Posts by Steven Raith 2373 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jun 2007
Hell, I ran Win2k8 Server in a VM on a Vostro 1400 laptop as a domain controller, DHCP/DNS, WDS, PXE server, for half a dozen Win2k/XP/Vista VMs on my main workstation.
While still using Ubuntu for wanking/banking on a seperate workspace. Seemed to work OK once it had a couple of gigabytes of RAM in it.
Why bother wiping it? :-P
Steven R
Being an atheist, I could quite happily pull apart that entire post with counter arguments and examples of just how utterly, utterly wrong you are on every point, but instead, I think I'll post the definition of "Bigot" from Wikipedia:
"Bigot is often used as a pejorative term against a person who is obstinately devoted to prejudices, even when these views are challenged or proven to be false or not universally applicable or acceptable."
Because it fits perfectly. I think there is an irony of someone railing against atheism [and presumable being religious in some way - otherwise you'd be describing yourself, surely?] fitting the above description so well, but I'm too lazy to tease it out.
At least I don't make baseless accusations about peoples character and lifestyle based upon nothing more than a word used to describe their religious leanings, or lack thereof. I make decisions about people based upon what they say, do and behave.
I have decided that you are a bit of a twat, and a bigot to boot, not based on the idea that you *might* be religious, but based on the fact that you are clearly incapable of separating 'religion' and ' character and behaviour of an individual person', which is the mark of a true idiot. And as we all know, idiocy transcends all religious barriers...
Thanks for the opportunity of a Friday afternoon rant, I'm off to the pub :-)
Steven R
"So you mean this revolutionary idea is the same one the BBC has had for how long now?"
Well, sort of, but I dare say Amazons business model is different - lets see you watch the latest DVD releases on BBCi or iPlayer or whatever the fuck it's called these days.
Also, with iPlayer, everyone who has a TV license pays for it, regardless of whether they have the capability to use it - I expect that Amazons service would be selective or subscription based. Opt-in, as it were.
So, um, it appears to be a cross between iPlayer and Netflix. Well, if you are going to plagarise, do it from the best, as they say.
If the price is right, it might cause casual film downloaders to use it instead of BitTorrent - christ knows, some of the stuff..er...my friend, downloads is of such shitty quality that streaming it from a decent source for a couple of quid with access to it for a couple of nights [or unlimited access for a tenner a month or so] might make my, er, friend, cut down his, er their, overall bandwidth usage and free up my, er, their hard drive for more extreme donkey porn.
I mean, network diagrams, system charts, expense accounts, tax returns and other prosiac and state sanctioned shit.
*cough*
Steven R
*hee-haw* "Quiet down, Dobbin"
The number of times I worked 70+ hour weeks when at a Computer Planet *cough* store as a tech, and got paid for 37.5 because I didn't authorise my overtime "in advance" is quite staggering.
Mind you, I was young, naive and not nearly as militant about these things as I am now.
These guys should watch their back though - callcentres, as noted, are easily outsourced, not to mention just plain old resited somewhere that has, shall we say, less restrictive workers rights....
Steven R
Blimey, first ruling that having farming land as setaside is a Bad Move now that there are food price issues, and now giving the Phormulaics a kick up the arse about privacy.
If the EU does something else useful this week, do we run the risk of the universe disappearing instantly?
[and being replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable, of course]
Steven R
You might want to actually *read* the article first:
"Sony's done this kind of thing before, but here it works on the fly with no need for a re-boot."
eight out of ten for effort, zero out of ten for observation, and minus eleventy out of ten for attempted-journo-pwnage.
Anyway, if it's anything like the Sonys I have used/supported over the years, the switches will fall off within twelve months!
Steven R.
So, your computer at home was connected to the internet without any kind of protection, and you got what appeared to be a remote exploit, or at least some kind of potentially malicoius code run on the machine.
You then took it into work and exposed your works network to your machine?
"Well, I've got home, locked the house doors, and set the alarms. Now, I'm going to juggle with nitroglycerine because what with the doors being locked and the alarm being on, I must be safe, right?"
