Posts by My Alter Ego
281 posts • joined Wednesday 16th September 2009 21:06 GMT
Posted in Who will rid me of these obsolete PCs?
Wish I'd seen this a while ago
We had to get rid of 19" CRTs & boxes, laser printers, and a shitload more. Ended up paying the council to take it away.
At least I had the sense to remove the drives & zero them, unlike some people you read about.
I'd offer, but ...
My flight was cancelled.
What I'd like to see is two sets of numbers:
How much money BAA has lost?
How much money the plant equipment required to keep things going would cost.
Finally, what kind of company refuses free help? Extra help, more flights, less cancellations = more income.
Airlines are just as blinkered. I called up Aer Lingus and asked them if they'd give me a full refund if I cancelled my flight so I wouldn't have to trek down to Heathrow (it was the last flight, so labelled as scheduled), and then drive back when it finally gets cancelled. My reasoning was that I'll probably get a refund anyway, and if the flight goes ahead then there'll be a standby seat available for somebody who really wants it (and is willing to pay through the nose, so extra profit). Response? "that's not how it works" & "I don't make the rules". As it was I found it was cancelled before I got to park, but after I left.
Posted in DUI suspect was watching porn DVD
No law applicable
That's a good thing isn't? Who needs a law stating that you can't drive while watching porn and pulling one of at the same time. Surely it comes under driving without due care and attention.
I'd be happy living in a place that uses some common sense: where there isn't a new law de jour.
Posted in Flash is not that reliable
Dissapointed
I was looking forward to an article detailing how Adobe Flash causes drives to fail.
How apt
I read facial as farcical.
What does the size of the company matter?
As for the bonus being cash, it could be that Google thought it'd be different, and it is. You get to hold the bonus in your hand, rather than it just increasing some numbers on your on-line banking page.
One pther thing
I would have made sure the vendor was fully aware of the cock up made.
You should have been even more generous
Telling them that you'd sign the new contract after they make a donation to a charity of your choice.
Admittedly I doubt I have the balls to do it, too much chance of being done for extortion (even if you are the legal owner)
Nope, but a South African may have got a stiffy
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=&q=south+african+stiffy+3.5
Posted in Twittering MP escapes with caution
It was so dissapointing to see her keep her seat
I was really looking forward to sending her a letter saying:
Labour X; Tory Y; Lib Dem Z. #gameOVER!
Don't think anyone will be surprised she got off scott free though.
Boffins
I for one am disgusted with the way in which you refer to members of the scientific community. This is the final straw and I feel I should inform you that I will rely on The Guardian for all my news in the future.
Yours
Disgusted, Tonbridge Wells
Re: Interesting
Reading the letter, it sounds like he's got a lot of correspondence to back this up. He's acting exactly as a scientist should, with disgust when it comes to stifling of debate. As somebody else mentioned, I wouldn't be surprised if he accepted AGW once incontrovertible* evidence is found. That however may take some time seeing as his confidence in some of the leading institutions appears to be fairly shaken.
Even as a lay person I know that incontrovertible isn't a word one uses lightly in science. If I were to say that I have incontrovertible evidence that the force between two bodies can be calculated EXACTLY as F = G * m1 * m2 / d^2, I should rightly be asked to prove it. Just because it's accepted as being true at the moment, it doesn't mean that it will not be tweaked in the future to fit future measurements.
Fermatt's last theorem has now been proved to be incontrovertible. It's pretty damn difficult to say the same of anything in natural science.
Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/435/
Re: Two things
"(In Ireland, do they offer a bag of potatoes for 650 Euros, and at the last minute swap it for a laptop?)"
As an Irishman I resent that statement. At the going rate it'd be 750 euro.
Posted in Nutter repairmen scale 1,768ft TV mast
Re: Looks like fun
According to the commentary, he's free climbing, and only uses the cow tail when resting.
Watch his hands at 7:18, he just rests against the upright while using both hands to open the carabiner.
Re: Free stuff wot costs money from Apple
That was my thought at first, but then somebody's gone to the effort in porting the code, and there's nothing in the license (MIT) to say it's not allowed. I can't even see a clause saying that the source needs to be provided as needs to be done with the GPL.
Basically, if you want it free of charge, there's nothing to stop you porting it yourself.
This happened to my neighbours
I had to explain to them that they weren't going to receive £450,000 and that the email received was a spam. As they had already been in phone contact with the scammers they then decided to tell them that they knew it was a scam and that they'd informed the police. A couple of days later they showed me an email they received from the "assasin" similar to this, except they were only asking for a grand (bargainous!).
Worst part was that they informed the council who then had to do a risk assessment on the "threat", as they might have to have been moved <sigh>.
Re: Hmmm
Wellll,
Assuming the swimming pool falls flat, ie water can't spill out, the weight of the walls is negligible, and it has a drag coefficient of 0.8 (that of a cube), its terminal velocity at sea level will be almost bang on 200m/s (447mph)
So, the kintic energy in the falling pool is about 50GJ, which equates just just under 12 tons of TNT, which about the same energy in 48 SC500 bombs.
