Posts by Neil

"Convinced"

In this hand, I have a brick. In my other hand, I have another brick. See these two meatballs? Now, passwords please...

Small problems...

Oh good, little 13-yr old Jane is sleeping soundly in her room. I know that for certain because the GPS tells me so. There's no way she'd dare go out without it!

Or,

Girl gets grabbed by one of the millions of Pedos that seem to inhabit every town these days. "Hey, what's this bright thing dangling from your belt? Oh, one of those tracker things..." <open window, throw away gadget>.

Soooo....

Someone on Wall Street takes a while guess on what the profits might be like and gets it wrong. Somehow, this is Google's fault and the share price dips.

Why not cut the bonus of the Wall Street fuckwit that got it wrong?

Shocked #2!

That there are no Pentium/FDIV bug comments.

Unless there are by the time this appears, of course.

Of course

There are no new criminals - only the existing ones who will already show up. So that's a completely foolproof system, then.

Offsetting

This is all so Arnie can deflect the media attention away from the fact that he's been pictured driving a 13MPG 6.2l Dodge Charger around recently...

<not the same Neil as the one who wants an Electric Car>

Something similar

A mate of mine once tried to row out to Hayling Island (the one near Portsmouth? I think it's called that) whilst rather inebriated, using a boat he found abandoned on a beach.

Turns out the boat was abandoned because of the large holes, causing him to sink and be rescued by a convenient coastguard.

I'm still amazed

They haven't started chloroforming passengers on flights yet. Can't get agitated or hijack a plane if you're unconscious!

That's nothing

In Malaysia and Thailand (and probably other parts of SE Asia), it's perfectly normal to see 5 or 6 on a moped.

Scary

It's an interesting world when train (ok, bus), spotters are considered dangerous.

Oh dear...

This is just so wrong. But I really really really want one!

Registry offices?

Why no pictures of signing the register in registry offices? And why only in registry offices - why not churches as well?

What am I missing here? I just don't get it.

IT Crowd

Did anyone else think of the overheating Abracada-bra when they read this?

Send a letter to themselves

Ok, it's not music, but their own news server contains many downloads that could be considered illegal - TV shows etc.

I loved my 400D

Then some bastard nicked it when my house was burgled. I upgraded to a 40D and the difference is staggering. Not in image quality (although it is improved), but in handling and operation.

Bloody hell!!

So the innocent guy gets drugs planted on him, doesn't notice them there and a few days later goes to Thailand, only to be stopped and chucked in a slum prison for the rest of his life. Which would be very short, as he'd probably be hanged for smuggling drugs.

Wonderful.

Not unfeasible

Given that the firm I work for has sold GPS trackers that operate for months from batteries for asset location purposes, if it's in a suitcase full of batteries and with an external aerial feed (i.e. on the roof of the truck, or a window of a plane) then it's possible. Given the scales involved even if the signal is weak and the position is out by a couple of kilometers it'd still work.

That said, I prefer the conspiracy theories ;-)

Why?

Why is this news? I painted my daughter's bedroom the other week. Surely that's just as much of a newsworthy story.

Mine has never frozen

But of course that's because I've barely had a chance to play it, as my wife and daughter are hogging the TV for Wii Fit.

<considers moving the PS3 to the bedroom>

People don't care about contracts

They only care about the shiny new phone. If they are too stupid to realise what they are signing, and how much it's going to cost them, that's hardly the problem of the staff in the shop.

I hope Accenture win...

Some time ago the company I work for did a big bid for some work for BG. Ourselves and a couple of other firms were invited to trial our stuff at our expense. A huge potential contract, so our managment fell over themselves to do it.

We poured time and resource into the project (it took up about 6 months of my time alone), and I'm sure our 2 competitors did as well. We supplied expertise and custom-built software to them.

At the end of the trial they said "thanks, but we're going to build it ourselves." In other words they got 6 months of free consulting out of us. So I hope that Accenture win.

This is all wrong

They were in a public place and thus had no expectations of privacy. The only other thing they could argue is harassment, however a single incident would not really be cause for this to be classed as such.

The fact (and the law) is that I have every right to take a photograph of anyone in a public place. I also have the right to publish and sell that photo for my own profit. So, AC - I won't need a release from you. I'm talking in the UK here. Other countries may require a release. The only caveat is that many agencies will require a model release before buying a photo, to cover their own backsides.