Do they do the IT equivelnt of Darwin awards yet?
Steven R
Here's a few quick, moderately rambling answers:
Working from home, for one - from my own experience, I can do a large swathe of my work from home now - outwith the fact that the works DSL connection has a measly 288kb/sec upload speed - it's horrifically painful to use.
Video calling - currently feasible, but it's not exactly fantastic quality, and often laggy and generally not as coherent and usable as the dog and bone. Yet. Current webcams can easily outresolve [in terms of lens and sensor capabilty] the sort of bandwidth most DSL lines offer if given the right software, so are being wasted for that function.
Gaming - as more and more people start getting into online virtual killing/racing/god-simming with current consoles featuring it as a standard part of most games, having a crappy upload limit means that if a couple of people on your ADSL line are playing playing BF2, and you go to use VOIP/Video-nattering, one of the two parties is going to suffer.
And god forbid you might want to host your own website/FTP space - or accessing, say, Slingbox content when not home.
Like, say, at work, during a particularly dull meeting. Give 4G networks a chance to standard expected mobile data access speeds up and you could stream SDTV at broadcast quality to your iPhone 4G/Nokia N9x/etc with stereo sound. Lovely.
Loads of good reasons to whack fibre in I reckon. I could go on, but if I sit here thinking up more reasons I'll never be up in time and will be forced to sully myself with the aforementioned remote access system at work. I shudder at the very thought, and not in a good way.
Steven R
...and lets face it, that's a big, and unlikely if - and are forced to allow OS X to run on non-apple hardware - how long before people start slagging OS Xs hardware compatability/reliability/etc as much as [insert your favourite OS here]?
If it did go against Apple, seeing Mac fanboys on the defensive proper for once would be a laugh, and this will make for some interesting reading as it plays out, I suspect.
Tux - because he and his chums have been fighting the hardware compatability/drivers stories for yeeeeears.
Steven R
This is like the stupid little pricks who have moved in to little villages near Donnington Park race circuit, and who complain about the noise from the race days - and even the public track days that are limited to 95dB.
Perhaps you should have checked that out before buying your house?
Steven R
[I'll leave out the fact that they don't complain about being next door to an international airport - because race circuits don't provide them easy access to the seedier parts of Europe, obviously...]
My god, I have just remembered how I set that old 486 of mine to boot.
Mod'd Autoexec that gave a menu of either Doom, Doom II, Heretic, DOSShell or WfW3.11
God, those were good times :-) DOSShell pwns Win 3.11 for ease of use and speed.
Steven R
PS: I turned 26 last weekend and now feel very, very old!
I used to work in the test dept at WGC, and there were a couple of Win 3.11FW machines in there. That was a few years ago.
I can remember my 486 SX25 with 4Mb of RAM struggling to play a 160*120 [or similar] MPG file from a double speed CDROM in Win 3.11FW. What a fucking chore.
And then my mother killing the machine by switching it off when I was compressing the[120mb] hard drive. I think i was eleven or twelve at the time.
Ah, physically changing IRQs to get sound cards to work, so much better than Plug'n'Pray and Windows Vista Hardware install [which sometimes tells me I need a restart to install a USB stick - I mean, WTF?].
Bring back jumpers.
Steven R
All bitching and moaning about smartphones.
Nokia 6650d, T-mobile, 600 mins, unlimited texts/data, does teh odd bit of intermanet browsing I occasionally need down the pub when someone suggests a good festival/concert to go to and I want to google it, does my gmail, and makes a good fist of making calls and sending texts.
you can take your N95/TYTN/iPhone and stick 'em up your arse :-)
Steven R
"What will they do at the start of the night, when noone wants to be 1st on the dancefloor?"
Most of the time when I have been in nightclubs early, there have been a couple of fat chicks who have been drinking since midday dancing round their handbags.
I always wondered what they were doing - and now we know.
"No wonder the world hates their IT departments. You''ll all a bunch of nerds."
You'll regret saying that when your subnet drops out when you are trying to download your donkey pr0n.
