Posts by alain williams 2469 publicly visible posts • joined 29 May 2007
some satellites in geosynchronous orbits
To be in a geosynchronous orbit a satellite must be 22,236 miles up, if not it will not stay in the same apparent place above the earth. So how can it be closer than some and not others ?
to an address in Dewsbury - I have never lived there, I live some 200 miles away. I only found out when I asked for a subject access request (data protection act). They refused to refund me as it was more than 6 years ago and claimed that, somehow, I should have known about it.
If you deal with them only do so in writing; what they record on their computer is not always what is said on the 'phone.
Given how much intelligence we can pack into a printer why does any OS need to do anything other than say 'here's the data, get on with it'?
It means that the printer manufacturer can save $1 in making it and offload the hard work to a computer that has to have vast resources just to be able to run Microsoft Windows.
They need to build them cheaply in case they do not make their money back if the user does not buy their over priced ink.
This is collecting personal data. I thought that the data-protection-act/GDPR said that what data is being collected, and why, had to be clear and easy to understand -- so why vagueness ?
I do understand that I cannot opt out of this government data scrape, but I should know what is happening.
it is about ensuring that what gets printed is not significantly biased in any direction
I do not mind bias in op-ed pieces as long as it is clearly marked as opinion of the author. This can lead to interesting debate, we need to be wary of no platforming unpopular views.
There is no place for bias in, supposedly, straight reporting of facts in news. But it is really hard to police as the choice of words can completely colour descriptions: one man's "freedom fighter" is another's "terrorist".
(Apologies to W Shakespeare)
I think that part of the purpose is to evade the cookie laws in the EU, California & other places.
So: back to normal for a few years while Google tracks everyone. It will take legislators many years to catch up ... I suspect that Google has draft a FLoC replacement for then.
because most of them would not know about it. Chrome will come with it enabled by default, you might be able to switch it off, but most would not know how to and probably not understand why they might be at disadvantage by being tracked.
Installing "yes" men that make a mockery of an electoral system.
This time is was Kaseya being arse holes, next time it could be some malfunction, either way Kayeya are unlikely to worry much. How much work would you do for $48/year ?
The only way of being safe is to take your own backup, preferably two that you keep in different locations.
Yes: it is harder, more work, needs thought - but how much is your data worth to you ?
I should not need to be put at extra risk of being infected with Covid because selfish bastards will not take the precautions needed to bring the R number down.
I don't like having to socially distance more than anyone else - but I do it because I am part of a community that works together for mutual benefit. Neither do I like paying taxes - but I do for the same reason but get annoyed when selfish bastards like Philip Green do not.
It's about time the GDPR enforcement authorities began wielding the big stick over this.
Well: let's do it then. All that it should take is a few of us complaining to the ICO (or whatever you have in your country) to get them looking into this. Unfortunately I suspect that a cattle prod will be needed to wake our supposed protectors out of their slumber.
Will do things that are easiest for them and don't care about privacy of visitors.
But this is something that the ICO should clamp down on: it is a privacy breach, data is being taken without users' knowing - this is a flagrant breach of the GDPR as must be specific and informed and freely given. But: the ICO is asleep on the job.
This is tracking and so the user should be asked if they want this to happen, if they agree that their data is taken out of the EU.
Much worse is what google analytics does - tracks users from site to site, how forms are filled in, etc. I have never been asked if I want this to happen.
Non-agreed use should be banned.
I suspect that some people do not notice the icon that says that updates are needed. So why not make it become bigger, flash, turn red over several days ?
I run Linux mint on my laptop - which might not be turned on for some time - which might skew their stats.
Firefox is a pain: I will sometimes avoid updating it as once you have done so it refuses to let you open new tabs until after a restart. That is annoying as it interrupts workflow and kills private windows.
It is more complicated than that. They are slanting the table against the small contractor. If you, say, take up 3 months work 200 miles away then they are stopping you claiming against tax the cost of your rail fares & hotel - insist that you aretreated the same as someone who has lived there for years. And other similar.
Agreed: charging for linking is wrong, but charging for reuse of content is right.
People seem to accept that reuse of music needs to be paid for, so why not reuse of news ? It should be OK to reuse snippets of news as you should be able to have small amounts of music or where it is incidental/background.
Presumably if someone drives somewhere on a business trip they will still be able to claim mileage.
If people use a fuel card for personal mileage then they were/should-have paying tax on the benefit.
I don't know about anyone else buy the number of miles that I have driven in the last year is 1/4 of what I did the year before, much more staying at home - good for the planet!
the document lives on the server, which is good for security
Maybe if it is your own server, but I can see many running this on xyz-random.com server ... and we see plenty of stories of these being cracked and files exfiltrated, not to mention the NSA grabbing a copy by using the Patriot Act.
or altered BIOS why not monitor IP packets coming from the machine ? If it is to talk to its spy masters how else will the machine do so ?
Most have firewalls that filter incoming traffic, but a really high value site should also look at outgoing packets - so this should have been caught.
The trouble with this sort of story is that you cannot trust what anyone is saying.
The "woke" brigade on Reddit and elsewhere deem the usage of "GIMP", "gimp" and "gimped" to be extremely offensive
Oh, I wondered why & so went searching and found a derrogatory term for someone that is disabled, & insult implying that someone is incompetent, stupid, & sex slave. All of these are different contexts from image editing - so what is the problem ? I assume that most of us understand that many homophones exist where words have multiple meanings ?
Of course: if I try hard I can switch off my brain's empathy circuits and view the world entirely from my own perspective and thus fail to understand that others are different and so become offended by their different use of words. But most of us are more intelligent that that ... are we not ?
I expect that some SJWs will down-vote this comment as they believe that everyone must avoid using words that their clique has decided are offensive and insist on pushing those memes much to the bemusement of others who were using them in a different context and had no intention of being rude about anyone.
or deceptive* in its use of these domain names ? If not it seems as if their use is reasonable. To provide good training it has to use domains that have to be good enough to fool those being trained. The UDRP arbitrator is wrong and facebook is being an ass (nothing new there).
* Other than trying to deceive those being trained.
I thought that the OZ bill was about paying for news content. If google/facebook show the news then there is no need to visit the media web site.
However this article is talking about paying for links. If google/facebook just link to a media web site then the media site has opportunity to show adverts, set cookies, etc, and so have opportunity to get income.
I would approve of google/facebook having to pay for showing to the user content from the media. I do not approve of them having to pay for just linking (and showing a small amount of link text).
I looked at the PDF of the bill ... not the easiest to read.
Then RedHat acquired it (the decided to sponsor it). This meant that Centos did not need to worry about funding and so lost the ability, and memory of, how to fund itself. Now that that is lost: RedHat has changed the rules and Centos has to follow them as it is no longer able to be independent. This is rather like a corporate buying its competitor.
The discussion about streams is a red herring.
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