Posts by Queasy Rider

I gave up on 'Search' ages ago. I now use the program 'Search Everything'. It takes a little while to index all your drives, but after that it is instantaneous.

Re: The Electronic Key Impressioner from Alternative Product Solutions

In the '60s I watched a builder let himself in various unfinished homes with a master key. He claimed the the key would cease to work after the new homeowners used their personal keys the first time, but I always wondered if that was true.

'Revealing details of their friends' lives"

You can run but you can't hide. I bought a snack in K-Mart yesterday. Paid cash. Was asked for my phone number. Said no. But I can't hid from my family, friends and acquaintances, can't say, "Delete that mention of me at your picnic," since I don't even know about it. I don't have credit cards, or loyalty cards, but I'd wager that a thousand times more corporations know my name, address and phone number, than people I actually know.

Re: Hmm

PS. Was 400mm x 400mm the size of the block of insulation ripped away during launch, or the size of the the opening which allowed the hot gasses to slip inside the shuttle, ultimately destroying it?

Re: Did VW actually break the law?

I have wondered about that too, and the only answer I can come up with is in the wording of the pollution laws. So, if the law says you must hold driving emissions to defined levels AND pass certain emissions tests to prove that, then you have only complied with half the law if you subsequently drive around emitting in excess of those levels, even if you passed the tests.

Re: licensing the brand

Now that winter is here it takes me forever to peel down my layers of clothes and remove my helmet to answer my phone in my shirt pocket when riding my motorbike. On the strength of your reply, I just coughed up $10 for a Polaroid Bluetooth speaker.

Re: Why is it only very primitive countries

"Justice." ????

I was about to point out NASA's prior claim before I read the rest of your post. Even though your tongue in cheek is evident, I feel compelled to remind people that the US genuinely considers their jurisdiction to extend as far as they care to say it does, hence the US vs MS over Irish servers, and therefore future US vs anybody trying to claim their space junk.

Re: The one really useful thing MS could do for all of us

Either way, Ireland loses. If MS succeeds in their lawsuit, the US Gov. won't take it lying down. All this talk about clamping down on Irish style tax avoidance will then focus attention on Ireland like a laser, and with the stroke of a pen, Ireland will become a pariah to US firms looking for tax breaks. They will abandon Ireland completely and permanently. Which is why Ireland hasn't ended the MS case with a stroke of their own pen, refusing MS the right to open those contested files. Because if Ireland did that, then the US would kill Ireland's Golden Goose by mercilessly going after Ireland every way possible, making it too hot for any American company and most other companies wanting to do business in the US to remain in Ireland. Sadly, the bully will win, one way or another.

Re: @Voyna, re civilian uses.

"the price should come down & become more affordable."

Yes, and in the meantime you could pay a human to perform exactly the same chores better, and more of them, for the entire duration of the disability, and more cheaply.

Re: "renew our registration"

For decades everybody used to line up outside the gov license office at the same time every year to get their new plates. If you waited till the last day, that line would take hours to get through. Then the gov got smart and staggered the renewal dates, reducing the lines immensely, but you still had to pick up a new metal plate with a new number. Now we have stickers, and maybe some day we will be able to order them over the internet and pay for them with our credit cards, and get them the next day, Amazon style. Sigh.

Re: glueing her car to my rear bumper

Although I like to generally drive 5 to 10 mph over the limit, I still try to maintain about double the spacing that my fellow drivers keep in traffic. If someone behind me is not happy with that and crowds me, I simply slow down to below the limit till they either back off, turn off, or go around. I firmly believe that there is no justification for tailgating a vehicle already going over the limit. Either pass or back off. I will not be forced to speed just because you are in a hurry. Of course the kind of driver that really gets my goat is the one that finally passes then drives no faster, or even slower than when they were behind you. They just can't stand coming second. I used to re-pass them just for spite, in my youth I wasn't afraid to drive in the triple digits if necessary to get back ahead of them, (I drove a 260 Z) but I'm(much)older now.

