsourced IT?
If you have an in-house IT department you can tell them to drop the current work, routine upgrades etc., and get patching. If the fault is in a 3rd-party switch or router and the manufacturer isn't responsive you can swap it out. Some network admin will have to spend a day with the user manual figuring out how to configure it, but overall cost and inconvenience are likely to be low-ish in bank terms.
If it's all outsourced, you can file a P1 trouble ticket but, assuming you're not the only people impacted, what happens after that is going to depend on where you are in the "big client" pecking order. Also, if the outsourcer has based their business model on using kit from one supplier, and that's what all their support techs are trained in, they'll have little interest in swapping it for a different brand and so making your company the special case that only one re-trained support tech can deal with. They'll just keep stalling until their suppliers come up with a fix. There's almost certainly nothing in your SLA that guarantees a fix to all security issues within, say, 48 hours.
Yet, it is normal. I am not excited and nervous when I press that power button. I am not even fully awake, to be honest.
I do wonder what today's generation will look back on as that sort of moment, if any?
I think back to my Grandmother telling me about everyone going out in the street to watch the first aeroplane they'd ever seen. I remember seeing Neil Armstrong's "one small step", live, I remember the first time I saw colour TV. Today's kids take it all, and more, for granted. What will today's 10-year-olds look back on in 40 years time as "wow, that was amazing"?
Really, do people not understand that the internet is not an interference-free, guaranteed availability network?
No, they don't. To "Joe Public", and the politicians in charge, the Internet is a utility just like mains water, power and gas. They assume it's rigidly held to exacting standards, highly available, centrally-controlled, and has a safe off switch. Tell them what it's really like and the result is total disbelief, along the lines of "don't be silly, no-one would ever have made it like that".
It notes that strengthening Europe's data protection rules – particularly with respect to what can be sent offshore – would encourage more cloud operations to set up servers within the EU.
Really? Sounds more likely to encourage companies to leave. What about the multinationals that have info in several jurisdictions, and find they can't move data between them? They'll head for the places with the lightest regulation, as always, and the jobs will follow them.
Leaving aside the DAB/FM religious arguments for a moment, this:
unlikely that DAB will be implemented on mobile phones (which usually have an FM receiver).
is an interesting point. Why don't mobile phones do DAB/DAB+? On the face of it it wouldn't seem to be a difficult feature to add to a largely-SDR architecture.
Just seems daft to have GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled if you are out shopping, simply for battery life
I was quite surprised how much difference turning off bluetooth made to battery life, when I was travelling and had a hire car with no hands-free. As for WiFi I'd say it's off 95% of the time, for the same reason.
painfully slow load up messages
Including hundreds of missing modules, undefined symbols, etc. It works after the reboot, which shows that the missing crud isn't needed anyway. I'd really hate to think that any system which was that crappily assembled and tested shared more than a power cable with the actual avionics.
The business of Google Search* is to deliver search results, not price comparisons. That is the business of Google Shopping,
Maybe you feel that they should be different, separate, services, but that is irrelevant. Both are Google products, and Google is entitled to use one to promote the other.
If you went to the dairy aisle in Tesco and found a BOGOF advert for strawberries would you start foaming at the mouth because the dairy department dared to advertise a price for a product that rightfully belongs in greengrocery? Or would you accept that people buying cream might indeed like some strawberries to go with it, and find the BOGOFadvert useful? Obviously some dairy users will hate strawberries, and Asda strawberries might be cheaper anyway, but is that a reason to criticize Tesco for advertising theirs?
At one time the CPU power of certain IBM computers could be increased basically by setting jumpers - whereupon everything cost more.
Funny, I just knew that would be the first response! Those systems, of course, were the ones rented by IBM (they didn't sell systems in those days) and you paid a license for the power you used. Just like today where applications are licensed according to things like the number of CPU cores. Even then it would have been obvious that by changing the jumper you were getting something you hadn't paid for.
Back in the 80s there were stories about some minicomputers (DEC? I can't remember) which had a similar trick. Due to a shortage of small memory boards, some low-end systems were shipped with larger boards which had a chip-select line cut, it was cheaper than losing the sale. If you knew which line, you could reconnect it. Hardly standard practiuce, though.
