* Posts by Queasy Rider

292 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jan 2014

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Argentina finds messenger to shoot after e-vote vuln allegations

Queasy Rider

Re: Never

P.S.

I have an acquaintance who informed me that a former employer of hers who, in order to circumvent campaign contribution limit laws, used to send checks in every employees' names to his favorite candidates. I tend to believe her since she was one of many bookkeepers for this devious man. And I got to listen in when some of the other bookkeepers got together with her and compared notes. Apparently that was not the only funny business going on, but nobody ever spoke up, even after the old owner died and new management took over.

And just to cement my confidence in the integrity of the election system, this now semi-retired woman now collects $200. every election working the local polling place.

<sarcasm> I'm sure this person (who once complained to me that she was wasting ink printing the whole webpage of lottery results, refused to let me SHOW her how to cut and paste only the relevant numbers into a Notepad file for printing) will any time now be reporting suspicious activity concerning electronic voting. </sarcasm>

Queasy Rider

Never

I realize it is a violation of the 'Never say never' rule, but I have never believed in the accuracy (read honesty) of electronic voting, and I never will. To me it is just a fancier way to stuff ballot boxes, with the added advantage that the average lay person can't understand how the cheat is achieved and therefore is less likely to detect said cheat.

China hacks 'everything that doesn't move' says Hilary Clinton

Queasy Rider

Good one, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

Queasy Rider

You took the words right out of my mouth. Have an up vote.

MIT bods' digital economy babblings are tosh. C'mon guys, Economics 101

Queasy Rider

Re: And yet...

Call me when robots are free, the power to drive them is free, and the raw materials they use to produce all those wanted items are free. Until them the futurists are just blowing smoke up our asses.

Spanish TV journo leaves subordinates cowering after verbal shoeings

Queasy Rider

Re: @Queasy Rider - "You're starting to sound like Matt Bryant. "

Or the point of the recording is that is what she is always like, no need to wind her up. I admit that I'm prejudging her, but it has been my experience that when employees finally screw up the courage to stand up to their boss it is not because this is the first or even the tenth time their boss has pulled this shit. It is because they are sick and fed up with it and it is either risk getting fired by speaking up, quitting, or living with an ulcer and taking it out on your family at home. Why you are defending somebody like her is beyond me.

Queasy Rider

Give it a rest. She's a foul-mouthed abusive harpie getting her comeuppance, and you're acting like a trolling contrariean. I don't care where she uttered her latest outburst, there's plenty of evidence that this is an ongoing problem, and I for one would not want to only have the choice to hear her shit or quit my otherwise satisfactory job in television. You're starting to sound like Matt Bryant. Save your lawyering for people that deserve it. You've made many good points in the past. Please don't negate any good will you've built up by defending the indefensible. Leave that to the shysters.

Respectfully...

Queasy Rider

"Without knowing the context... How do you know she wasn't provoked by her co-workers in the minutes before that recording?"

That's no excuse for her abusive, and lack of professional, conduct. How about reading the article again. "She persistently abuses her staff with foul-mouthed outbursts." "Staff expressed their concerns to management at CLMTV at the beginning of 2014." "Inspector of Work and Social Security rules the matter a "very serious" breach of employment law."

How much more context do you need?

PS. "you have no way of knowing whether she really means the threats or not."

Maybe YOU don't know if she really means to KILL anyone, but rational people do know the difference between abusive, empty, over the top threats such as hers, and real threats to kill such as Taliban or ISIS. It's not the threats, it's the abuse. Geddit?

It's the Internet of Feet: Lenovo shows smart shoes, projector keyboard phone

Queasy Rider

Re: COMPLEMENTARY TECH

Yeah, more in a sock, but not on your foot.

Queasy Rider

Re: I have a use

Yes, I've seen that, and I know a guy that is into bluegrass and designs his own instruments. He has made a number of dulcimers that can accommodate an ipad under the strings displaying the chords, lined up perfectly with the strings. Very clever really, but I can't afford (and don't want) an ipad. It's an Apple (say no more) it's way too small a screen for my purposes, and I'm trying to get away from carrying around so many battery operated and expensive devices. After i wrote my comments I looked up cell phone projectors and found many relatively cheap ones. Maybe I should be thinking of them in the meantime, but they seem pretty feeble. Anybody here have any experience with them?

