Posts by nojobhopes 60 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jan 2019
Yes, getting windows from "off-screen" is the main use of Alt+Space for me. If microsoft had fixed this little issue, I wouldn't be so bothered.
Microsft are the makers of a windowing operating system which still can't position a window onto a real screen after decades of upgrades. Do you really trust them to run AI?
Automated test tools for Windows have been around for decades, and while some have OCR capabilities, most do not need them. Automated tests can easily reach into the app and grab the status bar text, if the app uses Windows controls. And even in the modern world where there are too many windowing toolkits, tests should be able to rely on the controls exposed to Accessibility tools (like Screen Readers). On Windows we have the luxury of 2 standards, of course. Microsoft Active Accessibility or UI Automation API.
"Spend the billions making the Software that is already here such as Windows 11 + all the apps that everyone uses each day actually *work* as advertised"
Totally agreed! But can we start with Windows 10, or 7, or XP? 11 seems to be a power hungry scam and environmental timebomb, when everyone throws out their powerful computers because they are not quite powerful enough to run Micros~1's latest spyware.
You are correct, we've heard this before
"Windows 10 is the last version of Windows that will ever be released" - The Register
https://www.theregister.com/2015/07/31/rising_and_ongoing_cost_of_windows/
"Why Microsoft is calling Windows 10 'the last version of Windows'"- The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8568473/windows-10-last-version-of-windows
> consider what materials you sensibly allow on your printer
Kids off school during summer holidays... raining outside... could be _anything_ on the printer bed - clean clothes from a dryer, homework, dolls, chocolate cake, hay from the hamsters, hamsters eating chocolate cake...
A real risk of a nasty fire.
"The cyclist and vehicle targets were both lightweight and designed to be harmless to the test vehicle and driver."
Was the radar able to spot them? Were the cars guilty of crashing into cardboard boxes?
Having said that, we already have TMS - Too Much Software, and AI should only take over when proven to be safer than the average human.
Immediate solution - rename these shoddy AI systems. Why are Tesla allowed to call it AutoPilot? No wonder their owners think it will do everything. Trade descriptions.
Who?
Russia? March 2022 - "AGCO Agriculture Foundation Donates to Ukraine Emergency Relief" - https://www.fendt.com/int/agco-agriculture-foundation-donates-to-ukraine-emergency-rel
And then there's John Deere who have interesting business practices - https://www.freeict.eu/news/john-deere-restrictive-practices-hinder-maintenance-for-farmers - despite calling themselves "one of World's Most Ethical Companies". See some of the comments on https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2022/05/02/ukrainian_tractors_deere/
UK Government? "Tory MP's friend 'can see' how he went from tractors to p*rn site" - https://metro.co.uk/2022/05/01/tory-mps-friend-can-see-how-he-went-from-tractors-to-porn-site-16566918/
Or just some chancers.
What?
I would be very surprised if the outages only impact their production systems.
No-one likes price increases, but SpaceX have done more to cut launch costs than anyone else. Why are NASA using them to get to the ISS? Because they are reliable and cheap. So instead of being subsidised by tax payers they are actually saving the tax payer money. Of course the biggest saving would be to defund space, but that's a different question.
Starlink has plenty of competition. There's the traditional satellite internet proviers, who are expensive and have restrictive monthly data caps. But the biggest competition is the traditional earth based telecoms providers. They could have provided fast broadband to every person on the planet but decided that excessive profits and asking governments to subsidise their networks was more important. They could have expanded their wire, fibre, or mobile networrks to cover everyone. But apparently it costs more to dig a trench and lay some wires to the nearest town than it does for Elon to concieve, design, manufacture, and launch thousands of satellites which provide amazing connections.
“downloading by a web crawler facial images of individuals and personal information associated therewith; and storing the downloaded facial images and associated personal information in the database.”
Sounds a lot like the opening statement in a legal case against a company alleged to have broken Europe's GDPR.
Microsoft aren't personally trucking millions of machines to landfill, but they are pushing them on their way.
When will their corporate responsibility annual statement start measuring the tonnes of gear which their upgrades obsoleted? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility
And don't get me started on the vast tracts of human time wasted.
"but there's something about a jet of boiling water that I can't put my finger on."
I see what you did there
"He said tank, not boiler, so I'd assume from that it's an unpressurised, insulated storage vessel, not a pressurised boiler."
Yes exactly that. Copper tank, and unpressurised (vented to the attic). Managed to get a pinprick hole while trying to undo the massive thread on the element and folded the thin tank skin slightly. It was a very fine jet of quite hot water. Took a while to notice the wet patch downstairs and realise there was a hole. Was off to a Java training course (those were the days) and didn't want to leave the family without hot water. Water is a demon.
