Posts by James Micallef

Re: Good to see...

And Vitamin C too?

Re: US anything Meat I agree @SteveDavies not on your life....

@AC - Having been visiting over to that side of the pond, I can confirm that you are completely right*. US and Canada are huge countries that are also extremely fertile and abundant, and although dominated by large and 'nasty' agribusiness, there are still many small farmers and it's easy to find fresh healthy food *IF* you can be bothered to look.

I would say that a majority or a large minority of Americans are unhealthy eaters, don't exercise, are very overweight etc etc, but to characterise all of 300 million people like that is plain lazy.

* Except for this: "Some local hams are being produced that rival those in Spain.". That, I simply do not believe.

"wouldn't this be the most defining moment in human history since we discovered... "

If "they discover loads of life, bacterial or otherwise", it would be "the most defining moment in human history."

No "since....." required

Re: DNA

True, that.

It's something we consider extremely private and yet we leave traces of it wherever we go

"Erm hang on. Isn't this a good feature? If the vac doesn't need to work hard, isn't it reasonable to expect it to reduce its power consumption?"

Just exactly what I was going to say. The sensor isn't detecting a 'testing' scenario, it's detecting an 'I don't really need to be operating at full power right now' scenario.

Re: So the rumours are true

"WTF is "shareholder value"? "

It's a combination of dividends paid back to the shareholders (immediate / realised shareholder value) and market value of the share price (potential shareholder value that can be realised by selling the stock), and both metrics are very clear and easily available.

The problem is that in many cases (especially US) companies don't pay out dividends because they would be taxed, and prefer to use their cash to buy back their shares and so keep the share price up*. Thus executives' bonuses are linked to share price, leading to a lot of short-termism in decisions.

*Using their own cash to do this would also be taxed so a frequent trick is to borrow in the US against cash reserves held overseas, and use the borrowed cash to buy their stock back, which has an added tax benefit that the outstanding loan is a liability that can be offset against tax (ie can be used to lower their tax liability even further)

Re: Stress?

"Surely stress would be having your 2nd duty as front jack man"

I believe around one per season is around par for jackmen being run over by the car they're supposed to be jacking up. Living on the edge

Re: Nobody NEEDS a connected kettle...

"Before you know it you will receive emails from the manufacturer... "

I understand the dread from the part of the savvy user/consumer of having bits of kit accessible from the internet, even more so if they can autonomously connect 'home'. However there can be reasons to connect bits of kit around the home so that they can talk to each other. Maybe I want to control some consumption patterns myself instead of having the electric company throttle usage for me. Maybe for some people it's just cool to be able to put the kettle on remotely, what's wrong with toys and having a bit of fun?

Seems to me that a key piece of technology in the future is going to be a powerful and easily configurable home router. If people (especially younger ones who have grown up with always-on connectivity) are willing to control their kettles and fridges from their smartphone, they will also be both willing and capable to play around with their routers. All it would need is simply to identify every connected device and group them into devices that either can or cannot connect to the wider internet. Anything that needed connecting to from outside the home could be accessed securely through a properly configured VPN.

As far as I know it's already possible to get routers with inbuilt VPNs, the router I have at home already gives me a pretty good visibility of what's going on on the network if I can be bothered to look.

Maybe something for school's IT curriculum should be how to use IT properly, instead of whatever passes for IT teaching these days

Re: EUROBYL: The catastrophe that just. keeps. on. giving.

"I remember getting beer for 1c. That was before the WAR though"

FTFY

Re: This seems like a bad idea

"And yet, when a gun is accidentally discharged in America and hurts someone, the manufacturer of the weapon is rarely sued. It is often the gun's owner that gets the blame first."

Bad analogy. Gun manufacturers and NRA have very successfully lobbied the US gov to such an extent that US law excludes manufacturer liability for firearm accidents. Gun manufacturers are rarely sued because the possibility of winning is close to nil.

That aside, I agree with you that liability SHOULD lie with the vehicle operator

Re: Computer?

