Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Re: Two stories:

Back in the days of my youth, I were a good churchgoer. Rather than the heathen I currently am...

Church has been rebuilt. And now has a baptistry. A rather nice mini swimming pool which is filled from a couple of cascading pools - which serve nicely as fonts. So you can still flick a bit of water at baby, or stand up to your chest in water and give someone a proper dunking.

Curate: "I need to hold a microphone when I'm baptising so-and-so."

Me: "Nope. You'll be wet, that's wired to the mains. Water and electricity are not friends." [I didn't mention it's only 48 volts]

Curate: "Can I wear a radio mic instead?"

Me: "That radio mic cost £1,500. We can get more curates, we'll never get the budget for another mic."

That probably dates me, you can probably pick up a really good radio mic for £100 nowadays. Curates are much harder come by...

I suppose to him a radio mic is just a box you put in your back pocket wired to a thing you clip on your tie. Whereas to me, a radio mic is a horribly unreliable thing - where you need a back-up wired mic somewhere for when it craps out mid-sentence, and a spare 9v battery so you can run on stage and get it working again. If some bugger hasn't accidentally changed the channel on it. They're a lot better nowadays.

I don't care whose bots did it. Or if it was just an organised campaign by real users. People have a right to make lies up about other people online. Which is a shame, but the alternative is worse.

On the other hand, I do have an issue with Google making profits off the back of some scumbags attacking a kid who's just survived a school shooting.

And I'm extremely happy to use this as a stick to beat Google with, until they take responsibility for their own fucking actions.

Re: Getting tired of this "blame the messenger" campaign...

Dodgy Geezer,

I also downvoted you and the OP. Because I'm sick of people making excuses for Google.

Last year, Google turned over $109.65 billion. Of which about 90% is from advertising.

They made $16 billion-odd profit.

If people argued that Google can't be responsible for every site they link to, and everything posted on Youtube - then that would be fine. But to argue that Google aren't responsible for the content they choose to promote is ludicrous. Sure they say that an algorithm did it. But they wrote the fucking algorithm. You may be able to get away with telling journalists and politicians that "it was done by the algorithm, not us, honest!" But that crap doesn't wash here - because we know what an algorithm is.

Also, I remember when Google told everyone that all their search was done by algorithms, so they couldn't delete specific search results. Only to later admit that they did hand-weight some search results. Their competitors. Oops.

And I remember when they told the independent record labels that they had a choice with Youtube. Accept a derisory tiny cut of the advertising fee shown on your stuff that gets uploaded, or fuck you, we're turning off the anti-piracy controls that put ads on your stuff and give us most of the cash. That's not behaving like a common carrier. That's behaving like a gangster running a protection racket. Which is what Youtube is, so far as I'm concerned.

What Google need is a few more regulatory kicks to the bollocks, until they learn to be good citizens.

Re: "YouTube responded by "demonetizing" his videos"

Isn't that what they did to the independent record labels?

Option 1: We pay you the square root of fuck all (even less than the majors get). That means we enable our anti-piracy tools that put ads on pirated material but siphon some cash to you - but of course we keep the lions share of said cash.

Option 2: We de-monetize your official videos. We also turn off our anti-piracy tools - so you have to track down every individual case of your copyright material being put up. And of course we keep all the ad revenue from said pirated material.

Ah - good old Google. Don't be Evil.

Re: How long will they stay up?

If they're small, and cheap, enough - SpaceX might chuck 10 or so on every single launch that's not up to max weight. If you're producing them in those stupid numbers, it probably works out cheaper to build more than it does to make the, last longer. At least, if you happen to own a rocket company...

I think he said the fuel for a Falcon IX launch, is only $300,000. So once you've re-used a rocket a few times, and it's paid for itself and is perhaps reaching end of life, you might get a few more cheap uses out of it.

Re: Good riddance

Don't be silly. The forum Mods are in the pub. It's nearly Friday you know!

Sorry, but the problem being highlighted is the politics of the workplace.

If ALL staff in a company left all their biases at home then there wouldn't be a problem. But people don't just switch off bias like that, so all companies need to Police the views of everyone in the workplace.

Now there's a recipe for a nightmarish dystopian future!

No! Companies should not police the views of everyone in the workplace. Firstly it's a recipe for trouble, feuds, timewasting and probably bullying. As has happened here.

Companies should police their employees' actions.

There's also a place for training and persuasion, in order to overcome bias. And robust policies, with proper oversight, to question when people are failing to promote a diverse range of candidates. Which also means someone also needs to be measuring how well the company is doing.

