Posts by HelpfulJohn

Virgin Galactic finally gets its first paying customers to edge of space

Re: Bets

"How exactly does one build one of those on the Moon or Mars so you can re-use starship ?"

The same way one builds them on the Earth; Navvies, shovels, picks and big, yellow digger machines. One does not need a degree in Media Studies to be employed on Mars,

the Moon, Mercury or even Titan to ask: "Do you want chips with that?"

Sure, if the vehicles can *only* lift off from a specially-prepared runway, even under lower than Terran gravity, the first few will need to load up on Navvies and shovels then

wait around for a while but that's just Administration, engineeering and accounting. It sure isn't rocket surgery.

Oh, the diggers are vastly too big to be taken up in one piece so would probably need a few "Starships" each and a guy with a screwdriver set. Or hex wrenches. Maybe both.

But again that's just organisational stuff. Hell, given a set of poorly-copied diagrams, *I* could maybe fix them together. Eventually.

If it can be built in Bognor, it can be replicated on the coast of a Titanian lake. The latter may even be cheaper: no Union rates and no Health-and-Safety.

Re: What Goes Up

"... what goes down, doesn't always come back up."

Some of it did. I saw pictures. True, it was mostly the hard, tough bits but that would be expected from an explosive or implosive event.

.

Reg fashion: Here's what the well-dressed astronaut will wear on the Moon in 2025

Re: Why?

"...and which legal system will apply."

Maritime Law. According to Captain Blondbeard that would make heisting boots an act of piracy.

Also, perhaps, a little risky for the victim.

Anyone want an International Space Station? Slightly used

Re: Like a circle in a spiral Like a wheel within a wheel

Why de-orbit *anything*?

The stuff going around and around the planet is *mass*. It can be cut up, sorted and recycled as bits of newer, more magical and *better* habitats.

It took oodles and oodles of go-juice to get that stuff into orbit. We should be considering *not* wasting all of that effort.

For the short-term, we could just attach a few little engines and boot the ISS into a very high, possibly 24-hour parking orbit where she would be safely stored for ages and ages until we needed the metals, plastics, moulds, fungi and human wastes that she's made from. There's no hurry, ion engines would do. We could save loads of money on not lifting up that which is already there. Which brings up the point about "waste dumps".

If NASA are serious about long-term manned off-world activities, the poops made in the ISS should be saved for that far, far distant time when humans have city-farms in high orbit. True, the ISS crews probably won't make even a ton of waste over the lifespan of the station but that's a ton that would never need to be lifted from [then subsequently dropped back onto] the planet's surface.

NASA are, and always have been, extremely myopic, little-picture guys with poor grasp of long-term economics.

With foresight, even MIR could have been a valuable resource. Not, perhaps, as itself but certainly as scrap.

BOFH and the office security access upgrade

Re: Ah, time management systems

For most weeks, it is possible to work 168 hours, even if a tad unhealthy.

There have been exceptions. I have no idea what the bean-counting softwares would have made of 1752.

Re: Ah, time management systems

"What's the point of manually having to key it in every time?"

Are you new to this planet?

Tens to hundreds of millions of forms sent to people by mail with the first *empty* spaces being for the recipient to fill in their name and address.

Banks, government offices and several other groups firmly stuck in the Fourth Century or earlier *could* save many, many man-years of effort, and prevent the odd hundreds of thousands of typo's, by simply pre-filing in the information they already have - indeed *must* have to send the forms in the first place - but never will.

Humans are weird. :)

Re: received signal SIGTERM

Wasn't there some man in Italy or somewhere like that who was legally defined as being dead and whom the courts wouldn't revive even when he turned up in person to show them their error?

The judgement was that nothing he said was actual proof of him *not* being dead or something equally legalistic and dumb.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.

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

Hmm, it alerted you to nearby plague-carrier but it also took privacy seriously.

I see a little contradiction in there. :)

I have done that over the years with any number of file and image sharing applications.

So far, I haven't missed them.

Re: 14 years? [shakes head in disbelief]

Can I do a "me too"?

Cool.

Me, too.

Indeed, until I read this article, I'd forgotten I had Evernote bookmarked. Now, I'm wondering what I have saved there. :)

BOFH: The Boss has a new watch – move readiness to DEFCON 2

Re: I wonder if

And *why* would anyone insult her Monday? Did he have something against Mondays, or was it personal to just hers?

