Posts by andreas koch
411 posts • joined Saturday 14th June 2008 17:50 GMT
@ AC 2156h GMT - Re: . . . sits back
Wait 7 years and then come back. When you're 16.
Posted in Soylent days and soylent nights
@ Piro - Re: . . . Chromium . . .
Spoilsport.
My post was referring to the identically named, Google-developed web browser. This was to create a humorous effect by relating the topically non-relevant but in this forum prevalent definition to this article and showing a strong, albeit artificially fabricated and untrue, dislike for any possible connotation of the word itself.
. . . sits back
and grabs popcorn.
I feel so much safer now.
. . . like in the old days, when our vicar looked after me. He had a very special way to make sure that I would not sin that I must never tell anyone about.
So there's another non-government agency that has been elevated to stand above the law.
Don't get me wrong, I think that child abuse, snuff clips and other sick stuff shouldn't be on the web. But if this needs to be actively hunted down (and I think it should), then this should be the task of an executive arm of the law, like a police force.
I think a foundation or workshop or whatever with this amount of power and no need to answer the state for it is just wrong.
Just imagine Emily Snorple-Frumpington of the IWF not agreeing with your choice of garden plants. She might find some snuff movies on your computer. Whether that is true, leads to something, or is fabricated doesn't help you after your name is wrecked. And whereas a PC's wrongdoing will be investigated into, a private agency does not really have to answer to the law . . .
Wheelclampers?
@ David D. Hagood - Re: wind turbine
You've got to find Waldo first . . .
@tojb - Re: LED display == solar cell run backwards
The reason why it doesn't work is that in front of your LED panel is your actual LCD panel, which, powered down, is blocking the light to the LEDs.
'LED' screens are misnamed. They are LED-backlit LCD screens. There are real LED screens, but they are not for your average home TV but multi-square-yard advertising panels (Picadilly Circus and the likes) and scoreboards in stadiums.
Even so, if you could make your LCD-panel default to transparent when it's off, you'd still face the problem that the polarising filter is in the way, cutting 50% of the ambient light out, the light not hitting at right angles, the LCD panel being in the way and LEDs not optimised for 'reverse opration'. All in all, while it could potentially produce some electricity, it'd be way too inefficient to contemplate. Think about, as a guesstimate, an Eta of <1% for the whole circuit.
@ comz1 - Re: Excellent News
as per icon.
Re: Perfect for e-readers
>
. . .
the one thing those things suffer from somewhat is viewing in direct sunlight...
<
?
I don't seem to have a problem there.
And I must say, a solar charging back or cover for an e-paper reader sounds just like something that could work out.
How about
an automatic watch movement powering a generator? No light or any exposure needed, just the bunny for people who leave their phone in their pocket . . .
I'm actually only partly joking here, I find. When you're stationary, the phone can be on a charger; it can't be if you're moving about.
Hm.
@ Douchbag64 - Re: A couple of enhancement ideas ...
It's Monday morning, that might excuse you a bit.
But all in all you didn't really read Julianh72's post, did you?
Re: I Blame the EU
All those friggin' immigrants, I'd say.
Want my 'Daily Mail' when I'm finished?
Re: Who is in charge of the supply of bread to the population of London?
Totally beside the point, but à propos:
Being a German expatriate in England I can, unfortunately, only state that there is no bread supply in this country.
Re: They missed an obvious distracting task to measure...
Have they measured distractions inflicted from outside? Distractions inflicted on a driver without the driver actually causing this distraction or giving his or her explicit consent to be distracted?
When you drive along a road, you will be exposed to a lot of random, useless information. This information needs to be filtered out from the information that is useful for safe driving.
Your overall input signal consists of useful data, interference, and noise. Filtering a known interference from the signal is generally easier than filtering out noise and random spikes.
I conclude that it's easier to ignore that I'm holding a cigarette than seeing a road sign that tells me not just that the road ahead is now closed, but also that the roadworks are likely to continue for 17 weeks from the 4th of April, that the contractor doing the work on behalf of an agency working with the highways maintenance authority can be reached under 0800 555 123 467 8 or meaningless.email@somebuildingcompany.webmailhosingservice.co.uk and is profoundly sorry for any inconvenience that the work might cause you.
The same goes for little pegs on the side of the road with soggy A4 sheets of paper stuck on them informing me that the PuddleDuck nursery crèche is having an open day on Saturday, 15th June from 9:45am to 1:15pm.
And am I really that concerned about TRACY being 45 TODAY!!! that it needs to be posted on a bedsheet fluttering across the road?
Has anyone ever done any research into involuntary distractions? I think they would find that these have a far greater impact that voluntary distractions.
