Posts by Mickey Finn
77 posts • joined Thursday 30th April 2009 06:21 GMT
Cash is King
And always will be, if we all keep our eyes on the ball.
The corporate pirates and gangsters, will do everything they can with their mates in government to prize our folding from our hands, because the same thing has worked over and over again...
Money used to be made out of precious metal don't you know.
"Which leads your Reg hack to wonder what other companies might beat Apple's current valuation, once currency inflation is taken into account. The Dutch East India Company comes to mind. Are there others?"
The Yanks might not like the Brits much... But when it comes to corporate shenanigans... We dun it first...
South Sea Bubble anyone?
http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/South-Sea-Bubble/
Re: Control Room...
Furrenuff
Control Room...
I wonder whether there are any good shots to be had in the "control room" for the London "congestion zone", as they lick the envelopes on the statutory fines they are handing out to people that just want to use THEIR CITY!
Pedantry moment...
Mr. Sharwood wrote: "Hydrogen is abundant: pass a current through water and you'll make some."
I just thought that it ought to say "Hydrogen is abundant: pass a current through water and you'll EXTRACT some."
Re: Electric Cars bad...
Be my guest.
Re: Electric Cars bad...
What's that got to do with the price of a pound of bananas?
Apart of course from the fact that we generate electricity and run internal combustion engines with it...
The point is this... Every time you convert energy into another form, some gets converted into something that we currently have no use for... We call it waste. There is less waste produced from an engine that burns the oil directly... If they one day find a way of compressing and storing extracted hydrogen efficiently, cheaply and safely, we will probably have a good replacement for the current internal combustion engine, the compressed hydrogen being burned to drive a turbine of course.
Re: Electric Cars bad...
I notice people didn't like that... Well to make things worse those same people aren't going to like this:
In addition to those previous comments, I do not think that it is a good idea to hand total control of the production and distribution of auto fuel (or any other type) to a single central authority like government or giant corporate. If I have to rely on the national grid for my transport fix and suddenly one day, that grid runs dry...
Sounds unlikely, but by 2015 we will not be permitted to run coal powered stations (without paying a huge fine), we won't have the benefit of most of the remaining nuke plants (maybe Sizewell B), we will still be deeply prejudiced against shale gas, and (as nobody has ever predicted :) ) the wind turbine contribution will still be in the less than 10s of percents, the French will be at their limits as to what they can ship to us from their nuke plants... and our lights will start to go out.
And you people think that it is a good idea to convert to cars that run on fuel delivered in this way????
Electric Cars bad...
This is really interesting news, it was only a couple of days back, that I read that battery technology was the slowest developing with very little change in the technology since the 1960s... The idea of fast charging, long lasting lithium ion batteries is brilliant...
However, I would have thought that he last place to use these would be in personal transport.
What is "green" about using a fuel that is produced miles away, and loses strength the further it travels from its source? Surely it is better to buy gas (petrol/diesel/lpg) in a filling station, and wait until electricity can be reliably generated in the car, which of course the Toyota Pious does quite well.
Re: You could have your eye out with that!
Assuming that one is replacing the lead with something of a similar mass... Smirk...
You could have your eye out with that!
If lead bullets are so dangerous, perhaps they should make them out of a different material?
Skype and Microsoft...
The problem with Skype is Microsoft...
I would be less likely to jump on board the update wagon, now I know who is behind them. As one commenter TReko said... Skype is now bloatware... And I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't snoopware either.
On prejudice...
Not liking (or liking) cheese is a prejudice, though I would agree that the young learn things from their parents...
...Mind you, they usually do the opposite!
Quote: "collection of data by ISPs through Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) probes - colloquially dubbed black boxes - had only been implemented on a national scale in China, Iran and Kazakhstan."
I guess our politicians seek out their own kind...
Being prejudiced is a perfectly normal human trait after all.
Interesting
that Chrome gets an update just after the new MacBook Air starts having problems attributed by testers to...
Chrome!
Excellent point sir...
That's like the one about the NHS…
Which would fuction perfectly, if there were no damned patients (customers).
The point has already tipped...
Anyone who has a window, should take a look outside…
It's really s*it out there.
Don't talk to me about global warming!
Re: As ridicilous as it may sound...
Curious… I took a look.
I was expecting something really major, like why do the young seem to think that spare lace should be inserted down the sides of the shoe (without tying), and the solution to garish bows for them…
But no, it was something that I discovered some time back for myself, purely by accident. The reason why he is right, is that the underlying knot in the first example is a "granny" knot, and in the second example, the underlying knot is a "reef" knot.
Mind you, I was about 50 when I discovered this.