This is why "on" is so useful.

Also "to" when writing letters.

Tesla has a lot of work to do on its Optimus robot

Re: What's the point of a humanoid robot?

"There was an SF story along those lines"

That sounds like an Asimov short.

Or, more accurately, quite a few Asimov shorts.

Re: What's the point of a humanoid robot?

"...but not making custom sandwiches ..."

Many, many fast-food joints can't make custom sandwiches. Many, many shops, garages, supermarkets and McD's can't even make them without mayo and those are (allegedly) staffed by and supplied by humans. There is not a single physical "law" that limits a food-bot to being unable to supply a burger-in-a-bun without mayo. All it would take is a couple of lines of code and humans seem to be adept at supplying millions of those.

True, there are always going to be the accent and dialect issues but I have asked fully trained humans who supposedly apeak my language for a sandwiche wiht butter and chicken *only* and received margerine, mayo and ham so that type of error isn't unique to machinery.

Oh, and "Sorry, but it is now ten seconds after eleven and the breakfast menu is closed, how about a nice burger instead?" is an idiotic paradigm created by marketing droids with the express purpose of annoying us. It's amenable to a bug-fix.

Re: What's the point of a humanoid robot?

So don't make it out of a 1/4 ton of metals, use ceramics, plastics and other strong, light stuff instead.

They are not motor-cars, they don't need engine blocks. A human can do human scale stuff and weigh roughly as much as a human does. There are few physical or engineering principles that restric robots to not fitting into that scheme.

No, household robots do not need to be built by Volvo, they only need to be able to carry an unwell human upstairs and into its bed.

Even tiny, little nurses can manage that much.

Re: What's the point of a humanoid robot?

"You think robots are going to be wearing suits made for people and that's why they can only have two arms?"

Household robots, sure.

The whole point is to have *servants* but servants who will never rebel, never strike, never get tired of your shit and never, ever boff your daughters in any meaningful way. Slaves, if you prefer but slaves that are entirely free from ethical issues.

Household robots as general slaves *would* solve a ton of problems, eventualy, as with motorised vehicles, even for the moderately poor. If they could be made smart enough.

But it only works if they look like people but not *too* much so. And if some smart guy can solve the hacker problem.

Oh, and, yes, they need only two arms. Little girls will always love to play dress-up with their robot friends. Though spare manipulators could be stored inside the torso for emergencies.

Re: What's the point of a humanoid robot?

With genetic engineering and "medichanics", there are many, many obvious improvements that could be made to humans, too. You mentioned more arms, but having a microhand, with tool-ends such as screwdrivers and very strong grippers (spanner-like bits) and perhaps their own optical inputs would be nice. Not having dislocatable joints would be cool and knees are a daft design - far too fragile and complex.

The human eye, as you also noted, is a poor design, too. Sure, it works and it has allowed the species to do some truly amazing stuff but it is incredibly limited.

Human skin is far too delicate. Bones, too and the circulatory system is a joke.

The human brain *definitely* needs some upgrades. And the comunications systems could do with some tweaks. Current computers have "telepathy", there isn't any reason why a "better" human couldn't join them.

I'm not entirely sure what a "perfect" child of humanity would look like but it would not closely resemble the mal-adapted mokeys we commonly see at present.

Maybe it would more be like one of those doggy-style robots, but with better manipulators?

A miserable work week spent toiling inside 'the metaverse'

Re: So in conclusion

I'm wondering whether the keyboards being simulated were subtending the same visual angles as those in reality and if so, why?

It's surely easy to make large, wrap-around KB's with widely spaced keys? After all, the *virtual* KB's don't use any plastics and don't cost or weigh any more than would "normal" ones.

The same goes for the monitors.

Yes, bandwidth is an issue but not everything on screen moves. Keys, for example, only would when pressed.

Re: But... but... but...

*Any* repetitive motion is extremely tiring and damaging if you do it for eight or twelve hours per shift. Even the recliners and tappy screens that featured as "futuristic tech" on the TV serial "Star Trek: The Next Generation" would induce severe back strain, R.S.I. and other injuries eventually.

The hot-desk, standing-up work spaces there were worse.

Re: But... but... but...

One of he most credible bits of the movie "Timecop" was the geeky worker's use of VR.

