Re: Not Teachers, it's the Gobbermint

Maths,Physics and Chemistry have limited career paths if you don't want to take it higher (msc,phd etc) or move slightly sidewise i.e maths/physics grads in IT. so there are plenty of undergrad level people with maths degrees prepared to go into teaching for a steady job (i know two personally) rather then endure the crippling debt of MSc/Phd or try to compete for the limited jobs out there.

Not the same with Comp Sci as most people can find work of some description, can train outside of academia (industry certs etc) and can be employed in the field without a degree (its possible but i am not trying to open the whole i don't need no degree in it debate). so there is a much smaller pool of people wanting to become educators (and chances are those that do go on to FE/uni then secondary school)

Re: Censorship is bad. Always

supplying drugs (specifically possession with intent to supply) is illegal and possession of controlled substances is a crime. i don't get the analogy.

Laws can be changed to easy and on a knee jerk to say if its illegal censor it look at the post 9/11 laws that got through with little debate/oversight and once they are on the books its hard to get them taken off.

it was illegal to say celebutard x has had sex with celebutard y due to super injunctions. as more and more things become subject to censorship because of legality status that could (and i am taking it to an extreme) be justification for blocking twatter/facebook etc as they contain "illegal" information.

i agree, good sir!

indeed one of the most underrated games ever. hardly anyone has heard of it!

Re: Wow

i'd imagine quite a few people in china would like a passport under a different name so they can get around local house arrest/leave country/have a different i.d. Think dissendents,falun gong,smugglers,gangsters the usual bunch of people that need to hide there identity to stop the police rightly (smugglers,gangsters) or wrongly (dissendents, falun gong) having a "firearms malfunction" within the vicinity of their frontal lobe

Re: We all don't remimber

concorde was sensible at the time it was designed and built. no email and cheap oil. if it wasn't for the nimbys/tree huggers (propped up by US Aerospace) you would have supersonic flight everywhere(at least the option of).

instead there was the whole "think of the children" protests over sonic booms over land, threats by individual states to not allow conorde over head etc and so they were restricted to supersonic over water only (wonder how long uk-australia would take in a long range concorde?). not to mention email/phone is not so good for stuff, supersonic cargo planes anyone?

mind you its probably for the best given the "OMGZ THE SKY IS FALLING" result of the recent eurofighter sonic booms (i was in an affected area and thought my motorcycle had fallen over again, not that it was the end of the world omg terrorists!) some people even claimed to see bright flashes of light acompanying the boom ffs.

Re: After really trying with Unity and Gnome 3...

xubuntu is lovely i use it on all my non gaming Pc's and can be tweaked to play nice with laptops (actually get a longer battery life on an x60 with xubuntu then winxp).

come on gabe give me native steam (most of my steam collection is old/low graphics games any how like hearts of iron) and i will make the full jump

Re: if gold bars were stcked on the moon

problem is you have a catch-22 situation the branch of fusion research that relies on He3 is restricted by the shear lack of the stuff (its only really produced from decommissioned nuke warheads) and the lack of research means no point in grabbing the He3.

mind you it is used in some medical gizmo's, all we need is the US department of defense to need some for some new doodad and we will have moon colony's in no time (staffed by blackwater)

Re: What's wrong with buying British?

want to pay double for your car/house/whatever insurance? how about an extra third on your council tax bill? nope? well there you go.

its all well and good going "buy british" but when it comes down to it people vote with there wallets and that means the jobs go to bangalore where they can hire 5 people for the cost of 1 here(quality doesn't come into it in MBA land its all about the size of your team)

Re: When will parents learn

or is it that people have made the choice not to have children because they want to spend their time doing something other then raising children? if your doing it right its a full time job in itself , sure you can't watch them 24 hours a day but here is the thing don't bitch when your caught out.

we all got up to mischief as kids and either were corrected or not by parents/guardians in different ways. whats being said is if you are not prepared to do the pre-screening then don't let them use it. simple eh? just like why tv has a 9pm watershed if you let little billy stay up past 9 with a tv in his room then don't bitch when he watches "naked nuns shoot things and swear". don't campeign to ban violent video games (which have age certificates) because little billy took a bat to the grandma after playing GTA which the parents bought him "cos all the other kid have it and he whined until we did"

need i go on? oh and sure i will look back on this when i have kids actually wait. i don't feel the need to spawn and so will be spending my free time doing whatever the hell i want without having to worry if little suzie is racking up a credit card bill

Re: Workable form of mass electricity storage

i really hate the "use electric cars as power soaks" idea. i sometimes have an urgent need to travel on short notice so always have my bikes fuel tank full. even if they have a cap (10% of charge) you could be talking a serious issue given the recharge time (loosing 10 miles when power points aren't universal could leave you stranded) . The vice versa is also true if i plug it in at 6pm i want it to start charging then not at 11pm when all the soaps/celebrity come dance with me on ice has finished and power demand is reduced.

