Posts by Intractable Potsherd

@ Pet Peeve

Let me guess - you think that a person is either for you or against you.

You are wrong.

Re: When they @LarsG @ James Hughes 1

Only the bit about the two very small batteries. The rest is quite sensible. I expect to get at least 300 miles out of a charge without degrading the battery significantly - the same as I get out of a tank of petrol in my Subaru.

Re: It's a Garage 56 Car

Errrrrrrmmmmm - "to garage" *is* a verb. (http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/garage_2)

@ Destroy All Monsters

Yes, because the USA does so well on national health indicators vs GDP, doesn't it? There is a graph on the web somewhere that shows the USA as a dramatic outlier to the right of the graph showing that it has terrible outcome:expenditure ...

@AC

You don't get it, do you? This is satire.

Re: GreyWolf AC: This wasn't a hardware flaw. This wasn't a mainframe flaw.

For the record, I'm the one agreeing with Matt. I therefore want to insert that disclaimer that I don't work for RBS, I am merely a customer that can't see that any of the banks are any different, and so stay where I am and take the free insurances offered through my account.

Re: @SysLoll - Radical solutions needed @AC 18:27

Please don't feed the libertarian. He'll come back and tell you that law and order isn't actually needed, it can all be dealt with as civil law, with paid-for services. He'll also say that, again, you can pay for the best contract for you for fire (remember the first fire-services (in the UK) were provided by insurance companies, and if you didn't have the right badge on your house, the firemen would let it burn to the ground). The military, equally (the libertarian will say) was run on the basis of mercenaries for far longer than the standing-army system, and that it prevented wars (though a look at the history of Europe between, say, 800 and 1800 proves what bollocks that is).

in the anti-tax libertarian (actually, anarchist) point of view, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and taxation is all a way to keep the weak poor living off the deserving rich , and ... oh, I can't be bothered any more. For an idea of how such a system might work (if you have money), have a look at Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"

Re: Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy

That planet was, of course, Earth. I'm not sure that's what you had in mind with your comment ...

On a serious note, who *are* Gartner, and why does El Reg seem to hang on their every word? Is there an ... unhealthy ... relationship there?

Re: Said it before...

Agreed. I'm not sure it is the best model for the consumer - "let the producers set the price" always ends up with more expensive goods* - but, without the MFN clause and a bit of humility it could have allowed the market to settle somewhere between the two. The producers would have had to adjust their prices to what people are willing to pay, and Amazon might have realised that they could get away with making more money by charging *just* less than the Apple/publisher model. Win/win, I'd say.

I'm very concerned about the influence of Amazon on the book market, and would have supported both Apple and the publishers if they had done this properly. As it is, I despise them all.

* However, "let the retailer set the price" also tends towards screwing the consumer too, just in a different way.

Re: Some examples of what is and is not prosecutable might help

Robin Hood Airport is nominally Doncaster (the ex-RAF Finningley, a Vulcan base), not Nottingham. I do seem to recall that at some point in its inception it was referred to as "Doncaster Nottingham Airport", but that thankfully got lost. According to the airport's website, it is now "Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield", presumably to cover up the fact that Sheffield no longer has an airport (though some would argue that that the one it did have was little more than a tarmac landing strip).*

*However, I understand that Boeing are a bit pissed off that the airport closed just before they finished their tech centre at the side of it - I wonder why (innocent face).

Re: Google should be kicked out of Europe. @ Colin Camper

You expect anyone to take you seriously when you use words like "plonker" to anyone that disagrees with you? Sorry, I don't. I suspect you are trying to build up an Eadon-like persona for whatever reason.

Re: World's cleverest company states the obvious @AC 06:50

You've found HR to be remotely useful???? You must work in a charmed environment ...

Re: own goal ..

Yes, no, absolutely!

Re: Cloud cover @ Jim O'Reilly

Wow - that was the most blatant canned statement I've seen on these boards! Do you work for Gartner, or one of the cloud* providers?

*And we all know that clouds are just vapour ...

Re: Not bad for a first attempt

No, but it does sit on any piece of paper you have put on the desk and are trying to read.

Re: Spies spy on people shocker.

