Posts by GruntyMcPugh

Universal basic income is a great idea, which is also why it won't happen

Re: It works..

"Of course they pay tax on it",... why give it to them in the first place? This is just admin overhead. The earning limit already solves this for those in work, you've just added a third wheel.

Re: We already pay people to do nothing

"That's not quitting, that's redundancy."

It was voluntarily leaving a job, what do you see as the difference there? The point was I had full NI contributions and was entitled to JSA for six months.

Re: UK UBI

@woeful

"So, rename the jobseekers allowance a UBI, give it to everyone and get rid of the personal alalowance."

Er,... so take money off earners via taxation, and give it back to them? What? This is preposterous. It's admin crazy. If you'd said 'adjust the personal allowance to match UBI payments' that would be less admin overhead, but what you've proposed in essence is simply taking more money off taxpayers to give to the unemployed. How does that solve anything, exactly?

Re: UBI is great for the "third sector"

@Ellis Birt 1

"Currently, doing charity work can lose you your JSL."

You simply have to be available for a job interview at 48 hours notice, and to be able to take a job at two weeks notice, and you can claim Job Seekers Allowance and do charity work. It's just that you cannot turn down jobs using the excuse that it will affect your charity work. How you get treated at the job centre really centres around how they perceive your genuine intent to find work. When I signed on after VR, they were really accommodating, offering me training and advice on starting my own business, signing on fortnightly. Some people there were reporting in daily.

Re: UBI == death of all capitalism

@foo_bar_baz

Where is UBI being trialled? Which Govt gives all it's citizens, (now, that's _all_ it's citizens, to comply with the U part of UBI), UBI? (I'm excluding the Oil rich state of Qatar from the list of possible candidates, for obvious reasons)

Re: We already pay people to do nothing

@unwanted triumphalism

"Doesn't work like that. If you quit voluntarily you don't get benefits."

I took VR from IBM a couple of years ago, I had no problems signing on and receiving benefits. As I had full NI contributions I was guaranteed Job Seekers allowance for six months, with a review after that, I'd secured another position in a matter of months however so didn't find out what happened at the next step.

Re: Housing problem

@valerion "Also, a childless couple existing on UBI needs less space than a couple with 3 children."

Er, no. Tough nougies on the breeders. UBI is UBI, spread it a bit more thinly, and make do, because there's no reason to reward some people more highly for their life choices than others. If breeders need more dosh, they need to go to work and earn it.

Re: It works..

@PapaD "£400 a month (before tax)?"

Sorry, recipients of UBI pay tax now? I think you just invented a perpetual cash machine, where tax on tax makes more money than is put into the initial system,.....

Re: Great idea, pity

"would cost around 49% of the UK's income from tax."

So we cap the benefits of the disabled at £400 a month, and give perfectly healthy people in work a tax break, and lose money overall.

Sorry, I still don't get how this is supposed to work.

Re: Great idea, pity

@PapaD "What could you do with an extra £400 a month - pretty sure you wouldn't give up your job for it, because even minimum wage is nearly three times that."

An average salary pays more than that in tax,... so I'm a little confused, is this £400 a tax break? If we are giving working people tax breaks, where do we get the cash to pay those that aren't working £400?

Just where does the money come from please?

iPhone X: Bargain! You've just bagged yourself a cheap AR device

Re: Haven't we just been around this?

"AR doesn't require googles." Indeed, we have as you said, Google Translate, plus Google Goggles to identify things (oddly named considering it doesn't require Goggles) Google Cardboard is the goggles.

I presume Apple will come up with some sort of headgear though, because there is a great gaming opportunity there. Will they come up with some novel controller as well though?

How is 55 Cancri e like a Sisters of Mercy gig? Astroboffins: It has atmosphere

Re: I have been to a Sisters of Mercy gig...

'30 years ago',... annoyingly, never managed to see them,... I saw 'Fields of the Nephilim'*, 'The Mission', 'All About Eve', 'Ghostdance', and 'The Cult' (I was into Thrash, but I had a Goth gf).

