Bah!
I think you'll find that's *meters*.
We don't spell in French here in the land of the free(dom fries).
Posts by Stevie
7282 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2008
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US space programme in shock metric conversion
Apple's trial experts are 'slavish fanbois who believe in magic'
Report: SAP exec charged with $1,000 LEGO bar-code caper
Oracle juices homegrown Xen to match own-brand Linux
Tuesday 22nd May 2012 13:54 GMT
Bah!
So I'm guessing this is a death knell for Solaris then.
Keep going, Oracle. The more you sandbox your database the less attractive your overpriced products will be and maybe, just maybe a much deserved market downturn will force a bit of introspection on what the customer needs as opposed to what you can make them buy.
Why yes, I *have* just watched Oracle support techs spend three months not configuring their own software to run on Solaris.
Which you'd think Oracle techs would understand how to do on account of the heavy training and r&d vis-a-vis Orcale s/w on Solaris that would have been job one on acquiring Sun.
I mean, if there was any real future for Solaris in Oracle's strategic thinking that would be essential, right? Otherwise you'd just end up looking like a bunch of clowns.
Cloaked light detector sees without being seen
Titsup WHMCS calls the Feds after credit-card megaleak
What's copying your music really worth to you?
Monday 21st May 2012 22:26 GMT
Re: Bah!
Yah. And I loved that the pre-recorded tapes were of such crap quality too. I switched briefly to buying pre-recorded cassettes when I came to the US and was still under the impression I was going to return Blightside (this was the infancy of the CD era and portable CD players were a joke and cost a fortune). I picked up "Brothers In Arms" when it was a contemporary hit and was astounded that the distributor was crowing about using "high quality tape" to match the digital master. The tape in question was Chrome Dioxide, superseded by various proprietary formulations (TDK's Super Avalyn was my personal favourite) a decade before.
It's no wonder they can't find much sympathy in the buying public even without the "freetard" lobby's input (using that word in the culturally accepted sense, not to insult anyone in particular).
Monday 21st May 2012 15:25 GMT
Re: Economic harm?
Absolutely. Music peddlers have been regretting the decision to switch from sheet music (the original way of moving extra-performance music to the masses) to recorded music ever since the initial rush of money wore off and it dawned that they were selling however many repeat performances for free. Cylinders wore out quickly, but once more durable acetate and vinyl had hit the racks and the reproduction machinery became affordable the whole shooting match changed.
Add to that the indisputable fact that moving music from the radio and "disc jockeys" to a personal player caused massive changes in the music scene itself and the money to be made - and lost - became astronomical.
Digital reproduction tech means anyone can have a copy that is as good as the original - no loss from the re-recording as per tape - and so it is obvious the companies would move aggressively to lock it down. The history of DAT is the whole ball of wax compressed into a couple of years. "Open" at first, pulled form the shelves until a way could be found of nerfing the re-recording of tapes and that killed it stone dead.
What makes me laugh is the hysterical reaction of the iTune Tots when confronted by evidence that the CD isn't dying out any time soon.
But then, I remember when music came with artwork you could see and every record store was a modern art gallery, worth walking through just to feast the eyes. My kid spotted the booklet that came with "Pictures at an exhibition" and wondered why anyone would bother with those tiny paintings on the inside, so I showed her my vinyl copy. She's an artist and the reaction was interesting.
Shame that particular market for talent is drying up. No more Roger Deans bootstrapping to prominence on the cover of a great-selling album.
Met bobbies get CSI kit to probe perps' mobes
Txt-speak is a sign of humanity 4 U
GM snatchback of $10m Facebook ad cash = amateur move
Friday 18th May 2012 14:42 GMT
Bah!
And yet they still flock to use it. Perhaps "hate" is a piece of hyperbole used to cover a complex field of wants?
I only say this (and I don't use Facebook at all) as the "hate" comment mirrors similar comments from people trying to promote Linux a few years ago. People "hated" Microsoft and yet they felt no great desire to switch to a different O/S despite undeniable technical benefits of doing so.
Facebook has a central idea that people want, and are ready to put up with the stupid horseshirt that goes with it in order to get some. When something better comes along, they'll flee in droves.
Just like they did with AOL, MySpace etc.
But it will have to *be* better, not just different. And to get that, you need to understand what Facebook provides that is so compelling, and working from the "hate" baseline won't get you there.
When you do, call me because I'll invest in your startup.
Friday 18th May 2012 14:31 GMT
Bah!
Firstly, if GM cant tell whether or not the advertising is working, it's not working.
