* Posts by Ian

8 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Mar 2008

BNP DDoS 'mega-assault' not actually mega in the least

Ian

@Danny

By "Little Englander" I was referring to the type of selective-memory person who believes that two little islands off the coast of Europe are somehow superior to every other person and country on the planet. If you feel I used the wrong term, please insert a more appropriate one of your choice.

I wouldn't credit the BNP with anywhere near the number of braincells required to be in the same league as the 1930s/40s National Socialists. They're wannabes. Opportunist thugs who want to be in power at any cost so they can beat up who they want, any time they want, and they should be treated as such - with disdain. They should and cannot, however, be ignored or banned. Just made to look like the idiots and thugs that they are.

Evidently their grasp of technology and history are equally inept. The UK, not just Great Britain, is an entire nation of people descended from all over Europe who have fought, settled and bred with everyone else from around Europe and beyond. It is perfectly true from my experience, however, that many people really do think that the jobs currently being done by immigrants are "below" them and have a sense of entitlement to money without working to get it. That's not a problem with immigration, that's a problem with people being bone idle and expecting everything for nothing. It's also a problem with industry seeing the opportunity for a quick buck by employing someone cheaper than their current (presumably but not necessarily indigenous) staff.

My point above about the BNP leaflet being the only one with policies is that it's the imbecilic morons we've allowed into power in this country that are giving even bigger imbecilic morons like the BNP the room they need to expand. If the rest of them would stop sniping at each other and start actually running the country rather than running hate campaigns against the other parties, people like the BNP wouldn't have a platform to stand on.

Ian
Stop

If we're actually discussing history

Then you also need to discuss the Brigantes and the Welsh, none of whom were one people, because they were all tribes who occasionally worked together or fought each other - and the Picts, the Irish, the Scots, the Jutes, the Normans, the Angles, the Saxons, the Danes... We'll take on all-comers (then lose).

"Anglo Saxon" comes from the "Angles" (a Germanic tribe) and the "Saxons" (a Germanic tribe). The Normans came from Germany. The Danes were a mixture of Norse and Germanic tribes.

Time to get over the Little Englander stance, I'm afraid. There's no such thing and probably never was.

The thing that scares me the most, however, is that in all the election junk I've received through my door in the last week, the only one that actually had policies rather than diatribe was the BNP's.

Council to crack down on Cracknuts Lane

Ian
Thumb Up

More Bell Ends

...but the one in Rowley Regis/Blackheath in Sandwell then leads on to Mincing Lane for the double whammy!

However I can see some point to why some people would want to get rid of these names. The road signs from "our" Bell End are constantly going missing.

Demand for consoles, add-ons skyrockets as PC games plunge

Ian
Paris Hilton

No Support + Multiple Resale = BIG PROFIT!

Of course people don't develop for PCs any more. Since DRM/activation is now tied to a specific user to "prevent" (HAH!) piracy, you can't resell PC games. As has already been said, "recommended specs" are a joke by the advertising department. Don't even get into the next-to-infinite combinations of parts that make up PCs and cause software to fail.

Now take a console. No support costs because the hardware is fixed. Resell the (zero activation) game at £10 a pop as many times as it passes through your shop when punters want £2 off their new £40 title.

These companies are in it for the money. What on Earth makes you think they'll want to employ support staff when they can employ none, and what on Earth makes you think shops will want to sell PC titles when not only is it them that has to deal with the "it doesn't work on my box" arguments, but they can sell the console titles umpteen times at a nice tidy profit for each sale?

You can't play Guitar Hero on a PC. It's just doesn't work. FPS games work pretty well on both, as do platform games, but where are all the buttons to use Microsoft Flight Sim on a console, then? Anyone seen them? Thought not. How many MMOGs are there on the consoles right now? They really don't work well, either, do they?

Both markets can happily co-exist, but one makes vastly more profit than the other. Guess which one corporate entities will develop for. Doesn't take much doing, does it?

Paris, because even she can see which one the developers will put their money into.

MS takes Windows 3.11 out of embed to put to bed

Ian
Unhappy

Oi!

I may be an old fogey at 35, but I both used and supported 3.11 for ages. The office I still work in now (although no longer in IT) went straight from 3.11 to Windows 2000 for deities' sakes.

We still use DOS 6.20 to drive all the development kit for the current standard 2MHz interlocking systems though...

I still haven't convinced XP and dosbox to let me run DI's Tornado flight sim though... These fake soundblasters and USB to serial converters for joysticks just don't cut the mustard.

Ian P.

The war on photographers - you're all al Qaeda suspects now

Ian
Black Helicopters

Planespotters...

There was an interesting twist on this a few years back following the attempts and threats to shoot down airliners with man-portable missiles. A lot of airports started chasing away planespotters from within a mile or so of the runway because they might be planning on shooting aircraft. With a camera, presumably. They've now relented, realising that there is a bit of a difference between a Strela missile launcher and a SLR camera - even with an elephant gun lens to count the rivits on the left aileron.

Fear of nothing is a wonderful way of controlling people, isn't it?

Black helicopter warning because you wouldn't want to get caught trying to photograph one...

Aussie laser-pointer dazzle attacks on airliners: Bad

Ian
Alert

@ Tom (12:07)

"When a plane lands, It has it's nose up, quite simply, from the ground you wouldn't have the required clean tradgectory,"

Unfortunately that's not true.

1) It depends on the aircraft. A B757 approaches nose low, a B747 approaches nose high. They LAND nose high, for obvious reasons, but approach is a different matter.

2) By necessity (unless you are flying a Spitfire or a P-51 Mustang, for example), the pilots have to see the runway. That is ALL of the runway, including the undershoot, so you know how you are positioned in relation to it. If you look at all ILS equipped runways, they have an array of lights on the approach to the runway which are used for visual tracking / confirming / positioning on a precision approach. These light arrays are visible by the pilots until short final approach, as the aircraft goes over them. They are also almost always outside the aircraft perimiter fence and thus usually in publicly accessable areas. There's no problem at all getting line of sight at the flight deck windows.

Ian P.

CAA PPL/IMC (although admittedly lapsed)

Home Sec: British rings to be tightened against intrusion

Ian
Stop

Special Branch

...do actually do a little more than taping politicians in prison (whoops, did I actually mean that, or was it wishful thinking?) - ask anyone who is daft enough to try and fly a light aircraft to Northern Ireland!

That headline just sounds painful.