Re: The real issue with the Dodd-Frank Method
Good answer, Peter!
Posts by WeaselNo7
27 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Oct 2012
Has Intel side-stepped NGOs on conflict minerals in its chips?
Tuesday 7th January 2014 13:44 GMT
Re: The real issue with the Dodd-Frank Method
If you have a 'good' and 'bad' mine relatively near each other, wouldn't they be grouped together under the same 'goodness' or 'badness' label, because of the similarity in chemical signature?
A leap of intuition here as well, aren't those the exact situations that we want to help the most at? ('help' by getting rid of the bad guys) I say that because it encourages lawful economic growth and stability in areas that are affected by lawlessness and poverty?
But maybe those are a minority in the grand scheme anyway.
Number-crunching quant cooks up gambling machine, promises untold RICHES
DEAD STEVE JOBS chap becomes ENGINEER ... at Lenovo
Australia ponders 160,000-seat ERP possibilities
How to get a Raspberry Pi to take over your Robot House
Monday 16th September 2013 15:55 GMT
Re: Reg ongoing feature?
There's plenty of focus on the 'problems that don't exist', like controlling your curtains and turning lights on in a room you're already in (seriously, how big do footballers' rooms get?), but there's a handful of stuff I'd love to have working reliably and cleanly:
- movement sensitive cameras for security (mostly front porch, back garden, but indoors for when I'm on holiday would also be good), recording footage for when it's useful, and alerting me when I want it to. (chime? picture-in-picture on the TV? email when I'm on holiday?)
- music distribution
- 'Holiday mode' to realistically do the lights (and the aforementioned recording of movement indoors)
All the while:
- i want the delay from any of the interfaces to be negligible.
- I don't want to be plugging 4 inch monstrosities into light-sockets.
- I want the controllers to be easily replaceable (Pi!)
- I want to be able to secrete bits wherever I want, easily. I reckon I can hide a Pi in a few ceilings/walls without heat being a problem?
- Web interface that works well. Hosted at home (firewall locked down) and a decent, simple, login mechanism that means I don't have to fret about The Reds.
Bonus points:
- Will respond to voice commands, and has a scarily movie-esque flat female voice. Also a name that's a backronym.
- Ooh, what if it could recognise my face and say 'welcome home' to me. *geekgasm*
So, apart from the bit at the end, it's all stuff that Makes Sense (tm).
Monday 16th September 2013 09:09 GMT
Reg ongoing feature?
I'm constantly trying to work out whether it's time to dip my toes into the world of home automation, but there's always the impression lurking of it not being 'quite' ready.
It would be fantastic if there were an ongoing El Reg feature about trying to do usable home automation on a budget. Using as much open-source and cheap hardware as possible, while aiming for something that has minimal delays, is highly usable and low maintenance.
Sounds like something that a journo could use to kit out their home on the company's expenses... Just saying...
Kettle 'which looks like HITLER' brews up sturm in a teacup
Peak Apple: Foxconn contemplating life after Cupertino
NASA boffins: Space 'scope JUST missed dead Cold War spy sat
Java applets run wild inside Notes
US Navy blasts drones with ship-mounted LASER CANNON
Bacon sarnies can kill: Official
Thursday 7th March 2013 15:33 GMT 
Hang on...
I think everyone's leaping to conclusions here. With good reason, because it's intuitively true. However...
What if being at risk of cardiovascular disease means that people are more drawn to processed/salty meats? Some kind of genetic mutation that kills you slowly but makes you crave meat and alcohol. Or a parasite p'raps.
Causation, blah blah. You feel me?
Vertu-alised Android revealed at an all-too-real €7,900
Wednesday 13th February 2013 09:26 GMT 
<probably mistaken pedant>
Hang on.
500NM as a force? The N is a force (Newtons), no idea what the M is. perhaps they mean it's a pressure and measured in Nm^-2 ?
And 50kg of pressure? That's just a mass, right? It's not a pressure until it becomes a force (add gravity?) and you say how much it is concentrated over an area?
However, every day is a school day, there's probably some internationally-recognised shorthand going on here. The kind that I'm kept out of the loop on. On purpose. Bastards.
LibreOffice 4.0 ships with new features, better looks
Alien space rocks EXPLODE in fireball over Japan
Record numbers of you are reading this headline right now
Malware SNEAK dons cunning disguise, opens creaky back door to servers
Thursday 3rd January 2013 11:47 GMT 
Java exploit?
Strictly speaking, is this a Java exploit? I might be reading this wrong, but it seems to me the server needs to be previously compromised so that a file is deployed. Only then is tomcat/other told to install a web portal to give easy access to the server for miscreants.
I'm guessing the ease of installing WARs is what's being used as an easy way of giving access, but apart from that, it's hardly a Java exploit?
I could certainly be wrong, not many details in that article.
Japan firm offers mums-to-be 3D printed unborn infants
London council £1bn outsourcing plan survives vote
Thursday 8th November 2012 09:51 GMT
Re:
I agree with the sentiment, outsourcing doesn't usually work (or at least we only hear about the failures and frustrations).
Outsourcing theoretically can be cheaper for the same service, because of economies of scale (they've probably done the same job elsewhere, so can shortcut straight to the good stuff) and no wasted resources (if an employee isn't on your work, they can transition onto other work, as opposed to them sitting there doing nothing or making up work).
That's the theory anyway. So, yeah. Explained.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
