Posts by Adrian Waterworth

@AC

Sorry - wrong on both counts. System and software designer/developer with a number of years of experience under the belt. PhD in Fault-Tolerant and Real-Time systems, worked on kernel device drivers for the Telco division of Sun Microsystems, did the dot-com-bubble thing as System Architect for a B2B marketplace service provider, worked as a consultant software engineer/designer in the distributed systems (CORBA, J2EE) market and ended up doing various technical design and oversight things on large-scale contracts, such as the wonderful (NOT!) NHS care records system and various other major government and corporate IT outsourcing deals.

And, you know what? By the simple expedient of having properly trained (and intelligent) staff members, clearly defined reporting/escalation structures and a reasonable amount of advance planning, I have managed to avoid the situation of having to access systems, check email, etc. on my phone. Wow! How's about that?

On those occasions where something went sufficiently wrong that I needed to be contacted urgently, a simple phone call usually sufficed and I could ensure that someone would be able to deal with the problem. Or at least contain it long enough for me to get decent network access at home, at an office or via WiFi/VPN from my laptop in the hotel/station/airport/wherever.

Believe me, if you think that you, or the things that you do, are _soooo_ desperately important that you simply must have 24/7 access to your email (or whatever) via your phone, you will ultimately feel severely short-changed when your employer or client decides to save a few bucks and outsources your job to someone else who doesn't do the 24/7 thing on their own, but does employ a few guys in India (or wherever) to monitor stuff for them.

(Like all generalisations, I can think of possible exceptions to this. Although the only one that springs immediately to mind would be C&C support for the emergency services. And those should have properly manned data/control centres 24/7, so there should be no real need for some critical bod or other to be checking on email or systems via their mobile.)

In my experience, people who think that they simply _must_ have 24/7 access to their systems or email like that are either spending too little on their service providers (or on employing additional staff) or are over-estimating their own importance...

Of course, YMMV. That's just my experience from what I've seen in the various places I've worked.

Re: Not Banknotes.

Please not the triangular coins - I refuse to deal in piddling small change.

Is it just me...

...or did our friendly neighbourhood Martian's comment make complete sense there (well, more or less).

Or have I just got so used to reading banal rubbish on Wikipedia that pretty much anything makes sense now?

Actually, I guess I'm being a bit unfair to Wikipedia. I do sometimes check out entries on there and have found them to be broadly OK, but often lacking in real depth or detail. I've also been puzzled on one or two occasions when I've seen articles that have editorial notes about citations being needed or weasel words being used when the article does, in fact, seem to have perfectly good citations from reputable sources. Is that the whole editing cabal thing at play perhaps?

Dammit!

Now you've given the game away! I'll have to change my business plan again!

Luckily, most of the meaningless Web 2.0 buzzwords and completely reusable in the context of any old crap.

@Steve: Origin of CHAV

The "Council Housed and Violent" derivation for chav has been batted around the Internet a bit, but there's no confirmation that it's at all true. Unless you know any cops who can confirm it and date it first hand? As far as what can be found on the Internet is concerned, equally likely is a derivation from the Romany "chavi" ("chava" and variations). Or some other equally inventive etymological origin.

Personally I favour the Romany one since, a while before I heard the term "chav" in common use, some of the guys I knew around Newcastle used to use the word "charver" to describe such people. That would probably have been around 2001-2002, but I don't know whether they had picked up the word "chav" from somewhere and extended it or whether the word "charver" was in use first and then shortened to "chav". (I would suspect the latter, but I'm no linguist so I don't know whether contractions are more common than extensions when languages and words evolve.)

OK, I know, getting boring now, but I can't get me coat yet, I'm still wearing me Santa suit. (Just don't ask...)

OK, how's about...

"Windows Live Services - now the Internet can be just as f***ed up as your PC."

or

"Windows Live Services - trying to flog the pointless to the clueless."

or

"Windows Live Services - finding innovative new ways to miss the Internet boat all over again."

or

"Windows Live Services - all your shit are belong to us."

or

"Windows Live Services - too incompetent to do any evil."

or I'll get me coat shall I?

Hmmmm...

"A - gives - toss - who!"

Re-arrange the words to form a well-known English phrase.

Don't get me wrong - I like Apple Macs a lot, we use them for various graphic design thingies around here and I'd love to get a huge iMac or kickass Mac Pro to use for music production at home. However, I'm mainly stuck with PCs for most of my work at the moment. I also happen to think that the iPhone is an over-hyped piece of plastic crap that, in all likelihood, is so full of interesting techno-trickery that it's probably a bit shit in the "actually being a decent phone" department. And I've never owned an iPod.

So, basically, the meanderings and pointless witterings of the Mac-loving bits of the blogosphere are like Siberia to me. I know it's there and where to find it, but don't have any particular interest in going there. (Actually, if we're being honest, I'm probably more interested in visiting Siberia than I am in reading Mac fanboi crap...)

In one way...

