Posts by Daniel Wilkie 277 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jan 2008
I have to admit (and it pains me to do so) that I'd be happy with the french running our... running... with the french - no I can't say it. But I do mean it :p
As for building new sites from the Chancellors money, I'd bet the reason we can't is because he's already spent it. I wonder how much the bank of England charge in Overdraft fees, we must be well over our limit by now...
I have a Blu-Ray player downstairs, hooked up to a Bravia. It looks ace playing Blu-Ray films, but it doesn't really look noticably worse playing normal DVD's either. I can tell the difference if I look REALLY hard, but it's not enough to make me want to buy any more Blu-Ray films. Mind you, I never sat there watching DVD's thinking "My god, I wish somebody would bring out a better quality format, this is awful". DVD is as good as I need.
On the other hand, I've thought about getting a Blu-Ray burner for the PC as it's extra storage capacity would be very useful. I think high capacity optical storage definately has its uses, but I think they're excessive for movies. Games on the other hand, they would be good for. And playing Mass Effect on a normal TV then playing it on HD I can really see the difference, much more so than with HD movies and SD movies.
Personally, I'd rather see £10 million going round the US economy for something that actually does the job than £15 million, oops wait now £20 due to overruns, oop now up to £25 etc etc for something that's a great big white elephant that then breaks.
Besdies which, if the American economy falls apart, what do you think will happen to ours shortly after? ;)
They didn't ignore the arrest warrent though did they, as per their report their commanding officer chose to wait for clearance to enter the plane from higher ups which wasn't forthcoming. You also seem to be completely ignoring the fact that the guy was tipped off as he was supposed to be arrested off the plane, ergo the tactical situation had changed. Not only that, but OUR Foreign Secretary issued an apology to the Israeli government for ATTEMPTING to arrest him in the first place. Something smells of fish that's for sure.
One thing I can't understand though is why the plane was given clearance to leave in the first place. I mean surely ground control could have stopped it in the first place?
Anyway, nobody here is in possession of all the facts, myself included, and so I guess none of us can make a reasonable assessment. Have to see what the IPCC concludes - but I get the distinct impression that there's more to this than meets the eye. Bear in mind that the Met refused to persue the arrest warrant in the first place and so the charges were bought privately. Which sounds like somebody high up had already intervened once.
So in the case of the Israeli genereal, presumably if the police had decided to enter the plane (which they'd been refused entry to, and presumably had to wait for clearance from quite high levels as that would cause a considerable diplomatic incident...) and the air marshalls as well as, potentially, the generals own armed bodyguards had decided to open fire, causing the police to return fire, and a bunch of civilian passengers had been killed (bearing in mind your average aircraft isn't exactly full of clear firing lanes) - you'd have no problem with that and wouldn't be bemoaning the police for entering the plane and putting civilian lives at risk?
Sure, the whole incident smacks of indecision, but bear in mind a) The reason he never got off the flight was because he recieved a tip-off from the Israeli military attache, b) The foreign office profusely apologised to the Israeli government for the incident (which would suggest where the tip off had come from...) and c) The Police can't just storm a packed airliner from one of our allies national airlines without getting permission if they're refused, the situation becomes a diplomatic one which would need clearance from high up. Said clearance wasn't provided.
I run Vista on my desktop alone as a test for the office (bought a new PC, Vista was pre-installed, orders from above that we'll be moving to it anyway within a year so I figured a test was a good plan).
Out of the box, it ran like a sack of crap. Took ages to boot, ages to log into the network and indeed do anything network related. Applied every update that was available, improved things dramatically though network performance was still painful. Then I did some tweaking with some things I'd found on the net, disabling the global autotuning. It was perfect after that. Applied SP1, slow network performance, it had changed the setting back.
I must admit that, on this new £300 dell (2.8GHz Dual Core) I find I have no problems with it at all other than the odd IE lockup which I'm still trying to resolve. Certainly not all the issues everyone else has been having.
