Posts by Just Enough 783 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Jul 2014
I think most people are mystified as to why anyone is bothering wilth fraud on the comments. It's not as if Ajit Pai had the slightest intention of paying any attention to what they said. It was a flimsy attempt at pretending to consult the public, doomed to be abused and ignored from the start.
"pretty much all UK based IT-types-of-a-certain-age (ie us oldies), have very fond memories of the Speccy."
Indeed. Which is why it's tragic that this bunch of clowns are pissing all over those fond memories.
The Spectrum and its day are long, long gone. It is always a mistake to try to bring these things back. Just let it go.
Headline: "Make masses carry mobes"
Content: "He did not personally advocate the compulsory carrying of location-aware technology"
Actual words: "if the legislators were, for example, to require citizens to carry phones at all times"
Are we not supposed to notice the difference between the above three? He's simply speculating, and in a direction that isn't unique and sadly isn't completely impossible.
Yes, it's a stupid idea.
The UK government "running their own cloud" would simply mean them contracting the task out to an IT company, who would then "develop" an inferior copy of their own cloud that is out-of-date by the time it is delivered, at massively inflated prices and ongoing maintenance costs.
Far better to simply use an account with a cloud provider like everyone else.
The website was not banned, and GoDaddy's action was not necessarily intended to make the world a better place.
The idea was to get fascists off their systems, as is entirely their right.
They are entirely free to take their website somewhere else, and GoDaddy is not responsible for educating them otherwise.
I'm selling dodgy meat from an unlicensed back-street abattoir, and labelling it as Tesco's Finest.
It is not fair that I be prosecuted on the basis that there *may* be botulism on it. They have to prove that there *was* botulism on it. I'm happy for my customers to bear the risks of my dodgy meat, and I should only get prosecuted once there's a few deaths first.
Suggestions that I might kill someone is just playing the botulism card, and pretty low.
"BT monthly landline costs are to be trimmed by £7 from this weekend but only for customers who don't buy fixed-line broadband from any provider – in other words, most people."
This says the exact opposite of what was intended. If "customers who don't buy fixed-line broadband from any provider" was phrased in "other words" it would not be "most people", it would be "very few people"
I more puzzled about what context exactly can the word "manger" appear in a letter, and "manager" be substituted in and still make sense?
Are we to assume that this picky customer had no problem with a letter saying "Away in a manager, no crib for a bed", as long as it was spelt correctly?
"After the 56 update, though it became a horrible UI mess of complexity"
This. So much this. NoScript was never the easiest of add-ons, but recent updates have been disastrous. A complete and confusing redesign of the UI, with a lack of any documentation on how to use it. End users were expected to just figure it out themselves.
And it keeps breaking or forgetting settings. I got to the point of purging everything (poking through Firefox setting files to achieve this was fun) and attempting to start again. But then it screws up again on the next update.
It's not so much that his ashes are being put in Westminster Abbey, it's that there will be a "Service of Thanksgiving". Thanking who?
Here's a man who spent his life as an atheist, but now he's dead the god-squad muscle in. Giving thanks to a entity he didn't believe in, and co-opting their mythology onto his science work, "together to seek to answer the great questions of the mystery of life and of the universe".
I've no problem with people choosing to have religious services on their death, if that's what they believed and wished. I'm fine if it is all for the benefit of friends of family. But having these performances upon the death of those who specifically refuted them seems extremely disrespectful.
Did OH cite what they were changing?
OH needs to understand that anyone can say they're an expert on the internet. This is why Wikipedia relies on sources being cited.
And student everywhere should know that Wikipedia can only be a starting point for research. Check the cites! Determine how much trust to place on the sources.
You only have to spend a small amount of time looking at Youtube comments to see there are plenty of nutjobs who live there and probably don't go elsewhere for their intake of nuttery. Anything that encourages these nutjobs across to Wikipedia to spread their particular brand of trolling is a concern. But then, equally, it's good that maybe they get a chance to step outside their nutjob bubble. Maybe they might learn something that resembles the real world.
But not particularly nice that Youtube didn't even mention this to Wikipedia first though.
"If the MSM would just grow up and, get over a certin lil' Girls loss about what Fourteen Months ago now."
You know who bangs on about Hillary Clinton more than anyone? Clinton is yesterday's news. No-one cares. Yet not a day goes by without some Trump-ite, or the Man-child himself, giving us the old "But Hillary!" whine. And here you are with today's whine.
Meanwhile, back in the real and present world, Trump is securely in Putin's back pocket and his supporters are too blind to notice. Putin could land on the White House front lawn with a fleet of gun helicopters, and Trump would be out the back, waving his arms and shouting "Nothing to see here! Hillary! Emails! Lock her up!"
"the real money is made in the years after public office from directorships and sinecures."
.. in the very companies the public office was supposed to be regulating.