Exactly that. Not only the calculations actually. Given the advanced state of current imaging, image recognition and processing, you could automate the whole thing end-to-end, with a machine that takes it's own star readings, processes them, identifies the stars based on internal maps*, does all the necessary calculations and outputs the result.

As long as it has a clear view of the sky it can continuously keep a position reading, and perhaps use some form of dead reckoning to estimate a position when it can't get a star/sun reading. Also might be possible (I'm sure someone more knowledgeable than me about these things) to use not just visible light detection but other frequencies. For example would it be possible to use some form of radio telescope to identify where the stars are even if it's cloudy?

*as you mention these need to be downloaded into the machine occasionally, the machine itself should be airgapped otherwise that negates the whole anti-hacking thing

Re: So

It SHOULD be the case that "we,the people" are in charge with our will expressed through parliament and executed by civil service.

It is a GOOD thing that parliamentarians do not have any privileges not allowed to ordinary citizens beyond those strictly necessary for their jobs as parliamentarians. The key is in this phrase here:

"upcoming legislation on surveillance must include a provision to protect the communications of MPs, Peers, MSPs, AMs and MEPS from extra-judicial spying."

Well, that's complete BS. EVERYONE's communications should be protected from *extra-judicial* spying, this is not a privilege to be granted to MPs etc. On the other hand, if there is reasonable suspicion / evidence that is strong enough to get a judge to sign a warrant for surveillance, that *legal* surveillance could be applied to anyone, right up to the PM and the Queen, no exceptions.

"Windows Phone / Mobile or whatever its been re-branded as this week is on a road to no-where"

Which makes me wonder, why cripple Windows 10 with so much compromises designed to make it look good on mobile if then you're not going to support it properly? And why on earth would MS put in a lot of effort to developing their own flavour of Android if all they need to do is to have 1 version of Windows 10 with 2 possible interfaces for desktop / mobile?

It makes no sense to me that MS would build their own Android devices, if Win 10 on phones fail, why be in the Mobile OS space at all? In that case they can just concentrate on having their apps on iOS+Android, and stop making phones altogether

"...if and when you are, you will prefer that brand that you've seen loads of adverts for to the one you've never heard of.

Car adverts are a good example"

And yet, given that I am exposed to adverts for about 20 different brands of cars i.e. every single brand available in my locality, surely the net effect is to cancel each other out?

It's basically a stupid arms race - if none of them advertised, everyone would still know what brands are available simply by seeing them in the streets, the net effect on sales would be basically zero and each of the car companies has saved a mint. But just because 1 of them is doing it, they all have to do it to keep up??

Re: Charlie Hebdo

@veti - thanks for the tip, but I am neither a UK citizen nor resident. I am also not eligible to vote or stand for elections in the country where I am currently resident, so that won't work for me.

But the point is anyway valid. The reason that the people who get elected get elected boils down to simply 2 things, party affiliation and money. Party affiliation ties candidates in to all sorts of positions they might disagree with, but they will mostly toe the line, because the parties have a limited tolerance for internal dissent. The reason for this is, again, partly down to money because party donors expect some policy commitments from the party in return for their donations.

A completely independent candidate needs tons of money to get elected*, and even if that happens its still 1 candidate among hundreds.

In the current situation, a party getting 30-40% of the vote** with a turnout of less than 50% is treated as a huge victory, since the non-voters are classed as "couldn't be bothered". But a 'none-of-the-above' option allows us to distinguish between the "couldn't be bothered" and the "extremely bothered". This also allows to distinguish protest votes to minor candidates and actual votes for these candidates.

Even if there isn't a formal mechanism to do anything with the 'none-of-the-above' votes and electoral victory is assigned as usual, it would certainly be instructive to see how many of the "couldn't be bothered" non-voters would actually bother to vote to show how bothered they really were.

* though nowadays at least if they don't have their own they can crowdfund

**may be more or less depending on number of contesting parties

Re: Questions that bugs me....

