Posts by Kernel 776 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Nov 2011
"What the blazes was she doing barefoot in the hills ?
Is this a missed Darwin award ?"
Once upon a time we were all barefoot in the hills (or on the plains) and to the best of my knowledge we are not currently considered to be a critically endangered species.
On this basis I would hazard a guess that under the Darwinian theory of evolution that this is not a significant factor driving natural selection - even in Australia.
"The NHS issues ones certainly aren't all BT enabled, the ones I'm familiar are clunky over-ear affairs that don't appear to have changed in forty years, use zinc air batteries that are always running out out, and are prone to over-amplifying things like screaming kids."
That's odd, because as well as my over-the-ear hearing aids feature digital signal processing (they can mute a sound such as a hammer blow before it reaches my ears), selectable hearing profiles for different situations, can be individually controlled to reduce the level of "screaming kids" or loud bands from either side and get around 8 days use out of a zinc air cell - how long do a set of Airpods go on a single charge?
I was also offered the option, about 5 years ago, of buying a model with real-time language translation - no, hearing aids haven't changed much in the last 40 years.
"This use of Karman Vortex Streets to swim upstream, even when "dead" (but still flexible), is quite hip. "
This might explain something that I have occasionally wondered about - some years ago when visiting Lake Como I was surprised to see a used condom on the surface determinedly swimming towards shore against the wind. We live and learn.
"The US has had lots of guns for a VERY long time and has only recently had this problem with them."
There are other countries that have more guns per person out in the wild, including military issue weapons, but don't have the 'gun problem' that the US has - I personally think it's more a mental health and cultural problem, rather than simple availability of guns.
"Even if they don't hijack an airliner to crash it into something valuable then a mass stabbing incident in the air would still be a major win for the terrorists and would look awful from a security standpoint etc."
The terrorists (or glorious freedom fighters, depending on your POV and who wrote the particular history book) have already won - that happened as soon as the security theatre was introduced - with most of the Western world running shit-scared on a 24x7 basis they have no need for further "wins", their job is done.
"Quite a lot of us here have probably messed around with those little solar robotics kits that are out there...putting solar panels on your house is the same fucking thing but scaled up.
We're all led to believe that 240v is extremely dangerous to work with and needs specialist qualifications to go near, but the reality is, it's not actually that dangerous...if you're fit and healthy a whack from 240v mains will just give you a short bang and shake you up for a minute or two...it's unlikely to kill you."
On the other hand, I've regularly seen one string of my solar array churning out 12A or more at around 400V DC - that'll give you a short bang alright, but you'll need an awful lot of shaking afterwards.
"With pulse dialing "111" is effectively just three hookswitch taps with a slight pause between each one."
Depends on how your network is set up - in New Zealand we used reverse dials, so "111" was three trains of nine pulses - "999" as an emergency number could be dialed by wires in the wind.
I'm not sure which, if any, other countries used a reverse dial system.
">as non-US-citizens are also people
The supreme court and 80M voters might not take that as axiomatic"
Not quite that simple - to quote from Section 1 of the 14th Amendment:
" No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
I am astounded that an IT professional, who is presumably reasonably well paid and would claim to have far superior computing knowledge and skills than the average 'Luser", is sufficiently stupid as to view porn on the company laptop.
Surely he could have afforded to buy himself a cheap personal chrome book or laptop for this purpose and avoided the entire mess he's now in? He's basically destroyed his career in order to save $200~$300, or there abouts. Do they not teach common sense at IT school?
"An example of this is Queen Victoria. Her father also had a personal union with Hanover, and when he died she only succeeeded him as QUeen of the UK but not Hanover, because the later did not allow women to rule."
Victoria's father was never King of the United Kingdom and Ireland - that would be her uncle, William IV, whom she succeeded when he died. Her father, Edward, was Duke of Kent when he died, before Victoria's 1st birthday.
"the ex-admin should first learn of their firing by discovering their creds no longer work."
Ah, constructive dismissal - cue compensation for loss of dignity, lost income, etc., paid by the employer to the ex-admin, not to mention the possibility of an order to reinstate employment.
In many countries there are very specific processes that need to be followed to dismiss someone - calling them into the office and telling them they are fired doesn't cut it except in very exceptional circumstances.
"The same people who believe having an ultra-strong, cat-brained mecha-cat-girl companion would be a "safe" companion are the same sort of people who also believe the "self-driving" feature of Tesla cars is "safe." who've never owned a cat."
Fixed that for you.
"So rather than remote-desktopping into your work computer you have all the company data, software , licenses, keys etc on everyone's laptop to be left in a bar"
Of course not - why would I have all that lot on my laptop?
The access method was remote into my employer's network from work laptop (MFA required), remote into customer's network from my employer's network (at least one layer of MFA required) and then remote into specific product from customer's network - and as we dived deeper into the specific product many of the passwords were not known to the customer, just in case they were tempted to play. (At one of my employers a trained IT professional decided to change the Windows domain name, just to see if he could - that was 2.5 days of sitting on our arses while it was sorted.)