...I can sympathise with these guys. They've come up with an idea and want to protect it, fair enough.

However, I tend to side with the patent office on this one. There are far too many patents being granted for things that shouldn't be patentable, whether that's because there's prior art, or the "invention" is obvious, or it's just a new business process or a way of performing an existing process in software, etc.

As far as I can see, the US patent system is an even bigger joke than the UK one 'cos it has allowed this thing to stand.

Wonder if I can start a campaign for better patents?

Not a problem...

...for PirateBay to stop indexing or linking to or having anything to do with Prince. In fact, I reckon everyone should do the same, thus starving the whinging, midget, purple tosser of as much publicity and as many channels to market as possible.

He's a right little maladjusted arrogant copper nanotube if ever I saw one. Although if he stretches just that little bit further, he might be able to get his head all the way up his own bum - then we won't be able to hear anything he says anyway.

@Anonymous Coward

No, that's not a lisp. A lisp would have been more like "Thith ith a thtick up! Plathe thicth million dollarth in thith thack!" What you've got there is more like Gollum - just add a smidgeon of "Nice fishshshsh" and "Nasssssty cruel hobbitses" and you're away.

I always...

...feel a bit sorry for Ruthenium Nanotubes. They seem so much smaller and weedier than all the others.

Sorry, sorry, I know. That joke was a bit Protactinium Nanotubes.

OK. Got coat. Or should that be Cobalt-Astatine?

Yes, yes, I'm going.

It's not as if...

...the service that FR provides is in any way worth the money. Back when it was free, I signed up and used it to see what my old school and work mates had got up to. But as soon as the FR management came up with the idea of trying to charge for it, I not only stopped using it, but had my details removed altogether.

As a freebie, funded by advertising revenue or whatever other form of third-party financing that they could come up with, it would have been fine. But it wasn't ever something that was sophisticated enough or important enough to me (or to many other folks I suspect) that I would be prepared to pay directly out of my own pocket to have access.

That's the problem with most of the current Web 2.0 shite that's out there. They can be an interesting idea and they offer services that can sometimes be useful for staving off a bit of day-to-day boredom, but most of them don't have enough immediate and direct value to their users that those users would be prepared to pay for it up front.

It's so simple that even I can understand it - if you want to charge for a web-based service of some kind, you've got to start by thinking of a service that people will, in general (or eventually), be prepared to pay for. While a freebie site all dressed up in pastel colours and with rounded borders might generate a lot of interest out there in the blogosphere, you'll only really know if it's got financial legs when you try to charge for it directly and find out whether people are actually prepared to dip into their own pockets for what you're providing.

Ten bazillion free subscribers doesn't mean jack unless you really can convert them to direct paying customers or you have some other rock-solid way to generate revenue off the back of it. Seems like FR falls at both hurdles.

Hang on...

...the ad doesn't say he's a weapons technician. He describes himself as an "Engineering Technician". What the precise difference might be between those two I don't know, but I'm sure someone more au fait with RN grades/ranks/jobs can tell us.

As for the switch, it's probably just connected to a little light in the captain's cabin to tell him that dinner's ready or something...

Drink up me hearties, yo ho!

@Chris Hawkins

I'm afraid that it's all over for Frank'n'furter. His mission was a failure and his lifestyle too extreme.

I've forgotten my coat, but there seem to be lots of basques, fishnet stockings and suspenders around here all of a sudden...

@fon: Drivel on Sky

Yes, I know that the same drivel is on Freeview as on Sky. Except that on Freeview, you don't have to fork over £17+ a month for it. And, fortunately, the channels on Sky that tend to have passably decent content also happen to be the ones that are available on Freeview.

Assuming, of course, that you can get decent Freeview reception. Although I'm not actually in Cumbria, I am "oop North" and out in the sticks (and do still have an active Sky subscription for work-related purposes), so I haven't tried the wonders of Freeview yet. Luckily for me, my neck of the woods won't be switching until 2012 though.

Sports coverage? Not even in the least bit interested. Couldn't care less if every sports venue in the world and every sporting celebrity spontaneously vanished tomorrow morning.

Movies? For the cost of a Sky subscription that gives you all the movie channels, you can probably buy at least 3, if not 4, new-release DVDs every month. Given that I can't recall any time when I've had an active Sky subscription and there were even 3 or 4 movies that were worth watching in any given month, the DVD route makes more sense.

And as for the satellite signal? Well, our dish does actually have a pretty open view of the sky (straight over open fields) and is reasonably well-aligned. But there are still a few channels that have lousy reception unless the weather is just right (not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, not too windy - it's like bloody Goldilocks and the bears' porridge!)

So I'm afraid it's still a resounding "Tish!" and "P'shaw!" to the whole thing from me.

And in T6...

Steve Ballmer and his crack team of assault lawyers manage to convince Skynet that it's in violation of 235 MS patents, causing it to shut itself down rather than sign a cross-licensing deal.