Posts by Shane Orahilly 81 publicly visible posts • joined 31 Aug 2008
A: Hi, Apple Customer Support. How can we help each other?
C: Uh, my 4S battery life seems to be dramatically short.
A: OK Friend, we've had a lot of calls on this alleged issue, so we've set up a special "Battery Response Line" to deal with it. The number is 09000- IPHONE. Calls are charged at £1.50 a minute.
C: Uh, can you transfer me through yourself?
A: No Friend, that's against Company Policy. Good Day! >clik<
If the task is to perform ops without signal X/Y/Z, why not block them at the receiving end, on the ship, at the equipment that would normally use them?
OK, it may not be quite as simple as switching off the wheel-mounted Clarkson-voiced TomTom, but surely they could get some kind of exercise-only software update to ignore data from selected sources.
Perhaps blocking is the only way to stop someone.... Cheating? In a military exercise?
Are the Italians taking part?
The coalition don't control the office of the Mayor of London. You really think Labour (assuming Millibland stood a remote chance of being electable) would throw all that extra cash at London at the risk of Northern votes? Making life easier for Boris is unlikely to be part of their manifesto, or anyone else's.
Even if the fuel has fallen to the bottom of the vessel, it's still cooling down. Nobody's died. Not much more to say about it, is there?
As far as unnoticed, the BBC have reported it, but it's not headline news any more, what with the imminent lack of nuclear winter.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13374153
My name is Shane, and I am a Banksoholic, M. or no M.
I foresee knife missiles being delivered to many voters for their misguided ignorance of The Player of Games for the top spot.
Yes, I'd rather the whole of the Culture repertoire was seen in film form.I was ecstatic when the BBC adapted The Crow Road for television, and prayed they would visit Banks' scifi offerings, or The Wasp Factory, damn their eyes for seemingly bottling it when it comes to real extremes of human/AI behaviour they dare not show on screen for fear of breaking people's tiny fragile minds.
However, in a "Don't make me chooooooooose" scenario, I'd be most pleased to see how the games played in TPoG were represented visually, moreso if the concepts could actually be implemented as functional, wholly-playable games in some way or form. Also, you just know that Jernau's role as primary focus of the story would be foiled by the antics of Mawhrin-Skel, no doubt with ( written in for mass appeal) hilarious consequences.
Just don't fucking Jar-Jar the little murderous bastard, or I swear I'll do time.
"I'm the one who was smiling when I got home each time over the Christmas period when there was snow down here and everyone else was left stranded on the roads and at the foot of hills. I pay the inflated road tax and pay the same for my diesel as everyone else - I also use no more than most average 2x4's."
I'm the one who was smiling when I got home each time over the Christmas period when there was snow and ice stranding people on the roads everywhere as well, and it didn't cost me a penny in road fund licence or fuel, or make any significant contribution to pollution.
I walked.
On your car running costs, are you also adding in the Time costs? 5x20 minute round trips a week is about £10/week at minimum wage, which by my reckoning would make it £14.60/week. Of course, you're a voluntary worker in this case, but it's still a number that shouldn't be omitted for a true comparison of costs.
Weather, Discomfort and The Dark? They're just prissy things that most people refer to as Life. There's nothing wrong with getting accustomed to getting up earlier, dressing for the conditions and how to look after yourself at dawn/dusk. If your voluntary work will extend to a lifetime ferrying your offspring to work and back, I'd be surprised.
As far as public transport goes, I did a test of the "Family of 3 from Wolves to Blackpool" problem. For the record, my test was done from Sat 4th-Sat 11th June, with 2 adults 1 child using a Family and Friends Railcard, with one change of trains at Preston. Total cost between £50-55, simply by planning ahead and doing 5 minutes of research - with some of the best fares already gone!
Of course, any sap who walks up to the ticket machine/ booking office uninformed will get stung (Although many booking clerks will endeavour to get you the best price if there isn't a queue), but taking the time to PLAN a holiday, rather than walk-up-and-buy can yield great savings.
You're making far too many blind assumptions about national priorities, safety of personnel, suitability of equipment and efficiency of logistics in an epic-scale disaster area where everything has to be done on the fly.
Have you considered becoming a Projects Manager for Network Rail?
