Posts by Chris Bradshaw 175 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007
The only 'politically correct' option in this context is making sure she doesn't have any evidence of you using the terminology. What 'She who must be obeyed' doesn't know won't hurt her :-)
Would be AC for obvious reasons, but the old ball and chain doesn't read this site.
Yet.
OK, but in the Hubble case you are downloading a single file from a predictable location to a fixed point (assumption on my part). For SMSs, they are transmitting 7490 messages from 7490 different unpredictably moving sources to 7490 different unpredictably moving destinations.
And (probably more to the point) Hubble doesn't have a bunch of shareholders expecting a profit...
Title pun intentional. And it's warm out...
A preacher? In India. OK, it is possible, but not that likely.
Post-dated cheques? When I was in India (admittedly a while ago) it was pretty much a cash economy. Any Indian readers out there care to comment??
Gambia vs. South Africa - that's a pretty big mistake.
Grammatical mistakes are understandable, nobody is pretending to be a native English speaker here.
Suicide is (as I understand it) a common option for low-income Indian farmers with high debts. Is it a solution for someone who has Internet access and the possibility to raise $70k? And would it be the whole family, as seems to be the threat here?? Again, a comment from an Indian reader would be welcome.
My gut feeling (and my hope) is 419+..
I thought Canucks preferred clubbing the helpless and immobile.
But (seriously) clubbing him can break bones, and if you just leave him there (assuming he's not alone in the room) he is a threat to the other patients and nurses who may need to care for them. I absolutely agree that a Taser isn't a good option, I'd prefer to see a dart gun with a sedative, alternatively slip something into his tea...
And if he has a history of 'sometimes' becoming delusional, why didn't they take the knife away from him?
Everyone lost here:
Nina because she is dead (or at least has lost contact with her kids)
Hans because he'll be in jail for a long time, and his reputation is ruined
The kids because they have lost both their parents
Californians because they are paying the bill for the trial and jail time
Linux fans because ReiserFS will probably go by the wayside
Moral of the story - 'buying' a bride will get you just what you paid for - someone who is willing to sell themselves. What kind of marriage can you build from a start like that? I feel sorry for the kids..
@paul - If a person can be angry & crazy enough to plan a murder in advance including thinking about how to hide or destroy the evidence, a person can also be angry & crazy enough to frame another for a murder and keep quiet about it. And, just like murder, once you have started, you can't change your mind and back out of it - Nina (if she is in hiding) would be prosecuted and jailed if she turned up, just like Hans (if he did it) would be prosecuted for attempted murder if he started and then changed his mind before killing her.
Banning the lasers just means that the idiots will find some other source of amusement - throwing rocks off bridges for example. And what will the gov't do then - ban rocks??
The imbeciles who do this are the same ones who, a year or two ago, were scribbling with spray paint on the subways. And a lot of it is in parenting and schooling. Teach parents to be good parents and half the problems go away. Properly fund schools, so teachers are not overworked and can spend a little more time and energy on the few kids who will benefit from it most. And so on...
And give the kids something fun and cheap to do with their spare time - gyms with interesting sports, skateboard parks, movie theatres, computer game clubs, after-school jobs, whatever. But keep them interested in something, and they won't need to find their own sources of amusement...
They are the ones affected, and they know how much it affects them. If they say it's unsafe, I will not argue with them.
People have instinctive reactions to bright lights shining in their eyes when they are trying to concentrate on something. They may move to the side, they may close their eyes, they may block the light with their hands, whatever. The point is, that at best they are no longer concentrating on what they should be, they are concentrating on avoiding the light.
What if they shined a laser into your eyes while you were driving on a motorway? If a few drivers (but not all) complained, that should be enough for the practice to be banned and prosecuted.
And speaking of prosecution, the culprits should at least be forced to pay for the fuel used in a go-around, and the mainenance on the extra flight time. Then some kind of hourly wage for the passengers.
For second offenses, after they have paid up again, have them drive at speed on a racetrack and shine a laser into their eyes at every turn...
