Posts by Mahatma Coat
883 posts • joined Thursday 11th June 2009 14:00 GMT
Re: GATACA
why not just sequence everybody at birth and get rid of people with an IQ of <100 and any genetic defect?
Where would we get fresh politicians from?
Re: Holy cow...
this is their version of GooTube not F***Book
Don't worry, they are following this up with Farsibook.
Mehr?
Meh.
Bring on the Ayalollahs.
"hanging out" with their chums in Gmail
I sometimes worry that I spend too much time online but I haven't sunk that low.
It's time the fanbois got off their hipster arses
There are squillions of fanbois in the world so why don't they start a fund to pay for this bloke's healthcare? A quid each would cover it easily.
Posted in Long-distance robot makes landfall in Oz
Re: irritatingly anthropomorphised... as “he”
I think there's a clue in the name Papa Mau.
Posted in Long-distance robot makes landfall in Oz
"with software brewed by Java creator James Gosling"
Given Java's rather leaky reputation I guess just staying afloat for a year is quite an achievement.
Instagram starts filtering out hipster pics on Twitter
Many people may feel that this will enhance the Twitter experience.
Re: Cyclones
Actually, pretty much the entire southern hemisphere is imune to hurricanes. But we do get rather a lot of cyclones.
You'll never see a hurricane in the southern hemisphere:
Hurricanes are Atlantic Ocean cyclones.
Typhoons are north west Pacific Ocean cyclones.
Southern hemisphere cyclones are cyclones.
North Indian Ocean cyclones are cyclones.
The main difference between southern and northern hemisphere cyclones is the direction of rotation but they are all still cyclones.
Just saying :)
"carrying a North Korean passport"
The name in the passport, Kim Jong-McAfee, is a bit of a giveaway.
Just imagine if governments ruled the Net
Dodgy countries like Syria could just cut off phone and net access at the drop of a hat. Oh wait...
Re: Is the existing laws are so wonderful
Because they weren't enforced properly. Next question...
And the reason they weren't enforced properly is that the enforcers - the police - are as bent as the press.
Next suggestion?
Re: Great work raising the money...
Sounds like the BMJ see an unwelcome rise in men actually visiting their doctors for a change.
Looks like you didn't read the full article. Movember is giving advice that goes against evidence-based research.
Re: You know you have a problem...
Pile it all in the canoe, just in case of flood.
I see where you're coming from but I'm not sure that would work for me. The two largest items in my main garage are two 20' ISO shipping containers so I'd need one hell of a canoe. The other garage isn't quite so excessive.
Great work raising the money...
...but you may want to read this piece about Movember by the British Medical Journal.
The summary para for those with short attention spans:
Movember does not just seek to raise money but also to “significantly increase the understanding of the health risks that men face and will encourage men to act upon on that increased understanding.” To do this, men need fair and accurate information. Movember’s emphasis on screening tests, its recommendation of a frequency of screening that is not based on evidence, and its failure to provide good supporting information place well intentioned men in unhelpful conflict with their doctors. Meanwhile, the far more pressing concerns of mental illness, alcohol and substance misuse, smoking, and obesity are pressed into near silence. Is this the best we can do for men’s health?
You know you have a problem...
...when your garage is messier than mine after a Category 5 cyclone/flood combination.
Posted in MIDI: 30 years old... almost
Re: "unfriendly" European hi-fi gear?
The DIN is a cheap, domestic quality audio connector. The XLR is a solid, professional audio connector. If you have any more questions please refer to a qualified sound engineer. Oh wait, you already did...
Posted in MIDI: 30 years old... almost
Re: "unfriendly" European hi-fi gear?
The DIN connector is the poor man's XLR.
No shit
It felt like the kind of medium you'd use to send academic papers to a foreign university
If only the fathers of the Internet had the same foresight as Mr Birt.
Posted in Badges for Commentards
Gold, silver, bronze...
...and a rusty sheriff's badge for Andrew and Lewis, I hope.
Re: "ship off thousands of vegetarians to Mars"
They're only growing crops there, not farming animals.
An enforced lack of meat in the diet doesn't mean someone is a vegetarian. That's like saying a prisoner doesn't leave his cell because he's agoraphobic.
Re: "ship off thousands of vegetarians to Mars"
I must be going blind. Could you point out where EM mentions vegetarians?
"OS/2 also needed a couple of extra megabytes of RAM"
I was running Warp in 8 megs on a 486. Still, if you wanted to do multimedia with full motion video you had to fork out a few quid for "big" hardware.
