Combined with the Android Bitcoin article
Perhaps random.org going HTTPS only meant all the fuel got sent to one engine?
1822 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Apr 2007
I'm a stupid person by this definition. Except I'm not actually stupid, I made a deliberate payoff choice between good 'free' stuff, and some privacy. I made it based on the assumption that someone, somewhere was going to be tracking my activity no matter what, whether GCHQ, or just any other random SMTP server in my email routing. I had the choice to pay for expensive space for my webmail inbox or take up the Gmail offer of a huge inbox. Google Drive keeps 100 backup revisions of my work and means I can work wherever I am. Android reduced the cost of my phone and invigorated the smartphone market. I use Google's DNS servers to get past some of the rudimentary blocking my ISP thinks is good for me.
I made that choice consciously, as otherwise I'd be dealing with several dozen different suppliers and paying each one. I still have that option if I choose it, but the value of my privacy isn't a big deal considering London has a zillion CCTV cameras, my oyster card and credit cards will give you a decent idea where I am and what my patterns of spending are, GCHQ or 5 could easily get just about all this information anyway so my absolute privacy is already just an illusion. This way I also get some good toys in return.
In a few years, they'll have a whole bunch of data about a dead guy.
I am expecting a raft of high-horse downvotes by the way, but as you do, consider that some people see the world differently than you do.
Quite - I thought £159 was taking the piss until £245 came up.
Why so expensive? Actually, seriously, as a question. Fabric cost is maybe a few quid, retail. Stitching - seeing as Primark can make a profit on a jean jacket for a tenner, I'm not convinced that's the premium item.
>>>I have been to California many times and tried the various "craft beers" and they all taste like they were made by beginners.<<<
When you look where 'Bud Light' and their keg lager brethren set the bar, you don't need to be a great beer to be a better beer.
What it's about is corporate palliness because some poll showed that customer retention increases x% if staff use the customers names. In America. I can't speak for America (probably very similar, Americans aren't stupid) but in Europe it feels invasive, creepy and insincere.
What it's not for is identifying whose frothycapudoodah is whose as it's hardly challenging for staff in any other cafeteria to manage day in, day out, without faux camaraderie.
Hi Lars,
No, I don't think he had anything to do with either, except obliquely as a consumer, and to misrepresent them, then run their products into the ground.
Not sure what lacking a 'British' Linux distro has to do with anything - we speak English (and indeed en-gb is well supported, or failing back to en-us is hardly a chore) so I can't really think what that would contribute. We have plenty of contributors to the kernel and other distributions, so I'm not sure I understand your point?
>> 2nd best satellite dish in the UK <<
That's unfair - he also brought us shitty 'midi' stereos full of air with power measured in PMPO not RMS.
He brought us the emailer phone, which they even carried the pretence on The Apprentice that his 'offices' used them
He made Sinclairs crappier
Viglen who?
The model is buy cheap from China and flog it on, screw the British economy.
In honesty, he's not a man I'd take business advice from. He did buy a lot of property when the rising tide made most of his money. In fact, in his last series of comedy business light entertainment format The Apprentice, in which he plays Victor Meldrew, he was specifically dismissive of someone buying a cardboard skeleton. The guy met the brief, if the brief was wrong and underspecified that's the wrong brief. In software, would we expect 'I want the system to do what I want, not what I specified - so YOU are wrong'... Not acute business skills IMHO.
Employing people isn't just their take home salary costs. There's the NI, holiday pay, sick pay, maternity, recruitment, training, HR overhead, management of said staff, desk space, payroll run costs, IT overhead, uniforms, equipment, welfare vehicles, shift costs, plus the cost of what those coppers aren't able to at the same time. Employing people is expensive, the overhead is huge.
7 series is what your hoping for, or at least what the network is going for. 100 episodes makes the world of difference to global TV syndication (ie free money for life) which is why cast sign 6½ season contacts as by that point they'll request (and deserve) $1M/show. This makes 7 series the moon shot, with anything shorter being prematurely cancelled.
