Posts by Graham Dawson

Re: I suspect the chinese might find

This before or after they hatched the nuke?

Of course it's utter bollocks. I've seen this same anon on any article about linux, either posting obnoxious twattery claiming that linux has some number of orders of magnitude more security holes than windows (which is apparently so secure that the NSA cries its collective self to sleep at night worrying about to crack it) or just claiming flat out that linux is insecure because... well they never actually say why.

And it is always the same anon. You can tell by the writing style and the copy-pasting of bullshit statistics.

Re: Throw the book at her.

No, the law works on the basis that a criminal conviction must be evidenced _beyond reasonable doubt_. You are talking about suspicion: your fellow with a balaclava might be arrested for suspicion of intent to commit burglary, but unless they can prove that beyond reasonable doubt in a court of law then he gets away scot free.

Was he seen in the commission of a crime? Did he confess intent to commit a crime? Without that all they have is circumstantial evidence and suspicion, and frankly that doesn't amount to much.

With this lass, they suspect she had them turned on. Can they prove it? If they can prove beyond doubt she was distracted then that's one thing, but if there is ANY doubt at all, if she can demonstrate that the glasses were turned off or even demonstrate that the officers in question couldn't tell if they were turned on, then she wins. A criminal sentence would be overturned on appeal faster than you can say "unsafe conviction".

You're so adorable.

The universe is also (in one model) currently thought to be the surface of a four-dimensional sphere, which would mean there's technically no middle and no edge to it in three dimensions. It might also be the surface of a four-dimensional torus. I'm not sure what difference that makes...

Re: "extremist"

A "regional assembly" that would have added nothing except another layer of bureaucracy, justified the removal of yet more power from the local councils, and been funded entirely from whitehall, thus making it entirely beholden to the national government anyway. Disenfranchising the people and stealing more power to the centre of the state does not make a more independent or representative government.

Re: Sigh

He's using Debian from which, I assume you're aware, Ubuntu is derived and from which it inherits apt. The mere fact that apt is used does not signify that he's using ubuntu - which is not even supported on the pi, nor is any build available from canonical.

Re: How to inlflate JCB Tyres....

Hot air? That's no good. Once all the excitement is done with and the politico has gone home the tyre will collapse faster than politician's promise in the face of cold reality.

Re: Asus Transformer?

I've sung the praises of the asus transformer range before now. Bloody marvelous idea.

Re: 10/100Mbps Ethernet socket,

If the rest of your network is GigE then you will be fine using this as an endpoint for media viewing. My raspberry pi is only 10/100 and it can stream very heavy full HD movies just fine.

Re: Lean as they come?

Rent, utilities, tax, promotional events, public relations, office supplies, IT support... the list can be quite impressive and the costs mount up very fast. It takes more than just salaries to run an organisation.

@AC Re: Silly squabling

You might have a point, if not for the fact that fanboyism extends to things that are often free of any significant cost.

Vi vs Emacs, for instance.

Or Everton vs Liverpool (or United vs City)

Salad cream vs Mayonnaise...

The list goes on and on. It's not the cost that drives it.

Re: Graham Dawson Terry 14 There is no innocence

In fact yes, an 80s Fiat is more resilient than a modern lorry, in the same way that I could leave an old mini mayfair sat out on the street for a year without moving it and be able to drive away without issue, yet I couldn't leave my 2003 ford focus out for a year without having to spend a fortune having it repaired. Never mind the diesel in the lorry's tank turning to sticky sludge or the engine seizing up from lack of use, the ECU will be knackered, the electrics will be shot and the tyres will be ruined from sitting so long.

Those trucks you mentioned that the army keeps? They maintain them. They regularly turn over the engines, roll the wheels and clean the bodies, and air out the various bits where stale moisture will trap and corrode things. They change the oil, occasionally pump and replace the fuel, replace the wheels and test the electrics to be sure they're in working condition. They don't just leave them sat out in a field without touching them.

