Posts by Steve Mann

And NO Returns

@ Ron: Well it did in 1965.

@ Andy Taylor: Well said. I will never forget what that mealy-mouthed bastard Donal Rumsfeld said on the first day of hostilities in Afghanistan, upon being asked how he felt about the "friendly fire" incident in which a US pilot completely wiped out a force of (unresisting) British commandos.

"They shouldn't have been there".

Way to encourage others to join what was then a coalition of exactly two nations Donny-boy. Way to accept responsibility for a stupid mistake and show the world we weren't just a bunch of playground bullies with an over-inflated sense of our own abilities Donny Lackabrain. Way to say "Thanks for answering the call British Servicemen" Donny F*ckwit.

Hmm

Could not the man's lawyer argue that not having actually opened the envelopes (as I believe is the case) the man didn't know what was inside them and therefore was never actually knowingly "in posession" of any documents whatsoever. after all, anyone could make up such envelopes as a joke, possibly even to film the results for a reality TV show with a hidden camera. The wording "For UK/US/ etc Eyes Only" actually reads more like a TV Show prop or a parody than a real warning to me.

Furthermore, in the absence of any actual knowledge of what to do in the circumstances, but suspecting that any contents of the (possibly empty, possibly fake) envelopes might be sensitive, wouldn't the BBC, a state run organisation, be a more logical place to begin the process of repatriating them with their rightful owner than the actual first choice of the railway Lost Property office (via on-train personnel)? I doubt most people would think of the police as a proper place to hand in anything found on a railway carriage.

I think any halfway competent lawyer could get a walk on this one for the guy who found the envelopes whatever the real motive behind the man's actions.

Dolphin Confusion

No matter how confused a dolphin is, I would think it would know not to crawl out onto dry land to ask for directions.

Beaching is bizarre behaviour that goes against any sort of instinct the animals could have (they are monumentally unsuited for protracted stays on dry land, after all). If we grant that dolphins are intelligent (and that they are intelligent enough to recognise dangerous situations and co-operate to resolve them is no longer open to debate) the beaching behaviour suggests a suspension of that intelligence, as in some sort of cognitive disruption at a fairly basic level.

I'd suspect an infection of the brain as a first plausible reason for the beachings. That elliminated, I'd have to weigh the only other possibilities: That the sonar was so unpleasant the dolphins simply had to get out of the conducting medium, or that the dolphins were beaching as a first step to assuming their domination of the local human population, followed by forced interbreeding and the eventual over-running of the costal areas by hordes of loathsome hybrid Squeaking Ones, as Andrew so adroitly pointed out.

Self-Destructo Carrier Bags

Spar supermarkets pioneered the use of "bio-degradable" carrier bags in the mid 1970s. The actual result was a bag whose handles would snap unexpectedly without the usual stretchy phase to warn the shopper that the carpark would soon be covered in rolling fruit and/or broken glass. I kept one as a test. It showed no signs of biodegrading in the three years I had it.

A question: If these bacteria love to live it up on poly bags, why aren't the landfills total bacterial raves? Why aren't we seeing "Landfills Overrun With Plastic Eating Super Germs Outrage" headlines? Are these obvious threats to democracy only available in Canada?

Another question: Is it safe to cook up a batch of plassy bag munching germs in a Home Depot orange "Homer" bucket or do we need to buy a stainless steel containment facility for the little darlings?

Smug Kiwis Brought Low By Own Over-Cleverness Outrage

Kiwis need to drink their energy-generating medium? How unforesighted of them.

This was all figured out in the seventies.

Powersats in solar orbit. Microwave transmission. Amortize costs over whole world.

Result: Cheap as air electricity for as long as we remain capable and willing to build and launch the powersats and to tolerate a downloading facility near you.

Worth remembering department: The sun never sets in space.

I will now pause to allow the mob of angry villagers with torches to burn down my castle because "everyone knows" how dangerous this idea is.

:oP

French Technology?????!!!!!!

The cheese-scarfing surrender monkeys have nukes?

And proud Britannia is buying them?

