Yes, NTL's DNS was almost completely screwed last night, although more so in some geographical areas than others. At some point they replaced their normal homepage with one explaining this.
I've since heard from one of their newsgroups that it was indeed the cable-break that triggered their DNS-failure. Apparently the cable's broken 14km off the coast of Cornwall.
Perhaps they will find some piece of random modern art and say "Wow! They understood advanced Heisenberg compensation almost 1000 years ago! They built a nuanced particle meter!"
I think scientists tend to find what they want to find, not always what is there.
Point taken in the general case, but in Stonehenge's case the astronomical stuff you can do with it is just too convincing. For example, because of the way it links moon and sun movements it could only have been built on two places on earth - and the other is under the Pacific Ocean. It had to be built where it is for the astronomical stuff to work.
> But VxWorks got the realtime performance - don't forget that!I tried to do a small meassurement of the (worst case) latency for tasks/process scheduling. VxWorks: ~100us, Linux (with preemtive patch): ~2ms.
Exactly; as I said below when you're designing video products (as my company does) you absolutely MUST have everything done in a reliable and predictable way every 16.667ms (20ms in 625/50 standards). 2ms is nearly a lifetime in that environment.
Don't get me wrong, we'd *like* to use Linux (would make device drivers a damn sight easier to get for a start), but when we evaluated it a couple of years ago it really wasn't up to the job we needed it to do. A pity. We live in hope!:-)
> Speaking as the only person in my previous company who could make Tornado work, I'd rather eat my liver than touch it again...
I know what you mean there.:-)
Where I work we have a simple solution - we don't use it. We just ignore that bit, and use the GNU tools to compile our code for VxWorks. The only time we ever go near Tornado itself is to use WindView about twice a year to see how long something takes to run or sort out a tricky bit of task interaction.
VxWorks itself seems quite reasonable (we haven't touched this AE version you speak of). Since we *do* need "RTOS-level determinism", Linux wasn't an option when we started the design process, and RT-Linux was still in its infancy. We design video products, where you simply *must* get everything done in a reliable and predictable order every 16.667ms, or else people get broken pictures...
Generally agreed (I expect you know that there's an HVDC link from the UK to France, and they're building two more to Holland & Norway); however in the case of Italy it was precisely because they were over-reliant on their international feed that the whole country went dark. A tree fell over on the Swiss-French border, hit the line going from France into Italy, Italy lost 20% of its incoming power, and went tits-up...
Not so much to cut costs, but so that the site could be sold to some property developers so that they could build lots of nice luxury flats instead of having a redundant power supply for the tube.
The Hammer films starred Peter Cushing and were made in the mid-60s. One was an adaptation of the first-ever Daleks story, the other was an adaptation of the Daleks Invasion of Earth story.
The Fox movie aired in 1996 and starred Paul McGann, with a completely original screenplay.
Baxter's Space:(X) "trilogy" is on the scope of 2001 or Harry Selden, in the style of Stan's Mars, with the "3 alternates" conceit of Stans' O.C., with the continuity being 3 alternate twistings of a specific person by history, opportunity, and fate.
Yes, they're excellent books, so just a minor correction to help people find them better, the books are actually called "Manifold:(X)"; "Manifold: Time", "Manifold: Space" and "Manifold: Origin", to be precise.:-)
I thought this too, and had despaired for years...until I discovered Greg Egan. Read his short story collection "Axiomatic" to discover that there are still plenty of ideas out there to be explored. Quite restored my faith in hard SF, it did.
The test itself currently costs GBP 37.60 ($59.10 as I type). It used to be less than half that but it ramped up quite steeply a few years ago, probably due to garages needing to purchase the emissions-test equipment.
And yes, you pay for any work required yourself. However if you get any problems fixed within 48(?) hours then you get the retest (which hopefully passes it) free-of-charge, although there are some exceptions for some of the more major faults. That's never happened to me though, even when I once had to have some welding done.
Please note that you aren't ordered to have the work done, but if you don't you can't drive the car on public roads, except to an MOT test centre (with pre-booked appointment) or a garage to have the work done on it. It doesn't have to go to the crusher either, you're perfectly entitled to let it rust away in your back garden (or on your front drive, but NOT parked on a public road) until you can be bothered to get it fixed, and nobody comes calling or anything*.
However without a current MOT you can't get a tax disc to stick in your car's window, and without that you'll soon be picked up by the police. You have to buy a tax disc from the Post Office every 12 months (can also buy at 6-month intervals but is more expensive that way) and you need a valid MOT certificate and a valid insurance certificate to do so. And if the police stop you for any other reason and you don't have a valid MOT (or insurance), then you're in the poo.
I think it's a fairly good system, helps keep the roads safer, and it sounds more complicated than it really is in practice. Generally you just give it to a garage who give it the once over, tell you what it's failed on, do the work, and then pass it, usually all on the same day. Providing you keep an eye on your lamps and tyres most cars don't generally start to fail it until they're a good few years old, and even then on fairly piddling things like needing new brake pads.
