Posts by Chris Mitchell

FTC bans Rite Aid from using AI facial recognition in stores for 5 years

The Tories just did this

Jimmy Dimly is about to get this and do much more;

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/20/police-to-be-able-to-run-face-recognition-searches-on-50m-driving-licence-holders

Educating Verity the OU way

MSc in retro computing

About 10 years ago, just after the cretinous Carly Fiorina had DVed my employment history by killing HP computing, I thought I'd re-skill and learn the latest, state of the art development skills from the OU (I was a contractor, so everything was DIY). The MSc in software development beckoned, I paid the money, the books arrived and the first inklings that something was wrong began to arrive. The first unit enthused about the the go-ahead and state-of-the-art technique that I was going to use to analyse a business situation, so lo and behold, I was taught to use SSADM.

Turns out that as far as the OU is concerned, the art they were talking about was pottery. I still keep the books as a reminder that the OU are rubbish...

Chris M

Rootkit blamed for Blue Screen patch update snafu

What about Vista?

As in the problems MS started with SWMBO's Vaio? That's not got a rootkit, it's not got XP (more's the pity...) and it has the issue with the update; so what's to be done (and please don't kneejerk "Linux"...)?

MS update gives some XP boxes the Blue Screen

Nope, it's the updates and not the Vaio crap

Because it was working, then the updates went live and it stopped. I removed the updates and it worked again. To check, I allowed Update to redo what it wanted and went through the whole cycle one more time.

Vista as well as XP

Vista's also affected, at least on my wife's Vaio laptop...

Nikon Coolpix S1000pj

How about art?

Just a thought; won't this sort of device help struggling painters by allowing them to photograph whatever it is they want to paint, project it onto a canvas, then Paint-By-Numbers on the projected image? Muarkedly easier than tracing otherwise...

Chris M

Lehman Excel snafu could cost Barclays dear

Barclays de Zoete Wedd, anyone?

As I recall, it was a spreadsheet that did for BZW; they'd been using it for a while to mastermind whatever it was they did and then, as more Masters of the Universe played with it, it led them to believe that what it said was true... People just don't seem to learn...