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Qyiet

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  • Mar 29, 2021 @ 06:07pm

    As a drone pilot for a survey firm in another country

    This sounds nuts. Here you need a licensed land surveyor to check and verify legal plans are correct, and that's pretty much it. They sign their name to it, and are liable if its wrong. (there's a bit more to it than that.. but its the core)

    Some places want a licensed surveyor to do stuff as part of their process but its pretty rare. Doing work like general topo mapping, stockpile volumes etc can be done by anyone, a lot of the field work is done by graduate surveyors who have yet to become fully licensed. Even the field work for legal surveys can be done by technician surveyors, but the licensed surveyor will be checking the work, and that all the math does in fact stack up (its their license on and liability after all).

    In the drone space we get competition from non-surveyor operators. For some tasks they do the job cheaper, and are a better option if what they produce is good enough.. then its fine. Often they don't understand the limitations of of what they are producing, or the accuracy. But that shouldn't stop them from operating.. Like we shouldn't be stopping someone from drawing a map of a place by hand.. it may or may not be fit for the purpose at the end of it. For example a "you are here map" who cares if the dimensions are correct if they are close enough to find your way. If that purpose isn't of legal consequence then its up to the client to choose the quality they want.

  • Mar 20, 2016 @ 12:43pm

    Take the man at his word

    We should take the officer at his word: that the officer feared for his safety. That he 'saw' bulging eyes, sweat etc..

    Then remove him from duty as unfit due to psych reasons. He's clearly suffering from paranoia, or PTSD or something that is making him see things that are not there. As such he is not fit for duty.

  • Feb 16, 2016 @ 12:44pm

    Degraded Cellphone Coverage

    While everyone seems to (correctly) be up in arms about the privacy issues these things raise, I've yet to see someone complain about the mechanics of how they work on everyday cellphone usage. I can't believe they don't mess it up at least a little bit, and possibly quite horribly.

    These things broadcast a cell tower signal out that is stronger than the local towers tricking every cellphone in the area connecting to them instead. Presumably then every phonecall/sms/data packet then gets routed through this fake cellphone tower so that the law enforcement can see what's going on. (otherwise what's the point?)

    I can't believe that these stingrays will have a better back-end connection to the rest of the telephone network than a static tower, so surely they must degrade the performance of every device that connects to it.

    Possibly your poor cellular service isn't due to your provider sucking.. just that the police have decided that it would be a great idea for them to relay all your calls through their mobile connection.

  • Apr 30, 2015 @ 09:19pm

    They were both wrong

    The better smartphone is of course a windows phone.

  • Apr 12, 2015 @ 02:29pm

    FBI is better than Hans Blix.. they found some.

    attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction

    Is no-one else bothered by this change in definition of 'weapon of mass destruction' that seems to have happened. When Hans Blix was searching Iraq for WMDs these seemed to include Nukes, Chemical and Biological weapons. The sort of things where a single attack could wipe a city off the map. Now we are down to car and pressure cooker bombs? Why couldn't Hans Blix find a single one of those in Iraq?

  • Apr 06, 2015 @ 07:27pm

    Re: I wouldn't rely on the Anarchist's Cookbook's recipes.

    I wouldn't rely on the Anarchist's Cookbook's recipes
    I second that. I got hold of what was supposed to be a copy as a teenager, and compared what it said about making nitroglycerine to what my chemistry textbooks said. There were a couple of VERY important points missing that would probably get an amateur bomb maker covered in a mixture of strong acids and broken glass. That alone convinced me to never trust anything it said. I did find it a fun read though.

  • Mar 08, 2015 @ 02:45pm

    Re: And for what?

    So as John Key and his son can play golf with Barrack Obama mostly.

  • Mar 01, 2015 @ 12:03pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    FYI the exotic cars with the personalised plates were not picked out by dotcom. He accepted them in lieu of payment from someone who owed him money, but was unable to pay.

    Sure dotcom kept them, but they were not his idea.

  • Aug 06, 2014 @ 01:28pm

    This shows Sky's fear

    Sky is a pay TV monopoly in NZ. This shows that Sky is terrified of competition, and rightly so. I believe with the exception of live sport that Netflix provides a superior service to Sky in NZ for a fraction of the cost.

