Posts by John Brown (no body)

Details of 600,000 foreign visitors to UK go up in smoke thanks to shonky border database

Re: Why anyway ?

"Yes, and most of the recent terrorist atrocities in France have been committed by people who were on such a list"

And everywhere else in Europe!

Re: Why anyway ?

"Before Schengen most European borders involved cursory checks if any."

I remember arriving in Calais by ferry in the early-1980s. It was lunchtime. French border control/customs were no where to be seen.

Re: Problems

"New York is a hamlet in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, "

According to the Wikipedia..."New York is a small village situated in Tyne and Wear in the North East of England and is part of the urban conurbation of North Tyneside."

Not far away is Washington, Philadelphia, Ontario, Albany etc. :-)

Re: Problems

"For my kids too, I had to choose a nationality when registring their birth. I chose Dutch, for practical reasons, but when we got the paperwork back from the town hall, it listed both British and Dutch citizenship. I didn't complain."

Based on what you wrote "here" appears to be the Netherlands. So how does their system work that they granted your kids British citizenship? Real question, not nitpicking, as a friend of mine was born, to British parents, in Malaysia and they had to apply specifically for to the UK for UK citizenship on his behalf as a baby.

Boffins laugh in the face of Twitter's API limits. Now they can slurp info to their hearts' content

Web scraping remains a legally contentious issue.

Is it? If defined illegal isn't that going to put the kybosh on every search engine?

It's baaack – WannaCry nasty soars through Boeing's computers

Re: Now this IS bad

"Lives at stake if in-air damage had"

Yoda are you, my £5 I claim.

Uber self-driving car death riddle: Was LIDAR blind spot to blame?

Re: > at some point she was in the headlights,

"This strikes me as another weakness of the human monitoring. *If* we take the video on trust, then the car was being driven with dipped headlights which made it difficult for the human driver to spot the pedestrian."

Someone posted dashcam footage, at night, of the place where the incident happened. It's very well lit. Even driving with no headlights, a human driver would have seen the lady and her bike in the road.

"It shouldn't be hard to reproduce the accident scene, and find what went wrong."

Maybe with an Uber exec playing the part of the victim to prove it;s "safe"?

Re: "...a [Lidar] blind spot low to the ground all around the car."

"There is no excuse for not detecting someone wheeling a bike. Far smaller targets should be detected and acted on."

And that's the bit that's really, really hard. Is it a paper bag? Is it a brick? Is it a plastic or glass bottle? Is it something that fell off the back of a lorry that might cause damage or and old newspaper just blowing in the wind?

Are you able to read this headline? Then you're not Julian Assange. His broadband is unplugged

Re: And it's paid for and I'm so grateful to be nowhere

"if Assange is willing to spend time in a British prison for skipping trial in exchange for no extradition to the US then that seems the adult solution."

While I agree with much/most of your post, contempt of court is viewed extremely seriously by the judiciary and Assange is in no position to negotiate anything.

Re: It would take a heart of stone not to laugh...

"If we wanted him dead, he would be, embassy or not. Considering one of the Special Collection Services's jobs is to break into embassies and they're quite good at it,"

I don't care how good you think they are, or if they even exist. There's simply no way in hell the US, or even Trump personally, would order something like that in the heart of London At least not without asking Mr Potter for a loan of his "Cloak of Invisibility". Have you seen how many cameras there are?

Or do you think, for example, the Israeli Mossad would dare to attempt something similar in a foreign embassy in Washington DC and you'd be happy with that?

Re: Simple solution.

"He would probably only get a suspended sentence anyway"

Possibly, but jumping bail is contempt of court and when apprehended results in immediate imprisonment until a court can be arranged. This could be almost immediately, but might take time.

"According to the Sentencing Guidelines Council, jail sentences should only be used for skipping bail when there are serious aggravating factors."

Going on the run in such a public fashion whilst constantly thumbing your nose at the government may well be considered "serious aggravating factors"

Tesla crash investigation causes dip in 'leccycar firm's share price

Re: Still dealing with model S "autopilot" fatality lawsuits

"Lawsuits around Autopilot should be thrown out for the fact that to enable it you have to acknowledge the warnings, you get warned during use, and you are required to monitor the conditions during use. If you fail to follow these instructions then you should not have a leg to stand on in court."

Which, when you follow that reasoning to the logical conclusion, completely negates the need for the autopilot. If you have to pay that much attention and monitor it continuously, you might as well be driving yourself.

Not that I am NOT disagreeing with you. I'm just pointing out that all the legal disclaimers that come with this sort of "autopilot" are an effective admission that it's not safe to use.

Re: Electric Car Production Futility

"The carbon foot and level of earth rape is far too high in producing these totally unnecessarily fast and heavy vehicles"

That may well be true in the longer term, but you can't help but notice that the Tesla brand has brought electric cars to the notice of Joe Public more so than any of the other manufactures. It's also seemingly upped the game for the traditional manufactures who were, on the whole, pretty "meh!" over electric and hybrid for quite some time.

