Posts by Big_Boomer 816 posts • joined 18 May 2007
Why not? The incompetents in charge of Brexit have f***ed up so many other things, why not this one. Perhaps they were trying to delete data acquired from systems that they no longer have legal access to post-Brexit. Perhaps there is to be an audit process to verify that they have actually followed EU data deletion procedures, and someone panicked because they never have and that could invalidate the "Deal".
I for one am glad that he got banned and I don't really give rats ass about the reason. We have now had a whole week of not having his Peachnesses latest pronouncement on Twatter re-broadcast to the world by every single news media on the planet. As a consequence it's been a relatively pleasant week. Long may it continue.
One of antisocial media's biggest faults is that it bloats egos. I recently accidentally stumbled into a Conservative Party Farcebook group and the level of fawning and hero worship was nauseating. Anyone who worships another human being in my opinion needs psychological help. However, after seeing it I suddenly realised why people on antisocial media can get an artificially inflated ego, to the point that they believe that they are perfect and are doing a great job, when quite often the exact opposite is true. When everyone you hear from is telling you that you are a God, then eventually even the most cynical of us will start to believe it.
As for Twatter and most of the other antisocial media, I don't participate because I really don't care what most other people think, do, or are. I have enough on my plate with friends, family, work, and a few forums I participate on. Yes, I am on Farcebook but only because it's an easy way to stay in touch with friends and family that are spread out across the planet. I frequently wield the Unfollow button when I get sick of someone's drivel, but only occasionally use the Unfriend button for those who go too far.
I have an ancient Moto G that I use in the garage as the screen for a bore scope remote camera that allows me to inspect the piston crowns of an engine without taking it apart. Once rooted and with all the bloatware uninstalled it works fine for it's purpose and the battery holds enough charge for a couple of hours usage.
The biggest problems with repurposing older Android devices are the older versions of Android themselves and a simple lack of RAM. With the right software they could be repurposed into security cameras, vehicle trackers, and a whole raft of other functions.
The problem here is, as usual, greed. The media, both old school and so called social media, make more money when they have nice juicy stories to sell, so they gave Trumplethinskin a free reign as his ranting drivel was making them lots of cash. Then they suddenly realised that their greed had created a monster, so they put a bullet in it. This is no different in cause from the banks causing the Credit Crunch, or Brexit, or any one of hundreds of similar instances around the world. Sooner or later we need to put an end to the whole "too much is not enough" mindset but I guess that will never happen as it's "human nature" or some such drivel.
Finally Flash is dead. And for those missing their daily Joe Cartoon hit, most of them are on YouTube but you no longer get to actually hit the buttons.
My fave Joe Cartoon is SuperFly2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYE3riHLptI
I also like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3CyyaQwJS8 and for political balance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xnERaWfl-I.
Yet you are currently quite happy to drive around with a 50+ litre fuel-air bomb in your petrol car? Have you seen the intensity of a Lithium-ion battery fire? Have you seen what happens when you try to put it out with water? Have you seen supposedly extinguished Li-ion battery fires spontaneously reignite? Ask your local firefighter about them. Those firefighters that have experienced them HATE Li-ion batteries, especially in crashes as the car could end up with exposed high-voltage DC. None of these high-energy systems are safe by their very nature. We make them safe by designing them properly and with safety in mind.
All true, but hydrogen overcomes the range and recharge time issues that are holding back battery electric cars. No reason why the 2 different systems can't co-exist much like Diesel/Petrol/LPG. The markets will soon establish which they prefer if not both.
Hydrogen production can be VERY cheap when produced by renewable sources during off-peak times as otherwise the lack of demand would require shutdown of those sources. Windfarm operators, especially offshore ones, do not like to have to reduce output and in the UK right now wind is 55% of renewables and rising.
What a choice to have to make. Suppression of free will or endless bombardment with fake news, conspiracy theories, advertising, and other lies. I can see why some might think that restriction of the internet might be a good thing, but it's very rare that restrictions ever get lifted. It'll be interesting to see which countries try to keep their Covid restrictions going the longest following widespread vaccinations.
Personally I would rather live in a society that protects the most vulnerable, but lets the rest of us do our own thing, so long as it doesn't seriously affect anyone else's thing. However, since there are so many "things" now (7.836 Billion and rising) your thing is bound to affect someone else's thing, so where do we go from here?