I've been farting about with Macs, Windows boxes and Linux machines recently, and so far my favourite *nix is whatever is installed as the backend to my draytek load balancing router.
Mmm, failover, mmm.
Steven "Nerd" Raith :-)
Remember the old Ford Merkur? It's the Sierra to the Euro types, like myself.
My old man drove from Bradford to John O Groats in one, and through a mixture of careful slipstreaming and 'gentle high speed' driving [minimal acceleration/breaking, steering on the throttle at speed - the benefits of skinny tyres - cutting empty roundabouts and motorway bends, basically driving to exploit the traffic conditions etc] managed to pull 45mpg out of one tank on the motorway. Economy suffered once he hit the A and B roads beyond Inverness though, as he started caning it and did the last 120-30 miles in two hours flat. Which is pretty impressive if you know what those roads are like...
That's on a 1986, carb fed 1.8 liter Pinto lump giving 0-60 in about nine seconds and topping out about 120-130ish depending on how accurate the speedo is feeling and how much of a headwind you have. So 55Mpg from a Prius really isn't that special, not compared to the selection of EuroBoxes that can pull 45+mpg even when being thrashed into the ground on every trip.
The Prius is an interesting bit of kit, but it's not going to save the world. I personally look forward to a massive jump in electrical storage so that a two hour charge will give me a 400mile range in a medium sized, rear wheel drive and limited slip diff coupe, and also 400lb-ft or torque so that I can leave a set of 11's the length of a football field and take every roundabout with a dab of oppo lock. Or crash, whichever is more likely. Possibly the latter.
Although doing it with a flamespitting straight 6/V8/V12 would be much, much more fun, obviously.
In europe we have had stupendously high [compared to the US] gas prices for years, and the european manufacturers have dealt with it. The reason you are so amazed at the Prius - and we are not - is because, as you rightly state, you have never seen a car pull 40mpg before.
Welcome to the club mate. It's only going to get worse...
Steven R
"I don't understand why Google have to take their pictures in the middle of the day when people are out and about. They should run their photo safari in the early morning around sunrise."
A good point, with only two drawbacks:
1) Logistics - you are wasting, especially at the moment, a good 12-15 hours of good light time if you only go out at dawn and dusk.
2) Logistics - you are wasting, especially at the moment, a good 12-15 hours of good light time if you only go out at dawn and dusk.
I realise that's actually the same point twice, but I felt it was important enough to warrant repeating.
Apologies to Grant and Naylor, obviously.
Please come back when your head is screwed on - you are talking about making a couple of weeks of driving around various large cities instead take a several months. All on someones chargable time. [never mind the C-charge in London...assuming the vehicle isn't leccy/LPG anyway]
Steven R
"The government pays farmers to not grow crops - they call this set-aside. Now they say we must all buy less food because there's a shortage. But they are the ones paying farmers not to grow it!? I say it's time for set-aside - set-aside the government that is."
Your wish is my command:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4282134.ece
For the devoid of clickability, the story is about how the smack, sorry, poppy fields of Norfolk are under threat because the EU wants to abandon set aside [where the poppys grow] to bump up food production.
At last, Europe doing something useful. Provided that should they end up with food mountains again, they do something useful with it, such as paying farmers a reasonable rate for it and include it as part of aid packages to third world countries.
Certainly be more altruistic manner of dealing with it than calling it 'biofuel' and wanging it in an incinerator - we should really have better power generation methods than that by now [nuke, for example].
Steven R
PS: Set aside is good for goofing about in cars though...
Yes, you get up to 1100 minutes for around £30 on 3, so you could go for 700mins and 400 texts.
T-mobiles £30 is 700 mins, unlimited texts*, and unlimited** data if you go for the free web'n'wank. I mean web'n'walk. And you can get a nice shiny HSDPATW4T phone for free [not the case on PAYG] which has GPS and mapping. So you can watch pr0n on your mobile, then use Google Maps to find a strip joint for when pr0n just isn't enough.
