Posts by Richard Wharram
764 posts • joined Monday 7th April 2008 12:25 GMT
Why a Rubik's cube?
err...
Re: Not outsourced
Should I have used <sarcasm> tags?
Re: Not outsourced
That can't be true. A techie is just a techie. If you can get a brand-new one for a very low wage then that is much better than paying a higher wage for an old one. Simple economics. You need to do some totals on a spreadsheet to prove this is correct.
500 x £50,000 = £25,000,000
500 x £20,000 = £10,000,000
That's 60% cheaper annually. A 15 million pound saving per annum!
Honestly, can you techies not do maths? No wonder you never got promoted to management!
Re: Astonishing and nice!
Then we'll just use Greenfly to kill the Inhibitors and everything will be fine.
Re: Also
1" is enough?
Phew.
Re: Astonishing and nice!
Impulse? Meh.
They should be working towards a conjoiner drive.
Also
In other news:
MEN LIKE BIG TITS!!!!!!!
World-changing stuff. Who knew?
Well...
The unions needed to be stopped. It was a filthy, corrupt, and sexist, system. She did that. Good.
What she replaced them with is a mixed legacy and your point of view probably depends on where you lived and what industry you or your family worked in.
Re: A cover up
@LarsG
wtf? The report blames the bankers. Squarely. Did you read it?
Re: But surely?
Ironically, in the years before the collapse I'd been (with others ofc) working on MI systems that tracked the quality of sales made over time to make sure they weren't of poor quality e.g. cancelled in a week because they were only taken out under pressure.
Stupid that they did this for current accounts but not huge corporate loans :)
Re: This has worried me for a while
Branch managers have next to nothing to do with loans in this day and age. It's not Captain Mainwaring any more. Personal loans and mortgages were all approved by computer systems. I'd imagine there was constant pressure from the top to slacken the algorithms used to be more generous.
Re: But surely?
HBOS certainly had an atmosphere amongst management that bad news was not welcome.
Bonusing corporate loan arrangers for getting big loans that they could approve themselves didn't help a great deal either I gather.
This has worried me for a while
That we are trying to force the banks to lend to businesses when that was half (or indeed it seems now, nearly all) the problem in the first place.
Buying a gift for the wife
That old chestnut again?
Yes dear...
And they are there because I've got a cold.
Those on the floor? Yes, I've blown my nose twice already...
And my belt is broken too...
Posted in US funds Europa mission
The Chinese will beat us to it.
And then get blatted by a big alien.
Re: ...but when will they explain...
They came from a Brown Star.
Re: Is that...
Only in the first novel.
Re: "There is no mainstream party [...] which offers to dismantle these crippling stealth taxes"
Much as though I'd love to vote for a party that would scrap ROCs and FITs I can't bring myself to vote for a party that thinks the NHS could save itself a fortune by using Homeopathy.
iPad?
Didn't the idiot have a phone?
Well that might work.
If it's just comparing the face in front of the camera against an earlier one on record then it might do a reasonable job. The problem comes when trying to compare a random face against a large dataset. Then you will run into the problem of trying to keep false positives at a reasonable level without introducing false negatives. The problem is still not close to being solved for large datasets (e.g. a country and all previous visitors.) Indeed, humans would have a problem even if we could remember 70 millions peoples' faces. Some people just look quite alike. It isn't much of a problem for us at the minute as we only remember a few thousand faces but if we could scale our memory up we'd run into the same problem.
Some companies were trying to flog this stuff at a Retail expo the other day and it worked a treat but that was with only a small number of faces.
Pharoahs? 5,000 to 10,000 years ago?
Leaving aside the issue that there weren't any pharoahs until the 19th dynasty and assuming the term is being used colloquially to mean 'king of the two lands', upper and lower Egypt, then 5,000 years ago takes us right back before the Old Kingdom. Before the pyramids. Certainly before Cleopatra.
It just doesn't compute!
Re: Say WHAT, bro?
Ah, doctors trying to set policy again. Or rather a subset of doctors hailing from the old temperance movements trying to set policy. Maybe they should run for political office instead of being a doctor if that's what they wish to do.
Failing that they could fuck off.
Re: You know...
Hot For Teacher was better.
Never mind cataracts
What effect does it have on your tadpoles?
It would rule generation-ships out if all chaps loaded onto them had been jaffa'd.
