Posts by Amorous Cowherder 1063 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jul 2012
I thought Scandinavian countries were some of the most repressive in Western Europe? I seem to recall reading that in Sweden plain clothes Police regularly frequent bars picking up people who even so much as look like they might be using or attempting to buy drugs, then giving them a few hours down the cells to think about it.
As with most things , new paradigms are great and have a genuinely useful purpose and some get some great use out them. The trouble with IT is that everyone is after the next big thing, we're all bored with "the cloud", it's passe now and "So last year darling!", so like the media we have to drum up some new thing to keep companies selling stuff and CTO's arses on their expensive office chairs.
As another poster has said unless the data has some value, simply collecting more and more of it will not somehow magically give it value. One thing traditional databases have is a design, they are conceived to store a certain type of data in a an organised structure and to a certain extent you will get mostly useful data from it as you are constrained in what you can put in by design. BD on the other hand is simply an excuse to just grab as much data as you possibly can then decide what the hell to do with it after you have it! "Quick grab all the JPGs the company has on it's 53TB NAS filers and see what we might have!". Ok but we're a company selling copper pipe and plumbing fittings, will this give us anything useful after spending £1.5m on kit to do this?!
Don't get me wrong I can see some uses for BD type paradigms, I'm sure some have found it to be very useful but once again we see a new technology and everything is shoe-horned to use it without any thought about it's suitability to the tasks, simply because it is the latest buzzword.
I love buying CDs as the bands, the ones that actually care about their music, make a real effort to make an "experience" out of owning the recording. You get a nice inlay, lyics, sometimes access to extra stuff for download. You get peace of mind to know you have a physical backup of something if your MP3 collections gets lost
When I ordered a CD from a French-Canadian metal band they sent me the CD, gave me access to the 320K MP3 and FLAC versions of the tracks, a couple of extra tracks that weren't on the CD and finally put my name into a free draw to win some goodies from guitarist! All that because I bought a CD direct from the band's website, you wouldn't get any of that from bloody Amazon or iTunes!
If it wasn't for great men like "MAC" a lot of us would not be doing what we do today. He had such a great way of making the computer world come alive, the most important thing was he wasn't just about one aspect, he delivered the same passion for business software, games, the inner workings of the micro and the applications computers would be put to in the future.
He deserves his rest.
So it's not punishment you want, it's plain simple public revenge? Great 90% of the time when when you get the right person but a real bark when you paint the wall with the brains of an innocent person!
Tell you what why bother with all that justice bullshit either, eh? Just instigate several teams of covert death-squads, simple, plain street justice it's "cheap and painless and puts an end to it all so everyone can move on". The biggest advantage is that with no evidence of who killed the person, no one has to clean up the mess, except the victim's family! Save an absolute bundle in taxes!
Just a word to the wise though, don't piss off the wrong person, cut anyone up on the road or annoy any of your co-workers, they might mark you out as an undesirable and next thing your family might be soaping down your guts from their living room wall!
I have to admit the only reason I started messing about with JavaScript again was because I fancied playing with the fun stuff in jQuery. JS isn't as bad as it was 10 years ago, it's not great but then this is the usual "VHS was crap, Beta was better but VHS won on pure saturation!" argument all over a again!
"As far as these parents are concerned, spending money gets them a product that much worse than the free version."
There you have it, all sown up in one sentence. Modern movies on DVD format are diabolical.
I can't remember which one it was but I bought a movie about a year ago, tried to rip it, got nowhere after 4 different ripper progs failed, tried to downloaded the free downloadable version but it was DRM'd and wouldn't convert to anything useful. Sod this! 30 seconds on TPB, 4 minutes later I had a copy in MP4 format that would play on my Android tablet, my wife's iPad and the family Apple TV box off our NAS! FFS, life shouldn't be this hard!
"belonging to the very distant past and no longer in existence"
It's relative, in IT terms 30 mins is a bloody long time! Ha ha! And "no longer in existence"? Pretty much sums up the illustrious cult(*) leader.
( * cult - "devotion directed towards a particular figure or object" before you start! )
"public humiliation companies like Amazon, Google and Starbucks were put through."
Yeah but it had already been proved they were on the cadge, so therefore they got called up to explain why. If you do the right thing, no one will have any reason to ask you to visit the Headmaster's office!
Exactly!
The only dangerous thing that will happen is that if one more selfish bell-end has to get their phone out 0.2 seconds after they get a signal at the tube station, then dawdle out of the entrance tapping away on "FriendFace" or whatever is more important, while the rest of us try to refrain from pushing them over!
Want to check your phone? No problem, move out of the way and let everyone else, who has places to be, get on their way. Simple politeness and common sense is all I ask.
"Thomas Jefferson was an American."
He was British and a traitor.
