* Posts by h4rm0ny

4560 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jul 2008

Tell us we're all doomed, MPs beg climate scientists

h4rm0ny

Re: A rule of thumb

>>"As far as I can tell there's a hell of a lot more money in anthropogenic climate change denial than there is in supporting the consensus. All those oil, coal and gas companies willing to support their positions, for a start."

Ha! Have fun backing that up. The renewable power industry is huge and exists as an extra on top of our existing power economy having as yet almost no significant impact on fossil fuel, so don't try to compare them as if it's either/or. It's a massive money drain. Not to mention the huge number of academics making money from AGW-related grants. And then you've got giant lobbying groups like FoE. Carbon trading, fuel levies... The amount of money dependent on AGW is colossal. Don't start talking about the money in AGW "denial" until you've totalled up the money in AGW "belief" for fair comparison. And be sure to check your sources for the former especially because there are a *lot* of false accusations. For example there was a story recently about the millions donated to an organization for AGW denial. Turned out when you dug into it that it was a publication that covered the full gamut of politics and did some skeptical stories on AGW. Do some back of the envelops on the amount of money and careers dependent on AGW and then make the same comment if you feel it's still valid.

h4rm0ny

"The generally accepted position is that scientists are very sure (99%+ probability) that humans are the primary cause of global warming..."

Reading the comments here, I'm not sure "generally accepted" is quite right.

h4rm0ny

Re: Sir

>>"Yes, it took al long time to persuade some people that the world wasn't flat too..."

Citation needed. Because as far as I'm aware even very early societies knew that it wasn't flat. The Phoenicians knew it as they were great sailors (for their period) and they could *see* that it wasn't flat the same way you or I can - as a ship sinks beneath the horizon. And the Phoenicians are going back quite a way - I think they were one of the first societies to use an alphabet!

h4rm0ny

"When people start listing reasons as to why they cannot donate to one charity or another NGO, i think they are just making excuses. FOE has no anti nuclear campaign and hasn't for many years."

I was a member of FoE. I left because of their anti-nuclear stance. This was only a few years ago. Just for you, because it's easy to show you don't know what you're talking about, here are two features on Nuclear Power from the FoE website still available and on display:

http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/faqs/nuclear_power_5896.html

http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/issues/nuclear_index.html

Leaders from the above including:

"Many people feel uncomfortable about nuclear power but cannot see any real alternatives. They are right to be wary. Nuclear power is costly, toxic and not 'emission free'. It is also not needed"

Fact 1: We don't need more nuclear reactors"

and pricelessly:

"WMDs - uranium enrichment plants can be misused to make nuclear weapons.

Vulnerable - No nuclear reactor would withstand a direct hit from a jumbo jet.

Nowhere to hide - A successful attack could have an impact 40 times worse than the explosion at Chernobyl. "

And this you call "no anti-nuclear campaign". You will find FoE speaking against nuclear power every time it comes up in their earshot. The last literature I received from them before I left (I joined up for rain forest preservation) was filled with anti-nuclear 'factoids'.

No, I'm not "just making excuses". What is your problem. I didn't just ditch FoE and RSPB. I switched the charities I support to others.

"If you are a bird lover as you say, you should still support the RSPB. You cannot expect to agree with everything that any one charity or NGO does or believes."

I expect disagreements to be in the nature of what birdlife to protect or whether it is right to cull a non-native bird to a region of the UK to create more opportunities to the original native birds to the area. Not to find that my money is being used to support a particular choice of energy source. Now try writing your post again without assuming you know better about me than I do. I meant what I said and there's nothing unreasonable about my expectations. You don't know what you're talking about. Spend 30 minutes trying to find some non-negative bits about nuclear by FoE. If you're honest, you'll have to wade through a tonne of anti-nuclear stuff and come back and admit you were wrong.

h4rm0ny

Re: A convient crisis

"If politicians admit the climate crisis isn't a big deal, people will hold them to account for their failings - so they are as likely to let go of this cornucopia of false virtue as they are to let go of their parliamentary expenses."

