Posts by a_yank_lurker 4138 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Nov 2013
There is a significant difference between 5'7" and 6'1" even you otherwise resemble each other. It is 6 inches (152.4 mm) difference. That should be obvious to anyone other than an idiot or artificial idiocy. NY and NJ had a habit of issuing drivers license sans picture when other allegedly more backward states like GA were issuing ones with pictures on them.
Since many jurisdictions do not require posting the salary range for a position this puts CO residents at a disadvantage. The idea of requiring the salary range is on paper a good idea, it gives idea of the skills required and seniority level. But if other jurisdictions do not require informing prospects the salary range companies will often opt not to put this information out.
What CO failed to realize is there may be some reasonable commercial reasons for not posting a salary range as it might tip off competitors of what the business is planning or doing.
I could see filtering content not appropriate for a workplace/school on a workplace/school network. The devil is defining what is not appropriate and setting up the appropriate filters. I suspect any specific filter will offend someone, somewhere because they believe it inappropriate that a network should block content cluttering up the network.
I am reminded of the old song by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggee about network administrators - do not irritate the network admin because 'he knows about all the porn' you have been downloading.
As an serious amateur photographer I sometimes take a photo of a scene with people in it. They may be facing the camera but they are not focus of the scene. Often landscape photographers will have a person in the photo to provide a sense of depth and scale. In some photos, people may provide a setting for the scene but are otherwise not critical.
So how does artificial idiocy know what the subject of the photo is? Without asking the photographer it is just guessing.
For most using one cloud provider probably is the sensible option. And for many it probably does not really matter which one. But there will be a few who should use specific tools from each provider. It is more about knowing what each offers and what your needs are than reading some drivel from Gartner.
Living in the affected area, gas (petrol) is becoming easier to find though there are still spot outages at the retail level. I have been able find gas near me without any problem. It looks like we will back to normal in about a week or so. The 'official' start of the summer season starts the Memorial Day weekend (last weekend in May) so returning to normal will be most welcome.
You missed a couple of problems with diaper brigade in programming. They assume you can read poor contrast between the text and background. There is reason black text (or very dark text) on a whitish background is used. Another is a fondness for very small font sizes that are difficult for those whose eyes are a wee bit old.
The point is context of the search. In some cases the context is much easier to infer but other cases it is not as easy. Spare parts are pretty easy. It is more than likely you are searching for parts for either a repair shop or yourself. But a search for a computer or lawn mower, not so much. Who was the purchase for is part of the context. One might be buying a lawn mower as a gift for someone outside the household. Also, the timeline of the purchase, if any, is important. Is the purchase planned for the future or is it more immediate.
Targeted advertising is a fraudulent concept. There is no context on why one searched for or bought something. Was it curiosity? Was it a need? Need a new car? For a kid? I think normal people get the idea. Also, many purchases are essentially one-off. The new car, idiot box, etc. will last several years if over a decade. When the ad for a car for example would be effective is before you purchase; something the is very difficult to tease out.
I did not mention I only use a wired connection from a desktop when I do any online shopping or financial activities. Call me paranoid but someone is going to have a hard time getting my credentials and there are much easier prey available. It's not that it cannot happen to me, it's just there easier targets than me around.
The problems with passwords are reuse when they should not be and idiotic password requirements. As a couple have noted, reusing passwords on burner accounts is usually fine. However, as noted, each site with financial information stored on it should have its own, lengthy password. I use a password manager to generate and store passwords locally, they are never stored online. Many sites limit the length of passwords to about 20 characters; I prefer much longer ones.
The real issue is not 2FA or passwords but that too many conduct all their financial business on a mobile (not necessarily a phone) device in public places. Places that are often not very secure. Also, with devices that can be easily nicked.
The problems with floating points is widely known if you bother look around. I have 35 year texts that discuss fp problems in calculations. But I wonder how many 'programmers' bothered to consider these issues when writing their code for their Pile it Higher and Deeper feces. Which raises the question how many computer analyses are actually correct.
For a computer solution, a brute force solution is always possible for many puzzle games though it will be slow for a computer but probably much faster than any human. A more elegant algorithm that displays a deeper knowledge of the puzzle by the programmer should be faster yet. But if the competition the elegance of the computer solution is probably not critical.
Crossword puzzles are really tests of vocabulary and interpretation of clues. While they do require some skill, they can solved by an algorithm the uses a dictionary that cross-references clues. Often a partially filled out solution can be 'guessed' in a US crossword puzzle by the fact there are only a couple of words that fit the remaining spaces.
A properly programmed computer should always beat humans because it is much faster at searching data sources than a human can ever be. This really proves nothing to anyone who has worked with computers and programming.
I have not looked at the drawings or the bill of materials for these guns but knowing something about metallurgy I wonder about how the parts are heat treated so they have the correct properties so they are safe for the user. History is littered with stories of firearms and artillery blowing up because of metallurgical issues with the available alloys of the period.
Another issue is the tolerances of parts as that was an issue back in the day with early breech loaders. Breech loading firearms were not particularly safe or reliable until the development of brass cartridges in the 1860's/1870's. Part of the problem was poor sealing of the breech allowing gases to leak into the user's face.
Outside of metal working hobbyists who might do this to say they did it I do not see this being a practical way for most to obtain a reliable gun. But our various members of our native criminal class are not known to let little details lack facts get in the way of their narrative.
Actually it is not the pay scale but the what the IT bods do that is important. Where I am I do custom internal programming in an obscure language. Having our IT department build a cloud system would be foolish because none of us have the background or skills to do it efficiently or at a reasonable cost. Our day to day activities are doing other things that need to be done so hiring/using an outside cloud vendor has serious merits. The government is in the same situation, their primary IT needs do not revolve around many activities thus they have very limited experience or skill in many areas.
