Next in the news
reports of famine striking lawyer colonies outside USA This cannot be allowed to continue, UN to intervene.
2180 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jun 2009
I suggest some of the secret police TLAs have something embarrassing on assorted pollies. <tin hat > I wonder if the pollies are not driving this, they are being driven. Further, I cynically wonder if the spooks are being driven to drive the pollies. Perhaps a media baron or two has stuff on the spooks that is being used to indirectly control political processes now that the newspapers and TV are finally losing credibility.</tin hat> The Norks must be laughing. In the meantime I miss the real black helicopter that used to be hangared up the road. It was a joke then.
It could also be that the current crop of ministers is simply incompetent. The PM would not be able to partake in a high school debate from the little I have heard of his awkward fumbling for sentences.
IOT could be useful. True it will probably be used to increase surveillance instead until the new praetorian guard and their blackmailed clients are brought into line. (Spooks and their tame pollies for those insufficiently distrustful) It is possible that some useful stuff will sneak through, built by enthusiasts for special needs people they know.
Trevors point on decision fatigue relief is novel for IOT. Too many choices is stressing as is keeping track of a lot of things.. eg As one wag put it, how many cola brands do you need ? Perhaps the moral policemen might be usefully focussed on firms flogging the same common product under 20 names in supermarket to give the delusion of choice. In the case of a intelligent reminder list, I think he has made the first believable argument for IOT I have heard. Talk/PowerPoint slides of self stacking fridges was always foolishness to me.
In case you think this is trivial, flight management human factors decision fatigue is a significant subject. After 4+ hours flight making appropriate choices in a difficult or worse situation can be fatal instead of trivial. For recreational pilots it can be worse as there are no automatics and often less experience. For people with various disabilities I know, something that did gentle reliable reminders would assist them to live better lives with reduced care needs and more autonomy.
you assume our education system has produced enough educated people to keep the bombs working. The uranium goes off over time. The smaller the faster. Those units are only just subcritcal. Thats one reason why suit case bombs were abandoned. Six months storage before the cores needed replacing. Further, despite the simulations, how many nuclear crackers have been exploded to ensure the U2235 or plutonium and the associated high explosive charges, not to mention the triggering timing electronics still work altogether? AFAIK, none in 20+ years outside of Norks paradise in hell and maybe a few the Israelis set off south of South Africa in thunderstorms to disguise them. Speculation there.
<rant> Ah, terminator movies. Category: Fiction, country of origin: USA relevance therefore zero to discussions of AI becoming plausible, let alone reality. Given the vile scripts with viler characters acted with the depth of a drying supermarket carpark puddle it is not hard to wish the AIs would wipe out those disgusting organics. In T2 it took 15 minutes or less for me to wish the T1000 would hurry up removing that nasty little jerk Connor. From CattleCar Galactica thru Terminator movies, Robocop et al are a compelling argument for homo sapiens extinction. .</rant> But I digress. So far the builders are a long way from an artificial intelligence. Note, not expert systems which do exist and a few even work. A few more of you should read the excellent books, The Emperors New Mind and Shadows of the Mind by esteemed maths boffin Dr Roger Penrose. Warning, Set theory and a need to think required to enjoy.
Never understood the fear. Not until an intelligent AI can self repair and replicate could there be a risk. Finally, power sources keeping said machine going. Pull the plug and see what happens. Aside from that, given how stupid autocorrect on any device still is, I dont see intelligence appearing in hardware happening.
for those on sloooow and expensive comms links, those irritating animated anythings and attempts at popups et al take up bandwidth for parts of the page I might want. Don't mind ads if they are static and small as the sites have to generate revenue somehow, but 10 links to add sites, add snoopers and multiple little gifs make web surfing frustrating. Ad blockers are on full for that reason. The advertising firms might help themselves by using small well designed static adds more.
DougS, correct. Not first time something like this has happened. FermiLab had anomalous results on the last runs they did getting more energy out than they put in when they were not doing fusion or fission. They published the anomalous results asking for comments on what they had missed. No idea if they got answers. As Asimov wrote, progress happens when someone says, "That's odd" NASA made no claims on groundbreaking, just something was observed that does not fit current understanding. Anything that might be messing with quantum effects, especially quantum foam is in "not sure about that "territory IMHO. Have a thumbs up
@ mikejs
Move user configs ? YP/NIS properly set up could have a fully portable user environment It had some non text config though. Nothing like the thousands of lines of registry that make Windows such a hell to run regedit on. Unfortunately for we config file lovers, commercial unices have fallen in love with the XML database monster. Only a matter of time before linux becomes as bloated and obscure in its config.
