Re: Franklin Re: Fehu

".....Your faith in the competence and willingness of the law is touching." Your blinkered and reflexive desire to think the worst of The Man is simply moronic.

Re: AC Sunshiner Re: Billl HAHAHAHAA! - no rationality? no numbers?

"......you don't have a rational argument for your statements....." Try the Oracle server sales figures (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/20/oracle/ ). Nothing shows the fact that Larry is failing to convince the customers more than the complete lack of penetration of Niagara into even existing Sun accounts, who prefer the SPARC64, whether badged or direct from Fudgeitso. Your staged benchmark figures are completely pointless compared to the all important sales figures.

/ SP&L

Re: Fehu

".....So, "insufficient evidence" means that they didn't post the required number of pictures of themselves committing the crime?....." No, it probably means the pics are either of not good enough quality to identify anyone or that they do not show conclusive proof of coercion. The police would need to build up enough evidence to convince a prosecutor to take the case to court, and if the girl did not report the case until four days after the event she probably cleaned up all the physical evidence and left the cops with nothing but her word. Tragic, I'm sure the coppers involved would love to take the "rapists" in question into a windowless room for five minutes of truncheon practice, but that's not how the law works.

What the Anons are doing is saying "investigate but you had better reach the conclusion we have decided on or else" - that's just vigilantism by computer.

Re: Gary Bickford Re: SAP

".....This is just 'SAP is a PITA'...." Hmmmmm, so that SAP software, it got to be so popular because it was a "PITA"? No, it got to be popular because - if you employ or contract people that know what they're doing - it works really well. The key with SAP, as with any complex software, is to employ competent project management and techies that know their stuff. Going on the evidence, IBM obviously did not, or simply cared more about squeezing every last cent out of the customer rather than building a working solution.

Re: implicateorde Re: Billl HAHAHAHAA!

"There are initiatives underway (and have been for a while now) to use FPGAs to provide hardware acceleration. Why is it a bad idea to do something similar on the processor die itself?...." The question becomes how tightly do you integrate the app to the hardware. Too tightly and the chip becomes too specialized to do any other tasks well. And then you reduce the customer base, which means you lose any economies of scale and have to sell your specialised chips at very high prices. Remember the IBM/Sony/Toshiba Cell? Brilliantly clever, capable of amazingly tight integration, and yet a PITA to develop for due to the tightness of integration. Lack of stomach for the pain of coding it limited the application base, limiting the uses and keeping the costs high, leading to it overlooked in favour of cheaper, simpler, "less clever" but infinitely more popular and flexible designs like x86. If Larry ties his chips too tightly to Java, or worse still too tightly to just Oracle database software, then the other app vendors will push their software on anything but Larry's chips, and you can't build a business on Larry's software alone.

Re: hungee Re: SAP

Agreed, it would seem other organizations in Queensland manage to pay their staff despite the unions, so I'd have to say the blame lies more with IBM.

Re: Oh4FS Re: Poster boy for capitol punishment

"..... unlawful financial blockade....." oh please quit your whining, lying propaganda. If it was illegal then it would have been very easy for Dickileaks to over-turn the "blockade" in court, and there would be plenty of luvvies and socialist legal types falling over themselves to help out. The fact is VISA et al are quite within their rights under their terms and conditions to choose not to risk the prosecution of their management by potentially assisting a group likely to be charged with espionage by the US government, and for Dickileaks to call it illegal - and for you to repeat the assertion - is potentially libelous.

Re: nobody got fired for going with IBM

In this case, the probably more interesting question is who gets sued for buying IBM? I can't see Logica or Accenture kicking up too much of a fuss as they have to work with IBM, but I can see the taxpayers of Queensland looking to recoup some costs from Big Blue.

/More popcorn, please!

Re: Local Dupe Re:Matt Bryant Manifests The Red Shift

".....Only the civilized world......" LOL, more denial! As shown in the thread about the attempt to vote Manning a Nobel Peace Prize, the Anonyputz and associated numpties are not "the civilized World", they're not even half of one percent of the "civilized" World, they're just a tiny minority of shrieking, whining, wannabe, socialist and skiddies.

