Re: Stupid masochists.
Pendants rule OK: Or, to be more precise, exhibit certain characteristics normally observed in those in authority.
1117 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009
Many years ago - at school, to be precise, so that's 34+ years ago - I saw a video (actually, now I think of it, it was 16mm film) of a surgeon sewing a heart into place during a transplant. It looked like a sewing machine at work he was so fast.
But, I've absolutely no doubt that a robot - or more likely for the time being, a machine under the direction of a surgeon - could be a lot faster, and you use more advanced stitching techniques, e.g. like a sewing machine use two "threads" to make the join firmer, and get much finer stitching than most human surgeons can get.
I've been lucky - my appendix scar is all but invisible, thanks to the skill of the surgeon who stitched me (it was the surgeon, not a nurse, according to his registrar), but bring it on - I think it will be, in the right circumstances, a very great advance.
We used to issue bootcamped MacBooks to our PhD students - it was a solution to not enough space for desks, but inevitably, I needed to repair them.
One day, I found one on my desk to fix, and I thought I could smell something. When I got the thing open, it stank like the broth of hell - fairly appropriate analogy the student had managed to spill fish soup on it and waited a week to bring it in.
I actually tried to rescue it, sponging it with de-ionised water, but it was beyond redemption.
At least the next one had only been bathed in baby oil.
I never plucked up the courage to ask the student how that happened.
"It's reasonable that Macs and Phones and non-x86 tablets should be preloaded"
Why?
Possibly tablets (but look at the flak google is taking for monopoly atm) - but a macbook is just a laptop. A Mac Mini is just a PC.
Sell them all naked, and make a pile of OS disks available.
Not necessarily - I have an old version of Première, but no Quicktime - sometimes I get a prompt "To do X you'll need to install Quicktime", so I do something else instead.
Quicktime was assigned to /dev/null (or the nearest equivalent) long ago - I used Media Player Classic and Quicktime Alternative, and then came VLC...which appealed to the inner lazy bastard.
Since us folks in Blighty are heading into a (very windy) late spring, I assume that the antipodean islands are heading into a late autumn...which is a season that is noted for progressively more wind as it shunts into winter.
I assume that there is a good reason for launching at this time, given that a window to launch would be less likely.
GoPro Studio (until I got rid of it) kept on saying that a lot of features wouldn't work unless I installed Quicktime.
I decided to live with the lack of features, and uninstalled the studio rather than install Quicktime. I don't think I've had it on my Windows machine for well over a decade.
Harlan Ellison was born in 1934, and Scientology officially started in 1954, but was around in various gestatory stages prior to that, so Ellison would have been a tad young to make the bet.
The version I heard was that it was Robert Heinlein, and his religion was the Perfect Universal Love that featured in Stranger in a Strange Land, amongst others.
I think that there are probably many other versions of the story, but I'd recommend you watch Going Clear, which has a fairly good history of the origins of the bullsh^w Scientology.
Anyways, I always wondered about Pastafarianism, and their symbol, the colander - is it like a crucifix? I mean, you boil pasta to death and then strain its remnants through the device... I can't see the FSM manifesting when all its followers have that on their heads.
"Stephen Cragg QC, representing Love, told Westminster Magistrates' Court that the NCA application, if successful, would be a significant blow against individual privacy."
Why the heck does he think that they're doing it this way? As with the Apple cases ongoing in the US, the case against Microsoft in Ireland, this case and many others, all government agencies are seeking legal precedents for invading our privacies. These cases will run and run until the governments and agencies get their way, they have deep pockets and the ability to amend laws.
"Concern has also been raised about the always-on nature of the headset. The OVRServer_x64.exe function can be used to keep connections with the Facebook server when the headset is not in use..."
I'll bet that this becomes the norm with the Samsung, HTC, Sony, Microsoft, Google, and inevitably, Apple* variants...if and when they arrive. And, as such, I probably won't bother with them, so I'll be condemned to reality, however grim.
When did privacy become a commodity?
*The original, and best, apparently.
Windows 95 had the "It is now safe to turn off your computer" message on shutdown. This technician thought it was a witty jape to edit the image by copying the t of to and pasting it over the w of now, and saving the image on all the machines in they department computer lab.
None of the students noticed, and I felt a complete heel when a completely genial, but venerable, emeritus professor rushed up to me in a panic, apologising frantically because he thought he messed up my computer. I stopped witty japes shortly after.
I once had to go and fix the printer of a grand dame at the University. It was an old Oki laser printer that had an open toner cartridge - I always ended up with toner to the elbows.
Worse that that though, was her computer. At that time smoking was still allowed in some offices, including hers, and she did. There was an ashtray on the base unit of the machine, below the right hand edge of the screen. The screen was yellowy-brown all the way up that bezel. The keyboard of the computer literally sucked at my fingers it was so damp with exhaled tar. Turing the keyboard upside down and tapping it (part of my standard service) produced a veritable avalanche of ash, crumbs and crud.
Fortunately, shortly after there was a smoking ban in all offices.
If you add in the battle that Microsoft are having about Uncle Sam demanding access to data on servers outside the US, belonging to non-USasians who haven't committed a crime, and you could easily predict a massive blow to sales of US tech equipment.
The snag then is, what do you buy instead?
Apple will certainly take this as far as they possibly can - we've seen many times in various patent disputes how far Apple will take litigation.
I hope that they do. As has been pointed out, it seem fairly certain that there's nothing on the phone, as the owner was using iCloud backups, and was fairly thorough with the destruction of his other devices.
I still like the idea (iDea?) of Apple sayin okey-dokey, bring it here, attaching it to a device and "accidentally" bricking it.
Head to boardgamegeek.com and have a look at the games there...
Thursday evenings a few friends come round and we dig out one of the many games I have in the attic - Settlers, Carcassone, Discworld, and a few times a year we get together for a full day playing something like Through the Ages..
Most familiar boardgames* seem a little 1-dimensional after playing these games. And they're easy to learn, with very simple rules that have subtleties. Sometimes it seems that the shorter the rules, the better the game.
*The ones you find in Tescos/Walmart
Maybe it's me, but I try to never get riled, make snarky comments or patronise my callers.
I figure that if they get pissed off enough, they may learn to open a book, or press F1, or, horror of horrors, use Google.
And when they learn to do that, I'm out of a job.
Being polite, assuring them that it is the computer that is being stupid and obtuse keeps me in beer tokens.
I can remember exactly where I was when I saw the news that Challenger had been lost - and who I was with.
I'm glad about that - it shows that exploration of space is remarkably safe, indeed, it may be said to be boring. OTOH, I wonder if we took more risks - strides, not baby steps - whether we'd be further on in our colonisation of the final frontier.
This is an odd one.
My friend has a blue badge, but it attaches to him, not to any car - on occasions I've taken him to the shops in my car, and we've used his blue badge to park, quite legally.
Okay, that was about 3 years ago, but, unless they've changed the blue badge system, I'm not sure how the police will be able to tell if a car parked using a blue badge is legitimately parked or not, unless they wait for the users of the car to return.
They paid Apple about a billion to keep Google search the default on iDevices, according to a report on the beeb.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35380696
16 megabucks really is nothing to these folk.
Edit - the report is here too. Hadn't seen the article here, but I find that more interesting, especially the alleged cover up.
I'm actually paranoid enough to use cash for most of my purchases - shopping for food mainly at a local market that only accepts cash helps with this. And at the supermarket it stops my bank telling my insurers just how much I drink per week...
I'm reminded of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon:-
http://assets.amuniversal.com/d011b090df960131725e005056a9545d