Re: Newsflash: Crowdsourced data is inaccurate...
How very well said sir, excellent in every way - but the end result here was a keyboard/coffee incident! "Argle flargle, fleen your ogglefloggle?" hehe.
Posts by Scott Broukell
968 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Sep 2007
Social networks breeding spatial junk
Weeing Frenchman sues Google over Street View photo
Windows 8: Sugar coating on Microsoft's hard-to-swallow tablet
Ethics profs fret over cyborg brains, mind-controlled missiles
Royal astro-boffin to MPs: Stop thinking about headlines
Thursday 9th February 2012 18:39 GMT
@Perlcat - I know, it scares me a bit as well to be honest, but, it is the only way to ensure you get the true feelings people can express that way (and the answer "non of the above" is just as important).
I just feel that so many years of the pendulum swinging between two parties is an anachronism these days. If folk see that even if they vote for a minority party they feel strongly enough about with compulsory voting and true PR, they may get more engaged when they see their vote can actually have a result for them. All this, together with more smaller parties, might just help to re-engage peeps that's all I'm saying. I think it's time for greater pluralism and more parties / groups working together for the electorate - rather than for one or t'other major party to reap the rewards all the time.
In a true democracy politicians are elected into OFFICE and it is the electorate who holds the POWER.
Thursday 9th February 2012 15:52 GMT
untitled title
Long-term thinking - I'm afraid it will take a lot more than that, but it would be a very good start.
The Wests turn-around on Syria ? - you mean the realisation that no matter what we do there's no chance of assisting in the development of democracy or political pluralism in arab nations. Arabs are held back in this regard by their, religious devisions, medievalism, and tribalism. There is no Arab Spring towards democracy, just a fracturing along tribal, familial and ethnic / religious grounds. Arab nations with strong, (but mostly nasty) leaders are fine - those leaders hold the lid down on all that turmoil - introduce a little freedom from ethnic / religious dogma and it all falls apart. (Sadly there are many young educated secular arabs who would like things to turn out differently but I'm afraid their voices are now lost in the crowd.)
We (UK) don't have a much better position with regard to democracy either - dumbed down masses fed endless drivel on the telly and completely uninterested in politics. Exactly the way politicians like their masses - dumbed down. Until you realise that in order to drag ourselves through the 21st century we do indeed need to change tack politically. I suggest that we also need compulsory voting and that parliament needs a BIG re-fit - modern purpose-built environment with very modest accommodation for those ministers who need to stay over night etc. Throw in some proportional representation and we might have more coalitions of people prepared to work hard and put their combined heads together to provide that long-term thinking.
Which brings me neatly back to the question of the arab spring - coalitions are exactly what they need. It's frustratingly close to working in Iraq, but sadly, and mostly as a result of the afore mentioned reasons, struggling to work at all.
Japan takes second shot at extraterrestrial sampling with Hayabusa 2
American search team fails to find women's G-spot
Modeling-clay iPads foisted on unwary Canucks
Doomsday Clock ticks one minute closer to annihilation
Wednesday 11th January 2012 11:56 GMT
Population Problem - couldn't agree more
More to the point - if we do nothing about it then nature will take its course and it won't be very nice! Famine, disease, drought and warfare etc. The likely winners(?!) are the the developed nations with money and resource - might this be the course we are already set on for human kind ? Female children especially desperately need the chance of education - so that they can make choices about bearing children / contraception for themselves. Why does a child HAVE to be brainwashed into whatever religion it's parents observe - amounts to abuse in my mind. Children are the future ALWAYS - their prosperity and development is in our hands. Our immediate responsibility must always be towards them and not our own 'must have' needs of the moment. Do we want monetary profit / gain NOW, or a sustainable (and probably yes, less exciting) LONG TERM future for human kind ? In all honesty I doubt we are grown up enough right now to work this out holistically as one species pulling together. Maybe our species just needs to hit the wall a few times before we learn from past mistakes - we have been through some tough cycles in the past (glaciation, prehistoric migrations etc)Foreign sabotage suspected in Phobos-Grunt meltdown
Tuesday 10th January 2012 20:16 GMT
Agree
Willy waving doesn't get any of us anywhere. We are one race, standing on the same lump of rock, if we can't trust our partner nations in efforts to get off said rock, then we aren't going to get very far at all.
I hope very much that the days of Russian space technicians being paid in jam jars of vodka to repair cars or fridges are numbered. In the same way that I hope very much that such, global, endeavors bring jobs and training and knowledge to all humanity. If we are determined to get projects like this done properly we need to put aside all our playground angst and pull together.