Takes me back to Hawkes Oz card, complete with fines for offending public serpents.. Everywhere you went you needed an ID card, just like the USSR so many saw as the promised land. Brandis seems to be another terrified clerk in thrall to important sounding acronyms. Perhaps The Man From Uncle was watched too much by impressionable young minds, instead of Get Smart.
Did I read that correctly ? why not use a power cord. Safer, cheaper. Who wants that much energy sloshing around living room or kitchen unconfined. Aside from what the gear might mass at that energy level. Cloud, because thats what objects nearby may become, if not whole dwelling.
@IronGut.. Have an upvote. Also doing decent passwords is a sod of job on tablets. Since most tablets I have fondled have a shiny slippery case they are too easy to drop. Ironically, I prefer a netbook and tethered phone for light travel because it is easy to use. Have to move it to a decent light linux soon though. Failing that a laptop that is structurally thick enough to not snap at first drop.
full on volcanic activity long gone, yes, but evidence from moon glints in some craters suggests outgassing still occurs. Suggestions the Moon has a layer of hot rock/magma from its orbital variation around the Earth to act as a source of volatiles. OTOH, I thought the mares were massive impact sites, not flood volcanic basalt, hence the mascons under them. Odd bit about moon is that Earth side has big flat basalt plains with older highlands and the other is merely heavily cratered, suggesting different histories. It would have been informative to launch the remaining Saturn Vs as one flight was scheduled to go into the highlands. However, Nixon had to fund the war de-juere somehow,
indeed, good effort. Perhaps the various fields that make up the neutron via its quarks and the forces acting on them have the wave forms "smear out" and travel separately when a "decision" as to which way to go ? It is a weird place at those sizes. That attributes and object can travel separately suggests a field force carrier at work somehow, but that is speculation. Most interesting boffinry.
Now back to improving my lousy limerick literacy
>> All run on NT4 on a DEC Alpha, one of the most stable Windows platforms I have ever seen.
Run that kit. Was stable but had memory leaks that would embarrass a politician. Was NT4 after all. But I digress. How often in IT do we find that staff who have done studies in the technology, worked competently in it for years are over-ridden by some suit with not a technical clue for non-IT reasons ?
Sounds something like Beos packaging of applications. If not Beos, this has been done somewhere in FOSS before. Have to fiddle with it when bandwidth allows as I think it worth exploring. Seems like a way to bring microkernel stability to a monolithic kernel model if my limited understanding is correct.
given the current Oz manglement culture of putting HR droids, beancounters, so-called project managers aka bullies in charge at obscene wages and a blind belief in giving all contracts to known poor performers at higher cost than inhouse, I now encourage my grandchildren to avoid IT. Long hours, dropping pay, mounting paperwork and joyful bureaucratic obstruction make it too stressful. Aside from that, anything involving ACS rings my alarm bells.
A final niggle is the observation that some of the best IT staff I have worked with did not have tertiary qualifications while some of the worst did. A few work conversations discussed this issue and came to the general conclusion that a degree indicates very little, despite it being HRs lazy way of assessing applications. A few more years and the children of non-elite Oz will only have the options of pre-Castro Cuba.
Do not like to rain on your parade, but avoiding optimism is the only sane way to cope with current employment problems of everyone given the last 4+ governments hostility to increasing local employment options.
Fire public serpents ? Often those most needed are fired, especially the technically skilled ones with a track record. The PHBs get a bonus and pay rise and a bunch of freshly minted graduates infected by the latest fad are hired by oursourcerer-de-juer to "do project". Still Qld Health beat USSA Social Insecurity with their $B1 fail, showing Oz fails are world class.
Agree with other commentards that government military purchases are often stuffed up by interference from pollies, sometimes for ego, sometimes for who knows reasons. The technical assessments are over-ridden. This means the public servants cannot do their job or are made irrelevant. IMHO, ministers and PHBs in charge of departments need to be de-protected so that a major FAIL hits their superannuation, jobs and private finances It might encourage accessible recording of the reasons for decisions. And the term "commercial in confidence" be made an automatic disqualification from tenders being accepted, except for price until contract awarded. Fixed price contracts have much to recommend them. Encourages due diligence on part of tenderer. Now how do we get candidates with basic tendering skills elected ? Sisyphus, meet spin doctors ?
