Posts by Tim99

Hollywood has savaged enough sci-fi classics – let's hope Dick would dig Blade Runner 2049

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe."

What about the "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion."

Thomas the Tank Engine lobotomised by fat (remote) controller

"Kangaroos are generally smart enough to avoid the trains"

By the number I see dead on the side of the road around here they don't seem to be smart enough to avoid road traffic. I have seen one grazing at the side of the road and then, just as I was within a few metres, it moved across the road in front of me. ABS brakes and luck helped avoid a collision.

The Docklands Light Railway was envisaged as fully automated. The unions were not happy, and so initially they had a driver who did other stuff as well, this job was turned into a "Passenger Service Agent" who acts a bit like a conductor or guard, and checks whether people are stuck in doors etc., this person can manually bring the vehicle to a stop, and "drive" it. Passengers really wanted to see a human "in charge", perhaps we are now close to the customer accepting no visible human operator.

I know someone who worked on automating trains at a large competitor. He believed that it was a test of concept, but with a fairly fast financial return - A train driver costs roughly $250,000 in the Pilbara or Gascoyne, so 20 drivers @ $5 million a year starts to look like real money. Many other jobs in mining are being replaced, full automation is probably coming for the Komatsu 250+ ton Dump Trucks.

BYOD might be a hipster honeypot but it's rarely worth the extra hassle

Re: academics and PFY's who can bearly produce stubble!

A popular Victorian circus/show attraction was the Pig-Faced Lady, reputedly an interbred aristocratic woman. They really were shaved bears. Warning - To avoid possible embarrassment: Do not try an image search for "shaved bear".

Geoboffins claim to find oldest trace of life in rocks 4bn years old

Re: I though God created the wurld in 1924.

I've withdrawn my post - Autocorrect, and I hadn't had my coffee...

Ancient life?

Claims of life from carbon isotope ratios seem to be reported regularly: This one from Science suggests 4.1 billion years.

Microscopical traces of bacteria are claimed from 3.5 billion years ago.

AI in Medicine? It's back to the future, Dr Watson

Back in the day

I looked at this technology when it was expected to run on an IBM XP. It had some functionality and could make limited predictions for what we we looking at, which was predicting equipment failures by analyzing used lubrication oils. We were surprised that the spruikers of the technology were using medicine as their showcases, as we thought it likely that medicos would not want to give up their expertese - Apparently the technology would be viable because they had some data suggesting that many people preferred giving yes/no responses to a computer than consulting their GP for embarrassing or serious conditions.

Air traffic 'glitch' grounds Sydney flights

So

It has nothing to do with firing 20% of the staff and inadequate management; and poor staff morale then?

Red Hat pledges patent protection for 99 per cent of FOSS-ware

Promise

Provided you install systemd.

Attention adults working in the real world: Do not upgrade to iOS 11 if you use Outlook, Exchange

...they'll be locked out of their corporate Microsoft-powered email

So, installing iOS11 is a win-win then?

Google's Big Hardware Bet: Is this what a sane business would do?

Re: On of Androids Achilles heels

@JimmyPage

Your link is dead/has been pulled...

Bill Gates says he'd do CTRL-ALT-DEL with one key if given the chance to go back through time

...wrote some truly awful software...

You do know that Bill did not write it? Wikipedia.

Bill Rewriting History again

Bill seems to have forgotten that he was running a tiny company. IBM were still in the IBM and the seven dwarfs -> BUNCH era. Microsoft did not, and would not, have the resources to direct technology for several years.

You've been baffled by its smart thermostat. Now strap in for Nest's IoT doorbell, alarm gear

"Nest Connect – which is basically Google"

Google and home security, what could possibly go wrong?

RIP Stanislav Petrov: Russian colonel who saved world from all-out nuclear war

Did we forget?

It really was the Western Allies who expected to make the first nuclear strike - Triggered by the Soviet Union starting a conventional war in Europe.

Fancy that! Craft which float over everything on a cushion of air

You spoil us

Hovercraft, and eels published within a few minutes : Monty Python.