This is a party political broadcast...
It seems to me, from a brief look, that many of the vids are political in nature… Interviews with big-wigs and appointees, adverts for "the big society", and so on.
I couldn't care less whether the Tory party spends its money on this sort of thing, but in this case it is spending the taxpayers money, albeit not much in the great scheme of things… Far more is wasted by governing parties of every hue on things which were never offered during the election.
This is really yet another good reason why we need "Referism" in local (and national) government.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/05/that-ism-again.html
Of course, this is chicken feed when put in the context of a "Red Ken" performance at the GLC/GLA.
Re: It just works
Despite the fact that I have a good number of iDevices (five), I always thought that it was very easy to misconstrue that rather silly advertising line, it depends where one puts the accent, doesn't it.
It cannot be a brag to suggest that your products just work, it could mean that with just the slightest bit of tweaking or through heavy use, that they will fail to work.
Re: Moderator attention….
@Shakje…
So because Google tels you that fascism is extreme right-wing, authoritarian, of intolerant views or practice, you are somehow taking an objective view?
Pehaps you should understand where "right wing" comes from and how that phrase was debauched, and then you might understand who have the intolerant views or practice.
The term is derived from the 18th century French court, where those who sat to the right of the King were of the view that there was nothing that could be done for the poor and wretched that they could not do for themselves, whilst those on the left thought that something must be done.
During the 1930's, Germany was a hotbed of radical politics, and the communists who wanted (as in Russia) to control everything, the people, the land, the means of production etc., whilst the national socialists thought that allowing businessmen to run their businesses, and farmers to farm their own land would be more effective for building the socialist nirvana… They were both left wing, they both wanted to control others. They both turned out to be progenitors of the worst and most violent century in human history.
Meanwhile the "right wing" got on with their own lives, and tried to ignore what was coming at them.
So fascism is not "right wing", bearing in mind that the National Socialists were both fascist and socialist, but they became labelled by the communists as "right wing" because they were slightly less economically radical than them.
Anyway, fascism and communism are just economic philosophies, but fascism has been more successful because most of the governments in the world are essentially fascist, even the Chinese failed economically until they modified their system of government from Mao's strictly communist regime, to Teng's textbook fascist system.
For a real example of a non fascist and oddly right wing nation, one really has to go back to the early 1930's before Roosevelt nationalised the dollar, after that even the right wing USA started to move to fascism.
As for intolerance, that is usually practised and theorised by politicians either in plain clothes (or in frocks… religious types) who want to control others… Ditto authoritarianism… And most of those are of the left, perhaps Buddhism being the rare example of non-interference in other's business (or right wing).
Which leaves us with Mussolini (you know, he who invented modern fascism) and his comment.
Oh and if you want to label the "right wing"… Libertarian is acceptable, fascist is NOT.
Re: Fascism
If Mussolini drew the comparison it is good enough for me sir.
"Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power."
Whatever it is called, the effect is the same.
Moderator attention….
Mussolini (he who invented modern fasism) said: "Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power."
Not the actual merger, that is communism, rather the merger of their power.
So I state again, that this is an example of fascism (aka corporatism) at work.
The corporate businesses, the governments and their apparats (which include quangoes) invariably side with each other when deliberating issues where those that pay them are concerned.
NB: fascism has nothing to do with "the far right" as the BBC and other assorted lefties like to state.
Fascism
This is fascism (aka corporatism) in action…
Big business, government and it's quango apparats ganging up on the people that pay them to exist.
Bleedin' obvious...
So we are paying these genius's in Brussels HOW MUCH? for these little gems...
Water slakes thirst... uh huh!
Those Harriers were rubbish….
… They didn't fit in with the defence needs of the European Union armed forces. :)
Posted in E-car crash leads to battery blaze
Saving the planet
It's good to know that we are considering using this material to store the energy used to move our personal transport around with.
I mean, it's so ecologically friendly.
Wikipedia states mining and production of this material would cause irreparable damage to delicate eco-systems.
There isn't nearly enough of it to go round anyway.
It is more volatile than petrol, it catches fire when exposed to the air.
Now it seems to smoulder surreptitiously and then suddenly ignite three weeks later.
So bearing in mind that it is not a serious contender for use in cars for the above reasons, it is now clear that it isn't much of a vanity product for GM either.
Back to the drawing board I guess…
I know…
What about petrol?
Posted in BBC iPlayer to require TV licence
Cyril Connolly...
'ello…
I'd like to buy a licence for my fish!
Come again?
I'd like to buy a licence for my pet fish… Eric… 'es an 'alibut.
…..
