Posts by Martin
630 posts • joined Thursday 17th January 2008 11:18 GMT
@Helena Handcart: If you're going to put pictures like that into a phone review...
Others have made similar points, but as I made the original post, I ought to reply to your comment.
I don't have a boss who is a puritan. I don't wear a tie at work, though I consider wearing a t-shirt to be unprofessional in my office. I love life, and I'm not afraid of authority. And I have no objection, in general, to the unclothed female (or male) form.
But I see no reason why I should offend other people in my office - particularly women - who may not actually WANT to look at a picture like this at work.
If you really work in an office where displaying this sort of picture is acceptable, I wonder how many women would find it comfortable to work there?
If you're going to put pictures like that into a phone review...
...would you please mark it as NSFW?
Re: I need three hands here
"Personally I think an age of consent of around 13-14 is about right..." is presumably what was meant.
Having a fourteen year old daughter, I totally and utterly disagree with you. She may THINK she's old enough to consent, but she isn't.
Posted in Barnes & Noble Nooks bound for Blighty
Re: The problem is...
Amazon may "lock you down" but (a) the Kindle ebooks are frequently cheaper than the ePub equivalents and (b) are frequently the only format available. Add to that the sheer ease of buying Kindle books (one click, and a minute later you start reading it on your Kindle) and it's no wonder that Kindles lead the market.
I have a Sony Reader, a Kobo Touch and a Kindle. I am not just being a Kindle fanboi here. I'd love it if buying books on the Kobo Touch were as easy as it is on the Kindle. (It claims to be, but it isn't really in the same class...)
If you really hate being locked down, I believe that there are ways of stripping the DRM from Kindle books and reading them on other readers. Not that I'd know how to do anything like that, or in any way endorse it, you understand.
And as usual...
...a figure is plucked from the air - in this case, AUD$1.37 billion - which is presumably based on the totally and utterly flawed assumption that every illegal download is a lost sale.
Re: Deliver to office/workplace?
Hmm.
That's fine, until someone abuses it. I heard a story (possibly here on el reg comments?) about someone who got four motor tyres delivered to his place of work. Unsurprisingly, the workplace clamped down on getting personal mail delivered to work.
And typically...
...when you point out an error in spelling or grammar, you'll make one yourself.
"Is that signing as in an a signature...."
Posted in US flags from the 1970s SEEN ON MOON
Re: Hubble
"The moon is a difficult target for Hubble because it moves across the sky faster than Hubble can track it and is very dim in ultraviolet light."
That's a quote from this interesting page. - http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/hubble_moon.html
Fantastic resource, the internet.
I keep my photos on my own drive...
...and back them up (a) locally, and (b) using Dropbox. If (when?) Dropbox dies, I'll switch to another cloud backup solution. If my own local drive or server dies, I'll buy another one.
I don't really understand what the problem is here.
Re: Conviction? Pah...
Jeffrey Archer went to prison for perjury.
Jonathan Aitken went to prison for perjury.
At least three MPs went to prison for fiddling their expenses.
And the CPS, you may be assured, will be paying their own hot lawyers too.
I think there is a very good chance they will go down.
Posted in HTC disses Dr Dre by diluting Beats deal
People who wear Beats headphones have always baffled me anyway...
You spend over a hundred quid for - presumably - superior sound. Then you wear them OVER your hoodie.
Re: A friend of mine...
"A friend of mine hacked into his (then) girlfriend's account...."
Strikes me that if your friend felt the need to hack into his girlfriend's account, the relationship might as well be over whether or not she was having an affair.
Re: Social vs Commercial Networking
"I recently hit this dilemma when I left a personal review (using a personal account) of a product which had been purchased by the company I work for"
The product had been purchased by your company, not by you. You had presumably used the product as part of your work. I'm not saying the suppliers of the product were right to issue a "cease and desist" letter. But in this situation, I don't think you can realisitically separate your "private" persona from your "company representative" persona. It was you, as a company representative, who used the product. It was you, as a private individual, who left the review. They are both the same "you..."
Why not gamble on-line?
In the case of casino games, or even horse-racing (unless you're REALLY an expert), I agree - it's a reliable way of losing money.
But I am sure it's possible, if you're smart, to earn money playing poker on-line. I think it was Steve Davis who pointed out that most people who play on-line poker are dumb or drunk or both. Assuming you're smart and stay sober, you will win. I wouldn't mind betting that more than a few students help themselves through uni by playing poker.
Posted in B&O Beoplay A3
Four hundred and fifty quid?
Are you joking?
To give an iPad a stand and better sound?
Re: That's what you get when you cram it down our throats..
"or that anything 'green initiaive' will have any real impact!"
