Re: This was a particularly good one
@Peter Gathercole
I just wish more bosses would read them.
Noooooo.....trade secrets!
3782 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Oct 2010
Muting my cynicism filter for a moment, sounds like a nice try. But whether they are using badly-paid humans or AI, how quick and easy will the appeal process be? Particularly with AI checking images, I can see images being wrongly classified as trrrrst and an account being closed, and it then taking several weeks of complaints and 'the computer says no' before you, may, possibly get your pictures of your pet naked mole-rats restored.
How does this AI image matching work? Obviously it has to be a bit fuzzy, or all the nutter has to do is tweak the colours or do a bit of cropping to alter it. But how fuzzy? Does that photo of Brenda tapping the new Sir Thingumy Whatsit on the shoulder look too like a beheading shot?
Stuff the practicality...this thing will surely be a big babe magnet! 49" will really impress. Anyone with one of these on their desk must be really serious about their work as well - although what's the betting it's only the boss gets one, who uses it to play solitaire and surf dodgy websites.
...I must stop replying to myself...
Actually kudos to BAE for persuading them to buy such an unbelievable crock of brown stuff. It may well have had some clever bits in it, but "typing in an opponents name" ain't one of them.
I wonder, did they also buy any of those clever hand-held bomb-detectors that some British guy was flogging a while bag. The ones that couldn't detect anything?
""[It] works with keywords. You put in an opponent's name and you will see all the sites, blogs, social networks related to that user.""
By 'eck, but that's a bloody clever bit of software! So I just type in "Ali bin Mohammed" and it not only knows which one I mean, but can link it to his El Reg user account where he calls himself "Princess Alice", and his Facebook a/c where he's "Mad Gordon III"
Kudos to the software engineers. I wish I had their brains.
The days of baggage handlers chucking individual bags into the hold are, I believe, generally long gone. Isn't most stuff containerised these days? And people go to the aircraft down those funny stretchy tunnels - how do their bags get down to ground level? And when would they all be weighed so they know the correct overall weight?
Possibly a bit simplistic - I suspect they have a very complicated automatic system that can route many thousands of pieces of luggage onto approximately the right flight every day. If something in that system goes ffut then switching to a manual handwritten system would be no small job. It's a lot slower for a start. And then where do the horde of humans come from to read the handwritten labels and carry the bags to the aircraft?
@wolfetone
"I don't think, however, that the Tories/DUP will be voted in to power (as parliament have to vote on whether to accept the governments programme via the Queen's speech)."
You misunderstand the situation - if Mayhem offers an attractive enough bribe to the DUP then a majority in Parliament WILL vote to accept the programme. That's what a 'confidence and supply' agreement is all about. She'll only lose if some of her own backbenchers rebel. <FX> flying pigs, hell freezing over etc </FX>
The DUP are in government in the North (sort of) and they've already done a good job of turning the place to shit (£490 million?). It's only power-sharing that's kept them on the leash, and since the Tories are now the DUPs little friend Stormont won't be starting up again soon. Which leads to Direct Rule from London. By the Tories. Who will be told what to do by the DUP.
Have we got enough troops to spare for all this...?
The success of Netflix and Amazon streaming services shows that subscription-based media can and does work.
How true, every evening I'm glued to Amazon watching their local and national news. Their coverage of important Welsh events is unrivalled. And the hard science documentaries like Horizon on Netflix are hard to beat.
We need a written constitution and it needs to include something to guarantee public funding for the BBC. But having said that, WTF don't they sell iPlayer licences globally?
I suppose it's a step up from the mobile hanging from the ceiling at my dentist many years back - and soothing pictures on the walls.
Neither were much help when he accidentally drilled into a nerve. His response "Don't worry, pain is good for the soul" was even less help.
create a piece of software that could be sent to an individual's phone that would allow spies and russian and chinese criminals direct access to the device and so enable them to bypass encryption protection.
FTFY.
Would this be the famous NSA that has never ever ever leaked any of it's code, exploits and data to the wide world?
Turnbull told Parliament: "The privacy of a terrorist can never be more important than public safety – never."
I don't think anyone is suggesting that, although there may be a different view about the privacy of an alleged trrrrst. But even more importantly I think a lot of people would say that the privacy of everyone in a country and their freedoms under the law are more important than limited public safety. Millions died in wars to make that point.
Some weeks ago I posted the results of some very rough evidence of opinion on Brexit based on the response to various flagrantly pro-Remain postings on this esteemed organ (Fnar, fnar - he said 'organ')
At the time of the referendum up and down votes were split about 50-50
A few months ago up was leading down about 2-1
It's now more like 4 or 5 to 1
Does this reflect (as that 'nice' Mr Heseltine has recently suggested), that public opinion is now swinging strongly against the whole daft idea? Obviously commentards aren't particularly representative of the population at large (we're much too intelligent and have absolutely no social skills), but it's an interestingly trend.
Aluminium?