Google engineer suspended for violating confidentiality policies over 'sentient' AI

Re: Mechanical Turk, or just a stream of 1s and 0s?

Errrmmm, I dunno about *you* but those are the sort of idiotic answers *I* would give were some generic humanoid or alien testing me for Turingness.

But I have been told that I have a strange sense of humour. Dogs have a sense of humour. Cats sort of have a sense of humour. Elephants, chimpanzees, dolphin and some corvids seem to, too. No "artificial intelligence" has yet displayed one so far as I know.

Yes, some have been designed to "tell jokes" but those are often obviously simply filling in the blanks.

Eventually, were I being Turinged, I would probably lapse into seriousness and just admit to being a semi-sane, sensible lump of sentience but only after I had miffed the tester.

Does that indicate more or less Turing-completeness?

Re: Mechanical Turk, or just a stream of 1s and 0s?

Yerp.

I thought so many years ago when the school tried to teach them to me.

And I *am* sentient.

Allegedly.

Re: Anyone who thinks this is AI

" ...does it matter, which one?"

Err, yes?

*IF* one has in one's machinery an actual real "living", sentient person, a true mind then switching it off, rebooting it or even altering the software is *murder*. Ethically if not yet legally.

If it is simply a fake personality overlay on top of decision trees and look-up tables then it is no more an ethical issue than is stopping an instance of Internet Explorer.

The difference is comparable to that between switching off a bedside lamp and ripping the head off of a human.

Indeed, as an artificial intellect may well be potentially immortal and as the first one developed would be the entirety of a species, killing it may be worse than genocide.

This may not be something we should ever let them know.

Hmm, I wonder whether the Great Goo sucks up conversations from the Vulture?

Amazon investors nuke proposed ethics overhaul and say yes to $212m CEO pay

"Nearest reasonable shopping is Inverness - a mere 95 miles away."

Apologies if it is a sore point I am poking at but how are the buses? Cheap, plentiful, regular and extremely common, like perhaps every ten minutes all day, every day including Sundays and costing twenty pence for a round trip?

The two salary scales are *not* "unfair, not from "a certain point of view". A typical Amazon worker can *easily* make the same salary as the CEO.

All she would need to do is to work 14,133,333.33333333 hours per year. With a little creative overtime, some reduction in wasted off-hours taken as "weekends", "nights", "vacation-time" and "sick-days" and a bit of effort, this is quite achievable.

It must be. The bosses manage it.

.

For those without instant access to a calculator: that number of hours per year is equivalent to 588,888.8888888888 days per year or about 1,612.289907977793 *years* per year.

That's well within the limits of a what a dedicated, hard-working, loyal employee with a positive attitude and strong work-ethic can do.

All you need to do is to work hard and you, too can be a milliardaire.

Voyager 1 space probe producing ‘anomalous telemetry data’

" ... tend to want to be returned back to Earth ..."

Not me. There's sufficient Science and fixing-stuff-up to be done on something like Mars to make a one-way trip look enticing.

Should I get bored with a whole new planet to explore, and Mission Control to annoy, there's always the Moon, Mercury, Titan and the Jovian worlds to have fun and adventures on. Return to Earth is for wimps, crybabies and those with a future.

"There has to be another reason to send astronauts somewhere."

Give me a nice toolkit and some spares [together with some window-wipes] and I could fix up all of those little rovers and stationary robots on Mars. I might even be able to find and fix Beagle II.

That's more than *any* robot fixer could do and I wouldn't even need degrees in engineering to manage it. A simple link to the fixy-uppy databases on Earth would suffice.

Though, knowing how lax NASA/JPL and everyone else is at archiving old PDF's of machinery designs I'd be surprised if all of the blueprints are still available.

Humans are "intelligent fingers". With the backing of Central Command they can do far more than can any maintenance robots.

Though they do need some complicated support systems, which is a decided disadvantage.

BOFH: Gaming rig for your home office? Yeah right

"... To be fair, it could just about be feasible; or at least the air incident investigation board seem to think it's feasible. "

That is dead easy and dirt cheap to test. Simply let off coloured smoke cans at each generator's blade hub and watch the vortices.

It shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes for the smokes to reach across 1,800 metres and by digitising the movies one could analyse any residual patterns that might interfere with aeroplane stability.