Never saw The Sisters though,.... folks I know who went to the 2006 gig all said they sucked, so glad I gave that nostalgia a swerve.

*I say I saw FotN,... I saw some hats, a silhouette or two, and the output of a smoke machine for 90 mins.

Tesla launches electric truck it guarantees won't break for a million miles

Re: Fnar, fnar

I'm laughing at the innuendo for a different reason, it's funny because Musk only 'semi' delivers on his promises.

Let's see if he can get this thing made in any volume, and at a decent price point, shall we, before we all get little Tesla Semis of our own?

Google aims disrupto-tronic ray at intercoms. Yes, intercoms

I just stand at the bottom of the stairs and shout 'BOING!' (I always wanted a dinner gong, but haven't got room in the hall.) That seems to do the trick.

Apple succeeds in failing wearables

"Add to this its watching my heart rate in the background now and will let me know if something irregular is happening"

Er, it shouldn't be. And if it did, I think you might notice without resorting to looking at your watch, like radiating pain in the arms and chest, turning blueish, getting sweaty, and perhaps falling over.

US Homeland Security says hardly any Kaspersky software left on federal networks

So Kaspersky detects NSA snooping tools, Homeland Security suddenly drop Kaspersky products. Are the NSA using their own tools against their own staff therefore? Can't they figure out how to exclude stuff?

IBM asks remaining staff to take career advice from HR-bot

Re: Next Version

I think you busted the AI. Imagine the scene…. ‘What shall we call you oh great HR AI?’

“My,… Ca,<del>tbert,</del>”

I called this one Six Months Ago,.....

In the Reg article "IBM marketeers rub out chopper after visit from CEO Ginni "

I quipped:

"When I read the phrase "Big Blue chopper" I imagined IBM had come up with a machine that made people redundant. I'm a bit disappointed it turned out to be a helicopter. A remorseless sacking machine would be a good application for Watson."

I'm glad I left IBM. I'm not glad they are using my ideas however.

80-year-old cyclist killed in prang with Tesla Model S

Re: re: unwarranted triumphalism

There is no 'Road Tax', hasn't been since Winston Churchill axed it in 1947.

Teensy weensy space shuttle flies and lands

Re: Back to my childhood...

Yeah, check out the MiG-105 and the HL-20 lifting body experimental aircraft, both date from the '60s,.... also check out the 'Dynasoar' which was a small shuttle to be launched from the top of a rocket.

Sadly these projects were not pursued and the Shuttle was instead. We could have had some more specific competing space planes instead of the one size fits all Shuttle. Ho hum.

Re: Actually not much like the Shuttle at all

"copy of an idea the Russians were trialling in the 1980s"

Your timeline is a bit off.

Russia had Buran in the 80s, which was a reply to the US Space Shuttle.

Before both systems were the US lifting body experiments, plus the Dynasoaur, and the Soviet BOR and MiG-105 testbeds, all starting in the '60s. The soviets were trailing in this research, the USA was trialling lifting body aircraft in the early '60s, whereas the MiG-105 wasn't until 1969.

Dreamchaser however does strongly resemble the MiG-105.

Uber loses appeal against UK employment rights for workers

Chris Bryce, IPSE chief exec, said: "It is astonishing that the employment tribunal granted the two drivers worker status. A key element of being a worker is having to turn up for work even if you don’t want to."

So Chris, now Uber have employees, Uber can use this metric to force their employees to login to shifts can't they? And of course pay them for standing around doing nothing if there isn't sufficient demand.

Oh wait Chris, that's a shitty metric for deciding if someone is an employee, or self employed, isn't it?

UK Home Sec thinks a Minority Report-style AI will prevent people posting bad things

Steady on Amber, such an AI would probably be able to detect what a politician was about to say and fact check it before you blurted.

IBM's next turnaround tool is ... a new open-source font?

This is bringing back a memory, pretty sure we were previously directed to use a certain font during my tenure at IBM,... I know I never did, and nobody ever picked me up on it.