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You're thinking of Thomas Paine, he was radical corset maker from Norfolk I believe, he influenced Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson as they were forming the fledgling US congress. Well worth reading his books, they're as relevant today as they ever were, especially when he has a go at religion being there simply to repress people. He famously got invited to join the post revolutionary French government and refused to learn a word of French!
I'm glad I'm like not the only one, you know like, who got like really annoyed, you know about like what they said and stuff/
"we were like 'wait a second, that wasn't there before"
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! We SAID! *slamming ruler on desk* We SAID! Repeat it after me. We SAID, not "we're like". We SAID!
They could have made it worse and said, 'And like my colleague goes to me...". The use of "goes" instead of "said" really pushes my buttons!
I jumped to OSX when Vista came out but Windows 8 lured me back, I think it's great. I have no problem learning a new way of doing things, I've done it lots of times jumping between Linux, OSX and Windows over the last 25 years.
However I can see why it would be a problem for a company rollout. Windows 7 was a pain to roll out to lots of users who were used to XP so I can sympathise with IT depts, desktop support and trainers having to deal with people freaking out over why nothing is where is should be, especially the much beloved START menu.
Granted I had plenty of time to try it and an option to quit if I didn't like it but many don't have the time or an option to quit, so from that point of view again I can understand why people dislike it.
So basically he and doubtless dozens of other engineers, can log into anyone's kit and access anyone's account and the company thinks that laptop security is the real problem here?! Jesus wept what a bunch of...
If you're in that area and have any choice at all, I'd seriously think about dumping this bunch of cowboys and finding someone else to supply you! Christ I'd trust a bunch of GCSE IT students to do a better job of running an ISP than this lot.
Yep, same old story.
People have mobiles now...people like their tablets more for casual this and that...the PC is good enough....no point in a new one if Windows is still working OK on the current one....strapped parents are not buying little Johnny a new laptop until he stops looking up porn or playing games and actually does some proper school work on it....
I saw the CB games documentary ( CB is always a good watch! ) and it was a bit of a bombshell to see Twitter as the number 1 game, but he has a point. FB, PInterest, Twitter, they're are just about point scoring for most people, boasting rights about how many other mindless people they can convince to join them on the social-networking ride of despair. I use FB for sharing and discussing photography with like minded people but that's where it ends.
People who come begging for friends? I'll come and look at your work, if I like it I'll tag you else I'm not interested in being your "friend" just so you can boast about how great a photographer you are 'cos you have 1,000 people watching you. Show me some decent work, then I'll decide.
Because people need to communicate across time zones for example? We all lead busy lives so it's easier to simply leave quick messages for each other so no one has to wait around for someone else. We can get on with our lives and catch up with each other when it suits us. No wasted time dialing, calling and leaving a voice-message that might not get heard due to bad recording or background noise from the caller. Plant workers might not have time to leave their posts and walk 250 yards to a find a quite spot, a text message is perfect, clear and precise. Most of the time text message, being so small, the services can be offered free or at the very least can be made cheap being subsidised by another service on offer.
"As obesity cripples another generation, I foresee a time when Coke machines are as rare as those vending cigarettes. "
Coke alone are way, way more powerful than the tobacco companies combined, more political clout and way more money.
Do you have any idea how powerful the Coca Cola company is? How many outright assassinations of trade union organisers there have been at South American bottling plants? How water supplies are being wrecked for farmers next door to Coke's bottling plants in India? How many Coke machines are installed in schools because of pressure to find funds by the governors and local education authorities? All the time the governments in these countries turn a blind eye but pay lip service to the health campaigners.
Coke is embedded in our very Western culture. What recent Christian festival have we just been through and which jolly fellow get's centre of attention? Yep old Chris Cringle, the jolly red coated fellow with the presents. Now who was it that "painted" Santa in red to match their corporate colours and got the whole damn world to blindly follow along since?
"The # started 2017 as a way to link conversations on Twitter and based around actual events like #WWDC or #Doctor_Who. 2013 saw the # finally bankrupted."
So it started in the future and fell backwards through a timewarp? Perhaps there's hope if we kill the bastard to who started it when we get to 2017?
And that's exactly why "The Feds", law enforcement agencies and you DON'T get to make the laws, they're all simply employed to enforce what the legal system decides is fitting and fair!
The bloke didn't go out an rape 65 children, he's an annoying c**t who sent out shit loads of email wasting people's time, I hardly think having to have reconstructive surgery on his prolapsed lower bowel is a fitting punishment for that.
Jesus, with people like you about it's no wonder so many innocent women and children were burnt at the stake 300 years ago for nothing more than picking a few herbs in the woods!