It's a open invitation for corruption. You don't need the messy risk of offering a bride to a public servant. You just reach an agreement of a lovely fat salary for a "job" in a few years time, when they've finished rubber stamping your list of wants. Then all they need do is turn up for the odd board meeting, annual shareholders meeting (with accompanying dinner), otherwise do what they're told and they're a consultant director on a couple of million a year. Easy money.
Pai probably already has at least half a dozen such jobs lined up waiting for him.
I have the afternoon I spent coding a borrowed ZX80 positively seared into my memory. Plugged into the TV. Tuning the TV to the right frequency. Lying on the carpet. The slightly burny smell of the components as they heated up. I started with a printout from somewhere, but soon went my own way, coding the animation of a graphic square bouncing across the screen, then "exploding" in the corner.
I used a ZX81 not long after that, and of course a Spectrum. But no exaggeration to say that ZX80 was a defining moment in my life.
If I know you are paying so much for "up to" speed X, and then sell you a plan for twice your current price for "up to" speed X*2, when I know for a fact that you cannot possibly get speed X*2, and only occasionally even get speed X, then that's fraud. Plain and simple.
Worrying about the "up to"s is beside the point.
"If I were the judge I would hold him in contempt of court until he named names."
Well you'd be a rotten judge then. A principle of UK justice is the right to silence. You cannot be convicted of anything purely on the basis that you declined to talk.
Otherwise the courts would be full of trials where people would be told "Own up to what you done, whatever it may be, or we'll have you for contempt."
"a dual tape HIFI in my bedroom, so copying tapes was much easier"
A yes. The days you could be enjoy at parties fourth generation copies of tapes that sounded like they were recorded in a tin outhouse during a rainstorm. Also great fun if the tape-to-tape automatically set recording levels, so the quieter the music was, the louder it would turn it up until it was 90% hiss, 10% quiet bit.
Agreed. This is really an case of misguided good intentions. They mean well, but they've gone about it in a completely cack-handed way.
Just because the NHS is a government agency, does great work, and is under-funded, doesn't mean they are a charity case who'll eagerly snap up everything that any civic-minded group might do for them. They have to follow processes, just the same as any other massive organisation. Probably even more so.
NHoS are a self-appointed group who decided to appropriate NHS logos for a project that NHS England didn't ask them for. It's not unreasonable to the NHS to then worry that people might think that there is an official project, when they have absolutely no over-sight or control of it. How are they to know what kind of quality control is being applied? How are they to know that it won't turn into an embarrassing mess? Can you imagine the headlines? "Broken NHS system depends on 4 men in a cupboard."
The fact that they'd already re-branded from another name suggests that they really weren't paying attention the first time.
If they had wanted to produce something for the NHS, the way to go about it is to create it first, under a completely unrelated banner, and then impress the NHS how good it is, and it's free! Why couldn't they do that?
"Really? When the world's military is trying to get people out of military aircraft for numerous reasons?"
Military aircraft spend most of their time on the ground, where they are serviced by people.
Satellites don't come down when they need fixed, they have to be repaired in orbit.
"Ain't broke:"
Unfortunately, as a long term user of Thunderbird, my experience is that it is broke, and I've just spent the last week migrating away from it. It had simply got to the point where I could no longer trust it to do its job. Emails would download and vanish into a black hole, never to return. Folders would corrupt, rebuild, and dump 90% of their contents. Search functionality became increasingly a hit and miss game of chance.
This, combined with the continued history of neglect and changes of ownership, does not fill me with confidence for a software application that I need to rely on. So I am afraid we must now part ways.
"So people without tv's are paying tax for other people?"
Same way that people without children are paying for other people's children's education. Or people who have never wanted to go to war with anyone are paying for other people's army.
Taxes generally don't allow you to pick and chose how the money is spent.
"It just makes you sound like a smug twat."
Which is exactly why they should use it. It helps other readers get a better understanding of the person using it, and a better idea of whether everything they say should be ignored.
There's a whole host of popular, supposed to be witty, tired, words used in online forums that immediately flags an opinion as best ignored. You can probably think of a few yourself. They're very helpful, save time, and should be encouraged.
So it must be only a matter of time before some other modest, elusive fellow reveals himself to have invented them.
Then we'll appreciate how bitcoins are smart, he is smart and PROBABLY the smartest person you know. Bitcoins are going to be yuge. All other currencies are failing and over-rated.
If only there were any clues to who that might be.
You don't see the issue because, amazingly, you're not aware that many people don't subscribe to Sky, Virgin or BT.
I get the BBC through this amazing device called an aerial. Consequently I pay nothing but a licence fee and no-one has any idea what programmes I watch, and which I don't. If the money is paid through subscribers instead, does that mean I get my BBC for free?
"Netflix make better shows than the BBC"
Netflix don't make "shows", they make drama. They also don't make news programmes and pitifully little documentaries. They don't make radio programmes or have radio channels. They don't make soaps. They don't make educational programmes, natural history, science or history programmes.
Suggesting that Netflix is in any way a realistic alternative choice to the BBC is suggesting that we just watch episodes of fictional dramas, and do without all the rest.
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