Posts by silent_count

Re: "Thinks"?

Tesla thinks all these changes will lead to [...]

Sure they've done testing but their marketing people don't want to be hampered by facts.

You're welcome, Destroy.

Re: says:

I've got a lot of time for older people. They helped me when I couldn't walk without their help and now they have trouble walking without mine. What goes around comes around (as the Igors say).

The one which I have the hardest time explaining is, "why does the writing have to be so small?"

Sure, it's trivial to increase the font size but the UI elements don't scale well. Or maybe the heavens align and they do scale but now you've got a jumble of nicely scaled fonts and UI elements cramped and overlapping in a window which hasn't changed size.

While I understand how the underlying clusterfuck came to be but explaining why it is and, more importantly, why it hasn't been fixed is just too dizzying.

Re: hay man

"Not literally true"

That's the kind of thing they told me when I was a kid in a catholic school pointing out inconsistencies in the bible.

That phrase tweaked my interest so I looked up the guardian article in question... and immediately spotted where Mr Worstall went wrong. It's in the very first line.

"I have been an activist for 70 years. I’ve organised unions, rent strikes, [etc]"

Which roughly translates as, "any resemblance between the following and reality is purely coincidental."

An activist acts. They don't question the wisdom of their actions*. They've chosen their cause and are more than willing to toss the truth overboard in pursuit of 'the greater good'.

* When was the last time someone introduced themselves as an introspectionist? Perhaps the world would be a better place if we had more of those.

With red cheeks

*Rouge* is what you put on your cheeks to make yourself look fabulous. A *rogue* is the person who steals your rouge because they want to look fabulous too.

I'm sorry, AC. I normally don't do nitpicks but that one drives me nutsy. If it's any consolation, I do agree with you.

Re: £800 for a SOUNDBAR!

You jest, AC but I've wondered if that could be a plausible strategy - to use a bunch of phones as a speaker system.

Place your guests' phones at various points around the room. They automagically work out their position relative to the room's 'main' screen. And from there the phones act as a speaker system or as a supplement to the one which is already there.

Aside from getting phones from different manufacturers to cooperate, which isn't insurmountable, the problem would be that current phones can't determine their position that accurately. Perhaps each phone emits a short beep and the other phones compare notes to determine their relatve position in the room according to how loudly they 'heard' each beep.

Even if this would only provides the audience with a small improvement in their evening, it'd be worthwhile because it costs nothing - it's using what they already have.

Re: $41bn?

a) https://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/

b) For the investors, it's too close to call. But the succession of "Uber banned in x" stories is making it increasingly clear that the management are incompetent. They're not even greasing the right pollies!

It's all good. With my (less than world-leading) knowledge of x86 assembly, C++, and web page design, I'm sure Mr Hawking will want to clear his schedule to hear my thoughts on particle physics and the future of string theory research.

Re: "with no conviction'

@dan1980

I do understand your reasoning, as you've explained it, and thank you again for taking the time. I'll confess that I'm still uncomfortable with the notion of not recording convictions.

I'm simple. I think if someone does something good, they deserve the credit for what they've done. If someone does something bad, at the very least, the fact that they've done so should be recorded. That's the price, good or bad, of doing business.

All in all, it's probably a good thing that I don't have much to do with the legal profession. :)

Or the cynical ploy of: Let's weaken my current employer's business by alleging sexual harassment*, paving the way for me to set up a competitor. And if the former employer complains about me poaching customers/staff/algorithms/etc it will be perceived as even further harassment of a courageous victim who is just trying to get on with her life.

* I imagine that would cripple a dating app/site. Who wants to use a dating app run by the kind of creeps who would harrass their staff?

@ Trevor Pott and Ole Juul

I don't personally have a problem with WordPress as I don't use it. My problem with it is once removed, as it were. My entire experience of WordPress is that of people complaining to me that it doesn't work, or doesn't do what it's supposed to do, or can't be configured to do what they'd like it to do.

It may well be the best software ever written buy the most talented and conscientious programmers on the planet, but when you keep hearing about a toaster that burns the toast, and the person using it, the obvious conclusion is that something is wrong with it.

Maybe I only hear from dumb users, or maybe it's something like better documentation or user tutorials required. I don't know.

Re: Most people who 'like' the Bible

I'd argue the same for Mein Kampf - the people who say it's influential haven't actually read it, much like most of the Germans it allegedly influenced. It was so poorly written that it's Mr Hitler would have enjoyed far less support if his book had been more widely read.

Why I use SSD #2

A SSD equipped laptop doesn't have any issues when I carry it around on my motorbike.

Re: i would be rich today..

It wasn't so much that Ghosts n Goblins was hard but it was both hard *and* enjoyable enough that you'd keep trying. There were plenty of games that were hard, but they were also bad so you'd never play them a second time (Moonwalker anyone?). And a few that were impossible (Qix and Tetris spring to mind).

Wonder Boy would certainly give Ghosts n Goblins a run for its money in the difficulty stakes. Bubble Bobble and Black Tiger would too.

Re: Reading in the bath

If you haven't already, can I suggest trying (the badly named) pbchess, which comes with a build of CoolReader. The virtue of using it instead of the kobo software is that it loads the books from the file system, so you can name the files as you see fit and arrange them in whatever directory structure makes you happy.

http://wiki.vlasovsoft.net/doku.php?id=en:pbchess-1.2.6

Re: re: revenge porn can affect anyone

@Patrick R

The issue with explicit photos of children is that children are deemed too immature to be able to provide consent.

The issue with explicit photos of adults is that adults are deemed too immature to be able to provide consent.

It's a good thing that it's Ms Miller who makes that argument because if it were a bloke saying that (predominantly) women are too stupid to make their own decisions, he'd be considered sexist and there would be large sections of the mainstream media baying for his resignation.

Re: Cue stampede of punters

Cue stampede of punters to foreign-based VPN providers who don't retain records and will tell .gov.au where to get off, should they come calling.

Re: Why?

Apples to oranges, qwertyuiop.

Aviary is good* for simple photo editing - a crop or rotate of a snap you've taken with your phone. It is not in the same league as taking photos with a SLR and editing them with Photoshop and Lightroom.

* Or at least was until Adobe gets their mits on it.

Re: Considering all options

"Considering all options"

==

"The pro and anti bribes are about even and were still accepting offers. And my aren't the Caribbean islands are nice this time of year. I'd like one of those, thanks."

Re: No HELP* debt for the PM's daughter, I guess.

If you so greatly resent paying a higher tax rate then feel free to submit your resume to McDonald's. A high tax rate will thereafter no longer be an issue.

And if you don't want to pay for a university course, don't go to university. How hard is that to understand?

Anyhow, you won't need a degree for your low tax, dream job at Maccas.

Heh! You know what I'm waiting for? Some poor, deluded hipster who will try to get away with wearing an iWatch and a Google Glasses at the same time.

They'll bring their wrist to face level, to talk into their iWatch, and what follows will be a blinding moment of unexpected interoperability. The Google Glasses will beam the image of the person's wrist to the iWatch's display and the iWatch will beam the image of the glasshole's face to the Google Glasses' display. At that point we've either discovered the secret to a perpetual energy loop, or an Earth-rending implosion resulting in a black hole.