Posts by Paul RND*1000 406 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jul 2009
Since one loco pulled two joined trains out, I wonder if they couldn't have just put a diesel loco or two at each end of the mess, carefully joined the 5 stalled trains together end-to-end and push-pulled the whole lot (slowly) home to Blighty?
There's probably a good reason why not, I know (I'm not enough of an anorak to know if that's really feasible) but it seems just as likely given all the other apparent failings that it simply never occurred to them to try it.
So, let me get this straight, they've outsourced their customer service to their competitors?
John Lewis should price match, undercut or come close to the prices offered by Dixons, then issue every floor employee with an iPod Touch or small tablet PC or similar, and while they're helping the customer pick the right HDTV or whatever, pull up the prices on Dixons site showing that they might as well just buy right now in the store.
Wouldn't be at all difficult to make that stupid tagline ring very true indeed. :)
For you, and me, and other people who are paying attention it's a nuisance having to go in and make sure are settings are still as private as they're supposed to be. That's an issue because we shouldn't have to do that in the first bloody place. Facebook should have the decency to respect the settings WE ALREADY CHOSE. But no, every time they fiddle with privacy options they try to make everything more open.
For the other 99% of FB users, it's very much an issue, whether they care, or notice, or not. FB are being trusted with a lot of sometimes very personal info (much of which should never be on any website anywhere but that's a whole other problem and not exactly Facebook's fault) and have shown that they're perfectly willing to abuse that trust. That's a fucking BIG issue IMHO.
The other issue is that every time they do this, get pushback, then roll back some "to appease the user base", the line moves just a little in favor of what FB wants. One day those privacy levels you're satisfied with might go away, and too few people will care enough to force FB into a retreat.
Why on earth would they fix it when they can pay a fraction of the cost of fixing it to have the less-famous Wilson brother throw postcards around a giant map of the USA in an attempt to demonstrate that their 3G coverage isn't lame?
I notice in those ads they neglect to state whether they're talking solely about their 3G coverage, or are throwing EDGE in as well to make it look better. So they cover nearly the entire population with "a network", it would kind of suck to find out after you've signed the 2 year contract that the nearest actual 3G coverage is very far from you.
Part of the problem is that we're such an instant gratification society. We've fallen for all the "lose weight fast" nonsense filling the advertising breaks but failed to notice the small print which points out that "blah blah blah works as advertised alongside improved diet and regular exercise".
We go to the gym for half an hour 3 times a week for a month, then get pissed off and quit when we aren't magically transformed into the lean, muscular people you see on the adverts.
We get Wii Fit, use it for 22 minutes a day while still surviving on a diet of drive-thru cheeseburgers and spending most of the other 23 hours and 38 minutes asleep or sitting down. Then get disillusioned when we don't shift any lard until we're down to playing for 4 minutes a day just so we can say we did something (and I bet that's really an average of the 2 people who continued to put some effort in, and the rest who just gave up entirely and watched Dancing With The Stars instead).
Oh, there will be repercussions alright. They won't be apparent for a while, at least not in a widespread way. But they will come if police forces continue doing what they've been doing.
They will come when enough of the general public become aware of repeated situations in which police far overstepped their bounds. The repercussions will be measured in loss of trust and respect, without which the police will have a hell of a time actually policing.
When the Daily Fail is picking up on this ongoing storyline and deciding it needs to give its readers a handy cut-out-and-carry guide to their rights, every police force in the country should be taking a step back and thinking "oh crap, we need to really fix this right now or we're stuffed".
Maybe, for a change, the Fail might just have done some good. We'll see.
People are reporting issues because, duh, there are issues.
Maybe it's a design flaw that didn't show up on the more carefully assembled prototypes but does show up when they go to mass manufacture. Maybe a bad batch of components got into the mix. Maybe a batch of finished machines was built where the cheap outsourced manufacturing department and cheap outsourced quality control department both managed to be asleep at the wheel at the same time and let a bunch of lemons escape to distribution. Either way, it happened. It happens quite often.