It does look like Google employees have a lot of time on their hands

It's a shame they don't spend some of it on sorting their Youtube system out. I know it's asking too much that they pay artists a fair amount (after all that is by design. But they could avoid promoting fake news videos about children who've been involved in a high school shooting and accusing them of being actors - for an example...

Adam 52,

How was any of this forced on Google. How many companies have you worked for that have an internal social network with active discussion groups on politics and social policy? Including allowing (or possibly even encouraging) discussion on the company's own HR policy?

Were I running a company I might well have an internal message system / wiki / social thingamijig. But it would definitely be limited, and moderated. I might allow fun discussions on sport (if I were feeling brave), but no way in hell would I allow political discussion. That way madness lies.

the fact that Google allowed this, and then managed it so pisspoorly is nobody's fault but Google management.

Re: A plan with no drawbacks

Their economy being dependent on oil is a problem. The drop in prices hurt, because they import a lot and because they have a lot of debt owed to foreigners. But the government has also actively damaged other business sectors - by forced nationalisations (often without compensation) or stealing confiscating their stock - supposedly for breaches of the prices policy, but those goods never seem to make it to public auction.

They also pissed a lot of that oil revenue away. On schemes like subsidies to Cuba. And do you remember that weird scheme where Chavez was selling subsidised diesel to Transport for London - after some weird deal with Ken Livingstone. Turns out it's better him making unwise comments about Hitler, than siphoning much-needed money away from Venezuala.

Re: Are sanctions effective?

There are a couple of other points about sanctions. Obviously they don't always work, and if they do they take ages.

But create a cost for behaving in a certain ways. So those cost may persuade a government not to try certain things, because they know what will happen.

If a government is determined to ignore them at least you know you've weakened them. Sometimes they may actually strengthen a dicatorship politically (making foreign enemies can be useful), but they'll be weaker economically and militarily.

South Korea's defence budget is now bigger than North Korea's entire GDP - even though the South only spend about 3% of GDP on defence.

Re: Are sanctions effective?

Sanctions worked on the Iran nuclear deal. At least so far as we know - obviously they've been caught in the past breaking their committments to the IAEA - and hiding entire nuclear installations.

It may have taken over a decade, but we went from a situation of Iran developing a nuclear device with Israel (and maybe the US?) set to bomb them if they looked like getting close. Israel having already bombed the Syrian and Iraqi nuclear programs... To a situation where we now have a deal that they won't. Without creating even more chaos in the Middle East than there already is.

Sanctions may have worked to deter Putin from even more intervention in Ukraine. They certainly brought him to the negotiating table, though those agreements weren't kept. But there don't appear to be whole Russian military units intervening in battles in Ukraine now, even though I'm sure the special forces are still there.

Sanctions had an effect in South Africa. Not sure how strong.

They also may not have deterred Saddam's Iraq in the 90s, but they certainly stopped him from re-arming. Which he'd have done if he'd been getting the oil money still.

Myanmar have liberalised (at least somewhat) in exchange for removing sanctions. Though that policy is looking like a failure now - but they have a civilian government, which is an improvement - it's just not in control of the army.

Re: Oh, how the world changes

I don't think the US sanctions are all that important. Venezuala's problems are much more about the hideous mismanagement of the state oil company. Then they ramped up the price controls. They tried fixing the price of imported goods, which made it uneconomic to sell them, so they were no longer imported. Kicking off inflation. Hence the nation shortages of things like toilet roll. And it's not like they weren't running the economy badly enough before that.

Re: Market Saturation coming?

Hyperinflation has historically been quite easy to stop. As soon as people are convinced that the government is even vaguely competent and determined to stop it, hyperinflation stops. That might not even require Maduro to resign - he'd just have to publicly admit "mistakes have been made" and bring in a new economic team.

Getting inflation into single figures (or even low double figures) is much much harder mind. But economies can cope relatively well with 20% inflation.

I hope this is a cunning wheeze by the Venezualan government. As they do at least spend some of their money on social programs - so when all those foreigners inevitably find they've lost their money, that which the government haven't stolen, will go to good use.

But I suspect what's much more likely is someone has approached them with the idea, and whoever's running the scheme will end up stealing most of the money before Maduro's lot can.

Re: Media studies

Hmmm. The 62 Group?

A quick check online gives The 62 Group as an artist-led international cooperative of textile artists. I'm guessing you don't mean them.

Wikipedia mentions a British militant anti-fascist group formed in 1962 for a bit of a rumble with the National Front. But I'm guessing it's not them either.

Even the New World Order or the Illuminati turn up on internet searches...