These are highly technical and rather costly endeavors and every nation who has had a go has met with failures of some sort, big and small. Many are down to tiny details and minor component failure or programming errors. If we form partnerships in order to maintain the ISS and launch probes etc then we better, effectively, pool our knowledge and resources so we can all learn from our own mistakes - and that needs to be addressed by ALL partners.
I'm no big fan of space exploration - I think the same resources could, for the moment at least, be better spent on issues that we have down on the ground. But if you want to take a whole bunch of peeps to climb a mountain you can do it two ways: The strong can scramble over the weak and reach their glory at the top, or, the strong can help and assist the weak so that they can all reach the summit.
Microsoft schedules Kinect for Windows launch
Astronomers map largest ever zone of dark matter
Cops cuff rectal shoplifter
Make room, internet, there's another 5 million domains to fit in
Friday 23rd December 2011 15:58 GMT 
Just 3 minutes Lars
I'd be tempted to leave it off for a little while longer. Not for malicious reasons, (and I am not suggesting for a minute that you intend any malice yourself), but just to remind us how utterly reliant we are on the tech and maybe also as a reminder of simpler ways.
It would cause a mighty Pen and Ink (Stink - Cockney rhyming slang) and pens and ink might well be very much needed - ironically.
NASA finds first Earth-sized planets outside the solar system
Wednesday 21st December 2011 15:34 GMT 
Too sweet, to hot and just right ......
Would have been more amazing to find another Earth-like planet INSIDE the solar system - look out, it's behind you!!
Seriously, there's every chance of complex life coming into being on any number of planets throughout the universe. However, the chances of that occurring within communicable proximity and, with both parties having concurrently attained similar levels of technical skill to engage in said communication, have to be so, so small as to rule it out all together, don't they?
Although sometimes I can't help thinking that a visit from some advanced and cooperative alien species might be the only way to put us Humins straight on a few matters - such as good house keeping and the sustainable furtherance of our own species - only saying.
Funny how much more engrossing it is for us to look out at all the twinkly, shiny, shiny stars, rather than face the mess we make so often at our very feet!
The moment a computer crash nearly caused my car crash
Thursday 15th December 2011 11:57 GMT
@b166er
Agreed, if I might add -Take away the seat belts, air bags and whatever, then fit solid metal dashboards with sharp edges and stuff - then you will see people slow down and take care of themselves and others on the roads. In effect - Keep it Simple.
Otherwise we remain cocooned in all this needless gubbins and divorced from the real job in hand - driving with due care and attention.
Higgs boson hunters have god particle in their sights
Tuesday 13th December 2011 15:59 GMT 
<inert title>
So, basically, we put everything we had into these giant detectors and the particle accelerator and it turns out there it was! in this little cupboard, right at the back, all the time - which had a message scrawled on the door "Do not open until X-mass"
We've just got to check the sell-by-date against the speed of light next.
Typosquatters set up booby-trapped High Street names
Fake anti-virus victims in line for slice of $8m payout pie
Hitachi GST unzips to reveal hard internal 4TB whopper
Carol singers rejoice at pay-by-tap credit card donations
Saturday 10th December 2011 00:02 GMT
OI! Give us our winter solstice back
can't these modern 'pretend' religious lot get their act together and have their own 'Christian' festival some time soon. Oh no I forgot, their made-up baby birthday story is just that, twoddle, so they had to hijack a perfectly good (science-based) reason to celebrate the winter solstice which folk hereabouts have been enjoying for thousands of years longer than their made-up mumbo-jumbo.
Had to be said <rant over>
Can't wait till some folk are asked to just put their cards through this 'ere swippery contraption - cos the wiretap (sorry witless) connection to Barclay's is down - ooo thanks, now we cloned your card too!
Blighty promised £43m prang-predicting supercomputer
Monday 5th December 2011 10:15 GMT
<insert title>
"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition" (Carl Sagan)
That might explain what we refer to as accidents - every cloud ....
But now let's make some dosh throwing investment and actions in that general direction whilst we can, it keeps the old economy going for a while longer you know - a happy accident chasing after the defense of a sad accident I say - all man made and artificial like.
