Posts by jake

Re: Stick them on a Tesla.

"Speed-cams are expensive, they take pictures"

Yep. But even they don't work without a spendy maintenance contract to keep the lens clean.

Re: Stick them on a Tesla.

Fog Lights: pl. Noun. Small low-hanging lights on the front of a vehicle, often turned on in bright, sunny weather to indicate the driver's head is in a fog.

Re: Stick them on a Tesla.

Don't give the idiots any ideas ...

_{Is anybody reading ElReg not tired of explaining why, exactly, so-called "digital zoom" isn't all that useful?}

Re: Stick them on a Tesla.

I know of many cities here in Northern California which have done away with speed cameras ,,, mainly because they cost much more to operate and maintain than they bring into the city as revenue.

Re: Stick them on a Tesla.

"Come on Cops you have the CCTV... why don't you prosecute them. It is not as it you have to go out in the rain and cold to nab them is it?"

Have you seen the sorry images that most .gov controlled CCTV cameras produce? It's almost impossible to see what people are doing on those cheap-ass pieces of shit, much less ID a perp or read a plate ... and that's before all the the bird crap & etc. that builds up on the lenses.

The things might be a deterrent, but it's not because they produce usable pictures.

Re: Stick them on a Tesla.

Here in California, Tesla drivers are taking over from the holier-than-thou Subaru drivers who think that "doing their part to save the world" means they can ignore all driving laws whenever they like. BMW drivers take a back seat to the other two in this travesty of a triumvirate.

Re: A patchy server

It's not gaslighting. It's an attempt to re-write history.

_{(Un)Fortunately, TehIntraWebTubes has a long memory.}

Re: What of all the towns and cities named after Native American tribes?

"Nothing is being stolen. The Apache people *still* have their culture. Nobody took anything."

Well, there is one thing ... that feather logo. Feathers are never chosen by the individual wearer, they are presented to them by the entire tribe for important spiritual or political reasons. As regalia, they should never be taken lightly.

IMO, the Apache Foundation should choose a new logo, and apologize for misappropriation of the feather, as used in that context with that name.

But I'm not Apache, so I have no say in the matter.

Re: Bit ridiculous

"Put your hand ::snip:: you'll get the exact Pantone color"

For your hand. Your forearm, elbow, bicep and shoulder will all be different.

_{So will four more different spots on your hand ...}

Re: Oracle? Sun? Java?

Even more apropos, Memoriae Sacrum.

Re: A patchy server

"so it seems really difficult to debunk a story that's literally what the people involved say happened."

And the election was rigged, right?

Re: Bit ridiculous

What's wrong with hosepipe, you hoser?

Not "on to something", rather "on something".

Re: Bit ridiculous

Well, a variation of the original. Perhaps two or three generations old.

But exactly.

Re: British... bad guys in movies

Van Dyke was vocally too cardboardy to play a convincing Cockney. But again, consider the intended audience.

Re: Trademark incompetence

See: "Streisand effect".

Just to set the record straight ...

... so-called "Freedom Fries" was the brain-child of disgraced Republican congressman and convicted felon Bob Ney (served 17 months of a 30 month sentence at Club Fed (Federal Correctional Institution, Morgantown)).

Nobody in the US paid all that much attention to the supposed name change, other than the Press and the usual rabid Republican sycophants, who are a very small, if vocal, subset of the population as a whole. I can quite honestly say that I never saw the item on a restaurant menu, even when it was supposedly an in thing.

Re: Bit ridiculous

"It does not surprise me that God does not show up"

Doesn't surprise me, either, seeing as god does not exist outside the fertile minds of shamans, and the less-fertile minds of the easily brainwashed and subjugated.

Re: A patchy server

The Kermit Protocol was indeed named after the famous Frog ... WITH the expressed, written consent of Henson Associates.

The world was a much smaller, easier to get around in space in 1981.

Re: Bit ridiculous

"Why are we always the evil masterminds :D"

For the same reason late-night infomercials on TV are often hosted by somebody with a supposed Brit accent[0]. It stands out to the intended audience.