I gave you an upvote for "cornucopia of false virtue".

h4rm0ny

Re: Just wait

>>"According to the sage Arthur C Clarke, when asked what causes changes in science, "Old men die". We'll just have to wait & hope they don't do anything too daft before a more rational set take over."

Is the Universe taking the piss? The other day, I pulled up someone for attributing a quote from Arthur C. Clarke to Einstein and bemoaned how everyone thought Einstein said everything:

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2014/01/29/peter_capaldi_doctor_who_costume/#c_2092

Today, I find someone saying that Arthur C. Clarke said something and it was actually Max Planck. The original quote is this:

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. ~Max Planck

It's a conspiracy to drive me crazy, I tell you.

h4rm0ny

Re: My beef with climate change ...

My beef is where people misrepresent skeptics as not believing the climate ever changes. I've actually had people tell me to my face what I believe in contradiction to what I've just told them and I've had others online insist that skeptics believe this even citing studies at me which turned out not to show this (bad statistics on their part) and they still insisted on it, rather than actually debate any points. The worst sort of strawmanning.

I tend towards a neutral position of "we don't really know with enough confidence" and I get pilloried for it by people who repeatedly ignore that we are skeptics of AGW and keep throwing abuse at us about how stupid we are to think the climate never changes. Even after being repeatedly corrected as to what we actually believe (or await evidence of).

h4rm0ny

>>"Tell us we are doomed..... So we can have an excuse to raise spurious taxes."

Actually, what they did was funnel all the extra money to the renewables lobby. I think this was more a genuine case of the extremely vocal "environmental" lobby beating the MPs over the head to get them to do it, rather than lining the government's pockets (though I'm confident some of that happened on the side as per usual).

The reason I put environmentalist in quotes up there is because I don't really consider Friends of the Earth et al. to necessarily represent us environmentalists. There is a legion of us who genuinely care about the environment but there's an old guard with a lock on all the main movements and pretends to speak on behalf of all of us. For example, I'm pro-nuclear as by far the most logical way to reduce carbon emissions and other pollutants, but who do I join when FoE will just take my money and plough it into distorting the facts on nuclear? I can't even join the RSPB as a bird lover because they've jumped on the wind power lobby. Especially ironic as aside from the flawed economics underlying them they kill birds.

There are many of us environmentalists who have no voice because there's always someone ready to leap in and be interviewed by the BBC on "our behalf". And to pressure MPs into sticking high tariffs on our energy bills to pay for unwanted wind farms.

Microsoft-backed lobby group demands market test of Google's proposed 'search fix'

h4rm0ny

Re: Sod off, microsoft

>>"Uh, if you buy a Windows phone does it not default to using Bing for search? You sir, are a hypocrite."

Really? Because I didn't say MS phones didn't. It was someone else that said how MS operating systems did and I pointed out that so did Google's. Now your logic fits better the person I replied to, fits them exactly in fact because they were the ones that criticised another for doing what their own 'team' did. So will you now turn on them and call them a hypocrite seeing as they are the ones who did what you accuse me of?

Somehow I doubt it. I suspect your attacks are one direction only.

h4rm0ny

Re: Sod off, microsoft

"Bzzzzt - wrong. To use Bing and IE you just use the stuff that came with the OS. "

Uh, if I buy an Android phone does it not default to using Google for search?

The pro-Google lobby is out in full force today, looking at these comments. If Google's competitors can put pressure on to hold Google responsible for what they do, I'm fine with that. It's a good thing for us, citizens of the EU. It's only a bad thing if you have some football-supporter "my team" approach to Google.

EVE Online erects mashed-up memorial to biggest space fight in history

h4rm0ny
Thumb Up

Re: Cool

You sound smug.

Which is fair enough, all things considered.

h4rm0ny

Re: 40% of the characters are female but 97% male player?

"Can you imagine what the female game experience would be like if you had to advertise your real-world gender in game?"

Very, very unpleasant.

It seems to me that in games like this gender is becoming more and more about perceived gender roles rather than alignment with real world players.

UK picks Open Document Format for all government files

h4rm0ny

Re: hard coded systems

>>"So you make a copy of soffice.exe and rename it as winword.exe. Actually not quite that simple, but you get the idea."

