* Posts by Paul Johnston

411 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Apr 2007

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Dr Alex Moulton: 'An inspiration for generations of engineers'

Paul Johnston

How Much?

Moulton bicycles range in price from £950 to £16,500 depending on the model and specification. The price icon gives a relative scale for the price of each model in the range. For current pricing information please contact the Moulton Bicycle Company or find your local dealer via our Contact page.

Where were the bullet holes on OS/2's corpse? Its head ... or foot?

Paul Johnston
Happy

Re: Terse?

In Chinese you have to decide between er and liang whereas we would just use two!

Paul Johnston

Terse?

" I was one of the fools who didn’t realise that English is the most terse of all major languages"

I'm learning Mandarin which makes English seem so flowery and over elaborate.

South Korean convicted for tweeting Pyongyang propaganda

Paul Johnston
Joke

Re: Have I broken the law too?

I was more on about the results of Google Translate being rather mangled!

I used to write MT systems 10 years ago.

Paul Johnston
Alert

Have I broken the law too?

Below is a translation from Google Translate of a tweet from uriminzokkiri

Paddock's not the boss of corruption rimyeongbak weightlifting yamalro to fill my belly can not do this, paeryun main culprit is: http:// tinyurl.com/anmchw9

Seriously WTF

Bird of Prey: 1980s IT on on the small screen

Paul Johnston
Pint

Okay but...

No "Edge of Darkness" (Bob Peck not Mel Gibson!)

How IT bosses turned the tables on our cushy consultancy gigs

Paul Johnston
Happy

Here we go again!

I left school at 16 and went to work for BP as a marine engineer!

1984 and we were all made redundant, every last one of our years intake.

As someone said it's not personal.

So goes to University gets a degree starts working in IT.

I'm 49 now and if my job goes and there is nothing in sight I will just have to look at something else.

Jobs for life went in the 1970's it's sad but it's a fact of life, just deal with it the best you can.

Ancient 16m-yr-old beastie caught riding on much bigger flying mount

Paul Johnston
Joke

So

Creatures would do anything to avoid Ryan Air back in those days as well!

Miniature Baumgartner jumps from 128,000ft

Paul Johnston

Re: Hmmm....

Not conclusive I know but the view from the balloon suggests a very flat country, no sign of mountains or singing nuns so probably Holland not Austria.

P.S. Austrian jumper, Austrian flag?

Final decision by Home Sec on McKinnon extradition due today

Paul Johnston

Pardon?

Todner said:

We hope that our elected government will uphold the promises they made whilst in opposition ...

That will be a first

Russian Christians boosted by Pussy Riot law spank 'sinful' Apple logo

Paul Johnston
Go

Re: Apples...

As long as it is only made from one material!

Deuteronomy 22:11

Paul Johnston
FAIL

Fish

Shouldn't they draw little fishes rather than crosses?

Bill Hicks we miss you!

Skydiver Baumgartner's 120,000ft spacesuit leap delayed by bad wind

Paul Johnston
Thumb Up

Just hope

Delays are inevitable with something like this but hope if there are several more he isn't tempted to push it just too far.

This will be great when it comes off and he lands safely!

iOS 6 maps can't find Sydney Apple Store

Paul Johnston
Joke

Re: its become a bit fashionable to say 'Steve wouldn't let this happen...'

I agree Carol would let the side down a bit compared to the others!

'Stuff must be FREE, except when it's MINE! Yarr!' - top German pirate

Paul Johnston
Alert

Re: Never heard of this nobody...

By this I take it you mean download it, print it and the then burn that.

Please do not burn any electronic device you download it to, that would be silly!

Watchdog barks at EU plan to hand asylum-seeker database to cops

Paul Johnston
FAIL

Question

How many of the London Bombers were asylum seekers?

Apple drones reject American drone-strike tracker app

Paul Johnston
Unhappy

The difference between drones and more conventional strikes

From a "interest point of view" drones are more often targeted against important individuals such as the recent killing of Badruddin Haqqani. Whereas dropping a load of ordnance on a village in the mountains where no one famous gets killed could be part of the reason we don't get apps for that.

P.S. IMHO killing is killing and I feel far more sorry for the poor sod who gets killed whilst just trying to get on with their lives but that is the way the world seems to be, and always probably has been.