Think it was around the time 'Privileged Users' had to give up their Windows laptops for Linux ones,.... and I just couldn't be *rsed to find out how to install the font on Linux, assuming it was even available.

Jet packs are real – and inventor just broke world speed record in it

Re: Which Richard?

If it was Branson, it would be the sort of stunt he announced a few years ago, but still hadn't got around to delivering.

Tesla buys robot maker. Hang on, isn't that your sci-fi bogeyman, Elon?

Musk knows that all it takes to stop a bad guy with an army of killer robots, is a good guy with an army of killer robots. Problem is, to finance the former, he'll probably supply the latter.

Brit moron tried buying a car bomb on dark web, posted it to his address. Now he's screwed

Re: I have questions

Two reasons I can think of, one, intent, he intended to possess and use explosives, and would have without the intervention of the Police, so them intervening doesn't make him less guilty.

Second, postal services are common carriers and not responsible for the items they carry, so it could be argued that he owned the items once he paid for them, they were in his legal possession from that moment, just being carried by a 3rd party.

Re: Was the Glasgow accent even a factor?

Kind of, Police were told about an Irishman with a shotgun in a bag,.... so of course went into Rambo mode thinking they were foiling an IRA terror plot, but instead shot a Scot carrying repaired table leg, in the back.

So the accent was relevant because someone who was shit at detecting accents SWATted him and got him killed.

Give us a bloody PIN: MPs grill BBC bosses over subscriber access

Duplicates,....

"Or you could just enter your license number to login to iPlayer. Duplicate "leaked" license get blocked."

Currently the license covers a household AND their mobile devices.

Do people have to register their devices under your scheme? How else do you manage devices on the move, attaching to other Wireless networks at other addresses, etc? How many devices do you allow to connect under one license before you start blocking stuff,... you might annoy large families.

"BBC logon even if they want to watch ITV"

Indeed, at present, the addition of a PIN in iPlayer doesn't satisfy the goal of proving those watching live TV have a valid TV license. The law would need to be changed to allow the watching of live commercial telly without a license first,.. then as you say, the subscribers to the full BBC service could underwrite some free to air services, like news, PIN free. Or be draconian, and make every live TV provider authenticate to the BBC,... I can imagine that being resisted heavily, as it would be a SPOF and a DDOS target, and hand the BBC a big kill switch.

And it isn't a simple task to enable a PIN, every single app on every smart telly would have to support it, at the risk of cutting off some people with older devices. total buggering nightmare if all apps have authenticate, ITV Player, 4OD, etc.

Mythbuster seeks cash for roller skates to wear in virtual reality

I'd take quite a different approach,.... for one, I'd make it a boot with some ankle support, because the idea of something allowing my foot to slide says twisted ankle to me. Second, I'd replace the rollers and wheels with a bed of trackballs, so the boot can move in full 2D, and sweep and slide, simple pressure sensors will actually do the opposite of what usually happens, when there's pressure put down on the boot, the trackballs will unlock and slide to prevent IRL movement and signal In Game Movement, when it's lifted they will lock, allowing the other boot to move.

Surely though some restraint of the torso is needed still, to react against, or people are going to fall over?

This could be our favorite gadget of 2017: A portable projector

Almost sounds interesting,.... but there's the Yoga Tab with a projector at that price point, and many, many other portable projectors at all price points, it's a pretty crowded market.

Do millennials want to watch movies when they go camping? Isn't the point of camping to rough it a little?

Subsidy-guzzling Tesla's Model 3 volumes a huge problem – Wall St man

Re: For people my age

Certainly a visionary,....just unfortunate timing, what with Yuppies indulging in vulgar displays of wealth at the time, a modest transport was a hard sell.

Your future data-centre: servers immersed in box full of oil, in a field

Re: Surprised

A company, Nerdalize, in the Netherlands installs servers that look like radiators into domiciles. The residents get free heat, and Nerdalize rent out CPU cycles. It's all a bit beta at the moment, but the early results are encouraging.