I guess the key would seem to be that it depends very much on setup, infrastructure, programs that are installed etc. I mean everyone here will be running different setups - it might well work faultlessly out the box for some people, others like me it'll work with a little tuning, and for some people it clearly doesn't work at all.
I think what I'm trying to say is don't assume because something isn't working for you that it must be broken for everyone and anyone who says otherwise is lying/working for MS. I mean I'm not sat here saying it doesn't work for you because you're a numpty am I? ;)
/Pedant Mode on
THIS is an AC-130 - http://farm1.static.flickr.com/193/466075835_c4e7dbfa52.jpg?v=0
As is this -
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/AC-130_gunship_firing_flares_August_24,_2007.jpg/800px-AC-130_gunship_firing_flares_August_24,_2007.jpg
However I consed that I was infact mistaken - looking at the nose the H is different too :( Who knows.
Warning - included links contain extreme aircraft pron
Black Helicopters, because of the Extreme Porn law which I think this post may violate
I've disabled the Windows Search service on my desktop, which made quite a difference to general perforamance and if I'm searchign for a file I'm not fussed about spending a little extra time, if it means I can work faster the rest of the time (because I work so hard. Always.)
Unless I've misinterpreted what you're saying - you're claiming that if you shoot down a nuclear armed missile, it'll trigger the warhead and go nuclear am I right?
I'm afraid that's a hollywood notion - the same as seemingly petrol-filled hand-grenades and 100,000 round magazines for pistols. The conventional explosive might trigger, and you'll get lumps of radioactive material thrown around, but for a fission explosion it's pretty complicated and things need to be done precisely. The chances of that happening when it's being ripped to bits by 20/30mm cannon shells is pretty slim.
The UK gets ripped off by everyone - foreign defense companies and domestic ones. It's not the way it should be, but it is the way it is. If we bought carriers from the States, they'd bump up their prices to double what they paid for them. Hell look at car prices if you want a perfect example.
Lets not forget that there were two key technologies for the British investment in the JSF (because it IS a joint project) - there was two bits of technology that they needed us to make work. Firstly, iirc, there were issues with the VTOL system, which the British made work. And secondly, the ability to cruise at Supersonic speeds without using afterburners for extended periods of time. So without British Boffinry and Tech - no JSF. Well no VTOL JSF that can cruise at more than Mach 1 without running on the burners all the time anyway...
Um, technically unless I'm very much mistaken, parental consent has to be obtained from guardians for any photo's involving children - including school photo's as one obvious example. If the child can be easily identified I think permission has to be granted. I can't remember where I read it, probably in one of the Blackstones manuals, or maybe under some Child Protection Act rule?
Where's the link to the video? A Rapper brandishing the Koran in one hand and a gun in the other, it's Vanilla Ice all over again. You can't tease us with somethign like that then withhold the evidence, it's Friday!
At least a Playmobil reconstruction... Perhaps in the style of Captain Dan and the Scurvy Crew's "Blackbeards Treasure"?
Of course you know who shipped them "Crop Spraying helicopters" and permitted Dow Chemicals to export chemicals for use on humans for the war on Iran don't you... And supplied them kit to extend their missiles range...
And indeed France, Italy, and Portugal supplied them with Uranium and Germany helped them build centrifuges...
And indeed good old blighty supplied them with other weaponry too.
Then they decide to stop fighting each other, and all of a sudden we realise it was perhaps a bad idea... Politics is an interesting old game.
Of course, with regards to the defence industry documents protected under the official secrets act shouldn't be on your laptop (or any machine outside the secured network iirc) at any rate... It's called security. So chances are they WOULD be on your personal laptop anyway if recent trends are anything to go by...
Over a distance of a mile, a laser would lose some of its coherency and its focal point (not sure of the technical word) would expand. I see it with laser sights all the time, the dot which is 5mm across at 20m is gets much larger the further away you are aiming it. It's focussed at a certain distance from the projector don't forget. Therefore it's going to cover quite an area at that distance and so not need the same kind of precision aiming.