Wouldn't it be better to just have a speed limit for pedestrians? If people are walking slowly enough, the cars will have enough time to swerve and miss them.. This would also solve the 'running out in front of a car' problem. Enforcement is easy - just use speed guns, same as for cars.
It would also make jogging less tiring :-)
Some Europeans/Americans believe "all Muslims are violent intolerant terrorists" and want to exterminate them, because of the inflammatory actions of a few extreme fanatics.
How is that different from some Muslims believing "all Westerners are violent intolerant invaders" based on the actions of the US armed forces and propaganda films like this one (I haven't seen the film).
The instigators (usually fanatics) always have something to gain from this type of propaganda and incitement. The Dutch MP is trying to gain votes. The Danish cartoonist is trying to build readership. Al Qaeda and Hamas are trying to recruit and build community support. Right wing Israelis want to keep building more settlements. Hutus wanted to kill Tutsis. Hitler wanted the Jews to be despised.
The vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists or violent, at the moment. The vast majority of Germans were not Nazis before 1933. But these things can change, given too much propaganda and fanatic leadership...
I'd like to see him prosecuted for incitement to riot or hate propaganda or similar - he is no better than a neo-nazi fascist, and his actions will cause worse problems than already exist.
If you weren't allowed (as a kid) to put on two different socks, or do something different from your friends, then I feel sorry for you. If you never even wanted to, then that's even sadder... And if you don't allow your own kids - I feel sorry for them.
Just because you are comfortable with who you are and what you look like, does not mean that everyone is. How many women wear makeup, or color their hair? Lots. Fewer go for plastic surgery, but still a lot. How many men go in for hair replacement or penile enlargement products? And people often do this for years, every day.
This person wants a bigger change, but that does not mean that he will (or can) change his mind back again later. Your 'what gender they want to be today' comment is frankly rude, and shows your ignorance of this topic. Most people agonize over this for years before deciding to get the ops.
Or maybe you are just a troll. Hopefully you are less ignorant than your post makes you out to be.
A kid of two lesbians or two gay men willl have much bigger problems, as the 'difference' is much more obvious to the other kids. So will the only black or the only asian kid in the school. And remember that the US West coast is pretty tolerant of non-traditional gender definitions like homosexuality and transsexualism. Land of fruits and nuts, if you haven't heard the joke (I grew up in Calif.)...
I hope all goes well for everyone.
But I am quite curious whether the father will breastfeed in public.. :-)
If they made him pay for his upkeep in prison. Charge him say $50 for breakfast, another $50 for lunch, and $100 for dinner. And $300 a night for a bed. $30 for a shower, and $20 for clean clothes. I wonder how long he would 'not have any assets'...
And I hope they feed the <CENSORED> Spam (tm) every meal for the 26 years :-) Let the punishment fit the crime...
How about a Playmobil terrorist cell, complete with car bomb, suicide bombers, luggage bomb, box cutters, and victims. Washable red paste is also supplied. Watch your kid collect all the parts and identify which body parts belong to which victim. Can they identify the terrorist organization responsible??
And for those non-political families, we have the old Playmobil drug smuggler set, with mini condoms you can fill with white powder and luggage with hidden compartments.. See if you can get past the Playmobil customs officers...
Lastly we have the Playmobile insurgency kit - 50 civilians mixed with 5 insurgents, along with roadside bombs and a set of friendly soldiers and some missiles and bomber airplanes. See how many insurgents you can kill without getting more than 10% of the civilians...
Yeah, I do need a beer or three... :-) I'm off now.
I don't agree with Mr. Gates at all about the way he runs his company or the way his company competes in the marketplace. But I do admire him for doing good things with the money he has made, and I like how he takes a 'world-wide' in bad ways.
Buffett is planning to donate his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, because they will be able to do even more good things with the extra cash. Buffett feels (IIRC) that they will be better at managing the job than he, also they are younger and will have more time and energy to get things done. It makes sense to me...
I was proud to be British when I heard the London response to 7/7 - many people said they would not change their behavior - "business as usual", "stiff upper lip" and so on. That is the right response to the threat (which is as pointed out above quite small compared to driving, smoking, and drinking...).