Hole in ozone layer over Antartica was huge.
CFC's were banned.
Hole in ozone layer significantly reduced.
Just one example, but a pretty good one.
Climate change is slow, and you might not see any effect in several years directly. Also, consider that HAD we not been doing all the "green" stuff, things might have been even worse.
Posted in Fujitsu raises UK minimum wage to £14k
Re: Private sector?
What has the fact that they are in the private sector got to do with anything? There have been unions in private sector companies for years - frequently welcomed there, as it's easier for the management to deal with union reps than it is to deal with all the people individually.
And where, exactly, are these "better paid jobs"? Noticed the recent unemployment figures? They are not ALL workshy scroungers, you know.
Re: Antarctica is not melting
In other news, the Earth is only 6000 years old.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2005/06/01/evidence-for-young-world
(Well, it's from as unbiassed a source as yours was.)
Interestingly^U Unsurprisingly
Lewis omitted the word "Some" from the beginning of his title.
FTFY
While they are at it...
...they could look at the "booking fee" scam for theatre and concert tickets....
He didn't just write science fiction....
Many of his "straight" short stories are quite lovely. "The Beautiful Ice-Cream Suit" is one that springs to mind. He also had a wonderful ability to get into the minds of children - there's one story (can't remember which, unfortunately) which had a glorious description of what it's like to be a running child - to run, just because you can, and because it's fun.
Wonderful writer.
Re: The 1930's vs the 2010's
I hope they will LOL at us - I'd like nothing better.
But I suspect that they are more likely to say "How the FUCK could our grandparents have been so stupid as to let this happen without at least trying to do something about it?"
"A journalist relating the facts accurately is doing his job."
Well, yes. But on this subject, it's a long time since I saw Lewis Page doing his job.
Posted in 450-year-old football was hard to kick
Re: I never did understand why ...
So you have never argued about sports trivia? Or film trivial? Or TV trivia? or any other trivia? Ever? Even after a few pints, when your opinion on what is right and wrong suddenly seems one of the most vitally important things in the world, and it is ESSENTIAL that the other guy's point of view is corrected?
Well, OK. It's your life. You stay there and look condescendingly down at us normal humans if you like. I for one LOVE bickering over a pint or two about something that can't be proved one way or the other - and so do most people.
Improved scrolling?
What on earth is improved scrolling?
You grab the scroll bar, and drag it up or down - and it works. That's what I've just done.
It's worked for twenty years or more. What on earth is there to improve?
And the "improved" scrolling has "harder to grab" scrollbars, which may be harder to use for some users. That's improved how, exactly? (At least they haven't gone for the disappearing/magically reappearing sometimes scrollbars that Ubuntu invented...)
Posted in Ten... tablet survival accessories
Re: 5 pages?!
Ah, but it looks better on a fondleslab as five separate pages.
Re: A journey to Alpha Centauri
What kinetic energy?
If the spacecraft is running at 0.1c, and switches off it's engines, it'll continue to run at 0.1c.
Relativistic effects only affect people outside you. You'll just be at normal zero gravity, as if you were at rest.
All the guy said was "IF" we could accelerate at 1g continuously. He didn't say how.
Indeed....
That works out at £16K a month approximately.
Sixteen thousand pounds a month in expenses? Four thousand pounds a week, every week for over three years?
And that is, presumably, on top of the legitimate expenses she claimed...
How on EARTH could that have happened?
I'm not one to defend financial institutions...
...but this doesn't look like a big deal.
Morgan Stanley's research analyst revised his predictions based on the public information that Facebook put out, saying they weren't so sure how to monetize Facebook on smartphones. The research analyst has to be independent of the IPO people - so, he came out with his revised prediction to a few major clients. As the story says, it's normal for major clients to get predictions ahead of the mainstream.
They are only predictions, based on his experience and public information. He did not have (or one hopes he did not have) any inside information about the IPO. There was no insider trading going on here.
It's unusual - in most cases, the analysts of a company that are leading a major IPO will tend to talk it up. But it's not wrong; arguably, it indicates that Morgan Stanley were sticking to the rules that the people who do their analysis are completely independent of the people leading their IPO.
Posted in Orange pulls out of women's Fiction
It's not chick-lit...
...as you'd know if you'd actually read any of the books short-listed for the prize.
And this sort of knee-jerk attitude is why we NEED a decent prize for literature written by women.
Oh yeah?
What sort of phone are you using? How did you originally hear about it? Could it possibly have been due to an advert?
What TV programs do you watch? How did you hear about them? What films do you see? Were any of them based on trailers you'd seen previously in the cinema?
Same applies for more-or-less everything in this world.
