* Posts by Gordon 10

3872 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2009

Chipotle insider trading: Disproving the efficient markets hypothesis

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Efficient Markets Hypothesis ...

Did you even read Tims article - he was very clear that not all versions of the EMH claim to be informationally complete.

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Much complication.

One flaw with the information going back to the customer. It already does in the form of a receipt.

There is nothing that the customer pays for that entitles them to the aggregate sum of all customers data.

Or to put in a privacy flavoured context. Why should my next door neighbour get to know what CD's I have bought just because he has also bought some CD's from Amazon?

'Boutique' ISPs: Snub the Big 4 AND get great service

Gordon 10

Re: Quick correction

19th century network or 19th century company?

Apple CEO: Fandroids are BINNING Android in favour of IPHONES

Gordon 10

hahahaaha.

@AC I think fandroid_galaxy_fan29 is still available as a nick.

Got any facts to back up that wild supposition? Its far more likely that as the biggest volume seller of Premium Android Samsungs lunch is getting eaten by mid tier androids that are almost as good. Which co-incidentally explains why nearly all the current Flagship android makers are suffering.

UK official LOSES Mark Duggan shooting discs IN THE POST

Gordon 10
Joke

Follow proper procedure

Did the muppets who did this not get the memo about uploading all confidential data to Dropbox?

Joke - but the clock is ticking until it happens.

Gordon 10

How long?

Before some muppets does this with Care.data records?

And they wonder why we don't trust them with it.

What do China, FBI and UK have in common? All three want backdoors in Western technology

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Well, this resolves another question once and for all

Did you miss the part where they were new reqs?

Oh you mean we should take a random statement from an AC on some alleged competitive advantage that a Chinese company may or may not have taken advantage of?

Logic fail Mr AC.

Sky sidles up to O2, whispers: 'Fancy a little FOUR-PLAY?'

Gordon 10

Past Form

They also have co-operative form in the past when sky bought all of O2's fixed line broadband customers.

Strap on fitness finesse: Withings Activité Pop

Gordon 10
Joke

Re: The "glass" is plastic.

They could only afford Bonobo plastic. Once its scratched your'e f****d

Gordon 10

water-resistant to five atmospheres: good for splashes and perhaps the shower and surface swimming

5atm's is :Suitable for swimming, white water rafting, non-snorkeling water related work, and fishing.

According to the official standard. (Source Wiki)

Supersonic Bloodhound car techies in screaming 650mph comms test

Gordon 10
WTF?

Oh FFS

Im all for technoporn but really? Are they building a fast car or some sort of mini-tech empire?

'YOUTUBE is EVIL': Somebody had a tape running, Google...

Gordon 10

Arsebook ?

My soul is shivelling at the thought but maybe the only solution is to play the bloodsuckers off against each other?

Care.data refuseniks will be DENIED CANCER SCREENING invites

Gordon 10
WTF?

2 Simple solutions

Use GP surgeries to co-ordinate any screening or similar program. Since they will have a full set of records there wont be a problem.

They will also be able to screen out those people who would normally come into scope but shouldn't. ie avoid sending screening letters to those already in the terminal stages of the disease.

Alternatively give up trying to flog my medical data to the private sector. Ring fence it for the NHS and public (university) research only with a punishment equal to 10 years in prison AND 10% of worldwide turnover for the person AND the company who misuses it.

Since the 10% of worldwide turnover fine is already used in simple anti-trust cases I see no reason to have anything less stringent for my personal data.

Switch it off and on again: How peers failed to sneak Snoopers' Charter into terror bill

Gordon 10
Boffin

Organising the Techies

It seems clear that the snoopers charter is not going to go away having been identified by our lords and masters and their civil service puppet masters as a fundamental part of the bread and circuses needed to fight "the war on terror".

I cant help feeling as techies we are missing a trick relying on the likes of ISP's and the occasional condescension from Google and the like to push it back. Given how deep they have their hooks in the politicians its only a matter of time before they see something to be gained by allowing this legistlation to pass.

So pop quiz - what can we as techies do - that we are uniquely suited to do - to fight this in an organised manner, without necessarily having to closely align with any other protest group?

Answers in replies please......