Fragmentation of the internet is inevitable and always will be whilst people of one tribe don't trust people of another tribe. Only once the aliens invade will we start to learn that we are all one tribe, and even then it'll take generations.
I've never understood why anyone would care whether an EU dumfuk committee or a UK dumfuk committee makes any particular decision. Surely we should be getting rid of the dumfuks and populating these committees with people who have a clue rather than giving a shit what it says in their passport?
The Brexit electorate are now starting to see that they voted for something they will never ever get, and in it's place they are going to see lower wages, longer hours, higher prices, and MORE bureaucracy. Once those start to bite they will soon start screaming, unless they were going to be forced to actually pay tax on their earnings by the EU Tax changes.
I'm no fan of nasty sites like Gawker (the name says it all really) but I also intensely dislike Apple for their continuous "editing" and suppression of events. Hopefully the team behind the series will take it elsewhere and get the series made. Normally I wouldn't care but I'll watch it just to piss Apple off. I've never trusted Apple to do anything except milk their fanboiz for every last penny and I laugh when people complain to me about being locked in to the Apple system.
"Achtung, vee iz ze Politzei und vee haf gifen you ze orderz und you MUZT OBEY!" My apologies to any Germans on here for the racist stereotype portrayed there, but this does sound very much like some people in the Police are looking back to the days of the SS & Stazi with fondness.
The GoPro was probably setup and just left there. Could have been running for weeks if powered and set to loop record. As for the Drone, it's pretty obvious that it was surveying the cable damage at the moment when it finally gave up. Please don't start any more conspiracy theories. Enough of that mindless drivel around already.
No, not Wining, Whining!
"Oh but I want to cuddle 160 people and their viruses so why can't I go somewhere public, get drunk (so I forget all about masks and hand cleaning and social distancing) and get my dose of virus soup? It's not fair. It's a government conspiracy against right thinking pissheads everywhere. QAnal are right, they want to restrict our freedoms and closing the pubs early is just the first step. Next they'll want to limit us to Diet Beer and Wine-Light, and oh I just don't know what the world is coming to these days"
Me I say let the virus sort the idiots out. They will love it, and in the longer term it will improve the species considerably. Win-Win!
Every time a new version came out the price went up by 5x inflation so no wonder they priced themselves out of the market. Apple are also starting to suffer from the same problem. There are only so many people who will fork out silly money for a smartphone. Most of us are quite happy with a capable mid-range smartphone, don't NEED the latest fashion accessory, and definitely do not experience what EE's marketing twonks call "iPhone Envy". I still laugh every time I hear that drivel.
The world has lost an iconic scientific instrument. Yes it was built by the USA, funded by NASA, NSF, UoF, but it was used by scientists from across the globe and broadened our horizons considerably. Chances are it will not be replaced with anything similar as arrays are cheaper, more efficient, and more versatile, but it still deserves respect. My sympathies are with the people who work and worked there, and their families, and I'm glad nobody was hurt.
Given the depressed state of the Air travel industry, I certainly won't be buying shares in Boeing or Airbus any time soon. Even once Covid is "beaten" it will take years to recover, and given the new found realisations that business *CAN* be done by WFH and video calls/confs, I suspect that it will be several years before flights get back to pre-Covid levels. Those aircraft simulators must be busy as **** given the numbers of grounded pilots, or are the airlines also rotating their pilots to give them enough flight hours?
Humans, as we currently exist require oxygen under pressure, water, food, decent gravity, low-radiation levels, and temperatures in a quite narrow range from our environment. None of these exist on Mars or the Moon or in open space. So, if we are to survive off Earth, then first we need to solve these. Once they are all solved, then Mars is no better than say the Asteroid Belt with the possible exception of it's 3.711m/s² gravity field.
If we want to survive away from our home planet then Mars is just another resource, but the Asteroid belt has those resources in a nice cheap low-g environment where they are comparatively easy to get at and exploit. Mars is irrelevant. If we are to survive off Earth then the first step is bigger orbital environments where we can tackle most of these challenges near to home. Grab a decent sized mostly solid asteroid, carefully put it in orbit around Earth, then mine it for resources whilst learning how to live there.
We could also modify ourselves to be able to survive in space, or more likely create our successor species (AI/AS anyone?) such that they can survive anywhere.
I'm with Agent Smith w.r.t. how to label Homo Sapiens' effect on it's environment. Virus is a much better description than Locust.
