Getting Google to return search results which were actually useful would involve them throwing their entire ad-supported business model out the window and starting again from scratch.
Posts by R Soles
29 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Sep 2012
Web searching died the day they invented SEO
Signs of ground ice found on ancient protoplanet asteroid Vesta
Asteroid Florence buzzes Earth, brings two moons along for the ride
Re: What a rubbish artists impression
Agreed - the Earth as pictured is 5 times too big.
Holding my iPad at arm's length, the picture of the Earth is about the size of my thumbnail, i.e. it subtends an angle of approx. 1cm / 100 cm = 0.01 radians. (Using small angle approximation).
The actual angle at closest approach should be approx. 8 000 miles / 4 400 000 miles = 0.002 radians.
I don't suppose my arm is really 100 cm long, but I was trained in physics, so it's close enough.
So who exactly was to blame for Marketo losing its dotcom?
WannaCrypt outbreak contained as hunt for masterminds kicks in
"The NHS's online arm said that Windows XP use within the health service had fallen to 4.7 per cent"
Which sounds very good until you realise that, under some measures, the NHS is the 5th largest employer in the world with some 1.7 million workers.
The large army of cooks, porters and cleaners wont need their own PC of course, but still that's a lot of computers running a more than 15 year old OS.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9155130/NHS-is-fifth-biggest-employer-in-world.html
Mozilla to Thunderbird: You can stay here and we may give you cash, but as a couple, it's over
It's the 21st Century: Outside of Work, Email is dead
To put my contentious hat on:
Work
everyone uses MS Outlook and has done for the last 20 years. It's what the boss tells them to use, so that's what they do
Personal
It's the 21st Century: People use Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp &c. Noone has the slightest interest in archiving years of invitations to go to the pub or links to cat videos. It's not even a youth thing: I'm 58 years old and never email anyone, outside of work.
Independent of whether Thunderbird is good at what it does, it is a product noone needs, addressing a shrinking/dying market.
This is also the reason the UI in Gmail and other webmail is so awful: there's simply no return in spending money making it better.
Facebook's dabblings in TV suggest Zuck isn't actually a genius after all
Sad reality: It's cheaper to get hacked than build strong IT defenses
Since you love Flash so much, Adobe now has TWO versions for you
Ooh missus, get a grip on my notifications
Ad-blocker blocking websites face legal peril at hands of privacy bods
Bezos defends Amazon culture in letter to shareholders
Yes, but ...
Bezos claims:
"Someone energized by competitive zeal may select and be happy in one culture, while someone who loves to pioneer and invent may choose another."
Select a culture? Unfortunately very few people know what the corporate culture is *really* like until after they've joined the company. And then they're stuck for a year or two, unless they want a dodgy patch in their CV ...
Is iOS 9.3 Apple's worst ever update? First it bricks iThings, now Safari is busted
ExoMars probe narrowly avoids death, still in peril after rocket snafu
Well, there you go:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_protection#Impact_prevention
"For both landers and orbiters, the technique of trajectory biasing is used during approach to the target. The spacecraft trajectory is designed so that if communications are lost, it will miss the target."
I have it in the back of my mind (I used to be a real space buff, a long time ago) that Mars probes were deliberately aimed slightly off target, until a later course correction corrected it, to avoid just this problem.
Any debris would follow the wrong path and miss Mars, the probe would be steered onto target.
But I may be imagining this (middle age problems, dontcha know)
Researchers find hole in SIP, Apple’s newest protection feature
Telling your wife why you were fired is the only punishment
I doubt it
"Management cut Terry a break: because he'd been a good worker they deleted the files and kept the police out of it. Their logic? By says “having to tell his wife he was fired and why would be enough punishment.”
It's a nice story but
1. Not even HR managers are stupid enough to think he'd tell his wife the real reason why he was fired
2. No manager would expose their company to such a risk: imagine "Terry" gets arrested in the future for similar activities. The first thing he does is wreak revenge on the company that fired him by revealing all.
The police arrive at company's premises and confiscate all servers and backups, and start interviewing the managers about destroying evidence relating to a criminal offence.
You say I mustn’t write down my password? Let me make a note of that
Clear desk policy
Way back in 2000 I worked for a computer company where one of the pointy haired bosses decided on the spur of the moment to implement a clear desk policy in a rather "provocative" way.
Returning one morning from an off-site meeting the previous day, I found my laptop had mysteriously disappeared.
This was the opportunity for said PHB to loudly deliver a security lecture to the whole office*, before grudgingly giving me my laptop back.
However, I guess the look I gave him was clear enough, as he didnt try that stunt with anyone else.
*nobody, but nobody, in the entire company locked their laptops away overnight, or used kensington type locks, because there was card-controlled access to the building, and all bags were searched on entering or leaving
No, HMG, bulk data surveillance is NOT inevitable
Man faces 37 years for sarcastic post insulting royal dog
Google tells iOS 9 app devs: Switch off HTTPS if you want that sweet sweet ad money from us
A pause in global warming? What pause?There was no pause
Why has the web gone to hell? Market chaos and HUMAN NATURE
'The Mystery of the Martian Doughnut' solved by NASA sleuths
Icahn slurps another $500m in Apple shares, demands buyback AGAIN
Let's keep this in perspective - According to the Daily Telegraph, Icahn's investment represent a share of 0,6 per cent of the total.
Which puts him in the top twenty, but he's nowhere near the most important. He is just making a lot of noise to try and put cash in his pocket right now, rather than wait for the longer term development.
Good news: 'password' is no longer the #1 sesame opener, now it's '123456'
Apple's screw-up leaves tethered iPhones easily crackable
Researcher hacks aircraft controls with Android smartphone
it's going to take some time ...
According to the CIA Factbook, as of 2010 there were 43 983 airports worldwide (of all types). Mr Google claims that 836 of these are international.
According to various manufacturer information, there were worldwide in 2005
312,000 Active General Aviation Aircraft
17,770 Passenger Aircraft
89,129 Military Aircraft
26,500 Civil Helicopters
29,700 Military Helicopters.
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/584144.html
Fans revolt over Amazon 'adware' in Ubuntu desktop search results
"You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update."
Mark Shuttleworth said: "You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update."
Actually I don't, which is why I gave up on Ubuntu.
With every update they managed to delete up my wifi configuration or deprecate the drivers or otherwise screw things up so that I had to start from scratch every 6 months with my wireless network.