I get the idea that you think saying "actually not quite that simple" can mask a hundred nightmare scenarios of incompatibility.

h4rm0ny

Re: The Lawyer from Lima

>>"If a government decided to screen a version of Open/LibreOffice ,it not only has the means to do so, but the amount of money it saves on license fees also makes it a very viable proposition "

As someone who has been a systems programmer for many years, I really don't think the above is correct. Especially as its a moving target. Nor would it be a good use of our taxes to employ legions of code reviewers rather than just buy in enterprise software.

h4rm0ny

Re: Open does not necessarily equal cheap/free

>>"And god forbid they want to use MS Office on Android tablets - fixed"

Wrong. Office365 is browser-based. Open Office / LibreOffice (which you are replying about) does not have an equivalent.

h4rm0ny

"I think they meant documents that didn't need editing - like press releases."

Quite possibly. Then why can't they just say something like "finalized documents" or "documents for public dissemination"? Wouldn't something that accurately described the goal, rather than the method, be the correct way to classify things?

h4rm0ny

Re: Important change

"With what? Seven different distros of Linux each with its windows manager and that may not support some hardware because "proprietary drivers" are bad"

I wouldn't chose it over Windows 7 or 8 myself, but just because there are seven(teen) different GNU/Linux distros out there, doesn't mean it's impossible to standardise on one. There are a couple of enterprise level distributions: RedHat and SuSE. I haven't used SuSE since about 6.4 but you could run RedHat alright with LibreOffice as your standard. Again, I would prefer Windows by far for enterprise management and user experience, but the nice thing about using open formats (whether that's ODF *or* OOXML) is that it facilitates choice.

I feel that you have used my admonishment of richard76's own biased post to semi-launch your own rant. Yes, I like Windows also and MS are very good at enterprise deployment and management, but choice is good and its flawed to say that just because there are many GNU/Linux distros, you can't standardise on one of the enterprise-ready ones.

h4rm0ny

Re: Important change

I wrote: "You seem to want to actively lock out one (Microsoft). "

You responded "No" with a big Fail icon.

Your comment which I responded to:

>>"I don't think that will mean MS Windows will be abandoned soon, but going browser based is a good first step in that direction too."

I think my comment was pretty justified. Lets have a simple answer: are you stating that you wouldn't prefer to see Microsoft Windows replaced in Government?

h4rm0ny

Re: Important change

>>"Speaking as someone who actually works on a library that tries to read and write OOXML I can tell you that OOXML still is not very nice: it is overly verbose and inconsistent."

And compared to the original version? ;)

h4rm0ny

"I think in-browser editing means use wiki or HTML CMS to host data in a form directly accessible from a browser instead of using a format that requires launching a separate app like OpenOffice or Word when a browser will do."

Hmmmm. I honestly find it hard to believe that anyone would be so clumsy as to say "in-browser editing is preferred" to mean "use a wiki". I mean this is the UK Government so it's possible, but it's staggeringly inept even for them. It really sounds more like groundwork being laid for a deal with a company that primarily offers browser-based products. Some company that spends even more on lobbying than Microsoft and has a highly vocal and loyal supporters in the IT community, perhaps. ;)

h4rm0ny

Re: Important change

"Hmm, Westminster cafes are going to earn a lot of money in the coming days from all the Microsoft lobbyists landing there to try and "open up" that decision for the only-in-name "open" monstrosity called MSOOXML which is not only a standard that only became a standard by (IMHO) flat out abusing the ISO process, but is even today not possible to implement by Microsoft itself..."

You're out of date. The _original_ OOXML was a hurried mess, poorly documented and even including binary blobs. It was MS desperately trying to rush out something that qualified as Open back in the day when they suddenly realized they needed to. The _current_ OOXML is actually very nice. And yes, there are third parties that implement it. Best we forget all about the first attempt and focus on what we actually have today.

"I don't think that will mean MS Windows will be abandoned soon, but going browser based is a good first step in that direction too."