No-one here is surprised, but I suspect many, like me, are relieved that people like you have to resort to new phrasings of our sanity, rather than just saying we are conspiracy theorists. No longer can the apologists of over-reaching security get away with saying "Nah, they wouldn't just take all data!", because this shows that they do, and that those of us that knew that they could and would have been vindicated.

Re: Pretty much the definition of over-reach.

The problem is, these people are taking a long view. At the risk of seeming to be a bit of a nut, there is a finite risk that large numbers of the population are going to become the sort of people that the governments will want to have a handle on. Stocks of food supplies are very small these days, and a global bad harvest, such as we could have this year, may lead to food shortages. Surplus electricity production is very low in many countries due to lack of investment in the right places, and gas stores have been run down. Another bad winter such as the one we have just had could lead to power cuts. When people start to lose access to food and heating, they have a tendency to become restless. Governments have fallen for less.

Much of what is being done seems to have the underlying assumption that the people are a real source of threat to the powers that be. I don't like it, but I can't entirely say that I wouldn't be doing the same in their position.

Re: Not really bothered,

Forgive me, Maharg, but I regard you as an enemy of freedom. People with the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" mindset harm all of us. You are all hypocrites - you know that there are some things that should be hidden from certain people/organisations. There is a great deal that should be hidden from governments, probably more so than any other type of organisation.

Re: It doesn't usually make big news when...

Whilst I do feel sorry for Sheffield - it still has quite high unemployment - there is a lot more unemployment up here in Scotland.

Re: keen.

IMHO, food should be merely fuel, sex should be merely mechanical procreation. I hope for a future in which we don't *need* to eat, drink, breathe, have sex. I really resent being at the mercy of my biological body, and like like to believe that humanity will be free of it eventually, turning all these things into pass-times, not requirements.

Re: If we acceot that farmers need to earn a living,

That is something I've thought for some time, but I am not terrible well informed of the arguments for/against.

The issue of culling populations of wild animals is a different one, and I am not going to get into it due to lack of information.

The issue of hacking the websites of peripheral bodies is also a different one, and one that strikes me as being stupid and wrong.

Re: Are you even thinking this through?

And you think degradation of mobile connections will make *any* difference to the politicos that think there is no limit to the amount of data they can gather? I think you may be the foil-hatter here.

Re: Are you sure you want to do this?

There is no public interest defence actually written in to the OSA, but juries have been known to find one! Long live "perverse judgments"!

Re: Great harm to animals

There is some truth in what you say - the code-breakers at Bletchley Park kept their secrets until well into the 1970s. What chance of that happening now?

Re: Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it's failures@ Dan Paul

You seem to be talking about revolution, and you are wrong. Every revolution puts everything back by at least two generations - the one that loses the country it grew up in and can never go back to, and the following one that has no solid culture in which to grow up. There are virtually no revolutions that made things better for the ordinary person inside 50 years - try to find a different solution.

Re: But your bags are already bar-coded, how do they get lost.

My (completely uninformed, but long-contemplated whilst in security queues) thought is that, since the tags are flexible, it is possible for them to deform in such a way that the code reads differently from what it is supposed to say. If it is only one or two digits between e.g. "London Heathrow" and "Larnaka", then it becomes feasible that things go wrong. I assume that there are checks and balances in the system (let's be honest, luggage doesn't get lost that often, and not for long when it does - the stories that circulate are rare worst-case events, or contain an element of exaggeration), and so the entire process is better than "good enough".

Re: @Winkypop re: anonymous coward @ Anonymous Cowerd

The point is, there is only one "Winkypop" on El Reg's comments board, and so his/her posting history can be verified if necessary. Posting AC means the comments are lost in the noise of other ACs - and thus become meaningless.

Re: Fort Hood shooting

No, it was not terrorism, any more than the Boston Bombing or the murder of the soldier in the UK the other week was. It was no more terrorism than any event involving a nutter with a gun/knife/van/pressure cooker/can of petrol killing lots of people in a house/school/on the streets.

The number of things attributed to terrorism needs to be reduced, not multiplied. Terrorism is rare, and not worth making a fuss about.