Secondly, GM is still in the hole to the US taxpayer and cannot afford to be seen to be wasting monies more properly destined for repayments or long-overdue overhauls of its out-of-date product lines.
I can't speak to the motives of the author of this piece, but Facebook advertising is a current topic of hot debate in the media and *no one* knows how to figure out whether there is any measurable benefit from it.
Hell, no-one can say how the IPO evaluation was arrived at.
NASA found filming August's Mars landing in California desert
Thursday 17th May 2012 16:11 GMT
Bah!
So "just a test" then rather than an elaborate hoax designed to pull the space-blanket over the eyes of the taxpayers.
But how do they explain the purchase order for "3 tons of red aquarium sand and assorted small rocks and other clutter"?
I swear I saw a grinning skull around 3 inches in diameter, wearing a pirate hat peering out from behind a rock on some of the older footage, and on one photo I can clearly make out a sunken galleon wreck that can be no more than 6 inches long.
UK man to spend year in the clink for Facebook account hack
Thursday 17th May 2012 15:51 GMT
Re: Digital equivalent of breaking and entering.
Ah, but it would trespass in a USA house without the proper immigration paperwork, which is a Homeland Security matter (assuming the boob wasn't shot under the umbrella of various states' "justifiable self defence" statute).
He's lucky he wasn't sent somewhere for a manicure with extreme prejudice.
In any event, he wasn't supposed to be there, it was against the law in both countries, is well-known to be against the law and the obvious path if you can't face a spell in jankers iis therefore clearly seen to be "do not do this sort of thing".
Steve Jobs' death could clear way for more open Apple - Woz
Spy under your car bonnet 'worth billions by 2016'
Tuesday 15th May 2012 14:52 GMT
Bah!
Yeah, I had a friend who used to feel that way. Then there was the time he was doing 70 on a deserted stretch of the A45 with a clear view for miles and a badger ran out in front of him, froze then executed a leap-and-scream Kamikaze-attack on the radiator grille, demolishing most of the front end of the vehicle and leaving my pal in an uncontrollable ballistic missile.
Oh how we laughed. He didn't.
It didn't do the badger much good either, and the insurance guy had a problem identifying exactly what had been liquidized all over the engine compartment.
Tuesday 15th May 2012 14:43 GMT
Re: Cars that auto-regulate speed are a nightmare to drive
er...there is no danger in screwing up a satnav.
Only in driving as though the satnav were authoritative.
Last week a kid was instructed by his GPS to turn left as he crossed a rail line in my town. He turned onto the trackbed, rammed the third rail and took out the line for hours. It's a wonder he wasn't fried. The real problem here? Too much satnav, too few brain cells.
I reckon people shouldn't be allowed to own technology with a higher IQ than they have.
Tuesday 15th May 2012 14:30 GMT
Bah!
I love auto-automation. Cars that park themselves because apparently the "if you can't park it you shouldn't be driving it" test has a too-high failure rate these days. Cars that slam the brakes on if they decide you are about to have a collision. And my personal favourite: The car that abruptly slams up the windows tootsweet just before a collision in order to trap the occupants inside the flaming wreck with the headless corpse of the family dog.
Spiffy.
Tuesday 15th May 2012 14:08 GMT
Re: Before anyone says "here comes big brother"...
Well, ok, but the faster you go the more the tyres swell and the more your speedo underreports whatever it was set to report. Jaguar used to give figures in their handbook for how much this effect was putting you under the danger of the radar gun.
Before you pooh-pooh this notion, I can tell you from (reluctant) personal experience that at 140mph (reported), an e-type's wheels start shedding spokes as the rims expand beyond Young's Modulus of Elasticity for e-type wire wheel spokes.
Or something. I wasn't paying that much attention in Physics ten years earlier.
I can also report that this effect also raises numerous welts on the driver's head as the terrified passenger hits him with whatever can be wrenched off the interior superstructure.
Fastest-ever hydrocarb scramjet hits Mach 8, doesn't explode
Tuesday 15th May 2012 14:26 GMT
Bah!
Why are we wasting time with energy intensive lift technologies?
Adequate funding should be provided to those searching for an economical way to produce Cavorite on an industrial scale. The spin-off benefits to this research are obvious to all: it would revitalize the sagging railway buffer market and revolutionize the crane industry, besides making flying cars a trivial exercise in re-engineering current marques. Elevator technology would be given a much-needed shot in the arm and emergency skyscraper escape harnesses would be a new "must have" accessory for the busy Wall Street executive.
