Re: Wombats?
Warning: Old Joke Alert
Q: What do you play with a Wombat?
A: Wom
248 publicly visible posts • joined 17 May 2007
Running commands whilst connected to the wrong system/database is a rite of passage for anyone in the IT industry. We've all done it at some point in our careers and anyone who says they haven't is either lying or is a PFY who has yet to experience that bowel liquifying moment that strikes almost immediately after pressing the ENTER key.
What is more interesting is how you recover from the situation and did anyone actually notice?
"Why would the first fire bird pick up a burning twig?"
You can do the same amount of wondering about why anything happened for the first time. Given the number of edible plants vs inedible plants, is it just lucky we discovered agriculture before everyone gave up on the plant thing as being a waste of time?
"And all of it total crap."
If you think that the output from the BBC is total crap, you really need to spend sometime watching the output from other countries, and then you would be aware of what crap broadcasting really looks like. In my neck of the woods, the output from the local state broadcaster would make re-runs of the Teletubbies look like Oscar winning material.
"In most cases the advertisers had no idea that their ads were being served on sites that they, or their customers, found offensive.
On-line advertising looks like house of cards, and I suspect the whole thing will just collapse one day."
As Nectar are in the process of discovering.
"Honda, the makers of soulless machinery, are trying to: http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/news/a32162/honda-just-invented-a-self-balancing-motorcycle-that-never-falls-over/"
While, initially, that may seem to reduce by 1 the number of the numerous ways you can die on a motorcycle, I suspect that in fact, it may increase the number of ways to die. If it never falls over, presumably, you can't drop it on purpose when you need to?
>some relatively small further fraction comes back in the form of EU spending in the UK. But we have >almost no control over how this will increase in future or what the EU chooses to spend it on.
Apart from disputing the use of the phrase "small fraction", I am not so sure that the fact that the EU decides what it is spent on is such a bad idea. A Tory government is going to favour spending it in the Tory heartlands, that's where the votes are, similairly, a Labour government would favour the Labour heartlands. At least the EU decides on economic and social grounds rather than political ones.
"If that doesn't make your blood boil from either a moral or an ethical standpoint, then you've totally lost me."
Sorry, but it is a simple binary choice.
Apple et al are either breaking the law (tax evasion) or they are not (tax avoidance). If they are breaking the law then the relevant authorities should be prosecuting and someone should be going to prison.
If they are not breaking the law, then the relevant authorities should either change the law or if not, should say why they are not changing the law and then shut up about it.
No court is going to convict if the law is not being broken. The current furore over moral or ethical implications is simply a smoke and mirror exercise to distract attention from the fact that governments have no intention of adjusting the current tax laws. The reasons for this are left as an exercise for the reader.
You aren't going to defeat this by arguing technical impossibility. If the last month has taught us anything then it's that politicians and facts are mutually incompatible, and that the British Public has "had enough of experts".
We need a Daily Wail style campaign based on nothing more than vague hints and hand waving to suggest that not having encryption will cause really, really bad things to happen. The more outrageous the claim, the better. And then, we all need to spread the message amongst the witless and gullible as often and as loudly as we can.
What could possibly go wrong?
"The white-headed vulture - Trigonoceps occipitalis - is native to sub-Saharan Africa and under threat of extinction in the wild."
We'll just have to hope that the local swivel-eyed loons are more intelligent than the swivel-eyed loons around here, otherwise the damn thing will be going extinct in the West Country too.