Posts by Doctor Syntax

Re: Alternative steps

"find out who's siphoning diesel out of the storage tank."

I'd never thought of this aspect before but is generator diesel marked in the same way as agricultural "red diesel"? If so a quiet call to HMRC and a spot check on the offender's tank's content might save the need for involving the CEO.

Re: The echo chamber at work...

The link goes to a page with a 2027 copyright date on it. I've news for you. It's now 2021. A lot of work on m-RNA vaccines has been done in the interim, especially in the last year or so.

Remember this: the best vaccine is the one in your arm.

Re: Critical Thinking

Questioning the betters is fine. It requires recognising the betters, recognising why they are the betters and why the answers they give are more likely to be right than the opinions of some eejit they found on the net who can't tell the difference between biology and telecommunications technologies.

Re: Why all the thumbs down?

Difficult to educe their wealth, certainly. Worth is a different matter.

Re: those who fear evolution, demonstrate it

"I am pro-safer-vaccines"

Just so long as you don't catch something nasty and die from it while you're waiting for the safer vaccine to come along.

Re: Man makes idiotic statement on a mailing list...

Footnote in the Yes Minister scripts: "Terry Wogan was a talk show host. He talked and his guests listened."

Re: In a stockyard...

We also have our own coronaviruses which have evolved along with us. In prehistory with small human populations with little contact between groups a newly species-hopped virus that was lethal would be unlikely to propagate far unless it evolved. In other words there would have been effective selection pressure in the past.

What's new about this one is that it's hit us when we've got large, densely packed population centres with large-scale fast travel between them. We need to find a new way of exerting selection pressure and vaccination is one way of doing that.

It was an occasional occurrence at the biological suppliers where I once worked. It was based in an old Victorian villa & there'd a few escapes of rats which had bred. Hollow walls, hollow floors - plenty of spaces for them.

There was a mitigating factor. One of the managers, in charge of preparing microscope specimens for schools, stayed behind one night with an air-gun and shot one. Realising that it had a good chance of being infected with trypanosomes which would give him a batch of slides he went off to get a syringe. When he came back the body had been dragged away, presumably to be eaten by the other rats.

Re: Just think and consider for a moment ...

"What was the percentage of people who used ANOM and were NOT engaging in criminal activity?"

According to the article - zero. Unless, of course, there were more messages over and above the 100% which were criminal.

Re: Art!

I read somewhere that after the original display the bricks were either returned to whoever they'd been borrowed from ro otherwise disposed of. When it was brought back be ?popular demand a new set had to be obtained.

Re: £37 billion

"So I grade Harding 9/10 for brazen arrogance, and 2/10 for reality."

Where did the 2 come from?

Re: Laptop + Monitor = two computers?

Should have added "If there's nothing on the end of the cable, that's the problem."

I remember reading, a long time ago, that the function of a Unix kernel* was to provide an illusion of place and an illusion of process**. Some people seem unable to perceive these illusions. I don't think it helps that modern UI (and that includes web) designers seem to go out their way to conceal them. UX designers, of course, are amongst those who don't perceive the illusions at all.

* Other OS kernels are also available

** The reality, of course, is a scatter of segments on a disk and slices of time on a CPU

Re: Qualifications before being allowed to use a laptop

"I'm too busy"

"So am I"

Re: Laptop + Monitor = two computers?

Maybe where other monitors display "no signal" it should display "this is a monitor, not an iMac".

Maybe something like this should be the standard message on all monitors. "No signal" is a message tor techies who would just as easily understand the significance of the luser version: "If you can see this message you haven't switched your computer on. This screen is only your monitor. If you're not sure what your computer looks like follow the cable coming out of the back of the monitor and it should be on the other end. Not the cable that leads to the power socket, the other one."

Re: Once upon a time.....way back in another century......

7. Use in production.

It's only in 7, and even then only at large scale that rare, sporadic failures become recognisable. Even if you were lucky enough to catch one at the previous stages you wouldn't be able to reproduce it reliably enough to understand it.

Re: Another Harmony owner here.

A few buttons? What's wrong with a big hammer?

Re: Corporate Piglatin?

"Can you put this in technical terms?"

No. The essence of technical terms is that they mean something.

Re: How about.....

Too many idle hands in the development department.

Re: soon we will share one of the most significant updates of Windows of the past decade…

So far, so good until "They'll take over a major Linux distro next (Ubuntu is my guess)". How?

Re: Older applicants

Sorry, can't tell you. GDPR.