Re: Mad, Mad Multitasking

After having many useful apps disappear from the web and slip through my fingers, nearly two decades ago I created a folder named "Programs for a Reformat" into which I stashed any downloaded program installers which I felt worthy of saving. When I would buy a new computer with a newer OS I would use this folder to bring forward all the helpful little bits I had gathered over the years. This folder has evolved to contain many "Read Me" files, PDF manuals, relevant web pages, etc. I have brought forward through Win98, Vista, WinXP, Win7, and I expect Win10, dozens of useful apps. The three that get loaded before I even think about going online to grab the latest VLC or IrfanView or Firefox, are wordpad98.exe, (yes I still use this for simple .rtf files, and find all subsequent Wordpads annoyingly frustrating and space-wasting), tclock.exe (to augment my taskbar clock with the date) and SaveDesktopIconLayout (because in no time my new screen will be filled with sorted Icons). Moving to a 64 bit OS forced me to search anxiously for some replacements, but so far, success, keeping me in my comfort zone. I'm crossing my fingers about any future OS though, MS be damned.

Re: The lights are on is anyone home?

You wish. One can only hope.

Re:electronic/mobile communication is better

At the dinner table?

Re: Woa... that's nuts...

Not at all. America's most precious right is encapsulated in that moniker "Land of the Free". Obviously, what better punishment could there be than to take away that freedom? Sadly, the public's thinking seldom gets much deeper than that, which is why politicians pushing policies such as getting tough on crime, and the notorious '3 strikes and you're out' have such resonance with the voting public.

Re: Maybe it's time...

Unfortunately the Darwinian driver can remove only one of himself from the gene pool, but he can remove countless others, especially if he (or she) survives multiple crashes over time.

On a side note: Reminds me of the fashion model who crashed while texting and horribly disfigured herself. The clincher for me was her statement later that she should have known better, having previously crashed her car while also texting. Dangerous twat.

I love Give-A-Penny, Take-A-Penny. A great way to get rid of loose change in my pocket, and avoid getting more when I am only short a few coins to have the exact money for those many small transactions I often have nearly every day.

And you sound like a Republican blaming previous administrations' failures on the present administration. Tit for tat.

Re: Cards?

I too was flabbergasted after moving from a large city (where it had been impossible for decades to use a cheque in ANY store), to a very small town where cheque using was as common as credit cards, but the shock lessened when the local grocery posted the name of a customer at the checkout with a small note explaining they would never take this person's cheques again because their cheques were bad. That's what I call "naming and shaming." (Armchair lawyers jump in here.)

Re: Bollocks... Different Strokes for Different Folks

Right. I suppose we are at cross purposes, with me focusing on the positives of MNVOs and thus seeing this article as promising great things for China's millions. Sorry for my last line in my previous post. I didn't mean to come across as sounding so snarky. I need to proofread my posts more for tone and be less concerned about grammer and spelling.

Re: except that

Agreed. And speaking of phones, I just saw the future in a very upscale neighborhood recently. As a gated community it had a preponderance of golf carts plying its streets, and when school is out, as in weekends and after hours, most of the drivers are kids, some, half the legal driving age. From a fixed point I see at least a half dozen kid carts an hour pass, always with multiple kids aboard, sometimes as many as six, and usually blaring music, although that is beside the point. Which is... last week I saw a cart full of kids piloted by one about 12 years old, with no hands on the wheel because he was staring down at the phone in his hands. As this is a huge rich community (with 3 private golf courses, etc.) I am anticipating the sad day when multi-millionaire sues multi-millionaire over one of their kids killing or maiming another's.

100+ tabs open in firefox

How about 300+ tabs open while comparison shopping with Amazon, Ebay, Craigslist, Google, Bing, loading Youtube vids for reviews, all the while waiting on my throttled service. Restart... drip, drip, drip.

Re: I can't have robbed the bank, i'm legally dead!

But, but...

...if they already have you in custody, what's to stop the jailers from refusing to release you since you are already dead and therefore don't exist? Or they could just offer up your corpse.

Re: Alternative printer undoing

Safety specs, fer shur. Almost blinded myself once disposing of a cd-r. Tried to fold it in half to stuff it the trash. The little bugger resisted mightily (they are really tough) and when it finally succumbed, shattered explosively. Learned a valuable lesson that day, even blank cd's can be very dangerous. Fortunately nobody was standing nearby or my insurance might have been paying for eye surgery.

Re: Can you spare some change?

Agreed. Why can't a series of cabs just link up instead of traveling inches apart? Maybe travel in packs of threes or fours so they don't cause any more congestion than your typical long haul truckers. The railroad companies have been making and breaking trains of rolling stock for ever. I imagine we could even adapt their relevant software programs to be used on taxi trains quite easily.