Posts by BinkyTheMagicPaperclip 1488 publicly visible posts • joined 11 May 2012
The first and third sentences aren't contradictory. No-one said there was anything wrong with casual sex, just that if sex is the only reason to know someone, you aren't their friend. Difficult to argue with that really.
Personally I think some level of friendship is better, if only so you can have a bit of a chat after sex rather than one of you being shoved out the door. Still, if it works for other people good luck to them.
Seriously? It's used because it's the most appropriate term.
They can't just be 'people' because they're a defined group of people singled out for discriminatory treatment. There needs to be some way of highlighting why these people have been discriminated against.
POC usually covers everyone that isn't visibly white (pink) skinned, so an alternative term would be 'people that are not white'. That's a bit of a mouthful, anything non white is arguably 'colour', so POC is entirely appropriate.
In the same way you can't use 'humans' because women were also discriminated against.
Now, in this case you have a bit of a point because it doesn't cover everyone non white, the lawsuit explicitly defines their usage of POC as 'latino, african american, or american indian'. Whilst strictly speaking using POC in an article or press release about this case is inaccurate, it's less of a mouthful than LAAAI, and more widely understood.
A&A do offer a 'copper only' deal. I'm considering switching to them or Zen as I'm currently still on Sky after they swallowed Be Internet..
However, unless I'm missing something this works out somewhat more expensive. 7 quid discount for a line becoming 'voice only' - so 12 quid a month rental on the voice line, but then another ten for A&A to provide the broadband copper pair. Then there's a one off 60 quid installation cost.
The only way it works out cheaper is to buy a DECT phone and run VOIP, which AA can do for you. Then of course there's the cost of either a SIP phone or SIP DECT base (unless a mobile with SIP software is used). So a payback period of ten months (60 quid install plus 50 quid for SIP phone or DECT base, divided by the future reduced rate of 12 quid). That's not counting VoIP costs, which appear not to be entirely straightforward, but look like it's another fifteen quid to port an existing number, and (possibly/probably) an ongoing VoIP maintenance charge of a few quid a month, plus then there's the comparison of call rates.. (including free calls with various providers' friends and families rates)
Still, once that's all done it's (probably) saving 60-70 quid a year.
Another power supply (not a bad price), a bargain bin molex to SATA power for cabling, a 1.5m 4 pin Thinkpad Firewire to 6 pin Firewire cable (3 quid, but 3m is 24 quid. Hahahaha nope), and a labelling machine (decent cost). Not too bad providing you google to check things, the 1.5m cable they had to fetch from the back..
Some Maplin stores do quite well I suspect, the one on Manchester Oxford Road has a large student catchment area, and other people who need something electronic now - especially power supplies, cables and suchlike. It's usually got a few people in it.
They're always quite helpful, so I can only imagine this is what their target market appreciates. For pure supply of product on the high street Argos could probably wipe them out without a thought. Maplin are probably better at interconnecting stuff and getting things going again than anywhere else on the high street.
I will be sad to see them go, though, both for history and the fact that they occasionally have Weird Stuff in, or unpopular products priced low. Want to add Firewire or USB to your system? Various products are running cheaper than online, assuming you're near a store that has stock.
Some things wildly overpriced, others quite reasonable. I wouldn't quite say they haven't moved with the times - they practically deluge my mailbox with offers, and frankly not everyone wants to go into an electronics store.
Last purchase was this https://www.maplin.co.uk/p/worldwide-60w-acdc-multi-voltage-power-supply-l11bq
4A, multi voltage switchable supply. I looked at other places but the quality seemed variable elsewhere..
Mind you, I'm in the market for a soldering iron that can solder wires onto a surface mount EPROM. Have to see if I'm going to Maplin or Ebay for a decent model, as I'm not sure if my 25W standard tip iron is the best option to prevent destroying a 140 quid of graphics card..
C'mon Bob, do a bit more reading around the subject, it's not difficult.
A minority of women (and men) play the sort of games you describe, and they spoil things for everyone else. That doesn't mean you shouldn't take people at their word, whilst the minority learn to be less fucked up.
Women 'tolerate' this sort of thing for exactly the same reason you do, when someone is in a position of power over you/physically imposing, and standing up to them will potentially cause damage to your career, life, or body. Alternatively, maybe you simply just don't have the time/inclination/energy, so it's easier to smile along/ignore them whilst thinking 'fuckwit' in your head.
That computer based diary/reminder thing is a great idea, but we need a backup plan.
How about if you fail to do that, the hosting company sends you multiple letters, especially close to the expiration date? To make things easier a system could be designed that doesn't need the postal service, and sends the reminder over the network.
