Posts by Pete 2

Style? We don' need no steeeekin' style!

You can easily obsfucate your writing style by translating your words into another language, then back again.

So: from English to Croatian to Italian to English:

You can easily blur the writing style translate their words into another language and then again.

And if the result is gibberish (frfljanje - yes, really!) then it doesn't matter. Nobody ever reads this stuff, anyway.

The death of the channel

TV only evolved the way it did because of the scarcity of VHF broadcast bandwidth. It was necessary to cram an entire nation's viewing into a small band of frequencies and a handful of channels. So there was an inevitable "rationing" of content: one (programme) for you, one for me, one for the children, one for the clever people, one for the food-fetishists, one for the sports-geeks - and so on.

Satellite TV eliminated that scarcity. In fact, with over 10,000 channels available int he UK from various satellites, the problem was more one of discovery than of rarity: which channel on which satellite is showing the football - with a commentary in my language? Which channel is showing the latest summer block-buster? Which 200-300 are showing Friends, or NCIS or whatever other american series?

But with box-sets (a piece of marketing genius: imagine being able to collect together a load of old repeats and get people to actually pay again to watch them?) and streaming and a small number of premium content providers, those problems are a thing of the past. The difficulty now is one of moderating your behaviour and having the self-discipline to put down the remote and walk away.

We should consider ourselves lucky that no channel is streaming Eastenders from end-to-end, all day every day.

It's a shame they're splitting up ...

... because it means that in the future they will make 2 more people unhappy. Instead of inflicting their personalities on each other.

How many meg?

> 6.7 million people may not receive speeds above 10Mbps.

Well, if he wanted to go the "full hysterical" why not yell that 30m brits cannot get more than 30MBit/s?

I would suspect there are many ISP customers who do not feel the need to stream multiple HD video channels simultaneously and are therefore quite satisfied with < 10MBps.

Bandwidth costs money. If you are never going to use it, why pay for it?

Lawn-laying instructions?

Hopefully there is a large arrow painted on the side of the rocket motor. Under it will be the words "this way up".

Best not to take chances

Saying thank-you never hurt anyone

> Has a customer ever apologised to you? Or offered you a tasty thanks for your services?

Many years ago, on two separate occasions I was called in to deal with "issues" that a distributor had concerning systems they had installed in Westminster.

On both occasions, after a speedy resolution, I received handwritten notes of thanks from the end-user (though nothing from the disti in question). One on House of Commons headed paper, the other from the Lords.

I didn't get lunch, but the prestige within my company got me a very nice pay-rise. A benefit that kept on giving, year after year (and was pensionable!).

Tear the whole system down

We all know the law is an ass. I suggest that someone should find that ass and (being the owner or embodiment of "law") either feed it all the law books in existence and see what comes out, or ask it if it is happy for it to represent "the law" in its entirety.

Unless the ass specifically says yes, I cannot see how the law could claim any basis to continue. In which case the only solution would be to tear it all up and start again.

Possibly starting with the statement:

These laws govern the human inhabitants of planet Earth only.

Different people?

> sentient and can handle any problem you throw at it, as a human would

You must know some incredibly smart people. The majority of individuals I know can't even spell, do basic arithmetic or operate household appliances - past pressing a button and turning a dial.

How many points does NASA get for that?

From "The Book"

There was one inhabited planet in the seventh dimension that got used as a ball in a game of intergalactic bar billiards. It got potted straight into a black hole, killing ten billion people.

It only scored thirty points.

I wonder if they can arrange a canon off it's larger twin?

Filling the void

> NATO is “in the process of establishing cyber as a military domain

While this is clearly totally incorrect (since most cyber attacks are against economic or personal targets - and if the military is stupid enough to place unprotected "assets" in the public space, they should expect to have them busted). But it does indicate that the military is recognising it's own lack of relevance in the direction the world is moving and this power grab is their way of trying to reassert their usefulness.

The worry is that the military approach is singularly inappropriate to deal with commercial threats. You can't put a gun to every workers' head and demand they change their password every month. And you can't threaten to invade (say) the NHS if it doesn't upgrade the patches on its servers every tuesday.

What we will find is that this approach will change the military. No longer will they be a "force", but more a source of resources. If that means the defence budget gets diverted from buying ineffective weapons that will never be used, and instead put into protecting (another form of defence) important and ubiquitous parts of our infrastructure, that really should be nowhere near any form of public access or shared communications, then let's do that. But we shouldn't call it "miilitary".

code word

> Samsung's built the monitor for gamers,

Whenever I see any word that means game, gamer, gaming, I automatically assume it is like "organic" - meaning more expensive but with no discernible improvement. So a "gaming" mouse is just a mouse - but at 3 times the price. A "gamers" mouse mat is just a mouse mat, but by costing anything up to £60 (yes, really!) they are somehow better, make you more proficient, or just give you something to brag about.

The same applies to everything else that is meant for "gamers". Just like aficionados of high quality audio are targetted with oxygen-free cables and gold plated power switches and many other things that do not matter.

But relieving such people of their money is no bad thing. If buying overpriced stuff pleases them then fair enough. And for the rest of us, the words act as a warning.

Orange glove guy

It would appear you have found your USP for all future reviews. Just specialise in reviewing hand-held stuff and your fame will become legendary. Viewers will be so transfixed by the bright orange hands that they won't pay any attention to what you are reviewing (a reviewers dream, surely?) but your "brand recognition" will have marketeers falling over themselves to send you swag.

