Posts by John Brown (no body) 25401 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"Considering both the browsers are free to use, you don't even have to listen to any claim with a pinch of salt. Instead of talking bad about everything you don't agree on, prove it yourself and show it to others so others would benefit from your info."
Since you are making the claim and producing the figures is so easy, why not back up your claim and show us your own figures then? That would end the discussion quite nicely I think.
Likewise, why should we have to put up with someone elses choice on the decorations in the first place? Not so long ago, it was normal for the users to change how things looked to suit themselves, their workflow and the personal choices. Nowadays, more and more those customisation options are being removed and we have to accept some designers choices.
As for the "rise of Chrome", it seems the only way to get rid of the annoying pop-up on Google sites imploring people to use Chrome is to...er...use Chrome.
"Pan used to be the top of the pack until its developers lost interest: it now seems to be abandonware."
Pan is still being maintained, after a fairly major re-write a few years back. It still does what's needed. It's even useful for binary downloads these days and can even import NZB files if that's what floats your boat.
Surely Daimler are not manufacturing these chips?
The chips surely must be being built under licence buy some other company who are paying royalties to Nokia. Daimler will just be buying pre-built units or modules. Or have Daimler been knowingly buying shonky, unlicensed rip-offs from a white-box builder in China who are too difficult to take to court?
Clearly, I don't understand this patent malarky!
According to a quick interwebs search, a 2018 article reports the UK as #3 at building superyachts after Italy and the Netherlands. I think that was based on total keel length in construction and on order though, so not sure if any of them are capable of building something of this size.
Despite the decimation of the British shipbuilding industry, there seems to be a surprising number of yards still operating capable of laying down a keel of this size.
"I see no reason to buy new shiny just because it’s new shiny."
Similar here. This years new shiny is barely any different from last years new shiny. Or the new shiny from 5 years ago. It's mainly small incremental improvements, nothing revolutionary. Most of it is just marketing hype. In terms of computing power/phones, we're at the top of the curve and it's getting flatter.
Just look at intel CPUs, from the 8086 up to the Pentium, we were getting huge step changes in performance and technology every 3-4 years. I think it may have been significant, possibly deliberate and prescient, that Intel decided to get away from the model numbering system and have called everything since then a "Pentium" (not withstanding the trademark spat when Intel got told they couldn't stop competitors from using strings of number like 386 and 486 because you can't trademark a number)
You are being downvoted because you are assuming that the geographical location of where one is defines ones outlook, politics and biases. If that were true, then there'd be no point in having elections since by definition, every city or state would have a predetermined electoral outcome and no one would ever be able to change it or "steal" it.
Well, I for one, upvoted you because I knew what you meant. On the other hand, this is the sort of thing more likely to come out of California, so the mistake is very understandable :-)
Florida Man and California Man are two closely related branches of the same devolutionary tree.
"If they throw in a nice golf-course with private helipad, so much the better."
How big and expensive must it be before it can be called a "Theme Park"? A couple of cheap kiddie rides an a car park is probably enough. I doubt there's an actual legal definition anywhere.
"I should think that lots of ducting/venting would be a big clue."
Or it could be evidence of a legit business installing milling/drilling/sanding machinery, or spray painting booths that extracts the dust etc to the outside. Lots of ducting/venting in and of itself is not evidence of shady shenanigans. But as you point out, the smell of what is traversing the ducting and being expelled by he vents might well be a give away :-)
"Thus Ousmane Bah must sue, and win, to clear his name. Hope he gets adequately compensated for their carelessness too."
This seems such an open and shut case, he'll likely have his pick from a whole host of lawyers falling over themselves to take such an easy case. I just hope he gets to take it to court for full legal vindication and judicial mandated compensation and doesn't get seduced by an out-of-court settlement.
I'm not sure which article you just read, but it's clearly NOT the one you are commenting on. Just about everything you said is just so wrong.
It wasn't the thief who lost or had stolen, his ID
The ID wasn't a library card
The ID was NOT photo ID
"not a valid ID" means there is little to no checking when it's issued, therefore almost anyone can obtain this document without verifiable proof, therefore it CANNOT be proof of ID.
"I'm familiar with the arguments, the legal cases, the NIMBYs and so on. That's the point I'm making "
IIRC, some Chinese construction/infrastructure companies have come a cropper in countries with robust legal systems and democracy. They have, at least on some occasions, tendered for jobs which they priced and time-scaled based on their past experience in their own country and certain other Asian and African countries where once a plan is decided on, it goes ahead at full speed. Even if that means shifting entire populations out of the way.
What we in the "west" need is something in between. Such as, for example, a cut-off point where no further legal challenges can be raised so we don't get NIMBYs saving up legal points so they can keep going back to court with "new" arguments.
"Just _maybe_ it's all about which ads are more profitable to display?"
Yes, it's that. I mean, clearly if you just bought a shed the algorithm really out to be promoting related products, such as wood treatment/paint, barbecues, garden furniture, garden tools, lawn treatments, etc.
Likewise, if you order spare parts to repair an oven, they should be pushing cooking implements and ingredients at you, not more of the same part you just bought.
It's blindingly obvious to most people that these algorithms either don't work or have a much different purpose to that claimed.
"No. What they are investigating is who the hell thought it was a good idea to post military operational secrets online and why the frak did they not tell Google's robots to not index that."
There are sites out there full of questions and answers to specific online training courses. People do the training and take the exams and upload the details, screen-shots etc. Sometimes it's easy as typing the course name into Google and you can find all the answers to the exam you about to take. Or so a friend tells me.
