Posts by Bleu

Re: BORING: "Yes, we are pointing out that “GIF” is pronounced “jif”. Again."

Captain Daft,

I love your suggestion of 'wafflebangzitshammer' as the way to pronounce 'GIF'.

... but you let your point down by confusing pronunciation and grammar.

Giving you a vote for wafflebangzitshammer anyway, hope you made it up!

Re: BORING: "Yes, we are pointing out that “GIF” is pronounced “jif”. Again."

PNG is pronounced 'ping', with a sharp rising inflection, like in the quote from an old English comedy sketch, 'the machine that goes ping'.

Really only ever heard pea N G.

I remember seeing a cleaning product called Jif or Jiff overseas, I can't remember what it was for cleaning, but I will stay with gift -t.

Re: When it took off.

I believe the mission organisers have been paying close attention to that, at least one of the moonlets was discovered in obversations to assist the craft.

Re: Billion

Sorry, you are wrong. It is the US vulgar billion that is born of exaggeration and error. Every European language had it as ten to the twelfth.

Of course, we in the east reckon in fourth powers of ten, so multiples of third powers are irrelevant.

Much US english originates in error, from the fucked-up pronunciation of 'forehead', so that the little girl with the little curl rhyme doesn't work in most US english, to all of the morons pushing stupid prepositional usage, like 'based off' instead of 'based on', avoiding 'with' when it is perfectly correct, and using 'to' instead, never using the perfect verb tenses when they are not only correct, but add to clarity of expression, easy to name many more.

'I could care less' is one of the most nonsensical vulgarities, someone reversed the sense to make the statement rubbish, but murricans probably don't even understand how that is a logical fallacy, while 'couldn't care less' is not.

All (except for the fucked-up pronunciation of forehead), very recent or pretty recent innovations. The fuck-up of the pronunciation of 'forehead' is also recent and I gather not quite universal, but at least pre -WWII, the rhyme about the little girl who had the little curl was popular in the US, too, so it must have worked at the time.

Read US literature, you won't find the other vulgarities I mention, until very recently.

Re: Billion

Russell Crowe made a comment about banking 'bail-outs' seven or so years, he said something like 'Why don't they divide it up and just give x thousand dollars to every member of the population.'

He was widely ridiculed for the comment, particularly in places where, until recently, 'billion' had the correct definition of 10 to the twelfth power, not the ninth.

I checked his calculation, it was correct on that basis.

A great testament to short memories and the ignorance of so many journalists.

The mockery on that point from US journalists can, of course, be excused, but there wasn't much.

For those from other places, where there was a lot of mockery, it just displayed their ignorance.

Re: Humans are dumb.

I think you are either missing the point or do not explain enough.

So what if this German gent wanted to take a pic. of himself with Stonehenge in the background?

Likely had some artistic reason for doing so, sounds like a time there weren't too many people about.

Re: Just maybe they meant,

Beautiful comment Jonathon!

Why do people make ostentatious displays of taking photos on tablet computers? The photos are always crap.

The point always seems to be 'look at me,look at my Apple corpse tablet' (sorry, I have only ever seen Apple tablet owners pull that shitty attempt at showing off).

Re: So does this mean...

Maa,you can do the same thing with a small tripod without the podes being spread.

... but you will have a more stable platform if you hold the camera as far above your head as you can, pick the best position, and stand on tip-toes.

Re: Wouldn't this problem take care of itself?

I have visited there, they are a strange nation of conformists pretending to be brave individualists, and relying in all of the cities on a London-style property boom for their futures.

They have no productive industry. The economy is built on, in rough order, real-estate and construction bubble, minor stock markets by regional standards, mining, bureaucracy, and agriculture.

Of course, all of those except agriculture are a net loss for most in the medium-to-long term.

Interesting place.

Re: I don't watch much TV.

Well, aren't we the charmer?

As I pointed out to a similarly retarded commentard to you, I prefer at times to ask directly when I know there are people about who know.

That is the point of reg. comment threads, to respond to the article, to argue about things related to the article, and to ask questions and converse on things related to the article.

Maybe you will catch on some day.

Re: I don't watch much TV.

No, I just have a camera that has sockets for attachment to accessories for the GoPro. I have never seen a GoPro camera, except in a photo, I suspect that the Sony cameras for similar purposes do a better job.

The one I have is largely made here, but not Sony, and not claimed to be rugged, so I need an umbrella if it rains (as now) or snows (as it will be at times where I am going from Wednesday).

Results so far are good to great.

Re: I don't watch much TV.

I look forward to viewing the flowchart (too tired now), pretty sure I neither need nor want the stick.

Thx.

Re: I don't watch much TV.

I think I don't need one, although one or two of the other GoPro mount attachments look like they might be useful.

Narciss-stick! Love it, Mr. Woods!

Re: I don't watch much TV.

I avoid Google 'search' as I would the Ebola virus.

This site has a 'reply' function for two reasons: to argue with people or to converse with people on the topic.

I prefer to ask people who know for a direct reply much of the time.

You have displayed great ignorance with your reply.

Re: I don't watch much TV.

Well said.

Re: I don't watch much TV.

Thank you, I guessed that may have been the case from checking the accessories for the GoPro mount on my non-Gopro camera.

Nice comment in general.

That camera does not have live wifi AFAIR, so I may as well put it on a tripod to gain height at music events where it may be useful.

Don't have a great interest in the selfish and vain 'selfie' phenom.

