* Posts by Philip J.F. Quinlan

36 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Apr 2007

Margaret Thatcher celebrates 85 years

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Grenade

You forgot the wonderful work she did for Chileans herself

Having stopped those cursed Spaniards from prosecuting that poor sick Pinochet chap.

Truly her life will be long remembered by freedom loving people everywhere (in their darkest nightmares)

I presume God doesn't want her and hell won't have her @ this point (cf Mr. Frankie Boyle on the subject)

HABITABLE ALIEN WORLD discovered 20 light-years away!

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Joke

The B-Ark

Don't forget the telephone sanitisers

Steve Jobs in iPhone bitchslap to creationists, Tea Party

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Joke

re Bill Hicks

And he also explains why no one will get upset over this, the creationists in Dumbfuckistan are still waiting to evolve their thumbs and so can't use iOS based technology ;)

Czechs toast Bud-beating beer win

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Happy

title

I assume claiming that stuff was beer was the reason for the refusal

Windows 7 'genuine' nagware winging its way to OS

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Joke

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits

surely if the anti piracy detection isn't 100% perfect and incorruptible it shouldn't be used.

this is MSFT softwqre we're talking about!

Irish board hack prompts password reset

Philip J.F. Quinlan

SHA hashed with salt

... according to their faq yesterday anyway

Microsoft feeds Excel to supercomputer

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Thumb Down

Replacing hideous Excel macros is a job description

Curiously one of the first contracts I had many, many years ago was replacing an Excel model that took over an hour to run. It was core to this business' oppperations, replaced it with a smal DBI Perl app and stuck on their app server it took under 2 minutes to run. Job too 2 weeks, most of which was spent unraveling years of Excel macros conflated into a hideous mess in order to derive a spec for the code. it's now internally supported and running fine.

If you need a supercomputer to run your macro, consider writing a program ;)

NewsNow tells newspapers: Lay off the legal action

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Stop

Surely they want people to read their sites, no?

If so, links to topics I'm interested in are surely a good thing for the original publisher.

Or do they want me to wade through an acre of "Celebrity big x factor come dancing with the stars" news in order to find content that interests me?

Scientists lay bare Irish potato famine blight

Philip J.F. Quinlan

Blight resistant varieties

A Hungarian family, the Sarvari, developed strains of blight resistant spuds that seem highly resistant.

I've grown Sarpo Mira for two years and, without using fungicides, have avoided blight entirely , quite an achievement when you consider the weather.

They were conventionally developed, by selection, cross-breeding, and testing so they may fall to a later mutation, as they aren't grown on a commercial scale yet and so phytophtera may not have had a "proper go" at them but they work well for me.

Sounds like an ad, but if you grow your own, try them 'cos you know you'll be on holiday when the blight warning is given ;)

Researcher: Twitter attack targeted anti-Russian blogger

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Coat

Quite a lot of idiots out there then

What really scares me about this story is the number of people who will click on a link in SPAM.

@Goat Jim: Presumably these users' boxes are already on one or more botnets already.

Christ on a bike how many idiots are there out there, sigh.

Mines the one with the LART sticking out of the pocket

Asda clamps down on killer teaspoons

Philip J.F. Quinlan

@Chris

Wasn't that a Roald Dahl "Tales of the unexpected?

She clobbers him with the frozen leg of lam, the law eat the murder weapon

Ireland bucks trend with anti-blasphemy law

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Unhappy

Ahern is trying to court the religiouos right vote

Unfortunately the majority of the population are small minded half wits, (Ireland has this in common with every other democracy however, as Churchill put it "democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried"). Ahern's party (Fianna Fail) are about as popular as a flatulent pit-bull with swine flu in a lift at the moment and so he resorts to this blatant attempt to shore up FF's core vote. He's also positioning himself for a leadership challenge within FF. This legislation won't pass as FF's coalition partners (Green Party) would never support it.

Expect it to quietly disappear after European and local elections.

Microsoft's new search - Built on open-source

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Thumb Up

Pragmatisim wins out over ideology

MS have realised that reinventing the wheel isn't necessarily a good thing, particularly given some of their attempts, so they, in common with every other business are using open Source software to lessen the strain "in these difficult times".

