Posts by Red Bren
1000 posts • joined Wednesday 17th October 2007 15:20 GMT
Posted in Boffins build headless robo-kitties
Does it always land on its feet?
Then you can drop a few from a plane into a war disaster zone for a search and destroy rescue mission. It could even carry a small warhead med kit. What a terrifying terrific invention!
Re: Reading Uni
"Actually I'd a director of the firm, so I don't have one of these "boss" things"
You don't have one of those "proof reader" things, either...
<- Mine's the one without the interview invitation in the pocket.
Re: ASA is a waste of space
So you think midleading advertising is perfectly acceptable? Then can I interest you in this brand new* Porsche** at a knock-down price***
* apart from the previous owners
** Audi, but it's still German
*** fair use policy applies. Excessive use may result in clamping.
Posted in Fear the Embarrassing Bodies webcam
Re: House!
What ever happened to Hugh Lawrie after Blackadder?
Re: Kill your enemy safely, 500 years on
"the goal is to make the fight as "unfair" as possible."
But your enemy will be pursuing the same goal with whatever resource is available. You send an unmanned drone to a wedding party. "They" send some indoctrinated mule with an exploding rucksack on your public transport.
"War is somehow more moral if the enemy has more chance to kill your citizens?"
War is more moral if the enemy has a chance to kill your military, otherwise it isn't war, it's genocide. If you're not putting your forces in harms way, what incentive is there to seek a diplomatic solution before the first shot is even fired? What is to stop you riding roughshod over anyone who disagrees with you, or gets between you and a chance to make a quick buck? And without a military target, who do you think your enemy is going to attack? One-sided warfare is what causes the outrage, because it encourages powerful nations to behave like bullies and leaves weaker enemies no option but to go for soft targets, i.e they have more chance to kill your citizens.
"War is hell, there's no civilizing it. When you fight one, load the dice your way as much as possible and get it done with minimal risk to your citizens. Nothing else makes sense."
Not resorting to war might make sense. Not propping up corrupt dictatorships then wondering why their oppressed peoples hate us might make sense. Not arming "rebel" groups to fight proxy wars against regimes we don't like then getting a nasty surprise when they turn their weapons on us might make sense. Not going to war on the pretext of imminent destruction in order to secure lucrative oil drilling contracts might make sense.
Re: Power crazy?
"What is it with women home secretaries?"
Like David Blunkett and John Reid? I notice Lord Reid has also taken to the airwaves to voice his support for the snoopers charter.
To paraphrase your question, "What is it with Home Secretaries?" Are they all lobotomised by MI5 and ACPO as soon as they enter their ministerial office? If you made Peter Tatchell or Shami Chakrabarti the Home Secretary, would they instantly transform into rabid securocrats?
Re: Less freedom eh?
Give him 2 up votes. The first cancels the down vote, the second gives him the up vote.
It's lucky the US got its retaliation in first.
Re: Wonder where
I am a VM customer. Mr Murdoch's company is a VM customer. Please explain how this makes me a customer of Mr Murdoch?
I guess you weren't paying attention when they were teaching set theory...
IKEA Sten Shelves
"My lounge book shelves are the IKEA cheap "Sten" system - home sanded and clear lacquered. The only thing that has ever bowed them was the 21inch colour monitor which needed two people to lift it."
I did exactly the same. The shelves managed to support a 42" LCD TV and all my other AV equipment for years. I only stopped using it when I moved house and the wife insisted on something to match the cushions (or something)
Sadly, IKEA have replaced the STEN system with the incompatible and much less sturdy GORM system, which is a real shame as I wanted to use and expand on my existing shelves for attic storage. FAIL!!!
Re: Anti-fraud measure?
"Maybe this measure is really, at least in part, about mimimising that sort of fraud?"
I don't see how it would help as my GP doesn't know if I have an exemption or pre-payment certificate. It will still be down to the pharmacy to determine entitlement.
The easiest way to cut fraud would be to abolish prescription charges altogether. It penalises the long-term sick, it doesn't usually cover the cost of the medication or if it does, your GP will advise you to buy it over the counter.
Too late to opt out?
"We're not going to cancel the opting out that's already happened"
But we're not letting anyone else opt out now.
"There may be a process of recontacting people to explain the new arrangements"
We're going to keep asking if you still want to opt out until you give us the answer we want or you mess up the opt-out form, which we will take as consent.
"Hunt: I'll barcode sick Brits and rip up NHS's paper prescriptions"
You missed the bit about giving our details to his mates in the insurance and pharma industries a là DVLA.
"
Retirement Plan
Looks like Mr Osborne has a nice executive directorship lined up for when the government get the inevitable boot.