So you can be pendantic all you want, but I think on *overall value*, T-mobile has most other operators pipped there. And I think the problem is that they failed to market it as that.
I looked into this pretty closely as I was wanging about £25-30/month into my mobile, and fancied getting something out of it. Shiny phone and inclusive data ahoy.
Steven R [currently on the above plan, with a Nokia 6650, which is really rather nice]
*yes, FUP obviously - the lass on customer services reckoned it was actually unlimited but I doubt it.
**yes, another FUP, but it's about 2gb, which is plenty for a mobile...
"It is an overwhelmingly male-dominated area, though. Do you not agree? Of course women go mad under the circumstances. I myself am this far from laying waste to the whole gaff with a golf club."
Well, yes, and I concur entirely - but then maybe that's just my incredibly short fuse when dealing with idiots. I prefer molotov cocktails and a lump hammer to finish off anyone that the cocktails don't.*
I think I should get out of tech support, and move into, say, scrounging off the dole. Better quality of life socially, and probably financially as well overall.
Steven R
Flames - well, molotovs, innit?
*not strictly true - I actually go home and have a G+T to unwind, but it doesn't sound as good, does it?
"Perhaps the tall, handsome, fragrant, long-trousered men of IT who are surely lurking out there could step up. Chaps? This is an emergency. Come on. Sort it out. I'm waiting. And so is S&LiAR."
I am tall, aware of personal hygene, and correct trouser length. I can't comment on the handsome side obviously, that would be awefully presumptious of me, and it's subjective anyway.
I am, however, a borderline sociopath with nihilistic leanings. Whats a major personality disorder between fiends, sorry, friends, though?
Anyway, on the point of tech support males being useless, what about 99% of women in tech support - I've *never* met a woman in proper tech support [especially desktop support - network support lasses seem calmer] who don't have some kind of personality/psychological disorder - they all seem to be alcoholics, cokefiends, show signs of bipolarity[swinging between mania and depression] or are just generally appearing to be trying to make up for the fact that they are working in a 'mans world'.
Can't we all just learn to get along?
Steven "What do you mean, no, we can't?" Raith
[Paris, because she's potty enough to work in tech support too]
How do you know what a big penis sounds like? had one close to your ear? ;-)
I'm a bit iffy about wave power projects after whatever toss Osprey tried up in the pentland firth....er....fell apart, shortly after being trialled.
And that is all I have to add.
FAO pedants and those taking this seriously - all I wanted to do was make a ghey joke, don't bring up facts and figures about the Osprey project please, ta :-)
Steven "Currently a bit pissed" Raith.
"Slap on some decent telescopic optics and you could have farsight etc. "
Sorry, it can't see through walls and track enemies, as such, it's not a FarSight XR20.
Besides, all that three seperate cameras would mean is three sets of optics to zero in before you can accurately lay down fire - three sets of windage. Useless outside of CQB situations where you can just spray 800RPM over a twenty foot cone.
What this needs is a single lens that can be aligned at a closed range beforehand, then have the whole weapon, sights and all, just taken off the rack and used - hence why DARPA needs to work on something with a single optical barrel, but with multiple input feeds built in to it to pick up the IR/low light/straight light from one optical setup. Less alignment, no manual switching between straight light-red dot/starlight/IR viewfinders.
I think. But I have had multiple beers which means I can see in the dark anyway. He says, hoping not to trip on his shoes on the way to bed....
Steven R
Alien, becuase after this much beer, I don't think I'm on this planet any more...
A T-mobile Nokia 6650 to review? I'll accept payment in afternoon beers, plus 17.5% extra in peanuts.
Oh, and I have a younger female friend [she's old enough to drink legally - I'm not that bad] who seems to be really quite enamoured with me. Her on-again/off-again boyfriend has habit of being a complete tit with her and hurting her all the time, whereupon she comes to me for support. She's a good lass and could do far better.
My question is, should I convince her to chuck the bloke, and then take her for myself?
And
If I *do* take advantage of her trust in me, will I go to hell for it?
