Posts by Jason Bloomberg

Re: I thought my marching days were over

You are probably both right.

99% don't give a toss unless something directly affects their lives or the paper or twitter feeds they choose to read are telling them they should do so. We are mostly an insular and selfish lot.

But that 1% who do care are quite a large number.

Of course it's still a battle against 'whatever we do; nothing will change' resignation which has most of us fatalistically accepting however it is. Whether that's the price of milk and bread, government spying, or slaughter and ill-advised ventures in foreign lands.

Still, things do and can change over time. Many of the disinterested 99% can be moved towards dissent and even action. There's always a straw which breaks the camel's back.

risk exists in life ... but it never used to be a reason to ban things

Your right to take risks with my life does not trump my right to not have you take risks with my life.

Perhaps it wasn't always that way. Maybe society has changed and we recognise there is more to rights than self-serving rights.

You are correct, cars would likely never be allowed if they were invented today. Not unless they emerged as they are now, with all the safety features they have. How many needlessly died to make them as safe as they are now? Has it been worth the cost? I don't know.

Don't think I am in anyway anti-car; I'm not, but rights have to be balanced, and if some will not voluntarily facilitate that then the state must step in on behalf of those who face having their rights infringed. Society provides the state the power to do that and expects them to do so when necessary.

Re: Here's the problem

being within the letter of the law doesn't mean you're right

If it's not illegal it cannot be wrong; that's how they sleep soundly in their beds at night. They wilfully choose not to make any moral judgement on whether it is right. The legal test substitutes for a moral test.

Once that's understood it becomes crystal clear how government ministers and the like can stand there, with straight faces, telling us that something others consider bad is the right thing to do and can genuinely believe that.

Alternatives...

Earlier this week I foolishly walked out the house picking up the wrong jacket; locked out, no phone, but luckily some loose change. Maybe I am lucky where I live but there are at least seven public phone boxes within a 10 minute walk I could use to get help. I could reach many more within a half hour drive.

If I hadn't any money and needed help I would ask a neighbour, my local shop, pub or even begged a member of the public to help. Many people are on 'free minutes' so someone probably won't mind lending their phones in such an emergency.

And why doesn't she have a backup phone for when the main one fails, breaks or is stolen? Why no emergency phone in the car? At home there is presumably internet access and email.

Of course blind panic can easily displace rational thought. The lesson is be prepared and have a plan for adverse events like your phone not working when you need it to.

Re: What problem I have worth paying good money for is T.I.O.T going to solve?

If I were selling the technology I would probably argue cost savings -

When the time comes that leccy companies have variable charging you will have to micro-manage your consumption to ensure you maximise your cost savings. That is only going to be fully achievable if you have it done by a computer. There are savings to be had today with careful management and an automated, integrated approach to energy use which you are likely already missing out on.

Rather than having your heating system, fridge, washing machine, dishwasher, backup server, battery and electric car chargers, etc, each working out if it's cheaper to start-up now, hold off for a while, or start earlier than scheduled, it is easier and cheaper to have a single server crunch the numbers and tell the devices what to do and when.

And you don't need a personal server when we already have one in the cloud ready to go. Our system which integrates everything and even caters for any self-sufficiency generation you have will be far easier to use and set-up than anything you can create yourself or find elsewhere.

Bottom line; if it saves you money then why wouldn't you want it? If wasting money isn't a problem for you then fair enough.

Not everyone will want it or see the benefit in having it but I imagine a lot would. The current hurdle is selling the idea to people and achieving initial take-up. It fits in with government desires and would probably also have environmentalist backing and, above all, saving money is a good motivation.

Re: Hmmm........

I expect this would be treated exactly as if being paid in a foreign currency -

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/eim40033.htm

So no tax benefit for salary and any profit from such an investment in 'foreign currency' would appear to also be liable for either Income Tax or Capital Gains Tax.

One thing we can be sure of is that HMRC will want their slice of the pie and have the upper hand in getting it.

Re: The dirty secret of mobile apps - they don't make any money

Writing apps for profit is little different to trying to make a career as an author, musician or artist. A lucky few will make the big time while the rest will see little reward. Most therefore only do it for fun and a vague hope they might get lucky.

App stores have become too big but I don't know what the answer is. It's no different to having a store which stocks every book ever written, every recording and film ever made, every item ever produced. Nothing wrong with that but no one would find such a place useful for discovering what they will like as the sheer choice becomes overwhelming.

We rely on word of mouth and independent reviews to tell us there's something good and, though that may mean some real gems get lost in the process, I guess the best we can hope for is good categorisation of apps and user ratings.

Put bluntly; there has to be some kind of filtering because it can't work without any.

Re: You are welcome to scrape my LinkedIn accnt

I made a policy about 10 years of using my real name on the internet whenever I couldn't realistically use an alias.

Are you actually saying you will always use an alias if you can and if you cannot you will use your real name?

Not as painful as finding oneself in a similar position when nerves take hold. I expect there are a lot of people who know and understand exactly what he went through, and wish they didn't.

Everyone thinks public speaking is easy, and for some it is, but one only finds out when put to the test. He's not the first to think he could but found he couldn't. I reckon he actually handled it pretty well. He had enough composure to get out before things got really bad and better to cut and run than turn into a gibbering, incoherent wreck, a real and full 'meltdown'.

I don't think he's really going to suffer as a result and Samsung have had plenty of headline publicity indirectly so they can probably mark it up as success.

