Posts by PhilipN

Senior European Politician

Who's that, then?

Thought it was an article about Clegg.

Will die - no

Judging by the number of punters at the Surface counter at the local digi-shop compared with those at other counters, it is already dead*

*Save for corporations finagled into buying them in bulk

Would you Adam and Eve it

“Unintended” and “embarrassing” sounds like a two-word summary of the story of the Lady and the Apple

Mind wandered ...

While thinking about this remembered getting DV’ed the last time I called out the guy who holds up a long queue of the caffeine-desperate at rush hour by using a card - the kind requiring a VOUCHER to be PRINTED and then he has to find a space on a busy counter to sign the thing. Bastard! All for a 2 or 3 dollar/quid cup of coffee. Was he claiming it on Expenses?

Point of the comment is time was - the time of pen and paper - you could ask the restaurant to write a receipt for a lot more than the actual bill. Now that is how to charge expenses. Course none of us ever did that?

Who decides?

With acknowledgement to (a recent issue of) the FT, the C-in-C British Cavalry responded to the threat of WWII by ordering more fodder and second horses for officers, while the Wehrmacht busily developed the Panzer.

Easy to say he was a dumkopf but where did he have the authority to commission the design, construction and delivery of new battle-worthy tanks - and the formation of regiments to deploy them. And all else besides - a MAJOR and costly undertaking.

It wasn’t until it was almost two years too late that the politicians got organised.

So why don’t the MP’s put themselves under the spotlight?

After all, the soldier only does as he is told, yes?

Luxury!

Just this past weekend as chance would have it a live CD with the previous iteration of Elive on it was the first fossil I found in the drawer when I had to try and re-boot an old Mac Pro which had the flu. Booted, ran, GUI, the lot. Love it! Definitely will give this new-fangled version a twirl (knowing I can wind it back 5 years if the need arises and I shall be happy as a sandboy).

Connectors!

Cupboards-full and more all the time - all the way from serial, parallel, printer, scsi, FireWire 400 and 800, usb 1 through XX, Ethernet, and not forgetting vga, DVI-whatever, HDMI, power cables galore, audio cables with 1, 2, 3 or more jacks, optical, RCA, DIN, and now Thunderblah-blah 1, 2, 3 ....

But why is it -

1. The last critical connector cable is always two inches short.

2. That immensely valuable gender-changer at the bottom of the drawer turns out to be female-female instead of male-male.

Better stop here I’m getting angry

Too late : Ever tried counting the contacts on a scsi plug to see which frigging one it was? Sh**t!!

Wasp heaven

Cut the (bruised) top off an apple once and a fully-grown wasp staggered out from the core. He must have crawled in as a wee wasplet and couldn’t back out. Or was having a doze to sleep it off. Had no choice - after all wasps look and sound so ANGRY and the way they fly at you is so THREATENING - but to squash the b*****d.

Just imagine getting stuck inside a reasonably full barrel of cider and not even being able to drink your way out.

How to save humanity's self-respect

Brilliant idea - FB should freeze every single account - all of 'em - and require punters to re-register.

I'd be surprised if they have more than a few hundred million actual users. This whole chunk of the planet supposed to be on FB is bollocks.

"seized in as little as 24 to 48 hours"

Not clever.

Surely better to let them run and track what they are doing.

Hats off to Slackware

My Linux baptism was with Ygdrassil but blowed if I can remember whether I tried installing it from 5 inch floppies or those new-fangled 3 inch ones.

Dirty bomb

Newsworthy because of the chance to use the above epithet.

From which it follows all (hopefully) bombs in the world are "clean".

Phew! That's a relief. Had me worried there for a minute.

I got it!

To keep down the layoffs IBM put whole departments into suspended animation. They just woke up Notes.

Very clever.

Who’s next? The OS/2 team?

Some new directors have ties to Chinese elite, government

Urrrmmm .... ye-es...

This is China...so what else is new?

Key phrase

Oh I’m disappointed.

Given we are talking about calls to HMRC, I was hoping for an article praising us Brits’ creation of the world’s largest audio profanisaurus.

In other news :

Today's Financial Times :

"Facebook, Amazon and Netflix all closed at new highs"

Family unification has been a fundamental tenet of American policy and law since ..

Really? Could our brethren over there explain WTF about the above claim?

No, seriously I'd like to know.

Or has the writer been watching too many Disney movies?

As an aside, IAAFL and a cross-examining counsel would have a field day tearing a witness in the box apart over use of "fundamental", "tenet", "policy" and "law". Course the first question would be : "What was the tenet and policy before the Second World War?"

Now I understand

Straying this far from his brief of making the World a safer place (stop sniggering at the back!) I realise he thought conservation was something to do with the Conservative Party.

Walled Gardens

OK something to be said for keeping two systems functionally separate in principle but if you are the gatekeeper the openings in the fence could be selectively and more intuitively accessible from within each system. They must be there since this third-party app or that will help you to do things - such as sharing screens (e.g. Teamviewer), and seeing the output from a Home (TM) CCTV on a Mac (e.g. various) - which are not native to the system.

The Home potato patch surrounded by barbed wire in the walled garden - which I agree is a potentially very dangerous trouble spot for spreading potato blight - would have greater potential at least for me if I was not forced to handle it on a phone or iPad -

or a frigging Apple TV! Whose brilliant idea was that?

Pah! Away with your namby-pamby hobbyists

Look - first, young'uns, "chips" are not from potatoes. They* are Britain's finest. Grill a few extra to eat straight from the fridge, slightly shrivelled, the following day. Preferably with a slice of yesterday's toast which has absorbed all the butter. Best snack in the world.

Second, Walls's super size** - black on top and bottom. Sides optional. Wrapped in a slice of decent white bread with lashings of (melting) butter to compensate for the fat lost during the cooking process. Luxury!

* Sigh - kids today - "chipolatas".

** I hear you no longer have to pierce them with a fork?? What the hell is that??