Posts by fpx 221 publicly visible posts • joined 15 May 2013
Another user who has not bothered to read the terms and conditions.
I did. And it said that if anything fails, Microsoft's liability is limited to the amount that you paid for the license. Except in case of gross negligence. Good luck proving that to a jury against their army of lawyers.
Well, that's what it said years ago, when I last bothered to read through the license. T&Cs change faster than one can read them.
Agree and disagree. The current large nuclear power plants suffer economically because there are no economies of scale. There's relatively few of them, every site has its challenges (both in terms of geography and governance), and the workforce to build and operate them is different every time. As you say, SMRs have the promise to profit from economies of scale, when you build (and tear down) hundreds of them in a specialized factory where talent is retained, and then ship and operate them easily and nuclear-maintenance free. This would apply more to the double-digit MW range rather than three or more digits. I think the jury's still out on whether SMRs can deliver on that promise, and whether the costs will be comparable to wind and solar, but I do see the potential.
See, we got to the moon first! Now, sorry to say that we had to scrap the Human Sample Return mission to remain within budget .... but don't worry, we sent them astronauts a couple potatoes to farm.
Does that ban also apply to green card holders? It sure sounds like it, but this article only talks about visas, which the green card is not. And how about golden ticket holders?
I would assume that the US government can just nicely and quietly ask Elon for the remote kill switch for any Tesla vehicle. And close the windows, lock the doors, and set the heated seats to maximum.
Haven't they watched the early Top Gear episode that all baddies drive Toyota Hilux? Or the episodes where they drive a Hilux over an active volcano, or to the North Pole? Good luck trying that with a Cybertruck.
"Signal Desktop for Windows 11 includes a default Screen Security setting that tells the operating system that messages are protected with digital rights management (DRM), thereby blocking any and all screenshots from being taken - including the automated screenshots Recall uses."
The lesson learned here is that copyright is stronger than privacy.
Hey, Microsoft, remember that _I_ have implicit copyright in everything that I write, including this comment.
"McDonalds earns more money from real estate than it does from selling burgers."
That's the case for pretty much any franchise, isn't it? I remember reading that the IKEA mothership makes money by licensing the brand name to the franchise stores. The license fees are so high that the furniture stores struggle to make a profit, while the licensing fees accumulate in a double dutch tax haven before the profits are passed on to the shareholders, tax free. It's a role model that all franchises -- those big enough to afford a global army of lawyers -- like to copy.
I was working for a hardware/software company that specialized in digital signal processing. A lot of signal processing. They liked to use PowerPC chippery, because their floating-point units were superior to Intel's.
In the mid-noughts, they started drooling about new processors being designed especially for this niche by a little-known start-up called P.A. Semi. They had early prototypes and good rapport with the chip designers.
Then Apple came in, and bought P.A. Semi, not for its products, but for their expertise. The engineering team started working on what is now Apple's own designs, never releasing their own products.
"I'm sure after many years, and many billions, you can tell me (ie, cite) the exact relationship between CO2 and temperature, the exact amount of anthropomorphic CO2 & methane emitted by human activity vs natural, the amount of warming over and above the expected following an Ice Age (large or small) etc etc."
Once upon a time, a very religious family friend gave me a small book about science in the bible. One of its lines of reasoning was that "carbon dating is imprecise, therefore we must discount all science based on it. There is no need for carbon dating, because the chronology presented by the bible is perfect." It used this argument to disprove the notion that dinosaurs lived many millions years ago -- a figure implied by "bad" carbon dating, when the world is proven to be just 6000 years old.
Fundamentalist christians reason that, because Science cannot put precise numbers on anything (see above), it can't be true. Better believe the bible, which is obviously very precise about everything.
"a single F-35 contains 900 pounds of rare earths, while a Virginia-class submarine uses more than four and a half tons of the stuff"
There's your alternative source of rare earths. Just recycle a few jets and submarines. Don't these F-35s sit on the ground most of the time, waiting for service, anyway?
"Again, the end of support means that your Windows 10 PC won't suddenly stop working, yet running Windows without the availability of security patches isn't considered wise."
