Posts by Mage

Re: And when ?

The last update I did switched on one Sharing to MS setting. I do check each time.

Can I block "fall Creator's Update release" and only have security and bug fixes? Especially fix the stupid ultraflat GUI that has silly phone elements and inconsistent settings locations.

I don't care about the AR or an extra font. I've far too many already! Mostly I look for fonts similar to old printed ones to recreate old instructions, posters, labels etc. on stuff from 1920s to 1980s. I don't care to have a new font for the screen or for printed books I publish. If I do, there are plenty decent fonts out there.

Though my main laptop only runs Linux Mint + Mate and I have an Android Tablet, I do still mind a Win 10 Tablet / Keyboard and a Win 10 desktop for a games player.

Re: I think that's a good idea

Why?

Exactly what does the loss of privacy improve?

How secure will the collected data be?

How is it used?

If someone needs to send me a parcel they can "collect" my address. They ought not to keep it.

If someone is getting paid they can "collect" my credit card info. They ought not to keep it. Many illegally store the extra digits on reverse. On Amazon I make a trivial but valid address change so at least any purchase needs the credit card re-entered (there are loads of ways for people to access your Amazon account, potentially. I set limit for eBook reader very low).

Far too much is collected by Android, Chrome OS, Chrome Browser, MS Browers, Win10 etc. The motivation is not better software.

Also GUI quality and important functionality on many major packages (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla) is going down, so is telemetry replacing proper design, proper user testing and proper research of users directly? Telemetry tells you nothing about WHY the user did something or how important the hardly used features are.

Re: 5G is a marketing label only

Yes, 5G is about infrastructural integrations not speed.

Capital Expenditure vs Speed.

Why is geographical coverage poor and peak time speed poor for many users? It's NOTHING to do with technology, as indeed this lab demo (which has been done on other HW, this is PR) shows. The Network operators only install enough so not too many calls dropped and PAYG can be consumed and cherry pick the areas with good ability to sign up many bill pay customers (i.e. not much rural).

The licensing is too weak, enforcement almost none existent. Regulation exists to raise revenue from licences, not benefit consumers.

One physical RAN operator with "beauty comp" licence and USO 100% coverage, minimum peak time speed KPIs and raise revenue from VAT would be far better. Then the operators would be retailers.

"Free" phones on contracts should be banned. That's a hidden cost and reduces choice and competition.

This is shameful PR, in a long line of it since news of first 3G licences.

Re: speaker A is from Glasgow and speaker B is from New Jersey.

Context and engage in conversation is best. Speech recognition / "AI" is poor at context and rubbish at "real" conversation.

It's more brute force using a giant database.

"Kin yer mammy sew?"

Very different meaning in parts of Glasgow. Or it was 40 years ago.

Re: The 1920s onwards

Actually the 1780s to 1800. Programmable power looms, then in 1800 we entered the Electrical Age (Steam was well established), due to Volta's battery. Hence Shelly's Frankenstien's Monster 1821 approx (there were revisions). Before the end of 1800s there was telegraph, lead acid batteries, dry cells, fax, voice telephony, radio, cars (Steam, Battery Electric, Petrol and Diesel), typewriters, punch card census analysis (Hollerith = IBM), Gestetner's Rotary Duplicator, photography, cine, phonograph & gramophone, hearing aids using carbon mic/moving iron, amplifier module, torpedoes. HG Wells WOTW "warships" were already obsolete.

Maxwells famous equations only a hair's breadth from relativity than showed speed of light a constant (Einstein credited him) and the Michelson–Morley experiment was performed over the spring and summer of 1887.

The modern novel is mostly an 18th C development. (Jane Austin rather famous now)

Boolean Algebra for computers and the special non-Euclidian geometry need by Einstein for his 2nd Relativity equation.

Improved vacuum pumps and the CRT (UK and Germany).

