Posts by theModge 305 posts • joined 3 Nov 2011
It depends heavily where you are what service you get with virgin media. Partially I'm told it's a function of their odd network topology in particular if you're former telewest or NTL. Another factor though is how over-subscribed your area is: they get no where near their advertised speed in south birmingham (where I am), but they're pretty good elsewhere
wpf performance issues
The few projects I've used WPF on have actually performed very well - if you do as much as possible in XAML it offloads it to the graphics card for you nicely. The other thing I really enjoyed was using it for a touch screen project - it's very well optimised there.
Line of Business stuff almost always seems to be presented via web browser these days. I confess I'd rather it wasn't, thus leaving control of how it's presented to the developer, but it does have obvious advantages when it comes to working across platforms.
Yes. It's the management not the staff that win from pay being private. I loose nothing from my colleges knowing what I earn.
That's the nice thing about working in big "state-ish" places that use pay scales - I know pretty much when everyone around me earns in any case. It's only the highest levels that are by negionation, and you know for sure they're off the top of the scale, at the very least.
Not discussing pay only helps the company, never the employee. Thus I too always open. It's worth considering that if you have a "special deal" much better than everyone else's and you're not allowed to discuss it "lest you make them jealous" it's not impossible they've been told much the same...
I just want big butt....
And you can't lie?
Seriously, I'm with those who like tactile feedback.
In a different world, in which I used to work, this also applies to stage lighting control consoles. Touch screens are fine for functions you don't have to find in the dark, nor on a given beat, but some things need a button or (ideally motorised) fader.
They just turn that off to prevent the annoying beeping
Wiki has it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Wootton_Bassett_SPAD_incident
(Sweary blog post: http://pigeonsnest.co.uk/stuff/crapstuff/tangmere-wootton-bassett-spad-rail-morons.html)
And no, a VPN is not an option (because China is already known to bork unsanctioned VPNs and other encrypted connections)?
They try, but the number of Chinese students here in the UK running VPNs for their friends back home would suggest that they're ineffective in cracking down on them. From my colleges who travel it seems that something like your employers corporate VPN will work, even if say nordVPN is blocked. Not that this is a reliable bias for demonstrating your product if it requires a connection to your server at home, but if you're selling to anyone government owned in China you may well find there's a requirement to host your service locally anyway.
well....if any publicity is good publicity you could argue that declaring your product to be unhackable was akin to free pen-testing.
I mean I'm not sure I'd like to be famous as the "The person who makes shite software" but if I was planning on say, changing my name and emigrating it might work.
I don't know; you could do better than that with a bit of marketing:
1. Get Samples
2. Look at origin post mark.
If American, tell them they're Irish with a dash of Native American. I swear pretending they're Irish is the American national hobby and a touch of Native American makes you seem interesting and special.
Northern UK? Tell them they're Vikings
Southern UK? Tell them they're related to the Plantagenet royal line
I'm sure there's some others I could offend with a bit of research.
3. Look at surnames. If they give you an obvious clue, make it up on those grounds
4. Still be more accurate than the existing players
5. Give all the money to company directors and declare bankruptcy before people sue you for fraud.
Firstly from times when I work with only "slightly" tech people it seems VPNs are a fairly well known solution for general piracy, so there's no reason why they wouldn't think to put them to use for porn. As this is rolled out I imagine the knowledge only spread; soon every child in the playground will be using their mates dad's VPN for their porn needs (because what 14 year old can afford a decent VPN?).
Combine this with the prevalence of Tor for the procurement of all ones black market pharmaceutical needs (again, even amongst by people who work far from the tech sector) and soon every last one of us will look like a terrorist as far as GCHQ is concerned. So many of their potential employees will have used one or both of these things it will be literally impossible for them to recruit enough people to do the spying.
I guarantee there's enough on your PC to steal your identity, lock stock and barrel.
Of course, but whilst I'm not secure against nation state level actors who can e.g. get into the supply chain for my motherboard (who is?) I do take the sort of everyday precautions necessary to exist in this day and age, to the extent that it's possible to be secure whilst relying on the million different 3rd parties that comprise a modern computing environment.
I'd rather be spied on by the foreigners. They are less likely to just wander into my home and arrest me and throw me into jail on trumped up charges.
That would be my preference too.
I however have a far stronger defence: realistically there's absolutely sod-all of interest on my computer. I do research, but unless more effective data integration for your trains is a matter of national security I'm quite safe. Granted cyber attacks on national infrastructure are a thing, but my work would not be a good jumping off point for that.
