Posts by nijam

Ex-health secretary said 'vast majority' were 'onside' with GP data grab. Consumer champion Which? reckons 20 million don't even know what it is

Re: Clueless

> Ask to see your medical records...

The request will be denied "due to GDPR".

> Transparecy? They've heard of it

Transparecy? I've never heard of it.

The UK is running on empty when it comes to electric vehicle charging points

As the CO2 output of domestic heating systems is comparable to that of transport in this country, a much more immediate win would be tp switch domestic heating to electricity from gas or oil. Incredibly the infrastructure is there already.

But of course that would reveal the real problem ... that electricity is roughly 3 time the price of gas. That's masked for road fuels by the incredibly high levels of excise duty on fuel, VAT on fuel, and the final insult, VAT on the excise duty.

It makes you realise the whole push for green transport is mere lip service from the goverment that now more than ever cannot afford to lose those revenue streams.

Hundreds of irate UK Parliamentary staffers sue IPSA over 2017 salary spreadsheet publication snafu

> ... claimants' names and addresses were public information.

Quick, somebody tell GDPR.

Make-me-admin holes found in Windows, Linux kernel

Re: The fucking registry. Again.

> ...avoids having thousands of configuration files spread around each one with its incompatible syntax...

And instead focuses everything in a single cesspit of incomprehensibility.

> ... use of the word "leverage" implies that you cannot simply use ...

It does, but that's not (necessarily) what the article author intended.

Our Friends Electric: A pair of alternative options for getting around town

> ... Milton Keynes. The roundabouts for which the city is famed will be a test of the Triggo's ability...

They already thwart "serious" cyclists, most of whom avoid the cycle tracks alongside the roads, presumably so they can totter aound roundabouts rather than use the underpasses or bridges provided for their use. (Other idiots are available, of course.)

Ad tech ruined the web – and PDF files are here to save it, allegedly

Re: Dunning-Kruger

> PDF often "just works"

Unless the originator has incorporate fonts that aren't available to the recipient.

> It just says "emphasize this", "use large text" or "make a list", and it's up to the browser to do that in whatever way it feels appropriate.

Didn't CSS abomination stop all that?

I no longer have a burning hatred for Jewish people, says Googler now suddenly no longer at Google

> The Christian church would have been potentially far less misogynist without Paul anyway.

You're an optimist. The bible has been "edited" many times in the last few centuries to conform to the prejudices of the time. Saul of Tarsus was the first such (high-profile) contributor, and the enthusiastic acceptance of his views by the christian church speaks for itself.

> ...the ones who have never sinned and therefore feel qualified to throw stones at others

The ones who have lied about their sins and therefore feel qualified to throw stones at others?

Ordnance Survey to take a poke at Pokémon-style gaming with outdoorsy AR adventure

> head of mobile games at Ordnance Survey

I seem to have become lost in an leternate universe.

Cyberlaw experts: Take back control. No, we're not talking about Brexit. It's Automated Lane Keeping Systems

Re: Automation

> ... not rocket science

Commentards have previously pointed that it's rocket engineering which is difficult. The underlying science is relatively simple.

Re: "restricted to motorways and to speeds of 37mph"

> ... reduction of unnecessary speeding up and braking

Dream on. They'll just do it automatically.

Buyer of $28m Blue Origin space ticket has a scheduling conflict – so this teen will go instead

Re: Source of wealth

> There is a word in a dictionary that describes such person.

Well, two words actually: normal human.

Amazon: Our carbon footprint went up 19% last year but we grew even more than that, so 'carbon intensity' is down

Re: Next logo design

> free shipping option for Prime customers

You mean the shipping option that the Prime subscription pays for? Yeah, there's a streaming service thrown in, but like all TV stations (streamed or broadcast), Sturgeon's Law applies.

Re: Big is better (?)

> Seriously? To fix these problems, even if they aren't really problems, you would murder six billion plus people?

Seriously, that's about how much population reduction would be necessary to get a sustainbable planet. How you go about is an unsolved problem.

UK artists seek 'luvvie levy' on new gadgets to make up for all the media that consumers access online

Re: A fiddle

> Hold up - that's the Conservative manifesto....

And Labour. And the Unions. And... oh, your can fill the rest in for yourselves.

Green MSP calls on Scottish government to stop spending £4.7m a year with AWS after Amazon 'dumping' allegations

Re: Seems like the least reason to dump them

> ... why aren't they developing their own cloud services instead of forking out £5 million each year?

Bec ause they're a government so (a) it would be £5 million down the drain, and (b) it would all go to either one of their good mates, or to a a multinational service company who would make a pig's ear of it anyway.

BMA warns NHS Digital's own confidentiality guardian could halt English GP data grab unless communication with public improves

Whilst "data saves lives" may be - in some generalised, abstract sense - true, in the context used by the spokesman quoted in the the article, merely a vauous political slogan.

Huawei dev flamed for 'useless' Linux kernel code contributions

Re: Open Source?

s/United/untidy/g

> A fix is a fix, and unless it's something ...

... that doesn't require a fix.

And as for comments, the very best you can hope for is that they don't contradict the code.

Realizing this is getting out of hand, Coq mulls new name for programming language

Re: There are two hard problems in Computer Science

> ... the UK school system was deliberately designed to instill much the same sense of a disciplinary hierarchy...

True.

> ...based on race and social position.

False. It was based entirely on teachers being in charge in the classroom.

Report commissioned by Google says Google isn't to blame for the death of print news

> ...I think they're too damned ... cheap to buy a paper

After having spent X hundred quid on a phone?

