Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: Shame about Mastodon

Let's hope it stays that way too. I remember when Usenet was hosted on servers everywhere, pretty much every University, every ISP and many, many individuals were hosting servers and peering with pretty much anyone who requested to do so and, in many cases, only hosting the newsgroups they wanted to host, eg no binaries when they became a problem. It's an open protocol, plenty of free open source servers and clients, and yet it's on life support these days, There's a few islands of sanity still hosting "text only" servers and few "big boys" running full feed subscription services.

Then again, it took many years before Usenet went from 1000's of independents to a few big commercial operators, so even of Mastodon evolves to a few "super servers" it should be a good few years down the line. Unless some "genius" finds a way to monetise it.

Re: "that limit protects its customers"

How fast do (did?) Mills & Boon churn them out? Ok, that's an army of human authors[*], but still.

* I never read one, but some might say I'm being to charitable with that word :-)

Re: Let me guess

I think the rules changed recently and the company owners/directors can be made personally liable for the fines now and it's harder to wind up a company while legal proceedings are under way, specifically because of this "phoenix" trick.

Re: Spam calls

"Sadly the spam calls"

I think it's important to distinguish between spam and scam. Most of the companies in the article are shady in their practices and have rightly been fined, but are actually offering a service. Just not a service that would be viable without the illegal spam calls. If the service itself was a scam and therefore illegal, I think we'd be hearing a bit more about that in the article and the in the fines and/or charges levelled at them.

The calls coming from the Indian sub-continent and certain countries in Africa (primarily, other countries scammers are available) claiming to be the "bank security" or "Amazon security" etc are outright illegal scams trying to get access to your bank account and steal your money. There's very little point in reporting them to the ICO because they all use fake caller ID so at best, it would just be a statistics gathering game with zero chance of any real outcome. I suppose, in theory, if EVERY scam call was reported, it might actually produce some "big scary" numbers showing the actual scale of the problem and could lead to pressure on the phone companies to block the incoming sources, but even that would likely be a Whack-a-Mole event.

Re: oh wow, such a shock.

True. On the other hand, there are many people out there "collecting" all sorts of shit, gambling that in the future it will be in demand and they have "originals", in unopened packaging. Same with crypto currency. Some of those few early adopters probably made a fortune out of mining Bitcoin and hanging onto it instead of selling up early. I think you are probably right about NFTs, but really, there was a chance some may have taken off in some form and that's the gamble people are prepared to take. The sensible ones will look at risk and returns and only spend what they can afford to lose.

I still upvoted you though since, yeah, the odds of NFTs being anything other than a very short term investment at the height of the hype were obviously incredibly low to almost anyone with two or more brain cells to rub together :-)

Re: Use at your own peril....

"Yes, terribly, terribly sad but honestly, would anyone be trying to blame a physical map publisher if their atlas or A to Z was wrong?"

True. I remember referring to my road atlas many years ago and it showed a dotted/ghosted road junction onto a new motorway being built in the direction I was heading. IIRC it was marked "Penning 1998" and since it was 2001 now, I head off in that direction only to find an enormous mound of sand where the new motorway junction was supposed to be. The originally mapped road was still there, but now turned off in a direction I didn't really want to go and would not have chosen if I'd know the new junction was at least 3 years late in opening. Another was the "new" road into the North end of Hull. Every road atlas for at least 10 years showed the new road as "opening nnnn" where nnnn was the year after the map was published.

Re: So answer this.

Could be. The article states:

"The complaint also lists James Tarlton, Tarde LLC, and Hinckley Gauvain LLC as "Bridge Defendants" which it alleges "owned, controlled, and/or were otherwise responsible for the land" where the bridge is located, claiming that they "had a duty and responsibility to maintain" the bridge, not limited to "erecting and maintaining proper barricades and/or warning signs identifying any hazards particular to the land." These entities have also been accused of gross negligence."

But it does seem to be a a public road, or at least publicly accessible.

Re: But they do disappear

"Then they dropped a load of concrete blocks across the road and gave up."

Well, at least they didn't just put a few cones out to be stolen more than once as per the article though :-)

Re: Were there no signs indicating that the Bridge was out?

Your are right, but only in a small way. Google directed him down that road, that much is true, and after being closed for 9 years, Google Maps should have been updated properly, even if only to show a "temporary closure" since it's entirely possible that the bridge may one day be replaced and the road re-opened. On the other hand, the local council/authority/whatever have had NINE YEARS to properly deal with that situation by placing proper barriers there, not a few plastic cones that can be and have been removed multiple times. I'm sure even the most hard up and financially stretch rural small town council could have asked a local farmer or construction company to dump a few truckloads of "waste", eg rocks, hard core etc to block access for free or very little cost.

Re: ...treatment for brain changes and other detrimental health effects of space exposure...

According to various sites, a B5 reboot is in pre-production, eg here but there's been pretty much nothing heard since, especially since the Warner/Discovery merger, which saw a lot of cancellations even of high profile already running projects, so I'm not holding my breath.

