Re: It's sad

"Many school systems lack the resources to hire quality teachers "

quality teachers - warning ! entering area of high cognitive dissonance. Proceed with caution. The teachers are the problem - simply put , very few of them can teach. Admittedly, teaching is not easy , but then that is why they are paid so well, work such short hours and have such long holidays.

My personal favourite is the "pupil-free day" sort of like army intelligence , only the results are sadder.

Re: On a bush block in Southern NSW...

You obviously have a politician with a weekender as a next door neighbor. No adsl on bush blocks in northern NSW here, lucky to get it in the small towns.

Re: Now we might have a comparison

Do you mean the difference between the Microsoft Windows Tax and the Microsoft Android tax ?

They get paid whichever way they roll.

Re: “advance the bold vision”

"Then once you can rely on people's ability to discern pictures more quickly than words, "

The trouble is , when you know your way around the menus - the words become pictures, in that you don't actually read them , you scan down to the symbol (word) that you recognise by its position in the menu. you don't really 'read' them at that level.

Re: What's all this rubbish?

" I mean, who the hell decided we needed a smaller unit of measure, which would be approximately 0.3937 inches? "

Yep. Why would anyone want to measure anything to an accuracy greater then a furlong, perch , rod, bushel, chain, acre ? I mean come on now, why would you ? What good would it be ? What could you use it for ?

It was good enough for Grandad. Irony, isn't that a measure of how much iron is in a comment ?

Re: :-)

"..I know Freud was a bit of a cokehead, but I didn't think they went as far as crack teams"

Funny, how different people see this Freudian stuff, the crack I immediately pictured had nothing to do with drugs or fractured plaster . I was amused by the Freudian slip in the comment about psychoanalysts.

Re: Doesn't anybody watch '50s movies?

"duck-bill haircuts. Am I the only pensioner to read El Reg?"

No...this pensioner does remember duck-TAIL haircuts ;-)

Re: Is it really surprising....

Actually, going by their record, I'd put the U.S. at the top of that list.

Re: They may struggle with that one

"Can you say "prior art"?

since when has prior art counted in patent cases - can you say "rounded corners".

Re: Surely that's untrue?

"Measures we would reject as comically over-the-top might seem entirely reasonable."

Like the TSA ?

This is more likely just US propaganda - anyone sense us being prepared for another invasion ?

When it comes to paranoid in the extreme, us=nork . They have there gulags, US has Guantanamo.

Re: Bravo!

"I have never seen this sentiment better expressed."

Well put ! The first time I read it as - sediment. it worked just as well, i.e expressed through a screen door -Yuk.

"you can prove anything with statistics."

correction - you can justify anything with statistics. A subtle , but significant difference.

Re: Peer review the next big thing

" because my friends have a shitty taste."

Really ? Do you lick them or bite them ? Or did you mean, your friends do not have good taste ?

Re: Very cheap joke!

"And no. She couldn't be replaced by a rock. Lots of children would be very disappointed if she was."

And that explains it all - she's a kindergarten teacher and uses it for finger painting. Very productive indeed !

Re: One major difference

" Apple makes cheap ipods and unlike Samsung, Apple still own a very large chunk of the cheap mp3 player market."

Not where I live ! iPods are not cheap ~over $200. I have an android phone that cost $50, and makes an infinitely better valued device than an iPod, plays mp3's, use GPS, make phone calls, send texts, emails, apps, etc. etc.

From what I see, the only people that use standalone mp3 players, are kids whose parents don't want them to have a phone, for whatever reason.

maybe not the only ones.

"They make 2.5" portable hard disks with USB sockets soldered to the hard disk PCB instead of a SATA->USB convertor. "

I have a WD drive here with exactly the same set-up, I was appalled when I saw it, as it meant I couldn't swap drives in the enclosure if I wanted to. The upside was the drive including the enclosure was about the same cost as a stand-alone drive anyway.

Re: Bored of Blue LED now!

It's not "Bored of" it's "Bored WITH".

I hate "Bored of". It's horrible, it hurts my eyes, it's unnatural, it doesn't look nice, it's not trendy any more, PLEASE STOP IT, world!