Re: WTF?

yep just like for typing on tablets the solution is to use a case with a built in usb keyboard

personally i prefer having my phones with buttons and using this other thing thats always in my bag anyway. think they call them laptops or something not sure about this tech thing everyone calls me a luddite because my phones don't have touchscreens and have batterylifes measured in days not hours

Re: I don't understand

not to mention Bob is probably classed as a public servant so gets a nice pension/strong union backing. then is transferred to capita (i'd imagine ditching the council "perks" is where the money is saved) and after a year or two fired for some made up reason so they can employ one of their existing minimum wage drones in his place

Re: The race to the moon started when?

such a shame the Russian's focused on records (.i.e first x numbers in space etc) hen boots on the moon. not that i want to cheer lead them and the Chinese who seem to be the only ones interested in our satellite but go Russia !

merkins (because as a brit you are our only only hope in this sector) get NASA to stop focusing on the effects of microgravity on ants ability's to screw screws and get your boots back on the moon you gonna let a bunch of ex commie borch eaters beat you?

hell i would by shares in spaceX right now if they would let me. orbit is big business (comm sats etc) but this hunk of rock in orbit nah we don't need that just like cars going over 20 mph will shatter the human spine

Re: Law on their side?

from my experience of retail it was if you sell it you have to sell it for the price listed. otherwise whats stopping you from walking in to Harrods with some 99p labels and buying up the whole shop?

most companies will honor the mistake as policy but i don't think they legally have to they can refuse to sell and then correct the error which is what tesco have done

Re: Paying off your student loan is the worst idea possible

erm for me (2010 grad)

maximum student(maitenence) loan allowed = 4625/year

rent = 3840 per year (including electric etc but not net)

that leaves £785 to live off for a year which when you laready have some credit card debt going in to education, insurance of £180 (vehicle required to attend uni and do part time job), Internet (120ish) etc does not leave much left

So good for you if you found somewhere cheap to live, eat etc but the only ones pissing away their loan are the ones who's mummy and daddy pay their rent(including during the summer, not an option for myself or many others)/food/car and then give them a little bit more to "enjoy themselves". those of us not having the bank of mum and dad have to work as well as study which in my case meant being threatened with stabbings by underage chavs because i would not serve them booze , happy days

Re: The best thing about the razer mice

i would disagree. we have two deathadders in the house and they are both experiencing the double bounce (i.e single click registering as double) of bad micro switches. true they are 2+ years old but still i expect more given the price.

stripping them down and filling the switches with a non conductive fluid (motorcycle engine oil) does the trick and lasts longer then wd40

NFN

project orion was first

reading this at the moment, one of the characters "Fox" upon hearing of the ship starts referring to it as Orion.

top book by the way, recommend it for anyone that hasn't read it (same goes for any niven/pournelle book though )

the more you know....

i used to work in a store that would of been converted to a tesco express (and not even a large express)but they couldn't due to monopoly rulings (they still own the the company though). On these trucks your stuff is delivered in cages to roll it on/off the trucks as quick as possible.

even so when your average delivery is 7 -12 of these and they are as tall as a person and a 2 sq meter ish square (the local dairy is the same). it can still take 30 mins. Trucks have roll on/off capacity for cages, Vans don't they would be an absolute pig to unload/load individual boxes and take significantly longer with increased wastage due to drops etc

Now then using a fleet of transits and you would need a fleet as the trucks often have shortish runs (3-6 Drops) there is a real chance you could not fit a single stores worth in a single transit. Also these places do a good trade on alcohol at least 2 -3 cages per delivery (2 delivery's a week) which weighs a lot.

Electric would be no good either unless you want distribution warehouses on every street corner, the trucks do several hundred miles in a day, one of the main reasons being the distribution hubs need to be out of towns (in my sores case it was around 50 miles away)

oh and on point [1] your right i pay more road tax on a 650 55 MPG motorbike then a small car?

i work from home 80% of the time however for this sort of work can you imagine the potential of letting people with access to security information work from home? remember the minister carrying documents to #10 with the front page visible? now multiply that by thousands when morons start tweeting "Lol look at meh new iDooDad" next to the screen of there work laptop....

Unfortunately the doughnut is one instance where a physical work place is needed to stop people being morons.

good to see they are finally clicking that there packages are a joke.

because they would use conventional aircraft and not f35 jumpjets that we get +1000 brown nose points from the americans (were these not mostly planned through tony blairs bush rimming era?) who need as many international suckers sorry partners to prop up the hyper expensive mission creeping program.

Think they do this already with cobalt jackets they can place on normal muntions. It goes bang and spreads radioactive crap everywhere. not particularly lethal (at first) but a real pig to clean up and can deny access to a huge area