Posts by DavCrav

Re: So

"What is the elReg unit of scumbaggery?"

The Nixon?

Re: 4 Kelvin Moles?

"Grampa: "The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!""

Your car gets seriously shit mileage then. 40 rods is a couple of hundred yards. A hogshead is about 50 gallons.

Re: Yup, women are smarter.

"In 2016 its still ok for your average 20 to 30 something to say "I dont really know computers".

I get asked some truly basic shit more often than is reasonable."

Get to the back of the queue! I'm a mathematician and we've had numbers for quite some time, significantly longer than we've had computers, either the original human type or machine. The number of people who say they can't do basic arithmetic is probably comparable, and possibly heavily overlapping, with the tech illiterati.

"She mailed it in from one of her e-mail servers..."

Then TPP text wouldn't have been secret for so long...

Re: Don't think of BI as a welfare replacement...

"Yes, thank you capitalists, you raised us up to this level. But going forward, you're going to have to share now. The times they are a changin'."

Unfortunately, we have lots of productivity now because of capitalism. Get rid of the capitalism, and see how long your centrally planned economy keeps productivity that high

Re: When all else fails ...

"When all else fails ...

Blame Brexit!"

You think the 20% fall in Sterling is unconnected to the EU Referendum result? Interesting position.

"They might have a reason to reduce the offer, but what they got still isn't a bad deal."

Really? They are buying Yahoo!, and the price had a bn at the end. I think that's a bad deal, personally. I think at the time someone on the comments here accurately valued it as being worth 18p, three buttons and a pen top. Not a whole pen, mind.

Re: And yet ...

"And yet Philip Green is still allowed to be chairman of the Arcadia Group despite paying his family and himself massive dividends whilst driving BHS into bankruptcy. I guess he must have invited the Right People to his lavish parties."

Did he do it while insolvent? No. So he cannot be done for trading while insolvent. Note that he sold BHS as a going concern, and also wrote off more in loans and the price he paid for the company than he made out of it in dividends. The pension problems are primarily the fault of low interest rates, and are replicated all over the world: the BHS deficit is significantly wider now than it was when the company went into liquidation, for example. But let's not let a few facts get in the way of a rant about billionaires.

Re: How do they deal with this little problem?

"The company started three weeks ago, and it give it nine more before it folds. Any more than that, and the scam risks becoming too blatant even for the gullible."

And yet a quick Google search yields this BBC article from April 2015:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32282131

where apparently the tech was being demonstrated later in the year... Something doesn't add up here.

Edit: they have a video of the robot arms working there. Yeah, that's not going to work in real life.

Re: "some obscure board game"

"I assumed that the game in question was chess, because the last I heard Go was *waaay* too difficult for brute forcing, er, I mean, sophisticated AI algos."

Indeed. Which is why it was such a shock when the latest Go AI wiped the floor with the fleshy meatbag.

Re: Twelve =/= teen

"http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/11/15/3364432.htm"

Was that intended to support or refute my post? In that it said that we measure time in twelves because of the Babylonians, who used base 10 for counting but then grouped larger numbers into 60s. In my post I said that the Babylonians used base 10 and also base 60. I am not sure what you wanted to say, especially since you said nothing.

Oh, and add to my list of other cultures don't go up to twelve, Slavonic languages such as Russian start with one-teen.

Re: How the US election operates....

"3. The illuminati decides who will be president anyway (had to throw that in didn't I?)"

I thought it was the Templars, now known as Abstergo. Maybe that's jointly with the Illuminati.

Re: I would have thought that

"I would have thought that a contract with a dead person is void."

This is clearly not true in all cases: loans, mortgages, and so on are still valid even after a person dies, and the charge is made on their estate. This is probably where for example mobile phone companies can come in, as they have a credit agreement. Suppose that you get a two-year contract for a brand new phone, and on day two of the contract you die. There's a reasonable case for the phone company to get the phone back. Early termination charges for electric or something is pretty scummy, and the phone company could just eat the loss as a goodwill gesture, as it's not going to happen all that often.