* - recently they introduced a system where you do actually have to declare if you're doing this; instead of buying a tax disc you tick the "SORN" box (Statutory Off-Road Notification) on the application form and tell them the place in which you're letting it rust. So I suppose that in theory they CAN come calling to check this, but in practice I've had an old Ford rusting away like this for about five years now (must get it taken away sometime) and to the best of my knowledge nobody's bothered to check it or me (probably because I have another car registered as being on the road). The neighbours are pissed off though.;-)
> Speedometers are usually calibrated to read a percentage slower than your actual speed.
Um, wrong way round I think. They're calibrated to read a percentage OVER, so that you cannot use an under-reading speedo as an excuse by law. In the UK at least the regulation on speedos these days is -0% to +10%. (I think it used to be -5% to +5% but it changed at some point.)
It's generally believed that in the UK most police forces use a "10% + 3mph" formula, so that a 30mph limit is actually enforced at 36mph, 40mph at 47mph and so on until 70mph at 80mph; except on motorways (not dual carriageways) where the nominal 70mph speed limit is extended to 85mph in good weather conditions.
Of course this is at their discretion, and if they see you driving like an arsehole at 1mph over the speed limit then they'll nick you anyway.
It's an annual roadworthiness test that all UK vehicles older than three years have to go through once a year (6 months for taxis, I think).
It doesn't just test emissions (that was only added recently in fact) but all sorts of stuff, e.g. that steering, brakes, lights, wipers etc. work properly, that the bodywork is mechanically sound (rust is allowed, provided it's not on a loadbearing part) and that your exhaust isn't falling off and your tyres aren't bald.
They introduced it sometime in the 60s (I think) after a number of incidents where people driving rustbucket deathtraps cost a lot of lives needlessly. The letters "MOT" stand for "Ministry Of Transport".
When the C5 was first announced, Sir Clive said that the next model would be the C4, and the series would continue until the C1 saw the light of day - the C1 was rumoured to be a real car
I thought it was the other way round, that he was going to build up through C10, C15 until finally the C20, which was going to be the proper car.
That's actually where his marketing really broke down, in my view. In the specialist press he'd mentioned these plans, and that the C5 was simply a first step to test the waters. However in the mainstream press it was announced that Sinclair would be bringing out an electric car...so when it appeared everyone just laughed. Also, as has been said many times before, launching it in January was not clever. Had he launched it as a fun summer-type thing in July, it might have done better.
Slashdot Mirror
I've since heard from one of their newsgroups that it was indeed the cable-break that triggered their DNS-failure. Apparently the cable's broken 14km off the coast of Cornwall.
How strange.
I think scientists tend to find what they want to find, not always what is there.
Point taken in the general case, but in Stonehenge's case the astronomical stuff you can do with it is just too convincing. For example, because of the way it links moon and sun movements it could only have been built on two places on earth - and the other is under the Pacific Ocean. It had to be built where it is for the astronomical stuff to work.
Exactly; as I said below when you're designing video products (as my company does) you absolutely MUST have everything done in a reliable and predictable way every 16.667ms (20ms in 625/50 standards). 2ms is nearly a lifetime in that environment.
Don't get me wrong, we'd *like* to use Linux (would make device drivers a damn sight easier to get for a start), but when we evaluated it a couple of years ago it really wasn't up to the job we needed it to do. A pity. We live in hope! :-)
I know what you mean there. :-)
Where I work we have a simple solution - we don't use it. We just ignore that bit, and use the GNU tools to compile our code for VxWorks. The only time we ever go near Tornado itself is to use WindView about twice a year to see how long something takes to run or sort out a tricky bit of task interaction.
VxWorks itself seems quite reasonable (we haven't touched this AE version you speak of). Since we *do* need "RTOS-level determinism", Linux wasn't an option when we started the design process, and RT-Linux was still in its infancy. We design video products, where you simply *must* get everything done in a reliable and predictable order every 16.667ms, or else people get broken pictures...
Generally agreed (I expect you know that there's an HVDC link from the UK to France, and they're building two more to Holland & Norway); however in the case of Italy it was precisely because they were over-reliant on their international feed that the whole country went dark. A tree fell over on the Swiss-French border, hit the line going from France into Italy, Italy lost 20% of its incoming power, and went tits-up...
> > Damn, blackout, what can I do?
>
> Oh dear. It looks like you'll have to get a life!
Provided you can find a pub (bar) with hand-drawn pumps rather than electric ones... ;-)
> Why was it done? To cut costs, of course...
Not so much to cut costs, but so that the site could be sold to some property developers so that they could build lots of nice luxury flats instead of having a redundant power supply for the tube.