Our customer did not allow vendors, such as myself, access directly from the internet, it had to be via a dedicated VPN from my employer's network.
"Preventing use of remote desktop protocol on all company devices and prohibit using remote desktop applications for work;"
For me that would've meant compensation for constructive dismissal as my employer would be effectively preventing me from doing my job - it couldn't be done without remote access to customer's systems.
"Yes, I've seen it, I think it was a Mark Rober video.
Astonishing development."
Not really - to quote from the service manual of my 2007 Mazda BT-50 (Ford Ranger) ute:
'Noise (wind noise) which occurs during fan operation has been reduced due to nonuniform positioning of the fan blades.'
The fan definitely looks a bit different.
"People are convinced that the gubmint is completely inept, and at the same time they are sure they can keep secrets indefinitely, even through parties in power constantly change."
More importantly, what is the probability of any military organization keeping secret something that would otherwise be likely to open up massive funding opportunities to them?
"Aside: we forget the modern coffee shop only came into existence in circa 1997."
People were regularly meeting to do business in London coffee shops from the second half of the 17th century - by 1688 there were 80 coffee shops in London, each one being associated with particular business activities. One group that used to gather in Edward LLoyd's coffee shop to exchange shipping intelligence and arrange marine insurance contracts is still in business today.
If you want to go more modern, Robert Harris (NZ) has been in the coffee business, including cafes, since 1952.
"Is the CO2 released from the aerobic digestion and the CO2 produced making the energy to power the aeration pumps less or more than the CO2 produced if all that waste was anaerobically digested to produce methane and we then burnt the methane to produce useful energy? And is the byproduct a useful nutrient for use as a replacement for traditional chemical fertilisers? (nitrates being another big issue)"
It's been a while since the initial publicity, but the waste is digested to produce methane which is used as fuel for a couple of largish diesels which have been modified to run on gaseous fuel. The solid waste left at the end of the process is used as fertilizer in public gardens around the city (eg., https://hamiltongardens.co.nz/collections/ in the non-food producing parts), along with composted food waste, which is collected as a separate stream in the city's rubbish collection service.
Unfortunately this type of scam has the effect of discouraging investors in genuine examples of this technology. What the story completely failed to mention is that shit to methane is a long established and successful technology - our local sewage plant has, for several decades, been generating enough electricity to run the plant using methane they produce from fermenting shit.
"I think I'll go for the waterproof one and when the battery needs replacing make the decision to replace the phone or downgrade it by having a new battery put in at the expense of losing the IP rating."
It's not that hard to have both - I have a handheld radio transceiver that has an IP67 rating, an external battery that is designed for rapid replacement in the field, ports for programming/external mic and speaker and a removable antenna - all of these have seals which maintain the watertight rating when fitted correctly. It cost me less than all but the most basic of cellphones, so cost is not a factor either.
"I either have earmeltingly loud industrial metal on a proper stereo; or silence as my preference. The idea of less noise on a plane is appealing; however I’m acutely aware of how disgusting and problematic jamming something in my ear for 9 hours will be."
The day may well come when your musical volume preferences will lead you to either live with jamming something in your ears all day every day, or living in a world of near silence. If you aren't keen on wearing earbuds for nine hours on occasion, you certainly won't like hearing aids every day for for 13 hours or so.
"The Windows key on my Linux laptop isn't mapped to anything they expect"
Yes, been in that situation with one of them as well - but only after we'd spent the best part of 15 minutes trying to make it work, at which point I was informed that yes, my laptop did need to be turned on first.
After 30 minutes (this is when it was realised I needed to be running Windows, not Linux for all of this to work as per script) the conversation got quite terse - my friendly Microsoft support person listed all the things he was going to come and do to my wife - I told him that she was fine with that so long as he washed the smell of the goat he'd previously fucked off first - the call ended at this point, I think we got cut off.
Many years ago, when I worked for a government department that ran the nation's communications network, one of our local store man reputedly had a large supply of pre-loved left foot gumboots available for immediate issue.
Why? Because most cable jointers wore out the right boot when pushing on their shovel while digging up a cable, leaving the left foot in fairly good condition still, far to good to be thrown out with their right footed counterpart.
Never set the colour of all items on the screen (ie., background, text, mouse cursor, etc.) to be the same - these changes are very persistent and as a mere user the only way I could fix it involved the use of another identical workstation, a ruler and some very carefully measured mouse movements.
The support team's response to my problem was amusement, and, if I did manage to recover, could I please let them know how I did it.
" If an employee quits their job or is fired, they would have 30 days to vacate the premises."
Ah, so employment conditions have improved considerably - when my great-grandfather was killed in a pit disaster in the north of England in the early 1900's my great-grandmother only got two weeks notice to move out of the company house (although apparently she did get a free bible as well, which Musk doesn't seem to offering).
"...... or alternatively Nokia ( or Alcatel / Philips? do they still do telecoms stuff?? )"
I don't know what Phillips does nowdays, but Alcatel merged with Lucent to become Alcatel-Lucent long ago, who were then bought by Nokia almost as long ago - got the staff goodies from all three to remind me of the changes.
