* Posts by LaeMing

2410 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Dec 2009

White House forbids feds from reading WikiLeaked cables

LaeMing
Unhappy

I tend to agree,

but in the end, the reason this sort of journalism makes the money is that their market laps it up. The only way I can see the media changing without some sort of censorship (whether by force or agreement) is for people to loose interest in the guff. I don't see that happening, I'm afraid.

Mass mind control artist condemns El Reg to obscurity

LaeMing
Joke

What a big debate

from what was really a rather tongue-in-cheek remark.

I don't take myself nearly so seriously!

LaeMing
Thumb Up

Yes.

Always need to keep in mind that the "radio personality product" in non exactly the same as the person behind it.

LaeMing

A complete fool

who makes good money yanking peoples chains! Doesn't even have to do proper journalistic stuff like get facts (even slightly) straight.

Seriously, I would have no problem doing his job if the money was offered to me.

LaeMing
Happy

And the Reg is based is Europe

where Socialism isn't generally considered a smear word.

LaeMing
Happy

The fact that the world is still here...

...indicates a good number of you don't listen to RL et. al.

LaeMing
Go

Doesn't mind-control require minds to control?

I doubt most of EIB's demographic counts. I think the term you are looking for is "reflex conditioning" - you only need a target with a (more-or-less) functional brain-stem (or equivalent) for that.

LaeMing

In RL's demographic...

...mental laziness IS considered a good thing.

My Droid EXPLODED mid phone call, says Texan

LaeMing
Coat

Goodness gracious!

You blew my mo-fo up and rattled my brain.

That kind of blast can drive a man insane.

You flared my pants, and made me dance.

Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!

Supermarket techie in mega loyalty-point blag

LaeMing
Thumb Up

That is a rather cool idea

I wonder if I should offer the casher to use her (or his) own rewards card next time I go through the checkout. No skin off my nose there.

HP builds touchscreen Linux PC for India

LaeMing
Unhappy

Good rant

And I wholely agree with what you are saying, but it is a little lacking in relevance to the parent article?

SMOKIN' HOT BABE gets job as computer geek

LaeMing

That's why...

...Barbie comes with Xena.

http://www.eatliver.com/i.php?n=2741 (NqSFW - though my last boss laughed a lot at it when I sent her a copy).

Oracle claims trademark on Hudson open source

LaeMing
Alert

Forking

Forking is a common response to a knifing.

Interpol issues arrest notice for Wikileaks' Julian Assange

LaeMing
Stop

They have been watching too much...

...Blakes 7

Activists say consultation on RIPA was 'secretive and short'

LaeMing
Unhappy

That's why...

... they call it "pulling a swift one".

BOFH: Pain fear games

LaeMing
Megaphone

Free meals...

...of course, should go to the lower pay grades. Those above 4.7 can bloody well afford to pay! :-P

Apple accused of iPhone ban on 'all single-station radio apps'

LaeMing
Pint

I believe...

... we have a winner!

Masochists add Jimbo Wales to every webpage

LaeMing
Heart

Big thank you for that

Something about the WikiPedia ad with Jimbo's face really unnerves me.

And the fact that it always appears right between me deciding to click a link near the top of the page and my finger actioning that click is really irritating!

Both those things together were actually reducing my tendency to visit the site.

LaeMing
Pint

I should add...

...the advert in the iPad version would be a lot easier on me. It's the whole "he's looking at me" thing. Especially since I usually sit around in front of the PC at home in old shorts and a very holey (not in the Catholic sense) old T-shirt. Dripping sweat - Australia is heating up just now and I am under a flat tin roof with no air-con. Nice sea breaze just starting to roll in for the evening, though. Need a nice cold drink from the fridge now.

MP wants age verification for net smut

LaeMing
FAIL

I can't see how...

...this would stop access to any porn except the more reputable sites that already have over-18-only doorways on their front pages anyway. The 'underground' sites and their users will just take (rather simple) steps to bypass anything a government or ISP could put in place anyway.