Like it or not, advertising is a fact of life, and it works on everyone.
Posted in Roman roads get the web maps treatment
IE 9 required???
What on earth does the site do that it won't run on IE8, but works perfectly well on Firefox 3.6?
Posted in Ten... freeware gems for new PCs
Re: Well, someone has to say it...
Oh well.
When I put the post in, I had to decide between the joke icon or the penguin. Judging by the number of downvotes, I chose the wrong one...
Posted in Ten... freeware gems for new PCs
Well, someone has to say it...
Surely the best piece of freeware you can put on a Windows PC is a new install of Linux?
Let's see...
Quote mining - check.
Conclusions bearing no resemblence to evidence cited - check
Ignoring all evidence to the contrary - check.
Personal side-swipes - check.
Lewis Page, you have officially passed the requirements - your articles can be accepted for publication by the Discovery Institute. Congratulations!
Posted in Basic instinct: how we used to code
Well, damn - look what I found....
Replying to myself before anyone else does...
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dartmouth/BASIC_Oct64.pdf
And there it is on page 2. "The language that you will use is BASIC (Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) which is at the same time precise, simple and easy to understand."
You live and learn.
Posted in Basic instinct: how we used to code
Hmmm.
Until I see the actual Dartmouth BASIC manual, or a copy of it, and not merely multiple assertions all over the web, I'll stick by my memory. We knew that Algol was Algorithm Language, and Fortran was Formula Translation - but Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code? Please allow me to be very dubious.
digital tomes?
A couple of pedantic points
A tome is a big heavy book. The major advantage of e-books is that a whole library, never mind an individual book, is not big and heavy.
And if VAT at 20% is removed from an e-book, that reduces the price by approximately 17%..
But yes - I don't quite see why an e-book should attract VAT when a paper book does not....
Posted in Basic instinct: how we used to code
"Don't forget that BASIC was developed at Dartmouth college as a simplified (hence the "B") way to teach programming..."
You are aware, aren't you, that the "Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code" is a retro-fitted phrase? BASIC was called BASIC because it was basic. Afterwards, people asked "But what does it stand for?" and someone came up with this truly horrible suggestion.
I was using BASIC in 1971 on a PDP-10 at Hatfield Polytechnic over a phone line from our school. But I didn't hear anything about "Beginner's etc etc" until sometime in the 1980s - round about the time that the story that BASIC was invented by Bill Gates started.
Re: Where e-books go to die
Actually, not quite...
In the case of ePub, even if Sony, Kobo AND Adobe all go bust (which is roughly what would need to happen for Digital Editions to stop working) the books will continue to work on your licenced readers and PC.s.
Kindle - not so sure...
But this is why people strip the DRM off their books - so that they DO keep them if the worst comes to the worst.
Re: Reading
Which is fine if all you like is sword and sorcery...
Re: @Martin They should have used "Unbeatable*"
I didn't expect your comment to be modded. But I still hold by my statement.
You'll rarely or never hear a woman use the word in this casual way; most of them will find it extremely offensive to hear it used in this way. Because we men are in a majority here, we can hide behind the dictionary. But it's still offensive.
It's surely not hard to find another word to use - there are plenty - which doesn't have the same connotation.
Re: They should have used "Unbeatable*"
Steve Evans - please don't use "rape" in this sense. It's pretty damn offensive by any standards.
Congratulations!
A magnificent achievement.
You have won the official Wet Blanket Award for April, and you have been shortlisted for the annual 2012 Wet Blanket Award. I for one reckon you've got an excellent chance of the big prize.
Well done!
Posted in The iPad 3 would make me so horny...
...fucktard?
About every tenth time it happens, I ask - why on earth are people so damn RUDE on the internet?
Why do people on forums routinely use the sort of language that would get them sacked if they used it at work, and smacked in the face if they used it down the pub?
It's possible to disagree with someone, or observe that they have missed a point, without resorting to abuse.
Lewis Page has done it again.
The very first sentence of the article is completely misleading, in a way that the Discovery Institute or Answers In Genesis would be proud of.
There is no indication or even an implication that 'Scepticism regarding the need for immediate and massive action against carbon emissions is a sickness of societies and individuals which needs to be "treated"'.
In fact the press release states that "From a sociological perspective, resistance to change is to be expected...People are individually and collectively habituated to the ways we act and think."
It also says that ""This kind of cultural resistance to very significant social threat is something that we would expect in any society facing a massive threat."
There is no suggestion whatsoever that this sort of skepticism is a "sickness of society". On the contrary, it says that this behaviour is to be expected.
But I've given up expecting fair or reasonable discussion on this subject on El Reg.
