Posts by Mark 65

Re: Turkey nowadays

I take it the down vote was from a Mr Erdogan. Sorry Erders old boy but they were never going to let you in, that's an open secret.

Re: How about...

...using .gitignore before you commit anything?

Re: Meh...

I wouldn't say I'm excited about it, but the push for greater performance per watt is good news for people that make use of QNAP or Synology style NAS boxes as it means the virtualisation capabilities will become ever greater without the need for large power draw.

Re: Easy to solve

Maybe they only record an hour of footage because they:

1. Got sold a model that records in 4K

2. Got sold a model that has storage nearer 4K(B)

Re: grrr

I get between 25-30 miles from the car on a full charge. All my short journeys are leccy only.

I last time I put unleaded in the tank was almost a month ago.

I own a large 4WD, mainly for the 7 seats but it also goes off-road where a normal car couldn't. It gets used 7 days a week. The last time I filled the tank was a month ago, what's your point?

Re: Eleventy percent

Next to Hockey, Homer Simpson is a God damn genius.

What happened to the dolphin after it was captured?

Water boarded.

Re: Mumsnet is a refuge and a support network

Yes, but I'd wager that quite a lot of the men withholding legally mandated financial support are "thick fuckers" unlikely to be able to perform the alleged admin level entry into the site. In general, though not in all cases, if you have a judgement of some kind it's normally because you are owed something.

Nope, I'd be looking more towards the "just above script-kiddy" section of the hacking fraternity that may be pissed off by some mumsnet campaign or statement related to taking away their toys or restricting access to something or other. You know the sort of thing - net censorship, filters etc. That stuff tends to piss off people that just might have the skill-set. It doesn't even need to be anyone from the opposite sex if it were censorship related.

Re: stupid Canadian volunteers to give away rights

My opinion of gun control in the US is that they've never gotten away from the image of the gun toting cowboy a la John Wayne or The Man With No Name. What sensible reason is there for an ordinary member of the public to open carry save to effectively implicitly threaten everyone around them? The loons photographed walking around supermarkets with side-arms being a case in point. Nutters.

Most likely the attitude of your IT staff.

Re: 2 hours into a support call ...

I'm surprised they didn't respond with "well then you'll have to immediately stop using our products if the fees are not paid". They seem like the sort to do so.

Re: Furthermore

And that choice may well suit you. However, some of those others may have made that decision because they need to use a certain software package that only runs on Windows - I've heard there's a few.

The problem is also that there are plenty of educational sites for kids that are paid and mandated by the education system that use flash. You know, the ones where they are set tasks as homework that require completion. I wish they didn't use the shit but it means I have to have at least one machine with flash on it and, no, it's not a VM as the kids don't get to use the main computer.

Re: Where is the compelling business case to go to cloud?

The only business case I can think of for this sort of thing is for really small businesses where there is neither the will nor the ability to perform the function in-house. For such small scale players the alternative to google mail (business mail) or 365 is to have your own hosting service provision whereby you face the same possibility of downtime but without any frills on the service - think standard web hosting with email etc. An in-house email server without a guaranteed internet link is also a waste of time for these people.

For these small players such services are likely the best option. For larger, especially medium sized companies, I think you should have grown up and be able to manage your own IT real estate.

Re: Squatter?

Personally I do not see any reason why ownership of a trademark per se should entitle you to every domain with permutations of that trademark unless the current owner is passing themselves off as the trademark holder. That, to me, is what should enact a forced handover.

If someone is an avid fan of author X with a particular fondness for book Y such that they decide to setup a fan-site based upon name Y, and in no way tries to pretend there is anything official about it, then I do not see why said person should have to forfeit that domain should Y be made into a blockbuster with the trademark owned by bigcorp Z. Yet this is what such judgements would promote. Why should someone be punished for being first to market or, in this case, owning some domains you forfeited?

Here's an idea: if you're bigcorp Z and obtain trademark for Y then best you sort out domains upfront rather than try to strong-arm them later you cheap lazy bastards. To me that is part of your due diligence. Anything you allow to lapse is then fair game.

Re: Up to no good or just some tax shenanigans?

It would be quite interesting to see the precise structuring of the company. I'd imagine that previously they could dip into the overseas post-"tax" funds of Google to fund different projects. If Google is now owned by Alphabet, like some of these other cash drains/projects, how does alphabet get money to invest? It'd be easy to say "from the multi-billionaires" but typically such people like to accumulate rather than risk extracted income/wealth and how liquid is their wealth vs how much is effectively sat in a tax haven?

Re: Deniers?

