Posts by The Mole 490 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Apr 2007
Of course the less scrupulous systems also do differentiated pricing on the offers. From a demographic who shop around and have little disposable income, congratulations we will give you an offer to get 50% off . From a demographic who generally don't shop around or use price comparisons sites, fantastic, we will milk you for all we can get and give you an exclusive offer for 1% off and make finding the best deals really hard!
Or perhaps 8192/2048 = 4 bytes available per tile some of which is then used as a pointer into the TilesInViewEx table to find the remaining data?
Wonder why they couldn't just update the original table with a new size, or use something that wasn't placing such low bounds in data size.
I'm not surprised many SME businesses don't know what SEO is. Whilst this may be a big problem for the SEO companies is it actually a problem to the majority of the local market focused SME? My experience is that searching for "<placename> <businesstype>" seems to work pretty effectively, and even more effective is following links from business directories/rating sites.
"Take farming, for example. Not traditionally at the forefront of technological change"
Are you sure about that? If you ignore weapons many of the first stone tools would have been for farming, then as metal developed farming tools improved and would have driven the change, then look at the ploughs and other large metal devices where getting good quality metal was essential, then the development of steam driven threshers, tractors etc. Moving forward some of the first computers (Leo) were being used for optimizing food distribution, then development of sensors to automatically detect which plants are ripe ready for harvesting, gps based mapping of what areas have been ploughed/sprayed, or fully automated milking parlours which cows can just wander up to on demand, be milked by a robot and have all the data logged..
Farming as an industry is and always has been a hotbead of technological change, though individual farmers are none to stick in their ways.
Which of course is why the teaching pendulum swung to preferring course work and analytical type questions rather than memory recall (particularly in subjects like history). However then 'everybody' started complaining that it made getting the qualifications too easy as the students could copy from each other, plagiarize (or is that research?) and produce good work, also they no longer could recall key dates, so the pendulum has now swung back to concentrating on final exams benefiting the quick writers with good memories. Give it another 5 years and it will rebound back again...
"then "data protection" does not apply to them using that tweet to decide you cannot vote."
The information is in the public domain yes, but the argument is that by copying the tweet into their own database, by associating that tweet with a person applying for membership, and then by using that tweet to determine whether the application should succeed then they are storing and processing sensitive personal information without informed explicit concent.
The fact it was originally public information (probably) becomes irrelevant as soon as they start to process it for other purposes.
The court ruled that it is not illegal to own a computer and access the online version of the content without having paid the license.
The court did not rule that the broadcaster has to make the online content available to everyone, just that they couldn't prosecute against those who didn't have the license.
Unless required by law to provide the online content (which I'd be surprised at) then they can apply whatever access controls restrictions they like and as long as it isn't discriminatory then there is little the courts are likely to do.
Because a lot of surveys ask for postcode (and no other address details) for categorizing responses into geographic areas. Generally in the UK they will only use the first 4 or 5 digits (not needing to go down to road segment level) but will get a user to enter the entire postcode as its easier than trying to explain which part they do want. If the eircode identifies the house the anonymous survey is suddenly a lot less anonymous.
In the UK librarians (as opposed to volunteers) are increasingly rare in libraries, there will be IT staff in the central office who will nominally be looking after the IT infrastructure, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Wifi was subcontracted out to a third party to operate, probably with some form of unlimitted/Gigabytes plan. A single person connecting from a long way away is not going to add any traffic spikes above what a single additional person connecting locally will do. The contractor won't care even if they did as they aren't spending their own money to monitor it. The wifi will no more be watched over than the taps are watched over by an onsite plumber...
Well it is being done by an Israeli tech company so I'm sure they've thought long and hard about interception.
As well as the interception issues there are likely to also be copyright issues for the operators. Unlike home users modifying the content on their own machines (probably covered under fair use/private copying type provisions) the mobile operators are modifying the page content for profit (through reducing costs), at the same time they are depriving the content providers of advertising revenue meaning there are actual damages that those content providers will be able to claim for. Personally if I were a mobile operator lawyer I wouldn't want to go near it because of this reason.
If you are following the highway code distance then you will be able to stop in time regardless of how quickly the car in front breaks. The highway code distance is assuming something has fallen off the back of a lorry and so isn't moving, the stopping distance should be the distance required to recognise, break and come to a stop before hitting it. Most drivers don't follow the highway code however and assume that a shorter gap is sufficient, relying on the fact the car in front is unlikely to come to a sudden halt and so the total distance you have to stop over is longer than the initial gap..
Gaining access to the wifi network may be challenging if it has been properly secured, but the fact is most hospitals have been retrofitted with ethernet cabling all over the place - certainly to doctors offices and nurses stations. These networks will be connected to the wifi network (I assume the whole sales pitch of needing wifi on pumps is to allow the nurses to monitor them remotely without having to actually go look at their patients?).
The question isn't how secure is the wifi network, but how hard is it to plug a cable into a spare ethernet network port and start using the network?
