* Posts by Rich 11

4575 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Jul 2009

You want me to do WHAT in that prepaid envelope?

Rich 11
Joke

Re: Club 50+

As for the general health care system, it’s A1.

Shouldn't that be N1 in France?

We know it's hard to get your kicks at work – just do it away from a wall switch powering anything important

Rich 11

Re: Confession

I've still got the cheap wardrobe and chest of drawers I bought when I bought this house 29 years ago. I'd intended to replace them after a few years because they were all I could afford at the time, but they're still going strong. They look like tat but they still function, so I don't see any point in replacing them.

And before you can ask, no, I'm not married. Probably because most of my furniture is second-hand tat!

Rich 11

Re: Four legged switch operation

I try to position them on their sides to minimize the chances.

I bet the cats don't stay like that for very long.

Rich 11

Re: Uses of Radar

and allegedly the same result can be obtained at over half-a-mile using the air-search radar modes of the MiG-29.

There's a story from the Czech Air Force that the MiG-23's radar was capable of killing rabbits from a kilometre away. They used to test the scan/lock on a ground range; any bunny nibbling grass just in front of the target shed would end up in the evening meal.

Rich 11

Re: Why have the switch ?

It probably also explains why US hotel chains bedrooms always seem so dull at night.

That's so you can't see the stains on the bed linen.

We regret to inform you the professor teaching your online course is already dead

Rich 11

Re: On the subject of Primary Teachers...

I would say full marks to that teacher, except that he used the phrase 'remote offer'. 9/10 - must try harder.

Rich 11

So you're saying you couldn't possibly be blamed? OK, fair enough.

Rich 11

Re: Undead teachers are nothing new.

she'd have parents turn up to parents evenings and sit quaking in their seats

One of my mates moved back to our home town, kids in tow, to learn that a couple of the teachers who'd taught us back in the 70s were still there and were now teaching his son.

He went to the first parent-teacher evening with justified trepidation. He sat down in front of one of his old teachers, introduced himself and asked about his son's progress. The teacher gave him a long look, tipped his head to one side and said laconically, "He's his father's son."

Machine-learning model creates creepiest Doctor Who images yet – by scanning the brain of a super fan

Rich 11

Re: Distorted

Oh dear. Someone is struggling to cope with the basic concept of science fiction.

Rich 11

Re: Doctor Who’s fictional sidekick

Never trust anyone whose eyes change colour for silly reasons.

Rich 11

Re: Someone with access to an MRI machine has misunderstood machine learning again...

AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!

Did you just thcream and thcream and thcream until you were thick?

Rich 11

Re: Not a Dalek?

Potentially even doing away with the need for an fMRI machine.

DBA heroes don't always wear capes. Sometimes they just have a bunch of forgotten permissions

Rich 11

Oh, no, not again!

"because this other department are not co-operating"

Been there, done that, was ignored. Got so pissed off with the clusterfuck that I resigned for the sake of my sanity. Eight months after the original go-live date I'm told that it has finally gone live, to what might best be described as low acclaim. Now several former supposed colleagues are being forcibly resigned. I won't weep for them.

My bad! So you're saying that redacting an on-screen PDF with Tipp-Ex won't work?

Rich 11

Re: The Windows way

"find machine type, declare that this machine has no clock" instead of "look for a clock, if there is no clock then there is no clock"

It's flawed logic.

(I'd say "that's all", but unfortunately it is in fact everything.)

Rich 11

Re: I let a tear fall

Closest icon I could find

If you consider that in any way close then I think you really need to make a GP appointment right away.

Rich 11

Re: Last week's PDF redaction fail by a lowly employee of the European Union, however,

I certainly wish to avoid the Work for Wargroups version.

Rich 11

Re: The Weekly Cultural Moment

I'd guess proctor.

How do you save an ailing sales pitch? Just burn down the client's office with their own whiteboard

Rich 11

Re: UUC, was Interviews

I can remember both how to build a fallout shelter in my house and what eleven times eleven is. These are skills which seem to have fallen by the wayside in today's world.

Transcribe-my-thoughts app would prevent everyone knowing what I actually said during meetings

Rich 11

Rescue me!

an AI monkey can write ersatz Shakespeare, so cyber-interpreting what the scrum leader is bollocking on about at 9am on Mondays should be a piece of piss.

You're assuming that even the software will be able to stay awake.

One careful driver: Make room in the garage... Bloodhound jet-powered car is up for sale

Rich 11

Re: Perhaps Elon Musk...

Exocets are subsonic, and not even the French are audacious enough to fly in one.