Queasy Rider

I have a use

I have been waiting for years for a phone projector system. I have scoured guitar tablature sites for a decade and a half, collecting, editing then finally converting to an offline website over a thousand songs, hyper-linked and searchable by title, year, or artist, along with mp3's of every song in the collection, plus hundreds of TouTube how-to videos teaching general guitar techniques and many specific songs. Unfortunately I only know a handful by heart, even though I can play literally a thousand more when I have the words and chords up in front of me. My solution was to buy a 17" laptop to drag around with a charger and extension cord, in addition to my guitar. While that works, it is less than satisfactory. First I have to find a way to set up the laptop so that it is safe from drunks, dogs, children and just plain clumsy people, myself included. Then if other players want to join in they have to crowd around me, squinting over my shoulder to view the screen. And of course, if I'm away from a power source for any time, such as over a long weekend camping, then I either have to carry extra batteries or solar panels for the laptop. That just ain't gonna happen. I would love to ditch the laptop (it's old, heavy, has Windows' Vista, and fragile) and only carry my smart phone with me on my motorbike. The whole mess is about ten GB so I can store, (and share) it on a thumb drive or a flash chip. With a phone projector all I would then need is a surface to display upon, like a large sheet of white cardboard nailed to a tree or stapled to a fence, or propped up om a picnic table. I'm no Lang Lang but I've been ready for years to do the same thing on guitar as he did on piano with a smart phone. Bring it on Lenovo, make it affordable, and I'll be standing in line.

We caught Chinese technology spies RED-HANDED, claims US government

Queasy Rider

Re: Typical Communist Regime: NO Incentive To Create. Only Incentive To Steal.

Have an up vote for "corporatocracy".

AI pioneer reckons China's where the Rise of the Machines will start

Queasy Rider

You just couldn't stop yourself, could you? I was all ready to up vote you till you conflated UI with speech recognition. It is not the task of speech recognition to understand sarcasm, jokes, in-group references or cultural context except as it pertains to homonyms. And even people have homonym problems, especially non-native listeners. So, no up vote for you in spite of your excellent stochastic and heuristic reference.

Queasy Rider

Re: Reasonable goals

You just couldn't restrain yourself, could you? I was all ready to up vote you till you conflated UI with speech recognition. It is not the task of speech recognition to understand sarcasm, jokes, in-group references or cultural contexts except for certain homonyms, which even plenty of people don't get, especially those with first vs. second language limitations. No up vote for you.

Russia will fork Sailfish OS to shut out pesky Western spooks

Queasy Rider

Re: @ Ledswinger

Yup, Obama is to blame. What for? Everything. Regime change, regime no change, the economy, the weather, that pimple on your face and that boil on your ass.

Give us here a break and save your politics for other websites or a bar where somebody can actually reach out and touch you, forcefully.

Driverless cars deal death to Detroit, says Barclays

Queasy Rider

Re: Bollocks...

P.S. I forgot to point out how many more buses and drivers would be required if you divide up the school population by grade. If you had three kids in primary school, not an unusual situation, then you can expect two more buses a day just for your kids, and there will be more buses for middle and secondary school too. No school board would be willing to pay for all those extra buses, and I doubt any neighborhood would want them either.

Queasy Rider

Re: Bollocks...

As to the school thing, that all depends. The tiny street (one and a half lanes max) that I live on also has a primary school on it. For two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon it is restricted to one way. You can drive around the block so that's not a terrible inconvenience till the buses show up and then nothing can pass for over a quarter hour. Since that quarter hour falls at the same time every day, it remains a minor inconvenience, but, if every grade was staggered, I would go out of my mind trying to work around that seemingly never ending aggravation. And just to put the boot in, my street feeds onto a main highway which has two more school restricted zones one half and one mile away. And yes, the other schools have staggered hours (for the buses convenience) so there is no way around it. Kids, schools, who needs 'em? (Sorry, just kidding)

Queasy Rider

Re: Whoa, whoa, whoa ...

@skeptical i: agreed. Having suffered the car no-car cycle a number of times, I can state without reservation that I was richer without car, had money to spend at the end of the month. With a car it seemed that whenever I felt I was getting ahead financially, my vehicle would eat up that spare cash. Regular scheduled maintenance, unscheduled maintenance such as fuel pumps, water pumps, alternators, radiators, a/c systems, (and I performed almost all the work myself) tires, and finally that onerous insurance bill all conspired to keep me broke. As much as I didn't care for relying totally on public transit, I couldn't deny what it saved me.

'Logjam' crypto bug could be how the NSA cracked VPNs

Queasy Rider

Re: Not that many primes

Thank you for that calculation. I also thought, in my innocence, it would be simple to store all the known primes in an ordinary text file, albeit a very long one. They say ignorance is bliss, but I don't feel that way anymore. Thank you E. Snowdon.