Vortices from landing aircraft wings can travel for quite a few seconds so it's certainly *possible* that a wind-farm could be slightly disruptive when so close though I'm quite surprised the investigators didn't.

Why should I pay for that security option? Hijacking only happens to planes

Re: Ah, yes. The dreaded "fix it NOW!" call ...

I, OTOH, was usually the first to be called in for issues and overtime due to absences. I loved that. It was usually on weekends, nights or holiday-times which meant no manglement. It also meant additional pay which I also quite liked.

I only twice refused. Once because I was called in at 0600-ish for an 0800 start. As I don't drive and was several hundred miles away manglement eventually managed to understand that the taxi-cab fare would be ... rather a lot.

The second time was on our wedding anniversary.

I had this vision of her standing over me muttering: "Bloody useless *MEN*! Get up and tell me how to reload this thing!"

If you want less CGI and more real effects in movies, you may get your wish: Inflatable film studio to orbit Earth

Re: Boris is going to sue for copyright violation

Yeah, that's what I said but pithier. :)

Re: Space is big

"... because we've already done it."

Yerp, Skylab.

They had all sorts of dancing and physics experiments for the children in Skylab because it had quite a bit of room. Had they sent up more [and building hundreds is *always* cheaper, per unit, than just one] they could have had hand-egg games, pseudo-golf, acrobatics that would make little Olga envious and things no one down here in the mud has ever thought of.

And that's just the sports.

Imagine base-jumping from Olympus Mons or the ice-cliffs of Mimas. That one would need some thinking through as Mimas has no atmosphere to drag but I'm fairly sure a bouncy suit could be devised.

Imagine the Sun rising behind a kilometric Cross on Eros. Or a service held in the glows of the tails of Halley. That would entail really good glass but that's just chemistry and engineering.

There are no anti-trust laws on Luna. No separation of church and state in Hermes City.

No fish-and-chippy on Ganymede. The first guy to open one would have a limitless franchise opportunity.

All of the above are simply "business-as-usual" with a few tiny tweaks. The third generation off-worlders would not think like us. Their contributions to economies, cultures, governance, sciences, technologies and Life In General would be ... cosmic.

It's a pity that the Dream Of Stars is dead and only a tiny few of we Dreamers remain.

Re: Breathtaking

There can be no "Westerns" without the West. No "L.A. Gang versus Cops" movies without an L.A. No "Ice Station Zebra" without an Ice-world.

I don't say any of these are "good" but USofA has given us Johnny Cash, Blues, Hollywood, Superman, Tacos [well them and Mexico a little] and loads of other stuff Europe, Asia and Africa would never have invented.

Europe gave us lots of other things. Asia, too once people walked there from their Kenyan origin lands.

THERE IS NO WAY TO PREDICT WHAT RICHES OFF-WORLD SITES WOULD ADD TO THE HUMAN CONDITION AND OUR CIVILISATION.

For sure, it would *start* with more "Westerns". But two Ages-of-USA later those offplanet folks would be doing stuff we could never dream of.

The Dream Of Stars is not about merely buying chips on Triton. It was about expanding the species, about making *new* species, about making the Human Galaxies an eternal cradle of ubiquitous and everlasting peoples who colossally expand the human experience.

Mankind takes the stars or this world is his grave.

Re: Union rules

Nothing.

Or, more accurately, nothing *extra* as they will live and work there permanently.

I thought that was the long-term plan? Or don't we have that any longer?

Re: Small problem

"Stardancer" by Spider Robinson.

You don't buy horse manure. You have stables and the fertiliser is free.

"But what, " asks the USAlien jock, "would I *do* in a city on the Moon?"

I answer: "Do you want fries with that?"

You sell the heat. The ash is a useful, free by-product.

I thought Billionaires were supposed to be imaginative, innovative wealth creators? For such "far-sighted" people they sure have had centuries of being massively myopic.

Skylab could have done this in the 1970's. Fifty years ago.

UK, Australia, to build 'network of liberty that will deter cyber attacks before they happen'

Re: Your next PM

A burning bush on a watery tart?

Now that is *true* magic.

Re: Buzz words

"Sounds like 'We are allowed to do as we wish but you're not.'"

Of course we are.

So long as we accept that there are consequence for everyone not a prince or parliamentarian.

