Ouch.
Always use the proper tools and protective gear, kids!
6157 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Oct 2015
"What always boggled my mind about the whole Snowden episode is the incompetence it implies at the NSA if he truly were able to just copy all those files."
You've probably never worked in a really, really large organisation - doesn't really matter whether private or public sector, really. Ever heard the old joke about two guys looking at a huge office block? "I wonder how many people work in there?", muses one of them. "Oh, about half of them", answers the other. Yes, the NSA is full of smart people, but not necessarily in admin (or the department that sets the internal guidelines). A lot of them are your average garden variety 9-to-5 employees just shuffling along. But then, we can't all be like Jack Ryan, can we?
"... the enemy of my enemy is my friend..."
No.
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less.
Source: The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries (#29)
Been using AVM equipment since, uh, the early 1990ies? A long time, anyway. IIRC, at one point way back when they had the only ISDN cards that actually worked... so I just kept on using their gear. Never has been 'on the Fritz' so far. Good gear, good documentation - can't say anything about their support as so far I have never needed it.
"For many, it’ll be like the passing of Elvis Presley in 1977, or Princess Diana in 1997 – you’ll remember where you were and what you were doing that moment you heard the news."
Yes. I remember exactly what I was doing - I was lstening to the news.
It's sad enough as it is - no need for syrupy pathos.
It's not fear of change. Change is always an opportunity. It's the dread of yet another potentially good (although not exactly new) idea being perverted into something really unpleasant by the type of management that has heard the new buzzword, read an executive summary in a trade magazine, feels compelled to get on the bandwagon - but is utterly, totally fucking clueless about what it really means. Fun for the whole family!
"More than 1,400 senior IT and business executives worldwide were quizzed as part of the research." (emphasis by me)
Well, that's the flaw in the survey's methodology right there. The least Freeform Dynamics (what the hell is that supposed to mean anyway) should have done is some sort of error correction based on the IT/business executive ratio.
One of the 'what ifs' in Randall 'xkcd' Munroe's brilliant 'What If' explores the possibility of making a model of the periodic table out of the real stuff, i.e. putting a sample of each element in a shelve in the same arrangement as in the table of elements. Interesting. (Hint: see icon.)
Also, if Deckard was an android, he wouldn't have been kicked around by Roy that much. He doesn't win the confrontation - Roy choses to let him live. (Talking about the film version here, obviously.)
Vaguely related tangent: last year I saw some posters announcing some sort of event and thought the guy on it was Rutger Hauer. When I looked closer he turned out to be Herman van Veen. Oh my.
"...unlike tobacco, its easy enough to make your own beer/wine/spirits..."
Tobacco is a plant. You can grow it in your garden or in a box on the windowsill or indoors. (If you live in northern Scandinavia or similar, you'd need some sort f greenhouse anyway.) Even the bit after the harvest isn't that complicated and about on par with makein wine or beer, distilling is a bit more tricky. Source: my grandparents did this for a while, way back when.
Had similar problems around the same time - profs from the math faculty teaching would-be engineers. When worlds collide... However, my Casio somethinsomething (replaced by a HP48sx as soon as possible) and comrades Bronstein / Semendajew / Musiol / Mühlig helped a lot to get me through this.
"The company claims that the change is more than just an effort to get randy 20-somethings over to its platform, saying it has noticed an increase in the number of users who are "seriously interested in group sex." Apparently 24 per cent of its users are, although we wonder what their definition of "seriously interested" is."
I also wonder what their definition of "group sex" is.
"But interested to know what exactly you think is so special about the UK electricity supply sector that makes you think it is so different from others like Australia and NZ?"
I was going to comment along the lines that as the cars in the UK drive on the wrong side of the road, maybe the electrons were travelling through the wrong wires - but then I remembered that in NZ and Australia are driving on the left as well. So, sorry, no idea.
"Seems to me that the main disingenuity here is that many non tech aware people will think that a smart meter will automatically save them money."
Exactly. No, wait, I'd like to tweak it a bit:
1) Replace 'many' with 'nearly all'.
2) Take into account that nearly all of the people making the decisions are 'non technical people', too.
Wait again - I've just had a brilliant idea! If a smart meter saves me money, I'll have them install two! I'll save twice as much!