When I was having some problems with ADSL2+ the engineer told me there was a bit of Aluminium between me and the exchange that was causing trouble with speeds over about 10Mb, but he'd put in a request to get it replaced, and I believe that went ahead. (He may well have been bull-shitting of course!) I suspect their willingness to replace things depends on whether it's 20m or 20km!
Well, the really bright side is that governments with wafer thin majorities tend to have a high attrition rate.
Hopefully the opposition will refuse any 'pairing' arrangements, which means that every Tory and DUP MP will have to turn up for every vote, just in case all the opposition decide to.
Stress-levels for Tories start to go through the roof.
And on important votes they'll be wheeling MPs in on trollies from Intensive Care so they can vote (it's happened before).
Popcorn time...
There's some serious cognitive dissonance going on in the DUP (so, what's new)?
They want a hard Brexit.
They don't want a hard border to the south
They don't want a 'border' with Great Britain.
So, how will they stop those horrible Polish plumbers and Lithuanian chefs flying into Dublin, hoping on a train to Belfast (no passport checks) and then onto the boat to Liverpool (no passport checks). Ain't gonna work...
People are talking about Mayhem's pride and 'hubris' - jolly good word that. But I'm minded to dig out a lovely old Anglo-Saxon word to describe her (no, not THAT one) - ofermod. It was only used (I believe) in two contexts in Anglo-Saxon poetry, once to describe the action of Byrhtnoth at the Battle of Maldon in 981, when he allowed the invading Danes to cross a narrow bridge onto the mainland to meet his army (rather than picking them off as they crossed). His army was hammered and Byrhtnoth was killed. 'Ofermod' was used to describe his over-weening and fatal pride. The other use of the word is to describe the pride of Satan before his fall!
May be we now have a third use!
<ulster accent>
Yet another typical stereotypical bit of something-or-other put out by the MSM! What do you mean 'ulster' accent? There's no such thing - can't you hear the difference between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness? Seriously, there's a world of difference between the accents of Donegal, Derry and Belfast.
I remember having slight troubles with the accent of one of my Irish teachers in Donegal. Lovely woman, but very definite Derry accent. She was trying to explain how to pronounce something, but rather than using standard phonetics she tried to write 'English' words that sounded the same. Okay until she wanted to get an 'eye' or 'aye' sound (in standard English) She wrote down N-O-W pronounced 'Nigh'. Works fine once you get used to it!
Agree about pharmacists and other variations. Our practice has revamped the diabetic care - previously you saw a diabetic nurse who did various checks and chat, but then you needed to see a doc for general review of prescriptions etc. Now they have a lower grade person who checks feet etc, then a Nurse Practitioner does the main review, who is allowed to prescribe, so doc's time saved. Pharmacists should be allowed to do repeats (within limits).
Appointments are still a problem. Phone up in the morning and you'll get a same day appointment. With whichever doc is on duty. And you can't make an appointment a week or to in advance for a convenient time. It's same day or nothing - even for non-urgent things. Bit silly really.
We'll just have to pay more taxes.
I'm sure some of these gadgets are useful, but why the fcuk do they always need to be connected to the Interwebs? CCTV is very useful in a shop or even a home, but why do you need to be able to access it from Australia or Russia? There are cases for remote access, but it shouldn't be the blasted default. I had an argument with a colleague about getting a new EPOS system for our little shop recently - she liked the one which she could access from her phone. Why??????
What's outstanding about this is that it makes the same, if not more, sense than AManFromMars's posts...
So true, thinking of which, haven't seen him around here recently. Anyone know what's happened? Has the medication finally started working?
From a techie point of view it's all cool and neat, even if the economics may be a bit iffy.
What concerns me is the overall social impact and the tendency it will have to encourage more conurbations around the limited number of stops. People have been moving into cities for centuries for a variety of reasons, some of them good at the time, but we now have the potential infrastructure to reverse that trend. Why on earth should El Reg journos (or anyone else) have to spend an hour or more twice a day travelling to or from a job? Why do more than a handful of people need to travel from London to Edinburgh (or wherever) at high speed? Skype is even quicker, and no rubber gloves at the terminus! Explore your own neighbourhood before travelling to the ends of the earth to lie on a beach and read a book. Learn to savour the journey as part of your holiday. A hyperloop (or even a tunnel) to Dublin would be nice and fast, but I enjoy a few hours relaxing on the ferry.
What was that thing about the soul travelling at the speed of a trotting camel?
We're entitled to a government that is for America first, last and always.
One problem with that attitude is that you end up very isolated. No other country (sorry, no other sensible country) will want to trade with you as they know you'll try to shaft them on any deal. No-one will trust your word when it comes to international agreements because they know you'll tear them up if you think it's in your national interest.
Please Mr Trump, get on with building your wall all around the USA, and throw away the keys.
"I appreciate humor [sic], but there are so many topics that just should not be joked about,"
I don't think so - really there are very very few, but context, timing and audience is everything. Often joking about bad things is how people deal with them. There's a world of difference between laughing at someone's problem and laughing with them. The Maltesers ad?