Posts by Eponymous Cowherd 1596 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Nov 2007
Now, what do you think the reaction would be if you gave the Islamic world 6 hours to get clear before you nuke Mecca? How many people do you imagine would be still around at T-Zero?
Answer: At least twice as many as when you issued the warning. Men, women, children, babies, 99.999%+ of whom are innocent, but devout, Muslims.
The UK's nuclear deterrent (SLBM based) is based on the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) principle. Nobody can nuke us out of existence without us being able to nuke them out of existence too.
This is fine against superpowers, but is of no use at all against the likes of Al Qaeda, Taliban, etc. If one of Mr Bin-Laden's followers sneaks a WMD into the UK and sets it off, what good would SLBMs do us? Who, what and where would we nuke in retaliation?
When it comes to countries that may be a nuclear threat to the UK in the future (Iran, for example), SLBMs are, pretty much, overkill. What do you gain by nuking a stone-age country back to the Precambrian? Nuclear SLCMs / ALCMs are just as capable of doing that, and cost a fraction of the cost of replacing Trident like-for-like.
I suppose the only country the old MAD doctrine still applies to is North Korea as they have sufficient air defences to combat a cruise missile attack. The question is, is it worth spending all of those £billions on a submarine / missile system to protect us against one 3rd world country that has enough trouble of its own (and with its southern neighbour) without picking fights with an insignificant country in northern Europe.
How about stripping Skinner of everything and anything that science has provided for him and dumping him somewhere where science has had little impact for a week or so.
A week, stark-bollock naked (because clothes are a product of science), in the middle of the Australian outback should do it, though it'd only be a couple of days before he's dingo bait.
Pretty sure he won't find the experience "dull", though.
***"In general, it seems DRM restrictions in gaming are becoming more intrusive and creating problems for genuine customers, rather than the pirates who happily bypass these measures every time,"(Chris Boyd)***
This is a general truth regarding DRM and applies to just about any application where it is applied, not just games.
I cannot think of a single case where DRM has defeated the pirates, but many cases where it has inconvenienced, sometimes severely (as in the case of the Sony rootkit fiasco), legitimate users.
Poorly conceived and obstructive DRM "solutions" (and that's, pretty much, all of them). merely piss off legitimate users and make them *more* likely to resort to pirated/hacked/cracked products next time.
I use both .NET (C# and VB.NET), Java and C++ on both Windows and Linux. Apart from the core API's (which, for Java and .NET are *huge*), there are also the large number of 3rd party APIs that I'm required to use.
Personally I cannot remember all of the (probably hundreds of thousands) of methods on the (probably tens of thousands) of Classes and Libraries over those platforms and APIs. Maybe some are capable of this feat, but I hazard a guess that most aren't.
I have a decent knowledge of the basic libraries and classes and know where to find what I want, but for the detail I rely on the IDE to give me prompts and hints.
I suppose if you are a specialist in a large organisation / team and concentrate on a subset of 1 platform then keeping all you need to know in your head is possible, but I work for a small ISV (9 developers in total over (currently) 5 projects and, like many in that situation, do not have the luxury of specialisation.
Maybe there are some superheroes that can keep it all in their heads, but I cannot, and I suspect that I'm not in a minority in that respect.
For me a helpful IDE is essential.
Comparing the two I use most frequently (VS2008 and Eclipse (Gannymede)) I can honestly say I much prefer Eclipse. It gives me the help I require when writing code while VS2008 attempts to straight-jacket you into Wizard generated splurges of code while offering little support when have to go it alone. I have also found the context sensitive help in VS2008 to be next to useless. Highlight a Class / Method, hit F1 and almost a minute later up pops the "help" for the wrong thing. Usually the name is correct but its the wrong Class or Method (e.g right method name but wrong Class or right Class name but wrong namespace.)
The fact that VS2010 appears to have moved further down the bloaty-wizard route doesn't fill me with joy at the prospect of having to migrate to it.
with a change of Government, but will certainly get worse without one.
Both the LibDems and Tories have pledged to scrap the NIR in their manifestos. OK, they *may* renege on that promise, but Brown & Co will certainly see an Election victory as a green light for even more Orwellian shit.
Owning an iPhone != "Good with computers"
Owning an iPhone != "reliable"
If any phone says "my owner is reliable", I'd say it would be a Blackberry
If any phone says "my owner is "good with computers" (i.e, a geek), I'd say that would be an Android phone.