(Not much of a free and democratic country is it?)
(Unless "free and democratic" is meant in the North Korean sense of the phrase).
…. In other news…
The Metropolitan Police "Service" are using indiscriminate mobile phone eavesdropping systems (bought at our expense) for enforcing the laws (statutes)….
Don't forget to pay for your "fish licence"…...
Posted in The Guardian iPad Edition
A for effort
Nobody (other than BBC wonks, or people looking for public sector jobs in sustainability and diversity) reads this drivel anyway… So even though they have gone to this effort, it's a waste of space.
Posted in Iomega Mac Companion external hard drive
???
A new "pretty" Mac Compatible hard drive that does NOT include a Thunderbolt port.
Are they mad?
It Always takes two to tango
Well done to the Reg for its continuing coverage of world events, along with its excellent regurgitation of all things IT.
Horrific though it was, this event and others like it in Spain and the UK etc., are not without some sort of stimulus.
The "International Community" has been interfering both militarily and commercially in Arab affairs for as long as I can remember, and deep into the past (Richard the Lionheart anyone?).
Events such as this will always happen occasionally as long as others try to export "democracy", or otherwise interfere instead of engaging only in friendly trade and dialogue.
Pot.... Meet Kettle...
If you noticed sir, I did say "WE"... or actually "US"!
And it should have been more than a couple of elections back... At least as far back as Heath's time... Or even following the Attlee disaster.
Experience teaches us otherwise...
When the Bilderberger Denis Healy made "the pips squeak" in the 1970's it was like the migration of the wildebeast in the UK, except they all scattered in different directions.
And do you know what....?
I didn't envy them then, nor did I find their actions deplorable... Mind you, there was a certain amount of schadenfreude in regard to those lefty's amongst them.... Ha ha!
Of course, what is deplorable, is that the rest of us seem to be silent in regard to our masters, who have stripped us of much of our income, and spent it shi**ing on us from above. They have engineered a system, where there is no social housing, but where all the unnecessary stuff (all the stuff we can do for ourselves) has been socialised, they have also left us defenceless against all manner of marauders from within and without.... And they have colluded with the banks and financial "industry" to build the "information economy" (and feather their own nests), and now they are making us pay for this too, all with no obvious benefit.
And all for ha'peth of dogma!
The question is...
Why shouldn't we rise up and rip their throats out? Why are we not massing on Downing Street with pitchforks and cudgels?
Which unelected government?
"Britain's unelected government appears to be more powerful than its elected one. And without political oversight, and left to their own prejudices and devices, they don't half come out with some rubbish."
Are you referring to our un/civil service or are you referring to the unelected EU politburo?
Both are eating away at our liberties at an alarming rate...
I think we should be told!
If the UK is going against the EC politburo….
…It won't be long before they impose a ban on what is estimated to be a massive resource, particularly for the "big coal" areas like the UK, Poland, Germany… I mean… It wouldn't be fair would it?
Far better for us to tilt at f**king windmills!
My how we laughed around the campfire when the lights went out.
Keynes is the N in the W….
"...an attempt to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. Might work, might not: for they've still not solved the basic underlying problem. The eurozone just isn't (and is unlikely to be for many decades to come) an optimal currency area…"
In the same vein, I believe that the USA did not have a unified single currency until quite recently c1930's… around the time that Keynes became popular there… And just look where that got them!
So let me get this right...
...the perfect storm, or the ultimate state blah blah...
...is when nobody in this country has a job, when all of the entrepreneurs have left because the tax burden is completely unsustainable and when even the remaining employer, the government, can't afford to employ "civil servants"...
...er
??
@TeeCee...
The comparison in the article was about virtualisation being invented a long time back as part of the S360 environment...
Well I started my DP career on the "new" at the time S370, in reality it was a bit of 360 and a bit of 370... And the three machines in my computer room, and their peripherals occupied somewhere around 1/3 acre of floor space...
I was taking it as read that miniaturisation was a fact.
Oh, and along with the air conditioning, we had our own emergency power supply which ran on diesel, and a halon gas fire protection system.
And I realise that SNA was a proprietry comms system, but that would also have sped up over the years.... (as a proprietry system though, it was almost faultless and failsafe).
Basically what I am saying is... That in their hey day, the AS400 had far more potential than the crude PC that we actually got, and that apart from the obvious room for improvements that every system mentioned by commenters and the original author, it would have been a better starting point, had IBM had a bit more vision.
No Mention of the System38/AS400/iSeries...
