Servers & DRM too
I don't know? "Plays for Sure".
Do Tesco Hudl Tablets still brick when reset?
I think one model of Amazon Kindle on a particular FW "bricks" if you Factory Reset it, maybe DX Graphic.
9252 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007
And also that might make money
Geocities?
The website for epub specs erased when that crowd merged to the Web lot.
Some bosses just like clean desks and no dusty files in the cabinets.
The BBC used to destroy 16mm film and "save" £85 per episode recording over tapes when better practice and a fraction of production cost would be new tapes for each recording.
Probably a decision made by a manager or accountant that has never had to unexpectedly refurbish, restore, repair or commission old gear.
This will cost more in operator time than than leaving it alone and the risk that something important is removed.
Rules of IT:
Make backups
Make Archival copies that are not overwritten
Never delete archives.
Never EVER delete production files, ever, unless you have an entire system backed up, verified the backup restores on another box and someone is checking what you are doing.
rm is not your friend
rm -rf / is the devil's tool. Especially with --no-preserve-root
Was Bose, Beats, Sonos etc ever other than hyped style & price & size more important than function.
Also €250 for Apple earbuds that you can't change the battery on and are less adaptable than €6 wired earbuds for your ears. I'll stick with a phone that has a 3.5mm socket and my €12 earbuds + mic.
I solved TV sound issue (both TVs have like laptop speakers) by using a Chinese HDMI/Optical/RCA Digital to 5.1 analogue adaptor, with also a stereo down mix. Feeds regular dumb amps and speakers.
It's not about operating out of the US, but lack of regulation and oversight of US companies in the US, control, privacy etc. Safe Harbor has proved to be an illusion.
Everyday big US companies ignore the laws outside of the USA.
Just because a US company already have both Irish and British subsidiaries that are authorised merchant services providers by the relevant authority in each country shouldn't mean automatic approval.
Maybe ALL US ownership of companies processing EU data needs looked at. Would the USA allow foreign citizens to own and run even a TV station?
"These molecules are excited by the laser’s energy and react by vibrating and rotating."
So that's why it's called Laughing Gas.
Also I thought we had the MASER before the LASER. Isn't this band more like microwave than infrared? Though it's too early in the morning for figures and I can't remember what frequency a MASER could do. Most MASER applications are now done by GaAs FETs, but some are still used.
Some sums on an envelope would have suggested that it would need far more GPU and CPU than is available outside of a supercomputer lab. The response time to head and eye movement was known, the field of view and resolution needed was known. What they were promising wasn't possible and probably still isn't and won't be for a long time for even a well off business, never mind the public. Ten high end gaming rigs wouldn't be enough. You need very rapid head and eye tracking to avoid sickening lag.
It didn't help that all their "demos" have been essentially mockups so far.
I've saved nearly €700 in paper and toner "printing" to ebook. Read, annotate and copy back notes to laptop from an Amazon Kindle or Rakuten Kobo. Sony has a 13" + size one for PDFs called Electronic paper.
The eink is a niche. Inherently useless for colour (possible but about x6 dimmer) or video (massive ghosting and lag), but viable for paperback book sized text & B&W images. Reformatted web sites via Wordprocessor & Calibre are OK.
We just use the Laser printer for colour and scanning. Ink jet is too expensive and unreliable, we gave them up once everyone we knew had laptops and smartphones (+ Viber) to see the family snaps.
I keep mentioning this on Carl Icahn stories:
"That word doesn't mean what you think it means"
The correct descriptions are indeed Corporate Raider, Vulture Capitalist, Speculator... Maybe even Serial Asset stripper. Is there ANYONE that's an Activist Investor? You know, like Greenpeace buying into a Whaling Company to get them to make money catching plastic waste from the ocean and recycling it. I know a poor example. Maybe someone can think of one.
Every computer I've used since 1979 had a good keyboard. Except the Apple II, which was the last I personally owned, but I had the misfortune to fix the "screen on half a ball models" for some people.
Every laptop I've ever had, first about 1998, has had an Escape key. HP, Dell, Lenovo full laptops, and various netbooks.
Every computer I've had since 1992 was great to type on. I also use a real mouse.
It seems extremely expensive.
Ditch it.
1) Anyone with Facebook needs email to register, so email family and friends.
2) Corporate support? Get your own website.
3) Advertising? Stop funding this immoral US Mega corp. They lie about responses achieved, they've admitted it. Also targeting may break religious, gender, income, race/ethnic discrimination laws in many countries.
