Posts by Commswonk

Only few, and mostly non-native English, will get the reference.

Unfortunately being older rather than younger is also a prerequisite.

But since we're on the subject:

There was a young curate from Kew

Who kept his pet cat in a pew

He taught it each week

A new letter in Greek

But it never got further than µ.

Re: This:

You didn't come here to avoid pedantry, I hope?

As the original poster has a silver badge then any hope of avoiding pedantry should have been dispelled long ago.

Re: Walt Disney does it...

Are you hoping to become a Glasgow - based journo for El Reg?

Chop a tree down, plant another one.

And they converted themselves into paper with printing without any CO₂ being generated how exactly?

I think there needs to be regulation put into law for IoT tat before it's too late.

Er... it's already too late.

Re: "Pedantically, neither of these phrases are correct"

Pedantically neither of these phrases is correct.

Re: Failure of democracy.

This report and many other incidents are showing everyone that our present forms of governments do not, can not or will not represent the interest of citizens.

Well said; very well said actually. I just hope that nobody is particularly surprised at the statement because it's been bloody obvious for a long time.

Re: He is a professional "Internet Marketeer"

To paraphrase Voltaire...

If Grant Shapps did not exist it would not be necessary to invent him.

Re: I feel sorry,

Written from where, exactly?

Re: Just too smiple for words.

Smiple?

Does not compute, Captain.

Re: Pah!

I just had to log in for the sole purpose of giving that an upvote.

Re: Hmm.

PNG... PNG... PNG

Persona Non Grata; how the hell did IT manage to hijack an existing acronym for its own selfish ends?

And why was it allowed to get away with it?

Re: "while it dismantled its pension and social services to contain costs"

@ LDS: That was wholly a Greek decision.

As, we must assume, was employing Golden Sacks to massage the books so that the country could join the Euro.

A decision that has cost others dear...

Congratulations; 4 incorrectly used apostrophes and a couple of missing capital letters in 3 lines.

If English isn't your first language then forgiveness might just be available.

Re: Sorry, I didn't catch that

I'd be willing to join the Civil Service as a Director General of Mumbled Excuses and CEO of MAaaSS).

Sorry; that post was filled some time ago and there is a list of highly qualified applicants waiting for the next vacancy.

Re: Self driving car

From the article: As part of the data-slurping system, each Disco also runs a separate driverless car software suite that responds appropriately to the car’s sensor inputs. Although its outputs are disconnected, they are logged: analysts can then compare the software’s responses to real-world stimuli to what the driver himself actually did.

That's all well and good, but there is an important bit of information missing; in fact there is a whole list of important bits missing.

There is no apparent way of determining why the human driver's decision making process resulted in the action he/she took being different to what the software would have done. Is it going to be assumed that the human was wrong, possibly correctly if the result was some sort of impact. Because "why did he/she do that" cannot be determined (not obviously anyway) there is no way for the software to learn anything; it can only respond the way someone in a lab somewhere told it to respond.

And in any given scenario that way might be wrong.

What I don't get is why *none* of the political parties are pointing out that electric cars are a luxury item and therefore should *not* be subsidised...

Because politicians like to live in a world where external realities are excluded when those realities are in conflict with their deeply cherished beliefs. In the case of EVs technical realities are ruthlessly ignored because to recognise them would result in the politicians having to acknowledge that their dreams are just that; dreams.

EVs are seen as an "environmental" matter and as is all too often obvious the environmental lobby has politicians in some sort of Vulcan death grip.

Re: nice

Kudos indeed, but it's hardly a new concept. Go and spend a moment or two searching for Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats and you'll find that you need the "Black Hat". (But don't throw the others away; they are also useful!)

Re: Calling Mr Kim!

@ codejunky: I am not sure that would work. It isnt going to take a great deal to defeat wooden rockets and troops with sub-par kit.

You mean like last time there was fighting in Korea? Or for a more recent example think"Vietnam". If it came down to fighting (I hesitate to say "limited war", because it probably wouldn't be in any sense "limited") then there would be no certainty that China and/or Russia wouldn't support the NK cause for their own reasons, but even if both countries were prepared to sit on the sidelines it is hard to see how SK could escape near total destruction.