This has a vulgar side-effect, that series like LOST set off with no intention to tie up loose ends - the ONLY thing that matters is the overnight figures, so they spawn dozens of arcs they will never satisfy to keep you watching. I, personally (like that counts for anything), believe it's a fundamental breach of trust between the producers and audience. If I'm going to give you 100 hours of my life, your side of the deal is to act without cynicism and in the best interests of the story and characters I'm investing in.
This is why I don't join in on the first wave of hyperbole, nor the second... I've been cheated before and you don't get to do that twice to me. Better Call Saul is somewhat different as it's entirely character-driven, and that's so rewarding by comparison.
What hasn't changed is the stigma. Nor the blackmail angle.
"Sorry boss, we'd just installed the new traffic filter and saw all sorts of connections coming across the network, wanted to make sure we didn't have a hacker on the network. By the way, is this a good time to talk about my role in the company?"
I haven't seen figures for youtube as a subdivision for ages, but I know a few years back it was half a billion bucks a year subsidy. I wonder if it's better or worse now (assuming you don't confuse things with internal accounting handwaving)? Better-more adverts, worse-more hours of stuff spinning every day, removal of more copyrighted works.
Perhaps we should just write this whole internet thing off as a failed experiment ;-)
^^^ Most interesting about the Victorians. Maybe IP laws of the time didn't work as intended, have they been revisited much since?
I worry that patent law will take cues from the insanely lobbied copyright camp that means that bloomin' mouse will never enter public domain because protecting it for 95 years means the original artist is going to be more creative than a mere 20/40/50/75 years, which is blatantly bollocks.
Potting resin, and we're back to the pre-patent world. This is why the system is broken, your innovation is now not a part of the sum of human knowledge to build upon because the system that would have given you an exploitable monopoly has been abused and broken quite willingly by lawyers and money.
Patenting creates a temporary monopoly in exchange for publishing your research in the public domain. It's a hugely valuable system for innovation (before it, people would hide research as the only way to prevent copying) which necessarily stifled innovation. Copyright provision was similarly conceived as a temporary monopoly in exchange for putting creative works into the public domain.
Both systems are laudable, but the greedy cunts got in there wanting the monopoly, going on a land grab, but trying to slam the door behind them. I use the term cunts with sincerity, by the way. If I knew another term with more vitriol, I'd consider that instead - my apologies to ladyparts, this isn't about you.
With a title like that though, you know it's going to be shit, so make your own choices.
Another example of an excruciatingly bad film that will still happily take your £1.99 at the petrol station counter is 'Bikini Blood Bath'. You know it'll be dreadful (and it is indeed truly fucking awful) but it has a couple of clever moves for the post pub crowd. First few minutes, boobs (that's the last you see of boobs, too, they're there only as a come-on for the rest of the film), then bikinis, ketchup and no kind of plot worthy of watching. The scenes are apparently improvised by a bunch of vacuous non-actresses, but when the non-dialogue gets too dull for even the low bar you expect, the editor just drowns it all with crappy no-name rock. It really is quite a triumph of shitness, but cannot be included in a miserable viewing session like this as you KNOW it's going to be bollocks from the title alone.
I got a surprisingly good notional 150x illuminated pocket microscope for $20 from the far east - using it on a phone screen you can focus on either the surface scratches, or LED's (yep you can see each quite clearly). Admittedly you don't get to take photos, but absolutely great for banknote details, human hairs, etc.
Makes them smarter, but also encourages different ways of approaching a problem and of seeing/modeling the world around them.
Remember when you were learning Entity Relationship models, or Object Oriented design, you had a week it two is setting the world as tables with attributes or classes with methods? That was your brain making new connections, being able to spot bigger patterns, being, as you say 'smarter'. Smarter in that it'll now, at some level, be just a little bit better at analysing the big-scale picture and seeing flows of information, understanding interfaces, etc.
I would love some IT enthusiasm in cabinet alongside PPE and the classicists!