[0] Daft thing is many of the accents are faked ... and a good portion of them are not Brit, but rather Aussie, NZ, SA or other ... and the faked ones are often about as bad as Dick Van Dyke's in Mary Poppins. Quite jarring to people who can tell the difference.

"I think we should all be named using symbols"

We are.

Irish coffee is named after the Irish Whiskey in it, not Irishmen. I've addressed German's Chocolate Cake below.

Sourkraut is German, and means "sour cabbage", and dates back to at least the 1630s. The Yank term "kraut" meaning "a German" only dates back to the 1850s. As usual, context is everything ... ESPECIALY when using loan-words in English.

One green beer that I'm aware of that was fairly palatable was Neptune's Green Rooster, but sadly I've heard that Carlsburg bought the name and ruined the brew ... So yes, green beer probably should be banned as undrinkable swill.

"The cake is named after its creator, whose surname was, you guessed it, 'German'"

Actually, it was originally named "German's Chocolate cake" after the "German's Baking Chocolate" brand included in the original recipe. The guy who came up with the formula for the chocolate's name was named Samuel German. The actual inventor of the cake recipe was one Mrs. George Clay, of Dallas TX.

"much like how Caeser salad is named for the chef"

The Ceaser Salad was named after the casino in Tijuana, Mexico owned by Ceaser Cardini. History suggests that Alex, Ceaser's brother, was the guy who who came up with it (and the associated floor-show). The salad was originally named the "aviator salad", but customers started calling it "ceaser's salad"because that was the only place they could get it. While I'm at it, contrary to popular belief, a proper Ceaser Salad does NOT contain anchovies ... except those that are included in the formula for Worcestershire sauce, which is part of the dressing.

Re: (Talking of Deep Purple) - The acid test...

Depends. How many power strips does he have plugged into his powerstrip? And how many wall-warts are plugged into those?

Re: old news

Well, sure. And I have a restored 1915 player piano. I love the engineering in that, too :-)

She's not the Steinway at The Met, but she has a soul that is all her own.

Re: sloppiness

"sloppy" is both an ambiguous and a relative term ... Listen to Cyndi Lauper for "good" sloppy, or Madonna for pitch-perfect no-slop. Madonna and her autotune always gives me a splitting headache, where Lauper doesn't.

Note that I'm not particularly fond of either performer, I just chose two that I'm fairly certain most readers would be familiar with.

"quite small (about 30 centimetres long, with a 3cm diameter) but definitely dangerous looking lasers."

Sounds like a late '70s or early '80s design HeNe. Red beam, 632.8nm, most likely under 5mW. The power supply for these can give you quite the zap (around 2500V at 5mA), but the output is fairly benign, as long as you keep it away from the eyes. Useful at over 1000 yards/meters under ideal conditions with proper collimation. Cheep and cheerful, but bulky by today's standards.

Portability. Power cables are easy in ways that water pipes are not.

_{And portable water cooling tends to get bulky and heavy in a hurry.}

Cooling fan(s). Of the same era (maybe a trifle earlier), think Cisco AGS routers and desktop PDP-11 kit. Early 1980s to mid 1990s was peak fan noise, when processor and bus speed nearly outran the technology to be air-cooled. Lots of money went into heat transfer technology in this time period. Such tech also helped with the physical down-sizing of lasers and etc.

Re: Marketing notwithstanding, it's not taking of from "European Soil".

Airplanes "take off". Rockets "launch".

The transport took off from Cornwall. The rocket launched somewhere over the North Atlantic.

Re: Marketing notwithstanding, it's not taking of from "European Soil".

Regardless. we were talking about Cornwall and the North Atlantic.

Re: Marketing notwithstanding, it's not taking of from "European Soil".

It's not soil amendments that the folks in charge of the RDPs live for, rather it's rule amendments. So I rather suspect that the answer would be a highly qualified "yes" ... with no actual way to meet the qualifications. But they'll spend YEARS working on it. Taxpayer money isn't going to spend itself!

Re: Who is the liar?

John Deere is the liar.