Lithos = Stone, Sideros = Iron, but we can't call it a MonoSider as it pretty obviously has 3 sides plus a top and (presumably) bottom. So, I dub it MonoSid as it stands alone and is made of iron. Since it seems to have appeared between 2015 & 2016 (from satellite images of the area) and isn't covered in crud and dust, someone must be visiting it regularly to clean it. From now on it'll be visited by hippies and cultists and QAnon loonies who will proclaim it to be the living embodiment of peace, god, and proof that you can get gullible morons to believe any old conspiracy twaddle.
I used a finger trackball, similar to the Kensington Expert, that came built into a keyboard WAY back in the early 90s and I loved it. It had a really large ball (2 or 3" diameter) so you could flick it and it would keep rolling until you stopped it. It was perfect for fine precision work such as photo editing as well as for gaming (Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, etc.). When it died, I just couldn't find another finger trackball of the same type and could not get on with the thumb trackballs of the time, so I reluctantly went back to mice.
After a recent bout of carpal, my employers bought me a Penguin from Posturite, which is available in small, medium, and large sizes and is a "vertical mouse" so avoids the twisting of the wrist that exacerbates carpal tunnel problems. It works so well, that I bought one for home use and it is superb for everything with the one exception of fine precision work. Mine is the large and suits my massive hands (I wear 5XL motorcycle gloves) just fine. It is fully ambidextrous with a simple switch to choose between lefty and righty and to my eyes looks more like an Orca than a Penguin. Now that I know that finger trackballs exist again, I may have to try one.
After getting Credit Crunched in 2009, I ended up with quite a lot of debt and no income. A couple of the debt collectors were polite, understanding and helpful. Even though I acknowledged all of the debts and was making payments of £1 per month each, one particular agency still felt that they had to call me several times per day and on a couple of instances their agents threatened me. So, I called Citizens Advice. They told me to write to the original debtor explaining what I was experiencing. Next thing I know, the debt agency writes to me apologising, claiming it was a fault in their auto dialler system (yeah, right!), and agreeing to ONLY contact me by letter. The original debtor also wrote to me to apologise for the treatment. Since then I have settled every debt and will never get in debt again. I'd rather do without stuff than experience that again. Yes, you can have stuff today and pay tomorrow, but sooner or later you will over-extend (or your circumstances will change and over-extend you) and then you too will get to experience the joys of being "pressured" by debt collectors.
If you choose not to acknowledge your debt, then they will come after you by any means available. They'd rather not send someone to your door as that costs them money, so contacting you via social media seems like a reasonable alternative since that is a public aspect of you.
Yet another unsubstantiated comment against the BBC by a whining coward. Why do you waste your breath? Are the BBC perfect? No. Are they WAY less biased than almost any other TV news source available? Yes. Would I trust them over Sky (Faux) News on ANY SUBJECT? Yes. Do I check by viewing various other news sources? Yes. Do I let my personal politics and point of view skew my opinion of a news service? No, the ONLY deciding factor is accuracy. The one thing I like the most about the BBC is that both right and left wingers whinge about it being biased against them in equal measure. I can't think of a better definition of unbiased than that.
Prior to Covid I already worked from home 2 days per week. The cost to me for commuting to work for 3 days was £90 and 12 hours (120 miles per day + 2x Dartford Crossing Tolls). Yes, the commute sucked and I don't miss it at all. I am also not polluting anywhere near as much as I was, not congesting the roads, and not requiring days off or healthcare due to the stress involved in the commute.
So, I am £90 per week better off AND I got 12 hours per week back, but I am still working 40+ hours per week, still doing what I was doing before, so still earning what I earned before. My colleagues who live 2 miles from the office earn the same as I do and do the same work as I do.
What has changed is that many companies have finally awoken to the fact that having people work from home is not leading to the feared decrease in productivity. In fact it seems to be leading to a slight increase in productivity and once the companies have downsized their offices to suit the new working regime, it will lead to an increase in profitability from reduced costs.
If you are heavily invested in commercial property, you are about to lose your shirt, and THAT is what they are all terrified of, so they are desperately trying to come up with ways of forcing everyone to go back to working in an office.
Only the invention of a 100% safe instant teleporter could convince me to work in an office 5 days per week ever again. My days of wasting substantial chunks of my life commuting are over :-)
I am pretty certain that Trump cannot pardon himself, but what he can do is throw a Trumper tantrum and resign, so Pence will take over for the remaining 2 months, and chances are Pence will pardon Trump. Not that any of that is going to prevent Deutsche Bank and many other creditors taking him to court over his debts once he is no longer POTUS.
