Posts by Allan George Dyer 2547 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009
Anyone who completes the training program will be there on merit. What sort of requirement were you imagining that would disqualify half the citizens of America? The Artemis program will, surely, send more than two people in total to the Moon, so, as a consequence of the discriminatory selection procedure for the Apollo program, a woman candidate will become the first woman on the moon.
Unless, of course, China or India get there faster.
@AC - "They published a handy chart for those who can't be bothered to read:"
Thanks for the chart... but do the rules make sense?
So, the first assumption appears to be that a person only remains infectious for 7 days after they show symptoms... is that true?
Even if that is true, a person can go out again 14 days after the first person in their household shows symptoms. Using the example of Household 2, person D might isolate from the rest of the household, but then contact and become infected from person C on day 19, after they are allowed out. They might not show symptoms for another 13 days, spreading the infection further.
Am I missing something, or is this based on, "well, that's only going to happen in a small percentage of households" wishful thinking?
The HK Government has now admitted that the wristband and app does not work as advertised. “If the person only left their place without their phone, there is no signal from the band [triggered],” Lam (Gov. CIO) said. The only point in using the wristband, Lam added, was that a separate smartphone app, which has location-sharing functions, would randomly request scanning of a QR code from the band.
I guess they haven't considered the possibilities of copying the QR code?
@jason_derp - "Ugh! I really hate being reminded"
I'm sorry I triggered that, I tend to agree with your sentiment, my post was just trying to explain the situation, not cause mental trauma.
Comparing Canada and the UK, the UK's suffered under foreign monarchs for a thousand years or more, but we do get tourist dollars... or would, if the borders weren't closed. When we do travel, there's always a suspicion we should be apologising for invasions our ancestors never got to vote about.
@Bruce Ordway - "I wonder how easy it would be to hack in this case?"
Don't forget the motivation... if hacking DARTS could help someone avoid a 20 year jail sentence, then they might be willing to invest a sizeable lump of ill-gotten gains in the best hackers available.
All part of the context.
@Waseem Alkurdi - "users could magically retrain themselves when it comes to Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/$ANTISOCIAL_APP/$PHONE_OS"
No, new users train themselves. Retraining never happens, when the technology changes the old users are sent to the retirement home, muttering about this new-fangled stuff they can't understand. Just look at the demographics of Facebook users.
@bombastic bob - "It was TRULY SUPERIOR to EVERYTHING at that time, except maybe for OS/2, which Microsoft ALSO wrote."
It's worth adding that the key difference that made OS/2 superior was the pre-emptive multi-tasking. Win 3.1 had "co-operative multitasking", meaning the OS would pass control to each task in turn, if it ever got control back from the badly-behaved ones. On Win 3.1, you didn't want to do anything during a big download, just scrolling too fast in your wordprocessor document might cause too much delay and a timeout in the download protocol.
To complete the history lesson (not for you, bob, for the PFYs), after MS and IBM argued, they continued development independently, MS renaming their version to NT. The Win 3.1 line continued through 95, 98 and ended at Win ME, so Windows 10 is a direct descendant of OS/2.
@IGotOut - Well, if we're checking facts, then you should know that bats were eaten... the bats weren't in an overcrowded market packed in amongst snakes and fish because they were looking for a good deal on a designer brand. But the cooking process probably prevented anyone being infected by the bat they were actually eating.
And before anyone starts blaming a country for unhygienic conditions in the food supply chain, take a look at chlorinated chicken. There is lots of room for improvement, everywhere.
@AC - "Oh dear how our memories are short.
I lived in China during the bird flu (1997) and SARS (2003) - the only infectious thing then was fear."
So was I (specifically, Hong Kong), and I remember the Y2K problem too (see icon). Did the disaster scenario fail to materialise because it was never a threat, or because lots of people were taking action (checking and updating computers/washing hands and wearing masks)?
We know that newly-emerging diseases can have high mortality rates; the black death killed maybe 25% of the population of Europe; the 1918 flu pandemic killed 20 - 50 million people, more than all the soldiers and civilians killed in World War I.
COVID-19 has already killed 3131 (up to 3rd March). This is more than 1997 bird flu (6 people in Hong Kong, and 1.3 million chickens killed and incinerated as a precaution); more than SARS 2003 (774 deaths worldwide).
It hasn't reached the level of H1N1 in 2009 (150,000–575,000 fatalities) yet, but those deaths were spread over almost 2 years. There is still a lot we don't understand about COVID-19. The mortality rate appears to be significantly higher than seasonal flu, but is that just because there are many undiagnosed infections? Cases are appearing where there is no traceable contact with known cases, some people have appeared to recover, have no detectable virus, but then fall ill again after release. Coronaviruses usually die out in warm conditions, so this might all disappear as summer approaches, but MERS is also a coronavirus, and MERS was able to spread in some rather warm places.
