Yes, in that that's what he metaphor.
Oh, hang on, no, that's a double entendre, isn't it?
3483 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Nov 2009
In that case, it may be something I haven't read (or something I've completely forgotten about).
Mind you, had the subject come up a few days ago I might not have remembered The Preserving Machine, either. I just happened to be browsing some old titles a couple of days back and remembering which ones I'd read as a child and what they were about.
Philip K Dick's "The Preserving Machine" springs to mind, but (having not read it since, probably, the late 1970s, when I may have been too young to fully appreciate/understand it all) ISTR it was more about turning music into animals as a way of preserving it.
Animals which then began to evolve.
"There is nothing wrong with your operating system. Do not attempt to adjust the settings. We are controlling the configuration. If we wish to make it more useful, we will add features. If we wish to make it less useful, we will remove functionality. We control the applications. We control the connectivity..."
I'm sure I've seen something along the lines of the linked video before - people being presented with information about themselves and being surprised by it - but I'm not sure of the context, whether it was a YouTube thing, or a small piece in a TV programme, or something.
And in both cases - this video and the one I remember seeing before - I am saddened to say that my surprise is somewhat lacking.
If it wasn't for the mention of Apple, I'd be inclined to think he wants to put his dongle in Microsoft. (NSFW)
'I do wonder what sort of person sits down at their computer, opens up google, and searches for "porn".'
Something that has always amused me is when I was analysing my website logs back in the late 1990s, it turned out someone had found their way to my website after putting "where can I download soft porn" into a search engine.
Yes, someone was searching on the internet for soft porn.
All of those words with the exception of 'porn' would have been on most of the pages of my site - so it's easy to see how it happened, though I'm not sure how many pages of results the visitor went through to find my site!
"My preferred choice for online purchase is : I pay for something, download it and IT IS MINE FOREVER MORE. If that is not how it works, then my money is most likely staying in my pocket."
That's my attitude as well. If it's a digital purchase, I want to download it so that I can use/watch/listen to it as often as I like, when I like - not stream it, which puts the goods at risk of $company not just moving the goalposts, but removing them and replacing them with a basketball net.
I might occasionally opt for something that is only streamed, but when I do I am fully aware that I might one day lose access - and the price I am willing to pay therefore reflects that.
"I don't think this is anything new, groundbreaking, or useful over system that already exist (like just getting an email / notification whenever I access my account - even my server host does this "You just logged into your manager control panel. If this was not you...")."
Quite so. As you say, the photo isn't necessary - a simple confirmation request will achieve the same thing*. I'm inclined to think, therefore, that the photo aspect screams of, at best, gimmick. At worst, it's smoke and mirrors - a veil to make people less inclined to think about it to assume there's face recognition involved.
* And both are useless if your phone is stolen. You can still get in by use of the password - actual security - but if your phone's unprotected, then the photo or confirmation methods would provide you with less security than a padlock made of cheese.
"A similarly large majority would, in fact, answer "google" when asked what browser they use."
Quite. Conversation yesterday.
Me: "Type this into the address bar..." <starts reciting URL>
User: <Starts typing into the Google search field.>
Me: "No, I'm giving you an address. You don't have to search for it."
User: "Oh, so I can go straight to it in Google?"
Me: "What? It's nothing to do with Google."
User: <Opens a new tab in Chrome, clicks address bar> "See, Google."
When I saw that figure and that conclusion, I initially thought the same and wondered if there was a zero missing. Then I spotted the words "board members". He's saying, therefore, that they do no other work for the company than sit on board meetings, and that they are getting that $22K for not many hours at all.
"Don't stall, that is all."
I used to off-road, and my brother still does. I have a photo somewhere of him on the bonnet of his vehicle part way across a point where a river crosses our route, after someone had thrown him a strap to attach to the car - having done just that. 8)
'The Parliamentary committee's report reflects this, recommending that “CEO compensation should be linked to effective cybersecurity” and also recommended that the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) “should introduce a series of escalating fines, based on the lack of attention to threats and vulnerabilities which have led to previous breaches.”'
CEO compensation - no. Fines - yes.
The problem with the CEO's pay being affected (i.e. reduced - or possibly not increased next year) is that they'll be paying tax on that salary. Reduce the salary; reduce the tax - so this "punishment" is effectively a tax deductible version of a fine.
(Also, the company's bottom line is improved by the limited salary - they'll have to pay corporation tax on that, obviously, but consider the rate of corporation tax versus the rate for the tax band that Harding will be in.)
Let the CEO have their salaries, let them pay their tax dues on it. *Then* make them pay a fine out of their net income.
"Free Speech is not guaranteed by Tesco."
No, but it is also not something they are responsible for restricting or preventing. They do not have that right, and they also have no right to decide what you can and can't run on your device.
