Posts by Ishkandar

Re. Phil A

Hear !! Hear !! Well said !!

Between the pocket Hitlers appointed by the government and the "database-ignorant" code slaves, we have this wonderful system that even the poorest of airline and/or hotel booking systems will sneer at !!

Re. Ben@gotwind

> Also remember, the wind can blow 24/7 unlike the sun's relative short 'window of opportunity'.

If it does, then you either live in a wind tunnel or you eat an awful lot of baked beans. From the name of your company/project, I suspect the latter !!

Re. driving in gridlock conditions

Just do what my dad did. He got mum to drive and had a pre-work snoze all the way in !! Arrives fresh as a daisy and totally unstressed !!

Always did wonder why mum was bad tempered first thing in the morning !!

Re. vibrator function

At the very least, you'll NOT get done for bestiality !! You might go blind, though, or so I've been told !!

Paraphrase

Despise not the poor sparrow but rather, pity it, when it says that its ancestor was a dinosaur for that's all that it's got left !!

Also applies to humans quite readily !!

Must be something in the water...

The lizards' behavior does not seem to differ greatly from that of the humans' down at the pub in Kiwiland (including the mouthing bit) !!

Retrieval !!

I'm sure the "enemy" non-cobmatants will gladly clear up after they have departed and modify these little robots so that they can be recycled into non-suicide bombs to be used against their previous owners !!

I believe Sun Tzu mentioned something about "making war support war" some 2,500 years ago !!

Top 5 Chinese surnames

From time immemorial, we've been taught that the top 5 Chinese surnames, in descending numerical order, were - Chen, Li, Zhang, Wang and Ho. Looks like the Chen(s) have slipped a bit in their duty to procreate and the Ho(s) have dropped off the list all together !!

Relevant languages

As a naturally tri-lingual person and having aquired enough of a smattering in 6 others to get by in my daily needs, I think the teaching of a foreign language is a good thing. However, the _choice_ of a language is where the problem lies !!

What is the benefit in teaching kids French or German to GCSE standards if they are NEVER going to work in France or Germany ?? Kids will never be willing to suffer through years of "boring torture" just for the sake of a few days' holiday ! On the other hand, the three most widely used languages in the world are, in descending order, English, Chinese and Spanish. English, they learn at home and at school. Chinese and Spanish will enable the kids to get better jobs when they finish school because that is where the demand for languages is !! It also makes travelling abroad a lot easier since many places in the world use one or more of the three languages !!

Then again, the most commonly used and widely understood language is expressed by the waving of large-denomination local currency notes to attract and retain the attention of the local serving person(s) !!

The RICO Act

Microsoft, racketeering ?? Never !! ;-P

Re. Evil Graham

The answer is simple !! They are _NOT_ foolish enough to bid for undeliverable projects based on politics and wishful thinking instead of logic and analysis and proper funding !!

Take our Great British Shining Examples in the world of IT - the NHS project, the Home Office biometrics projects, the HMCR tax project, ad nauseum...

Then again, it's not just in IT that these things happen. How about the Pride of London - the Millineum Dome !! Or, even better, Wembley Stadium !!

Re. Adrian Jones

Have you ever had a noseful of fizzy drink ?? I think that's what will happen when you snort it !!

Be aware that you may be taken for a rabies carrier with foam in your face and be put down (humanely, of course )!!

It's simply Zen

Robert Grant,

It's simply the art of Zen; a bit like getting blood from a stone !!

State sponsored terrorism

Thank God, most German users have LCD/plasma screens otherwise the likelihood of another "crystal night" might be even more terrifying !

- If we don't understand it, we ban it !

Dear Mr. Morely Dotes

There is no need to fill a modern main battle tank with aluminium pellets since the damn thing is MAINLY aluminium anyway. Might be a tad worrying to the crew if the frontal armour gets thinner by the minute though !!

Dear Phillistine

Its natural predator in Africa is HUMAN who catch it as "bush meat" !! Perhaps Floridans can be trained to catch them and eat them. Makes a change from boring Texan beef, for sure !!

Re. Fred Fnord

But then again, less than 5% of the US population can correctly name the capital of China despite having bought hugh quantities of Chinese-made goods from their Wal-Marts, etc. !!