Re: It's not real therefore you can't take it from me

^ Except it doesn't appear he is actually claiming that.

Perhaps Ulbricht is totally stupid but it seems more likely he has a smart lawyer who sees good legal grounds for getting the asset back. If it's not in the 'list of things the feds can seize' then they can't legally seize it. It seems eminently sensible, and the obvious course, for Ulbricht and his lawyers to argue that this asset is not covered by such a list.

I suspect he's on a hiding to nowhere but that doesn't mean he's wrong or foolish to try. The feds have over-stepped their powers in the past and may have done so here.

Re: weird design decision

I can't say why it was designed that way but the generic reasoning would be to give more capabilities, and more flexible options, than a simple LED across the camera power supply gives.

For example the LED can be PWM controlled allowing it to be dimmed or brightened depending on ambient light levels, it can be flashed to indicate status, such as drawing attention to it if a physical shutter were closed and you were trying to use it. If taking still shots, the camera can be kept on and the LED flashed as each shot is taken.

Should the LED be on when the power is on or on only when the camera is in use? We can argue that all day long and not have a universal consensus. Arguably the best solution is that which allows either and that's likely what the designer decided to do.

Done this way the manufacturer or designer of the camera part doesn't have to worry about how the system integrator wants to use it or what they chose to use; they have all options available to them. If they want it to behave differently it's simply a firmware mod not a hardware redesign. In fact it allows old product to be upgraded to new functionality simply by uploading firmware to it. This would usually be seen as an advantage though in this case it also creates a problem.

Re: Google

If Google want to diversify away from Intel, buying up one or more of those wannabees or simply placing an order with a lot of zeros after the first digit for their product would be less expensive and take less time to get the the new machines spinning up and going online.

That's always been the age-old choice; pay someone to do it for you, buy up a business to become part of your own, or create a department to do it from scratch.

Each has advantages and disadvantages, risks, costs and opportunities. It seems unlikely Google would not have considered and weighed-up all the options they have. Perhaps cost and time are not the primary concerns?

The resilient internet, or not

I am totally unsurprised that you have no idea how the network operates! Well done at highlighting that.

Yet how many times are we told that the internet is resilient and immune to such single point failures? And wasn't that the prime motivation for its development?

Few would expect redundancy from home/office to cabinet but it seems the infrastructure is far more tree-like than net-like with a single point of failure knocking out numerous downstream branches.

The infrastructure is frequently demonstrated to be much more fragile than it should be. The redundant and alternative paths to keep things going when one site falls over seem to be placed too high up the network and I suspect less redundancy exists than could exist. I would venture that's a cost decision. Things could be made better but the network operators either don't care or don't want to invest in that.

People may be ignorant of how the network operates but they are frequently led to believe it operates other than it does in practice.

Re: The real issue?

I'd say the real flaw is that any system allows for such a situation to take place.

It does seem bizarre. The court seems to have effectively granted the regulator an open-ended license to take as much money as he wants. While Apple may have agreed to being placed under regulator control as part of the settlement I doubt that is what they expected or foresaw.

I don't have any sympathy for Apple over their guilty behaviour but this does not appear to be reasonable.

Re: Money, money, money

Yes the Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charity but Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd is not, and they are responsible for engineering and trading activities related to the PI.

It is like Help The Aged saying; "it would be great if we had a cheap mobility buggy to help get older folks out and about". Someone saying yes, forming a trading company, building and selling such a buggy, handing profit over to Help The Aged and paying them royalties for having come up with the concept.

Money is important. Both to keep the company going and for creating the next generation buggies, and to deliver money upstream to help the charity achieve their charitable aims. The more of it the better.

This trading company is not a charity, is not limited to any charity remit, but is helping a charity. Selling under the banner of "The Help The Aged Buggy", rather than "8% of purchase price goes to Help The Aged", makes for good marketing. This charitable association can secure better component sourcing deals than competitors, making the price achievable and gaining wide appeal. It is a win for both the trading company and the charity. Not so good for competitors who cannot claim such charitable associations and the benefits which come from that.

Re: I wonder

But, and rather importantly - How often or regularly?

I have worked during my holiday. There was a crisis and I was the one who could solve it so I did. In return I was rewarded quite well and it proved worth it; everyone won from that.

That is somewhat different to, day in, day out, not being able to tuck the kids into bed because, "Daddy's got a speadsheet to finish", which is what we really need to worry about. A bit of give and take is okay. As long as its equitable and any willingness to self-sacrifice doesn't become an obligation or otherwise exploited.

Re: Smells like FUD

It does but I bet it has got a few people asking could it be done and is there any good use for it?

It wouldn't surprise me if those discovering the idea weren't the ones hoping to develop the idea further. I imagine a few here would be willing to crowd-fund such an insert. I would.

It doesn't have to be only for nefarious purposes. Ignoring the creation of spam farms, having distributed computing power everywhere which people can call upon seems a decent enough dream. Maybe MK could fit one inside every mains plug?

There are already Wi-Fi enabled SD cards so it's easily possible at a small size. The main downside is cost but that drops with economy of scale. Pump out a few billion and we could see costs fall significantly.

Gaining access through Wi-Fi isn't too hard either; there's probably an open router nearby and BT have conveniently put FON access in their phone boxes. There's a good chance such a module can find a link to the outside world and, as noted, that becomes easier with router back doors and smart meters.