But I don't see what you're whining so hard about - even when the sentences were lower, all it took was the chance of going to jail for "dedicated Internet warriors" like Sabu to start crying and grass up all his buddies. Seems it's quite common when the skiddies get a taste of the steel bracelets for them to ditch their "ideals" and save themselves a little jail shower action (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/07/hacker_snitches/).

Re: Billl Re: HAHAHAHAA!

"Itanic.

'nuf said"

More like you CAN'T find anything to say to dispute the obvious - T5 can't do the heavy, single-threaded enterprise workloads Larry claims it can, and sticking a lump of cache on the side without any integration into the chip on M5 is a waste of time. Once again, SPARC64 (and Itanium, and Power) will massively outsell Niagara because it's the only chip Snoreacle's can offer that is actually capable of doing the job required. Whilst it's good for Snoreacle's that Larry has learned from Ponytail's mistakes, it's still amusing to see how the Sunshiners are still trying to deny the obvious.

/SP&L

Re: Tom 38 Re: AC Destroyed All Braincells Gordon BTRFS? You must be joking...

".....this list is from 2006....." Oh, thanks for reminding me that first Sun and then Oracle have been trying to fix the problems with ZFS for twelve years, and seven years since they tried to push the problem to the OSS crowd, and still can't get it production ready! Face it, ZFS is just another too-little-too-slow-too-late Sun product, it's the "Rock" of software.

Re: Local Dupe Re: "Our only threat is the threat of more threats."

".....Then why were they treated with such unsparing behavior and threatened with such outrageous sentences by the prosecutors?....." Who says they are outrageous? You see it's actually just like dealing with kiddies - the first time they do something stupid you might send them to their room for the afternoon, they do it again then you up the punishment in the hope they get the message, so you ground them for a week. The problem is you and your skiddie chums are really thick and the message didn't get through with community sentences and harsh words, and the e-crims are using your skiddie activities as cover, so the grown ups are having to use stronger sentences and it seems (from the volume of the whining) that you and your Anonyputz buddies are finally starting to get the message.

Re: Kebabfart Re: Kebabfart XFS not safe

<Yawn, yawn, YAWN>. Simply repeating the same Sunshiner propaganda over and over is simply going to switch the undecided off even faster. Fail!

Re:Local Dupe Re: Local Dupe Re Local Dupe Saturday 6 April 20:17 GMT

".....threat....." Threat!??! ROFLMAO! Please do explain what threat the Anonyputzs are to anyone other then themselves? What they have actually done other than mindless and minor Internet vandalism? What massive "threat" did Aaron Swartz provide other than the a bit of petty copyright theft? Sorry to burst that big bubble of grandiose self-absorption, but you guys are not Internet James Bonds or real-life Lisbeth Salanders, you're just skiddies wasting bandwidth.

Re: Captain Server Pants

"....virtualization penalty is high on Atom...." Your using the wrong implementation model. With multicore Xeon and Opteron, we've got used to the idea of carving up boxes with virtualization software because we had so many powerful cores in even a 2-socket server. Instead, I would suspect that the model with these systems will be that of cobbling individual Atom server blocks in grid-like cluster instances. Granularity is stuck at the Atom CPU level, but management is easier, and you increase or decreas the power of an instance by adding or removing nodes from the cluster. The result is also more resilient seeing as the load is split over several disparate nodes, especially if you can build your instance across two or more chassis. If you imagine using a 2-socket server with hex-core Xeons for a VM that needs 8 cores, if you lose a CPU you could lose most of your processing capability. With this type of mini-server board, if you lose a board you lose two cores, you simply carry on at 75% processing power whilst you switch in another card to bring the cluster back up to 8 cores (you might even have an automated solution that adds in a spare card to the cluster the minute one fails).

