Posts by Stevie

Bah!

The attitude to patent farming should be the same as that held toward cybersquatting: If you have no real intended use beyond extortion, you should be forced to sell on in a certain period of time.

Personally, I reckon patents in this sort of position should expire into the public domain after a short period - say five years. That way there is still value in them to be had but not the incentive to the rapacious goings-on of late.

But of course, I am naive. Patent-farming is the new black. Wall Street has shown us the way - make nothing of value, merely suck vampirically on the effort of others, printing virtual money out of thin air. Watch out for arising circular references in the system which can bring it down around your ears, but if they happen don't worry, the government will bail everyone out of their manifest incompetence with no questions asked.

Alas poor Kodak. Doomed to the buggy-whip oubliette before they knew it was coming. End of an era.

Damn

Shame Poul Anderson didn't live to see this.

Bah!

The Chinese appear to have closed the gap in the faked space picture technology race.

We should demand a convincing fake Mars landing by 2015 with a guarantee of a fake safe return from our politicians. Also, we should fake a probe to debunk the fake Russian rover.

It's like our own fake photo labs just gave up.

Bah!

Blind alley, Nigel11? Only if your vision of the transistor is as a switch to be used in a computer.

Bipolar transistors, and furthermore *Germanium* bipolar transistors are used to this day in high-quality audio amplifiers because they can handle large current excursions without venting Magic Smoke.

Come to that, there is a burgeoning market in valve (vacuum tube) amps by guitarists who can overdrive the output stages by turning the knobs to 11 to get "appealing" distortion with no fear of cooking off the amplification components - the electron beams just miss the anode if you make 'em bend too far or push 'em back too hard.

Your world may begin and end with the computer, but for all the talk of "point, click and ship" the world's electronic needs are a bit more involved if it's all going to work.

Next up: Why dismantling the US Post Office won't be a Good Thing, because even though you shop online using an iPhone the cheapest way to get what you bought in your living room from the warehouse in Goshnoze, Ware to your front door is ... the US Post Office. (Insert appropriate equivalents for UK etc).

Now, back to my Raspberry Pi for some quality time with subminiature FETs.

Hmm...

Be interesting to see a similar map of Coventry.

As for Dresden etc, one might argue a bit less marching into the Sudetenland, clanking through Poland, sneaking round the side of the Maginot Line and so forth and the whole mess could have been avoided, and Europe might not be as impoverished as it is. But of course then we'd get into the whole WWI peace treaty thing and yadayadayada back to Charlemagne.

But if it hadn't happened, Britain wouldn't have gone bankrupt trying to hold the line.

I was born and lived for five years in Hillfields, Coventry. I well remember the landscape of bomb sites pierced by completely soulless blocks of flats. What a view could be had from them - rubble and weeds. There was no money for clean-up or development, you see.

Most commodities were still rationed two years before I was born. My dad needed a permit for two tongue-and-groove floorboards before he could buy them. Remember that next time you are in the DIY centre. Britain's economy was wrecked by WWII, and it never recovered.

Also, if the pesky Hun hadn't mobilized with extreme prejudice, the Americans wouldn't now be able to say they came in to save the day. Don't blame the Americans for boasting, blame the buggers who pulled a knife and yelled "come on have a go if you think you're hard enough!" and provided the opportunity.

Bah!

The WD NAS drives don't seem to have much of a reputation for being home-installation ready, to judge by the Amazon feedback, and there seems to be an awful lot of people upset about the current range of WD NAS products on teh intarwebs.

Not much point in having a 5TB NAS on the market if your name for such devices is as near mud as makes no difference.

Bah!

You mean you killed a playmobil man in this ill-advised so-called experiment and didn't even have the decency to give him a NAME?

I notice that all the people bravely keeping both feet on the ground have friendly monikers like "Dave". Only those of limited limb articulation are required to give of their all anonymously.

For shame El Reg, for shame.

Bah!

Didn't Sputnik just go "beep" as it went round and round in big circles until its battery died. I seem to recall that a fiery death was part of the Sputnik lifecycle too.

Call me Susan but this doesn't sound like the sort of legacy one wants to invoke for a machine targeted at developers.

Oi!

Worrabout V'jer?

