Posts by TeeCee 9435 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007
Where both sides say that the negative publicity surrounding the dragging of their disagreement into public view has hurt them and that they and their companies have suffered financial damage verging on bankruptcy.
Then they go and shovel shedloads of cash down the lawyers' throats in order to have the whole sorry mess picked over again in detail through the courts.
"...a proper, horsey name, like 'Desert Orchid' or 'Sanyo Music Centre'."
...that of all the keyboards that taken a coffee soaking courtesy of El Reg, this was the only time the coffee in question had taken a trip through my sinuses to get there. Then, after sponging the worst of it off, I read the comments and LaeMi's made it happen again.
Quality!
However, all that aside. I once set up a series of servers named after a variety of demonic entities. It made sense as networking was still a bit of a black art* back then. Anyhow, I came unstuck when some born-again new hire refused to login to something reporting itself as "Asmodeus" on principle. Fortunately (or unfortunately if you're a religious twat), I managed to convince the powers that be** that downing the whole lot and reconfiguring, with all the attendant hoo-hah, was going to be a sight more expensive than paying the little sod off when they sacked him.
*One thing a good naming convention should have - a really cheesy gag to justify it.
**The earthly ones. No messy stuff with entrails required at all.
The lads at the Torygraph must be laughing their bloody socks off over this one.
I find it astonishingly difficult to believe that there wasn't anyone involved in the release of this information who didn't make the obvious deduction. I.e. that with it all in the public domain anyway, the only thing that was guaranteed to bring the whole sorry affair back into front-page news was an attempt to censor it.
All they've done here is give the Toadygraph an excuse to trot out all the same details again, stating in each case (with undisguised glee at the whole "two for the price of one" thing) where they wouldn't have been able to point the finger if they'd only had access to the "official" version. Much as I enjoy seeing MPs nailed to the cross, I think that it's in the interests of good journalism if the hacks at least have to supply their own nails and wood rather than having the government send it over gift-wrapped.
Conclusion: The government really are a bunch of cast-iron, grade "A", dyed-in-the-wool fuckwits and I'm not sure anyone would notice if we replaced them with a bag of hammers.
J.C. released from custody (filed 21/4/0031)
Today in Jerusalem, Jesus Christ (31) was released from custody. Significant speculation that he was to be crucified for his work in undermining the Roman government led to a mass Twitter campaign for his release. The Roman authorities bowed to the vox pop and eventually released him on license, with the condition that he returns to Nazareth and refrains from any overt miracle working.
The Roman Governor (P.Pilate - 57) said in a tweet today: "He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy"....
You're missing the Joker in the pack, the BAe 146 / AVRO RJ.
This already has something very similar. The engines on these aircraft were originally designed as turboshafts for helicopters and rev too highly to be converted directly into a bypass fanjet. The solution is the same, there's a gearbox to allow the fan to revolve at a lower speed than the turbojet bit.
The 146 is not so affectionately known amongst crews as the "flying gas chamber". There have been numerous incidents of both passengers and crew being overcome by toxic fumes in the cabin. In common with most modern aircraft, the compressed air for cabin ventilation / pressurisation is taken as a bleed from the bypass fan ducting of the engines (cheaper than having a seperate compressor). The problem here is that the gearbox lubricants are highly toxic and if a seal leaks........
".... most notably in The Sun....."
I wonder if this is the sort of appeals process that Harriet Harperson had in mind when she rattled on about the "court of public opinion" over Fred Badloser's pension?
Thought for the day: Is Max Clifford a barrister in the Court of Public Opinion?
I'm guessing that if they're resorting to Tw@ter because other forms of communication are banned / controlled, then Tw@ter itself'll be cut off in Iran in fairly short order.
Next week: International shock as Iran jumps to top of "most desirable country to live in" tables. Immunity from inescapable and continuous drizzle of utter bollocks outweighs risk of beheading, stoning, amputation, nuclear war and inability to get a beer.
"If you sign up and we win the election you'll get paid the same amount, but you won't have to do the work or run the risk of being lampooned in the press, lambasted by the commons accounts committee and sued by the government when you deliver your usual barely-functional, unresponsive crock of completely useless shit.