    Sky flinching at seeing that available to non-technical users is just showing how scared they are of their market collapsing.

  • Feb 23, 2014 @ 12:41pm

    Re: Re: console use

    Because choice is a bad thing?

  • Feb 20, 2014 @ 03:01pm

    Re: Comcast and Netflix

    Not exactly for the faint of heart, or scared of the command line. But if you want to setup a mikrotik router you could sort it so that traffic from a given MAC address was routed via a VPN. I do that in NZ for the users of the guest wifi to avoid the stupid NZ 'skynet' law.

    Sidenote: The NZ 'Skynet' law is obsessed with the last public IP address.. so if a guest downloads a mp3 without the proper license I'm on the line as the owner of the last public IP address in the system. However if the last public IP address is in another country... no problem... hence the VPN for guests

  • Feb 19, 2014 @ 05:39pm

    3mpbs

    The US speed index tops out at 3mpbs? I get 3mpbs from Netflix on DSL in New Zealand.. or ah.. so I've heard. I couldn't possibly actually be doing that: it would be breaking their terms of service.

  • Jan 29, 2014 @ 04:21pm

    Easy Solution

    Just move it all to /dev/null it's surprisingly fast, cheap, and scalable.

  • Nov 11, 2013 @ 11:40am

    Re: Re:

    I'm IT for my company, and I will ask you to enter your password. I'll never ask you to tell me your password.

    If for some business reason I need to act as you I'll reset your password, and tell you as soon as you are available. (presumably you are not available). I'd be very suspicious of any IT department that has a different policy.

    Some users are very hard to dissuade from telling you their passwords "It doesn't matter it's just ....". I try very very had to stop them from telling me that.. I don't even want to know HOW they create their passwords.

    I understand how users get confused though. We had one user return from working for another company overseas recently. Apparently their IT dpt wouldn't let them even SET their own passwords because 'Then how would I use your computer if you are not there'. If their IT demands terrible practices like that how are users supposed to know better?

  • Nov 06, 2013 @ 05:06pm

    This Sucks

    I live in NZ, and I'm damn sad this shit got passed. I literally protested in the streets over this. The Prime Minister is the minister in charge of this and has been trying to cover up the bullshit exposed by the kim dotcom saga all 'under urgency' with a nasty legal patch job.

    The only oversight on the new laws all come down to the PM saying "trust me, I'll never let anyone do anything bad". After cocking up the oversight on a bunch of crap including the dotcom raids I don't trust him as far as I can throw him. He also said that he would resign if there had been mass spying on NZers.. it makes the guardian interesting reading at the moment, but I'd be amazed if he would ever do it.

    The only light at the end of the tunnel is that the opposition parties have said they will repeal these changes, and instigate a wider review of NZs intelligence agencies if they are elected next time. And next time it should at least be close.

  • Jul 16, 2013 @ 04:52pm

    4Chan Proof?

    The problem with making something 4Chan proof, is it's like trying to make something idiot proof. They just keep making better idiots.

  • Jul 10, 2013 @ 06:16pm

    Hobbiton.. good idea!

    Hrm, I live near where the Hobbiton scenes in LoTR were filmed, I wonder if they would hire it out.

  • Jun 04, 2013 @ 02:57pm

    Re: Re: Re: That sounds familiar...

    $8 in 1984 is $18 today. So it wasn't that much of a lie http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%248USD++%281984+dollars%29+

  • Apr 01, 2013 @ 09:02pm

    Poes Law

    It sounds like they've been taking tips from this guy http://twitter.com/NotAPoliceman

  • Feb 06, 2013 @ 02:24pm

    Re: Not dangerous?

    The difference in energy release from a microwave and the energy by a human body is 10 DBm. So to go from harmful (putting your hand in a microwave) to harmless (touching another person) that's a good baseline on an exponential scale.

    Now the difference between standing in a wifi zone, and a microwave is ~60DBm. To put it another way, the person standing next to you is emitting the same amount of energy as just over 3000 laptops wifi. If you afraid of wifi, you should be deathly afraid of other people.

    Numbers came from here.. any math was my fault :)
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm#Unit_conversions

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