Posts by meanioni 48 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Mar 2011
I used to drink tea until I worked in one place where they used the same insulated jugs for tea and coffee and did not wash them out well enough in between. So you got tea flavoured coffee or coffee flavoured tea - both tasting vile. Put me off tea for life even the smell of it makes me go green now....
So one of the reasons you are saying that Ubuntu is glitchy because it refused to install on a tiny virtual hard disk that was only marginally bigger than the base OS needed?
Sounds like a DFU problem to me.
...because of course disk space is such a problem these days, I must remember to upgrade my disk to 32Gb when it comes to payday.... <slaps head>
Got latest MacOS running on two machines and it has been stable, no bugs. Very nice.
So the article is based upon removing 32 bit support (which has been known about for years and is not unreasonable) and a couple of devs moaning.
Well big whoopy do....
Compared to Windows 10 and the multiple updates it has had to pull because of breaking machines I think this is a non-story....
"if folks took the time to even use hot rather than cold water and soap not rely on antibacterial rubbish"
Plenty of research that shows that whether the water is hot or cold is irrelevant; similarly if the soap is normal or anti-bacterial. The main factor in hand (or for that matter any other body part) washing is how long and how vigorously it is washed (I just know that will trigger comments...)
Generally taxes are used for public benefit (yes I know there are lots of exceptions and there will be snarky comments about this) - but in terms of providing and maintaining roads, law and order, fire protection, healthcare for staff, waste disposal, etc. Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of this case, Apple as an income and profit generating entity is quite happily using these services and benefiting from them, but is not willing to pay its fair share.
Simply from a social good perspective and not from a "they're all a bunch of greedy bastards" they deserve to pay taxes to make their fair contribution across each European country in which they operate.
Of course, the governments concerned could always withhold collection of waste, block off roads, ignore any 999 requests originating from Apple until they do pay.... :-)
I worked with several hundred Grid PCs. I was working in Commercial Union, the insurance company who bought a large number (I seem to recall them being about £3k each and this was in the early 90s). They were amazingly engineered as they were made in a magnesium shell, contained shock-watches and you could drive a car over them or drop them out of a third storey window (as our staff did) and they would survive. I believe the shuttle actually had two of them on board and they were used for navigation. US Miltary liked them too as they were so battle-hardened and used in M1 Challenger tanks as I recall. The battery lasted 30 minutes at a push and the machines we had came with a CGA, orange plasma screen, a whopping 20Mb hard disk and 1Mb of RAM. At the time, they were unique as no-one had invented a truly portable machine. Grid also came out with the world's first LCD laptop, the Lynx which was a thing of beauty, still very much a piece of quality engineering. Sadly Tandy snapped Grid up and they just disappeared (as they did not know what to do with them), whilst Compaq and Toshiba entered the market and developed the laptop into what we have now. RIP Mr Ellenby, you were a genius and a fantastic engineer.
Well, I've decided to license my ears and eyes to all those providers who bombard me with material I did not request (e.g. music used in a TV programme/ad/on radio/Youtube Vid). I will be sending the broadcasters a bill for the pleasure of using my ears. :-)
Alternatively, bring in a levy on blank media, but phase it in. Start with the earliest form (fair) and then work it in over a period of time. So, now for Video 2000, Laserdisks and reel-to-reel. In two years, do VHS and Betamax, 4 years time 8-track and cassettes, then minidisks in year 6..... :-)
Rolex? Schmolex! £10K on a watch? no ta, would rather spend it on something more worthwhile.
Apple Watch - lovely gimmick, but a bit pointless - screen too small to do anything meaningful (so people will still have to use their iPhone) and will largely be bought a) by fanbois or, b) by people showing off or c) by nerds.
So you can send your pulse to another user.... really? I mean, really???
BUT the main thing that will kill it is the stupidly short battery life. Yes I know that most people take their watches off at night (I don't) but to be seriously useful, you would operate it frequently during the day, which means a battery life of less than one working day (if not straight away within a short period of charging/recharging). So most of the time you would leave it switched off.
...which is exactly what I did at the proud age of 10 when my parents spent a small fortune on an LED watch which you had to press a button to make work. Friends and family thought this was cool and would show them it, by pressing the little button. And then the batteries died... LCD watches then came out and have dominated the digital watch market since.
So until they sort out better batteries, Smart Watches will be a short lived (and expensive) curiosity that will gather dust.... just like my LED watch :-(
Deary me what a load of cobblers some of the posters make here.