Well YES, Silicon Valley VCs do think you're a CRETIN

Queasy Rider

Re: Dumb question

And what happens if somebody else, either a pool or an individual, finds the next valid block, the same block that you've been searching for, before you? Does all your (and your pool's) work go up in smoke, and your electricity to waste?

Astroboffins perplexed by QUADRUPLE QUASAR CLUSTER find

Queasy Rider

Re: There can be only one

Although your comment seems to be tongue-in-cheek, the first thought that occurred to me upon viewing the picture was that I was looking at an example of gravitational lensing. The spacing and sizes of the quasars seemed to indicate (to me at least) that quasars one and three were the same item, as were two and four, and thus were really only two quasars, but I assumed that the boffins had considered that possibility and had for some reason discarded it.

SHOCK! Robot cars do CRASH. Because other cars have human drivers

Queasy Rider

Re: Luddites

I lived in the burbs and commuted to the heart of downtown for decades. I tried both driving myself and taking public transit. I ended up settling for the bus and subway but it wouldn't have taken much to swing me the other way. Transit took twice as long but monthly passes were convenient, affordable, especially compared to downtown parking rates, (and could be used as often as you liked making them attractive for hopping around the city for what felt like free). But getting up over half an hour earlier every day to catch the bus felt like a death sentence to a nighthawk like myself. And freezing my ass off every morning of the year standing at a bus stop hours before the sun rose to be at work by 7:00 (first bus 5:45 a.m.) was no joy either. The only salvation was the fact that I got to sit all the way and do the morning crossword, but if I'd had to board the bus, and subway one stop further down I would have been forced to stand for almost an hour, hanging on a strap, arriving at work, exhausted and cranky. As it was, I stood all the way home every afternoon, practically asleep on my feet, eyes closed almost all the way. I hated those days, and as a result, my job too although there was nothing wrong with the job, but you had to follow the work.

So sure, public transit works, and pretty efficiently too, but give me a Johnny Cab (if affordable)or robo-car any day. And yes, I had one job far off any bus route that I taxied to every day at my own expense when I was carless, and another I bicycled to.

Queasy Rider

Re: Luddites

Here is (or was) a sort of example of driving slower to get there faster. It has been a long time since I drove in Toronto, but thirty years ago the Queen Elizabeth Way, a four lane (now at least six lanes) major feeder route into the city, had computer run traffic lights controlling the on ramps, limiting the amount of vehicles actually merging into the traffic lanes if there was too much congestion at any particular interchange. The theory was that a brief wait on the ramp allowed smoother, faster traffic flow because it prevented bunching up. Perhaps someone here could tell me if this is still the case, or if it was abandoned because theory didn't match reality.

Queasy Rider

Luddites

Yes, you are all auto-driver Luddites, and I down-voted every last one of you. Not because of your Paris, Rome, Naples, Prague, Winnipeg, ravine, Mars, Pluto or Tatooine examples, because I tend to agree that those will be some of the last places that the driver-less cars will successfully navigate, but because you all refuse to admit that some day (and the sooner the better) they will succeed. And for refusing to acknowledge that they already can handle much of the every day driving chores we face today. I honestly believe that fully and universally autonomous cars would have prevented virtually every accident I have been in or witnessed over the last fifty years. They would have prevented speeders, tailgaters, drunks, cell gabbers and texters, lane hoppers and wanderers, daydreamers, boy-racers, red light and stop sign runners, non-yielders, and old fossils that can't even see over their steering wheels. And I suspect I know why you all hate these cars. It is because when all is said and done, we all love to drive, to feel the power of the vehicle in our hands, to be in control of such power, to feel the freedom of the open road, to negotiate the twists and turns of a medieval city or Arab market place, to thunder across the Australian outback in complete solitude, to explore back-country roads on a lazy afternoon, to take a driving vacation. Yup, I'm going to miss all that too, but every time I hear the sound of a crunched door panel or a busted tail light I literally get a sick feeling in my stomach. Was somebody hurt, did somebody die, isn't that a shame, what a beautiful vehicle, there go the insurance rates again.

Instead of fighting the inevitable savings and benefits of robo-cars, we need to find ways to preserve the things we love most about driving. That means finding ways to share the road with them, maybe even restricting certain by-ways to driver-only access, or limited times of day. Searching for edge cases to doom these machines will ultimately prove fruitless, so come on guys, embrace the future and let's find a way to make this work for everybody. Smart folks like you have no shortage of ideas, that's why I read and heed all the Reg commenters. There must be ways. Cheers.