$10,000-a-dram whisky 'wasn't even a malt'

Re: Even the experts sound iffy

"It's worth paying for the good stuff."

.. but it is very subjective,.... a couple of years ago I did the tourist trip around the Glengoyne Distillery, and had a sample of their 12yo and 20yo, the 20yo I personally found too phenolic, so exited through the gift shop with a bottle of their 12yo as that was far more to my taste (and pocket :-) )

Glengoyne is a lovely distillery to visit, btw, pretty much what you imagine when you think of a distillery, three lovely copper swan necked stills, set in quaint buildings, certainly captures the romance.

Hells door-bells! Ring pieces paralyzed in horror during Halloween trick-or-treat rush

Re: torches and lanterns.

.. I've been looking at old fashioned storm lanterns, which are a snip at about four quid each on Ebay. Just need a decent bulk source of non-smelly lamp oil. Or is paraffin OK to use indoors nowadays? I remember my granddad had a paraffin heater to stop his greenhouse getting frost, and it was a bit smelly.

"but if electricity fails then the gas heating system will not work"

Indeed, so being the kind of self reliant type I am, I have a couple of log burners, one in the front room, and one in the lounge, and they keep those rooms toasty, and the rest of the house bearable. I've only had to rely on them solely once, when the old boiler blew a control board.

I'm so not on board with the IoT for providing basic needs, such as warmth. Worst case scenario, and there's a power cut, and I have no coal, or logs (doubtful, as I have two large bins for coal that usually last me through winter, and several log stores) I have a large axe, and a local park where there are trees (and usually enough fallen wood to collect, before I'd have to start felling anything)

Hell, I went to see Ray Mears last night, he was demonstrating fire lighting techniques adventurers have used for centuries, but we've abandoned the 'KISS' principle and now have made some simple things excessively complicated.

F-35s grounded by spares shortage

Re: Let's make planes that can't fly......

Not 'Commando' comic perchance? Where all we ever really heard the Germans say was 'Aiee!' as the bayonet went in?

IBM offloads Notes and Domino to India's HCL Technologies

Re: Aw come on - give Notes a break

Do you still need 'ZapNotes' these days?

We all had it installed so we could restart Notes after it crashed, ... for those that never suffered Notes, 'ZapNotes' was a utility that would close down lock files etc, so you could restart Notes without rebooting your PC. Notes did fail fairly often, and this would also lock up Sametime, so ZapNotes came to the rescue.

Re: Jesus, is Notes still going?

As others have stated, IBM is a Notes house. We also had to use the assorted office products too, when I left IBM they were still under the 'Symphony' label, but who cares what they were called, they were all inferior to MS Office products.

USB stick found in West London contained Heathrow security data

Re: How as this even possible?

"Assuming that the "loser" of the USB drive was the one who complied it"

Indeed, or that the USB stick wasn't discarded once it's content had been copied to a laptop by a 3rd party, who was perhaps paranoid the stick could be traced and didn't want it in their possession.

Just because the stick has been returned doesn't mean the security hole is plugged.

Why are we disappointed with the best streaming media box on the market?

Re: Roku - crushing your aspirations of watching a movie

I've got an old Roku LT that does none of those things,.... it just works. It's a hell of a lot faster than my old Virgin Media TiVo, which was just getting slower and slower until I canned VM and put it back in it's little box, and waved it goodbye.

The searching thing is not the fault of the Roku, some apps do lookaheads to match content as you type, some don't.

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

"Department of Health and Cabinet Office wrote to trusts saying it was essential they had "robust plans" to migrate from old software, such as Windows XP, by April 2015."

Interesting, because I had an interview for an IT role at an NHS Trust Hospital in November 2015, and they were still talking about moving to Windows 7, and hadn't started.

I now work in local govt, and we're well into our Windows 10 rollout, and are migrating patching from WSUS to SCCM.

