Posts by Teiwaz 4136 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Oct 2011
Still got my old Acer Aspire netbook...It'd do better with a *nix OS but there are not drivers for the wifi and my skills don't extend to making my own.
Interesting...what model?
I've an Acer Aspire One N450 that's been happily running Ubuntu for years since I replaced WinXp, no issues with Wifi, but some other distros struggled with providing firmware outofthebox.
It is gratifying to see the majority of Register readers have opted to turn the robot regardless of what it says. I will sleep a little easier tonight knowing that the robots will not take over just yet.
The reg is full of grumpy techies who know all about on/off switches, and still can't understand why everything doesn't come with one, especially if they are potentially annoying.
The trouble with your dissertation is that most of ElReg's readership are actually interested in such things.
That's not really a problem of the dissertation but of posting it to the Reg, where most the denizens would rather pounce on something that seems unscientific to them and lampoon it first and always.
The main issue with non-mainstream research into Egypt is it's being repressed at the source, but this is probably due to the mostly US AA pilgrimage tourist business that's sparked up as much as Egypt Antiquities Commission not wanting to allow anything that might be seen to promote alternative hypothesis in general.
not least because no electroplated items have been found.
Really, I thought the 'electroplating' use was the one given by people in response to the suggestion that ancient people might have been using it to light the inside of tombs with fancy over decorated lamps with huge bulbs or run their wig-making factories.
Saw that on 'Ancient Aliens' - which was marginally in favour of lighting and poo-poo'ed electro-plating (but strangely silent on electric horse-hair braiding).
Although I'm sure you know this, it's worth pointing out that most of those SciFi ideas not only re-date the TV show Ancient Aliens,
Yeah, I was not really clear I used 'Ancient Alien <u>element</u>' expecting that would be enough to convey I didn't literally mean the 'Ancient Alien' programme.
Danikens 'Chariots of the Gods' book was published a decade earlier than the first of the mentioned shows (Battlestar Galactica 1978), but I doubt that was a principal influence as well.
The Atlantis myth is a likely candidate (personally I think the Minoan disaster the likely root for that myth, but I'm open to other ideas).
I like watching Ancient Aliens occasionally first few fresh series only, (latter series seem to want to attribute everything including getting up at 4 am and using the entire roll of bogroll to alien influence), it's a rich vein for Sci-Fi, a lot of the most successful Sci-Fi series and stories have the Ancient Alien element in there somewhere. BattleStar Galactica and Stargate being the more famous examples.
And personally, I very much doubt the still touted tomb explanation when it comes to the Great Pyramid. The interior is just too weird, more like a chemistry set in stone and no decoration, the construction timescale doesn't wash, the flawed reconstruction project is still cited like it answered everything and have you seen the size of those stones? I'm not at all convinced by AA solutions to the mystery either.
Sure, the resonance might be a unintended consequence for a huge stone tomb of intricately piled up blocks as everything resonates at some frequnecy, but why the effort in that shape, and why the odd shaped chambers and tunnels in that particular arrangement?
Are we to start calling bits of code that are non-buggy but just inelegant 'farts' then.
I think it's a potentially hairy root to be going down, it'll be taste, next then touch, then may get even more embarrassing. Teaching kids to code is likely to result in being put on a register.
next will come "we're not going to show pages containing [insert subject disapproved of by vast majority] in our search results
Nonsense.
Google don't do this, societies (or the ravening insect hive-cleansing mentality of humans) often these days, governments hoping to ingratiate themselves with a popular movement or vocal lunatic fringe with money/power or influence), only occasionally responding to the will of the majority (or the mindless mentality of the mob - take you pick).
Curating their own search result other than for profit prioritising of results (they are an ad-slinger) is detrimental, 'what if users don't find what they are looking for enough they start using Bing?' would be the worry. Surely prop, non-standard web markup would be ignored by anything other than their own web engines? They've got a grip with the chrome browser just now, but it's just due to convenience.
Google controlled ad-blocking is merely an attempt to stop ad-blocking from becoming popular enough the majority of the IT-disinterested start to get annoyed enough to get interested.
