Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: Marketing notwithstanding, it's not taking of from "European Soil".

Nah. Not enough ocean going tugs to tow the island away from the European continental shelf, not to mention the lack of miners to dig the island free of it's foundations. And anyway, the Scots would be mightily pissed off!

Re: Telescope with no viewfinder

"cheap & cheerful manual kit for me (no motorized mounts etc.))"

I remember circuits for motor controllers in electronics magazines many years ago, probably ETI. I never really thought much about it or even why one would really be necessary until one time there was a lunar eclipse, the sky was clear, it was a warm summer night and I had my camcorder on a tripod (for cheap tape based camcorder, it has a remarkably powerful optical zoom!). I had to keep checking and adjusting the camera because on full zoom I could actually see the Moon moving across the field of view. Something I really knew about intellectually but had never seen or noticed in practice before that night.

Re: Oh well done

I think it was on BBCs The News Quiz where Sunak was describe as the first PM of 2023 :-)

Similar comments and both made me chuckle :-)

An excellent rant. I hope you feel better for writing it!! I feel better for reading it :-)

But RPED? I only ever saw that on Amstrad PC1512/1640 MS-DOS disks. A quick'n'dirty, nice simple editor :-)

Because it was so small and fast to load, I copied and used that for config.sys/autoexec.bat editing on every system and MSDOS version after that, especially anything that had to be booted from floppy :-)

Nowadays, it's whatever the default editor on FreeBSD is when you type "edit", or if on some version of Linux, nano. Anything more complex than editing a simple config file or simple script gets done in a "proper" modern GUI editor.

Re: Predictable problems invite solutions

That depends on how hard you hit the dust during the lithobraking manoeuvre :-)

Re: Yes, but..

And if the car itself actually gets some firmware security updates, will that still happen out of warranty, will it be made available to the drivers or will you have to go to a dealer and pay through the nose?

Re: The only proper Roku product

It's raining here!

(I've also heard it call Veganuary too. I just ignore all these social media drive "special months". When I first heard of "moovenber" I thought I was supposed to eat more beef than usual. Turns out it was just poor diction of the person talking about it and something about beards or something.)

How far back do you trust your backups? How far back can you go before what you did since and is now lost is more than the company is worth? Can you go back to last years backup and fill in 12 months worth of blanks?

"According to Europol, the miscreants often spent months on the compromised networks without being detected,"

Re: Right

Try not to confuse Carbon with Carbon Dioxide. We get enough that "shorthand" in the main stream press :-)

Re: Hmm

The downvotes were for not realising that the the article DID mention that Apple already have a system in operation. El Reg did an article about at the time, so it's no longer headline news.

Re: "Data is king"

"Most GP’s are contractors, running their own practices contracted out to the NHS."

And, like dentists and other parts of the NHS, are slowly but surely being borged into larger and larger groupings or organisations, most likely leading to a very few very large providers eventually who then become ripe targets for take over by foreign well fund corporations experienced in the area, something the UK business world isn't generally very good at.

Re: People are now starting to realise

Like rare earth metals processing? Look how that's turned out.

Re: Uh-huh, right

The BBC article quoted "forum credits" at 20p. They didn't specify if the credits are 20p each or if it's 20p worth of credits.

Re: So in the near future

And if, not it's a "launchpad" for training workers at Teslas cost who then move on to the home grown Chinese EV car makers.

Well, I've not seen much of it and yes, all those type of shows require suspension of reality, but that one just struck me as even more out of touch with reality than the general run of the mill howlers they all use. I treat the tech side of TV and films as being science fiction since some of it might be possible one day :-)

After all, we laughed at the infamous "Zoom in! Enhance!" to get the car number plate from some crappy CCTV or phone footage. But with camera phones at 4K or higher these days, that's possible in some cases now :-)

Re: Too bad we don't have such efficient tools in politics

"I'm reminded of that chapter in Asimov's Foundation, where the declarations of some diplomat were passed through a logical analysis procedure to conclude that said diplomat had said absolutely nothing of substance or significance."

Oddly enough, that's one of the bits I remember from Asimov too. maybe we both read it at a time in our lives where it was highly appropriate and so it stuck. Semantic analysis was the term IIRC.

200 million times better according to the latest reports, for the knock down price of only £0.20.

Re: Not just sticker price

An interesting statement. 12+ months wait time for a new EV and *only* 6 months wait time for an ICE equivalent. Back in the day, you went to the dealer and bought it off the lot unless you had very specific options you needed, and even then, it was a month or two at most before delivery.