Posts by This Side Up

Alan Turing Institute to spend UK.gov grants on AI for air traffic control and banking

Re: AI for air traffic control?

Mid-air collision: Oops, sorry. We'll learn from that.

Happy 'Freedom Day': Stats suggest many in England don't want it or think it's a terrible idea

Shift of Blame

"many restrictions are being lifted with a shift of emphasis onto greater personal judgement and responsibility."

In other words a shift of blame onto the public for the next wave of coronavirus.

Apple's macOS is sub-par for security, Apple exec Craig Federighi tells Epic trial

Re: Think of the children

"Never been pushed to schools for education purposes. "

What about Element 14? They did have a go at getting into education.

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Water's wet, the Pope's Catholic, and iOS is designed to stop folk switching to Android, Epic trial judge told

Switching cost

"Epic Games was keen to highlight, as its own marketplace allows users to run the same software on multiple platforms."

So why can't they allow users to run it on Android and iOS? Can't they give customers on one system a voucher to switch to the other? Or even an install file which they can carry across?

Brit MPs and campaigners come together to oppose COVID status certificates as 'divisive and discriminatory'

NHS App?

Do they mean the NHS app, or the widely discredited Serco Trash and Trace App?

Ministry of Defence tells contractors not to answer certain UK census questions over security fears

In what way...

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... does knowing your sexuality assist local or national authorities in providing services?

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"only question about gender had just M & F as possible options. Good start!"

And if you happen to be inter ...?

MPs slam UK's £22bn Test and Trace programme for failing to provide evidence that it slows COVID pandemic

Re: NHS Test & Trace??

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If it goes badly blame it on someone else; if it goes well take the credit.

So it's "NHS Test & Trace" and "Government Vaccination Programme" (complete with Minister who does nothing as far as I can see).. Of course it should be Dido Harding Test & Trace" and "NHS Vaccination Programme".

Rookie's code couldn't have been so terrible that it made a supermarket spontaneously combust... right?

Halt and Catch Fire

Wasn't there once an apocryphal IBM 360 instruction HCF = halt and catch fire? Type your comment here — advanced HTML and hotlinks allowed

Actually it was rumoured that you could get an IBM chain printer to catch fire by alternating between upper and lower case!

Copper broadband phaseout will leave UK customers with higher bills and less choice, says comparison site

Why can't ...

Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML OK, Why can't the ISPs and Openreach use the technologies they have to deliver the performance they advertise? I pay for 'up to' 8Mbps. I don't care how it's delivered. I do care if I'm only getting 300kbps on an ftp download.

Pure frustration: What happens when someone uses your email address to sign up for PayPal, car hire, doctors, security systems and more

An email address isn't good ID

There are many cases where there is one email address for a household, or where one partner uses the other's address. Not all ISPs give you multiple usernames or your own subdomain.

Who watches the watchers? Samsung does so it can fling ads at owners of its smart TVs

Smart TVs are Dire

I have a Panasonic box and the apps are limited to iPlayer, YouTube, Netflix and maybe one or two others I never look at. Trying to navigate iPlayer is tedious in the extreme. Surely this is completely the wrong approach. It would be far better to have a Linux computer with a built-in tv tuner, a bluetooth keyboard, and a tv application.

As for Samsung, I have one of their tvs (not smart) but I won't get another because of the appallingly designed timer facilities.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin. Hang on, the PDP 11/70 has dropped offline

Unibus

Ah yes, at one location I worked at we had a staff canteen that was popularly known as the Restaurant at the End of the Unibus.

Ex-barrister reckons he has a privacy-preserving solution to Britain's smut ban plans

Re: This could actually make $$$

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"... it could cut out the vast majority of smut on little Johnny’s phone. Which is 100% more that is achievable at the moment."

Doesn't that imply that currently we can cut out approaching 50% of smut?

Smart fridges are cool, but after a few short years you could be stuck with a big frosty brick in the kitchen

Re: Never understood this

"Consumer grade appliances are trash, with no longevity and (usually) no repair options[0]."

I bought my Servis washing machine c.1989. It was one of the first to use full microprocessor control instead of a big clunky rotary switch. It had a new mother board under warranty and has been extremely reliable since then. It's only now starting to go up the back end of the bathtub curve. Sadly the company was liquidated in 2011.