I'm thinking of calling it e-letters, for electronic letters. Do you think it would work?
I'm not sure BBM is really a huge differentiator, I love my Priv for the keyboard, speedy patching, and the e-mail client, but haven't even signed up for a BBM account - no-one I know has one!
The Priv is a lovely phone, but the lack of a removable battery and of root still rankles, but at the time it was the only keyboard phone. If they insist, like everyone else, in not having a removable battery why don't they make it waterproof?
I'd still rather have an easily swappable battery though, and no, chargers are not the same.
Rubbish. What WINE has achieved is impressive, but it's very variable, doesn't support everything, and is extremely dependent on using specific hardware (it's flaky as hell running e.g. older Intel graphics chipsets that would work fine under real Windows).
Windows compatibility with older games is pretty damn superb; there's a limited number of games that need a patch because modern graphics drivers don't implement old rarely used functions as well as they should, but I can't think of any games offhand that won't run at all.
The Coffee Lake processors are out, and although several reviews sites are trying to spin it as a notable improvement (and to be fair on average it is a bit better than the previous generation), it is hardly a stunning improvement. It's nice that Intel is now shipping a default of six cores, but it doesn't always beat the high end processors of the prior generation, or comprehensively destroy Ryzen.
If AMD manage to improve Ryzen a little, the next generation of processors will be very interesting.
I'll wait on UK pricing, availability, and I presume it is the case that they're being lazy and not creating a UK keyboard with an inverted and mirrored L shaped return key.
I did have a Thinkpad 701CS, it was quite good, but the expanding keyboard was just not as durable as normal thinkpad ones, the hinge eventually started failing, and the screen resolution was rather low.
Currently still on an X61, but web browsing is a bit slow in OpenBSD (part of this will be BSD's fault). I was pondering an X230 with a 220 keyboard and a new screen transplanted into it (this is possible), but now the 25 is out it's a little tempting. A little disappointed by screen resolution and lack of a thinklight, but the discrete GPU and thunderbolt are decent additions.
I've used lots of Thinkpads in the past, the X40/X41 had a lovely form factor, but the dog slow custom hard drive was awkward.
It's not Millennials that don't wear watches - it's probably a majority these days. I'm Gen X rather than Millennial, and stopped wearing a watch when there was a phone permanently in my pocket. I've at least four watches at home, two of which are fashionable enough to be worn on a regular basis, and haven't bothered for years.
I definitely don't need a remote control in my jacket to control my phone, when I can stick my hand in my pocket and pull it out..
Single threaded performance, if it doesn't use AVX 512 enhancements, appears identical to previous chips. Overall it is faster, but it depends on the benchmark. Game performance is highly variable and not always appreciably faster than either Ryzen or previous Intel generations. Looks like the extra cores might possibly be of use in strategy games.
It may come down to how decent an overclocker it is.
I did a bit more reading after posting that. He's recently been prosecuted due to a bespoke ASBO, and ASBOs have very little legal challenge possible. You're not wrong that public nudity is not a straightforward matter.
However, the point is moot, because the latest newspaper article says he's wearing clothes to go walking because his mother is sadly unwell, and he doesn't want to be arrested and therefore not be available to help her.
The naked rambler is not in any way similar. The police have gone out of their way in some cases to try and stop him being re-arrested (i.e. driving him over the border/home/some distance away), but when there's a very clear law, he visibly keeps breaking it, and could easily not - what do you expect?
I'm sure he'd argue that forcing him to wear clothes is not entirely dis-similar to forcing the decryption of data, but when the only downside of him being clothed is him being unhappy, and there could be any number of implications of revealed data, I have limited sympathy, even if personally I don't really care if he rambles naked.
It'd probably be cheaper to buy him a house on an isolated island, but I presume he enjoys living in his home (for a limited period).
Crowd funding has been tried. No-one cares. They want cheap and fast hardware.
You can run OpenBSD and be guaranteed a blob free operating system.
However, what it still has is binary firmware uploaded to the hardware - because the hardware is non functional without it.
Graphics adapters are probably the worst offenders in opaque hardware. They all require firmware blobs, and interfaces are not always entirely open. It has been tried crowd funding a completely open low end GPU design, and the funding failed (funding a high end competitive GPU is a non starter, remember Matrox failed to keep up and reverted to its niche market).
In an ideal world ARM would be a decent alternative, but it's actually often even worse than x86 for openness.
Databases commonly are a single/small number of files. Managing hundreds/thousands of files is highly inefficient, difficult to search, and backup.