Again, thx.

Re: Most hated version of Windows

I never had the misfortune of experiencing ME, but 3 and 3.1 were very bad. Interesting that it was also the point where Windoze took off with management.

Re: It's not difficult you know

I saw what you did there. Well done. Can't see what the drones downvoting are on about.

Re: Commercial use forbidden?

One colleague has a Surface. He seems pretty happy with it.

Not for me, though, I hate that type of keyboard.

Never played the old GTAs.

They looked a little lame to me.

Chinatown Wars on the DS (the original version) was great.

For a top-down view, a real work of art. Fun to just drive around and admire the scenery at first.

I got to 6 wanted stars and still escaped. Record was over 24 hours (game time) pushing wanted levels higher and higher.

PSP version did not look as good, but did look good.

I can't imagine how it would work on a touch-screen device, dabbing on bits of the screen for control.

OS in ROM

The HP Journada or Jornada had an MS OS in ROM, still think it was a great machine for the time.

I was unfortunate to buy a Psion 5mx instead, that it was designed to fail after being used a few tens of times was criminal.

Psion should have offered a gratis fix for *all* owners.

The mx and Journada were both popular in Tokyo, saw more people using the mx on trains, until the screen cable inevitably broke.

Earned Psion a lot of well-deserved hatred, was probably the main factor in their collapse on consumer hardware.

In Akihabara, you can still find a Journada in good shape.

Haven't seen a 5mx in a shop for years, not because it is a sought-after rarity, but because everyone hates Psion for the design fault. The shops wouldn't stock them even if somebody offered an unused one that was still going (which would only be possible if it was unused).

No fan of CE, but the Journada was a good CE-based product.

Re: Microsoft's good software

It is also a pretty crap text editor, unusable for programming, html, etc. OK for a quick note, sure.

Try the ?ix world for some good text editors, many take up much less space and do a lot more. Ones with similar capability to Notepad are much smaller and make much smaller files, as are many that do much more.

Bang for byte, Notepad is pretty crap.

Re: Microsoft's good software

I have been forced to use that, too, it is clunky, opaque, and irritating.

You are only saying it as an Apple cultist.

The underlying software design for MS Word on GUIs is admirable, what they use it to write is generally not.

A couple of versions for 2000 and XP were alright, but certainly never great.

Re: Microsoft's good software

I agree with both of you.

Still have a Thinkpad running 2000, mainly for some old hardware, music (tracker) software, a couple of other things I suspect would not run well in WINE or under Win 7. It is not connected to the 'net.

MS Word 5 had some great design points, I especially liked the clear separation between style sheets and the ability to directly edit the style files and many other points. Recent versions with the f****** ribbon (hey, let's design the new version explicitly for morons w h o a r e a l i t t l e sloooowww and don't want to do too much) instead of a visible menu and, as an added bonus, elimination of certain key sequences, are like torture.

I taught myself VB and the relevant classes so that I could fix stupid crap MS does *every time*, decided that doing that was a waste of energy a while ago.

I am aware of the downloads to change the latest one, but that would violate policy at work (DIY mods did not, when I bothered).

5.5 was even better, sure not as capable as DTP programs of the time, but a great product, fantastic interface and much the same design for style and layout as 5.

Noone much saw it because it coincided with the big shift by mgmt. to Windoze for officey stuff.

Citing New Scientist as any kind of standard

for science is a laugh.

but it is quite clear that they advanced science as well as technology.

They didn't put it on a pedestal, and as easy to see in Suetonius' account of a job-eliminating device being rejected, you cannot say 'that is only engineering '

Sorry, sweetheart, there was a social factor, retain jobs that the people doing them generally liked. More than a touch above modern western thought

There is also a knowledge factor, the proposal came from someone with a very good knowledge of mechanics, sorry if you like to differ on that, you may also look at their elevator systems, knowledge of structural forces. much more.

I very much doubt that the publisher is responsible,

except by publishing crap.

One of the ways SF has become crap now, is the competition to write the next Star Wars, when the only things Star Wars stole from literary SF were from Dune..

Re: Read it, bored of Baxter.

I am surprised that anyone could plough through most of his books, congratulations to you for staying the distance!

Stopping well short of reading all he writes, his novels are, well, I won't labour the point.

Short stories, though, I buy old magazines, he did write a few that were really good, writing was clunky, ideas were great, a long time ago, even a couple that were episodes that became parts of his crap novels.

Baxter the hack, he has descended to the level of the Kevin Anderson and Brian Herbert partnership.

Re: Explain!

She wouldn't happen to have been ethnically malay and muslim by any chance? They are muslim by constitutional decree in Malaysia, though not, of course, in Singapore.

I am not sure if Islam considers monkeys unclean in the same way as dogs, but I suspect it does. While in Singapore, I witnessed the huge outrage that ensued when an acquaintance called an ethnic malay a dog, not without justification given the latter's behaviour at the time.

I do know, however that hatred of monkeys is widespread among at least the more red-necked malays.

This is as a way of getting at the ethnic chinese, since monkeys have a special place in chinese folklore and religion, both folk religion and the sino-buddhist tale of the mission to Ghandara.

In more than one case in the past, monkeys in public places were poisoned just to spite the ethnic chinese.

By the way, it isn't wise to generalise from 'Malaysia' to 'south-east Asia'.

Re: Now we KNOW where the Sony hackers got "G.O.P" from

I came out with a subtler take on the same a week ago. In before!