"You missed the DNA analysis to find our who's been in your home and estimate their duration of stay. Want to know if your lover is cheating on you behind your back? Now you can tell."

That would be functionality that was built into it, but can only be accessed if you upgrade the software for a special introductory price.

"It's not even losing enough money to be a proper startup."

Maybe this is what the 'achieving scale' in the article means?

Re: Black differently abled gay height challenged single mothers in Computer Science!

"In light of this assertion, lack of diversity in technology recruitment becomes more difficult to excuse as a consequence of natural ability.

I know where the author is going with this but lack of any significant pattern in the student population does not justify to force "diversity" on employers for the sake of it - because employers are not hiring in the same population, especially not if that population is reframed by adding more "diversified" people."

I'd go much further than all this. I'd say the author has taken a study that shows that coursemarks across a specific population is roughly normal, as with many things in life, and then extrapolated that to claim that this means that all substrata of the population are equally adept at things, which is a no-no.

For a start, the dataset is hideously self selecting, almost the epitome of such: final-year computer science undergrads. Now come on; if there were a geek gene, you would rather hope that all of these people have it in the first place, so we are looking only at the 'cans'. This is specifically against the author of the article here, not the paper itself.

For the authors of the original paper, I assume they looked at pre-moderated marks, and not those after they have been fit to a curve? I couldn't find any mention of this in their paper, but since this is trick-cycling and I actually have real maths to be getting on with, I didn't look too hard.

Secondly, finally for the off-the-top-of-my-head-reasons-why-this-paper-is-rubbish, exams are designed to get a normal distribution. We write a few questions that everyone will get, then attempt to write a few questions that some will, some won't, and a few very hard questions, to get this nice distribution of people.

To be fair to the authors of the study, they are trying to prove that computer science results at university level are normally distributed, just like every other subject. And they succeed at that, although my reasons above are a pretty good explanation for that even if the underlying population ability is bimodal. And then the trick-cycling comes in, and it's garbage from then on. They miss out one very good reason why lecturers think distributions are bimodal: because the people they see are bimodal. Interactions with students are mostly with the very weak and the very able, with those in between being largely invisible until exam time.

Final grade for the paper: 55%. A solid upper second, but not enough critical analysis to get onto most graduate training programmes at major companies.

My login for ITV Player was absolutely definitely not David Cameron of 10 Downing St, London, SW1A 2AA, DoB 9/10/1966. I guess I should update those details now...

Re: Americans, again not realising there's a world outside them

"Blacks are not being killed by police in any remarkable numbers. They're actually less likely to be shot and killed by the police on any given encounter than whites. Not only that, but most of the police shootings of people of any race are justified."

Oh goody. Another misuse of statistics. It's not that blacks are being killed more often in any given encounter, it's that these encounters are much more likely to happen to blacks than whites. So if a black person has as much chance of being shot per encounter as a white person, but is ten times more likely to have an encounter, can you please tell me how much more likely he is to be shot?

"...most of the police shootings of people of any race are justified."

OK, so that means that up to 50% of police shootings are not justified? I would bloody well hope that most police shootings are justified. In fact I'd be concerned if any at all are not, and if one is not justified, then the police involved would go on trial. (Not necessarily convicted of course, but a full, public investigation involving a judge and lawyers, just as when non-police shoot people in an unjustified manner.) But who decides if the shootings are justified? Oh yes, the police.

Re: Is this really an option?

"The Chocolate Factory had declined an earlier request to be audited.

I didn't think declining a tax office audit was an option... Maybe being a company the size of Google does give you an advantage."

I think that means something like

"Can we take a look at your books?"

"Come back with a court order."

"OK, here it is."

"Oh. Erm, OK then."

Re: Barrel Bombs vs Precision Guided 500lb Bomb

"If by 'Precision Guided 500lb Bomb' you are referring to laser guided, more accurately laser marked target bombs, they are only as accurate as their markers.

The target is identified by the laser carrying marker being identified using a 4-digit number entered by the pilot. This number is conveyed to the bomber pilot who dials it in to the ''Precision Guided 500lb Bomb". The bomb ignores all other 4-digit identifiers.

