Posts by a pressbutton

The return of (drone) robot wars: Beware of low-flying freezers

Drones are limited in use

Do you live in a flat - no drones for you

Do you live in the sticks - no drones for you

Do you live in a 'nice place' where planning is tightly controlled - no drones for you

Do you live near any sensitive building (hospital / school / police station/ prison/ embassy / power station /........ ) - no drones for you

In any case

20 years after we worked out that if you want to call someone, call their mobile, not their house

I hope we are starting to learn that if you want to deliver a package to someone, deliver it to them, not their house.

Apple and Android wearables: What iceberg? It’s full steam ahead!

I used to wear a watch until I got a reasonable smartphone that was worth carrying around (email/satnav/kindle etc) - at that point I realised that I was using the phone as a watch as well.

Call me when one of these watch devices make it worth leaving the phone at home.

Capitalize 'Internet'? AP says no – Vint Cerf says yes

Never mind capitalisation, in the future there will only be one word

and that will be Big Brother

or is that big brother

hang on, that is two words

BBC post-Savile culture change means staff can 'speak truth to power'

Re: I don't believe a word of it

When the pro Brexit group complain about pro EU coverage and the pro EU group complain about the pro Brexit coverage then something is as it should be.

Well, maybe

However it is undoubtedly true that the BBC is biased

To the centre.

Gillian Anderson: The next James Jane Bond?

Re: The future...

"Who is 001?

You are number 6"

Problems with identification everywhere...

You wanted innovation? We gave you Clippy the Paperclip in your IM client

Re: I will pay good money...

Sir,

I think you are looking for the nearest open public library.

Ad-blocker blocking websites face legal peril at hands of privacy bods

Re: @FF22 no one pays attention to them?? - Hamlet Ads

Air on a G string - JS Bach

Introduced me to classical music

Have a pint for reminding me

Re: Bull

I can see why they wont do (A)

24/04/2016 10:00 Some of your ads are serving up malware and are directly from you

24/04/2016 10:15 Aware user spots something odd, emails publisher

24/04/2016 10:17 Email arrives

24/04/2016 10:30 No-one reads the email

24/04/2016 16:30 No-one reads the email

25/04/2016 08:30 Someone reads the email.

25/04/2016 09:30 Malware removed

30,000 people have been exposed to malware 300 had to do something manually, 30 lost data

At the very least your sites reputation now has rather diminished value.

Quite probably (IANAL) if you did not take timely action once informed, you have liability for loss and consequential loss. At what point 'timely' is is arguable, but probably shortly after 24/04/2016 10:17.

How IT are you? Find out now in our HILARIOUS quiz!

Re: The future...

A user calls to report a non-working printer. Do you...

(a) suggest they turn it off and back on again?

....

I always suggest they turn it on and then back off again and that performs as expected every time so far.

UK Home Office seeks secret settlements over unlawful DNA retention

Re: whats wrong with retaining DNA data?

Actually it would make the database less useful.

Any reasonably competent burglar would buy a bag of DNA (dust from a vacuum cleaner) that has been taken from a bus/cinema.

What my DNA is is none of HMG's business - and why should I pay taxes for them to keep it and make it searchable?

DNA does not uniquely identify everyone - your identical twin has the same DNA as you. and the level of uniqueness depends on hte number of markers matched.

The current balance where people who have a conviction have their DNA retained may not be perfect, but it is reasonable up to a point - why should I pay taxes for the police to find the criminals and then DNA match them again?

Boffins urged to publish in free journals by science sugardaddy

Re: Not before time!

Welcome's words are like a straw in the wind that was harvested from a marshy area.

Pun overextension failure imminent

Why should you care about Google's AI winning a board game?

still do not know what intelligence is

A bird can fly better than me - is it more intelligent than me - no, I think we can agree the ability to fly is not a proxy for 'intelligence' not least as we can build planes

A computer beat the world champion at go - is it more intelligent then me - I do not think so but some may debate this, I would say within the domain of playing Go it is but the ability to play Go is not a full proxy for 'intelligence' not least as we can build computers.