If you cower in fear, the terrorists have won. They are trying to terrorize a society and will be encouraged by any fear and paranoia they produce. The Met is helping them with these ads...
Certainly, the police should try to infiltrate them and catch them planning attacks. But not to the point of causing panic or public paranoia.
Also, the harassment some people will receive as a direct result of this campaign will push some people a little farther from society, will isolate them more, and contribute to their eventual recruitment by terrorist groups. This won't be the only cause, but people who are already on the edge may be pushed over...
Free local calls on land lines sounds very nice, until you give out your number to the wrong people. My parents in CA let the answering machine take every call because about 75% of the calls they receive are not wanted. They get calls from charities, businesses, magazines, cold sales calls, financial services, and so on. Part of the problem is that they gave out their number too readily or were too polite to hang up, but it is a big problem for them. The cost of paying someone minimum wage plus commissions to cold call (or having a computer dial a list of numbers) with free calls is very low. Add small cost per connection / minute and it becomes less cost effective.
And David Shepherd (above) is right - Americans don't want to pay for it when someone else wants to call them, so they didn't (and still don't) give out their phone numbers to all and sundry. Emulating the US system is a big step in the wrong direction...
The postal system (a long time ago) also figured out that getting the recipient to pay for the mail didn't work very well (for one thing, the cost of delivery was incurred even it the mail was refused on arrival).
that Microsoft finally came up against an international specification that they couldn't embrace, extend, and exterminate :-)
They've been trying for how many years now??? And just now they finally concede that the Earth is not going to change it's rotation around the Sun just to conform with their concept of what it should be.
Idiots. Or possibly really they believe that God uses MS products and maybe (just maybe) He would find it more convenient to just tweak the system a little...
Sorry, but I would prefer a version of Excel that gave me correct results. Actually, I prefer OpenOffice...
And good luck getting a version of Excel which is compatible with all other versions. MS wants you to buy the newer version so they make sure that Excel only loads files created with the last two or three versions. OpenOffice is much better, they load all kinds of files...
When MS was required by the EU to license some of their IP (their server interoperability API), they (MS) chose to charge a royalty of 3.87% of the licensee's sales.
I know that the EU said this was too high and MS subsequently lowered it, but given the Excel pricing of $30 - $800 mentioned above, the average price paid for Excel is probably in the range of $100 and a royalty of $2 per copy is well under what MS thought was reasonable to charge.
Can't have it both ways, guys...
Microsoft is raking in money because of their monopoly, and has been for years. But because there wass no more market share for them to gain on desktop OS, they abused their control of the desktop market to increase their market share of the server market - by making it difficult for their competitors to communicate with Windows desktop machines.
The EU was right to fine them initially, and to insist on compliance with restrictive measures to try to put the market back into balance. When MS did not comply, the EU justifiably levied another (bigger) fine.
But I suspect that MS has profited hugely from their illegal manipulation and control of the market. They calculated that their profit would be more than the probable fine, therefore they did not comply with the EU restrictions - MS gained financially from their non-compliance. IMHO this is contempt of court - I would put the head honchos in jail for a few months. I'm sick of white-collar criminals and rich <CENSORED>s getting off with fines that are treated as a cost of doing business - a bribe in effect.
A fine is not an acceptable punishment for a drug dealer - why should it be acceptable for a robber baron???
This just makes buying alcohol less convenient. The people who want to binge will still make the trip to the liquor store to buy what they need (perhaps they will buy more so they have to make the trip less often). This idea might help non-binge drinkers drink a little less, I know that if I have some beer at home I'll drink one of an evening, but if I don't have any I won't make a special trip to the store for it.
And as for 'dry' counties or states in the US - people just drive to the nearest 'wet' county and fill their car with bottles.. Again, it makes drinking less convenient but does not stop the behaviour.
People with an addiction (compulsion) will do whatever they have to in order to satisfy the addiction...
What will they think of next - banning food sales in supermarkets to help overweight people and binge eaters??
