Posts by Chronos 1247 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Oct 2007
Do left cunts actually exist? Not come across one of those; they're usually unbiased. Unless you mean Corbyn? :-)
Joking aside, he seems to have manipulated his control over a piece of land to deny the public access to and become the dog-in-a-manger of something utterly priceless: An area of the coastline. I'd say he fits your pithy description quite well.
A little box that goes "bzzt!" (as Kryten would say) as it cattle-prods ad hosts and data fetishists. You just plonk it on your network and make it the default gateway and DNS. A Raspberry Pi III model B+ with the switching regulator will barely read on your electricity bill (you have refused a "smart" meter, I assume? One more gateway to let them know when you're home and when you put the kettle on) and it's pretty much self-maintaining.
You'll still want the uMatrix, uBlock and HTTPS everywhere extensions and you'll also want to think about your browsing habits and how much of that form you truthfully answer, i.e. do they really need my real DoB? A PiHole will take much of the grunt out of sticking a finger or two up to the data thieves, though.
Also, please remember that your e-mail client and many other applications probably also use The Web. Make sure that these doesn't spaff your willy size to the web at large...
I note with interest than Mr Perens conveniently ignores the three and four clause BSD licences which predate both the OSI and GPL. You really can't get much simpler if you want a lawyer-free experience, although they admittedly don't conform to the idealists' view that a licence should enforce openness of the resulting derivatives.
Icon, because Beastie, whose position was usurped by a politically correct sex toy/space hopper a few years ago, roughly around the same time pet projects and idealism screwed up the ports system.
There's always a smartarse, isn't there? The fact that Dabbsy has already observed the outcome in his thread collapses the potential for me using the information in any successful manner and means there's still some surprises for him, too. He may even find that cache of Scottish Euros useless...
Don't say the P word. That opens up a whole new debate on cause, effect and free will.
Dabbsy, you should know this already. Nobody has reached the state of happy contentment of the final release - and won't for a good long while, especially while we still have warring tribes who think their way is The One True Way for whatever reason, be that god bothering, pointless patriotism or political bent.
Just enjoy the bugs and hope they get exposed by someone else's edge-case.
Icon: Expected outcome of this round of testing. It would be so much better if we were to settle it with a sprout-lobbing competition...
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, turd, twat, geek, nerd, boffin and egghead. It's getting a little cumbersome now. I suggest we return to the original seven and sodomise anyone who tries to expand them (or points out that motherfucker is a repetition, technically, of the word "fuck") with a big rubber thingy and then beat them with it until they recant.
Seriously, has this person nothing better to do? Words, as Humpty Dumpty was rumoured to have said, mean exactly what people intend them to mean. Intent is all. In this sense, nerd, geek, boffin and egghead all point toward intellectual attainment which I would have thought was high praise. Perhaps someone's feeling a little insecure and needs a "time out and blankie" session, as our leftpondian colleagues would say?
There's something funny about old supercars that people think were good but were actually shockingly awful. The Countach is becoming the generally accepted benchmark of the breed, especially if you put that silly spoiler on it.
It's a bit like advertising. They try to make you buy something you don't need with money you haven't got that won't do what they want you to think it will do. In that respect, the Testarossa is a very good example.
"These intermediaries, such as browser and operating systems, can impede consumers' ability to exercise choices via the internet that may block digital technologies (e.g. cookies, JavaScripts, and device identifiers) that consumers can rely on to communicate their opt out preferences,"
Icon. These "intermediaries" are communicating a preference on behalf of the consumers who opt to use them. The message is clear: Begone, foul creatures.
No, twat is the past participle of tweet. Comes in very handy when discussing the platform.
"You twat?"
Which, serendipitously, happens to be my default response to many tweets accidentally seen (I never deliberately read that drivel), although with a slightly different inflection and no question mark.
Sounds awful. Let me know which depot serves you and I'll look into it. I will readily admit that mis-sorts do happen and things regularly turn up at our depot which shouldn't, given the automated routing by the lobster in the Coventry hub. We manually re-label these and ensure that the tracking is flawless for the next hop by noon.
The drivers are employed for the most part which, coupled with the route being covered by a regular driver, is what should separate us from the competition. There's no piecework per attempted delivery and they have to take anything failed out the next day. We deliberately use hand-written customer absent cards because it takes longer to write them out correctly than to wait a minute for the householder to answer the door. They're also supposed to write them out on the doorstep which often results in a successful delivery with the slower resident or a neighbour offering to take the parcel in, something that should be attempted anyway where the tracking label doesn't forbid it. The behaviour you describe is actionable and you would be quite within your rights to message the depot via parcelforce.com to have management correct it.