Apple Thunderbolt Display 27in monitor
WD dries out flood-trashed fab, pumps out first disks
NASA busts booster booster
The BBC Micro turns 30
Wednesday 30th November 2011 09:24 GMT
Typing in code from a book / Cassette player
I was learned to write code out long-hand in an exercise book, then debug it long-hand, then sit down at a golf-ball terminal (no screen - what are they?) and diligently type it in, before saving it out to punch tape (sometimes cards if we were lucky), and we had to do that 28 hours a day and sleep in a box int' middle o road :-)
But I know what you mean. These little miniature acorn things were such fun!
Councils emailed vulnerable people's data to strangers
Tuesday 29th November 2011 11:22 GMT
Agreed
Something has to be done to ram home the message that just because the individual involved isn't sitting in front of you, peering at you through a perforated perspex window in some miserable council office - it doesn't mean that the raw data doesn't have the same value to that individual!
Without looking to excuse any body, it's the separation from the human bean and their data that underpins the laxity I'm sure - but I'm not sure what the solution is.
What should a sci-fi spaceship REALLY look like?
World population's appetite TO DOUBLE by 2050, boffin warns
Wednesday 23rd November 2011 10:20 GMT
Racist ?
Well ok then, yes, Human Racist.
What's racist about saying that our world is divided by race, religion and creed ?
And if my land was ravaged by drought and pestilence I would like another nation(s) to offer me land where I can continue sustainably and contribute to the whole, Human Race.
We are all standing on the same bloody piece of rock so we are one race without borders or political / ethnic lines drawn on any map. I guess your part of the playground is fenced off.
Wednesday 23rd November 2011 10:08 GMT
<title>
At least China was brave enough to attempt to place controls on its population - remember the slagging off it got at the Copenhagen conference, nobody mentioned that years ago it had smelt the coffee regarding sustainable population whilst the rest of us dare not even mention population control - even now! What's the quote again "Whatever your cause it's a lost cause unless we limit population".
Ok, China messed up because male children were favoured ahead of females because they can supply higher levels of labour output, supposedly. That attitude prevailed amongst the poorer families because they had immediate problems that needed fixing and couldn't wait for their levels of income / living to increase - which was the long term goal of the plan and would very probably have resulted in a balance being achieved between the sexes.
Instead we dream up (very expensive) ways of helping infertile couples have children when infertility is natures own way of keeping populations in check. There is a growing population of kids in the west who need foster care or, better still, adoption and we prefer to go abroad and cherry pick some African / Cambodian kids or whatever - have children become commodities in our culture?
Every woman on the planet should have the right to decide on her own application of contraception / abortion - whilst also considering the implications for the next generation to come. And all of us need to get it into our heads that we, the current generation, are less important than the generations to come - they are the ones who have to live with any mess-ups we make. Therefore our policy thinking must always err on the side of the generations who will truly inherit the results of our actions.
Costs for food production don't have to get ever higher - there are simple ways of using composting, biomass and simple crop rotation that even our ancient ancestors understood which can mean it is managed in a sustainable way. Meat can be produced only on grass upland for example - land which is unsuitable for crops. Granted, meat product might therefore be at a premium, but it will be sustainable - not resulting in deforestation, topsoil loss, erosion and barren land that is of no use to anyone. We choose to industrialize farming - that's where the problem arises.
The sum total of our intelligence is, as you say, already here - it is the persistent blinkered approach to our own predicament that holds it back from yielding up sustainable solutions and getting anywhere close to what that sum total could ultimately achieve. We only choose to see what we want, to sustain that blinkered approach come what may, so we can have stuff, things, and consume now that which we should be passing onto the next generation.
Tuesday 22nd November 2011 16:54 GMT
Humanity ...
Train wreck in slow motion - we are all sitting in the train carriage discussing just how the emergency cord should be pulled. Great idea - tip tons more chemicals into the soil - that's got to be sustainable and long-term thinking ain't it.
We need not worry about the 7 billionth baby or famine, disease and drought etc etc - I mean let's just party on peeps, yeah! We just can't get it into our heads that the wuvely global village isn't that at all - it's a basement slum for the majority at the bottom and a penthouse suite for the few at the top.
We are far too divided by politics / ethnics / religion to be able to work together cohesively. It's not the way we do things - it will be nasty and messy, I just hope that those generations who survive it can learn from past mistakes. But then that seems to contradict what I said about the way we do things.
There's probably too much commercial interest in stopping it anyway - like inventing the ever-lasting light bulb I suppose - if only we could live sustainably - I guess current market, economies would suffer poor dears.