I have enough trouble with Orifice's formatting with the current fonts I do not need another set to muck things up.
Now if the Rejects of Redmond would actually fix Bloatware-as-a-Disgrace and Orifice I would be content. I do not need any new fonts as the current ones are perfectly adequate.
Funding research tends to corrupt the research as there is a bias to find what the funder wants or expects. The bias may not be overt but it is there. Even if the researcher takes pains to lesson the bias it is there subconsciously.
A related issue is the ethics of the funder and in the case of AI I have my doubts about the ethics of all the institutional funders whether corporate or government. They want results that make themselves look good. So the conundrum is how to fund AI research so it will done more ethically.
Both can be rather contentious topics in any social environment. Depending on who is involved the conversation could get rather heated face-to-face and will escalate faster online in most cases. Often all it does create a wedge between people who often need to work together. By keeping certain topics out of the work place you are less likely create unnecessary friction. The fact too many do not have wisdom to tread on these topics very carefully is a problem.
The problem is the side effects of LSD and heroin can be very nasty. There is no easy way beforehand to determine if you will have any of these side effects and at what dose. This is true of any powerful drug like these. It's propaganda but observable fact.
Recreational use of these drugs is also hampered by dealers cutting them with all sorts things which can make what is already somewhat unpredictable even less so and even more dangerous.
"The War Of Northern Aggression" should the called "The War Of Southern Stupidity" as one prominent Louisiana educator pointed out before the war. The prominent educator, first president of Louisiana State University, was a certain William T. Sherman whose boys were very liberal with matches in Georgia, South Carolina (very, very liberal), and North Carolina.
Apple actually got the WIMP ideas from XEROX PARC. The people at PARC said Jobs and Apple were the first to grasp key ideas behind WIMP. Ideas implemented in the Lisa and Mac in the early to mid 80's. Others followed Apple thus indirectly XEROX PARC.
One of the great 'what ifs' is if XEROX manglement grasped what PARC was doing and actually tried to seriously commercialize their ideas in the early to mid 80's. They had the resources to do it.
'See no evil', 'Hear no evil' will eventually explode in a company's face and do much more damage to the company. The 'Do not disparage' clauses are misguided, idiotic attempts to protect the company when the company should be more proactive about bad behavior of their employees. I am not concerned about the occasional bad hair day we all have but that genuine slimes are protected by the self-inflicted Omerta. When the slimes are found out they are often in relatively high level positions which makes the situation much worse.
When a company is in bad shape the typical response is to shed money losing groups that cannot be made profitable. Whether selling off or shutting down, the effect is the same; the groups are gone. Groups that can be returned to profitability get serious attention and sometimes more resources. However, broad head count reductions are often nothing more than purges to lower the payroll at the expense of long term company health. Customers can and do walk if they think it is in their best interests. Never give a customer a reason to walk.
Attributed to John Wannamaker is the observation that 50% of all advertising spending is wasted but the problem is which 50% is wasted. Advertising by its nature is hit or miss. Targeted ads based on search history or to some extent purchases lack context of the search or purchase. So why was I searching for X? Was it genuine need or interest in purchase? Curiosity? Gift? The answers depend on how much I have in a given product and thus how much attention I might pay to a specific ad.
WFH has many advantages for those who can do it. For most WFH employees they probably will need to pop into the office a few times a year; there are some things one can only do easily at the office. Upper managlement needs to understand there is more to life than sitting a cube farm listening to (and smelling) your neighbor's farts because control freak needs to see your face.
As many have noted above criminals are not noted for their skills and while computer crime requires more skill than a 'smash-n-grab' often it is done by script kiddies or the like. Also, how many reported computer crimes are solved which would give a more interesting number. I suspect many computer crimes go unreported which also skews the statistics. Also, how many of the 'computer crimes' are prosecuted under other relevant statutes; fraud was noted in the post.
When one of the Canadian airlines was switching from English to metric units the fuel was loaded to the correct value but in pounds not kilos. The plane ran out of fuel in flight and had to glide to a landing on an abandoned RCAF airfield being used as a drag strip. Outside of a few bruises there were no injuries and no fatalities. This type of error is far more common than is realized.
From what I have seen over the years is OSes and applications become bulkier as they are asked to more over time. C and C++ are fine languages for their eras particularly when the overall code bases were smaller. As the code got bulkier, it got more complex as there are more possible interactions that might be difficult to find, trace, test, etc. This makes are language like C more dangerous as it becomes more difficult for someone to properly track all the interactions and manage memory correctly particularly for some obscure interactions. This is not a criticism of C or C++ but a criticism of language developers being very slow to realize something like Rust or Go was needed a long time ago. Whether Rust has the answer or Go has a better solution; I do not expert enough to know. But this has been needed for a long time.
As noted, most people's details have not changed much since 2019. DOB definitely not changed. Name probably not. Location probably not. Marital status probably not. Email and phone almost certainly not. And I know I have missed many more. Personal details by their nature can identify a person fairly readily if enough are known and one cares to make the effort to cross reference the details. Some of us have fairly rare surnames world wide for example. Knowing location, age, and a couple of other details might make an exact match fairly easy. John Smith might take a little more work.
Smartphones tend to be bloated messes with all useless apps preloaded. The last several phones I have had did/do all I really need out of the box: phone calls, texts, weather, an occasional photo, and directions. The rest is fluff whether preinstalled or installed by me. I have not seen a phone, even bargain basement ones, that could not do my list in years.
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