Posts by BorkedAgain 686 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Mar 2010
...the beams narrowly miss the target and set off small fireworks hidden in the walls nearby. And are rotoscoped in during post-production.
...and yes, I am the man who thought "Die Hard with a Vengance" was a documentary and changed the security in airports accordingly. Here, let me just fold my jacket into this tray for x-raying...
"Is it working?"
"no."
"It's broken*, then."
Call me a simpleton, but looks reasonable to me.
* leaving aside such alternative diagnoses as "switched off", "on holiday" etc as simply silly. If you're turning people away because your system isn't delivering the data you need when you need it then it's failing to deliver to spec, and may therefore be considered broken. Pedant. Yes, you.
...and my previous one's photo (taken in my mid-to-late-twenties, with fairly enthusiastic hair, a goatee and skinny face*) looked nothing at all like my current face (balding, close-cropped pate, clean-shaven, cuddly) and the worst I ever got was funny looks at Charles de Gaulle.
Of course, my new passport has all my biometrics and DNA fingerprint digitally scanned which makes me feel SO much better...
*It was the nineties, dammit. This was de rigueur. I was careful not to mention the burnt orange shirt...
Heavens to Betsy. I wouldn't have thought that it was unreasonable to assume a fundamental level of connectivity that comes as standard on a £250 netbook...
I'm guessing the list price of this taxpayer-funded hardware was EXTREMELY reasonable though. I'm right, aren't I? Of course I am. I'm sure you wouldn't have had to pay over-the-odds to order custom laptop hardware with the by-now-standard hardware spec trimmed down. That's be batshit crazy, wouldn't it?
Reminds me of Scratch, and will probably be useful in a similar way for extending the school curriculum beyond "how to make text bold" - I do like the interlocking blocks concept; helps make things clearer for beginners.
I have to agree with TeamEvil; if Mr Pogue wasn't able to get his head around something like this, then it may reveal more about Mr Pogue than about the platform in question. Just sayin'
I'll know more when (if) I get my invite. :)
Sure. Let the freetards beta the changes for us first, then roll out the properly-tested, properly-working new interface to us paying customers.
If you're mad-keen to try out the new UI, sign up to your own non-domain gmail account and play to your heart's content. You didn't have this new UI last week, so it's not like it's a major hardship keeping the status quo for a bit while Google log who screams and why...
...Rather liked it myself. Liked the collaboration, the ability for a newcomer to the wave to replay its history, the instant translation robot and the whole idea. Never quite reached a critical mass of colleagues or friends to make it actually useful, and I rather suspect that's what put paid to it in our case.
That, and the lack of integration with "old-fashioned" email.
It'd be nice to see it resurface in slicker form in Gmail or Google Docs or similar. For people who will miss the collaborative aspect of it, you could try using Google Spreadsheets to collaborate with; it's not perfect, but it's free and easy... ;)
I wonder what happened to the civil servant responsible for signing that outsourcing contract. In the real world they'd be out on their ear. My guess is that they got promoted to a slightly less damaging position and are now troughing away at even more public money.
Go on. Tell me I'm wrong...
Nothing wrong with Google Docs. It's an excellent collaborative tool and, run on the correct browser, can be extremely stable and capable. Comes with Wave too, which is where collaboration gets slicker 'n deer guts on a pump handle...
Ah. The correct browser... Probably best forget all of that, right? If they can't even choose the correct browser* with world+dog screaming the obvious in their ear, what chance their getting anything else right?
* Where, for the sake of argument, "the correct browser" is ANYTHING except IE6
You know, that strikes me as an extremely clever lateral-thinking solution! Roundabouts aren't generally used as anything but a place for traffic not to be. I don't know what the accidental destruction rate might be, but it isn't unknown for roadside boxes to get hit either, so...
Mr Loughran, I take my hat off to you. :)
I hope I won't come across as combative or argumentative here; I'm genuinely interested. What metaphors would you suggest to replace the desktop / windows / icons / mouse / pointer - based user interface that world+dog has gotten used to over the last couple of decades?
I'm finding it hard to imagine a different approach, let alone a better one, being so used to this one by now. Sounds like you have some ideas. Have you shared them with anyone yet?
Thing is, if you're working in, or have links to an academic institution, then there's going to be any number of Computer Science graduates looking for a postgrad thesis* subject, and building a pilot of your new interface on top of a Linux distro would be a sweet project. I'd jump at the chance myself if I hadn't all these pesky bills and clients to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
Just promise to share the results with us back here, eh? ;)
*this may even fall within the scope of an undergrad's final-year project. If he's REALLY good...
Was he asking for payment to refrain from posting the exploit?
I think he jumped the gun shamefully, but I wouldn't describe it as blackmail. That's not to say that there aren't a range of options of criminal and/or civil charges that might be brought, but I don't think blackmail is one of them...
I know a number of people who WANTED to vote Lib Dem but, being in a seat where the choice was between Labour or Tory, decided to vote Labour as the lesser of two evils.
Leaving aside for the time being the fascinating question of which of those two evils really is the lesser, proportional representation would have made the vote they wanted to cast count more, so they'd have been more likely to vote with their conscience instead of having to adopt a more tactical approach.
Or, to put it another way, the percentage of the Lib Dem vote was artificially low (by a minimum of two votes) because of the inherent unfairness of our FPtP system. It's a disgrace, but while the power keeps being passed between the two sides that the system is biased towards, it's unrealistic to hope for any change.
Perhaps now, with the power in the balance and Clegg's thumb on the scales, we may see some movement... *dreams...*
(I'm not scared of a coalition government. Look what a strong majority brought for the last few cycles...)
Golly. Think you may have over-reacted there a little? Okay, the previous poster made a bit of a rash generalisation. Insensitive, perhaps. By all means join the swelling ranks of people telling him off for that. But comparing the situation to the extermination of millions of innocent people in the early 20th century is (a) a bit silly and (b) a LOT insulting to the innocent people who were exterminated in the early 20th century.
Unless there was an extermination subtext in the original post that I missed, in which case fair do's. Flame on.
(or were you joking? If you were, then kudos to you. You came across as so sincere in your outrage, and you sure fooled me...)
An email client, office apps (WP, Spreadsheet, Presentation) and a browser seem to answer most needs. Oddly enough, we used to run this kind of software on old 486s, back in the day...
Obviously important techie bods like myself are the exception to this rule. The latest, shiniest, bestest hardware and software available on the market is an absolute necessity if I'm going to do my ever-so-important job. but for normal office drones I don't imagine this'll mean much more than an extra six months between hardware refreshes...
So I don't imagine the idea is to facilitate the leaving behind of fewer traces (for example) or blackmail (tinfoil hats are so last season) but probably to allow your web app's history entry to work better when you revisit the site after your session has closed, for example.
Or maybe they just did it 'cos it seemed like a funky thing to do at the time...
Or maybe, just maybe, it really is part of their secret plans to turn every internet-connected human being into an oompa-loompa...
Evil how, exactly?
I mean, possibly I'm being hopelessly naive here, but surely they've spotted something that would be a useful addition to Chrome OS, and liked it so much they bought the company.
Wouldn't it have been worse had they used their awesome scale and power to simply do their own version of the same solution in competition with the innovators, using their might and market position to drive the originators of the idea out of business? 'Cos they could have done that, and then the uproar would be deafening in its silence (because nobody would hear about it, that's why.)
I can think of worse fates for a tech startup than being borged by the chocolate factory...
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