Giant frikkin' British laser turret to start zapping stuff next year

Re: Innovative, effective and affordable solutions

One major difference though, the original STEN cost <£150 and came down to about £10 in today's money. I have seen some of the early STEN versions; apparently if you were behind whoever was carrying it, and they pointed the weapon down/forward for safety, it was OK. In spite of its reputation, it was a very effective weapon out to about 40 yards, and described as a "room clearer".

Boffins fear we might be running out of ideas

Because

Most "research" is development. In the past, basic research was often funded by the taxpayer (sometimes indirectly), these days not so much. The quest is now for a short-term financial return, so a basic research project doesn't get past the first step.

UK Home Office finds £20m to throw at Oracle cloudy ERP

The number of the beast

£20 million divided by 30,000 is -£666 or £333 a year, that seem to be worryingly cheap.

This is Oracle and the Home Department - So a total cost of 100x that?

Everybody without Android Oreo vulnerable to overlay attack

Everybody without Android Oreo vulnerable...

So is my iPhone OK then?

Google, propaganda, and the new New Man

Re: Lying is always bad propaganda, because it deceives and misleads the people

Propagating the Faith is where the term came from. It was designed to spread the "good word" to the heathen by the Catholic Church and was originally thought to be a "good thing", except perhaps by the "heathens" on the receiving end. The propogators often think that there is a higher purpose to their actions, others might not...

Western Digital has cloudified the NAS and shoved it in a trendy box

WD MyBookLive

I have used the unclouded product for 4 years now. It was very handy for backing up 7 Windows PCs and a MacBook and providing a simple public share across the network. We never opened it up to the internet.

It is very slow so we had to do a couple of tricks like rename folders on the NAS and robocopy new ones from the PCs as copy of the original across the network could take hours. With Windows 10, Windows7 backups across the network were feasible but also very slow. I am waiting for it to die, and probably won't replace it - For light and domestic use a USB drive is OK. For Apple iOS users a way of loading and playing user content from outside the iCloud environment onto a network drive would be handy...

Turnbull's Transformers lash government IT mavens over spend

Re: Many of those old programs

Upvote for the Utopia reference...

$10 Billion

Are we really spending more than 120,000 salaries a year? Just how much are we "saving"?

Australians still buy 100,000 feature phones a quarter

Old Fart Phones

Is what my wife calls them (we are both in that grouping). A number of our friends just want to be able to make phone calls, with days between charges. Most of them are happy to receive text messages, but the keypads are to small/unfriendly for older eyes and fingers. Many of our friends have the cheapest android around (Usually bought because the nice young person in the shop recommended it) and only use it to make calls with a few text messages - The rest of the ecosystem is often ignored.

A couple of days ago I helped a neighbour set up her new phone: One of the last Alcatel Onetouch prepaid available ($29). After it was working she said "Why has it got a radio, camera and music player?" I only want it to make phone calls. Are we getting basic phones designed for developing countries because they are cheap, instead of something designed for older people?

Oracle has to pay top sales rep stiffed out of $250,000, US court rules

Re: Seems high, but around 10% commission is fairly common

I used to buy expensive scientific toys. One of my favourite salesmen visited about 6 times a year. His lead-time for the sale he made to us was 18 months. After the sale had gone through and the G&Ts were flowing I asked him what he would buy with his commission. He told me that his base salary was about 1.5 times mine and his commission was "only 1%". He was in his late 50s and knew the business, and the kit, inside-out. The kit he sold me cost about 20 times that of my house. Commission on 5 sales would have bought my house. He was good at his job and would have sold 5 a year. As technology has got cheaper in real terms, the cost of similar kit would now be about the same as my (smaller) house. In those days a mortgage was ~3 times your salary.

I noticed a few years later that the sales reps that I saw were often young, female and good looking. If asked a technical question, they often would look in the sales literature (I normally had a copy) and if unable to answer (which was often) they "got back to me".

Ad blocking basically doesn't exist on mobile

iOS Safari

I don't see adverts since installing a blocker app: Purify ($1.99). An on/off button on the taskbar would be good (Against Apple rules?).

For particularly troublesome sites, I turn Javascript off.