Openness is good because it allows free choice of vendor. You seem to want to actively lock out one (Microsoft). Office 2013 is really, really good. And there's also Office 365 which works in the browser pretty darn well. As pointed out earlier, ODF doesn't exclude Office at all. It's actually one of the best editors there is for ODF.

h4rm0ny

"Yes but you don't need Adobe to read PDF."

Well no, but Adobe make all the best software for creating PDFs. You can export a document from Word to PDF and it will do it quite nicely - well enough for all my reports. But if I wanted to do something big and serious with PDFs, particularly dynamically creating reports in PDF format from templates I'd created (but other things too), I'd be using Adobe software. It's the same sort of "soft" control Google and other companies use.

Also, just to highlight how clueless the Government is, you *can* edit PDF documents. It's not always perfect but again, Office 2013 amongst others can do it. It's gone a bit screwy with PDFs made externally but when I've needed to edit a PDF generated by Word itself, it works absolutely fine. So choosing PDF as the "non-editable" format is a bit dubious. For real non-editability, you need DRM solutions. E.g. you can check the signature of a document.

h4rm0ny

>>"Remember what happened when Massachusetts tried this. There may be more to come on this."

Perhaps. But MS Office is perfectly compatible with ODF so there's no reason why they can't continue to use Word, et al. with this. It's mandating an open format (good) rather than mandating a particular company's software (bad).

I'm puzzled by the babble about in-browser editing is preferred as if this is intrinsically connected to openness. Is this some Google infiltration trying to push Google Docs, or something?

Big tech firms holding wages down? Marx was right all along, I tell ya!

h4rm0ny

Re: Excellent article - b u t -

>>>"It is illegal not to divide ones assets equally among one's children on death, a parent cannot write a will that favours (or disinherits) one child"

What??!?!?!? So if I want one child to get all my wealth then my only options are... what? Arrange an accident for the less favoured child? Give it to one in advance of my death? That's outrageous!

Boffins demo re-usable paper and waterjet printers

h4rm0ny

#1 in your list is silly. Uncertain about #2 but doubt it's insurmountable. However I have one that is a significant problem: shredding.

I can think of very little that gets printed out which shouldn't properly be shredded after use. If this ink leaves traces that can be recovered to read the original document (and I'd be a little surprised if it didn't but am willing to be corrected), then it's not usable for many of us. Though I really approve of using less paper.

Hello Moto: Lenovo grabs Motorola biz for $3bn. But Google's KEEPING the patents

h4rm0ny

Re: Defend who against whom?

>>"Remember that they never sued Google directly, only it's customers."

That's because Google came up with the genius idea of monetizing the _use_ of their product rather than the _selling_ of their product. So they are free to infringe on others' patents whilst others have to shoulder the costs of licencing those patents. All the while Google still makes money off infringed IP. And they still get to control Android itself by subverting the Open Source principles of it with all sorts of "soft" controls on it:

Good article on the last point for any interested:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/

h4rm0ny

"Has this become the United States of China?"

Yes.

h4rm0ny

Re: for those who said buying Motorola was all about the patents...

Finally, even the most fanatical Google cheerleaders will have to stop trying to claim to the rest of the world that the Motorola purchase was about manufacturing.

New Doctor Who's new costume newly REVEALED by Beeb

h4rm0ny

Re: Remember that bit in the IT Crowd

>>"Also, going with what Einstein (I think) said about magic, the Doctor kinda sorta IS a magician, to us backward apes at any rate, no?"

Assuming you're thinking of the quote I think you're thinking of, then it was Arthur C. Clarke who wrote: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

Honestly, if you don't know who said something, don't just make up a name. People do this all the time and it just spreads disinformation. If it's vaguely sciency, people pick the name Einstein if they don't know. If it's vaguely period and funny, people assume it was Oscar Wilde. If they're especially well-read they'll occasionally claim it was Dorothy Parker.

History contains more than three people, you know.

h4rm0ny

Re: Grats to Capaldi

"Never seen Dr Who but I understand it's quite an institution over there and thus a plum assignment for him."

