Posts by Stevie

Bah!

"It seems that these days, if you want to buy some known brand TV you just can't avoid getting a "smart" one."

But one can avoid installing dodgy apps offering an obvious "summat fer nowt" honeytrap.

Re: Amazon Prime "2 Day" shipping...

Two days plus one half day for fulfillment if I order at night is usual from key click to ripping open the box for me (if it is a prime deal). It is why I re-upped and re-upped again, even when the price for doing so went up. If they couldn't live up to the promise I wouldn't pay miller fer privilege.

Including an order that went in on the evening of Wednesday the 21st and the box was in my hands on Christmas Eve. And three orders for stuff that were put in on the previous Monday morning and were in my hands by that Wednesday night.

I admit that when I ordered that "home NAS" thing the Reg writer de jour was frothing over they told me that it would take weeks to deliver on account of them not actually having any in stock yet - so I cancelled the order and Amazon were happy to let me do that.

I also had one order listed as prime that took five days to deliver, but that one was NOT shipped by Amazon, but by the vendor. Can't blame *Amazon* for that. That ball is squarely in the vendor's court (though they did deliver within the terms of service, even so, so there were no formal grounds for complaint).

Returns, in the rare event I've had to make them (I think four times in as many years), have been a dream to conduct too. When I contrast this experience with what I went through when I lived and shopped in the UK I laugh 'till I cry. Yeah, "unfair" practice is what is killing the high street vendor.

Amazon, right here, right now = toasted bacon sandwich with HP sauce good.

You're living in the wrong place, Jeffeypoooh. 8o)

Re: Lawyers lose small change behind the sofa

"Also how is it insider trading. They were not 'insiders' they obtained information that lead them to want to buy shares in a company."

They traded using non-public information. That is the definition of insider trading. It doesn't matter how you get the information, if you act on it, even if you lose money, you are an insider trader and breaking the law in the USA.

" These 'hackers' were not in a privileged position."

Yes they were. They had information Joe and Jane Shmoe did not have and used it to gain an advantage over them. That is pretty much the definition of being in a privileged position as far as stock trading is concerned in the USA.

"The way they got that information is illegal, not how they used that information."

Actually, both are illegal in the USA, as I have explained. It is generally all about intent when it comes to Federal Law. The intent here is pretty bloody clear to anyone. Break into someone else's computer (illegal, and well-known to be illegal after numerous very public prosecutions concerning same so intent can be inferred to a high degree of confidence) and trade in stocks based on that stolen private information (again, the intent to trade stocks based on the information stolen is pretty easy to infer on account of it being exactly what they did).

Just because we have domestic criminals at the corporate level who are gusty of much worse abuses doesn't mean everyone working at a lower reward expectation level gets a free pass, and this might just put the fear of the FTC in those other buggers for a bit.

Heads on pikes please.

Re: It's called OS X

Really? People at corporate level are opting for a branded proprietary *nix that will not run on their existing kit but will require a captital outlay I conservatively estimate at about three times what they paid before? Not counting the rip-out'n'replace costs? In this economy?

Are you sure that alternative isn't pronounced "Red Hat"?

Because that would be an unnecessarily high cost (but waaaay lower than OS X running on iThing) software swap only option. Corporate would love the "someone at the end of a phone in an emergency" factor and the techs wouldn't have to move, store and dispose of umptytump bits of kit that would suddenly be usless under the iScheme.

Re: A few things bugged me about The Force Awakens...

How about it being a blow-by-blow recapitulation of Sar Wars (retconned in the titles to A New Hope)?

Someone should have been made to pay back their scriptwriter fee.

Re: Could this explain why

Low Earth Orbital velocity, which can be barely achieved with the current state of the art I might add owing to all the so-called scientists renaming stuff instead of getting proper rocket science done, hardly qualifies as "relativistic".

Just because going up and down the well futzes up yer digital watch doesn't imply a meaningful red shift in the rear-view mirror.

Re: Oh tomato tohmahto..

