Posts by Stevie

Re: Yoof today

There is a school of thought that Hitler was empowered in his curious Anglophile stance by a 1930s Cambridge University debate in which it was resolved that "this house would not answer the call to war" (paraphrase). Apocryphal, maybe, but resonant with the perenial American equivalent in which there is always a popular uprising waiting to happen as soon as troops invade (I'm told the meme goes back as far as the war of 1812).

I imagine aome of those applauding the debate teams were soon flying Hurricanes, storming beaches or facing fown Rommel like everyone else and with just as much gusto.

Here in the USA I am bewildered by the attitude that one can disenfranchise a large sector of the young people in the country then expect them to become enthusiastic soldiers in the next war.

Tell young people they aren't real Americans and don't belong often enough and when the chips are down the middle fingers are likely to come up.

Why do I say this?

Happened on a larger scale when the Rome reneged on the deal to make closely allied Italian cities "Roman" rather than "Italian".

a 20% discount if the punter pays early

Here in NY if you try and use the Official Website to pay off your totally bogus fit-up job red light violation* you get charged a grubbing and usurious surcharge for making it easier for the state government.

This is because they farm out the collection to predatory gits who retask roller-coaster mugshot tech for draconian innocent car driver victimization, who use the Roman Tax Farmer model for revenue generation - a process with the technical name "Skimming".

If you then decide "the hell with it, I'll send 'em a check by (arthritic) snail-mail in the envelope provided" you find that the envelope provided is emblazoned with the legend "Red Light Violation Guilty Plea Fine Enclosed" in shouty bold right under the mandatory (in these post 9/11 days) return name and address so anyone seeing it knows you are an axe murderer in the making.

8op 8ob 8op

Thrrrrrrrrrrrrrp!

*AKA a fair cop but society is to blame*

Re: FredBed

To: Most Junior Programmer

Please see attached work order.

I've programmed the allocation of the first 50 students. Please program the roommate bit.

Shouldn't be too hard. I've done half the work for you.

Re: Bah!

But Ken, back then programmers knew what they were doing. You know why?

Because they learned how in the real world with burly chief programmers who would break fingers and take spleens in the event of fuckups and be patted on the back by the chief analyst when it all came out in public.

I still have nightmares about the head of the punchroom. Most militant and violent woman I ever met and Azathoth protect you if you crossed her path when she was firing over open sights.

The rise of Pleb Programmers is, I think, a far more modern, post BBC Model B era phenomenomnomnominon.

Re: People are too stupid to do the right thing

The right thing to do is for companies that store this sort of data to do so in an unstructured way and to encrypt everything, including the bloody transactions that re-structure it.

Stop keeping atomic pieces of coherent information physically proximate. Make ot logically proximate on business demand, not haxxor demand.

And keep it all in Furbish for fuck's sake!

Re: Bah!

Only a problem if you are charging money for the idea really.

I was thinking more along the lines of having the surfer dudes run their membership up the beach by hovercraft, first having a noisy and sandblasty trip up and down the sand to make sure it is not mined or full of saltwater crocodiles.

Ten or twelve passes each time should make all the annoying pests move out.

FYI: Hovercraft have an air cushion, not air jets. The first greenie lawsuit would be thrown out on a technical technicality.

Re: Don't look at the sun kids...

"Always view an eclipse or the full sun indirectly, by projection."

That way all that can happen is you set fire to the house or give the person in the next room a nasty neutrino burn.

Re: Forcing the Underground

Ah, the ugly costs of "free speech".

Re: Nice photos, but..

Si, is Siberian hamster. That is why is having tail.

Re: I wonder if anything like this has happened.

"I know for a fact what you say is wrong. You see, I WROTE the specs."

"Funny that. You see, I REVISED the specs."

And then:

And I have to wear the bloody things! You're BOTH fired you useless spare parts!

Re: I perceived no deep context.

Funny thing, perception.

Re: Huzzah one of the things America got right

Well, that and inventing the internet thing in the first place.

SCSI or death!

Pah! Block multiplexor or nothing!

Re: Snopes is a Damaged Brand....4 Jtom

Sorry, but my experience with Snopes and controversial issues showed it to be a hard, left-leaning site. Too many time I've seen things listed as, 'false' when a trivial bit was wrong, while other issues rated 'mostly true' when one of the significant factors was untrue.

And yet you added no examples from the reams of offending material to back up this claim.

I don't disbelieve you, but I don't believe you either. You get a yellow bead.

Re: I worked for IBM in Feltham for a while.

The Heathrow high-intensity landing radar used to crash the small on-site mainframe until it was moved into a shielded room.

Why on earth would anyone put their radar in a shielded room?

This sort of idiocy is why Britannia doesn't rule the microwaves.

Fought them on the beaches, rationing, thrashing's too good, etc, more etc.