"AI,mumble mumble ,blochain, something something quantum."
You forgot crypto :-)
1. First build a time machine.
2. Go back and mine a load of bitcoin from launch
3. PROFIT!
25409 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"The meters are optional thankfully and anyone who wants to double check that they're not compulsory see the following:"
My supplier used to contact me on a fairly regular basis "offering" a smart meter. Then they started sending letters saying they'd booked and installation date for a smart meter, "please reply and confirm". All either actively refused or in the case of appointments, ignored. I think they finally got the message and gave up on me. I've not heard anything about smart meters from them in a year or so :-)
"And he was the only guy running a computer company exploring electric vehicles then."
Calling it an "electric vehicle", while technically correct, is touted as one of the prime reasons for it;s failure. In the run up to the unveiling, everyone, especially the press, were expecting some form of car and what was actually presented was a tiny little recumbent tricycle. So the press mostly ridiculed it from launch day onwards. He completely mismanaged the expectations on that one.
Keyboard "de-bounce" routines. Not sure if any of the Sinclair line ever suffered that, but there were a few early home computers that scanned they keyboard in the assumption that the key contacts were perfect and commonly resulted in multiple detections for a single key press. Later version would fix this is ROM, but early versions often needed the de-bounce program loaded before doing anything else on it :-)
"I always preferred concave keyboards,"
Same here. For those not aware, the idea is to make each row of keys feel at the same relative angle of incidence from the fingertips based on the home keys, ASDF/JKL: thus minimising finger movement, angle changes and probably RSI. Most modern keyboards give me more strain or tiredness more quickly, and that's even worse with a flat laptop keyboard and even some desktop keyboards which are designed just like laptops nowadays.
"I did exactly that for my Spectrum! :)"
Yes, back then they mostly used a simple polled matrix layout, which also made in incredibly simply to make a custom gaming keyboard working in parallel with the main keyboard. In my case, the four arrow keys laid out the way I wanted them, a fire button under each thumb with a switch to use them as a single switch or as a pair for those games with two fire keys/jump etc and more keys in the middle to be left/right/fire/hyperspace for asteroids-like layouts. All done with 2.5mm jack plugs on leads to customise the layout in a sort of "hardware programmable" way. No messing with micro-controllers. emulation or other "complicated stuff. Just a ribbon cable from the internals to a socket on the outside for the custom keyboard to plug in when needed. Didn't even need to power down to plug it in or remove it. And it still works today :-)
"LGBTQ+ issues ....straight white cis male dominance "
So, does the "+" mean non-white? Or are we adding in yet more issues over and above what is discussed in the article?
I must admit to getting confused over just what this is all about. I thought it was about womens rights but it seems to have morphed into a weird mish-mash of anyone not "straight white cis male" is being persecuted by everyone who is "straight white cis male". I wonder how this plays out in places where "straight white cis male" are one of the minorities?
"If it was a man control woman issue, no woman would be anti-abortion."
Religion has a lot to do with that.
On a similar but slightly less emotive issue, not all women were in favour of womens suffrage. Why was that? Did they believe that women were not capable of voting sensibly? Or was it also paternal religion claiming that men were "better" than women and so those religious women believed what they were told rather than accepting their brains are not significantly different or less capable than those of men?
"these laws take away every woman's rights, whether they're directly affected or not."
Does that not mean running a conference in such a place is a good idea then? Or should everyone shun Tennessee and the like-minded States to the detriment of the women who have to live there?
Aren't the US against other people subsidising their aircraft manufactures?
"While NASA has committed to contributing $425 million over the next seven years, Boeing has committed to around $725 million for the program, NASA said. "
Sounds like a massive R&D subsidy to me, not just in cash terms but in "free" use of NASA resources.
"it will be hard to believe the 'state' isnt again lying, exaggerating or fabricating."
Seriously? You're going with that line? Pot, kettle, black?