We live in a world bathed in radiation - solar, cosmic rays, background radiation from the earth itself and food you eat, by the way (helped by those lovely atom bomb tests from the 50s through to the 80s) and Chernobyl. Add to that flights, x-rays, etc and most people get a healthy dose by doing nothing. And amazingly, were not all flaking out from radiation sickness.
It matters also what sort of radiation is being emitted - alpha can be stopped by a sheet of paper, beta has a short range and gamma is the sort with the most "staying power" is more dangerous to living things.
The radiation from Fukushima has dispersed over a huge area. Many of the isotopes concerned have short half-lives so although the initial risk was high, over time it has decreased. Yes, there are more dangerous isotopes, but again - they are heavily dispersed and if they emit alpha/beta unless you eat it or rub it on and leave it on your skin, you are unlikely to suffer any consequences.
Soot particles and dioxins from coal and waste burning plants produce far more carcinogens over a much longer time period, in addition to other toxic gases such as Nitrogen Dioxide,etc.
So relax California - the risk to your health is infinitely higher from the burgers you may eat, going on a sunbed without proper sunscreen and stress from your job!
And as for the poster who said anti-global warming people treat it as a religion - look in the mirror buddy! I have seen considerably more evidence of religious fervour from pro-GW supporters - preaching to others, faith without any rational, objective scientific view, taking text/views literally and getting aggressive and feeling threatened by anti global warming views.
...and either:
a) Eat a normal diet
b) Make up some porridge, mix in some honey and then drink a vitamin tablet with a glass of milk *
*This is a healthier equivalent of the ingredients of Soylent, which is mainly sugar, oats, milk protein and miscellaneous chemicals and additives, including minerals and vitamins.
I would not want to be on Soylent long term, yes you can technically live on it but it is hardly a substitute for a proper diet and almost certainly will lead to health problems longer term.
"so called flaws"??? just google the three I mentioned and you will find thousands of people having the same issues.
If you had a good one - great, you were lucky. But I'm b*ggered if I am paying for a supposed top of the range phone which has such flaws and which Samsung refuse to do anything about.
For my sins I've got an iPhone 5 from work, a Nokia 920 as my main phone and an Android phone as a spare. I replaced my Galaxy SIII with the Nokia.
I wouldn't say I'm a fan of any specific phone, but the Windows phone and UI is not as bad as many people make out once you get used to it. In some ways it's quite intuitive. The Galaxy SIII promised great things but I got rid of it after 3 major faults (and understand that I am not alone in this respect): cracking bezel, rebooting randomly or freezing and random times when the sound was distorted/crackling. It went back to Samsung and they said nothing was wrong with it.... hmmm
Liking the 920 more - robust, well made. Sure the OS needs tweaking but day to day I don't notice any major issues and all the apps I use frequently are there.
When I switch from the 920 to my iPhone, the iOS interface does feel a bit dated - particularly the one button approach.
"Then we should proceed with my plan to move Great Britain to the safety of the Mediterranean post haste."
It seems a shame to bury all that beautiful scenery into the foundations of the causeway. I think we should move Slough and Crewe first then any town/city in which Katie Price or Simon Cowell live. We should then move onto the homes of any BMW/Audi drivers and Rupert Murdoch.
We can melt down windfarms to make pontoons and the hole left by the removal of Slough would become my first giant shark tank adjacent to my newly built mansion. Now all I need is a white pussy-cat....
Most of the objectors don't probably realise how Glass works. To take a picture you have to tilt your head and say: "OK Glass take a picture" there is a short delay and the picture is then taken. Any more interaction (changing settings, etc) involves using a mini touch pad on the side of the head-piece.
It will only take 10 seconds of video and similarly you have to verbally instruct it.
So the idea of someone sneakily taking pictures of children in a toilet is a bit far of the mark when you have someone wearing very obvious hardware on their face, staring at them for some time, having to give a voice command which is a bit of a give-away. Plus the camera has a light on it when it is on.....
The more likely scenario when visiting a bathroom with Glass on is you accidentally record your own todger...
Then 3 months later - "Aunt Mabel, come and look at my video of my trip to Skegness....here's the seafront.... ah, oh, b*gger where's the stop button...!!!." :-)
I wonder how many of the posters here actually were adults in Thatcher years...