@Mahatma true, because the federal government provided economically perverse incentives from taxpayer funds to do so. Why ? Lack of rational advice but lots of lobbying. About time to make all political parties self fund from citizen members only with a cap of say, $5000 per election cycle. And bring back the week or two news blackout for an election so the final days hysteria can be displaced from election day. Yes the bloggers will go nuts, but only the true believers will notice. Also, applying truth in advertising laws to all political groups, NGOs and charities will improve their trustworthiness, especially as deregistration and banning of officeholders might clean out the Stygian Stables of the current ruling elites.
@ chrspy: term socialist undefined and used mostly as a pejorative term. However, I note that green schemes seem to require subsidy, ie money transfers from individuals, industries and activities that do generate money. This is could be loosely defined as a socialist activity because the government is actively altering the economy for non-economic purposes. Worse, quite often for no effective purpose. As I have typed before, I will take greenies seriously when they begin to practice what they preach. Live in rural mud huts, use teleconferencing rather than flights to expensive remote resorts, adopt subsistence lifestyles or support nuclear energy, as a few of them do despite execration from the true believers. All things central urban greenies do not do. At least their desire for mass human die-offs is not hidden, but only as disguised racism. All those nations breeding should live as we tell them to and avoid industrialisation. Still talk of overpopulation, despite the worlds population going to drop overall by 2050 on current trends. In the developed world, some nations already have a problem with population decrease. I fear it is only a matter of time before health care for the over 70s will be reduced as an economic measure. Joe Haldermans Forever War described the start of this thinking well.
The above discontinuities between professed belief and practice perceived by those who bother to think are probably part of the survey's inconsistent findings. No actual knowledge on human effects on climate are required to see the inconsistent behaviour. Bit like Oz gov warbling about budget emergency but abolishing taxes on wealthy non-citizens while increasing costs on citizens. One does not need to be an economist to perceive the talk and action is contradictory.
Genetics ? hmm, let consider. Since less than 25% in the 1960s had a convict ancestor and its way lower now that suggests you are right for the wrong reason. Pommie aristocrats and successful con merchants came here and bred, becoming another ruling class. Mkes sense of the senseless.
@Michael. Wedgies were shot for years for taking lambs. Seems they were cleaning up carrion mostly. Wedgie pair over the hill from home never bothered my sheep and lambs anyway. Now if only the wedgetails would develop a hunger for foxes that a clot of a pom introduced here...
BTW, isn't Antarctica a better counter weight than Oz ? Oz is so lightweight in most things, except stupid governments. Where the heck do we find so many idiots ?
car, shmar. chickenfeed. try hitting one with a plane, or worse, having one have a go at your plane. The loud bang was heard 3000 feet below and two miles away. Plane made it back OK but entire tailplane checked and horizontal stabiliser needed a rebuild. The characters who fly fabric planes have a well founded fear of Oz bird life. Fortunately the local ones around my airfield mostly ignore us when we use them as thermal markers. One nearly rammed me on an inland flight but literally grabbed air with wings and legs extended to brake before it stopped short of my starboard wing tip. I think we both were distracted by the flock of ibis thermalling ahead for different reasons. The one time I left helmet cam behind, mumble mutter. This supports idea that feathered legs have aerodynamic use, but I suspect mostly as airbrakes to allow speed control in swoop attacks.
As for car damage and off-topic, emus, the Oz version of flightless birds are regarded as much worse to hit than a big roo in the Oz NW and WA. Those skinny legs break and 50kg of annoyed bird arrives thru windscreen.
Evidence for assertion of "will soon increase again from the minimum," James ? All knowledge is provisional, theories are not knowledge. Models are thinking aids at best, stumbling blocks once they become received truth. Cycle 24 has not followed most models and differed from all of them so far. We need at least 3500 years of data to be confident about the effects of the known solar cycles to be confident. Some evidence from isotopes exists, but is understandably disputed. As for the term climate science, just a media mumble. Meteorology is a recognized science, but climate science ? Which climate ? Desert, oceanic, coastal, tropic coastal ?
As for current warm spell, still not as warm as Roman and cooler than Minoan. What I do not understand is the obsession of NGOs and bureaucrats with creating energy shortages and making CO2 emissions worse. eg Germany burning more brown coal, everyone creating more CO2 for concrete to be used in windmills that wont produce enough electricity to be worth the effort. Asbestos coat on figuratively.
ITIRC the odds of success just before launch was 50/50. NASA expected one in 6 Saturn Vs to go bang. That none did suggests they built better than they knew. The skin of the LM was the thickness of a soft drink can or thinner. Busting it was possible. Bloke I admire most was the Apollo13 systems guy who did 3 days computation overnight to get return orbit parameters out for damaged Apollo.
