* Posts by John Brown (no body)

25255 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010

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I paid for it, that makes it mine. Doesn’t it? No – and it never did

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: re: streaming services and content

It depends on your storage method. Sometimes I want to watch a film or TV series again, but usually year later. So I make sure I have and keep it in a form where I'm not worried about running out of storage space, so not on a PVR, especially not provided and controlled by my cable/sat company. (I found out to my cost a few years back, recordings made from channels on a higher package all become unavailable if you switch down to a lower package that doesn't include those channels)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: re: streaming services and content

Well, if you insist on "having it now" when it's only just come out in the cinema, that is all you tend to find. Have a little patience and learn to understand the abbreviations in the filename and you'll get what you want.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: re: streaming services and content

You were lucky. DVD players, even before BD came out, were already trying to restrict how many times you could region switch, often to as few as five times, the last one becoming permanent. Most of us here would be aware enough (especially after being bitten once) to chose one with either unlimited region changes or which could be "hacked" for either unlimited switched or just made "region 0" once and for all :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: re: streaming services and content

"and none of the choices was being made by algorithms or advertising bots."

Local, independents, yes. But if you ever went Blockbuster or similar, then they were constantly moving stuff around, getting rid of less popular title and "nudging" you towards to "popular" titles which they had 50 copies of.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Dubbed Content

It does make a sort of sense, so long as when you buy a bottom of the range car, you still pay the bottom of the range price for it. And if you pay for some of the extras at purchase time with a "lifetime" outright purchase, not a subscription (still currently an option), those items remain enabled when you sell it and therefore are part of the resale value.

On the other hand, if you buy outright with all the extras and then find you have a bottom of the range car, no extras to sell when time to change cars, then you've been ripped off!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Dubbed Content

"Looking through Netflix, saw the trailer for Squid Games that was dubbed - but it didn't match what was being said with the subtitles!"

ISTR reports that the dubbing and subtitles were so badly done on that show in particular, that native speakers were pointing out that anyone not a native speaker was getting, in effect, a different story from the dubbed or sub-titled "mistakes".

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Dubbed Content

"They're going to befoul themselves when they see what the car industry has in store."

I've been considering a new car, maybe for next year, and so looking at what is available and it's quite hard to find a purchase price. They all seem to be pushing leasing deals, which get into silly prices for high mileage drivers :-(

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"a kettle on the stove."

I don't think I've seen one of those since I was a nipper some 50 years ago. And they were pretty rare even then. Whistling kettles used on a gas hob. You'll occasionally see them around now, sold as nostalgia items along with "stove top" coffee makers. The US, being the "home of the labo[u]r saving gadget", it still amazes me that an electric kettle is so rare in the US considering the many uses there are for boiled water over and above making tea. They even tend to call them "tea kettles", with "tea" commonly pronounced in a slightly higher pitched voice in an attempt to sound "English" :-)

Feds put $10m bounty on Putin pal accused of bankrolling US election troll farm

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

It's always struck me as odd that political parties in many countries, but particularly the USA, seem to be exempt from advertising law when advertising their candidates, policies, whatever and seem to be able, quite literally, to lie as much as they like and get away with it, even down to the level of personal accusations, often founded only on rumour, against their opponents. All sides are equally guilty of this.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Transporting

Governments make the sanctions rules in the first place. They can change them as they see fit. There are already exception for food, water, pharmaceuticals etc.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: This has been going on for a long time

An interesting article on the BBC re climate change denial and where some of the foundations for it originated

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62225696

Big money influencing world events isn't new, sadly. The deniers, of course, will claim "MSM!!! LIARS!!!" naturally :-)

Paper batteries on the cards to power IoT and smart labels

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Better than currently (pun intended) where the existing stuff already goers to landfill with a more toxic battery. I'm pretty sure I've seen examples of printed components directly on to things like paper too. Maybe another step to literally printing circuits AND a power source for even cheaper, disposable sensors.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Volts is not power

Yeah, basically, they've improved/invented/discovered a new application for what most of us will have seen as a high school physics demo/experiment. I don't mean that to denigrate what they have done. They've potentially come up with something useful, but not actually invented a new technology. Good on them for thinking outside the box.

But I do have a slight snit with the article where it reads "the lead wires". I'm assuming they meant "the wire leads" and not that the wires are made of lead. Just badly worded IMHO since we are discussing electrochemical reactions and lead/acid batteries are a thing too so being precise with words which are spelled the same and could be confused is important. Is it "leed" or "led" :-)

Reg readers tell us what they wanted for SysAdmin Appreciation Day

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I got the same as most of you...

Ours were rewarded with the start of the rollout/transition to entire new systems, which will continue over the weekend. Stock management/ordering/delivery/everything all singing/dancing stuff. :-)

Why Intel killed its Optane memory business

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Squeezed from both ends

Optane, the new RamBus?

Atos waves bye to 12k staff, adds 16k mostly in offshore and nearshore sites

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Nearshore

My guess is they mean eastern Europe rather than the more usual Indian location for outsourced staff.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Are they fit to work?