"The spam filters on my email server reject 96.5% of all incoming emails. Probably about 5% of what does get through is spam. So assuming no false positives, that means 96.5% of all email is spam that is blocked, 0.2% is spam that is not blocked, and 3.3% is non-spam and that my spam filter correctly identifies 99.8% of all spam."
Exactly! Just takes a little bit of thought.
I'm not a complete twat who sends their email to all and sundry, I run a couple of personal domains with about 25 email accounts and despite only relying on a third-party spam filter I can count the spam that gets through on the fingers of one hand.
Sorry spam is much like malware/virii, if you're not paying attention the buggers will get you, stay sharp and you'll stay safe.
Vacuum fluorescents!
I remember my old man had a TI calculator with a vacuum fluorescent display in it, it used to sit behind a thin red plastic filter so it could try to like looked like a red LED calc. He used it for about 15 years from around '79.
Anyone remember the Grandstand games company from the mid 1980's? They used to make lots of handheld electronic arcade game conversions using those vf displays.
"Parents, it's all your fault!"
Whoa there Sonny, not all of us are Mumsnet freaks with a "Think of the Children!" fetish! Me and the Missus like a bit of light grumble action and access to adult toy-shops. Just 'cos you have kids doesn't mean you're instantly a prude, it just means you have a shit load more planning to do to be able to make time to appreciate each other's intimate company!
Completely agree but it's up you as a responsible parent or guardian to know when you think your kids are mature enough to understand the facts. Not all kids are the same, some mature mentally at different times. They teach it to primary school kids at around 8-9 years old. We took our daughter aside about a month before the school started teaching it, we had a frank talk about the birds and the bees, respect for your body, yadda, yadda, then she had time to take it in before the school got all clinical about it.
She came home from the first lesson and said it was a quite funny, some kids freaked out and felt sick and some had to leave(!), some weren't allowed to see it, but actually it was a little boring, said what we had said to her was a much more interesting way of explaining it.
We're all different and we all react in different ways learning the way sex works. You can't just buy a chainsaw, give to the 12 year old kid who cuts your lawn for a tenner and ask him to cut down that 100 foot pine tree in your back garden!
I worked at a sport centre for a Summer job when I was 16, they had a stand-up Outrun cab. Every break I'd spend ages playing it, best I did was finished 11 start-to-end runs in a row without failing! Not something I could put on my CV but Outrun does hold a special place in my heart.
I think Facebook is absolute bollocks but sadly being a budding pro photographer you have to go with the flow and get your work into as many places as possible, photography is a dog-eat-dog world where social media for us down in the pecking order have to dwell. Yes FB has netted me some work, it is useful sometimes but I hate the bollocks that 98% of Facebook consists of.
Some of the utter tossers you have to deal with, the advertising and these stupid buttons with this sort of happy-hippy teenage girly bullshit really makes grimace some days. I try to limit my activities to around 5-10 mins FB a day. I hook up with my photographer mates, catch up with a couple of photo groups, check in with family members and I check out of Zucks shit-fest for another 24 hours. I had the phone app for about week and it just got on my nerves, so I deleted it and stick to a browser at home.
I'll never understand this sort of thing from these moral minority types. Perhaps if we were a little more open and sensible about sex, instead of the "giggling behind the bike sheds" innuendo, then maybe we wouldn't have huge rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs. Teach kids it's bloody good fun, this is how it works, get informed and stay safe. Instead we have to have this sort thing, where condoms have be sniggered at like it's something naughty and slightly dirty, adverts have to be viral 'cos we can't have that sort of thing on TV that granny might be watching.
People have sex, deal with it! Old people, young people, disabled people, black, white, asian, hispanic, Jewish, Catholic, wearing, leather, plastic, silk, satin, men and women doing something enjoyable involving the less hygenic areas of the human body! Rejoice and enjoy, there moral minority stop acting like it's only people behaving like rutting animals that have sex.
Well OK but if you had a clue of any sort you'd know that even in a tiny organisation of say 500 desktops, every single user uses their kit in slightly different ways, some will pull some obscure function in an Excel spreadsheet, some will have about a thousand Word macros, how many intranet servers with thousands of pages that all need checking and testing? Sorry but you cannot dictate that user's will do XYZ and lump it, this is the real world and when top notch manager pulls in 25% of the company business says "He hates XYZ new fangled desktop!", the IT troops scramble to find out why, get it sorted and all while still trying to keep it all safe, secure and manageable.
Seems obvious you've never done a desktop rollout in your life! Took my shop months to move up from XP to Win7 on only several hundred desktops 'cos we had so many different apps that all had to work perfectly else you get very high profile manager ( and their staff ) beating down the IT head's door and demanding a rollback.
I don't want to even contemplate switching operating systems on 15,000 desktops, that's a project manager's dream or nightmare, depending upon how it goes..
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