Posts by acid andy

I still can't understand what happend to Weetabix. I'm sure years ago they used to be larger, with more rounded corners and a nicer consistency.

Re: The last general election results ...

@ codejunky "Part of this is trying to get it past the EU rules. If it takes so long to make changes then people cant be blaming the tories and instead blame the coalition, the coalition cant be blamed it was labour etc."

Good points and I actually *want* it to be difficult for governments to change things. There's just about enough good aspects left to western civilization that stopping a rogue government from quickly and easily screwing everything up is highly desirable. I'm against Lords reform for that reason. Any entity (including for example the ECJ as well) that can slow up big government changes and add scrutiny is a good thing in my book.

"What former glory? Blackouts and British rail? Underinvestment in water and sewage, BT. Unions on strike. The NHS nearly went under when it was created due to its expense. Begging to the IMF."

There are increasing electricity and water shortages under the current regime. I heard that private companies have been selling off lots of our water reserves. I agree that beyond a certain point union action can be troublesome but the opposite situation where worker compensation and welfare is utterly neglected for years is just as bad.

"Very true. We have seen under 13 yrs of labour what more money into the public sector and expanding it rapidly has done. Here we are complaining about those services."

I disliked almost all the initiatives that Blair and Brown's governments poured their money into. Many of them just seemed to erode civil liberties and others created work for busybody pen pushers. That doesn't mean that all public sector investment is bad. It's about the true aims behind it and who really stands to benefit. Just remember that Corbyn is a world away from those two chaps.

"Socialism will work this time, all the other times they did it wrong. Thats a lot of failures and almost no successes in that tally."

I've already been very clear that I don't support extreme Socialism. I'm advocating a centrist social democracy. This is what Corbyn offers. Free market capitalism with some small checks and balances to discourage monopolies and encourage investment in employees and smaller businesses rather than sitting on assets and concentrating wealth at the very top. And a decent support network of social benefits and services. What we have now is not a free market. It's crony capitalism where any risk involved in reckless speculation for the largest businesses is covered by near zero interest rates, government bailouts and funding and legislation for their own pet private projects.

"If rent controls can deflate the monstrous housing bubble then I say bring it on!"

"It cant. History is not on his side again."

All the previous housing bubbles in the 70s, 80s and 90s corrected naturally within a few years. This time successive governments have thrown everything at artificially propping the market up. The whole thing is so fragile it wouldn't take much to get it to correct back to a real fair market value. Especially if you're content with living outside of the South East.

"You cannot stop boom and bust, it is part of the business cycle. In fact the more you restrain it the harder life becomes for all and less money for those lovely social services you want."

And yet stopping a housing bust is something Nu Labour and the Tories have been desperately trying to do for years - with exactly the consequences you have just stated above.

"HS2 is a huge cost to the tax payer for something that doesnt even sound like it will work. And you want more government? Government is doing this."

Look, generally speaking I prefer smaller government to big government. But it's an oversimplification to just consider small versus big. It's a question of what part of government is being expanded, whether it is overseen and regulated by a truly independent external organisation, and precisely what purpose it is going to serve. I want increased civil liberties for the individual and ideally a good environment for small businesses. A big authoritarian government can be very bad for that but a small government can be bad for it also if it is just replaced by hugely powerful, monopolistic big businesses. In the current situation big business has almost become its own wing of the government, such is their lobbying power and financial clout.

"When we look at facts, experimentation, history we should be able to learn from our mistakes. So why repeat what we know doesnt work?"

Good question. Blair, Brown, Cameron and May's extreme brands of Neo-Liberalism aren't working. So let's not repeat that. Let's learn from our mistakes and give JC a chance to fix this mess.

Re: CASE

You're right about CASE tools. It takes at least as long as writing the equivalent code would have done and then, more to the point, it's a whole lot less fun than just writing the code. Luckily, with most tools you can knock out the basic code first, click a button and have it generate the CASE model from that afterwards if your PHB insists on having one.

Re: Can we please add

Luckily for me, I don't think I've heard that one yet. What does it mean, "derived" or "generated" or "discovered"?

Re: What's with all the hate for vinyl?

"CD decks for scratching exist. Whether these are up to what you describe, not sure."

Yeah I know they exist but it's only ever going to produce a synthesized approximation of the real scratching. I'm not saying people will necessarily be able to tell the difference. Whether it's an acceptable replacement would be a similar sort of question as asking someone whether a synthesized guitar sound would be acceptable in place of a recording of the real instrument. It's a matter of personal preference.

I am no expert on scratching but I'd imagine there could be certain effects or subtleties that some people could achieve with vinyl that they couldn't on one of these CD decks.

@ShelLuser

"eouwiofpunj"

Do you use a Dvorak layout?

Re: Is there a petition to insist that we DON'T change the new £5 note?

@John Sanders

"It is all about virtue signaling, never forget that, they need to show everybody how much better people they are than the rest of us."

Oh really? There was me thinking that being vegan usually has nothing to do with other people's perceptions and everything to do with reducing the unnecessary suffering and premature (often unpleasant) deaths of other species that cannot speak up for themselves.

Ironically, you seem to be the one out to show everybody something. By criticizing the vegans, aren't you trying to show everybody that you're a better person than they are (and yes, I'm aware you could apply a similar argument to my own post)?

Re: Hollywood is creatively bankrupt

Yeah you've absolutely nailed it. Same thing is arguably happening to the Bond franchise and many others.

I think it's not just the pursuit of profit though, it's the ubiquitous short-termism in modern businesses. Who cares if what sets a brand apart gets diluted until everyone loses interest and it dies, just as long as the broader demographic appeal gets bums in seats just *this* one more time? Right? I mean just look at Windows 8 and 10 - one could argue M$ are burning users' goodwill and solely riding on brand loyalty and inertia while they can, so long as it maximizes their profits right *now*. To hell with the future.

I wonder what drives this obsessive short-termism. It's happened in politics too. Is it that people have shorter careers now for some reason or is it a widespread moral bankruptcy where they just don't care about their long term legacy? Or is it pure short sighted idiocy? It can't just be the latter, otherwise that would have always been the case, unless humans really are getting dumber as a species. So what's changed?

Re: TOS was high-science - considering

Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica (particularly the reboot) are almost devoid of science. The rebooted Battlestar Galactica seems to perhaps even abhor science in favour of religion. I noticed something similar in JJ Abrams' Lost (you can't call that space opera as they're not in space) where the whole series seems to represent a battle between science and religion and science loses! And don't even get me started on his reboot. : ( I personally seemed to grow out of Star Wars as a kid so was less than impressed when JJ's script writers seemed to consider the two as interchangeable!

Trek is sci fi as far as I'm concerned because they at least did their best to research their technology and define it with clear rules that, mostly, were followed. Much more so than any of the other contemporary TV shows set in space, which were more like B Movies. I have to concede respect for science wasn't allowed to get in the way of a good story or in the way of the key premise of any story really, which is why they had lots of foes with godlike powers and such. There's still too much science and engineering and pragmatism baked into the design and layout of the ship and universe to call it space opera though, for me.

The show doesn't try to hide science or apologize for it like others do, nay, it celebrates it. This is embodied in Nimoy's Spock.

You could make a case that the show is a good show, but *bad* sci fi, sure, but I don't accept your conclusion. All this said, I will concede that the boundaries of what makes a genre are a matter of personal opinion, so a protracted argument about this is probably a futile waste of time.