Claimed (although contested by Thwaites & Reed) to be the oldest continuing clock manufacturer in the world, and based in Shropshire, the home of the Modern Olympics (Even if they did decide to commemorate this by creating an animated penis of a mascot) . Far more appropriate than a piece of cheap foreign junk.
"Right, just tried to look up their share price over the years..... Network Rail are a limited company: they are totally privately owned."
Totally privately owned by the State, I think you'll find. All NR "profits" are re-invested into NR. Income is from the DfT by form of grant, Train Operating Companies (TOCs) for their rights of access to the network, lease/rent of properties (including the shops at stations). In effect, it's a government office which has been spun off the chancellor's books, but is still under the government's control.
If you would like to suggest a method of funding redundant backup signalling systems for the entire rail network without having to resort to massive increases in fares or taxation, and also without taking more money away from paying for sorely-needed additional rolling stock to enable the extension of overfull trains to deal with a demand that far outstrips supply, I'm sure HMG will be most grateful to receive it. However, your total lack of knowledge of anything rail-related is going to make that unlikely.
Cease this nonsense forthwith.
"worth just £44."
"at a total cost of £75,000"
"£35m since 2006/7"
"reached a low of $3,000/tonne"
"breaking the $10,000/tonne barrier."
Please, standardise the currency expression throughout articles. Yes, international market prices are in USD and local costs are in £Sterling, but is it really too much effort to maintain the use of one or the other exclusively (or both together using parantheses for the alternative expression) over 6 paragraphs? You underestimate the laziness (and pickiness) of some of your devoted readers!
With regards to the actual story, it's good to see some of these idiots getting put away for a decent stretch. The impact (and safety risk) of such thefts is exponentially greater than the material gain. The only better result we could possibly hope for is that one of these morons tries to lift a live 400kV line or gas main. Instant Justice, served very hot indeed.
They may not have bleeped Bruce/Bruce/Bruce (can't remember which of them it was, they all look the same to me, did their visit count as returning to the scene of the crime etc.), but if my memory serves me right, they did bleep Clarkson for the same word in the same show.
Perhaps there was a contextual difference that warranted one being allowed and not the other, such as proof of illegitimate parentage being presented to make it an honest observation instead of a derogatory term. Bastard is also used as a reference to something "of abnormal or irregular shape or size", which could be applied to at least 2 of the 3 UK presenters.
Of course, this means we can all go on TV and call our fathers motherfuckers on primetime :D
...those 15 years had included some work on grammar, but I digress.
I'm curious as to why you have a flash 3g "phone", when you don't actually make use of it's full features. Perhaps if you had obtained a device which is only capable of voice and SMS, you wouldn't be so angsty. I'm sure if you ask around, there's bound to be someone out there who could interface it with a Fleshlight and a cafetiere, then you can take up one of those offers and realise it's full potential ;)
It may be purely an American (Too much CSI in my TV diet) thing, but if the information obtained from the pizzeria was only gained because of the inadmissible evidence on the pizza boxes (failure to log/process, subject to tampering), then the chain of evidence is broken, and can't be used. If, however, they had got the details via questioning (and properly recording the details from) the delivery boy and followed the unbroken chain via him, the pizza boxes are irrelevant, and just made a good news story about porky plods.
Of course, I could be spouting utter shite here, but hey, that's US crime drama for you ;)
Ah, the golden age of the fairground arcade! Getting your coppers from the Penny Falls changed into "silver" by a surly, unkept travelling fellow, and talking your "A game" over anyone who was already occupying your cockpit, hoping to put them off and run them out of change so you could have a go, jumpers for goalposts, isn't it? Wasn't it? Marvellous!
My personal list of honorable omissions would have to be:
Golden Axe - 3 choices of character, 3 friends shoulder-to-shoulder , hacking and slashing the day away.
Afterburner - The full-on pitching rolling cockpit version sounded like an urban myth to we boys from the farming shires, but Lo! A big adventure to London and the Trocadero centre made legend... legendary.
Gauntlet - WIZARD NEEDS FOOD BADLY. I think that phrase left a subconscious thread in my mind which led to me being overweight and playing mages in D&D all too often in my youth.
Bubble Bobble - Come on, who among you would have thought "Hey! Let's make a game where you kill the bad guys by trapping them in bubbles and popping them!". Not I, but I'm glad someone did.
Double Dragon - Where the crouching roundhouse kick was King.
