Posts by 0laf 1980 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Nov 2009
Good review. You're certainly talking about my niche at the end of the article. I've an iPhone SE and like the size and hate the size because small screens mean small on-screen keyboards which are hard when you've big hands.
It's a bit dear for me thought but I suppose it's cheaper than a bigger iPhone.
I have for some long years repeatedly told IT that they are in the sewage business.
While everything is working noone is interested or wants to know what they do. When something breaks IT become very important indeed.
Turd icons needed. One polished, one rolled in glitter.
The keenness to work hard and graft at all hours is often exploited in new developers. If you burn out the business doesn't really care there are always more where you came from.
Same in accountancy, law, banking and many other professional areas. If you survive long enough you might just get promoted to the point where you too can feast on the blood of the young. But that point is always getting higher as those at the top need more and more blood to keep them alive and living in the fashion they are used to.
A mate of mine is now a partner in a large accounts firm. To me as an outsider it appears to be some sort of pyramid or Ponzi scheme. At every stage he has been promoted they seem to fuck him over a bit more and lure him on with the promise that at the next stage it will all get better.
Those in the years before him had a much easier time with benefits and perks but as they went on they have pulled up the ladder behind them to feather their beds even more.
I do wonder what would happen if everyone suddenly refused promotion or walked.
Another current example is Governments demanding that maths be changed to suit them enabling crypto to only apply when you are a bad guy.
It's more complicated but just the same end result of a State government demanding pi be 3.
[It was the Indiana Pi Bill which nevr made it to law according to wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill]
Successful thieves are usually pretty efficient. I suspect rather than farting around with scanners etc they'll just hit this POS hard with a hammer.
Even if you can't break this quickly by hitting it all you have to do is disable the electronic element (probably by hitting it hard with a hammer or rock) then the user will have to leave their bike. That'll give you plenty of time through the night to work on it.
My old Oxford bike lock weighed about 1Kg and was shatter and cutter resistant. It probably protected a motorbike which was worth considerably less than the bikes locked up by the hipster users of this shit
No one. Which the situation the middle managers want to be in. Top bosses get told about the big savings they are about to get by the implementation of the new outsourced unicorn shit cloud service. The work carried out by some allegedly overqualified 8yr old in a tech sweatshop.
The computer would eliminate accidents through inattention. inc drink/drugs. So those idiots that drift across lanes without looking or overtake on blind corners, pull out without looking etc.
The computer won't make those mistakes.
What they'll be less good at is dealing with the unusual circumstances that pop up quite often. Most of us are used to adapting and driving around those problems.
I wonder if the problem here is the question being asked?
Rather than highlighting the crash "ooh look in this situation the Tesla would crash" should we not be asking "in this situation did the Tesla do the right thing"?
If I was driving the properly, with no assistance, I would be aware of the traffic around me in all four directions and presented with this I would know if I could dive right, left or should brake (driving properly remember).
(but really if I was driving properly I might well have been aware of the obstruction from half a mile away if I was looking ahead and had a line of sight)
Does the autopilot on the Tesla have awareness of the road users around it or is braking its only choice? Or would the majority of human drivers be be lax in knowing what's ahead and unable to brake as hard as the Tesla (recent news ignored) and would have the same accident but more energetically.
In this case is the Tesla's response statistically safer by still having an accident but at lower energies?
I'm no great fan of driving assistance beyond active cruise. I agree with the studies that show if the driver isn't requires to be in control their concentration will go. I think that just seems to be the way we are made. So either very little assistance or full automation. The Tesla half way option seems to be the worst most dangerous choice.
Like any massive orgainsation bank systems are often very old and very clunky. Any one big system will really be effectively 20 'bits' of old systems all held together by string and good wishes.
The guys who wrote the various bits will have retired, moved on or been outsourced to india years ago.
The guys doing the migration will likely be contractors for the most part some of whom will never have seen the system they are working on or have worked on anything similar before.
The guys managing the project will also be contractors probably in a different country never having met the techs or having worked on similar systems before either.
The senior managers don't give a fuck as long as whetever they do saves money and increases shareholder dividends.
