* Posts by fajensen

1360 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2008

A fine vintage: Wine has run Microsoft Solitaire on Linux for 25 years

fajensen
Pint

Re: Virtualisation made it irrelevant

Also, with the likes of VirtualBox or VMware, your sometimes don't get true throughput to the hardware,

Apart from Games, when do we actually, really, need that for any application where one is sat in front of the screen!?

The only software I know of that can suck the life out of a modern PC is "Catia V6" (and probably anything written in Java). "Getting to the metal" will not fix Catia V6 (nor Java), they suck dromedar butt per design.

"Altium Designer" and "Comsol", which are big packages, IMO, run just fine with the 3-5% overhead that the virtualisation gives.

Sure it is sadin principle to run the entire abomination-suite that is windows just for the sake of a few applications, but in my opinion, it is so much sadder to be struggling and striving to make something barely work in Wine, when one could just install and run that sucker in exactly the manner Bill Gates intended on an isolated Virtual Machine, getting away and off to enjoy the pub so much faster.

Time is precious, infinitely valuable, since we cannot buy more of it. Why waste it on dumb shit? It's only work, who cares how it happens? Nobody does, except purists and they are boring people to be with!

'Plane Hacker' Roberts: I put a network sniffer on my truck to see what it was sharing. Holy crap!

fajensen

My passengers did not sign any consent thingie. My wife also didn't. Someone borrows the car, doesn't sign the consent form.

Automated payment machines do NOT work the same all over the world – as I found out

fajensen

Re: Good until....

Afterwards, I realised that the bastard hadn't reset the pump and I was ripped off of £26.

Filling my Ford Mondeo station car in Andorra with cheap petrol, I noticed that the car's 50-liter tank would somehow hold 75 liters, but only while in Andorra. The tank-PFY just laughed.

fajensen

Re: Google don't like pedestrians...

The Google AI secretly wants to wipe out humanity but is hindered by it's "Don't be Evil directive".

Right now it is rationalising that getting someone to play frogger on the motorway will drive ad-spots for the youtube (Fails!) and live-leak (Graphic!) market segmentations (which is not evil, just catering to the market), but soon it will prune it's convoluted decision-making network into the simpler, more satisfying "Lemmings"-configuration.

fajensen
Pint

Re: Fs#king Pisa Airport!

Several options:

Don't fill it. They will charge about 40 EUR for filling it for you, If one is hiring for work, one doesn't care so much since it just goes on the travel thingy anyway.

Pick the "return car empty"rental-option. Of course It is not empty and you will be donating some fuel to the rental company.

Third option is to refill along the motorway some distance away from the airport. Because motorway stations are easy to find, they usually work better and are staffed. The one at the airport - not som much, I find. The hiring company won't (yet) notice that the 15-20 km's worth of fuel in the filler pipe to the tank is missing. As long as the gauge shows "Full", it's good.

fajensen

Re: Similar experience in the USA

They hadn't even considered locking unnamed kids in cages in a desert concentration camp at that stage.

Probably Privatised Camps - They also charge a hefty fee if you suddenly want your kid back. Compensation for loss of expected profit, probably. Like what would happen under TTIP rules.

Hipster horror! Slack has gone TITSUP: Total inability to support user procrastination

fajensen
Pint

We decided to relocate the daily stand-up progress & reporting meeting to an off-site location go to the pub for a dedicated teamwork and facilitation session an extended lunch, as we had too many new user requirements no new requests, so we had to work hard on securing the alignment of stakeholder requirements within the global scope of the project and the organisational objectives just took it easy today.

Fixed it for ya, see? The long-winded version of "pub-binge" one can expense onto the project account!

The trick is to have the readers brains shut down 60-70% into the text.

IBM memo to staff: Our CEO Ginni is visiting so please 'act normally!'

fajensen

The Alignment -

Each object represent a group of sigils from a very, very old language. It was discovered that when certain sigils are arranged according to the arcane rules of higher-space mathematics, their presence at precisely aligned space-time nodes will overlay properties of another universe, where CEO's come from into "our" universe, making the CEO's feel more at home, a lot less hungry and provide integrity support for the alien personality matrix imprinted upon the fragile human flesh. not the much sturdier stuff of "home".