A well setup network will presumably use mac address checking and the like to prevent rouge devices connecting but I don't know how easy those are to be defeated.
A lot of drugs need to be infused over a period of time otherwise they are dangerous - hence why they are being infused rather than injected in the first place. If you deliver over 30 minutes what should have been delivered over 6 hours then there is a very real chance of serious harm before it is noticed.
That said I do agree that the real risk is relatively low - though the low risk of getting caught and impersonal nature of doing it remotely may make the theoretical risk higher than that of a person walkign round fiddling with the machines.
That said I'm not sure why they would need wifi to begin with, they have a screen for a reason and I'd hope don't require regular software updates anyway given they don't actually do much.
Of course this already exists - it is called course work, with the added bonus the time constraints don't have to be as strict (depending on how organised the pupil is or if they leave it to the last minute. Education and exams have a natural pendulum action between "course work makes it too easy restrict it and do exams" and "exams unfairly favour those good at fact retention and writing fast course work is far fairer". Personally I'd say course work reflects the real world of work far more accurately but then I also think the point of university is for academic people to be academical and advance the boundaries of knowledge so it all comes down to what you think the purpose of school, exams and university is for.
How much does running a polling station actually cost?
Looking at http://thanet.gov.uk/your-services/elections-and-voting/working-at-elections/working-at-elections/ it's a probably less than a thousand pounds covering staff, transport, pencils and hire.
It adds up but the likelyhood of an all electronic system properly maintained and updated actually coming in cheaper seems low to me.
As for the supposed benefit of poll results coming in quicker my general response is who cares? Even historically it hasn't been a big problem to wait until the next morning to find out who has formed the government, in the current situation even when the poll results have been done it is likely to be days (if not weeks) before we know who the government is anyway.
In many ways I have little issue with Google enhancing its search engine to embed info boxes from its own products (e.g. type a postcode it shows a map), nor is it unreasonable that if you use a combination of google products you may get an enhanced experience.
What I do have a problem with is if Google manipulates the 'organic' search results so that competitors are artificially ranked lower so that a normal user isn't likely to find them compared to results for google products. Manipulating the ranking of competitors making them harder to find would be abusing the monopoly on search results.
I think you missed the point of the post. Apple kit (like any other) does have failures - even (as you say) if just from people being people and dropping stuff or spilling liquids on it. Making the devices next to impossible and uneconomical to repair is irresponsible and bad for the environment as for even minor breakages it is more economic to replace the whole unit regardless of the environmental cost.
There is a balance to be had but I for one don't believe that Apple's margins are so tight that they can't afford to effectively screw/clip the battery in place rather than use glue making it near impossible to replace safely,
If I remember right it is the European Commission not the European Parliament who are ones with the reallly dodgy accounts. I've always thought that Peter Mandelson must have really felt at home in the commission..
That said I'm sure the quality of the European Parliament accounts and expenses claims are superb...
I agree things do go wrong, many humans have coughing fits, distractions around them meaning they avert their eyes (which have minimal redundancy for depth perception anyway), drive erratically due to moods, fall asleep at the wheel, drive when drunk, drive with the onset of dementia, and keep driving even when warning lights, banging sounds, etc suggest that they should stop.
These are all errosr/sensor faults that already happen. A self driving car will have redundancy for important sensors and (unlike humans) will fail safe - pulling over and waiting for a service vehicle to come along and fix the faulty sensor much to the annoyance of the passenger who would just have ignored it. They will never be 100% safe but the probability of the types of errors you describe happening and causing a catastrophic failure is going to be lower than the 'faults' that a proportion of human drivers repeatedly drive with.
As for servicing my bet is that in the short-medium term then either
a) you don't buy the car you hire with servicing and insurance included (as standard insurance companies will initially not insure it)
b) They will be full of DRM/require software being reset during the servicing meaning the only genuine parts at the genuine service station are capable to do it and we will pay through the roof for the privilege.
To be fair providing access (and sharing) of information on techniques and technology to improve sanitation (e.g. how to make a bio-toilet, how to use malaria nets efficiently or prevent the breading of mosquitos), farming (irrigation methods, accurate weather forecasting, prices in the local (or not so local market), and poverty reduction (solar lights, access to new markets, how to effectively reuse the materials around you) are all things that will contribute to the above. What balance between on the ground and the costs is of course an important question.
If you have access to some ones phone sufficient to request the password then you will almost certainly (for most users) already have access to their email accounts that they have on their phones. All this services is effectively automating is the pressing of the 'forgotten password' link and creating the new password through the reminder email link.
Of course if you come to rely on this service you are stuffed if your phone breaks and you can't log in to setup a new phone number as you can't create a one time password to log in with...