This sort of problem child product isn't the first from Apple. Apple isn't the only company to drop a truckload of faulty gear on it's unsuspecting customers. The computer industry isn't the only one which has these sorts of problems. Big companies are just as vulnerable, maybe even more so because they're more likely to be building mass-produced items to cost in a cheap semi-skilled labour market and the numbers involved are much higher when it all goes Tiger Woods. Apple aren't immune to it just because they're Apple. ;-)
These problems are nothing new either, though in days gone by you'd take the item back for exchange or refund and maybe moan a bit to your mates at the pub about it. Now, people get online on a dozen forums, Facebook and Twitter and moan about it, and other people who had the same problem join in until there's a big echo chamber effect where a typical product problem starts to sound like the company is deliberately churning out broken hardware.
P.S. I'm sure Apple will replace your keyboard with one that has working SHIFT keys if you ask them. :)
The problem with the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" attitude is this:
Maybe you have nothing to hide now, so you have no fear of your habits online or offline being logged and stored away somewhere. You're safe.
Now fast forward a decade, after we've continued down the slippery slope even further, and imagine that some innocent activity you enjoy is now considered to be a "threat" (UK-based photographers are familiar with this issue already, now that their hobby/profession has become something which "arouses suspicion").
Conveniently, your last 10+ years of searches and browsing related to the newly proscribed activity are all ready and waiting for the authorities to trawl through. Please present yourself to your local Ministry of Freedom offices immediately for Thought Realignment.
Easy: there is no such thing as a "permit to film" at least not for public places in the UK.
The "pass" shown was his press credentials, at which point the cops pursuing matters further would have gone well beyond shooting themselves in both feet and so they wisely fucked away off, as they should have done in the first place.
I could be sympathetic to their cause, I *should* be sympathetic to their cause, but when this sort of loon-head academic twit starts telling me I should stop washing and give up coffee, it makes me want to go buy the largest most obnoxious SUV I can find then have it adapted to run on a mix of whale blubber, pureed baby seals and charcoaled rain-forest.
...at least the Chinese are punishing bankers for their misdeeds instead of bailing them out with no strings attached, thus leaving them free to shit all over the economy again.
Somewhere between "put to death" and "golden parachute" there is a happy medium on how to deal with these corrupt bastards who *have* destroyed lives by their greed. I'm thinking we should keep Gitmo open and swap some pinstripe suits for orange jumpsuits.
"If you're concerned about Google retaining your personal data, then you must be doing something you shouldn't be doing."
Yes, I am concerned about Google retaining my personal data.
Yes, I'm doing something I should not be doing.
I'm using services provided by Google. Which clearly I should not be doing. I should stop right away. You should, too.
Unfortunately everyone offering alternative services must be assumed to be equally evil, though at least they're not being self-righteous pricks about it while desperately pretending to absolutely not be evil.
Since it's their ratings-chasing hysteria which has people freaking out over this "plague" anyway.
I've had to explain to at least one person than, no, H1N1 is NOT 100% fatal. For real.
This time next year, swine flu will be last year's news just like bird flu is now (remember how *that* was going to end civilization as we know it? Yeah. Can you even remember the HnNn code for that one now? I can't.) and the "news" will be full of whatever humanity-ending plague is going around then.
The only plague likely to kill is all is the fast-spreading "Human Stupidity" or H1S1, the cure for which is to stop listening to whatever the well-paid talk radio host or TV rent-a-pundit with plastic hair is telling you, do your own research on things and FOR GOD'S SAKE THINK FOR A CHANGE!
"If the same event took place in England the officer would be in jail for murder yet Americans think shooting a man is just fine."
So whatever did happen to the officers who shot Jean Charles de Menezes? He wasn't even armed yet I see no record of jail time for the killing, indeed all I could find was that, despite their failure to shout any sort of warning and the victim's failure to really do anything that justified use of deadly force, the jury was instructed not to return a verdict of unlawful killing, and the case was deemed an "open verdict". Doesn't quite fit with your confident assertion, does it?
Meanwhile here in gun-nut-land, or at least this part of it, armed standoffs involving police vs disgruntled citizen are a somewhat regular occurrence, but very rarely end in fatal shootings, or any shooting at all. Maybe it's different in the major metro areas, but it's definitely not the rootin' tootin' wild west you seem to think it is.
I don't like the creeping surveillance state at all, but this is one area where cameras could be a good thing. They keep the cops honest for a start, no more claims of "self-defense" when a camera proves that someone was really just being a uniformed thug. If they disable the camera and then go all Clint Eastwood on someone, their intent is clear (and if the system doesn't punish them as such, then it deserves to lose all respect anyway). On the flipside, they also protect the cops from all-too-believable accusations of brutality when they really *were* acting in self defense.