Intelligence is partly determined by the 'world' that is open to the 'person' being 'tested'

The machine that wins at Go will not play Scrabble afterwards - or football.

Intelligence is also partly determined by intentionality, I want to play scrabble, not Go.

I am not a professional in this field or philosophy. I do not intend my comment to imply that a blind or disabled person is less intelligent than someone who can see etc.

Indeed we don't really want truly intelligent 'non-person' entities - they won't be as good/efficient at making cars etc as the AI that are optimised for the job.

To those who criticise the Go AI as something that just 'learnt by studying past papers', it isnt quite that simple, it 'studied past papers' then 'competed against itself' and google picked the champion - the best AI.

Out in human space many people started playing Go by studying what other people did and then competed against each other and from that emerged a world champion...

Aye, AI: Cambridge's Dr Sean Holden talks to El Reg about our robot overlords

I think it might have been Esther Dyson

The best one I read was what that AI in Computing is

"The raisins in a loaf of raisinbread"

That was back when context sensitive help was thought of as AI.

How exactly do you rein in a wildly powerful AI before it enslaves us all?

Why should AI be smarter

-We don't even know what smart is

We're doing SETI the wrong and long way around, say boffins

Re: Smarter than us

+1

Both books are excellent and I have pre-ordered the third.

Not typical SF - this is written by someone living in china and provides a genuinely different view on life / politics etc .

Have a beer for that suggestion

Investigatory Powers Bill lands in Parliament amid howls over breadth of spying powers

Re: ISP level protection

I am given to understand Germany has some fairly good privacy laws

Samsung off the hook as $120m Apple patent verdict tossed

Re: Geez!

Not quite, the market will find a solution, like not selling that phone model in the USA.

This could be one reason why Xaiomi/ Huwaei have not pushed hard into America.

They have better things to do than be sued - like having a beer

Coding is more important than Shakespeare, says VC living in self-contained universe

The Economist...

"The Economist is, of course, an excellent publication. But as anyone who is not permanently focused on the potential money-making possibilities that exist in change going on around the world can tell you, it comes with an excessive bias and places little value on the experiences and values that drive most of the people living on the planet."

The thing is it is called the ecomomist. You are attacking a newspaper about economics for being too full of news about economics and not enough about food & sex (or whatever)

(actually the arts reviews and obituaries are usually excellent)

"As subject specialists will also tell you, when the Economist does glance over their specific topic, the end result may be well-argued and attractively produced, but it is often distilled down to a catchy sign-off and misses many of the critical, finer points.

In other words, it is often wrong."

Well, as it is known as the paper that published an editorial titled 'What god should do next' modesty is not a strong point, and the standard structure of a 2000 word article is often to put a catchy last para in, as most people skip over the meat in the middle where the nuance is to be found.

This is probably true of most journalism - like this article.

TTIP: A locked room, no internet access, two hours, 300 pages and lots of typos

Where is GCHQ/ Teresa May when you need them

If the TPP agreement and its supporters have nothing to hide

... how can openness be a problem?

Learn you Func Prog on five minute quick!

Learn you Func Prog on five minute quick!

I don't see any fnords to pine for

Stephen Hawking reckons he's cracked the black hole paradox

If information is preserved, and the information refers to charged particles, what information being preserved?

Curiosity Rover eyes Mars' creeping dunes

Re: The future...

nah, luke

much more interesting

Dear Santa: Can gov.UK please stop outsourcing?

Outsourcing works...

... if the thing you are outsourcing is fully definable

and the requirement will not change at all over the life of the contract.

and the outsourcer can make a profit in there somehow

This is why you see outsourced server farms / hosting environments so much - excellent example of what can be sensibly outsourced.

This is why waste collection can be outsourced (and renegotiated as recycling is brought in)

In terms of many PFI deals, or outsource deals for local councils for the most part all you need to do is stop central govt changing laws etc, stop local govt having elections and changing priorities, and stop people behaving differently over the life of the contract.

No, no hurdles there.

