Posts by Roland6

>all we got was "Computer says no". Not sure if that's Turnitin's fault or the Uni

"When you use Grammarly’s free online plagiarism check to detect plagiarism, you’ll see an instant report that tells you whether or not plagiarism was found

...

Grammarly’s Premium plagiarism checker flags specific sentences and provides reference information about the source"

I assume Turnitin have a similar free and subscription services, hence suggest someone was not paying...

Personally, I would expect the Uni to have the subscription version just so that they have the evidence to support their judgement.

Re: Local Minima in the intellectual content?

It might be harder than that...

A question has to be how individual the responses ChatGPT gives are. If they are not personalised we can expect at some point several students on the same course etc. will hand in work that is broadly identical.

Naturally, if a savvy lecturer submitted the question to ChatGPT before they issued it to the students, they would have a reference that will assist them in detecting the use of ChatGPT...

So CheatYourWayToADegreeGPT is going to have to take the ChatGPT results and personalise them - by training it on a user's previous essays?

>The VC lot then asset strip leaving an worthless shell behind and millions of pounds of debt.

Before this they will have extracted as much money as possible from the government for their investment in the UK etc.

The sad thing is does seem that whilst it was cheaper to the UK government to subsidise the continued employment of the Tata steel workers, many multi-nationals see such subsidies as a given and thus include them in their business planning rather than treat them as the exception...

Re: @localzuk

>pro growth policies based on known economics

Economics is not a science. But following the lettuce’s logic, she should have taken all the wealth off the 2 percent, as this would have encouraged them to go out and create new wealth…

> We currently have the highest tax's in decades

Keep drinking the kool-aid. Taxes were much higher in the 70’s and 80’s, it didn’t stop people being entrepreneurial, just ask James Dyson…

The “high tax” stuff is just b***ocks. If you found a company and it becomes successful - which is the exception among startups - there are plenty of tax breaks for you to personally do very well. The people whinging about taxes are those who want the trappings of success ie. Look at me I’ve got a yacht, chateau etc.

Re: Pointless

> but the design of the EU is technocratic and to separate the politician from the vote

The design was decided by and agreed by the national governments, in the case of the uk, the Conservatives as led by Thatcher…

Yes, we voted for MEPs but Westminster et al didn’t want them to have any real power anytime soon…

> And yet you have more democratic say over our gov than the EU

I’m not so sure given there was little democratic accountability for the lettuce - appointed by a selected few and then (thankfully) cast aside by the same few, who then stitched things up for the appointment of Rishi; who the pundits doubt the few will actually permit him to lead them into the next election…

> If our gov is so bad then how does adding another layer of bad gov improve things?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Catch is many, back in the 80s, thought (a future) EU et al would slap down the worst excesses of Westminster…

As we are now seeing with the levelling up monies, Westminster is again making region aid political and a competition…

As I’ve said before, the real problem is at Westminster not Brussels…

Re: Pointless

>Brexit

I note from the UK press that the Conservatives - the party that gave us “Brexit” but really wanted us to have an even harder “Brexit” has now effectively said Brexit was a big mistake and the main reason why the UK economy is currently doing so badly…

> While the EU presidents are elected away from the voters and are just as bad if not worse

Which given how quiet the elected politicians were on this matter over several decades, is exactly the way they wanted it to be…

BTW don’t remember receiving any voting papers concerning the appointment of the UK PM….

Re: 25 years too late

Only 25 years?

Showing my age, I remember lack of technology strategy of the Thatcher government in the early 80’s. It took some pushing for the government to invest in the European research programme and then to actually support UK businesses (small or large) to apply for funding…

The Conservative approach to the brain drain, caused by the lack of investment and uk business/government unwillingness to pay market rates, was to approach the US government and get them to restrict the awarding of visa’s to UK nationals wishing to work in the US (the main destination of UK technology experts).

Re: LastPass

That is ElReg (other reputable publications are doing similar) recommending a product, it isn’t Bitwarden saying they are better than Lastpass.

I suggest given the latest disclosures about GoTo’s cloud storage and archives, I suggest any review of security products such as Bitwarden now need to include a full security audit of the service and their development and operational practises.

Re: LastPass

Probably because a chink was found in LastPass first, so the hackers simply homed in and chewed...

Suspect all the others are currently breathing a sigh of relief it wasn't them and keeping a low profile - noticed how no one seems to have jumped in and attempted to attract dissatisfied LastPass users, so suspect the majors are quietly reviewing their security and logs going back as far back in time as their records permit. ie. I suspect none of them can put a hand on the heart and say they haven't been hacked.

Re: Somebody else's computer

Well it was always going to be turtles all the way down...

Re: Are you ok?

Having worked with Unix in the 80's and 90's, both Posix and the Open Groups licencing of the UNIX™ branding through the passing of a suite of conformance tests was very necessary to bring the various Unix source-code variants into line and at least maintain a common feature set.

Looking at the demise of proprietary Unix, I suspect Andriod in it's current form consisting of open-source and closed vendor additions from both Google and the phone manufacturer has a limited life.

I also see Linux at some stage having to develop a LINUX™ conformance testing suite.