If I hold a cigarette while driving, then I know it's there, it's of no consequence to the traffic and I can ignore it.
While I can't endorse the use of a mobile whilst driving because it's not legal, the same applies for this mobile use: I know about it, it's traffic-irrelevant, I can ignore it.
I can apply a steep-flanked filter to these distractions because I initiated them myself. In my opinion they are a minor factor compared to the general information noise that gets thrown at you.
Any research links, anyone?
P.S.: Did you notice the missing 't' in 'webmailhostingservice'? It was irrelevant, you ignored it.
P.P.S.: My current favourite useless sign is stuck 15m high on a camera pole on the M3. It says "camera not in use". Just why this information is so relevant that I need to be distracted from the traffic around me to look up beats me.
Just went to the comments
to read the latest Eadon vs MS joke.
No Eadon.
Is he ok?
@ jeremy 3 - Re: youtube : the internet crazy finder....
. . . and cheese.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug8aM9v40Sg
Just another World Heritage Site
>
. . . Of course, China has every right to tell the Americans to sod off and head along anyway. After all, what has NASA got to hide?
<
I think that people here would get upset if WalMart built an ASDA over Stonehenge, Egyptians wouldn't find it funny if the Cheops pyramid would be scrapped to make way for a Starbucks, and the Chinese might be a weeny bit miffed if Tiananmen Square would be converted into an Apple store.
As would everyone else, really. It's a mark of achievement, you don't just trample on it.
Re: Just asked someone who did GCSE IT last year
@ various ACs and other defenders of the curriculum.
His statement might not have been totally objective. Teenager's statements seldom are (as you might or might not know*); nevertheless it shows just how amazingly interesting this subject was made. Not.
Generally education seems to aim at pupils passing the test instead of grokking the subject. After all, free (as in beer, not as in speech) schools need to show a certain return for their council funding. This might be totally different in public schools that you pay for.
* . . . reminds me of the film 'Medicine Man', where Sean Connery's character gets insulted by a Yanomami shaman with the words: "You are not a father".
Just asked someone who did GCSE IT last year
what they did in this subject.
His answer was: "Fsck all."
Apparently the most IT-ish action was copying a file using the command console with step-by-step instructions.
So yes, I have to agree with him, coding in school would be nice. (That's also what the young man behind me thought, he was bored to bits in their IT class.)
Cliché, maybe.
I can just imagine the Steubenville police chief: "You pimple faced loser of a nerd try and stich up our All American Football boys, just because they're having a bit of fun? I'll show ya, faggot!"
Re: So...
>
. . .
if you step out of the line that Uncle Sam is drawing in the sand.
. . .
<
Don't forget that the line will not be drawn until after you stepped over it.
Re: Speech Recognition - - - ROTM
User: "phome, caww an abwuwance, i am habbing a stwoke"
Phone: "Please repeat your request in a loud, clear voice"
U: "Phome, caww an abwuwance!"
P: "Please repeat your request in a loud, clear voice"
U: "Nrrrggg!"
P: "Voice dialling deactivated, switching to face unlock. Please smile."
U: "I am habbing a stwoke, caww mebicaw hewp!"
P: "Switching to alternative expression. Please protrude your tongue ensuring that no offence is given to any member of the public nearby or persons watching you remotely on cctv."
U: " . . . "
P: "Please repeat"
U: ". . . "
P: "Dialling cancelled. Switching to standby."
.
.
.
.
P: "Low battery. Please connect charger."
.
.
P: "Low battery. Please connect charger immediately.."
.
P: ". . . switching to emergency mode. Bleepbleepblurpbleepblurbbreepblurb. . . drrrt . drrt . drrt"
London Ambulance Service: "Hello, how can we help?"
P: "There is an immediate need for assistance at 181 Piccadilly, London W1A 1ER . "
LAS: "Can you give details?"
P: "Bring a MicroUSB charger."
Re: iPhone owners are rich
iPhone owners are more likely to state a higher income than they actually have, to cloak the fact that they're working at Starbucks...
@RainForestGuppy - Re: Low Cost iPhone
>
Not sure what features you could remove
<
It only runs "fart-Apps", and the only available display language is inuit.
And it comes in light pastel beige.
'xcuse me
but could someone remind me briefly why anyone needs an app (whether it's a cloaked link or a reformatting of the data) to use a website anyway?
@ Eadon - Re: MS in HEADLESS CHICKEN MODE
Your 4 things . . .
I don't know why I'm responding, but aren't you a bit overzealous there?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
If Microsoft loses 50% of the market and Apple triples their share by the end of the year, then we're still looking at a MS domination.