You say you want a musical revolution. Actually, have three

Queasy Rider

Re: Rock Family Trees?

That sounds like a Monty Python skit to me.

Ericsson to Apple: Cough up for licences or stop selling iPhones, iPads and Watches

Queasy Rider

"pontuficating"?

Quid-A-Day Nosh Posse chap in 'desperate' cash shortage

Queasy Rider

Your observation that Brits were quite healthy in spite of rationing accords well with Dr. Michael Mosely's observation that during the Great Depression in America, the average life expectancy increased by six years, this during the so-called Hungry Thirties. Apparently a calorie restricted diet causes little to no harm to the general populace, just eat the right things.

Queasy Rider

Neil, do you think you could raise a healthy family on a quid a day per person? Especially a family with maybe a pregnant woman, or nursing mother, or a couple of teens actively engaged in physical sports?

Queasy Rider

Re: Cheers to those who've tried this

Your observation about food prices is supported by a study I read that discovered that the poorest communities had the highest food prices. The authors of the study concluded the reason was simple: poor people can't afford to travel too far to price shop and so are stuck with their local markets, which stick it to them.

P.S. It sounds like your Nosh Posse was getting pretty desperate towards the final day. I'd like to ask all of them if they could have continued on for another month, or perhaps indefinitely, because it appeared to me they were destined to bump up against some health issues, some of them perhaps serious, especially for growing children.

UK exam board wants kids to be able to Google answers

Queasy Rider

Re: Surprised no-one's suggested this one yet

Why go through the trouble of creating your own website? Just save your answers (Cliff Notes etc.) on your home server and tap into that during your exam.

Queasy Rider

Re: Google Translate

I love Reverso for French context. Very handy.

Queasy Rider

Re: Exams?

Same here, I aced exams and all through primary received top marks because end of term exams comprised 100% of our grades. When I rolled into secondary school and homework (which I never did) and class projects started to be factored into out grades, my marks dropped like a stone.

Facebook serves up shaved, pierced, tattooed 'butterfly' as CAPTCHA

Queasy Rider

Re: Its certainly not a butterfly

I apologize for inserting this comment near the top after reading 44 other comments, but El Reg's readership seems sadly misinformed where it comes to slang terms for a lady's outer parts. Instead of blaming a computer algorithm for misidentifying that picture, go to Reddit, subreddit Gone Wild, subreddit Labia Gone Wild, and you will plainly see (literally) a number of snaps clearly identified as butterflies. I would link directly to one but since the pictures are extremely NSFW I will leave it to you all to follow the final link posted.

Best Buy bites down hard on Apple Pay fruity bonking deal

Queasy Rider

I know the old joke: pick two...

a) high quality gear

b) low prices

c) informed sales help

...but I still shop at Best Buy because...

A) I can't afford the best gear

B) around here, only the internet can beat Best Buy prices

C) I get my information online

D) I try to spend locally when price is comparable, and small ticket items aren't worth the online bother when Best Buy is only a ten minute ride away.

So I ask in all sincerity, why don't you shop there?

Top Spanish minister shows citizens are thick as tortillas de ballenas

Queasy Rider

Re: Pedanting...

I wish I could up vote you repeatedly. I have a cousin that would contradict every phrase(no exaggeration, every phrase) I uttered. No hair was too small to split. Haven't seen him for 30 years, but my blood still boils at the thought of some of his inanities. Worst of all, some of that disputativeness rubbed off on me, so now I find it difficult to impossible to bite my tongue in conversation. I feel sorry for my onlooking friends when a similar personality orbits into our conversations. Raised voices etc.

Yay, we're all European (Irish) now on Twitter (except Americans)

Queasy Rider

Re: You're damned either way

I repeat: Having sex with a child in Thailand will get you locked up for years in America. Child sex tourism, look it up.

November 13, 2008 at 2:05 PM, updated May 12, 2012 at 8:36 PM

MOBILE, Ala. -- A pair of Gulf Coast residents pleaded guilty in Mobile today to allegations that they made several trips to Thailand to have sex with young boys.

Burgess Lee Burgess, of Mobile, and Pensacola resident Mitchell Kent Jackson, who used to live in Mobile, pleaded guilty to traveling to have sex with a minor and conspiracy to do so. They face more than 10 years in prison under advisory sentencing guidelines, but have agreed to cooperate with an ongoing investigation into "sex tourism" in hopes of winning lighter punishment.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/31/new.jersey.sex.ring/index.html

Queasy Rider

Re: You're damned either way

The US has been convicting people for things done outside their jurisdiction for ages. Having sex with a child in Thailand will get you locked up for years in America. Britain too has jailed people for their actions in the East. I can't remember the specifics, but I believe over a century ago people in England were going to jail for foreign actions which were disgusting their countrymen at home. Maybe somebody here can help fill in the details.