Arctic ice shrinks to ‘smallest in satellite era’ - NASA

Paul Johnston
Happy

Re: Question is, what caused it.

You don't really get that much soot, i.e. solid particles from a marine diesel, when you see them "blowing the tubes" most of the crap comes from the solid particles from a boiler.

Going viral 9,500 years ago: 'English descended from ancient Turkey'

Paul Johnston

Re: Hittites

Hence Kurds are actually "Mountain Turks".

Paul Johnston
Thumb Down

Re: Not quite

Er Pictish?

Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei outs his supreme-self as arty hipster

Paul Johnston
Thumb Up

Great!

We can employ all the old "Kremlinologists" to see who is in and who is out by the relative position of the people in the photos.

Just wait until people start getting photoshopped out a-la Nikolai Yezhov!

Job ad seeks 'mediocre' developers

Paul Johnston
Joke

Re: Sounds like my next gig!

Those CS lecturers never could spell!

Daily Mail group boss spoof tweeter fights to protect anonymity

Paul Johnston
Trollface

Re: Twitter ID

Please don't tell me you don't know how to get round IP address logging!

This is suppose to be a place where people who know about IT congregated

Mexican election loser and Anonymous say vote was 'fraudulent'

Paul Johnston
Happy

And in old news

So if you don't agree with the messenger the news can be ignored?

Very long URL I know but these are Official Russian voting figures

http://www.vybory.izbirkom.ru/region/region/izbirkom?action=show&root=1&tvd=100100028713304&vrn=100100028713299&region=0&global=1&sub_region=0&prver=0&pronetvd=null&vibid=100100028713304&type=233

Look at the first two rows of the last column.

Registered voters 320455

Votes cast 1619073

~64% of these votes went to guess who?

Estonia pitches itself as the new Silicon place

Paul Johnston
Thumb Up

Nice place

It's a nice place to be but surprisingly expensive. The language is not "THAT" difficult one you realize prepositions are thin on the ground and it uses cases. Those who have drunk in Tallinn will no doubt know Nimega and Nimeta, the bars with and without names respectively!

Fedora 17: Mm.. this stew of beefy source tastes just right

Paul Johnston
Thumb Up

Re: Btrfs?

Cheers makes sense!

Just wondering how it compares to say ZFS what with Oracle now "being involved" with two designs which seem to have quite a lot in common.

If you wanted to play with Btrfs would you be better looking at "Oracle Unbreakable Linux"?

Paul Johnston
Trollface

Btrfs?

Whilst having support for file systems is nice I do wonder how much "Demand" there is for Btrfs?

Curious how many people who run Fedora would actually plump for anything other than ext4?

Now ZFS and something like Dtrace would be interesting.

As to the problems people may have with it just now, you know why it's called the bleeding edge don't you?

Sent from

[root@localhost ~]# uname -r

3.3.7-1.fc16.x86_64

Ex-Yahoo! bigwig! admits! insider! trading!

Paul Johnston
Thumb Down

"OUR" Markets?

"they undermine the integrity of our markets "

Says it all really doesn't it!

Shoreditch's sparkle smokescreen leaves BBC journo 'tech-struck'

Paul Johnston

Re: Patrick Moore

We all sometimes have the wrong word come out.

Just most of us are not being recorded or played on air.

IBM smashes Flash out of Wimbledon, serves up HTML5 app

Paul Johnston
Megaphone

Sport and Statistics

Rant!

Will someone please take out all the bl**dy statisticians from sport and have them shot!

Who really cares if X got Y % of first server in whereas A got B % with a SD of J????

Rant Over!

Leica goes all out B&W for M-Monochrom camera

Paul Johnston

Re: hmm

It's sold in lower volumes because it costs more .

Papua New Guinean tongue saved from extinction?

Paul Johnston

Beware !

If you study "unusual languages" which suggest problems with a Universal Grammar you may get kicked out for being a racist!

http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/03/28/poisonous-dispute/

GCHQ's spy death riddle shines light on UK hacker war

Paul Johnston

Bright young man!

"after graduating with a first in mathematics in 1996 aged 17"

Very sad the way his name has been dragged through the mud!