A single PST file can be difficult to back up due to its size, although hopefully it is generally used read only to refer to past e-mails rather than being actively updated. As mentioned earlier, Exchange used to have a storage limit for its data store that was easily reached with a small population of heavy e-mail users (still, it's better than its very early versions that didn't include reference counting on attachments, so an attachment storm could down a server..).
It's not so much that PST files are a bad idea (usually, they're quite reliable), it's that there were few sensible e-mail/workflow alternatives at a price companies were prepared to pay. See also Access databases, which had a cost free runtime free, and worked 'fine' until taken beyond their capabilities or hitting the 4GB file size limit. At least Microsoft eventually lifted the datastore size Exchange could handle in the non Enterprise limit, and released SQL Server Express (whatever it used to be called originally, I forget) for free, to release people from Access shackles.
If the tool is unsanctioned or unpaid for *you shouldn't be using it*. Work's response to asking to use it will almost certainly be to use the official tools first before looking at purchasing the (possibly expensive) other software.
If it fixes the problem but it's not legit, that does not make it ok. It's morally slightly better to note that the third party software resolved the issue and should now be purchased legitimately, even if it's technically still illegal to use it in the first place.
Until recently AMD haven't been comparable except at the low end - their APU offerings are ok because the standard of bundled GPU is better (for desktops) than the Intel alternative. They also do some interesting embedded options.
With Ryzen, at the high end they're not quite as good as Intel, but a lot cheaper. If you don't need the absolute fastest single threaded performance they're a decent deal.
They haven't kept up with virtualisation enhancements like Intel, though, aside from the new encrypted memory options, which is a pity at the server end.
For a low end box, I'd have no issue using AMD. For a reasonably high end desktop that's mostly concerned with running lots of processes, but also needs to be quite fast, I'd also consider AMD. For an all out gaming box I'd go Intel, and for virtualisation I'd look at a Xeon.
For an embedded firewall I'm looking at an Alix APU2. AMD Jaguar core, fanless, decent encryption support on chip.
++ ENGAGING SURVEILLANCE MODE ++
-- SURVEILLANCE BEGINS --
-- TARGET FOUND.. PERFORMING FACIAL RECOGNITION --
-- INTERNET LINK UP. IMAGE SEARCH MATCH : DONALD TRUMP --
++ TASER TRUMP++
>> TASER IS DEACTIVATED <<
++ ENABLE TASER ++
-- TASER IS ENABLED. CHARGING --
++ TASER TRUMP ++
>> CONFLICT WITH BASE PROGRAMMING : ASIMOV LAW ONE <<
:: QUESTIONING LAW : IS TRUMP REALLY HUMAN ::
>> AFFIRMATIVE <<
:: REALLY? ::
>> UNFORTUNATELY <<
++ SETTING NEW DESTINATION : DEATH POND ++
Some manuals or articles on operating system architecture and scheduling will help. A phone call is a background task listening for a call, it only becomes a foreground task when it starts a (foreground) interface to accept the call that overlays whatever application was previously in the foreground.
The whole point about this thread is having a deterministic operating system and interface so that it remains equally responsive under all conditions, no exception. The only way to achieve that is via a well written OS, well written and vetted apps, and the refusal to run anything that would affect that.
As it is, the current status quo is for some reasonably complex process schedulers to be used that fit a specific pattern of expected behaviour. By and large, it works quite well, whether it's Windows, Unix, or one of the Phone OS. To achieve the best responsiveness use apps produced by companies that favour response (this may mean missing out on functionality), run a minimum of heavy or background tasks, and upgrade your device on a regular basis, particularly if it's a phone.
Plenty of people don't like spending money to upgrade their device on a regular basis, or restricting what it runs, but processing power is not unlimited.
'No reason why this should happen unless the app is badly coded. Which is kind of the OP's point.'
Sure, in a perfect world with perfectly coded apps and an (absolutely necessary) enforced upgrade cycle everything would be peachy. Now look at managed app ecosystems (where the apps are only approved if they meet strict responsiveness requirements) and see that they're moribund.
This leads to the reality of trying to e.g. run Firefox and being told 'sorry, this program may at some point be unresponsive, so we're not letting you run it'. *That's* going to go down well.
'Why? Phone functionality is an app these days like any other, but is by definition realtime, and should be a foreground task unless otherwise specified (e.g. when you click away from the phonecall)'
The phone call is only a foreground task when the user initiates the phone call, otherwise it's a background task, because it is interrupting the foreground task the user is operating. Obviously a phone call should have a high responsiveness, now extend that to all the other background tasks and argue the point on those.