As has been shown time and time again just hurling big munitions on to a piece of territory is not enough to defeat it; it needs boots on the ground and it doesn't need a fertile imagination to see where that could lead. Like I said earlier... think Vietnam. Simply decapitating the NK regime in the expectation that that would be enough to ensure instant victory is fantasy.

Re: The unfortunate thing about this

We get the government we deserve, I guess.

An oft - repeated idea, but I fail to see why we (i.e. the voters) should get the blame. What past sins did we commit to have the sort of governments that we do? All we can do is put a cross in a box; as I said on a different thread a few days ago if all the candidates are dunderheads then dunderheads are elected. Not exclusively, perhaps, but in sufficient numbers to be highly damaging to UK national interests and the individual interests of the electors.

In any case foreign & defence policies rarely if ever feature in election manifestos; far too specialist for electors to worry about.

So - please - no more blaming the electorate. The defects are in those we elect, and the party we vote for matters not one jot; we have no choice but to elect fools.

Re: Outlaw the use of "up to" - it is lying about the truth

Not strictly, er... true. It is the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

If supermarkets tried to sell (say) tins of bean labelled "Contains "up to" 5 x 50 gram servings they would find themselves being pursued by customers and officialdom alike. Ditto pints of beer or litres of petrol.

I suspect that the trouble is that marketeers cannot work in anything that isn't short and snappy, probably based on the assumption that their likely customers can't either*, so putting in any sort of caveat about the limitations in speed that might arise is seen as impractical and pointless.

* They might, of course, be right.

Would you care to explain why do you think the original phrasing was inaproppriate?

Muphry's Law (or one of its variants) strikes again...

Re: Little Jim

Not sure that's appropriate here, but on the plus side it means I'm not the only El Reg habitué who remembers the Goon Show.

Re: high % women?

Rather odd this...

Women under - represented in the boardroom? Result; complaints.

Women over - represented in TV Licencing prosecutions? Result; complaints.

Raise this on El Reg? Likely outcome - downvotes.

Whether you're a techy or not, if you're drafting laws, you CALL IN EXPERTS.

But they do; unfortunately they are experts in drafting laws, not experts in what the law in question is actually trying to address.

"We have consulted with experts, and they advise us that this isn't the best way to go about things, so we will look for other solutions". What the hell is negative about that sentence?

Nothing negative, but from a politician's viewpoint it's simply wrong. Their approach is

"We have consulted with experts, and they advise us that this isn't the best way to go about things, so we will look for other solutions experts."

Re: "accusing them of derailing Britain’s “golden opportunity” to take a lead in 5G"

I would be interested to know the grounds for believing in any such "golden opportunity". Apart from anything else 5G will be the subject of an international standard (see a later post on the subject) and the UK is highly unlikely to be a manufacturing base for any of the component hardware.

So where, exactly, would this "lead" come from?

Re: saving lives, expanding mobility and reducing congestion

@ Tom 7: A largely centralised system will be able to dispatch routes to all vehicles that mostly avoid congestion. Proper load balancing can take place.

I think you have just introduced a whole new level (or levels) of possible FAIL, because as described your system would require each vehicle to upload its destination details to some Deep Thought somewhere so that routes can be allocated per vehicle and downloaded to each vehicle. Where is the bandwidth for all that going to come from?

If such an idea was to "work" the most likely outcome would be that the solution to congestion on (say) the M25 would be to introduce congestion on all the surrounding roads, assuming of course that they aren't already clogged up.

I live near the M6 and am only too aware of what happens locally if anything really major happens on it; in case you haven't guessed the result it is local roads become completely impassable, as opposed to being just very busy.

I am of the view that too many people see "autonomous" vehicles being some sort of panacea for all the current driving ills; your optimism may be admirable but in my opinion it is simply the stuff of dreams; it is highly unrealistic. A (large) degree of scepticism is required.