Posts by Marvin the Martian

Re: "popular Japanese Reddit clone 2channel"

No, no, they're clones without an original. Stand alone complex, it's called.

As the first commentor suggested, the perpetrator is long dead, sending out pre-programmed stuff. So far, so "ghost in the shell".

Re: The rights man, the rights

Very true. The cries of incomprehending agony from a 2year old when "The Gruffalo" and "The Gruffalo's Child" disappeared after a month, about a year ago, having watched those daily for a month... It's still fresh scars.

It may become obligatory in Magaluf.

Having a DIY pump facility installed would certainly help reduce emergency calls from binge drinkers --- their mates could just pump them & continue.

Another factor that springs to mind...

"Low hanging fruit". If there really is a "several-decades old slowing down of growth".

Re: Winter?

Whatever GCSE season we're in, in Blighty it's definitely the Rainy Season. Which stretches typically from Mid-May to Early-March.

Re: I still dont get why Google is dumping iGoogle

No, iGoogle (in its /ig incarnation) will be discontinued in November 2013, so less than a year to go.

database software.

You're thinking of Access, not Excel.

Nomen est omen.

More failure: here a 2009 iMac that's moved left/right and tilted up/down a few times a day --- desktop working machine by day, DVD viewer every night --- and never a cable has fallen out.

I'll return it to Apple, "does not perform as promised by Alpha Klutz".

What's with the Apple fixation?

Everytime there's something at Foxconn (who make the bulk of ALL laptops, not just the fancy schmancy macbooks) then it's "trouble at Mac-builder Foxconn".

Every single error at Apple Maps is reported in an article. Some evenhandedness, then! The number of Google Maps weirdnesses were staggering at the beginning, but you only got one article per type --- e.g., the Escher-like buildings that were leaning in all directions. Now every misplaced locality (where nobody ever goes, that's how nobody notices in the first place).

"UUUUh, the Apple links to scenic Luton in Devon instead of the shitty one near the airport" (what else you'd expect from a company that takes design seriously?) --- There's dozens of similar non-Apple WTFs [a classic one is truck drivers going for Lille in France (en route to the UK) ending up in the small Belgian village of Lille 100miles eastward] but suddenly that's not interesting? indeed, because there's dozens upon dozens. And it's not Apple.

Get over it, sick puppies.

Re: Less likely to kill

Dragons are indeed very far down the list: Top-three are horses, then cattle, then dogs.

Most spiders and snakes are near the dragons in probability, slightly higher are sharks and crocodiles.

@Acerimmer: "badges=people with too much time on their hand"

You mean, it's the modern equivalent warning of "never start an argument with someone who buys ink by the barrel"?

On the other hand

A lesson is learned: if you want to be a conservative, don't propose changes.

Re: @Tyrion

You know 80% of the people that own a WinPho? Wow.

You could try to find the fifth person, and have the whole set (royal flush?).

Why would stego be in HTML or whitespace?

Play a video, and hide in each cell bits of your message. Perfectly viewable with little image degradation, if you don't overdo the stego-vs-overall content ratio.

"The trick here is the criminal's response vs the jogger's response."

Is that your opinion on the conundrum posed, or is there any argument/facts/whatever to back this up.

If you take an average dog and put a cat in front of it, the outcome mostly depends on the cat: if it stands its ground and threatens, the dog retreats; if it turns tail the dog chases it (and it depends on the individual/training whether it play-chases or grabs to kill). [See similar video of cats chasing bears up trees etc.]

So that's in line with the idea that police dogs go by the runner's reaction; but it applies to untrained dogs. [Trained dogs differ: My neighbour's hunting dog, a lurcher, almost killed my not-running-away cat; in four seconds he put him into intensive care for three days after he brazenly jumped into the dog's garden to eat from the its tray.]

AFAIK police dogs are never trained with unprotected people (say lycra-wearing joggers), I guess Health&Sanity laws wouldn't allow it, so that's not it. [Come to think of it, police dogs are trained with the 'criminal' dressed in gigantic, furry, anti-bite suits. So if they were strictly trained by similarity, they'd be lethal to those annoying "mascots".]

I have seen police dogs bring down running as well as standing people, and people making eye contact or looking away. That doesn't mesh with the dog chosing his target based on running style. I think target indication is very much up to the handler; it's not that they suddenly shout "CAtch!" with their arms on their back and looking at the clouds. I actually wonder what the dog would do if there's possible confusion (signal? stop?); it can certainly be instantly called off if chasing the wrong target.

