Posts by Jason Bloomberg

Re: The cops also reportedly discovered at the home an IS application form,

And this is why the Home Secretary should be insisting the Royal Mail open all letters and checks them.

Yes, sarcasm. But I'm sure many of her right wing pals would support the idea.

Re: Wow. Just wow.

I cannot believe he was a seasoned captain.

Possibly another victim of "done it loads of times before and nothing bad happened".

In know what the law says about not driving faster than you can see/react

Never drive faster than your Guardian Angel can fly has served me well.

Probably wouldn't have helped here as I would have been looking over my shoulder trying to figure out what the fuck she was up to as I went over the edge of the missing bridge.

Re: The United States

Not to worry U.S. you are still the world champs at blackmail. (do as we say or... sanctions)

I would suggest not. The trick with sanctions is to make it a better option to comply than not. That usually rests upon complying or going it alone, with going it alone having big risks and huge costs. It's often pragmatic to suck it up and comply.

But cutting someone off shifts the choice to going without or going it alone. Which is a no-brainer and inevitably forces acceptance of those risks and costs.

It staggers me that America would walk this path, force China into upping her game.

Re: Kickbacks. It's always kickbacks.

a team of 10 could have delivered from any number of FOSS options

I suspect you are probably right, and maybe a script-kiddie in their bedroom could do better than what often is achieved.

But who's going to risk that when no one else does, when the usual suspects who ultimately get to do it have a vested interest in insisting it will be too complicated for anyone but themselves, that only they can and will deliver, when everyone else falls for their bullshit.

The false logic that they couldn't possibly fail given the eye watering sums they are charging, that anything else is too risky, usually wins the argument.

Re: Indeed

The electorate is going to punish him for this

You think so? And you think they are going to punish them by voting for parties who would go even further in re-establishing some sanity in our relations with the EU? Or maybe you think enough people will choose to vote for one of the parties of swivel-eyed loons to get them elected?

I don't see much evidence at all of anyone against rejoining Horizon, only the usual suspects who don't want us to have any relationship with the EU, hard right brexiteer extremists and their loyal fans, racists and bigots, who would rather see Britain destroy itself than have anything to do with the EU in any way.

The way I see it; this is a step towards giving leavers what they voted for, not what brexiteers keep pretending leavers voted for.

Most people appear to see this as one of the few things Sunak and this government has got right, that it was the delay in getting it which is lamentable. It won't save Tories from deservedly being put out of office, but that won't be because of this.

Re: Battery life

Easy. Fit a rechargeable battery and some sort of impulse recharging system in the calves and wrists and people can use it all day, every day. It will improve the health of nations as people are forced to do their 50,000 steps a day if they want to go online, and there will be no chance of it losing power just before the money shot.

Which led me to wonder what Captain Cyborg, Kevin Warwick, self-appointed test-bed for bio-engineering, is doing now? I haven't heard mention of him for a while now.

Re: Between morphng US regulations and RISC-V

China won't give up working to acquire the technology any more than the US or the UK would.

Some people really do seem to think, that if we deny China access to the things she wants, she will simply give up on her ambitions, accept it as her fate.

It's supremacist thinking to imagine China could never get to where we are, have what we have, without us. It's wishful thinking to imagine we can keep China five years behind where we are. That's an over-stated advantage anyway, and laughable when China already has the lead in some fields.

Trump's, and now Biden's, trade war has perhaps been the best thing which could have happened to China. Not so great for America. We'll have to see what comes of it for everyone else.

I'm guessing we'll benefit from what China achieves, be busy trying to figure out how to survive the nuclear winter, or frantically trying to learn Chinese.

Re: I'll assume this was America

It's not right, it's not fair and it's illegal in civilised countries (but it doesn't stop it happening, have a chat with the staff at your local petrol station and ask what happens if they get a drive off if you're in the UK)

It seems some cunts will want cashiers to cover the loss but decent people would consider those cunts as the cunts they are.

If it's a case of the driver coming in to pay, buying something else, and the cashier charging for that and forgetting about charging for fuel, it is more of a grey area, but even so, I would say a driver taking advantage of that is as guilty of a crime as deliberately driving off without attempting to pay.

Fundamentally no employee should be responsible for compensating employers for crimes committed by third-parties.

Re: Dates

I believe that everyone registers every year. 'Same as before' is just for convenience. So it's presumably anyone who was registered in any year between 2014 and 2022, which explains the huge 40 million figure.