UK says wider National Insurance number use no longer a no-no

Re: The future...

Back in the mid 80s a fellow student in the midlands had a number of jobs in quick succession.

He then got a job in the local HMRC as a data puncher.

Whilst he was there he saw his own NI number a few times and took joy in mis-typing the NI Number.

I am unsurprised if there are many, many people with duplicate NINos / gaps in records etc.

However, all payrolls (Pensions and Employers) will need your NINo to communicate with HMRC.

If it still works six months from now, count yourself lucky

those pants need an upgrade

In 6 months time I expect they will bring some out that smell of bacon and eggs.

...The sausage and brown sauce is diy.

black helicopters because much like rounded corners, there is probably a related patent / court case in progress somewhere.

BOFH: How long does it take to complete Friday's lager-related tasks?

Re: Tut tut...

The BoFH leaving a trail of evidence. That is going to come back and haunt him...

.. au contraire

The work logging system clearly shows Mary ordered the bleach cleaning and then passed the job on to pfy to take a rolled up carpet away.

Given the reference to nuns, this could be known as a hail mary pass

Doctor Who: Nigel Farage-alike bogey beast terrorises in darkly comic Sleep No More

Not good or bad just average

It wasnt as bad as some of the colin baker stuff that I just don't remember at all

I wont be remembering it photographically - there were no scenes like the one where the person takes his hand out of his pocket and his hand had turned into a grub (space ants on a spacestation)

Most developers have never seen a successful project

Re: Needs just a tweak.

No.

People shape themselves around the building as built.

One good example is bristol Southmeads PFI hospital. On commissioning iirc

- the x ray room did not have any lead in the right walls (so it was not used)

- one of the operating theatres had the wrong aircon so was not sterile

(i think fixed now)

- there is no staff car park and staff pay 0.6% of salary for parking...

(still not fixed)

I recommend "How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built " by stuart brand.

Having said that people shape themselves around the provided software too.

Re: The future...

Or does every developer occasionally get lucky once?

Stop raising the hope of the readership.

The only GOOD DRONE is a DEAD DRONE. Y'hear me, scumbags?!

Re: The future...

spelling of lynx ... sounds phishy to me

Bacon as deadly as cigarettes and asbestos

Re: Meh.

"Sooner or later, EVERYTHING (yes, including sex) will be PROVEN to be bad for you. Then it will be proven to have been false. Then..."

Sex especially...

Think about that whilst you are driving

Tesla X unfolds its Falcon wings, stumbles belatedly into the light

Re: The future...

Why the silly^W fancy doors?

Because it is NOT a Cayenne/ F150 etc...

Devious Davros, tricksy Missy and Dalek Clara delight in The Witch's Familiar

Re: Dalek Hybrid & a usual copout

Nah

Chances are the Doctor is it's dad/mum or son / brother

Mythical fathers have a bit of history doing bad things to their children and vv (Cronos/Zeus, Zeus/many, Tvasr/Indra, Hreidmar / Fafnir)

And Cain / Abel

US to stage F-35-versus-Warthog bake-off in 2018

Re: versus?

ISIS is pretty much an edge case.

... sorry if i missed something exciting but hasnt pretty much every large military action since August 1990 (outside peacekeeping in bosnia/kosovo) been

- based in north africa / middle east

- against relatively small mobile groups (admittedly, the iraqi army was not too mobile)

- with lower technology weapons (so far)

Adulterers antsy as 'entire' Ashley Madison databases leak online

Not so anonymous

Guido Fawkes website says there are 130 odd .gov.uk addresses in there ...

Careless at best.

Hey, folks. Meet the economics 'genius' behind Jeremy Corbyn

All missing the point

That Thatcher was in power and then Major (underrated imo) and then Blair and then Brown (overrated imo) and now Cameron

- and things are still not great

... should lead one to conclude that the party leader does not really have that much power or competence and we should be expecting less from government not more.

Whether that is

more local govt / trade unions / co-ops (left)

or less govt / more self reliance / charities (right)

depends on your pov.

