Posts by CrazyOldCatMan

that I was developing tinnitus

Had it for many years - triggered by consumption of painkillers. Which are pretty much the only thing making moving bearable and hence I have tinnitus all the time.

Fortunately, it's only a mild polyphonic whistle (dominant note is a high C) in my right ear so it's bearable.

beer in cans is filtered to remove the yeast

'yeast corpses" - I doubt whether there is much live yeast left in yer average commercial beer anyway - it's mostly killed off by the alcohol..

(Which is a nice metaphor for humanity - producing enough waste product that's toxic to the thing producing it..)

Re: The service animal scam is about to come to a very abrupt end

don't think the cat would enjoy going on a plane

At least two of my moggies would cause severe harm to anyone trying to cage them in order to put them on a flight (ex-feral farm cats - let's just say they haven't exactly had positive experiences of being caged and, last time we tried to take the big ginger (think 7kg of usually-placid cat that turns into a whirling ball of knives and daggers while trying to get away. His sister is only about 4kg but has the same combat technique) to the vet for his checkup I ended up with big claw and teeth holes in my right arm and hand. Neither of them go to the vet any more..)

Re: You gotta shoot...

use a beer icon and mention Heineken

Well - it's *a* beer - just not one anyone sane and with working taste buds would want to drink..

Re: Footie result...

Forfar's... alive???

No disassemle!

granite

Which, ironically, is a known source of radon gas - long-term exposure to which will probably kill you..

(Like my F-I-L - he was a monumental mason, working mostly in granite. He died of cancer in 1977. Hopefully, my wife wasn't exposed to radon quite so much..)

Re: Undocumented APIs

Undocumented internals of DOS

I remember having (and using) that book in the early/mid 1990s - I wrote a little program to enumerate all the LAN Server print servers and trawl their shared drives for anything interesting..

I ended up having to run it overnight because it had a tendency to somewhat flood my local 4mb token-ring segment. But I did discover quite a bit of 'interesting' graphics and applications that people were clandestinely sharing..

(Mind you, this being the era of CGA / EGA graphics there wasn't anything too... graphic.)

Re: Very different times...

Guess who has reverse engineered Amazon's API?

It wouldn't be a Big Red evil comany would it?

Gasp!

(It's another symptom of the sickness running rampant in industry - short-term profit at any cost.)

Re: Little Britain standing on its own now (well, next week)

Little Britain will become Little England at some point

Which is ironic given that Boris paints himself as a One-nation Tory, vowing to protect the Union..

Of course, his puppetmasters in the ERG don't really care about anything other than making lots and lots of money out of leaving the EU. As far as they are concerned, the devolved administrations should just shut up and do as they are told like good little vassals who don't deserve self-determination..

Oh, the irony.

Re: But, but, but ...

Surely Johnson didn't lie to us?

Of course not. I'm shocked you would think so!

Now - about this nice bridge I have in Arizona - you still interested?

Re: Trump is great for Europe

but Trump is actually great for Europe

I listened to a bit of his whinge^w speech yesterday when he was complaining about how horrible the EU was to the poor, misunderstood and unappreciated USA..

After about 5 minutes I turned over to BBC Parliament, only to find Trump-lite was on for PMQ.

I ended up switching it off and listening to music instead.

Re: He's threatening Italy as well

small countries without the issues and costs (welfare, immigration, etc.)

You've obviously never been to the Netherlands - they have a similar history with immigration to us (and for similar reasons). And their welfare system is considerably better than ours - especially now.

Re: He's threatening Italy as well

if you belt a bully on the nose, he will usually leave you alone ater that

Or, in my case, having an older brother who, on discovering that I was being bullied[1], had a quiet chat with said bully (during which said bully lost two front teeth) which resulted in me being left alone by all the bullies[2].

He had to apologise in school assembly but let it quietly be known that he would be happy to have similar discussions with anyone else that bullied me..

[1] The only one of my 3 older brothers that actually cared.. He's still the only one I actually talk to on a regular basis.

[2] Being (at that time) a small skinny kid with glasses that was actually interested in learning made me a natural target. The fact that I didn't kowtow to the bullies didn't exactly help.

Re: Idea

You'd need a lot more than one comet - in fact a whole series of ice asteroids would be required. And using something else to actually start the martian core generating a magnetic field so that the solar wind doesn't blow away all the atmosphere again..