The Hammer films starred Peter Cushing and were made in the mid-60s. One was an adaptation of the first-ever Daleks story, the other was an adaptation of the Daleks Invasion of Earth story. The Fox movie aired in 1996 and starred Paul McGann, with a completely original screenplay.
At least, I hope so.
Understandable mistake, but that would be www.theregister.co.uk, I think.
Most things in Finland are... :-)
720x576, actually.
Although it's 720x486 in 525/59.94 countries, which is closer, I suppose.
But HDTV is, as the other guy said, rather higher, i.e. 1920x1080 or 1280x720.
Yes, they're excellent books, so just a minor correction to help people find them better, the books are actually called "Manifold:(X)"; "Manifold: Time", "Manifold: Space" and "Manifold: Origin", to be precise. :-)
I thought this too, and had despaired for years...until I discovered Greg Egan. Read his short story collection "Axiomatic" to discover that there are still plenty of ideas out there to be explored. Quite restored my faith in hard SF, it did.
It used to be good. It isn't much any more.
The two groups aren't mutually exclusive, you know...
I doubt it. Balloons and tortilla chips probably don't mix. ;-)
And yes, you pay for any work required yourself. However if you get any problems fixed within 48(?) hours then you get the retest (which hopefully passes it) free-of-charge, although there are some exceptions for some of the more major faults. That's never happened to me though, even when I once had to have some welding done.
Please note that you aren't ordered to have the work done, but if you don't you can't drive the car on public roads, except to an MOT test centre (with pre-booked appointment) or a garage to have the work done on it. It doesn't have to go to the crusher either, you're perfectly entitled to let it rust away in your back garden (or on your front drive, but NOT parked on a public road) until you can be bothered to get it fixed, and nobody comes calling or anything*.
However without a current MOT you can't get a tax disc to stick in your car's window, and without that you'll soon be picked up by the police. You have to buy a tax disc from the Post Office every 12 months (can also buy at 6-month intervals but is more expensive that way) and you need a valid MOT certificate and a valid insurance certificate to do so. And if the police stop you for any other reason and you don't have a valid MOT (or insurance), then you're in the poo.
I think it's a fairly good system, helps keep the roads safer, and it sounds more complicated than it really is in practice. Generally you just give it to a garage who give it the once over, tell you what it's failed on, do the work, and then pass it, usually all on the same day. Providing you keep an eye on your lamps and tyres most cars don't generally start to fail it until they're a good few years old, and even then on fairly piddling things like needing new brake pads.
* - recently they introduced a system where you do actually have to declare if you're doing this; instead of buying a tax disc you tick the "SORN" box (Statutory Off-Road Notification) on the application form and tell them the place in which you're letting it rust. So I suppose that in theory they CAN come calling to check this, but in practice I've had an old Ford rusting away like this for about five years now (must get it taken away sometime) and to the best of my knowledge nobody's bothered to check it or me (probably because I have another car registered as being on the road). The neighbours are pissed off though. ;-)
Not only did you not argue back, but you used the "s" word on Slashdot!! :-)
[falls off perch in shock ;-) ]
Um, wrong way round I think. They're calibrated to read a percentage OVER, so that you cannot use an under-reading speedo as an excuse by law. In the UK at least the regulation on speedos these days is -0% to +10%. (I think it used to be -5% to +5% but it changed at some point.)
It's generally believed that in the UK most police forces use a "10% + 3mph" formula, so that a 30mph limit is actually enforced at 36mph, 40mph at 47mph and so on until 70mph at 80mph; except on motorways (not dual carriageways) where the nominal 70mph speed limit is extended to 85mph in good weather conditions.
Of course this is at their discretion, and if they see you driving like an arsehole at 1mph over the speed limit then they'll nick you anyway.
Yup, details of what the MOT checks for those interested can be found here.
It's an annual roadworthiness test that all UK vehicles older than three years have to go through once a year (6 months for taxis, I think).
It doesn't just test emissions (that was only added recently in fact) but all sorts of stuff, e.g. that steering, brakes, lights, wipers etc. work properly, that the bodywork is mechanically sound (rust is allowed, provided it's not on a loadbearing part) and that your exhaust isn't falling off and your tyres aren't bald.
They introduced it sometime in the 60s (I think) after a number of incidents where people driving rustbucket deathtraps cost a lot of lives needlessly. The letters "MOT" stand for "Ministry Of Transport".
More information here.
I thought it was the other way round, that he was going to build up through C10, C15 until finally the C20, which was going to be the proper car.
That's actually where his marketing really broke down, in my view. In the specialist press he'd mentioned these plans, and that the C5 was simply a first step to test the waters. However in the mainstream press it was announced that Sinclair would be bringing out an electric car...so when it appeared everyone just laughed. Also, as has been said many times before, launching it in January was not clever. Had he launched it as a fun summer-type thing in July, it might have done better.
Or it might not.