Posts by Tikimon

Re: Hand Holding

"No sir! I didn't see you playing with your dolls again!"

Re: "Superficial Marketing Tosh" Virgin is hardly a pathfinder

"So don't be so disparaging, most of the innovations in transport have started this way, and it is a necessary step on the path to more widespread use."

I get where you're going, and agree. Problem is, this is not how space transport is starting. This kind of flight profile was done with the X-15 program decades ago. "Space transport" implies (to me anyway) that one transports something from Point A to Point B. Virgin's program is not Transport, it's merely an expensive carnival ride, where the loading and unloading are done at the same platform a few minutes apart with a thrill ride in the middle.

That's ALL this project will ever be good for. Other companies are working on Transport, moving people and cargo from Earth to orbital destinations and sometimes bringing them back again. As far as speculative "deliver something to space and hand off to another ship" Space-X style rockets would do that better with less complexity and risk.

The dawn of digital "checkpoints" for government control

As noted, recognition tech is being taken up rapidly. It's only a matter of time before the government demands access to those scanners and data. ALL of them. Like Google, the spymasters believe its their right to know everything about everyone and store it forever. Soon facial recognition will be installed at shopping malls, train stations, sports venues, public buildings, anywhere a thin claim for preventive security can be made. Desire to recognize customers (for "rewards" of course, lol) will lead to most retail using it as well.

Think CCTV is invasive? It's usually mounted kinda high up, often providing imagery that lacks enough detail to ID people. Facial recognition will be at eye level and close, taking excellent shots of our faces. CCTV has a vague "watch for trouble" mission. Facial recognition has ONE purpose, to record and if possible identify everyone who passes it.

If you combine spying through your phone, home-automation setup, and public face recognition, you already have the effective elements of the Telescreen from "1984". With access to all these systems, the spymasters will watch and listen to us everywhere we go. It's worse actually, because Orwell didn't imagine huge searchable databases to store and serve up all that info.

All this tech was supposed to make our lives better, not bind us in digital shackles...

What do laws matter?

...when you're above the law?

That's the real point of all this for the spymasters. They believe they are above/below/outside/ARE the law, and have to answer to nobody. Ergo, their actions should be secret, without oversight, without redress or recourse. They will never accept being reined in, and in the unlikely event restrictions are passed they will simply ignore them, like they're ignoring our legal protections now.

Oversight? Limits? Even if you add restrictions, what the hell is anyone going to do about violations? NOTHING. Just like has happened since Ed Snowden ripped the mask off.

Only in Hollywood

Gettin' your hands dirty ain't smart where pathogens are lurking. Only in movies do "scientists" dig around in piles of steaming poop barehanded. Yick! Real scientists wear impervious gloves!

As do others who deal in icky substances. I saw a vet check a horse before sale to see if she was preggers. He put on a long vinyl sleeve thingie, then shoved his whole damn arm into the mare up to his shoulder. Stood there with a thoughtful look on his face, feeling around for a minute. He then declared her "clean" and removed the arm with the most godawful schlorping sound, and peeled off three feet of slimy glove. When I feel like IT is just too stupid for words, I think of that job and disk errors don't seem so bad.

Aging bands to age whiskey!

Seems appropriate.

Re: Revenue up, units down

""...a unit of sale is less relevant for us at this point compared to the past."

So in plain language, Apple is all about The Bottom Line, the end to which all means are directed, and the primary measure of the company's success. Hard to reconcile that with their holier-than-the-competition PR...

Re: Buzzwords...

"Rap is just Country music without the country, or the music."

WRONG. Country music does not glorify crime and "gangstas". It does not treat women like mindless objects for sex or label them "bitches" or "Ho's". Rap is a sometimes toxic collection of misogyny and criminal attitudes loaded with F-words.

Country music is at worst kinda boring. It tends to be about the life situations the rest of us non-criminal types care about. Life and its windings, love gained or lost, bad jobs, dogs and automobiles. Your kids can listen to it with no worries about nasty language or misogyny. It's almost the diametric opposite in content and intent from Rap.

I'm not even a fan of Country Music, but it doesn't deserve to be lumped in with Rap/HipHop.

Re: Hahaha... - the times are changing!

Know how every new tech widget is going to totally replace something else? That happened with cars in the US. Why walk when you can enjoy post-war affluence and drive? Suburban areas also spread out more than stacked-high cities, so destinations frankly moved out of walking range. A three-block city walk is nothing, but a five-mile walk down a highway is something else.

Times are changing! Planners are building new with sidewalks again, nice broad ones. Sidewalks and paths are being retrofitted where they didn't exist. Walking paths and trails are proliferating, now that local governments have realized what a draw they are. Many of us will be stuck with a car or transit for a long commute. But more every day, we can walk our neighborhoods and to the local stores. Things do improve sometimes!

Re: Good trick to steal secrets - NOT

Sorry, that's a stupid trick to steal secrets! The instant it can be PROVEN that Kaspersky is spying and sharing with the Russian spooks, their reputation is gone for good. Eugene Kaspersky is not dumb enough to throw his whole business down the drain, and certainly not for something so minor as infiltrating one office drone.

Kaspersky is a witch-hunt victim because of their integrity. They refuse to install backdoors for the UNITED STATES spooks, and they have revealed several Western government sponsored malware campaigns. Therefore the US Gummint wants to punish them for standing firm on honesty. They also prefer you use security software that has NSA-Approved backdoors in it and not one they can't subvert. So now our tax money is spent to smear one of the few honest companies to be found and try to destroy their business.

