Posts by Jim 59

Re: Good advice

Agree with article. I don't have children but if I did, internet access would be from the downstairs family PC only. Implementing that might be tricky for the "man in the street" but anyone in this forum could do it using their IT skills IMO.

Also tell your kids from an early age that everything in the PC/internet is recorded. Which is largely true. Root user sees all etc. etc.

Re: Or

No. What keeps Windows on the desktop throne is MS' control over manufacturers. Every purchase of a PC is a forced purchase of Windows.

The KDE and Gnome projects have also done their best to keep Linux off the desktop by despising their users and writing themselves into irrelevancy. I use XFCE and LXDE.

Alas, all is vanity...

Don't many traditional names have pretty meanings anyway, Ruth, Verity, Rebecca = happiness, truth, beauty. Alan - handsome, Simon = "TheRock". Wish I was called Simon now.

Re: Why tape is still here

The reasons why tape is the win for large data / long term backups are fairly straightforward and have been well discussed on this site. Data size, data laws, money and Moore's law all ensure that tape stays where it is for the foreseeable. Some have argued that spinning disk threatens tape, and some say spinners are themselves will be ousted by SSD. But SSD replacing tape ? Seriously ?

Use a mail client

Sound advice but not having to use a client is the main reason web mail exists.

Robin Hood etc

"Robin Hood tax!" is less of a serious strategy, more of an anguished wail from the UK citizenry still denied justice 5 years after the economic crash.

Instead of sackings and imprisonments, it has been business as usual, the same faces still in control, and already repeating their mistakes. Until justice is obtained, and the moral hazard is erased, folks are just not that interested in banks distracting us with pretendy prizes or discussing theories.

News just in - this week's banking scandal - hard sell of so-called "interest rate swaps", http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24508664". Panarama last night...

(I am not disparaging the chaps who won the prize.)

...but there's times when only something of that calorie density will do

Good point but, disappointingly, you can still be hungry after a Big Mac. Despite the calories it's not a large meal. All you are eating is a small serving of mince meat, half a potato and a small amount of bread.

For roughly the same calorie intake (~1050) you could eat a Sunday roast dinner or even large fish+chips. I know which would fill me up more.

Re: And so it continues.

Churn -> spy -> advertise

When the the interwebs be free of this irksome business model.

Re: Consistency, above all

Agree it sounds great. But the NHS open source promises are like a very obese person swearing they will lose weight next week. We have heard it before.

When big business gets a whiff of this they will smash it to smithereens with their lobbying wrecking-ball. Sorry for the cynicism.

Re: The elephant in the room

I think it is by-and-large true to say tablets are toys and that only PCs can accomplish any proper tasks.

Phones/tablets = content consumption

PCs = content generation

Re: Well done

Author is right about the Pi's biggest fans being forty-somethings. Disagree with the rest of the article though.

Eben Upton ... devised the Pi as a modern take on the low-cost machines on which he says he cut his own coding teeth.

Cheap ? Dragon 32 in 1982 cost £200. That's about £700 today. Ker-ching. Likewise BBC = £400 -> £1200. Even the zx81 (release price £70) works out at £210 in today's money. There was nothing cheap about home computers, except that they were cheaper than minis /mainframes.

But how many have those have gone into schools?

You miss the point. Pi was designed to be cheap enough for individual ownership, not as a school platform. Schools are still in "IT = Excel" mode.

Michael Gove, who appears to have decided it’s more important to teach little'uns how to program than to use the technology they will sit in front of when eventually they enter the workplace.

If Gove has done that, he is to be applauded for reversing the actions of Labour, which killed Computer Studies and replaced it with ICT, ICT being "how to use Excel". Unfortunately in out hi-tech world, "how to use Excel" is hardly a rare or marketable skill, it is a is a basic life skill, like tying your laces.

Re: MP3

Just to add - I listen to MP3 music on a very large hi-fi, not just on tinny earbuds.

Re: FTC still trading?

Bummer. I was just about to become a Waze user, but not now. Google's goal will be to suck Waze users into the data mine, where they can be merged and re-identified as users of Youtube, Blogger and Google's hundreds of other properties. Distancing yourself from Google becomes more difficult every day.

So Google gouges more people more of the time. I wonder if they will direct your route to take you past certain billboards or shops they have a deal with/own

Re: Facebook's world-class algorithms.

"Mentioned a musical => must be gay."

LOL

Makes you want to try algorithm baiting.