It's very much an institution. We had a cinema release for the 50th Anniversary episode and the cinemas were having to open up extra screens and it was booked up over a week in advance round our way. The crowd when I went was probably around 40% teenagers (of which slightly more girls than boys, I'd say) and then the remainder was a complete span of all ages up to around mid-fifties, with a small smattering of older. I'd say above the teenage level it was roughly an even gender split, maybe slightly more men than women so an inverse of the teenage set. But not especially pronounced in either case. It really does span everyone in this country other than, I guess, recent immigrants.

h4rm0ny

Re: Right wingish

"Cut his hair a bit shorter and we would have the first skinhead Doctor...."

Second skin-head Doctor. Matt Smith went skin in Time of the Doctor. Although he put a wig on afterwards.

As to the costume - I was hoping for something a bit less trendy and a bit more dishevelled. I'm happy if this Doctor is a bit less gabbly-look-at-me-i'm-so-zany, but it would be fun if they went a bit more rambly / disorganized, rather than serious-mature.

Stephen Fry rewrites computer history again: This time it's serious

h4rm0ny

Re: Why let truth get in the way...

>>"Sod it, Jeremy Paxman knows everything (if his role on University Challenge is to believed) so let's just make him President of the World now and save some fuss."

With Paxman's ego, I suspect he'd consider President of the World beneath him.

h4rm0ny

Re: Somebody put it far better than I could...

>>"@Horrid. You beat me to Julie Burchill's assessment! At least it was probably her."

I find it hard to imagine that creature coming up with anything I'd ever want to quote. She has less depth than a puddle of piss. And I don't break out that sort of personal attack as a general rule, but in her case I'll make an exception. Vile creature.

h4rm0ny

Stephen Fry is an incredibly irritating person.

I was really quite enjoying the last Hobbit film up until his smug visage appeared. Everyone else in that film was acting, even though it's basically a film about big flying lizards. Except for Fry, who was just being Fry.

Not that I ultimately blame him - he does what he is asked to do. But why does anyone think that's what we want to see in the first place?

Sinclair's ZX Spectrum to LIVE AGAIN!

h4rm0ny

People will cherish even bad memories if they're long enough ago.

GP surgeries MUST DO BETTER on data handling, says ICO

h4rm0ny

"Does anybody currently trust their data in the hands of those antisocial, incompetent bastards known as 'medical receptionists'?"

My team were pretty hard-working and unless you've seen what it's like from the other side of the desk, trying to deal with an endless horde of patients with very small teams, shut up. We'd turn our phones on early in the morning and they would ring continuously (yes, I know the difference between continuous and continual) throughout the day. You'd get occasional five minutes here and there when they'd stop.

We divided our reception staff up logically. So we'd have a dedicated line for test results and a receptionist permanently by that phone upstairs. We had some further receptionists upstairs who just did phones so that patients on the front desk in person weren't kept waiting too long by the receptionist taking a call. But it all goes only so far when you're under-resourced and over-subscribed.

Saints? No. Degrees in biochemistry and astrophysics? But "Incompetent bastards" ? I bet you'd last five hours on the front desk before losing it with the eighth patient that morning who insisted they be seen as an emergency patient right away when your GP's only have a small number of emergency slots left and the patient is clearly just trying to jump the queue of people who are sicker but willing to endure and wait.

h4rm0ny

Re: Everything you need to know ...

"GPs will always have access to your data. It also gets mailed around the country when you move doctor or you get health insurance"

Let me tell you how it is from someone who worked in Primary Care (GP surgeries and PCT). Yes, your GP has access to your data. Yes, if you move to a new GP your records get transferred. I don't know why you imagine these two things are profound counter-arguments to centralized record keeping and wide-spread access both of which are vastly different to just your own and previous GPs having access. Furthermore, on an insurance check, no - the insurer does NOT have access to your health records, a GP will be asked to let the insurer know if there's anything on there that would impact the policy. Very much not the same thing. I have actually witnessed discussions between two GPs on whether something needed to be disclosed to an insurer or not and they were trying to tread a balance between patient confidentiality and obligation to the insurer in that instance. If you had a cardiac arrest last year, they'll tell the insurer that (and you should have anyway as you'll already have signed something saying if you had any serious medical conditions or not). It doesn't mean that the insurer gets to look through your records and see that you were pregnant at fifteen or are seeing a counsellor.