Maybe ATOS need to be brought in for an interview to assess their "fitness to work" possibilities? I'm sure the commentariat can come up with good ideas to make it as difficult as possible for ATOS to even attend the meeting and some even nastier ways to make the meeting, should they manage to attend, as much "fun" as possible.

Suspected radiation alert saboteurs cuffed by cops after sensors disabled

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: But ... why?

Or, just throwing this out there, they are or became anti-nuclear and were aiming for some sort of bad publicity regarding nuclear power.

Apple's secret car team tosses keys to Lamborghini lead

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Wherfe will it be built?

Outsourced assembly to Foxconn?

Battle of the retro Unix desktops: NsCDE versus CDE

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: You can not be serious, man ...

"Anyway, in 'ix' systems"

FWIW, the usual abbreviation is *nix systems. Ix Systems is a US company founded on open source and building commercial stuff, which I what I immediately think of when I see the fairly rare use of "ix systems" as an abbreviation if Unix-like.

Samsung boss likely to be pardoned for bribery

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: One law for us, another law for them

Like an outgoing US president? And no, I'm not just, or specifically, referring to His Trumpiness.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Considering they have one of the highest inheritance taxes in the world, it does make one won der how these huge chaebols manage to stay in the family. With inheritance taxes of up to 50%, they must use some clever tactics to slowly pass on the wealth to the next generation before popping their clogs.

ISTR at least one chaebol stumping up c$10b in inheritance tax in the news a while back.

Ah, here it is. It was Samsung, just last year.

Scientists use dead spider as gripper for robot arm, label it a 'Necrobot'

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Why not chickens feet?

Not for most people (or chickens). Compared to how many chickens are killed for food, the vast majority reach the consumer sans feet. What happens to the feet at the "factory", I don't know. But I'm sure they could donate a few for the advancement of science :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: There's no way this won't

Starship Troopers. Although, to be fair, not that awesome a film. The book was better.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Arcade claw machines are designed to fail. You didn't really think you could "win" an iPhone for 50p, did you :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: NOPE

"I think it may be simpler to just build artificial manipulators one time, and be able to use them for a very long time afterwards."

That may well end up being the case, but copying the design of the spider leg might be the best design solution. On the other hand, for very small micro manipulators, it may be cheaper and easier to use dead spider legs, even if only for one off jobs. There may not be all that many applications for something like this where the manipulator needs to work for many 1000's of operations or a period of week, months or years.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Well

"We're human, and have the capacity to understand the critters, but not vice-versa."

domestica cattus are very, very good at understanding and training humans to do what they want. You have cats. You know this. Have they trained you to forget this? Seems they have. Proof!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Joke

"Three coffees later I realise that technically speaking spiders are not insects."

That's why ion the US they're all just "bugs". It saves having to learn big and complicated words and how/when to use them correctly. All part of the great dumbing down New World Order conspiracy!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Rise of the machines?

"I actually bought a can opener whose principle was unknown to me until I saw this excellent video and it works astonishingly well."

Well, that's 20 minutes of my life I'll never get back. TWENTY whole MINUTES about a tin opener FFS! But it was weirdly and strangely fascinating. Somehow, I feel cheated and satisfied at the same time. You git!!

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"I don't think they'd like the smell."

Clearly you are not a cat person. They tend to like the most foul smelling cat-foods and turn their noses up at the one we think smells almost passable. Mine like a bit of fish, chicken or even "gourmet" cat food now and then, but much prefer the foul smelling, cheap stuff as their daily "go to".

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Like beetles with electronics glued to the heads, electrodes implanted and using them as remote control robots. Already been done. This latest spider thing is far more "humane" by comparison and at least as creepy.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Ever notice that there are no vegan ecosystems on Earth? "

True. On the other hand, predator/prey ecosystems are usually self-balancing. If the predators grow too numerous and eat too much of the prey, the predators starve and die back and the prey species recovers. That part of it doesn't really happen where humans are the predator. Famine due to "over preying" or other reasons in one part of the world means we ship food and humanitarian aid from other bits of the world to maintain the numbers of predators.

MIT, Autodesk develop AI that can figure out confusing Lego instructions

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: If you can't build IKEA furniture...

"if it doesn’t work it’s because I skipped too fast through the manual."

I'm of a mindset that likes to check through the instructions first, lay out all the parts then follow the instructions through step-by-step.

Brother-in-Law is the type who just dives in with a "suck it and see" attitude.

He asked me to come help build and install the new 3-door Ikea sliding wardrobe system he'd bought.

Lets just say I had two of the new sliding wardrobe doors up and working while he was still trying to take apart the one he'd managed to sort of assemble, but this time putting all the right parts on in the right places and order, ideally with no bits left over this time. :-)

He still thinks he knows what he's doing and that his way is better.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

On the other hand, what is it actually doing that's useful? Id the instructions are well done in the first place, then who needs it? If the instructions are badly done, then is the solution really to spend a fortune creating an AI to turn them into something people can follow instead of just sacking the instruction creators and employing someone capable of doing the job properly in the first place?