Re: spl23

".....Are you sure you've got that the right way around? Speaking as a PPL with a lot of rotary experience, I find it hard to believe you would give slots flying helos to the worst pilots....." Again, "worst pilot" from a fighter selection process does not mean the one with the worst spatial awareness or reflexes, it's more a matter of the overall package plus attitude. Some people can be exceptional pilots yet not be natural fighter pilots, and other good pilots suffer more quickly from information overload (a modern fighter pilot has not only his onboard systems fighting for his attention, he also has to co-ordinate and manouvere with at least a wingman plus probably other friendly fighters, local ground- and air-control such as AWACS, his own defense systems such as lase detectors, radar detectors, jammers and flares, his own detection systems, and then his weapon systems as well, all the while still doing the actual manual task of flying the aircraft). Helo pilots more often fly single aircraft missions on shorter flights, and usually don't carry as complex systems.

But, if you want an historic example of whirlybods screwing up where fast movers didn't, when the USMC first ordered the Harrier they decided chopper pilots should fly it because they had experience of hovering and landing. They turned out to have the worst accident record of any group of Harrier pilots (more than twice as bad as the Indian Navy pilots, for example!), a record that was much improved when the USMC switched fast jet pilots to flying the type.

Re: Local Dupe Re Local Dupe Saturday 6 April 20:17 GMT

SCHWING, SCHWING, SCHWING! It's OK, stop stressing and ranting, everyone reading the thread already knows you lost the argument.

Re: Kebabfart Re: XFS not safe

Kebbie, every one of your crusading posts just makes the whole idea sound even more silly. You can't just say to the people that have between them happily and successfully run millions of systems over the years on solutions other than ZFS that they were "all wrong and ZFS is the only right answer". They will just laugh at you.

"....There are lot of children sitting in a ring...." Hmmm, good thing I use arrays to store my data and not groups of children then!

".... ZFS can detect faulty power supplies ...." <Yawn> Most servers and arrays I know of can do this for themselves already by seperate PSU monitoring software. In fact, since many of them link into remote support solutions, they do it BETTER than ZFS in that they will get a replacement PSU out to site whilst the ZFS admin is still working through the logs looking for the ZFS warning on the PSU. Fail!

Re: AC Re: With 2 disks...

".....HP are already running part of their web site on this technology....." Well, two thumbs up for eating their own dog food, but as someone that regularly suffers the hp public websites I'd have to say their web designers produce what comes out of the other end of the dog.

Re: Money

Maybe the Ecuadoreans have got so p*ssed off they've started charging him rent.

Re: Re:Local Dupe Matt Bryant "<Yawn> Melodrama, hyperbole"

".... I was referring to the fear of governments, their legislators, administrators and military....." These are civil offences and civil punishments.

"....Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki deterrents to continuing the war another week?...." Besides the idiocy of comparing the civil offence of defacing or DDoSing a website to the wartime dropping of the atomic bombs, the bombs did force the Japanese to abandon their determination to resist further, so your point is also wrong as well as stupid.

"....Did you think you were the Gustav Gun of The Register, pal?...." Nope. Guns don't tend to point out the blinkered silliness of people like you.

Re: Captain Server Pants

"....Why the odd rack size?...." Agreed, very good question. Why not just make it 5U tall and put a little more airpsace in the chassis, you'd still get just as many in a standard 42U rack? Or is it a weight/heat thing, like the blades, where if you put too many in a standard 42U rack you go beyond the weight limit (according to hp, four fully-stacked C7000 blade chassis are too much weight in a standard 42U rack)?

And why a 500GB SATA drive, surely you would want an SSD to lower power consumption?

"....If you compare this machine to an Oracle T5-4 it's pretty clear HP is out to lunch....." Well, if you think that they are both aimed at the same target - weiner thread webservers - and that the hp option will run bogstandard x64 apps that the Ts can't, then suddenly it makes more sense.

"....What about HP-UX?" Webserver market - not much call for an enterprise UNIX at the low end when Linux does it cheaper.

I wonder if they'll make a blade that slots into the C7000 chassis so they can be mixed with Xeons and Itaniums and also take advantage of Flex Fabric.

Re: Destroyed All Braincells Re: This can become good.

"....Itanium must have been airbrushed out of the future." Don't be silly, that would be like using a Ferrari as a milk float. These are aimed at small workloads like hosted webservers and the like, not enterprise big iron. Please do try and learn the difference.