Go on, hit Reply All. We dare you. We double dare you. Because Office 365 will defeat your server-slamming ways

Why stop there?

It would actually help if they could ban top posting and quoting the whole of the preceding conversation unnecessarily.

Also users should stop gumming up the internet by sending megabytes of html, css, js, logos, tracking links, etc when a simple text message would do.

From Brit telly presenter Eamonn Holmes to burning 5G towers in the Netherlands: Stupid week turns into stupid fortnight for radio standard

No specific evidence

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"there's no scientific evidence to substantiate any of those 5G theories. I hope that clears that up."

There's no scientific evidence to substantiate any of those God theories. I hope that clears that up.

Bad news: Coronavirus is spreading rapidly across the world. Good news: Nitrogen dioxide levels are decreasing and the air on Earth is cleaner

Well, we won't want runway 3 now will we?

But if people are self-isolating themselves and working at home you would expect emissions from domestic heating and cooking equipment to increase.

Attention all British .eu owners: Buy dotcom domains and prepare to sue, says UK govt

"It has long been industry practice not to actively remove domain names from the internet "

Try telling that to EE!

Guilty: The Romanian ransomware mastermind who infected Trump inauguration CCTV cams

Windows powered?

"Each of their CCTV units consists of a camera attached to a Microsoft Windows-powered computer"

Do you need to know any more?

BT pushes ahead with plans to switch off telephone network

Re: Oh well

What about loop disconnec t phones? Will they be catered for by the legacy interface.

Btw it used to be 48v (traditionally backed up by 24 x 2v glass accumulators in the basement). Are they using 50v now?

'Every little helps'... unless you want email: Tesco to kill free service

There's a lesson here

Never use your ISP's domain for your email address or web site. Register your own domain then you can keep your address when you change your ISP. All you have to do is update the DNS servers.

Here we go again... UK Prime Minister urges nerds to come up with magic crypto backdoors

Back door and not back door

"... there is a way to both have a backdoor and not have a backdoor ..."

No problem.

Just don't open the box.

Brit transport pundit Christian Wolmar on why the driverless car is on a 'road to nowhere'

Autonomous vehicles

http://www.tvgam.org.uk/articles/auto.html

Something I wrote last year along similar lines.

Prosecute driverless car devs for software snafus, say Brit cyclists

Driverless means there isn't a driver

1. Please stop using "driverless" and "autonomous" interchangeably. A driverless car (SAE level 5) doesn't have a driver, hence the name "driverless" (no driver). So it doesn't have driving controls and can't switch to being driven by a person. Vehicles with lower levels of automation can.

2. Software will have bugs in it. It's only a matter of time before the right combination of circumstances will arise to reveal them.

Car insurers recoil in horror from paying auto autos' speeding fines

"Our view was that when you're talking about a ton of metal that's travelling at high speed on the roads, you should potentially lose that right to take risks with other people's lives. Our input would be that we think the updates should be implemented right away."

What if the car is parked in a location where there is no data signal? Do you set out on a journey only to come to an abrupt halt as soon as the vehicle picks up a signal and discovers that an update is available - possibly when you're doing 70 in lane 3 of a motorway?

What if the update contains a bug? Can the vehicle revert to the previous version or does it have to stay where it is until the manufacturer fixes the bug?

This obviously hasn't been thought through.

2040

Once again we read this nonsense about the government banning the sale of diesel and petrol engined vehicles after 2040. This is not what has been said. They are only proposing to bena the sale of NEW diesel and petrol vehicles (excluding hybrids) after 2040. It will still be possible to buy and sell existing vehicles at that time, barring further restrictions.

Flash... Nu-uh! Tech folk champing at the bit to switch off life support

OK, so you get rid of Flash

from the browser. I won't mourn its passing. But what do you do about all the sites that contain flash and don't get updated but do continue to be hosted?

Ten new tech terms I learnt this summer: Do you know them all?

Re: Broadband

and Bandwidth - this used to refer to the width of a signal within the frequency spectrum. Now it seems to mean capacity or throughput, or just the amount of time you have available for something.

Re: AKA iPhone?