[Wolves very much hunt in packs with a leader somehow indicating which one from a herd of buffalo to bring down, while there's a mass of similar-sized, similar looking beasts stampede in identical fashion. So dog training must use this signalling/listening system.]

Re: "What a load of crap." -- "sue every tablet maker then" etc.

Checking Apple's website [ http://www.apple.com/uk/ipad/specs/ ], I notice for the first time they market it as 'storage', not 'memory'. I'm assuming that is indeed the free space (otherwise we'd have had lots of lawsuits).

So arguably, given that the iPad is the complete market leader, if MS finally comes up with their own version shouting similar numbers, you'd expect them to be comparable. But they're not, so the guy has a fair point. And I'm sorry, but even for a desktop OS, eating 16GB out of the box is just shocking... Realistically, you'd buy a tablet guessing at worst 2GB gets eaten by the OS.

[ElReg readers know that it's saddled with a FrankenOS being both desktop and mobile plunked on it, a regular customer cannot be expected to know; similarly I know MS was heavily backing tablets as the future about a decade ago, so it's not really "MS finally comes up with their version" but that's what the street sees.]

Re: The European Union

"We could achieve this as a separate project. Faster and for less cost."

Hahahahahaha... I can see britain achieve this on its own, the week after successfully rolling out an ID across the nation(s).

GFE

OK, I'll let you in on a secret: Google.

I think it's mostly comforting news.

At a recent debate at a prime UK university, more than half the students voted in favour of the thesis "casual sex is morally wrong". The percentage actually went up after the debate... The prof arguing the "not wrong" position was just horrified.

The only hope is that the bunch of Oxbridge rejects just didn't understand what "morally wrong" means.

Re: in summary:

"Man who volunteers foolhardishly jumping from stupendous height is not world's greatest thinker"

Gee, you wouldn't say?

That said, I also think manned space exploration is stupid and futile, just done for the merrikan public. We've got robots, you know, that need far less in life support systems.

Werhner v Braun may have said that man is the only supercomputer that's cheap to make, but the definition of 'super' has moved on since then.

Re: That is truly outstanding

Seeing him in the kitchen, I'm wondering about cleaning.

Specifically, ElReg's recent article about keyboards in the dishwasher dying...

Re: Stunning

While we're at it, we demand equal time for creationism; last year's Darwin propaganda was shocking. I think we should insist on taxpayer money being wasted wining and dining obscurantist lobbyists while time spent on fringe loonies should increase.

Sincerely,

A. Raving Monster Looney

"credentials gained on part-project"?

Sounds improbable, as the project (in this reading) is expected to fail horribly. Either they claim they did wonderful work but then left the company when things came close to final (not what a prospective employer wants to hear), or they have sown the seeds of disaster (not good for credentials either).

And if it goes well it's still hard to explain why they have left a steady gig when things got serious, leaving their employers exposed in many ways (including press -- read shareholders in the new employer's mind).

Re: What are you supposed to do, use a ‘4’ instead? Gre4t ide4.

There's anyway the keycaps applet to let you find (and type) whatever you want with the mouse.

This article isn't about solving a real problem, it's about complaining how modern cars aren't made from single blocks of pig iron anymore.

Re: so...

No it doesn't. It draws attention to the fact that Apple strongly disagrees. Which is their point I suspect -- the longer this goes on, the more people think "galaxy? oh yeah that ipad clone"...

You can't eat your cake and have it: either Apple is only good at marketing (selling bucketloads of mediocre stuff at inflated prices) or they're incredibly stupid at it (but then how do you maintain that they're so good at selling?).

Us sitting in our chairs are not even of the level of amateurs at this marketing game. I'm sure Apple has tested reactions, and the UK Samsung victory was Pyrrhic at best: "it's too uncool to be a copy". Every newspaper article about the apology hide&seek quotes that hilarious* putdown (certainly in less techy sites -- here every reader knows it).

*Hilarious for the admittedly special value/context of a judicial proceeding, of course, with grown men wearing 17th century wigs.

Re: cash?!

So what's going to be more expensive, letting a handful of Moss types in a room play with a scalectrix set, two ipads and a soldering setup, or take real cars outside in a landscape to be filmed as usual from a helicopter as well as a truck? Come on, math is not that hard.