Remapping ECUs is another case where it isn't "free". The cars sold with increased power often have other systems (tyres, brakes) updated to match. Simply tweaking a map without understanding the consequences can cause many problems, not least when the insurance company won't pay out after an accident. That's why most ECU maps these days are encrypted.
why would they be suspicious of other "performance enhancing" tricks?
Because they're free. You don't get free stuff from big companies, but too many people are still too greedy to see that. If it looks too good to be true (in IT or any other domain) it almost certainly is too good to be true. Just like that nice man offering you candy to get in his car. It might be safe, but why take the risk when it almost certainly never is?
Only a small minority of people have an understanding of IT security,
It has nothing to do with IT security. If someone tells you that you can get "X" just by doing "Y", and the value of "X" is much, much greater than the cost of "Y", it's a scam. That has been the case since long before the days of the snake oil sellers in the Old West.
Apple has created a brand around the idea that in exchange for extra money, non-IT people get security and IT support along with really cool gadgets.
I think that Apple, like other luxury goods suppliers, has actually created a brand where many people assume that the price has been inflated well above the actual cost by the presence of the name. As such they are more willing to believe that they're being ripped off, and more willing to assume that some simple trick will release the extra value that Apple is hiding from them.
Tell someone that there's a special command in their $500 iPhone that will release more storage, they want to believe it. They'll happily believe that Apple has hidden the storage to make more money.
Tell them the same thing thing about the $25 chinese knock-off from the local discount store and they'll laugh at you, since it's clearly way too cheap to have anything big hidden in it.
thinking that the rm rf commands will unlock extra storage
Well, that's not entirely false. You'll certainly have lots more free space afterwards...
I don't really have much sympathy for people who fall for such tricks, anything which offers you something for nothing is bound to be a scam. No free lunch.
Backups are indeed complicated, and the first thing to do is work out what your needs are. Do you even need to be 'disaster proof" ? Start with the analysis, which data are critical, how much can you afford to lose before the business is impacted, how long can you afford to be without them, etc. The results of that will tell you if you need dedicated live synchronous replication across multiple sites, cross-your-fingers cloud, or just a DVD in the safe at home once a month. Part of that analysis, of course, will involve looking at the Data Protection requrements for the info you need to save, where you can legally put it, and how concerned your customers might be if they don't know exactly where it's being kept.
Starting with the solution ("put it in the cloud") and trying to make the problem fit that solution is a recipe for disaster, not one for disaster recovery.
Far better that the resources are controlled and exploited by a nationalised monopoly. I realise that then offers scope for diversion of funds into the greasy hands of politicians and their cronies but at least the money has a chance of staying in the country,
Except that all the evidence in the former Eastern Europe, Balkan states, etc. is the exact reverse. The money goes straight into the greasy hands of the politicians, and thence into Swiss bank accounts. What incentive is there for the politicials to keep the money in the country? There's nothing there they want to spend it on. Letting a nationalized monoploy run things not only provides no incentive to reward the workers, it also removes all chance of unbiased oversight.Not to mention that the political cronies who run the monopoly are unlikely to have been selected on the basis of their competence in the industry concerned, as 1970s Britain showed.
IANAL but I believe that in all 3 examples the business owner is well within their rights to refuse.
It can get complicated, though. See the Belfast "Gay Cake" case:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/gay-cake-row-gareth-lee-felt-unworthy-over-ashers-bakery-refusal-to-bake-cake-31096066.html
even though the bakery owner was quite clear that "Our problem with producing the cake we were asked to make last year was with the message, not the customer" they've still been taken to court by the Equalities commission. I don't envy the judge.
It does seem that this case could hinge on the supplier having accepted the order and then cancelled it, we may end up with a situation where businesses have to make it clear in advance what they will & will provide. Seems likely only to make more lawyers rich.
Here in Europe (I think we count as part of the rest of the world) we have 240V single phase
Technically we have 230V single phase. When it came to standardizing, places like the UK with 240V ±6%, and others with 220V ±6%, didn't want the disruption of a change. In the finest traditions of bureaucats everywhere the tolerances were changed, so that Europe now has a "standard" of 230V, the UK has 230V +6%/-10% and old 220V countries are 230V -6%/+10% so we're now all the same. Without anyone having changed.
The only time it really mattered was when "real" 230V lightbulbs were used in the 240V UK, and had a shorter but brighter life. Less of a problem for LED/Fluorescent ones
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