This does naively assume that Big Brother won't screw it up by subverting it into yet another way to spy on everyone. Too bad, it could have been a useful tool.
The whole point of netbooks was that they were inexpensive, modestly powered and VERY portable, with excellent battery life, yet were usable as a general computing device (unlike smartphones).
At 12" (and maybe even 10") they just don't appeal to me any more. Now they're too big to be your carry-everywhere super portable second system, yet too small to be the only computer you use. This is why my circa 2002 big bad desktop+Toshiba Portege combo was replaced with one 15" laptop after only a year of use. That not-quite-12" system wasn't really portable enough to be worth the hassle of maintaining two PCs.
Really, I wish these idiots would just bugger off and leave the protection of animals to those who actually *do* constructive, reasonable work in that area.
All PETA are good for is generating self-publicity, most of which does more harm than good by strengthening the "animal rights people are all deranged and should not be taken seriously" stereotype.
"how will rural communities feel about having a balloon close by and how tempted will scallywags feel about taking a potshot at a comms balloon?"
If it's at 60,000 feet you'll be doing well to see much more than a bright speck in the sky on a sunny day. As for taking potshots at it, your average bored redneck likely doesn't have access to the SAM launcher or interceptor aircraft he'd need to have a hope of hitting it, and will stick to shooting holes in road signs and random wildlife like they do already.
If I'd been tazed every time I threw a screaming, mental tantrum as a kid, I'd glow in the dark now.
On the other hand, I grew up before it was deemed unacceptable to administer physical punishment, and I would get a wallop *when I deserved it* so at all times I knew there were limits to just how far I could push it before I really got myself in trouble. I might have been a tetchy little bugger at times, but things never got out of hand.
Let's not be too hard on the chap. Even if he's for real, compared to most of the people who post comments on YouTube, he's really quite lucid, rational and level-headed.
I mean really, reading most YouTube comments makes me wish I could somehow steer this entire planet into the heart of the sun.
I wish I had photos of the old DEC 3100 workstation I got my hands on after my old university replaced them all. After nearly a decade of running non-stop in a dusty ancient building full of students, there was a blanket of dust a couple of inches thick covering *everything* on the mainboard. It looked like you could have lifted it up in one piece (I didn't try).
Despite this the workstation still ran perfectly well, though this did go some way to explaining why the old classic Macs in the same computer suite kept catching fire!
Then there was the computer I had the pleasure of replacing with a newfangled Pentium machine back when I was doing IT support work. The computer itself was OK, but the keyboard looked like stuff could start growing out of it at any moment. He'd only had that computer for maybe a year. We junked that keyboard and probably should have burned it just to be safe. I hope they never gave that guy a laptop.
What I *would* like to see is for Firefox to have improved keyboard-only navigation around links on a page (and by "improved" I mean "usable", you know like Opera has been doing perfectly well for some years now).
No, I'm not a normal user. But as an IT geek I *am* apt to recommend software to others who *are* normal. I'm less apt to recommend anything which aggravates me by hiding menus away, or chews through my RAM like voracious locusts through a field of crops all in the name of looking purdy.
My guess is that the MS marketing people have never seen an actual episode of Family Guy/American Dad, but their kids keep telling tell them how awesome the shows are, the ratings are good, and marketing drones understand that those must mean it's hip, edgy, and popular and thus a good thing to glom onto, right?
Then they see, for the first time ever, what they've hooked up with and realize that they're about to score the biggest PR own goal since the Polish Photoshop Affair.
I wonder how much mickey-taking the shows' writers can indulge in now before Microsoft get all huffy and send in the lawyers?
...is that it should be a reminder to all of just how shoddy most mainstream journalism is these days.
In the headlong rush to be first with the headline, "fact checking", "research" and other such impediments to winning the news cycle have been taken out behind the newsroom and executed.
I'd like to see the news media either start doing it's job properly again so these sorts of embarrassments are much less likely and we're all much better informed by what they tell us, or keep suffering humiliation after humiliation until enough people realize that they just can't be trusted any more.
I'd prefer the first outcome but I'll take anything that isn't an increasingly mediocre, untrustworthy news media which is still trusted by too many people, which is where we're headed right now.