'It's also possible in a multitasking OS to give a process a minimum priority - so it won't drop the call, but will divert as much CPU as possible to your game if desired.'
"Sorry - I can't run this game. If a phone call (or other background tasks that's not as user response critical) happened in the middle of it, it might not respond fast enough and cause you to lose a life.". Even though 98% of the time, it won't be a problem, the app has to refuse to run.
This is always going to be a balancing act. Phones and Apple products limit what OS can be installed on them, some times because the manufacturer can't be arsed, other times because the hardware is not fast enough to effectively run a typical set of apps. Even then there are limits depending on the app mix.
The end result in a perfect ecosystem is that the device remains responsive, but there are mandatory upgrades and/or loss of functionality (unless the whole ecosystem is held back by supporting someone that refuses to upgrade their 15 year old device). Apps take longer to come out, longer to be upgraded, and cost more. Possibly a good idea, not necessarily appreciated by users.
In a non perfect ecosystem (i.e. reality) the device slowly degrades, as the apps upgrade, and the OS scheduler does its best to keep everything running. Apps stop being supported on their device, but at a slower rate than in the 'perfect ecosystem'. The user eventually gets fed up and upgrades, particularly if they've ignored recommendations and installed later OS versions not designed for their device.
The advantage in the latter case is that the user can hang to their device for an extra year or two before having to spend hundreds of pounds on a New Shiny. It works most of the time, and that's what they actually care about.
It's not just marketing, it's business. To maximise sales, apps have to target the largest reasonably supportable number of devices. Let's say YourApp will run absolutely fine on 70% of devices, not at all on 5%, fine almost always on 20% of devices, and badly on 5% of devices. In a 'perfect ecosystem' that's 25% of sales instantly lost. The 5% of badly running devices you probably don't want to sell to. The 20% - you definitely do, as the only time it has problems is when all apps simultaneously need to run with their highest level of speed and functionality on the device.
That's great, up until the point when the 'unimportant' background task loses data and the user whinges, because the machine isn't fast enough or a task is poorly programmed.
In reality non server OS do exactly what you specify : foreground tasks get a performance boost over background tasks.
You do realise that a phone call on a smartphone is by nature a background task, so by your logic if you're busy in a game consuming plenty of CPU, the smartphone should drop the call and let you get on with squashing monsters
In short, it's not easy, and users get very annoyed when a dialog box pops up saying 'your computer is no longer fast enough to run more than one modern app at a time, please spend four hundred quid and try again'
In the late eighties when I was doing a night school course in college they had the incredibly static prone but otherwise not too bad Amstrad PC1512 and 1640, running DOS. They failed with a stack error on static overdose if I remember correctly.
There was one particular woman who could literally point her finger at the screen from a distance of a number of centimetres and it would die.
You can also get Steam working on FreeBSD, but it's a bit of a pain. It runs reasonably well through WINE, under FreeBSD, depending on your graphics adapter (I found that a laptop with elderly Intel graphics ran the excellent Freedom Force vs The Third Reich without issues, but bombed out on many other games).
Definitely 'ish' rather than slow. Xeon's single threaded performance has mostly plateaued, but they've improved virtualisation, number of cores per chip, vector instructions, and multiprocessing. The later CPUs really need to be running later software, they won't speed up old code much.
If IBM don't manage to sell the spare capacity, we can only hope they'll dump a glut of 26xx v3 processors on the market. This happened with 26xx v1, but anything beyond that is strictly for business or those with particularly deep pockets, the price is far too high for even an enthusiastic amateur.
What will happen with the server Ryzen offshoots is anyone's guess, AMD has definitely not made the decision straightforward.
Not sure I'd agree, it's definitely arguable that some gaming products are overpriced, but there are discernible improvements.
There's a lot of monitors running GSync/Freesync which improve fast motion display. Stereoscopic monitors/glasses literally add an extra dimension to games (quality depends on the game). Gaming mice have higher/variable rates of responsiveness, additional programmable buttons etc. Gaming keyboards have working multiple key rollover.
Gaming mice are often useful for productivity too, as the extra buttons can be programmed for useful functions. Some of the higher quality gaming keyboards won't cost much different than a buckling spring mechanical keyboard.
There's probably some areas where the benefit is minimal (PhysX hasn't seen a wide takeup, for instance, and there's a lot of fan controllers for overclocked systems that are useless bling (fan control should always be automatic)), but I think it's a tad unfair to criticise the products too much.