What's that, Microsoft? Yep, a Lumia and Surface SALES BOOM

Gordon 10
Thumb Up

Fair play to them

On the hardware front at least. MS seem genuinely committed to producing good quality hardware and whilst the Surface 3 isn't to my taste I've been haunting eBay for a Surface 2 and am likely to take the plunge any day now.

Probably still silly money as a straight out tablet replacement but as an ultraportable laptop it has some legs.

Opera Jon weaves a brand new browser

Gordon 10

The missing word was "UI" perhaps.

Lizard Squad threatens Malaysia Airlines with data dump: We DID TOO hack your site

Gordon 10
Thumb Up

This is when I support the collection of metadata

Identify some of the suspected members of lizard squad, get a warrant to access their *recent (and future)* isp and phone records, *BAM* throw the book at the odious little toads.

Note to "CallMeDave" & TheMillipede all done within the remit of existing legislation.

Not withstanding the Fed's are probably working over the next "Sabu" as we speak.

Hoaxer posing as GCHQ boss prank-calls PM Cameron

Gordon 10
Black Helicopters

Re: Optional

I expect the prime suspect is "falling down the stairs" as we speak. Having already admitted to the Currant Bun that he was off his head - quite literally wont have a leg to stand on.

Shareholders pen outraged letter about Ellison's bulging package

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Can it be clarified?

According to Reuters - sweet fa

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/01/26/uk-oracle-shareholders-idUKKBN0KZ07K20150126

"PGGM owns 0.08 percent of Oracle's shares, according to Thomson Reuters data. It was not immediately clear how many shares Railpen holds."

On that basis they should take their money and walk if they don't like what Larry is doing.

Their FAIL - they cant claim they didn't enter in a shareholding in Oracle with their eyes wide open. Even if their motives are benign they are effectively no better than Icann. If you want to effect change at a company pony up the funds to increase your shareholding or get together with a syndicate of similarly interested parties. Otherwise STFU.

FBI-baiter Barrett Brown gets five years in chokey plus $890,000 fine

Gordon 10

The kid has balls

Releasing that statement.

5 years seems rather dubious for merely being connected with the guys that raided HB Gary.

About the only legitimately valid crime he should have been done for was the threaten exposure of the fed.

Another slowhandclap for American "justice"

SCREW you, GLASSHOLES! Microsoft unveils HoloLens

Gordon 10

Re: Hope they truly work

Me too. Although to be fair their Hardware is miles better than their Software these days. Surfaces are lovely, and the Xbone not bad either.

Aint that ironic.

Elon Musk snowed under with Googley dollars for Space Internet

Gordon 10

Re: could be worse...

Too late!

It looks like you are trying to land a reusable first stage - can I help you with that?

***boom***

'Success'? Verify FAILED for 40% in self-assess tax trial

Gordon 10
Joke

Re: Cause and Effect?

What loon thought farmers were a good set of first candidates, they must have some of the most complex financial profiles out there.

And that's without factoring in red diesel sales, badger baiting clubs and compensation payments to wounded walkers who wouldn't "get orf my laaaaannndd"

Gordon 10
WTF?

Can some one explain

Wtf Verify is meant to do and why are they spending my money on it?

According to the blurb it seems to be outsourcing the simple aspect of logging on to a Govt portal with a user id, in favour of some nebulous identify matching guessing process run by commercial interests.

What lunatic thought that this was worth spending money on? Im usually against big Govt databases, but if the alternative is spreading my details across a whole host of commercial interested parties - give me Big Brother any day of the week.

Blurb

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introducing-govuk-verify/introducing-govuk-verify

Facebook worth more than Portugal? Hell, it's worth a LOT more than THAT

Gordon 10
Thumb Up

Re: Wasting twice the time

This - tie it together with the Opportunity Cost argument above you could argue that all we have done is swapped one leisure activity for another and any gain in utility (let alone something more concrete) is marginal at best.

And that's without factoring in the fact that facebooking is an asynchronous activity that can be performed in the "quiet times" between other leisure activities.

Indeed there's probably a delicious irony that advertisers are paying twice to get our attention for less time than they previously would have. ie We skip the TV adbreak to Twitbook, then ignore their ads to concentrate on the Kitten Video or Doris's latest colostomy adventure.

Polish chap builds computer into a mouse

Gordon 10

Re: 128 GB flash ... nobody will be able to work for long with so little storage

I agree - my MBA has 128Gb - with my ITunes library on a Nas - there is plenty of space to run any application I need, all store my core documents AND a copy of Win 7 running over Parallels.