Chinese bride sentenced to hard labour for retweet

LaeMing
Thumb Up

You are the man!

I really think so!

USB fanboys teased with 16-port hub

LaeMing
Boffin

Only 16

Cambrionix have had a 49-port hub for over a year.

Made from 7 7-port hub chips cascaded off an 8th, I would assume.

Mostly used for bulk device testing.

Shut up, Spock! How Battlestar Galactica beat Trek babble

LaeMing

Super growth

The thing that bugged me was not the speed of the growth, but doing so without eating - even most of the humans that were taken were not eaten by the post-chestbursters.

Aparrently there was a cut/never-filmed scene in the origional where the crew did discover the food stores ransacked, though.

No wonder CompSci grads are unemployed

LaeMing
Happy

I have been called a "geek" by IT support people

It was intended in a more-or-less friendly way, at least I choose to interpret it as such.

I was a mere deployment tech (put PC on desk, turn on, copy user's data, remove old PC). But my boss tended to sneak me out to do the curlier support tasks as she had no faith in most of support to fix more than someone's word file. Most IT people today seem to treat a PC as a magical box. They have rote-learned some arcane gestures to manipulate the icons on the magic window to keep the godlet in the box mostly happy but have no real knowledge of how it really works.

I'm old-skool - I started with digital electronics after dropping out of a completely pointless senior high school experience back in the 80's. Ican (and have) build an 8- or 16-bit computer from chips up. Can pick up the basics of any language in a few days (interestingly it took exposure to Java back in the 90's to get my head around object-oriented before I could finally manage C++). A few years ago I spent a boring lunch break drawing a pure-logic router circuit on the whiteboard while doing a Networking course at trade college. It became very obvious why all the masks are inverted - significant saving in transistors, which back when these protocols were created was important.

Most of my knowledge is not formal and so not attached to a piece of paper, so finding a job I liked was a bit of a slog, but by starting at the entry level and showing what I had, I think I am finally there now - I now get to help Digital Media Creative Arts students make electronics/microcontroller-based art, amongst many other things - heaven.

First official HTML5 tests topped by...Microsoft

LaeMing
Go

Actually I am happy

All that "throwing paper aeroplanes, doodling on its exercise books and making fart noises at the back of the class" is a result of not having any serious competition. That concept works both ways and it may now be FF's turn to pull the finger.

Intel lobs pork buns at world gone Google

LaeMing
Stop

@BorkedAgain

You pay for a bank to keep your money? My financial institution pays me for the use of my money.

Frenchman cuffed for naughty lip-slip email to MEP

LaeMing
FAIL

That's a bit stiff!

Sense of humor fail, me thinks. And touching a raw nerve.

He probably should have used a public forum rather than a private email, though. The communication channel CAN make the difference between sexual harassment and a good joke referring to sex.

Hells Angels slap London dressmakers with trademark suit

LaeMing

Talk about...

A bunch of trendites prancing around in motorcycle colours. Talk about trademark dilution!

BA slams stupid security checks

LaeMing

Yes

more accurate to say, "direct effects of terrorist activity are insignificant to the population en masse." Of course that sort of attitude pervading society would counter terrorism - who wants to be a two-years-later-forgotten pointless drop in the ocean for a cause?

Google boss: 'Creeped out by Street View? Just move'

LaeMing
Go

And of course...

...if he is fired, he can apply again for the position in a year and a half. No-one will remember he was fired.

Intrepid Vulture 1 spaceplane pilot arrives at PARIS project

LaeMing
Happy

That is one severe case

of helmet-hair!

The great Aussie firewall is back - and this time it's personal

LaeMing
Unhappy

The main difference is

that the film industry has a powerful lobby group and a lot of money behind it. Politicians know where their contributions come from if they know nothing else at all.

LaeMing
Grenade

Slipery slope of a see-saw

I think the supermarket magazine rack might get a bit bare too! This slippery slope could be tipped in entirely the opposite direction to that which the government's corporate sponsors would like.

Microsoft's fear of an OpenOffice

LaeMing
Megaphone

Re: OOo good enough to write a letter.

