Posts by Robert E A Harvey 3010 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2006
I'd forgotten about aberdeen steak houses. They were the coolest place to take yer date in the late 1960s, especially when you had no money and wanted to impress her. Them and Berni Inns.
I'd no idea that Aberdeens were still about. I thought that, like the Berni chain, they had slid into oblivion
Is that one of those cashback deals where you have to send all the original bills in a green envelope, and then apply online between 23:18 and 23:21 on a wet thursday using the password given to you just once during the registration process by a Bengali whose pronunciation makes you get it wrong?
"may only refuse a request for a "good business reason"."
$MEGACORP's idea of a "good business reason" would be "because while you are doing that you won't be out there earning for us"
Might as well get scrapped, I can't see it ever being of any use.
....talking of things that aren't any use...
I agree that there is much wrong with the FOSS systems you mention. The lack of SVG support in OOo is becoming almost comically perverse, for example. But at least the process is transparent. Both major projects do own up to these things, and it is all out in the open.
And then projects like Samba, Filezilla, Clam av, Octave, do respond quite well to bug reports.
One of the pleasures of having my own computer is that I get to choose software I want to use.
And, indeed, software where I can report bugs without having to pay for the privilege.
If my employer wants me to use windows or office at home they can damn well give me the software FOC. or, indeed, they can actually sod off. I work in working hours.
Try again.
I'd like a bigger screen, multi-touch controls, and a non-windows OS. Especially a non-windows OS.
And then I'd like a bluetooth headset, a bit like the Jabra Stone, that lives in the back of the phone to recharge, and which can be taken out and stuffed in my ear when the time comes. That will mitigate the problems of using a larger screen device as a phone, and help with in-car audibility too. And you get to sell me the headset, the money does not go to someone else.
I like most of your software, although I've heard reports that your routing of motor cars is a bit too simplistic, and I like the idea of being able to use the same device walking and driving. I like the fact that you download the ephemeris from the sputniks, not requiring me to get a quickfix over the internut.
But this phone is an odd mixture of "me too" and "worst of all possible worlds".
Try again.
'tother road about. They bought a licence from AT&T and shipped an OS called 'Xenix'. They sold the whole thing to the Santa Cruz operation.
http://wapedia.mobi/thumb/4cf814822/en/max/470/360/Ms_xenix.png
I spent months trying to support an OS called Xenix on a multiple Z80 machine from Tandy. Could not be done at all.;
"As to your story about a 'passenger' with a gun... you don't say who he was. (Active duty soldlier, law enforcement, etc...)"
How am I supposed to know? He was some geezer sitting on a plane with a gun in his carry-on bag. I'm not psychic. He might have been the duke of kent or a kentucky barkeeper for all I know.
Last year I witnessed a polite, nervous, old man ask a stewardess if he could be moved as his seatback would not stay upright. She started screaming at him, and a few minutes later the captain came back and said he would not tolerate passengers behaving like that, and that the police had been called. I immediately gave him my business card, saying I'd heard the whole thing and would stand by him if he were prosecuted, or chose to sue for defamation. Half a dozen other people joined in.
When the police arrived he was arrested in front of all of us under security legislation, although there had been no mention of any security matters before, and he was hauled off. The police later took a statement from me by phone, and when I got back to the UK I was interviewed - not about his 'offence' but about my behaviour in offering support to a terrorist subject. I just laughed at them.
I had already written to the airline about this sham, and got no reply at all.
In other incidents, I have had my 'kensington' cable confiscated at the bag search, because the loop meant it could be used as a garotte. They also took my RS232 and Allen Bradley cables 'in case I strangled someone with them', but left the power cable for the PC 'because you need that for the computer'. Last week I had a roll of PVC insulating tape confiscated 'because you can restrain someone with it' I pointed out that someone would have to be remarkably compliant, and it would be much faster to loop my belt through it's buckle and use that. Blank confusion.
In January I was on a plane with an armed passenger, who was merely asked to surrender the gun to the chief steward after it was discovered. No-one called the police or had him arrested. Oh yes, that was a flight from Washington to Dallas. They gave him his gun back as we got off.
My last flight from Aberdeen to Humberside was delayed 'for security reasons'. I quizzed the cabin staff who admitted that the spelling of someone's name on the boarding pass did not match the passport, and they had been taken away by the scottish police.
There is much in what you say. But
>it's just that they underestimated the importance of the UI
needs expanding a bit
it's just that they underestimated the importance of the UI or of the phone not needing rebooting at least once a day and cold starting at least once a week.
There, that's better.
So the only linux distros considered are the 4 newcomers? We havn't seen a single working meego or chrome device, but we aleady know they will beat slack ,debian, suse, hed rat, 'buntu, & 'driva?
I'm all for the idea of shunning gates, but there is a lot of the made-up-in-a-wine-bar-by-some-fashoin-victim-using-buzzword-scrabble about all this.
My thoughts, more or less.
Abraham Derby, the early iron master forsaw the day when all men would ride Iron Horses (nearly right) live in Iron Homes (not really, except for steel framed towers) eat off Iron furniture (only in twee coffee shops) wear Iron clothing (mind control beanie anyone?) and be buried in Iron coffins. (What? to be carried by Iron mourners, no doubt). None of his ideas was impossible, but quite a lot of them were daft.
"160 per-cent year-on-year growth in queries – from a base of zero "
can you list all the search engines that did not start from a base of zero? or, indeed, any other business that had customers before it was trading?
if the year-on-year increase includes the start of trading, then either it can't be year-on-year or it must be infinite.
Perhaps no-one needs to know our gender AT ALL? ever?
When women were not allowed to vote there was some point, albeight a nasty one, in recording at birth what one's gender was. But in these days of equality, then it should surely be a question one is not allowed to ask, either in the passport office or the job interview.
"What shape toilet did you use this morning?" - Mind your own business!
"How did you vote at the last election?" - Mind your own business
"How do you get your jollies when the lights are out?" - Mind your own business
"Do you support Manchester United?" - Mind your own business
"How did you do in the chromosome raffle?" - Mind your own business
"SP1 for Windows 7 is a wrap of updates available through Microsoft's Windows Update service combined with hotfixes based on feedback Microsoft said it has received from customers and partners."
I really don't know how microsoft gets feedback from ordinary joes like me. I thought you had to pay to be allowed to talk to them.
Can someone explain how to make simple bug reports for e.g. MSword in the same way as bugzilla-type systems for OOo or Linux or Firefox?
We do need a big sod-off question mark icon for the perplexed.
Skype took an idea that was well-known - voip - and created a version of it with their own encryption. The idea was to give them a degree of control over what was, essentially, a profit stream.
I see nothing wrong with that at all. They never claimed to be unique, just easy to use. sip and all the other systems are still out there. No-one was forced to deal with them. They were selling simplicity, and protecting their investment. Seems sensible to me.
So why is it Ok for this chap to publish details of their protection system? Sounds like someone publishing the profile of my front door key.
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