"I think Uber could have used their software to convince established taxi companies to hire them for dispatching."
Maybe, but probably not. In that case, they would just be another app on the market. It may be hard to believe nowadays thanks the press that Uber gets, but there were already taxi apps out there before Uber existed.
"Clearview AI told The Reg it "has never had any contracts with any EU customer and is not currently available to EU customers."
Did El Reg ask for clarification from Clearview over whether they include the UK in their statement about the EU? Do Clearview understand that "The EU" doesn't mean "Europe" and "Europe" is not "The EU"?
"Charging either at home or work is the obvious solution for the vast majority, and places of work should be strongly encouraged to install numerous slow chargers, and solar panels to contribute to the load as well."
That would be nice, but so many places of work, especially in city centres, are reducing parking spaces because they now get taxed on those spaces. It's seen by HMRC as taxable benefit in kind for employees and the Environment Agency sees charging for, or reducing work-based parking spaces as a way to get people out of cars.
As I stated originally, I'd love to see a full on switch to EVs ASAP, but it's not going to happen easily and without a great deal of pain because neither government nor industry want to pay for or invest properly in it.
No amount of hand waving about what should happen and what would be the best solution is going to change the fact that no one really want's to do it in a way that makes it easy for people to choose EVs.
The carrots of cheap/free chargers, subsidies on EV purchase costs and zero VED are either gone, reduced or about to evaporate. Only the sticks of ever increasing costs on ICE vehicles and fuel and charging to enter "clean air" zones are left.
Apparently, the average car journey in the UK is only 8.4 miles or less than 800 miles per person per year, depending which figures you looks at. EVs should be eminently do-able in the UK for most people using private cars. But we MUST have more charging points in car parks to account for all those people living further from work places or shopping centres.
If you had read my reply, you'd have realised that I wasn't complaingin about it happeing. I'm complaining about people like you acting like it's already happened and that neither the technology nor the financial investment in infrastructure is happening.
You think 7 slow chargers in a car park is better than 1 fast charger. Well, yes that;s true. but a car park of 600-700 spaces with only 7 chargers isn't really going to cut it. Just a few short years ago, it wasn't unusual to be driving around a car park looking for a space, only to be disappointed by the the only free spaces being charging bays for electric cars only. Now, even with a low penetration of EVs still, it's not unusual to see all the charging bays occupied and EV drivers struggling to find somewhere to charge.
Yes, destination chargers should be ubiquitous, but they aren't. Almost no one is prepared to install more than a few to satisfy the box-ticking requirements. Of all the sites I visit, only council, hospital and university sites have charging points. None of the schools or private companies I've been to in the last year have any at all.
The usual reply is to just hire a car for those few times you need to go on a long trip. What the people saying that don't take into account is that replacing your long range ICE car with a short range EV cost so much more than just buying a new ICE car in the first place. there's little, if any saving on an EV you can "bank" for the hire car. The days of "filling up" and EV for free are already long gone.
"Cars spend the vast majority of their time parked somewhere... whether that enables charging at work or at the supermarket..."
That still seems to be some years away. The only places I've seen with more than a very few charging points are motorway service stations. And Tesla-only charge points seem to outnumber the generic ones.
Those are the charge points the large number of people with no off-street parking will be needing to use frequently. A small EV needs a number of hours charging every 100 or so miles. A small ICE car needs a 5 minute fill up every 400-500 miles. That's quite a significant difference that has not yet been addressed in the race for carbon neutrality and start of increasing taxes on ICE vehicles. Some money is being put out there to increase the number of charging points, but I'm not seeing the increase in constantly available electricity generation. Even Hinckly-C is now coming on line in 2026 rather than the planned 2025, thanks to COVID and other delays and assuming no further delays.
I'd really like to see a full switch to EVs ASAP, but the reality is that it's going to a take a LONG time and many of us will be highly inconvenienced in the process, as well having to pay more. I'm also in the group that can't switch to full EV yet anyway because of the distances I travel and the extreme cost of anything capable of those distances + fast charge facilities at, at least, the other end.
I just hope that their non-appearance is taken strongly into account if Tesla decides to appeal the decision.
Any defendant who fails to turn up and defend themselves should automatically be barred from appealing the decision unless the circumstances are very, very exceptional.
Aaaaaand there it is again.
How is a "mobile unit" different from a fixed unit? The update server is somewhere on the network and the "unit" needing the update is somewhere else on the network. How the data gets from server to unit isn't relevant. Who's to say that there's not a radio link somewhere in the link between the devices? At the very least, it's entirely possible the end device getting the update is on the users WiFi, therefore it's a "mobile unit" by most definitions, QED.
The beeb did an excellent show on Radio 4 about this a little while ago.
It seems there are benefits, loopholes and exemptions on some charges for "smaller" companies.
Large organisations use an agency to get their large number of temp workers, eg for the Test and Trace and Vaccination programmes. Those agencies then sub it out to other agencies who than hire people but "employ" and pay them through 10's of 1000's of "micro companies" who are registered in the UK for a week or two before having a transfer of ownership to a director in the Philippines. These "directors" usually have no skills or qualifications other than to occasionally fill out official online forms and get a couple hundred quid a year (a lot over there) and may well be directors of multiple companies.
It's all technically legal and is costing the UK £billions in tax avoidance (Note, not evasion, that would be illegal)
The whole IR35 thing is a tiny part of this whole legal mess.
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