We'd rather you didn't do this as we haven't got the money. Thank you for listening."
The Lords have traditionally been rather difficult to control as they owe little to the parties that they represent. Also, there has always been a healthy number of crossbenchers (those not affiliated to a particular party). I'm not aware of any Commons government ever having sat in the knowledge that they also held an absolute majority in the Lords. Finally here, the remuneration for sitting in the Lords has in the past been a paltry amount, so those that turned up did so out of altruism and a sense of duty rather than for the cash.
It always had an inbuilt conservative majority, although that was very much a "small c" thing as any Tory government that's had a contentious bill returned in tatters will attest. This is probably a good thing as I think an upper house, to act as a governer, should always tend towards the status quo as the preferred option and object to anything radical on principle. The control here is the Parliament act and eminently sensible this system is too. Radical legislation *should* be difficult to get passed.
Why on earth do you think that Bliar spent so much time attempting to turn it into a talking shop stuffed with well-paid toadies? The only reason that it still acts independantly is that Tony found to his cost that even some of the most lickspittle of his client Lords, once elevated and thus untouchable, "went native". The main reason the gibbering lefties are so keen on an elected upper house is so that their stooges'll have to toe the line or risk being deselected at the next election....
Apart from the numbering issues, yer NAT router with an inbuilt firewall is great protection against the gits out there.
The sound of running boots in the background is that of scumbags trying to be the first to take advantage of all the Opera users having a discernable port open and forwarded to their PC.
Still, I suppose that even if every single Opera user switches this on, the resulting botnet will still be quite small by usual standards.
Also, you'll only get those 35 miles if you do them fairly slowly.
The Prius automatically disables its Electric Vehicle mode when you exceed something around 45 km/h or shove the throttle too hard and cuts in the engine (always assuming you remembered to press the button to force EV mode in the first place).
Rumour has it that the official Toyota PHEV variant, set to debut later this year, is a little more forgiving in this respect, but since the one under discussion is a bog car with a higher capacity* battery pack stuffed into it, I'll bet that the standard restrictions apply here.
*Yes, "higher capacity", not "bigger". I think it's the same physical size as the standard NiMh one...
"It's just to protect the children"
Ah, the "just think of the children" defence. I find a strange irony in this classic straight from the Daily Heil being used to defend the PRC's latest strategy in treating its population like mushrooms*.
*Something else traditionally kept in the dark and fed shit.
"Actually makes calls back to Solid Oak servers"
Dear Solid Oak. When a call comes in from a Chinese IP, send it back a set of suggested safe links to "subversive" Western news sites, Falun Gong and porn. Block anything from the Chinese government or Jinhui software. Ok, you won't get any cash, but it'll be funny and probably get the thieving little shit who ripped you off sent for some extensive "political reeducation".
"....since using the Kindle that he became aware of the failings of old-style books....."
I only became aware of the massive advantages of old-style books once e-versions became de rigeur in the world of IT manuals.
Each to his own I suppose, although I can't help thinking that Mr Bezos' opinion is somewhat coloured by the fact that every time someone buys into his hype and stumps for a Kindle and a load of books for it, his wallet gets heavier.
Are just as much of a threat on modern battlefields as they've been since they were invented.
Surely the key difference here is that they are of no significant threat if the person using them isn't close enough for you to be able to see where they're firing from without resorting to gadget assistance (e.g. standing on the edge of your foxhole with the nasty end pointed in your direction).
ISTR that when the Eee* shipped amidst much interest there was an XP version or a cheaper Linux version.
IASTR that ASUS found that sales of the Linux version were somewhere in the vicinity of piss-poor and that quite a few of those sold were returned for an extra-cost XP "upgrade" (hah!).
So the *real* question here is whether an extra 20 quid on the price differential between the two versions will galvanise the great unwashed public into jumping the shark. My money's tentatively placed on "no" here.
The elephant in the room is whether the lost sales courtesy of a 20 quid price hike are sufficiently taken up by Linux version sales to make it worth while, when the cost of stocking, distributing and supporting two parallel product lines is taken into account.....