The 15-sheet thing is probably a typo, 150 seems closer to the mark.
Setup was easy. Removed lots of orange tape, switched on, followed the quickstart guide and had no trouble installing the consumables. Configured the WLAN manually from the top-panel controls and it worked first time. It doesn't obscure the WLAN key when entering it, which is a major plus in my book.
The duplex is slow, but if I'm ever in a hurry I can always switch it off. The last time I was in that much of a hurry for a printout to finish was after pulling an all-nighter writing a GCSE paper, even in duplex mode this thing hauls compared to the Amstrad DMP-2160 I was using back then. I can live with the duplex slowdown, in other words. :) If I really needed speedy printing I'd buy a laser printer anyway.
I have it wireless networked and the memory card slots appear as a Windows share named \\printername\canon_memory - the software tries to map a drive to it if you ask, but I had trouble with that part (something to do with the workgroup name, and the only problem I encountered). I just set the printer name to MP560, added \\MP560\canon_memory to my network places and was done with it. You do have to set this up in the configuration, it's disabled by default. Also it only works for memory cards inserted into the slots, doesn't work for devices connected to the USB port on the front. Can only see one card at a time.
Scanning to a PC on the network works nicely once you have it configured (MP Navigator is a bit fiddly to set up for the different scan types, and upgrading it to a newer version reset the preferences to default, AARGH!); choose the destination machine and the type of scan, then just scan each page of the document, or each photo with one button push. Scan to PDF will keep adding pages to the PDF file until you tell it you're done. About as painless as it gets with a one-sheet-at-a-time flatbed, really.
It can scan to a memory card or USB device (PDF or JPEG), but ironically cannot see those files when you go into the print from card/USB options because it doesn't use the DCIM directory standard when writing but requires it when reading (I can has firmware fix, plz?)
Supposedly there will be Linux drivers in "autumn 2009". How good they'll be is another matter. Since Lightroom won't run in Linux, it's a moot point for me. :-(
Overall impressed, though I'm waiting to see just how quickly it uses ink (the HP it replaced was a thirsty bugger).
That well-worn line "won't somebody think of the children?" is going to come back to bite us in the next couple of decades, and it'll serve us all bloody right.
We're afraid to let them hear or see anything scary, we're terrified that they could get even the smallest of injuries while playing, some parenting now resembles protective custody more than it resembles a normal upbringing.
We buy into the notion that everything has to be sprayed with disinfectant and that you must always have hand sanitizer available. Then have to buy other products to boost the immune systems that haven't been exposed to the normal everyday stuff that we *have* an immune system to protect against.
I've been to a few school competitions where they, in effect, gave out awards FOR SHOWING UP.
Never mind "think of the children", won't somebody please think of the future adults?
One day this generation of risk-averse, auto-immune deficient sheltered kids with a diminished concept of "winning" and "losing" are going to be in charge. Our only hope is that they do what kids generally do and rebel against their upbringing.
"I don't live anywhere near bears but I think if I did a quick patdown would reveal mace and dead squirrels (bears use them for toilet paper) before it revealed a mobile phone."
What, you mean they don't use Charmin??? Damn corporations have been lying to us again!!
Not sure what would be worse either, a bear eating you or a bear spraying you with mace, THEN eating you. I suppose they keep it for self-defense in case some random weirdo tries to pat them down. ;-)
"Maybe she was expecting the phone to explode? In that case the iphone would be like lobbing a hand grenade."
The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch^WCupertino?
Is it possible that someone who can't bring themselves to type in something even remotely resembling English (what the hell is their first language anyway, Double Gibberish? ZOMGWTFBBQ?!??!!!!11!one!) perhaps also can't grasp whatever simple steps are needed to step back and forth between lite and regular interfaces? Buddy, if you're in Lite-Hell it's because you deserve it for crimes against communication!
It's also entirely possible that Facebook's interface is such a screwed-up, cluttered, burning disaster even with advertisements blocked that the stupid option is too hard to find. A case of "it's easy if you know where to find it", something that Facebook suffers badly from.
Well, it's like this: I own an older but quite serviceable laptop which is on XP (and only then because Lightroom and Photoshop CS4 don't run under Ubuntu).
Windows 7 might indeed be good, but XP works well enough *right now* and will still work well enough after October 22nd and for some time to come afterward.