So I believe that your alternative 1) is correct when applied to the US !!

re. blame BA

Err....it's not so simple as that. The plane is usually pressurised for 8000 feet NOT 38000 feet. Otherwise everyone will be on Oxygen continuously since the air up there is too thin to breathe. And the boiling of water is dependant on the pressure - PV/T - as in pressure cookers, given the same volume. Climbers of very tall mountains have the same problem.

Larry sails again ???

I thought Larry swore NEVER to sail again after his near-death experience in the Sidney-Hobart race !! I think he even got rid of the Sayonara, his treasured yacht, and bought a Russian jet fighter instead.

Recycled water...

But to collect the "waste" water will require many more bits which will add to the overall weight to be lugged around.....

And please tell me that Phil above does NOT live in London. Hydrogen generator in the garage (presumable with storage). Sheesh !! One good ciggie and, literally, BANG goes the neighbourhood !!

Where IS Darwin ?? 3200 km ??

Somewhere in the Antartica, in the South Pacific (go East pass New Zealand and keep going, the Kiwis are rather particular who they allow on their islands), somewhere in the Southern Indian Ocean, or in the Suluwesi Archipelego ??

Suitable Canadian response

Just turn off the taps and shutdown the power substations along the border until they see sense. Well. they tried invading Canada once before, in 1812, and the Canadians saw them off. Now, with all their troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, they'll be hard pressed to do much more than make rude noises.

High tech

Rumour had it that, during the Second (or was it the Third) Indo-Pak War, the Indian anti-tank brigades were cunningly armed with giant can openers !!

Pointed at us

I seem to remember that London was a target for a large number of rockets and that some of them actually landed and blew large lumps out of it. But then that was 63 years ago and they no longer make V1s and V2s nowadays !!

Remakes

For an excellent proof that a remake can ***actually*** make money and be popular is "The Magnificient Seven"; a remake of "The Seven Samurai" with a Mexican flavour !!

Top Gear crashing cars

The Brits were driving around in cars about 2000 years ago. They were made of (mostly) recyclable material and powered by two horses. Perhaps Top Gear would like to crash one of them on to a barrier.

WARNING !! Please do keep an eye out for the RSPCA chappies, though. They take a dim view of people doing nasty things to animals like horses !!

Britanny

Yes I have been to Britanny. And No, if you go West from Britanny, you'll end up in Good Ol' Blighty ***first*** !!

Oh, come now...

The Yanks WON the WW2. It's what Hollywood said and they must be right !! After all they gave such great historically accurate movies like U571.....

That reminds me...

Of a story I read some time ago of a company who sent numerous letters threatening to take a woman to court over a trivial sum they said they were owed and only discovered their mistake when they actually took action and was directed to the local cemetary. It seems the woman had died many, many years back and NOBODY took her name off that company's database and she had kept accumulating use-fees for services she could NOT possibly have used !!

Come back, Sales Ledger clerks ! All are forgiven !!

Passports

But it's American so it must be alright. After all, they are the ones who are fighting the righteous war against terrorism. Who knows what dastardly Canadian terrorists will do ? They might smuggle in rabid polar bears or poisoned maple syrup, or worse, destroy the American cultural fabric with their pop stars !!

Me Injun say

White man speak with forked tongue.

So does this mean that can I just ignore anything I agreed to in Microsoft's EULAs on the grounds that I *didn't* actually agreed to them ??

Branding

Since it will be a combination of the ***Oyster*** brand and the ***Barclay*** brand, why not just call it the "Oy vey" card !!

.......and then along comes 2.5+ million users making X times 2.5+ million transactions and.............

Final beta testing

I thought the first rule for rolling out software and applications is - TEST, TEST and then TEST again !! I may be wrong. of course, and may have wasted the last 20 years doing a lot of unnecessary testing.....

Come back, Murphy !! All is forgiven !!

How fascinating !!

"Sword ownership rights have been under heavy fire since they were determined to be the leading cause of death during the Siege of Acre in the third crusade.

School officials determined, due to the violent nature of the video game, the iron-age WMD (weapon of mass decapitation) and other undisclosed information, the matter should be classified as a "Level 3" situation."

And all that happened at a period in history when all good Americans were bashing each other on the head with stone axes !! Perhaps the police should arrest everyone in possession of a lump of WMD (Weapon of Mass Disablement) stone !!

