Posts by dodge 88 publicly visible posts • joined 30 May 2007
Right, so several super clever little monkeys have seen the twat-o-tron, found it funny, and are now using it to post replies. It gets old a bit quick, though...
For both the people who haven't yet seen it, it's here http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/the-twat-o-tron/
And now that you've seen it, and laughed at its ironic brilliance, please don't use it. Irony is funny, palgiarism is not, and plagiarism of a bot is just sad.
LOL is for losers. The smart people use onomatopoeia:
he he or hee hee for something laugh-worthy
heh for an amused interjection
tee hee to a witty aside
ah ha ha ha for dry retort to lame joke
hyuck hyuck when laughing at someone you dislike's misfortune
bwaaa ha ha for belly laugh or heavy mocking
fnar fnar for use with innuendos and similar
ha ha ha bonk for laughing you head off.
That is all. Carry on. Paris because she's not seen a lot of public action lately.
It would be great ... hack the system so that the generals back home think some key units are being wiped out, triggering a retreat, then in the confusion -really- wipe them out.
Or vice versa. It could be enormous fun messing with their minds.
Why don't they all just go back to swords? People still get to die gloriously, but it's SO much cheaper.
Sigh. I hoped I'd not have to spell out the blindingly obvious, but I guess not.
>One way or another, the right and freedom that you exercise in flapping your lips
>and spouting your liberal claptrap was secured by people willing to fight (and
>sometime die) to secure those rights.
People fight and struggle. Once they used to brain each other with giraffe femurs or stabbed them with some sharpened dung. But now technology allows them to maim and mutiliate not one, but THOUSANDS. Without even getting off their chair. That people fight and struggle is tautology. That the arms industry profits out of this, and escalates it by investing valuable resources into it is the fault ONLY of the arms industry and it's customers.
It's like saying "lawyers are needed, otherwise who'd protect us from the other lawyers"? Remember the bit about circular arguments? Your argument, AC@14:12, is circular and spurious. And I suspect you're one that never goes closer than Discovery Channel from actual armed conflict.
People fought and died stopping the Nazis -- because the Nazis had awesome weapons. No weapons, no problem. Or at least, less spent on developing super-duper weapons, less of a problem. And when you spend zillions building weapons, the temptation to use them is pretty damn strong. It's a solution looking for a problem. And most of the time, it finds one. Or makes one.
I love insane science and awesome tech prowess -- but let's not forget what military tech is being used to do. And that is maim and kill. Rather build awesome Priuses that look like Star Trek shuttles. Actually, dont. Sink it into F1 and better paragliding kit.
Yeah - good point, well made! The untold billions spent on the arms industry would never have been better spent in non-military research. The unbounded misery caused by wars and conflict are absolutely justified because we get to have Hummer H2s and longer-range Boeings.
I can absolutely see the harm-reward balance there.
Oh good, nothing like loads of sloppy love-ins for the death machines. So tell us again why the Reg thinks slavvering coverage of military hardware belongs on an IT site? And why there is no ethical considerations applied to these stories?
Lewis, you may get a hard-on from military stuff, but please do remember that it's used to KILL PEOPLE. Talking about it purely in terms of the military's euphemistic performance descriptions is shallow and craven.
I drive past a guy with a tin can at a traffic light every morning with one arm, and one leg. The other bits were blown off by a land mine.
Now piss off with your cheering parade for the arms industry, where companies build ever more horrific weapons to take on other manufacturers horrors justified in a cynical circularly referencing argument.
I'd love to see how many of those UK arrests were actually turned into prosecutions (i.e. the authorities demonstrated that they had enough evidence to actually move forward in a case, rather than quietly letting go the islamo-goth (thought all Muslim chicks wore black?) or random poor sap guilty of being brown in the wrong house).
And then see how many of these prosecutions actually resulted in a guilty verdict.
That, maybe, is a reasonable reflection of terrorist activity. Accusation /= guilt.
Web proxies are pretty much a non-starter. If you live in Syria, or any country not in Eur/US, Web proxies are far too slow to be useful. Watching a Web page render with glacial slowness so that you can post your blog entry on some dire politico shenanigans? You'd have to be pretty determined. And have a _lot_ of time on your hands.