In short, if we communicate properly we can make things work correctly to the satisfaction of all parties. We need to know about this sort of thing so we can correct it. Being just another one of the rotten apples isn't what we want to accomplish.
Disclaimer: I'm just a lowly CSP in a local depot. I have no "clout" but I can and will escalate any issues I'm made aware of via any media to make PF better for our customers.
Yes, PF are trying to address this with PO lists by postcode for the drivers. You can request, via parcelforce.com, to have the package up-lifted to redeliver, hold at depot or hand off to the correct PO free of charge once because of exactly this problem. The advantage of using the on-line system is that it ties in directly with PF's redelivery messaging system, which an administrator in the correct depot will see. Theoretically, the telephone staff should be able to transcribe a call into a redelivery message for you but often these come through without tracking numbers which makes the job ten times more difficult. Use the web site and always include the tracking number.
I sympathise. However, Parcelforce always try to deliver twice rather than taking the first failure as an excuse to mark it "awaiting collection" and you can book a third conveniently timed attempt (i.e. day of your choice) on line free of charge. Even better, PF will deliver to your local Post Office if the parcel isn't too big (will go through the PO's parcel hatch) if requested or if you're not in and the driver has to go to the PO anyway.
PF are under Royal Mail rules, i.e. they must get a signature unless the parcel shows driver option to leave safe or a no signature required contract number so, no matter how many times you leave a note on your door saying stick it in the shed, the driver won't do it. The also cannot alter the first attempt address, even if it's patently wrong, as it compromises mail integrity.
A lot of PF's reputation is because people expect them to act like Yodel, Hermes and such. They won't, and long may that be the case. The only company who beats PF for service and security is DPD and they do this by treating their workers like machines.
Thursday December 12th 2019
The General Erection
Whereupon all the useless pricks in the country stand up to try to win a mandate to hang around wasting time with a bag of bollocks for the next five years.
The fannies in the civil service won’t allow them to enter into any meaningful activity even if a different bunch of cocks win.
You may as well vote for a dildo. It stands more chance of penetrating the establishment and won’t go soft immediately.
The word never had the negative connotations portrayed until the bloody media (Bishop Facks voice) twisted it out of all recognition, probably at the behest of some Sir Humphrey who was worried that hacking things together rather than buying shit was fun and legions of technically literate hackers would be a little harder to bullshit.
Sounds more like woo-woo to me. If I could remember the last time I listened to broadcast radio of any stripe in the car, I'm sure I'd care. Considering the number of Nissans on the road, the last thing I need is the interior of my car filled with the sound of inane fatuousness, mindless drivel and people with an overabundance of cheerfulness and nobody to inflict it upon.
It will be the broadest of bands, outward looking and open for business. We'll have a referendum about the definition of broad, where the party will back a 100mB/s¹ rate. Broadband for the many, not the few! Boris has consistently missed his targets to get broadband done and misled the public about the benefits. We will take a new direction.
I'd say you couldn't make it up, but I just did :-)
¹ yes, that's millibytes. Ed Millibyte will be broadband minister and the GPO will return to its core function of not giving a shit
Aye, t' floor bauds. Kept t' puddle from draining away...
One wonders what will happen when more than a few 5G devices are on these superfast cells. Available spectrum would seem to dictate that they'll go south with alarming rapidity with popularity. Then us'll be back to vibratin' t' damp string, mekin' our own ones to go wi' t' zeroes for 25 hours a day down t' pit while chewing on a gobful of cold gravel as dad chops us up wi' 'is knife and dances on our graves singin' 'allelujah.
That gorgeous dial-up which limited websites to basic low res graphics and huge advancements in compression. Or do you have blazing speeds offering websites quickly with graphics pleasing to the eye that has created the interactive long distant communications we love? Be hard/expensive to facebook message never mind video call previously. Now people do it to avoid mobile phone call charges!
One person's graphics pleasing to the eye is another's pointless chrome. Everything you mention can be done over open, established mechanisms without being dressed up in a frock and monetised. The mechanisms developed to create the dynamic web we see today have been driven not by aesthetics but by a desire to hide things from view such as web beacons, supercookies and offline storage. That Javascript, for example, can be used to create engaging content is a side-effect.
It also required (note, "required" past tense because we've pretty much hit a ceiling for general purpose computing and the upgrade hell is now the sole preserve of mobile telephones) consumers upgrade more and more just to display this needless chrome. Now we've hit a plateau, one wonders just how fast the web could be without all the cross-site tracking, advertising pulls from the bare minimum specified kit behind load balancers, surreptitious insertion of unique identifiers and content delivery as a service. I suspect that metric is far, far better than what we have at present and it would seem that these data fetishists and ad bureaux are wasting your, my and everyone else's time, money and sanity for very little return.