Computers ? Who needs computers ??

Just get me that lady in the picture......

bloody geeks, the lot of 'em

Seriously, the first really usable full spec "laptop" that I know of was the Toshiba 100 (and later, the Toshiba 200). It was a laptop if you had 28 inch circumference thighs !! It used a 386, had a 14 inch LCD screen and could run on DOS, CP/M, or as mine did, on SCO Unix and all the programs that were written for those OSes. Mine actually ran an Oracle client AND database, all be it shoehorned in. And you didn't even need to be a bodybuilder to carry it around, although it helps !!

Government Health Warning !!

Please stop having babies, getting married or dying until we have sorted out this problem. Otherwise, it may affect your mental health !!

Please put down that blunt object !! PLEASE PUT DOWN THAT BLUNT OBJECT !! PLE........Argh !!

Nobel prize

No Nobel prize for those damn Danes; especially after they kicked our collective arses in 1613 !!

Salad Swede

Quislings

Haven't you heard of Quislings or collaborators ?? There are plenty of stories of human Quislings working for mechanical/alien overlords against their own kind in lots of Science Fiction (NOT sci-fi, please) stories. They'll be the ones manning(??) the Segways !!

Then along comes the hero/heroine/heroid/herobot and wipes they out !!

JSF ?

I seemed to remember having read somewhere that the JSF was found to be too heavy and overweight (not surprising really since its American; think McDonalds and Supersize me) to fly off a carrier so it went back to the drawing board.

So what's with VTOl, STOVL and other alphabet soup ?

The length of my dentition...

I believe that Heinlein's book about chucking rocks at Earth was "The moon is a harsh mistress" where ore carriers loaded with rocks were chucked at Earth using electro-magnetic catapults.

And the only (humanly possible) reasons for conquering Earth is to enslave the population or that Earthlings are very tasty or both !! Therefore, wiping out the population will not serve.

But as Arthur C. Clarke had said,"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"; perhaps we should look to Harry Potter for ideas to defend Earth !!

Dear tony

Could it be that you did all your work at the centre of a pyramid which converted all those harmful astro/electro-radiations into health-giving rays and, thus, contributing towards your current well-being ??

talkie toasters

That is banned under the "inhumane treatment of the enemy" by the Geneva Conventions !! Far easier and cheaper to send the mother-in-law along....

Atlanteans

Naw. It's those pesky Atlanteans from their hidden base somewhere in the depths of Antartica trying to spam the world with requests like "Flood relief for Atlantis !". Sure as hell sounds better than the 419 spams !!

Tagging politicians

Dear Mike,

Tagging politicians is an utterly unnecessary expense. Just head for the nearest source of incandescent, infra-red and there you'll find them pouring out volumes of hot air !! Perhaps they should be harnessed as a source of renewable resource energy and just elect new ones when they run out !!

Left-handed usage

The Arabs of old used to go into the desert, do their business and scrub up after with sand using their left hand only. Then they ride away on their camels which have a single hump. Tough guys, these Arabs and completely eco-friendly too.

A better use of a good tool

Many years ago a bunch of technically competent robbers walked up to a *bullet-proof* plate glass window at a jewelers in London, fired a nailgun at it and made off with several millions in jewelry. Appearantly, the *point* of the nail multiplied the force of impact tremendously and, thus, shattered the *bullet-proof* glass. If I remember rightly, that nailgun was made/marketed by a company called "Hilti". I believe that a scramble ensued amongst the glass manufacturers to produce a *Hilti-proof* glass !!

So, all are not stupid, who use a nailgun !!

I'm alright, Jack

Shut down all TV transmitter towers by all means !! I only watch Cable TV anyway !! And as for mobile phones, bring back the string and two baked beans cans !!

With teachers of such a calibre, can we wonder at the kids' exam results ???

Colour ??

I could be wrong but I think the first colour Z80 computer was the, imaginatively named, TRS80 colour computer or the Video Genie clone. They appeared long (in IT terms) before Sir Clive produced the ZX80.

Oh dear

Poor, poor Al Tariq must be spinning in his grave to have such a fuss made over a rock named after him !! - Jib Al Tariq

Moral booster

Michael, it is considered to boost the moral of the Public Security Bureau officers. Gives them something to look at on the graveyard shift !!