Apart from that:
I'm not the greatest of MS fans, I neither use it privately (Ubuntu, Mint, Debian [1 XP istallation in a VM]), nor at work (RHEL, CentOS), but listening to an outcry of users and then trying to give them back what they miss can't be a bad thing. Not even if they take a while. Not even if it's to save market share and not purely altruistic.
It surely doesn't deserve a FAIL comment.
@ Don Jefe - Re: I immediately triggered an idea of another application
Siri autoresponse via iCremate @11:53: Please hand over remains to appointed courier ETA 14:53. Autonotifying relatives now.
I immediately triggered an idea of another application
at the other end of life.
This, I thought, would be just the right thing for care homes, so that they could have a monitoring screen in a kind of "service" office; not unlike the screen at the Tesco self-scan tills. If a red (maybe it should be yellow/?) light shows, the unit (resident) needs attention. This service agent (nurse) could then be automatically provided with the right size and type of product to be used, as well as an optimised route to service several incidents in sequence. This has a potential to lower the needs of training as well as the time spend on each task and the waste due to mismatched materials. Beancounters would love it!
But then:
Some care homes couldn't care less now, literally, so it's rock bottom already. No improvement possible.
That doesn't mean it won't be implemented, just wait . . .
Re: @ AC 1934GMT - Apple uses alternative to FoxConn
- - - and Blackberry.
@ AC 1934GMT - Re: Apple uses alternative to FoxConn
A few mentions of multimillion Dollar share transactions, a few rumours from a factory and a bit of hearsay about plastic backs should get the share prices back up to the $700s. Then everyone who lost most of their dosh during the last months of Apple value slump can quickly sell off, recover their losses and buy into Exxon again.
This isn't, I think, about technology, this is about economic market tweaking. South Sea Bubble.
Oh, and by the way, we Fandroids don't slag off Apple because we don't like them. They're just much more entertaining to mock and slander than Samsung, Google and Nokia together . . .
Re: What's the spooks' solution?
The solutiion is easy: Switch it off. No more smut then.
Likewise ban sugar, salt and all the other things that make people die. Outlaw alcohol, tobacco and cars. And sex, as you're at it.
Unfortunately then everyone (well, most people anyway) will find Spain or France so appealing that they will no longer fork out taxes to pay for the wages of home secretary or deputy prime minister.
Who the flying f'!$% voted for this bunch to waste resources on this?
@ Vimes - I would really like to know how the porn-filtering is supposed to work. Anyone?
I think you would find that quite a few parents don't even realise that you can access some dubious stuff from a smartphone. And there's also the peer pressure: "Wingewingewinge, muuuum, but Ellen has got a Galaxy S3, and I'm sooo unfashionable because you won't buy me anything better than a Nokia 6250".
But back to the filtering: It's not rocket surgery to work out that a blacklist has more holes than a pasta strainer, surely Joe Public will realise that as well. Then this should make the people in the government that enforce it this way look rather - - - underexposed, wouldn't it?
I'm totally against filtering, I think it's pointless and a waste of time and resources. But if everyone agrees that it is necessary, then at least, it should be done in a way that works.
Otherwise people are relying on a safety belt made from a single strip of toilet roll.
@ AC 1858GMT - Re: Qui Custodiet Custodes
>
It's time to stop this before we all decide we'd be better of in Russia or China!
<
That's OK, just go, as long as you keep buying iPhones.
@ Vimes - Re: I would really like to know how the porn-filtering is supposed to work. Anyone?
You mention a blacklist. But a blacklist does not work, it only blocks sites that the 'auditor' knows about, and that might not be up to date; in fact, it never is or can be.
Filtering would have to be done based on content, and how does a software tell a 'naughty' picture from a decent one? I can even think of 'naughtiness' with no skin exposure, so filtering for pink isn't the solution . . .
Blocking the pirate bay didn't really stop anybody, did it? Apart from the possibility of renaming it or just getting the torrent files somewhere else, there are proxies that pass the info through. So really, all this is 'make-believe' for some people. Surely the politicians must know that? They're calling us stupid.
@ JohnSanders - Re: I'm just waiting
"
And what happens when you have tried the new GUI, and it doesn't not only show any strength but you find out is completely backwards?
"
If it doesn't suit you (My laptop doesn't crash, by the way, what are you doing?), then use a different GUI.
Easy as that.
Again, and again, and again: Calling something 'crap' is not a valid statement in my opinion, even as a personal opinion it's unsuitable. Unless, of course, you were born in Vulgaria.
By the way, I've got nothing against XFCE, Debian, Mint; I actually have those in use as well, but on my casual-everyday-lappy I'm happy with Unity. And I don't understand how a distribution can be so flamed for a replaceable part of it.
