philpem

34 ms·

271.
by philpem 7y ago
I know someone who loves giving this response. "Safari is junk, use Chrome and it'll work". I also love sending him patches to show how easy it is to fix his stuff so it works in Firefox, Chrome, Edge... and of course Safari.
272.
by philpem 7y ago
Given sufficient motivation, I expect it would be possible to replace the card reader and punch with something a little more modern. It wouldn't be period-correct, but it would provide a more convenient way to get data into and out of
273.
by philpem 7y ago
Corporatisation is probably a better term.
274.
by philpem 7y ago
You get far fewer angry letters when the barrier for entry is that the writer has to pay for a stamp and an envelope. The thing about a letter is, you've got 30-90 minutes while you write it to reconsider what you're writing. And
275.
by philpem 7y ago
For the same reason there's hostility (aka "drama") in all communities. An unwillingness to listen, a rush to get an adrenaline hit from posting hate, an anger over not being the one with your name in lights. (having helped r
276.
by philpem 7y ago
I expect it's partly due to the market ecosystem when DMR was created. The standard is codec-agnostic, but in practice DMRA (and thus all the manufacturers) settled on AMBE. If APCO P25 predated DMR, that'd at least partly explain
277.
by philpem 7y ago
Not always. 25kHz "wide NFM" is still common where licences have been grandfathered in, but 12.5kHz "narrow NFM" is becoming more common. 12.5k NFM has the same signal bandwidth as a timesliced (dual timeslot -- two virt
278.
by philpem 7y ago
The problem is twofold: "graceful degradation" and the effect of digital compression. Digital schemes like TETRA and DMR compress the audio and add error correction. The audio bitrate for DMR is somewhere around 2400 Baud. This me
279.
by philpem 7y ago
The sad fact is, the regulators are so underfunded they probably can't afford to hire him.
280.
by philpem 7y ago
The other reason is how it looks to business customers. Buying a piece of software (one-off) almost always requires budgeting and capital-expenditure approval. Add in the mess of depreciation calculations and maintenance fees, and it's
281.
by philpem 7y ago
I think that'd be a pretty good way to burn bridges, to be fair. A GDPR subject access request would be a lot of paperwork...
282.
by philpem 7y ago
Household budget, a couple of old bank statements, some Github clones...?
283.
by philpem 7y ago
Put the files you need on an encrypted online share, then download them when you need them? Then of course zero-write the hard drive and reload the software when you're done.
284.
by philpem 7y ago
Rejection with no feedback is the most common response I've had. In a lot of cases, I've asked for feedback and been told "for (legal reasons, operational reasons) we don't give feedback". It's shitty, but them
285.
by philpem 7y ago
They're getting a lot of flak (and instance mutes) from Mastodon instances at the minute. Librem/puri.sm have gimped their Mastodon fork to entirely disable reporting (both handling incoming reports and sending abuse reports to ot
286.
by philpem 7y ago
I was thinking of the Sony rootkit, and the Starforce and VAC exploits.
287.
by philpem 7y ago
My local police force won't even answer burglary or theft calls any more. They have an automated service which gives you a crime reference number over the phone! "Press 1 for a burglary crime number... press 2 for a theft from the
288.
by philpem 7y ago
I don't know why this has been downvoted, anyone who's had any contact with the UK police knows it's absolutely true. I was attacked and injured a few years ago, in an area with really good CCTV. The police spent six weeks cl
289.
by philpem 7y ago
The trick is to spin it better. It's not "reducing police power", it's "even better training, tools and techniques for our hard-working police officers".
290.
by philpem 7y ago
At least in the UK that'd get you one of these responses from the police... "You haven't lost anything, there's nothing to investigate." "That's a civil matter. You need to get a solicitor." "Go
291.
by philpem 7y ago
Developers who make games for Windows PCs tend to fill them with so many "DRM" and "anti-cheat" measures that they might as well just sell them as a prebaked rootkit.
292.
by philpem 7y ago
They would have had a technical drawing of the top lid, which (if it was a mould drawing) would have shown the various ribs. Put a sheet of Vellum over the top, sign it, then use a graphics tablet (Summagraphics were around back then) to di
293.
by philpem 7y ago
Depends how thick the custard is. Is it thick enough to classify as a non-Newtonian fluid?
294.
by philpem 7y ago
Exactly this. A dummy load (a 50-ohm resistor) will give you a perfect 1:1 SWR, but makes a rubbish antenna... an SWR match just means it's less likely to fry the transceiver's power stage. You could transmit data over FT8, but yo
295.
by philpem 7y ago
If they started with a no-signatures preproduction mould, adding embossed signatures wouldn't be terribly hard (relatively speaking). The lid was almost certainly injection moulded - which means you have two mould halves which form a c
296.
by philpem 7y ago
I had to look it up... Yes it's basic maths, but it's something which isn't commonly used. It's something I'd expect a mathematician to know, but not your average member of the public. For an SE, I'd expect the
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by philpem 7y ago
They also seem to shield a lot of the "business directory" scam artists. Just about every single one I've received had an Amsterdam address on it.
298.
by philpem 7y ago
Well, qemu + libvirt + virt-manager works pretty well. Virt-manager adds a very nice VirtualBox-style GUI front-end to libvirt.
299.
by philpem 7y ago
And security researchers around the world can poke at it and figure out how to defend against it and derivatives. Another day, another better mousetrap.
300.
by philpem 7y ago
The UK has the British Computer Society -- though I'm not actually sure what purpose they serve. I was a student member for a couple of years, but beyond the occasional Government IT job advert which required BCS qualification and accr

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