Posts by Dabooka 1200 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2007
Clearly it's a toy, it's 30 years old. Surely you're not suggesting folk are buying 30 year old kit for every day computing purposes?
And again clearly the designer was trying to be original. And to be fair one could argue they were successful. Also see VW's 1995 Polo Harlequin
Interesting post, thank you. Especially the example of 'copter.
However surely it's kind of irrelevant in terms of the example of Kyndryl (whatever the hell they think it means), as surely that's been created not for the English language but as a trademarkable name for a new business entity.
As I say, not to detract from your post though as I found that interesting.
To be fair it went back 'home' to my mate who gifted it to me many moons ago.
I sourced the retail pack of OSX 10 and intended to max it out for ram and HDD too but never got around to it, whereas I know he will. Used to be a glorified juke box in my shed and ran Firefox. Dread to think how out of date that was.
Great post, in particular the issues of balance between security, teaching and the understanding and willingness of parties to support this balance.
I work in a college, have done for many years and know the majority of the tech chaps well; front line and management. Now two examples spring to mind where we've hit a wall through that lack of willingness.
1. Software - It is reasonable request, and often a requirement, to have specific software for teaching staff. Where the IT chaps are great at support systems used by back office or even examination software for online tests, anything more taxing is always met with a rebuff that it can't be done for security. A case in point being the engineering team needing some CAD stuff which caused all sorts of issues due to permissions and access. Ultimately they have to use it and as you mention above once the right management tiers get involved a solution was indeed found. Okay it's limited to a couple of classrooms, possibly for licensing too I don't know for sure, but it was sorted. At the end of the day it's deployed in real world organisations so it should be doable here, right? That's not to say that checks and measures aren't needed but it would be nice if on occasion the default response was 'Okay, let's have a chat and find out what you need and what we can do' other than just an outright no.
2. External access - This one I get, it's a right headache for our chap carrying the burden. However we deal with a lot of external agencies and organisations who on occasion need to access certain information which we are obliged to provide (think regulatory checks). I've tried for a couple of years now to have a system that would allow us (not me, but the greater 'Us') to grant access to a SharePoint or whatever where limited time, read only access could be granted. No dice. The work around solutions are clunky, time-consuming and full of risks of a different nature. I've all but given up now.
The point is that in most cases is a Support service and striking a balance is really important. Education and understanding, especially of the management, really is the key to helping everyone move forward but all parties need to take a more understanding approach to the other person's views and requirements, and end users need to wake up and start learning how it all works. It's become too easy to be lazy.
I'm certain there's an episode of Teen Titans where an AI Pizza Bot is tasked with creating hitherto unknown variations of pizza toppings. Needless to say the world is bought crashing to its knees under the sheer scale of the task and creation of all of these pizzas.
Now if Cartoon Network can see the risks why can't Google?!
Well it is certainly the case where I work, the various sector funding bodies employ a variety of auditors to scrutinise and check, and some are very thorough indeed.
And they do find fraud, often involving multimillions or even 10s of, so it does do the job on occasion (although we don't know what they don't see either of course).
Aside from it's altruistic origins, how many of the glitches (such as the USB-C and heating issues mentioned in the article) would be accepted with such aplomb if were megacorp? A lot of home engineering and third party workarounds exist for the Pi families challenges and most of them would end up being issued with cease and desist orders and any fuzzy feelings of goodwill will sharp evaporate
You're right of course but the difference in approach is because there's different needs and wants. This medium is about energy storage really, it even refers to the ongoing challenges of production in the article.
There's a need for being better at both for sure but that means addressing individual technical and engineering problems, which this is part way in achieving.
@Lars
Not sure about some of these points. Certainly everything I read and see in reaction to Polish contribution to Enigma and the Russian involvement in Berlin seems to cover everything fairly well. It's tosh such as U-571 etc that derails fact for fiction
The point about lives saved is interesting as of course time brings more reflection and more modelling (all hypothetical of course) but you are correct; we'll never ever know. I have never really been aware that the number of UK or American deaths, military or civilian, are somehow greater or more 'significant' than others. Rather to the contrary I would state that most would think of Germany and Russia first and foremost.
'Apparently they had different Enigmas on u-boats'
My understanding is that the U-boats ran with a forth wheel whereas the standard one had three. I'm sure I read once that this contributed in the early days of Bletchley, as the forth cog was in essence superfluous for certain transmissions and was therefore always set in a certain place. This gave a constant of sorts which was identified and gave the boffins an 'in'. If memory serves routine weather reports was one example of this happening.
I may be off in detail and I'm sure someone else on here can explain it more clearly but I'm sure that's basically it
Tremendous!
Not as good as yours but many years ago in the early / mid 80s (I'd be about 7 or 8 I think) my dad's mate was a mechanic and often took on extra work cash in hand, and he had a canny garage with all sorts of fascinating tools and equipment that we were never allowed to touch or play with.
I remember coming home from school one day to discover he'd had a fire when welding (knowing what I know now, I appreciate most cars then simply dissolved in the wet) and he'd put it out using an extinguisher he'd got. A blue one.
I don't know how big this fire was but it would probably have been preferable to simply let the house become engulfed with flames that attempt to clear the mess of all that powder. Crikey what a mess. It had got into the kitchen, the lounge and everything had a thick layer of dust over it
I am unfamiliar with Poe's Law but will state that I do indeed have a thick skin otherwise I could just have withdrawn it. As it it I accept it wasn't interpreted as such, especially with a broad range of readers found on here, and will take the lesson and learn.
I'd rather just explain myself so at least some readers will then understand my intentions (although I'm still baffled that the 'dozens of alternatives' snippet was picked up on more) .
However it really is colossal clusterfuck. Ignoring the widespread corruption, cronyism and double standards, the simple reality is the government are incapable of either asking for assistance or acknowledging they are wrong. On anything.
Every time I see one of the prime wazzocks on television they evade answering questions, repeat the same nonsense answers or spit off more and more soundbites. I could almost forgive them this (almost) if it weren't for the fact that every single thing they say or do is measured first and foremost against potential backlash.
Nothing is genuinely done to give benefit, because it's the the right course of action or due to the fact we deserve some honesty. It's all done to try and mitigate fallout and that should not be the primary driver. This is why you end up with debates about scotch eggs* a substantial meal and folk spending time devising workarounds.
They are, as long as served with crisps (preferably Seabrooks)
Are we supposed to really believe that not a single person at Microsoft thought this might be used for its intended purpose to manage people and 'bad' managers would lap it up? Give over.
I could see some at my place salivating at the prospect of management by metrics. The fallout would be brutal.
I recall asking my teacher at school about what RISC was all about when I first read about these. Best guess it would have been around the 1990 mark and probably through one of the many PC mags which littered the house at that time.
I guess it is inevitable in this day and age for a company such as Arm to te used and abused by global tech and venture capitalists, but still such a shame.
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