@Jim Booth - I too wouldn't really like people taking pictures of my kids without my permission, but they are doing nothing illegal so I can't stop them.

@Chris W - what is _actually_ wrong with taking pictures of schoolgirls walking out the school gates? Where I live the girls are fully clothed at school so it's not exactly child porn is it? Plus, I can go onto the school website and - shock horror! - there are pictures of the kids in school uniform on it.

This attitude that anyone taking photos of kids is automatically going to use them for nefarious purposes is completely ridiculous. Crap analogy, but we'd better ban kitchen knives, because somebody might use them to kill somebody else.

<climbs down from high horse and calms down>

It's obvious...

As per current reporting trends, the bees have obviously turned lesbian...

Soudns good

Maybe my TV can break the encryption on Sky Sports for me!

Maybe they've actually got a point...

According to an eyewitness (i.e. sombody in the queue), the stabbed man walked past the queue and said "Get a life". Upon which somebody from the queue jumped out and stabbed him...

Now, I didn't hear of this happening at the launch of Wii-Fit......

Logical(ish) conclusion? Violent video games cause violence.

Proper conclusion? The guy who did the stabbing was a complete psycho and would've done it regardless of what he was queueing for.

Just in case....

Let's put Bruce Willis on Standby...

Ok, I'm back from my lunchtime sojourn

Found the thing I was after and thought I would buy a freeview box for about £15 as well. Because they have to grass you up to the TV Licensing morons, they have to take my name and address. After 10 wasted minutes of them trying to type in my name and address I told them to forget it and didn't buy the damn thing.

I was thinking

It was all an insurance scam by the guy who was "robbed". You know, hide everything he wants to keep that's of value, post the ad and oh dear, everything has been taken and he arrived just too late. Wait for the insurance to cough up and he's quids in.

</cynicism>

At least it's spelt correctly

At my local Woolies the staff print up signs for special offers and so on. Or should I say "sign's for special offer's and so on". They cannot get apostrophe usage right, and there are nice A4 sheets on their store-front proclaiming (assuming formatting works out as I write it):

Wii In

Stock Now Great

Deals Inside

Useless.

I'm tempted to go in and order that CD in store though.

@Fraser

>re: The only way you can get Lost.

>

>There is the option of paying for it by getting Sky, buying the inevitable DVD box >set or waiting for it to come to terrestrial TV (not sure if it still does that, mind)

Good points, and very true. But I can't get a satellite dish where I live - cable (or freeview) is my only choice.

As for Boxsets, that'd cost me £80 when I used to get it in the price of my TV subscription. And I'd have to wait months, avioding spoilers. I may even still buy the boxset - I've got 2 of them already, I'm just waiting for the initial daft price to drop.

Saw a program

On TV the other night (Ok, I only saw the last 5 minutes of it) that was telling us about how the new baggage system worked. My first thought was "that'll go wrong."

I didn't realise quite how quickly I'd be right...

Not just Heathrow

The two bags thing is common across the world... I was in Kuala Lumpur airport and some silly woman at the gate told I couldn't carry two bags. I pointed out that one of them belonged to my wife and I was just doing the gentlemanly thing and carrying it for her.

Nope, I had to give it back to my wife, walk past the silly woman and then take it back from her again.

I was crap at Elite

But the BBC did kick-start my entire career, as that's what I learned to first program on.

Our school still had them in 1994 and that's what I did my GCSE Computer Science project on. It helped that my mum worked at a school and could "borrow" one for me to have at home.

<Runs off to search Ebay for one>

Sad start to the day

The Rama series of books are literally the best books I ever read. I've read the set several times now and each time it doesn't fail to astonish.

Stolen Vehicles?

Why not buy a proper, installed, dedicated GPS tracking device for your car instead. Kind of like the ones I've been working with for the past 7 years... This is just exactly the same thing shrunk down a bit with an internal battery. Not really new.

Good

Am I the only one who thinks this is a good thing?

If I were ever bought to power the first thing I'd do is double all sentences for all crimes. Except stupid things like pensioners not paying council tax, who would never go in the first place.

1 Hour?

So it's about 3 times quicker than Concorde?

And that was designed in the '60s...