Oh, and as a fully paid up geek, I can assure you I'm quite well acquainted with SOAP.
Just bought a Fujifilm Finepix S1730 for a paltry £135 from Argos. At that price it was well worth a punt and I must say I was very impressed.
12MP, 15x optical zoom, has full manual mode and offers 1080p video at 30fps. Picture quality seems excellent. Biggest criticism is the unintuitive menu system.
Its a "bridge" camera, so is hardly "compact", but such a feature-filled piece of kit for £135 makes it well worth a look.
Not exactly useful, but fun for geeks.....
i-Jetty (jan Bartel). A port of the Jetty web app server to android. Run a web server on your phone.
Android Scripting Environment (Google). Write and run scripts directly on your phone. Download directly from http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/ (not on Market)
AsciiCamera (jeck Landin) Take pictures in ASCII and save as text.
Frozen Bubble (Pawel Aleksander Fedorynski). Faithful port of the Linux classic.
Scrambled Net (Moonblink). Nice port of knetwalk.
Not being a social network victim and travelling more by public transport than car:
1. Task Manager (Wing Tseng). More sophisticated than ATK and has a handy widget to kill all background tasks.
2. BeebPlayer (David Johnston). No argument there. Top application, and free, too.
3. EStrongs File Explorer (EStrongs). Manipulate files on device, SD card and Windows shares.
4. WiFi Analyser (farproc). Does exactly what it says on the tin, and does it well.
5. Movies (Flixster). What's on, where its on, what time its on. Reviews (Rotten tomatoes) and previews.
6. National Rail (croworc). Train timetables and live times. A bit flaky but the only App available.
7. RealCalc (Brain Overspill). Excellent scientific calculator.
8. MyTracks (Google) Because I sometimes like to know where I've been.
9. BBC News (Jim Blackler). Convenient source of news. Headlines widget.
10. Tricorder (Moonblink). Because I'm a geek.
***""If we have our way, the [Crime and Security] Bill will not pass, and then it will be for a Conservative government to make rapid reforms to how our DNA database works and to ensure that its use is proportionate and that we do not continue to store the DNA of people accused of minor infractions who, in reality, have done nothing wrong.""***
Erm, would that be "done nothing wrong" as in " Not arrested", "Not charged", "Not convicted", or what? And how is someone maliciously accused of rape different from someone maliciously accused of shoplifting?
This is not a grey area. If you are convicted of an indictable offence then you go on the database. If you are not convicted, you don't go on it. If you are convicted and later cleared you come off it.
While I was never going to vote Labour, my intentions have now suffered a major swing towards the Lib-Dems.
Whatever the outcome of the General Election, **PLEASE** let Ed "so what" Balls lose his seat.
The look on that arrogant oaf's face when he realises he's got the boot would (almost) be worth another 5 years of this Labtard Government.
Just a shame we can't vote Lord Mandelweasel of Twatspanner out of office.
***"It <iPad> is NOT a laptop, Kindle, desktop or smartphone replacement, it's a different kind of thing entirely."***
But what purpose does it serve? Is there anything that can be done on an iPad that cannot be done quicker or with greater ease on a laptop, netbook or smartphone?
Fucking awful doesn't even begin to describe it.
Oh, and forget the idea of DAB in your smartphone. If you think battery life is crap now, it won't last an hour with a DAB receiver on. All the "crap FM radio" has to do is demodulate the FM signal and amplify it a bit, all very low power stuff. A DAB radio has to throw some considerable processing horsepower at the task of decoding and decompressing the DAB datastream. That costs power. Quite a lot of power.
And then there's the fact that DAB is old technology (MP2) already superseded by DAB+ (AAC+ and Reed Solomon error correction), which does offer quality and robustness broadly similar to FM.
We are merely being sold a pup so the Government can make a quick profit selling off the bandwidth.
Waaaay back in the 1980's I built a joystick to plug into my ZX Spectrum based on 4 mercury tilt switches.
While developing it I experimented with taping the mercury switches to the Spectrum, itself, and tilting the whole thing.
I think that just about covers the Patent's claims and pre-dates it by about 20 years.
I refer you to your BOLDs:
***"TAKE SOME FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR CHANGE AND NOT LET THEM HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR CHEELDREN."***
particularly the "NOT LET THEM HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR CHEELDREN" bit.
Not let *who* have access to your "cheeldren"(sic)? Who are "they". How do you determine who "they" are?