Go on IBMers, tell us what you really think

Re: mother-effing tool

"and I didn't fill it in correctly a single time because i knew I was leaving"

So it was like my CLAIM : -) Well, apart from the 'knew I was leaving' part,.. although I did eventually.

TVA sounds like a PITA. and while a lot of my work was scheduled (Monthly security scans for required patches, quarterly for ISEC and 6 monthly for Nessus) other stuff came up, like investigating offshored fluffups, or helping fix them, or just generally noticing some teams were breaking the rules, and trying to either get the rules fixed to make sense, or the teams to understand what the rules actually meant. Some of this stuff didn't have CLAIM codes, so was shoehorned into where it fit the best. TBH I cared a little too much, and I doubt anyone else goes into the detail I did. But hey, that's no longer my issue.

Re: @AC @Grunty I don't mind

Yeah, PBCs were graded on a curve, so it really didn't matter if you did everything that was asked of you well, because if everybody else did that too, some people still had to be marked down, to fit the curve.

And of course genuine slackers had been taken care of through redundancies, so the bar was totally artificial after the first round following a TUPE.

Plus of course the goals were a bit too salesy, revenue, cost saving, etc. I worked in Security, I just had to bang on about how we hadn't had any unscheduled downtime due to malware / virus / intrusion so no costs or service credits on my watch, but it starts to look a bit tired if recycled every PBC.

Re: mother-effing tool

Are you talking about CLAIM, or is there some hideous bastard offspring of that idea you now have to deal with?

Like many things IBM, CLAIM was a decent idea, but poorly implemented. Having a weekly report of how much time we've spent on different clients work, so we can bill them accordingly is an obvious need, but having a weekly report tool that has to be filled in by midday on a Wednesday to avert the dreaded 'Delinquent' status was pure nonsense, we had to guesstimate what we were going to do for half a week, rather than just record it daily and sub it at the end of each week.

Then take the holiday marketplace, a good idea being able to buy and sell holiday, poorly implemented that we could only do that during a limited window at the start of the leave year, so had to guess what our holidays needs might be if they fell outside the norm.

Sky mobe ad featuring beefcake Tom Hardy banned for being 'misleading'

The advert did send a mixed message, why would they lock people into an initial 24 month contract, but then offer a mid contract 'upgrade',.. the length of the contract reflects the cost of the handset, so it was kind of obvious there was a catch,... and the small print did explain the catch.

Good on the ASA though, the small print is small for a reason.

Credit insurance tightens for geek shack Maplin Electronics

Re: Feels like we're dying

... 'cancelled the works Christmas party' that is a sign,... I used to work for ntl: and I distinctly remember the memo when our Xmas bash was cancelled, and the financial justification for doing so. Like the sum of money not spent staved off their near bankruptcy,.... if Maplin are penny pinching to that degree, they are on their uppers too.

Re: We need an alternative to the jungle monopoly

"Sainsbury's hope to add the range of Argos to all of their stores, whilst shutting down as many as possible of the Argos locations. its a huge gamble"

Indeed, I went to my local Sainsburys recently, and they have partitioned off a section that's going to become an Argos outlet. Now, I don't want to classist here, but the local Argos is at a different postcode, for sound reasons, it's near to where their main demographic live. I can't see those customers frequenting Sainsburys and swerving by the Argos outlet. Maybe those customers will opt for deliveries instead, but then anyone can opt for delivery, so why move the location of the store in the first place. I'm not going to spend more at Argos because it's in Sainsburys, instead of at a lower rent shopping centre.

re:match

.. yeah, they will price match, last thing I bought from them was TP Link Homeplug WiFi extender, got a price from PC World, but bought in Maplin, 'cos the salesguy checked the specs for me, and was willing to price match, and the 'assistants' at PC World don't know one end of their elbow from the other.

I had the usual crap advice from the sales boy at Currys PcWorld at the weekend as it happens, I asked which of the TVs they sell will record to a USB device, his answer 'Most of them do that',.. riiiight,... so which? 'Cos none of the infomatics mention it at all,....