Quite devastating really.
Feel free to pick at the numbers, I did this will eating my Thursday pie & chips.
Posted in Acrobatic pilot survives loss of wing
Re: Once in every 10 years in the world, eh?
I read it as the wings falling of for that type of aircraft only occurring every 10 years, though I suppose it's ambiguous.
As for the fatality in Bicester (my gliding club), I'll be incredibly interested in seeing the AAIB report when it comes out. From looking up the CAA registration for the aircraft it appears it was built in 1966, which isn't unusual for gliders, the ones I'm training in vary from 1968 to 1991. Needless to say the wing loading on the stunt pilot's aircraft would be far higher than that of a glider near the apex of a winch launch. Unfortunately it can and does happen, an example being a glider in Nevada recovering from a spin when there was excessive wing loading above the never exceed speed (Vne)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schempp-Hirth_Nimbus-4#Accident_history
As for ballistic parachutes being banned over here, I'm not convinced that's true, the first time one was used in "anger" was only a week ago, in Oxfordshire no less.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-10930035
Granted, the registration appears to be American (it appears to start with an N, but I can't read it from the photo).
Posted in London tenders for speed cameras
Who are these muppets
When forces across the country are cutting speed cameras, TfL are increasing their count? And how the hell are you supposed to speed in London in the first place?
Why do they never call me?
It's always nice to have a bit of a laugh at some scammer's expense. Same with phishing emails, I always follow the link and fill in as much information as possible. I recommend friends (who are savy enough) to do the same. The lower the SNR the better.
Just wait for the idiots to ...
... insert batteries incorrectly in series: "Instaload means I can put them in any way".
It's actually quite a clever idea, just wait for the naysayers to say it shouldn't be patentable as it such an obvious solution. It's a simple solution, but at least it's a hardware patent rather than some business process or one-click rubbish.
The public are understanding the benefits of an more open* app store too.
This is a comment I received from a customer who bought one of my apps. He found a bug which I verified and fixed. I emailed him to say that the new version was available in the Marketplace with the bug fix. It's looking like I may have to start writing iPhone apps, and I'm dreading that day.
"Incidentally, I must say I'm impressed with the way Google allows developers like yourself to download apps without the limitations Apple adopts for their iPhones."
* I say more open, as I'm fully aware that apps can be removed from the store and killed remotely. You're still are allowed to install an app from outside the store without voiding your warranty though.
Posted in Governments mull net censorship grab
Let them.
"a nation like Uganda, again for example, could decide to block the entire TLD for not complying with its rather outdated notions of personal morality."
If the countries are allowed to do a blanket ban, they will no doubt use a simple regular expression filter on the hostname, something that is easily circumvented. The sooner the censoring starts, the sooner the populace can start working on ways of getting around the issue.
Let's be honest, the people who like to tell people what to believe aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.
Never been happier since moving to FreeBSD
I got thoroughly fed up with the fragmentation of the various Linux flavours about 7 years ago. Trying to get a package to compile on X distro when it had been designed for Y just got massively annoying. It appears to have gotten better, but I've made my move and there are two chances of me going back.
However, when it comes to using a desktop open source OS, I do use Ubuntu as it takes no brain power to set up.
Can we have a Beastie icon too?
@Giddy Kipper
I can only hope that you missed the Big Brother icon.
I'm really quite insulted at the suggestion that I darken said website.
Please run a poll
Which concerns you more when visiting London?
a). Being blown up whilst using public transport
b). Being stopped by police under S.44 for taking a tourist photo of a "possible terrorist target"
The OSS criticism has a point
We have FreeBSD installed on several machines. If I come across issues I obviously check for existing fixes, if there are none (quite often) then I do my best to understand the problem and patch it. In an effort to "share the love", I always submit a patch to the project's maintainer, but more often than not I don't even get a response. Funnily enough, MySQL have the best record (at least with me).
I've now got a documented list of patches I need to apply to a range of packages when upgrading, which is getting rather tedious.
That said, at least it's all open source, so that I can patch issues rather than waiting for the vendor to do it for me.
Evil Steve? It's the closest icon to Beastie.
Re: Where?
Me too. Suggestions anyone?
Posted in Labour candidate tweets postal votes
I especially like her new handle: kerry4HMP
There are several points of interest here:
The returning officer decided not to inform the police, that was left to the public. Does the returning officer not understand his job?
She seems to believe that saying "Mea Cupla" & "I'm neither the first nor the last" absolves her of any wrong doing.
She happy with the fact that she gets away with revealing ballot counts prematurely, but anyone who publishes the numbers is flouting the law.
It's "for the police to decide what action to take.", WTF, It's obvious what action to take, refer it to the CPS immediately.
Strangely enough, there are no comments on her blog, I'm waiting for mine to be published, though it's probably not a good idea to hold my breath. I'd also like to know of who else has made a similar mistake, ie. telling the world rather than a couple of mates. Methinks nobody.
It does kind of make sense
Having organisms that keep their environment stable is an ideal way of surviving. If CO2 raises the global temperature, than why would an organism output more CO2 in a warmer climate? Cooking your environment is not a good to thrive.