Nor do they get to do any of this at any time they like.

I get really tired of people who know fuck all, think they're clever and just like to try and sound smart or score points by attacking what they think are obvious flaws with what they think are great insights.

Your GP / previous GP seeing your records =/= a massive centralized database accessible nationwide and by insurers.

I say this as someone who used to work in Primary Care - you CANNOT trust the DOH to safeguard your privacy. I repeat: they WILL NOT. The original CfH (Connecting for Health) programme where all this comes from had every receptionist at every GP practice in the country able to access your test results and similar and their response to us when we were horrified at this was 'only registered NHS professionals who have signed patient confidentiality agreements have access'. Translation: anyone who takes a job at a practice has signed a bit of paper (one of many). That is the DOH attitude in a nutshell - it doesn't matter if something works or doesn't work or shouts your personal information from the rooftops. What matters is whether there is a bit of paper saying its someone else's responsibility or not.

There are tonnes of horribly overworked people in the middle and lower-tiers of the NHS. People at the coal face struggling with endless waves of ever-aging patient lists, people at the lower levels of the PCT tearing their hair out trying to co-ordinate finite resources and manage all the programmes that exist between practices and stay on top of all the bureaucracy that is dumped on them. But the upper levels of the NHS? Rotten to the core. It's why I left - so many problems that were above the level of access I had to fix.

Anyone who tries to trivialize this like the AC I just replied to did, or who thinks that the DOH will look out for you, is lying or an idiot. Once you get to the upper reaches of the PCTs and higher, they're corrupt as Hell and motivated solely by making sure they get money to their private industry friends and that they have a bit of paper saying a disaster is not their fault.

They will NOT give you any privacy protection that you do not FORCE them to. And the moment you take the whip away, they will try again.

Altcoins will DESTROY the IT industry and spawn an infosec NIGHTMARE

h4rm0ny

Re: Valid Points

>>"I am sure there are people who are mining this stuff on someone else's electricity bill - so for them the economics are completely different."

By "someone else", do you mean parents? Cause I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the bitcoin mining going on is by live-at-home kids - people who have the free time and subsidised living costs. I imagine there will be a few raised voices when the electricity bill comes in!

Intel ditches McAfee brand: 'THANK GOD' shouts McAfee the man

h4rm0ny

"All AV software eats pretty much all available CPU + 10% as soon as you start opening files."

Actually, I just use Microsoft Security Essentials (well, what was MSE, it's now just built into Windows 8). Runs fine in the background. No need for AVG or others anymore.

h4rm0ny

@chriswareham

I think John McAfee was far more damaged by association with that shit software than vice versa. I actually find the guy pretty cool. A programmer who personally made it on to a South American president's hit list, got himself smuggled across borders, waged an espionage campaign against said corrupt politicians with bugged laptops, honey traps and has a sense of humour too (see video).

Versus a processor-munching piece of shit that you have to download a well-hidden utility just to uninstall and which it's almost impossible to buy a laptop without. A piece of software whose sole utility is to make Norton look good.

The only disappointment in this article was I thought we would *actually* be getting rid of the software, not simply same shit, different name.

Bitcoin blasts past $1,000 AGAIN after Zynga accepts cryptocurrency

h4rm0ny

So someone at Zynga wanted to offload their Bitcoins?

Coming in 2014: Scary super-soldier exoskeleton suits from the US military

h4rm0ny

Re: IED's and RPG's make the Military Troop w/ Vehicle Redundant...

>>"2 years ago the US military admitted the use of actual troops was over and done with...the drone and smart bomb use in Libya recently is where we actually are on troop use...RS."

Oh, humans are not redundant yet. It's just that the USA can get cheaper ones from other countries. (And perhaps more importantly to the politicians ones that don't come back to the USA in body bags). For example in the Lybia attack you mention, there were lots of foreign troops on the ground in Libya for the (so called by the Western Press) popular uprising. Only they weren't Western, they were from that bastion of democracy, Qatar. (So Western trained troops, rather).