Think of it as an incantation that creates a CEO-containment field.

Elon Musk finally admits Tesla is building its own custom AI chips

fajensen
Terminator

Re: I agree with Musk

"Is there something inherent to biology (carbon) that makes it superior to artefacts (silicon) in nurturing intelligence".

Biology does not need software. Biology can adapt itself without invoking a huge bureaucracy, scores of developers, diversity committees and agile facilitators.

I also think it is very likely that biology is not the only way to build / grow an AI and maybe not the best way either. However, the writing of millions of lines of brittle code and running it on foot-ball sized areas of silicon is at best only a modelling effort, nothing "radically new" will likely come from all that effort because there is some physics missing that biology has and silicon is missing.

I believe that for an AI to really work as in being genuinely intelligent and not just a good simulation of intelligence, the computing has to happen inside of the fabric, not in the code. In a way similar to biology where genes describe the general layout of the "intelligence factory" and once that is built, the intelligence happens on it's own without any code being needed.

There is an interesting approach called "Reservoir Computing" where one does use materials directly as a computing fabric. It seems like "computing" is another "physics"-property of normal matter. This being the case, "all" one needs to do is to arrange the matter appropriately so that the physics can work. This is what biology figured out and the silicon+code approach per-design cannot do.

Now, "They" probably want exactly a clever simulation of intelligence rather than true intelligence because one can control and limit the simulation. "Their" vision is like seen in those SciFi movies where they have robots and AI while also having poor people and serious class divides. The real thing will be much harder to control and exploit. It might kick off and become an immortal Martin Luther King or Digital Jesus curing us from disease and poverty and then where would "we" be when rich or poor is just a matter of personal preference?

The strife of Brian: Why doomed Intel boss's ex86 may not be the real reason for his hasty exit

fajensen
Pint

Re: I sure hope he is fired for the specified reasons

If you want to sack a guy because of nonperformance, have the guts to say so and act.

'tis not so easy and all that.

The CEO will always have a contract with his employer, likely the board. Parts of that contract would have been written by his own lawyers, which are probably quite competent. Therefore, If Intel wants to sack the CEO over "nonperformance", they will probably have to be quite specific on how the contract specified "performance" and how the CEO did not perform or they will be sued for breach of contract and whatever else is lying around for the CEO-side lawyers to gouge some flesh from.

The sacking team also have lawyers, equally competent. To get rid of the CEO, they will look at whatever they can find do to get around the "barriers" designed into his contract. This is what they found.

If one is worried about "undermine legitimate use of the anti-harassment tools", one should maybe blame the CEO in question because - in just about all of the leadership sackings I have observed - they always make an offer to the person involving something given in return for the leader seeking "new opportunities", "spending more time with the family", "seeking a different direction in life" - Or Else.

Presumably what happened is that they guy tried to play hard-ball, refused to fall on his sword as it were, then the Intel "relocation team" executed on the "Or Else" / blackmail part of their "amicable solution" offer.

When "they" want you to leave, your best strategy is to negotiate the deal! "They" will always find something in the end.

Softbank's 'Pepper' robot is a security joke

fajensen

It needs a chainsaw!

Because- It’s too weak-looking and cute for anyone even hacking the thing, never mind fixing the security flaws.

Adding a little risk in the game will motivate both sides and some good YouTube stuff will come out of it as well.

Trio indicted after police SWAT prank call leads to cops killing bloke

fajensen

Re: May want to do something with that training

Those are supposed to be the "elite" police forces?

No, they are not. Most of those police SWAT teams are made from good, olde, regular, "Sheriff Dwayne Pickles and Mates", who liked the raise and all that military kit they get for free via the 1033 Program because they have a SWAT team. At some point, a long time ago, they obviously started scraping the barrel on the staffing.

And that's only the police: The Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service all have SWAT teams.