It's basically the perfect model for large scale IT disasters all driven from the top by cost saving MBS types.
Experience and low risk costs, this sort of disaster has all been costed in and someone high up has basically done the Ford Pinto maths. IT'll save us more money in the long run than we'll pay out in fines if it goes wrong so crack on.
Which isn't to say the banks are alone in this thinking. Government too now won't pay for experience.
"I thought TCB had said in a statement that security wasn't affected?",
I think the fraud was like the talk talk one. The scammers were aware of TSB problems and used that as a script when they phoned up randomly.
"Hello this is the TSB I belive you're having problems, we're contacting all our customers...."
Keep calling till you hit a TSB customer.
He feels sorry for himself, he's know he's getting off this particular gravy train very soon.
But employment is a revolving door for the guys at these levels, he'll pick up another cushy directorship soon no need to worry that he'll go through hardship or need to visit a food bank any time soon.
My old man was a jogger in his middle age. He said that jogging often made him need to go potty whilst out and about. He would proudly point out the places he'd taken a dump (not in the street) and tell the tale.
But then he used to fart in elevators before sending it back down and various other 'pranks'.
It's a type or pyramid scheme. Those that bought in early know it's garbage but need to promote it to get more people to invest in the hope the original investors will escape with something.
I'd expect in 2020 2yr late a mediocre product to emerge whoch will be vastly inferior to the Occulous or Hololens of the same day. It'll sell nothing and company will fold.
Reads like - London based think tank asks wanky bearded hipster 'digital evangelists' if they'd like some money.
London based wanky digital types say 'yes'.
Minister and their London based wanky wonk employees say they'd also like to give money to London based celebrity endorsed wanky digital startups so they can get invited to nice parties (in London) and look good in press pictures.
I might be wrong it's just what's implied to me
I see my predictive text was set to "Epic fail / Freudian slip" mode with a misspelling of "forensic" being changed to something more anatomical.
Coupled with an inherent slapdash attitude to QA (a job on the Daily Mail awaits) resulted in the above substitution.
If you are offended by my error I must proffer my complete and utter apathy to you, I really truly and deeply don't care. Thank you.
The small amount of investigation I have done led me to believe that insurance would only pay out if you had done your due diligence and basic protective measures to the extent that you would probably be in a position to recover from the incident reasonably well meaning insurance was not economical.
I could see insurance for specific services such as foreskin investigation or other recovery services being more useful than a catch all payment for an incident.
Shite.
Drones are easy to fly and relatively cheap which means that existing employees will be trained to use them and we'll buy them like any other piece of equipment.
We'll pay off the guys that used to climb up tall building to inspect them and we won't need so many access systems such as lifts and cherry pickers. We'll also need fewer expensive manned aircraft and pilots.
what is interesting are the begging letter to stay in touch from companies which I've never ever had anything to do with or in many cases never even heard of.
Thanks for the heads up, now kindly fuck off.
GDPR is lots of work for businesses but in general a very good thing for citizens. Those businesses that were playing nice with the DPA for 20yr won't have found it all that tough. IT's the shits that have found their dodgy dealings and evasiveness come back to get them.
I have a small netbook style laptop, it can't/won't install any updates after January this year. No error code, no accessible log to say what the bloody problem is. Just the message "can't install update because previous update hasn't finished".
I don't use the machine often enough to be bothered to put the effort in to fix this. I'll see if there is a linux distro about for it soon.
Windows update is by far the worst element/product/turd that Microsoft has ever produced in a long history of producing large steaming turds.
'Steaming Turd' Icon needed.
I've never liked this trend to touch screens in cars. It means I have to look to carry out a function and can't do it by touch alone which I've been able to do on all cars since I started driving 24yr ago.
Voice recognition is (in my humble experience) universally shite. I appreciate I sound like a Scottish farmer and I don't really expect these system to work for me, however my partner has a pristine cut glass English accent and they don't work for her either. So voice isn't really an alternative.
There is a lot to be said for tactile knobs and switches I can find without looking. Despite their current woes VW does that the best of any cars I've been in (or did it was a 2007 car).
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