This is the same guy who had his supporters shouting "Lock her up" at EVERY rally he organised.. Now he's trying to use the EXACT same defence that he didn't think she deserved, ie innocent unless proven guilty.
"To be honest its kinda hard to keep up with what he is accused of."
At the time you posted that, 14 hours prior to this post from me, all the charges were public and you could read them yourself.
Oh and just to reiterate a previous post of mine, Trump IS NOT a Presidential candidate. He's just one of the people trying to woo the Republican party into making him their Presidential candidate.
You're missing the point. The classification system is a guide to whether something is likely to be something of “national defense information.”. If something is secret, top secret or higher, then it's very likely to be of “national defense information.”. So, the classification of the documents may or may not be relevant in terms of the law as written, but the fact they are classified makes it highly probable they are subject to the law as written. The prosecution says they are. The evidence in the charge sheet say Trump knew that. Now it's up to the courts to agree or disagree with the veracity of the evidence. I'm sure Trumps legal team will want bring AI and "deep fake" into the argument to try to discredit the evidence.
"currently running to become president."
For someone trying so hard to prove their "facts" are correct, it's worth pointing out that the race for President hasn't even started yet. He's currently running to be the approved Republican candidate for President. This is just the qualifying round he's in.
"All of those charges could have been avoided if he simply handed the documents back when asked for them. Instead we have to go through this ridiculous clown show because Donald is a dickhead and his cult followers are muddle headed democracy hating copium abusers."
Apparently, his fund raising efforts sky-rocketed on the day of the court appearance. And he's probably already crowd-funding his "defence" fund too. There will delay after delay after delay in this case too, all instigated by him and his legal team right up to and even beyond the next Presidential election which, in his head, he will win and do whatever it takers to make this all go away. Of course, if/when he loses that election, assuming he's the actual Rep candidate (he might not be, it's still a while away), he'll be totally fucked.
"but there he is still, basking in the attention he so craves at our expense."
The press can't afford to ignore stuff like that because if they don't carry the story, someone else will and they lose readers/viewers/listeners. The UK Govt tried to restrict the press on interviews with the IRA and their ilk, and that failed spectacularly. Even the BBC, often accused of being government lackeys, simply got voice actors in to "speak" the words, often with the skill of an impressionist. IIRC, that escalated to "not showing images of IRA people", so the news, including the BBC, just filmed the interview backlit as a silhouette, neatly skirting the restrictions and staying within the law, making the Government look stupid.
There's nothing like deflating an ego, but the press will not be party to it unless it's them doing the deflating.
"(by the way, love the way the article identified the perp through a long long list of misdeeds rather then by name)"
Yeah, very funny. I'm guessing El Reg is no longer expecting to be granted any direct interviews or even PR comments from his team any more and so, as with Apple, are just having fun with it :-)
"Using a prison sentence as an excuse to remove civil rights or as a proxy for mendaciousness is naive, foolish, irrational, and unethical."
And yet, there are a list of "rights" a US citizen loses on being in prison, some of which may remain restricted for life even after completion of the sentence.
See, for example: https://www.ncsl.org/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights
I see the irony in referring to something as a "civil right" which can be rescinded and potentially never returned. That sounds more like a privilege than a right. Likewise, the prisoner who stood for the Presidential election last time around. I guess he couldn't vote for himself even though he had the right to stand.
"If I'm not mistaken Mr. Smith's decision to move the jurisdiction from DC to FL was either not known well in advance or the Cheeto's team assumed he would not be indicted so did not prepare for this."
I don't understand why this matters. They were both going to plead not guilty anyway. They don't even need a lawyer for that bit.
Exactly that. It's expensive consultants trying to justify their fees that come up with this bullshit. On the other hand, an actual, real-life *good* consultant will come up with ideas and suggestions and not need to use the BS because they understand what they are doing and often it's the "new pair of eyes" which sees the obvious, unlike the incumbent manglement/C-levels who can't see the wood for the trees. Sadly, they are a rare breed.
