Posts by deadlockvictim
321 posts • joined Friday 19th June 2009 12:12 GMT
Re: What kind of screaming right wing loon are you?
Maybe if the Irish scrutinised their banks as hard as they do their independent TDs (members of parliament), they wouldn't be as broke as they are now. [1]
That and blindly following every order that comes in from the ECB in Frankfurt...
[1] For those not following Irish political affairs, Ireland as a few very colourful TDs — Mick Wallace and Luke 'Ming' Flanagan being two of them — and they are rarely out of the news.
Re: Cooking
AndrewA» before modern humans and before our ancestor could talk
Is there evidence for this? Were the vocal cords of earlier hominids so poorly developed that speech was not possible? Or did you mean to say that we have no evidence of speech or language from a million years ago.
I'm not saying that you are wrong. The allegation just seems wrong.
I would regard cooking as being primarily useful for making meat safe and old meat eatable (by stewing). It's really not good if you have to eat all of the meat immediately. Not everyone had access to salt.
Re: This is akin to
Sergey, is that you?
Honesty
Why don't Apple just admit that they intend to consolidate their place in the market and that there won't be any groundbreaking new products in the near future? The key pieces to Steve Jobs' masterplan seem to be in place: iTunes | Apple Store — iPhone — iPad — Cloud | Central Server facility to process the data of Apple customers.
Apple can then concentrate on eliminating problems that exist in the whole user experience (which is what they sell), maybe remembering that they sell expensive computers to devoted and neglected users and taking time to either develop a new vision for they way we live or finding such a person with a vision.
is it a good thing...
Is it a good thing that Microsoft has its head in the clouds?
There are a good number of websites based in the Cloud, especially on Amazon, and this seems to be quite successful.
Are there many here who use, or know people who use, cloud services for anything other than secondary file storage and websites?
Re: Now i hate apple....
Do you hate Google with such vehemence as well?
Re: But are you a Hun?
Schultz» But are you a Hun?
Well, I do have a propensity to wear furry hats and have strange dreams about charging about on horseback. I also get hot and bothered by unreasonable houseowners lying in front of my bulldozers, although may not be related to the topic in question.
MacBookPro Owners
I have to say, that I have a whole new level of respect for owners of MacBook Pros. Do ye all install tracking software on your MBPs?
This is the new Reality TV. Channel 4 should make programmes based on the lives on people who have acquired stolen goods, via the stolen goods themselves.
Re: Who voted these buffoons in?
UKIP: The UK has her own Internet Protocol party? Excellent. Where do they stand on TCP?
( Before anyone responds in earnest, I did contemplate a joke-tag, but thought better of it. )
Pythagoras
If we are to compare famous ancient people with Steve Jobs, then I reckon that Pythagoras would be a better example.
What is commonly attributed to Pythagoras is more than likely the results of work from his school or already existing common knowledge. In contrast to Apple and her devotees Pythagoras demanded an almost religious zeal from his followers.
However, instead of finding an ancient SJ, I rather find a latter day Socrates [1]. Now, that'd be fun.
[1] To quote scripture: A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
Re: This article is lies, isn't it?
I doubt very much whether this article has any willfully false or falsified statements in it. Lewis Page highlights the articles that reflect his point of view. It is up to you to find other sources and to compare and contrast what each side has said. Hence the importance of developing of critical thinking in school.
Being a lazy, comfortable, latent treehugging leftie, I don't like the tone and conclusions of Lewis Page's articles, but I do read them because it is good to have one's point-of-view questioned and proven otherwise. I would never stoop to questioning the truthfulness of journalism though.
Oh Brunhilde, you're so lovely
You could try Wagner in the subhead, for a change.
Daddy, why does the lady in the white coat watch you poo all of the time?
It seems to me that Dr. Shultz needs to methodically study the faeces of middle managers and compare it with the control samples from underlings and upper management, as well as middle management waste during hours of relaxation. Only then can she claim that her findings are valid.
Investment in the mac
I realise that Apple is moving away from the Mac and it's a pity.