That aside, your fiat was built to very crude tolerances. Modern vehicles aren't. Even a 1980s lorry would have had a finer tolerance in its manufacture and would be much more vulnerable to environmental effects without regular maintenance.

So yes. Your fiat could survive conditions that a lorry would not tolerate, but only because it was made of rust and string to begin with.

Re: I expect to get a zillion downvotes but...

Ah, but the constitution of the united states didn't establish a democracy. Democratic elements were involved in the election of representatives, but the fact remains that the United States were established as a republic, with decidedly undemocratic elements balanced against the democratic, in order to prevent mob rule.

The united states are not a democracy, and they never have been.

Re: Hmmm...

Given their space program is funded to levels suspiciously similar to the amount of aid we send India each year, you may be more right than you think.

@mycho @bygjon Re: This is disturbing

You're both wrong. Burning was reserved for "heretics". Accused witches, if they were executed (which was much rarer than people seem willing to accept) were hung or occasionally drowned. Homosexuals were generally hung.

Stop laughing at the back.

Things were bad enough back then without having to make up all these falsehoods and silly stories. The etymology of faggot (and gay for that matter) is not even remotely similar to the one you're spreading, so please stop.

Re: @john deeb No three & no kings

It's also mentioned in Luke. Each of the four gospels had different points to make and so epmhpasised different aspects of the story.

The NT consists largely of letters between people, which can hardly be called allegorical (though they do make allegorical points at times). Textual analysis of the surviving copies (of which there are thousands for each) indicate that they were all written within a period of around 90 years. There's very little disagreement over this even amongst the most critical of bible critics. Where the disagreement lies is on the validity of their content and the accuracy of translation.

But that's irrelevant to what I was discussing.

Apart from the Magi, who can't be verified, everything I described is true. The triple conjunction, the political turmoil (and the potential links between the two), the existence of the man called Jesus, who called himself "bar Abbas" - the son of God - and his death, the rebellion against the occupying Romans, and the conquest of Israel in the mid 60s. All these things happened.

This was to illustrate the point that the jesus story and the events leading to the end of Israel as a nation both began with that conjunction. It occurred at the right time, it had the right "meaning" for the people of that time, and the events that took place after it are all verifiable.

You could call it a self-fulfilling prophecy if you want. That isn't the point either. I was simply trying to establish that the whole supernova idea is a crock, and that the language used in the text fits the appearance of a conjunction - and the events that took place in that area at that time - much more readily than any other phenomenon.

You want to cite some sources for that, or are you just pulling numbers out of your butt?

@Ian Re: Idiot tech?

Who needs a reason? It's always been the case that government in this country likes to ban things without understanding what they are, purely on the basis that they're new and different.

I hear those things are awfully loud!

Re: Seriosuly?

How about "Limited Internet Service Providers"?

Then you can tell everyone you have a LISP.

Re: Payday loan and betting, eh ?

Should we ask Ian Rush?

I It could be miniaturised quite handily, I reckon. You could get the individual characters down to, oh, maybe 10 or 15mm on a side. Have the screen take up the majority of one side of a box with the mechanics in it and attach the keyboard via a cable containing the hydraulic lines.

The major potential problems would be in the durability of the tiny pins and the reliability of their motion. The clearances required to make a small display wouldn't be beyond the capabilities of the technology of the day, given how fine they made their clockwork.

I'm tempted to go off and scribble up some rough plans for this...

Of course in the real world, inhabited by the real humans you seem to contend this is aimed at, even the most dense and unfocussed realise that they can extend the life of their expensive hardware by replacing ram or replacing the harddrive at relatively little cost, both to themselves - as the cost of a new speedy large drive is significantly less than a new laptop - and to the environment - as they don't simply throw out an entire computer just to buy the latest new piece of shiny, overpriced kit from the world's most effective tat marketer just to get an incremental capacity upgrade.

Re: @ rcorrect

Just about everything Jake has ever stated comes entirely from his apparently very fertile imagination.

