Posts by Rich

museum pieces

I think the 2900 should be separated from things like the Colossus. I've actually used one (at uni) so it's clearly modern equipment and should not be in a museum. Do they have a PDP11/34 as well?

Open enough for me..

I wrote an app in 2003 that read and wrote Excel spreadsheets using the documented XML format. So the spec must have had enough data. I didn't need to look in any "hidden binary streams".

A cynic would suggest that Massachusetts desire to push MS alternatives was related to a desire to porkbarrel local software hero Lotus against a distant westcoast competitor. Now that Lotus has been absorbed into IBM and is pretty much out of the office tool market, this requirement no longer exists.

eBay vs American Phosgene Company

So this is basically rating companies by the amount of marketing bollox the produce - I think it might be an inverted index.

If the American Phosgene Company puts out big glossy brochures on recycled paper about how all their poison gas is being shipped in biodegradable containers, etc, then they get loads of points.

I'd suggest that eBay intrinsically helps the environment by enabling stuff to be traded rather than dumped when the original user is done with it. Likewise Amazon allows many shopping trips to be delivered in a single postperson's round, rather than invoving each buyer in a car journey to buy a book.

I reckon their index is probably inversely true.

Touch keyboard

How's the touchkeys to use in the rain? Or on a freezing cold day? Or in a car before the lights change (yes I know you aren't supposed to, but).

GPS

The US system uses triangulation between cellphone towers, as do most cellphone location technologies. It's primary purpose is to locate 911 callers - when cellphones were first introduced in the states, the generally cludgy nature of the US systems meant that roamed callers would often reach the emergency services in their hometown when reporting an incident thousands of miles away - geolocation was a rather overkill mandate to prevent this.

GPS would be fairly useless for this, as it only works outdoors, whereas there is an expectation that all cellphone services work inside.

Unix had search

In 1973:

find -name '*' -exec grep <blah> \1';'

or something like that..

Microsoft have been alleged to have a monopoly for the last 20 years, during which time two competitors have thrived. One is for geeks and the other for metrosexuals.

Leaving Microsoft with the substantial non-geek, non-metrosexual market. If Linux or Apple wanted to broaden their appeal they'd no doubt eat into Microsoft's market share.

Translation

Presumably they mean that the site text, not the content, will be translated, unless they have amazing voice translation capabilities?

Only 100bhp

I'd almost think a 2 stroke motorbike motor would have a better power/weight.

I'm no expert, but isn't a straight jet a lot less efficient at low speeds than a wheel drive?

Terminology 2

Given your helpful comments on terminology: Is a "paedophobe" someone who wishes the keepers of the annoying brats in row 23 would keep them in their birth country until they're old enough to play quietly on a PSP for 12 hours?

Heavy water stocks

The scientists would not have had the "worlds supply" of D2O with them. The Vemork plant of Norsk Hydro in Norway was continually producing heavy water up until its succesful sabotage by the Norwegian resistance in 1943.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gunnerside

Scientific?

So the best, most scientific testing methodology is to find a random website that uses product X, get it to produce an error message and assume (having no knowledge of the setup) that the database must be causing the problem (and not the fact that they are, for instance, using an obsolete driver?)

I'd suspect that if Bloor had been up for a fight, Microsoft would have had difficulty. For instance (I assume this was in America) news organisations have some constitutional protection. For another, the validity of shrink wrap contracts is all a bit dubious, particularly when they remove rights you could reasonably assume to get in return for handing your dollars over the counter.

ASBOs aren't the answer

I agree with the poster about ASBOs.

There should be specific laws and people should be prosecuted under those laws.

If private clamping is a problem it should be banned (as it is, I think, in Scotland) and instead an offence introduced of parking on private land without permission. Then car park owners could call the council to get unwanted cars towed/ticketed/clamped.

1980's printers

You guys sound like 1980s print workers.

They had a good thing going where instead of producing the paper directly from the journos text in the computer, they went through lots of utterly uneccesary processes to employ the maximum number of *skilled* people. Who had to be union members.

Your ideas (like taking out the GUI and make people use a CLI) are following exactly the same track and going to end up the same way.

Basically, you should be able to tell a computer system what you want to do using as simple an interface as possible and it should do it - whether you've got a Gold Swimming Certificate with Oak Leaves or not.

Obtaining passport data

I'm sure there are lots of corrupt government officials in many countries who'd sell you a disk of visa applicant or landing card data with the details of a few million passport holders.

Of course modern technology makes this easier - it's a lot more useful getting a disk than a hundredweight of landing cards or filled out visa applications.

etymology of Limey

The expression "Limey" stems from the sensible practice of English sailors drinking lime juice to ward off scurvy. They were called this by their American counterparts who were showing their traditional refusal to adopt superior foreign technology (cf GSM, electric kettles)

The corresponding term "Septic" came into use as a reference to the rotting extremities of the American scurvy victims, not as is often thought, through rhyming slang (Septic Tank = Yank).

100% TRUE!

Loonies

"The symptoms disappear when they are away from microwave sources (or electrical sources if they are severely electrosensitive"

Where do they go to avoid electrical sources - the bottom of an abandoned lead mine?

The human body is an unbeliveably complicated system, inhabited by lots of other lifeforms, some of which it doesn't fully tolerate. Everyone will have a range of twinges, aches, itches and snuffles going on most of the time. Currently I personally have a cold sore, and itch nose and I feel a bit lethargic.

That's the "normal range of operation" - it happens to everyone. If you start trying to diagnose you'll go nuts and start thinking your mobile phone is giving you cancer.

Even simpler solution

Just ban all premium rate services.

What do they add to the sum of human happiness?

Maybe we could then move back to the kind of telly where somebody talented writes a script and a group of other talented people perform it.

Blogger comments

Blogger is a big security hole.

When you comment, it invites you to log in with your Google credentials. It would be the work of moments to make the comment link on a blog template go to a spoof page that collects these instead.

As a minimum, you could then read through email, issue password resets, etc.

Title

"125cc and under or 250cc and over".

Funny, but that would make 200cc bikes among the best ridden. When I was 19 and had an RD200 I rode like a complete bloody idiot, so must of been an exception.

How will I vote?

I'm non-UK resident so I don't need an ID card. Having left the UK less than 20 years ago, I am entitled to vote - which I usually do by post or proxy.

If I turn up in person will I be denied the right to vote because I don't have a UK ID card?

Squirty creem = drugs!

You can allegedly get wasted on squirty cream. The propellant in the cans is NOS and by turning them upside down you can inhale the NOS without the cream.

This was used by Ian Banks in Espedair St where he has one of the characters twoc an entire trolley load of squirty cream containers and attempt to snort them.

You get what you pay for

I'd never buy a Dell anything.

Apart from anything else, they're a leading mailer of large amounts of annoying junk mail, spam faxes, etc. They seem to have only been stopped from spam emailing by it being illegal.

They're sold through the Warehouse (a leading NZ seller of cheap junk) FFS! Would you buy allegedly enterprise class equipment from a place that's only one level up from a market stall?

HP and IBM have a duopoly of quality PCs. If you aren't going to buy one of those, you're better off finding a good unbranded system builder.