Posts by Mr Booth

US labor official suggests Amazon's Alabama workers rerun that unionization vote

I wasted valuable brainpower responding to this.

You do know what a free and fair ballot is? Or maybe not if you are in the US.

Someone grab my coat please, it's the one with the stuffed pockets.

Pentagon scraps $10bn JEDI winner-takes-all cloud contract

Obligatory B5 misquote

"And so it begins....again." Kosh (the good one)

FTC approves $61.7m settlement with Amazon for pocketing driver tips

Just the tip...

Thank fuck I live in a "civilzed" country, (.nz), where tipping is optional and by choice....

Judge Vulcan-nerve pinches JEDI deal after Amazon forks out $42m to pause Microsoft's military machinations

It was the end of history....

Babylon 5 pic again. This drama may last nearly as long as the series did. However in terms of entertainment value; I give this 2 stars only. The lawyers must work harder. Mine's the one in the Omega-X Class Destroyer in orbit.

Shhhhhh: Fujitsu bags another £12m from Libraries NI as bosses fail to bookmark replacement

Re: £25m over 5 years

I take it you never worked in Libraries then.

"What could be possibly involved: a website, a catalogue database, some software and terminals for checkout, a few public terminals in each library, and that's it. That's nothing really new, you know... I mean it's the stuff of high school projects."

I showed this to the other library staff I work with and there are some lunches and beverages that have become ejaculated forcefully from their owner's mouths.

I am even going to print your quote and put it on the wall in our office. I will of course give you full credit.

I wish I had time to fully explain the role that technology plays in libraries and how we manage data, metadata and digital archives etc.; however my time is limited and I wouldn't even know where to start.

Do some research or better still ask a librarian for some help bringing you up to speed :)

Mine's the coat with the tattle tale strips in it, because RFID is really shit at securing books in libraries.

SpaceX didn't move sat out of impending smash doom because it 'didn't see ESA's messages'

ahem...

It's called Grindr.

And very appropriate in this case :)

Mine's the coat with.... well you really don't want to know.

Audible hasn't even launched its AI-powered book subtitles and publishers have already fired off a sueball

Just ask first :)

I work in an organisation that deals with publishers and copyrights all the time. We rarely have problems because we let our publishers, and narrators know what we are doing in advance. This is good because:

1. We use the feedback to decide if something is worth pursuing further before putting more time and money into a project

2. Any objections can be raised and subsequently worked through before the lawyers get involved; if it looks like lawyers are going to be involved, we can then go back to step 1 above.

3. Sometimes we get really good feedback and incorporate that into our planning.

4. Everyone appreciates being kept in the loop and over time it builds good business relationships.

It seems like tech companies these days are just doing things..."because we can" and not really thinking things through. Is this an Agile thing or just a Lack of Common Sense thing?

At least there should be plenty of egg to go around. Oh, and lawyers too.

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

some one did this before!

....0118 999 881 999 119 725..........3.... ahem

Cops use bread and riot shields in desperate bid to contain crazed swan running amok in streets

Someone had to say it

Dear Sirs,

May I humbly request a reenactment in Playmobil.

Forever your humble and obedient servant etc.

Mr Booth.

UK libraries dumped 11% of computers since 2010-11... everybody has one anyway, right?

Re: large print mills&boon

Actually the braille Mills and Boon is not that great, depending on the spacing (single or double) siding (once again, single or double sided) and whether the text is contracted level 1, or level 2, or uncontracted you can be "fingering" your way through a volume about 20 times the weight of the paperback.

Hence why I always laugh when I see the braille King James bible in The Book of Eli. We have a KJ bible in braille in our library and it is not something you can carry in your hand, or even on your back if you were so inclined.

What you want is to go after the thermoform biology textbooks, these have all the tactile diagrams you will ever need to satisfy your need for the personal "touch".

Cops called after pair enter Canadian home and give it a good clean

Re: anti-crime

Believe it or not, this actually happened to me. In my university days I had a lovely green '79 Mitsubishi Lancer GL. One day, I hopped in, started the car up, reversed out and had the feeling something wasn't right. I noticed the faint smell of cigarette smoke (I am not a smoker) and wondered if someone had been in my car. It was only when I opened the glove box, only to recognise nothing in it; that I had indeed taken someone else's car. I was mortified, so discreetly reversed back, and parked the car, locked it and sheepishly found my car parked a few bays down.

A few weeks later I saw the same car, and for shits and giggles decided to park next to it. As it was exam time I found a nice observation spot in one of the libraries and watched to see what would happen. Sure enough, a parade of people doing double takes, a bemused security guard and yes, the owner of the other car backing my car out of the car park and driving about twenty feet down the road before realising their mistake. The real kicker was that our licence plates were almost the same, the only difference was the last two digits were reversed.

FYI: That Hawaii missile alert was no UI blunder. Someone really thought the islands were toast

Re: Perfectly Understandable

My right pocket has a copy of "Duck and Cover" the other has a copy of "The Wasteland Survival Guide."

Got a Windows Phone 8 mobe? It's now officially obsolete. Here's why...

had a cheapie android once...

while my Lumia 1520 was in for repairs.

Found out quite quickly it was not wall resistant.

Did discover I had anger management issues however.

So not a complete loss.

And made me appreciate the Lumia even more =]

No worries!

Upgraded my Lumia 1520 a couple months back with no hassles- parallel imported too :) And yeah I agree with L05ER, eff Microsoft for basically killing off an awesome mobile os...grrrrrr.

Tech Trump: Silicon Valley steps into the valley of unhappiness

Re: The Silicon Valley titan who bet big and won?

Speaking of the Hunger Games, who would have thought that The Purge would become a documentary on the future of the US.

Class 4 weapons and below kiddies!

NZ hotel bans cyclists' Lycra-clad loins

Back in the days

As an ex resident of Rangoon - Rangiora, I remember this pub fondly. As it was the closest drinking establishment to my house, I remember being tasked to wander down to said pub to refill dad's flagons as a 16 year old. (I think the legal age was 20 back then) A quick wave to the publican who would note the "purchase" on Dad's account and off I'd go again. Good days. Didn't have to worry about lycra then, or rules, regulations and overzealous constables.

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

Re: I believe OCR is used for sorting the mail

Actually, of more interest to marketers. I used to work for a postal company, and the OCR machines we had were Siemens (yes) integrated mail processors (IMP). They could pretty much do everything. OCR readability was pretty good, I think the target was about 96-97% of all addresses.

The most interesting thing was that the machines took a photograph of the letter, not just the address and could store it. The main purpose of this was that if there was an address that could not be read, the image was then flashed to a VDU where a human could then input the address and send it back to the IMP, which would then route the letter to the correct sorting bin.

One of the crazier ideas was to create a database of every delivery point in the country, called NAD.. yes... National Address Database and assign an individual identifier for it and store the images for the letters going to each address. As company logos, etc, are often printed (and could be read by the OCR), it would eventually have built up a database on every household that a marketer would give their right testicle/ovary for. We would have known who you banked with, had insurance with, what loyalty programs you were a part of, who supplied your telecoms, power etc...

Fortunately it didn't go ahead back then as storing and sorting that data on a daily basis was going to be very expensive....now, I don't know, the concept would be even easier and cheaper to implement.

It's the not the spymasters, it is the marketers I fear.