Re:Local Dupe Re: Matt Bryant "<Yawn> Melodrama, hyperbole"

"....,but the raison d'etre of all these laws remains the same. Fear." Well, duh! Of course the idea of a sentence is to install fear in those criminals too stupid to otherwise be deterred. If there was nothing to fear from punishment then there would be no deterrent value. That covers everything from speeding fines through to murder, including e-crimes committed by dumb skiddies and career e-crims. Your problem is you cannot see beyond the (minority) politics you associate with the actions of your skiddy buddies to realise those actions are still illegal and will be punished.

Re: Local Dupe Re: Local Dupe Local Dupe "My Bad"

"..... If Congress enacts these stringent penalties, we will have new tech versions of the Sedition and Espionage Acts....." <Yawn> Melodrama, hyperbole, but still no sense at all. I know the Anonyputzs all like to think they're a combination of Rat from The Core and Batman, that they are somehow "great players in The Game", but the truth is they are minor annoyances and petty criminals, nothing more.

Re: I really get annoyed with radical animal-rights people

".....6 hours after moving them???...." Gee, I'm guessing you're a townie, as you seem to know SFA about farming. There happens to be quite a bit to do even on a small-holding (even more with the added red-tape and paperwork insisted on by townie civil servants). My neighbour used to be working 5am and rarely finished before 7pm, and that was with two teenage sons to help him in the hours before and after school. And yes, animals were often left unattended in fields for most of the day. I love the countryside but I would not consider being a famer as it is just far too much hard work. If you don't believe me then I would recommend you take a holiday and volunteer on a farm for a fortnight, it would seriously remove the political blinkers.

Re: Seems like a good idea...

".....they subvert quarantine restrictions....." In 2001 there was a farm near Highhampton in Devon that had three suspected cases of foot-and-mouth. The three animals had been segregated and were in a barn with a sign on the door saying "quarantined", but some do-gooders still trespassed onto the farm, broke into the barn and "checked on" the animals, then went and cheerfully "checked on" not just the rest of the farm's stock but also the neighbouring three farms, spreading the infection and leading to ALL the livestock on all four farms being slaughtered. Their excuse was the barn had no windows and it was "cruel" to keep the animals in the barn.....

Re: Hmm...

"......A skilled farmer knows where he can place poisoned food so that a fox will find it....." Exactly the same place an otter or badger will find it, or a domestic cat or dog. I too grew up in the countryside and lost pets to and saw wild animals killed by poison, so you can stop that claptrap, thanks.

Re: I really get annoyed with radical animal-rights people

".....the animal rights people look more like a 'ban all animal use for human benefit'....." The whole Animal Liberation trip has nothing to do with animal rights and all to do with continuing outdated class-war beliefs. For them, farmers = landowners = The Rich, regardless of whether the farmer is a smallholder. Nothing exposes this sham more than how these "Animal Rights" proponents often happily wear leather clothes and shoes but then complain about (rich) people wearing fur or farms that have the very livestock their leather comes from.

Re: SteveB299 Re: Daily Mail

".....If you care about our global life support system (ie. the environment) then you must be some kind of atheist leftist....." You may be right. After all, Adolf Hitler was a veggie, loved doing watercolours of countrysides, and was very fond of animals, especially his dogs, and was continually in conflict with the Catholic church. And the Nazi Party was a Socialist one, just like the original Italian Fascists (Mussolini was originally a member of the PSI, the Italian Socialist Party). Oh, sorry, was that not the example of caring lefties you were thinking of?

Re: Mike Bell Re: Fractional Reserve Bollocks

Sorry, but your being deliberately obtuse. The bank makes the purchase of the property when a mortgage is taken out, so "real" money does get taken off the bank's books. And without that mortgage system only the rich would be able to buy houses, and just imagine how much the Lefties would scream then.

Re: Tony Green Re: Funny how suicide-bombers are always labelled "cowards"...

The predominant target of suicide bombers are civilians, in the case of Jihadis usually other Muslims. The predominant target of the drone pilots is the Jihadis with the intent of stoping them slaughtering other Muslims. If that is "fucked up" then I would have to suggest it is you with the problem, but then I would blame that on your parents for your poor upbringing and lack of education.