Note for the kidz: You could buy a second hand car for the cost of 8 megs of RAM in the early 90s. (Yes, I really did mean to type megs and not gigs.)
Where's the Four Yorkshiremen icon when you need one?
The trip will cost around $35m
I note with interest that home taping is still killing music quite a bit.
Re: Personally I loved OS/2
Me too. I have very fond memories of OS/2.and the support was second-to-none. One day an IBM product manager turned up a my place to help us out with a problem. He even left us with extra software to play with.
The installation set of some 32ish floppies was a bit tedious though.
A question for the mods
Do you have a script that automatically deletes any comments critical of Orlowski?
Cuddly, loveable, Google
All those free services don't seem quite so free now, eh?
"Past the age of 12, children's interest in Apple wanes"
Let the downvoting commence.
"greasy-haired blokes in trench coats"
I guess Orlowski has never been to a music biz conference. The delegates look pretty much the same as the PP members in that photo.
Really? Seriously?
AC/DC music has never been sold digitally before
Did three decades of Compact Discs pass them by?
Re: What a useful and well-thought out comment.
What part of the phrase "taking the piss" don't you understand?
Re: both share the same goals, or similar goals.
Mozilla exists to make the Web a better and more open place. Google exists to make more money for Google.
"less airtime than Google or Apple"
If Mozilla gets less coverage in the non-tech media then the answer is simple: put a stupid cartoon on their site and change it regularly (works for Google) or change the boss to a polo-necked plonker that thinks he's Jesus (still works for Apple).
They should have used Thunderbird
Any slightly competent UI hacker could remove the CC: field from the Compose window. There may even be an extension already available with the similar functionality.
Hmmm...
...I wonder if the photographer (MobiusCo) or the model (Mercedez Lee) were paid by GoDaddy. That image doesn't appear to be available via MobiusCo's online store.
Re: Colour me confused
I am happy with this compromise
If you want to know why this measure won't be effective I'd suggest giving this podcast a listen. You may find it educational.
Warning: contains people with actual knowledge.
NASA needs a fix
How about hiring Gary McKinnon? He sees to know his way about their systems.
They got the wrong one
In the early 80s - around the time of the miner's strike - a journo friend of mine told me that all of Fleet Street was buzzing with a story about a senior Tory that was involved in a similar scandal. None of the papers published the name for reasons known only to them. I'm not going to mention the name either.
A couple of months later an episode of Spitting Image ran a sketch with two characters talking and the wall in the background was sprayed with graffiti that said:
The Tory in the sex scandal is LB
Those initials obviously don't fit McApline.
Posted in Zeebox lands down under
Enriching the TV experience...
...with more yet adverts and intrusive corporate branding.
The only enrichment happening will be the pockets of the Zeebox execs.
Re: Colour me confused
Yeah, technically it's kind of filtering
It's filtering. And anyway, the weirdos will just use other distribution channels.
Colour me confused
internet service providers will be required to block some content
How is this backing down from Net censorship? It looks like mandatory filtering to me.
Posted in Judge denies move to ban ad-skipping DVR
Re: Not really too bothered by ads ...
Yes, 15 minutes of ads to an hours programme. Says it all really.
Only 15 minutes? Luxury.
I guess that you're not in Australia where the commercial channels can slip 25 minutes of adverts in to a one hour slot. Just imagine a imported BBC programme with a running time of 59m 20s and then have 25m hacked out. It's sacrilege.
Posted in Judge denies move to ban ad-skipping DVR
Fox said it was “disappointed”
Fox is having a bad week. I did laugh.
Cyber?
I thought serious people stopped using that word in the 90s.
Re: oh.fuck.it?
The .it admins do have a sense of humour though. They allowed fuckw.it and likewise the .at admins allowed arseh.at
Hippie Company?
Candidate for oxymoron of the day.
Re: What's the Albanian for "enhance"?
At the risk of being seen as a bit of a swot for Albanian linguistic fluency I can tell you that "Enhance the image of the note." is Automjeti im është plot me ngjala.
A timely reminder
"Users typically rely on photos for storing information,"
Never take photos of your passwords.
Too late...
...I whittled all my crap down to the absolute essentials* when I emigrated. Overseas shipping costs tend to concentrate the mind somewhat.
*The books, LPs, CDs, cassettes, VHS and V2000** tapes still weighed in at over half a tonne, IIRC.
**Don't ask.