Norks
Teehee again.
Re: Oracle are being evil. MS supports this evil
" MS copied Java to make .NET. So why aren't Oracle suing MS?"
wtf?
Microsoft copied many of the principles of Java but it has a completely different API.
If copying the principles behind a platform is copywritable then I'd like to point to the fact that we had a language that compiled down to bytecode that could run on different platforms in the early 90s at the old Halifax Building Society. Does that mean Lloyds Banking Group can sue Oracle? They could do with the money to be honest.
It is a dickish move by Oracle I'll concede but would you expect anything else?
Posted in Boffins spot Luna-sized exoplanet
No need to pack a duffle coat then?
Maybe a knotted hankie?
Re: Norks
Norks.
Teehee
Oooh
I'm detecting an imminent dark matter event now.
Bloody Guinness.
Not a big deal
Won't this mean some of us grow goatie-beards, wear leather and plot to murder our boss? (not all changed then)
And Apple will be a charity for the homeless and abandoned kittens.
brew
I'm a big fan of "letting it brew"
I don't like tea though.
wtf
That is the worst analogy I've ever heard. It's like two pigs... in, err, dresses... trying to... err... do lawyery stuff... err...
D'oh
Forgive my memory but Sooty is who from somewhere else? :)
Am I the only one who likes the Ribbon interface?
Also is LO4 available on the Ubuntu Software Centre or do I have to install manually?
Re: Interesting but speculative
Despite the abundance of planets around flare stars in Elite 2 I always understood that they would be extremely hostile to life due to their variability. Coupled with the fact the planets are much closer and will be tidally locked, the sunny side is going to get regular toastings.
Maybe in a trillion years when they turn to blue dwarfs they'll be a but nicer. I'm probably not going to be around to find out though.
No puppets?
I suspect we could solve the UK energy crisis by attaching a turbine to the late Gerry's grave :(
Keep this away from me.
What if I'm having impure thoughts round the office?
Keep out of my mind!!!!
Mmmm, boobs.
Re: Advice please
It's very hard to keep a straight face when these suppliers talk about where their electricity is generated when you actually stop to think how electricity works.
wtf?
As previously mentioned, I grew up in the Selby area with is surrounded on all sides by coal-fired power stations. As far as I'm aware Selby cancer rates are not abnormal.
Now if you'd made a joke about it turning local residents into boozy, fighty near-humans I could have laughed along with you but you didn't.
So I'm not.
Indeed
The fact that those who build wind turbines don't have to provide the back-up gas / unspecified-and-unlikely-energy-storage to cover their downtime is ANOTHER subsidy for wind power.
Re: Unfortunately
Having lived in the Selby area I'm very familiar with coal-fired power stations including Drax, Eggborough and Ferry Bridge.
They may be quite big up close but for the amount of power they generate for the UK they are a mere speck on the landscape. The amount of space required for wind turbines to produce equivalent power could eclipse whole counties.
Re: Nuclear always costs more than it's supposed to
@Ledswinger
Epic post!
Re: Just wait a few billion years.
You're an Inhibitor aren't you.
Is there a more secure VM?
Could users replace Oracle Java with IBM Java or some other version for a more secure experience?
Posted in The Oric-1 is 30
5 years after the Orac design was unveiled.
They should have copied it. That seemed way more fun.
RedLetterMedia
Looking forward to the review for the new film already!
Re: News flash from 25 years in the future...
No CO2 from cars is good though surely? What's the greenhouse effect of drinking booze? Beery-farts smell like the end of the world to me.
Also, I think the efficiency might need improving a touch to make this a cheap fuel for cars.
And farts for that matter.
This is good news then?
Possibly?
More likely...
More likely to produce methanol than ethanol at a guess.
My reasoning is that it current mainly produces formic acid. In humans formic acid is produced from the chain:
methanol -> formaldehyde -> formic acid
The reactions being triggered by the enzymes alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase respectively.
The chain for ethanol (non-tramp booze) is:
ethanol -> acetaldehyde -> acetic acid.
So from only my hazy memories of how hangovers work and why tramps go blind I deduce that it is more likely to produce meths than single malts.
Of course meths can run cars. There's a campaign for it somewhere. It's not a top tipple though.
@Fibbles
Best. Post. Ever.
On this subject at least.