Governments are inherently untrustworthy as anyone who wants power over others is exactly the type of person you don't give it to. However, they are removable, at least partially democratically elected and accountable here in Capatalistia. The likes of Zuck and Google aren't accountable to anyone.
In short, old boy, you're talking out of your tail-feathers while defending the indefensible.
The T word is the issue in all of this. I, personally, don't trust anyone until they've earned it. Overriding one's basic right to control who we trust is a trust-damaging act in itself, which is why we now have this negative feedback loop: You lose trust in Big Data, they push for more and remove control, you trust them even less, ad infinitum. Google's removal of the WebAccess API in Chrome, crippling µ[Matrix|Block] is a case in point. All that is going to do is either drive market share of Chrome down or usage of, e.g., PiHole up with the concomitant perception of Google being even more untrustworthy.
I completely get the idea of quid pro quo for web services, it's just that there should be choice. It's a bit like the TV Licence; people should not be forced to contribute to something they feel is not good value, in this case sacrificing privacy for a few shiny baubles.
The RSGB represent themselves and their own agenda. No more, no less. Ask the Milton Keynes Amateur Radio Society about how many fucks the RSGB give about important historic radio sites, for example.
This is highly unlikely to be a licensed amateur anyway. More likely it's someone who stumbled upon an RTL-SDR and went looking for something interesting to do with it. The beeps and boops filling the VHF/UHF spectrum seem mysterious and interesting but, as this so eloquently shows, there's bugger all content in most of it. You'd have to be really bored to find this interesting. AIS broadcasts are much more fun for about ten minutes.
As for prosecuting for passing unencrypted data about, paging a doctor is hardly more than "ring the ICU at your earliest" at its best and only exists because wandering around a multiple acre hospital site looking for the bugger is too time consuming. No patient data was harmed in this entry level geekery and old school pagers are being turned off fairly soon anyway. This person's prosecutable mistake was making what he or she received available to a third party.
Since most hospitals now have WiFi discos volante in the ceiling tiles, I can think of an emerging application for ESP32s and OLED displays that replicate the whole thing securely, Star Trek commbadge-esque. Well, as securely as WiFi can possibly be, at any rate.
"Alexa, where is Doctor Majengwe?"
"Doctor Majengwe is asleep in the autoclave room after a 45 hour shift on shit pay. Do you wish to deprive her of any more sleep?"
The one thing that needs addressing for EVs to be viable is the replacement cost of the pack. Sure, address fast charging if you must but do, please, sort this bleeding money pit out first. Until this goes away, I'll be sticking with internal combustion and a fuel tank that doesn't need a >£5k replacement every five to eight years.
The old G-Wizz that everyone loves to hate are a case in point: These used lead acid, which are cheaper than li-ion, and you still see mountains of the things with "requires new battery." It's far from ecological to waste a whole vehicle just because its fragile, volatile energy storage system is shit. The only reason you don't see Priusen scrapped because their electrical storage ist kaput is because they have a petrol engine that hides the fact.
...but it's still massively entertaining when you're right? That. Just one little hole:
"Self driving vehicles?" The director burbles.
"Already taken care of. Your Lexus is the test case and it's trundling down the road as we speak. Who knew it was as easy as painting double yellow lines and alerting a passing traffic warden?"
Absolutely not. First you'll have to fill in form DA-726 part A (Ownership of Dangerous Animal - Imaginary) for the leopard. You'll also have to register your filing cabinet and provide the Home Office with a master key for RIPA purposes.
Incidentally, unused lavatories will now be subject to an extension of the bedroom tax.
Icon. Or is it?
I find that the most notable cause of this phenomenon is manufacturers (HP, I'm looking at you and your piss-awful ultrabooks) who omit the ubiquitous HDD LED. I can't tell what the machine is doing, if anything, and the bloody thing looks like it's sulking. Right! I warned you! You're now going to get a bloody good thrashing!
/FX half a tree hitting a laptop
I really do wish a certain purveyor of logistics services had a BYOD policy. This, on top of having fifteen disparate interfaces to a similar number of back-ends open, many of which don't render properly on the aforesaid craptops, Windows' inability to copy selects to the clipboard without being told, utter lack of middle-click paste, various UI "innovations" that maximise a window you really want to bog off from view and trying to organise collections for various route drivers who don't want to do them is a fast-track to male pattern baldness and asset damage.
I really should have stuck with torturing users myself. Being on the other end isn't any better.
