Posts by Pete 2

The media always hype this stuff

Every year we get some breathless pundit squealing with delight about a meteor shower with words like "fantasic", "spectacular" and whatever superlatives still have some life (if not credibillity) left in them. The same goes for comets, eclipses, conjuctions andall the rest. One budding journo picks up as astronomical announcement and exudes awe about it - that's picked up by another who embellishes the first's work - then another with more exaggeration and finally it hits the TV and we're all exhorted to view this "sight of the century" (which seems to occer every few years).

Almost all of them are a damp squib.

Whether that's because the uncertainy and qualifications that the original bulletin contain get left out for reasons of making the news "public friendly", or astronomers genuinely thought it would turn out better. However in the UK the main reasons seem to be the weather, the light pollution and TV presenters (and their script writers) who have no concept at all - none whatsoever - about how bright, or dim all of these events are.

We were "promised" a comet earlier this year - FAIL! Sure: it turned up on time, but it was a huge disappointment. Same goes for all theother ones since Halley, 25 years ago. Maybe the media should learn their lesson and just let it all go - though then they'd probably be inundated by calls from scared and ignorant viewers about "strange lights inthe sky". You can't win.

Can a fail whale float?

Most web "phenomena" last a few years. They grow and grow, become the darling of the online press - then the wind changes and all their users desert them (sometimes helped by unpopular changes, managerial incompetence or the next "big thing" being bigger and thingier than they are). Twitter has had a good run and round about now you'd expect it to start sliding as the next generation of internet users dismiss Twitter as being "for old people".

So why go for an IPO? Possibly to staunch the slide. Buy up the competiton, or expand by aquisiton - or maybe just to cash out while there's still some money in Twitter as a going concern.

Either way, given the current climate there's no good time to float (or sink), but on the presumption that the financial situation won't be getting any better for some time, and that Twitter's shelf-life could be coming to the end, this would seem like a good time for them. Whether it's a good time for investors? No-one can say.

What was the question?

It would be handy to know what question gave rise to this result.

Was it a non-specific equiry about the abstract principle of extracting oil and/or gas - or was it a direct question about whether individuals would be "happy" to have this carried out withing ½ a mile of their homes, or their childrens' school?

I suspect the answers may vary considerably.

Two stools

So what is it?

It runs "sketches", so is it a more powerful (overly-powerful) Arduino competitor with rather high power requirements

It's got an x86 instruction set, 256MB of DDR3 RAM and PCI, so is it a PC - no mention of windows or Linux

It seems to me to fall between both.

If you're just going to run embedded code with no O/S, there are better, smaller, (probably) cheaper and less power-hungry ways of doing it. If you are going to boot an O/S, there are smaller, more powerful, more capable (e.g. the dual-core 1GHz/1GB, SATA Cubieboard2) and (possibly) cheaper alternatives for that, too.

With either of these propositions, it's going to be the user created support that makes or breaks it. I wonder if anyone would port BeOS/Haiku to it?

Floating on the QE

At present the USA is keeping share prices high by "printing" $1Tn a year for quantitative easing - buying up their own bonds and keeping market prices high.

One assumes that Twitter want to dump as many shares as possible get their IPO done before this fount of artificially high prices dries up. So while they might be able to get $15Bn at current valuations, I don't need to take a bet (as all share dealing is, is a posh phrase for gambling) on whether or not it will stay high.

Is it just me ...

> American corporations held a total of about $1.48tn in cash as of June this year

So american businesses hold about $1.5 tril of cash, but america owes about 16.7 terabucks

Anyone else see a potential problem here?

Height of stupidity?

> lets you access Twitter, Facebook, email and texts while you are on the go,

We all thought that trying to send SMSs while driving was so dumb that nobody would need to be told not to try - but no, apparently the limit of human intelligence is lower than we thought.

Will we now need to be reminded that tweeting while driving is so blindingly stupid (for the driver to do) that each text should be automatically forwarded to the Darwin Awards assessors?

Mark Twain was right

> The current 11-year peak in solar action... may presage a lengthy quiet period

And like everything to do with climate change, nobody can say for sure.

It seems that the quote attributed to him turns out to have some substance after all. For those who missed it::

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjectures out of such trifling investment of fact

or should that be his other one:

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please

Either way, it's a great spectator sport, just so long as I don't have to do anything until we *know* what is actually happening - and whether it is turning out good or bad.

How many hackers does it take to change a lightbulb?

> protect critical infrastructure and data stores were the country to come under electronic attack.

Or in this case, to unplug "critical infrastructure" from the source of all evil?

Seriously, you'd hope - against all common sense and reason - that anything that was actually critical would be a long, long way from being accessible over the internet.

> "cyber weapons" could be used along with regular munitions in future conflicts.