*There, I mentioned it. Can we have the pic now please?
"This is your driver speaking. I'm afraid there's a bit of traffic on the taxiway out to the pad today. I've spoken to launch control about a slot and they're getting back to me. In the meantime, we're number 12 in the queue and, assuming nothing changes, we should be in position to blast off sometime after hell freezes over."
I call killing the superior, more innovative product on that one too!
I used to take great delight in pulling the odd wire at random out of a socket on my network as a demo while my Ethernet-encumbered colleagues shat bricks at the sight of this. I sometimes wonder at the sort of throughput we'd be seeing these days if TR had been developed further, given that even 4meg TR kicked the living shit out of 10meg Ethernet in the old days.
Anyhow, SUN and Ethernet didn't kill off TR, IBM managed that on their own by not opening the the thing up until it was too late and the opposition had got their feet well under the table. They had the lead and they threw it away in an orgy of fat-arsed complacency. The speed, price and compatibility of the 3com TokenLink III cards (once IBM saw the writing on the wall) was a pointer to what might have been, but it was too little, too late.
120,000 years? So in length of time life's been around terms it's been taking a bit of a siesta then. About the only danger here is that of it getting a tad pissed off at being woken up early and throwing a hissy fit.
Put it this way. If it was deadly to human life, there wouldn't be any human life around these days for it to be deadly to.
Now, where's my cloned T-Rex you bastards?
Except that all those 'leccy cars, vans, buses and such charging overnight in the coming years will take care of this for them.
Unless the sort of thing in the article really takes off with the heavy consumers as well, in which case we'll still have a peak demand problem, but it'll be overnight and Sod's law will have had its revenge.
I don't see why this would dent Toyota's marketing at all.
"....see no use for F1-style KERS on road cars"
A quick trawl of the Prius' specs doesn't reveal the presence of an "F1-style KERS" system. The closest I can come up with in the world of road cars is Honda's system in the Civic and Insight, which at least shares the "either charging or driving but never both" aspect.
Good news: You have the sort of luck that the one in umpty-something million chance comes up with your name on it.
Bad news: It involves being hit by a meteorite and 15 minutes of fame rather than being the sole winner of a quintuple rollover on the EuroMillions draw and a lifetime of sybaritic luxury.
I'll be importing a copy then so I don't get the EU-b0rken version.
I'd like to think that enough people will follow suit that the chair-polishing, IT-illiterate, overpaid, graft-addicted fuckwits in Brustrasllesbourg will be treated to a lynching by pissed-off software vendors, but I'm under no illusions here.
If I want to install another browser (and I do - several actually), I'd like to do it in my own sweet fucking time once I've got the thing up, stable and app ready and not as a critical part of the build process so I can fetch driver updates et. al. thanks.
One thing I will definately do is vote for the most extreme right-wing bunch of 'tards I can find at the next Euro-poll. I can see from the hand-wringing over the recent results how much it pisses off the bien-pensant tossers in Euroland every time the gibbering nazis get a vote.
The trouble is that you are comparing Apples with Pears there.
The 'leccy bike boys have over 100 years of suspension, frame, brake, tyre and such development to draw on. The lads working between 1907 and the 1930s had to start from scratch with every single component.
Let's see 'em stick the same power unit in an iron frame with cantilever leaf springing at the front and no suspension at the rear, no dampers, 2" crossply tyres, drum brakes (rear only) and ball bearings packed with cart grease where required and see what they get then.
If we are invaded by a ravening, self-mothered pseudohydrozoan immortal Dr Who jellyfish clone vampire blobomination horror-swarm, it'll actually be a highly-radioactive, ravening, self-mothered pseudohydrozoan immortal Dr Who jellyfish clone vampire blobomination horror-swarm.
This is comforting news how exactly?
That's just a picture that looks like a Haynes manual with a Lunar Lander on it! If you hold it sideways and squint, you can see the pixel effects where the inconsistant images were stiched together and I won't even go into the obvious errors in the lighting effects.
There is no real manual and there never was, you read it here first. Any actual manuals you may see on the bookshelves in Halfords are a product of Orbital Mind Control lasers trained on you by the CIA......
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