Posts by Ishkandar 603 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Apr 2007
I think it was a Russian general who said, "Perfection is the enemy of 'good enough' !!"
This applies even more to the design stage of any project. However, what really FUBARs everything is, often, not the design per se but the constantly changing requirements from the "super-users" (uneducated arseholes with dictatorial powers) !! The possible solution to this problem is to have a "super-troubleshooter" who tells them a few home truths, e.g. you make trouble, I'll shoot you !!
It happened to me and I thanked God everyday of that project for this guy !!
BTW, the PH icon represents to level of "intelligence (??)" of the super-users !!
Actually, Pontianak in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) is bang on the equator !! It has a nice little marker in town for where the equator goes through and it is a great tourist attraction. Strange that one couldn't launch from just outside town. It also has great R&R facilities for the lads for after-launch parties too !!
We are still running NT4 SP3 for all work machines including an Oracle database and a very large in-house-built application. It ain't broke and we wouldn't fix it until twylight falls on those machines.
I refused to use XP until it was stable. Had the same problems when NT first came out and waited until it (NT) was sort-of stable (SP2) before moving on to it.
And I have used 64 bit machimes yonks ago; mostly in middle-weight iron that served as room-heaters in winter. And for those of you who believe in the Creation according Prophet Gates, try looking up PDP-8s !! I believe that was the era of Kernigan, Ritchie, Aho (?)*, Wienburg et al !!
Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; thrice is definitely extracting the Michael......
*my memory ain't what it used to be. Too many black coffees have flowed under the U-tube !!
So now we know that, when Tony the Blair-witch said that his government poured so many *EXTRA* billions into the NHS, this is what happened to those billions !!
ALL reports to date indicate that the patients are *NOT* getting any benefit from all that extra dosh !! From all I've heard, we'll have got far better value-for-money just buying a large herd of ponies and getting guys to ride from hospital to hospital with saddle-bagsful of X-ray films; and it's environmentally friendly, too !!
Perhaps we should adopt a concept first postulated by Larry Niven (science fiction author), that any NHS administrator who specced a impossible system should be dismantled and his parts offered for free orgen transplant to the needy. Obviously, the brain will be the most valuable part - one previous owner, hardly ever used !!
800,000 Gap applicants' data lost is not really that bad. After all, if these people had all that much money/assets to be ripped off, they wouldn't be applying to work for Gap, would they ?
To be fair, they may be slightly better off than those applying to work for MacDonalds ?
Genghis Khan, or Temujin (to give his true name), NEVER out-ran his supplies. In fact, he had a great obsession about supply dumps all along his route(s) of march. Furthermore, he could split his army into three or more "sub"-units and march them along different routes and only converge when they were near their objective in order not to over-stress the supply situation.
BTW the word you want is HORDE not "hoard" and that word is a Western corruption of the word "Ordo" which meant a "division" of 10,000 men.
And the only reason the Mongols turned back from conquering Europe was that the Great Khan had died and all the generals were rushing back to Mongolia to chose (or be "chosen") the next Great Khan ( a bit like the Republican convention(s) of recent times).
As for copulation, they had the pick of the women from all their conquered territories so they should have no problems in that sense. Therefore, the prohibition is on the actual desire rather than the force of circumstances (as had happened often in European sailing ships of yore).
Having said that, the Spartans were famed for their martial qualities and they made buggery of young into a fine art !! Or could it be that they would rather charge the enemy and die gloriously like men than to be buggered by their superiors (pun intended) !!
If that boat went through the Panama canal AND got there in time to intercept that sub, it's got to be the fastest boat on (or above) Earth !! And the Septics moan repeatedly about the Chinese naval build-up on the Pacific !!
Come back, Thunderbirds !! Where are you when we need you ??
BTW that sub looks like something floating off Blackpool beach powered by a semi-sozzled fat bloke pushing at the pedals !! All that's missing is the knotted hankie...
Before you rant on about "the sweatshops of Commie China", please note that Apples and Dells are mainly contracted to the "sweaty-palms shops" of the renegade province just off-shore and that many of "the sweatshops of Commie China" are owned and operated by good, kind-hearted US/Canadian citizens. Rather similar to the Cuba of the Bautista days !!
Say, rather, that the kindly Michael Dell has screwed the manufacturers to the lowest price possible and they responded in kind. Now, if only Mr. Dell will sign up with FairTrade.....
>>> Assuming one super-sticky particle per cubic metre (or one brain cell per three starlets - don't ask us to guess which of them is currently using it), <<<
Shurly that is based on the Heisenberg Principle (or should that be the Hasslehof Principle ) wherein the starlet using that one brain cell is the one **NOT** next to Mr. Hasslehof (on the basis that if you can see em, then it - the brain cell - is not there).
@ Pretty lady - It is presumed that that one brain cell can function in the Virtual Machine mode, whereby it can access the computational power of the unused AND unpickled cell(s) in Hasslehof's brain and, thus, obviating the need for massive localised computational power !! Just one local cell plus one from him WILL make the two requisite cells.
In the UK, one is NOT legally obliged to pay for a TV license **IF** one does NOT watch television *programmes* !! Possession of a television set is NOT a valid reason for suing anyone for a TV license. I believe this has been proved in court that a person who *only* uses the set for watching videos/DVDs can *legally* possess a set without paying for that extortion from the Beeb !! The onus of proof is on the Beeb !!
Ever since a duff exploding battery incident about 4 years ago, I have taken to buying (at my own expense) the GP (Gold Peak) equivalents of the "official" batteries of Japanese the manufacturers.