Excellent idea. Collect up all the computers and throw them at the enemy. Especially in an assymetric warfare theatre (the defining type of war in the 21st century), where one side has a great big target painted on its arse and the other is coming at it with a pitchfork.

Let's decide.

Defn: Science. A process whereby observations are made, theories are drawn up and tested by means of experiment. The experimental results are then used to gain a consensus regarding the accuracy of the theory in question.

Religion: A belief system where faith and doctrine are formulated, depending on various factors: real or imaginary. That doctrine is then promulgated by an appointed (or self-appointed) leadership. The lack of a testable foundation makes refuting the articles of faith very difficult for the non-beleiver, but acts to strengthen the resolve of the true followers.

Fines are fine

Jail is better.

To a company like Google, slapping a fine for non-compliance (or "law-breaking" as the traditionalists might call it) means very little. Even confiscating the advertising revenue they make in France would only be a minor annoyance.

However, their stance that "your law does not apply to us" needs some serious attention. Flinging a few americans into a french jail until the company makes itself legal would certainly have a direct and personal effect on the decision makers of the company. It would show Google that they cannot take such a patronising position and above all else, it would be wonderful theatre for the rest of us to watch.

You never know, you might even get a few brits saying "Go, Frenchie!"

Stars to stars

> forced a youthful Stephen Hawking out of Physics and into Tap-Dancing classes

You never know, it could have freed up the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics thus giving someone otherwise doomed to appearing on X-Factor something to aspire to.

Though we might have ended up with A Brief History of Time being written in txt spk. Would smileys have made it easier to understand?

Sack the lot of them

> Ofcom is ... looking for suggestions about how it might direct its considerable resources

Hmmm, £100 Mil.

Well, they've got all the policies they need to give us an excellent communications structure, they're just absolutely useless at implementing and enforcing them. So how about sacking all of its existing management and replacing them with effective individuals, instead?

I'm sure the redundancy payments (even at the civil service's vastly inflated, self-serving rates) wouldn't consume all the money. Even if it did, it would be money well spent.

With the remainder they could buy a dictionary, so they could look up the real meaning of the word "unlimiited".

Ask one back

And why can't copier-paper manufacturers create paper that "knows" when you're trying to make a photocopy of something you shouldn't?

To the to the truly ignorant, everything has a simple solution.

Easily fixed

> people only spend six minutes a year thinking about their energy bills. Naturally, Brem thought this was a bad sign

So that's why they continually jack up the price of gas & electricity. So that people think about their bills the whole time: worrying about how to pay them.

P.S. No need to crank your heating up with a remote controlled app in order to get out of bed. Just put on a dressing gown, like a normal person does.

The real moral of the story

Tweet away, be as rude to and about airlines as you like.

Just don't make the newby mistake of using an account with your real name. Surely everyone (everyone who uses twitter, or any other social media for that matter) has many, many accounts under different names, guises and personas (wot! it's against the rules? Oh no! what shall I do) so just use one of them, instead.

Be prepared.

Blaming the victim?

> If you lose money from your bank account the banks give it back to you.

But is that what really happens?

The way I see it is that a bank has a duty to put in place sufficient security for it to keep our money safe. That's safe from (traditional) theft, safe from internet theft and safe from themselves being unable to give it back to us when we ask for it.

So far, cash machine security measures haven't evolved much beyond the PIN-code systems that were around in the 1970's - though my PIN in those days was 6 digits, instead of the 4 we have today. Is that really progress?

Although for home banking I now have a nice little card reader, courtesy of my bank, that "proves" I am in posession of my card when I log on to their computers, I still feel that the onus is on the banks to make sure their security is up to scratch to protect our money. There will always be some crime, the goal for security measures is to reduce it to a level that we customers are willing to pay: both in terms of losses from theft and the cost of the measures to prevent it.

I suppose it *is* possible

Let's see, Stop sexting and send a love poem instead ...

There was a young man from Cape Horn,

who wished he had never been born,

he wouldn’t have been,

if his father had seen,

that the end of his condom was torn

Yup! 156 characters. It will just fit, as the actress said to the proverbial.

Small detail

The delivery guy could leave your package, but how do you sign for it?

What IS new

... is that there's been so little innovation from Apple for such a long time.

It does appear that they managed to launch their ballistic [ used as a technical term here ] trajectory with the early products, when there was little or no competition. Since then the curve has been sustained by the F*bois who are still living in 2008/9, the inertia of big business and the lack of anything better from the Android-ers: who are *still* playing catch-up and who's idea of innovation is aping what Apple have done in the past.

However, like all ballistic trajectories, at some point the upwardsness flattens out and gravity starts to exert its influence (as it does on us all!). Sooner or later that "meteoric" rise does what all meteors do and falls to earth in a firey spectacle. The only difference between Apple's ballistics and ordinary ballistics, is that you can usually plot, very accurately, the where and when of the descent and ultimate crash. With Apple half the fun is spectating and wondering when the historians will say "they finally lost the plot". Oh, and try not to be underneath, inside, or invested (financially, or in the products) when it does hit.