Re: elderlybloke Re: "...required for safe and effective weapons delivery." - RAF

"Early in WW2 the RAF was very civilised and did not bomb Civilians as it was consided by the Planners to be important to behave as Gentlemen....." Well, yes and no. There was a general order not to bomb German territory but that was more due to the worry of massive reprisals from the Luftwaffe. In the pre-war years the RAF had been quite happy to bomb civilians in the Empire, but Goebels had done such a good job on the propaganda front the British government were convinced Hitler could flatten all the cities in the UK with ease, and the government were worried that the popular will to resist would crumble. This was partly the result of the mantra that "the bomber will always get through" so over-used by the RAF to allow them to build up their own bomber force between the Wars. In the event, Fighter Command's advanced warning and control system ensured the German bombers did not always get through, and the Blitz showed the plucky common Brit's resolve turned out to be quite substantial.

"....Things changed quite a bit after the Hun did the Blitz on Britain...." Erm, not quite. The Jerrys had already dropped a number of bombs on British cities, particularly in individual night raids, but it was the (possibly accidental) dumping of bombs by a Luftwaffe crew over London that Churchill seized on to mount a deliberate retaliatory raid on Berlin. So in the case of the RAF vs the Luftwaffe, it was actually the British that made the first PLANNED mass Bombing raid on the German capital. Hitler's reaction - pushing Goering into mass daylight raids on London - ensured their defeat in the Battle of Britain. Attacking British cities was always in Goering's plan (as it had been in Spain, Poland and Holland before, but Yugoslavia came AFTER the start of the Blitz), but it was supposed to come after he had eliminated Fighter Command, and he shifted attention to London too early. Of course, once the cycle of nightly raids had been started by both sides, Britain's superior strategic bomber force and the course of the War ensured that the Germans suffered far heavier bombing than we took from them.

".....The Americans don't bomb Civilians ,they just do Colateral Damage instead." Actually they do, and in wartime it is quite legal as you are striking at the support and manufacturing system of your enemy. In essence, Mrs Jihadi giving food and shelter to Mr Jihadi and Son in his compound is a legitimate target as long as he is the primary target. The Americans would prefer not to kill Mrs Jihadi, but then her death does send a message. The Americans would also rather catch Mr Jihadi alive for interrogation, but they'll settle for dropping a bomb on him if there is no realistic chance of a successful capture mission.

Re: Local Dupe Re: Local Dupe "My Bad"

"....powder blue Triumph Spitfire....." SCHWING! Whilst your guessing games are mildly amusing, I have to point out they are just more of your usual diversions. I find it very hard to believe a reflexive hater of The Man like yourself hasn't got something to bleat about Congress's plans to smack skiddies harder, or is it just that you're still waiting for your herder to tell you what to think?

Re: dolt in pyjamas Re: Well duh!

If the Tories read that post they'd probably be breathing a sigh of relief as they now know they're not facing an intelligent opposition.

Re: Tom 38

"It wasn't the mortgages that banks themselves loaned out that was the problem...." Actually it was. The realisation that those mortgages were valueless as they would never be repayed that led to the subprime collapse when traders stopped buying the mortgage bundles. If the mortgages had still be good investments then the trading would have continued.

Re: Kebbie Re: But ...

"....If ZFS on Linux is a bit unstable, it might be....." So doesn't that suggest it actually isn't production ready as claimed?

Re: Alan Brown

".....My pick is that a lot of taxpayers will decide to sod off to greener pastures, which will result in even higher rates for those who don't......" This is one taxpayer that has been contributing tax and NI from his teens who will be happily waving goodbye to these shores and taking my savings with me. The Lefties can shriek and whine about my being greedy or whatever, thankfully the sound of their teeth gnashing won't reach to the beach.