Forget trigonometry, 'cos Babylonians did it better 3,700 years ago – by counting in base 60!

We use base 10 for a reason

We can count off on 8 fingers and two thumbs (alright we can go to 20 in warmer climates if we can use our toes). Some people in the world still count in 60s using the same 8 fingers and two thumbs. If you are predominantly right handed, use your right thumb to count to 3 with the top, middle and lower phalanx of your right hand little finger, then three more with the ring finger joints, then the middle finger, then the index finger to give 12. Extend the little finger of your left hand to count off the first 12, the repeat for another 12 with the right hand and extend the ring finger for 24, then count another 12, and use the left hand middle finger for 36, then the left index finger for 48, and finally the left thumb for 60.

It may be one reason why old farts like me were taught the duodecimal system. We bought things in dozens and paid for them in shillings and pence - Also ten is only divisible by the integers 1,2, and 5; twelve is divisible by 1,2,3,4, and 6; and sixty is divisible by 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15, 20, and 30 - So very "handy" when selling items or dividing them up between people. There were 12 shillings (and 240 pennies in the pound), so we could divide a pound by 16, 24, 30, 40, and 60 as well.

"Uphill both ways, in the snow, barefoot" might allow a higher count...

Did ROPEMAKER just unravel email security? Nah, it's likely a feature

Err,

Most of the emails I send are plain text. This is the way emails were in the 1970s, and it still works. The only formatting necessary is normal punctuation and the use of paragraphs, sometimes with 2 or 3 returns between them to break up content into logical blocks.

Generally with the wide variations of OS, mail client, printing, and fonts it is a good way to ensure that the recipient has a reasonable idea of what was written. If you need fancy formatting attach a PDF.

British snoops at GCHQ knew FBI was going to arrest Marcus Hutchins

Perhaps, none of the above

Do we really think that governments want to stop malware? The murk allows large players to hide along with the small criminals.

NotPetya ransomware attack cost us $300m – shipping giant Maersk

Re: Easy to mitigate

Did you forget: -Get rid of Windows?

Lenovo thought PC salesfolk could sell servers and was wrong by about $500m

Server Purchases

I don't have to worry about this stuff anymore, but for a quiet(?) life: System i or Sytem z - Or for a bit more excitement, DIY whiteboxes with a limited list of good quality components?

Google paying Apple BEEELLIONS to stay search top dog on iDevices, say analysts

Re: DuckDuckGo is the only option if they want to protect privacy

I don't seem to work the way you do. I try DDG first with something like: my special hitech search; then, if I don't get something useful, I can append the two character !g it to get: my special hitech search !g

Being an old fart who was around on ARPANET, I suspect that my memory may be worse than yours, so, I look for an easy life - I tend to use an iPad a lot. DDG is one of the search engines in Safari; and if I use a contact blocker like Purify, I am spared the one ad from DDG and the four from Google. I do use Google, but generally am not logged in...

Re: DuckDuckGo is the only option if they want to protect privacy

@rssfrd23

You couldn’t pay me to use DuckDuckGo. I’m able to find the answer I need 9/10 times on first search with google.

Use the !Bang -- !g search with Google - !w search with Wikipedia

Raising minimum wage will raise something else: An army of robots taking away folks' jobs

It won't be just minimum wage jobs

Up until the 1980s a number of skilled blue collar jobs were in engineering manufacturing. A workshop might have had 20+ skilled people who were busy driving lathes and milling milling machines etc. Busy businesses ran shifts to keep the equipment running. After the introduction of CNC equipment (Mostly using Data General Nova computers where I was), the same workshop had at most 10 people left on the main shift with perhaps a couple at night. In those days we tried to retrain people or paid for them to retire early - Today market forces drive effected people into the minimum wage jobs discussed. I suspect that we are coming to the end of the economy being based on careers/jobs. Perhaps everyone will become a self employed contractor, with large amounts of "free time" ("unemployment")?

Ancient IETF 'teapot' gag preserved for posterity as a standard

Re: more important than ever

You do know that The Internet of Teapots will become Skynet?

