Posts by Peter Simpson 1
484 posts • joined Wednesday 10th June 2009 14:14 GMT
Contractors
"each drug-laced corpse is attached to a special drag streamer which deploys on departing the aircraft,"
One dare not even attempt to calculate the cost per mouse. This must be a very profitable contract for some large US firm, hurting no doubt, from a recent loss of work in Iraq.
//Mine's the one with the KBR logo
Not to be confused with the homonym...
XINU: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinu
//IT!
VOA has an obligation to report on it, explain it and give it context.
Or, they could take the higher road and not give Paris and her associates the publicity they crave.
I can't wait to hear how Paris is explained and given context.
//who else but...
Posted in Microsoft Windows glider crashes
Microsoft should have learned by now
Xbox RROD, Zune, Kin One and Kin Two...
They don't do hardware well. And apparently, Operating System design by committee doesn't work so well either.
Join the fun
419eater is having fun with one of these lads right now:
http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1586885
Where are you, bitch?
I believe it's pronounced: "Whea you at?"
Never ascribe to malice...
...that which can be explained by incompetence.
Posted in Acrobatic pilot survives loss of wing
Excellent advertisement
for the ballistic parachute system.
And a darn good thing it didn't catch fire!
//any landing you walk away from is a good landing!
Posted in Buxom buttocks bolster Beemer bonnet
Look at the polish job on that bonnet
You can almost see your reflection in it...
//Who else but Paris?
Posted in Air steward resigns via emergency chute
Pretty much...
...anything you can do on or near an airport is criminal if "they" want it to be. It's a zero-tolerance and common sense-free zone.
Still using a copy of Office 97
I got it from a previous employer. Works fine, though I probably can't embed multimedia files or create .docx files.
Why not?
Probably because the readers for the Oyster card are more expensive and/or require different or unique comms gear to approve the transaction. One thing'sfor sure: someone at TfL has decided supporting Oyster involves more work/money than they're willing to put out.
Which they destroyed anyway
The TSA has keys, but they are probably too lazy to go and get them, or they don't have enough, or the baggage handlers thought they saw something in the X-ray that looked valuable and broke the luggage open to have a look.
Yeah. Flying in the US is a PITA now. But I feel *so* much safer. Not.
Posted in The Register comment guidelines 2010
You can't break even
And you can't quit the game!
But seriously, those are quite reasonable guidelines that shouldn't be hard to live with. You have a difficult job and from what I can tell, you do it capably and with a good sense of humor (which you have somehow managed to retain).
The beer is for after work.
English baseball fan?
You really should be supporting a better team than the Yankees, then.
The Red Sox are the only team worthy of your support.
Posted in Give a little love
We're still using Office 2003 here
Works fine, does everything we need it to do. Aside form MS eventually deciding not to support it any longer, why would we ever stop using it?
Cocaine warhead torpedos
Coming soon to a beach near you.
//"I would like to have seen Montana."
Posted in Vital PARIS supplies jet in from US
Better bring 'em back...
"Mines the one with the little umbrellas and straws in the pockets."
I think the PARIS design team will be needing those umbrellas for their deceleration 'chute.
Posted in The Linux Chronicles, Part 1
VLC
It runs on Windows. Our IT guys swear by (not at) it to view stuff sent by clients using who knows what codec.
Best quote
From a neighbour:
"They can't be spies, just look at what she did with the hydrangeas!"
Mine's the one with the Miracle Gro in one pocket and the invisible ink in the other
Interesting
1. Standard WiFi? No top secret technolongy in a USB stick from Qski's lab?
2. Done in by needing to return a defective laptop?
3. Not quite the sleepers of yesteryear, were they?
Mine's the one with the dagger in the pocket (natch)
Failure in US
PLC or BPL (Broadband over Power Lines) has failed pretty spectacularly in the US. The combination of Ham opposition, poor data rates and installation and maintenance expenses far higher than DSL or fiber, doomed it.. As was pointed out above, there are only so many bits per second you can push through a wet noodle, and it will require more effort in terms of clever modulation schemes, noise reduction and signal power than using something made for the task, like fiber or (arguably) coaxial cable.