Which is just another way of spreading the wealth. Since the whole Bay Area is full to bursting point, they are actively encouraging companies to go somewhere else and this is just one of the ways of doing that.
Why are so many people obsessed with accumulating so much wealth anyway? What are they going to do with it? Roll around in it like Scrooge McDuck? Once you get beyond a certain point more wealth is irrelevant. I get that nobody wants to give it to the government, local or national, but how else do you expect them to build and maintain the roads that your employees use to drive to work, to operate a sanitation dept, a police force, etc.? A 40:1 ratio is obscene, let alone 100:1 or more.
Shame about the contents. Never been a fan of Tequila but each to their own.
As for those who "worship" other human beings, what is wrong with you? You can see it on just about any "celebrity" social media account. If you worship another human being then you need counselling and possibly electro-shock therapy,... with a cattle prod. I recently got dragged into the Facebook page of our Prime Minister and the number of people on there telling the useless eejit that he is wonderful and marvellous and doing a GREAT JOB is astounding. I imagine, just like Trump is now learning, that one day soon reality is going to intrude and that's going to hurt
Anyone who compliments me is immediately marked as suspicious and I make certain that the cattle prod is charged and ready. Very very occasionally I feel that I earned that compliment and accept it politely. And no, I'm not a believer in positivity and other gushy claptrap. Reality is where it's at.
https://www.itv.com/news/2020-02-25/coronavirus-outbreak-chinese-minister-sorry-for-loss-of-life-defends-china-efforts-contain-virus
Looks like a sorry to me. More than you will ever get from the Tories or from Trump. Besides, this Huawei witchhunt started way before Covid and reeks of protectionism.
The software I work with (medical devices) uses .NET and because MS seem to change the .NET version with every release (or every other release) of Win10 we simply cannot keep up with the testing. So, we have quite a lot of customers still using 1709 and 1803 because they are on a 3 to 5 year upgrade cycle of our software and the version they currently have will not work with .NET 4.8. Some are still running Win7. We have given up on the spring releases of Win10 and focus on the autumn/fall releases but even then it takes months to test a new version of our software with that version of Win10 due to the fact that our software connects to so many other systems. Win10 has become a royal PITA because of the constant updates. At least with Win7 we could block the .NET updates.
It seems that corruption and self-serving has become the new norm in our "modern society". I was brought up to treat others as I would expect to be treated, but it seems to me that a great many people have been brought up to believe that they can do whatever they want with impunity. I probably shouldn't be surprised that these sociopaths end up in top management/government positions as the whole mind-set of modern management seems to be one of climbing over the bodies of those you have cut down to get to the top. Yes, some get ahead by being good at what they do and are to be admired (but NEVER worshiped!), but you just have to look at governments and companies around the world to see eye watering levels of incompetence and greed at the top of many of them. The whole idea of serving their electorate/customers has given way to simply milking every last penny of personal/corporate profit out of their increasingly hostile electorate/customers.
"Well, uh, when I was a mechanoid, the right nipple-nut was used to, uh, regulate body temperature, while the left nipple-nut was used mainly to, uh, pick up shortwave radio transmissions. Now, what I'm saying is, no matter how hard I twiddle it, I can't seem to pick up Jazz FM." <LOL>
I'll agree to getting "enhanced" when they can guarantee, on penalty of THEIR death in case of failure, that what is implanted cannot be hacked, pwned, or otherwise interfered with without my permission. What's that you say? Not a fat chance in hell of that ever happening! Guess I'm going to the grave un- enhanced then. I'll leave the enhancing to those who have a fervent desire to become part of the Borg.
I refused to vote for Corbyn because he was a dithering incompetent, no, I didn't vote for the Traitor/Tory party either, and yes many of us did campaign against Brexit and against the Tories. Living in Brexit Central it didn't have much effect though. Yes, my MP/slimebag is Mark Francois.
As for being bored of hearing it, I suggest you cut off all contact with anyone else via any means whatsoever, because this crap is still going to be affecting the UK long after we are all dead and buried.
Nothing I have yet seen even comes close to AI or even SI for that matter. There are a few that can simulate intelligence briefly, but it pretty rapidly becomes obvious you are dealing with a program. I hope that we are still researching AI but so far as I can tell these last few years have been an attempt to monetise research systems that are not ready, don't work as they should, and as such are effectively a con. There are very few exceptions out there that I would put my own money into.