So, is it really that much of an imposition to follow good medical advice? Wash your hands frequently, and, as I'm in HK, I'll wear a mask when I'm out, not so much for my protection, but it's worth it if I'm a symptomless carrier and it prevents someone else being infected.
"ability to detect and avoid unintended consequences"
Note that "target not killed" would be an unintended consequence.
"the ability to disengage or deactivate deployed systems that demonstrate unintended behavior"
How long before the AI learns that is must deactivate the deactivation system to be sure of completing its mission? There was a documentary about this.
@Cynic_999 - "Lets' see how the police react when a wanted villain is spotted in a hundred different locations at the same time."
Uh... they make 100 arrests, and get successful convictions for "obstruction of a Police office in the course of his duty", or "wasting Police time", or "conspiracy to defraud", so their success statistics soar!
@AC - "Why can't we all just agree to write dates with the most significant digits first and the least significant digits last."
We did agree, see ISO 8601 (obligatory XKCD).
On the other hand... yyyy-mm-dd is Chinese date format, so this is obviously definitive proof that Huawei is already hacking UK telecoms infrastructure from the future (and therefore definitely planted by the NSA).
[Edit] - You left off the century?! Barbarian! Heathen!! Heretic!!!
@Dan 55, AC, Charlie Clark - Yes, individual accounts or an anonymous upload account would have been a reasonable solution, back when ftp was relevant. The shared upload account with full read access switched my reaction from 'ftp, how quaint' to ** horror **. It's not the fault of the protocol, but it might be a warning of a lack of current technical skills.
It's been almost that long since I was last horrified that a business was still running an FTP server, and wanted me to use it ("just upload your docs by ftp and we'll get it published" - me: resist temptation to check on their other projects).
icon: it's the only way to be sure.
It is so heartening that your post has triggered such an outpouring of accurate advice from well-informed people. It will be so useful to people who may be confused or worried by the complexities of changing international bureaucracy.
At least, I guess some of it must be accurate, just like there's usually a lottery winner.
How about Russell's Teapot? I can't prove that there is no teapot in orbit between the Earth and Mars; should I, or anyone, reorganise their life according to their belief about its existence?
In this case, we are discussing the practical implications of the existence of one or more Popes, specifically, should their signature be required to permit Alistair's trip downtown in a flying taxi? If the Pope(s) are truly God's representative on Earth, then they have authority over everything, including flying taxis. On the other hand, an old bachelor with no aviation qualifications and dangerous views on birth control who many people say they believe was appointed by God is entirely unsuitable to be making air traffic control decisions.
While you might want philosophical certainty, what do you do for practical decisions? Personally, I'd put myself about 6 on Dawkin's Scale ('6. De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero. "I don't know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."').
@Calum Morrison - 'the UK who've changed our spellings and are therefore "wrong"'
No, it makes the US outdated. Don't they know Tudor English End of Extended Support was in 1649? They should be downloading the latest updates when they're issued.
@Crazy Operations Guy - "tighter security increases the risk of attack. Terror organizations like to recruit people who are frustrated" - Yep, totally with you on that. Not everyone (probably only a tiny %) will react that way, but it might be the critical push for some.
"someone came up to you and handed you a bomb, telling you to blow up the car in front of you. A lot of people would do it without a second thought." - Wait, what!?! Personally, I'd consider that sitting behind a car that might move in a minute preferable to sitting behind a burnt-out wreck of a car (for small values of bomb, large values probably result in lying dead behind a wreck of a car) that will never move. I can see why you put "Crazy" in your handle; is your estimate of "a lot" based on it's what you'd do, or is the whole world crazy?
@TsVK! - "imagine the backlash if border security did not tighten itself"
So it's about security theatre, not effective protection?
Is there any evidence that such intensive questioning is actually effective in detecting and/or monitoring real violent threats? Or is it just a way to splurge money, intimidate innocents and please xenophobic supporters?
At least the "Are you a terrorist? Y/N" check cards are cheap, and probably just as effective.
@TechnicalBen - were there drinks with that food... from your wiki link, "Finding a substitute delayed the flight by more than six hours to the following day". After six hours of drinking, they would've been quite relaxed when boarding.
One of the examples in the video was a "one-time security token", which is exactly the sort of thing that shouldn't be broadcast. Yes, a data leak isn't the same as hacking, but the data might be useful in a hack (e.g. the token), or part of the target data. You've recognised that it is a broadcast system, but the designers don't seem to be thinking that way, and IoT product developers might come up with all sorts of dodgy uses.
My movie plot scenario, I was thinking of someone reading data using this method, and an attacker uses a laser to overwhelm the genuine signal and feed in false data. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
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