The logic in the article seems to be that because this law isn't currently being enforced then there is no reason to repeal the law. This seems backwards, if the law isn't currently being enforced then councils should either be encouraged to actually enforce it, or the law should be repealed. Having unenforced laws hanging around the statute books are among the worst types of laws, they allow for malicious prosecutions and penalise the people who try to actually be law abiding - if it isn't being enforced and you are ignorant of it then you are (probably) fine, if you aren't ignorant of it and law abiding you loose out.
The flaw in your argument is that Bob is *generally* more likely to use his increased income to but a newer more fuel efficient car, whilst Joe is *generally* forced to by an old banger and therefore pays more VAT on the petrol he is using.
That said I agree with you it is one of the better taxes, the biggest problem with it are the oddities in some of the rules that make it inconsistent and illogical (books vs ebooks being a prime example).
What do you mean by a model? Is a computer model/mathematic proof sufficient? After-all why should Mr Smith loose out because he can't afford to manufacture his new jet engine? Without a patent he can't safely go and ask someone else with the skills and equipment to manufacture it as they could just steal the idea and will have the resources to make it quicker.
I totally agree though that the system is broken, mathematical techniques and processes shouldn't be patentable (covering most of software - that can be copyrighted), the tests for innovative, technical effect and non-obvious to someone skilled in the art should actually be enforced. Taking X and shoving it on the internet or on a mobile phone is not generally innovative or non-obvious. Thinks like bouncing menus don't have technical effects and are just processes/mathematical techniques anyway.
Its a webserver serving a dynamic page there's no need for the url to bare any relation to files on a file system at all. The website may be configued to pass anything after showthreads.php into the php script - which the script may then just ignore.
The route of the problem would seem to be the browser is way too lenient with parsing css and will pull definitions out of any old junk.
Total autonomy is still allowed - as long as its possible to interrupt that autonomy in an emergency. The purpose of a robot is to perform tasks more efficiently, more reliably, and (particularly for flying drones) from a position that a human can not get into easily. None of these purposes are defeated by requiring a human to be present in the field to ensure that drone doesn't malfunction or crash into another person. I'm sure farmers would much prefer to do the job sat in a chair/on a quad bike supervising then actually having to do the manual labour themselves.
Long term when we get more experience with the technology then the rules will undoubtedly get watered down and change, until that happens these seem a pretty good compromise.
As long as the fully automated drone has the capability for the user to override and take emergency control then it still fine - I very much doubt there are any drones which don't full into this category.
Emergency control probably boils down to dynamic route replanning (ie telling it to stop and hover, or giving it a new destination/manually defined route to fly).
"but all that the current King can do is to offer a pardon."
Yes, but I'm not sure why you say 'all' when that outcome is exactly what everybody would like. All that needs to happen is for the king to give him the pardon. (And ideally the laws get changed/no longer abused).
Three take the alternative approach of providing an app for the phone which seamlessly hands phone and sms off over a wifi connection instead. So if the office (or house) already have wifi that the phone can use you are sorted, ditto for hotels offering free wifi (and who wants to stay in one that still try to charge through the nose for wifi?).
I'm sure you are right there about the Greens. And the problem is, as the Lib Dems have found, it is very easy to have good policies in opposition but when in government for some reason the civil service and vested interests (and plain reality) make implementation of them turn into something quite different.
I agree, Labour and Conservatives are as bad and totalitarian as each other. Lib Dems (unfortunately) have got themselves into a bad position even when you give them the benefit of the doubt over what they have done behind the scenes to curb the conservatives agenda. UKIP are now seen as the place to go for a protest vote and it scares me what a government with them in would look like. I'd actually for the first time seriously considering voting for the Greens as a valid alternative party except their profile is so minimal I don't really know what they actually believe. With the right PR behind them they could come out as the alternative people who don't like UKIP go for... but I doubt they are going to get their acts together. Shame there's little to no chance of a new sensible moderate party suddenly being formed..
Whilst that is a tragic occurrence you have to be careful, there's a well known legal maxim that hard cases make bad law. Even with this particular case why should the fact it was done online be special, afterall what if they hadn't emailed it and just shown it round the classroom instead or whatever? Most of these cases should be covered by existing harrasment laws - and if they don't then that's the law that probably needs improving
To recognise people who have made a worthwhile contribution to the United Kingdom and so deserve recognition. A good proportion of those are normal people like lollipop ladies for their contributions (perhaps the Queen has a soft spot for lollipop ladies,but every year there always seems to be one that has spent the last 40 years helping children cross the road). .
A bad proportion also seem to be for civil servants as a for of mutal back patting which hasn't really changed since the days of "Yes, Minister"
"James Hacker: I'm not going to approve any honour to any civil servant in this department who hasn't earned it.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: What do you mean "earned it"?
James Hacker: I mean "earned it". "Done something to deserve it".
Sir Humphrey Appleby: [indignantly] But that's unheard of!"
Came across the iBox printer today (http://www.iboxprinters.com/ibox-nano-1/) which also looks very interesting at only $300. UV resin based rather than extrusion which seems to give build results on their product page, I don't know how the strength of plastics compare and the ibox has limitted build area.
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