Re: Yeah... mais non..

This terrible name is obviously meant to appear French, at least to say out loud. Problem is, that "Boux" would pronounce as "Boo" and the company name is "Bootie". Little socks, how cute!

The "Bo" (long O) sound would be spelled Beau (or Beaux plural). However, using that for "bowtie" leads to "Beautie" which looks like Beauty. Having chosen to weirdly spell a common word as their name, the obvious pseudo-spelling didn't work so they chose to mispronounce it as well.

If you have to jump through so many hoops to make it fit, it ain't working guys!

Ah hell, let's have some fun. One could use "Beaux Tie" (plural to include all genders) for a bondage supply company. Just sayin'.

Re: I see no notch, only display ears.

It adds no USEFUL screen space, only little blind corners where you can lose your socks or car keys.

What a "notch" really does is keep some idiot designer and a slew of marketers in business, claiming that they've come up with something breathtakingly new and awesome. Just like Ribbon UIs and their ilk, change for its own sake and breaking functionality as a side effect.

That's Mechanic Effect at work

When the balky machine realizes that One Who Is Not To Be Messed With has arrived bearing tools, they think better of it an decide to behave.

I've wondered if users could proactively trigger this effect. I suggest they fix the machine with an angry stare and say "Don't make me call the IT department!" Worth a try.

Re: Eh?

"And external USB hard drives in 2018? It's 2018! At least get a NAS if you're not ready for cloud yet."

Yeah, and in 2018 external drives are pretty sweet for a good price! They also require NO internet connection, are worlds faster than anyone's streaming rate, and won't eat into a data allowance moving files around. Encrypted for security, immune to cloud provider hacking, can be stored in a safe. Good luck putting your NAS in your pocket!

Is it the millennials? There's a huge lack of perspective in these forums. Just because it's new doesn't mean it's better, or that it will totally replace something that was working fine already. I can list a dozen things that were proclaimed dead and obsolete, but inconveniently insist on sticking around being useful.

Re: Colour me sceptical

"fixed CCTV cameras, where it could be running 24/7 across thousands of cameras."

And that, children, is the whole point of the exercise. Once those cameras are in place it will be trivial to store, share, sell, search and categorize every image they collect. Mealy mouth assurances of deleted data and "privacy protections" are only "this won't hurt" lies used to calm the victim.

Re: Why do I smell...

"I'm with you here, the most common commands are always available muscle memory makes it very easy... I never understood why people dont like it"

Let me clue you in. If you're doing the same thing over and over, it can be good. However if you need to FIND something the Ribbon hides it.

A person can scan through a series of menus in a few seconds. We're good at reading lists, Menus always worked FINE. Ribbons and Docks appeared to Be Different and justify the cost of an upgrade, not because we wanted them. They obscure things behind unlabeled icons and drop-down menus tied to the icons. Looking for a feature is now a nightmare of hovering over every icon on six tabs of cute little pictures. Did they hide that under Format, Layout, or Home?

Most users simply give up rather than play Hide and Seek. I support a shopful of users and they universally hate it. Time and familiarity have not changed their minds.

Re: Not sure how big of a loss this is

VirtualFanboi666 (Microsoft MVP):

"This post is not relevant for this forum, which is only for network errors involving Token Ring on Windows 10 for Elbonian language packs, even though the same diagnosis and fixes apply to a common problem with all versions of Windows for all languages. Please repost your question in the appropriate forum, good luck finding the right one, and too bad about the time wasted. Since the 45 useful replies by users solving their own problems makes Microsoft look like the uncaring, clueless fu**s they are, this post has been locked and will no longer be updated."

Thanks to crap like that from their anointed idiots, a knowledge forum without Microsoft's involvement would work BETTER. Good riddance!

Re: Mission at end?

"Seriously, if I were the first Mars colonist, I'd hunt these things down and repurpose them."

And this is why the Pyramids, Colosseum, and so many other historical structures are RUINS. "Nobody's using that, let's dismantle it to scavenge the rocks!" Away, thoughtless jackal!

If I were the first Mars colonist I wold reverently visit these priceless pieces of history and place markers listing their history and accomplishments. Also a sentry gun and a KEEP OFF THE ROVER sign.

Re: Free advertising

Yeah, but not ALL advertising is good! PETA does a good job getting their name in the news, but not in a positive way. Why did El Reg share this here? So we could all point and laugh! PETA doesn't benefit much from the exposure they get over this kind of thing.

Re: The moon is a Harsh Mistress

Anybody check the trajectory here? Are the Martians starting to fight back against our invasion of their planet by laser-wielding scout robots?

Homeopathy placebo NOT ok

There's a huge and dangerous error in the "quackery is OK because Placebo Effect" assertion. This argument assumes that the patient has a problem that CAN be fixed through placebo effect and doesn't really need medical help. In those cases patient belief in the quack remedy may indeed trigger the patient's own body to fix it.

In every other case, the patient will waste (possibly critical) time and resources on the homeopathy or other snake oil. They will not get better. They might get worse, possibly to the point of permanent harm that can no longer be helped by Real Medicine. Look no farther than Steve Jobs, who let an easily cured (when it was found) cancer grow while he tried new-age quackery. He finally turned to Real Medicine after a year or two, but it had spread too far and was incurable.

By delaying or preventing useful treatment, quack remedies indeed do harm, sometimes enough to kill the patient. Snake oil should NEVER be given a free pass or credit, it only lets their proponents claim legitimacy and lead more people away from cures that actually work.