Posts by 0laf

Pharmacology graduate here. One lecture was on alcohol interactions and metabolism.

Lecturer informed us impressionable students that unless you have a particular genetic mutation you can basically drink as much as you like and you'll never get cirrhosis.

Although you'd never know until it was too late.

Bloody educationalists

Teachers love iPads, but education managers who don't teach love them even more. At one point in the recent past it appeared that a KPI for education was the ratio of iPads to pupils. It didn't matter if they sat in cupboards flat or that they were nicked. They just had to show they'd spent a lot of money on Apple kit and all was good.

iPad = educashun = digital

Shiny and political buzzword compliant.

They never had any idea what to do with the fucking things and still don't.

I accept fully that there are circumstances where a tactile display are very useful and that there apps on the Apple store which are genuinely wonderful for kids with special needs.

But the rest? Shiny shite.

And they're a bastard to set up in a multiuser environment where the users are fundamentally evil.

Drones aren't really robots yet. They're just large expensive radio controlled planes flown at long distance. Until they are making decisions for themselves that's all they will be.

There will be a much bigger debate to be had yet about robots able to make autonomous decisions which will result in deaths especially when that leads to the inevitable friendly fire incident.

Robots in other places will probably be subject to hot swap, coded at a base then taken out to replace the duffer. Like everything these days no one will be allowed to own the robots they'll all be on subscription.

So when you're old and decrepit make sure your subscription for your ACME arse wiping robot doesn't lapse or things could get very messy very quickly.

Adverts

Kindly take your shiny shiny data mining and advertisement platforms (no, they're not "things that might interest me" they're fucking adverts) and shove them up your executive arses. Sideways.

If you want to serve ads through it then discount it.

At least Amazon gives you a way to buy out of ads on their Kindles. I'm surprised that they haven't done the same with the Alexa thingy.

On one hand I hate the idea of these assistants on the other I could direct 90% of my 6yr old son's inane questions to it and get about 2hr a day back. It's a dilemma.

Awareness

I hope they are also educating their marines on the dangers of taking any potentially embarrassing or criminal snaps with a digital devices. They should have been doing it anyway after some of the images from Iraqi prisons leaked causing some issues wiv da law.

HMS Forth,

HMS Begbie more like.

Cloud seems to be one of the rare areas where the needs and desires of individuals and big business are aligned against government.

IT lets big business look genuinely like they are standing up to 'the man' on behalf of the 'little guy'.

Of course they're not, and if big business starts to align more with government again they'll be just as quick if not quicker to fuck over the 'little guy' again.

But I suppose we shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth too much. You just have to be aware you're dancing with a tiger with Cloud.

Ohh FFS

When you can make a robot that can understand me yelling at the device with a fairly heavy and irate NE Scottish accent whilst a small boy is taking over me telling me about daffodils or Scooby Doo and the TV is blaring in the background and he's got a 2DS in his hand and I'm chasing a fecking cat round the room...... then, then you've made a breakthrough in voice assistant AI.

And until your voice activated sat nav can manage a route between Auchinblae and Kirkcudbright without exploding in sparks quit your fecking boasting.

And that robot looks like the bastard offspring of a coffee grinder and a butt-plug.

None of those start-ups have they key factor of a a decent small keyboard. Touch screens and connectivity can be done by any Chinese manufacturer.

But that Psion Keyboard....

Intent

Yes he was authorised to carry out any and all of those actions while carrying out his function as an employee. But that is done within a framework of employment policies. None of which will say specifically "you must not destroy the company".

If my job was to drive a truck I would be specifically authorised to get in the truck, to start it, to put it in gear and to make it move.

That would not cover me if I was then to choose to drive that truck through a school.

If this guy had caused all that damage while doing his job with the intent of fixing issues then he might get off. But on the evidence printed it seems unlikely that he will be able to prove his intent was anything other than malicious.

Psion FTW

Maker of the greatest micro keyboard evvah.

Teeny tiny yet you really could do proper work on it for an appreciable period of time. I can only assume there are some patent issues that have stopped anyone from doing a proper update to what was a genius small format computer.

Final straw

I finally closed my Yahoo a few months ago after one of my friends called up to say they were getting spam from it. I'd not really used it for a while but I was reluctant to clsoe it since it was my very first email account and I'd had it since 1995.

But I'd changed the password to some 15 character monstrosity from a password manager so even I didn't know what it was yet it still got nailed (wasn't spoofed there were some other hints about that).

Politics

Unsurprisingly an investment to get good headlines doesn't produce a result within one parliamentary cycle so the politicians want to drop it as fast as possible before it makes a negative headline.

The usual British story, we'll invest just enough time and money to nearly makes something work then run away just as it starts to pay off then moan for the next 50yr about Johnny Foreigner stealing out work.

If you want to invest in blue sky research like this you have to be prepared to take the risk. Sometimes it will pay off massively, many times it won't.

Certs

Certs are a racket anyway.

I've been working in an Infosec role for over 10yr now and I've looked into the major certs over that time.

If you read the materials it's so basic and so narrow and nothing like the real world that they only serve to generate income for the cert companies and give HR a nice box to tick. Far easier than actually seeing if you can do the job.

Saying that I'm doing CISM shortly. It does nothing to help me do the job but it's insurance because it ticks that HR box should I ever need it.

This action is only against those individuals/businesses reselling pre-configured devices which access copyrighted material. And even then it'll only be effective against those who sell within the EU using legal channels.

It's not going to do anything to stop these boxes being sold from outside the EU (i.e. China) and it is still legal to configure these devices as an individual to stream copyrighted content.

Sky has never appealed to me since the price just isn't good value. I've got Prime and I'm considering NetFlix as well. Most people I know with Sky are paying more like £50 a month and they all talk of dropping it all the time (although few ever do).

Mars' gravity is a fair bit lower than earth, would that not effect these dropstones any anything other artefacts from falling objects?

Don't be a cvnt and there won't be a problem

But then for the hacking to have any influence there has to be dodgy dealing to be uncovered.

As a novel proposal how about having elected members that aren't dodgy crooked bastards for a start.

By not being a crooked bastard you run a good chance of rendering Russian hacking ineffectual.