Posts by GrumpyOldBloke

Re: That pie chart is well wrong

Trump is placing trade sanctions on China in part over IP theft (or recycling), expect about $600B to turn up on the door step any day now.

What else is in it? Just ask any congress critter that has actually read the bill. There must be one!

Re: @AC

The place never stopped being a penal colony. Check out the security theatre for the games including airport style full body scanners (rapiscan have the contract are these the xray scanners or the terahertz ones) wonder what happens to the images. There will be back scatter xray vans on the gold coast - who cares about public health. And the never ending increase in police powers to keep us safe. Gold Coast, a good place to keep away from for the period of the games and possibly beyond.

To which Mr Franklin would reply that to have reached that point then you have already surrendered most of your liberties in exchange for fantasies that the state can or will offer you protection.

In any popular tabloid any criticism of the police is inevitably met with a response - when you need the police to protect you. The problem of course is that the police do not offer this service, at least not to Joe Public. The social contract between the government and the governed has long been broken and one sided. Further erosion of the rights of the governed will not make the government any more competent or any more interested in protecting you in your time of need.

Re: Sigh...

the spend of £40 million at Porton Down to do something about it...

Grubyments don't work that way. The spend at Porton Down would have already been decided as would have been the eventual end game from all this Russian bashing - probably an excuse to re-enter Syria. We in the free West are now following the bouncing ball of increasingly shrill outrage from politicians and the press to 'do something' and hence arrive at the predetermined conclusion. The Iraq war, WMD's and babies thrown out of incubators was not that long ago. Lest we forget.

._.. .._ _.._ .._ ._. _.__

eom

Re: Standard tactic

Just as there is a symbiotic link between police and criminals, so to between governments and terrorists. (If not symbiotic then directly funded). Terrorism is the gift that keeps on giving, influencing all sorts of power grabs like the one above. As there aren't enough real threats to justify the security and military apparatuses that have been built, we have to make some. This is similar to the situation before the great war, or the war to end all wars, whereby large standing armies were bankrupting the kingdoms of Europe and rational deescalation was abandoned in favour of Russian roulette. The only winners were the banks.

Re: Won't somebody think of the....

That depends on where the pressure to discriminate against $X comes from. A team is not an isolated entity, nor is a corporation. How internal and external influences are handled may suggest fairness, biases, discrimination, stupidity or something in between. With enough pressure a team will act against its own best interests even if that limits long term survival. We see this in the lifecycle of every major corporation.

Re: Beware the future!

Don't worry, we can save freedom by destroying it. Just send your tax dollars to the Joseph Stalin memorial super ministry, C/- Canberra.

Re: Solution

I don't think it was ever about contributing anything of value. When you are the worlds largest supporter of terrorism then that 1% is an important part of being able to move your assets around. It's the journalists and whistle blowers that need to be stopped.

Re: HFC Horrible Fucking Crap

Part of the HFC debacle was allowing foxtel and Telstra to keep all the good frequencies while nbn got stuck at the noisy end of the spectrum. Add negotiating skill to the nbn co's list of credits.

Re: The solution is...

Does it matter whose?

Or it may mean that as you employ more women you need more women to communicate and socialise with them. Either, because of bias against the men, the men speak a different interpersonal language, the men regard them poorly and so a grunt is seen as being more than sufficient or because the men will not engage with them due to concerns over their mental stability, maturity and the risk of false allegations. It may also mean that the economy is moving from making stuff to talking about stuff.

Re: PERMANENT SLOW MOTION REPLAY ?

No Meadowlark, the super advanced androids will still take over mankind. The difference now is that they won't know what to do once the takeover is complete. Mankind will start referring to the androids as politicians and we will lament how nothing ever seems to change for the better. Expect the androids to one day start serving adverts and legislating for donors in the absence of any real AI.

Not going to happen. We will still be here fighting with nuclear weapons over the last peanut butter sandwich when it all comes to an end. Some amongst us want all the toys and as long as they can convince the rest to go without in the name of their greed we are stuck.

Re: kettle calling the pot black

As an owner of a Huawei manufactured Nexus 6P that boot looped shortly after the 1 year warranty expired, I suggest that they haven't improved by much. I wouldn't buy from them again.

Re: The Pence Rule

Probably not your fault unless your office is at the end of a long dark road with no public transport and surrounded by prisons, psychiatric hospitals, wolves and cannibals. There are obviously other drivers influencing women's career choices and expecting it all to be magically fixed at the corporate level is leaving things a bit late. As an exercise in trolling it would be interesting to chart women leaving technical industries with the increasing proportion of women in school teaching roles. Are young women not reaching for some industries because of a lack of accessible role models (male or female) to inspire and teach them technical skills.

Re: What's the hit rate?

This isn't about catching anyone. This is about fear of and control by an authoritarian state.

Look at how people are now willing to accept that the US govt can pass non-constitutional laws if they apply to non-citizens or outside of the borders. As a poster above pointed out probable cause becomes reasonable suspicion. Then it becomes a hunch followed by whatever the officer feels like stealing under local forfeiture conventions. All the while in the land of the over medicated anyone opposing this becomes a conspiracy theorist. A population already conditioned to live in its own faeces with the UK and Oz half a step behind. You have got to admire the social engineering that has gone into this.

