Posts by Graham Dawson

Re: Threepwood!

The prophecy has come true!

Re: Stupid

Thing is, Lars, she calls herself a socialist - though in practice she's much more of the social democrat that is the norm in Sweden. In fact she out-capitalists me sometimes... :D

But she calls herself a socialist and she knows all the talking points. I'm not going to argue with her about that, not unless I want to have my half of the bed redistributed between the cats.

Re: Look at the plus side....

Custom linux with buildroot, approximately 3 seconds to desktop. Well... xorg. Loading any DE on top of that would double the time at least.

Re: If....

They do if you wrap them in a suitable cable armour, which likely wouldn't be much different to the armour used for conventional twisted pair.

Re: Experts?

By and large, the hereditaries werent' all that wealthy - yes, I know, they often had a lot of land, but they didn't have much income from it. They also didn't receive a wage for attending parliament. Most of them had jobs of some sort, and a fair number even worked in industries relevant to the legislation they were scrutinising, or were hobbyists or passionately involved in some other way.

It wasn't perfect of course - you had your usual collection of imbeciles and wastrels that you'd expect in any hereditary system, but for the most part they only attended for as long as it took to get to the various bars and private dining rooms in Westminster Palace.

The end result was that the Lords tended to act as a brake on the profligate excesses of the executive and forced Parliament to pay attention to the detail of proposals before sending them for scrutiny, even after attempts to stuff it with appointed life peers. Naturally it had to go.

Nobody can legitimately argue that what we have now is in any way better than what we had before. I'd even go as far as to argue that very few alternatives would be better given they all rely on political patronage of some sort. An elected upper house, which has been proposed a few times, would probably be the worst solution of all. The only real alternative is to take the original principle of the Lords, which was essentially a sort of severely restricted jury service based on property and title, and generalise it to to the entire population. Appoint members to the Upper House by lot, have them attend for a fix period with suitable compensation. That way you can avoid the problem of appointed patsies, perpetual election campaigners and party-political ideologues (though you do potentially risk replacing it with a different set of ideologues) and instead you get a relatively reasonable cross-section of the population, with a higher chance that someone proposing or scrutinising legislation has some idea of what they're talking about.

He means in terms of visible user interface, not the blobs of code behind it.

@John G Imrie Re: I blame 18 years of socialist government.

Blue and Red, Green and Purple.

Re: Blech...

It could work. An x-files sequel with the lead played by a. actual cannibal? What's not to like?

Re: Pure Genius

The difference between HS2 and the california thing is that HS2 has an extra political dimension to it. Viewed purely in terms of Great Britain it's entirely pointless, replicating lines that already exist and that travel at almost the same speed, but it was never meant to be merely a line between London and Edinburgh. It's part of the European high-speed rail network. Viewed from that perspective it makes sense - at least politically, if not economically.

The benefit is in allowing reliable refurbishing of the engines at low cost instead of hoping that the engines survive immersion in sea water, which in turns cuts the cost of launches, as the engines can be re-used reliably instead of having to be built fresh for each launch.

On the capsule side, having it land at a designated landing site instead of splashing down would slash the recovery costs to a fraction of their current level. Instead of having to keep a bunch of ships and aircraft on standby to find the capsule, you can just walk up to it and open the door. And you can refurb and re-use it without much effort too.

Re: Frankly ...

It was his smile.

Re: Another reason to skip secret santa

How about having it very clearly explained that being a temp doesn't excuse you from taking part and then being let go right before Christmas - and right before the gifts are handed out.

If I knew then what I know now, that place would have stunk for weeks afterwards.

Re: Scrap metal?

No, scrap metal is metal going for scrap. It can be perfectly useable but no longer useful - like the old cast iron radiators we used to scrap all the time when I was a builder. They worked. They didn't work well, so they were scrapped. That made them scrap metal, even though they were fully functional.

Re: Not as silly as it sounds.

So does that mean they'd cave out?

Re: Architected?

Perhaps they engineered it. Oh wait that was a noun that became a verb (before being a verb that became a noun), I guess we can't use that. Did they oversee the build? Oh wait that's a verb that became a noun too! Why it's almost like language changes over time!

Object if you like (lord knows I do) but don't act like it's some new thing. It's how language came to even exist.

Re: 40%

You've got it backwards. Whisky is legally defined as being no less than 40% ABV because the flavour of the spirit drops off significantly if you dilute it beyond that point.

Re: come on people

Too busy getting their rocks off.

And then you can just fence them in and dig out the shears.

I don't remember gold-surfing dwarfs and a giant statue of Thorin's ego in the book...

Re: Apple TV

Neither of them offered any particular points I was interested in disagreeing with, so I went and downvoted UKIP instead.

Re: Star Trek

Oh come on, I already erased the third and fourth, what more do you want from me?

Re: Static addresses

Sure, let them have this slice of the salami. There's still loads of sausage left. Just one more slice is fine...

Re: Sorry

And yet every citroën I have seen on the road has, without fail, had an entirely non-functional left brake light. Every single one. They may be great cars to drive, but the electrics seem to be universally shite.

Then again I drive an old cherokee so what do I know?

Re: Is Facebook still around?

The influx of obnoxious teens is the reason tumblr has gone to shit over the last year or so.

Re: shock absorbers for landing

That's what my general trajectory always looked like when I was playing Lander as well...

You could say the same about people who insist on making tea in a strainer rather than just using a bag. Some people insist that the old way is obviously superior and take great pleasure in the ritual of making their drink. Whether such things are pantomime or comfortable, pleasurable experience is entirely in the eye of the beholder.

Re: Well, I hope they work things out and can sample the comet!

Don't knock it, those harpoons held him pretty firm to the side of the whale as I recall, at least in the film.

Easy. Shoot them.

Re: The child

The sort of sick fuck who would murder someone for internet fame, perhaps.

Re: Aspergers etc

That's pretty much what spectrum means these days, in contexts outside the measurement of light. One of its definitions is "a range; a continuous, infinite, one-dimensional set, possibly bounded by extremes." presumably taken from the near-infinite gradation of the electromagnetic spectrum. Words tend to get used for similar but distinct ideas and over time, and in differing contexts, change meaning in quite fundamental ways.

Since we're getting picky about words, however, I must stress that it's not Aspergers/autism. Aspergers is one expression of the condition and is more properly labelled as higher-functioning autism to distinguish it from more severe expressions of the condition. It's also not a disease.

Re: Making a false statement?

Nope, it's much closer to an arbitration service. It administers various intellectual property treaties.

Re: Free software solves all problems ever

You realise those embedded devices will use busybox, yes? And that busybox isn't vulnerable to this?

Try again.

Re: Liverpool underground nightclubs!

Those are the nightclubs.

@Fibbles Re: False Flag

And no correction from the Reg either despite the fact that the site is now forwarded to rantic media's own site.

Come on Reg, I always thought the redtop image was a bit of clever satire.