Not only that, passengers wouldn't see it - they sit at the SIDE of an aircraft, looking out SIDE windows - the pilots sit in the FRONT and look out the FRONT windows...
There was a phase not that long ago of people doing it to trains and buses (buses are not obviously quite as fast...) and I've SEEN it with my own eyes being done to a bus driver.
Final point - approach speed is normally around 150-160mph.
First off, why the Navy? Wouldn't the Army be the more logical choice to investigate this (and don't even ASK how it would be useful on ships, I wouldn't imagine they routinely come under small-arms fire...)
And secondly, how is it going to differentiate between friend or foe? American troops have trouble doing that with bloody great armoured vehicles painted in recognition markings so how could they tell a man, probably hidden, through a camera?
Since the majority of ISP's are provisioned through BT Wholesale, and since they clearly have truth issues, what are the chances that, since all the data will have to through through BT exchanges and BT infrastructure to go via the ISP that all that will be profiled by Phorm too?
Just a thought, I'm not sure of the technical aspects as I've never worked for an ISP.
I can't help but wonder if the vote had gone the other way, with the same allegations of corruption, whether people would have still been saying the same things, or whether it would have been a case of "Microsoft are just trying to cover things up, of course the vote was fair and they can't hack it. Linus Torvalds is my god." or something similar. It seems nobody is quite able to incite such pathological hatred as MS.
Besides, everybody knows that Linus Torvalds was the lovechild of Bill Gates... Linux was just his way of rebelling against his father.
Nvidia sell more cards than ATI perhaps, I'll give you that one though I haven't looked at it recently... But they don't have more cards installed on Vista than microsoft have copies of Vista that are crashing. I think the key is that, perhaps for once, its not 100% fair to blame all the crashes on MS and Vista, if the majority of reported crashes are caused by a 3rd party?
Mine's the one made from Nomex, I think I'll be needing it...
The fact of the matter is though, Kids will be cruel no matter what, if its not Transgender parents it'll be something else. Either he'll be at the top of the pile and bullying the other kids, or he'll be at the bottom of the pile and being bullied by other kids. Law of the Jungle I'm afraid.
Kids are bitches, but they grow up eventually.
Also, not to be funny, but not only were we right there in the Balkans, we still have a prescence now as part of the peacekeeping force. The only difference is we were a bit quieter and avoided the limelight a little because, for some bizarre reason, we chose not to blow up chinese embassies and get our stealth aircraft shot down. I missed oppertunity if you ask me, at least you'd have heard of us if we did then the world could love us as much as it loves America!
Also, as you'd notice if you read something other than the Daily Republican, you'd already know that it was a joint anglo-french (theres something that doesn't happen often!) inititative that was largely responsible for the UN Security Councils decision to send 26000 troops to Sudan. I can't stand Gordon Brown any more than I can stand Dubya, but none-the-less, credit where its due.
Also, not to be picky, we never really colonised (not the spelling) much of the middle east, we were more africa and asia, but hey, splitting hairs now.
I've installed it on my office desktop for testing in the hope it will help with a little documented problem to do with the fingerprint scanners on the Tosh R500 and Offline Files (Why it breaks it I have no idea, but there you go, answers on a postcard). All seems to work fine so far. The only problem I've experienced is that network performance slowed to a crawl as was the case when I originally installed it out the box. However a quick check showed that it had changed my autotuninglevel=disabled setting to autotuninglevel=highlyrestricted - I set that back and I have to say it's made a heck of a difference.
All those users who have noticed improved file copying though, try turning the autotuning level to disabled and you'll notice its faster still. SP1 restricts it over a vanilla vista install, but it seems to be much faster without it.
Sorry if this makes no sense, I may be mildly intoxicated...
Flibble.
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