Rich 11

Re: Perhaps Elon Musk...

a custom-built wheeled cart that the jet lowers to the ground as it is flying 20' above the ground

I respectfully suggest that this would be worse.

Can we just say that, as a general principle, a supersonic aircraft in ground effect would not be a safe vehicle in which to ride?

You would expect a qualified electrician to wire a building to spec, right? Trust... but verify

Rich 11

Re: The neutral doesn't join up with anything on the switch!

Ditto, between 1985 and 1999. Clamps on everything in the kitchen and bathroom. I had to stop one girlfriend from trying to remove the one on the bathroom radiator when she gave me a hand redecorating that year. "It's ugly," she said.

Rich 11

Re: You would expect a qualified electrician to wire a building to spec, right?

I don't think she has anything to complain about anyway. Successfully strangling her little angel would also have enabled the fulfilment of his angel potential.

Nothing new since the microwave: Let's get those home tech inventors cooking

Rich 11

Re: Smart heating system?

When we went on holiday, my dad just flipped the Master Switch on the fuse box in the pantry, and turned the gas main knob all the way off before locking the front door.

Did he also unplug the TV aerial in case there was a thunderstorm? Mine did.

(We didn't have the problem with the freezer. It was in the garage, on a separate circuit. I suppose the local scallies could have tapped into that while we were away, but generally they didn't have the nous not to fall off ladders or stab each other with screwdrivers, so the lecky was comparatively safe.)

Dratted 'housekeeping', eh? 150k+ records deleted off UK’s Police National Computer database

Rich 11

Re: Backups - Not the answer

And that any crash they can walk away from was actually just a landing.

Rich 11

Re: Backups - Not the answer

Half of the MBAs I know are almost unbelievably crap at functioning in the real world.

Rich 11

Re: Backups - Not the answer

At least you get to train for those deeply worrying (but mostly rare) events.

With the advantage of decades of hindsight I do wonder if my hands-on HND shouldn't have included a module describing techniques for handling 'oh shit' moments and for covering up any consequences or reallocating blame. Would the 17-year-old me have been intrigued to see that in the college prospectus?

Maybe advanced user management (blackmail and cattle prods) should also have been in the module.

Rich 11

Re: Backups - Not the answer

operator has that "oh shit" moment we have all had in our past

And which a fair number of us will also have in our future.

shit the system down

Yup, that too!

Rich 11

Re: Backups

This does, of course beg the question of why anyone would situate their DR facility next to something as potentially explodey as an oil refinery.

I expect they chose that location because the ground rent was so low. Low for reasons which have since occurred to them.

Facial recog biz denies its software identified 'antifa members' among mob that stormed Capitol Hill

Rich 11

Re: Matt Gaetz

Apparently the lawyers have been getting nervous and their bosses are starting to sweat too. Some of the radio networks have been getting their right-wing talk-radio hosts to read out statements declaring their recent statements as not being necessarily true (for some veteran hosts, 'recent' will go back to 1987 and the end of the Fairness Doctrine!).

Maybe there is an advantage to living in the most litigious nation on the face of the planet, even if it takes the tragedy of an attempted coup and five deaths to get anyone to consider the vitriolic drip of little lies as a contributor to cause and effect.

Rich 11

Re: Matt Gaetz

And not just the politicians. The Fox News and Breitbart 'journalists' who immediately gave out the Antifa line post-coup after repeatedly stoking the fires pre-coup should be obliged to demonstrate the truth of their more incendiary claims else face incitement charges.

Trump silenced online: Facebook, Twitter etc balk at insurrection, shut the door after horse bolts and nearly burns down the stable

Rich 11

Re: Will we get to a point where our democratic apple is so rotten..

I wouldn't worry. Give it a year and I'm sure Arkansas could sink to the occasion.

Rich 11

Re: Will we get to a point where our democratic apple is so rotten..

Succeed? Unlikely. Secede? Probably.

Rich 11

Re: Will we get to a point where our democratic apple is so rotten..

there's a whole lot of rot to cut away

The US could start by performing a dickectomy on itself and cutting away Florida. They're going to lose the state to climate change anyway, so best just to make the cut now and save some money.

Pizza and beer night out the window, hours trying to sort issue, then a fresh pair of eyes says 'See, the problem is...'

Rich 11

Re: Prelalal dnceodig

Dunno. It's all Greek to μου.

Singapore changes the rules and will now use COVID-19 contact-tracing app data in criminal cases

Rich 11

Re: Is anyone really surprised ?

paedophones

Adults who sound like children? I admit I find high-pitched voices quite annoying but I've no wish to actually lock those people up.