You make a couple of good points.
- A lot of telemetry is used to improve products. Microsoft used usage stats from Office when deciding which icons to put first on the Ribbon (hated because of the way it was rolled out but overall beneficial).
- Google is providing this stuff for free. We should be paying for great maps but don't have to. Quid pro quo.
Maybe if platforms and advertisers were more careful to hide the clear link between what pages we visit on one site and the ads we see the next site, we wouldn't be so suspicious.
Irrelevant talk about turning off mobile data or the cost of data in the USA. Google should grab only what can be justified as necessary, and tell us what that is, in their privacy policy. It is becoming law in most parts of the world.
$$$? The accusers want more than their $8+ back. They also want the dosh Google made by selling their private data to advertisers. The article says "The lawsuit seeks to recover the fair market value of the co-opted cellular data and the "reasonable value of the cellular data used by Google to extract and deliver information that benefited Google,""
Microsoft? Just you wait until someone does the same with Windows 10. A friend runs his desktop PC with data off!
If we could express intent in a way that a machine could understand... we wouldn't actually need unit tests. Just get the machine to generate the code to implement the intent. If the intent changes, re-generate.
All we would need then is a system to help us test our intent...
I've seen it done, and was there when the police arrived.
Of course even if you stay on the line to explain your innocent mistake, the police in the US are obliged to turn up at the registered premises for the phone number. They need to check all is well.
A lot of private office exchanges are configured to forward "911" from an internal phone to the police, as if you were on a normal landline. There is even a US Patent for it - US20040081290A1.
Some interesting snippets in this Cisco manual:
https://community.cisco.com/t5/collaboration-voice-and-video/911-call-announcement/ta-p/3203809
"If the caller hangs up before talking to a 911 dispatcher, then emergency services will be sent to the site to verify the emergency. Since most of these accidental calls are caused by users misdialing the number or by accidentally entering the long distance access code twice"
"Since many dialplans are based on an access code of 9 followed by a long distance number of 1 or 011 for international calls, accidental calls to 911 happen on a frequent basis."
So remember when you are next allowed into the States and want to call home in UK:
9 - "oh!!" - 11 - 44 - number without the leading zero
And that's the issue - memory. We all know 9 is for an outside line (except on exchanges where it isn't). We all know "1" is the 'national' prefix when in the USA (equivalent to 0 in other countries like the UK). So surely "11" is the international prefix (equivalent to 00 in the UK). And suddenly there are a pair of uniforms in reception wanting to see the person who made the accidental call, just in case... Memory issues mean we forget we should be dialing 9011 before the country code.
Of course "Pushing out updates to Android is notoriously challenging" (https://www.cnet.com/news/how-youll-get-apple-and-googles-contact-tracing-update-for-your-phone/). In reality lots of Android phones don't have the latest security fixes. So how are Google getting this tracking update onto all Android phones? Via Google Play services. Which doesn't work for vendors who produce Google-free AOSP Android phones (like cheap knock-offs and Amazon Fire devices). This proves the Android OS update approach is a bit broken.
Oh the beautiful agony of double standards.
Fruit and veg = procescuted
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1010827.stm
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7692483.stm
Precious metals = allowed
- https://bit.ly/2JzBdQ1
Clothing = allowed
- https://bit.ly/2wTWDoM
Weapons = allowed
- https://bit.ly/2KmFOpC
Height of politicians = allowed
- https://bit.ly/2KnnRra
Pints especially in icon form = swallowed
I am concerned that the Regtastic Regomatic Randomiser 9000 is becoming self-aware... and jealous.
It seems to be obsessed with its competitors. ERNIE is of course the Premium Bonds quantum-powered random number generator - https://www.nsandi.com/ernie. Ernie is quite a beast. "Unlike previous versions which used thermal noise to produce random numbers, ERNIE 5 is powered by quantum technology"
For a bonus point perhaps someone could explain the algorithm which the Government Actuary's Department uses to prove that Ernie is actually random. I had that as an interview question once.
NASA 'deorbited' the Galileo probe into Jupiter in 2003 at a leisurely 108,000 mph. The probe was powered by two radioisotope thermoelectric generators, each carrying 7.8 kilograms of Plutonium. Apparently NASA polluted Jupiter because they didn't want to pollute its moons. Other missions have similar legacies and risks. The Mars Science Laboratory had a 1 in 420 chance of a failure resulting in a release of plutonium dioxide in the launch area. (https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/news/pdfs/MSL_DEIS_Fact_Sheet_final_1.pdf)
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