Re: Are you ok?

From memory I think a company did put their Linux implementation through the X/Open (aka Open Group's) POSIX testing - a necessary requirement for inclusion in Government contracts.

If POSIX has been replaced by UNIX™ as a requirement for Government contracts then there will be distributions out there that will have been tested.

Re: Are you ok?

Unix was also pretty unique in that networking was included in the OS distribution for free and workstations were shipping with Ethernet (MAU) ports by 1985...

For practically everything else (*) networking was an extra and only available in proprietary flavours. The PC was open and hence had a wide variety of third-party networking solutions.

I forget when PC's started shipping with pre-installed Ethernet adaptors - my first laptop (a 386) in circa 1995 required a 3Com PCMCIA card, my 2000 laptop had an RJ45 Ethernet port and I think also desktops were shipping with motherboard RJ45 Ethernet ports.

Re: These guys' newsletter?

It seems both POTS.org and PSTN.org are available...

That might be the case, however, as it was all across the press at the time, we can safely assume Westminster MP's in general didn't care and neither did the minister those civil servants reported to...

> Petty bureaucracy at it's worst.

Westminster (and I think it was the Tories as well), could not be bothered when given the opportunity to make Imperial measurements an official measurement system of the UK.

As Westminister did not officially ratify Imperial measurements, nor did they object to the parts of the legislation that would consign imperial measurements to history.

Just another example of the UK shooting itself in the foot and blaming “the EU”…

Re: Hooray for Avoirdupois and pounds, shillings and pence

> The only people that argue against this are those that grew up with said archaic system.

Trouble is Johnson, Mogg et al are too young to have any real experience…

Re: Nobody

That isn't what was said.

My 20 year old washing machine has a number of wash programmes which according to the manual broadly correspond to 30/60/90 minute washes. However, as the machine has various setting (stains, extra rinse, short spin etc.) and sensors (load, water colour etc.) a wash programme can be shorter (or longer). As far as I'm concerned based on my selections my washing machine is always ready to be emptied after an hour, hence I simply organise my 'washday' time and activities around this. Similar applies to the tumble drier. This way the washing can get done whilst being slotted around a load of other jobs...

I just don't see any benefit in rushing to sort the washing out, just because the programme has finished after 50 minutes rather than 59 minutes...

>all the "smart" devices in your home should connect to a central security hub. Something that you have control over, which has its own long term support.

That's consumer friendly, it would mean people could use devices from different manufacturers and thus avoid vendor lock-in etc.

If government(s) were to require this way of working, I expect we would see the IOT/smart industry getting together and hammering out Standards, just as we've seen in computer networking...

Re: Miéle...10yrs is faaarr to short

>appliances that use same parts across multiple brands.

I'mm actually happy with my Siemens washing machine using many of the same parts as the cheaper Bosch and Neff branded machines from the same manufacturer, it means I get cheap parts combined with an easier to repair machine.

Aside: Generally the longer lasting machines are designed in a way that expects an engineer to have to replace parts, however, when the drum bearing needed replacing it was simpler and cheaper to replace the entire factory-assembled drum assembly than just replace the bearings.

Re: TVs and cars

>The car I was looking at,

how long would that be supported

This is not quite as trivial as some would believe.

The app which would have been released when the car was launched, which we could reasonably expect to work on 'currently' shipping versions of iOS/Android. Support will be needed (over 20 years?) to both maintain that app so that it works on new releases of iOS/Android and that the updated version will continue to work on previous releases and that the iOS/Andriod stores continue to make available these older OS versions available for (new) download.

I can see many people deciding to use old phones for many of these smart devices, particularly where the device/vehicle is used by multiple people with the old handset effectively becoming a physical key..

Re: TVs and cars

>did nobody consider searching for parts available from a breakers.

Life was so much easier back in the 80's, you visited a couple of local scrapyards, locate vehicles with the part you required, assessed vehicle condition and part for damage and wear and if happy remove and haggle over price (hoping you had sufficient cash in your wallet).

Now I have to look up the part(s) I want, to get the part number(s), then visit 'auction' sites to find parts that have already been removed from unspecified and unseen vehicles...

Not saying it isn't useful to be able to effectively visit every scrap yard in the country and get a price before you've committed, just that it isn't quite as straight-forward as some try and make out.

Re: Tech press could be better here

>To the extent that the tech press is meant to help consumers make purchasing decisions, lack of discussion of this is a failure.

I've made a habit of adding a suitable comment to such articles.

Example 1: laptop review that doesn't assess the built-in webcam, microphone and audio - the world has been using Zoom et al for two years now...

Example 2: Mobile phones: channels supported, peripheral device support - does it support ANT+, which point release of Bluetooth, which WiFi standards and how many inbuilt antennas etc.

Re: What?

>The so-called "whiny lefty" as we know it today is a creation of the right wing, ... This segued into 'victimhood culture'

Agreed, the right wing have done a good job of elevating their victimhood culture (they are victims because the isn't running how they believe it should) to the point where many simply accept their highly distorted view of the world as being normal...

We should all be rushing back to "the Office" just so that the ‘the honourable member for the 18th century’ can be happy...