The days of risk taking are over for western humans. Unless its bailing out waster bankers. Private sector just as constrained as NASA due to more pervasive safety laws. OTOH, Monda is right. No legacy job creation schemes and a cost effective focus on goal mean Musk et al have a good channce of selling LEO lifts. What profit is there going to Mars ? See Nivens short story "I'm in a Hole" about an asteroid miner caught in the gravity well of Mars. Selling transport for research probes for sure. For raw materials, not a hope. Better to explore the various Trojans and metallic asteroids methinks.
a culture obsessed with bad news, addicted to FUD and consoled with anodynes of pop "culture". Real achievement almost ignored. Just as previous nations made their big achievements, then faded rapidly, were the moon landings the high tide of the USA ?
Automation is the sensible thing to do, but not as exciting. Settling the New World was also dangerous, risky and mostly not cost effective for generations. Still it captured imaginations which very little does now. New bling that rings just is not the same as a Saturn V thundering skywards with 3 men in a can.
what makes ASIO think many of us hand over data for any purpose ? All data hoarders are loathed for the same reason. Websites that demand any purchaser create an "account" with name address phone etc to buy something and one more expletive deleted password to remember reminds me of a late unlamented electronic shop that drove many purchasers crazy with demands for same data. It sparked lampooning anecdotes on alt.rec.humor. Lately I have not bought things simply because of snoopy Buy Now pages.
If ASIO or the rest of the servile servants of the USSA want to snoop, let them convince an court in an auditable reviewed process. Given the cliches delivered by the current AG as received truth, nobody is watching the watchers. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
not so sure about that. Bandwidth is one thing, QOS another. Is all traffic equal, even in a data center ? I suggest to the outside user, probably, but to applications using backend services, definitely not. One wants a critical financial lookup and update to happen ASAP, while a webpage refresh can drag on. I do accept that bandwidth is cheap inside data center, but this project is aimed at hyperscale centers, so it is outside my experience and I suspect, almost everyone elses.
Given that carrier grade TCP/IP can utilise the hardware around 90% before performance degrades, the claims seem suspect. However they were done in a Real World situation with measurable changes. Were those changes in queue lengths significant to outside user ? That I did not see answered. Regardless, still worth doing to test alternative solutions. Given that individual network nodes make decisions based on local information, unable to optimise the whole network state, a central controller might have a better performance if it is managing the total network state which this seems to be addressing. Need dedicated control channels and very fast silicon though.
buy something to extend shiny shinies to sell, then smother acquired firm with a layer of suits. I note that marketing to high end of IT market is also not working for any firm. Electronics of all types are commodities and priced accordingly. But then, we all expected this kind of death for Nokia for how long ?
Absolutely correct. In an election and count one is trying to maximise trust. Even if this annoys the media commentards because it may take days to be sure sometimes. Paper is auditable, unlike electrons. Way, way back in the day when I brushed up against AEC systems they did care about security on their big systems. What concerns me is that AEC management have stated the AEC does not have the resources to properly check the voting rolls. That scares me. Successive governments have cut the public service as part of the magical efficiency mantra. Now the chooks are coming home to roost, with diarrhea. A cynic might suggest that this is part of a plot to subvert Oz democracy. But production code in VB ? Even more terrifying.
is untouched. Yep, still drones galore around the PHBs insulating them from the Real World. I am surprised that IBM had any new customers. But most big US derived multinationals are the same. The only question is when will the implosion come across the USSA when the Real World imposes itself in a way that can't be ignored by professional brown noser protected aristocrats. Feel sorry for those ho did their best to be rewarded with more overwork and a pay cut.
not much use from the little mainstream media I read. Just helps the PHBs identify targets for HR to persecute. Just waiting for the Fat Man to claim more powers for the spooks needed because of MH17. As for this legislations workability, some coffee spots and bars around Canberra will become dens of iniquity under this piece of paper. Ah, an excuse to drink on the job! Now it makes sense.
it is a lost cause. Only public noises that mention UN these days seem to be social engineers or panic merchants. Usual FUD from the Fat Man yesterday if we don't encourage additional snooping and data retention. Odd given that under Oz law, such as it is, there is no restraint already. Loyally serving his masters in the USSA I suppose. Perhaps costs should come out of pollies superannuation and secret police budget so auditing of activities can be done by forensic accountants.