Mike Pelley's Musings

From Ars Technica it looks like there is another use for copyright way; or at least an attempt to use it. When Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed earlier in July the station used some “confirmed” names of the flight crew as listed in the graphic from KTVU in Oakland, California. Obviously the person contact at the NTSB had a sick sense of humor and was apparently fired. However trying to C.Y.A. using copyright seems to be a desperate attempt. Read the full article TV station tries—and fails—to use copyright to hide its racist news blunder on Ars

I keep hearing this “silly” commercial on TV whereby the announcer talks about “no one else has” followed by “class exclusive”. This is just plain silly and redundant – if “no one else has” it then by definition is this not “class exclusive”? At one time commercial copy writers would jump with both feet on such redundancy.

It looks like the CIA/NSA, MI6, DGSE, BND, MSS, etc. (that is the United States, British, French, German and Chinese) intelligence services will have to break out their old intelligence methods. Or, drag back staff retired a few decades ago (unless they are dead – both the Russians (Soviet Union) and the United States tried psychic measures – see Project Stargate (Wikipedia)),

Anyway, it seems that Russia in reports on CBCNews.com, BBCNews.com are buying typewriters to reduce the potential of Edward Snowden-like leaks. The Federal Guard Service of the Russian Federation (Федеральная служба охраны, ФСО – Federalnaya Sluzhba Okhrany) is buying German typewriters at over $700 each.

As a note to my I.T. colleagues: Comments on the need for I.T…..

Again from Ars Technica today…

At least it isn’t just me who puts things together backwards… In the Ars article of 2013 July 9 entitles Parts installed “upside down” caused Russian rocket to explode last week on July 4 a Russian rocket, carrying a GLONASS navigation satellite (Russia’s answer to GPS – for some reason Russia doesn’t trust the U.S. system…) because, get this: Because various sensors were installed upside down!

Each sensors had an arrow that was suppose to point toward the top of the rocket, but multiple sensors were pointing downward instead. Anatoly Zak reports on RussianSpaceWeb.com that:

Each of those sensors had an arrow that was suppose to point toward the top of the vehicle, however multiple sensors on the failed rocket were pointing downward instead. As a result, the flight control system was receiving wrong information about the position of the rocket and tried to “correct” it, causing the vehicle to swing wildly and, ultimately, crash.

Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed…

When I read the article US agency baffled by modern technology, destroys mice to get rid of viruses in  Ars Technica today I couldn’t believe it… Is this April 1st – a/l/a April Fools’ Day? From the article:

EDA’s CIO, fearing that the agency was under attack from a nation-state, insisted instead on a policy of physical destruction. The EDA destroyed not only (uninfected) desktop computers but also printers, cameras, keyboards, and even mice. The destruction only stopped—sparing $3 million of equipment—because the agency had run out of money to pay for destroying the hardware.

The total cost to the taxpayer of this incident was $2.7 million: $823,000 went to the security contractor for its investigation and advice, $1,061,000 for the acquisition of temporary infrastructure (requisitioned from the Census Bureau), $4,300 to destroy $170,500 in IT equipment, and $688,000 paid to contractors to assist in development a long-term response. Full recovery took close to a year.

Like… WOW!!!!

P.S. I wonder if they are looking for a new CIO?

I saw this in the Washington Post (link):

Just received this 404 (page not found) error on CNet when I clicked on an article. I think that this response has to be one of the funniest messages…

I decided to, what we would say in the good ol’ days, ‘tune in’ to CBC’s web cast (actually, it looked like a rebroadcast of NASA’s feed, but anyway) of Chris Hadfield’s departure from the International Space Station (ISS). As you can tell from my previous post Cmdr. Hadfield’s Twitter feeds and YouTube videos have been, simply, AWESOME!. So when I decided to catch the broadcast my ear’s were practically blasted off due to the loud commercials at the start of the broadcast! I have also noticed that the same thing happened when listening to archived shows. In some of the archived shows it was worse – and I didn’t think that that was possible: some commercials are lower than the main program and others much, much louder! ARRGGGG!

The CRTC mandated around mid-2012 that:

Effective September 1, 2012, Canadian broadcasters and television service providers (e.g., cable, satellite, and IPTV providers) must follow international standards[1] for measuring and controlling digital television signals, and must ensure that TV commercials are broadcast at a similar volume to programs.

This doesn’t apply to Internet broadcasts (other than IPTV) but it should! Anyway, this annoyed me enough that I’ve registered my annoyance with CBC. Here is the complaint I sent by web form to them on 2013 May 13:

Folks – We know that the CRTC has mandated that the volume levels of commercials must be lowered (http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/info_sht/g3.htm) to follow international standards. While Internet broadcasts are not included in the CRTC ruling why have you very obviously set commercial levels much greater than program contenct on the Web? I have noticed this on both live broadcasts (e.g. Farewell and hatch closing LIVE – http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/ID/2129383292/ on 2013 May 13) but also archived shows such as the fifth estate, Market Place, etc.

This is extremely annoying and distracting.

Thanks,
Mike

Let’s see what response I get, if any!

Commander Chris Hadfield’s encore.  Simply… AWESOME!!!

This has got to be one of the best quotes I’ve read on Windows 8’s new “Metro” user interface (UI). Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said that Windows 8 would be like combining a toaster and a fridge – something that, while technically possible, was “probably not going to be pleasing to the user”.

In my playing around with Windows 8 the UI certainly is nice for a tablet (although my preferences are Blackberry Playbook, Android 4.x, Apple iOS and Windows 8) but for a desktop machine – no. Desktop knowledge workings won’t be reaching out to the screen to select, etc., – that is why we have keyboards and mice/trackpads – unless we want humans to start looking like orangutans (picture: really long arms). And no, desktops are not in a death spiral like many pundits indicate. While the market is stagnant or slightly declining could you see an office administration professional trying to type letters on a tablet (or any serious management professional, for that matter)? No, the tablet market is growing because people are moving to devices that they need to really consume information or provide very mobile, forced-choice input – tablets. I have a number of tablets (Playbook, Asus Transformer and iPad) but for serious work I go back to my laptop. And, for gaming I am back to my desktop.