Posts by Andy Non 1813 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jul 2014
with what users want, or Microsoft is. Either way, each new feature or direction MS takes makes me glad I abandoned Windows and switched to Linux long ago. MS seem determined to get their hands on your files and data by hook or by crook.
I guess that nowadays it is very much a case of what Microsoft wants being the direction of travel. More bucks to the bottom line is all that matters to them and screw the users, they are incidental.
Who actually gains from click fraud? Who is behind it? All I can think of is companies doing click fraud against their competitors to drive up their ad costs.
The obvious benefactor would be whoever is selling the ad space such as Yahoo, but apparently they are trying to clamp down on click fraud, so who is behind it?
Exactly. There are so many scams and dodgy ads, the safest bet is to ignore the lot of them or ideally block them all. Facebook and other social media companies have no interest in turning away paying scammers. They are rotten to the core.
Back when I used to have a facebook account, I often reported spam and blatant scam ads that appeared in my timeline and was routinely ignored. I stopped reporting them after a while and in the end I quit facebook completely due to the deluge of crap and scams in my feed.
I'm somewhat surprised that there are still gullible punters using facebook who actually part with money to these scammers. More money than sense.
I attended was a total disaster. The organisers had somehow managed to forget to advertise the event until the last minute. The result was around forty stands, including my own and barely a handful of visitors throughout the day. We all ended up just going around each others stands and having a chat. A complete waste of time and expense.
I really noticed the different handling when I went from a smallish motorbike to a very heavy Kawasaki Z1300, 6 cylinder monster. It was noticeable I had to nudge the bar to the right when turning left, to drop the bike towards the left then straighten up again.
When I made the switch to Mint Cinnamon from Windows 8.1 it was partly on the look of the desktop and menu system, which were similar to Windows 7 and that it was one of the highest downloaded distros and was well maintained not an arcane version of Linux. I ended up sticking with it and a decade has now passed using it. Other factors, for me anyway, were that it came with Firefox, Thunderbird and Libreoffice which I used in Windows anyway. Mint just worked out of the tin so to speak. No faffing around. Minimal learning curve.
Dual-boot is how I got into Linux many years ago. It worked well for a few months, then a major Windows update overwrote the dual-boot and trashed Linux making it a Windows only machine again. That was the last straw so got rid of Windows instead, making the machine 100% Linux. Not looked back since.
Yes, just download the one you want and make an installation USB stick with it. Then just boot the computer up with the stick in and it will boot up into Linux. (If it doesn't you will need to go into the BIOS to specify 1st choice for bootup is using the stick, not the hard drive). You can typically have a play with Linux at this point and if you like it, tell it to install it fully to the hard drive.
I've been using Mint (Cinnamon) for around a decade now and find it clean and simple to use, free of bloat. It just does what I need an OS to do, stay in the background and let me get on with stuff. I can't imagine ever going back to Windows, despite using it from the earliest versions and earning my living writing software for DOS then Windows machines.
Ouch! Didn't know that.
Anything to do with printer ink is a horrible messy task. Back in the day I bought a contraption for the computer dept to re-ink the large ink ribbon spools used in the massive DEC line printers to save a few quid. Quickly the IT staff refused to use it and I got stuck with the job myself. We soon went back to buying new ribbons.
I'd say it needs to be minimized for space flight too, not only for the safety of the crew but also for the future of space flight. If the Starliner blows up on the launch pad it will a massive blow to the already beleaguered Boeing company's reputation. SpaceX could end up with a monopoly that NASA is trying to avoid. People in power may simply decide space travel is too risky for humans, resulting in no political will for a moon base or lots of other space projects.
With Boeing's recent track record I wouldn't want to be one of the crew... not without highly absorbent underwear, a fireproof suit, an ejector seat, a good life insurance policy for my family and ... oh forget it, find someone else.
ChatGPT and all the rest aren't true AI, they are just advanced predictive text generators, trained on a colossal amount of text and they are pretty good at predicting what words, sentences and paragraphs to suggest in response to an input. There is nothing truly intelligent about them. So many people and companies ooing and ahing at the emperor's fine new clothing... he's stark bollock naked!
"Not sure how many suppliers still ship themselves"
Some do. Lately if I'm looking for something I can't buy locally, I'll look on Amazon and if I can find the item, see if I can discover a website for the vendor directly. It can often be cheaper to buy direct than via Amazon.
I used to buy from Amazon quite a bit, but hardly at all nowadays, I've lost trust in them as a reputable vendor so only buy inexpensive commodity type items from them. Plus I'm sick to death of them trying to cram a Prime subscription down my throat at every touch and turn.
I did that with a PS4 controller. The "genuine Sony" item from Amazon was clearly counterfeit and didn't work properly from the outset. I sent it back for a refund, bought one from Currys which worked as expected. I've started buying a few things from my local Currys store - at least I can take them back if they are faulty, Amazon has become a dodgy vendor for electrical marketplace items which fail outside the 30 day return period - Amazon just wring their hands "nothing to do with us sunshine".
The one thing I hated more than anything when I was writing software (I'm retired now) was any interruptions. I'd often have a head full of complex code that I was effectively running in my mind and needed to key it in... any disturbance from a colleague, telephone or pop-up message etc could crash my thought processes. Then it could take 10 or 20 minutes to get back to where I was. This sounds like the Clippy of programming. "It looks like you're writing some code... would you like me to interrupt and feck up your thought processes?"
That adds a frightening prospect to working in this field. Not only could you be fired if the scumbags gain access to the systems, you could also be facing fines and legal action by the authorities, maybe even prison time? Sounds like you need personal liability insurance as you would if you are surgeon etc. Wonder if it would even pay out though if the state imposed fines/punishment for perceived negligence? No wonder there is a high burnout in the field. Surprising anyone would want the job.
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