@Phil Endecott
"£100" per year. How the hell does that work? Let me guess, it's some minister's cousin who runs the only registrar allowed to provide .gov.uk domains.
I gave up waiting for Vodafone to pull their finger out
Was also able to screw them down on my contract seeing as I wasn't using my available upgrade. Think I've saved money already by buying it direct in February. Also have to say I've never been more pleased with a phone that with the N1.
While it may not bode well for OpenSolaris
How many other vendors ship out media free of charge?
re: So what
Must not feed the trolls. To be honest the only comment here that I've had censored was one bemoaning the lack of political assassinations in this country, which to be fair was pretty sensible.
Faux News is a just bad example in it's on right.
Re: hmm
Not sure I agree with that, charging a person's credit card simply by clicking on a popup is an incredibly bad idea.
How many times have you been working away, click the mouse button or press enter just when Windows decides to present a popup windows with focus. Usually it that blasted "Windows will restart in 5 minutes" window with the "Restart now" button selected, so when you press return at the same time, voi la, your computer shutsdown.
Now instead of losing work & time, you lose money too. Great idea from McAffee. Not that I'd ever have this problem, McAffee is the 1st thing I remove from new machines.
Good for her
Nice of her to highlight the Pinochet debacle, to be quite honest, I'd forgotten about it. She's got a point too, at the rate NuLab are going it'll be a criminal offence to highlight government incompetence & hypocrisy.
The only thing I wish she hadn't done is use "Nazi", as it may detract from her sincerity.
"party officials are now taking a close look at Ager’s films"
I bet they will, I bet they will.
@Pete 2
Have to agree about sudo in Ubuntu, users will always find a way around it. I always execute sudo bash when using it on my laptop when there's more than a couple of tasks that need doing. Not sure if any distros allow this out of the box behaviour.
I learnt my lesson playing with Linux in the mid 90s; did a recursive chmod when I was in the root directory, not my home directory as I thought. Gave up trying to fix it and reinstalled. I'm now extremely careful when executing any recursive command, and religiously use pwd before doing anything even remotely catastrophic.
Re: Yup... truly nerdy
I gave the telnet version a go, but I think the server's just been slashdotted.
Not that I'm a supporter of the ACPO
Especially since they sent me a flyer telling me that I should be scared of terrorist handymen & pest controllers:
http://www.met.police.uk/campaigns/national_counter_terrorism/counter_terrorism_leaflet.pdf
According to Sir Hugh Orde:
"We are more than happy to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Of course, most of our information is owned by chief constables anyway so it is absolutely retrievable..."
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmhaff/uc1006-i/uc100602.htm
Of course, it possible (probable) that Sir Hugh Orde was telling MPs what they wanted to hear, and would then make up every reason under the sun to ignore the requests.
Posted in BT hijacks business browsers
How's this working?
Can somebody explain how BT have done this? We're (unfortunately) using BT Business ADSL in our office but haven't noticed any issues. I suspect they're manipulating DNS requests, and seeing as we run our own BIND server we bypass ISP fucking around like this. It's also nice to be able to flush your DNS cache when needed, instead of waiting for everything to propogate through the ISPs cache.
However it works, it's definitely a major fail.
Big floating screen
What I want to know is whether it can do the big screen projected into mid-air. I'd buy it just for that.
So you've joined the BBC in doing snivelling apologies.
"... so it was never our intention to cause offence", I hope that was tongue in cheek.
Speaking as an Irishman (who's Protestant, but still thinks the Orange Order are a bunch of twats), I beginning to think that my countrymen have bugger all sense of humour.
But then, I know a lot of Irish people refuse to admit that our flag contains the colour orange, but call it gold instead, completely ignoring the symbolism of the design.
Hands up those ...
who are looking forward to the nauseating scenes of Apple Store drones applauding those willing to part with their money in exchange for one of those things.
I've no comment on the actual device, just the pathetic scenes of people buying said company's products.
39% are happy to have their DNA kept if not charged?
Jesus tittyfucking Christ. This means that people are either too stupid to understand the question, or too stupid to understand the consequences. Either way, 39% of the people polled should be removed from the gene pool before any further damage is done.
Best sub title ever
I'm going to have to replace the virtual keyboard on my phone now.
Posted in 'I'm an IT worker not an assassin'
There's no smoke without fire.
At least, isn't that what we're told when it comes to terrorist suspects.
Posted in Climategate witchhunt fingers scientist
Holy fucking shit
This questionnaire actually exists? I thought this was just tongue in cheek until I <insert favourite search engine>ed one for the questions.
Stop, do not pass go, do not speak, do not even think. If you do, you may be committing a crime.
So what we have is
a bloke who's been deemed guilt before his trial. Is that entirely legal. Any laywers out there?
Does this mean that BDSM clubs are now illegal in this country? If thinking of somebody being harmed for sexual gratification is illegal, surely the actual act is too. Not that making BDSM clubs illegal would curb my social life, but why won't somebody think of the masochists.