They'll be deploying stuff like the "right to be forgotten". Along with the same technologies that our own and other governments are requiring of them to deal with forbidden contents (under labels like "extremist" or "paedo") around the world.
Ah, so you don't want to let the fact that Google themselves fought against having to de-link certain search results get in the way of a nice conspiracy proposition.
They do so dislike having to spend to curate their results unless someone is paying regularly for the privilege, and 'right to be forgotten' isn't a premium subscription service (it would probably count as blackmail if they tried it). Guess the China is worth the exception.
What a lovely company to have as a "Partner"
I always considered 'partner' in the business world to equate to 'exploitable resource'.
Anyone surprised should brush up on their Rules of Aquisition.
If public education (in all countries that have it) would teach critical thinking and right vs wrong, the entire batch of issues would simply go away.
Sounds like a fine idea, but doomed to fail. Teach people to not listen to what they want to hear?
Slaves aren't expected to reason, just do what they're told.
Just create a unified messaging app or cross app protocol and stop taking the piss.
Facebook and their ilk used to allow connection through XMPP I seem to remember, then they realised they could get away with taking the piss, and shut that down (around 2015 I seem to recall)
Their audience merely acquiesced to using things like the dedicated one service only apps like Messenger. I generally don't like terms like 'sheeple' used willy-nilly, but there was hardly a 'baa' over that, because the majority didn't use multi-service apps anyway, we'd already reached the point where most users were on the same one or two services run by megacorps that could afford to snap up any upstart merging rivals.
That's one reason why cutting taxes is self-defeating - it makes a government more wasteful, not less.
I fail to see how the current governments could be more wasteful (expect some wag will suggest a labour government, and actually miss the point on what's a waste and what isn't - but I doubt they have got it together either).
You'd think with less tax money to waste on doomed to fail IT projects....
But no. 'Essential Public facing Services' would probably go first, if they haven't already (quite close to Northampton).
I think you'll find that this kind of magic thinking applies across the spectrum
Does it though?
It's not as if the UK has ever experimented with a Gov that isn't Blue or 'New' Red of late, and it's often forgotten that in the late blue-yellow gov, the yellow acted to block some poor choices by the blue (although not enough, and still sold out too much).
The Labour party recently held a workshop teaching its MPs to lie in order to smear opponents.
Naughty them.....
Quite frankly the ship sailed on that one years ago - I'm not even sure it started merely with Maggie and her 'Spindoctors'.
The only way to fix the problem from the source would be a criminal offence against reporting untruth, but applying it to newspapers and news publishing concerns (including partisan info sites, advertising and politicians only at first would probably sort 90% of the problem within a year.
The Chinese don't have much of a problem with Fake News on Weibo
I don't know about that, to use the nail analogy, 'they merely have more hammers'.
They'll be on newspeak soon, if not already. They've already had to ban 'Winnie the Pooh' references as the population uses it's imagination to get round bans on topics of discussion.
There'll not be that many words soon, but on the other hand the population are getting it's imagination and creativity honed sharper and sharper.
Dutch is a category I language for English speakers, i.e. easiest to learn:
Funnily enough, 'double dutch' is common english phrase is it not?
Second language wise, the UK is probably at the bottom (I'll add Ireland to as well, as Irish is not and internationally useful second language IMO).
Transparent, obvious, and (unfortunately) not very customer-friendly.
This is Ms version of Customer Friendly*.
They're helpfully removing some complexity to the licence for customers convenience by upping the prices evenly across the board presumably.
* Well, as friendly as your local blackmailer can get.
The primary use of the internet has always for the obscure and the unacceptable to mainstream.
Remove that (and it is being slowly eroded, stamped out and ancient creaky sites on the arcane built by hand in antique html are being quickly replaced with gleaming malls of fluff nonsense and emporiums with shiny content management systems), the life will go out of it. It'll end up just another shopping and booking 'telnet'
The next generation to be born won't want much to do with it.
I'm surprised the current lot that grew up with it as 'just a part of how the world works' are that interested (and if they are, it's only because of Minecraft).
A Google software engineer might have no problems getting their head round WINE if they must (though Google no doubt have Windows machines if only for testing purposes). This isn't necessarily true of a small business in Saxony.
