Posts by Jason Bloomberg

The problem with the protests...

Is they seem chorus backed by fanatical Chicken Little screaming and screeching that the sky is falling. There are things to be concerned about with the acts but hysterical hyperbole doesn't do their cause any favour.

There's a big difference between 'stop these acts' and 'get the mechanisms of these acts right' yet many protesting don't seem to understand the difference or are poorly vocalising their position if they do. The first makes it sound like a bunch of freetards complaining they'll have access to pirated or illegal material restricted rather than protecting free speech. Not the best way to communicate with Joe Public or sway opinion.

Shouty Icon because that seems to be the flavour of the day.

Very confusing

"The Velvet Underground claimed that the design could not be copyrighted because Warhol took the banana image from an advertisement that was in the public domain".

IANAL, but is copyright not automatically assigned for "the work" which Warhol created no matter what its source material was? That work being the album cover, the iconic banana image with Warhol's moniker alongside it.

Great news

I also stuck with 20Mbps after hearing all the problems with the new outers on the 'free 30Mbps upgrade' so I can look forward to a free tripling of speed. And no doubt an increase in service charge in the future.

While I've always received the full speed advertised it seems to be DNS issues which slow things down for me.

If only the rest of VM were as good as their cable infrastructure.

Nine minutes per hour?

Maybe, but the important thing is really 'programme content per hour'. I guess it's channel idents, 'coming soon' and 'on a sister channel' that allows one hour of recording to be watched in 45 minutes or less on a PVR.

I've been meaning to actually look at the time code to measure it accurately for a while so that's something on the list to do over Christmas :-)

If Carlsberg operated a broadcast channel...

Refuseniks

I'm all for people understanding social media and being aware of the issues involved but everyone must have a right not to be involved if that's their wish. Especially so if membership requires disclosing any information that a person does not wish to disclose to the site or others.

Also; what happens if a manager 'falls under its spell', starts to believe the culture they immerse themselves in? A complainant faced with a manager believing defamation or abuse is okay or it's 'fair game' because 'it's only the internet' is probably worse served than someone who doesn't understand the issues.

I don't need to sign-up to supremacist and racist sites to understand that hate speech is harmful.

Video quality

"I think the makers could have increased the quality of the video camera. After all, I have a better one on my phone!"

Did your phone cost less than £60? And does it fly?

Won't they ever learn?

Every 'massive discount' sale I've seen ends in tears, complaint and bitterness.

Sellers appear unable to predict the rush they will cause and can't cope (whether in real life or on the web) and there are inevitably more disappointed customers than happy ones. I'm quite sure they do themselves more harm than good and I don't believe that such negative publicity actually is better for them than none at all.

As to those hopeful punters that partake; it's sometimes difficult seeing them as anything other than a pack of starving dogs fighting over scraps but that seems to be base human nature and I can appreciate how pissed off they are when they don't think they've had an equally fair chance of snagging the bargains on offer. And likewise those punters who sulk over losing out because they don't want to get involved in an unseemly mob rush which is little more than 'legalised looting'.

Frankly, I am frequently ashamed by the desperation exhibited in the fight for bargains which brings out the worse in people and those who encourage such behaviour should equally be ashamed of themselves. There are far better and more dignified ways to reward customers than throwing meat to the pack and standing back for the onslaught.

Paging Mark Twain

It's too soon to write-off Windows tablets and certainly too soon to predict the demise of either Windows or Microsoft - though people have been doing that for decades so why stop flogging a dead horse now?

Pricing, capabilities, advertising, hype and review ratings will dictate whether they succeed or fail, not any fanciful sticking of wet fingers in the air and trying to guess which way the wind will be blowing in a few months time.

Never forget that, setting aside brand loyalty, peer pressure and herd mentality, punters don't so much care what something is but whether that something does what they want in a way they like it being done. If Windows tablets 'tick the boxes' there's no reason it shouldn't succeed. The anti-M$ mob probably won't agree but Windows and Microsoft still have respect and brand loyalty.

Net Cops

Will they be correcting grammar and citing Godwin's Law too?

Rooting - not a magical panacea

Some people seem to believe that rooting is some magical technique that simply opens closed doors and that by rooting everything will still work as it did before. The reality is often very different as demonstrated here.

Amazon may have taken a more laid back approach to rooting, accepted it will happen, but I don't think they promised rooting would work or would be easy to make work. I don't see any real disconnect with what Amazon staff said; it's more a definition or expectation issue of what "rooting" is and achieves.