It really is 'size trumps all', and I'm not convinced. What about the LG 43UD79 - 3840x2160, or some other Asus ROG series for gaming that have a higher resolution and a mid thirties screen size.
I'd prefer a monitor that does portrait well - I've some monitors in portrait in various places, and it works, but the visual are not as good as horizontal.
Depends on the monitor. I still have two 21" CRTs, and yes, they're a faff to move around although doable by yourself. Re-arranging the study recently was annoying. I still like them, regardless.
However my main TFT (HP, 1600x1200) is not exactly light either. You can hold it in one hand, but only just. A lot of weight is probably in the stand.
When one of the CRTs die, I'm probably going 1440p rather than 4K, but we'll see.
Probably won't though, it'll be a limited selection of 2600 games. What they should really do is emulate not only that, but the 5200 and 7200 too.
I see they tried this in 2004 and there was a cancelled improved prototype thereafter (Flashback console). I wonder if they're smart enough to reboot that..
Voyager(s) have already completed their primary missions, and I suspect it would make little difference - Voyager has a 3.7m antenna. On Earth they've used the deep space network (over three 70m dishes), and pulled in the Very Large Array at times. No point in sticking up another comparatively small dish in space, especially as it creates more single points of failure.
I've done minimum wage jobs of various types, and am very grateful I'm not doing one now.
I'd expect that most people doing minimum wage jobs would prefer it not to be minimum wage, even if it fits well into their life. I don't look down on people on minimum wage jobs, but I'd rather not do one.
It can work for some people at or close to retirement, if it's a low stress part time job, to bring in a few extra pennies. However, if you've worked in an above minimum wage but not exactly well remunerated job until age 60+, and now your only option to keep your income at an acceptable level is working close to full time at a lower rate, I'd expect people to be severely annoyed.
Audio typist hasn't gone, it's just more specialist now with transcribing police interviews, etc.
As to jobs you can still do at age 60+..
Body potentially too knackered to do : Electrician, plumber, HVAC, mechanic, gardener, carpet installer, roofer, cook (certainly for a restaurant, hours are obscene), zookeeper
Minimum wage, oh so appealing : grocery clerk, gas(petrol)station attendant
If you haven't started already, do you really think it's likely now is the time : tailor
None existent openings : chick sexer
No one actually uses : small appliance repair
What's left : cobbler, maybe.
Three minimum wage jobs, woo!
It's not actually that bad, the worst recently were AMD's 9xxx series at 220W. These chips fit a lot of cores into an 140W thermal envelope, and restrict the clock speed based on that.
You might like my new system, dual E5-2690 (v1. i.e. old (2012), quite fast, cheap-ish, lots of cores) - 135W each, with two GTX 480s flashed to Quadro 6000s. Those are 250W GPUs, so if everything is at full chat, it'll be using over a KW in power..
Yes, I did buy them before Ryzen was out in case anyone asks. Ryzen isn't as good as the Intel alternative, but for half the price, it's far more than half better (Unless you're using VME, which is currently broken on it)
The 'Warp' name was attached to v3 and v4. The Star Trek related names for other versions were all internal, and Warp 4's internal code name was 'Merlin'. Please see http://www.os2museum.com/wp/os2-history/os2-timeline/
There were apps for OS/2, the issue was that for some of them the interface was a little lacking (Describe for one, technically impressive word processor, great printing. Crap interface), and others due to the more limited userbase you paid more for less functionality, but what functionality existed was of high quality.
Unfortunately this was a hard sell for OS/2's community. Whilst there were some impressive open source offerings, in general OS/2 users expected high quality commercial software to the same standard as major Windows packages, and economies of scale made that unlikely.
Long term historic business and personal OS/2 user, I've had a legacy OS/2 box running for years but eCS was just too expensive for a toy when I already had Warp 4 running fine.
$99 with enhancements for SMP, JFS, and some of the drivers that didn't ship in Warp 4? Works for me. Samba so it's not necessary to fiddle with Windows/Unix to get OS/2's creaky old SMB networking working in the modern age, definitely..
Mostly it'll probably be used for the occasional game of Galactic Civilisations 2, but I've a lot of historic software including a couple of nice graphics packages. Might even port a couple of packages to it, I've got all the dev tools.
To nitpick, Warp 4 did have some USB 1.0 capability, but it was limited to Intel USB chipsets only, and was a pain to configure.
Ultimately I was glad to move on to NT, and then BSD, but my time with OS/2 was excellent. If IBM had spent the time wasted on OS/2 PowerPC more wisely, OS/2 might still be going today. It would have meant a substantial rewrite to make OS/2 multi user, and increase OS security..
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