Hopefully they come to realise that lots of people are now using it and perhaps a bit of interoperability might be a good plan, though Rob and Loony have valid points which shouldn't be forgotten.

Trying hard not to gloat here, but any time someone suggests that Open Source is not a feasable way to go, I'll be able to point @ MS themselves. Common sense is prevailing, oh crap the world must be coming to an end, so is it pig sniffles or an asteroid?

Brutish SSH attacks continue to bear fruit

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Linux

@ Richard Kay & Carlo Graziani

This is the correct solution, however learner distros should enable fail2ban by default. It should be part of the meta package in ease of use distributions

Bacon sarnies cure hangovers: Official

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Thumb Up

Forget source and too lazt to Google

Meat is murder, but a bacon sarnie is justifiable homicide;)

I now have plans for the post-(traditional Good Friday piss up )-breakfast

PS. Does any other civilised nation pander to Christians to the extent that it is illegal to sell alcohol while the Christians are mourning the death of an itinerant Jewish philosopher?

Indian boffins mull zero-grav bhajis

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Flame

Waste recycling costs will also have to be factored in

Given recent performance of the ISS what hope for the bogs on the curry laden mission

Budvar beats Anheuser-Busch in latest Budweiser battle

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Thumb Up

Anheuser-Busch make beer?

Of course Anheuser-Busch can't get a trademark for beer under the Budweiser name they should also be done under trade description for referring to that rice based swill as beer in the first place.

The merkins can make beer, they just choose not to export it (Fat Tyre, Sierra, Red Tail...) The bland watery crap they export should not carry the honorific beer, nor indeed the name of the brewery that the useless twat who founded the co. was expelled from. </rant>

Microsoft promises 'lessons learned' on IE 8 download day

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Gates Horns

I've been testing it and it's not bad

Seems to work well for me, faster than IE7 and FF certainly, but the addons in FF just make it so handy to use. I can customise the hell out of how I use regularly visited sites, block all advertising, only allow Javascript from a limited set of sites ...

IE8 on the other hand seems to be a peace offering, a Microsoft product that obeys open published standards and for that it is welcome. Most sites just have to remove the ieSucks.css and ieSucks.js files and they will work well with IE8.

If sites remove all their IE workaround code people will discover that IE(6|7) are unusable and the impetus to move to IE8 will increase.

Still don't trust the bastards though.

Gates looses mosquitoes on tech conference bloodsuckers

Philip J.F. Quinlan

@Chris

Fortunately HIV can't survive in a mosquito the way Malaria and other diseases do.

I'd assume he used males from a lab source, but of course terror is unrelated to the actual risk involved and so I'd say he could be sued for bio-terrorism.

That said I'm reminded of the quote "The only way a rich man goes to jail is if a richer one wants him there",and there aren't that many richer than Billy.

Microsoft to act on IE8 'show stoppers'

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Thumb Down

Tested on http://acid3.acidtests.org/`20%

Flies through the Acid2 test but fails worse then Firefox on Acid3

Three in 10 Windows PCs still vulnerable to Conficker exploit

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Gates Horns

OK, Windows has it's security problems

But this update was flagged all over the net and even on the mainstream media, it's hard to believe that this is because sysadmins are failing to deploy the update.

Personally I suspect that this is caused by machines that fail the WGA test and as a result can't get the patch.

Is there any data on what machines they scanned?

Microsoft spits out ODF plans for Office 2007 SP2

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Gates Horns

You can tell they intend to work with others

From the http://www.documentinteropinitiative.org/ site

"/If you have specific questions about Office’s ODF implementation, or if you need further information about the notes themselves, please post questions to the MSDN interoperability forum."/

The MSDN interoperability forum returns an 404

Unhappy people watch more telly

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Boffin

Who'd a thunk it

So people who do stuff feel better about themselves than those who watch the dreary tedium that passes for entertainment in Telly land.

How do they get they fill in the grant applications without bursting into tears?

After all these "researchers" can hardly believe they are doing useful scientific work, can they ?

Dell offers XP option for £44k

Philip J.F. Quinlan

@ BigYin

I you are connecting to a cisco VPN, you simply download their client, compile for your kernel, copy over your pcf file and thereafter, as root, vpnclient $PROFILENAME.