And there's nothing illegal about mailing gold to people. I've purchased jewelry online.
Except for the small detail that if it goes "missing," the UPU members all say you have exactly zero comeback. Missing includes games of parcel football, sticky fingers and outright failure to deliver. Sending precious metals through a postal system is about as secure as leaving it on the street.
Also, I now have a mental picture of Mr Shouty walking around like a 7 stone adenoidal Mr T replete with sovereign rings, capped teeth and many bling chains and I cannot unsee that which my mind's eye hast beheld. Please pass the mind bleach.
Try it in Welsh. A few miles down the road from here is a village. It's Ffynnongroyw at one end and Ffynnongroew at the other. Now I'm wondering where the demarcation line is for the two and if the people in the middle get locked up for identity theft just because one letter doesn't match on their bills.
Isn't modern life just wonderful?
US view of communism:
* Not having guns in every room
* Not having one of those little stars and stripes pins on your pyjamas
* Having pyjamas
* Not ending every sentence with "God Bless America"
* Having cushions on your sofa
* Any engine with less than 8 cylinders or a flat plane crank
* Pronouncing "aluminium" properly
* Beer that isn't akin to making love in a canoe (fucking close to water)
I fail to see how anything technical will even register despite the fact that the real commies already do what this lot want to do and it would make a lot of sense to associate the two.
They’ll mandate we have some kind of audio monitoring device in our homes next.
Plenty of scope. Smart metering, smart TVs, smart speakers, iThings, stock Android, the connected infotainment in your car, Ring doorbells...
/me reads it again
Oh, wait, that was sarcasm, wasn't it. Oh, ha ha. You got me.
Patel and Barr are just figureheads. The driving force behind these pushes for no privacy persist far beyond administration changes and it'll never go away. If one faces the fact that neither of these mouthpieces have the vaguest clue what "encryption" is beyond being human-unreadable on the wire, one will realise fairly quickly that they're being fed canned speeches and rhetoric by Sir Humphrey or his USian counterpart, Hank J. Dingleberry III. They're called permanent secretaries for a reason, you know.
Suggest extending this into and oversight of stock trading systems, bank transfer conduits and public finances, however, and you'd hear the screams of chagrin whilst standing in one of the most unpopulated bits of Mongolia.
LDAP/Kerberos. It's one of the very few things MS got right - then screwed it up by requiring a load of proprietary nonsense in DNS to make it work¹, compounding that by making realms so complicated so as to be completely unrecognisable to even the experienced *nix admin. Linux just requires a couple of config files, a PAM module or two and an nsswitch tweak.
FSVO of "making it work" which MS deems as being "when nothing but Windows can use it"
Having been a maintainer of several FreeBSD ports in the past, I have to point out that *BSD isn't an option if so many of the applications we rely on not to use "Linuxisms"¹ assume SysD is in place. It'll make porting, supporting and using said applications a bloody nightmare. Shims that fake SysD's APIs are all well and good but many simple things rely on direct access and edge cases that aren't covered because Poettering moved his mouse or it simply wasn't exposed in normal usage are legion. If the default in the *nix world is to do all of this via SystemD, your worldview from an alternative environment becomes increasingly narrow.
Bottom line is if Slackware and Devuan become impossible, so do many of the ports in the *BSDs. What is actually needed is education of distro maintainers in Unix fundamentals such as One Task Done Properly and code portability. SystemD is almost proprietary in its effect.
¹ See the porters' handbook for details.
it says the Supreme Court has authority over Parliament
Not quite. As I read the ruling, the justices are very careful to stress the opposite, that the PM's advice to Her Madge removed parliamentary sovereignty and that it is for the parliamentary authorities to sort out now they have been restored in their prerogatives. All the SC did was reset the clock to before the Scruffy Scarecrow went beyond the pale and triggered a load of pomp, circumstance and archaic nonsense on a hollow pretence.
The ruling, in effect, has said "parliament had been castrated for no good reason; we've sewn its nuts back on but it's up to parliament to make sure they stay on from this point forward as we have no authority save upholding convention and the law."
The shit scarecrow will be even more despised when he manipulates the wording of "That Act" they just passed to force the Prime Minister to request an extension by resigning, triggering another leadership election and leaving the UK without a PM to request said extension.
"I will obey the law." Yes, but Machiavelli would be so proud.
So if you’re listening, bank regulators and European politicians: quit your worrying and complaining. Facebook remains just as trustworthy and reliable as it always was.
Exactly. Think of a round figure then subtract another number¹ from it.
¹ an extremely large number, more than the estimate of electrons in the Universe
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