Posts by Professor Clifton Shallot

Re: Another goddamned appreciation of the late, lamented Bill Hicks

"Stuart Lee is just bitter he's never been as funny as Hicks."

That's quite probably true but I think his article would have made Hicks laugh.

Re: "We all start out as just one cell"

"Well, to be technically correct, the best kind of correct, we start off as two cells, which is the fun part. These two haploid gametes then combine to form a single-celled diploid zygote."

Is there anything that could be said to be "us" before the zygote is formed?

Re: Sounds like IT tech word churn

I had a manager who regarded Gartner report in much the same way St Joan did the voices in her head.

Our actions were run to the dictates of these divine utterances and even if it lead to us being burned at the stake we could meet our doom face-on, consciences clear in the knowledge that we had done the Right Thing.

At its worst VM telephone support is the very worst I have ever encountered in any situation ever.

The do have some very good guys - but not many and not out of normal working hours in the UK in my experience.

If I honestly believed there was a competitor with an equivalent product and better support I'd switch but I've heard horror stories about all of them.

Re: It does seem as if its a bit of a hole @Tom

"Rosetta, ...is in orbit around the comet (not sure how this is possible without a significant gravity field

Apparently the initial orbit was powered (and triangular) then they moved Rosetta close enough that the limited gravity of the comet was able to smooth that out to a self-sustaining ellipse.

Apparently that was pretty straighforward compared with landing Philae.

No idea if that makes sense - I take all this boffinry on faith.

Re: TechMarketView need a closer look at what they're saying.

I think, although it isn't perfectly clear, that the AWS figure is global and the other is UK only.

Re: They were vegetarians not vegans.

Yeah, my dad always says his lettuces are not suitable for vegetarians.

Re: " write to us"?

I think it ought to be obligatory to allow customers to cease using a service via any of the means by which they are able to subscribe to it in the first place.

I had to cancel some unrequired web hosting by post, giving a fortnight's notice - was barely half a dozen clicks to sign up for it.

Re: A question of English?

"Many of the Eurocrats are just petty enough to do everything they can to ensure that a country which leaves will fail"

Doesn't need them to be petty - they have a direct self-interest in ensuring that if they can.

Re: 66

"Must re-apply the faeces to the sick I use to keep the hoardes of women away from me"

Wow, you would have thought the vomit on its own would be enough of a deterrent.

Re: How big...

Put it this way, it's had no complaints.

(Although as Nick Doody would have it, surely people would be more impressed if you said "I've had *complaints*!" But I digress.)

Re: Retrogression of the "Force".

"didn't the spacecraft in episodes IV -VI look more primitive than the craft in I-III"

They did indeed - which IMO fits with the move from a decadent, peaceful republic where luxury and status were important to a civil war where just churning out relatively efficient fighting machines took precedence.

Of course that doesn't preclude good design and while they don't match the elegance of Spitfires, the x-wings and tie fighters are iconic in their way.

Yes. App (/ subscription) sales volumes are much more relevant than hardware sales for this.

People already have the devices and are now casting around for things to do with them - for a certain subset, Office might be just the sort of thing they were looking for.

Re: Energy from a nail in a tree

Well I wood but I am not holly certain a beer is enough. Th row an order of chips in and it's a deal - I'm a hog any way you look at it.

Re: Boil pancetta (note splelling)?

"Every cocido I've had made by kosher Spaniards has had a proper lump of serrano in it"

Well, that might depend on just how kosher, they are!

According to some of the internets cocido does have its origins in the Jewish community but presumably without the porkiness.

@Dave 126

"I haven't yet used a Galaxy Note for long enough to judge it."

I've got a Note phone and a Note Pro tablet - the phone is a bit too small to really use the stylus on, although my girlfriend has come up with some decent impromptu sketches and it is handy if you are doing something where your hand might obscure useful information.

The tablet is a different matter - there's enough screen real estate to have a decent sized handwriting area (recognition is the best I have ever seen but as a former Newton owner I may be easier than average to impress) and drawing and sketching on something that's more like A4 size feels a lot more natural.

