Posts by JetSetJim

Re: TANSTAAFL!

senescence: the condition or process of deterioration with age.

What feature developed since <INSERT FAVOURITE RELEASE OF OFFICE> has made your life easier? The ribbon made it harder for me (YMMV), and other than that and new icons I've not noticed anythinng new in the last ten years. Menus have shifted around, which is just a new layout to get used to, but some things (e.g. getting at certain file properties, finding different application options, and I miss being able to get to SystemInfo from the Help -> About menu.

So yeah, I think it's deteriorated with age, but admit it's a personal opinion that you might not share.

Re: And

Putting the TinFoil, Devil's Advocate hat on, one wonders what commercial agreements were put in place for (a) Google to access the scan data, and get the doctor's time to assist in the training of the AI, and (b) what sale/licensing price would be achieved.

Re: I need an AI haircut

> I have spent ages trying to think of a solution which would let me see queue length online but really can't find one

Err, ring them and ask for the current wait time?

Re: Insanity

fair point, for sure you don't need ar-15s to hunt deer, and guns in general clearly don't protect people. but given the situation, an armed team seems at least a little reasonable

Re: Anti-Satellite isn't that hard

Depends on how much junk they can shoot up there at once before their launch sites get flattened. LEO is apparently 309,038,244,000 cubic miles - I bet there's some funky military mathematician's who've worked out just how much junk to fling, and of what size shrapnel, to optimally disrupt satellites in as short a period of time possible.

Re: Cool, cool...

No, not 90% of women at Nokia were underpaid:

"...which found 90 per cent of those affected were women"

and the objective was to "remove all unexplained or unjustified wage differences"

and lastly, "Salaries for Nokia's 103,000 staff were changed from the beginning of July"

It's a bit weird that they say that 90% of those affected were women (and there are about 20k women in Nokia), and then they say their entire workforce's salaries were updated. Seems like if *all* women at Nokia were affected, then at most 22k staff would be affected. Reading the Google-Translated version of the Finnish article (YMMV), it doesn't say at all how many staff were affected, just that 90% of them were women

Anyway, it may well be that "female tech staff member A got a pay rise because male tech staff member B was earning more for the same job at the same performance level", or it may be that "female tech staff member A got a pay rise because female staff member B was earning more for the same job at the same performance level" (and similar for male-male comparisons). No stats are provided in this article that can be used to derive some form of sexual (or other) discrimination on Nokia's part.

It also doesn't say discrimination of any form didn't happen, so I'm not saying it hasn't. Just that the Register article doesn't say anything.

Again, RTFA gives us that the pay gaps were caused by old interview practices asking for previous salaries and offering a bit more to get someone in, or from job mobility within the organisation, changing job/country and not getting a raise.

As to how staff took the message - in the UK, at least, you can't force a pay cut on anyone without their agreement, so I guess everyone got a pay rise to the highest common denominator - with HR wielding the "same job, same performance" to keep some variability...

A bit curious as to how they might factor in the duration of performance into their calculations. One might hope that a consistent underperformer who just before this exercise manages to pull their socks up for once and get into the Excellent category of performance doesn't get a good salary bump to match their colleague who was getting Excellent for the last 10 years.

Re: I like proper cash

And they might well pull a wry smile, say "tsk, another Luddite", and continue polishing the beer glasses with a grimy rag. I'm sure they are aware that they may well lose some business because of their decision, but they obviously think that the benefits to them outweigh that cost.

Re: Is it worth the cost ?

Apple now has $245 billion cash on hand, so shouldn't be a problem for them - although whether the Intel designs could be brought up to compete properly with QC designs (IIRC Intel designs were a bit shit when they were stuck in an iPhone, as others have pointed out).

Then QC will sue Apple for patent infringement, and about 15 years later that case will be decided after repeated appeals & refilings.

Re: CockWomblers Unite

Everyone should live in that world

Re: Entertainment is a problem

> So I buy a film on DVD, then I go to torrent sites and find a ripped version without all the bullshit and I watch that. It's a much more pleasant experience.

www.makemkv.com

No torrent required, although occasionally a disc is too hard to get into. Also the resultant mkv file on a dlna Nas box. Job done

Re: I had to read this twice

I assumed the turntable was mounted on an air suspension with belt drive to properly smooth out the signals being Wi-Fi'ed, thus ensuring a higher quality of modulation scheme

Re: But apparently ...

Oh yes, I know it's the start of the move towards every transaction being uploaded to HMRC. Not looking forward to that, but can see it coming eventually.

Re: "all of our current and future build"

That was my first thought, too. And it's not as if they have to dig up the street to do it as it's "where all the traffic comes together [in the exchange]."

Rip it out, attempt to get your money back as it's not fit for purpose (the purpose being to supply gigabit capable fibre), replace with decent kit.

On average, there seems to be north of 4,000 homes per exchange (5600 exchanges in the country, 25million homes, assumes they're all connected), so you're looking at around 12 exchanges worth of problem?

Re: It's worse than the antivaxxers.

Actively not vaccinating doesn't just risk themselves, but also increases the risk to vulnerable people that have a reduced immune system - e.g. those on chemo, or even those rarities that do have allergic reactions to some of the ingredients of the vaccine. This is due to reduced herd immunity. By doing this, the anti-vaxxers are helping to "kill off the genetically weak".

Bring on compulsory vaccination

Re: What the hell kind of contract did he have?

Perhaps he'd previously developed the logic bomb code as a plugin for all his work in Excel and he merely stated that it was essential for all his work on this contract.

Might want to see if a previous employer had a similar issue...

Huawei might be the equipment vendor for the network, but the detail being sought is not likely on their kit but instead on central servers running billing and geopresence software which is unlikely to be Huawei. The network infrastructure had the ability to trace an individual (or more) IMSI, but that will in itself leave traces (assuming it's done by accessing the legal intercept interface), but this set of attacks send more against the customer account data, which is held elsewhere.

Re: "data warfare"

> Of course, you have to be already planning on spending money on flights, cinema tickets, coffee and amazon prime to actually do better than offset the cost of the health insurance in the first place

This indeed. Also, cash benefits from the same provider, and discount on a bike, too (they cancelled that benefit this month, though). Overall, I think I'm in the "net zero cost" for the insurance, and the data I give it is garbage, too. Wrist tracker probably thinks I wank a lot, but I hit my"steps" target every day...