Microsoft put themselves in this hole on purpose, and they pulled others into it with them. They ignored complaints from those who understood what they were doing. Microsoft made money from this (and still do...).
So force Microsoft to help pay for fixing the web. Say 50% of the cost of making sites compliant, based on lines of HTML code modified per hour and a standard developer rate.. Yeah it's a lot of money. No I have no sympathy for them. They have the money, and they caused the problem.
It might even bring a boom to website developers... :-) Web 3.0* anyone
* yeah, I want a trademark on this :-D
vacuum bubbles in fuel pump, and engines not delivering thrust, plus some debris in fuel tank - sounds to me like the pumps were unable to deliver enough fuel to the engines. If Boeing says the pumps were OK, perhaps the debris in the tanks restricted fuel intake and this was the root cause of the problem. It is strange though that it was a problem on both intakes and at the same time. If the tanks were close to empty (so more debris per liter of fuel), and if there is some kind of mesh or filter to stop the debris getting into the pump, the end of the flight would see the most debris blocking the filter....
disclaimer - I don't know much about fuel systems on airplanes, just a guess on my part...
A world without cynicism would be a sad and dismal place :) I actually prefer the cynicism, which I can easily read around, to a straight* news story. And let's face it, if Mr. Lettice wrote this article without a twist, it wouldn't make the first cut and for good reason....
But, that said, there is a reasonable need for this service - Ocado wants to reassure potential customers who are worried about home invasion scams. Other than the average customer with a beemer, two examples which spring to mind are elderly or mobility-impaired people, who likely make up a good percentage of their repeat-customer base with a regular delivery schedule and are likely to be more worried about this type of thing...
* i.e. dry**
** i.e. boring
Perhaps Microsoft could try to become "good online citizens" themselves by not releasing software until it is fully tested, not when it still has so many bugs and security holes allowing takeover by botnets, spammers and other such scum.
And then they could stop their designed-in obsolescence, which is immoral and should be illegal.
And then they could let go of the monopoly on OSs and browsers and office suites.
And stop throwing chairs...
If I wanted to search on Google, I would have done so. If I want to see the 404 (which sometimes I do, for work), I want to see it. Google should show the 404 page, and fill the toolbar with appropriate search terms. Or have it turned off by default.
I do not need or want a nanny search engine, any more than I want a nanny browser or OS...
"The greatest remaining challenge... will be developing a method for making a synthetic liquid fuel from just CO2 and water using renewable energy sources."
Evolution has already taken care of this - this is exactly what plants do.. So all we need is to genetically engineer a plant that can be { composted / refined / fermented / extruded / ... } into { methane / oil / methanol / diesel / ... }. And if it can thrive in an enriched CO2 atmosphere, we have a place to empty the CO2 tank.
@ nickf
I actually prefer this solution too :-) Except perhaps for cleaning the stables and streets.... In Slovakia, I sometimes see a farmer-driven horse & cart in the counrty, it's a nice feeling that the changes in the 'civilized' world haven't affected all...
The Reg doesn't want to pay. The public (or a vocal minority :-) ) doesn't want to work for nothing.
So may I (respectfully) suggest the reg use some non-financial incentive. Prestige and exclusiveness being uniformly desired, I have in mind a special 'ElReg-published writer' icon for those readers submitting an article which got published, available for a set period...
Or a date with Paris... Frankly I'd take the icon, though :-)
If there were just real / ficticious check boxes on the survey, the results are unbelieveable. It would be interesting to have a 'know this' or a 'guessed' checkbox too - some the people who guessed (half of them) got it right and they still ended up at 47 %!!!
@ Morely Dotes - In the US (mostly in the Southern states, I think) there is a supermarket chain called "Piggly Wiggly". Sorry, but idiots are everywhere (as this survey shows)
"Eiberg noted that the blue eyes mutation is neither "positive nor negative", since it doesn't affect chances of survival"
I would argue that it was a positive mutation, because the blue-eyed population (as a percentage of total population) has obviously grown since the initial mutation occurred.
If there is no 'survival' benefit, then it is probably with some aspect of reproduction - i.e. blue eyed individuals are more likely to mate more often, or will be able to attract more capable partners, or be reproductive for a longer time, or something...