Strategy Boutique actually came up with a really awesome logo, but someone forgot to delete several draft layers when they hit "flatten image" and "save".
And as someone who works in brand consultancy, I'm still fighting down dry heaves. Probably not that unlike their "customers' expectations".
How about doing something about that stupid master password feature, which, if not enabled, leaves your login credentials (username, password, server) open in FREE TEXT with just a few clicks of the mouse. That's how it comes configured BY DEFAULT.
Tried submitting this bug to the support forum, but their posting engine was playing up.
And being able to jump to the first letter of a sender/subject in a column by hitting the corresponding key (like almost every other app on the planet) would be nice too...
And having a decent send/receive that checks all your accounts without you having to resort to a plugin.
And improving the pig-ugly interface.
But apart from that it's fine.
~R
I've not been able to get definite evidence of it, besides sales/tech people at various disties stories, as well as some very strange behaviour while testing Logitech/MS hardware, but I believe some of MS' hardware uses Logitech innards -- notably Web cams.
Things like MS device drivers barfing when installed on machines with Logitech drivers installed -- and MS KB saying a fix when MS device drivers don't work is to remove certain keys referring to Logitech devices.
MS hardware can be good (keyboards, mice) but mostly it's some good quality hardware designed into stupid packagning with idiotic focus-group defined features, with kludgy drivers (sometimes not even signed according to MS own driver signing standards!) and software that keeps trying to force you to use Microsoft services ("NO! F#CK OFF! I DON'T WANT TO USE F#CKING WINDOWS LIVE! I TOLD YOU THREE TIMES ALREADY!)
A couple of guys have been trying this for a few years on leisure sail boats, but it's a lot harder than it looks (the kite falling out the sky in lulls mentioned above is just one prob). See http://kiteforsail.com/ and http://www.kiteboat.com/kb_killer_kanaha.html
From the comments above, it's clear that most readers misunderstand how power kites work -- they act like wings generating lift, not like giant parachutes.
I also rather think the global warming skeptics utterly miss the point again... burning lots of oil inefficiently creates air pollution, wastes resources and ultimately costs companies and ultimately consumers more money. Whether or not you believe CO2 causes climate change, reducing air pollution, saving fuel and reducing costs are good. Even right-wing economic conservatives with a borderline-sexual obsession with the Wonders of the Free Market System can see that, surely?
Just ask yourself. What Would Bill Gates Do?
Run so much better than those airlines of them furrin' asians or them olde westerners and stuff who just can't seem to crack it and show off by spending untold billions on planes. No, Emirates is not more profitable because it is covertly state-funded in a million subtle ways, allowing it to spread and pour capex into infrastructure back when all other competitors were in retreat because of SARS, etc.
Aren't you glad that your petrol expenditure is helping to finance Airbus?
What, I ask with tears in my eyes, has UK Gov's use of Open Source components got to do with ANYTHING that the good Dr Pugh is concerned about? It's playing wonderfully into MS' hands to conflate "open standards" with "open source" and then "lack of quality standards".
Not supporting Macs or Firefox users (anywhere from 5-20% of total population) has nothing to do with open source, it's about observing documented industry standards and basic Website design professionalism.
When did "lazy, sloppy MS-centric app and Web development" come to equal "meeting our needs for quality or security"?
I tested one of these, it's complete pants. Yes, it's uncomfortable, yes, the buds don't really fit IN your ears, nor ON your ears (so intrusive AND don't block out noise), blurb says they're "adustable"... which is not strictly true, you can only rock the whole unit up or down. Sitting on a highish-backed chair? Bulge at the back keeps bumping annoyingly.
Music sound quality? Average at best for BT headset, well below a set of wired earbuds. Call sound quality? Average. Repeated breaks in connection? You betcha.
The controls are annoyingly hard to locate by touch, and they're so incredibly sensitive that just brushing them knocks it to the next track/volume up or what have you. I didn't try, but buyer reports I've seen say that using it during gym (i.e. sweating) toasts them. So bang goes their USP that they're good for "active use".