Is 5G the new Vista?

XP was good enough. it did most things that most people wanted, well enough.

And so with 3G and 4G. Is there really any need for more features, speed, or whatever the hell 5G is supposed to offer?

I can see that from the phone and mobile operators point of view it's a good thing. Hey it's 5! that makes it better than 4 and that is all the marketing people need to know. And it's probably all that they will sell it on, too.

tourists virtually touring

> while on hols rather than looking at the sights

Meh! all the sights are freely available for viewing on the internet. Maybe that is what the holidaymakers are looking at?

Or could they be scoping out next year's holiday, instead? 'tis better to travel in hope than to arrive.

Hyperloop sucks

A hyperloop tunnel is basically just a giant vacuum cleaner. Rather than sending people on journeys, couldn't Londoners use this to send all their garbage up to Scotland?

Before the train gets sucked into the tunnel, just toss a few black bags of rubbish in, ahead of it.

The only problem might be if the Scots start sending their rubbish back down.

What did you call me?

> To get approval the delivery project executive (DPE) must get approval in writing

I wonder for how long they were called Delivery of Project Executives, before someone noticed

[ and yes, I know there is a Dilbert cartoon along very similar lines ]

Drain that battery fast!

> For the second time this year I’ve found myself trying to think of new ways to exhaust a phone, and been stumped

Simple. Just turn on the GPS.

A cheap mistake

They say that if you lend a "friend" £10 and they don't pay you back, you've learned a very cheap lesson. It would seem that this guy, and maybe his date too, both made a mistake - but fortunately discovered their errors before it turned costly.

Oh, and where the hell can you get a pizza for $4?

Stale

Facebook has taught us a valuable lesson: most of the people we call "friends" are not that interesting.

We are willing to exert effort to keep in touch with the people we actually like. The ones who's company we value and who's presence we appreciate.

What FB has done is to hijack the term "friend" and load it with emotional baggage. So there are insecure people who value their own worth by the number of "friends" they have - although they have never met the vast majority of them and probably would not like them, in real life, if they did.

But for most FB users, it is just an easier way to send messages to people. FB has become the go-to method for contacting people you know, pushing email (and all the SPAM it attracts) to one side.

The downside is that FB is full of people promoting their opinions - even though nobody cares what they think. And little do they realise that since FB can silently block their posts, very few people see what they write or post, anyway.

All I want is the screen

The display of a "TV" is the biggest and most expensive part. I want this to be the dumbest, too. I don't want it to be dependent on the whims or mistakes (or cynical marketing) of some distant third party. I don't want to have to upgrade it, or replace it, merely because someone, somewhere, flipped a bit in a protocol and made it obsolete.

I want the smarts to be in a separate box.A little £50 add-on that can be changed every couple of years if necessary, to keep up with the tech, That also helps in since it stops my costly display from containing more parts (or points of failure) than necessary. So that a badly soldered SMD that only deals with networking, or the remote control, doesn't mean having to toss the whole shebang.

With pricey kit, dumb is good.

Write what you think

> "can type 100 words per minute straight from your brain."

Since people can't think at 100 wpm, this will just be an unfiltered feed of their consciousness. I would expect the "output" from such a system to be something like:

The minutes of the last meeting oooh, my nose itches are distributed wow look at her to the steering subcommittee WOW for their approval I feel a fart coming on. Having been approved I hope I don't sneeze it'll make the fart worse they will be sent to all the I wish that guy would stop talking so loudly other committee members is it lunchtime yet? who should complete their uh-oh, here it comes their actions before ACHOO damn! .... oh crap the next quarterly meeting I fancy the curry for lunch.

Though I can see that a largely unfiltered stream, straight from the brain, would start to drag psychoanalysis into the 18th century. And that the advent of actual data could end up giving it a basis similar to what Mendeleev did for chemistry.

MS delivers improved user experience.

> The Redmond giant is no longer serving software fixes to PCs and other systems that run Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 on Intel's fresh new Kaby Lake

So does this mean I won't get any more annoying messages about upgrades. No more pregnant pauses when the box boots up? No more tedious waiting for it to shut down?

If so, BRING IT! it sounds to me like this is the best reason yet to upgrade my CPU.

Save some fun for us!

> under the guise of "agile?". I'm no expert in project management, but I'm pretty sure it isn't supposed to be making it up as you go along, and constantly changing the specs and architecture.

So why should the developers have all the fun? Why can't the designers and architects be "agile", too? Isn't constantly changing stuff all part of the "agile" way?

Normally abnormal.

> some members of the free software community habitual, hateful and reflexive contrarians

The same can be said about any online forum. So it's good to see that the IT people are no different. Maybe we are "normal" after all?

F35 - that's REAL integrated thinking

So is the feature that this fighter can't land more than once just an acknowledgement of the effect that all it's combined failings will have on its combat success?

it was only designed with a single-use arresting gear because the manufacturers don't expect it to survive two sorties.

Robot wars?

And what happens when delivery robots from competing companies meet?

Will they pass each other graciously with a tip o' the antenna, or will they deploy the size 10 wheel masher and wreak automated destruction on their foes?

Will we get no-go zones, where DHL's version of Sir Killalot jealously guards every entry road into E14, while UPS's sentries carve out a "Manor" in SW1?