USA society == utter utter nightmare

Yes, the USA is so mind-blowingly awful that people are literally queuing up to live there, or risking imprisonment by sneaking over the border, or taking their holidays there again and again and again.

Meanwhile the poor citizenry are treated like prisoners, earn only £100k a year, and are forced to put up with constant good weather in their spacious, swimming-pool ridden neighborhoods, while-

appeal and elegance

...it's an electrical connector FPS.

Re: Well yes... I guess

Do I really need instant access to everything?

Not really. But a physical CD & CD player might be more "instant" than some mp3 solutions out there. Boxee et al want us to think that listening to MP3s requires turning the whole loft into an always-on datacentre. Just getting a quick blast of Pink Floyd is like upgrading an Oracle cluster FPS. You lose heart while the remote control is still booting.

Bring back the fun with a cheap MP3 player + 1 cable + Rockbox. "All off" to "music audible" in 1 second.

Re: Dedupe

Encrypt post dedupe. Good idea in principle, Tricky to engineer as the dedupe engine needs to decrypt all potential data blocks before deciding if they are part of the deduped file. Hard to engineer without prejudicing the encryption.

real density to 100Gbit/in2

On tape? Amazing. Hard to imagine how it is done. That is equivalent to about 6 Gigabytes per inch of DLT tape.

Re: You know

Google tentacle slips over YouTube comments: Now YOUR MUM is at the top

Translation:

Google puts YouTubers in filter bubble to strengthen data mining

Translation

Google gouges you more brutally than before, while showing you less

Chrome

Chrome == Google stalkware

Try the disinfected version - SRware Iron

Re: Total loss of control.

Hiring your own server gives increased security, but no more control than vanilla cloud. As Nate demonstrates, corporations chop and change. One business decision from them and your data is kicked out on its ar5e.

Cloud as a backup target is okay in a minority of cases. Seeding is the bug-bear, and the solution in Nate's case was living near the vendor. But updates can be bad too. Move or rename a couple of large folder trees and your heading for a big sync. And restores are trouble because the cloud is more likely a sync/mirror that a full multi-generational backup. You want your CV as it appeared in July ? Sorry we have only last week's copy.

So the marketing dept is calling networking "cloud". relax. They will have their moment, then move on to something else.

Re: still better at making it than giving it away

Giving away that much isn't so easy. If he lives another 30 years, Bill could give away 6 million pounds every day and still not reach that 95% target.

That's like buying a brand new Vauxhall Vectra every 4 and a half minutes.

Re: Sigh

It is not longer accurate to describe Google as a internet "search engine". The thing being searched is not the internet, just a domain of things Google is happy for you to see. And the items returned are not "results", but carefully ordered material that reflects how Google would like to integrate into your life.

You think you search Google, but you are the one being searched.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google

Re: Looks up, checks calendar.

The "business test" questionnaire is designed to be so woolly that it allows any conclusion to be reached about any contractor. It does not provide the clarity that was expected of it. So it is of little use, and their is nothing you can do about its provisions.

Maybe HMRC could tell who the real contractors are by, you know, just looking ? Here is your typical pretend-contractor:

- he/she often works in the public sector, doing the same job in the same office year after year. Lives near work. Often is a manager with reporting staff. Is thus indistinguishable from permanent staff. Uses the Ltd company merely as a ruse.

Now the real contractor:

- Typical contract length 3 or 6 months, inter spaced with non-contract periods almost as long. Works over an hour from home. Lives in crappy hotels. Has costs of £1000+ per month. Uses the Ltd company because big clients don't deal with sole traders.

The real contractor is indubitably a real contractor because nobody would behave like that if they weren't.

Statement from the Department of the Very Obviouis

This is not a shock statement from Attenborough. Put people in hospital instead of leaving them to snuff it, and you have interfered with evolution, obviously. Fortunately the NHS is doing an excellent job of snuffing out the old and weak, so with their help it will be survival of the fittest again. And if you are not weak you soon will be when you haven't has a drink of water for 7 days.

Suspect Beeb is left wing ?

...let's find out by asking Nick Griffin-

Re: France isn't too bad

Vive la France!

Microwave

I'm shocked, I say shocked, to discover a person who sets the time on their microwave oven. Good article, but save a penguin why don't you.

Re: TDK SA90...

"Sure, sound quality isn't great, but the kids today do the same thing, compressed as heck digital versions not hissy analogue"

Lol how true. 128 kb/s is like listening to music coming down a hose pipe.