> ... I think lawmakers should get involved in fixing it

Political intervention in news reporting... what could possibly go wrong?

Re: Partly true

> The Metro is free. Put a £1 cover price on it and it will die overnight.

The Metro is free. Put a 1p cover price on it and it will die overnight.

Home Office slams PNC tech team: 'Inadequate testing' of new code contributed to loss of 413,000 records

Re: Realities

> ... include comments in your code ...

The best you can hope for is that comments don't contradict thge code, of course. Not just in this example, either.

Apple announces lossless HD audio at no extra cost, then Amazon Music does too. The ball is now in Spotify's court

Re: Yay!

> Digital is convenient but it's always going to be a compromise.

Sadly, the analogue processing used in studios is a noticeably worse compromise.

Cloudflare launches campaign to ‘end the madness’ of CAPTCHAs

Re: Hardware dongle

> The user plugs the device into their computer or taps it to their phone

Finding it amongst the stuff on my desk (assuming I'm at my desk) will take wayyyy longer than 32 seconds.

Yahoo! and! AOL! sold! for! $5bn! as! Verizon! abandons! media! empire! dreams!

Re: Pay me. I can pee over a hundred yards.

> I haven't seen many Equity Funds investing in Hansom Cabs, stagecoaches, semaphores, fleets of narrow boats, 8-track-tapes, transistor radios and penny-farthings.

I assume you mean recently. I'm sure they (or their equivalents) did in the good old days.

Stealthy Linux backdoor malware spotted after three years of minding your business

Oh, this is so tempting, can I refrain? No, evidently not:

> to make the malicious code less likely to be noticed...

... by disguising it as a different piece of malicious code.

UK government gives Automated Lane Keeping Systems the green light for use on motorways

Re: Lane keeping = lane hogging?

> "if these drivers didn't avoid the use of the left hand lane when it was clear"

When was it clear? 1970-something?

Re: Rolling roadblock ...

> "It has the potential"

It has been *claimed* to have the potential. No by road users, I believe.

Re: Why is the Holborn problem a problem?

> Pedestrians produce so much less CO2

Well, you could claim that pedestrians (including pedestrians who happen on some occasions to be driving a motorised vehicle, or worse yet, live in a house with central heating) produce *all* the CO2. All the excess CO2, at least.

Re: UK Transport Minister

> Or no further knowledge at all.

How would we be able to tell?

Re: Naysayer

> A tesla would have seen the obstrution

unless it was blue.

IBM creates a COBOL compiler – for Linux on x86

Re: COBOL

> the language that never dies

According to some analyses, it never actually counted as a language in the first place. It always looked like a load of upper case letters shaken up in a bin bag to me.

> I never used it in anger

which may account for you having a soft spot for it.

Re: [Aside] Storage media

> I hate to be a pendant

Well, just hang on for now...

Yep, the 'Who owns Linux?' case is back from the dead

> ...any offending code could easily be removed and new, non-infringing code written instead...

Any offending code has long since been removed and new, non-infringing code written instead. Not because of copyright or its like, but because it has been obsolete since the last millenium.

Over a decade on, and millions in legal fees, Supreme Court rules for Google over Oracle in Java API legal war

Re: Unbelievable

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse", it is said. To which I point out the necessary addendum "except in a lawyer, where it is known as specialisation, and costs extra".

Re: It's not even open source

> Not so sure about that as now this decision just gives anyone who wants to take open source code for their own purposes, not donate their changes back and break compatibility a free run

That's already pretty much the case under most open source licences.

Re: Wah Wah Wah! Oracle! They don't like the ruling!

> ... Motorola didn't invest in keeping its 68000 CPU's relevant

ISTR Sun approached Motorola to collaborate on a new architecture which would have superseded 68000, but were summarily rejected ... so went it alone with SPARC instead.

And yes, at the time, SPARC did indeed run rings round contemporary Intel offerings.

While truly self-driving cars are surely just around the corner, for now here's an AI early-warning system for your semi-autonomous ride

> ... self-driving cars are surely just around the corner ...

Best place for them.

AI recommendations fail fans who like hard rock and hip hop – official science

> People who prefer softer music, which is a limited set of genres...

meaning "People who prefer softer music, which is a vast range of indistinguishably bland 'songs'..."

Mullet over: Aussie boys' school tells kids 'business in the front, party in the back' hairstyle is 'not acceptable'

> The current trend ... are untidy, non-conventional

So, a trend, but not conventional? Teachers, eh?

Under threat of judicial review, UK.gov agrees to consultation before extending Palantir's NHS role beyond pandemic

> ... the government has now agreed not to extend Palantir's contract beyond the pandemic without consulting the public.

The "pandemic" will go on for many years yet.

Mostly because it isn't, and hasn't been for many months, a pandemic; it very quickly became apparent that it was endemic ... and would remain so.

City of London Police warn against using ‘open science’ site Sci-Hub

Re: How do you know you can trust the papers on SciHub?

OTOH

If you read a copy from an authorized site, how do you know it hasn't been edited? The conclusions changed? Reported data altered?

> The City of London Police deal with all or most online and financial crime

Or as was pointed out by a previous commentard, "...doesn't deal with..."

> The City of London Police, which has responsibility for intellectual property crime across the UK

Given the relationship with Elsevier and its ilk, should that read "is responsible for"?

> Surely the real issue is that a pirated paper may be subtly tampered with subsequent research based off that?

Not necessarily a problem, given that funding bodies often "steer" the research, or the publication of results, in the first place.