But no. NASA and the industrial-military complex remain mired in the 1950s vision of Von Braun. Probably because Cavorite was invented by an Englishman.
I wonder how many other wonders of science have been lost to jingoism?
Tuesday 15th May 2012 14:13 GMT
Bah!
I have two points to make concerning lack of crucial detail in the article:
a) Exactly how many cartons of off-milk would have to be dumped down drains to equal the greenhouse emissions of this scale model of Thunderbird 1?
2) Was there or was there not a Playmobil pilot on board during the test, and if not, does it represent an exclusionary policy on the part of the agencies involved (no Playmonauts need apply?).
Okay, three points.
Grab your L-plates, flying cars of sci-fi dreams have landed
Friday 11th May 2012 19:29 GMT
Re: Parking on a skyscraper
Don't try this in NYC, where many of the building have or had helipads designed into them.
See, there was this incident when a rotor blade came off a helicopter sitting on the Pan-Am (now the Met Life) building rooftop helipad, showing a bunch of people on Park Avenue why we call 'em "choppers".
After that, helicopters were not allowed to land on skyscrapers any more.
Keep out of the Olympics' way, earn a haircut from TfL app
Thursday 10th May 2012 15:55 GMT
Re: Bah!
Well, it *has* been about 38 years since I was sitting in front of a burette with my manometer readings and a flask of lime water in front of me, but I think I could probably work it out back-of-fag-packet style if I was being entirely serious.
I seem to remember a Biology teacher almost asphyxiating a mouse in a demonstration of how carbon dioxide was a definite product of respiration. Silly bugger forgot to turn on the water that powered the air pump that supplied the conical flask the mouse was trapped in with air and the mouse passed out while she was blabbing on about controls and the need for pure chemicals. Once the situation was pointed out she squeaked and turned the tap on full blast. The lime-water in the detector went milky in about 1/10 of a second as the mouse's chest heaved to draw in volumes of life-giving air now blasting it with hurricane force. A great triumph.
Said mouse survived to further the cause of science again, but it tried to bite anyone attempting to put it in a conical flask from that day forth, which only goes to show a deep understanding of scientific principle is not automatically a product of being exposed to the science itself.
Sometimes, showing science to others just ends with you getting bitten.
Billion-dollar high-tech ghost town to run itself without humans
Red faces abound as boffins build gamma ray lens
Did dicky power supply silence climate-change probe Envisat?
iPad chargers can open beer bottles
Wednesday 9th May 2012 16:51 GMT
Bah!
Electrons often get stuck in those wall-chargers, forming a dangerous shock hazard as many tinkerers can attest, but these can be loosened to flow through the wire and do useful work.
Simply strike the wall charger firmly with a lump hammer five or six times before plugging it in and you may notice a perceptible drop in charge time.
Use eye protection and open your beer first, of course.
Apple logging passwords in plain text
Wednesday 9th May 2012 16:40 GMT
Re: Uff
"developers of web sites/services that are now worth millions of dollars."
Yes. my brother-in-law used the excuse that the Mac was a superior web development platform to buy a G4. I looked long and hard at him and then gently said "but won't you need a PC as well since the websites you are building are graphically intense and intended to be viewed by the general public who mostly own PCs?"
Games built on Macs look great, but must be ported onto PCs to recoup costs. I venture to suggest the cost benefits of that development path themselves strongly suggest turning it upside down.
Use whatever you prefer to use, a computer is just a tool after all, but for God's sake stop living in the kitten-infested world where Apple do no wrong. iTunes *is* a piece of unmitigated junk with the most unhelpful user interface for music playback I've ever seen. There. The sky didn't split. The iPod should come with a dedicated volume control. Not having one is a design convergence error. Wow no lightning bolt. Storing the passwords in plain text is a stupid and dangerous mistake. If you read that last bit on a PC-related topic you'd agree.
The only major difference between PCs and Macs is that when things go wrong with Macs the user community tightens ranks and denies, and the PC user can read about an issue the next day on a milk carton. I was unpleasantly surprised at the sheer number of "known problems" with that bloody G4 once it began breaking down and yours truly had to go a-hunting in the forums (and even then could only turn up issues if I knew what they were before I went looking). What a piece of junk, and what a bunch of disingenuous users.
Plus, I never heard of anyone having to sign an NDA before a warranty replacement with a PC.
Let’s send 3D printers TO THE MOON
Wednesday 9th May 2012 15:16 GMT
Bah!
3D moon printers? Idiot! Assuming anyone would *want* to live in da-glo plastic igloos, where in the moon are we going to get the miles of weedwhacker wire needed for the old RepRap to feed on? I thought scientists were bad enough at the moon-shot thing, but these 3d printerloons take the space-biscuit.