To upgrade to Windows 7 would almost certainly require a whole new system and if I'm in the market to do *that* I'll be replacing my current rig with some sort of desktop Mac for LR and PS work and the smallest Linux-based netbook I can get for when I'm just wanting to browse the internets from my couch or to take on business trips.
"we've added a radar that looks at targets and accesses a target as a threat or a non-threat"
If they can hook that thing up to a rack of Hellfires, I'll be all over it. No more problem with slow-driving hicks who can't read the speed limit signs because they flunked kindergarten.
Generic "smiling people in suits with computers and plenty of racial/sexual diversity" photo from iStock* - $5
Copy of Photoshop - $700
Bad head-transplant job performed by the office intern - $7.50/hour * 5 minutes = 62 and a half cents.
Extracting a public apology from Microsoft - PRICELESS!
* NOTE:
"The company has not addressed the laptop in the middle of the photo. It appears to be an Apple MacBook. But like the black man's head, the Apple logo seems to have gone missing."
Stock photos can't have visible trademarks unless they're for strictly editorial use, so the photog who created the original would have had to edit out the Apple logo.
"A browser error is of no help, it smacks the user on the nose with a rolled up newspaper and forces him to think about what he's done."
Frankly some users *need* to be smacked on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. Repeatedly. Until they learn that you do, in fact, have to be careful when using the Internet.
Yes, Mr. I-click-links-in-\/14gr4-spam-mails-and-buy-their-shit, I'm talking to you here. It's your fucking fault that spam keeps happening, because morons like you make it worth the effort.
And Miss I-don't-know-what-it-said-I-just-clicked-OK-and-now-my-computer-runs-slow-WTF? you're guilty as charged too, God knows what mischief your utterly owned box is up to, making the internet a pain in the arse for the rest of us. Thanks a whole lot, stupid.
"If I type in "google.cmo" accidentally, and am presented with a link to Google, then the ISP has just made my day easier. Who cares if they get paid for that click? It makes the internet work better for users."
All that does is condition the user to believe that they can ham-fist their way through the internet without bothering to check that they typed the right address in and that they can then click on some link which takes them where they really meant to go.
That sort of carelessness will eventually lead them somewhere which is a real, registered domain serving up a double dose of malware, and now they're owned again. Gather a few thousand of those together and you've got something which makes the internet work WORSE for EVERYONE.
The trouble with the Prius is that the petrol engine acts as both a generator and a drive unit so it needs to be big enough to (barely) do both at the same time. This, plus the more complex transmission, adds extra weight and driveline losses, buggering up the range when running solely on batteries. Just because it's clever engineering doesn't make it a good solution to the problem.
The Volt's fossil fuel mill only acts as a generator, so only needs to be big enough to do that (and can be set up to run at its most efficient RPM for that task). Smaller engine means less fuel usage and less extra weight for cooling etc. The electrical motors drive the wheels directly so it might not even *have* a geared transmission which reduces weight and cuts down losses. Because it has the generated power to fall back on it doesn't need huge numbers of batteries to have a useful range (hence the quite short 40 miles range on battery only).
@ Anonymous Coward 15:50 GMT
"If you can only drive 40 miles before a recharge you had better not be going any where but to the store and back"
Errr...that's why it has a small petrol engine to generate power, to recharge the batteries on those trips where you do have to go further than 40 miles. Pay attention 007.
Though I do have a round-trip commute in the 30-40 mile region, with easy access to electrical power at both ends. If it wall-charges quickly enough my biggest problem with a Volt would be making sure the petrol in the tank didn't go stale!
Peter2: "So, enough people clicked on an unsolicited link in a spam email to bring a website down"
Steve Mills: "Seem like a bloody stupid way of making his/her opinions disapear."
It would be if the opinions were hosted somewhere that could survive the onslaught of spam-email-link-clicking idiots.
But this was *Twitter* we're talking about, so the bar to making this happen isn't exactly set high. There's a reason why the "Fail Whale" is so iconic...
Then again Steve does have a point, I hadn't heard of the guy before this all happened. Now I have. Lots of collateral damage, major news coverage, tons of publicity for their target as a result. Way to go, idiot Russkies.
Since botnet isn't an appropriate term for this sort of attack vector, how about we call it a "meatnet"?
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