* Posts by Alan Bourke

968 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Aug 2006

39 episodes of 'CSI' used to build AI's natural language model

Alan Bourke

So they're using a television programme displaying no intelligence

for something that isn't artifical intelligence.

Gotcha.

IT resellers, this is your future: Shifting driverless cars within 5 years

Alan Bourke

Two words.

My arse.

So the 'Year of Linux' never happened. When is it Chrome OS's turn?

Alan Bourke

No ...

it means Linus thinks he won.

When Microsoft make Windows a Linux distro, then he'll have a point.

Alan Bourke

Widespread Linux on the desktop remains elusive.

The software that homes and businesses want just isn't there. Don't say LibreOffice. It looks like a 1998 shareware application.

But so what? The desktop is not the be all and end all like it once was.

Microsoft's foray into phones was a bumbling, half-hearted fiasco, and Nadella always knew it

Alan Bourke

I had a WinPho for 18 months or more.

As an OS it was very slick. Of the two 'walled garden' phone operating systems, I'd take it over Apple's Fisher-Price UI any day.

What killed it for me was app support. Not necessarily your Facebooks et al, but 'mid range' apps. Your local transport provider's real time updates app. Your local gym chain fitness class booking app. They all have iOS and Android versions, but never Windows.

Scared of that new-fangled 'cloud'? Office 2019 to the rescue!

Alan Bourke

Re: Can I just buy the MS-approved LibreOffice plugin please?

Isn't that a LibreOffice problem?

So. Should I upgrade to macOS High Sierra?

Alan Bourke

So it's like Windows then

... wait until big patch 1 at the earliest.

WDC's My Cloud Home Duo is a natty piece of kit but beware iContent

Alan Bourke

Hey iTunes can't sync iTunes a lot of the time

so don't feel bad.

Driverless cars will make more traffic, say transport boffins

Alan Bourke

Just as well there won't be a rise of the autonomous vehicle ...

since even if we weren't a very long way from it being realistic technically, it's solving a problem that doesn't exist.

AI slurps, learns millions of passwords to work out which ones you may use next

Alan Bourke

Not an AI

there is no AI

Outlook.com looking more like an outage outbreak for Europe

Alan Bourke

Re: A Microsoft mail infrastructure having difficulty scaling? Say it isn't so!

Our organisation is on it. Around 10k employees in all corners of the globe.

Microsoft teases web-based Windows Server management console

Alan Bourke

Re: GUI good

There are some things that are easier with a GUI and some things that are easier with a CLI, world withoud end, amen.

Yet more British military drones crash, this time into the Irish Sea

Alan Bourke

I presume

they go and recover them?

Facebook posts put Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli in prison as a danger to society

Alan Bourke

Re: I only wish...

I'll crowdfund you.

The new, new Psion is getting near production. Here's what it looks like

Alan Bourke

IT'S ADORABLE

AND I WANT IT.

Microsoft won't patch Edge browser content security bypass

Alan Bourke

Re: re: Microsoft products - exploitable by design.

Chrome of course pure as the driven snow in this respect.

Uneasy rest the buttocks on the iron throne. Profits plunge 14% at Sky UK and Ireland

Alan Bourke

Why are they still charging extra for HD?

It's not like it's some new technology at this stage. Gouging.

The lady (or man) vanishes: The thorny issue of GDPR coding

Alan Bourke

Re: @AC

Is it even possible for tape backup?

DeepMind says it's given AI an imagination. Let's take a closer look at that

Alan Bourke

The AI hype train

has now reached Pulling Spurious Claims Out Of Your Arse Station.

Vendors rush to call everything AI even if it isn't, or doesn't help

Alan Bourke

You could knock a Hangman game on the ZX Spectrum

and pass it off as AI these days, it would seem.

Radiohead hides ZX Spectrum proggie in OK Computer re-release

Alan Bourke

The ZX Spectrum does not have 'apps'.

It has 'programmes'.

Brit SAP user group seeking more line-of-business members

Alan Bourke

I never fail to be amazed

that corporates still use SAP.

Is this a hotdog? What it takes for an AI to answer that might surprise you

Alan Bourke

it isn't going away?

It hasn't bloody arrived yet.

While USA is distracted by its President's antics, China is busy breaking another fusion record

Alan Bourke

That reminds me

I must look up what's happening with the Rossi E-CAT contraption these days, for a laugh.

Ever wonder why those Apple iPhone updates take so damn long?

Alan Bourke

Re: Whatever the reason given - it's bollocks

"across every possible combinations of things?"

These are Apple devices. A fairly limited selection of fixed platforms and OS version combinations, not Android where world+dog has a device and their own jimmied version of the OS.

Therefore surely not beyond Apple to test in-house.

Nest leaves competition in the dust with new smart camera

Alan Bourke

Re: I don't get it

They're for targeted advertising.

Has AI gone too far? DeepTingle turns El Reg news into terrible erotica

Alan Bourke

Has a thing that doesn't exist gone too far?

