Posts by NRT 73 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2007
I have just realized why I am not in a well paid management role.
Last weekend my keyboard died & I needed a new one. I went to a shop and saw a range of keyboards from £10 to about £165. As a normal human being I bought one for £10 (plus a free mouse). Obviously, what I should have done is bought the expensive keyboard and then taken the shop to court for charging me to much.
That way I could have made millions!
Nick.
Once .music is established and is the main place to go to buy music, expect to hear the licensing groups start pressing the labels to stop selling on any of the other domains.
This will, of course, be done to avoid "confusing the poor consumers". However look at what may happen if they succeed.
1. All "legal" music is now on .music
2. Any music not there must be "Illegal".
3. Threaten to take down any site with music on it that is not on the gTLD. No need for any nasty expensive court hearings the site is, by definition, a pirate one.
Am I being unduly cynical here?
Nick.
One problem with making the inner tube from perspex / polycarb for the camera is that it is an insulator and will slow the rate of cooling.
Why not make the lower part of the tube i.e. from the top of the CO2 level down, from metal & the upper part from plastic.
This would provide maximum heat transfer for the cooling & insulate the top part which is exposed to the ambient temperature.
The drawback to this is that you will have introduced another, potentially leaky, joint to reduce the obtainable vacuum.
Incidentally, will you need to top up the CO2 whilst it is cooling down?
Nick.
When viewed from the outside creationists & young earthers appear incomprehensible. However when you remember two items of their faith, 1 The only way to heaven is through faith & 2 Every word of the Bible is true then you can see why they twist around desperatly trying to make the facts fit their theory.
Failure to do so (and indeed believe their strange theories) means that they no longer have faith & will therefore go to hell.
So, like a lobster pot, it's easy to get in but very difficult to get out of again.
Nick.
When I use a function within a programme all I do is something along the lines of
FunctionName(Par1,Par2,.....Parn) {
I neither know nor care how the function works, that is the job of the company that provided me with the function for use within that enironment.
In effect none of my code executes the technique that is licenced, this is done by code that the providing company has written (& I assume has a licence for).
Nick.
Unfortunatly for PC World their receipt does not take precedence over the law. Your mouse is under warranty for one year whatever the T & Cs on the receipt say (I believe its the Sale of Goods Act).
If necessary mention 'Trading Standards Officer' & 'Small Claims Court' this often persuades shops to see things your way :-)
Nick.
A few months ago my neighbors bought their children a new (second hand) laptop and an internet connection. They found it impossible to set up themselves.
They spent many hours on the helpline which did not resolve the problem. When I got home that day they asked me to help.
After a quick look the 'problem' turned out to be that the router defaulted to WPA2 & that their PC could only use WEP. It was easy to go back to my machine, armed with the relevant passwords, and drop the wireless encryption back to WEP. Problem solved.
The problem is, I now know their passwords and the ISP spent a lot of time (failing) to help.
What is the ISP to do? Push the default security settings as high as possible and accept that this will increase their call centre costs or keep default security low and get crucified for that?
Nick.
QKE relies on the fact that the state of a particle changes if someone looks at it.
What happens if, rather than just examining the data stream, I intercepted the data stream? At that point I know the quantum key (and the intended recipient does not). I can now reconstruct the QK and send a good copy to the victim as easily as the original sender did to me.
At this point all three of us know the key and can read any subsequent data.
So; what is wrong with this method?
Nick.
You do not need to learn how to drive a car to get a (provisional) driving license.
You do not need to carry a passport with you normally, it is occasionally useful, when you know that you will need to identify yourself.
The ID card however was, while 'voluntary', likely to become essential. Want to prove that you can buy a drink? Show me your card.
Get stopped whilst driving? Today you are told to produce the relevant documents at a police station within a reasonable time. With the 'convenient' ID card. You would be asked why you were not carrying one.
Finally, some of us ancients on this site remember the abominations 'ID' has perpetrated in the past. I do not wish to see this repeated here!
Rant over (and only one exclamation mark).
Nick.
What is reasonable to a large commercial company is not necessarily so to a single programmer working alone. This does not even start to address the problems faced by FOSS, where the license to use/redistribute does not normally involve payment (except in kind (if possible)).
In 1994 the previously free use of the GIF format was changed (software patents). This lead to a switch away from GIF to JPG formats on the internet. With far fewer numbers of people on the web then, it was possible. I am not sure it would be as easy now!
I would agree with 'RAND' if it really was reasonable, it so often isn't.
Nick.
My wife dropped her phone into the toilet (fortunately before use). We removed the battery & then washed the phone thoroughly with de-ionised water.
After the phone was dried out (24hrs on a radiator) it worked correctly.
That being the case, why does immersion invalidate the warranty?
Nick.
Imagine the scene. You are waiting by the phone for the call that tells you that you have reached the peak of your career... You have been promoted to minister!
Then you discover that it's "Minister of going around sounding like a fool". What a crushing anticlimax it must have been.
Nick.
If MS spotted a machine spewing spam from smallfactory.co.uk I suspect many people would be a little surprised if they responded by blocking the .co.uk domain.
Here they spotted spam from smallhospital.nhs.uk and promptly blocked the higher level, why?
Can you imagine the screams of outrage from Westminster if they tried that on .gov.uk?
(I suspect it's just a way of persuading the holdouts to move to .nhs.net).
Nick.
Nice! I want one of those, and it will be ready (for testing) by 2010.
So they are going to rip out the existing grid and install a high temperature superconducting grid all by next year.
I think my technobabble detector has hit a severe overload.
Nick.
It seems to work like this:
1) I do not understand/disaprove of activity X
2) You enjoy and engage in activity X
3) I tell you to "Stop that, it's very silly"
4) You tell me to "Go away"
5) As it is (obviously) not possible that I may be wrong.....
You are ADDICTED!!!
Nick
Years ago Digital Research discovered that DRDos ran better if it identified itself as MSDos. When I wish to see an I.E. only web site I tell my browser to lie, this is widely done and often works.
Now Palm does the same thing & there is an outcry from some people. Why?
Nick.
It would be nice if MS changed the behaiviour of their installer, at the moment a Windows install will nuke a dual boot MBR & boot straight into Windows.
It would be polite of them to do what the other OS installers do. I.E. check to see what else is there &, if necessary, ask!
Nick.
An old chip & pin bank card showed blistering on the surface after 3 seconds in a 650W microwave oven.
An RFID card with an arial would absorb more power so less than a second would probably kill the chip but someone would have to experiment to see when the card showed obvious signs of dammage.
Nick.
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