Cambridge Analytica 'privatised colonising operation', not a 'legitimate business', says whistleblower

Re: The BBC

BBC Radio 4, home to the new HHGTTG Hexagonal Phase.

Re: The BBC

"... continues to be very, very quiet on this."

You seem to be seeing a different BBC to me. They've reported quite widely on this subject.

Fatal driverless crash: Radar-maker says Uber disabled safety systems

Re: Human-To-Vehicle communications

"Remember "Sudden unintended acceleration"? Who are you going to find who's stupid enough to intentionally walk in front of one of these?"

Just attach the red flag to one of those little, slow moving delivery robots and kill two birds with one stone.

Re: We must ban all self-driving cars on public streets now

"In my opinion, the @USDOT should immediately impose a moratorium on all autonomous vehicles on public roads."

I agree There a plenty of non-public places that are very similar environments where permissions could be gained. Such as military bases, industrial estates, university campuses or, better yet, the large areas these autonomous car makers already mainly seem to operate from.

Re: Cause of Death: Ostrich Algorithm

"Exactly. See here

There seems to be an erroneous belief centered on the Uber video that the accident happened in the dark, whereas the fact is it the road was well lit."

Thanks for that. It's a very well lit area and I can no reason for the "superior" sensing ability of this car to have not seen the victim in time to stop unless there was something very badly wrong with the sensors or the data processing. She was about 2/3rds of the way across the road when she was killed. It was obvious she was a "hazard" from the cars point of view. It almost seems as though, as someone mentioned elsewhere on these forums, that the cars systems can't anticipate a collision, merely react to an imminent one (and it doesn't even seem to have reacted in this case)

Re: Cause of Death: Ostrich Algorithm

"Essentially, the car was driving blind"

So all this stuff about night vision and LIDAR is a crock from Uber and it;s partners?

Skip-wrecked! Boat full o' rubbish scuppered in Brit residential street

Re: Recycling tyres

"Not saying all tyres go this way but it takes a fuckton of them to be shredded to a smallish size to cover a 2 mile course to a depth of 3 inches."

Likewise childrens play areas and even road surfaces (mixed with tarnac). I also recall a report from Australia using cut-up sections of tyres strapped together and reflectors added to make roadside marker posts which, on the whole, survive being driven over in accident almost entirely unscathed. and a longer roadside lifetime to boot.

Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, off you go: Snout of UK space forcibly removed from EU satellite trough

Re: The Swiss are in it

"I have no doubt Britain can and will apply to join again but ESA is not just financed by member states but also through the EU budget so things do change with Brexit."

Canada is also an ESA member. Just sayin'

Re: The Swiss are in it

"That's the problem with remoaners, they never leave their comfort zone to hear other opinions."

And then there's the Brexiteer heroes galloping to the rescue to save us from the nasty foreigners, whether we like it or not. Take the blinders of and try to see that many people, on both sides, have their own, differing reasons for how they voted. You need a narrower brush.

Re: A very big catapult should do it...

"Well I believe that we are the only country to develop orbital capability and then kill it off..."

I wonder what sort of funding, if any, Reaction Engines Ltd will get? I can see them upping sticks and moving, lock stock and barrel, to where the money is.

Re: From the department of bleeding obvious

"Why on earth would we be due a refund? We are choosing to leave."

For the same reason we will paying £billions for "current and future obligations" to be allowed to leave. As the first many posts point out, having cake and eating it. I wonder how much any UK patents and software is worth it to the EU to keep, or, if refused access, how well it will work if any UK patented kit or software is withdrawn. The UK seems to have a had a significant hand in security side of it.

India: Yeah, we would like to 3D-print igloos on the Moon

"I don't like to be reminded of the second season too much."

There was no second season!

Re: See what l did here....

"and tell GUMMINT to just STAY OUT OF THE WAY as much as possible. [yeah here come the exploitation arguments, yotta yotta - *yawn*]

I think all the recent exposés of the likes of Cambridge Analytics, Facebook, Google and their ilk shows what capitalism gets up to when the law is failing to keep up and regulation is light.

Re: igloo

"Anyway, an igloo is kind of odd and impractical. But using LUNAR MATERIALS is definitely the way to go."

The whole 3D printing thing sounds like grandstanding anyway. At least initially, the obvious thing is something akin to a Bigilow expanding habitat.

Re: Trash disposal

"Something particularly hazardous like radioactive waste or toxic chemicals you might want to bury a little deeper and further from inhabited areas, just to protect against the unlikely possibility of a meteor landing on top of it and sending it flying..."

Or in case it reaches a critical mass and explodes with such force that it splits the moon in half, send the survivors on a magical interstellar tour such that they reach a new star system every week and manage to spend a few days at each.

Prof Stephen Hawking's ashes will be interred alongside Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin

Re: Way to go Mr Hawking!

"Actually, I would have preferred to have been made by a bevy of Swedish beauties in bikinis dancing to a Santana solo and cavorting in a Balinese lagoon."