Audi RS3: Keep running up that hill, with no problems

Re: Sierra Cosworth

It was a long time ago, but even so I remember my dad could change gear, sometimes quite quickly.

Sierra Cosworth

hm

Fond memories.

I was 15 ish and we had just finished breakfast.

Knock on door

Policeman to my dad 'Sir, do you own a sierra cosworth ...

Dad (just about to leave for work) to Policeman 'yes it is in the front drive' ... pointing at an empty space

Turns out it had been stolen for use in a ramraid but they lost control and hit a boots.

The only car I have been in where you could drop it into 3rd at 110mph and get a wheelspin, whiplash and 130pmh before realising what happened - joys of the m11.

Layoff-happy Capita charges staff to use cutlery in canteens

Capita is doomed

You have an organisation that has (hopefully) a non-core process.

Capita is an organisation that takes an existing process and does it cheaper using knowledge you have and it's own knowledge.

This will work just fine for a while, but inevitably costs can be cut further by moving the job to $cheaper_country, or innovation.

The thing is that Capita is uk based and so a company based in $cheaper_country can undercut them and capita does not innovate - it is a process based organisation.

Inevitably it will fall behind, one symptom of that is this, as margins get tighter the managers look to get the money back _somewhere_

The trouble here is that the company is - along with many others - overmanaged.

Those who do work on assigned tasks 100% of the time. There are a few people who have the job of mining innovation.

The thing is this is not generally the best way of working. those paid to innovate will not see the small opportunities those at the coal face see - the bread and butter of Capitas existence.

NEVER MIND the B*LLOCKS Osbo peddles, deficits don't really matter

Chocolate

Kids chocolate is nasty.

Is that the dark-but-not-bitter-and-quite-smooth chocolate of deficit, or the cadburys feel-the-hydrogenated-fat-globules-on-your-tongue defecalit chocolate.

Bruce Schneier's Data and Goliath – solution or part of the problem?

hmmm....

That mr file didnt like the book is no secret.

EU Commission looking for ways to DECLARE WAR on Google

Re: The future...

I googled for bing,

All i got was a video of a man singing white christmas

Ring Roads, After the Crash and The Age of Earthquakes: Guide to the Extreme Present

Re: Two apparently unreadable books, one a picture book for children

reading real Situationist publications before you make that comparison.

... any good examples?

Give biometrics the FINGER: Horror tales from the ENCRYPT

Re: Just not found the right 'biometric' to use yet

i think you are referring to something called an iprod.

'Utterly unusable' MS Word dumped by SciFi author Charles Stross

Re: Content and Style

if you know of something that compares successive versions and allows you to selectively merge parts, please tell me

- but please dont say cvs/git etc

Chipotle insider trading: Disproving the efficient markets hypothesis

time

the weak form of the emh may be correct if it is further weakened to allow for information becoming available at different times (includng never) to different people.

getting my coat because there is no clock icon

Tax Systems: The good, the bad and the completely toot toot ding-dong loopy

Re: A cynic writes...

Absolutely.

I would add:

One way of deciding if something is a science is if it makes predictions that can be verified and are correct.

Macroeconomics generally fails this - or has not been doing too well for the last 10 years or so.

Microeconomics (pricing theory at Amazon, seat pricing at BA) seems to be reasonably successful, mostly because practitioners dont make big claims about what can be predicted.

However many would say microeconomics is a frankenstien's grandchild of of psychology and accountancy and statistics.

nice in theory

however if this was in place back in the early 90s when mobiles were just introduced to the mass market, that high level of tax (as it would have been a high end luxury back then) would prevent the mass adoption of phones.

Thus preventing the rise of vodaphone - who contribute so much to the british govt in taxes.

Thus the icon.

More seriously, glass windows used to be luxury items.

Really, govt tech profit cash grab is a PRIZE-WINNING idea?

Re: Creator as King - data generated by actions

not so black and white.

data belongs to those who observed and recorded.

(apart from some medical data, but even then - try asking the NHS to delete all your data including the data of yours that has been anonymised and incorporated in a large set)