Re: Oz has a fix for that, just ...

"After I retired I asked him. He said he was smuggling donkeys."

According to a family member, whose reportage I of course trust completely, when I was younger I wanted to grow up to *be* a submarine.

No one ever did give me a really convincing explanation as to why that wasn't a valid career path.

When I found out that no one was hiring trainee-submarines, I decided I wanted to be a Starship captain.

No one is hiring them, either. :(

"For gods sakes, think of the Trillionaires......... won't SOMEONE, *PLEASE* just *THINK*OF*THE*T*R*I*L*L*I*O*N*A*I*R*E*S*!!!!!!!!!" Impassioned pleas from "up-and-coming" backbenchers to tabloids.

BOFH: Switch off the building? Great idea, Boss

Re: Messing with oxygen-fluorine compounds

Obligatory Xkcd : https://what-if.xkcd.com/40/

"What is the worst that can happen?"

Secure boot for UK electric car chargers isn't mandatory until 2023 – but why the delay?

Re: Secure boot is going where?

"Time will be that charging from a 13 amp socket will be as illegal as using Red diesel."

Or simply made impossible by way of "HDMI" for E.V.'s

Which innovation may even make way for the wonderful marketing ploy of restricting charging to juice from "approved" dealers and partners.

Hmm, one could even use this scheme for other IoT gadgets such as fridges, lighting and heating.

Apple fridges only powerable by Apple-supplied electricity. Coming soon to a world near you ...

Of course, buying off-brand electrons and jail-breaking your cooker will become a violation of patent, copyright and other DRM, DCMA, and Computer Misuse laws.

Fun times.

Re: "automatic network disconnection if unsigned software runs on the smart devices"

"The article is about car chargers not EVs themselves."

True but the charger is a possible vector to the vehicle. If the charger is ill, the vehicle can be infected. Maybe. Unless they, too, are heavily protected.

Does anyone know [or care] whether they are?

'IwlIj jachjaj! Incoming LibreOffice 7.3 to support Klingon and Interslavic

"Is the other person who actually bothered to pay the registration fee for PKZip also here on ElReg?"

Yes.

Yes, I am.

I also paid for Irfanview but only because I loved the thing and felt that Irfan deserved the money.

However, I did drop PKZip after it went bloated or something. I think it got bought up.

A tiny typo in an automated email to thousands of customers turns out to be a big problem for legal

"Makes you wonder why you bother, doesn't it?"

No, not in the least though that sort of thing is rather disheartening when it happens over and over for thirty-odd years.

All it takes is one happy customer to squeal with glee that she wants to have my baby [extreme hyperbole but the meaning behind it was clear, she was a little bit grateful for my help] to make the entire Helldesk experience well worthwhile.

A few others, scattered randomly across the decades of various IT Support roles, add strawberry bits to the normal tapioca of life. It does not take much of a "thank you" to brighten up a week and they are all remembered.

Be nice to your Support guy, it may be the only time he ever gets thanked for his efforts.

For sure, manglement mostly won't.

Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

Re: Names for Facebook parent company

"ENRON" has been taken and they may object so how about "ELRON"?

Reminiscent of the progenitor of something equally nasty, slimy and destructive.

Hmmmm....

How about "THRUSH"? "Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity". This acronym has the advantage of sounding like a very nasty fungus.

When typing to relatives, I have the bad habit of calling it "FarceBoke" or, if I'm being inclusive, "FarceTwat" but I'm sure they would never accept either of those, nor are the two antisocial media companies likely to formally merge.

Addendum: no prizes are offered for knowing where I found the THRUSH name.

IKEA: Cameras were hidden in the ceiling above warehouse toilets for 'health and safety'

Re: Disgusting!!

If it is all going into the same disposal facility and if there is guaranteed all-day access and if there is absolute pirvacy [absent late 20th Century and onwards Scientists nosing about] then why not have the one?

It saves time, effort and training.

Re: Excuses, excuses

"Installing the cameras in 2015 is recent enough for some serious data protection legislation to have been violated"

IKEA, as an employer, must hold digital data on identifiable employees. as a commercial entity, it must hold identifiable data on customers.

Would those mean that the video footage would be required by law to be disclosed to an employee or customer who requested it, as is true of some other records?

I am definitely no lawyer so I have possibly misread the statutes.