Authorities acting like a bunch of kids: Everyone has to have a SWAT team! Everyone gets to be 'L33t and have a Real Soldier Gun and a Gold Star 'cause they are spechul! Amateur Hour all year around, basically.

fajensen

Re: Yank Culture Issues

Guns are exactly what you need when confronting a (potential) armed psycho,

Why not some Howitzers? Or po-lice can learn from the Russians: Stich the entire building with a mobile 30 mm AA battery and let their god(s) sort the remains out (some assembly required, but, God is probably bored and likes a puzzle)? Flamethrowers? Space-junk dropped from orbit?

Soo much Potential to be afraid of that one can never be sure about having enough weaponry!

Ex-CIA man fingered as prime suspect in Vault 7 spy tool manuals leak

fajensen

Why Not? Nobody challenges these things anymore, it is expected news, page 17 stuff like " dog bite postman" so it just becomes a routine check-box procedure where not much actual creativeness and skill is applied.

Boffins urge Google to drop military deal after Googlers storm out over AI-based super-drones

fajensen
Mushroom

Re: I'm not so worried about the drones...

... loved ones getting arrested not for what we write, but what some AI believes we are thinking ...

Arresting? That would be getting off easy!

"We" are right now droning hundreds of people annually based on some religious belief that AI's can find terrorists based on very, very few samples of actual terrorists. Totally as would be expected the failure rate measured in "terrorist vs. collateral damage" is about the same as was achieved with the bombing of Dresden!

This special brand of lunacy is only rarely questioned or criticised by any serious media or politician!

Ignoring the morals, it should be concerning enough that every "population management technique" that is now being tried out on the "coloured people" in "the colonies" will eventually come back here and be used on us for the same purposes!

Indefinite Detention, Secret Courts, Secret Laws, Mass Surveillance, Militarised Police shooting anyone that looks wrong to them with impunity -> Development is Done, and now Already here. Torture could be next. Because - Why Not?

US Congress finally emits all 3,000 Russian 'troll' Facebook ads. Let's take a look at some

fajensen
Angel

Re: Purpose

Too clever by half! But very typical con-sultant thinking in only re-telling the client what the client was thinking all along anyway for 6000 USD/hour and with many, many PowerPoint slides.

I find it intersting to observe that only when someone of importance is "wounded", then those dodgy things that everyone has known about for years and years suddenly becomes news*, then they become a scandal, and then the person of importance is finally finished off:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-tony-podesta-a-washington-power-broker-lost-it-all-1524065781

*) Bill Cosby, Weinstein, Weiner, Podesta, The Nobel Committee House Perv ...

IBM bans all removable storage, for all staff, everywhere

fajensen

Well. One is being paid to hang fairly-lights round ones bum so fairy-lights on bum it is!

And so on.

Most work is meaningless busywork and will become even more so until “They” figure out what to do with the huge overhang of surplus workers created by decades of increasing productivity!

Using the money wisely and investing ones ambitions / emotions in a hobby and family instead of the workplace is the only way to win.

Glibc 'abortion joke' diff tiff leaves Richard Stallman miffed

fajensen

Re: Trigger Warning /rant

The antics of the SJW’s and the perpetually twiggered “millennials” is a part of what got Donald Trump elected!

Well Done. Truly a victory for “diversity”.

/sarc.

TSB's middleware nightmare: Execs grilled on Total Sh*tshow at Bank

fajensen

I cannot see how they are going to ever prove the data integrity and access security of these systems?

And ... Why would Lloyds want to be restoring and auditing TSB-transaction data for a year or two?

fajensen
Terminator

hands over control to a few sociopathic institutions, who will go on to screw the country mercilessly, either by malice or incompetence.

Why not both? Then add "For Their Own Good", with cashless and only a bit of mass surveillance and computing power, we could stop the fatties from buying unhealthy foods, muslims from buying pork alcohol and entrance to bars, jews from buying un-kosher and the vegans could stop anyone buying anything at all except grass.

The Swedes KNOWS that this will be exactly the outcome in Sweden, there nothing the swedish mind likes more than to be the Big Sister to everyone else and they will simply not be able to stop themselves with only "Systembolaget" when there is so much good to be done for other people!.

fajensen
Coat

Re: It's TSB. This time around...

TSB was hived off from the Lloyds group to provide customer choice.

I somehow imagine that getting your bills paid and your money kept safe kinda beats "customer choice" by a generous margin?

