Posts by John Brown (no body) 28765 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"So it doesn't look like Apple wants him back, either."
...or maybe after 10 years of Apple, and 6 months in Tesla, he's at a point where he wants to work somewhere where there's a bit less of a toxic "work always comes first" environment.
I spent 12 years in a relatively high pressure environment. I'd never ever want to go back to that. Some people thrive like that, some only while young, many don't.
"Give an inch and some people will take a mile. I've seen too many people assuming that to assist or aid is to do completely, it isn't."
You'd almost think no one had ever seen the apocryphal story of the motor-home driver crashing while on cruise control because he went back to make a cup of coffee. Considering the number of times it gets trotted out, you'd think that any company producing vehicles with cruise control from basic through adaptive, to lane-assist, they'd have big warnings all over the place, eg manuals and on the sun-visor, maybe on the steering wheel, to remind people they are still in charge. People are people, and the engineers simply CANNOT assume that drivers will understand the limitations.
I'm getting a strong sense from the article that the car kept going despite the likely instant death of the driver and the ripping off of the entire roof. Some sensors were obviously damaged as it went on to crash into some trees, but from the article write-up, didn't appear to have made any attempt to do the equivalent of "oh shit, hit the brakes!".
At the very least, there must have been a huge physical shock through the car bod and chassis as the roof was ripped off, sudden changes in the environmental cabin sensors, ie lots of data screaming that something significant had happened and yet the car seems to have driven on, oblivious to the accident.
"At 1.1 TB, the database has over 5K per voter....that's more than just what was listed in the article."
According to the BBC article, it was spreadsheets. Excel overhead? Was it even a database or just a few immense spreadsheets? Or was it a database with reports produced in spreadsheet form all in one big trove?
"after school or lunchtime or other extra activity time is set aside for giving pupils the chance to experiment and play with computers under *hopefully* the watchful eye of someone who knows about them and can help them, but importantly is not a 'classroom' or other academic setting of learning"
That's where my electronics hobby came from. There was some basics of electronics in Physics (more electrics, really) and various bits of transistor and logic gate theory in Comp. Studies, but actual electronics construction with real soldering irons was a school club every Tues evening and everyone was doing something different. Not a class of 30 all building the same traffic light controller!
"My daughter is in year nine of one of the country's top girl's grammar schools...She is now going to do French instead and is very disappointed."
Maybe they are still under the impression that they are training up future diplomats and senior civil servants wives?
"No disrespect to the lecturers, but they are being expected to teach a subject which they barely know themselves"
For some reason, this seems to have been a failing in anything involving teaching computers in UK schools going back many years. I wonder if they put physics teachers into the job with little to no training in physics as opposed to teaching? I wonder if this is an extension of "oh, computers, I don't much about them and I don't want to" badge of honour at the hiring level?
At O level, we got maths teachers. One was doing the pilot A level while teaching us O level. We all learned a lot together because both he and we were interested. At A level we got a Systems Analyst from the local council IT/Mainframe dept. on secondment. She was great and really knew her stuff! Those sorts of teachers seem to be few and far between in current teaching. Or maybe it's all the keystages, ongoing assessments and paperwork taking up too much of their time.
"90% of jobs might require "digital skills" but how many of those will be exclusively using proprietary systems that a GCSE won't teach them?"
Right. There needs to be encouragement to look at all available course, but teaching every pupil CompSci is not essential by any means. But it should be an available choice. A good rounded education is good for everyone, even if much of the stuff you learn is never used again. There are large chunks of my education that I've never needed to know since I studied it, but the overall general knowledge and the ability to know what I don't know but does exists somewhere can still be useful. I don't need to know the terms of the Versaille Peace treaty any more, but knowing it was one of the causes of the lead up to WW2, ie learning from historical mistakes and thinking through the likely consequences of decisions, is useful.
Was listening to an interview from a few years ago about this. The obviously young interviewer and the obviously young interviewee were exploring the possibilities and the interview seemed surprised that computer science and programming should be taught "at high school level" and the teach said there was a "gap in the market". FFS, do these people know nothing? I was doing programming as part of Computer Studies O and A level almost 40 years ago!
Doesn't the US have *ANY* laws to protect employees? I know a lot of states are "at will", but FFS, this is just taking the biscuit! It's like some 3rd world economy. Yeah, workers get paid for their work, sometimes, but doesn't the fact they show up for work every day require a little bit of loyalty from the employer, even if it's brought about and forced by legislation? I know "socialism" is a dirty word in the Land of the Free, but you guys really ought to think about hanging onto the baby before you throw the bathwater out. No one should ever have to sue just to get the pay they earned, let alone get sacked for having the temerity to complain about it.
"Facebook's technical fix, according to the company spokesperson, involves the creation of administrative accounts not associated with personal Facebook accounts, "
Yep, it's amazing. Even AOL worked this out back in the dial up days. Kids today, pah! Will lessons be learned? Maybe, but too late. They should have learned these lessons before they were allowed into the real world (as much as Facebook is in the real world)
"Ultimately, that's the real cost of doing this sort of thing, not a token fine."
No, it's not, because those us like you are a tiny drop in the ocean of customers who don't give a shit, are apathetic about it (cost of doing business, it's just how world is nowadays) or actually think the retailer cares about them personally.
Paris, because she cares!
"I buy Halon Gas back from data centers, so if your afraid of the discharge let me know i send you some Cash or BC.I have herd the horror stories like that over the years, i actually recharge those tanks as well here in the US, were still allowed to service them."
This reads like some Nigerian Prince just died and someone wants me to help them move some money out of the country!