I have a 32gb thumbnail sized USB key sticking out the side as my "just in case" that's never been used for anything but adhoc data transfers.

MYSTERY RADIO SIGNAL picked up from BEYOND our GALAXY

Gordon 10

Re: Local Sources

How does a local source equate to the energy output? Is the "suns output" estimate adjusted for attenuation?

Microsoft and mate release Azure transporter beam

Gordon 10
Joke

What parameters are selectable

for consideration of migration?

Fed Access Yes/No

NSA Access Yes/No

MS Corporate Ownership US/<rest of sane world>

Scientific consensus that 2014 was record hottest year? No

Gordon 10

Re: Thermometers

a pertinent question for all the datasets - and for what time period were they that accurate? ie did they get upgraded at any point.

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: Cut the sh*t! @Stuart 22

Try addressing the point of the article. As a statistician would you be comfortable saying "xxxx EVER" if its within the bounds of the margins of error.

In this article that isn't the crux of what Lewis is saying.

He's saying the previous 3 increments that led to the "hottest years ever" were all well within the margins of error for his dataset - if the same is true for the NOAA and other datasets then saying "hottest ever" is a bit dubious.

Forget whether Lewis is a warmist or denier - he's saying its very disingenuous to be making such headline grabbing statements.

Snowden doc leak 'confirms' China stole F-35 data

Gordon 10
FAIL

What you mean just like the US isn't building the F22 as well?

Ski MOUNT DOOM or take top coffee to the beach? Your choice

Gordon 10

Are you the kiwi Nigel Farage? And I thought us poms were meant to be the whiny ones.

LIFELESS BEAGLE on MARS: A British TRIUMPH!

Gordon 10

28hrs apparently!

According to these links Beagle and Curiosity are about 4km from each other - and Curiosity's max speed is 0.14 KM/h it should take Curiosity just 28hrs at full chat to get there.

Although I'm not convinced the scale on that map is at all right -I think there are a few zeros missing off the scale which may slow Curiosity up a bit.

Olympus Mons is meant to be 600 odd KM wide.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mars-map/

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=curiosity+top+speed&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-GB:IE-SearchBox&ie=&oe=&gfe_rd=cr&ei=ZQW5VJXTOoqA5gbUpoCICw&gws_rd=ssl

Gordon 10

Re: Curiosity

Even better - get Curiosity to bumble over and plug a USB stick in to download the photos.

US and UK declare red-team cyber war – on each other

Gordon 10
Unhappy

Outages

I doubt there will be any - there is a real risk of the rules of engagement being defined such that actual damage doesn't occur - and therefore potentially nullifying some of the whole point.....

Gordon 10
FAIL

Re: So are we saying...

Not at all - we're saying we should test whether those tiger teams have done a good job - not assume they have, and since the threat surface is continually evolving and that State hackers would potentially have new & different insights to other professional testers it does no harm and possibly a lot of good.

Did you know that but just wanted to take a cheap shot at banks, or did you not think before commenting?

CIA exonerates CIA of all wrongdoing in Senate hacking probe

Gordon 10
WTF?

wankers

with this kind of crap endemic within Govt organisations its no wonder any techie worth their salt would slag "callmeDaves" encryption disposal proposals at every opportunity.

When you can't even rely on an organisation to admit complete malfeasance there is something majorly wrong.

Lets not forget they tried to get criminal charges raised against the committee.

Govt powers or any sort - take a leaf from Zammo's book - just say no.

Warning: Using encrypted email in Spain? Do not pass go, go directly to jail

Gordon 10

Re: France vs Spain/UK/US

Maybe some of the still remember why fought against regimes which wanted "papers bitte"

Gordon 10
Black Helicopters

Re: Cameron can go do one

Not just one idiot. millipede and Harriet Harmon basically said the same thing today.

Vote Lib Dem, UK, SNP basically anyone except Labour or Tory.

Don't use Charlie Hebdo to justify Big Brother data-slurp – Data protection MEP

Gordon 10
Thumb Up

Quote this

Anytime this shite come up.

" “Far-reaching data collection in France would not have prevented the odious attacks in Paris. As with previous attacks, the perpetrators of the Paris attacks were already known to security authorities and had been the subject of investigations and supervision measures.

