Posts by Beauchamp

How to get a Raspberry Pi to take over your Robot House

Re: Arduino

I concur, cheaper, faster and quicker to implement.

That said, the Pi camera isn't bad for those jobs where only machine vision will do, for example looking to see if it's your cat before unlocking the catflap (this is not a euphemism).

Microsoft no longer a top Linux kernel contributor

Why do you want my personal details for this?

Submit my details for some informational missive? No thanks.

Probably it all becomes clear when you read their Privacy Statement. If you have a weekend free that is.

Google cooks web dev teaching tool for Raspberry Pi

Re: Pi still a miss.

Two words for you: try Scratch.

One of the whole reasons for Pi is that it should do Scratch and do it well. Compare this to a second-hand machine like you will find in practically any house and it looks poor. I can buy a £100 (or less) laptop from Amazon which will do it better and doesn't need all the peripheral hardware (case, monitor, keyboard, mouse, USB hub, wireless dongle, power supplies, cables).

And the USPs of Pi also look increasingly weak when compared to any programmable phablet.

Pi still a miss.

Unfortunately the Pi still does not hit the mark, it's too sluggish when compared to everything else around. No kid wants to sit down to a machine that has a thudding lag every time an icon is clicked.

Introducing one reworking of an OS after another is just polishing a turd. The interface should have been the place to start, not an add-on (cf. One Laptop Per Child).

Google's motivation for doing this - like several other of their current touchy-feely projects - is because the public is turning against them.

What has happened to all these Pis that have been sold? My guess is that half of them are on techy Dads' desks waiting to be made into that project that will never happen.

Meanwhile, the kids are doing Scratch or Python just fine on some other machine in the house.

Going lo-tech to avoid NSA snooping? Unlucky - they read snailmail too

To and from?

I would say that it seems unlikely that they would collect meta-information from the letter contents.

Most likely is that they are collecting only the To: and From: fields for their database. The connections between people are the richest source of information that is likely to be easily derivable from such communication since anything that was hidden in the message could not be routinely looked for.

After all is said and done there are a very, very large number of ways to hide information in what seems to be plaintext.

I'm particularly interested in how they could conceal that a letter has been opened.

Windows 8.1: Here at last, but is it good enough?

Re: Snapshot of windows in my life

GNU/Linux doesn't have a marketing department.

If a major change is bad then it dies in the the extremely harsh user ecosystem and is replaced by something better. Evolutionary forces are the most powerful driver of *everything*, software included.

Microsoft's murder most foul: TechNet is dead

GNU/Linux is now the only show in town.

A completely GNU/Linux business ecosystem is the provably correct business strategy for almost all companies not directly involved with producing MS compatible software.

We long ago classified MS as another dead technology. Their business plan seems to be orientated around producing new things, not better or compatible things. This is a business risk for any company with a horizon that is more than 2-3 years.

PRISM leaks: WTF, you don't spy on your friends, splutters EU

Perspective on spying.

I think some perspective is required here from the plebians' point of view.

Our tiny local branch-line rail station has 16 CCTV cameras, some of which have microphones in them.

All the roads around here have large-scale ANPR camera coverage, as do many of the local side streets.

All of the shopping arcades, malls and pedestrian only zones have CCTV which is not only ubiquitous but deliberately made to stand out clearly (as a threat). Many of the podia used also have microphones.

Even though it is done blatantly and much of it by private companies, this is all apparently fine.

But when an embassy is bugged, it is a major issue.