Dunno about being created that way, but I'd not mind dying that way.

Re: Leap of faith

"In practice what matters to most members of a religion is the community, not the theology."

And yet they sing the hymns, chant the chants and say the prayers. Sounds like you are describing hypocrites or unthinking sheep.

"Indeed. Contractors don't get paid...."

Of course they do. Well, the savvy ones do. It's already factored into to the contract price.

What a hang up: US big box biz Best Buy kicks Huawei to the curb

I'm, surprised

While it doesn't have carrier deals, the company is still able to sell its hardware to consumers as unlocked units.

I'm shocked and surprised that no one has mentioned if Big Telecoms and Big Cellphone are not lobbying hard to make all phones illegal unless locked to carrier and unlocking them to become illegal. DRM/Piracy/Think of the Children, etc.

Prez Trump's $60bn China tariff plan to hit tech, communications, aerospace industries

Re: What Trump wants…

"Lol!!!! John Bolton is respected worldwide you moron..."

Your world must be very.very small.

User asked why CTRL-ALT-DEL restarted PC instead of opening apps

Re: Feeling Old...

"Not to speak of getting the interrupts hooked in the right sequence!"

I'd forgotten about that! A bloody TSR written by someone arrogant enough to think theirs would be the only one loaded so didn't gracefully pass on activation key-presses properly to next in line. If you only had one like that, you could load it last. If you had two like that you were either stuffed or had to find some way to patch it.

YouTube banned many gun vids, so some moved to smut site

"PornHub has the same rights and I really wouldn't be surprised if the gun guys get kicked off there too (for entirely different reasons"

Based on my limited knowledge of the USA, it does seem as though the areas with gun racks on the back window of the pick-up is also a very religious god-fearing area. They won't be happy that their family friendly gun videos are being hosted on the devils porn sites :-)

"Sex, Guns, and Violence: Sorry, the combination of these I see creating weird subconscious associations and possibly encouraging all kinds of nonsense ranging from domestic violence to snuff flicks. It's just too creepy."

That's exactly the association the "anti fun" crowd have been pushing for decades. Sex and violence is always associated when complaining about the failing younger generation, vandalism, deliquancy, video games etc etc etc. Of, and let's not forget the devils music, Rock'n'Roll that was going to destroy civilisation back in the 1950s. because it encouraged wild dancing and sex!

seemingly random application of their "rules".

Considering the sheer amount of YouTube content and the massive flood of uploads on a daily basis, I would suggest it's poor algorithms rather than "seeming random". We see it all the time with automated systems from parking tickets issued 3 seconds after the ticket expires to weird site blocks and take downs.

Zucker for history: What I learnt about Facebook 600 years ago

Re: The Four Yorkshiremen Sketch

"the original pre-Python version"

Yes, Alistair, the proper one :-)

Re: The Four Yorkshiremen Sketch

"When I were a lass we had nowt but a slab of granite and a flint to inscribe notable dates onto it with!"

Luxury!

UK watchdog finally gets search warrant for Cambridge Analytica's totally not empty offices

Re: A ruse by any other name smells like a cheat

"Do you honestly think that the reason the ICO is like this isn't by design?"

Considering that FAST, an industry group seem to be able to do unannounced raids with Police assistance + warrants on no notice, it does seem a little odd.

Re: Elvis has left the building

"Here's the logic. You are running queries against a data set of potentially 50 million users, what server do you need for that and how much disk space is required? Do we believe they could fit it in an office in London?"

I did a repair on a server grade desktop box a few years ago at a university. The user was running queries for research on a local copy of the entire NHS patient database, over 60 million records. No network connection due to data sensitivity. The HDD looked exactly the same physical dimensions as any other 3.5" HDD. Weird that it all managed to fit in there eh?

Corking story: Idiotic smart wine bottle idea falls over, passes out

Re: "How the hell did they get any funding"

"PT Barnum made a living off that. He'd have LOVED the internet. Ye gods."

Too much competition?

Re: 19 Crimes wine - Clever AR application

"Just build an app to recognize the label."

Or read the barcode.

UK's data watchdog seizes suspected Scottish nuisance caller's kit

"In the past there were phones at some level crossings and drivers of slow loads had to get clearance first. "

There still are. There is usually a phone at the crossing too.

Cambridge Analytica seeks data protection assistant

Re: Resume

"I wouldn't want CA on my resume"

I quite liked SuperCalc.

Re: CA

Stable doors, Shirley? Barn doors are for shooting at. Something else they seem incapable of doing correctly. Maybe they should be ordering a barrel of fish?

a data protection assistant

Well, "assistant" does rather imply that there is someone with a more senior title that includes the words "data protection" that the "assistant" will be..erm...assisting. But that's obviously not the case.

BOFH: Give me a lever long enough and a fool, I mean a fulcrum and ....

Ask, and Ye shall recieve

BOFH: The PFY Chronicles

BOFH: The PFY Chronicles part 2

BOFH: The PFY Chronicles Part The Third