Posts by Mike Pellatt 638 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Apr 2007
Come back when there are personal electronic devices available that are usable by people with any disability or cognitive impairment that exists.
Until then, take your your ableism and ageism and stuff it where the sun doesn't shine.
Oh, not forgetting the homeless who'll have a little bit of difficulty finding a power source.
A bit of kindness towards people who struggle wouldn't go amiss.
I'm completely out of touch with the latest iterations of blockchain technology, but isn't there some issue with exponential increase in computation as you add to the chain? If so, tends to make its use for log/audit immutability proof a tad tricky.
Whereas today with the private sector doing it all, I've been waiting, let me see, 7 years for fibre. And still no sign.
The private sector keeps refusing to do it unless they gets shedloads of taxpayer money, and even then can't be arsed to actually deliver.
And even then, once they've done it, they have to pay back some of it because it turns out more people sign up than they thought (see BDUK phase 1 gainshare - yes I know that was FTTC)
This. However much you try and bend one system to look and behave like another, there will always be stiff bits that won't bend.
Embrace it, run with what you have, changing how you work when swapping systems helps keep the brain active.
And what is this "text editor" for MacOS of which the author speaks? What's wrong with vi in the command window?. Works for me.
You've made the classic mistake of misunderstanding Democracy there.
"Government of the people, by the people, for the people"
If the outcome of a particular version of government claiming to be a democracy isn't the net benefit of the people (and that doesn't mean "a majority of the people") then it's demonstrably not a democracy.
Not by that definition, anyways. Of course, even the Greeks had ways of redefining democracy, by excluding some people from their definition of "the people"
But, as the parent comment says, the work involved in verification is effectively unbounded, thereby rendering AI useless.
With you on the GIGO bit though - I've been saying for some considerable time now that AI will be a demonstration of GIGO on a global scale. And, boy, does the internet have a s**tload of garbage available for AI training.
What we see here is a demonstration that garbage in can create garbage out elsewhere in the system where non-garbage has been inputted.
"What is overlooked in all of this is that when working from home the employee needs to have an appropriate environment to work in.
Offices pretty much guaranteed that"
Oh, don't make me laugh. Every office I've worked in over the last 15 years had air handling that provided hot spots and cold spots. In modern builds and refurbs. So half the people on the floor wanted the temperature up and half wanted it down.
If that fundamental isn't right, you can forget all the rest that you list.
People say the same about driving into Devon from Dorset.
But then Devon CC are quite open that they're only doing safety-critical road repairs. Which means only potholes that have been reported by the public and meet their "safety-critical" criteria - >40mm deep, and "the size of a dinner plate" across.
Indeed. I can't remember when it was that the hosted wordpress.com came to life, but I seem to remember thinking at the time that it all seemed a bit shitty. It seemed like an attempt to get do a bait and switch to get people off the free (as in speech) WordPress and into something that was being proprietised. Can't remember what it was about it that made me think that, though.
Unlike all those "trade journals" which do exactly what you say, Mark regularly pulls apart press releases, drills down into the detail to find out what's really going on, and calls out, sorry, "seeks clarification" on the bullshit. You do him a disservice.
Yeah, there are a lot of BT shills in the comments. Such is life. He's recently started moderating comments, so I guess the more extreme are getting mod'ed out now. Or maybe just the spam and abuse.
That's the problem with getting "smart" marketing people to sell a technological development.
It was the same with HS2, they banged on about the speed and ludicrous cost savings for execs who'd have their chauffeur driving them anyways, when the real issue it needed (and was designed) to resolve was overall capacity (mixing freight, frequent stoppers and non-stoppers on the same tracks crucifies capacity, even if you put in loops)
It's dynamic pricing and the ability to shift load that's the benefit of smart metering. Trouble is, that needs the user to invest in automation. A solar/battery system that your energy supplier manages, like Octopus Intelligent Flux, and the real benefits of home solar and distributed generation/storage start to be gained. If you don't trust 'em, get your home automation to manage it instead.
Crapita are, unsurprisingly, unfit to run the DCC.
I have 2 meters installed, about 100m apart, neither LoS to a Telefonica cell site (this is the Soith area obvs). Both have T2 antennae.
One commissioned on the second attempt (once I'd seen the WAN light reliably indicating connectivity).
There have been 3 attempts at the other one, I thought I'd got a commitment to put a T3 antenna on it, but DCC decided nope because "my address doesn't have coverage". All attempts to plead that their coverage modelling is clearly wrong as I have a functional meter fall on deaf ears.
I have not route for redress as I don't have a direct relationship with the DCC and the Ombudsman can only seek a remedy from the energy retailer, who cannot influence the DCC either.
Clearly not only Crapita but also the contractual arrangements aren't fit for purpose.
Unimplemented instruction traps going off to software implementations can have interesting side-effects.
First, an aside. The actual O/S calls on Dec10 (if not earlier) were implemented via UUOs. Bu I digress.
In the late 70's/early 80's, the research group I worked for started their Dec10 replacement plan. Put in a VAX 11/780 with the Floating Point hardware. Soon after it was installed, I left.
Then it was time for another system. Was it to be a VAX or an IBM? Now, Rutherford Lab having an IBM was quite the draw in that direction as it made data exchange easier, FP formats not being quite standardised as yet. So, benchmarks were run (you know where this is going now, don't you?)
The IBM 370/whatever that was being contemplated won, so it was ordered. Some time (months??) later during maintenance, it was discovered that the VAX FP unit wasn't functioning, and the FP instruction set was being transparently emulated. Fixed it, the VAX now out-performed the IBM. Red faces all round.......
The tinfoil hat brigade is strong here given the downvote on that.
The speed with which load shedding is required, once it is, means that doing it via the smart meter network rather than at the substations would not, you know, actually stop the grid crashing.
Suppliers to Gov don't like opensource because they're no-one to sue if it all goes titsup [i].
They don't understand the "if it breaks, you get to keep the pieces" principle of opensource.
[i] Yes, a supplier actually said that when I was in a discussion on secure email for local government, and a district council in the SW had built one using opensource. The potential supplier wasn't willing to take that on and run it as PaaS. Not that they called it that, this was 2005 and that moniker was hardly A Thing.
Whilst your comment has some (considerable) validity, recycling rules probably aren't the best exemplar given that they will be dependent on the contract negotiated with the waste collection contractor. Now it you think there should be one single national waste collection contract, perhaps we could get rid of those variations....
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