That if IBM had thought about it a bit, could have been the the personal computer of choice rather than the Wintel PC itself.... It was and still is far more advanced than the PC/Mac with seamless movement of user data from one piece of hardware to another and a file system level database as standard, the parts of the design that aren't 64 bit, are 128 bit and have been for nearly 20 years...
Instead what has actually happened is that these systems are reduced to having a poor stab at emulating the inferior unix concepts.
Ohio Jub Milk Bandit...
Doesn't have quite the same ring as the Illinois Enema Bsndit.
Never mind, quite amusing anyway.
Posted in So, how does your economy grow?
That is not Switzerland's fault...
... Rather look to the various national team management organisations (the FA in England), if they thought that FIFA was acting criminally, they could pull out of FIFA organised events.
Posted in So, how does your economy grow?
The Swiss get it..
The federal government of Switzerland only meets to "govern" four times a year, the rest of the time these people do something else.
The Swiss people govern themselves, through a process called direct democracy, and when they cock up, there is no embarassment, they put it right at a later attempt, no loss of face, no U turn jibes etc..
Oh, and they are the richest per head in Europe and among the richest in the world.
Now, I will sit back and wait for the inevitable comment about Nazi gold...
Posted in Daleks given a well-earned break
On the contrary...
...I was thinking that compared with the first Matt Smith season, this one has been the best I have ever seen...
Almost grown up!
Posted in Daleks given a well-earned break
The problem with Daleks...
...is that they are too much like our modern day politicians...
Even though they were originally modelled on the Nazis!
Fat pipes for fat communications between fat computers...
Hows about some techies putting their heads together and finding out how to build computers and linkages that didn't contain and transact so much bloated data...???
The big IT companies just seem to have conveniently forgotten about this objective, perhaps because they persist in adding more and more layers to 40 year old outdated concepts.
Given that scenario, we would be able to worry less about the scammers in both the criminal and government underworlds that want to rob us of our hard won cash and freedoms. We would be able to communicate privately and down thinner, pre-existing pipes.... You know, the way we used to!
David Davis is 37.
Re: 1984...
In 1984, Apple made a film which suggested that they were the antidote to fascist totalitarianism...
In 2008, I bought my first Mac, a MacBook Pro, I was fed up with the unreliability of Windows, its constant viral attacks, its bloat and all the other stuff we just love about that product.
In 2009, I bought a 27" iMac, and loaded a program which warned me about internet activity... I was surprised at how frequently they attempted to phone home.
By the beginning of 2011, both had needed significant repair, something which had never been a problem with my PC's be they home built or manufactured and sold as built.
Here they have demonstrated that they have not understood Orwell's message, and are using the book (of the film) as a manual.
I won't ever buy another Apple product... Natch.
Problem is... Where to next...
Menuet on a PC maybe?
Posted in Nothing to lose but your desktop PCs
Server resources are not expensive... But accountants are!
In the places that I worked in during that period when PC's were becoming ubiquitous, the argument which was difficult for techies to dismiss, was that PC's were cheaper, well they might have been when in the hands of an accountant who had a modicum of ability to fiddle around with spreadsheets.
For the average user, the dumb terminal with purpose built screens of information... Just enough for the worker to do his/her job, was a perfect system.
When I started out as a computer operator in 1974, the amount of work/throughput that we managed to achieve with 3MB of memory and three CPU's was staggering compared to what is achieved today.
As Thad says...
Microsoft inspired FUD!
Yeah Right...
Did anyone notice that this report originated in Kapersky Labs in house magazine?
Your little "aside"...
Dan Goodin wrote...
"The company, in keeping with its Jobsian obsession with privacy, has yet to utter a peep despite widespread media coverage."
Surely what is good for the goose, is good for the gander?
Posted in Wind power: Even worse than you thought
Misplaced trust...
Good summation Sean Baggaley...
It is interesting here to put two and two together and ACTUALLY make four!
Bird mincers don't work, so we will have to import more nuke from France.
The new portable nuclear systems, such as those designed by Toshiba, operate within a closed loop system... Any slight chance of an accident is consigned to the site where they are manufactured like Sellarfield rather than where they are deployed, and they actually work in practice (as opposed to theory).
Therefore the conclusion might be drawn that our government in Brussels (and its lackey in Westminster), is FAR MORE DANGEROUS than something like the 30 year old Fukushima.
We have been using French nuke for a very long time (about 20% of our total energy requirement) and that is OK, other EU member states have similar symbiotic relationships. The EU wants us to DEPEND on these relationships to further blur the nature of the nation state, so that we could not leave, even if we wanted to.
The agenda is NOT the relatively safe and secure generation of power, the agenda is one world government, and therein lies our real Armageddon.
...Oh and did I mention shale gas?
