Posts by Ken Moorhouse 4222 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jul 2007
I haven't visited this site for a long time. Tried to go into it, succeeded, but what a dog's dinner. The list of people in my network is scrunched up against the left margin. Never mind. Just on a quick inspection, at least two of the people on my list are deceased for certain*, another person appears twice (once with her maiden name, the other her married name). There are so many more out of date entries on there. My point is that this cannot be considered a reliable dataset to glean useful information from.
*Edit: Make that three - sad to hear "Mr Airfix" (Ralph Ehrmann) passed away in early 2023 RIP.
Without refreshing my study of this kind of thing, I would say that everything can be done using + (with or without carry), left shift and right shift. In terms of the underlying hardware logic components, everything can be built using either NAND or NOR gates. The TTL system's basic component is the 7400, which consists of four two-input NAND gates in one package. In addition (damn the pun) a system-wide gating pulse is needed to give the system some kind of memory.
https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/sequential/seq_2.html
IIRC when I did the WordPerfect Certified Trainer course there was a trick question regarding the use of WordPerfect for calculation in tables where, if you blindly followed the instructions, you got an invalid answer due to arithmetic overflow of some sort. The candidate had to use their brain to figure out that the result was nonsense, and how to adjust the method to give the meaningful answer that was required.
I remember when decent calculators cost around £100. Who remembers Metyclean in Victoria Street which had all the latest gadgets? Sinclair (of C5 fame) arrived on the scene and started flogging Scientific calculators at a fraction of the cost. Only problem was that it would give a supposedly valid answer to say, doing the arcsine of, say 1.5, or the tan of 90 degrees, whereas the more expensive ones would throw an exception. Savvy lecturers could, of course, build such traps into their homework questions.
Those with foreign-sounding names to speak up and insist that they are dead. The incentives are massive: no tax to pay!
Hmm, Musk could play that card himself, one day.
Will Trump backtrack because of all that lost revenue?
EDIT (My comment should be threaded under those discussing revoking SSN's for obviously alive citizens).
I had a shock recently when I put something into a shopping basket on a site that happens to use Stripe, on my desktop pc. A site, incidentally, that I had never visited before. I went to the Basket, typed in my email address and, just as I entered the final letter, I received a text with a code.
The form itself asked me to enter that code, which I did. Not only did that populate my postal address, but it filled out my credit card details!!! WTF? I tried this test on another, completely clean pc, with the same outcome.
I abandoned the cart and emailed Stripe that they have somehow connected (1) My email address (2) my mobile phone no. (3) My postal address (4) My Credit Card details. How was that possible? Isn't this a flagrant breach of data protection?
Who remembers when people thought that Cookies were dangerous? Well, this is similar, yet on an entirely new level, where your Credit Card No is stored remotely, then presented to anyone with the incentive and expertise to do so.
To their credit, Stripe responded immediately saying that I had bought something from site xyz, x months before (hmm, that's a bit dubious as well, social engineering anyone?), and I clicked on a link on making that purchase, something like "speed up future purchases" which maybe I mistakenly pressed (I don't remember so), but even if I did, my expectations were "speed up future purchases ON THIS WEBSITE", not everywhere on the f'ing planet. Stripe informed me how to "opt out" of this behaviour, which I then did.
Since then I've encountered similar behaviour with Shopify. The difference between them and Stripe being that the parent company there seems to not understand what customer service is - ignoring my attempts to "opt out". Have a look at their TrustPilot ratings, they are about as popular as companies that issue PCN's. Presumably there's no redress as they are in Canada. (If anyone can help with this problem, please let us know, surely I can't be the only one?).
Ok, rant nearly over. What relevance is this to Copilot flying my computer? Well, as Howard says, that extra checkbox might help the likes of Stripe and Shopify leverage themselves into your Browsing Experience in unintended ways.
So, not only would I not touch Copulate (thinking of it thus might help), but I am now telling potential suppliers that use Shopify that I will not be entering my details into their Baskets, due to privacy issues. Some are decent enough to accept orders via other means. If enough of us did this then it might make a few companies think they are losing business due to the checkout system they are using.
"This implementation has materially reduced average call handling times, and we expect further reductions with the impending go-live of automated customer data protection verification."
Wherever I have come across AI in ringing a company, or engaging with website chat facilities, I generally abandon the call/chat as my experience is you go round and round in circles. A recent amusing charade as an example: I ordered something from Amazon and it was to be delivered by Royal Mail. Now Royal Mail have not had problems delivering precisely this item before (by van), but this time it showed simultaneously as "Out For Delivery" and "Item Retained" on their portal. Their online chat went into meltdown trying to make sense of this: there is no "other" option available to actually deal with unusual situations such as this. When the post lady arrived that day she handed me a scrawled note on one of their cards saying "Too Heavy". Ah, ok. But isn't Royal Mail's core competency supposed to be in DELIVERING items? How did the item get to the sorting office in the first place? Anyway, I'm not collecting it (how will they get it from the rack it is sitting on in the sorting office onto the counter in order to give it to me, if it is THAT heavy?). So I complained to the Seller who said "no problem, I'll get another shipped out today for you". Little wonder that Amazon is wiping the floor with traditional delivery companies.
