Posts by CowardlyLion

Bet you can't guess what I'm wearing, or where I'm wearing it

Re: <misty eyed>

Seconded. Still the proud owner of an NTK tee shirt.The "Elite" one.

One person's harmless japery can be another's night of LaserJet Lego

Re: Radiation Leak

That's very off topic for this thread! But here you go...

Russia indicates rocket engine exploded in test of mini nuclear reactor

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/12/russia-indicates-rocket-engine-exploded-in-test-of-mini-nuclear-reactor

Microsoft tells volume customers they can stay on Windows 7... for a bit longer... for a fee

Re: Microsoft is giving people some extra time...

> Yeah, like Active Directory, or Visual Studio...

Even that's available for Linux now

https://code.visualstudio.com/

Can the last person watching desktop video please turn out the light?

Re: Well it ain't coming from me

The Newsweek site is particularly annoying for the videos that insist on playing even after you've stopped them, and then follow you around the page.

US-Europe Privacy Shield not worth the paper it's printed on – civil liberties groups

Re: Uhm

> we can get ourselves a new government if they don't fix it.

You'd like to think so. Others are not so sure.

Britain’s one-party state

Labour’s implosion leaves Britain without a functioning opposition. That is more dangerous than many realise

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21707209-labours-implosion-leaves-britain-without-functioning-opposition-more-dangerous

Pokemon NO! Hospital demands ban on virtual creatures after addicts invade private wards

That sort of thing has already happened...

" I crashed my car playing Pokémon Go

"I saw this Lapras was close. As it’s a water-type creature I assumed it must be down by the nearby lake. I jumped into my younger brother’s car

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/05/playing-pokemon-go-crashed-car-experience

Post-Brexit UK.gov must keep EU scientists coming, say boffins

Re: "attracting European students and staff members to the UK was necessary"

"Hmmm, on a serious note, they voted the EU out? Linguistic tic or perception? I thought they voted themselves out not the EU.

Fog in Channel. Continent cut off.

Stop lights, sunsets, junctions are tough work for Google's robo-cars

Re: So ? Humans can mis-see things too.

Or this one...

http://xkcd.com/253/

How Brussels works: if you can’t beat them, join rewrite an EU directive

“the Daily Mail of the Europhile elite”

>> described earlier this year as “the Daily Mail of the Europhile elite”

> By whom?

By Charles Moore in The Spectator...

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/de-gaulle-knew-it-britain-does-not-belong-in-the-eu/?_ga=1.147754167.1882574306.1456488948

Tesla autopilot driver 'was speeding' moments before death – prelim report

That was mentioned in the article. The software to monitor the current speed limit was not sufficiently reliable in practice so it is not enabled by default.

What's Brexit? How Tech UK tore up its plans after June 23

Re: @ Doctor Syntax

One effect of the Brexit vote is that there has been a huge upswing in support for the EU across the continent .

"Support for the European Union has surged to multi-year highs in the bloc’s biggest countries following last month’s Brexit vote, according to a poll that will disappoint Eurosceptic parties hoping to usher their own nations out of the EU.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/eu-support-surges-in-big-european-countries-after-brexit-vote/article31017083/

Time to re-file your patents and trademarks, Britain

Re: 'EU' -> 'UK' -> 'K'

Except that Great Britain is the name of the island that comprises England, Scotland and Wales.

So, if Scotland leaves we can't call what's left the UK (the union of the the kingdoms of Scotland and England) nor Great Britain, because we only have half the island.

Not that only having part of the continent stops the USA referring to themselves as "America".

Windows 7's grip on the enterprise desktop is loosening

Re: If they'd made Windows 10...

Could you tell us more about this anecdote (the MD's computer being forcibly upgraded to Windows 10)?

べーコンはどこですか? demands post-pub nosh fan

µ is AltGr+M at least on my machine (Fedora 22 / KDE)

Is it humanly possible to watch Gigli and Battlefield Earth back-to-back?