"Instead of creating an ineffective dragnet on all air passengers, security authorities should have been exchanging the data they already had on these suspects,”

DANGER: Is that 'hot babe' on Skype a sextortionist?

Gordon 10
Pint

Re: Know your target

Students == Less time spent in the school of life + more time spent surfing the internet drunk stoned or bored.

What will happen to the oil price? Look to the PC for clues

Gordon 10
Boffin

Capital Intensity

Some interesting propositions. I presume the move from a Resource Extraction to a Manufacturing paradigm for Computing is still valid even taking into account the spiralling cost of FAB's?

Im basing that presumption on the fact that Tim wouldn't have made such a schoolboy error ;).

If take moore's law as a model for the computing industry as a whole, we would have Resource Extraction down near the base of the curve and then Manufacturing at the point where it starts to go exponential.

Where this becomes most interesting is that if we posit that Moores law is actually a Sigmoid (S shaped) curve then what model does the top part of the this curve correspond to? A return to the Resource extraction model, or some other model takes effect?

http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/11/its-not-exponential-its-sigmoi.html

(wishing for chin scratching icon) Jimmy Hill?

SanDisk's flash chip nightmare: How I'd escape black hole if I was in charge

Gordon 10
Stop

Whats this got to do with a US court?

ie if the components are sourced and sold in the Far East, for delivery to the US in various oem boxen, other than FUD whats the court going to do? Put Netlist in the position of trying to shut down the big 4's server sales and see if it has the balls to try it.

A savvy SanDisk would be assessing the competition in the sector and judging how easy it is for the big 4 server vendors to jump ship. A couple of sweeteners on the side may be far less costly to buy some extra time.

SpaceX drone hovership ROCKET LANDER BURN: Musk to try again

Gordon 10
Mushroom

Re: "floating barge"

afaik some of the more mobile Oil rigs just have big tanks in the "feet" that are flooded to provide stability, with only some tethers/anchors actually going down to the seabed.

One of them might be a good contender for the HMS Muskpad. although I would guess they cost a couple of orders of magnitude more than a barge with a flat deck and some station keeping thrusters.

Which may be valid if they are ultimately shooting for a pad based on land.

What do UK and Iran have in common? Both want to outlaw encrypted apps

Gordon 10

Re: Good luck Dave

Surprisingly Cleggy seems the closest to getting it right. Shame some of their other policies are so whackdoodle.

From the Beeb

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30673625

Mr Clegg said he backed targeted measures to identify suspected extremists and if necessary examine their communications, saying the state had always reserved the right to "steam open a letter" if it thought those behind it meant harm to others.

But he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that one element of what Mr Cameron was proposing would go much further and would involve "scooping up vast amounts of information on millions of people - children, grandparents and elderly people who do nothing more offensive than visiting gardening centre websites".

"Privacy is a qualified right. If someone wants to do us harm, we should be able to break their privacy and go after their communications," he said.

"But the snoopers' charter was not about intercepting communications.

"It was about storing a record of all your social media activity, of every website you have visited of every single individual in this country, of people who would never dream of doing anyone else any harm, would never dream of becoming a terrorist or having anything to do with extremist ideologies.

"The question we need to ask ourselves, in a free, open society as we defend our values against the abhorrent attacks we saw in Paris, is where do you draw the line?"

Gordon 10

Good luck Dave

You have just confirmed any wavering doubts I had about voting for one of the other 2 muppets - or possibly Fardre on the grounds he can't even spell encryption.

Professor's BEAGLE lost for 10 years FOUND ON MARS

Gordon 10

Re: Too much time has elapsed....

poor thing had to go cold turkey without even a nicorette patch to help.

Adults-only Chrome add-on grabs you by the Googlies

Gordon 10
WTF?

Does the world really need another remote desktop option?

.... exploit coming in 3..2..1...

MI5 boss: We NEED to break securo-tech, get 'assistance' from data-slurp firms

Gordon 10
Mushroom

to correct the quote

"As you would expect, we are offering our French colleagues our full support as they respond milking this situation for all its worth"

Samsung’s SUPER-speedy SSD is a real power-sipper

Gordon 10

Re: Use of words

are you sure about that? Even for sequential writes my understanding was the wear levelling and raid-like usage of the individual chips would require most/all of the chips powered up. Unless the power up/down time has much less latency than Im assuming it does.