Re: Hmm....

he obviously doesnt care about any possible repercussions

Well - he knows full well that Trump isn't exactly Bezos' friend (especially as Bezos isn't a dictator known to have killed off lots of people[1] - that seems to be the sure-fire way to get Trump fawning on you).

[1] Except, of course, via workplace injuries in Amazon warehouses. But, since that's due to neglect and indifference rather than deliberate action it doesn't count.

Re: Alarmingly small?

cell-phone more when one is in command of everything

It's entirely possible that he has more than one phone.. (yes, yes, I know - stretching the bounds of possibility I know. But even the Orange One has more than one phone and he's only the POTUS and a pauper compared to Bezos. In fact, the only think I thing OO exceeds Bezos in is the number of wives/mistresses he's cheated on..)

Re: Slurp -

legal term is "tortious interference"

No - I think the original "torturous interference" is probably more accurate.

Re: Antitrust

Google deployed Chrome

And how many bits of 'helper software' (aka malware) that it came with? (And still does..)

Re: Antitrust

me thinking they'd turned into the good guys now!

No - they've just learnt how to hid it better. And lost some of the "We're Microsoft - we can do what the hell we like and you peons just have to put up with it" attitude.

I propose the COCM Rule - no IT company with global reach can ever afford to have good morals or ethics - and smaller companies inevitably lose them as they get bigger.

Re: Oh for fucks sake

someone will just invent a better idiot

Especially using the British Standard Idiot standard..

(It could be argued that idiots are not invented as much as spawned by random chance)

Email is still very useful, especially in a business environment

And some people still use faxes.. A tool might be old, but that doesn't mean it's not still useful.

Take an axe for example - they've been around for 100s of thousands of years, but they are still useful for reprogramming recalcitrant computers..

Re: Local GPs are probably the largest problem

mediatised

Mediatised? Give me a break. There are perfectly good words already for that sort of thing ("publicised" or "broadcast" would do for starters) without someone mangling vaguely-comprehended words together into verbal gibberish..

Re: Uber Flaying Taxis

heavy duty drone with handrails on the underside

Fine unless you happen to be wearing a skirt or a kilt..

Re: Flying taxis = wrong solution to right problem

version of the DLR

All travellelers on the DLR probably are not aware that one of my brothers was an engineer writing the original signalling and guidance system..

Travel safely now!

Re: "Lightsaber"

reciprocally (mis)name places in the US

Most of which place-names they stole from us anyway. Even Pennsylvania - it's a village outside Bath..

Re: US original Spelling Myth

Normandy wasn't quite the same as other "French" regions

Just like 'English' isn't really a monolithic language - every Saxon/Angle/Jute region had it's own dialect and (to a large extent) those differences were retained into modern English. And lets not forget the huge Norse/Celtic influences either - northern English retains a lot of Norse (and in places like Cumbria, Celtic influences).

In short, English is the illigetimate offspring of many mothers and farhers. Mixed in a decidedly promiscuous way.. Mind you, it still grinds my gears when I see the total lack of grammar and mistakes in vocabulary in (particularly) self-published books.

Re: Noah Webster Jr is to blame for American spelling...

.. and to simplify the spelling for all those immigrants[1] for whom English wasn't their native language.

[1] Yeah - all the people in the US are immigrant-born. Damn immigrants, going over there and massacring the inhabitants. Trail of Tears anyone? Mind you, we are not exactly innocent either.

Re: For extra fun ...

I've not seen that many men wear tights!

Then you haven't been round proper bikers (ie - the ones that ride in all weathers and don't ride gleaming race-replica bikes in their gleaming race-replica leathers..).

It's fairly common for them (used to be 'us' but I had to give up riding bikes 15+ years ago because of arthritis) to wear tights unger the leathers since it helps keep you warm.. And, trust me, after an hour on a bike in 2C freezing rain, no matter how good your waterproofs are, you *are* going to be very, very cold.

You paid for it and it is 'private' property

An analogous situation is with public footpaths here in the UK - for time immemorial, the public have had the right to use those footpaths and bridleways *even* if they cross private land. Many, many people have tried to prevent this and, pretty much every time, have failed.

Which is a Good Thing (TM)