I wonder how many MPs (of any party) have shares in Arqiva?
I'll see your tinfoil hat...
And raise you a tinfoil umbrella...
Microsoft are actively trying to exit the OS market because they don't need it any more. If they can push more users onto Linux, the OEMs will start offering it preinstalled and more software will be ported across or offered via the cloud, including MS' own offerings. Once Windows has been replaced by Linux as the ubiquitous desktop OS, MS will reveal the diabolical reality - their oft repeated claims that Linux infringes its intellectual property are really true! OEMs will be picked off one by one, just like Android phone makers, until they're all paying a licence for every Linux PC they sell. MS gets a revenue stream without the cost and hassle of developing/marketing/supporting an OS.
I'll get my tinfoil coat...
Re: Sigh
"so much writing"
Did you bother to read any of it?
"Things change..."
Has the previous poster's business suddenly changed? Have the users he supports suddenly decided to change the way they do their jobs? No, because well managed change is done carefully, with the agreement of all affected. Instead, we have this paternalistic fait accompli where Microsoft are saying, "We will decide what's best for you!" when they should have said, "Why not give our new interface a try, we think you'll love it!"
In the same way that the 95 GUI overtook the 3.1 GUI, Metro could have gained traction as people got used to using it at their own pace. Refusing to give users a choice suggests a lack of faith in the new UI.
"...don't like it? Use something else"
Two of my previous employers would allow you to choose alternatives to Windows on the desktop if you could present a reasonable business case. The enforced retraining that the Metro UI introduces makes that business case even simpler.
"or write your own OS"
That's why we have Eadon! :-)
Most accurate watch in the world?
If I bought this for my wife, she would set it a few minutes fast so she wouldn't be late...
"Or even strap said TX under a few taxi cars, etc, hand have someone else identified on CCTV as the car driver."
And if the taxi drivers look a bit foreign, there's no way anyone will believe they're innocent!
Re: as i remember...
If you can convince your children that they'd make a wonderful meal, you need to be stopped. As for milking them...
Sales-droid overhype
"it has a pair of tuners that are capable of picking up cable, satellite and terrestrial DVB-T2 transmissions"
Really? I can plug a cable/satellite feed straight into a telly and view Virgin or Sky without their set top boxes? Sorry if I take this with a pinch of salt but I'm just getting flashbacks from conversations I've had in Dixons/Currys/Comet that went along the lines of:
Sales Droid: "It has 99 preset channels!"
Me: "Really? Why would I need 99 presets when there are only 4* channels I can tune them to?"
SD: "You can use them for satellite channels..."
Me: "So I won't need a set-top box?"
SD: "Well no, you'll still need the set top box..."
Me: "But I can assign the TVs presets to different satellite channels?"
SD: "Er... no, you assign one channel to the set-top box and change channels on that."
Me: "Ok, so why do I need the other 94 preset channels?"
SD: "Errrr..."
* I'm showing me age.
Re: Psychological tests are crap
How would Godwin answer it?
Thank you Dr Mouse.
I'm glad someone else noticed the unfairness of comparing this distant galaxy's past wild antics against our own galaxy's sensible and mature behaviour. Who is to say the Mliky Way wasn't a bit of a party animal in it's youth? For all we know, this distant galaxy has done the cosmic equivalant of swapping the motorbike for a people carrier, drinking red wine instead of cheap cider and settling down into a boring middle age.
"...licensing is an effective way to share technology and build on each other’s work."
If by "share" you mean stifle and by "build on" you mean hamper.
Patent trolling is the new innovation.
Unspecified Patents should be annulled
Patent defence should work like trademark defence, so that everyone knows the exact nature of the infringement and can avoid doing the same. Of course there is no incentive for Microsoft (or any other patent holder) and its lawyers from doing this as picking off alleged infringers one by one when they become profitable enough is too much of a money spinner. And there's no incentive for the law makers to make disclosure compulsary as their snouts are in the trough too.
Why would an energy company want you to use less?
I can think of two scenarios:
1) Your supplier got their long term forecast wrong and haven't bought enough energy on the futures market to meet current demand. If the spot price for energy is too high, your supplier may decide to protect their margins by cutting customers' consumption rather than supplying them expensive energy.
2) Your supplier got their sums right and have enough energy to meet demand however the spot price for energy is higher than than their retail unit price, so your supplier may decide to boost their margins by cutting customers' consumption and selling the excess energy on the open market.
Neither of these scenarios involve a shortage of energy, just a cynical playing of the market.
@sam_leivers
Can you get the cricket scores? I want to know who wins the 20202020...
Re: My new superhero name...
