Posts by ThePhantomBovine

No wonder Marvin the robot was miserable: AI will make the rich richer – and the poor poorer

AI is irrelevant

It isn't AI that will make the rich richer and the poor poorer, it's capitalism without safeguards that does that. AI is irrelevant to the systemic cause of extreme financial inequality.

NHS could have 'fended off' WannaCry by taking 'simple steps' – report

It's all so simple..

GP's could take the simple step of seeing their patients. Surgeons could take the simple step of operating on all the patients on their list. Consultants could take the simple step of seeing and treating all the patients on their list. Domestics could eliminate hospital outbreaks by taking the simple step of cleaning the hospital. You could go on indefinitely with gross oversimplifications of 'what was needed', but as always the prerequisites to achieving the 'simple' steps are usually not as straight forward. All departments within hospitals are plate spinning, and when one of those plates falls, it's all too common to see scapegoating of those with no control over the number of spinning plates because it all comes down to money and power over how it is spent.

Dropbox defends fantastically badly timed Condoleezza Rice appointment

Re: What does she actually bring to the table?

"The important thing is for Dropbox to correct this mistake as soon as possible. It's been going on for too many days already."

Not really, as the individual/s that appointed her clearly had no moral or ethical objections to her previous actions. If she were to go, then those individuals remain. Doesn't her appointment to the position give a bit of a strong hint as to the values of those running DropBox?

TortureBox just got dropped.

Too late, Blighty! Samsung boffins claim breakthrough graphene manufacturing success

Not really, given the complexity, effort and money involved in R&D of new materials. The idea of a patent is to stop a company from investing millions in discovering how to make a better material, only for a rival to steal those discoveries at no cost. It's only fair that a company investing the time and money gets an appropriate return on their investment. I'm sure the patent on the Graphene technology won't last for more than a few hundred years.

Samsung pulls Galaxy S3 update as users moan: It's PANTS

Re: Ahh

You mention android, but what has android got to do with this? Given that I have an i9300 and regularly update my AOKP ROM and haven't had issues. Is my phone hardware magically different to other people? Try looking at the crap installed by Samsung and others who put their crippleware on top of android. AOSP is android, don't confuse this with buggy bloatwared versions.

Gaming co ESEA hit by $1m fine for hidden Bitcoin mining enslaver

Is this really new?

Imagine having a top 10 free android game and implementing this in a version update. The processing power may be small, but on millions of devices chipping away? Or maybe introduced as firmware updates on millions of routers worldwide. Maybe the big companies have been embedding similar code in lots of software/firmware for other tasks for years. Ever had windows processess that overutilize the cpu for no good reason or routers that keep rebooting from overheating? (cue spooky sinister music :-) ).

Right, that's IT: We'll encrypt INTERNAL traffic to thwart NSA - Yahoo

"Yahoo has never given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency. Ever,"

Would that be just US government agencies or does does that include GCHQ et al?

Does that also include third party companies hired by any particular government that then pass the data on.

"Yahoo has never given access to our data centers" Does this mean access was just taken?

"our data centers" do they pass the data on to other data centres not owned by them?

Just a few thoughts

We want to put a KILL SWITCH into your PHONE, say Feds

Can the government ever win?

I love the idea of a kill switch. I say put one in every piece of electrical equipment. How many people have been beaten, stabbed or murdered for the content of their wallet, house or for their phone. If a phone holds no value, why steal it. If a wallet only contains digital currency that can't be used by a theif, why steal it.

The only people who wouldn't be happy with this are the insurance companies who cover theft of electrical items. Implementing these kill technologies would be a cost for the company not the government, and as people pay tax that pays for government law enforcement, think about how much tax money goes towards dealing with theft related crime.

Sony sucker-punches Xbox on price, specs, DRM-free gaming

Re: WMA

Just imagine what the state of the mobile industry would be if Google hadn't funded the development of Android. At that time, pretty much every decent touchscreen phone was an Apple phone that wouldn't play DRM free and patent free formats such as ogg vorbis and theora. If Apple had cornered the market they'd look next into Apple games consoles and we'd be looking at the same draconian DRM/codec/app restrictions that they apply to their phones.

Sony aren't sticking it to the (sweaty) man, they're just competing for customers. Look at the HDDVD/Blu-ray war. I had both players and I can tell you that HDDVD should have won from a "what's best for the consumer" point of view as the players were faster to play, cheaper, the format was complete. Instead they teamed up with some big studios and forced us to use slow players with compatibility and load speed problems.