If you are just blinding signing contracts without knowing what your signing then you have much bigger issues and REALLY need to get a lawyer to look over any paperwork before you sign it from now on.

It's Hobson's Choice really. Contracts will usually be overly permissive to start with and if you don't like the contract; "You can fuck off, darling. Next", and there are plenty of others willing to step forward and sell their souls to the studios and production companies,

How soon until being an extra becomes a thing of the past is hard to tell. When you need a Ben Hur quantity, perhaps, but for most productions it's probably going to be cheaper and easier to employ live-action extras, then faff about with CGI and all that's involved, for a while yet.

I am not cold-hearted enough to have no sympathy but it's a fact of life that some jobs do disappear over time. Change usually means losers as well as winners.

Re: Haha tricked ChatGPT yet again

[Read the question c a r e f u l l y. He could be anywhere]

Wouldn't walking one mile south, east, north, then west, and being back at the starting point, require the hunter to be half a mile north of the equator?

It's been a long, hot, sticky, icky day, so I might not be firing on all five cylinders.

But I'm pretty sure there aren't that many polar bears living near the equator. At least not out of choice.

Re: Female alien pilots?

I am sure aliens would have their own version of Elon Musk, who might have convinced their intrepid interstellar travellers that FSD worked better than it does.

Re: What about Starlink?

Why not Starlink?

Because BoJo's gang spaffed an unbelievable amount of money on buying OneWeb to further brexit dreams delusions of becoming a global space race player and they needed to do something, anything, to try and make that appear a wise investment.

Re: X11 logo?

there's only so much you can do with something as simple as an "X"

A few easy to add extra lines and you can have a convincing swastika - Which might be apt for the direction it seems to be going.

Re: Clear licensing terms

Soon after the Raspberry Pi launched Oracle were making a big thing of Java being 'free for use on a Pi' so, having decided to consider it as a possibility, I tried to find out exactly what that meant, what the licensing terms were, what was actually free and what wasn't, how much choosing Oracle Java would cost me.

That was a Fucking Nightmare (TM) and even the guy pushing Java for use on the Pi was never clearer than mud.

It left me feeling like I was being talked into being scammed or set-up in some way so I quickly concluded I would never use Oracle Java nor have anything to do with Oracle, ever. Fuck 'em.

Nothing Oracle has done since has convinced me I was wrong in that decision.

Re: Forgotten phlebotinum

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 s.49 and s.53 make it a criminal offence with a penalty of two years in prison to fail to disclose when requested the key to any encrypted information.

That it does is no good reason to accept its legitimacy.

We also know that Johnson saw himself as the new Curchill.

What bemuses me is that he could have achieved it by pushing for a tiered EU, which to me is where it always needed to be heading, and now seems to be heading, albeit slower than snail's pace.

He could have been the one hailed for having "got the EU sorted" but instead nailed his flag to the mast of a small minority of nationalistic and selfish bigots. His big mistake was to aim to win through division rather than through uniting.

Ironically his failure was lack of ambition, failing to understand how great he could have been.

The EU hasn't slammed the door on us since we stormed out but there's zero chance of us getting what brexiteers want, membership benefits without being a member, having our cake and eating it, which they always promised we would get.

We are indeed world leaders in duplicity, mendacity and sophistry but the EU can see right through that.

Even now brexiteers see it as some sort of god-given right to be given what they want and it's "punishing us" to deny them that.

We will only secure meaningful deals and make brexit work - if we don't abandon it, once the grown-ups take back control.

Re: Threads release in the UK

I'm still finding it hard to read that name "Threads" and get an immediate happy feeling.

I have always called posts and replies on particular topics in newsgroups and forums "threads" so it's just a shrug from me, no emotion either way; feels a reasonable name to choose.

The huge data grab which comes with it I could get emotional about but, as I have no intention of signing-up myself, it's still a "meh".

I might however pull the Threads DVD from the 'cataclysmic doom and oh shit" section of my bookcase to celebrate its arrival.

Re: I want COMPETENT, not cheap workers

It seems to me most successful countries will bring in immigrants as a 'not quite slave labour' force to do all the shit and low paid jobs the natives don't want to do, freeing natives up to get educated, advance themselves, and make their countries world beating.

But brexiteers want to to give our high-paid and skilled jobs to foreign workers while forcing natives to do the shit jobs no one wants to do.

I was never convinced they were batting on our side.

Re: FFS

Cynics. I am sure fibre will extend beyond the luxury properties into mud hut land. At least up to that point where that metric box can be ticked and they can go begging for another subsidy.