Re: "...that thinks like a human."
Damn you beat me to it !
Posts by Canopus
23 publicly visible posts • joined 9 May 2013
Hackers demo prototype security scanner that thinks like a human
NAO slates UK.gov's 'haphazard' sci-tech money-chuck plan
Thursday 10th March 2016 13:33 GMT
Re: Toys for the minister to stand in front of
But my friend the problem is that the only qualified resources are the very people asking for funds.
I mean who except an experimental high energy physicist can tell you if a £2M cerenkov scintillator
is an actual and useful piece of equipment or if it's a code name for a large supply of vodka?
Smartphones don’t dumb you down, they DUMB you UP
Saturday 7th February 2015 08:33 GMT
Re: GPS maps are not the same
I am not addicted to technology.... but sir you are confusing two things I believe which are "Maps" and "Guidance systems".
GPS guidance systems may not be perfect - by far - but they do something that no traditional map ever did which is propose a route for your journey...
This Christmas, demand the right to a silent night
Russia: There is a SPACECRAFT full of LIZARDS in orbit above Earth and WE control it
Warrantless snooping on American man was LEGAL in terrorism case, rules US judge
Get ready for software-defined RADAR: Jam, eavesdrop, talk and target ... simultaneously
Apple says sayonara to Samsung's ninjas: iPad, iPhone don't infringe comms patents – report
Antarctic glacier 'melted just as fast Long before human carbon emissions'
Devs write 'film my shag' sex app for Google Glass
Gates chokes up, WEEPS to Microsoft shareholders amid talk of CEO hunt
Sonos and I: How home media playback just gets SO FRUSTRATING
Monday 18th November 2013 16:07 GMT
Nice.... but not quite there yet !
Sorry to be a spoilsport but I assume that Sonos speakers ...for all their pricey greatness are still not fully wireless speakers...
They need some form of power source and - as I doubt they provide high power sound with two AAA batteries - they need some form of messy cabled wired mains connection....
The Sonos website artfully avoids the question and shows us carefully oriented shots of speakers in designer living rooms seemingly not connected to anything.... a bit misleading no?
Z30: The classiest BlackBerry mobe ever ... and possibly the last
Brit PM raps Facebook for allowing GORY beheading vids
Tuesday 22nd October 2013 16:07 GMT
Re: Kids today
Wow, you must have had a very privileged life then !!! May I ask where and when you had the chance to grow up?
We always find a scapegoat minority group to diabolize and bully...... my parents were raised in a WW2 society where "people of colour" were inferior and "germans" were the incarnation of evil.
I was raised in a society where mocking and bullying homosexuals was the "de facto" norm because it was some sort of "abnormal" behaviour and where you would be rejected by your peers if you made friends with immigrant kids (the darker the worse)
Take any slice of human history and you'll find copious example of such behaviour....Burning witches and infidels, ethnic or religious "cleansings", mocking and bullying homosexuals, progroms, ghettos and apartheid....
Modern kids are just been exposed to the current version of prejudice of intolerance on modern media... Not very different at the end of the day.
Instead of criticizing the media we might be better off giving them an alternative and more tolerant message... The same one that allowed most of us to grow out of the prejudices we were raised with !
MS Word deserves DEATH says Brit SciFi author Charles Stross
Monday 14th October 2013 07:08 GMT
A De-strossing Article!
I am a great admirer of Mr Stross's novels, but ranting - no matter how satisfying an outlet for the ranter -never achieved anything....
Give us some requirements, some constructive criticism... what features are so sorely needed?, which ones need to be "liberated" from the stifling limitations of Redmond's design?
Or maybe you happen to have a laundry designed spell processor you could share?
It could be put to good use to unleash waves of popular writing creativity.. or is it
the wrath of the ancient ones? (one may wonder which one would be worse...)
Why I'm sick of the new 'digital divide' between SMEs and the big boys
Friday 12th July 2013 11:48 GMT
Could not agree more
Hear, Hear ! I clap with all three hands (having had the bad luck of being designed by an armchair system architect) and salute the author !
He is one of very few voices that seem to remember that - under the herds of spherical IT cowsultants and the mile high layer of spherical bovine excrement they have been trying to bury us under - there is one basic down to earth concept that should underlie any IT project (drumroll please) - it's called : fit for purpose !
Ofcom set to release interesting spectrum chunk for unlicenced use
IBM's $1bn layoffs latest: Now axe swings in US, Canada - reports
Network Rail axes hundreds of tech suppliers
Hitchhikers' Guide was WRONG, Earth is not in a galactic backwater
Who is Samsung trying to kid? There will NEVER be a 5G network
Tuesday 14th May 2013 11:30 GMT
Welcome to the real world....
...of techno marketing hype. Nothing new under the sun unless you spend your life with your head in the sand (or in standardisation committees - which some may argue is pretty much the same)
Give me one technology company which is not using spin doctors to make bold claims about "revolutionary breakthroughs", "disruptive technologies" or other "killer apps" ?
You might remember in the late 1990's quite a few bold statements claiming similar breakthroughs in "3G" when the UMTS specifications were not even completed.
So what are we supposed to do? Hang all spin doctors and PR types and only let stolid engineers publish statements after they have been peer-reviewed by the "ministry of truth"?
Hummm.... but in such a world of perfect factual communication what would we have left to complain about?
M&S shoppers make quarter of a million NFC payments a WEEK
Thursday 9th May 2013 14:29 GMT
Re: Don't confuse NFC and EMV !!!!
Lee, you are confusing the radio communication protocol (ISO 14443) which is common to all of these cards (and NFC devices) and the applications which are built on top of said protocol such as EMV payments or Oyster transactions....
Yes a basic contactless reader - such as those frequently used for access control can "recognize" an oyster card, an NFC phone or a contactless bank card.... because they all use the same low level communication protocol which (I am oversimplifying for the sake of brevity) requires each "device" to respond with a unique identifier.
But compatibility stops here.... your "cheap" readers cannot handle an EMV payment transaction, nor can the contactless bank card readers at Pret, Boots or M&S be used to top up your oyster card.....
Thursday 9th May 2013 11:57 GMT
Re: Don't confuse NFC and EMV !!!!
Check your sources (Wikipedia is not infallible) and read carefully the articles you point to before posting a comment mate. Unless of course you enjoy looking like a fool!. (Yes articles and specifications are meant to be read - incredible isn't it :-)
As the article you refer to clearly states: "Near field communication (NFC) is a set of standards for smartphones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity, usually no more than a few centimeters"
If you want to get technical, contactless EMV cards are based on the ISO1443 standard which predates by more than a decade NFC. NFC was coined in the early 2000's by NXP (at the time Philips Semiconductors), Sony and a few others.
In fact if you took the time to read the specifications you would notice that NFC actually relies on the ISO 1443 specification and not the other way around !
Biting the hand that feeds IT