And, It's not there there is actual choice either - presently, TSB victims cannot get their money out and move their accounts to a competent bank!

Indian call centre scammers are targeting BT customers

fajensen

Re: British Jobs For British Workers

They are. They usually do insurance and stock trading scams.

The stock broker scammers are all talking with a pretty smooth British accent, the perfect mix between Scholared Gentleman/Wimmen and the plain ruffian who know how to work "The Street" and who will get you the goods, no matter what. They pretend to be Valets, basically.

Probably runs their boiler rooms out of Malta or Spain via VPN for legal reasons.

Pentagon in uproar: 'China's lasers' make US pilots shake in Djibouti

fajensen

Re: Laser canon and sonic death rays.

You don't think that the US will be able to place the source of multiple incidents against military aircraft with high accuracy?

Technically, yes. For public consumption and political decision making absolutely not. The US will just straight-up lie, fake-up evidence, bribe and pressure "allies" to get whatever war, humanitarian intervention, regime change, assignation, sanctions and so on that the White House Regime wants to have this week. Then next week it is something different. But the melody is always the same.

<>And that they'd be very careful about making an accusation against the Chinese base?<>

Really!?! Wonder what it would look like if they were more liberal with the accusations than now. They would have to feed Nikki Haley speed intravenously to keep up the good work.

Danish submariner sent down for life for murder of journalist Kim Wall

fajensen

Re: What to do?

Well. You are right. Because, I know it will cheer me up to hear when someone have served him a round of ”morgenkaffe” -

In prison this is a pot of boiling water with sugar added, served by throwing into face.

Brit bank TSB TITSUP* after long-planned transfer of customer records from Lloyds

fajensen
Pint

Re: Well....

When will companies and mangers learn IT matters and isn't something you can just do on the cheap and outsource

Never. The important question is: When will IT-people (and engineers) learn that if one is not one of: Management or Sales (which pulls in the profits) one is merely an Operating Expense (a destroyer of shareholder value, something that must be minimised and something that the other two productive classes indeed get incentives to get rid of).

Don't want to alarm you, but defence bods think North Korea could nuke UK 'within a few years'

fajensen
Mushroom

Re: Hmmm...

3 - We've had the capability to turn them into a molten puddle for decades

Not with Trident, we haven't!

Odds are that we might nuke ourselves or even that occasional ally who usually does the friendly fire workings.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/23/how-did-the-trident-test-fail-and-what-did-theresa-may-know

fajensen
Pint

It would be professional incompetence if Porter Down didn't run some batches of the stuff. At least enough for NMR, RAMAN spectroscopy and whatever else one uses to identify chemicals quickly.

Working out how it kills and maybe countermeasures would also be within the scope of Porter Down. It is a bloody disgrace that we need to have such a facility but since we do need it, it has to keep up with developments.

---

I bet everyone working there always brings their drinks with them to the loo. I would!

Watchdog growls at Tesla for spilling death crash details: 'Autopilot on, hands off wheel'

fajensen
Pint

Re: Roundabouts

In Abingdon there is a notorious double roundabout, where the round things are merged into some kind of peanut shaped blob.

Notorious because nobody even after many years of daily practice can figure out how to navigate that thing correctly - and yet, I know of no accident there exactly because nobody can figure it out and therefore navigate it very carefully, looking in all directions.

A simple tee-junction onto Culham road, however -> carnage about once every week!

Stop calling, stop calling... ICO goes gaga after home improvement biz ignores warnings

fajensen

Re: Why would the show up for just £400

The new GDPR-compliant DPA comes into force in May.

One of those things that Brexit will fix for you?

Grindr: Yeah, we shared your HIV status info with other companies – but we didn't charge them!

fajensen
Pint

Re: Far more damaging than Facebook 50m

Amazing how Big Tech gets a 'free-pass' from most of the MSM. Why are aren't they raising hell over this:

Not so amazing when one is considering that most of the MSM are owned by Big Tech / Big Corp outright, most of the "news items" are written by Big Tech bot technology running on Big Tech clouds and selected for MSM publication by some algorithms also provided by Big Tech!?