Please get off this 'AI' cut & paste bandwagon. There is no AI. There is nothing even in the ballpark.

Ireland to make revenge porn, cyberstalking criminal acts

Alan Bourke

They're embarrassing ...

... however they are unlikely ever to be enforced, the recent palaver was a case of someone highlighting the absurdity of it to try and shame the government into action. The police demonstrably DGAF.

While Facebook reinvents Sadville, we still dream of flying cars

Alan Bourke

Flying cars? Pft.

Even less likely to ever appear in mass adoption than self-driving cars. Most people can't drive properly, why would you want them flying?

Stanford Uni's intro to CompSci course adopts JavaScript, bins Java

Alan Bourke

I thought we needed to encourage new developers ...

Any language that needs the like of TypeScript or CoffeeScript to impose some readability and sanity on it is probably not the best choice for an introductory programming course.

Miss Misery on hacking Mr Robot and the Missing Sense of Fun

Alan Bourke

Seen some of the first season.

If nothing else it should be lauded for technical accuracy and restraining itself from the usual OVERRIDE SECRET PASSWORD nonsense.

What should password managers not do? Leak your passwords? What a great idea, LastPass

Alan Bourke

Just remember passwords

with your brain.

Murder in space: NASA orders astronauts to KILL cripples – then fire bodies back to Earth

Alan Bourke

The day that the word 'podule' is deployed on El Reg ...

is a day that I'm happy.

After 20 years of Visual Studio, Microsoft unfurls its 2017 edition

Alan Bourke

Re: Reboot required ...

Boo hoo. How often do you install an IDE like this? Is it that much of an issue?

Linux on Windows 10: Will penguin treats in Creators Update be enough to lure you?

Alan Bourke

I would contend that the path length messing up Node

says more about Node than anything else.

Bring it BACK... with MODs! Psion 5 storms great tech revival poll

Alan Bourke

Pick one ...

"Colour screen with a few more pixels, modern ARM processor, decent chunk of memory, USB, WiFi, maybe a 4G modem, SD slot"

or

"keep the thing running for a week on a pair of AAs"

NZ firm tucks into $27m on the back of VR 'hologram' promise

Alan Bourke

Yet another bandying of the term 'hologram'

when it's nothing of the sort. Just like those 'Ronnie James Dio lives again!' things you see at gigs which also talks shite about holograms when it's just an updated version of a 150 year old stage magic illusion called Pepper's Ghost.

Roses are red, violets are blue, fake-news-detecting AI is fake news, too

Alan Bourke

Basically in any tech story in 2017 where you see the word 'AI'

substitute the term 'bandwagon-jumping bullshit'.

If you need an in-mem analytics cruncher – and, hey, who doesn't? – Microsoft Graph Engine is now open source

Alan Bourke

Wah wah wah

big bad Microsoft. Get over it.

Totally not-crazy billionaire Elon Musk: All of us – yes, even you – must become cyborgs

Alan Bourke

AI hype mill bullshit

alert.

UK prof claims to have first practical blueprint of a quantum computer

Alan Bourke

Where's Captain Cyborg?

I miss Captain Cyborg.

Is it the beginning of the end for Visual Basic? Microsoft to focus on 'core scenarios'

Alan Bourke

Re: Fickle Microsoft

No other ecosystem ever changes of course.

'Maker' couple asphyxiated, probably by laser cutter fumes

Alan Bourke

'Maker'

As a stupid term it's up there with 'millennial'.

Everything wrong with IoT (and how to fix it) – according to Uncle Sam

Alan Bourke

Everything wrong? Here you go.

1. We can't even keep things that are supposed to be on the internet secure.

2. Most applications of it are stupid and pointless.

3. It's largely just another data-slurping and ad-vectoring mechanism.

Soz fanbois, Apple DIDN'T invent the smartphone after all

Alan Bourke

Re: Apple? Invent?

That's like saying they invented fast cars. It's the car that's important. And again, that comes under 'brilliant design applied to existing concept'.

I used the first Macs in college when the alternative was Nimbus PC's *gak* and VT100 VAX terminals. So I'm glad they did.

Alan Bourke

Apple? Invent?

They don't invent much, really. If anything. They do apply brilliant design and marketing to things that already exist though and make your granny want one.

‘Artificial Intelligence’ was 2016's fake news

Alan Bourke

Great to see.

Some sense being spoken about the avalanche of bullshit where pattern recognition etc gets pimped as artificial intelligence.

Sexbots could ‘over-exert’ their human lovers, academic warns

Alan Bourke

Yeah?

We'll see about that ...

Uber to Cali DMV: Back off, pal, our 'self-driving cars' aren't self driving

Alan Bourke

Like most of the 'self driving cars' noise at the moment then ...

... largely flim-flam that will never work in most real world applications.

Meet Hyper.is – the terminal written in HTML, JS and CSS

Alan Bourke

Why? Why? Why?

Because sometimes it's enough for something to look cool, that's why.