Posts by Warm Braw

There's certainly a concerted effort to make them look like riots.

Easy to get the wrong impression if you follow the fake newsmongers.

Re: Eugenics - Sometimes a good decision - is what I think.

I've usually found that people who volunteer their IQ as a preemptive strike know there's no other reason anyone would take them seriously.

Re: No echo chamber here...

Actually don't answer that

It doesn't really need answering: NHSX is the government - there's no pretence of independence.

A more interesting question is whose interests the government serves.

Re: Much like the inside then...

And we'll not even get started on the regions attempt at smart ticketing...

When the Metro first opened, there was an integrated, zonal ticketing system that worked across metro, buses and ferry (and the trains from Blaydon to Sunderland). That was all demolished as part of Thatcherite bus deregulation. The now-private bus companies compete with the Metro for passengers and there is no incentive for any real smart-ticketing system unless the transport operators are providing complementary rather than competitive services. I live on a bus route where different services operate at different times of day: sometimes you can get a through ticket to your destination, at others you have to buy two tickets and travel on a connecting service at a significantly higher price. And that's with the same bus company - they really have no interest in serving passengers.

Nexus (the PTE legacy body) tried to bring in a London-like system where bus companies operated under contract, but this was shot down by legal challenges from the bus companies. Boris has promised to give local areas more freedom to regulate and commission bus services, but the words "Boris has promised" render anything that follows meaningless.

Isn't that only available around Christmas?

Has Santa promised to make 2020 the year of Linux on the Rooftop?

If you had an aerodynamically sculptured helmet, though, a figure-hugging bodysuit would allow its novelty to be better appreciated.

Re: Rico anyone?

The linked affidavit also alleges:

Re: My Toaster Tale

the single controller chip has clearly cracked in two

You got the wrong model...

Re: Based on language translation

The generated functions and production code have to be tested; they are not guaranteed to be correct.

That's not generally a characteristic you would welcome in a compiler. It's not as if there isn't open source code available* for parsing and lexically analysing COBOL and Python, so you just need to glue a code generator on the back end for the target language. You might not get a result that you can visually associate with the original (though you could put that in comments), but at least it would be functionally correct^.

I'm not quite sure how an enormous amount of effort to produce a flawed AI solution + unknown effort to correct the result actually saves time and money. Particularly when elderly code has a habit of working in mysterious and undocumented ways - usually the main reason it is preserved.

Edit: And given the world is supposedly moving towards container-based microservices, why convert stuff anyway if it's working?

*With the exception of proprietary language dialects.

^Assuming conforming data types for source and target

Re: No support for standard protocols like POP3 and IMAP etc

The "problem" with standard protocols is that the clients don't facilitate your monetization. I wonder how long it will be before Google's increasing contempt for "less secure apps" leads to their access being terminated.

Re: I know many people who work so-called "gig economy" jobs here in California.

nor do they want, multiple different "employers"

I'm struggling to understand what the objection might be, particularly if it then involves better terms of employment. Unless, perhaps, under the present arrangements it's left entirely up to the "worker" to declare their income for tax purposes.

Re: What problem are the certificates solving?

The difference between how something works and why it is used is the difference between mere knowledge and actual understanding.

Re: stop using it

Not signing up doesn't stop you being used by it, unfortunately.

Re: x86 Software

Bootcamp, VMware, Virtualbox, etc

And, of course, Parallels.

I think this is as interesting for what it says about Windows - there's always been that nagging problem that there would be some (especially business) software that wouldn't be available for Mac natively and having a route to use it without needing additional hardware was hitherto been seen as a positive.

It looks like Apple probably reckon that most of that market can now be satisfied either by web-based SaaS solutions or by cloud-based Windows virtual desktops. That's not a prediction that will come as welcome news to either Microsoft or Intel.

Re: I thought containers were a thing now

Interesting, thanks, will take a look...

To be fair, the problem is using a database API that requires a human-readable SQL command which your code has to construct so that the command interpreter can parse it back into the component parts you originally assembled. That's just asking for trouble and it's not really a PHP issue.

If you use PHP with Oracle, for example, you could at least use oci_bind_by_name to assign values to named parameters in a template SQL command without having to worry about quoting and escaping.

Re: Conspiracy time?

The app has largely been abandoned, so the issue of Apple/Google etc is now moot.