As a concept, AI worries but excites me. You have no idea what I would give to be able to have a chat with Andrew Martin or R.Daneel Olivaw, but given human greed and corruption, I suspect that Skynet and The Matrix are far more likely outcomes.
As one of those "neckbeards" (I don't have a beard) that dropped Firefox due to it being difficult to use I can say that I found it to be slow, a resource guzzler, not customisable in the ways that I wanted and needed, and a royal PITA to use day to day as so few websites back then supported the unique way that it handled websites. Yes, I went for Chrome because back then it worked and was massively better than FireFux or Internet Exploder in almost every way. Since then I regularly reconsider what browser to use and have tried quite a few, but they all seem to have their problems and not many of them stick around for long. If Chrome manages to cut back on the advertisers overhead and give me a nice responsive browser again, maybe I won't move to another browser, but it doesn't look like it. Maybe I'll give Brave a try, but it will be one in a looooong list of others tried over the years, with all of them so far being uninstalled as not good enough. And if you can't figure out what JAFB means, go watch Blue Thunder. :-)
Just by attempting this land-grab, the Nominet Board have shown themselves to be self serving and NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE. They will almost certainly now try another way to achieve the same goal, that goal being to line their pockets with gold. Not for Profit means just that. What is it with people these days. Is everyone a thieving scumbag these days?
The problem with advertising as a revenue stream is that you are relying on, for your income, something that is intrusive and often irritates your customers. I often mute the TV these days when irritating adverts come on because more and more of the advertisers are not getting the returns from their adverts that they want so the are making their ads more intrusive (off-key singing, jangly music, irritating voices), and that is because we end users are becoming immune to the very techniques that they are using to convince us that their product is a "must have" and we are becoming immune to it BECAUSE of their over-use of these techniques. So called Targeted Advertising should have reduced the irritation as it supposedly advertises what you are already interested in, but in my experience it advertises what I have ALREADY BOUGHT and am no longer interested in, so more irritation there.
I don't use ad-blockers as, unlike the worlds freeloaders, I understand that if I want something then I can either pay for it, or else view some adverts and the advertisers will pay for it. However, if a site uses irritating in-your-face techniques, that site gets visited less and less often until they lose me as a customer.
This move by Google is just another step in the "war" and will undoubtedly be countered by those who don't want to see the drivel foisted on us by the ad makers and their chosen deliverers of drivel.
Makes no difference who you buy it from. You can choose to have the Chinese, Russians, or the 5Eyes listening in on your comms. Your chances of installing a fibre-optic network without that these days are mostly non-existent. The Congolese obviously chose the Chinese, who undoubtedly paid the most kick-back to the corrupt government officials who approved the purchase. And before you start on about corruption elsewhere, look at your own government wherever you are. Almost all of them are a bent as a 9 dollarpound note.
This time it's moral corruption, but we seem to either be going through an epidemic of corruption, or else it's always been there but was ignored and tolerated. Every day I find myself more and more disappointed in just how base, corrupt, and despicable the human race is becoming. These days everything seems to be about appearance and how things look, rather than about ethics or empathy.
IBM seem to be determined to deter the best sales people from working for them. Short sighted greedy morons probably to blame, as usual.
The best sales commission system I have worked with (I'm not in sales myself) had unlimited commission on all new sales and repeat sales, but the commission on support contracts was a fixed percentage and could not be discounted. Because of that Support was well funded and staffed and generated a small cash profit as well as many happy customers which in turn resulted in repeat and additional sales both with the same customer and by word of mouth. Prior to that the sales people often discounted support contracts resulting in us being told that support was a cost centre.
"the phenomenon engulfing the town of Gorleston, literally on the arse end of England (Norfolk)."
The arse(hole) of England is London. You can tell because you can smell the sh!t emanating from it just by standing downwind or watching/reading any government press briefing, or by reading any of the Daily Tabloids. Gorleston is better described as a pimple on the right buttock of England.
As for the Crockers of the newly christened "TeaPot" roundabout on the A47, good on ya. :-)
Sounds to me like Nominet has outlived it's usefulness and that UK domain registrations need to be passed to a company more fit for purpose. Seems like everywhere you look these days someone is lying, cheating, deceiving and conspiring just so they can squirrel money away in their offshore bank accounts.
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