No, it's all the evil 3rd party scripts, cookies, monitoring etc. Much by Google or inspired by Google.
Installing and using uMatrix helps.
No idea why 3rd party cookies are not disabled by default. I've never found disabling 100% breaks anything and aren't they illegal in Europe?
Also evil Google CAPTCHA systems that delay access to sites and are simply Google being a parasite on training data sets. SHAME on web sites installing those!
Service Providers can sell your data under this law? Am I mistaken?
No-one, EVER, should be allowed to pass on personal data or usage without a warrant. Like for a search of a building. Selling on information gathered should simply be illegal no matter how it's gathered or the kind of company.
Still it's a start. Google, Facebook and cronies are despicable parasites.
If it's just about textbook weight, why not ANY 10" or larger laptop or tablet, iOS, Mac OS, Chromebook, Microsoft, Android or Linux.
Why would decent Irish Language text books be ONLY on the iPad? Which if true is a scandal too, a much bigger one.
I know one Limerick school that does this. It's wrong headed. You can't object, because then you'd not get in.
Note in most Irish Schools the parents have to buy the books. There is a racket in primary school where many textbooks are also combined workbooks that can't be reused.
The ones that aren't are changed regularly.
I know one of the schools.
If it's just about text book weight, why not ANY 10" or larger laptop or tablet, iOS, Mac OS, Chromebook, Microsoft, Android or Linux.
Why would decent Irish Language text books be ONLY on the iPad?
If the text books are only on the iPad that's a scandal too, a much bigger one.
What Apple and the Limerick Educators are saying doesn't match reality.
There are BETTER printed Irish resources and if you MUST use a screen, a laptop is better and cheaper than the walled Garden iPad.
No screen at all is proven to be best.
70% markup and a walled garden designed purely for browsing content.
It smells of either idiocy or corruption.
Other thoughts:
1) They shouldn't be locked to Apple,
2) They don't need screens except in very few subjects.
3) It's proven to be poorer than education without screens,
4) Anything cloud based should be illegal.
5) The ease of use is a lie. It's just inflexible.
Because, actually the ESA isn't an EU organisation. Not all EU countries are in the ESA, though the the EU as a whole contributes. Also there are three (I think) non-EU countries in the ESA.
It's explained accurately in this otherwise fictional account of Aliens visiting earth. "The Solar Alliance" by Ray McCarthy. The Aliens quickly figure out that the UN is mostly a talking shop. The ESA and EU take them longer to understand. A new Earth agency is setup by the countries with space launch facilities, or willing to make a major commitment, but who is REALLY running the Solar Alliance, with its HQ in Shannon Ireland, an Israeli Finance director and an ex KGB/SVR Russian in charge of Security?
Available to install on Windows as long ago as NT4.0, just not promoted by MS.
UNIX/Linux has ALWAYS theoretically had multiple desktops.
Explain again why I'd want the pseudo laptop / Cloud Terminal spyware from Google rather than Windows, MacOS or Linux?
Calling it Self Driving or Auto Pilot is a marketing gimmick. Some countries already insist it's only marketed and described as a cruise control.
Can we make it a criminal offence to hype AI. Or maybe to use AI at all in the description of a product. AI has become a meaningless marketing term too.
Directors should be personally liable. A fine on a company is no deterrent.
No, they have already done dodgy deals with UK Health trusts.
However no way should anyone anywhere approve this. This serves three purposes:
1) Yet another buy in instead of development. Android was bought in and very successful for phones and tablets. Garbage on TVs and a disaster on wearables. Android & Chrome & ChromeOS replace the street view war-driving.
2) Gather even more personal data.
3) Compete with Apple in Apple's last niche, which having got off to a poor start the Apple Watch is inexplicably doing well.
Thus Google buying Fitbit was inevitable given failure of Android wearables/watch and growth of Apple smart watch. Also the Apple Watch has been adding health features.
Not always.
A positive DNA match with the suspect can even be someone the suspect doesn't know, a false positive.
A negative DNA match exonerates the suspect*.
DNA testing at crime scenes is a big advance. But not as reliable as fingerprints. It's not a 100% detailed test. OTH, identical twins don't actually have a 100% match, but a better match than what is normally regarded as positive at a crime scene. Yet amazingly they DO have different fingerprints because those will develop differently even with a perfect clone or identical twins.
[* though they need to sample the DNA of the suspect widely if the person is a chimera, that is their own twin, then they have two sets of DNA! However a negative on both sets is conclusive.]