"There's probably an interesting research project in figuring a way to auto-transcribe these meetings* and calculate the signal to noise ratio."
IIRC, Hari Seldon did that and went on to develop it into Psychohistory (or will do, depending on which universe or timeline you are in while reading this)
Something about a "semantic analysis" of a long winded politicians speech which, taken in it's entirety, said precisely nothing.
"Reporters tend to use the terms they heard rather than translate to more common terms due to a) being lazy, b) not really understanding what's meant and/or c) not wanting to get into trouble by getting the translation wrong."
Or, sometimes, because they are either uneducated or not concentrating properly and make a mistake.
Yesterday, I spotted two stories where "loaned" was used instead of "borrowed" and on todays Local BBC TV News, the reporter talking about astronomy called it astrology :-)
Ah here's one of them. Caption for one of the photos read "PC Mike Jelly has loaned a full size RS200 from the Ford Heritage Centre, and helped Scalextric create a slot car version"
"And a lot of that was due to Microsoft's view that they know better than the user what the user is wanting to do."
And that attitude has never gone away. It's grown. After all, we aren't allowed to change how Windows looks any more, let alone the "helpful" pop-ups and messages we still get interrupted with all the time.
"Fearing something bad had happened, I found the power cable, tracing it back to where it *should* have been plugged into the wall. Wanting to charge his laptop, the student had ignored the two empty double sockets where he was sitting (he was sitting near the printer), unplugged the printer and plugged his laptop in."
Well, of COURSE he pulled the printer plug and used that socket. How else could he be absolutely certain he was choosing a working socket? Those empty ones were probably empty for a reason, ie they don't work. If they did work, there'd be something plugged in to them. Sheesh, some people! :-)
Dad used to work away a lot. One time when he was home, he'd cadged a drum of 75Ohm Co-Ax and left it in the garage. A nice cream coloured one he planned to save for when the TV aerial cable needed changed. Anyway, he gets home after 6 months somewhere hot helping build NATO radar systems around the edges of the USSR and mum happens to mention that the drum of "washing line" he'd left wasn't very good, it kept snapping and it was all used up now. See icon ------------->
I was visiting our office a few years ago to do some stuff in the workshop (a fortunately infrequent occurrence!). Fire alarm went off and everyone dutifully headed across to the far side of the workshop, down the corridor and out the main door. I went out the fire door right by me, and the closest exit for ALL of the workshop guys. So I wandered around to the front of the building to the assembly point and beat my collogues there. It was, of course, a false alarm and an email came around from a manager asking who had left the workshop fire door open and could it please not happen again. I replied to the email, copying in the fire marshals and H&S people in, that I had left that way as per written policy. H&S replied stating that I was correct and the relevant Fire Marshal agreed and apologised for not checking the fire door once the all clear had been approved. Eventually, said manager also agreed I'd done the right thing and pointed out to the rest of the workshop staff that they should also have gone out that way. So, a win win all around apart from the workshop staff feeling I'd dropped them in it for a while after :-)
So, as per quite a few of the replies here, most fore alarms are either drills or false alarms and most people, from habit, exit the building via their normal entrance and rarely use the proper fire routes until someone puts their head above the parapet and point out the flaws.
"I once(*) forgot I was making chicken stock(**) with the carcass and the stock pot ran dry. The smell of burnt chicken skin and bones is … not pleasant."
I did that once too. I must have caught it sooner than you did though. At most, it smelled if fried chicken and the smell was gone by morning :-)
"At a previous gig, we had a manager with no sense of smell - complete anosmia. He also liked fish. He was the only one who couldn't smell it."
A large part of enjoying food is the smell as well as the taste. If he had no sense of smell, I'd imagine his sense of taste was hampered I'd guess that this in turn would make him need and/or want quite different, possibly stronger flavours than most of might enjoy to get the most out of it. Unless he was one of those people that see food simply as food, a necessary evil.