What are now Alcatel cellphones are made by some Chinese company that bought the rights to use the old Alcatel name and branding on their products.
I've worked with several systems that employed Raman pumps to improve the receive signal to noise ratio - amplifiers are still required every 60~70km, with maybe a 120km section where the Raman pumps are used. Unfortunately, Raman pumps introduce more noise, so they're not a magic solution in all cases and, with the systems I worked on (from a leading vendor based in a very cold country), we would normally only have one Raman span in a system.
It's only the last 20km or so of the fibre span that acts as an amplifier and even then it needs to be good quality fibre - old fibre with multiple repairs (which cause reflective points at the splices) doesn't work so well with Raman systems.
Edit: Bugger!!! - Jock beat me to it while I was trying to write a comprehensive answer :)
Regeneration an amplification are different - amplification is an analogue process, and, just like audio amps, optical amps introduce noise, distortion, etc each time the signal is amplified. Amplification occurs in the aggregated optical domain and the amplifiers, being an analogue device, are signal rate and content agnostic. I've worked with systems where there were different signal rates being carried by different wavelengths. An amplifier has no access to the signal content and can't even read the optical transport section overhead data - at this level the data stream for managing the amplifiers is carried on a separate wavelength that is dropped and inserted at each amplifier site.
Regeneration is a process in which the analogue optical signal is demodulated, optical transport section overheads removed, the individual wavelength payloads extracted, regenerator section overheads removed, re-shaped, re-timed, repackaged (new regenerator section overheads wrapped around payload) and then goes through the process to be sent on as an aggregate analogue optical signal again. Regeneration happens in the electrical domain and as a result regenerators must be designed for the specific signal rate and protocol they are regenerating.
Regenerator spacing is determined by how far can you go and how many times can the signal be amplified and still extract useful information at the end of it - this is largely determined by the modulation method chosen and the ability of your chosen forward error correction mechanism to recover errors.
Amplifiers are generally spaced at around 60~80km, depending on the system design, especially in terrestrial systems where if possible you want to put them in sites you already own. Submarine cable power feed voltages are determined by the number of amplifiers equipped - each one needs 50V at around 2.5 amps. I have seen systems that feed around +25kV for one end and -25kV from the other, for a total voltage drop of around 50kV end to end.
I've been out of the industry for about 3 years now, so some of this may be slightly dated.
"if the industry/government were thinking properly they'd have one company per location and make them share the fibre."
That's the way it's done in NZ - there are two companies that provide fibre (and the NTU) for the entire country, and only one of them serves a given area.
The fibre providers are required to supply connectivity to any retail ISP (on the same terms), so I can get my service from a range of suppliers according to my personal preference - neither of the fibre suppliers are allowed to offer retail internet services.
Our power is on a similar concept - distribution lines infrastructure provided by companies serving a particular area and not retailing electricity, customer's choice of who they buy their power from via those lines.
"How exactly do you wear out a solar panel?"
The performance of (current) solar panels deteriorates over time, gradually reducing their output for a given level of light input.
That said, the ones on my roof are warranted to perform at over 83% of their nominal capacity after 25 years, so as long as you slightly over-provision at install time this is not likely to be a significant issue for most people. At that point in their life, it would also be possible to replace the original panels and de-rate them to a lower output for a new life in a less demanding situation eg., an ex-400W panel de-rated to 300W would still be fine for many purposes, at a suitably reduced price.
"Solar cells get weaker over time as do batteries."
While it's true solar cells do get weaker over time, to put this into perspective the warranty on my recently installed 7kW array states that it will still be capable of around 6kW output in 25 years time - most modern diesel engines (especially automotive types) are unlikely to age as well in normal day-to-day usage and will have required significant maintenance expenditure to even survive that long.
""... but eight times more lossy ..."
Where did that information come from? "
"The company quotes attenuation rate — signal loss — of 2.5dB per kilometer for 1310nm wavelengths. By comparison Corning's SMF-28, which is commonly used in long-haul networks, manages 0.32dB/km."
You're right! - it only 7.8125 times the attenuation of SMF-28, although I've never seen a long-haul DWDM system that uses 1310nm. That wavelength generally seems to be favoured for short-haul coarse WDM applications.
" an exercise in frustrating logistics and contracts."
Oh yes! I've spent many an hour on the phone waiting for someone at the other end to get an engineer organized to make the necessary network changes to fulfill pre-arranged restoration plans.
Usually, success in this endeavour is immediately followed by complaints from those who completely failed to understand what the phrase "you're getting this international capacity cheap because it will be pre-empted to restore other, more important, customers in the event of $cable failing" means in real life.
"We once had a new apprentice who had been forewarned about long weights etc. "
I used to work in a job where there were long and short weights, depending on what model of manual telephone switchboard you were changing a faulty cord on.
IIRC it was short weights for the more modern British Post Office 300-type PABX boards (some very nice oak to be salvaged when they were scrapped) and long weights for the much older Western Electric style main exchange switchboards - I have a lovely mahogany coffee table made from an end panel of one of those.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