I dunno what's worse: The panic amongst certain of my American colleagues when they read about the French being tooled up in the Plutonium Playpen, or that the land of my birth is so starved for good old British neutron know-how that they will be buying reactors from Le Creuset's latest line.

Oh the humanity.

"Is the Moon conductive to human life?"

Empirical observation would suggest that the moon would conduct life rapidly away from anyone stepping out of their space ship without some sort of spacesuit.

Metal Shavings?

Oh for goodness sake!

Either wrap some newspaper around a magnet and use it to pull out the iron filings or simply blow them out with a can of "spray air".

*How* much training do these so-called egineers get before lift-off? Is it *all* p*ssing about in the vomit comet and poncing around underwater in space suits, or do they do any actual real-problem stuff?

All this faffing about wouldn't have been tolerated in my day.

Harrumph etc.

Typical IC Fabricator Behaviour

Never should have moved away from the pentode valve.

WTF?

Is it REALLY going to take a law backed by punitive damages to make these buggers start using a bit of common before burning tapes/CDs/whatever and carrying them offsite? My details were on a tape lost by a bank about 18 months ago.

The IT department responsible for this disgraceful cock-up issued a statement that it was "about to" implement encryption at the time (so any future IDs I might adopt and give to the bank were presumably safe), and they assured me that it was unlikely that anyone would have the equipment to read the tape anyway so I shouldn't worry my little head about it.

Oh yeah? Is it *that* unlikely that a tape containing a DIY kit for forging the ID of a couple of million customers would be stolen by someone who *hadn't* taken the preliminary step of obtaining a couple of easy-to-get surplus-these-days tape units BEFORE concocting the elaborate "steal tape from courier" plan?

Hay-Zeus on a Bike! You'd think that at least ONE of these buggers would get the message. Perhaps only when Glorious Leader Bush or Beloved Co-Leader Cheney have had their Name, SSN, Address and Deposit Account numbers stolen will Something Be Done.

Bah.

@ Anonymous Coward (Ha ha, look at the Stupid and Angry Microtards.)

<<I've never heard an OSX user complain about it.>>

That's probably because Apple make them sign NDAs.

Seriously, is there any more defining characteristic that separates Mac users from PC users than the latter's willingness to talk publically about the problems with their computers and the former's close-mouthedness?

Yes, there are Apple-run forums in which Mac problems are discussed. Badly designed, almost-impossible to navigate forums in which one has to know exactly what one is looking for before one asks the search engine to find it.

But if a suggestion of a problem with a Mac is made outside the Apple Cloister, it is met with cries of indignation and the FUD banner is unfurled.

Burning batteries? Only a PC problem, idiot! Cooked thighs 'n' nuts? That's why we don't call Macbooks "laptops", dolt! Lid won't close? Hamfisted clown, this is precision equipment, not a PC toy! Power supply gone south for the third time in two years? Sign this NDA and we'll send you a new one!

As for the guy who sneered that PCs were only used by people who couldn't afford a Mac, well, I just finished repairing a "better" Mac for a family member. Every part needed could be summed up as "PC equipment with a 300% Mac tax added on". I think I began laughing hysterically when I found the cost of a new CMOS battery was nearly 20 dollars (as opposed to about four dollars for the PC version). Yes, the Mac is expensive for entirely understandable engineering reasons.

Then there was the innovative "suitcase" case design that placed the power supply, made - judging by the cost and weight - from depleted uranium, directly over the most fragile parts of the motherboard when it was swung open. One mis-step when removing or replacing the power supply (which burned out because for all the innovative engineering it no-doubt contained it was lacking any sort of fusible, replaceable element that would protect the electronics) and that was it for the wretched machine.

Wouldn't touch one with a barge pole now.

Bad Air

Well, *I've* felt ill after breathing the air in a 747 for the 7plus hours it took to cross the Atlantic. More than once, and when you consider I've made the trip only about a dozen times, them's worrying stats.

Of course, some of the airports I've had to cool my heels in when flying point-to-point have made the air quality in the plane a secondary concern next to getting the hell out of <insert your own airport hell of choice>.

@ Much simpler means of "protecting ickle childy wildren" (tm) Anon Cow

Er, according to your clause three everyone would have to become some sort of paedo, then get caught at it before they could apply to join a social networking site.