As to media centre, have you tried the Mythbuntu distribution, or just install myth from the repositories, with a compliant video card it knocks seven shades out of media centre.

There you go, something to do this weekend ;)

Bill Gates cried to make the world a better place

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Gates Halo

@@AC

As you say yourself there is absolutely no proof of the link, however there is a link between a failure to immunise and the ability of a pathogen to live in human hosts and so be transmitted throughout the comunity leading to outbreaks of diseases fatal to children.

Of this we are very sure and so as you say, in the absence of evidence to the contrary we shouldn't play with children's futures by failing to immunise our kids on the basis of a rumour.

St. BillyG because this is the first time I've approved of his behaviour in a very long time (~DOS 6.2)

Microsoft embraces and extends server promiscuity

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Gates Horns

"Simplify" unix management

This could lead to great savings, after all if we could simplify Unix management by getting rid of all those complicated switches and things you have to use in the CLI then we could dispense with those expensive Unix admins and get a load of MSCEs in to look after the systems.

So who's going to write the front end for ip then ;) Should be a piece of cake if we just strip out all those things that W2K3 can't do,

Google trumpets PageRank for pics

Philip J.F. Quinlan

Curious and not totally unrelated service

search Flikr for photos based on a thumbnail sketch

http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/

US state outlaws RFID data theft

Philip J.F. Quinlan

Switch for RFID

My initial thought was a shielded container, so I did a quick search, and someone has actually patented the concept of a card-holder which shields a contained card when closed.(http://www.freepatentsonline.com/WO2008005329.html) I would have thought that was a bit blindingly obvious myself.

Ahh, nearly pub o' clock

Microsoft! bids! $44.6bn! for! Yahoo!

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Gates Horns

Hotmail! for! the! 21st! Century!

Wow, MS are to become the largest users of open source software on the planet, and pay US$44.6 bn for the privilege or will they migrate to their own dogfood and bring Yahoo! up to the wonderful standard we have come to expect from Hotmail.

Icon, 'cos Bill runs BSD now

Spain bows before la blogosfera

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Gates Horns

As Anglo culture takes over, will we lose the tenets of these cultures

I mean really, which of us would like to see a culture whose language that gave us "barbecue, burrito, cocaine, hammock, salsa, siesta, taco and, of course, tequila" disappear, think of what else they may add to Fridays if they're left at it.

Icon, because mono-culture is bad

Beware the populist mash oozing out of Facebook and YouTube

Philip J.F. Quinlan

@ Evil Graham

perhaps, "getOuttaMyFace.com

Brit violinist does a Radiohead

Philip J.F. Quinlan
Happy

@ Mike Street

"classical artists make most of their money from appearances (i.e. by playing) rather than recordings"

Same is true of the vast majority of other musical artists, it's the recording companies that make money from the CDs, the cost of promotion, advertising, video production et al being taken from the artists royalties.

'You're a f**king moron'

Philip J.F. Quinlan

The Greater Internet Fuckwad theory

The link below provides a theoretical basis for the idiocy one sees in online forum(s|a)

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

Website offers virtual substance abuse, P2P pressure

Philip J.F. Quinlan

The following morning

Do they get spiders crawling out from under their spreadsheets and wobbles in the colour depth/palate the following day when they attempt to use their machines for work?<p>

A good X-Roach style skittering the morning after hallucinogens and they'd soon wise up.

<p>

<b>PS:</b> Any chance of a gram of virtual speed for my pathetic broadband connection

Survey: young Brits ready to embrace evoting

Philip J.F. Quinlan

Ireland's experience

We trialled e-voting in 2 constituencies, the machines were purchased from Nedap in The Netherlands, the software wasn't published, the machines hardware schema wasn't published and the storage requirements went a bit beyond slinging them into the shed at the back of the Garda station.

<p>

At least with traditional ballots I can go to the count centre and verify the process

Rookie plumber torches £5m mansion

Philip J.F. Quinlan

RE: Linking

Came across a similar scenario once when two different plumbing firms were used building an apartment block, the first fix plumbers connected the gas and the water mains, however since the water was installed and tested before the gas appliances were fitted (purchasers chose their own gas appliances) all the plasterwork in a 7 story building had to be reefed out and redone, my how we laughed. Ahh overtime, you miss it sometimes.