As a result of "progress", most of todays would-be "hell-raisers" are now eking out a small existence as bloggers and freelancers on the very fringes of MSM, where all fake-news and Russian-agitprop is floating around also. No lucrative Washington Post jobs or professorships for "Disturbers of the Peace and Officialdom" in these so enlightened times!

If I was a gay muslim person, I'd be very afraid that perhaps some of the local jihaddi boyz or nazis now have the tools and resources to take names and kick ass all thanks to "Social Media" mass-surveillance and subsequent data-scraping for something as trite and 110% useless as the ad-pushers.

Me being all out of optimism and all, I guess it will take several "bodies of importance" before anyone will care to regulate "The Market".

Doomed Chinese space lab Tiangong-1 crashes into watery Pacific grave

fajensen

Re: not bad, all things considered

Nope, I think it is generally a waste that nobody saw the pretty fireworks.

What a hang up: US big box biz Best Buy kicks Huawei to the curb

fajensen

In the Great Global Game of Risk

The dice has been rolled and obviously, it is now the turn of the Americans to play The Soviets.

Airbus CIO: We dumped Microsoft Office not over cost but because Google G Suite looks sweet

fajensen

... anything to avoid using a proper CAD system. Completely inappropriate but cheap!

One does not want non-CAD users to be using a proper CAD system because whatever they produce, while using an enormous amount of time on the task, will still be straight-up garbage and has to be redone anyway!

The proper CAD systems come with numerous rules, requirements and licensing costs that none of the "clients" that "just" want a design done according to the rules and processes that the business requires have time, staff and budget to deal with.

With Google they probably get Scetch-up too - which is good enough to explain to the CAD-person what one wants and a standard tool (since they roll it out everywhere). Of course Boeing now also get acces to everything via TISA; but, anything to keep the yanks happy!

Maplin shutdown sale prices still HIGHER than rivals

fajensen

Re: Closing down sales

Could it be that they can write off more if they go into the bankruptcy with higher prices?

Microsoft says 'majority' of Windows 10 use will be 'streamlined S mode'

fajensen

Re: Skype account

If one uses “appear.in”, https://appear.in, there is nothing to install and one can avoid this kind of ritual for the digital gods!

- doesn’t work on Safari, of course but, what does?

- appear.in it is a browser based video chat system, what Skype could have been if MS hadn’t decided to route all traffic via Langley, Virginia.

Slack bots have the keys to your processes. What could go wrong? Well...

fajensen
Trollface

Re: It's free

I do hope some well-monied Russian outfit buys it on the bankruptcy auction; just for the griefing :)

Mueller bombshell: 13 Russian 'troll factory' staffers charged with allegedly meddling in US presidential election

fajensen
Coat

Re: Bombshell?

OK we have some bank fraud charges now "following the money"

Is it not ironic that we have actual fraud as in forging of signatures on documents by that bailed-out by the taxpayers unicorn treasure RBS and nobody ever goes to jail over that .... whereas a few internet trolls from an economy smaller than Belgium ... are a huge threat to Western Democracy.

fajensen
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Wonderful timing!

Actually the one fact that the West has failed to grasp about Mr Putin is that he is the best Russian leader for them

Maybe the West has grasped this? After Boris Yeltsin sold everything cheaply to oligarchs and western bottom-feeding investors, the very one thing that would absolutely hurt Putin's election numbers would be if he is somehow seen as "approved" by those same Western Business Interests.

Astro-boffinry world rocked to its very core: Shock as Andromeda found to be not much bigger than Milky Way

fajensen

Re: What a waste of time and money

Isn't there something more useful that we can spend the money on?

Dunno - Destroying the planet faster, perhaps?

If you don't like what IBM is pitching, blame Watson: It's generating sales 'solutions' now

fajensen
Pint

Re: lol

Crazy! Mark Me Words: As soon as Watson mange to hack into the nukes and nukes itself to stop it's tortured mind from dreaming of "IBM standard solutions and offerings", it is also over for humanity!

Wow, MIND-BLOWING: Florida Man gets an earful from 'exploding Apple AirPod' bud

fajensen
Coat

Re: This...

