Posts by Matt

Canadian prof develops drunk-driving sim

Desenitisation?

Hmm, not sure this is a great idea.

You "play" this a couple of times, and get "good" at it.

Great, thinks you, I'm now able to control a car when hammered, it's easy...

Then you put the theory into practice.

BOFH: Damsels in distress

@Matt

They were in Business Class.

First > Business > "Cattle".

BBC stumbles on email list

Misread that

@Alan

I misread your comment of "Does no-one use the BCC field anymore?" as "Does no-one use the BBC field anymore?"

Now there's a thought, a field that the BBC could use to indicate that there were potentially a whole lot of problems just around the corner! Nice.

Paris Hilton walks to freedom

Alternative to community service?

I don't think community service is the answer here - she'd only cash in on the thing - "Simple Life - Street Edition" or something.

Why not send a nice bill to Ms. Hilton for the amount of money wasted on this whole sorry mess - the trial, the retrial, hell even the prison sentence itself.

Sex game bloke traps modesty in padlock

Maybe he misunderstood what "protection" meant?

Especially when there are people like this around...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/4253849.stm

NZ couple fight to name kid '4Real'

@Hugh

Wouldn't it work better with a middle initial of "G"? Sound it out...

Cornish separatists menace Jamie Oliver

But...

People from the area can't afford to live near where they grew up. Like pretty much everywhere really. The solution - earn more ;-)

As for blaming the selfish outsiders who bought the houses - what about the former residents who "sold out" when they sold the houses. Should they have (a) taken the best price (b) sold to a "local" for less because that's all they can afford.

I know what I'd do.

Spammer faces 11 years in prison

Justice?

There is something a bit wrong with all this - 11 years for sending spam (albeit a lot, but bear with me) = huge fines/long jail terms, same for sharing mp3s/movies. Yet reading in the papers yesterday a man here got only 3 years for breaking into his neighbour's house and raping her. Oh, and this was intially a suspended sentance, only activated when he flicked a lit cigarette at his victim **just hours after the hearing**.

So crimes against an individual/that have potential to cause real harm - a slap on the wrist, essentially, compared to crimes against corporations and/or where no real harm to the individual. Eh, priorities people?

Rather than 11 years in prison (or jail, or gaol ;-P ) this chap, who obviously knows a bit about computers, should be put to better use - have him teach computer (not spamming!) skills to kids, or something useful.

Slovakian fountain stunt groom released

Re: IT Angle

No IT angle?

1. So what? (In Bootnotes therefore not serious etc etc)

2. Do you think posting that there is "no IT angle" makes you clever? Everyone reading it knows there is "no IT angle" already - do you think we need help spotting this?

US Patent Office returns to Microsoft-Eolas fray

But...?

I suppose it would depend how Wei released viola. Part of course/project work => belongs to UC. Done in own time as a personal project -> I think it belongs to him. If it was part of course/project work and therefore belonged to UC then can the prior art argument be used at all, seeing as they themselves owned it (by extenstion)?

Google Maps hits the streets

Brilliant

Wow, google maps has come a long way in only a couple of years. I've spent the morning doing no work, choosing instead to "wander" the Streets of New York. Brilliant.

This is, of course, a great thing: now the stressed desk jockeys of New York can save so much time - rather than actually take 30 minutes out of the day to get some fresh you can now just go for a "walk" around Central Park online, thus avoiding the hassle of actually having to go outdoors at all.

Next step, virtual sandwiches please then we won't need to eat. Sweet!

Space shuttle crashes in Alabama

Look closer...

There is a subtitle on the article that appears on both the main page and the article itself, and indeed even this page with the comments on it.

"It was on a train at the time".

Really, how sensitive must you be to be alarmed at the title of this article when directly underneath is a pretty big clue that we're not talking about a shuttle crash?

I'm reminded somewhat of Tweak from South Park - the kid who's so hopped up caffeine that he jumps at anything...

Dell's dance with Ubuntu: True love or farce?

Harry Homeowner doesn't care?

Thought I'd provide my 2 cents - there's the general theme that most "Harry Homeowner"s don't really care what makes their shiny new computer run, as long as it does.

I use both XP and Ubuntu and yes, I'm happy that for my needs the two are pretty much interchangable (web, email, casual development), and I'm sure that for a lot of people the two would also be interchangable, eg OpenOffice is a good replacement for Office, Firefox for IE, Thunderbird for Outlook etc, however I'm not 100% sure that Harry is 100% ready for Linux just yet. (Or Linux is 100% ready for him!)

I happily sit somewhere in the space between newbie and expert so I generally can find my way round the gubbins of the things, but while the installation was indeed a sinch, I can't for the life of me get Ubuntu to use WPA-PSK on the wireless card. I've trawled through numerous tutorials and still no luck. It takes all of 10 seconds to set this up in XP.

One thing windows does quite well, and Harry expects, is (generally) that things are easy enough to get going - I've given up in frustration over the wireless and use a big chunk of cable instead. Getting this going should be simple. What about other things that Harry likes - webcams, ipod, things that plug into the USB, skype, printers etc etc. Will they all work? First time?

For Ubuntu, or indeed any Linux to really be useable to the masses things need "to work" - no trawling through forums thanks - also the hardware manufactures need to be on the ball and supply drivers for *all* O/Ses.

Having said that things are getting better - bar the wireless everything works well - incl. mono, which like most Linux flavored things is a lot cheaper than its counterpart :-)

Short measures cost UK boozers £481m

The Big Pint

oversized glasses 2 and a solution!

Guinness did an ad campaign a couple of years back (probably only here in Ireland) where the slogan was "the big pint" - the reason? That they argued that when you get a pint of the black stuff you actually get less that a pint of liquid as the head, lovely as it is, uses up precious space in the glass - so you're getting less than a pint of the actual liquid. Hence the larger glasses, and the witty(!) slogan.

Back to the main point: easiest way for the punters to get their precious money's worth? Fforget the fancy pumps and measuring techniques - if you get less than a full pint:

you (to barman): "do you sell much X around here?" (x being your choice of poison)

barman: "yeah a bit"

you: "well you'd sell more if you filled the glass up!"

easy!