Surely it's a Super Villain name? I can picture it now, "I am DARK LIGHTNING, cower in fear as I assault you with low dose, invisible radiation and in 50, 60 or maybe 70 years when you're dying of cancer, you will remember the name, DARK LIGHTNING!!!"
Mine is the cloak with matching pants that go over my trousers...
Re: Benefits are not a "handout"
"If your wages aren't enough to support your family, why did you have a family?"
If your wages were enough to support your family until you had to change jobs and/or take a cut in pay, what do you do? Hand the kids back?
"Benefits should not enable people to make or support life decisions precluded to people who work."
You're peddling that divisive propaganda myth that people either work or are on benefits, never a mix of both. But the truth is, the many, if not most benefits claimants also work. Exact figures are difficult to come by as it doesn't suit the government's agenda to give clear figures, but it has been reported(1)(2) and disputed(3) that in 2010, one in eight housing benefit claimants were unemployed and between January 2010 and December 2011, 93% of housing benefits claims were made by households with at least one employed adult(4).
Benefits are there to support people with the life decisions they made while they were in work. Otherwise, what is the alternative?
"The very notion of the 'benefit trap' appears to be a challenge for you to comprehend."
The very notion that people's circumstances might change appears to be a challenge for you to comprehend. Cutting benefits doesn't make housing, food or fuel any more affordable for someone on a low income. It doesn't magically create lots of jobs. It just pushes the already vulnerable into deeper poverty and turns a "benefit trap" into a homelessness trap - try getting a job with no fixed abode for your address.
(1) http://england.shelter.org.uk/news/previous_years/2010/june_2010/housing_benefit_warning
(2) https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/6735/2084179.pdf
(3) http://fullfact.org/factchecks/one_in_eight_housing_benefit_claimants_unemployed-27479
(4) http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancies/majority-of-new-housing-benefit-claimants-in-work/6521183.article
Re: I always use my phone for Google's GPS when I'm in California
"What really distracts me is all the motorcycle drivers who are allowed - by California law - to drive on the lane stripes in between cars"
In the UK it's called filtering and it is perfectly legal. When you say it "distracts" you, do you really mean it pisses you off because the biker isn't stuck in the traffic jam with you?
"I'm always certain I'm going to end up seeing one of these guys getting killed someday."
Make sure you signal and check your mirrors and blind spots before changing lanes and at least you can be more certain you won't be the one doing the killing.
Re: School requiring degree level content or above...
"I did political science, followed by a law conversion and am now a lawyer..."
It's a lawyer! Quick!! Let's get it!!!
Benefits are not a "handout"
I'm disappointed by El Reg's use of the lazy, sloppy and derogatory phrase "benefit handouts"
The over-repeated myth that living on benefits is some kind of lifestyle choice made by people who have never done a day's work is just that, a myth. The majority are claiming what they are entitled to, because they paid into the system while working or their wages are not enough to support a family.
Having already set up a division in the nations consciousness between the deserving and undeserving poor, i.e. strivers versus skivers, using a single label for a collection of benefits allows the government to portray all claimants as skivers and makes cutting support for the most vulnerable so much more palatable. Now this pre-emptive talk about fraud will give the government the cover it needs to make it even harder to for genuine claims to be made.
Re: Just buy a computer! Sorted.
Barnie said, "Red Bren are you saying we should continue to employ Civil servants to stop them being unemployed!?"
A valid question that deserves a response rather than a down vote and the short answer is no. The longer answer is that I don't believe in a job for life and that progress often has casualties, but how we treat those casualties is a measure of how equitable our society is.
What I'm railing against is the laying off of knowledgeable staff, to be replaced by a cheap (yeah, right!) ill-conceived system that has the potential to exclude the most vulnerable. I'm railing against a government that is ideologically driven to gut the public sector, irrespective of the social cost, while at the same time castigating a culture of benefit dependency that it is itself fuelling with its cuts.
I've been on the dole and it's not the rock & roll lifestyle some make it out to be. In fact it's a pitched battle to get the benefits you're entitled to, having paid into the system for years. The system assumes you are a freeloader and it actually struggles when you're determined to find work. I've been told I've applied for too many jobs in one week for the system to handle and that I should rearrange an interview as it clashed with my sign-on time. I've been told I can't enrol on some of the useful activities the Job Centre offer because I haven't been unemployed for long enough. There may be a hard-core of work-shy individuals who know how to play the system but that is not true of the majority of unemployed, who get penalised when they're trying to do the right thing.