We can also ignore the fact that a lot of the good quality foreign IT labour has already moved to a better paying locale due to good quality IT experience being in short supply almost everywhere.
The weak pound makes Britain a less attractive place to come deploy your IT skills.
Random anecdotal case study: My Czech friend. He can earn almost as much at home as he does here, but in Czechia he can live like a king whilst so doing; the £35kish he was on here goes a lot further there.
Lucky he didn't get an impromptu arc welding lesson; I assume this was a CeeForm, not Cam \ Powerlock?
Pulling a fully loaded neutral out of a set of Cam locks is a fuck up I'm pleased only to have read about, not tried, however even a 63/3 isn't rated for disconnection under load.
If you want to talk to bit actually operational bits of train rather than monitoring or customer entertainment you'd be better off with an RS232 or RS485 dongle rather than twatting about with Ethernet. Apart from anything else when most of our current rolling stock was designed the sort of microprocessor that did Ethernet was not the sort of microprocessor you had doing engine control. CCTV and other more recently fitted stuff might use the same connection though..
Nowadays you get challenged if you are leaving the council recycling centre with the container in which you brought your things there on foot.
Oh but to live in such a liberal paradise where you can bring things in on foot! Here in Birmingham they won't allow you in without a car. The 3 recycling centres for a city of 1 million souls have multiple hour long queues on Saturdays in the summer. We too can pay for it if we don't have a car. They wonder why there's a problem with people fly tipping..
The issue with regenerative breaking we have found is that you need really, really big super capacitors, which are physical big and expensive. Batteries can't take charge as fast as breaking produces it and a fully laden truck will produce a great deal of current indeed under breaking. You can then charge the batteries off the super capacitors so as to leave them empty for recharging next time you break, if you're doing this for range (as we were) rather than speed (as F1 does). People generally use big resistors (which need cooling) to dump any current that doesn't fit in the capacitor.
I keep the kosher sausages right next to the halal bacon.
My devoutly atheist Iranian friend went through a protracted phase of asking is the [pork product on the menu] halal in restaurants. It was quite funny the first couple of times. Especially when the waitress looked confused and went to ask the kitchen.
I thought in the real world you only tested people you wanted rid of anyway, in the hope they'd show up drunk and make it easy for you?
Probably less the case with Network Rail (who really don't like there poor employees drinking), but I've heard of it working that way in the private sector, especially banks and the like.
Funky modern signalling systems that actually know where the train is have issues with not knowing which of several parallel lines a train is on, purely from GPS, so there is a need to use Balises on the track for location. If this could be made reliable enough then in 40 years time when it clears all the committees that will need to discuss it, it could be very useful.
Sennen Cove.
Beware militant surfers? Sea Lions can be dangerous I guess. I seem to recall the first transatlantic cable landed in Sennen Cove did it not?
Related geeky interest, whilst in that neck of the woods check out the telegraph museum: http://telegraphmuseum.org/
Interesting enough for a visit even on a dry day!
Another I read but can't remember the source sadly, but apparently if do do something regularly, such as the drive for your commute, your brain realises you're not learning anything new after a long time doing it and as I understand it stops bothering to store memories.
There's billions of sailors* on one of those tubs. The tanker will have had 12 men and a dog. How come tankers don't keep driving into things?
I realise someone must press the big red "Fire" button, but that doesn't seem to taxing. I assume the other 275 spend their time polishing missiles.
*276 I asked wikipedia
It's not the credible-for-cretins idea's that are the problem, it's gullible but rich friends you need. I mean anyway can be convinced you're in a position to sell a bridge, but what's the point if they don't have any money to buy it with? All the rich people I know are either a) just not that dumb or b) got rich by being tight and wouldn't part with cash for anything.
I thought the book somewhat glorified the war and the idea you weren't a citizen unless you fought, where as the film was a satire.
I concur. I've heard arguments that Heinlein wrote starship troopers to show us a dystopia and that he wished to show us what a bad idea a society that really venerated the military to that degree was. Maybe I'm just not literary enough, but I just didn't get that feeling from him. He wanted snappy uniforms and synchronised marching and he wanted it now.
The film, conversely, dropped in a couple of little bits of subtle satire (the recruiting adds for example) in-between and otherwise fun action film, which is most fun if not entirely sober.
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