I wonder if there have been studies on this in the current population - eye color vs family income / number of kids / marriage longevity / ??? It would also be interesting to know how percentages of blue-eyed people have changed over the centuries in different areas of the world...
If they say they can shoot down an incoming ICBM with a few minutes warning and tracking data, why can't they shoot down a satellite with weeks of warning and lots of trajectory data? And they presumably have time to take a few shots, on the off chance that they miss it....
Or they could ask the Chinese to do it..
The Mao jacket please...
If you want to go more than 200 km, and not wait a few hours for your batteries to recharge, swapping batteries is really the only option. If you don't like the batteries you get (in swap) - you can always swap them again...
The old stagecoach systems in the US (and probably Europe, but I don't know) used the same system, except people swapped tired horses for fresh... The difference in quality of horses must have been a bigger problem in those days than batteries will be now - for one thing you can test a battery, for another you can recycle it or replace old parts. And you never need to call the vet...
Perhaps we need to think of the 'batteries' as 'fuel carriers' rather than as 'parts of my car' - at that point swapping the batteries is like filling up with gas - you don't know what quality of gas you are getting but there are measurable and enforceable standards for the gas - I am sure that batteries will have the same. Batteries which are not up to par would be sent for repair or be replaced by the station, so they would be out of the loop quite fast (like old banknotes...).
These were just silhouettes? I'm not sure I'd be interested enough to really evaluate the choices properly.. At the very least, pictures of the whole 'package' would make a better survey. Best of course would be an actual visual 'measurement' encounter, but where to find an obliging set of body doubles*??? Icon self-explanatory
What about artists's models? They are used to posing nude in front of audiences, and (probably) would not mind being judged this way...
I'll take quality of life (nice bookstores, good food, Parisian cafe) over standard of living (Amazon, McDonalds, Starbucks) any day. And I'm willing to pay more for it, as I know I have to.
And re French laws - If they want to do business there, they must follow them. Flouting the law there (as anywhere) will not come cheap. And it's nice to know that even in the Silicon Valley in the US there are good friendly walk-in bookstores with in-store cafes. But enough people have to have enough money and time to support them. Even after the monopoly comes in, some little place will pop up and compete - find them and buy from them.
Is that the 'filipino monkey' chatter will treble in volume... And the <insert hostile country here> military will figure out a way to cause more paranoia on <insert friendly naval power> ships...
I'm glad that they held their fire. But I'm worried that (idiots on) both sides are looking for an 'incident' in which they are 'innocent victims' and the other side is the 'aggressor'. :-( I agree with AC that the Iranians will 'lose' the war, just as the Iraqis 'lost', but what then? Who wins the peace??? And, in the larger picture, what is the political fallout? How much more extremism and hatred of the US/West would a war with Iran build up? And where will this all end???
Sun's interest is in breaking the M$ near-monopoly on office suites and corporate PC operating systems. Sun's core business is hardware, not office suites. But if customers have a bigger choice of OS, and can use Star Office on a Solaris or Linux box, Sun can sell more hardware.
And there are two versions because that is what the market requires. Open Office because it is a free download, you can't compete without that, and Star Office because many corporate customers have an aversion to free, open source software. They want to pay someone for everything, so they have a throat to choke when it breaks...
It is interesting why no other life form has contacted us first - assuming intelligent life exists elsewhere (given billions of galaxies with billions of planets each, it probably does). Some of their civilizations will be millions of years ahead of ours - they must have astronomers and telescopes capable of detecting that there is a watery planet here.
Why haven't they visited?
1. no FTL travel, and no-one wants to spend thousands of years in a spaceship.
2. they have already killed themselves off (pollution, global warming, atomic war, religion, ...)
3. they are already here or have been (why does every culture believe in all-powerful Gods?)
4. their freezer is still full of dinosaurs and mammoths...
@ Dam
Sorry to disappoint you, but radio waves do travel at the speed of light in a vacuum. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light or http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/waves_particles/lightspeed-1.html or do your own google search...
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