All the shrieking and finger-pointing about what caused the crash aside, whether it was "ordinary people" being given mortgages they can't afford or "greedy bankers" making to many risky swaps, the solutions being punted around all revolve around making it harder for "ordinary people" to get cheap and easy credit. Businesses will suffer too, to a degree, but the banks will still lend money to the ones actually keeping their heads above water as the governments need them to keep giving loans to businesses. So, what have the Lefties achieved with their reflexive attacking of their favourite bogeymen? That's right - more "ordinary people" paying up to "capitalist" landlords because they can't get a mortgage. And who are the biggest landlords? That's right - those "greedy bankers" that stuffed their bonuses into bricks-and-mortar investments. How ironic!

Re: Gordon Gordon Tom Maddox Gordon Phil Gordon Gordon AC Destroyed All .....

"Matt, you have exposed yourself as an opinionated ignoramus beyond whom it is to even aspire to mediocrity...." Gee, some people have such a hard time dealing with criticism or a contradictory viewpoint. You're just sad, I pity you for your inability to see beyond your own blinkered Sunshine.

".....Facebook runs CentOS on their servers, not supported RHEL.....Google runs their own "unsupported" version of Linux....." Please do pretend Faecesbook or Google are the same business models as the average business, just for laughs. Both are extreme examples where they employ a lot of technical people to design and manage their web services because their business IS the web service, whereas for most companies the web service they run is INCIDENTAL to their business. Sorry, do you want me to use shorter words than incidental? You also fail to show that Faecesbook or Google uses ZFS, so your chosen examples are the extraordinary examples where they design and implement a unique solution, but STILL did not choose to use ZFS! Gosh, if ZFS was so essential as you claim, surely they'd be using it? ROFLMAO @ you as you merely prove my point! You are a master of FAIL!

/SP&L

Re: Local Dupe Re: "the sportscar for the fun down country roads or on track days.

"......A 1960 Austin Healy Mark I....". No thanks. An out-dated chassis at its time of release. The version with the 3-litre engine was a brute, a "real man's car", but you spent most of your time trying to stop it diving into the nearest ditch.

".....Not a speck of dust or spot of oil....." That's because the BMC engine had dribbled all the oil onto your drive overnight!

"....Everything of Matt's is just as perfect as his comments...." Everything of Matt's is not as perfect as Matt's comments, but thanks for the vote of approval for the comments. Oh, were you trying to be sarcastic? Hmmm, another area you need to work on. However, I would suggest you focus on your history and technology before brushing up on sarcasm as the massive gaps in the former are really more pressing problems.

".....One day Matt is going to fail the whole wide world....." Now what have I told you about that Napoleon complex of yours? Not everyone thinks they have the right to rule the World like you do.

Re: PT Re: @ObSolutions

Aw, did some get upset by the simple truth? Does it hurt you to realise you are not going to "save the World" or whatever you have convinced yourself you can do? It's always fun to see you lot thrashing around, whining and bleating, rather than facing facts.

Re: Alan Firminger Re: Matt Bryant and others

Whilst you seem to have a vague knowledge of the matter you're mainly talking male genetalia.

".....Those men were heroes like no other....." Relax, stop flexing the class chip on your shoulder and realise no-one is denying that the "common" aircrew, especially the bomber crews, were heroic.

".....Most combat crew had no more qualification than Matriculation, got at sixteen....." You are thinking of general aircrew like gunners when what we are discussing is pilots. Especially single-seater pilots, who had to be their own WOP, navigator and pilot, whereas the bomber had a man for each job. Big difference in role and requirement.

"..... None of the normal degree courses added a desirable skill....." Correct, but it was more to do with showing the intellectual capability of the applicant. As a pilot trainee, before you got to do flight training you had to do ground training which included a lot of technical work on theory of flight, aeronautics and mechanics - you washed out if you did not pass that stage. That has not changed, indeed the increase in complexity of systems means the role has become even more technical and therefore the requirement for a certain level of intellectual capability even more pronounced.

"....And for any bomber station ground crew was comparable in numbers to to aircrew...." Sorry, but that is just wrong. For a start, a Squadron Leader would typically have responsibility for 300 people all in, whether a fighter or bomber unit, but that does not include the other support staff on the base such as flight control, RAF Regiment and AA crews, and does not consider the supply chain sitting off-base that kept the spares, POL, new airframes and replacement aircrew rolling in. Even then, his actual aircrew would be closer to 80-100 men even on a four-engined bomber unit (and only 24 on a single-seat fighter unit), not even half of the 300 under his direct command.