On the other hand, if it does come to pass, then I hope to be pleasantly surprised since "Series creator J. Michael Straczynski is writing the pilot and will return as showrunner and executive producer"

Re: if you fail, try, try, try again

"After all, if you can serve ads AND make people pay for it, what's not to like."

Cable and Sat TV have been doing that since they started. It's hardly a new business model. For that matter, Cinemas have shown adverts for as long as I can remember too. Last time I went, a good few years ago, there was about 15 minutes of ads, followed by 10 minutes of trailers before the film finally started. And they don't even have cartoons or a 'B' feature before the main film any more and they charge too much for everything, and, and, and....never again!!!

Re: @Neil Barnes -- coccyx-centered comforts in cold climes

...slow cooked sweet meats?

Re: coccyx-centered comforts in cold climes

"But I can't help feeling that the whole 'own nothing' culture has a fundamental issue: sooner or later, _somebody_ has to own the stuff. And that seems likely to be fewer and fewer people (companies, of course) as time goes by."

It's the new "pension time-bomb". What happens when you retire and you own nothing? You're gambling that your pension will be worth something. What if it's not worth as much as you hoped? Your pension is tied to the value of the stock market in most cases.

Scalextric[*] scaled up to human drivable size?

The pickup/guide is sort of a tine keelboard and solves to battery weight problem of EVs all in one fell swoop. It might involve some cost "upgrading" the roads to match though.

Re: First i've heard about the EE Warrington trial

If you are "tech savvy" and live in an area where they turned off 3G and you didn't notice, then that's a win for EE. Clearly you were getting a signal of some sort and it was good enough for you and your phone was quite happy with 4/5G or you never use data. A 3G phone will still make voice calls on 2G according to the EE page about the switch-off.

Re: So.......2G will be here for while and 3G will disappear almost immediately...

...and all have a registered SIM too, so the provider knows who they are to send the bills and the notifications off the switch off to. Whether those customers actually see and act on the notices is another matter. If john.Smith@company.co.uk is the email contact and he left for pastures new 5 years ago, then that might be an issue for the customers to deal with.

Re: I thought they already had.

I suppose the real question is, what do they mean by "switching off 3G"? Are they just going to start turning off the 3G kit at the masts or are they going to be taking time to replace 3G kit with 4/5G kit at each location as they go? Does it mean that the 4/5G kit goes in using the existing 4/5G bands or can 4/5G phones adapt to 3G bands with 4/5G running on it? Can 4/5G even work on 3G bands? I'd guess so, since they seem to use similar but different bands.

Re: Three

I find anywhere near any university tends to have poor data. Large density of students who generally will have everything switched on all of the time, various social media apps swamping the local available bandwidth. The university WiFi coverage isn't designed to cover the outside of buildings or beyond the edge of campuses, so once the students are outside of that WiFi coverage range, it all switches to the phone networks.

The networks are probably built based on population, but the type of population and denser than average short term congregations of people can also have an effect as well as we seem to hear every time there's a big event on.

Re: Should this be so easy?

Although, on the up side, an actual kettle lead will most certainly do as an emergency replacement in a pinch for a PC or printer. Obviously not the other way around though because of the notch. And assuming in the successful case that the piddly little short kettle lead is long enough for the application.

On the other hand, you may upset the local tea drinkers, so only attempt at your own risk!

Re: It doesn't always smoke though

You missed a step. If the drive is really cold, depending on the local climate/weather, leave the drive in the heated workshop for an hour or so to acclimate to the local temperature and allow any condensation to evaporate off that may have accumulated on a cold metal brick brought into a warmer location. Only then apply power to the device.

Re: So let me recap...

"The web was created to lift us up..."

...and a laudable intention it was too. But it rapidly became a dumbing down tool, removing text, replacing with pictures and videos :-(

Re: Mopeds

Yeah, I remember when Mopeds could barely reach 30mph, but as the engines got better, a new legal definition was made and so the speed limiter was added. many back street garage mechanics made a mint removing them. Of, and the "ped" part of Moped was because they had actual pedals you could use to, you know, pedal it along if the 1/2 Gallon tank ran dry so the "mo" part of moped, the motor stopped working..

Re: Remember the Honda 50?

"But, yeah, one of these days some kid is going to be corpsified on one of those things."

It's already happened, multiple times. And since you said "pavement", I'll assume you are in the UK. If so, privately owned ones are not allowed on the pavements or public road and rented ones are only supposed to used by people with a driving licence, full or provisional. Parents who buy them for under 17s and then let their kids ride them all over town should be fined or otherwise legally punished for knowingly allowing the kids to break the law and putting them in harms way.

Re: Remember the Honda 50?

"(slow down and check traffic before turning into it?? Who does that??) in front of me at night."

Just the other day, major city centre, traffic lights on red and even the cyclist actually stopped at them. Not the e-scooter riders though. Straight through, barely slowing enough to look and check if there was any cross traffic. Death Race 2023!!