@JT

That's an interesting case scenario. As you say, these cars at least in first iteration need to operate in a world where most other cars are not self-driving or smart. Ideally they need to be working totally independently ie even without any outside communication to internet services or other external notifications from nearby cars / other objects, their onboard sensors and processing should be able to handle the driving requirements.

Can these cars recognise hand signals given by police officers directing traffic? Can they pass through a red light if it's a policeman who is waving them through? And, most importantly, can they tell the difference between a police officer directing them with hand signals and a random Joe doing the same?

In the scenario you describe, ideally a self-drive car would be able to recognise that someone is not just 'in the way' but also giving it signals to proceed, stop, back up, move this way or that. It should be able to do 'know' that in some cases this will involve breaking signalled traffic rules, and yet also be smart enough to not blindly follow any hand-given directions.

Re: If i was in charge of Dell

"If i was in charge of Dell I would use that 67 Beeeellllion dollars to ..."

Dell DON'T have $67B, that's (mostly)* coming from the VC firms, so the VCs are presumably going to have a good chunk of Dell debt or equity.

Although presumably Dell could still buy plenty of whatever they want to buy even with a couple of $B

*I'm not sure if I missed it in the article but I don't think it was specified who's fronting how much of the wonga.

Re: @Esskay

"This was not a corporate decision from my point of view,"

Since the very moment this shitstorm broke I was expecting the moment that some 'rogue employees' were blamed. Predictable as night follows day.

Re: They probably preferred it they

"ISIS have some standards about the quality of the vehicles they like to use"

Top Gear's indestructible Toyota episode was certainly instructive in this regard, it's no wonder that Toyota HiLux is the pickup of choice for militias. Incidentally, as I recall from a 'jeep' Safari in Dubai, the 4WD of choice is the Toyota Landcruiser.

I wonder what would happen to a Chevy or Ford pickup if Top Gear tried the same treatment on them. Probably wouldn't last 5 minutes.

Re: This strategy avoids pissing off their OEM partners

"A possible, I believe, very viable strategy is to concentrate on enterprise, business, and government sales"

MS are already doing pretty well from their concentrating in this space. MS Server, Sharepoint, MS-SQL + BI stack, Active Directory and remote management/provisioning of PCs/laptops etc have improved in leaps and bounds in the past 5-10 years. None of that is going to go away in the next few decades.

What WILL go away is the individual PCs/laptops, because once you can get a device as powerful and practical as a PC into a gadget the size of a phone then it becomes a no-brainer to replace laptop+phone with phone+dock for 90% of their business customers. And the execs who will be making those type of decisions in 5-10 years' time need to start to be wowed now, hence the premium line of Surface Pros and Books.

Note that Apple have also been converging OSX and iOS, and I believe it's only a matter of time until 'desktop' OS will be the same kernel as 'mobile' OS with a few extra bells and whistles. After all, even from a developer point of view it's surely easier to write 1 basic application with 2 switchable interfaces depending on screen size available, rather than 2 completely different applications for 2 different OSes that must nevertheless share as much as possible the user experience and functionality.

"some members of the legal profession might try to play up to the cameras"

Surely they're already playing up to the jurors and/or judges?

I think it's a splendid idea. Democracy is founded on openness and transparency. I don't think many people watch the parliament channel wherever it's available either, and probably also mostly dull as dishwater. But anyone who wants to follow the proceedings should be able to

Re: All cars have split CAN buses

"Perhaps the audio systems are controlled without CAN bus access: the dashboard could connect the phone to the radio and speakers via a separate media-only network"

If any carmaker is integrating digital entertainment systems (especially internet-enabled ones) and car controls, I would like to know who that is so I can forever shun them.

"You certainly separate the engine control stuff from the body electronics. Any bridging between these is done with a gateway of sorts (think firewall). "

I would jolly well hope that this is the way that things are done, but is there a way to know for sure? Car brochures are full of glossy fantasies, and I bet if you ask a dealer if the vehicle's primary CA bus is internet-accessible, you'll get in reply either a blank stare, or an enthusiastic yes because they don't have a clue what a CAN bus is and why it's a terrible idea for it to be internet-connected.