And why do we insist on sending food and medical aid to folk in places continually ravaged by drought and famine - so the poor bastards can breed another feeble generation who we can then watch going the same way - nice. I know many have clung onto their 'tribal' homelands for thousands of years, but can't we just get over the stone-age mind-set and move them somewhere better! And then help them understand sustainable ways of living - many African tribes-people have spent years and years doing just that after all!
All this to say there is an awful lot we could learn from the very populations who live on the edge of things and whose predicament seems ever more precarious.
<rant over - back to the bunker for a nap I think>
Clooney fingered for Steve Jobs role in Hollywood biopic
Saturday 19th November 2011 11:48 GMT 
<insert title>
It surprised me that Jobs had not arranged for some cryogenic entombment system, he just seemed like the kind of person that would do that, maybe in anticipation of being re-animated centuries hence and playing himself in the first of many biopics to come. Then settling down, maybe re-branding, ready to release the next series of must-have gadgetry. Whatever is said about him and his product, he seems to have had a large amount of energy, drive and ambition and enough money for the cryogenics.
Whatever - RIP Steve - he started out in interesting times and I am still more than happy with my modest collection of early hardware, which still works fine and, imho, is far more worthy than more recent gadgetry from Apple.
He had vision, even if some didn't much care for the final horizons he settled on.
Second water utility reportedly hit by hack attack
Saturday 19th November 2011 11:48 GMT
<insert $var=concern>
So as I understand it, utilities adopted these remote data / control systems in order to make a financial saving because they could dispense with (x) amount of human engineers, the vehicles they required to visit sites / control stations and the fuel the vehicles needed to get from A to B and C etc.
Well I'm 100% certain that none of those savings was ever passed onto the customer.
Furthermore, why FFS was nobody interested in penetration testing before setting these things live ?!?
Should we not demand to see thorough independent testing by some accredited peeps with the real know-how, with publicly available results and then rigorous examination and re-testing of any systems that fail the tests, with the utilities concerned bearing all costs involved.
And while your at it, please independently stress test the smart meter tech that is being adopted at the time of writing.
I mean, we pay through the nose for energy as it is, with costs and 'energy security' about to get more expensive - it would seem a critical area for examination.
Bagged salad contained decomposed AVIAN CORPSE
Wednesday 16th November 2011 16:01 GMT
well duh!
no, no, no, you silly billy - any unused materials are simply put back in the chiller section of your fridge where they survive, fresh and happy, for anything up to another 7 x days - due to them being bought originally in the natural state of nakedness nature intended for them and not wrapped in any sort of plastic or stored, therein, in a de-oxygenated environment. Wake up at the back there !
Wednesday 16th November 2011 11:38 GMT 
<mmmmmm>
extra bit of protein :-)
ffs make the salad yourselves peeps, these ready prepared salads are well known to be so heavily washed in bleaches and other chemicals that their nutrient levels suffer accordingly. And, once the seal on the de-oxygenated atmosphere in the bag is broken, you've got about ten minutes before the stuff is compost! (its days old before it even got to the supermarket).
Ready prepared, can't be arsed food - another way to contribute to the wasted food mountain in this country.
Pass the wine, dear. Yes, that papier-mache thing
Monday 14th November 2011 16:20 GMT
<please recycle this title>
In the 70's weren't the ingenious Dutch delivering milk in 1-litre plastic bags. You popped the bag into a more solid container designed to hold it snuggly and snipped the spout off with scissors. No energy wasted collecting and washing the much heavier glass bottles and plastic is cheaper to recycle than glass any way. AFAIK this was reasonably common in other European countries at the time. I never understood why the Brits shunned the idea. Even now the common plastic milk bottles in use have to have a cap and collar and label. None of that is needed with the bag system, printing is easier as well. Just a thought.
Granted, you do need to have the 'holding' container to hand, so it's not that portable outside the domestic, kitchen, scenario. But one solution might be to achieve rigidity through inflating air sacks around the main container ? Look, if i give it a blow job it stands up on it's own - sort of thing (oops!)
Space station resupply 'nauts avoid fiery death
Eurozone crisis: We're all dooomed! Here's why
Friday 11th November 2011 13:57 GMT
@Jemma
Whilst I find myself sharing some empathy for the argument you put forward, I'm rather more inclined to believe that it is culture of values we bestow upon material goods and the shiny shiny, that needs to change. We are bombarded with messages to consume ever more and that, I would suggest, is where the hallucinatory factor comes into effect. We are like rabbits caught in the head lights of corporations, and we can't take our eyes away from the idea that if we don't personally own that "must-have" thing, then we fear what others will think of us and how we will be measured socially. This is utter shite of course, unless you are caught by those bright lights.