Oh mighty Moderatrix, I pray you shall push your opinion on me and force me to comply with the aid of nipple clamps and the cat o' nine tails.
Steven R
While I'm not prepared to rule out Eccleston making a reappearance, what you see in that shot is someone in a dark top with cropped hair with their face behind their hand - anyone sitting like that, from that range, with cropped dark hair, could be passed off as Eccleston. Hell, I'll get a No2 all over, throw on a dark top and a my black bomber jacket, hide my face behind my hand and I'll pretend to be Eccleston if you like.
Alas, your theory is blown by the fact that there are several shots of this person later on [I'm *utterly* positive it is the same person as in the initial wide shot] and it clearly isn't Eccleston. Unless he has had pretty major facial reconstruction surgery.
Hope that helps.
Steven R
PS: No, I have no idea why I am up this late on a Tuesday night posting about Dr Who either. I think it's a bad thing.
By the time you are 18, you are trusted to get married, start a business, go bankrupt and get a divorce because the missus doensn't want to live with someone who can't keep a business running. But you aren't trusted to be able to drive.
If your parents want to keep tabs on you at that age, to that degree, then your best option is to tell them to give you the £300/$500ish, put it towards a deposit on a room/studio flat and move the fuck out, sharpish.
What next? Wrist moniters so that your parents know how many times a day you are making Baby Jesus cry?
[although I suppose it would be a good reason to get a woman, eh?]
Steven R
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the Lord flipping the world the bird! Is this an omen?"
<bit of bill hicks>
"The Prince of Peace is back....
...and he's pissed off!
"I said I'd be back - but I didn't say what kind of mood I'd be in""
Mind you, I'd be pissed off if I had been crucified, resurrected, buggered off for two thousand years, come back and find that all my devout followers want to do is worship what I was slowly, painfully killed upon.
</bit of bill hicks>
Sorry, couldn't help it.
I'm going to hell, and you're all coming with me...
Steven R
...fraudulent emails?
Christ, the systems I look after are utterly nothing compared to this, but even I don't take the advice of a fucking email to confirm a config change of any kind - I confirm these things in person, or at least on the phone if it really, really can't be done in the flesh.
I'm trying to work out how someone could have put this through without triple checking it - I mean, it's ICANN, not BobsPlumbers.co.uk for gods sake!
Steven R
"Well now, you won't be needing all those fancy lenses whilst shooting your pr0n now, will you?"
Actually, having a good, wide lense [F1.8 or less] is good for shooting indoors without full studio lighting - means you can get decent shots without ramming up the ISO, etc. If you want a decent, cheap, sharp low light lense, the Canon F1.8 50mm is great for the £60-70 it will cost - really punches above it's weight/price when stepped down, and gives really good results wide open too.
Comments regarding the lenses are correct also.
"Unfortunately Canon charge a small fortune for their lenses. Sigma is a reasonable bet though.
I looked at getting a lens nicknamed the Bigma, a 50 to 500mm lens offering some serious zoom capabilities. Imagine my shock and total failure in justifying the outlay after realising it costs £500, and thats your typical 'Ebay special' price.
Digital compacts can sometimes offer a 500mm equivalent, aroundabouts 10x zoom depending on your cameras sensor size for a fraction of the combined cost.
If you're not going to make money from your photography, and in this day and age, its difficult, its just not worth the outlay if you're poor like me! Its all too easy to justify it in your mind by 'saying' you're going to get my photos published, but you know it wont happen!"
You clearly don't take it seriously enough. ;-) As I'm sure you know, the Megazoom SemiSLR lenses are compromised by their low build costs [compared to a good Tamron/Sigma/Canon unit] and the fact that they have to cover a simulated 300mm+ range. Also, they don't tend to offer enough adjustability. Not for my tastes anyway. And Electronic Viewfinders make me want to hit people :-0
I covet my mates Sigma 70-200 F2.8, and I am prepared to sell a kidney for it.
Well, some guys kidney, perhaps not mine...
*pats 300D + Tamron 28-75 F2.8 XR Di LD*
:-)
Steven R
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