Ah, Spam fritters! They served them at the canteen when I worked on the BSC Redcar complex in the dim and distant past. We reckoned they were made from dumper truck tyres.

Re: Testiculate

Wasn't it Adam Hart-Davis who coined that one?

Ultrasonic Sound

Surely it's an oxymoron, not a tautology?

BT installs phone 'spam filter', says it'll strain out mass cold-callers

"Presumably only a UK phone can generate a CLI number itself? BT should not allow a CLI to be different from its allocated number unless pre-registered."

A phone (handset etc) doesn't know its own directory number. It's connected to a line card at the exchange or local concentrator which has an equipment number. The software on the switch translates between equipment number and directory number. So presumably to spoof a CLI you'd need to access the switch e.g. by using a particular command sequence, but I'm not a BT technician.

Re: A Typical Scam Call I Get

Call from withheld, unavailable or international number comes in.

10s.

Answering machine pickes it up.

"Hello, thank you for calling. So that we can deal with your call efficiently please select from the following menu:

If you're a claims management company press 1;

If you're a boiler room press 2;

If you're a bogus Microsoft engineer press 3;

etc."

For some reason they don't seem to want to play ball. Can't think why.

School cyber safety spiel shows smut to 'Strayan students

Logging in

Ignore this post. Other login forms don't work on this browser.

Google nukes ad-blocker AdNauseam, sweeps remains out of Chrome Web Store

Re: Maybe they should've thought the whole video ad thing over

"Preferably big expensive adverts that they can persuade their punters are getting them value for money."

If I see a big, expensive advert I think "Why should I pay for that?" Same with a big, flashy shop.

Re: Maybe they should've thought the whole video ad thing over

"pissed off people are not going to be good customers."

You can say that again!

"pissed off people are not going to be good customers."

Thanks.

'Didn't you read? "Love me or hate me, as long as you KNOW me."'

No I don't buy that. There's no way I'm going to uSwitch or Go-compare because of their irritating tv ads. If I KNOW a brand then I'll remember to avoid it. If you stick a pop-up window in front of what I'm trying to read what makes you think I'm going to buy your stupid product anyway?

Stupid law of the week: South Carolina wants anti-porno chips in PCs that cost $20 to disable

Re: More Magic Technology

<<"Meanwhile the UK's own DaFT is proposing "new technology" that blocks mobile phones in cars."

So what if there's a crash and someone has to call the emergency number?>>

It's legal to call the emergency numbers so any device would have to permit it.

Anyway they can't even block mobile phones in prisons which ought to be possible using microcells or by erecting a faraday cage around the whole caboodle. Actually it might be more productive to snoop on prisoners' calls which of course they can't be making because mobile phones aren't allowed.

Re: More Magic Technology

<<"Meanwhile the UK's own DaFT is proposing "new technology" that blocks mobile phones in cars."

So what if there's a crash and someone has to call the emergency number?>>

It's legal to call the emergency numbers so any device would have to permit it.

Anyway they can't even block mobile phones in prisons which ought to be possible using microcells or by erecting a faraday cage around the whole caboodle. Actually it might be more productive to snoop in prisoners' calls which of course they can't be making because mobile phones aren't allowed.

Information on smart meters? Yep. They're great. That works, right? – UK.gov

Complete and utter bilge!

Consumer Engagement Strategy "has been informed by a range of UK and international evidence and seeks to drive uptake and support behaviour change to deliver maximum benefits for consumers from smart meters.”

Which tells me exactly nothing. Typical post-truth politician-speak.

Helping autonomous vehicles and humans share the road

Save drivers?

"That might mean requiring cars to save drivers, as Mercedes has already decided to do."

Um, I thought we were talking about driverless cars? I think you meant "occupants".

Hapless Network Rail contractors KO broadband in Uxbridge

Uxbridge?

Obviously it was near West Drayton on the Great Western Main Line and not at Uxbridge. This isn't the first time this has happened. Usually it's the signalling that gets disrupted. The problem is that they don't know exactly where the cables are even if they think they do. The cable ducts are buried under the balast to make it harder for thieves to get at them (most are copper) and every time the track gets tamped and new ballast is tipped on top the cables get pushed a little further into the cess or down the embankment. Even if they are shown on plans they may not be where they were when the plans were drawn.