Posted in Linux game-time refined with latest Wine
Eccch, Visio
Another annoying MS app that barely succeeds at its job. The user interface is terrible, and even contradicts MS's standards for user interaction. I doubt the product has been touched since they bought it, except to obfuscate the file format to prevent anyone from building a competing product. It's way past time for Visio to be replaced by a good cross-platform vector drawing tool.
Posted in Linux game-time refined with latest Wine
Reads, doesn't write
OpenProj will let me read MS Project files, but it doesn't work very well at all at writing changes out in MS Project format. If they can fix the output export to MS Project file format, the authors would have a good competitor to Microsoft's overpriced product.
Would like to see this in the US
Warning when your bill is 150% of normal, must call carrier to release hold when bill hits 200% of normal monthly amount.
Seems like it would save a huge amount of complaints, credits, etc. Option to set your own trigger points as a bonus.
MG Midget tach chip
Friend's tach failed. Disassembled it, found a TI numbered chip. As I'm an EE, called my local TI rep and asked for a sample (chip number was one off from a standard TI tach chip). Reply comes back 2 weeks later: "it's a proprietary custom part".
Cra@p.
"But I found a couple in the engineer's desk drawer and they're in the mail to you."
Yesssss!
Tach repaired, worked fine for many years more. The MG's long gone, but I still remember the generosity of that TI rep.
Romani eunt domum!
Two of my favorite movies.
He's not the Son of God, he's a very naughty boy!
and
Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don't fail me now.
Additives
Alcohol, dish liquid and a splash of ammonia will all help get bug goo off your viewport better than plain water will. As a side benefit, no Legionnaire's can survive all those chemicals.
Posted in Malaysian cops bust SMS scam ring
cooperative criminals
They had accounting ledgers! Well done. Someone's raising the bar here.
It will!
(just may take a while)
That'll be 50 quid, please!
it all depends on your definition of "works"
For example: life coaching, self-help publications definitely "work" to make money for the coach or author. There is certainly no shortage of those who would partake of such services. Thinning the herd to extract those with the ability to pay is where the real skill comes in!
//think positive, now!
Posted in PARIS pops down to QinetiQ
Lots of fun
Sometimes you can learn an awful lot just by playing around. Looks like this was one of those occasions. Thanks for letting us "watch".
Posted in PARIS gets her very own private enclave
Anyone considered
asking Paris to sprinkle some bubbly over the nose of PARIS on launch day?
I'm sure she'd be happy to do it if you let her finish off the bottle afterwards...
Posted in Microsoft ad R&D veep beams self to AOL
AOL?
What do they do now? Are they still doing dialup internet for the 10% who can't (or won't) get broadband? Doesn't seem like much of a career path...
Posted in Ubuntu 10.04 triumphs over GRUB bug
Funny
I've pissed about with Ubuntu for years, and it's been nothing but stable.
Updates haven't caused me more than a couple of problems, and the fixes for those were on the forum before I needed them.
As I've said before, and will say again about Linux:
It doesn't suck any more than Windows does!
(and quite a bit less, from my experience :-)
Except Man2 played with the phone
and acessed Man1's Facebook page. He knew d*mn well to whom the phone belonged. He called a helpline instead of going back to the bar the next evening and asking if anyone had been looking for a phone. He then sold it to a blogger for $5000.
Gizmodo knew d*mn well what they were buying. They *could* have taken a few snaps of it, and then called Apple and offered to return it. Instead, they kept it for a month, published that they had bought it off someone who found it in a bar and disclosed that they knew who had lost it.
Neither of these folks comes off as being particularly ethical. They are now getting their just rewards. It's hard to feel any kind of pity for them.
Great Waves of Nonsense
"...we are divided and ignorant of life beyond our world."
Thus this thread?!
"Go to www.alliesofhumanity.org or www.greatwavesofchange.org to learn more."
If *you* can't explain your theory in a paragraph or less, why should I subject myself to overlong web pages full of multicolored large font nonsense with blinking backgrounds? [don't need to go there, all those pages are alike]
Take the flight, Gray!
It's probably been a pretty bad week. Go on, you owe yourself a bit of a break, mate!