The alternative can be infra-red markers placed around/near by ground based accomplices OR a laser target marking system. These are often referred to as Ground Laser Target Designator (GLTD) and are used in conjunction with Paveway bombs and Hellfire missiles.

The transmitted marker is from a Nd:YAG laser with a wavelength of 1.064 micrometres (3.93701e-5 inches) and a pulse energy energy of up to 80 Millijoules (0.0010 watt seconds). They are good for -32 degrees C to +45 degrees C operation.

Unaligned nations are using IR receivers that decode the marker signal and transmit the codes, in real time, to alternative IR decoy markers which then become the target for the incoming weapons, thereby rendering the 'Precision Guided 500lb Bomb' less ineffective.

So much for 'precision'."

I can't tell whether I've just read a Wikipedia article or an extract from a Tom Clancy novel.

Re: Very few commenters seem to know the facts of this case...

"If you wish to see my sources on the above, visit https://justice4assange.com/assange-case-fact-checker.html

Although it is a pro-julian website, everything listed there can be independently verified if the nay-sayers only chose to do so."

I won't bother going to your website, thanks. Your first 'fact'

"1. The UN formally found in February 2016 that Julian Assange is unlawfully detained by Sweden and the UK."

is false. A UN committee found that Assange was arbitrarily detained, not unlawfully detained. the committee consisted of non-lawyers from a variety of countries, and did not worry itself with concepts like the law.

It is clear that Assange's predicament is neither arbitrary nor detention. The leap of logic they took was that, because Assange cannot leave without being arrested, he is de facto in prison. And because he is 'in prison' according to them, without trial, this detention is therefore arbitrary.

Note that this logic would apply to anyone hiding from the law: taken a few hostages and won't come out? You are being arbitrarily detained by the authorities. It's crazy but hey, sometimes the UN just has to make political points against certain countries, and this is the only way they can do it.

"What's next? A picture of a cat fleeing from a burning house will be considered animal abuse?"

Yes, if you deliberately set fire to a house knowing there are cats in there. Of course, arson probably takes precedence.

Re: Copy protection for links

"or would the potential user of the link have to mail me, and request the right to use the link?"

I think everyone who wants to click on the link should have to send a letter to the owner of the target address asking permission to click on the link. Permission would normally be granted within 28 days by return of post.

"In my view everyone who uses a computer should be trained in general security, how to spot these emails and made to sign a waiver saying that if an infection is proven to come from them they pay the ransom if no other method of recovery is available. "

You might need to change the law first, as making employees personally liable for costs tends to be frowned upon, at least in the UK.

Re: Other colours are available.

"yet no-one ever mentions an Indian, Chinese or Middle Eastern bond?"

I'm not sure about Indian, but how many Chinese and Middle-Eastern people would get through the security clearance procedures, do you think?

Re: What if taxation is inherently unjust?

"What if taxation is inherently unjust?

Think about this with great care. Taxation is unjust, in and of itself. How so? Well there's no guarantee government will return a benefit in direct proportion to what that take by force. What's more, 95% of all taxation comes out of earned incomes, while unearned incomes are virtually untaxed. These unearnds are about the same amount as the earned so would form an ideal alternate tax base. Show me any politician ready to stand up and point this out. Meanwhile, Apple and the Irish government have risen significantly in terms of nobility."

None of what you said makes taxation inherently unjust. At best, it would make our implementation unjust, not the concept itself, so it wouldn't be inherent.

"these are all examples of speech that is NORMALLY not protected under free-speech provisions in countries' laws."

"Sorry, but you are wrong. At least in the US, free speech means free speech."

You says I am wrong, then give one example of a country to prove that these are normally not covered under free-speech provisions. I wonder, if I give two examples of countries where I'm right, that makes you double wrong?

Re: Uber saved my ass last weekend

"There's a reason why taxi drivers are primarily immigrants: they're very poorly paid."

They might be poorly paid, but driving a taxi, especially long-distance driving like this, where you don't have to know lots of shortcuts and detailed maps, is one of the least skilled jobs out there, simply requiring a driving licence, which the vast majority of the population have. You would expect it to pay at the extreme lower end of payscales.