Re: "So bad it's good"

Thumbs up for TOFIEWOO - will be using that in a sentence first chance I get!

'Yes, yes... YES!' Philae lands on COMET 67P

Probably worth pointing out then that ESA is not an EU government body and even includes Canada.

http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Welcome_to_ESA/European_Cooperating_States

Windows XP market share GROWS AGAIN, outstrips Win 8.1 surge

Re: That has got to be embarrassing for Microsoft

True, but our Intellectual Property laws are such that no other company can take on support for Windows XP until 2096 or thereabouts, even though Microsoft don't want it. They should either support it, sell it to a willing third party, or open source it so we can all support and develop it collaboratively.

Nokia to Devs: PLEASE DON'T make Nokiadroid apps look like WinPho

Re: It's not a feeder for Windows Phone

Thanks for that link. I'd never heard of this blog but the article you took the chart from is excellent!

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2014/02/modelling-nokia-x-scenarios-and-the-level-of-desperation-it-reveals.html

Retiring greybeards force firms to retrain Java, .NET bods as mainframe sysadmins

Re: @BlueGreen

What does RIF stand for in your comment?

None of the definitions I can find seem to fit...

http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/RIF

Windows 8.1 becomes world's fourth-most-popular desktop OS

Re: Where's Linux and MacOS on the graphs?

If you follow the link to netmarketshare you can see the data in a variety of ways.

Desktop OS share gives Windows 90.72%, Mac OS 7.68%, Linux 1.6%, Other 0%

So Linux at 1.6% has about 1/6th the market share of Windows 8 (inc. 8.1) at 10.58%.

http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0

Cinnamon Desktop: Breaks with GNOME, finds beefed-up Nemo

Fedora has up-to-date Cinnamon

Cinnamon 2 is already available in other distributions, Fedora for example:

# rpm -qi cinnamon

Name : cinnamon

Version : 2.0.3

Release : 1.fc19

Architecture: x86_64

Install Date: Wed 23 Oct 2013 11:58:06 BST

Group : Unspecified

Size : 6762352

License : GPLv2+ and LGPLv2+

Signature : RSA/SHA256, Sat 19 Oct 2013 02:02:52 BST, Key ID 07477e65fb4b18e6

Source RPM : cinnamon-2.0.3-1.fc19.src.rpm

Build Date : Fri 18 Oct 2013 17:57:02 BST

Build Host : buildvm-16.phx2.fedoraproject.org

Relocations : (not relocatable)

Packager : Fedora Project

Vendor : Fedora Project

URL : http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com

Summary : Window management and application launching for GNOME

Description :

Cinnamon is a Linux desktop which provides advanced

innovative features and a traditional user experience.

The desktop layout is similar to Gnome 2.

The underlying technology is forked from Gnome Shell.

The emphasis is put on making users feel at home and providing

them with an easy to use and comfortable desktop experience.

US Congress proposal: National Park will be FOUND ON MOON

Re: Damnit - Free Robot Assistance

You've not seen the movie "Moon" then?

Who should play the next Doctor? Nominations needed!

Thomas Sangster

Thomas Sangster was brilliant as a sort of mini-doctor in the Family of Blood episodes.

Coke? Windows 8 is Microsoft's 'Vista moment'. Again

Re: The fall out of Win 8

You could look at Xara Extreme as an alternative to Corel Draw and avoid some of those Windows boots.

Star Trek: The original computer game

And still included in modern distros. Here on Fedora 17 for example install the "bsd-games" package and type 'trek'.

Blighty's revolutionary Cold War teashop computer - and Nigella Lawson

The Case For The First Business Computer

> Nobody can say whether the LEO lived up to Thompson’s promise to cut expenses or whether

> it helped Lyons become efficient - I asked Frank and Ralph, and they reckon nobody really knew.