They (the GP ones) are far cheaper, works just as well or better (they have larger capacity ones that the "official" manufacturers don't produce) and they have NEVER been known to over heat, catch fire or explode. So much for the highly praised Japanese quality control procedures when a tiny, little Singaporean company, manufacturing in China, can show them how it is done properly !!
Having said that, it could be that these batteries were shipped by mistake to the general public, since they could have been ordered by the Ninjas as disguised hand-grenades !!
From your comments, I presume that you have everything connected up to the "network printer sharing thingies". We have more than one network printer for 10 people who do approx.20-40 (text and/or image) prints per day each. The difference is that the printers run off a 386 box salvaged from the scrap heap, force-fed with Linux and made to function as a print server/spooler on the LAN.
This liberated 10 printer cables and 10 power cables for the unneeded printers and a LOT of desk real estate which get promptly colonised by plush toys, boxes of chocolate biscuits, "must have" executive toys, etc.; the network cable is there anyway for other purposes.
Even as we discuss, Uncle Sam has "misplaced" 190,000 AK47s and other weapons !! And they have the cheek to blame others on weapons proliferation !!
Truly as the Native Americans would have said," White man speaks with forked tongue" !!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6933569.stm
The original command "load" meant grasping the barrel of your weapon near the mouth and slamming the butt to the ground whilst groping for a cartridge from your cartridge box, ripping off the bullet from the cartridge and pouring some of the powder onto the frizzen (no spellchecker ??) pan and the rest into the barrel, raising the ramrod from its holder, reversing it and slamming it down the barrel and raise it, spitting the bullet to the hand holding the barrel and then slamming the ramrod again into the barrel to push the bullet as far down as it will go, raising the ramrod, reversing it and putting it back into its holder. You are now "loaded" !!
As for clips, the old Lee-Enfield 303 had clips of 5 rounds which were "loaded"/inserted into the integral magazine.
And, depending on the definition of an "assault rifle", there is that Czech invention, the Brno-Enfield 303 light machine gun, more popularly known as the Bren. It was man portable and had an excellent range and accuracy and pre-dated the German "assault rifle" !!
With regard to the Vietnam War, the M16 was not the only weapon that was highly unpopular with the US troops. An even more unpopular weapon was the "Pig" - the M60 heavy machine gun. It was know to fly apart under heavy use, which rather defeats the purpose of its use !!
All WIMPs arise from work done at PARC. They first invented the GUI and then invented the pointing device that "enabled" that GUI - i.e. the mouse. Their version went on to become the X11R3 standard that was used on a lot of early PCs/microcomputers by those who were bothered to "fit" the X11 free source code into their flavour of x86 unix !!
As mentioned above, Apollo, Sun and others used various flavours of the X11R3 on their systems and was highly sought after by those who had to work in graphics !!
It definitely was NOT an either/or case !! You completely forgot the 6809 chip which was also quite popular in those days !! You also forgot the Commodore 64 which pre-dated the Pet and the British TRS-80 clone - the Video Genie - and the masses of Far Eastern Apple II clones, i.e. the Franklin, Pear, etc. Some of them came as DIY kit-in-a-bag which pre-dated the ZX80/81 !!
Then there's the grand-daddy of all micro-computers, the Altair DIY job. Ask any kid nowadays what breadboarding means and they'll back nervously away from you holding out a knife or a cross, depending on their religion !!
The fact is that the Koreans "blends" are, themselves, made by blending good and not-so-good whiskey. Spectroscopy or spectrometry will have a hard time telling the difference without a whole encyclopaedia of whiskey to reference !! Furthermore, after purchase, they proceed to chuck all sorts of mixers, including green tea, into the whiskey !!
The **real** whiskey drinkers there buy only unblended stuff; for which privilege, they pay a hefty import tax, not to mention the advertising and importer's profit !!
Whoever, this Korean guy is, he is doing a pretty good impression of Alistair Campbell !!
"Darling, I've just solved this major problem that's been plaguing the Council for the last ten years ! I just need an hour to finish up before I come home for dinner. I hope to be home by 9.00 pm......Aw, WHAT !! It's...It's...ALL disappeared !! My computer just SHUTDOWN !! Aaaargh !! "
Be fair, guys !! If you don't like that free software, they offer to cheerfully refund every cent you paid them for that software !!
That said, for every one knowledgable geek that I know, there are at least 38 others whose knowledge of IT is limited to where the on/off switch is on their PCs. Similarly, Tesco sells ready plucked and gutted chickens. If you don't like that, you can always buy fertilised eggs and hatch them yourself and then feed them and wait until the chickens are grown enough to slaughter, pluck, gut and *THEN* cook !!
BTW, I love rearing and slaughtering my own chickens !! Gives me a sense of power !! ***Evil cackles***
Quite a few of the "new" features have been implemented by skunkworks add-ons by frustrated DBAs/Analysts who cannot wait for the "Real Thing" !! Most of these are done using low(ish) level languages.
What we have here is the same thing but tarted up (i.e. dumbed down) for those "DBAs" who cannot be bothered to research further than the last notes from their Oracle "certified" DBA course !!
I also agree with Ian Grumby (see above) that some features have appeared in other databases earlier. However, it's much more fun lighting a fire under Microsoft !!
>Greenpeace said of the announcement: "Consumers, most of whom have no desire to eat GM produce, expect politicians to put their health, food, safety, and the environment before the vested interests of a few agro-chemical companies."
Of course, they are frightened ! Imagine if the paste they use for DIY wallpapering suddenly gets up and stick to them instead !! Then again, the fact that ordinarily produced (non-GM) paste also sticks to them is quite beside the point !
And glossy paper is only useful for the production of lads mags and other publications of the higher shelves, not the Independent !!
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