Money, currency exchange and business transactions are rather like armaments - ok in the right hands but a real danger in the wrong ones. We do need a monetary system - we don't need it to be fueled by greed and avarice.
I am a firm believer in "small is beautiful" - in the sense that good smaller companies usually place greater value on their workers life-work balance and greater value on their individual contribution to the company. (Yes, it can happen in larger corporations I know but I think it is rarer). It's those values that we are missing - making the customer really feel valued and not RIPPING PEOPLE OFF that matter. Small is beautiful makes sense for the banking sector as well - having many more smaller banks causes less damage to the whole system if one makes a mess of things. Cooperatives can offer a good model for sustaining values towards the work force and the customer imho.
So it's getting away from the "value of things" and placing more emphasis on individual skills and abilities and valuing an item because it's well built, does the job perfectly and is going to last that I would suggest we need to push for. (or get back to indeed)
There are two ways for a bunch of people to climb a mountain - they can run at it, with the stronger ones clambering over the corpses of the week who have fallen. Or, the stronger ones can reach down and give a helping hand to those that need it below them and in that way we all reach the top and feel a much greater 'value' all round.
Tis our own human nature that holds us back all the time, and yet, it has the potential for such greater things, if only we would let it happen.
yours, (embuggerancedly),
Scott
Thursday 10th November 2011 17:45 GMT
Fed up ......
..... with gubermints and banks telling us that we should be so careful to manage our personal finances and them then being complete arseholes with their state spending / borrowing.
During the years of the last "Prudent" labour administration I was bombarded, daily, with offers of releasing equity, having more credit cards or getting cheap loans to tempt me to become more like my peers and have a second car, a fourth annual skiing holiday and another wide-screen plasma in the kitchen. It's all shit and bollocks and the little people always end up paying for it with jobs and income and stress.
Banks and financial institutions drove the more recent expansion of Europe because they wanted to reach a wider customer base for lending euros out and trading in misery. That's what precipitated the latest pile of streaming effluent.
Remember that both Germany and France (and UK, I think?) allowed themselves to break the sacred government borrowing rules for Europe - so that set a fine example to countries like Greece.
I cringed every time I heard Gordon Brown say "the value of your property keeps rising under Labour" - to me that's not good news, that's dire news for the younger generations trying to rent / buy somewhere - it's just plain greed and avarice.
There are other ways to do retail banking, with mutuals and providential societies, oh, but they all demutualized under the Conservative "Loads a money" dream of profits, profits, profits. OK, the growth isn't stupendous, but imho I prefer a steady growth concept anyway.
So completely (YES COMPLETELY!) separate retail from investment banking so Mr & Mrs Smiths savings don't get clobbered and increase the banks capitalisation to at least 140% and if that makes the job of traders and investors harder, then perhaps we won't mind them getting some remuneration / bonus for their hard work (sorry gambling skills).
Imho we need far more, smaller, mutual banks and far more co-operative businesses, along with government prudence (actual prudence this time) and a drive for steady long-term policy making, but I don't suppose we will see things change cos the banks and financial institutions have got all our cash (got a firm grip on our nads) and refuse to lend any out to help start-ups etc.
Europe is built inside-out anyway imho. Instead of having a huge hub in the middle, awash with funding and wotnot, it should have hubs in each country keeping a finger on the pulse of businesses and the local economies, which feed that data back to a smaller central hub where experts make analysis and adjustments accordingly. It's called feed-back rather than monopoly.
And, most importantly, independant and transparent oversight!
<rant over> thanks I needed that. Of to the pub now, I've got just enough for half a pint of mild and a packet of cheese and onion. Oh! the memories / realities.
Wi-Fi hotspots to skyrocket over next five years
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Is the electromagnetic constant a constant?
Nude lady recreates Star Wars tauntaun scene in dead horse
Eggheads use Twitter to work out if it's raining
CERN boffins re-running neutrino speed test
Wednesday 2nd November 2011 15:46 GMT
A neutrino went into a bar ........
... and not one person noticed.
75 trillion squillion other neutrinos went into the same bar and still nobody noticed.
Then one neutrino lepton to the bar and did a little jig, which may or may not have been noticed by at least one or more peeps in the bar, but who can tell?
I blame it all on those tau-quila slammers.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