Well said, Lewis

But you'll never win the argument against the existential threat of Nuclear Armageddon while deaths and damage caused by non-nuclear is simply ignored or swept under the carpet.

It appears many are prepared to accept the negative and often terrible consequences of industrialisation - Bhopal, Seveso and others - but not when it's nuclear. We tolerate no end of deaths and injury from driving, drinking, smoking, drugs and even war but with nuclear it's got to be guaranteed zero risk or we're not having it.

I suspect people will only change their minds when the atomic >kaboom< they fear is countered by showing them the reality we will have without nuclear. It really is a question of a lesser of two evils and when people understand that their opinion will change.

DIY metal foundary

A 3D printer that has only really been a tool of the last few years is an essential? I'm not even convinced by a brick making machine or tree planter, but what strikes me is that many of these tools rely on prerequisites (like metal, nuts and bolts) yet there are no tools to create those prerequisites.

I've always predicted the world will end after some disaster with society starving while surrounded by food for lack of ability to build a can opener. That those who know how to rebuild will, by Sod's Law, be amongst the first to die and consequently doom the rest.

I'm sure we could rebuild from nothing to where we are today, just as we did it the first time, but that process will have to be incremental, starting from the basics (fire, the wheel, the engine, etc) with the added difficulty that we've taken so many resources out of the earth that they won't be so easy to obtain next time round.

39 quid a month

I think I'd go to Tesco / Maplin / eBuyer and buy a new USB disk every month.

At least they would have resale value, I'd have multiple copies of my files, and far less chance of everything disappearing in an instant. For a year's cost you could have quite a nice little cloud of your own running in a cupboard.

At the end of the year you can turf the server out a window to get the full experience of Backify. And with more chance of getting some data back.

Voice controlled TV?

How exactly is that going to work when a TV announcer mentions a channel name or gives some other instruction that controls the TV?

6:22 GMT

Not it seems according to Big Ben in that clip.

Some people seemingly have no common sense

If the police report is to believed it seems all three were given a Get Out Of Jail Card for free, told to sling their hook and that's the end of it. Only through their subsequent actions have they ended up in the position they have. The anonymous black feller seems to have had enough sense to bugger off into the night, no doubt breathing a sigh of relief at his good fortune and it not having a worse outcome for him.

I suspect the judge is going to have as little sympathy as I have.

Ghostery

The nicest thing about Ghostery (beyond the blocking) is that it visually lets the user know just how many trackers a page is using - a frighteningly high number on some sites! I expect other tools have similar capabilities.

Getting non-experts educated and aware of the issue is an important part of the process and it soon wakes them up to what they would not otherwise see.

The long and short of it

Having commuted fairly regularly across country the 200 miles each way in reasonably free-flowing traffic is usually more pleasant and less stressful than the 30 minute stop-start crawl to the local office.

It is also quicker and cheaper than train and door-to-door beats the mad mix of walking/taxi and a variety of public transport to do that; one cancelled or late service and it all falls to pieces.

Perhaps the most stress relieving part is being able to guarantee a seat and a compartment all to myself. I can turn the phone off and I've the perfect excuse not to do any work while driving. And it's got music and air-con which I can adjust to how I like it. Luxury.

Reminds me of a joke from way back ...

Man goes to see a doctor; "I've got one ball much bigger than the other".

"Show me", says the doctor.

The patient produces a huge testicle, the size of a basketball. The doctor bursts out laughing, tears streaming down his cheeks.

"Don't laugh", says the patient, "or I won't show you the large one".

Biased reporting and freetard mentality

"David Olsen took its FTP server offline after being threatened with a copyright trolling"

Are you so sure it's "copyright rolling" and not legitimate "pursuit of alleged copyright breach"? Is it not for the courts to decide that?

There's going to be a lot of egg on face if the courts finds there has been a breach of copyright, and this could be music to Astrolab's ears - If I were their lawyer I'd continue to pursue the case against Olsen, if I lose I shrug and walk away, if I win I can then sue ICANN for the same with the matter pre-judged and ICANN have very deep pockets.

Copyright issues aren't - and shouldn't be - judged on what freetards would like but on what the law says. If the law is an ass then get it changed, but I'm sure I'll be getting down-voted by those very same freetards who are offended by that notion.

Limited use

So really no different than having two mains distro boards and switching one off. But with the (in)convenience of a remote control that still has to be manually activated.

Why not just run one distro board through a mains timer switch?