And finally, Moonwalker - Absurdly good fun, utterly insane, and a goldmine for the arcade owners.
+5 internets for an Iain M. Banks reference, aaaaand I'm done.
It's a solution, but once you've paid your entrance fee to a park, it's going to be gut-wrenching (ha) to find out you can't get on anything, whether you queue or not. A better solution would be either the "Every body's Happy" option that has been adopted of adjusting seats to suit the larger frame, or the more harsh (but twistedly amusing and not necessarily business-wise) option of making sure all media advertising the theme parks states "Most rides unsuitable for chubbers, but we have plenty of restaurants and fairground food for you to console yourself with".
Prepare for boarding? I think not, Lardbucket.
...automotive companies don't fit a driver-adjustable (or maybe GPS-referencing) audible warning system for vehicle speed. Similar to a parking sensor, the closer you get to the set speed limit, the more frequently it beeps to alert you, with a constant whine (similar to having the missus in the passenger seat) at the speed limit, thus enabling you to keep your EYES ON THE ROAD.
"Another 3 points and now a ban for driving without due care and attention? I was looking at my speedo to ensure I didn't get another 3 points and a ban for doing 34 in a built-up area!"
Anyways, had a 4 GB one of these for months. Cheap enough, works. Being a non-pro, I didn't realise there would be no cap for the plug (Argos just billed it as a USB Memory stick, so I assumed it would), and I do prefer to keep electrical connections covered when not in use :/ Other downsides are, well, it's a bit TOO small, if you want to physically label these for finding stuff in a jiffy out of a pile, and the plastic loop is just asking to be broken - although I did manage to persuade a 1mm keyring through it without damage.
Firstly, let's not try to eliminate TOO many of the "human errors" in football. Chanting "The referee's a wanker" is part of the game as much as anything (In fact, it's probably the only chant that EVERYONE knows the words to, and can join in).
Leave offsides, handballs, fists to the fizzog and the like to the human component, and post-match review. Let's restrict the tech component to "Did the ball cross the line Y/N".
Then, let's not dump a load of cash into systems that rely on tracking chips and the like. All that's needed is a quick-playback video system, which can be used by the 4th official to speedily review any situation between the sticks. In cases of any doubt, play can continue until the ball next goes out of play, giving #4 a chance to tell the on-pitch ref if a goal was scored.
Hawkeye is fine for tennis and cricket, where the position of the ball is put in doubt on a very frequent basis, and constant vid-checks would be a real drag in proceedings. In football, the goal-line is crossed much more rarely, the ball most often finds the back of the net thus not necessitating a sophisticated system. Also, the ability to show the crowd visual replay of the ball crossing the line to confirm their suspicions (Whether on big screens in a prem/cup stadium at the time of play, or highlights on the League Show a few hours after the event) will always be more accepted than a graphical representation of the ball crossing a graphical representation of the goal line.
The expense of any system used can be limited by only having it used in the top league of each nation, play-offs, QF and up in national cup competitions, and all the way through international tournaments. That should still leave plenty to discuss in the pub about how Accy Stanley didn't get promoted because the ref didn't see the ball cross the line in the game against Wycombe 3 months ago which would have seen them scrape into the last playoff spot, etc.
Oh wow, this post is far too serious. Um, Playmobil recon or it didn't happen, Bulgarian Airbags for everyone! and such.
"Indeed, some of Apple's iconic products have even been featured in museums,"
...right next to the self-euthanasia machine, zyklon gas canisters and dummies of "great" dictators and control freaks of the last couple of millenia, no doubt.
Being in a museum isn't ALWAYS a good thing!
Nurse! My tongue is stuck in my cheek again!
1) @Nazar:
"The wife can attest that the produced product is, "some of the best stout I've had"."
What would the wife know about it? Has she been breaking The Rules? Get her some white wine or a fruit-based drink.
2) Drinking responsibly - The only way to do this is to not drink alcohol at all. I therefore accept that I'm irresponsible, but I really, really hate the use of such an oxymoronic statement.
Pint - for the fella.
Does this laser focus specifically at the target's range? I'm just wondering what happens if a civilian vehicle happened to be flying a few thousand feet above any rogue missile, directly in the laser path. PEWPEWPEW baked Boeing 747 passenger for breakfast?
I know, it's a million-to-one chance, but any Discworld reader knows what that means...
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