That's just the half of it. My home PC is still running Windows 7. It still works perfectly well for me. It hasn't received security patches in a while, but it runs behind a firewall that is configured to let in absolutely no traffic. Safe enough for me as long as I don't install any malware myself.
Most applications have also stopped receiving updates. I wouldn't mind, but of course the rest of the world is moving on, and many Web sites now insist on using new features that aren't supported by the old browsers that I am using. For about two years I've been getting banners that my browsers are not supported; now, there's some features that do not work.
The same happens with cloud-based apps. Just to quote one specific example, the Dropbox app will be the next to go; it keeps reminding me that it will cease working in May.
I can still run ancient Commodore 64 software from 40 years ago in an emulator, but some apps that are less than 5 years old -- no chance.
I would be happy to delegate driving to my car. I don't need FSD that works everywhere in all conditions. I wish manufacturers would focus on the tedious parts of driving first. If the car would drive autonomously in clear highway conditions, and in stop-and-go-traffic, that would be a major relief. If the driving conditions are more complex, I am happy to take over, but please with an advance notice in minutes, not fractions of a second.
"Matters such as the contents of a laptop belonging to Biden's son Hunter that allegedly containing evidence of corruption and proof that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen.”
What a bombshell. Hunter's laptop also had definitive proof that the election was stolen!
Oh.
You know, I'm a great fan of the Oxford comma. Corruption COMMA and proof. Makes this so much clearer.
Funny that DOGE hasn't found any waste whatsoever among these missions. $10B is just the launch cost, who knows what we could have saved by cancelling the lot.
Oh well, it might happen anyway when they find out that the government employees that are essential to planning and launching missions have been terminated for "performance."
It's not just the talent that is lost, but also the future talent that will never apply for a government or government-funded job.
But then, who needs talent when Elon's death star AI will instantly solve fusion, sea-level rise (don't call it global warming) and world peace the moment it is turned on, with no science involved.
So the the lightsail, you can send a spacecraft to some other star system in a few hundred years? Great! And then what? After having accelerated to relativistic speed, the spacecraft will arrive at relativistic speed, with no means of slowing down. So it has a few minutes to observe, and then it's off into a much bigger void beyond.
It's an engineering marvel that will never be economical to run.
First, even if the ticket price were "just" 5k, there's a limited set of business and first class travelers willing to splurge on saving a bit on travel time. When you have the choice of 5 hours squeezed into a tight seat versus 10 hours in a fold-flat bed, and the ability to charge those extra 5 comfortable hours as overtime, what do you choose?
Second, you are saving significant time only on non-stop flights, and there will be few of them. If you have to connect, most of the time saved evaporates. Now the total time is 8 hours instead of 10, for triple the price.
Third, because of the factors above, only a few number of these jets will be built. Economies of scale will not apply, making the plane more expensive to build and run. All those airline options will evaporate when Boom will be unable to keep its promises -- just like Branson's pre-orders did.
This jet will certainly find a niche as a toy for the super-rich, though. "Nyah, nyah, your puny Gulfstream can't even go supersonic!"
This guy got exactly what he wanted, media and regulatory attention, and he knows that this attention plays in his favor. He knows that in the end, very likely, he will not get fined, but just be told to be nice in the future. Which turns the entire exercise into a net win for him.
Too many politicians these days have swallowed that very same logic, that there is no negative attention. The negativity eventually evaporates when the media frenzy turns elsewhere, leaving only attention behind. Welcome to entertainment circus politics in the 21st century.
Using made-in-USA technology might help Washington snoop on the world.
Like using Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Tesla. Washington reserves the right to gain access to data collected by American companies worldwide or businesses operating in the greatestest nation in the inner solar system.
Sure, the difference is what you are doing with the data. I don't mind the data being used to solve crimes, but I'd prefer them to go in with a warrant based on probable cause, not to blame guilt based on association, rumor or what US citizens would refer to as free speech.
Give Bransom some credit for getting this venture off the ground. He has no obligation to fund this business indefinitely.