Google drives a tenth of news traffic? That's bull-doodie, to use the technical term

Queasy Rider

Re: How many of these are using Google as their address bar?

I type 'el reg' when using someone else's computer and search engine to find a recent (this week or so) article, and then select and scan Register's home page. Of course the site is bookmarked on my computers and browsers.

Remember SeaMicro? Red-ink-soaked AMD dumps it overboard

Queasy Rider

Thanks for opening my eyes. I don't share your feelings about RIM but I have a number of other companies on my hate list for different but similar reasons.

Queasy Rider

And I'm curious as to why all those commenters, who are salivating over the remotely possible demise of Blackberry, are not going for AMD's throat the same way. Could it be because AMD is an American corporation, but Blackberry isn't? Hmmm? Vultures indeed.

What would have stopped TV5Monde hack? Yup, MOAR LAWS

Queasy Rider

Turn-around is fair play

“A well-organised exchange of information between member states on cyber-attacks and IT security vulnerabilities can significantly improve our safety level,”

'Cause once we know the vulnerability, WE can use it against OUR enemies.

Secret Bezos delivery helicopters operate from mystery Canadian base to evade US regulators

Queasy Rider

Re: Lots of possible drawbacks to this whole thing

In other words, just like delivery by truck.

Queasy Rider

P.P.S. And don't tell me you wouldn't consider a gun, but you would stand by while your neighbor would draw a bead across your yard at a drone. If I ever saw anybody in my neighborhood pull out a gun and aim it at any thing other than a poisonous snake in his own backyard, I would have the law on him so fast he wouldn't have time to pull on his socks for his trip to the cop shop.

Queasy Rider

Reply Icon

Re: Give the idea a chance

P.S. Maybe I don't like the sound of your dog barking at every bicycle and pedestrian passing by, or snarling at my kids when they pass within fifty feet of your fence, or the sound of your wind chimes keeping me awake every windy night, or the sound of your daughter and her girlfriends squealing when they are playing in your backyard after school, or the sound of your son and his buddies buzzing around the neighborhood on their electric skateboards and scooters, or playing football in the street, or your older, unlicensed kids driving up and down the street in your golf cart with its radio blaring, but I would never suggest they can not or should not. And I most certainly would not suggest a shotgun as a solution. What are you, some kind of terrorist? Don't like the way things are so let's fix it with a gun?

Queasy Rider

Re: Give the idea a chance

Oh really. You are within earshot of all 300 houses in your community, are home all day, every day to listen for drones, keep your windows open all year round so you won't miss a chance to bitch about those drones taking a minute to drop off their packages and return to the truck, and would rather listen to a diesel delivery truck going through the gears entering and backing out of every driveway. It sounds to me like you're not happy unless you've got something to whine about. You might want to look up the term NIMBY.

I live in a small community too. There's a firehouse down the road, a hospital a few miles farther down, an interstate too. Sirens and traffic noises are a fact of life. This is 2015, not 1815. My advise to you is: build a bridge and get over it.

Queasy Rider

Give the idea a chance

Why do some people just have to shoot down every fresh idea before the presenter ever gets a chance to explain? Haters got to hate? Most places I have lived receive Fed Ex and similar packages the same way: the driver pulls up on the street in front of your house, or up your driveway if that's practical, unbuckles his seat belt, jumps out of his truck, walks to the door and drops the package on your front door step. Then he walks back to the truck, buckles up and drives away. All the drone has to do is save the driver a hike to the front door.

OBJECTIONS:

1) Some trigger-happy redneck is going to shoot the drone out of the sky.

ANS: Bullshit, the drone never reaches the sky, and the driver is never more than a few yards from the drone and would clearly be able to identify any shooter.

2) When nobody is home anyone can see the drone delivery and steal the package.

ANS: When nobody is home anyone can see the truck delivery and steal the package. What has changed?

3) Drones have a limited range, less than an hour flying time.

ANS: Who ever claimed drones would be making 30 mile deliveries or used to replace trucks and their drivers. Drones will be employed to make the drivers more efficient, reducing the need to back out of driveways, maybe allowing them to make a few more deliveries per shift, or reducing the amount of trucks on the road, saving gas and wages.

In short, give the idea a chance before you shoot off your mouth that it will never work. And try thinking of why it can work, maybe.

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