Of course, that would make everything more clear cut, and is where this story began if you think about it.

Prepay, the New York way

You walk to the kiosk, slap down a small gold bar and announce that you're filling the tank. When the tank is full, you return to the kiosk in the vain hope the price hasn't risen during the fueling and you'll see some change.

Honestly, how is pre-paying "punishing" anyone? You find a station you trust and you pay at the pump using a credit card. You watch the statements to make sure some crafty sod hasn't rewired the pump to short you - it happens every so often - and you get on with life.

If you have to deal in cash, you slap down enough to cover the tank filling or you live with the tank not being full when the money runs out.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm having a hard time seeing the tremendous burden this places on someone over the pump it then pay for it model.

Bah!

The iPhone will only be said to have come of age when it can run OS2200 in native mode.

"Vista". "Leopard". Pshaw! Real operating systems don't have cute names dreamed up in some marketing brainstorming session.

Bloody toy computers.

Yahoo's Valueless Products

Well, I don't often use their search engine myself, I'll admit, mostly because it used to get less relevent returns to my queries than Google some five years ago. I don't know if that would be true now though.

Yahoo are still my first choice when it comes to shake'n'bake specialised social networking, and I often tout Yahoo Groups to others as a quick and esay way to get some quite sophisticated tech for a web presence with automated mail-listing for free.

There's plenty I'd do differently if I was building any one of my own Yahoo Groups by hand, and some of the recent changes have been rather counter productive, but then, I wanted to be up and running in minutes so I could dedicate more free time to my interests and less to dicking about with website crap so I was willing to live with the less-great stuff to get that.

I wouldn't doubt they loose money on it though. The garbage-collection criteria favoured eternal spam wastelands the last time I investigated shutting down a group whose owner had just walked off without delegating a replacement. I wonder just how much of the spinning real estate is actually weed-infested landfill? Perhaps an audit would do more for shareholder value than yelling for a new board?

If you want to have a go at the so-called experts in the so-called tech support department then I'm with you 100%. Douglas Adams could only dream of such monumental levels of incompetence and apathy.

When Yahoo put out a new template a couple of years ago that resized all group logo pictures to bedsheets (which was a problem for mine since I went for quick-loading postage stamps when I built 'em and the resulting fuzzy mess made some of the older readers think they needed new specs) I played around for a couple of days then gave up and asked how to size the art smaller. The reply?

"Reduce the size of the image".

It has just occurred to me that this sort of tech support may have been part of the attraction from Microsoft's point of view: at least one part of the organisation was already aligned with the Redmond Way of Things and wouldn't need reindoctrinating.

Jesus Effing Christ

I dunno what's more appaling. The story or the comments it has garnered.

Meatballs?

Then that ain't no ordinary dog! That's Teddy Salad, masterspy!

Not Fast, Not Food

Okay, yes, McDonalds is an easy target.

But before we get *too* down on the American Horror, let us remember that the British were doing just fine in the inedible food line yonks before McDonalds ever opened that first place in Picadilly.

Like in any British Rail cafeteria, at least the ones I ever attempted a meal in.

And for the truly iron stomached with something to prove there was Newport Pagnel Services on the M1. Situated in what must have been the longest lasting scenic contra-flow roadworks in the history of the Motorway, one could enjoy truly horrific food served at one by carefully recruited miserable gits.

McDonalds have a *long* way to go before they equal this level of food terrorism.

Nothing New

Tell you what, that piccy of the assault rifle C/W underslung break-away Taser pistol reminds me of the "Johnny Seven" gun my friend Brian had when we were kids.

Does it come with a compass in the rifle stock?

Errata Errata

Acherly I think you'll find that's DODDOS.

Can't we all just get aloAAAAAARRRRGGGHHH!

First of all, chemistry and ambient atmospheric composition aside, there isn't enough oxygen coming out of one of those nose-tubes to provide a real danger of fire unless the cunning old bastard collected the gas for several hours under his bedsheets. It's a trickle.