There's no ticket price for going to orbit yet, and once there is, it will be at least 100x as expensive. There's a significant slice of population who can afford a $500k joyride, but not a $50M one.
I'm not part of either slice, and even though Branson says that he doesn't have the deepest pockets anymore, I'd still be happy to trade him for mine.
Yes, it's a pain in the ass.
But, unlike merely refusing third-party cookies, it is actually a solution to the problem, which is that Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook etc. are all tracking you with their first-party cookies.
I wish browsers were able to sandbox cookies into windows or tabs.
I don't care about third-party cookies. I flush all my cookies down the drain after each browsing session, and each session is to one site only. For example, I have this browser open to read El Reg and nothing else. When I'm done with El Reg, I close the browser, which is set to delete all cookies upon exit.
As the commenter above already said, the big advertisers have no problem to track you across the entire web anyway.
The commenters above appear to misunderstand the nature of these trades. It's about detecting minuscule price differences between trades. I.e., if you see an offer for stock of company A at $10.01, and a purchase order for the same stock at $10.05, these traders will step in and buy the stock from the first trade and sell them to the second trade.It's a guaranteed profit, you just have to be a few microseconds faster than the competition. This guaranteed profit is sucked from the other market participants, since of course the fair thing would have been to let the two trades settle directly at $10.03.
Once upon a time, about a decade ago, I read the T&Cs for Microsoft Windows.
There was a clause that, if anything goes wrong, such as Windows eating your homework, and unless you can prove gross negligence, damages are limited to the amount of money that you paid for the Windows license, or US$ 50, or the actual damages incurred, whatever is less.
It wouldn't surprise me if a similar clause applied here. So good luck attempting to prove gross negligence against an army of lawyers.
That may be true but does not apply to my point above, which was about updates. A software provider -- like Apple in this case -- is free to attach new T&Cs to an update. It's a bundle. You have the choice to accept the updated T&Cs and install the update, or to decline the update, in which case the prior T&Cs remain in effect.
To use some more concrete examples, if you do not like Windows including more forced advertisement, you can remain with unsupported, vulnerable legacy versions. If you do not want to agree to new data collection terms and conditions with the latest WhatsApp update, you are free to remain with an earlier version -- that will be disconnected from the network in 30 days.
See, you have a choice! Or not.
Let's not forget that you not just have to read the T&C once. There is software (looking at you, Apple) that makes you re-agree to the new and improved T&Cs whenever you install a minor update.
With software updates now coming at you pretty much round the clock, new T&Cs are essentially coming to you faster than you can read them.
Amazing that this is legal.
And if you read all the fine print of the license agreements that you had to agree to in order to use your smart devices, you will find out that Amazon, Microsoft, Google can disable your accounts for essentially any reason. And of course you've given up the rights to sue them or join a class action suit along the way.
Sure, some of those clauses might not stand in court, but who's got the deep pockets to fight them about it?
Virgin Galactic is the only game in town to ride a rocket and see space.
Commercial ventures that take you to orbit may just be around the corner, but will be somewhat like 50 times as expensive.
If I had a few billion in spare change, sure, I'd thumb my nose at those poor suckers and wait a few years to take a real trip to "outer space", a.k.a. LEO, but at this price point, Virgin Galactic will still find plenty customers among the merely rich.
Since I don't even qualify for that, I'll have to stick to the few milliseconds of micro-gravity that I can get in a rollercoaster.
What a load of revisionist (neo-) Nazi crap.
I see that similar drivel was recently added to the English-language Wikipedia page for Friedrich Hasenöhrl.
The German-language Wikipedia page states, in part, in my translation, "the similarity of both formulas was used by proponents of nationalsocialistic German Physics to sow doubt about Einstein's originality. Max von Laue responded that while other authors before him applied the concept of inertia to electromagnetic energy, Einstein applied it universally for all kinds of energy."
> "The binary firmware and update files are encrypted with a custom 1kB block encryption [...]
This sounds very much like, "I have implemented this perfect encryption that nobody can crack because I am the only genius who understands it."
A statement that has been proven wrong again and again.
Licensing questions aside, it was very unprofessional of ORQA to purchase a software module without documentation.
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