It's not the same scenario as individuals charged under a criminal justice system, nor indeed civil law, where more often you do have to prove you didn't do wrong. It's a completely different issue especially as many big international companies are more powerful than countries and think laws don't apply to them at all.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_corporate_acquisitions_and_mergers
These lists are incomplete.
Victorian Antony Trollope saw a lot of this coming: "The Way We Live Now".
c.f. Dickens and "Little Dorrit".
Or John Brunner and "Shockwave Rider", far better than over hyped "Future Shock".
Maybe even Roland Perry "Program for a Puppet".
Which Corp is most like House Harkonnen?
Often those run better on WINE or an XP virtual machine (both on Linux) than on Windows 10 64 bit.
Some newer Linux distros need a poke to get the WINE 32 bit support installed, which IMO is more important than 64 bit for "legacy windows" applications with no Linux replacement that may never have an upgrade released.
Smaller projects only need a spreadsheet and one manager that spends a few minutes a day or even per week updating it.
I used to give courses in MS Project and was appalled how many people were sent on the course with zero training in project management, or indeed in anything other than doing work set by a supervisor. Also it's better suited to NON-Software projects. Big ones.
Long before PCs and minicomputers. Not just HW & SW, but um, buildings and cars too.
Sometimes leasing or rental makes sense. Not with most computer HW & SW for most businesses.Locks the small to medium into dependency on the Cloud Provider and ISP.
Risks the world infrastructure because if one retail chain, business or wholesale goes down it's no big deal. Even if the "Cloud" is 1000x more reliable (it's often less than decent on premises), then when it goes down it's an apocalypse.
Fortunately the tipping point of dependence has not yet been reached.
Set slightly in the future:
https://www.amazon.com/Silver-Lining-Celtic-Otherworld-Book-ebook/dp/B06Y26M8Z6
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/716453
Yes, it's got Fairies and Otherworlds, but I think the warnings about "The Cloud" are real.
During the minicomputer and PC era we went forward. Digital Equipment Corp developed cheap two PC clustering that only need a pair of ordinary servers, SCSI cards with two external ports, four external SCSI bus repeater/isolators for when a PC/SCSI card failed and two external racks of SCSI drives, mirrored, as a minimum. Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition. Rather cheaper than a 1991 VAX cluster.
Outsourcing to the cloud and trusting the big USA mega corps is a backward step since that high point of development of on premises gear. Later you could use fibre and put the shelves, UPSes and servers in two separate sites.
Madness. Can they be trusted to be realistic?
Say after me. MS Project or any other Project management software does not manage projects.
People manage projects. Project management software allows the team leaders or project manager to update the reporting based on realistic analysis of the progress and snags that have occurred.
Useful for a large building project like a hospital or school or new shopping mall, maybe a housing estate.
Not so good for a small team of programmers, or one single house build where the Project management software overhead is too high and a spreadsheet updated by one person might be better.
The conclusion was that even for slow charging, widespread use of EV needs a massive increase in power generation and in Grid infrastructure.
Swapping battery packs is a better solution as fast charging needs x10 current, with potential issues supplying the charging stations, heavier wiring and even more peak demand infrastructure.
Hydrogen isn't a solution. Perhaps making LPG using waste carbon and solar or nuclear power is a better idea? Oddly LPG can be transported with less energy loss than electricity. Also existing petrol vehicles have been modified to use LPG since 1970s. Safer than EV batteries and hydrogen.
EV does make sense for stop-start and single person commute in cities / urban. LPG makes more sense for trucks, buses, rural cars, BUT only assuming synthetic production from renewable sources and maybe hybrid Fusion/Fission (the neutrons from Fusion allow Fission reactor waste to generate electricity and make the waste a lot safer). The carbon in synthetic LPG has to come from waste carbon.
Prime, KDP Select, Kindle Unlimited, Subscriptions are all evil when it's a retailer.
They also cheat content providers of Royalties.
Subscriptions result in consumers paying MORE than buying what you want when you want. A tax on the poorer people subsidising big consumers.
Amazon is building monopolies. It needs broken up and regulated. So does Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook.
Sadly ASA and the Irish equivalent are not real regulators. Unfortunately real ones like Ofcom and Comreg ended up being "Captured" by Mobile Operators and previous incumbents.
Certain Data and Financial regulators have been poor. However USA is much worse (FCC, ICANN, Opioids etc).