To address your point about the BIG Elephant in the room, I disagree that it's the public sector that needs cutting down to size. I would be more inclined to look in the direction of a sector that the UK economy has become too reliant on, that loaned money it didn't have to people who couldn't afford to repay it, sold the debt on as a prime investment product, and then came begging for handouts when the whole pyramid scheme came crashing down.
Re: Just buy a computer! Sorted.
"It IS about economics. It's about the costs saved by firing 80,000 civil servants"
And the money saved while those 80,000 former civil servants struggle to claim benefits through the online system that replaced them.
And the additional money saved as 80,000 long term unemployed have their benefits cut for failing to get a job during a double/triple dip recession, in a shrinking job market, flooded by 80,000 newly unemployed civil servants.
@phr0g
Surely they would have to prise them off your large, sweaty feet?*
Deformable Parts Model
This phrase worries me. I can't help imaging a situation where my robot butler insists that I am in fact, an item of furniture and it is going to deform my fragile fleshy parts to match its model dataase...
Re: I have an issue with Fry
"hmmm what to finish on?"
BOOM!!!?
Oh wait, that could get me in to trouble. I can't believe someone down-voted this poem. No coat for me, I've got my underpants on my head, pencils up my nose and I'm on my way home in Wibble...
Am I just too cynical?
El Reg announces they are going to do a Geek's Guide to Britain, then we do the hard work filling the comments section with places to include...
No wonder Journos are always down the pub!
Re: Annual updates and annual cashflow
"hopefully they don't go all SimCity on us!"
Why not? If they screw up and no one can access their servers, they mighty give away a free copy of XP...
Posted in Build a BONKERS gaming PC
Bonkers or minimum spec?
Is this the minimum spec to play that new SimCity game I've heard so much about 'round these parts?
How come there's no mention of a direct fibre link to LINX, for the ultimate zero-latency, online gaming experience?
Posted in Boeing outlines fix for 787 batteries
Re: insulation/electrical tape
"The individual cells inside will be hidden by thermal insulation so that even if one cell experiences A PERFECTLY NORMAL AND SAFE EVENT, no one will notice and criticise our planes again!"
Fixed it for you.
Re: Tabloid hyperbole FAIL
Lewis' sub-headings usually betray his sympathies on the story in question. So I think we can safely conclude that he posts his articles from his mobile, while driving home having had a skin-full at lunchtime...
Getting your foot in the door is the hard part.
Business have always been looking for a shortcut to get quality staff without going to the trouble of training people. Why bother training people if you can head-hunt the finished product from a competitor, or worse than that, watch your investment walk out the door when a competitor head-hunts your staff.
Sadly, this leads to the bizzare situation I found myself in where all the recently qualified were chasing the few entry-level roles available, while employers were struggling to fill roles requiring just a couple of years of industry experience. The job seekers went where the work was, be it another location or business sector, then the employers had to entice them back.
Perhaps if more employers offered students meaningful opportunities during study through sandwich courses, tomorrow's graduates would have a better understanding of the real world?
@Andreas Koch
Good to see you took GBL's advice about getting help*
* For the asterisk addiction**
** Oh blast, now I'm doing it!
Re: But How
In my experience, the driver of the delivery truck doesn't bother to knock on the door to tell you the delivery has arrived either. He just shoves a badly scrawled note through your letter box telling you to collect your parcel from their distribution hub in Sink-Estate-on-the-Dole between the hours of inconvenience and may as well take a day off work.
Re: How the heck is Steve still at the helm?
"He's likely to rip out your heart with his bare hands"
Wouldn't he use a chair?
Posted in Amazon yanks SimCity download from store
An EULA is not the LAW
IANAL but my understanding is that regardless of what a company puts in an EULA, you cannot sign away your statutory legal rights. And a contract isn't legally enforceable if the terms are unfair.
Posted in SimCity 3000
@JDX
To not quite* answer your question, "Can I run it at a decent resolution on a modern PC?"
I'm running it under WINE on my Fedora 18 box at 1280x1024 resolution without any problems. From what I can tell from the WineHQ website, it doesn't support widescreen resolutions, but it still gets a gold rating.
If I get a chance, I'll try installing it on the wife's Win7 laptop and let you know if it works...
* I should be a politician!
Re: How to speak Welsh
Its fun to laf at Welsh becoz inglish is so strate forwud...
@ graeme leggett
"A bit like putting a fiver into the lottery sweepstake at work and finding out only £4 of it went on tickets and the other quid is sitting in a coffee jar "for another day"."
I would say its more like the sweepstake buying a jackpot winning ticket and the organiser refusing to share out the prize to encourage other punters to join.
Seceding from the EU
You think that distancing the UK from a less prudish EU is a show of balls that would save us a great deal of pain?
I guess you are glad to see a return to Victorian values.
