Posts by tkioz 448 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jul 2009
Anyone who has ever lived in a fishing community can tell you this research is very welcome. I remember the first time I saw an unexploded WWII mine... I was a teenager working at the local fish transport company, there I was shoveling ice and a pack of utter idiots off one of the trawlers drive up in a ute with this big ass spikey thing in the back of it... they'd dredged it up in their nets and decided to bring into into the centre of town...
Yeah the next 8 hours waiting while a bomb disposal unit got there and then defused the bloody thing were -fun-... the police moved people out of their homes, evacuated buildings, basically a fun weekend! I spoke to one of the bomb techs after it was all said and done and he said that if it had gone up, it would have taken out a lot of the nearby area... bloody big bomb, but they didn't even blink, apparently they get a lot of practice on the them.
Generally someone would dredge one up every now and then, though most of the fishermen are smart enough not to bring it into the middle of town!
With Screen Australia running the only games that will get funding will be artsy fartsy bollocks... just like how they hand out funding for crap like Rabbit Proof Fence/etc...
There is no way those latte-sipping ponces would do something as low brow as fund something that actually might be *gasp* enjoyable...
While I wouldn't say fixing a computer is dangerous in general, most techs, including myself, could tell stories about those rare occasions when things go tits up. Like the time that PSU literally exploded next to my head... thankfully none of the shrapnel managed to leave the case, but the large bit of metal sticking out the side of the PSU not to mention the noise and smoke nearly gave me a heart attack...
And then there is dealing with older style CRT monitors... death traps that they are. So yes, a laymen could hurt themselves... not that I give any credence to the bollocks Toshiba is peddling.
@Sean Timarco Baggaley
I agree that spring cleaning would be a luxury, but it would have a decent effect. If you put together a group of legal scholars to go through the law books and distill them down into a single volume with all the laws, their current exceptions, etc. in one place it would do wonders for both the legal profession (less looking for obscure case law) and the population at large, as it stands the law is very hard to understand, and it shouldn't be; anyone with a form 8 education should be able to understand the basics of the law, but few can because of all the obscure and out of date information in there.
While I don't use his product (don't really like it), I can respect him for his work, and sympathize with his problems. I myself have a bit of a temper, and it's hard to keep in check, so I can see where he coming from, it's unfortunate that he seems to given up on controlling it though, he is a very smart man and could do great(er) things if he looked into anger management.
As for his job... well I'd say it's vital, you need people like him that focus on the big picture, otherwise you end up with all sorts of garbage all over the place, and that's not just in the world of code, it's everything...
I may be way off base here, and forgive me if I'm asking stupid questions, but I honestly don't know much about the subject.
Isn't a vaccine something to prevent an infection? If so why are they giving it to people with HIV already? Not that I'm advocating infecting people with HIV as a test, but it just doesn't seem to make much sense to me...
Is this also a treatment for people already infected?
Normally I'm a bit hesitant when comes to "pricing mistakes", though I generally fall on the side of the customer (customers get boned over screw ups all time, so it's only fair companies need to eat it as well), but in this case it seems like a clear open and shut case of Apple buggering it up.
He asked them if it was the right price, they said yes, they should definitely honor that price.
The unrealistic job requirements made me laugh when I first ran into them... then cry when I kept running into them. I moved to a new area a few years back, and my savings were in a crappy state after the cost of moving, and the job I had lined up disappeared into the government maw (deciding to do a two year "study" on the project that was just about to start... killed that company) so I started looking around for anything...
Even retail IT... a small computer store offering $28k a year wanted people with at least 5 years experience (got that), multiple certs (got those... no idea what a computer store wanted with some of them though), extensive programming experience (got that but retail it????)... and it kept going... all for $28k working in a store fixing malware infections and updating browsers...
I went in and asked "this is a joke right?" turns out, no he wasn't kidding...
Price gougers and Geoblockers can go rot in hell, THEY, not consumers are the main cause of piracy. When I go to Amazon to buy an eBook, or whatever, and get a bold faced "You can not buy this book in your region" they lose all right to complain about people pirating that content.
People want to do the right thing, but when you make it harder for them to purchase something than if they stole it, you're only harming yourself. There is zero legitimate reason for digital content (priced in USD! Steam!) to cost more in one region.
It's complete bollocks. Get rid of Geoblocking, get rid of price discriminations, and then if piracy keeps being a problem you can bitch, but not until then.
They want people to use their "App Store" so they can get in on the profit like Apple has... and No. Sorry. Just No. I want nothing to do with their abortion of a UI, and I definitely don't want anything to do with their App Store.
The "closed garden" approach that Apple made popular is something I wish would just die a horrible death.
Yeah... trying to force people like me onto that stupid tablet OS is going to end well for them... I was very unenthused by 8 already... this news just means I'll be even less likely to upgrade to their Apple clone (seriously, App store? crappy interface?)
Unfortunately there is no real competition for desktop users who *gasp* WANT A DESKTOP OS. I wouldn't buy an Apple for all the tea in China, and don't even me that Linux bollocks, I want something that works, I don't want to be screwing around with Linux (tried it before)
My best is the first four years went something like "hey dude, hey dude, how about letting me out of this place, or at least bringing in a few chicks"... then since he stopped speaking English at that point it seems reasonable he gave up and embraced the time honoured tradition of swearing his head off while smiling and nodding...
All governments are hypocrites about this sort of thing... "How dare you spy on us!" they scream when they catch someone... all the while spying on other nations themselves... It's part of the game, they all accept that, so long as they don't get caught, and now it applies to cyberspace as well.
