Posts by allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: "To use another TV show, Upstairs Downstairs, "

Trickle down economy, anyone?

Re: Alistair Dabbs...

"Perhaps he should gift them to the IdiotInChief."

Okay, but not before he posts a picture that shows how the gloves go with his dinner jacket.

Re: "abundant data by itself solves nothing."

Isaac Asimov: The Machine That Won The War

Re: you rock much harder than Shelbyville

Nothing wrong with monorail if you do it properly.

"I'm having extreme difficulties trying to imagine a scenario in which rescue workers within 17 metres of a person in distress are having major difficulties locating it."

Happened to a mate of mine*. Fucked up big on his BMW R80. Crashed in the side of an oncoming Audi he had not seen. Curvy country road, cutting corners, way too fast... Anyway, he ripped out the Audi's rear axle and tank. The good thing about riding a boxer was that ge got to keep his leg because the cylinder took most of the brunt. The unfortunate thing about those boxers is that they have a tendency to right themselves and drive on for a little bit after you've fallen off. Which was what had happened. Emergency sevices started looking near the crashed bike; its rider lay maybe 30 m from that. Of course in a ditch under some bushes. They eventually found him when he managed to crawl a bit closer to the road.

* I know, I know.

Re: Mein Campf

"The musical?"

No, that would be "Springtime for Hitler".

(From "The Producers". BTW, don't bother with the remake, watch Mel Brook's original.)

Re: Chemtrails FTW

The chemtrail crowd is busy following The Beloved Leader of The People's Democratic Republic of North America on twitter these days.

Re: Same old problem

Ah, yes. Let's replace religion with another*, secular, science-based ideology and stomp out those religious nuts!

(Has been tried, didn't work.)

* Religion, ideology, pretty much the same from where I sit.

Re: USSA

"In private."

On Facebook.

Re: "Machine learning" not new

1. Collect big pile of data.

2. Use neural network to process data.

3. Tweak network so that results turn out "right", i.e. convenient.

4. Profit! *

* For a while, and for a few. At some point in the future, the will be a huge pile of crap to clear away, but who cares?

Re: But...but...

Well, I agree.

It's basically "measure twice, cut once". Inconvenient obstacles make you think things through a little further. Useful not only when writing progams.

(FORTRAN 77 with punchcards, a 40 minute bus ride to the uni datacentre, waiting anything between a couple of hours to a week until they had time to feed your stack into the card reader. Yes, diagonal stripe in big felt tip pen on the side of the stack. Columns 78-80 had to contain your initials. Still, after the first trip to the datacentre to collect your printout and stack which inevitably meant collecting something that had not worked as intended, you thought harder and longer before you punched that card.)

Re: Forget parachutes

If you hear the phrase "stell' dich nicht so an", brace yourself and prepare for pain.

Re: Intelligent human being panics at single random email?

The Student People are easily startled, but they will soon be back, and in greater numbers.

Simply apply a liberal amout of construction foam to the offending area.

A lot of problems can be solved by applying liberal amouts of construction foam. Don't leave home without it.

Re: Dilussions of grandure....

"So in IBM's eyes, she was still on American soil."

Well, you know. "Special relationship" and all that ...

Re: cripple your own economy

"... the US can take advantage when some areas of manufacturing come back onshore."

Easier said than done.

You'll need much more than just the odd manufacturing plant. You'll need quite a lot of infrastructure to get that plant up and running, and then some to keep it running.

In most offshored industries you'd have to buy the manufacturing tools offshore, and possibly the IP that go with the tools you need and the IP that go with whatever you want to manufacture as well. Because when an industry is offshored, it is usually sold lock, stock and barrel, and the rest gets scrapped. And even then you'd have a new plant with new machines but no trained personnel to run it, no distribution channels, no client base.

For all practical purposes you will have to start from scratch and re-invent and/or re-build an entire industry from the ground up. Which will take time and money. And you'll have to do this while competing with industries abroad that already have all that up and running.

Who is going to pay for all that? Not the companies or investors whose MBA-mindset made them think that offshoring was a good idea in the first place. Which leaves massive subsidies by the state. And where's that money coming from?

TL;DR: can be done, but will take decades, a lot of money and a commitment to long-term planning that just isn't part of the current MBA-mindset (which makes it easily the biggest obstacle).

Re: Grrrr

"Your faith in the democratic process is comical."

If you've got a viable alternative, let's hear it.

Re: a solution @big_d

"The German courts have interpreted the data protection laws to cover the dead as well."

No.

Accessing the account would mean accessing what are basically conversations between several persons. One of the persons involved is dead. The others are not, and therefore have rights re protection of their data.

Re: Simple government response...

The WTO would like to have a word with you.

Re: Frozen water?

Obviously not. Urine would not reflect as bright as water, and with a distinct yellowish glow.

Re: Tell me again, why putting sensitive information in the cloud is a good idea?

Because reasons. You'd need a Harvard MBA to understand.

On a tangent: if we're talking military projects that Uncle Sam pays for, why can't a government agency like, say the NSA, provide secure cloud storage for the agencies and their contractors involved?