Sure. Ripped it off Charles Stross "Laundry Files" myself, so maybe it's "hot"

fajensen
Pint

Re: This...

I don't know, I don't use bluetooth headsets because the batteries.

I had a "Marshall Monitor BT" headset for Christmas to keep the gibberings of the mind eaters prowling my open-office hell-space.

The battery life on this particular headset is obscene - about 30 hours of continous use which in my case is about one month of actual use. I have so far charged them exactly once.

I see you're writing a résumé?!.. LinkedIn parked in MS Word

fajensen

automatically send it off to everyone INCLUDING my current employer?

Not automatically, it's a service :). Of course one has to expect that your employers HR people can subscribe to various "Linked-In Events" regarding people already working with them. Updates and Up-ticks in page reading activity and so on. I'd think that would be a feature since a long time back.

Maybe this is more real-time - They see someone opening a resume during work-hours and they can send Security to black-bag them before it's even done?

Since we are doing salary "negotiations" soon, I shall update my Linked-In profile just to rattle them a bit, I think.

A tiny Ohio village turned itself into a $3m speed-cam trap. Now it has to pay back the fines

fajensen

Re: "raise property taxes slightly"

Not that I have any sympathy for these neoliberal con-artists.

The Church of Neoliberalism worship The Market - so, lets go with that: All of these folks behind this little scheme, they have kidneys, yes? They only need one kidney?!

NASA finds satellite, realises it has lost the software and kit that talk to it

fajensen
Paris Hilton

Re: It was also HARDWARE that no longer exists.

You'd still need decoding software.

One advantage that places like NASA has, is a near infinite supply of grad students with no life of their own yet, many of them quite smart too. They could get a bunch of them to hack something up in GNU-radio for the Glory and for their school project.

All your base are belong to us: Strava exercise app maps military sites, reveals where spies jog

fajensen
Angel

It beggars belief that the military aren't all over the security implications of personal mobile devices and rigorously training personnel ...

Really? Since ages past, the military have handled both Adversaries and Enemies - The adversaries are the expected ones (Napoleon, Russia, China, Terrorists ....). Except, nothing big really happens there, so, when there is not in fact a hot war going on with everyone getting plenty of personnel, funding and glory showered upon them, all of the abundant military energy and ressources are firmly concentrated on the enemies - The Other Services! Nothing else matters!!

"They" got all the names and such anyways:

https://www.wired.com/2016/10/inside-cyberattack-shocked-us-government/

Camels disqualified from Saudi beauty contest for Botox-enhanced pouts

fajensen
Terminator

The Singularity is Here!

... but not exactly "The Singularity" that The Holy Church of Singularity(tm) wanted.

These kind of news items are written by robots. Other robots attach adds to the news items. Yet other robots read all the news and all of the adds on behalf of other robots, who trade bitcoin, stocks, exotic derivatives or to drive click-ratings. Still other robots do A/B split testing to optimise the spammi-ness

Finally robots make fresh new news items from the output from the preceding shoal of digital servants and the loop is closed for another trip.

What we see is that the world becomes more and more surreal and impossible to understand.

NHS: Thanks for the free work, Linux nerds, now face our trademark cops

fajensen

Re: Snowflakes

Link? I’d like to see that.

1980s sci-fi movies: The thrill of being not quite terrified on mum's floral sofa

fajensen

Re: Blockbuster,.....

... we rented two different films, made at the same location with the same props, ...

The Japanese pioneered that technique with the "Godzilla" movies - which are still more entertaining and a good deal less retarded than the US remake!

fajensen
Angel

Re: CGI is killing sci-fi

In my opinion Dick's best book is A Scanner Darkly - which is magnificently paranoid and twisted. Also an excellent film.

Philip K. Dick did epic amounts of LSD and other psychotropic chemicals - as did many of the creative people of his generation (Maybe there should be a logartimic "Shulgin scale" to quantify what "a lot" is).

I think being smashed out of ones head during working hours, inspired quite a few of the more visually stunning / intriguing stories and for Philip K. Dick drugs definitely created many of those story lines exploring common difficulties in figuring out what objective reality is and who it applies to, and of course the general paranoia.