The Russians spy/spied on the yanks, the yanks spied/spy on the Russians, the Frogs spy on the Poms, the Poms spy on the Frogs, The Chinese spy on the Japanese, the Japanese spy on the Chinese, etc. etc. It's all part of international relations.
I hope they try and take the games back... I really do... because in a lot of countries that law is firmly on the side of the customer in these issues. Wrong price? tough poopies, you've got to honour! Badly handled give aways? Tough crap, gotta honour it!
The only lessons companies learn are the ones that cost them money.
I guess they think freedom of expression only goes their way huh? Why aren't they protesting videos that call for the death and mutilation of people of different faiths? Why aren't they screaming about the anti-Semitic tripe that is endemic on youtube...?
Oh right... they are too busy giving some piss-ant little film a streisand effect. Seriously. they need to grow the hell up, so you're feelings a hurt, waah waah, get over it.
Chances are, my dear Apple Fanboi, that since Google spent far more time working on their project rather then banging it out like trained monkeys that they had far more time to avoid pratfalls like this, either by letting government approach them or approaching the governments themselves.
@Michael H.F. Wilkinson
Unfortunately a small, vocal, minority of people claiming to be Christians and Christians leaders get so bogged down in scripture and literalism that they forget to actually be Christian, that is to be Christ-like, to be a follower of Christ, to follow the ideals of Christ, forgiveness, kindness, tolerance, gentleness, acceptance, humility, and love.
I'm honestly staggered people like him end up in positions of power and influence... Hell I'm a religious man, a Christian, and I think this guy is a wackjob that shouldn't be allowed near a slide-rude, let alone influencing critical science oversight...
The quest to understand the universe and how it works is a quest understand God... To disregard evidence out of knee-jerk moronic fundamentalism is to spit on God's work.
This is a funny one... Both sides are right! Of course it was predetermined, it's playing politics, but on the other hand, it's also true, working with Chinese companies is like handing your information to the Chinese government on a sliver plater.
And so both sides are also hypocrites! Huawei by pretending it's not a tool of it's government, and the U.S government pretending it believes in the free market (here's a hint, it never has, and likely never will, just look at the "farm subsidies" and other bollocks it pulls, while at the same time whining like a little bitch about the practices of other countries!)
That's one of the main criticisms of Dysons' ideas (one he himself brought up IIRC), the idea that any race that had the knowledge and capacity to build one, would be so staggeringly advanced they wouldn't have the need to build one (beside bragging rights).
But on the subject of harming your planet... not so. If you build one in our solar system, you'd do it out near Jupiter's orbit, the Earth, Mars, Venus, Mercury, would be INSIDE the sphere and it wouldn't have much impact on them at all.
The shear amount of living space of a Dyson construct is really hard to get your mind around, you'd have land equal to billions of Earths, capable of housing hundreds of trillions of people without any crowding at all... Hell it would be like Earth with only a few million people living on it... It's brain hurting.
Though you'd need a lot of people outside bringing you raw materials to keep the civilisation going... that's stripping mining on a stellar scale kind of stuff... Hell you could dismantle every planet in our solar system and still not have enough raw materials for even a small percentage of it...
In engineering form follows function, but in technological evolution, function follows form.
Why would a sea-based life form discover fire? Gun-powered? Combustion? That rules out an entire tech tree that leads to space.
Would a species with a genetic memory develop writing? if not how would they work with complicated equations?
It all comes down to the idea that in order for a species to reach space they have to have SOME things in common with humans.
I don't want to know what a Kardashian Level II civilisation would look like :p
But seriously, we're not even type I on the scale. A type I civilisation can produce the power output equal to an entire planet, we're no where near that. Maybe in a few centuries, unless we get a break somewhere in energy production.
While I applaud the research, I honestly doubt any civilisation would ever construct a Dyson construct... for the simple reason any civilisation capable of doing so would be so advanced they wouldn't need to build one.
Actually stretch that... I could see humans building one if we could... just so we can brag about it...
It is a statistical improbability that we are alone in our galaxy, let alone the entire universe.
Disbelievers people say that the conditions for life are mind boggling rare, and intelligent life even rarer still... I'll accept that, but working for that, there are there are 300 Billion stars in our galaxy alone... and ours isn't even a very big galaxy...
The raise of intelligent life could be one in a trillion trillion to one... and there would still be literally countless other intelligent life forms out there in the Universe somewhere...
As for spending money on something better... like what? better bombs? reality TV? pills to make dicks harder? Please enlighten me.
While some posters seem to be of the impression that since Russia and the yanks are friends now this shouldn't be an issue... it really is one. Keeping your defence tech "in-house" or at least preventing general exporting is a good diplomatic tool. It gives you something to bargain with.
"Oh hey, you've got those new missiles guidance chips? can we have a look?"
"What do you have we want?"
If there is one thing any government hates, it's someone taking away their prerogatives.
Yikes... I better no run for public office if people are digging up WoW forum comments...
But in all seriousness, I think personal hobbies should be off limits, some people like model trains (I can't see the attraction), some people like building ships in bottles (really can't see the attraction), some people play video games, everyone needs a way to unwind.
The PPK is fairly weak, as far as handguns go, even the 9mm that you see on TV as deadly (unless you've got plot armour) is fairly weak.
The PPK is best used up close when you've got no other choice, and against the skin in a vital spot, essentially an assassins weapon. The way Bond uses it in the movie (torso shots at 10-30 meters) is very unlikely do anything more then knock people down, unless you hit someone in a vital spot (e.g the neck), and against body armour it will do jackshit.
Also Bond would need to be an Olympic level (better actually) shooter to make half the shots you see in the movies. Pistols just aren't that accurate.
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