Hardly worth the effort
As most replace their computing kit every three or four years, unless Google plans on annual drive-bys, the information gathered will soon be out of date.
Add to that, the fact that most MAC addresses and SSIDs can be changed at will, so the exceptionally paranoid will be updating theirs regularly.
Anyway, it's not particularly useful to know the physical location of a MAC address, since it's not sent as part of the packet that goes out on the internet. It's the ISP-issued IP address you're interested in, but the one being broadcast by the access point isn't the same as the one on the other side of the NAT box, so what Google will end up with is a list of all the known locations of 192.168.1.1
War-driving's not illegal if you're Google?
Weren't the cops arresting (or at least, stop & questioning) war drivers a few years ago?
Posted in Rogue admin waits for verdict
Teach him a lesson
The $5m bail and the criminal charges seem vindictive to me. This is how the "establishment" teaches you not to screw with them. I'm fairly sure Mr. Childs made no friends in his employment with the city, and this whole episode smacks of vindictiveness.
And to those who suggest a list of passwords in a sealed envelope in the safe; yes, that would be a very reasonable way of handling the situation. But, we're talking about politics, police and barely competent administrative employees here. Reasonableness seems to have been hung out to dry, along with Mr. Childs.
//at this rate, he will have served his sentence before he's ever convicted.
I'm far more worried about
Microsoft software, of any kind, being in my pacemaker.
Brings a whole new meaning to the term "Blue Screen of Death", now, doesn't it.
No, thanks.
Posted in BOFH: The PFY Chronicles Part The Third
Too good to be true
He should have suspected something...
Well done, Simon!
Ahh! So no more funding
of companies that claim Linux is full of "stolen IP", then?
And, of course, they'll be granting an irrevocable blanket waiver to Linux for those 250+ patents it allegedly infringes.
I very much doubt that Microsoft has any love for Linux. Linux is serious competition for Microsoft on almost all fronts. That's why IBM is putting so much effort into Linux.
Posted in New Reg comments system ready to launch
I'll happily subscribe to comment
*IF* there is a (small) prize awarded for the comment with the highest number of "thumbs up".
Think of it this way...commenters who contribute consistently good comments (as judged by their fellow commenters) would be able to make back their subscription (and potentially make a profit!).
Perhaps those who consistently come in with the highest number of "thumbs down" should have their subscription rates increased? (I'm looking at you, "amanfrommars"!)
Posted in Novell (not SCO) owns UNIX, says jury
There's a significant difference...
...between "leaking copyrighted UNIX code into Linux" and contributing code to Linux, which *your company* originally wrote to be used in *your version* of UNIX. IBM writes and awful lot of code. To claim that they cannot re-use it in or contribute it to another operating system is just silly. It's code IBM wrote, they should be able to do whatever they want with it, including give it away or release it under GPL.
tSCOg's claim that there is UNIX code in Linux is based on their warped idea of what constitutes UNIX code. Their claim is that once a "method or concept" has been used in UNIX, it cannot be used anywhere else.
Shareholder value
@Oregon Guy: "When our president or CEO talks to the media, you hear a lot about returning value to our shareholders. Shareholder value is paramount here."
Be afraid. When companies I previously worked for began to mention "maximizing shareholder value", it meant that they had no plans to innovate and were winding the company down. The CEO's chief concern was to remain employed as long as possible, while keeping the share price constant and the balance sheet balanced. This usually meant cutting headcount to make the quarterly profit/loss numbers (which usually ended up being near zero).
USA resident here
We have several major "government contractors", Lockheed Martin apparently one of them, who think that just because they (sometimes) can build planes that fly and boats that float, they are experts at everything else.
Boeing has just discovered that, while their planes fly, they aren't very good at building electronic fences to keep wandering Mexicans out. Lockheed Martin has just discovered that they should be rated somewhere south of Geek Squad when it comes to ability to set up an IT infrastructure.
Perhaps the FBI should hire some people of its own (or listen to the ones it has) and take the whole project inside. Odds are it wouldn't cost any more to do it themselves...
Shipment of thousands
The press release said, in the shipment of thousands, 300 or so were fakes.
//Paris knows how to fake it