Though SF can be argued to seriously start with Lucian's True Stories (about 150 AD?) they really took off due to 19th C industrialisation, science, mathematics and tech. Verne's 20,000 leagues was all based on EXISTING tech, he'd been inspired by a model of a French military submarine.

Books were still only for well off people. Most people in 1830s to 1850s saw theatre productions of Frankenstein rather than book. London had many theatres with up to 5,000 people a night.

The whole Victorian pre-Raphelite, neo-pagan, Celtic literature (English translations) and thus Fantasy writing took off in Victorian age, which fed into SF. Dracula (based on the Irish myths & lenann shee more than central Europe, he was Irish), McDonald's Lilith and many otthers without which SF would be rather boring (how much a debt does Hellconia owe to Fantasy?).

Tolkien new all the Victorian stuff, though LOTR is more based on Celtic, Teutonic and Norse myth. & legend.

EE "Doc" Smith in late 1920s "invents" Space Opera (he puts impossible "jokes", he knew science and that Iron is the lowest state were Fusion and Fission end, so the spacecraft powered on Iron is an "in joke").

By the 1980s SF had seriously gone off and is now most is too Transhumanist "religion" and indulgent fantasy (Nano everything that's really just magic, immortality, General AI, resurrection clones and mind transfer to computers, the stuff of the comic end of SF in the 1940s).

I like Aldiss's earlier works.

Re: "function even when the host is offline"

All of them just have simply input /output on the consumer devices for the big central AI data slurping & privacy theft.

Re: Different planet

Also fine the Board & the senior executives personally. The £50K isn't even a slap on the wrists, and the customer will pay.

Re: A 32-bit DAC for audiophiles...

@Lost all faith...

You have been overdosing on irony tablets. Or is it sarcasm. I must learn the difference.

Re: Geneva Convention?

This is publicity seeking fantasy on Musk's part, though I agree we should not have autonomous weapons of any sort.

Cruise Missiles (Many are jet engined drones with rocket motors for launch) are an updated version of the V1 / V2. They are usually manually launched, but use onboard autonomous guidance and targeting. In any case only snipers (and similar) fire at individually selected humans. Rapid fire, machine guns, shells, missiles, torpedoes, mines and bombs are indiscriminate and often used against non-combatants (civilians, medics, wounded soldiers, prisoners, animals etc).

Also Heat seeking surface to air and air to air missiles.

MIRV nuclear ICBMs. Aren't some set to automatically launch if the other side's first strike is detected? They are not anyway aimed at identified individuals.

Mines

Are Drones and loitering "cruise missiles" always manually targeted?

1) It's really got nothing to do with AI

2) The big nations only either ban smaller nations from their weapons or agree to ban weapons that don't actually work too well for them (Chemical & Biological. e.g. in WWI Gas attacks far less effective and more expensive than shelling or machine guns or tanks). Major big power exception is USA using agent orange/defoliants in Vietnam. Current Syrian regime and Saddam Hussain used Chemical weapons to intimidate and kill civilians. They are not very effective against an organised army.

Note: The WWII German V weapons killed about 2,000 enemy civilians and hardly any allied soldiers. About 20,000 of their own slave and other workers died making them. If they had made aircraft and U-boats it would have been more effective. Churchill turned tide of Battle of Britain by war crime of targeting German Civilian areas / Cities. Germans then switched from bombing aerodromes to UK cities (and Dublin twice, one accident, once because Fire Engines sent to help in Belfast). Hitler then ordered development of V weapons (Vengeance). Churchill certainly understood Hitler's psychology.

Re: Bah!

Did we abandon real computer science in the late 80s / early 90s in favour of "languages", "libraries" and "frameworks"?

Have we abandoned compile time validation in favour of run time testing?

Is discussing merits of Javascript vs python 2 vs python 3 missing the bigger picture?

Async, threads, co-routines, mutex, signals, processes are all tools for design of systems with concurrency. Sometimes co-operative multitasking, pre-emptive or dataflow design is best approach. What works for user space on a desktop GUI may not be appropriate for a device driver or a web server with an SQL back end.