Basically most BT headsets suck, so rated against them it maybe deserves a 70% rating versus the best possible BT headset. As a product on its own it gets about a 50% rating ito it's intended functionality.
YMMV.
"The decision 'dashes the hopes of employers that contractual class-action waivers will be an effective tool to stem the flow of debilitating class-action litigation," Colleen Regan, the attorney representing Circuit City told The Times."
Whoa... how about this for a revolutionary idea... how about not geting sued by abused employees because you bribe them with fair salaries and actually compensate them for work they do for you?
Where's Arthur Scargill when you need him?
So if Orange stuck a mast in your garden, lots of ingorant RF-fearing luddites would want to pay less for your house. Maybe it's because radio masts are big and ugly*? Maybe it's because people have a fear of the unkown, exacerbated by rampant disinformation from tin-foil hat wearing brigades?
And this has what, exactly, to do with the issue of an existing mast being taken off a building because some tumerous wrinklies are tilting at windmills?
But Orange would probably pay you several thousand pounds per year to have the mast there, so that'll make up for your lower sale-price.
* PS there's a South African mobile phone mast manufacturer that's genius at disguising them as trees. You can choose from portly pine tree or perky palm. See www.envirocom.co.za
The Top Cop makes a very good point... the increased criminalisation of law-abiding people. If the cops now assume you've either committed a crime, or will soon commit a crime, the message will be driven through to people that they're all essentially criminals just waiting to be prosecuted.
And if I'm going to have the hangover anyway (suspicion, records about me, etc), then the moral ground shifts rapidly towards normally (mostly) law abiding people starting to think that doing something a little bit illegal is justified by the fact that they're already assumed to be a little bit criminal.
And that's a road we don't want to go down, do we?
@"To all the It-could-never-work-ists" --- sorry, you've got it hopelessly wrong.
You spin on your chair, and once you're moving you keep moving, using negligable energy, apart from slight friction losses. Hook yourself up to a dynamo and you'll find you slow down fairly quickly.
If you want to take energy out of a dynamo, you have to put energy _in_ to the dynamo. Which means putting your feet on the ground and kicking. What, you think power stations burn all that coal and gas and uranium when they could just take some spinning office chairs and hook them up to the units?
And @E=MC2, that equation defines the relationship between mass and energy, it's got nothing to do with the "First Law of Thermodynamics" (matter can't be created or destroyed, it can only convert from one form to another), which was elucidated a hundred years earlier than our woolly-pated Austrian.
The problem is not that the idea won't work -- it could. It is absolutely true that people stepping on tiles that sink could generate power. The problem is that the ideal is unworkable on a practical level, and to such a degree that it suggests the two MIT rocket scientists are about as ignorant of physics and engineering (and basic common sense) as a 3-year old child.
Oh lord, how do you get to become science editor of the Telegraph? By being a credulous imbecile?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/07/31/eacrowd131.xml
They demonstrate a proof of concept where a stool lights up some LEDs when you sit on it. Oh wow... that's going to certainly solve the energy crisis in mass transportation!
Roger Highfield, Science Editor, well done for being as gullible as all getout, and for not checking your facts, like how much energy a human actually generates when walking. 60W indeed.
Bunch of drooling imbeciles.
OK. So how about this... instead of mechanical linkages driving a dynamo (what kind of morons are these guys... do they have ANY idea how hard it would be to make an efficient design, let alone how expensive that would be to manufacture and maintain?), but let's rather posit a piezo-electric floor tile. No moving parts, and current generated is largely dependant on _pressure_, not mechanical movement.
So that's a bit better, although the amount of current generated would be pretty negligable.
But we're all trying to save the planet. Hordes of commuters marching up and down the platform would generate more than enough power to almost pay for the grouting between the tiles.
"Torture is an absolute necessity, and, personally, I do not think that is it such a bad thing to torture a person who is planning to explode a bus with civilians."
Oh well done voshkin. So how do you _know_ the person you are torturing is going to explode a bus with civilians?
Right, Mr Maybe Terrrorist, we're going to attach these wires to your gonads and ask you some questions. Are you planning on blowing up a bus?
