Re: Better left to the authorities

Tom 13's got a very good point. There are a LOT of innocent (or at least not proven guilty) people in jail because of faked results. We've descended a long way from Maimonides' ideal of letting a thousand guilty go free rather than imprison one innocent man. With predictable results.

Re: Carbon dioxide

You have to love our educational systems. They'll teach you how to be a good little slave of the state, but they cannot teach you how to succeed, nor how to think. Just believe whatever version of the truth they tell you. That is all.

Re: Compelling reasons for reviving the ether

Should be easy to detect, then. Just use an ether net. (Hey, it works for catching the ether bunny.)

I realize I should be beat for those puns. That's why I'm running for the door.

Re: Mostly harmless

I notice that while he wants to bring US leaders "to justice", he only wants to bring certain ones to justice. I call BS. This is not justice. This is just politics.

Re: Cue a random word generator.

I'd help contribute to their database, but my hovercraft is currently full of eels.

@SW10

I prefer a viton barrier, due to the higher level of heat generated. Rubber tends to break down.

Re: Hmmmm

Helpdesk caller: "I knew that there was something strange about the helpdesk girl, but she was *so* convincing when she asked me what color my underwear was."

Re: Oh yeah?

At the risk of irritating people, I have a hard time getting excited about dual booting machines. M$ has never played nice, and probably never will. In the meantime, a *IX can host multiple virtual machines, including the M$ "products". All's it takes is a little beef in the machine spec, and you can have cake, and eat it too. Running OpenSUSE, with Virtualbox, have 5 different VM's running at same time, no appreciable performance deterioration. All on a laptop with 32GB RAM.

Re: Noooooo!

While you're plugging different foods, in the States, R. M. Felts out of Ivor, VA makes traditionally cured bacon and ham. Cured to being shelf-stable, no fridge needed. They ship, too.

Very tasty. Just need some beer to go with your bacon sarny, and meat's back on the menu, boys!

Re: Rejoice

No, Dilbert has no idea. The character that understands the BOFH is Wally. Wally is a Zen Master of a different dojo. Dilbert is just there as filler between Wally episodes.

Re: Is it good or bad?

I was always told to shave a strip down the middle. put lighter fluid on one side, light it, and stab the little bastards with a fork as they ran for cover.

Re: what you did there, I saw it

I hear that business is humming.

Re: What was that?

Which one of you is Brian?

Re: "Sound like the young man didn't have a sense of humour,"

Uhm, you read the part where they said he was a lawyer, right?

Re: Could it be Hungarian?

My nipples exploded with delight to read that!

Re: Uh oh - potential PR disaster

Yeah, I think that the way they've built this up, the public wouldn't settle for anything less than Deja Thoris.

Re: mike@plokta.com

Didn't the prototype also gain weight from mercury contamination? (The guy that polished it blew on it as he cleaned it over the years, and the mercury came from his dental fillings.)

re: "...but a general making a phone call or email or whatever is not a law."

Let's try this little exercise. If a uniformed policeman told you you could not put a sign in your front yard advocating, say, to legalize marijuana (a worthy cause, IMO) -- is he impacting your free speech as an agent of the government? How about if he was *not* in uniform, and *clearly* not connected with the government -- just doing that as another citizen? In the first, this is restricting your free speech. No law needed. The potential threat of enforcement is all you need. In the second, it is two citizens both exercising their right.

Now, assume a General in the Army calls you personally, *as has happened*, to tell you not to say/do something. Legal authority or no, I'm telling you that as a representative of the government, he needs to have his tit put in the wringer. It is an ugly precedent. What's the next acceptable rank to tell you what to do or what not to do? Colonel? Major? Captain? Lieutenant? Where does it stop, when it never should have started in the first place? As a general, he should know the legality and ethics of this, but then, if he was so smart, he'd have kept his fly buttoned and saved us all a lot of trouble.

Re: Global Warming

...in the same sense that long underwear causes global warming of each of my bollocks.

Re: Seriously, though,

Pessimist? Why, yes, I am. Thank you. I prefer the phrase "able to learn from make past experience", or "willing to make an inference of future occurrences based upon past events.", but "pessimist" works fine, too.

