Posts by John Brown (no body)

Not only that but "skills they believe are needed for the role".

How about the kills he HAS? Do they match up with the role?

Re: Instructions to disable QUIC on Chrome

...for as as long as it's "experimental". I highly doubt it will possible to disable when it's no longer "experimental". On the other hand, something Google are well known for are perpetual Betas and sudden cancellations of projects.

Re: Would you pay $100 to screw a hedge fund?

"The professional shorters have long view themselves as hunters of the weak, it's an ironic twist that they find they are no longer at the top of the food chain."

Yes, even the King of the Jungle can be brought down by a large enough pack of Hyenas :-)

Re: at&t you say?

"I hope they get what they deserve. In spades."

Good idea! They can dig an even deeper hole :-)

Re: What am I missing?

Both the previous examples sound, to a layman like me to be related to extension numbers on the users side of their own switchboard. This system is something the Telcos do on their side of the switch and re-direct to multiple consumer lines even using different technologies such as land-line. mobile and VOIP. Right or wrong? I dunno.

Re: So who's side is the ICO on: Fine amounts to £0.20/call

That 20p per call doesn't match up with convicted calling companies income. IIRC, cold calling only result in about 2-5% positive response rate. Possibly less that lead to an actual sale.

Re: I am surprised at this much progress

Not necessarily. Calls from another network, particularly international calls, might only be presented as coming from that network and may or may not present a number, let alone a genuine number. BT or whoever simply charge the foreign network. It's that networks problem to bill the individual.

Re: "No contactless"....

No, it's still a usable option. Swipe'n'PIN is a thing. It's a fallback in case the chip can't be read. There may be newer card readers out there without the swipe option, but most I've seen still have.

Re: "No contactless"....

"I'd never used contactless before and find it fails about 10% of the time forcing me to enter the card and pin. I suspect that's because it's not my card and they suspect me!"

IIRC, the standard usage is 10 contactless transaction then on the 11th the machine will ask you to insert it, read the chip and ask for your PIN. It a fraud reduction tactic so if you lose your card or have it stolen, it limits how much can be taken before it becomes useless or is otherwise blocked. The raising of the transaction limit and the possible 10 goes a thief gets means they can now steal up to £400, which is no small amount to most people.

"If this affected all card type transactions then the "Contactless-less" is a bit meaningless."

Not sure what the cause was, but standing in a queue in the Co-Op on Monday, a guy in front had about 5 goes using NFC on his phone before eventually giving up. Unfortunately, it was a filling station shop and he'd just put about 30 quids worth of fuel in. Luckily, it's a very small town, they knew him, so he filled out a form promising to come back later with a card. My Co-Op direct debit card worked immediately and without issue directly after he left the till. That makes me wonder if it was some interconnect between the payment processor and certain card issuers (assuming that NFC on a phone is handle by some sort of card issuer too)

Re: When does Apple buy Italy?

"Apple can write Italy off as a tax loss....."

...and then sue the auditors when they discover it's not worth what they paid?

Re: They all look the same these days....

"a screen resolution that makes the text so small you can barely read it."

...and apps or web pages that don't let you zoom in!!

Re: New Features

I have WPS office on my phone. With a keyboard and a bigger screen I'd probably use it as an office app. But since I have a laptop too, the phone app is used primarily for tracking my business mileage and expenses because it's always to hand, "instant on" and easy to use while parked up in the car. Likewise, email and opening attachments. The laptop is better, but needs to be pulled out, opened, switched on, the app takes time to load, it's harder use without a mouse (although has a touch screen which mitigates the mouse issue somewhat). I can sort my expenses on the phone quicker that the time it take to get the laptop out and started up. It's horse for courses, but if I was more of an occasional user and primarily only needed access to office stuff at a desk, yes, a dock with screen/kb/mouse for a phone would easily do it for me. My old phone, and my previous, older phone, was more than powerful enough to use as a "desktop" for most of my use cases.

Re: New Features

That is so true. Back in the days of film camera, the vast majority of users would be careful of when an dhow often they took photos because every click of the shutter release cost money. With digital photos, there's no noticeable cost (maybe a bit electricity of such low cost to the user it basically free) so people take way more images than they ever did in the past. The vast majority will probably never be seen again, but people are loath to delete any of them "just in case". Even the really crap ones where they then took a better one.

My work phone camera gets mainly used for taking photos of tiny, hard to read serial numbers and connector layouts. They get deleted as soon as the job is done :-)

Re: Not a lot of new features?

"the added benefit that I'm still getting security updates even though the phone came out July 2018."

it's a sad state of affairs and soundly damming of the rest of the mobile phone industry when a phone getting security updates after two and half years is seen as a benefit. Three years ought to be the minimum one should expect.

"I wonder how much money is too much or is it just a way of keeping score when you have more money than you know what to do with?"

Another part of it is the stock markets insistence on ridiculous valuations based on growth. Just look at how much a company's shares can fall when their massive annual profit declaration is less than the stock markets predicted humongous profits.

"We predict growth of 20%. OMG!!!! Growth was only 19.9%!! SELL, SELL, SELLLLLLLL!!!!!11!!1!one!1"

Re: "Sources told us reseller XMA sourced the kit but was not asked to configure it"

"Does this mean:"

Neither. It was, unusually, a hardware only boxshifting deal. Imaging (or not, as the case may be) was down to the recipient schools/LEAs/whatever.

Re: "We are aware of an issue with a small number of devices"

And the first Google result tells me there were 11.7 million school age students in the UK in 2016. So 20,000ish is a small number in that respect. It's not a good result, but it's far from being the disaster some are claiming.

Re: re: free school meals

All things considered, no I doubt very much they would. They have a single over riding policy which is their lynchpin to power and are pretty much unopposed because of that.

They may actually be competent, they certainly seem to be at least reasonably competent, but if/when Scotland gains independence, it'll be interesting to see just what direction politics goes when there is one massively overriding party whose prime policy as been achieved. Will they self implode? Will they be deserted by the majority who only voted for them based on leaving the UK? Will they become dictatorial because they need "something" big and relevant to replace their leave campaign? Will they rush through an EU membership and, as a very small country, become less and less relevant as a party and government?

Re: Professionals built the titanic...

"And obviously two of each animal is an insufficient gene pool."

And speaking of food supplies, the majority of those animals are food for others in the chain. Not to mention the mucking out that needs doing!

As for transport, was the horse domesticated and rideable at the estimated time of the flood? If so, the Pony Express is probably the best estimate for prehistoric fast communications.

Agreed, Ghettoising minorities into special interest groups and echo chambers really is not a solution. Maybe something called Inclusive In AI would be a better choice. Otherwise all the Indian and far eastern people will still be excluded.

Look at MumsNet. It claims to be a "parents" group but it's very name excludes fathers. Any father who does join is looked on with suspicion and the first hint of disagreement with a "mum" and they get banned.