There's a tiny amount of lag - little enough that you stop noticing quite quickly but it is there - and obviously plastic on coated glass is almost friction free and so feels quite different from paper. (I might actually consider one of the lower-quality screen protectors to mitigate this).

For something completely portable it's in the 'good enough' bracket IMO.

Re: motivation

He was more interested in looking at the unintended consequences of even seemingly trivial instructions rather than paperclips per se but I do take your point.

Would "Make as many paperclips as we can profitably sell!" fit better?

It wouldn't take much imagination to see this leading to equally disastrous consequences.

Re: And the moral here is

"Don't buy a game until it comes out and you know you'll like it."

The dilemma here was that I wanted the game to happen and it might not have without being backed.

I'm perfectly sanguine about that backing not resulting in quite what I wanted but accepting that there was no guarantee that it would be perfect (for me) does not mean I'm not rather hacked off about the change they have made to the promised product and the way they went about notifying us of that change and handling complaints.

I won't be asking for a refund, and I will probably give the game a go at some point but that's quite a way from the excitement I originally had and I have to say that the whole experience puts me off Frontier and may even put me off funding other games in this way. Fortunately Wasteland has been quite a lot of fun so far which restores a bit of faith in the general idea.

Re: What about France ?

"What about France ?

"It is already 75 percent Nuclearified for its leccy. And no one seems to mind it or object . Been that way for many years."

France has an admirable dedication to energy self-sufficiency as a matter of national security and nuclear is a huge part of that but to suggest that no one objects when they build nuclear plants is way off the mark.

Apart from anything this is France and people object to almost everything almost all the time.

Nuclear gets the same sort of objections as it does anywhere,it just has greater government support and so a) there are better incentives (/bribes if you are that way inclined) for areas that accept the plants and b) it will happen anyway whatever anyone says

Sarkozy flat out refused to discuss the matter - the UK gives more of an ear to the NIMBYs and Green activists / nutters. Cameron did sign up for cooperation with France on nuclear power though so that may change.

Re: missing the point,@Sweep

you may find this interesting:

Yes, indeed. Thank you very much.

Purely anecdotal I realise but my Pebble goes longer than a week between charges (about nine days in fact).

The UI is obviously not very slick and (because) the screen resolution is low but that's a result of the focus on battery life which is the correct compromise IMO - it certainly made the difference between me stumping up on Kickstarter and writing it off as a silly gadget.

Personally I think they've done very well - initial production and distribution delays aside - largely through setting themselves achievable goals that were in line with what people would find useful rather than aiming for a wow factor with insufficient utility backing it up.

Re: The glaring philosophical issues of time travel

"when a couple of Star Trek characters travel in time ... it's as if they say "well, we just had an adventure that ... throws into doubt all our concepts of self, consciousness ,.. Let's never speak of this again.""

Well they are all already used to teleporting which raises pretty much all the same issues so I guess they have dealt with any cognitive dissonance.

Re: You what?

"About time the ethicists were told to bugger off"

Not a fan of The Only Way Is Ethics?

Re: I can't be...

My local Spar sells a range of scotch eggs including one that is made with a pickled egg and coated with salt and vinegar crisps instead of breadcrumbs.

I wouldn't say I prefer the egg pickled but it's certainly a good variation to have available.

Re: I don't know about the T&C's

What are your stretch goals?

I think it might be the case that these particular tablets are also being released running Windows on the same or only very slightly different (more RAM?) hardware.

So Linux ought to be no problem in terms of the capabilities of the device.

Excellent article. Thanks for the link.

Re: Sainsbury's, £25, job job

"Title says it all."

Some of it twice.

Re: We have purposefully chosen an intimate theatre setting rather than a large venue or stadium.

"we don't have a hope in hell of filling anything larger"

She sold the place out for 22 nights in 15 minutes (and tickets were not cheap).