I think it's a fair assumption that the entire rat population on these islands probably started from one or two breeding pairs. A thoroughly rat-infested ship would not make it all the way across the ocean -- once all the food is gone, the fun stops for the sailors as well, and so rat control en route would be a priority. Can you honestly say that you can eliminate 100% of them? If poison would work, why couldn't they be able to do that on ships, where there's fewer places to hide, and a LOT more motivation to eliminate them? Rats, even at that time, were not food animals -- but vermin to be destroyed out of hand.

Until those questions can be answered, I'm going to continue assuming that this is one of those sops to our collective conscience that doesn't actually *do* anything other than reduce the problem to somewhat manageable levels, while introducing toxins to an ecosystem that may not be as able to deal with it as we would hope. After all, something's going to eat those poisoned rat carcasses.

Free speech? Freedom of religion?

Not so much, apparently.

Deep frying the Koran is provocative and stupid -- even unnecessarily offensive. (but so is burning the US flag, or putting crosses in jars of piss) But it's our guaranteed right called "free speech". Is free speech to take a back seat to implementing what amounts to Shariah law in the US? Stopping this kind of speech in order to 'prevent bloodshed' is either cowardice or selective outrage -- which is it? Which other speech is to be stopped next? Why not just force the rest of the world to convert to Islam, (atheists and all) in order to prevent bloodshed?

Oh, for a US leader to say "Here we have free speech, it's a guarantee in our Constitution, and we can't do anything about it. I suggest you get used to it." instead of calling to put pressure on people, abusing their power. If you give in to mobs, you will be ruled by mobs. I can't see the advantage in that.

Re: Decimated

I just figured that the "decimated" rats were now fully motivated to get about their ratty business. No more desertions or malingering for them!

Re: Ahh the memories...

Nasty.

My fix for relatives' PC issues

is to allow all my calls to roll to voice mail. If it's a PC problem, it's 'delete' for the message.

If they buttonhole me in public, I use my home cell to page my work cell, and I take off on my "important call".

Re: Decimated

Yes, every time I hear someone use the term "decimate" as opposed to "annihilate", I want to beat someone. Don't get me wrong. A decimation of humans in the original sense is horrible. Decimating animals that will (literally) "breed like rats" is a waste of time IMO.

@ Fatman

Didn't you know? I'm psych(ot)ic!

All the "meaningful text" in the world won't help.

Often, when you have a technical issue, you need someone who's "not an idiot" to work on the printer. Kudos to Sharp for an elegant solution:

First to get the idiots to call in the problem rather than screwing the printer up with inept troubleshooting -- then with having an engineer on the payroll capable of fixing things, and finally, having said engineer also capable of locating a local "not an idiot" to fob all future toner shaking calls onto (don't be insulted -- there's a clear dividing line, and this is something to be glad of). Clearly, they've mastered not only the technical engineering, but also the human engineering to grow support infrastructure cheaply.

My advice to you, young padawan, is NEVER be seen working on the printer -- or you will discover that you have many children in the organisation, and they *are* all idiots. Find an excuse to do it while all else are on lunch or at home. Act surprised when it works the next day. Never admit that you know anything about printers.

@Dan Paul

...so, let's see here. It (the Ricohs) were working, and you liked them, so your organisation felt compelled to buy someone else's product under the assumption that it was a "rebranded Ricoh", and found that they were *gasp* DIFFERENT??!?!?!?!

What part of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" don't you understand? What part of the phrase "Salesdroids often lie in order to sell things" is so hard to comprehend?

Further, WHY would you *assume* that a "rebranded" whatever would have exactly the same interface/firmware?

Finally, WHY didn't you discover the annoying differences BEFORE you brought a different printer in-house? Surely you *tested* them before dropping a few hundred grand on them -- or did you just *assume* that because they *looked* like your beloved Ricohs, they would function just like them in every respect?

The power of FAIL is strong in this one.

I'm calling out your obfuscatory BS.

The best way to reduce call outs and costs would be to allow help desk personnel to carry out beatings. That's the only thing that most printer callers understand.

No user needs to understand nm and msec in order to print. The only thing they need to understand is: "paper goes in here, and toner goes in here, and when it's out, put more in". The fact that they screw that up should tell you something. The fact that you don't "get" that tells me even more.