Thinktankers! Suggest sensible things!
US gov boffins achieve speeds faster than light
Microsoft ejects DVD playback from Windows 8
Why embossed credit cards are here to stay
Thursday 3rd May 2012 21:27 GMT
Bah!
I've had my credit card spoofed on a number of occasions, none of which caused me to be out of pocket.
I happen to agree that certain aspects of the credit card system need reviewing and updating, especially in the "going after the bastards" department - I've had at least two instances when I could have led police to the perp's door had I been in the same state, but the CC bank was not interested in doing anything about it. Oh well.
But in terms of consumer protection, credit cards are pretty far ahead of the pack.
Hampshire council throws BYOD party, hires extra security
How politicians could end droughts forever But they don't want to
Wednesday 2nd May 2012 15:27 GMT
Um,
Not arguing the choice issue, nor the worth of investigating the LP option but:
a) Costs of desalination are not just the costs of the electricity. The plants must be built to do the job and then they must be maintained. These sorts of operations are hell on the old infrastructure, especially when you have brine as part of the equation. All in all, worth properly costing and investigating.
2) The case for the prosecution swings from London to the UK as a whole and back again. I venture to suggest that London != UK as a whole. Stop trying to sell us this "Lawns for Londoners" plan as a "Greensward for All" one, you cad. We all know that once everyone has paid for the desalinated water the snotty city types will keep it for themselves and everyone else will be showering with gravel.
Never mind. Once global warming has had its way with the ice-caps, everyone will have all the water they can deal with if that nice Mr Gore is right.
Barnes & Noble plans instore NFC Nook-book bonk-buying
Wednesday 2nd May 2012 14:41 GMT
Bah!
The nook couldabin the killer device that stole the bookshop back from Amazon if it had not been crippled by the (tunnel) vision of lock-in and DRM. The decision would have been between the Kindle Fire DRM-locked to Amazon or the Nook free to use anything but Amazon. I know which I'd have spent dollars on.
As it is I gave the missus a Nook and she gave me a Fire half a year later. She has the better machine, I have cheaper tat. But we can't share. Well done B&N, Amazon. You dunned us for two copies of Game of Thrones but in the process pretty much guaranteed that I would only spring for Gutenberg from now on. The wife is already mostly reading the Friday Free Books.
Fail.
Computer nostalgia is 10 PRINT 'BOLLOCKS'
Zuckerberg: Now share your organs with Facebook friends
Biennial boner blights Beemer biker
Tuesday 1st May 2012 18:13 GMT
Bah!
"Two hours each way to his destination?"
Ah, I see the problem. Mr Numb Nuts was expecting to ride through some sort of Non-Euclidean, direction polarized twisty-wisty space and unprepared for a two-hour ride. You know, thirty minutes out, two hours back, like when the wife nips down the shops for sugar, a journey of about half a mile, and is gone for three hours.
Microsoft hikes volume prices by more than a third
Tuesday 1st May 2012 15:38 GMT
Bah!
Wow. I understood that MS was less than an automatic choice in Europe these days but it seems that MS is on surer footing than I was led to believe.
Haven't seen such gouging since the UK went metric, at which time I hadn't seen such gouging since the UK had gone decimal.
Wait, do I see a pattern?
Intel bakes palm-sized Core i5 NUC to rival Raspberry Pi
Gigantic lava spirals wreck Mars ice valley theory
Shuttle Enterprise comes home to New York
Friday 27th April 2012 18:25 GMT
Bah!
My conference call with a vendor was destroyed by forty yahoos busrsting into my cube and deploying iPhones, all the time yodeling up a storm.
"It's the Space Shuttle!" was a common, shouted refrain.
Except, of course, it wasn't.
The Flash Crowd In My Cube were apparently unaware that what they were actually seeing was an (un) space (non) shuttle glide-test prototype incapable of any sort of powered flight or re-entry, and far too heavy to be used for the real thing anyway. Mr Prickett Morgan couldn't possibly have seen this one launch because it wasn't possible for it to do so (though I got home early from work to watch this one make its first filmed landing in the days before NASA told anyone about the weight issue and like others thought this one *would* fly eventually).
So congratulations New York! You got a second-hand pretend shuttle mock-up to display on the Intrepid. All the real shuttles are on display somewhere else.
The Space Shuttle: The spaceship we cared about so much that we don't have them any more.
Apple fanboi offers to change name to get WWDC ticket
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