Looks up, checks calendar.

Wasn't all this stuff done to death and reached the same conclusions over 10 years ago, when IR35 was a "live" issue. These days there doesn't seem to be anything new, except the Jimmy Carr reference and the inevitable few contractors who still think they can get away with it (or their lawyers, who really should know better by now - surely it's wandering into the realms of professional misconduct for them still to be advising clients that they can avoid their taxes in this way?).

Most contractors of that era just did what I did: go "legit" and bump your rates up to make up the difference. Job done.

That burning smell

You would hope there would be some sort of regulations about how many of these could be installed within range of each other. While the article talks about 1 "charger", what happens if your premises puts one in, the shop next door installs one, too - as well as a utility device in the shopping centre and possibly another in the offices above the public area.

A few of these, close together could give the Walkie Talkie building a run for its money in the death ray charts if multiple chargers all locked on to your (pocketed) iPhone at the same time.

Quite the opposite

> considering rejecting registrations if they feature keywords linked to criminality

As anyone who's worked with Microchip's PIC processors will know, doing a web search for "pic" throws up millions of pages of garbage [ using the standard internet definition, garbage: anything not related to what I want to see ] and makes the name PIC a positive pain to find stuff for and presumably a liabilty for their marketing department.

So maybe instead of banning words that, at present have an association with dubious activities, but which tomorrow could have changed their meanings completely and been replaced by other "naughty" words - maybe Nominet should be positively encouraging as many people as possible to register sites with those words, close spellings or them, combinations and other possibile dodgy terms. That way the baddies, to some extent, be thwarted in their quest for naughtiness and might accidentally stumble upon something that's pure and good and right and might learn to mend their evil ways.

The only problem might be if you find that your mum has logged on to your honeytrap website ...

Innocent until ...

> They had no numbers on the number of convictions that arose from those arrests

Which is a shame, as that is the only statistic that matters.

Being arrested is not an indication that you've done anything wrong

Getting charged is no indication of guilt

Going to court doesn't make you a criminal

The only two possibilities for being classed a "baddie" is if you either plead guily (or accept a caution), or if a court finds you guilty and any appeals don't exonerate you.

I realise there is a huge "There's no smoke without fire" contingent who will naturally assume you're a fully paid-up member of the underworld is a police-person (or even the cheap plastic variety) so much as looks at you, but these individuals need to have their biases adjusted.

Mathew 7:7

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you"

Or: Only open a can of worms if you plan to go fishing.

The "news" here isn't so much that the Beeb has a particular political leaning, it's that the BBC Trust chose to pay an organisation that would find that they had such a bias. I'm sure that if they'd chosen another organisation to review their output they could have obtained a completely different outcome.

The legal profession has a saying: Never ask a question unless you know the answer. I would hope that the BBC Trust has at least that much political nous, and that they got no surprises at all with the results that they paid for.

The only other question that comes to mind is: why would they have done this? Charter renewal coming up in a few years. perhaps?

Knowing your place

Yes, the blogger does sound like a petulant child. Yes, it doesn't seem (to the unqualified eye) that he's done anything illegal. Yes, it seems like the head has completely over-reacted.

In fact, nobody comes out of this sorry episode looking as if they are a shining example of the role they fill.

However it seems to me that the head teacher has grossly over-stepped his authority, getting involved in events that happened outside the school gates - even if it was all about the school. Schools are not the USA - they don't have a god-given right to interfere in matters that displease them, in areas they have no jurisdiction over.

I am slightly puzzled by the head teacher's reaction, however. Given the obvious animosity between him and this kid (one that smacks of unprofessional behaviour, reacting to the taunt is a newby's mistake), you'd think he'd be throwing a party to celebrate the parting of the ways, rather than stirring things up even more. Maybe with sufficient exposure, teachers do get to be like the children.

Fuel to the flames

> So, those of you who've not yet entered the competition ...

You *know* this is just going to be a platform for the smutsters to take another bite of the cherry ... Hmmm, cherry ... CHERRI

Computerised High-altitude Emergency Rockblock Release Initiator

Contrived? Moi?

Does it matter what you do at 15?

Ans: only if you're still doing it at 40, or 50, or 60.

So teenies smoke. It's no big deal - they'll soon grow out of it. 15 years after you stop, almost all of your health risks are the same as someone who's never smoked. In fact there is some evidence that TV campaigns, such as for nicotine patches can INCREASE the number of young and stupid smokers - on the basis that these make it easier to stop later, once they realise how nasty (and costly) it is.

So from a health PoV, stopping in time is as good as never starting. Although during those intervening, all important to social acceptance and getting lurve years, you'll still stink of tobacco smoke.