Re: Speaking as a printer engineer, sometimes the BOFHs aren't much help either...

With all due respect, you may be excused, as you work with HP printers, which were manufactured by people who actually made the crazy assumption that people would want to use them to print, and think reliability is a plus.

You reckon without the utter fail that is a Ricoh printer. Can you imagine an enterprise printer that does not speak PostScript unless you purchase an upgrade, or once the "upgrade" (to ancient technology) has been purchased, that the printer CANNOT RECOGNIZE it until you insert PJL to tell it to switch over? Apparently, Ricoh is unable to detect %!PS at the beginning of a file.

Never attribute to hippies what can be blamed on the vortex of stupid

Printers are a vortex of stupid, where you have the computationally inept, unable to read what's on their monitor -- so they print anything and everything.

The only solution to the BOFH's sad situation involves homicide, as the moment one of these wankers has mistaken you for their mother, they not only latch on with all the grip of a drowning man, but TELL ALL THEIR INEPT FRIENDS AS WELL, arranging your adoption of every moron in the place.

No hell like printer hell, guys. Take my advice, perfect a blank stare, and whenever someone mentions a printer problem, use it until they go away -- no matter how hot the chick or dude is. The fact that they have a printer problem and are looking for assistance is all you need to know to stay away.

I still laugh at one of my compadres who had such a user (she lured him in with hotness, and then bludgeoned his good will to death with angry(!) statements like: "Ever since you changed my monitor, all my papers have this thumbprint in the middle of them!" (For the morbidly curious, she fed every page in by hand for some unknown reason, and had a jar of that stickum to separate pages right there on her desk...)

My advice to him was to go home, eat a whole bunch of bean soup, onions, eggs, sauerkraut, and beer, and bright and early the next day, sit next to her telling her that you refuse to leave until she's happy with the printer. It took her *three* hours to give up. Such is the power of stupid, my friends, such is the power of stupid.

Re: The wife's primary pistol of choice ...

So was mine. It went off in the morning, and went on all day long, until I sank into the blessed relief of male-pattern deafness.

Re: > very high risk that women will quit prior to being able to do something useful

Poor Mongo. Didn't expect you to be out posting so soon after you'd ceased to be only pawn in game of life.

http://stevemaley.com/2012/10/10/rip-alex-karras-mongo-only-pawn-in-game-of-life-rsrh/

Statistically, you make a point...

But in terms of individuals, it boils down to the choices made. Universities et al don't hire statistics. They hire people, and due to the way the system works now, if a young woman wants to explore that as a career, she has that right.

I think that women have a vital role to play in industries like this, but their numbers will always be lower in proportion to men for the above reasons, which is why I both agree somewhat and also want to clarify, in order to not close doors to women who *do* want into STEM industries.

Re: Perfectly valid medical experiment

I'm more concerned with what happens to the jubblies. I can see myself generating a lot of money for breast cancer research with just a few hours of mesmerising footage.

@daddyhoggy

Didn't you read OP's non-standard interpretation of TL;DC? She's TOO LATE coming up with a plan of not screwing her backup musicians, and her 15 minutes are up as a consequence. Pretty astute, I'd say.

pub landlords -- I've met the type.

They seem to have the idiotic impression that:

A) the term 'play' means that performing music is your form of entertainment, and therefore, since it's "fun" for you, then payment for services rendered is optional.

B) that since you "play" for an hour, they should be able to pay you minimum wage for that time, ignoring all the time you spend practising, learning new music, etc.

C) Since they can "replace" you with recorded music, there is no reason at all to pay you.

To which I say:

Fuck you very much.

Re: "According to computer models...

According to the good doctor's logic, he can state with absolute assurance that he has had soup du jour, it was chicken, and [bedevere voice]logically,[/bedevere voice] every time you have soup du jour, it will be chicken for you as well.

Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.

Re: ".....obvious ones include various aspects of the Indiana Jones flicks ...."

...and don't call Hellboy "Shirley"

Re: Stealing von Braun

...as the great Patrick F. McManus says, there's no better way to look intelligent than to smoke a pipe and look contemplative. You can get away with anything that way.

Re: units

I like jubbs. Really, I do. What an awesome unit of measure.

With that 'stache?

Any hour is a good hour for the G&T.