Bah!

So the ice loss, although not accelerating *is* a fact then? There is a steady, non-accelerating rate of ice loss over Greenland's surface?

So Global Warming is, in fact , a fact.

Interesting. So the argument can become not "global warming exists" but "global warming is not as fast as we thought it might be (yet)".

Good to know.

Bah!

Way to miss the point, Mr Hill.

First, coding is not programming. Drag and drop app design for Android is just fancy scripting and you can't make a living doing that.

Second, why in Cray;'s name is anyone running around unplugging anything?

Third, so kids are not a "one interest fits all" proposition? Blimey! Whoda thunkit?

Here's a thought: Instead of looking at the Pi as just the ZX81 all over again, look at it as a chance to provide some kids - at a knock-down price so low you can expect some populations of kids to self-fund it much as I bought paper and crayons and God-alone knows what else over the years for my kid's schools - the chance to build and configure their own network using the Pi and some cables. Not a toy computer for hobbyists but but a very inexpensive component that could be used to teach people USEFUL skills for the future.

Class project: build and use a network MUD using the Pi. All you need is a big table, the cable, the Pis, a power supply and some monitors (old TVs will do in a pinch). The kids will do the rest.

No need to unplug all those MS Office boxes at all (not sure why this is being done in the first place).

Bah!

Don't the Russians already know lots about this from making people stay on Mir for a year and more?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeri_Polyakov

Bah!

All this talk of powder fire extinguishers and not one mention that for a small fire a packet of baking soda is all you need, even for a fat fire (though I'd go with the tried and tested damp tea-towel myself in that event. Have done, in fact.

Baking soda also cheaper than fire extinguisher (and so can be changed more often) and can also be used to deodorize the fridge (which a fire extinguisher can't). You can even cook with it, which is most assuredly contra-indicated for most fire-retardant chemicals.

This message brought to you by the Small Fire Extinguishing Council, a subsidiary of The Amalgamated Conglomo Baking Soda Mining Consortium.

Mfft!

Whole new meaning to DD Uber Alles.

Bah!

Sounds to me like the clueless ones are the people mindlessly pushing a "solution" without clearly understanding the business needs or the software capabilities and issues.

"People don't use alternative software because they are dumb". A cry as old as Linux and sadly in no danger of being replaced by something more piquant and useful.

I use both MSOffice and OpenOffice. OpenOffice is no replacement for MSOffice if you actually need an office suite as opposed to a glorified typewriter and calculator (ie what most IT staff use it for). It can be used instead of MSOffice if the needs do not call for the advanced capabilities of MSOffice. The only way to tell if this is the case is to do a proper business analysis of the customer's needs and then make an honest assessment.

This battleground wasn't won by Microsoft from where I'm sitting, it was lost by those campaigning for the alternative.

Bah!

Wouldn't "all the trimmings" of a thunderstorm include torrential rain?

Anyway, one thing we have lots of here in the USA is large fires. Can't say that thunderstorms have been prominent in any of the ones in recent history so "can cause" probably means "rarely cause".

I doubt you need a thunderstorm to get a tornado going in a big fire anyway. The fierce updraft in the fire would supply the energy, and eventually the wind will start twisting due to pressure gradients in the flame column.

Bah!

Wouldn't assuming a Greek ID be on a par with half-inching a bankrupt's mortgage?

Well done that man for stealing quite possibly the least marketable assets ever harvested.

Bah!

Well, the summer runs longer and the winters are shorter in New York than when I first moved here 28 years ago, and the continental "wheat belt" is moving north, steadily (because the moisture and temperature "bands" are moving).

Something is happening, and I'd hazard a guess that it is climate related rather than because of all the fish in the atmosphere.

Bah!

Kids still read comics - Japanese comics.

Superheroes work best on the big screen now we have CGI to make it all look hyper-real, and the internet is swallowing your potential audience just like computers swallowed the hobby electronics audience thirty years ago. Oh well.

You got old and the kids these days don't like your comics. They are also on your lawn.

Awww!

Bless his little cotton socks!

They're so cute when they think they've found out something new.