Why would anyone expect a small business to bend over backwards, it's the council that should be, with undoubtedly more staff and resources, Format conversion, via through Wine or otherwise is often as simple as a flat or comma delim file (which simple instructions could tell business how to deliver, assuming such programs have such simple file export and haven't decided on a lock-in approach to their users data).
It is after all wiser to keep data exchanges simple and limited in complexity, and XXX proprietary package with some weird-ass private file format is probably the worse thing possible.
@Teiwaz
National-Socialism was Hitlers mob, is that what you mean?
Yes, well done A/C, you can press the reward button now.
Modern equivalent in political terms is parties promising both lower taxes and better public services, only the stupid and greedy should be taken in by such promises, but it seems to work decade after decade and the corporate driven right wing gets in more elections than not.
we used to mock the Soviet/Communist system for its ability to squander vast sums of money on achieving massive inefficiency...
That was staid big government inefficiency, this time it's the worst dysfunctional marriage of Private and Public sectors.
I'm beginning to think that mismatch-up works about as well as National-Socialism - i.e. looks like it might weil be popular on paper but doesn't work as advertised in reality, but applied with dogged determination no matter the consequences.
The problem is that there are no PCs with a good and modern Linux desktop to buy for the average punter.
Can't always blame the companies who actually want to sell stuff here, when even Dixons/Currys/PC World staff are giving an almost anti-sales talk to potential ChromeOS purchasers due to frequent returns due to it not being Windows/working like windows.
Without a commercial entity backing it up, 'Linux doesn't need that kind of quantity sales push.
Used to swear by Openbox -
Tried it recently in a bout of nostalgia, surprised and annoyed to find extreme weird behaviour under Multi-monitor conditions.
Dolphin FM kept leaping to the right, finally worked out it was being centred on the 3-screen real-estate, also while maximising, window would leap to the primary monitor.
Enlightnement has lovely independent workspace action, it would a be a fav if not for the clunky window remember method and other weirdness that annoys after a while
Gnomes workspaces on one screen only option kind of works for indpendent screens, but lack of window remembers and placement on a particular screen / workspace for a particular window class and only recently gettting close to window quarters puts it well back on my list.
Plasma - excellent, apart from the use of the tired old netwm restriction of one desktop visible at a time.
i3 is almost perfect, except sometimes you want better floating window support.
Every desktop has it's flaws and good points, and this is something that becomes frankly hard to miss when you try to work with multi-monitors
For example, can someone figure out right away how to throw and catch a ball if they've never seen one before?
Catch, maybe not. Babies learn to chuck stuff out of the pram pretty quick. Agression seems to be a pre-programmed learn target, it's the cooperative bit that has to be painstakingly learned in humans.
The latter is particularly crippling – so many apps and other services depend on an accurate location fix.
All I see location, where it find that out, being used for is trying to convince you to sign up for or got to some site to read about 'one simple' trick that hundreds of millionaires in your one horse neighbourhood want banned. I'm sure this has to sound more effective if you live in some Capitol City or XX in Tri City Area in the US, but it sounds like the babbling result of a brain injury over here.
just remember the the EU as currently setup is the a neo-liberal multi-national corporatists wet dream made flesh.
Really? They actually bothered to bring Microsoft to heel over bad practice, and are trying with Google.
Damn sure the U.S is too sold out to be bothered with consumer rights, and the UK certainly can be bought easily (and are ready to sell its citizens data at any time, bargain basement prices, closing down sale, final year).
* 'neo-liberal'??? Is that like new Labour - 'liberal' generally has a different meaning this side of the pond.
How about those saying it'll be fine reassure the public by making clear that if the pound drops below parity to the EUR inflation rips to over 10%, and the economy does go into recession, they'll admit they were wrong and put their full support into joining EFTA
That sounds like an Election promise. The UK Government (and maybe all governments) use those for toilet paper the moment the Election's over.
The NI "Troubles" had their roots in the civil rights excesses practiced by the Stormont government in the 50's and 60's,
That was true of the original - the Border crossing towers are something that the 'local community' there really found oppressive - there is No appetite to return.
A return of the little portacabins the Irish Customs use to have would probably count, even though mostly harmless - seriously no appetite for Authoritarian Stop Checks now they're gone.