It'd be slightly different with OSX or Windows, these are quite tied down. But Linux?
This is probably the main reason why it doesn't catch on as a desktop OS. To many squabbling, fanatical fanboys who scare hoi polloi away.
I'm just waiting
for the Ubuntu haters to rant about how stupid Unity is (which would be totally pointless in this "anything-but-Unity-thread", but hey. . .), and that Shuttleworth is not very clever, and that Canonical is just ripping you off, and that and that and that . . .
I've never really seen the point in criticising a configurable OS for it's GUI; If yo9u don't like something, change it! Or let someone change it for you: enter Mint.
Most of the time GUIs are a very personal preference and you mainly stick with what you grew up with, thereby not giving a new GUI the chance to show it's strengths.
In my opinion Ubuntu is a great package, it's easy to install, runs with loads of hardware (even older stuff) and gives users a wide choice of GUI; all combined with an easy, reliable update solution and a ton of available software. I've got no problem of recommending it as a Desktop OS. I actually found that quite a few non-IT people handled Ubuntu/Unity a lot better than Win8/TIFKAM.
And I have to confess that I actually rather like Unity now.
@ Bill the Sys Admin
Your opinion, have it.
But there's no need to call someone who clearly isn't an "idiot" just to use it as a derogatory term.
Unless, of course, you don't know what the word means or who you're writing about.
Re: How would it work?
Civil servants, 'lever goes up"?
?
No.
If it does
(or already did) happen, would they tell?
But then, the people who propose this kind of lark have got no idea of the volume of data or it's complexity involved; they probably think they can keep a 3½'' floppy per day per ISP to browse through . . .
I would really like to know how the porn-filtering is supposed to work. Anyone?
This was (again) triggered by an article about Mr. Cameron and smut filtering. This time it was about public WiFi.
I still have tremendous problems in understanding how these filters are supposed to work. Will there be a whitelist (updated in real time?) of all web content that is not porn?
Otherwise how will anyone know that the packet transmitted does not contain porn?
If there's a website called knittingclub.co.uk hosting a file called scarf.mov, who knows that this file doesn't show some people doing a horizontal Mambo? Who checks every minute if the undoubtedly educational original content of http://www.classicalkitchenutensils.org/main/pictures/cookingspoon.jpg hasn't been replaced by an image of a transvestite masturbating on a skinned cows head?
Can someone tell me how all this is meant to work? Really, I'd like to know.
How would it work?
I still have tremendous problems in understanding how these filters are supposed to work. Will there be a whitelist (updated in real time?) of all website content that is not porn?
Otherwise how will anyone know that the packet transmitted does not contain porn?
If there's a website called knittingclub.co.uk hosting a file called scarf.mov, who knows that this file doesn't show two people doing a horizontal Mambo?
Can someone tell me how all this is meant to work? Really, I'd like to know.
@ mutatedwombat - Re: Raspberry Pi Phone
I think this is more like a "mutatedwombat-didn't-get-the-sarcasm-fail".
@ Eadon - Re: Visionary gap
>
. . .
I guess iWatch is their next frizzle.
. . .
<
Fixed it for you.
Re - They should be shot
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Any damn fool using a mobe while driving should be shot, right after they crash.
<
You're a Merkin, no doubt.
@ Gray - Re: No real surprise here ...
You somewhat beat me to it.
Mr Kim Jong-un will be shown later
>
Although Kim Jong-un normally likes to broadcast videos of himself trying out the latest Nork military tech, Pyongyang has not yet commented on the cyberattack claims.
<
North Korea's Intelligence Service has
(due to this article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/09/feature_ten_sexy_computers_roundup/)
found, that the formerly prepared propaganda video of their divine leader initiating the cyber-attack using a Sinclair ZX80 would be somewhat outdated. Photoshopping a Commodore Amiga 512 into the shots takes a bit of time, but once it;s done, we'll be able to be properly frightened by North Korea's IT-power.
I hope it will be done by the same director who did the Space video, which is now training material at the Bollywood Film Academy as an example that cheesyness can, in fact, be overdone.
Not the same industry, but just denotes size too:
>
Berns, however, notes that there may still be reasons to deny trademark protection to "iPad mini". For one, although Berns has found "no similar registered mark that would bar registration" (her emphasis), there may be similar marks in "prior-filed pending applications" that would bar Apple from gaining a trademark.
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http://boots.scene7.com/is/image/Boots/10001345?wid=280&hei=343&op_sharpen=1
Paris, because she's a lady . . .
@ Iain M. Banks
[broadcast Eclear, sent 3651820175.2]
xAndreasKoch, aboard dROU 'Dinner Is Ready'
Thank you for your work.
+++
Apple goes green.
Awwwww!