Re: 'Fake News' - I hate that Term!

I think there can be a difference between fake news and lies. Lies are easy to spot. You can often easily find the facts to counter them.

Fake news sometimes uses all factual information, but just misses out the context. Also as used by the Russian government it seems to be about sowing doubt and discord, rather than promoting anything. They're not trying to persuade people that Russia is great. They're trying to persuade people that everywhere else is equally shit.

I'd say the Daily Mail's approach to diet and health is pretty close to fake news. They're playing for a reaction from their readers to get more readers / clicks. The Mail is a carefully crafted product designed to keep its readers outraged and engaged. And they've suffered least from the press circulation apocalypse over the last 20 years. To be fair they also do some proper campaigning journalism sometimes.

I also think the Guardian's coverage of Brexit has got pretty close too. Although I suspect it's more out of passion than cynicism. 2 or 3 times a week there's an opinion piece about how the referendum should be overturned because reasons + Brexiteers are all stupid. That garners many clicks and comments. Ramps up the outrage. If there's bad economic news: Brexit!!!! If there's good or OK economic news, mumble...mumble...not as good as it could have been...mumble. If the UK government makes some statement about it, pour scorn on it. If some loudmouth like Guy Verhofstat does a bit of trolling, imply that's definitely the EU final position, and it's totally correct, and the UK government smell of poo. If some Tory backbencher does a bit of similar trolling - cry "Infamy!"

But surely deliberately skewing the way your report news and your comment to make things more partisan and less clear - and so polarise the debate even more - is not what a good newspaper should do. Under its new editor, I think the Guardian has become the Daily Mail of the left. Which is a shame, I used to like the Guardian.

Re: 'Fake News' - I hate that Term!

I don't know if Wakefield believed his crap or not. He had a conflict of interest, because he ran a company that did the vaccines individually - but it's entirely possible that he believed that the MMR vaccine caused autism, and so went out to prove it and also make money from it on the side.

He did fake some of the data in the research though. Which is why his co-researchers initially supported him, and then suddenly found out and rapidly distanced themselves from him.

He also took samples from children without the parents permission at events to promote his single vaccines.

And of course put the parents of kids with autism through hell, thinking that it was partly their fault that their kids had the condition. And some still believe it's a government cover-up because of his bollocks.

The bad thing was the hysterical coverage from the press at only one bit of research questioning the vaccines, and the scientific ignorance of papers like the Mail in continuing to promote the story when it looked like it might be bollocks.

Re: The problem that I have

To be fair to the Guardian, proper moderation is very expensive. Especially when you have as many users and comments as they do. Most of their threads that allow comments go into the hundreds, and the contentious ones go into the thousands.

And here's an important difference. The Guardian do it, and lost £30-odd million last year. Facebook make over a billion a quarter.

The Register are lucky that their commentards are relatively fluffy and benign.

Perhaps the public also need to take responsibility for who they vote for? If we vote for the shiny, smiley politicians who tell us only what we want to hear - then eventually that's the only kind of politicians we'll get.

If we scream gaffe at every politician who makes a minor mistake in an interview (or even worse expresses an inconvenient truth rather too bluntly) - then we'll get a bunch of media professionals trained to say as little as possible.

Re: The problem that I have

You shouldn't edit someone's post without clear warning. I've been a forum Mod and the [snip]play nice - the Mods[snip] is acceptable to save an otherwise good post that's gone too far. But in general it's better to just delete the whole thing. Which sometimes leaves you forced to delete one-or-two follow-up posts, which no longer make sense.

However moderation ain't censorship. Censorship is where you're not allowed to make your argument by the government. There's no requirement that anyone has to listen to you. The Guardian have built that audience and that platform, and it's theirs to control. If they let you have your say on it, then well done them. If they don't, it's a shame. But it's not their job to give you their audience - you can always go out and get your own.

Re: DARTS: Deceiving Autonomous Cars with Toxic Signs

How about: Fooling Unmannned Cars Killing Unsuspecting Pedestrians?

Re: O2 sent me a Windows Phone 7

It was 8. 7 got decent numbers of upgrades, including some of the features from 8, but 8 used a different kernel in a failed attempt to make it compatible with Metro apps for tablets and desktops.

Basically the whole reason for ruining the desktop Windows 8 was to have this seemless app ecosystem, and Sinofsky totally blew it - pissing off vast numbers of users in the process. D'oh!

I had a Win Pho 7, and later went to 8 with a small detour via an iPhone 5.