Or just read anything accepted by the bulk of scientists and experts who study climate.

At one time the bulk of scientists and, for that matter, the World's population actually believed the Earth to be flat. So what?

The reason I am sceptical is because we are told it is all mankind's fault and yet nuclear power is not embraced but instead utterly pointless needs-to-be-backed-by-gas-turbine windmills are touted and get just as large a state subsidy. Ugly bastard things that, shock horror, don't live up to expectations in generating power. Solar is also a joke for most of the planet where power is needed.

Sustainable is not covering the planet in windmills. It is also not trying to force people back into the stone age by penalising the poor with your shitty green energy subsidies. Cheap energy is the prime source of growth, without it your economy is fucked.

If you want to get most people on board I'm afraid you are going to have to come up with some concrete proposals that don't fuck the poor, the economy, and the environment instead of all the subsidy grabbing "thou shalt not" evangelical bullshit.

It may continue to happen.

Experience shows mass surveillance results in a poor signal to noise ratio and the real targets, even if identified, are soon forgotten in the chase for more information.

Yes, but show me the leader and party with so few skeletons in the closet that they are prepared to meet GCHQ and/or the police head on and shut this all down.

Re: @DaveDaveDave

If minimum wage was set at a proper level then those who work wouldn't be dependent on state handouts and those who didn't would have a good incentive to seek out work.

If you are, as I suspect, implying that the minimum wage should be higher then I thoroughly disagree. Higher minimum wage levels are a massive discouragement to employment and financial activity. Take the example of Australia as a case in point. The minimum wage is currently a minimum of (I think) $17.50 per hour. A teenager waiting tables on a Sunday can quite easily earn the same hourly rate as a qualified tradesman when penalty rates are taken into account. How do you think that works out for the industry as a whole? Higher prices are required in general to cover these higher wages. These higher prices then discourage more casual dining out activity. In so many places these days you see entire levels of staffing by effectively children. I've seen places where everyone from the table staff to the chef were minimum wagers because the cost of those wages is so high. This just results in poor outcomes for both employees (older more experienced staff are not employed) and customers (quality is absent). Before you state the obvious "you have a choice, go elsewhere" I am telling you this is absolutely endemic in the industry. Retailers and hospitality are both staffed by kids. The minimum wage is not helping people at the bottom as it is displacing the older workers and increasing it is just inflating the cost of all basic goods and services. It is a cancer in its current form and level.

NB The younger you are the lower the minimum is, hence the issues.

Re: @Mark

But if you're correct and online ads put off more people than they encourage to buy a product, they will eventually stop.

Couple of points:

1. There will always be people that cannot fathom AdBlock et al and will thus be forced to view ads. Most advertisers will work on the basis that a percentage of viewers will follow ads. Trouble is there is a lot of subterfuge going on with the online ads market - ads that inflate to cover your phone screen as you were about to follow a link thus generating a false statistic.

2. Google has a nice little trick whereby, when searching, a shitload of paid results come up first in the list. If the company or service you were after appears in that section then why scroll down to the real results for the link? Google would proclaim the advertising worked whereas I would state that in the absence of the paid results I'd still have gone with the same provider as they were high in the actual search results. With their tailored search results nearly every time I search these days (unless anonymising) the service/store I'm after is in both the paid and the real results. Google is just there to optimise the payoff from search and advertising however this can be achieved. PHBs will always play ball for fear of missing out.

Personally I don't care about typical page-filler ads as I block them all.

Re: Exposing Enemy Action?

With http all over the site save for only the sending of username and password not the actual receiving of the form etc I doubt they'd need to ask for anything. It would seem about as open as could possibly be.

Re: Having been hit with GST on overseas purchases

The convenience is the much lower price. When local is still 20+% dearer after GST added there's still a whole load more convenience headroom in that purchase. Books alone are normally double the price here compared to Book Depository. 10% on an $11 book vs $27 locally as one recent example.

Someone in AusPost would likely create a facility where you could pay the GST online with a couple of % ticket-clip. No queueing. Money still saved.

The writing is on the wall for local retailers.

Re: Therin lies the problem

2 year sentence to think of a better workflow seems a fair enough punishment. As pointed out, 12-15 is longer than for rape or murder - are you f*cking nuts?

Re: Annoys me sooo much

@patrick_bateman: You sir are an arseclown. If all of those contractors know less than you, are completely inattentive to their work and yet earn more than you then you must be a complete simpleton for not joining them. According to you, you have the skills, work ethic, and would like to be on their pay.

In short, quit fucking whining and do something about it.