No.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZTT!!! (shriek)
Nooo
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTT!!! (shriek)
NOOOOO
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZTT!!! (shriek) BZZZZZZZZZZZZZTT!!! (shriek)
OK, OK, I'm planning on blowing up a bus.
You bloody idiot -- not only do you run an extraordinary chance of torturing some muppet that was at the wrong place and the wrong time, but any information they give is likely to be seriously flawed. That's WHY civilised governments ban torture... you risk punnishing the innocent, you frequently get useless information, and you become the people you're supposedly fighting.
Let's see you defend the torture policies when it's YOU strapped to the chair with your nadgers in a vice.
I rather like the new logo. It's elegant, it's got a nice flowing line, the font has a nice balance. It's contemporary, it's a little bit zany with the curls (serifaroos?).
The old one with the wings just looked kooky. What, it's a roo-angel? The bewinged spirit of a kangaroo hit by a road train? Or did one of the plates just slip badly in final repro?
The previous logo is nice enough, but the roo looks like he's just clubbed his head against the right hand margin.
Now, can they stop mucking with their logo, and do something about their shite baggage policies and high prices?
Just to add to all the fanboydom, my first laptop was a PoS NCR (servicable, but only). Then I got the 701 "butteryfly". Even after having it for months I'd still sit opening and closing it watching the keybboard fold in and out.
It was the perfect design for a regular traveller - light, and compact (so you could use it on an economy class plane seat and actually have it fit on the tray table), but with a nice big keyboard for my fat fingers.
My next laptop years later was an X40, a great machine that survived infinite abuse.
The two best features of ThinkPads are the fact that the lid has a bezel that keys into the base when it's closed (protecting the screen and hinges), and the "Think Light", a small white LED in the lid bezel that can shine on the keyboard when it's dark (surprisingly and amazingly useful).
And the trackpoint is simply a vastly better pointing device than the trackpad.
Take a Tesla coil and measure the electric field around it.
Now the MIT bunch say that there is almost no electric field on their contraption (and magnetic and electric field are highly linked usually -- hands up the Right Hand Rule), and on their device even the magnetic field is constrained unless it is energising another coil. This is more like high frequency antenna/wave guide design than a couple of loops of copper.
I'd imagine one of those fluorescent "low energy" lightbulbs would make it go bananas, though.
And the point about the sheer numbers of crystal believers and magnet healers is very true. I suspect the MIT guys don't hang around many wholistic healing neighbourhood markets.
> We all remember how many times the Israelis have blown up the London Tube.
>Make sure we never forget they're evil no matter who the suicide bombers are.
Who is "they" in the "they're evil"? I seem to remember that the London Tube bombers were largely British citizens of Pakistani origin, who undertook their attack on fanatic religeous grounds.
The Isreali-Palistinian conflict may have religeous aspects, but it's fundamentally a territorial dispute, with Isreal illegally and brutally occupying land seized in violation of UN resolutions, and enforcing outrageously harsh security measures on adjoining Palestinian territories. It's a struggle typified by stunning over-reaction by Isreali forces (you throw a stone, we open fire with automatic weapons, you shoot a clumsy and inefective rocket, we send in F16s with cluster bombs), where Palestinian casualties are scores or hundreds-fold more than Isreali, and heavily biased toward civilians. And where Isreal constantly shelters behind a thin "but they're the aggressors trying to destroy us" line.
Reminds me of a joke...
A French, a German, and an Israeli go on a safari and are trapped by cannibals. They are brought to the chief, who says, "We are going to eat you right now. But I am a civilized man, I studied human rights at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, so I'll grant each of you a last request." The German asks for a mug of beer and a bratwurst. He gets it, and cannibals eat him. The French asks for three girls. He has crazy sex with them, and then follows the German onto the dining table. The Israeli asks: "Hit me hard, right on my nose." The chief is surprised, but hits him. The Israeli pulls out a Galil assualt rifle and shoots all the cannibals. The mortally wounded chief asks him: "Why didn't you do this before we ate the German?", the Israeli proudly replies: "Israelis are not aggressors!"
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