The other problem was that they fixed the kernel to future-proof 8, but didn't fix some of the missing features from 7. They did all the work under the bonnet - and barely touched userland. Total incompetence from Microsoft.

I think the problem is they weren't willing to bet the resources needed to make mobile work, but weren't willing to swallow their pride and just give up.

I'm convinced they could have got the cheap smartphone market before Android sub £200 phones were good enough and they really should have been able to get the corporate phone market too. And from that large segment of the market would then have had the heft to be able to launch an effort at the prestige high-end phones with Nokia's clever camera and sound tricks. But management weren't up to it! And they failed to cooperate with Nokia, even after Nokia had bet the farm on them - and when it was clear that Nokia were their only serious hardware partner.

I feel the phrase management clusterfuck seems apt. Or maybe omni-shambles?

Re: Lumia 630

Lumia 730 here. Weird model names, as there was a 710 (Win Pho 7) and a 730 (Win Pho 8/10) - but no other 7** models. I've had both of them, and really liked them.

The Met Office app stopped working last week. It will no longer update and when I decided to try re-installing, it's disappeared from the app store. So they've obviously withdrawn it, and I now have a less easy to read weather app. Chiltern Railways have also removed theirs.

So even the few apps that were around are going away. Fortunately there aren't many that I regularly use. I have a tablet for apps - my phone is for work, reading email and talking. Or texting if I'm forced. With a side order of sat-nav.

I'm not paying iPhone prices, even though it's on the company. So I guess I'll be going back to 'Droid. It's a bit more faff for me, though I'll easily cope. But I'm not looking forward to supporting my Mum on it - she's needed almost no help with Windows Phone, except setting it up. My experience with Android suggests it's going to be a lot harder.

Re: I like Apple things

I really like the Tetris thing of different sized icons. It was about the only thing I liked about the Android UI too. Having used all 3 systems on my phones - though Android longest ago, so I'm out of date on what it can do nowadays...

It means I can create a custom screen where the buttons I use least are smaller. And a couple are huge, not to make them easier to press, but to divide the screen into different sections. I admit I'm an unusual user in that I want some functions to be usable when I'm out-and-about and not wearing reading glasses - so they should be bigger - and stuff where I'm going to need my glasses to operate them anyway (app store, settings etc), may as well have small icons.

That's the other thing I like, the ability to have a larger text size. So my address book and text messages can be readable without glasses.

I admit I'm an unusual user, but it is true for everyone that with phone UIs there are some tasks you need to do at moments when you're distracted and in awkward places. Answering/making calls, sat-nav while walking. These need to be easy, intuitive and have as few distractions as posisble Other tasks are done more deliberately - and so you can go to town on the details.

I got my Mum a Windows phone, and she said the other day that she was sad that she'd have to upgrad to something different soon. I'd say she's found it even easier to use than an iPad - although that could be because it does less.

Re: Why have a print button?

Dinosaur

Yes please! In a sesame seed bun, with onions, cheese, mustard, mayo and pickles.

And I'll take a 50 page document to go.

For some things, paper is better. I have 60-odd PDF datasheets on my pooter. The more important ones are in my paper info file, along with hard copies of certain bits of legislation and useful British standards documents. When I'm on the phone, and in a hurry, that file is what I flick through to get the right answers to the right questions without having to stop mid-sentence to make my computer find me the stuff I want.

Oh and it has the price lists too, with hand-written annotations.

I love my tablet, but even if I had a work one, I just don't see it being as fast to search as I can flick through a well-organised folder with dividers for the important sections.

Re: Do you ...

I'm taking no sides in this argument. I'm too lazy to have done the research to have an opinion.

But if you want to accuse people of that level of sexism, you need to say who you're accusing and state how you know they hold such opinions. I've seen a bunch of posts I don't agree with, on both sides, but not noticed one that expresses the view that women are only fit for washing cooking and cleaning. If there is one, reply to it with your complaint.

If not, you're part of the problem. Another person taking an extreme position and trying to win the moral high-ground without confronting the issues.

Seeing as you didn't ask me, I'll tell you what those issues are:

1. Has Danone been unfairly hounded out of his job - and possibly had his current life and future career prospects ruined? Is he some evil sexist bastard, or just someone who's got out of his depth and is now being shat upon from a great height by people who love the sounds of their own voices and couldn't give a fuck if they destroy someone's life doing it?

2. The discussion about sexual discrimination. Obviously this is actually the more important matter to society - but if people are going to use someone's life as a way to launch that discussion then they have a duty to be careful about it.

3. You can't get on your high horse and claim to be the more moral, caring person, if you're destroying someone's life in the process without justification.