I'd like to see them investing some of their pile of riches into greatly expanding their mac user base.
They could reduce the cost of the MacPros and make them seriously competitive in price with standard high-end PCs.
They could buy EA and have all their games released first for the mac. They could produce a serious games-oriented Mac.
They could buy Ireland.
They could strive so that from, say, 2014 on, everybody's first computer would be a Mac. The iPad should point the way to get Mac Minis into every bedroom and livingroom. Make it $300 and offer MS Office for almost nothing. Offer greatly subsidised MacBooks to students and schoolkids.
In other words, make them an offer they can't refuse.
Maybe it will cost $20-30 billion, but if it also ups Apple's marketshare of computers (rather than tablets, smartphones and the like) used to 20-30%, it will have been money well spent. Of course, Apple won't be able to keep this up for too long, but the hope would be that the seeds once planted, will take root and remain.
Alas all of this runs contrary to Apple's modus operandi, but it doesn't sensible to me.
Re: fanny-packs
Many thanks for that, sir.
fanny-packs
I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned fanny-packs yet. I was always greatly amused when Americans talked about fanny-packs, getting a slap on the fanny and such like.
In the same vein, what's ghee? Similar to a gee-bag perhaps?
I could look it up, but that would be boring.
Czechs check cheques
How long have ye been waiting to use that headline?
I reckon that ye have a cabinet full of witty wordplay and punes just waiting for the right story to come along.
Re: @mmeier
If you delve more deeply into the saga, you'll find that it was all an inside job.
Did you never think it strange that the most powerful spaceship ever constructed could be destroyed so easily?
And what about all of the super-thermite found in the region afterwards?
Unsecured WiFi
I wonder how many unsecured WiFi routers Google found?
Appeal to Star Wars
Guten Tag Herr (oder Frau) Meier
Here is my answer to your bewilderment:
1. Remember that most the commenters saw the first 3 Star Wars movies in their preprubescent - pubescent years.
2. The storyline features clear distinctions between goodies and baddies. This greatly appeals to children.
3. There hadn't been too many cowboy movies (if any) in space before. Being first is good. Star Trek had been around 10 years before but on TV. Star Trek is also beloved by this generation.
4. There are cool weapons. The protagonists have evener cooler ones. Many boys in their forties can still clearly remember the swoosh sound made by the lightsaber.
5. There were impressive (for the day) special effects. Who cares if there is no noise in space (with the exception of Strauss)? Big spaceships and bigger explosions greatly impressed at the time.
6. Harrison Ford [1] and Darth Vader were breakout characters. The latter the best embodiment of badass we had witnessed. His quotes are still used to this day. The former is charismatic and went on to great things in the Indiana Jones' movies.
7. The storyline is relatively simple and linear with hints that there is more to know.
I suspect that if I had seen Star Wars as an adult, I might have thought of it as a cute childrens' film. In retrospect, my teenage self began to find The Return of the Jedi a bit too predictable.
[1] a.k.a The Carpenter to the Stars
Re: Serious competition
Tom7» remember Arty Murray?
Actually, I hadn't. I've only been reading the BOFH since 2002.
The old stuff is good and I got confirmation that PFY stands for 'Pimply Faced Youth' too.
Thanks for that.
Re: Serious competition
No, no. We need a proper foil, one who both understands how (and why) the BOFH operates and still intends to get his way. Otherwise it is just a rehash of previous episodes.
Posted in SimCity Classic
Gridlock
Much as I liked SimCity and SimCity 2000, it always irked me that one could only build roads that ran parallel or at right-angles today. I put it down to the simplicity of code enforced by the constraints of hardware at the time, but now I wonder if it had more to do with the North American mindset: cities are built in grids.
I wanted to try and recreate more mediaeval street layouts. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
Serious competition
The BOFH needs some serious competition again. This episode reminded me of Dilbert and I wondered whether there is a cunning & competent HR manager in the company.
Hmmm.. Dominic O'Connor vs. BOFH. That would be an enlightening spar to witness.