This isn't terribly far away from refusing to let you access online banking if you don't have cRapport installed.
Out of curiosity, I thought I'd check. The article is very simplified in terms of the descent and deceleration.
According to this, the descent is slowed from 755 feet per second (226.5m/s) to 5 feet per second (1.5m/s).
1.5m/s is 5.4km/hour - so rounded, 5km/hour is correct. However, the devil is in the detail.
The 'chutes aren't the sole method of deceleration: There are two pilot parachutes and a drogue which bring it down from the the 755 feet per second to 262 feet per second (78.6 m/s). The main 'chute then brings it down to 24 feet per second (7.2m/s) and finally (and quite literally at the very last second) some small engines fire to reduce the speed to that final 1.5m/s.
Fascinating stuff.
It slows down a lot over the course of those 10km.
For it to take two hours to descend those final ten kilometres (i.e. at 5km/hour) would require an instant deceleration from the speed at which it is travelling to that 5km/hour speed the moment the 'chute opens.
At least, that's how I think it works. But then, I'm not even a brain surgeon, so rocket science is way beyond me.
Brilliant film. And a good few years since I last watched all three. I have since picked up a cheap copy of the undoubtedly crap remake of the first (or is it the second, which was as much a remake of the first as it was a sequel) - so watching all four might be on the cards soon.
Or I might hold off until I have my hands on the series.
"I remember watching a documentary some years ago about this."
The Two Thousand Year Old Computer perchance? An excellent documentary - the sort of thing that makes the licence fee worthwhile.
Edit: While looking for the lego version on YouTube, I found the documentary itself there.
"whats the chances that TalkTalk have taken their servers offline because of the TeamViewer hack?"
Actually, no. I'm not a customer but I did (in a round about way) report a fault to them in the latter half of last week: I sent an email to a Tiscali address, which got rejected because a TalkTalk MX somewhere between me and the destination - I send through my domain hosting company's mail servers - was blacklisted for spam.
This amused me because Carphone Warehouse bought Tiscali and rolled it into TalkTalk before offloading them, making Tiscali is part of TalkTalk, so I commented about it on Twitter. Unsurprisingly, the people that do their Twitter feed caught wind of it and quizzed me on the details, then said they'd pass it to their email team for investigation.
So they've probably taken the whole network down to get that MX de-listed.
The problem is that the situation the article is discussing are where the hyperlinks are to stuff that is itself subject to copyright, and which has been published without the owner's permission.
So the logical answer seems to me not to make those hyperlinks subject to copyright, but to find anyone who publishes them guilty of a crime of, say, "facilitating copyright infringement".
"Alas, that won't help. As far as I can tell, they're hanging on to the data you delete"
At this point I smile at the nonsense I've put on my LinkedIn profile. Some of it is real, but most of it is just silly - such as being a member of the Pie Eaters Association, and that my first job involved monitoring clients' pie purchases and stock levels.
Every time someone I know tells me I should take it more seriously, I add some more stupidity.
"I've played along with a scammer, trying to do everything he asked me to do. I didn't tell him I was using a Linux box, with no internet access, it took about an hour before he finally twigged that he was being taken for a ride."
The one time I tried that it didn't work very well. I was at my parents place when I answered the phone, and when I started acting a bit dim the guy spoke to me by name: But not my name, my youngest brothers' name, which caught me off guard and ruined the whole thing.
And it's only now that I've put two and two together: My brother was a TalkTalk customer at one point.
(He often gives my parents' number as a contact number due to his mental health issues).
I wish I could remember exactly how long ago it was so I could correlate it to the TalkTalk HackHack - but the truth is while I'm thinking earlier this year, it may be that the timing of events in the news may be affecting my recollection.
"In fairness to TalkTalk (that stuck in the back of my throat a bit) - I've had 6 phone call attempts to "assist me with issues using TeamViewer" and 11 email attempts asking to add such and such a person on TeamViewer - I've never been a TalkTalk customer and the emails have come through Hotmail.
So I don't think it's just confined to them."
Well, in fairness to your poor suffering throat, the TeamViewer problem that's been in the news recently doesn't start with phishing emails that try (from the sounds of what you describe) to get you using it or whatever. That problem is people that already have TeamViewer installed, and someone manages to access it remotely - no phishing necessary.
So I think you're commenting on a different (if slightly related) issue.
Well colour me surprised. I had no idea the real thing is crimed around the side and not the top - so I've been buying and eating (and very much enjoying) fake Cornish pasties... in Cornwall.
The place is obviously filled with treacherous imposters. There is only one solution - we should separate it from the rest of this great country, and force it to become an independent nation state. If it wants to, it can apply to join the EU in its own right.