Trace & isolate is now essentially a CRM system operated by home-based customer service reps - they get assigned a few people to follow up who've tested positive and attempt to get a list of contacts and their details. You can even enter your own information yourself.

There are a number of concerns about the data collection. One is that the data is shared with a significant number of organisations and stored for up to 20 years (the privacy statement seems to have been amended since I last read it which is a worry if it's dynamic). Another, possibly larger concern, is that local public health officials are not currently able to make use of the data for local outbreak control. By the end of the month, they expect to have access to the total number of cases/contacts in their local authority, but not the postcode-level information that would allow them to implement targeted lockdowns.

So although this information is being stored, it may, in fact, be of no use for the purpose for which it is being gathered. In other words, another knee-jerk reaction to accusations of poor preparedness with no real thought as to the practical implementation. We know Boris doesn't do detail - or indeed anything, but it seems none of the rest of them does either.

Re: The least of our worries

Westminster, we could have a problem...

Don't make the mistake of thinking they care about that. If you fail to make the most of the brilliant new trading opportunities that they have generously laid before you, it will be your fault, gloomster.

Re: "Yes, Anon activists are back."

clearly somethings wrong

I think people got that.

The man was already handcuffed. He didn't need restraining. The knee remained in place well after the man was dead.

It wasn't an unfortunate accident, it was deliberate. It wasn't "restraint", it was murder.

The problem isn't some unapproved restraint technique, it's that police offers can murder people in cold blood and, often, escape any sanction by making obviously fictitious excuses in which the criminal justice system is subsequently complicit. That's why crying "rule of law" in response to mass protests is a hollow sham.

Re: I Remember...

in the second year as we had data entry terminals

There was a time at Newcastle - and I presume elsewhere - when you were expected to use mechanical calculators for work on numerical methods. I gather the exam halls echoed with the sound of whirring and pinging.

Re: Oh. Again?

being able to launch from pretty much anywhere, anytime and likely above any inclement weather

Shame the same can't be said for the Virgin Balloon Experience.

Re: But no one cares what Trump has to say

there is really almost no point at doing comparisons between countries on deaths per capita

It depends what inference you're attempting to draw.

That the UK has a higher per-capita death rate on any reasonable measure is pretty indisputable at this point and has been since the start of the epidemic since the US is a couple of weeks or so behind the UK curve.

All I wanted to point out is that at this specific moment in time, the UK government has a bigger public health failure to explain than the US government. I have no idea where the US and UK will end up in excess mortality terms and even then it's not clear that an overall number for the US is useful given the variation in the approach of different States.

One of the troubling signs in the latest UK analysis is that there's not much significant regional variation, suggesting that there had been a widespread geographic spread before the lockdown. That's a mistake the US government has, in principle, had the opportunity to avoid and possibly still could mitigate.

Re: Rootin' Tootin'

I, as President, will not allow it to happen!

A hundred thousand deaths, on the other hand...

Re: Hanlon's Razor does not apply today...

This is supposedly the product of an expert security company.

I'm not that bothered about the appearance, but the reason that people continue to write Win32 based software is that it works, it works on previous versions of Windows and if Microsoft stop supporting it in future, Windows will be dead anyway. There's really no point in writing a UWP app, it simply restricts the platforms on which it can run.

And, as you say, there have been so many abandoned futures; the only survivor has been the past. Legacy has become Microsoft's USP.

Re: Is it wrong to be in favour of this?

I don't think my personal data is at much risk from the Chinese government (at least for now) as it is from the Five Eyes, so I've not been terribly concerned about the data capture issue - the traditional telephone network is full of holes already.

What seems rapidly to have become a bigger risk is the use of economic sanctions to achieve political ends - and it's not just China we have to be concerned about: the US is behaving just as badly. It would be very unfortunate it the national communications infrastructure became degraded as a result of an embargo on spare parts, or suppliers being placed on "entity lists". If we were part of some larger economic alliance we might have a bit more clout but trying to practise market defence on our own is going to be quite tricky.

Re: Quelle Surprise!

According to recent reports, the "people they've recruited" thought they'd been recruited for retail customer service jobs and the first time they realised they'd signed up for contact tracing was in shambolic video "training".

It's also emerged today that contacts, assuming they're identified, will likely not be tested but merely asked to quarantine regardless. And that there's some sort of turf war between PHE's contact tracers and local authority public health staff.

Meanwhile, the shelves are starting to look rather barer again in my local supermarkets - looks like the citizenry are already preparing for the government's "success".