Re: Fact Checking
This explains so much.
It explains why he lives in a Palace and why David married a Princess. You just don't get any posher than Posh Spice.
Posted in Any storm in a port
Re: This is really old news
This makes perfect sense.
You are interested in stamps, Lichtenstein makes great stamps and has a superb philatelic museum and shop.
You are not interested in hotels, in fact, one hotel is much the same as the other.
If the German girl wants to go have some fun, then she can go with you to the philatelic museum in Vaduz.
and so the takeover begins...
Will we need a new name for the two soon — Yoogle! perhaps.
Like the fact that a watch or car combined with a computer is essentially a computer, so any smaller company working with Google becomes essentially Google. Is Yahoo! + Google = Google?
Posted in Why you need a home lab to keep your job
Re: Far more advanced than I
Your wife should look after her own data and be responsible for her own backups.
Backing up and backup maintenance is a tedious bloody chore and it comes under the category of personal responsibility.
Hopefully this will not result in any marital disharmony.
Hmmm
U.S. Person» "We have a right to privacy in our Constitution, but this does not mean a fundamental right to data protection," Rodgers said at a conference in Berlin, according to a report by German publication Heise Online.
Is that the same as saying the people in The Land of The Free™ have the right in their constitution to bear arms, but this does not mean a fundamental right to own weaponry, or have I misunderstood the Second Amendment?
I bet that the English are just waiting for the Americans to give up the guns so that they can invade again, amn't I right, Mr. Cameron?
Posted in ESA proposes 3D printing on the moon
robots
Does anybody know if sending up robots to the moon to build a base station would work? I imagine that we possess the necessary know-how to build sufficiently robust robots to cut rock as building blocks and lay them in an architecturally structural manner in order to erect the superstructure of a moonbase.
That being said, I wondered why the Japanese didn't send robots into the stricken nuclear power plant in Fukushima. It can't be that there weren't any available. I reckoned in the end, that TEPCO valued the robots over those poor buggers* assigned to handle the disaster.
* As in: you have brought shame to the company by being in the wrong place at the wrong time and by not challenging company policy. you will kindly sacrifice yourselves horribly so that the company may save some face.
Chairs
The purpose of the new iteration of ms office is to keep Steve Ballmer in chairs. he prefers the more expensive, executive chair and these don't come cheap. Even with the excellent launch of windows 8, his habit means that ms are required to churn out the same old innovation every 3 years.
Re: Pity Google does reeally push the issue by ...
JaitcH» My employer owns it's own mail server and all records are deleted two days after it has been read.
Isn't that illegal? I have no idea which jurisdiction you are in, but I thought that it is a widespread requirement throughout the Western world to retain business e-mails for at least a year or so. I could be wrong, of course.
Nexus of Forces
The Nexus of Forces sounds like the destination in a science fiction cartoon that I would've watched as a child. Or a spacehsip, for that matter.
And as for "driving real business value": getting workers far away in unpleasant conditions to do exactly what you want them to do, despite the fact that you oftentimes ask the impossible from them.
Our volume in Bulgarian Airbags?
Inquiring minds want to know, please.
Re: "a quarter that of The Sun"
Did you not see those filthy pictures of users exposing their boxen for all to see?
I was shocked and offended, so I was.
In case you missed, you can get your voyeuristic kicks here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/26/ventblockers_2/
Farmville
And while they are avout it, they should study the link between those who play Farmville often and then go to become actual farmers.
Outsourcing
Outscourcing, in my experience, is troublesome, slow and unreliable.
I considered this about 8 years ago as well when I was working with a firm in Chennai in India. The problem was that the programmers required exceptional well-written documents (you get what you specify) and the mistakes that they made were often culturally-based rather than coding-based. To add to that, the programmers rarely stayed long at the company. It was not unusual to " see a new face" every 6-9 months.
I reckoned that I would be spending as much time, if more, in order to get them prepared and then further to correct mistakes. They also had a strict one-week check-out policy and that made the meeting of deadlines difficult. I would have become a project manager and that wasn't for me.