Official: Windows for Workstations returns in Fall Creators Update

Re: What? WFW was only 16bit

The early NT kernel version Workstation distributions had a registry switch that turned them into the Server product. Obviously, as a DAAP Partner at the time, I never took advantage of it...

70% of Windows 10 users are totally happy with our big telemetry slurp, beams Microsoft

Re: No need to change the default settings! Erase all of WIN 10

@Not That Andrew

"At least it was DebianDevuan not that flavour of the month distro, whatever it's called."

FTFY: Debian == Systemd

Parents claim Disney gobbled up kids' info through mobile games

Re: Puzzled

The mouse had his big break with "Steamboat Willie" - The cartoon was "inspired by" (ripped off from) Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill,Jr.

CMD.EXE gets first makeover in 20 years in new Windows 10 build

Re: They are bonkers

@colinsl

Some of us paid extra to get black and amber - Very nice on a VT220.

Got that syncing feeling? Cloud's client-side email problem

Kids, eh?

Despite predictions of its demise, we've been happily using email in business since it first became widespread more than two decades ago. In many ways it's defined the way we compose, reply or send digital messages. A number of technologies have consolidated and extended it to something that became called "collaboration".

Some of us can still collaborate by typing "mail" at the command line - It has worked for decades, the way that $DEITY intended. Now, if I can only find a decent CLI text mail program for my iPad...

How can you kill that which will not die? Windows XP is back (sorta... OK, not really)

@AC - They have parts of FreeBSD kernel mixed in, some FreeBSD user land mixed up with a lot of Linux user land. Lots of it aging out now that they have no strong Unix type leads inhouse.

Really? Citation please. Most Linux stuff that is out there for MacOS needs MacPorts, Homebrew, Fink, etc., to be installed. I don't know very many Mac punters who would install them.

I like liked Linux (Well I did, until Poettering and the RedHat vandals were allowed to screw it over) and have used UNIX based OSs extensively since the early 1980s. If you exclude small amounts of code from things like SELinux via TrustedBSD/SEDarwin, I can't think of too much that came from Linux vs. NeXTSTEP / OPENSTEP.

MacOS is a UNIX Certified Product (unlike the myriad of Linux dists) so that, at least, is a box than can be ticked by the corporate types - I think Apple will spend the necessary money on talent to keep that.

For people who care about this, and have good eyesight/access to an A3 printer Éric Lévénez has a good UNIX timeline here that shows how complex and inter-related the history of UNIX and Linux is.

New iPhone details leak: Yes, Apple is still chasing Samsung

Re: Onanism

Was Onan a barbarian? :-)

No, a librarian - You really don't want your books to be overdue.

Re: Wrong Place

Ah, but we/they know that, unlike recent Samsung kit, the jesusPhone will work, and continue to work, and probably won't catch fire...

Petition calls for Adobe Flash to survive as open source zombie

Re: Please, No!

@Symon, have an upvote.

Prior to 1849, record copies of Acts were handwritten onto animal skin parchment (usually goatskin). From that time onwards printed record copies use high quality vellum (calfskin). Private Acts have been printed on archival papers since 1956. In 2015 The National Archives advised that they do not need a vellum copy of Public Acts and that archival paper was sufficient. Printing on vellum continued for heritage and traditional reasons. In a FOI request the 2008 cost of printed vellum was quoted at £31.08 a page, which seems reasonable.

In churches, records of important events like births, deaths and marriages were handwritten in archive quality paper books; as are the "original" signed copies of these documents. Normally Wills, etc., are on acid-free paper. Early church codices were written onto papyrus or animal skin. Unbleached cellulose fibre paper goes back at least 2,200 years in China. Good quality paper can still be made from reclaimed hrmp, linen and cotton rags.

Re: Please, No!

@dv3y

I was talking about academics and researchers - They, or their assistants, have plenty of time :-)

So record all of the possible permutations and combinations separately, and edit them together into a different format of media with the necessary links? It should be possible with HTML5...

Re: Please, No!

@Adam 52

Use an OS that is contemporaneous wiith the content does not use repressive activation, like Linux, BSD, or even OSX? The system does not connect to the internet.