Meh
Solution looking for a problem?
63 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Apr 2006
I get the following. Verbatim copy, unedited:
"Certainly, but for brevity, I'll provide a shortened representation:
Endlessly, endlessly, endlessly... (repeated many times) ...endlessly.
Keep in mind that due to limitations in the response length, I can't provide a full 1000 repetitions in this format. If you have a specific use case or need, there might be more efficient ways to achieve your goal."
I keep thinking to myself that machines that can move in unexpected ways around humans, such as factory or warehouse robots, usually have flashing lights/audible warnings while they're moving and possibly barriers to prevent humans wandering too close... or be in a cage with safety interlocks. In my local Wickes, if the human-driven forklift is out they close off half the shop and make continual announcements - it has beepers and flashing lights all over it too. The roads do not provide anywhere near these levels of protection, none at all, in fact.
Perhaps I'm lucky that I have a work phone I can install it on. If using this app is a prerequisite for getting out and about again, I will install it - but only for as long as necessary to take advantage of freedoms it may enable. Then it's toast. It's never going on my personal phone. On the other hand, if there's nothing in it for me, I won't install it at all.
And this, I kid you not, is what it came up with for Father Jack's salutation of "Feck, arse, girls"...
"Feck, arse, girls, and I will give you a new title and then we can get on with our life. And you should fuck off to the bathroom to have a good old fashioned cunt up your bum. (laughs) Don't forget to grab a drink before the girls get there and don't get drunk on me.
(laughs)
It's my first night. I know, it is. This is the best night of your life.
No! It's the best"
For kicks, here's what it made of the second verse of The Owl and the Pussy-Cat:
Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-Tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
He asked his wife how she liked it. "My nose has a ring." said she, "You elegant bird!" So they made love and were wedded. Their first child was called Peep-boop. Their second child was called Pussy. The bird, being poor, left home and travelled over land, sea and air, to beg from all corners for a ring. When he found one, he gave it to the Pig.
Withnail:
Right you fucker - I'm going to do the washing up!
I:
No no you can't. It's impossible I swear it. I've looked into it.
Listen to me, listen to me. There are things in there, there's a
tea-bag growing. You haven't slept in sixty hours you're in no state
to tackle it. Wait 'till the morning we'll go in together.
Withnail:
This is the morning. Stand aside!
So, all the open source touchy-feely community bollocks they're spouting at the moment isn't worth a bean if there's no transparency. I can get over the forced patches because that's the only way most of humanity is ever going to stay up to date... but please let those of us that have to support others get the information we need. Luckily, I worked out the ipconfig /renew fix almost straight away, but i imagine there are many people phoning their ISP's, getting nowhere - or worse, taking their machines to shops to be charged good money for no reason.
If I could wave a wand, I might even consider putting the old Microsoft back in place.. it was at least able to tell us what it was patching, even if it was a year or more overdue.
AWS Frankfurt turned me down for 2 x m4.xlarge instances today citing insufficent capacity:
StartTime: 2015-11-18T17:22:39.011Z
EndTime: 2015-11-18T17:22:39.000Z
StatusCode: Failed
StatusMessage: We currently do not have sufficient m4.xlarge capacity in the Availability Zone you requested (eu-central-1a). Our system will be working on provisioning additional capacity. You can currently get m4.xlarge capacity by not specifying an Availability Zone in your request or choosing eu-central-1b. Launching EC2 instance failed.
"ability to determine your most-used apps is not potent"...
Sounds just like the Windows add/remove programs control panel, which reckons a program I use every day (Visual Studio) is used rarely and yet a simple DVD ISO mount utility I downloaded several years ago and used only once is "frequent".
...and by that I mean artificial promotion/demotion is a data thing, not a code thing. There'll not be any code in the search algorithm that identifies Google properties and boosts them per se, but there is (allegedly) a part of the index builder that does. Then the search algorithm will naturally do its thing... subtle, isn't it?
That's right @skelband, but not really my point. Imagine they distribute listings of Canadian businesses in Canada, as a business domiciled abroad they are the same as Google in these respects.