Maybe if I had met a brilliant young programmer whom I could trust, I would have jumped at them like a shot. Otherwise one is trusting so much on teh grounds of greed.
For may, Facebook IS the web
I believe the answer is yes and no. It relies on Bing for info it doens't have itself.
In keeping with the subhead
She told me again, she preferred handsome men
but for me she would make an exception.
Apple & Lenovo
Are Apple and Lenovo competitors?
Would someone who buys an expensive MacBook Pro be someone who would also buy an expensive ThinkPad? And vice versa? In my experience, the two camps have been neatly divided in two.
Or is it a question of whether Apple and Lenovo are competitors yet?
Posted in Which qualifications are worthwhile?
It all depends, doesn't it?
It all really depends on what area in IT you'd like to get into. IT is a wide field.
One quote that comes to mind is that one should everything about something and something about everything.
It requires time and a modest investment on your part. Most of what you'll need is freely available online or available at a modest cost.
I always recommend learning SQL and databases to people who want to get into IT. Most companies store their data in a DB, even if it (and often it is) a MS Access or FileMaker Pro DB. Turning data into information is a useful skill. Adding reporting experience with Crystal Reports etc helps further.
Furthermore, once you know one dialect of SQL, getting into the others isn't that difficult. The server software ranges from free (Postgres, MySQL, MS SQL Server Express, Oracle (I think) to affordable (MS SQL Server Developer Edition is about $150 up to the insanely expensive.
There are many entry-level books available in good bookshops which walk one through the theory and the practice. There are many helpful sites online, such as http://www.simple-talk.com.
Finally, many companies offer certification exams which I have personally found to be very useful at application and interview stages.
If you can, avoid helpdesk jobs. In my experience, the people who work there are overworked and underpaid. It is usually stressful and the remuneration in no way justifies it. People in Helpdesk tend to last no longer than 9 months, with the exception of the lifers, and they usually get little respect. they are at the bottom of the foodchain.
If you can survive on very little, your time will be better spent practicing at home.
At the end, though, you have to ask yourself: what do you enjoy doing? what do you do in your spare time? If you are fond of tinkering with networks and seeing what they can and won't do, then networking and systems administration would seem to be the way to go.
Re: What? No silicon heaven?
Does Zaphod run a secondhand computer business too?
Obese Data
Perhaps obese data would be a better name for it: it's so big that it's unhealthy, of no real benefit, a burden for those who have to manage it and threatens to destroy our comfortable way of life.
recommendation
Like Dell, HP and other suppliers of Microsoft stuff, John Lewis "recommends" Microsoft.
capitalism
I'm sorry, I'm confused.
I thought that capitalism was getting bailed out by the State when you showed obvious signs of being declared bankrupt.
Maybe Adam Smith could help us out here.
Re: Shock Horror
Annihilator» ...cracking a diary's padlock...
You mean reading their secure, protected facebook page, surely?
Re: NASA bulls and lies as usual..talking molecules while alien spaceships all around Curiosity...
@Destroy All Monsters: have you considered the iambic pentameter?
Re: Phantom voters are phantom users
Unfortunately, we are.
Who was it that said that you won't become poor by underestimating the stupidity of the masses?
Re: None of those soound exclusively Apple based.
We have the further problem between Apple names in (well, once) common usage and their official usage. for example, if I name my child 'Blue & White G3', will Apple then tell me that the official name is actually 'Power Macintosh G3' and make me change it? There are 2 'Power Macintosh G3's and it will lead to confusion.
We need answers to these questions.
And what about version numbers? Just of the embarrassment poor iPhone 3GS has, now that the iPhones are at v5? The parents are clearly to blame here.
Too lazy, more like it
I should really get around to taking a picture of the 15 or so late 1980's early 1990's macs (along with all of the assorted junk that goes with it), but I keep forgetting when I get home.
There's no problem with my continual collection of it. I can quit anytime I want...