Secondly, how tollerant of his behaviour would you be if your grandad was in the next bed to this knife-smuggling, delusional loon? Does anyone seriously doubt that someone cunning enough to smuggle a knife into a hospital isn't capable of sticking it into someone?

Thirdly, there were plenty of staff at the hospital who dealt with this sort of thing on a regular basis who felt it was time to call in the civil militia. Clearly, things were a bit more fraught than would appear at first reading.

The Taser is clearly a controvesial weapon, and not nearly as harmless as was at first thought by many BUT it is the best of the alternatives when it comes to disarming someone behaving irrationally without undue risk to the one doing the disarming and without permanently maiming the perpetrator. This isn't TV. A knife slash could easily be a career- or even a life-ending experience. In their place, what would YOU do?

@Treacle

27?????

It was 72 last year!

Not only do they want us to join their f***ing gang so they don't actually have to do the dirty stuff themselves, they're planning on shortchanging us on the virgin front too.

Bastards.

Haaaaang on.....

I think people posting here are confusing "modeling the weather" with "forecasting the weather".

While the point of the former is to do a better job of the latter, you can forecast the weather for most purposes to an acceptable level of error with the naked eye, a couple of instruments that have been around in essentailly the same form for several hundred years and a bit of knowledge.

The addition of com links to other people doing the same stuff elsewhere makes life even easier of course, as does a radar setup of the right kind in the right place. Satelite pix are the ultimate bees knees.

Not perfect by any means, but good enough for most purposes.

It is my understanding that modeling the weather requires so much digital oomph that the further out you try and predict it the more likely it is that it is already happening by the time you get the answer.

My next door neighbour uses a rock hanging from a string outside his kitchen window to forecast the weather. If he looks out and the rock is wet, it's raining. If it's not wet, it's not raining. If his window is broken, it's windy.

Secret World

Overheard at Secret World Studios:

Down by some railway siding

In their secret world they were conspiring

To find the places where we hid our kit

Now where'd our server go? Oh ****!

Yeah, but...

I agree that there is no supposition that the billing address should be shared with the 911 dispatch system.

Any more than I think the phone company should have the innate right to sell said billing address along with suindry other details to "marketing partners".

IT SHOULD JUST BLOODY WORK. Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs, that is what is required from a National Emergency Response system. If you can't do it, get out of the effing market and make way for someone who can.

But what about...

...the added threat of my iSniff not only being hacked during uploading but now picking up a case of The Sniffles on the tube or being crocked with allergies two months out of every summer.

I don't want to reach into my jacket pocket for my hi-tek toy only to get a handfull of iSnot.

Something Must Be Done.

MySQL

*Somebody's* head should roll.

Sun paid a billion dollars for MySQL?

I thought everyone knew you could get it free off the internet.

Power Requirements

If the industrial west would get its collective finger out and establish the solar power sat network with microwave downlink that people-in-the-know have been saying we should do for thirty five years, we could drop the price of leccy to fractions of a penny a kilowatt, make it as clean as it is probably ever going to be possible to get it and finally get us off needing oil for power generation.

All that sunshine just being wasted. All that bloody rigamarole with "Carbon Credits".

Gordon Bennet!

@ AC Laughing @ Buddypepper

"Sorry matey - if you buy an off-the-shelf operating system, then IMHO it's really that operating system's job to operate your system (the secret's in the name, folks) and unfortunately that means it should run any hardware you happen to have. "

Gee, I wish someone had told me this when I was attempting to upgrade my brother-in-law's computer from a formerly loved but now admitted to be buggy OS to the new "I see God" version. I had so much trouble sorting out the truth from the fanfic I almost gave up. The computer itself was little help and crashed repeatedly when I tried to download updates for it.

Oh wait. You only meant that to apply to Microsoft OS's didn't you? I'm sorry. Trying to fit a version of OSX on a OS9 infested G4 which crashed every time it got near the WWW obviously would come under a different set of rules. After all, macs "just work", don't they?

Without question, Linux will run on anything, anywhere, anytime. Providing you don't mind the odd Kernel rebuild or two of course. I myself am running Suse Enterprise 10 on my car's electronic lock key fob "clicker". I've been locked out of my car for weeks because of some petty driver issue, but the OS is running just fine.