Now if it had USB or LAN connection and could be automatically scheduled to power each socket on and off individually then that could be something to talk about. But even so, when trying to implement anything like this, the impracticalities become obvious pretty soon; many devices power-up in standby mode so you have to do a lot of faffing about with extra remote control button pushes to properly turn things on, then wait for them to be ready to use.

It all amounts to delay, frustration and leaving things switched on. And the fist time something critical auto powers-off whilst recording something is likely to be the last time you leave auto power-off enabled.

Most people find they have very little they can or need to switch off, and it's rarely all in one place.

Bottom line : A seemingly good idea but not as useful as it may first appear.

And people are surprised?

You own the item but don't own control over the item.

How could that possibly ever go wrong?

Maybe this will be a wake-up call for those who thought it never would or never could. On the other hand there seem to be plenty of suckers born every minute who do not read or cannot understand the small print - even when in 72-point bold - nor recognise the bleeding obvious when staring them in the face. It's however sometimes hard to feel any sympathy.

The ascent of man

Given that most of us spend 8 hours a day working, or at least imprisoned and pretending to, have probably 2 hours commuting, and spend most of our free time knackered, watching TV, just sitting in the pub or shopping, and wasting half the weekend catching up on sleep; the research I'd like to see is - Why isn't there something better than what we have? How did we ever get into this state?

Whatever your beliefs are it's hard to think we were put on this earth to slog our balls off for 40-60 years and then die. For me it's not about the money it's wishing to have time, to be something other than a wage slave. Like most people I have neither money nor time, and it's usually a catch-22 that you will at best have one or the other, not both.

If this is the pinnacle of human society then something has gone badly wrong. I personally think the hippies have the right idea.

So much handwringing

Just make a bloody decision; don't whine about how you don't know what to do, can't decide, can't balance out the pro's and con's, all the while leaving users exposed.

Simply block Java on a site by site basis, allow the user to enable it for all sites or specific sites, and end of story for now. If using Facebook or any other site necessitates enabling Java, puts the user at risk, then that's the user's or site's problem, not Mozilla's.

It's no different than what to do when a link is suspected of being malicious: Always allow it to be clicked ? Block it ? No; warn the user, let them decide what to then do. It's the only option anyway at present because there is no other single 'right answer', as Mozilla seem to have already recognised so it makes debate on what to do pretty pointless, mere procrastination.

I hope this shower never take on jobs as firemen because the house would likely burn down before they can decide whether water should be used as that might damage the contents.

Risk averse society - Fear and paranoia in parenting

It seems most parents fear their kids will be doing exactly as they did when they were young themselves, but while their parents couldn't stop them putting their lives at risk and doing all sorts of dodgy or dangerous things (that's part and parcel of enrolling in The University of Life), as parents themselves they will.

At the drop of a hat parents seem to become 'total fascists' partly driven through belatedly realising what they risked themselves but the 'bad parent' label and universal condemnation if things go wrong is what really makes it that way.

The old standard when I was a kid was, "don't come running to me if you break a leg", and if you did you could expect a bollocking on top. These days a child breaking a leg is seen as failure and negligence by the parents; it's probably considered child abuse and necessitates the parents being punished. It takes a brave parent to risk that.

Society needs to loosen up; accept risk as a fact of life.

The Core American Value

"You're either with us or you're against us"

Americans seem to view everyone as "American" or "anti-American" and with patriotism and character assassination national sports it's easy to lead the masses in the direction one wants with such nonsense as - If we don't torture terrorist suspects they *will* kill Americans. Are you going to be responsible for the deaths of those Americans?

Anyone who doesn't want to be condemned as anti-American has little option but to say, "Hell yes; torture the bastards".

Look beyond the White Cliffs of Dover

France seems to like its nuclear energy, we like our 'Jerusalem' green fields, prefer nuclear plants to be stuck in backwaters out of the way, and much of Britain's infrastructure is owned by foreign countries anyway.

Let France get on with it and we can simply import what we need.

'Little Englanders' and in-bred, horse-riding villagers and everyone else can stop their knee-jerk and NIMBY protests on wind, solar, nuclear, fracking and every other option presented.

We can place whatever's left of our military after Cameon's cuts in Kent, ready to be over there in a shot, should the French try to hold us to ransom and threaten cutting us off.

Of course, without our own nuclear plants, we won't produce our own nasty stuff for our nuclear weapons but as we're making ourselves completely dependent on America in that respect it won't really matter.

We import almost everything else so why not simply add leccy to the list? I believe we already import from France anyway.

Then we can concentrate on worrying what to do when the sun goes out.