Yes it is.

But who in this day and age, particularly in a home environment, writes letters!?! Even my mum writes emails (though she calls them faxes :-D )

Dead baby taunting troll feels wrath of law

LaeMing
Happy

[Trolls] can be punched you know!

I believe the traditional method of dealing with trolls is to refer them to your big brother for a good head-butting.

OOo's put the willies up Microsoft

LaeMing
FAIL

I think it is more a case of

developers not giving Oracle a chance to sue their butts off since said company now "owns" the term "OpenOffice".

LaeMing
Happy

I agree

My preferred document format is a very small subset of HTML - basically Heading, Paragraph, bold, italic, lists and one or two other useful formatting and structure tags. Anything more is just arseing around to try and cover up a lack of real content!

Has an advantage of showing well on any screen-size at a any font size.

Paper? That is what you wipe your butt with isn't it?

Ubuntu 10.10: date with destiny missed

LaeMing

I vaguely recall

Debian discussing a continuous-rolling release between Testing and Stable some time in the past few months.

LaeMing
Stop

You seem to be under the impression

that the people doing the UI design could be retasked to graphics driver programming/debugging without a couple of years of training. I don't think forcing graphic-artists / UI-designers to code low-level drivers would produce a result you would be happy with.

Foxconn faces leaked report of worker abuse, violence

LaeMing
Flame

A very fine line m'laddo

Those sort of worker abuses can carry up to an execution as punishment for management over there. Sure, the Chinese Govt. is turning a blind eye now 'cause it suits them to, but next time they get /really/ pissed off with Taiwan they have a perfectly legal process to execute a bunch of Tw nationals and nationalise their assets.

Roll on the day.

Tesla Motors: Our cars don't burst into flame, but our emails do

LaeMing
Boffin

Remember,

corporate-sourced flames have to be judged by a different criteria than personal flames. The writer (if they still value their position) has a lot less scope for creative language.

This PR hack needs to go back to Business Letter Writing for Beginners though - an effective business letter should always be worded in terms of benefit to the recieving party (something I didn't know until I was landed with teaching a Business Letter Writing for Beginners class back in '04 after which my own letter-writing results improved noticably!).

Robot teddy bears attack Alzheimer's

LaeMing
Terminator

Lets put words in the bears' mouthes

White Bear shouts: I WUF you!

Brown Bear thinks: What a tosser!

Legendary steampunk computer 'should be built' - programmer

LaeMing
Boffin

I believe

the term "bug" can be traced back to card-programable mechanical weaving looms (which inspired Babbage so the loop is somewhat closed).

iPhone app tagged as terror tool

LaeMing
Badgers

Ya know.

Emmitting infrared radiation makes you easier to target. Maybe this guy should have his ability to generate body heat revoked!

Google Earth 'Liquid Galaxy' open sourced*

LaeMing
Happy

SpaceNavigator

"Joystick" appears to be a SpaceNavigator 6dof (x, y, z, roll, pitch, yaw movement). I have a SpaceExplorer version (same controller, more buttons) for VR work and they are pretty great for this sort of environment once you get used to them.

Fruit bat fellatio team crowned Ig Nobel laureate

LaeMing
Go

You're just jealous of the bats.

I know I am!

HABITABLE ALIEN WORLD discovered 20 light-years away!

LaeMing

Actually,

they will scrap their invasion plans as it becomes obvious our civilisation will have deteriorated beyond the point of being of any use/interest by the time they arrive.

LaeMing
FAIL

Just wondering why,

the artist choose to give a (probably) tidally locked planet icy poles at the top and bottom.

LaeMing
Happy

I believe the correct terminology is:

"This is a nice planet we are taking over."

"It certainly is."

US demands right to snoop the world

LaeMing

Um, it is a democracy

And you can tell a lot about a people (on average) by the leaders they allow to rule them. While there are certainly individuals of worth, the majority are represented. Of course that applies to any group of humanity and to be honest, we just don't (on average) measure up to much.