James May 'hologram' raves about old tech at Science Museum

Paul Johnston
Unhappy

Oh No!

Where is the Flying Scotsman with realistic chuffing sound?

My son is going to be distraught!

Turing's rapid Nazi Enigma code-breaking secret revealed

Paul Johnston

Re: Must be a fake

Guess you mean the Wehrmacht, thought the Bundeswehr were on our side, it wasn't formed until well after the end of WW II.

Seriously why cannot they make it available now?

Hacker jailed for 32 months for attack on abortion-provider site

Paul Johnston

Er wrong!

The Judge said:

"Those who find abortion repugnant do not use it as an excuse to justify deliberately committing offences"

They do, have a look at Barnett Slepian.

That they find it repugnant is their whole justification. This is something the opposing sites are never going to agree on. As this thread has shown it is a hugely emotive issue.

Pope Benedict in .XXX pro-Islam cybersquat drama

Paul Johnston

Why not..

Just ignore it?

HP, Dell warn of price hikes after Foxconn wage rise

Paul Johnston
Thumb Up

Re: Re: Re: Easy fix

Cheers :-)

Paul Johnston
WTF?

Re: Easy fix

Microsucks!

Microsoft?

Curious why a company whose major output is software would outsource to the Taiwanese hardware giant Foxconn.

Apologies if you meant some other company

Squirrelled away: seeds survive 30,000-year winter

Paul Johnston

More interesting!

Have they found the squirrel which lost the nut and ended up in the permafrost itself?

Now bringing that back to life would be interesting!

Node.js Native breakthrough: cloudy C++ on steroids

Paul Johnston

No news is good news!

An alternative take on not hearing much about RoR is that it has got past the hype and is at the point where people decide to use it or not based on its merits rather than you must use it because all the cool kid do!

Funnily enough bringing RoR and Javascript in the same article doesn't mention the former now uses the latter

http://www.rubyinside.com/rails-3-1-adopts-coffeescript-jquery-sass-and-controversy-4669.html

Judges retire to consider Assange’s last chance on extradition

Paul Johnston
Joke

Not all bad then!

"and warned that the European arrest warrant system could collapse if the WikiLeaker-in-chief walks"

Result IMHO

Eurocom Panther 2.0 Core i7, SLI notebook

Paul Johnston
Joke

A Guess

Assuming most laptop disk failures come from mechanical shock i.e. dropping the thing how many people will dare drop a 5K laptop?

Newt Gingrich wants Moon to be 51st US state

Paul Johnston
Alert

Thanks!

Ever since I read this I've had that bloody "New Model Army" song going through my head!

Redmond campaigns for gay marriage rights

Paul Johnston

I could be wrong but...

Don't corporations have to justify their actions by saying they "increase shareholder value!".

Hence the reason given might be an economic cloak for what is really a moral stance.

If they came out and said we just think this is right would that leave them up to legal action?

We are talking about the USA here.

McDonald's punters offered sex in exchange for Chicken McNuggets

Paul Johnston
Thumb Down

Well

If it turns out the lady was homeless, unemployed, had mental health problems or something like that this is just really a rather sad story.

Footie club sacks striker for homophobic tweet

Paul Johnston
Thumb Up

Tough yes!

This it his first tackle in Rugby League

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YILC-7k2VDM

Bit of a wobble but did stop him coming back for more.

Pro-Israel hackers threaten tit for tat after credit card leak

Paul Johnston

Just a thought!

I've always assumed buying online using a credit card was the sensible way to go. However is there going to be a point where the credit card issuing banks are going to say "with all these details being leaked to the world and his dog so frequently it seems we need to look at other systems".

All well and good setting up secure payment systems but if the details are out in the wild what use are they?

Anonymous hunts neo-Nazis with WikiLeaks-style site

Paul Johnston

Making Donations

Party membership is one thing for a legal party but don't financial donations to political parties have to be declared? Suppose I give x million to a party and then they exclude my business from some tobacco advertising laws or I give a couple of million to another party then seem to get rather nice tax breaks this surely should be in the public domain!

US deploys 1.8 gigapixel helicopter surveillance drones to Afghanistan

Paul Johnston
Thumb Up

Ceiling

30000 feet seems rather high!

Anyone care to give a estimate of the highest a helicopter can reach?

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