Re: Still on sale?

Only the silicon that is not operating as designed.

Yup, one moment capitalism and the efficiency of a competitive free market is good but if it gets in the way of the bread and circuses it is bad. There is no difference between ticket scalping and futures trading. If it pushes up the cost of food and fuel and the bankers profit it is good. If it pushes up the cost of nothing consequential and the plebs profit it is bad. From a market point of view bulk buying tickets helps to support the entertainers by guaranteeing a level of market support and contributes to market efficiency by providing services to those who are prepared to pay, and as our economics teachers told us, can make the best use of the tickets.

Re: Another set of predictions

The NBN's powered boxes by the side of the road look archaic now but we will stick with them because we are Stralians' and that is what we do! Soothed over by talk of off-budget, user pays, its all Labor's fault, terrorists hate us for our infrastructure, no one needs more than 640K, etc. Mobile broadband will be enough for the older low bandwidth (email and web) customers if the telco's get their pricing and marketing right. That will blow a big hole in the NBN both for finance and contention meaning no money for upgrades and no justifiable demand. NBN may even need to offer a CVC aggregation product across many POI's to keep things affordable (closer to the original plan).

Re: so this is one of a series of gummints that

Oz owned by foreigners isn't a problem, especially if they are fervent supporters of democracy and the process of donations that keep it alive. A government that offers no value to its voter base is a problem. People might start asking why is government so expensive and what does it really do, having sold off any legitimate activity? Lists and databases to the rescue. Busy work under the pretense of keeping us safe. This is also visible in our PM's latest brain f@rt. A list of foreign actors who might seek to influence government. ASIO already has a list and our politicians were so warned. Not good enough. We need to put them on another list, even better make them put themselves on a list for a fee. Not sure what happens to the list after that. Locked filing cabinet in the basement or circulated marked additional discretion required when accepting donations? As for Brandis's list, think back to gun registration. Once something is on list then additional rules can be formulated about its use or decommissioning. Like the Liddell power station whose owners are not prepared to play ball to flatter the LNP. As critical infrastructure we open the path to subsidies and arm twisting, carrots and sticks.

Re: Depression —> Paranoia

Or valued?

Re: Never heard of it

That is the trick. I still haven't worked out how to opt out. Anyone know?

Re: Still not too late

Large flywheels - that has got to be tough on the bearings in high seas.

Re: Dammit.

No Sir, I did not cut down the cherry tree. The Russians did it.

Pilot should be fine.

Locusts, you can but dream. By the time the US food companies are done with them it will be 50% sawdust and GMO high starch filler, 40% GMO soy, corn syrup and artificial flavouring, 5% preservative and 5% undisclosed byproducts of the pharmaceutical industry. The big label on the front showing a cartoon image of a super locust will be as close as you will get to your fantasy protein source.

Re: Skin in the game

21 newspolls under Turnbull showing the LNP being crushed at the next election. Politicians are hurting.

Re: a 50-km long intact lava tube

How long before people at one end of the tunnel declare war on people at the other end of the tunnel. Better make that two good primary schools. An Aldi at one end and a Kwik Save at the other should be enough to get hostilities underway.

Re: Die Hard: Offshore

Perhaps with an evil strategy to drive the container vessels into US war ships - though that might be a bit unbelievable even for Hollywood.

Re: Quality over quantity...

The old hospital surgery straw man, well not for much longer. You can lie there happy knowing that diversity makes us stronger. Though some security was missed in the hospital electronics, a performance bias was included that considers your relative worth on the rainbow scale and your privilege level. While you might die, a cross dressing Latino man may live. See how warm and fuzzy that makes you feel. Similarly the AI in your self driving car will be capable of split second value judgments as to who should live and who should die in a collision, even if a circuitous route is needed to reach that outcome. Diversity is not just about gender, sexual orientation and colour but about value and intent.

Yeah but the graphics are better.

Re: Is this an outbreak of common sense?

No, the DTCA covers more than just cryptography. It covers a wide range of research and activities in manufacturing, medicine, telecommunications, and a bunch of others even if there is no relation to the military. There is no exception for fundamental research. This is typical head up rear end Canberra with no thought for the unintended consequences, for the R&D driven entirely offshore or for the closing down of future skills pipelines. Just when you call peak stupid in Australia the country surpasses itself. That the serfs should feel happy about crawling to some lick spittle public servant for a licence to do R&D under the pretence of keeping us safe while our own governments supports the US in its terrorist activities around the world is laughable.

Fortunately as we have learned, Australian law trumps the law of mathematics. Our worthless policy makers and their sycophants can simply legislate supremacy in this area. ROT-13 is secure by government fiat and that is all we need.

Re: It will be interesting this time around

The rest of the world has pretty much given up any hope for Trump. His presidency has been an exercise in bicycling backwards thus far. He does not have enough political capital to take on the TLA's, he couldn't even get his party to agree on what to do about Obamacare. Best to just wait until the US sanctions itself into irrelevancy.

Re: well played poms

Don't underestimate the stupidity available down under. I have no doubt that we will easily counter Rudd's innings and go on to at least draw the match.