You see that's the USA's approach where possible. Don't send in your own troops - you're right that they want to use drones and airpower as much as possible in place. But they use these to support their proxies on the ground.

Drones so far can only kill people. To control them, you still need other people.

iPhone fanbois outsmart fandroids in totally reliable test of brain power

h4rm0ny

>>"Spoken like a true Samsung user ;p"

Not quite sure I get the joke, but I use WP8, actually (Lumia 820).

h4rm0ny

I got as far as the second question and then decided I was smarter than the test's author. "How many months have 28 days?"

Obviously we all read that and know it is supposed to be a clever trick - "OMG! 'Cause like months that have 31 days totally also 28 days". But seriously? Every native English speaker naturally interprets that question to mean "how many months have exactly 28 days" and the question author fucking well knows that they're phrasing the question badly. They even set it up that way in their own phrasing with "some months have 30 days, some months have 31 days" implying that the latter case is distinct from the former case when in fact the correct wording EVEN IF YOU WERE USING THE QUESTIONER'S INTERPRETATION would be "some months have 30 days, some months also have 31 days". It's badly phrased twice over even within itself. I loathe questions that rely on their own ineptness with phrasing. If you want to test my actual ability with something, test it. Stupid little gotchas like that are obvious and for petty people.

The one about "how many nines between 1 and a 100" is also another stupid question. There is one. Obviously they mean how many times does the digit '9' appear in representations of all the numbers between 1 and 100, but to anyone with a programming / mathematical bent (which I will willingly argue is the more accurate way to think), the answer that immediately occurs is that there is 1. 9 is not 19, however you write it down.

The smartest people? Those that realize the test is only testing their willingness to wilfully go against the normal meanings of language. No-one can claim the test author isn't knowingly phrasing things in a way that isn't natural to the English language.

Antarctic ice shelf melt 'lowest ever recorded, global warming is not eroding it'

h4rm0ny

Re: Always suspected...

>>"Mines the one with the keys to the 6 litre V8 in the pocket"

Skepticism of AGW does not mean you have to disregard the environment. There are issues of pollution and finite fuel reserves and the nasty regimes we support to get that fuel. Personally, I think we should all be on nuclear as much as possible by now.

But anyway, my point is that your post is exactly the sort of thing AGW proponents point at when they want to characterise the skeptic position as selfish people who don't give a damn about the environment.

h4rm0ny

Re: That was bizarre.

ElectricWizard - I can. See that your join date is actually today. So as you're really, really new here, that second page isn't 'preemptive'. It's in fact long overdue given the number of attacks commenters regularly make on Lewis whenever he writes such articles.

Lyrics upstart Rap Genius blacklisted by Google for Justin Bieber SEO scam

h4rm0ny

Re: Block Canada (was: Are we thinking about this the wrong way around?)

You lot do all realise that you've turned into your parents, don't you?

"Youth of today.. *mutter* that's not music *mutter mutter* why does he look like that *mutter tut*"

h4rm0ny

Re: I hate to break it to you

>>"As far as I am aware, only scammers build a network of backlinks like this for their customers."

In the early days of Google, this was standard and open practice. I didn't know anything had changed. My first reaction to this story was "isn't that normal?"

I'm surprised at the 11 downvotes of the GP. I'm think what they say *is* normal behaviour.

How much did NSA pay to put a backdoor in RSA crypto? Try $10m – report

h4rm0ny

"It's amusing that what was once a very left-wing project is now taken as a very right-wing ideal."

Left Wing and Right Wing do not respectively mean 'things we like and things we don't'. Pledging allegiance to the flag is neither socialist nor none-socialist. It's just propaganda and indoctrination, something common to either end of the Left-Right spectrum.

This is what biased media leads to: attribution of anything negative to the faction you oppose. Racism? Homophobia? These must be things that are Right Wing because I am Left-Wing.

Feds charge four in GLOBAL Silk Road METH RING case

h4rm0ny

Dread Pirate Roberts...

You just know that someone is going to take up that mantle.

In fact, I'm not even convinced that Ross Ulbricht is the real Dread Pirate Roberts.