I was and I remember just how crap things were in the 70s prior to her coming in. Let's start with some home truths:
Car industry was on its knees - destroyed by over-unionised workforce, rolling strikes and dreadful product. Reason it died was lack of competition against the German/Japanese imports. Our luxury cars weren't and normal cars were unreliable, lacking features and not using latest technology. Blaming Thatcher for this is a bit rich as it was in its death throes anyway.
Mining and steel industry - quite simply we could not produce at a good enough price - like tin mining before it (which we used to lead the world in) and clothing, other countries entered the market with a lower cost base (cheap labour, etc).
Other manufacturing, I remember in the 70s everything was "made in Hong Kong", again cheap labour. they, like us moved on into higher value business (when was the last time you saw anything labelled "made in Hong Kong"?) China is currently filling that void, next it will be India and Brazil - just natural progression. No point in us trying to compete.
British Rail was a laughing stock, bloated, inefficient, strikes, lack of investment. Whilst I don't like the rail prices at least when I travel now its on a modern, fast air-conditioned train that generally runs on time.
And the list goes on.
Thatcher was a catalyst, like it or not this was going to happen anyway. If she was guilty of one thing it was not providing the support for the people - the sudden crash plunged many areas into deep depression. But then I'm not sure what could have been done anyway.
I also laughed to see someone blaming Thatcher for Blair coming in. Hilarious.
And if there was one person who is more responsible for screwing this country over, it was him:
Got us involved in expensive and pointless wars
Spent like there was no tomorrow
Encouraged a dependency culture
Failed to control bankers
Almost sunk us into the Euro...
Wasted billions on vanity projects (Millennium Dome....etc)
Science is a bit suspect as there is no causal link given between red meat and early death. Also they admitted that people who eat a lot of red meat smoke and drink more and eat less vegetables.... so are basically more likely to be unhealthy.
In other word, people who are more likely to be unhealthy die earlier - what a shocker! :-O
I bet if they ran a study on how many of the men wore Y-fronts they could find a similar link - yep wearing Y-fronts reduces your lifespan.....
The funding for this study (the red meat one, not y-fronts) is from a basket of funders (number of government departments, some trusts but a lot of heart and cancer charities). So this also raises a question as they all have a vested interest in this coming out bad....
If there's one thing guaranteed to get most of the posters flaming each other on here its debate on operating systems, be it on a PC, phone or a tablet.
I always find it amusing to see the passion that this induces as: *MY* o/s is better than yours, etc.
Been in computing too long, have a Mac, PC running linux and PC running Win 8; have an Android tablet and phone and Win 8 phone (and have had iPhones and iPads) I find it hard these days to get passionate/excited about any of them.
They're all flawed, all from evil megacorps and all do the same thing, some better, some worse than others...
Some oursourcing contracts can work very well, especially if they replace failing IT/IT support in an environment where it is hard to drive change.
The problem in my experience lies in customers putting bad outsourcing contracts in place where they neither have considered and allowed for potential negative outcomes nor put controls around costs.
Ugh star wiring - surprised no-one mentioned it - for me the main killer of Token Ring.... I used to work in the insurance company Commercial Union who lived, ate and breathed IBM. They backed Token ring over Ethernet, OS2 over Windows, Smartsuite over Office, Lotus Notes over... well any other half decent email programme. I set up my own little enclave with a peer to peer Windows for Worksgroups network (remember that!) running over Ethernet, using Office.... I fought off battles from my IT Department...
Then about 2 years later the nerds in the IT centre panicked and came to us as the most experienced people using these technologies.... ah those were the days :-)
There's a very simple way of launching.
Have a 6 balloon design.
Put a PORG (Person Of Restricted Growth) on the launch platform with a box of matches and an air rifle. If a PORG is not available, just use a small child (but remember to tell their parents first...)
When the first balloon bursts said PORG lights match and ignites fuse of rocket. PORG then shoots out balloons one by one for a "controlled" descent.
If lack of oxygen is an issue for the matches, you could equip PORG with a magnifying glass to focus the sun's rays.
If lack of oxygen is an issue for the PORG, make the balloons really big, so it will get to altitude within 2 minutes (maximum breath holding time)....
....and an ambulance to deal with the bends and scrape them off whichever bit of the landscape they end up adorning..... :-)
Hey, at least it would be in a good cause....
If we assume a photon moving at the speed of light has energy (and therefore by e=mc squared) mass, a single photon with a wavelength of 400nm moving past you would have, according to my calculations 1,656 yoctoelephants per second (i.e. 1.656 x 10 to the power of -27 elephants) :-)
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