N.I. seemes to be doing quite well with no Central government to speak of, but of course all the real decisions were handed over to quangos years ago as the councils were hotbeds of partisan politics.
Place should become an anarcho-cyniclist commune and get it over with.
Since the 'leave' vote was skewed towards the over 60s
Amusing, but the over 60's grew up in that environment (I assume, I'm from N.I, even the Vietnamese boat people cleared out when settled there ( could well have gone back to Asia were people were sane) - not much language, but you could sit on the bus and try to guess who was Catholic and who was Protestant from dress and manner).
1/ Hard Brexit: Civil unrest as food and gas become scarce
You really haven't a clue how world trade and WTO rules work, do you? Why on earth should any of that happen?
No wonder people get scared of Leave when there's such blatant nonsensical remainer FUD around. Project FEAR is alive and well, it seems.
Well, I'm pro Europe, and I didn't buy that reason either.
However, there will probably be a backlash after Brexit, even if all EU ties are cut (even ECHR ones, which were not on the referendum) - mainly due to the Fairy Godmothers of Leave being unable to produce one scrap of the land of milk and honey, fully funded NHS now that we no longer give our money away to Europe and etc.
How long before some sweating tory tries to chivy up some war spirit in the face of short term hardship before he nips abroad for a short break at the expense of some CEO friend of his.
that legal oversight of GCHQ's bulk spying regime was fit for purpose. It also failed to have the agencies' dragnet surveillance practices declared incompatible with Article 8 of the EU Convention on Human Rights, which is a privacy right.
Not for much longer, which if you ponder it for a moment it becomes clear what this whole Brexit drive is really about.
The inevitable slide toward Airstrip One - some cabal are really taking 1984 as a manual - the interest in another runway at Heathrow may only be a sign that some of them never actually bothered to read the book, but a hoping they got the right idea...
Thank you for agreeing with me - the EU lawmakers are the Commission who are appointed by the EP, and they do not have to appoint members of the EP that were elected. Unlike our system where the PM is a duly elected MP.
@Tick
Wrong!! The European Parliament has much less say on Commissioners, and this is at the design of the National Governments, 'taking back control' or keeping it away from the public has been a thing a lot longer than pithy referendum slogans. The current Brexit is little more than rightwing national identity posturing by a strong tory backbench (whether they ostensibly leave and call themselves UKIP or not, they are agitators. We've already had May refuse Parliamentary oversight or discourse on her exit plan on several occassions and try to steamroll her vision, her plan through to whatever ripe or rotten fruiting like she's some ace striker going for goal from the other end of the pitch.
This is the shape of things to come, and this will improve the publics say in the running of the country not one whit.
The procedure for appointing a Commissioner is as follows:
The member state governments agree together on who to designate as the new Commission President.
The Commission President-designate, in discussion with the member state governments, chooses the other 29 Members of the Commission.
The new Parliament then interviews all 30 members and gives its opinion on the entire "college".
If approved, the new Commission can officially start work in the the January following the European Parliamentary elections.
organisation where the people who make the laws are not elected by the people, and cannot be removed by them
The main complaint levied at the EU is the unelected manner of a lot of the decision making.
The European Parliament is limited by the appointed Executive Commission, it's not likely that way by accident or some nefarious plot, this is the decisions of heads of the individual goverment.
All leaving is doing is shifting the lawmaking north to London, but it'll mostly be the same laws except for Human Rights as they need to be curtailed apparently, and you'll still have the same say over the same faces and rosettes every couple of years and you'll vote blue, like your dad did, because the red is for immigrants and dole-scroungers and the country will continue to circle the drain while being sold off and the current MPs retire to France or somewhere nice with a good Health Service.
hugely incompetent Scottish referendum process which came very close to resulting in the fracture of the Union
History has hardly yet begun to tell. The current incumbents may very well put his blundering well into the shadow with their own.
Now we only have the centrist and extremist nutjob right wings left in the tory party.
Scotland will eventually leave, as England continues to march to rightwing bands (it's the 12th of July every day, propped up as they are by the DUP) while Scotland continues with strong Socialist tendencies.
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