Newp, grounding, at least on the DC side.

Re: I think they where hopping

A few issues.

First, get your prescription checked.

Second, a lot of the blueray films that came out in the first wave or two were just upscaled DVD releases rather than remasters. They're generally crap. It took a while for television broadcasters to really get the hang of producing HD content, which has resulted in ramping of quality just slow enough to be not-quite-perceptible. Compare TV now to TV then and it's pretty obvious how much higher the quality is.

Of course visual quality doesn't mean much if there's nothing worth watching.

Re: Bird massacres

in most of the country the single biggest killer of songbirds - allegedly the favourite prey of cats - are not cats, but magpies. A cat might be able to get one songbird but given their lack of flight, cats are generally not capable of catching that many birds. In contrast, magpies do something that no cat would even think of attempting: they destroy nests. They take songbird chicks to feed to their own young. The growth in magpie numbers in recent years has had a devastating effect on all sorts of small birds - and not-so-small birds as well. They aren't particularly picky about where they get their food, you see.

Re: So tell us Mr. Branson

I dunno, JDX. Perhaps the fact that it's a tropical island is a pretty good reason to live there? I don't begrudge him that. I'd do the same if I were rich enough to buy an island. What's the point of an island if you don't live on it?

Just as long as he doesn't start lobbying for any tax increases in the UK. These rich ex-pats have been known to do that from time to time.

Re: @Adam T

You want an unassailable example of a de-jure standard, look no further than the Intermodal Shipping Container, which is no less than the physical manifestation of a set of ISO standards on the transportation, identification and handling of freight. It transformed the freight industry so completely that the cost of worldwide shipping has gone almost completely flat and is no longer governed by distance or mode, but rather by content.

Every time anyone complains about ISO standards all you have to do is point at that. Or road traffic signs. Or bolt threads. Or any number of other things that we take for granted and assume are "just so", but are in fact the result of a piece of an international agreement to set a standard.

I'm saying this as someone who's really not all that keen on transnational and supranational organisations: there are times when they just bloody work. Setting standards is one of those times.

Re: This could get interesting

They assume. They can't do much else but assume and pester you with threatening-sounding letters that amount to nothing much if you read the fine print. They have no legal right of entry (even the police have no legal right of entry without either permission or a warrant) and they have no ability to procure a warrant, and have to ask the police to do it for them.

The detector vans and all that gubbins are empty propaganda, merely designed to remind people that the TVLA exists. Just ignore their letters and tell the "inspectors" to take a walk. If they can't see a television displaying live broadcasts from the public highway, there's nothing they can do.

Not that I'm saying you should try and evade the license by hiding your TV in a back room where it's not visible to passers-by...

I only ever watch DVDs on mine.

Re: 1 out of 10

I feel compelled to complain about all the complaints made in this thread.

Second! Touchscreen keyboards are the bane of my life.

@Elron Re: The sad thing is..

For the sake of comparison, I went n900->xperia mini pro (which was awful)->xperia pro

I couldn't live without the physical keyboard. Even with the screen size of these latest phones, the lack of tactile feedback from a screen just confuses my fingers. It's a failing. If I could get some sort of clip-on bluetooth keyboard that suppressed the on-screen keyboard I'd switch in a heartbeat.

Re: A witch! A witch!

Incorrect. Burning was for heretics, whilst witness were generally hung or drowned. It's no better, but it pays to be historically accurate.

Re: Android already king of tablet marketshare globally.

Well, as I pointed out, they are using them in my experience. Perhaps you're just seeing people who don't have a tablet and assuming that they're android owners. Or people who simply weren't using them at that particular moment.

Course, the great thing is, if or when Sammy goes down another manufacturer will slip into its place with a new line of droid phones and you'll be able to seamlessly transfer all your contacts and apps between them without any hassle.

Of course, it has to be acknowledged that not everyone is comfortable with all that information being handled by Google.