".....Fighters required a bit more work to keep them up." That statement is simply illogical. Please explain how a four-engine bomber with more complex radio, radar and navigation systems could require less maintenance than a single-engined fighter? Even if we compare the typical RAF fighter unit with a full complement of 20 Spitfires, that's only twenty Merlins to service, whereas a Lancaster unti with a complement of twelve Lancasters had 48 Merlins! Then consider that the Spit only requires oxygen for one and fuel for a short flight, whereas each Lanc needs oxygen for seven for a much longer flight, plus much, much, much more fuel, all of which needs to be provisioned, stored and delivered. And that's even before we get round to looking at the supply, storage and fitting of the bombload carried by the Lancasters! Sorry, simply does not add up.

Re: ObSolutions, Inc

"Your point being... ?" Doh! It seems even that simple maths was a bit too much for The Faithful.

"They might trust the boring, BAU bits of their business to COTS packages - and so they should. But not the family jewels....." Especially the family jewels as that is the part of the business they will want ot risk least. Seriously, you go try convincing a business to try something new without the safety-net of at least tested and supported by a major vendor. I can remember the days when companies did all their programming in C++/CGI, and then this thing called Java popped up and even with Sun's support they still went all cautious and said they wanted to see it in action first!

".....You are hilarious." You are merely inexperienced.

Re: Make of it what you will

"..... The top scoring UK fighter pilot was in fact a Sergeat pilot......" The highest scoring Commonwealth pilot of WW2 was South African Squadron Leader Marmaduke Thomas St. John "Pat" Pattle DFC & Bar, not a sergeant. The highest scoring British RAF pilot was Johnnie Johnson, who was promoted from Reserve Sergeant to Pilot Officer upon completing his training and before he started flying (in 1939 all new RAFVR pilots were Sergeant Pilots). I'm guessing you're actually getting confused over Eric Lock, the RAF's highest scorer in the Battle of Britain, who (like Johnson) joined as an RAFVR Sergeant Pilot and was also promoted to Pilot Officer before seeing combat, but is still listed as a Sergeant Pilot in many websites. Sorry, guess you'll just have to rethink all those class-war myths.

Re: Mostly_Harmless Re: Make of it what you will

"Gongs for bravery shouldn't apply IMHO....." True, they share none of the physical risks. But gongs are not just awarded for bravery, they are often also awarded for exemplary service or leadership or achieving a very difficult battle task.

In general, the argument for RAF officer pilots is the hammer versus the spear argument. The Army (and Navy) operate in such a way that a large percentage of their men of all ranks face action together. In a battleship you will have men of all ranks facing equal dangers together, just as in an Army deployed to a battlefield there are risks for soldiers be they privates right up to generals (though probably less for generals). Both present a broad hammer. The RAF is very much like a pyramid - even in the days of WW2, over 300 men may have supported, serviced and supplied each aircraft that may have a crew of just one that actually goes up and takes all the risks. That is a very sharp spearpoint. Since it has always been a very technical role it has always required a more educated person in the cockpit (and traditionally that meant a uni grad, which also historically meant the upper class), and since it is a role in high popularity the RAF has been able to pick and choose only the highest level of applicant. Attracting and retaining uni grads of the right calibre means paying them a suitable starter wage, which means they have to be on the officer scale. Whilst it has been shown in times of war that the criteria can be lowered with excellent results, that sergeants can do the task of following officers into battle (they rarely led), peacetime meant a reduction in the size of the spearpoint so again the RAF could be choosier.

Re: No I can't fix your computer Re: Are you insane?

"....Assange cannot be extradited from the UK to the US because he is an Australian citizen and the (two active) extradition treaties prevent commonwealth citizens being extradited from the UK to the US...." Unless the Oz government waives their right to intervene, which they have already indicated they would be highly likely to do seeing as they have no love for the criminal A$$nut either.