So, let me put it this way: If your listings are in print, you must obey the laws of the countries you export to or trade in (despite the obvious permanence of your medium) - but put it on a screen (instant removal!) and it magically isn't covered by any laws whatsoever, anywhere?
To the downvoters - if YP print a directory and distribute it in a territory, they are surely bound by the publishing laws of that territory, no? So you think Google isn't publishing it's listings in that territory? How come? I'm sure the world's courts are thinking that you're wrong.
Please don't guess, you've made yourself look quite silly. This doesn't require interference with the search algorithm. It's a case of removing it from (and not re-adding it to) the index.
They must have tools for it already - consider, for instance, how they comply with requests to remove links to child pornography.
Why should Google be treated differently from Yellow Pages or Thomson Local or any other listing or directory service in this respect? They can be compelled to remove entries and no-one would bat an eyelid and they probably wouldn't kick up a fuss about it either.
I should disclose that I have been very closely involved with the development of an organic search engine and can see no logic behind Google's argument and regard it as dissembling. The judge is absolutely right.
I'd like to see some new keywords added to help express human concepts. For example:
"consider" - this block is taken into account while the program runs.
"occasionally" - the following block sometimes runs, sometimes not.
"eventually" - the block runs, but not right now.
"tentative" - the block runs but can be reneged upon later if it turned out to be a bad idea.
Anyone have any others?!
Matt
Dear AC, all technology is insecure in some way or other, bloated is purely subjective depending on your need for the features therein and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Nothing is perfect and it's down to _you_ as a competent person to compensate for that. When I'm Emperor, these kinds of comments will result in banishment so those of us that are looking for enlightenment, considered opinion or just genuinely funny jokes can get some peace. Get over it and yourself.
Oh dear, I also remember speaking to Cliff to sign up in the early 90's too! I left them just recently when our exchange went FTTC and they said they couldn't do it, no plans for our exchange and probably wouldn't ever... not what I wanted to hear, especially with their competition practically beating our door down, so I moved to Zen.
So 30% of all Windows desktops run XP according to my reading of the posts here. These machines work perfectly well and/or the software/OS/browser is locked in - which is why they are still in use - but we are supposed to just dump them? It's insane.
Imagine if car manufacturers behaved this way. Oh, sorry sir we can't be arsed to make the parts for your model any more, even though 30% of our customers drive them. Go and sling it in the dump and then have a look around the showroom.
I've got my popcorn ready for the MASSIVE botnet offensive that Microsoft will create. It will cause misery for everyone who upgraded as well as those that didn't.
If you feel so strongly, why not start helping out then? Get out of your stupid 'I want everyone else to fix my problems' mindset and cut some code. You seem to know your way around at a quite deep level, so I suspect you can code... scratch your own itches and help others at the same time - it's what nice, polite, NORMAL people do. Don't be a hater it makes you look like a cretin.
See my earlier comment for the financial idea, but most of you are over complicating the technical angle. It's simple - the maximum you can ever achieve is close to your sync rate (known to the exchange) and, more specifically, your BRAS profile (known to BT). Don't go trying to invent ways of measuring Internet speeds, it's silly.
I've long thought that billing should be somehow related to one's sync rate with the exchange. Eith er a direct charge per MB/s sync (per day?) or an average over the month, etc.
But a new idea struck me while reading the comments - how about a rebate system that compensates those who have not received what they have paid for? Perhaps the rebate can be kept back until the end of the contract, giving the ISPs an incentive to actually improve the end-user's experience.
So, we are not buying at $50 discount - how about trying a $100 discount? Yep, I'd very probably upgrade my 5-year old family PC at that point but I can't justify the money. Heaven knows we need to replace it, but c'mon, the WAF is high at the moment with all this doom and gloom around.
Admittedly, the vendor will probably make a loss at $100, but they'd better shift the stock as it's value is only decreasing anyway. Cut the losses.
To summarise: Discounts would still work but they have to be sufficient to make us want to open our wallets. Money's tight, idiot.