Btw what's the new measurement train got to do with it?

Twitter suspends 235,000 'violent extremism' accounts

I wonder how many of those 235k accounts were Whack-a-Mole accounts?

DVLA misses out on £400m in tax after scrapping paper discs

Double taxation

The DVLA is clinging on to calendar month taxation so that it can charge double VED when a vehicle changes hands during the month. You pay for the new vehicle from the beginning of the month but you only get a refund from the start of the next month. That still applies if a car changes hands between family members at one address.

They could easily modify the software to charge VED by the day. A day's overlap would be acceptable.

The way to avoid double taxation is to sell the old vehicle at the end of the month, and SORN it to be on the safe side, then become the registered keeper of the new vehicle on the first of the next month. If you have to acquire the new vehicle at the end of the month then SORN it and don't use it until the new month.

BBC detector vans are back to spy on your home Wi-Fi – if you can believe it

Wouldn't it be much simpler...

to pay the licence fee out of general taxation, on the basis of the existing fee times number of households? That would eliminate all the costs associated with administering, collecting and enforcing the licence fee as well as the complications with free over-75s licences. Tax threshholds would be reduced slightly to compensate.

That would automatically cover all UK citizens watching any BBC content on any device at any time in any place. It would only leave out overseas visitors, and special arrangements could be made for large hotels e.g. through a tourist tax. Small B&Bs could be disregarded.

Of course people will cry "why should I pay the licence fee if I don't watch the BBC?". They always do. But commercial tv costs us far more than the BBC licence fee and we don't have any say. And with commercial tv we have to pay for not just the programmes (mostly trash) but also the cost of making the ads (mostly annoying trash). I can't ask Sainsbury's for a discount because I don't watch their adverts or those of any brands they sell. Ditto any other shop.

Btw there is no longer any such thing as "live tv". It's all at lease two seconds old by the time we see it - more for HD.

Adblock Plus blocks Facebook's ad-blocker buster: It's a block party!

When will ad pushers realise that if they interrupt me while I'm reading a post/article/whatever with pop-up windows, or interrupt the tv programme I'm watching and scream at me for 30 seconds, I'M NOT GOING TO BUY THEIR SILLY LITTLE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES,

Stop resetting your passwords, says UK govt's spy network

It's good advice

When I was working we had to change passwords every 45 days so of course I had to write them down. Also you weren't allowed to have any dictionary words or permutations of dictionary words or numeric or alphabetic sequences or repetitions of the same character etc. It strikes me that the more rules you make the easier it becomes to crack the password by brute force, because so many combinations can be ruled out. You can discover the rules by trying to create or change a password because the system will tell you why your password can't be used!.

On the other hand I have a feww critical passwords which aren't recorded anywhere. I can remember them but it's very difficult if you're asked to enter the 7th, 12th and 15th characters for example. And they are completely meaningless character strings so there is no easy way to remember them. On the other hand knowing my interests isn't going help you.

Britain is sending a huge nuclear waste shipment to America. Why?

Get it right!

Please learn the difference between "Sporadically" (here and there) and "Spasmodically" (now and then).

BBC telly tax drops onto telly-free households. Cough up, iPlayer fans

One more thing

Why can't the Govt just pay the licence fee out of general taxation and reduce the income tax thresholds to compensate. That would abolish the costs of administering, collecting and enforcing the licence fee at a stroke.

And is the licence fee enforceable anyway? We used to have detector vans which could pick up what you were watching on CRT TVs. With LCD screens, tablets and smartphnes it's not quite so easy.

Also there's no such thing as live tv anymore. With digital encoding, compresing, multiplexing and buffering it's several seconds old by the time you see it.

Youtube etc aren't free

They push ads at you all the time, and ad blockers don't stop them.

Why should advertisers object to ad blockers? The people who use them are likely to be so annoyed by ads that they wouldn't buy the stupid products and services anyway. A panel at one side is fine, but if you stick a pop-up window in my face a) I'll kill it straight away, and b) if I happen to notice what it's for I'll go out of my way to avoid buying the stuff at any cost. By all means make product information available - when I need it I'll look for it.