Those *aren't* rhetorical questions, Steve. You inferred that we "parentards" should take "responsibility" by preventing perverts from gaining access to our kids.
How do you suggest that should be accomplished, Steve?
1. Most child abuse is *not* "stranger danger". Its carried out by friends and family.
2. Most paedophiles don't look like paedophiles (well, unless they are wearing a cassock).
So, how do you "TAKE SOME FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR CHANGE AND NOT LET THEM HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR CHEELDREN" if you don't know who "they" are?
Well, you can't, can you, and phoning the paedo hotline just to check that every friend and family member that may have access to your kids isn't a raging perv is a non-starter too.
All you can do as a "parentard" is ensure that your kids know of the dangers and what they should do when they are confronted by someone who tries to do something inappropriate, and ensure they understand the sort of things that are inappropriate (Yes, you *can* do this without explicit and lurid details). You ensure you know where they are, when they should be be home. You ensure they know how to contact you at all times. You ensure they know how to get help if they need it (Emergency services, etc).
What you can't do is wrap them up in cotton wool. Kids need to be kids. Being over-protective and stopping them doing things and meeting people because they might meet a perv can cripple their social development, and is child abuse in itself.
As you may have guessed, I *am* a "parentard" and i *will* will "chip in". Not to say your opinion is "irrelevant", but to say it is complete, utter and total bullshit.
Say a programme I wrote goes tits up and costs company X £10,000.
Company X sues me and wins. I pay £10000 + £2000 costs
The problem was actually caused by a 3rd party encryption library. I sue 3rd party dev for £50,000 to cover lost revenue due to the bad rap the previous case has given the product.
I win and the 3rd party dev has to cough up £50,000 + £5000 costs.
He discovers the problem was down to a bug in a 3rd party library *he* was using.......
And so it goes on, and the lawyers get richer.
A car, like an application, is a composite article. A large proportion of the vehicle is of 3rd party origin. If the car breaks down because its 3rd party fuel injection system fails, or crashes because its 3rd party braking system fails should the person who bolted it into the vehicle be blamed? If the security problem is caused by a 3rd party encryption library is that the programmer's fault?
A car doesn't operate in isolation. If it gets trashed by an 18 wheel "semi", is that the fault of the car or the people that built it? If an application is compromised by another application running on the same computer, its that the fault of the programmer?
If the car breaks because it hits a large pot-hole (like that's going to happen in the UK) is that the fault of the bloke who built it? If an application's security is compromised by an unknown flaw in the underlying operating system, is that the fault of the developer?
Developing secure software is not a major issue. Ensuring it remains secure under all circumstances is a huge problem, and costs a *lot* of time and, therefore, money.
Make them think you are interested. Keep them talking. Keep asking questions.
Then tell them to piss off.
Score points for the length of the call, how angry the sales muppet gets and the absurdity of your questions (and the inability of the muppet to answer them).
Best one so far is convincing some twonk who was trying to sell us a new phone system that we didn't have any phones and he was actually having a nightmare about his work.
ID cards and, more importantly, the NIR, have *nothing* to do with preventing terrorism, crime, illegal immigration or even making it easier to buy booze.
No.
The purpose of the NIR is to make money. If they had to pay you then there'd be less profit when they sell your intimate details details to anyone willing to pay for them.
They'll already sell your address to parking enforcement scum, so you can be sure the much more valuable info on the NIR will go the same way.
The Harrier has a similar "Reaction control system", so the F35B is no different in this respect.
There is also a good chance that any non-VSTOL plane with similar damage would have have to ditch rather than risk a carrier landing. Possibly more so as a conventional aircraft is relying 100% on its wings to provide lift during landing, whereas an F35B doesn't.
It would still be more prudent to ditch the plane than risk pilot and carrier, however.
The Harrier uses a water cooling system. It carries enough water for a 90 second hover at full rate (in the tropics).
IIRC the problem is caused by hot exhaust gasses being drawn into the intakes during hover. I think F35B system (shaft driven lift fan blowing cold air) keeps the hot exhaust away from the engine intakes.
but some are more equal than others.
It used to be called "positive discrimination", but that still included the bad "D" word, so the pigs decided to call it "affirmative action", and all of the other animals were happy.
Big Brother, because there isn't a Napoleon icon....
I keep wondering if there is a equivalent to Godwin's Law, where any any online discussion about the British Labour Government will eventually lead to someone mentioning Orwell.
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