Suckers for punishment, we added a crawler transporter to our Saturn V

Rich 11

Re: Nicely Done - Going to need a bigger house.

That's not a moon, it's a space station.

Lay down your souls to the gods of rock 'n' roll: Conspiracy theorists' 5G 'vaccine' chip schematic is actually for a guitar pedal

Rich 11

Re: Another quote

I wonder what the networked equivalent will be?

Internet dating enables fucking morons to better find each other.

Rich 11

Re: Ha ha ha.... but it's not funny

You're going to have to find someone else to blame for the other 48%.

Facebook and Twitter are used to spread the nonsense and lies, regardless of their origin.

'Following the science' rhetoric led to delay to UK COVID-19 lockdown, face mask rules

Rich 11

Re: Trickledown economics

You can work on reason all you like, but if your underlying assumptions are wrong you're not going to be able to reach a valid conclusion. You've already demonstrated that you had the wrong idea of what constitutes trickle-down economics and you've already been given a link to the recent paper which assessed that it doesn't work as its proponents have claimed for the last forty years. It was always a contentious claim too, so the paper doesn't come as a surprise.

It's up to you what you do with that information.

Rich 11

Re: Here we go

No worries. I'm more than happy to believe the worst about any politician!

Rich 11

Re: Here we go

Apparently the medical profession is shocked that there are fewer flu deaths than would normally be.

No, they're not shocked. This is an obvious and expected result of social distancing, mask-wearing and quarantine (self-isolation or lockdown). It's hardly a surprise that generic measures put in place to limit the spread of one infectious respiratory disease would also help restrict the spread of other infectious respiratory diseases. Greater awareness has also helped increase the take-up of the annual flu vaccine.

Rich 11

Re: Trickledown economics

You really do have this all wrong. Please try reading a bit more about the subject. I know from your previous comments that you're about the same age as I am, and were therefore very likely exposed to the idea of Reaganomics and George H W Bush's rejection of it as voodoo economics just as much as I was (or more, given that I'm in the UK). The consistently high numbers of downvotes you're getting should tell you that your understanding of the matter is incorrect as a matter of fact, not of opinion.

I'm only going to respond to one particular point, because it's so blatantly short-sighted.

So the rich keep hold of the money by spending it (to get the asset). So where did that money go? To the previous holder of the asset. Who used it to fund their lifestyle. Paying many down the chain.

Where does the money go? Generally to purchase other assets, for the same reason that the original buyer bought assets rather than funded their lifestyle. Unless the economy is in an asset crash (housing market, tulip bubble, currency slump), in which case they'll buy gold or just move money offshore and sit it out.

Rich 11

Re: Trickledown economics

That's not an example of trickle-down economics. Trickle-down economics is where wealthy people are given a tax break or refund which prompts them as individuals to spend a lot of money, eg buying a second superyacht that costs more than the value of the refund. The thinking goes that this keeps companies afloat and workers employed to build and operate the yacht, so that the government sees a greater economic benefit than if they'd spent the value of the tax break directly themselves, on bailing out businesses or paying workers to retrain. This is what has been shown not to work, because the money tends to get spent on assets and then effectively locked away in a vault until the asset is cashed in at a profit or no longer provides sufficient return. In other words, it just shuffles existing stuff around rather than stimulating the creation of anything new. Hence the tax break does little but increase inequality.

Rich 11

Re: The Institute for Government, a bunch of non-scientists

what has happened to that and her?

It's still shit; she got promoted. The Johnson government in a nutshell, really.

Dutch officials say Donald Trump really did protect his Twitter account with MAGA2020! password

Rich 11

Re: Gators!

Trump won't end up in San Quentin. When his lawyers finally persuade him he has no choice but to take a deal they'll make sure he gets sent to one of those cushy jails for rich people, which are basically a country club without the table service and where the spikes on the perimeter fence point in rather than out. The most serious threat he'll face from the other inmates will be only being able to cheat on a 9-hole course rather than an 18-hole one.

Rich 11

Re: Gators!

Toxic around the edges and with a venally venomous centre.

BOFH: Switch off the building? Great idea, Boss

Rich 11

Re: Clytmenstra

That's readily avoided, if you remember to listen to your sex slave.

Cruise, Kidman and an unfortunate misunderstanding at the local chemist

Rich 11

Re: The over-reaching long arm of the law

"Sure. You bring a couple of black guys we can throw down the stairs, CID will book the prossies, and we'll all have one hell of a party."

Rich 11

Re: We did manage to raise eyebrows at Boots one time

Boots sold gin? Was that at the perfume counter?