So, yeah, Royal Mail avoided an annoying call from me, improving their call statistics. Instead, they've got a problem sitting on their rack for the next 18 days when they will have to return it from whence it came. Revenue for them: Zero. Costs: 2 x shipping costs plus not being aware of a driver who can't be arsed to deliver a package.
OK software writers have shot themselves in the foot here. It is so easy using RAD to set up multiple ways to do the same thing e.g., onclick, keyboard shortcuts etc. Has each method of entering that event been tested? I would think not, the number of combinations is just too high. It could be argued that so long as the procedure call is tested, that's fine, but maybe the difference in coming from a modal vs non-modal form could defeat something important from happening, for example.
The number of times I come across situations where similar things can be done in similar, but not exact ways, is frustrating. Sometimes it's just a case of the amount of baggage accumulated by going in in a particular way that is infuriating, such as the alternatives to ncpa.cpl, for example.
What I think is ideal is generating a meaningful log from applications I write. Anything generated by MS makes my eyes glaze over. (I can recall Silverlight being particularly bad in this respect).
True. Upvoted.
They've indicated though that they are keeping it. As that stash grows, it could be used as an "index" for Bitcoin's value, as the scarcity of Bitcoin in general circulation will impact its liquidity, hence squeezing Bitcoin's value skywards. However, if Trump changes his mind (haha... tomorrow maybe), then Bitcoin's value may crater.
TL;DR On balance this probably won't have any effect on Bitcoin's volatility.
Yes, but...
Two questions:-
If the applications that you need to run need to "phone home" when you're disconnected from t'internet, then you've got your data, but you can't open or edit it. Or are applications going to be told not to phone home during an outage? If so, how does MS know there is an outage, rather than you craftily pulling the LAN cable out in order to have unfettered use of their apps?
Is the data that is hosted on your system actually accessible as such, or is it encoded in some kind of Azure gloop? If encoded, then you might as well go with storing your data locally. Eh, I believe that's called On Prem.
I fairly regularly get emails from a bank who issued me with a credit card.
At the bottom of the email on SOME of them, there's the following bordered (for emphasis) message:-
We want you to recognise a fraudulent email if you receive one. *** will greet you personally using your name and the last four digits of your account number: 0123
*** obfuscated
Two problems:-
One is that my credit card does not end in 0123.
Second is that I receive communications from them on 4 (FOUR) different DOMAINS. (Note: not email addresses, of which there are more, but four different domains). One problem arising out of that is if I want to search for one of their communications I have to do so using different search strings.
At the moment they are hassling me with PGP secured messages purporting to be KYC type messages which look really spammy. TBH if they want to revoke my card, fine, they don't follow the rules, I don't want their card.
How the #### is the average Joe supposed to know what is genuine and what isn't?
The US Gov just needs to instruct DNS hosts to selectively black-hole European queries (both ways). That would probably be the most severe thing that can happen, but there are milder versions which would be incredibly disruptive. Simply using US-based DNS services could scupper European's use of the internet.
I remember a US election where people in UK couldn't even browse US sources of information as it was geo-blocked. US Gov seemed to have forgotten that there are US citizens resident in Europe that needed to make a choice in order to vote. With the current administration I feel that similar reckless changes could be made.
Just remember that in the old days of coups, the first thing the perps did was to take control of the media.
I used to think they were a pretty ordinary band....
Seeing them live at Hammersmith Odeon changed that. They really are/were a band to see live.
Don't buy any of their albums though, the recording quality is a bit like someone in the audience recorded it... through a bucket.
For the record... (Ha!) Out of Ive's choices I'd take Simple Minds anyday.
I rang up for a balance of account today. I today found that if you answer their questions as briefly and quickly as possible it's not enough for them to verify your voice. The next tactic is they ask "how're you doing today?" Just reply "ok". They then asked to repeat surname and DOB. Did so as quickly and briefly as possible. Delay whilst their system gives up: "Sorry I can't verify you by your voice. I'm going to have to ask you for numbers from your PIN."
...makes it extremely difficult to get a simple bank balance over the phone. They coerce me into saying a set phrase so that they can identify me by my voice. I never comply with this and I'm then stuck in a long queue to speak to someone. They then - somehow - after answering a few questions, say they've verified me by my voice. I want to be identified by *proper* security questions, not by the latest fad.
This thread should demonstrate to them that they are playing fast and loose with my money [overdraft]. (I'm not holding my breath). So if someone rings up and hacks my voice and siphons money out of my account, how can I prove that I did not make that call?
Speechless? Yes, probably the best policy under the circumstances.
One of my clients had a problem with their Foreign Exchange spreadsheet, which they update religiously on a daily basis. I was asked to have a look at the problem and I couldn't believe that it wasn't calculating cells correctly. It was only when I realised that it had been saved and opened in the above mode that I twigged. I just don't know how Microsoft do it (screw things up) sometimes.
The turning point for me was when I, as an Authorised HP Dealer, received as part of our Demo allocation, an A3 ink-jet printer at a steeply discounted price. The PSU on it went ker-phut within a few days. HP just shrugged their shoulders* and the distributor threatened (but did not proceed with) court action. This was in IIRC Fiorina's time.
*ISTR HP telling me I had no rights to return it. ISTR my response was "do you want me to demonstrate it in its current [non] operating condition?" I can't remember how we disposed of it in the end.
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