Posts by Phil O'Sophical

Re: ".... reasonable to assume most UK citizens wouldn't ....,"

Yes, we are "subjects" of our monarch, not "citizens" of our country.)

Incorrect. We are subject to the laws of our country (as are almost all people to their respective countries, worldwide), and since the Sovereign is Head of State we're technically subject to them, but they don't have supreme authority. That lies with Parliament, due to a long chain of constitutional events from Magna Carta onwards. We are all, also, citizens of the UK, that status is clearly reflected in the wording of our passports, among other things.

Re: My most memorable mistake

We had somewhat larger motor-generator sets in the Uni basement lab. The motors were fed by 200v DC via a rheostat, which was used to bring them slowly up to full speed. When you switched off, the rheostat holding magnet was supposed to release & drop the rheostat back to zero for the next restart.

One student didn't notice that their magnet hadn't released, and so re-powered-on the motor at 0 ohms. The very thick cables all sagged noticeably, the fuses surprisingly didn't blow as the motor went from zero to several thousand RPM in under a second. The two things I remember were watching the thick steel case of the motor visibly flex under the torque (but remain attached to the floor) and the deafening tortured scream from inside it which brought staff running from the adjoining lab. I suppose we were lucky it didn't detach from the floor & exit via a wall. No-one ever dared to try it again.

Re: All the best words have at least two meanings

As in "This needs more oversight", or "This was due to an oversight" ?

Re: Sod Monaco!

The only parts of Monaco he saw was from the taxi, going to & from the airport

He probably saw most of it, then.

Re: Does HVO really reduce emissions ?

I think that the petrol issue is more likely that 95RON (E10) can contain up to 10% ethanol, but Super only max 5%. As always the key phrase is "up to", some E10 fuel has much less than 10% ethanol.

Re: Generating business reports with AI

So, just like an AI?

Re: Some OSS development introspection needed

It highlights the same old problem, no programs (and especially not security-critical ones like SSH) should link to other code unless the code linked to has had at least the same level of review and scrutiny as the main program. This was found because someone did the due diligence, but many others don't. In both the companies I worked for where open source was used we were required to prove that we'd done such review before we were allowed to ship a product.

Re: Burned Cow Bones

It isn't just the Underground, it's London in general.

I remember a training course in London years ago, where I spent the day in the centre but stayed in slightly greener suburbs. Each evening I'd get back to the hotel and think "ah, fresh air at last". Then I got off the plane home in Belfast (Aldergrove, way out in the country) and remembered what fresh air was really like.

Re: Photo ID in UK

Photo ID was introduced in N. Ireland 20 years ago. The general view of the electoral authorities is that it has had no effect on blocking any particular group from voting, with one exception. The number of dead people voting has dropped by 90%.

Re: He's The Doctor not Doctor Who.

So who is the title character?

Yes.

Re: Bung received..

"Don't I get a cut?"

"No, Minister."

Re: NTFS/Linux permissions

Perhaps use the suid mount option, so root maps to nobody unless mounted suid, when it could map to administrator?

I've not used NTFS on Linux, so may be way off base, of course.

Re: Going Fishing with Another Can of Worms

And the whole film sponsored by Tesla, whose cybertrucks will turn out to be the only ones with a secure ELD (yeah, I know, but it's a movie).

Re: It's hard to feel sorry for some victims

Why, do you think it's OK for criminals to attack people as long as the victims are rich?

Re: Stop right now!

Larry has enough private jets

He has a MIG-29, but the US government won't let him fly it.

Re: First hit is always free-ish.

it tends to screw up the formatting.

In my experience that's almost always down to font differences. It's worth looking online for some of the additional free fonts that match those used in MS tools.

Re: One more reason

If the Firefox developers would stop fucking about with the UI and breaking stuff then they might keep more users.

Re: Impressive horns

So you want to cross-breed sheep with mice, to create mini-sheep that are better at hiding?

The huge holes in the skirting board would be a giveaway, though.

make social media, banks, and telcos jointly and severally responsible for all losses

All losses? It's not that easy, for several reasons.

Many of these scams work because greedy or stupid punters are willing to ignore the "if it looks too good to be true" rule in the hope of making a quick buck. If you buy a too-cheap Rolex from a guy down the pub, and it turns out (surprise!) to be a fake, should the publican be required to reimburse you? Why should the honest, sensible, customers of those businesses be on the hook to bail out all the dumb ones? Make no mistake, if a bank has to pay out compensation that money won't come from the bank, it will come from the bank's customers, which after all is where the bank gets all its money.

There's also the risk of unintended consequences, if people get used to the idea that they will always be bailed out when they do something stupid there's a risk that they will be more careless about scams: "It might be a scam, but who cares, I can't lose either way". There still needs to be some level of personal responsibility involved, even if that's not very trendy in these nanny-state days.

If there's negligence on the part of the bank or other platform then by all means make them pay, but it can't be a blanket rule.

Reminds me of a colleague who refused to pay motorway tolls with a credit card because "they" would know where he'd been. He could never explain who "they" were, nor why he thought anyone would care where he'd been.

Incidentally, paper cash usually has unique serial numbers, so is also very traceable.

Re: I can't get the video to work

Oddly enough, if you right-click & ask Firefox to open the video in a new tab it plays (from YouTube) just fine.

Re: Other side of this.

Use a bell on the door, it worked fine in the days before cheap CCTV cameras.

Re: All those were the days

A colleague discovered that the audio device on early Sun workstations had world write permissions, so you could rcp audio files to someone else's system. On one occasion he sent the noisy bit of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus to a machine being used by a fairly new team member on the floor below.

With impeccably unintentional timing she had just completed a successful demo to a visiting VIP when the system boomed "Haaallelujah! Haaallelujah!"

Apparently she just looked stunned, and stuttered "it's never done that before!"

Re: Zero sum game

Just ahead of the Office of Budget Responsibilty.

Re: Seeing is believing

For our flying cars?

Re: Don't people test edge cases any more?

You can't assume that dates like 2100 will only be of concern to programs that deal with "now", though. Anyone born today has an excellent chance of still being alive in 2100, so any programs that are expected to deal with life assurance or pensions for them may well have to handle dates up to 2120 and beyond. You don't want pension forecast reports to fail just because someone didn't care whether 2100 was a leap year or not.

Re: Came to say the same thing

which sends and records your GPS position continuously.

No it doesn't, that would be illegal and unusable (there are over 250 million cars in the EU). eCall makes an automated call to the emergency services if it detects that the vehicle has been in a crash, or if someone pushes the "help" button, and will then transmit position data.

The system description is quite clear:

" Your eCall system is only activated if your vehicle is involved in a serious accident. The rest of the time the system remains inactive. This means that when you are simply driving your vehicle, no tracking (registering your car's position or monitoring your driving) or transmission of data takes place.

When a call is made through your 112-based eCall system, your personal data is processed according to EU data protection rules. This means that the emergency services only receive the limited data they need to deal with the accident situation, your data is not stored for any longer than necessary, and is removed when no longer required.

It would be a violation of GDPR to do anything else.

My wife and I both bough laptops (Lenovo & Dell) from one of those refurbishers, and are very happy with them. They even offer a build-to-order service, choose your keyboard/memory/storage etc. and they'll assemble it for you.