Posts by Chris G 6754 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Oct 2007
They are all as bad as each other.
Telefonica has always had bad accounting ( without exception always in their favour) and little to no accountability.
Vodaphone is the same, you get sudden added charges that have no apparent explanation and if you go into a Vodaphone shop (at least here in Spain) the staff will tell you something along the lines of 'We can't access that information as we are not Vodaphone only a franchise, call the help line'.
The help line if it ever answers will thenbtry to sell you a new more expensive contract.
I now use Yoigo, who doe to their good pricing, simple contracts and excellent service are growing rapidly, if they become as big as the others, I wonder if the service will retain its current levels?
The article ought to be evidence in a law suit to revover the misspent funds from Nominet during Haworth's tenure and from all three of the board who oversaw the efforts.
Just looking at the list of U turns they are allegedly wiling to make demonstrates that they know they are in the wrong. Time for the pitchforks, torches and the tar and feathers
In Spain on many top tv programs you will see ad breaks of 15 minutes or more and sometimes a couple of minutes after a film has resumed there will be another shorter break.
I assume that hasn't changed as I haven't watched anything in at least five years.
The closest thing to a 'relevant' ad that I ever see on the internet are one or two of the ads at the top of a search page when I am actually looking for a product.
Google are complaining that the proposed legislation will affect such things as " nearest Thai food" requests, all the questioner has to do is change the terms to name the area or location.
The same applies to most of their objections.
In reality Targetted Advertising from Google and FB's point of view is an advertising ploy that targets the buyers of their services, ad companies, surprisingly enough are suckers for targetted advertising, as for the rest of us, not so much.
Working From Home Stress Syndrome will become a thing along with the 'New Normal™' when it has kicked in fully.
Even peasants in developing countries get to go outside away from the house to practice their subsistence living, so even they, are not imprisoned in their homes for both work and off time.
More than anything else, WFH is a wet dream for bean counters that will ultimately turn out to be flawed, home working may suit many people quite well but the need for access to printers and other infrastructure as well as access to line managers who may not be answering questions as readily as they might in a collective office environment, I can see things going down hill.
Time will tell if I am right or wrong but I am willing to bet that WHFSS will become a thing.
@45RPM
From the House of Commons library; In the year ending March 2020, there were around 46,000 (selected) offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in England and Wales.
So yeah banning those guns really reduced violence, in the period '19 to '20 in England and Wales there were, in spite of there being no guns allowed some 1.950 gun crime offences, as for other violence I am sure there was enough of it though I can't be bothered to look it up.
" The alternative is that the purchaser (i.e. the company using it) holds the buck for liability rather than being able to sue the developer."
I agree with your entire post, as far as the above sentence is concerned, the purchaser using any particular AI for a given purpose should be at fault if an outcome is undesirable.
If you buy any product and apply it to a particular purpose and it turns out to not be fit for that purpose you are responsible in the first instance for that result. With regard to customers, due diligence and duty of care are your responsibilities.
I think it is rather limiting to restrict prizes to only US and Canadian entrants but no surprise.
I imagine a space borne engieered variant of the Quorn fungus ( a type of fusarium) might be a potential source of protein, if they could come up with a way to feed it on space waste.
Or are we going to see Uber or Deliveroo going cosmic?
I live in Spain where the general rule is; If there is a law that says you can do something, you can, however if there is nothing to say you can in law then you may be prosecuted if you do.
An example recently was drones, in theory they were not covered by the regs that covered free flying RC model aircraft that are limited to specific sites, a lot of people assumed they could flydrones anywhere because of that but a couple of people I know were threatened with prosecution by the Guardia for flying drones on the beach and inbthe country.
What this all points to, is that the ongoing trade war in the name of national security is not about to end with a change of administration.
I wonder what will happen if the US wins and US commerce no longer has parts, materials or products to sell because it all came from China.
Expect moves against Alibaba and AliExpress before too long.
In other words, a docking device.
That's so old school and not new, innovative, shiny or disruptive, it doesn't matter if that is all that is needed. Marketing wonks have less attention span than a goldfish and think everyone else is the same, they must always have something new to tempt us with.
Still, at least the thought of even more EMF washing through our homes will drive the crazies even crazier.
Depending on a number of factors, extracting lithium from brines can take up to a couple of million litres of water per kilo of lithium.
There are also the other minerals that come with the lithium such as potassium and magnesium salts or others depending on the content in Cornish brines, they will be dumped if not needed and can then leach into the local environment.
I can imagine there being a lot of protest at mining anything in Cornwall nowadays.
But if the common reports are accurate, only the elite few have any access at all, so how would a budding script kiddie even be able to show aptitude if kids in general have no access.
It's nothing like the west where every student needs a laptop in order to produce their homework.
With a relatively small population of about 26 million, the ratio of talented hackers who have not grown up in a connected society but have tge required talents is exceptional.
I really wonder where NK gets their expert Nation State level hackers from?
Considering how apparently limited citizen's access to the internet and PCs in general is, it's a wonder that they have any significant numbers of proficient IT people at all let alone those who have the mind set and skills to target western infosec types.
Answers on a post card etc........
"Companies are'nt goint support products for ever"
I am currently waiting for a full gasket and repair kit to arrive in the post, for my 1977 Briggs & Stratton engine on a generator, incidentally, the genny is British made and I can still buy parts for that too.
Companies like Apple are primarily sales organisations driven to maximise profit by selling new units an charging as much as possible for both the items and their maintenance.
Lifetime is pre-planned as a part of the basic business model even if the quality in Apple's case is reasonably high it is still a marketing operation driven by the company and not the customer.
Companies like Briggs became ubiquitous by selling a well engineered product as well as excellent service, a pity that few manufacturers use their business model anymore.
I have near permanent reminders to 'remediate' Google Play services, when you look into the remediation, it is basically switching back on their spyware.
I use Firefox/Ublock Origin on my pc so now YouTube has blocked me from recieving notifications, commenting and sign-in only lasts for minutes before requiring another sign in.
Pathetic childish spite that, if anything makes me more resolute, if they block access entirely it will hrdly affect my quality of life so sod'em.
Is beginning to look like a bet.
I saw a youtuber called Wranglerstar who homesteads in the Pacific Northwest, he had just set up a new account and received the kit and thought it was a little expensive but seemed to work well.
Time will tell if the system is good long term and in theory with more uptake should be cheaper.
What I liked, was that the system was fairly portable.
Money and control, if I were a European dependant on cloud and considering the US gov and the US giants increasing penchant for weaponising their dominance, I would consider a non-US cloud as a strategic necessity.
Certainly if I were a European government I would be sure to limit use of US clouds for government contracts.
Given the nature of modern military equipment, I would imagine in a war against a major adversary, that some king of counter cyber warfare would be necessary in the field as well as based at somewhere like GCHQ.
I can't see a combatant in the field during a battle getting much joy from calling a help desk miles away from the battle.
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