Posts by Steve 114
65 posts • joined Wednesday 8th July 2009 05:40 GMT
Crossborder Sting
Have you seen how much they add on-line to post their spit-kit out of the USA? (even just over the border to Canada)? That's silly, because to get plentiful comparative results from Eeur-op, where most USians' ancestors came from, they'd really have to tempt us. Meanwhile, 'FTDNA' still looks the pro alternative.
Fallacy?
The 'speed of light' is a distraction. Light is instant (in the frame of reference of the photon doing it). Anyone else watching has to consider a universal constant called 'c'. You can't do without 'c' for spacetime, just as you can't do without 'pi' for circles. If you think something has travelled 'faster than light' you have simply misunderstood the problem. Go square a circle.
Re: Tablet computer has slot for SD card - Surface deficiency
Our 'shit area' in this house is chock-full of anthologies. Does that help, or have I misunderstood?
Re: My god
Even there, there's a formal 'Trading Standards' difference between a traditional 'brim glass' and a modern one with a level-mark.
Re: Nice troll
Seems a fair bet that all Homo Sapiens preserve genocidal instincts. Saying it shouldn't be so doesn't make it not so. Beware any groups who do not look and think like you (or even wear different football scarves). And do not eat their babies.
Utah JuJu
Why do I find family research from this source doubtful? Are they trying to baptise all those dead grannies?
Re: Elmer Phud
Even a pedestrian on a mobile will blunder into you. Simple reason is his 'mind is elsewhere'. As for why they need to 'walk up and down' while ranting - well, don't try that when driving either.
Maps must be fun
As an 'elderly, confused', I got an Android phone. Liked it a lot, rooted it same afternoon. But it seems the only way I can get the sainted 'Google' Maps' integrated is by getting some kind of Google ID, so that they can track me - no thanks! (Meanwhile some other mapping system downloads useful slabs all over Europe). And my various TomToms in several cars almost never mislead. But my son can't upgrade his I-Thing because 'the maps don't work'. Whatever is going wrong?
Posted in Berkeley Lab proposes 4D clock
Re: this reminds me of two things
...'they still experience (relative) immorality' - incest Down Below?
2-bit store
Stopped going to TCR when Proops left. They sold me two 1-bit ferrite memories in perspex, which made natty cufflinks. If you have them, they're mine - stolen in Amsterdam.
Posted in I spy: Drug drops and foxy couples
Re: 10x optical zoom?
And for stereo with any zoom, you'd need the optics further apart. At least as far as your own eyes! And further still for a touch of the 'hyperstereo' which is such fun on landscapes with any still camera.
Re: isnt this getting a bit silly now
TWO sources of smoke? Wow!
He: "Do you smoke after sex?" She: "I don't know, you naughty boy, I've never looked."
Re: Just saw!
-and, for two thoroughly sensible questions.
Tough spec.
Good to see Lewis Page not disapproving of something. Don't get me wrong, I generally agree, but this helps recalibrate the disapproval-rating scale. Does he write for mainline papers? They too could do with a corrective dose of reality.
Re: We don't want driving planes,
It isn't a 'plane', young man, it's an 'aircraft'. First thing they told my father when they gave him a biplane at Old Sarum (with no handbook): "Machines are for sewing, Planes are for carpentry".
Re: Hope it's better than the stage version
Strangely, 'New Statesman' (with Alan B'Stard) transferred better to the stage - more pantomime, less Radio-play sophistication required. We'll never know if YM Mk.II works on-screen, if it's on a dark channel.
'Politics' rules OK
Try chairing any international collaboration where the reps are mainly men. There'll be sharp disputes on process, elections, personalities, even when to take coffee breaks. Nothing to do with the science, but events with public exposure do highlight any splits. The upside here is that lots of people have had relativity dramitised by the press, and got a bit educated - yay, I even bought a book myself to answer the questions better.
Re: What to do?
On all my machines, XP is the next XP. (Except a new netbook with Win7, which is merely irritating).
Re: Dunno yet - it's still installing...
About an hour on my old x64 Toshiba laptop. Only one bluescreen 'DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION', solved with a reboot and then 7 updates listed (one Tos-specific). Password- and start- screens are ridiculous, but desktop once found is redolent of Win7, with cosmetic plusses and minuses. I'll stick with XP.
Trolls aplenty
Don't necessarily blame the company: there are specialist USian lawyers out there, looking for issues, and then recruiting a company to front for them.
Fishy
I heard that if you can't see out of a window from your desk, a tank of tropical fish is second-best to liberate creativity. (Come lunchtime, remember Wanda makes a very poisonous sandwich).
Posted in MPs: 999 HQ revamp FAIL cost £469m
Change first, not last
A broader problem: the client hopes the sly catalyst for change they find hard to announce will be 'integrated' new IT. They can't specify what they want (because they haven't done 'change' yet), so they give the specifying to the consultant too. What nobody notices is that the plebs who actually do the work now don't want change. There are layers of them entrenched, each with different resistance agendas whether justified ('these things never work') or unjustified ('bosses will see what we're doing'). Result - institutional sabotage, and an ever-escalating volume of profitable change-notes until the buck stops. Fire, health, offender management - you name it, we've all been there and done one.