On the other hand, as a learning experience for an AI system that might be used for something else, then yes, it might be useful in that, at least as far as Lego or even Minecraft, it can then go and test it's results and refine them.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Well the instructions were written by humans , so .."

Yes, self-assembly furniture instructions can vary wildly from easy-to-follow through to who-the-fuck-drew-these-pictures-a-5-year-old?

Saving money by avoiding having proper technical writers creating instructions and good translators localising them by switching to hieroglyphics was a huge step backwards. Who wants to put money on someone deciding emojiis will be the next disruptive step in instruction "writing"?

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Now 100,000kg smaller

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: We're screwed!

Bins first started disappearing when the IRA put bombs in some of them. Councils realised that "saving lives" also saved money by having very few litter bins and therefore very few people paid to empty them. Some are gradually coming back, but as you say, few and far between.

Experts warn transition to private space stations won't happen anytime soon

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Medical experiments

I don't have an Android device with a screen big enough to play that sort of game on. And ot really needs a keyboard and joystick :-)

There's Oolite, of course, plays on FreeBSD, Linux, MacOS and even Windows :-)

Apple-1 prototype hand-soldered by Woz up for auction, bids expected to reach $500k

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Open source?

I would imagine the plans he'd already given away were still "open source" in that he gave them away for free and I doubt Woz placed any restrictions on them. I suppose, in an alternate universe, someone else took those free plans and built a batch of computers, sold them, and made a killing, possibly bringing Woz along for a newer iteration and something other than Apple was born. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs, ever on the lookout for opportunity, hooked up with Bill Gates and the rest is history :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I am the despair of the antique auction trade

Out of curiosity, what are the 100 year old cameras you have? Cheap and cheerful Box Brownie affairs or high end well known makes? If the latter, why those and not the cheaper ones?

I'll be more impressed if they are functional, serviceable, "unknowns" rather than from the prestigious names:-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

"Why the heck is a broken remnant like this worth that much?? Sure it's history, but is it REALLY 500k USD interesting"

Depends who you ask I suppose. Just look at the antiquities market. Or the plastic Star Wars figurine market. Or the Cindy doll market :-)

Collectors will pay a lot for what they and/or their peers/community think might be valuable. First editions always command much higher prices.

NASA's Lunar Orbiter spots comfortably warm 'pits' all over the Moon

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Hmmm...

"I suppose with the low gravity, some sort of hopping robot, might be possible, but damping it so that it doesnt spring straight back out would be a challenge,"

Clearly you never saw a Moon Hopper on UFO

Mmmm, I need to go lie down in a darkened room while a dream of sexy ladies in string vest outfits with silver miniskirts.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Stability

"I wonder how stable the holes are?

I wonder that too when I read these bits from the article:

"hypothesized the pit and others like it were created by the ceiling of a collapsed cave.

“For long term colonization and exploration of the Moon, pits may provide a desirable habitat:

As the first line was from the end of one paragraph, and the second line is the start of the next paragraph, it seemed especially jarring and maybe not such a good idea.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Asimov

That has the feeling and maturity of a joke you came up with 20 years ago and have been waiting to use ever since :-)

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: 17C

Here doon sooth in Geordiland, that's not only a real swelterer. but we'd already be in shorts and no tops long before it got anywhere near THAT hot!! Bloody saft Scots! :-)

Charter told to pay $7.3b in damages after cable installer murders grandmother

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: Whatever happened to the "Corrections" button?

I just assumed it was some americanism of English. Like "in back" instead of "out back" meaning going outside to the back garden/yard or, in an audiobook I was listening to today, "coming in out onto the balcony".

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I mean...

The forged document should not be that hard to trace back to source. Even in the US, contempt of court is taken very seriously. The lawyer who presented it could be disbarred and imprisoned if responsible. If not, s/he will have no hesitation throwing someone under the bus when her/his reputation is on the line. Who presented it to the lawyer? That person is either guilty or knows who it came from, and so on down the line. Considering the threat of court action, that should concentrate some minds right back the the guilty party. Everyone in that evidence chain needs to swear in front of the judge how and where they got that letter.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Really? Even when fax machines were popular, I'd think it a little odd for someone to have one at home, never mind an 83 year old nowadays.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge
Thumb Down

Are you saying that anyone who gets fired should never work again?

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Re: I'm surprised

"That they topped it off by sending the victim to collections really is the cherry on top of the turd."

More likely, just a lack of communication in their internal systems. That sort of thing happens all the time in many medium to large size companies. Poorly designed systems that don't take account of anything unusual.

John Brown (no body) Silver badge

Your first paragraph includes the word "alleged". Assuming that was alleged in court, then it came with proof and was accepted or rejected by the court, so is or is not relevant in the final outcome.

I agree with your second paragraph. The company was aware of his situation and appear to have mdae no effort whatsoever to help, thus failing miserably in their duty of care to employees.

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