Maybe older programmers get paid more due to years of experience and grew up with 80 column terminals so tabbing across causes more line-wrap that necessary whereas aligning using only the even numbered columns helps keep lines shorter. Although I first learned programming using 80 column coding sheets, then 80(ish) column teletypes, I also had to deal with 40 column x 25 line CRT CBM PET and 64 column x 16 line TRS-80. Keeping my code compact and lines short is deeply ingrained.
"But not so much to secure their data it seems..."
That's where the $628,000 comes from. $1000 of man-hours to inform the victims of the leaked data (being generous!) and the other $627,000 to implement the security that should have been in place already.
"This worked well in the 60's and 70's, but by the time the 90's came along many people realised all sorts of odd things could happen when the date ticked over from 99 to 00."
FYI, many people were aware of the issue as early as the 70's and earlier. Pensions, mortgages etc doing valuations many years into the future, long term payment schedules etc. It wasn't generally considered, but there people and industries affected and thinking about long before the BBC told Joe Public there would an ITpocalypse!
Although it's pretty obvious at this stage that that the ruling is aimed purely at The Pirate Bay and similar sites that are almost elusively full of links to copyright infringing material, we all just know that the lawyers will be salivating at the gates over this ruling and picking it apart in the finest detail to see how they can re-purpose it for other means and apply it across the entire EU.
"2. Amazon UK/DE has worked for me in the past. Now it doesn't."
it's probably related to the new rules on VAT and where it's payable when distance purchasing across borders. Borders? I hear you ask, isn't the EU supposed to be a "common market" with free trade? Apparently only under the right circumstances, especially where digital content and IP rights holders are involved.
"I used to use a DVD/Hard-drive PVR setup to transfer programmes from SKY onto DVD and then rip them to whatever format I wanted, long winded but served the purpose. Much easier to just press a button."
Virginmedia boxes allow you to copy programmes off them too, but not through the HDMI output so only stuff downscaled to SD. I can record and watch HD only if I keep the recordings on their rather small internal disks.
"Companies see that 2 "Full-HD" monitors next to each other are popular, therefore they bring out one that combines the same number of pixels."
Yep. The primary bit of software that our section of the company relies on 90% of the time was always a pain on the 4:3 screens because they put the main menu in a column down the left side so we were forever scrolling right. They finally fixed that issue about a year after widescreen monitors were standard issue and put all the menus along the top. Now we are forever scrolling down. Twats!
"It's good for films too "
I can easily imagine some chav getting one to use as a TV via cable or sat box and then setting everything up for ultra-stretchyvision cos, "well we paid for all that space so we're gonna use it" cos of black bars on "normal" wide screen broadcasts :-)
I'm sure we've all seen people with 16:9 TVs watching stretched 4:3.
My technician was telling me only yesterday that he was in a store and a guy was buying a "gold-plated optical audio cable". I can't even fathom how that works. But the guy paid a fortune for it because "it'll make it sound better".
Well, it's obvious, innit! The gold plating helps the light bounce around better inside the tube with minimal leakage. The cheap tat with just a black coating absorbs the light leakage instead of reflecting it back in like wot the gold does, innit! So you get a better and stronger signal at the other end. Lossless, innit!
"I have had this broom years and it's only had 6 new handles and 5 new heads. - Trigger, Only Fools and Horses."
I once got sent to a job, not without a little trepidation, because at least three other techs had been to this particular PC multiple times and from the records, every last part of the innards had each been replaced at least once. That left two options, so boss sent me out with a mains tester that would record spikes and drops etc. Rather than plug the device in and spend possibly quite some time doing nothing in the hope that "the event" would happen, ie the PC would reboot, I decided to gently tap the PC on each of its sides. It's a mini tower and the slightest knock on the side nearest the motherboard cause the now infamous "event". So I took the motherboard out, complete with it's mounting tray (remember them?), and looked down the gap and sure enough, the tray is bent and almost, but not quite, touching the solder points of the board. No doubt a temperature change would cause the metal to "pop" or maybe a kick from the user moving her feet around was causing the random reboots.
Remove board from tray, bend tray the other way, reassemble and all is well with the world, the universe is in balance and I never had to go back to that site again. Shame really, the user was very nice and I'd have liked to get to know her a bit better (I was still single back then!). I sometimes wonder if the other techs thought the same and that's why they never found the fault.
"accessibility of the individual property"
OR already have easy access to almost every property in the UK and far easier access to new builds than anyone else. Builders often will only allow BT into the new estates at build time and no one else can get in for a year or two until the land/road/footpath access is handed over to the local council. I'm sure VM and others would love to put fibre down in the new-build ducts alongside BT.
"technology is widely seen in the nation as the solution to its upcoming labour shortage"
Initially, solves a few problems, such as an impending labour shortage and a population needing care now and increasing as time goes on.
But what happens in a generation when the newly ageing population is smaller, as is the workforce, but there are even fewer jobs because everything "easy" is automated?
Pretty much all copy protection is defeated eventually and the people most likely to be affected by it are the everyday people who, if they can't get it free or cheap;y or make their own backups, will pay for a pirate copy at the car boot. It's the organised counterfeiters who make big money from large copying runs who have the most incentive to break copy protections mechanisms and they are more likely to be connected to organised crime. Or, gasp, terrists!!!!!!111!!1!!1!
"Newer models have the ability of accepting emails as print jobs, which means a port have to be opened for it to listen to something. This feature gives me the heebie-jeebies and I have disabled it. Great idea, but risky. No thanks."
Apart from a few rare edge case, I can't imagine email to print being anywhere near enough a "must have" to install it into the firmware of so many printers. I suspect it's purely a marketing thing in an attempt to differentiate and add to the list of features when selling them.
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