Or ... take the time to learn Latin and speak with authority not predicated on some anonymous un-peer-reviewed garbage scraped from one place and replicated all over the web.

No, I don't speak Latin. But neither do I bust someone's chops because they know more about it than I do, and I don't make fatuous appeals to popularity by citing anything on teh intarwebz.

Re: 'MURICA! FUCK YEAH! (4 Grade%)

"Manifest fucking destiny, assholes. [This translation was brought to you by The Spirit of '49 Corporation -- Providing Significant Keywords since 1800 Zulu hour]"

There were Americans at Rourke's Drift?

I remeber Burt Lancaster was at Islwanda, but Baker's men were colonial-free as I recall.

Re: Bah!

Seriously? You want me to believe you wouldn't accept a free bonkbot from a vendor in a business where grown men typically start fights over free golf shirts and ball point pens given out at tech show booths, Mr Downvoter?

Re: Considering that list

If you're a fan, read the books.

What, even the tree-killing and worthless for any other purpose fifth installment? Aren't there international treaties limiting the mandatory infliction of that sort of pain on innocent bystanders?

'Cause if there ain't, there bloody well should be.

The HBO writers should get a Nobel Prize for making Game of Thrones a proper story again, using pacing, plot and POV characters the viewer cares about instead of spending five hundred plus pages introducing fifty new POV characters we don't give a fewmet for at the expense of bringing the story to a shuddering halt.

GRRM is now involved in the author's equivalent of writing spaghetti code to prolong the paycheck, and after the agony of episode five I'm done contributing.

Re: “nothing can be traced”

"Contrary to how its portrayed in the movies, forensic accounting is how Al Capone was nailed."

Contrary to every movie put out before 1960 maybe. I can't think there's a person on the planet who ever went looking for the Al Capone story who didn't know that he was nabbed over tax, and just about every movie since about 1980 which deals with organized crime mentions that "obscure" fact somewhere.

Re: Heads on Pikes

Yes, please.

Re: So Eric would have had to bung the celebrated airhead a couple hundred thousand dollars

Oh dear, I've picked up a disgruntled kickstarter backer who needs someone to shout at.

First, no-one paid Mick Jagger to drive the car so your vacuous contention doesn't hold unless the device itself is so monumentally ugly and/or unfit for purpose that no-one in the public eye would be caught dead wearing it.

Secondly, I always take it as a bad sign when people who are not "family" start talking about a company CEO or KS project launcher by first name. The peachy printer comments were full of people being super chummy and supportive as their money was being embezzled, as were those idiots who forked over small fortunes to "Charley" at Chaosium in what turned out to be a KS-enabled multi-project ponzi scheme (scarily bad management rather than personal gain as far as I can tell, but still). You know all reason is absent in any argument where someone refers to the former head as "Steve".

Thirdly, I couldn't parse I doubt the kickstarter backers would like their money going that way, or Charles River Leeches. I'm afraid I don't understand the point you were making.

Fourthly, why would you want someone unintelligent to showcase the device, which should, if everything people have been saying about it is true rather than hyperbole, sell itself to the brightest and best? Get it on the wrist of, say, a Doctor Who and life is gravy.

Re: Software does not wear out

Does if you connect it to the internet. Two or three updates and it's threadbare and full of holes.

Re: Slowing down the rotation and longer days means more warming.

Depends which way the nearest pole is pointing relative to the Sun. During winter things will be colder and climate change deniers will be gleefully announcing the death of "global warming" through chattering teeth.

Re: Hardly conclusive

So you know how to dodge jury duty by exaggerating your paranoia into "reasonable doubt".

I know one foreign consultant who is an incompetent lying bumbler. Should I assume all foreign consultants are fit only to be shipped "back where they came from" or is that unreasonable of me?

And by being rejected as a juror you proved conclusively that part of that prosecutor's job was indeed to judge your doubts as unreasonable.

The lack of persuasiveness you are citing is from reports in a newspaper, not statements in evidence. No-one has been sworn in before speaking. No doubt forensic evidence will be offered to back up the contention that Sir Wanksalot is guilty of arson.