That is all.

it is right up there with "try and do it" which to my eye reads as "you should try to do it AND do it "

what is wrong with " try TO do it " ?

Re: Now I hate Win 8 as much as the next man

"Ah, I remember back in the day when keyboard manufacturers hadn't been forced to incorporate an additional OS-specific function key into their keyboards for no good reason. "

I still use an old IBM model M - what is this Windows key, of which you speak ?

Re: Nice

"Frankly, I couldn't give a monkeys about the hardware - and not too much of a monkeys about the OS - as long as I can easily port my software from one platform (that means OS, newbies) to another."

So the fart apps are easy to port are they ?

Really balanced view of technology there - I am a developer, therefore software is EVERYTHING !

Grow up ! It is a symbiotic relationship software/hardware - either is useless without the other.

Re: The state of his marriage

"Maybe he should give her one."

Intentionally ambiguous ?

Re: duchessing

Actually, it's a term used in Australia to describe what the poms used to do to visiting Australian politicians.

You get them to do what YOU want, by wining, dining and generally impressing them with the the pomp and wealth of the mighty British Empire - then you knight them. Works like a charm with political hayseeds, and the poms are past masters of it.

Any profit margin is better than a loss margin, which is what a lot of these enterprises manage to do these days.

Why not keep it as a sideline to pay the CEO's salary package, no wait ! that won't be enough...damn.

Re: Oh dear...

Sorry, buddy, but you're not even on Obama's radar, let alone on his most-wanted list next to Assad and Merke... next to Assad.

it would be good if it was so, unfortunately, you are more likely to end up in gaol for life for copyright infringement than genocide with our present political leaders.

Re: ICS fail points docking

So 70 % for the new iphone ?

Re: Forget beer proof, is it Monsoon Proof

"I wrapped a laptop in two turkey basting bags, and two zip-lock monster bags and after a one-hour trip I had to dry everything and repack. Monsoons are hard taskmasters."

maybe you should have carried it in the car with you - instead of on the roofrack.

Re: Security?

I thought the VERY short range, meant the hacker would nave to be in your house with you. Wall penetration is very poor too.

Re: File managers?

Total Commander PowerPack makes it even better. You quickly forget that it handles everything transparently - until you have to use a machine with just Explorer on it. Feels like working with both hands cut off . just copy the whole directory to a USB stick and you can run it from there.

Re: Marketing must love this

I especially love it when they use the phrase "..downoad speeds of UP TO xxx mb/s..." - bearing in mind that 'UP TO' does include the number 0.

I take your point, but I dont really think a download speed of 0 qualifies as a download, I call it waiting.

virus compatible

"I have no use for it, but it is interesting."

Indeed, runs all xp apps - what is security like ? virus , rootkit , trojans run as if on xp ?

Re: Re: Re: And a more mundane consequence of non-jamming

Yes , local knowledge is a desirable attribute. For a real world example, my wife called a "Big White Taxi" after I passed out on the floor and vomited about a litre of blood.

Unfortunately, the government in there wisdom had decided to centralise the ambulance centre call-centres. So, instead of a local call-centre despatching a local ambulance the central despatcher 700klms away took the call and sent an ambulance to an address with the same street name but 120klms distant from me. After waiting an hour for the ambulance which did not arrive, she bundled me into the car and we drove to the hospital 20mins away in town.

Needless to say, I survived, no thanks to the ambulance.

"I've seen people text or IM and talk AT THE SAME TIME, at that point the texting/IM'ing is almost like a technological replacement for telepathy with your friends."

have you actually looked at the crap these cyborgs text. "gr8 lol" very intellectually challenging !

Yep. telepathy alright - communication between 2 mindless morons.

I'll gladly join Jake in the 20th century , if it means escape from these mobile twats.

I think he was right with the neo-luddite thing...the real luddites were just a tiny bit earlier than the 20th century.

Re: +1 for the Lelo Mia

+2 best buy ever. Great build quality, usb recharge, and inbuilt battery...win ,win, win!