Next up:

"Turns Out Object Orientation Doesn't Fix The Wheel Reinvention Thing Because It Is Still Quicker To Write New Than Find Whatever You Need Amongst The Three Thousand Classes Defined In The Undocumented, Unindexed Enterprise Library".

Bah!

This is a non issue. I am posting this very missive from a Windo

Bah!

Bollocks. I rode a BR train twice a day between Coventry and London in 1982, and I now yearn for those days of clean, quiet, fast, timely trains. Breakfast in the buffet car in the morning, comfy padded seats on he way home.

Would that the Long Island Rail Road, the boil on the backside of commuter rail, could come close to that sort of service.

They may not have Brainsmacked Glaswegians, but the Long Island Rail Road customers could give them a run for their money in terms of stench, mess and rudeness.

Plus, the trains take longer to do the 40 miles between Deer Park and NYC than BR did to do the 110 miles between Coventry and London Euston.

Plus the LIRR breaks down more. Even the newly replaced bits break down almost as soon as they are switched on (see: New signals, non-damp-proof wiring of)

Plus the LIRR trains move more like the Seaview did in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, hurling people from side-to-side. Fall asleep in a BR train and all that would happen would be sleep. Fall asleep on the 6:04 from Atlantic Terminal to Ronkonkoma and you'll wake up with whiplash, and if you are seated next to a window, a concussion.

Plus, only one electrical socket, for cleaning equipment.

Still I shouldn't complain: The designer of the new trains finally figured out how to keep the lights on when the train crosses a switch or parks for one of the interminable delays that are the hallmark of the LIRR rider experience. For twenty years I carried a small flashlight so I didn't have to stop reading my book for five minutes here and there.

Hooray!

Finally, real science! Thank you, Register, for showing those useless planet-renamers and thermometer-shed-paint obsessed twillups the way.

Aiee!

Invisible Martian dust devils that go *the wrong way*???

Aiee!

Look to the skies! The cylinders are coming!

Wow.

I hadn't up until now read Jobs's letter.

I had no idea that someone who had risen so high in a business devoted to communication could be so awful at putting a point across in writing. Repetitive juvenile style, self-contradiction and fallacies even I could exploit without breaking a sweat, and yet this was what people took as gospel? From a CEO-level, tech-savvy executive? Did the man actually proof-read this?

Ye gods. I'm more in awe that anything got to market as well as it did under the Apple label after reading that. The undergrupenfuhren and worker drones deserve yet more kudos.

Bah!

Just watched the 6-part "Pit", though I got no booklet with my copy here in the USA.

I thought it showed the BBC's reputation for quality sci-fi to be well-founded and could only lament that he quality of the script (with all those great incidental characters) was a thing of a bygone age.

Although the SFX and miniature work was naturally dated, I thought that in some respects the 6-parter surpassed the movie version.

Not only that, I'm something of a Golden Age buff and I don't recall either of the two major plot ideas of this story being used before. Not saying they weren't, just that my recollection from my quite wide reading around the material is that they weren't.

Which is another major feather in the writer's cap from where I'm standing.

Bah!

"Away with you, Baumgartner. "

Indeed yes, sir, be away with you. Your opinions are as out of place as a porcupine in a monkey's pajamas!

Aiee!

Aiee!

Heh!

"The President also won re-election in the United States." Good one.

Aiee!

Aiee! Brain Plugs! Aiee!

Aiee! Windows 8! Aiee!

Aiee! Brain plugs *running* windows 8! Aiee!

PS.: Aiee!

Bah!

IM Annie, AOL Sue, Dunno what's happened to the friends I knew,

Hey hey, Baby have a TXT on me.

Bah!

Another troubling sign: If the management keep telling everyone that cash-flow makes direct deposit impossible but have no trouble funding an all-day secretaries day luncheon (for everyone, duration from noon until two the following morning for those with no real work to do) at a country club every year.

Bah!

Yep, light and thin, two things I look for first in a 7 inch tablet device, then high cost is paramount.

Bah!

I well remember in the days of the Commodore Pet, Exidy Sorcerer and Tandy TRS-80 that someone offered the first truly cross-platform peripheral - a foam-rubber baseball bat with which to pound these forerunners of our favourite timesucks into submission after a sustained bout of electronic recalcitrance.

Prescient, some.