Posted in RAM prices set to 'free fall'
Expensive
I paid a shilling each for two 1-bit wound ferrite rings encapsulated in clear plastic. Made nice cufflinks, until they were stolen. As a price-per-bit, that's still some theft.
Posted in Ace Reg reporter in career suicide shock
Advertorials
And given the advertorial propensities of that oh-so Gemini Organ, don't you think it's time the WiFi connectivity of certain major 'Cruise Ships' was checked out by an effusive expert?
Grrr
yes, and we have:
'appeal the decision' (grammatical error)
'find your representative' (constitutional error)
'more on this story' (a tragedy is only a 'story' to expensed journalists)
All I want is BBC headlines on Firefox, and Radio 3 with fewer smug music-over self-ads.
I'm told they do TV as well? Keep your movies off my screen-estate!
Bad Taste
in so-called 'Songs' remains bad taste whatever hardware they're on.
Always free
Some pushers offer free drugs too - all you have to do is sell the stuff on, and profit.
Loving it
I regretfully left COBOL (with ICL) very many years ago. Never really found anything better: in later more managerial years UML came close, but you can't seem to get it to compile (as we used to do, all night, with punched-card decks and flailing magtapes). Where's today's comprehensible, self-documenting, unambiguous language with which I can define, describe and evolve my business interrelationships?
Panic Attacks
Other reports say he couldn't work because of 'Panic Attacks'. With five children, that's what you get. Prison should help a lot.
Arguably not
Good point, so that's an exaggeration too. But the ISS has the option to be just a tiny fraction faster and then they really would be in space. Actually, we're all in 'space' when we jump, it's just that our orbits intersect with the earth's quite soon. Also, kms are French too - told you so. And Paris is in France.
Non-space
No way is it a 'space' ship. I know what I mean by 'space' (and the formal definition is frankly rubbish, must be French), and you simply can't be anywhere there without doing escape velocity first. It's a glider launched from the thinnest of atmospheres, and maybe quite fun as a fairground ride for our epoch.
Bing dong, the Witch...
Only "Bing" is worse.
Abuse
The Wife forwarded hers straight to the Paypal abuse address. She is well trained. No auto-response yet (from Paypal, I mean).
EuroCrud
Transport's not my sector, but Brussels is. Are we sure that there is not some strategy there which *compels* governments to require location-aware electronics in cars? (already happened with 'On Board Diagnostics', which isn't for your servicing convenience, but so that they can police emissions). So maybe the 'Softening- up' is being done in the knowledge that Britain will eventually have no choice. Picture of Eurocrat stealing sovereignty by stealth.
Swiss Cheese
..is always involved (check it out - the 'holes' can line up). But in this case, the failure of any feasible system to detect that two arguing pilots have tried to take off fully-loaded, without checklists, slats, and flaps, and with the warnings of same curiously disabled, does seem to make the 'Trojan' holes rather minor.
Who, Steve?
Haven't used Microsoft Maps since they renamed it stupidly to honour Liz Hurley's not-quite-husband. It's a jealousy thing.
Addition
£3 for the card and £1 for the first day, perhaps?
Nice Mr M?
Perhaps nice Mr Medvedev mentioned over burgers that he's picked up 10 USian spies, and made the friendly suggestion that the FBI pull in a few minor sleepers so that a traditional swap can happen without bothering real Embassies.
Hosting exploits?
So the latest Firefox wisely advises me on startup to update Flash. But if I do, I must first remember to untick some 'MacAfee' thing they try to slide in, and when the update is done, uninstall some 'Adobe downloader' thing. Easy - but do I have to tell my non-geek cousins all this?
Adapt now
Try 'YLMF OS'. Latest Ubuntu, looks like XP. Ma and Pa thank China!
Silly name
Wasn't Bing Liz Hurley's squeeze? Worse, they've applied his name to their mapping/aerial photo feature, so my old html links to locations now advertise their silliness to my readers. Linking Google Earth doesn't seem so easy.
Goolie Chit
My father was friendly to the tribesmen, but he would have needed it if captured. (except, the girls wielded the knives, and they couldn't read...)
Squids-in
Octopus? Is he 'Up before the Beak'?
Posted in Apple in shock talks with Reg reader
Bonjour, and thanks for all the fish
Why do I have to uninstall something called 'Hello Sailor' in French, after every time I update the thing?
Give us a choice
This morning there was a '+' at the top, so I could take-it-or-leave-it, this evening the fonts have gone fey and there's nothing obvious to close the new sidebar. Options, please.
Tat's
- are a turnoff. And think what they'll be like when you're 70, girls.
Posted in NPfIT ignored NHS culture, says Halligan
Just give up?
No one has explained what the preferable IT strategy would have been. Bottom-up doesn't work when those at the bottom end think they have vested interests to protect. IT itself doesn't work well if everyone has to retrain to be a typist first. Of course you need explicit data standards and a common strategy for something that is (for better or worse) a single giant organisation with a single set of use-cases. So, they've tried everything and not found perfection - who suggests they just give up?
Overmanning
Manned missions may be thrilling, but they are an expensive way to do science. Better ways to spend the money now, until we find somewhere where local life-support is genuinely sustainable - may be centuries.