You would probably be interested in the following paper:

The Case For The First Business Computer

Author: Nick Pelling, 26th March 2002, Kingston University Business School, Surrey, UK

ABSTRACT

The business cases behind the five proposals made to the board of J.Lyons & Co. by Thompson and Standingford in 1947 - which led to the construction of the first business computer [#1] - are analysed, but found to be strategically lacking. Both an alternate reading of the case and some contemporary implications are then developed.

http://www.nickpelling.com/Leo1.html

Lunar water-prospecting rover rolls closer towards launch

Soviet find water on the Moon in the 1970s

We already know there's water on the moon, found by a rover in the 70s. Going back to find more is still a good idea though.

(Phys.org) -- In August 1976 Luna 24 landed on the moon and returned to Earth with samples of rocks, which were found to contain water, but this finding was ignored by scientists in the West.

http://phys.org/news/2012-06-soviet-moon-1970s-west.html

New guide: Bake your own Raspberry Pi Lego-crust cluster

Re: One Pi is Pi

The collective noun for Raspbery Pies is a punnet.

Milky Way DOOMED to high-speed smash with Andromeda galaxy

Re: We need to name this future galaxy

Actually, I like "Milkymeda"!

Big Media drags 142,000 through UK's courts in a year

Re: Now that Radio 3 had turned into shit ...

Rubbish. What about Late Junction for just one example? Do Classic FM have anything like that? Not any time I've listened to it. Classic FM seems to have, generally, what I'd term "chocolate box" classical, whereas Radio 3 has a wider variety of music, of all genres, than any other radio station I can think of. Classical, Opera, Rock, Jazz, Folk, Electronica, Experimental, you name it. I've discovered so many great things through hearing them first on Radio 3.

Re: What about commercial TV?

Exactly. I can't find a citation at the moment, but some years ago a research group did the maths for three consecutive years. It turned out that "free" ITV was, in effect, funded by a hidden sales tax of about £230 a year added to your grocery bill. At least if you don't have a TV you don't need to pay the licence fee, try asking Tesco for your TV subsidy back. As I recall the group in question were forced to stop publishing the numbers under pressure from the commercial broadcasters. Shame because I would love to see updated figures.

Re: License Fee

It's to keep it separate from the government, as with the police and the courts. One of the BBC's prinicpal duties is to be a publicly owned body reliably and accurately reporting to the British people what the government are doing and why. It's one of our safeguards against fascism. Becoming a directly funded media arm of the government itself would be a very, very bad thing.

Eddie Murphy heading for worst movie ever glory

Ultraviolet

I nominate Ultraviolet. Despite it managing only a measly 9% on Rotten Tomatoes I still can't help feeling they overrated it.

Android Market morphs into 'Google Play'

Re: From Google's blog

I've just had a notification pop up that an app (Angry Birds) requires updating. Clicked on the notice and I get the message "By using Google Play you agree to the Google Play Terms of Service, the Google Books Terms of Service and the Youtube Rentals Terms of Service" with accept and decline buttons. I read the first of those (Google Play Terms of Service) and did not like it, especially the bit that says, more-or-less, we reserve the right to delete anything we want off your phone any time we like. So I hit the decline button. That just quits the app, so now I can't update Angry Birds (as it is in this instance). Presumably I now cannot update any of my apps ever again until I accept these new terms, let alone install anything new - not even the ad supported freebies. This is not good at all.

Teletext toddles off as licence taken

Page 888

What about subtitles (i.e. page 888). Will they still work?

How to destroy the music business

Musicians can always make money from T-shirts

> Musicians can always make money from T-shirts and playing live,

> and as far as I know, no one plans to take that away.

Unfortunately, they do want to take that away:

"Time was when bands would supplement their income from selling

merchandise. Now, though, greedy venues want their share of the proceeds

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/jun/11/costoftouring

Mystery HDD maker orders kit to build monster-capacity drives

Disk Sizes

@David Corbett: That's an excellent metric - Reg please specify new storage tech as having a "song capacity of nnn C90 cassettes"!