* Posts by thenim

93 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jan 2010

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God save the Queen... from Donald Trump. So say 1 million Britons

thenim

Re: Where were all these virtue signallers...

Why is there a down vote on this? Oh shit - my mistake, forgot, it's not an "alt-fact"!

Swiss effectively disappear Alps: World's largest tunnel opens

thenim
Pint

All the banter aside..

Here's a pint to the engineers (and ehem, project managers) on this!

US Treasury: How did ISIS get your trucks? Toyota: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

thenim

otherwise known as the

Clueless Interloping Agency...

Google and pals launch Accelerated Mobile Pages project

thenim

As if things weren't befuddled enough...

Another bloody useless "standard". After 10 years, got back recently into doing some web thingymagick, and the sheer number of acronyms that have been added to the mess it was back then is janky!

I wish there was a browser that would only load content from a single domain once the page loads - without having to install a gazillion different plugins and play wack-a-mole..

After the ad slingers the biggest blame lies at the feet of trash sites like Buzzfeed and it's kin...

(Side question, does anyone on this site actually follow the register on facepalm/twatter/tumbleweed-plus/rss?)

BOFH: The ONE-NINE uptime solution

thenim

What is it with these ridiculously oversized ads...

now blocking the text too... I would have enjoyed it but for the stupid ad blocking the text on the first page... useless...

(yes I know ad block and all that shite, but still...)

I need a password to BRAKE? What? No! STOP! Aaaargh!

thenim

Re: Stereotypes

Have you *seen* the Italians drive? Drove south of Rome towards Naples for the first time a few weeks ago, now that region is special... Indicators are dead weight on their cars...

The only way to get anywhere is to be a complete and total dick on the road, i.e. not Christian driving... (e.g. do not signal, ever, even when pulling on to the motorway; turn onto a main road even if there is on coming traffic - for they will stop; traffic lights are, well, just for information really; pedestrians - bah, meatbags, all fair game; speed limits are for other people, 60, ususally means 100, 130 is about as fast as your ferrari* can go on the road; and finally right of way is governed by size...)

Special place for driving...

* all cars are driven as if they are ferraris...

Alien Ninja Fembot Pirates vs the Jedi SAS Chuck Norris startroopers: RUMBLE

thenim

You missed one...

Putin.

He will own anything on this list and any other for that matter.

Best shot: Coffee - how do you brew?

thenim

Re: Sorry.

I do have to agree with you there, I live in Switzerland, and they are big on this UHT shit, tastes aweful. However full fat milk on coffee now that's a different story..

Hey, Michael Lewis: Stop DEMONISING Wall Street’s SUPERHUMAN high-speed trading

thenim

Don't get your point...

What has algorithmic trading got to do with any of the listed scandals in your comment? IMHO, this is the general problem, anything wrong in banking/markets is naturally blamed on the least understood of all components.

If you read some of the details surrounding recent flash crashes (say 2010), you'll see that even there, the exchanges have found that it has little to do with HFT, and most likely the result of something done by a meatbag. Typically such an action would ripple across any algorithms (as it did in 2010), but you'll also find that the algorithms also help to stabilize the situation and provide the necessary liquidity.

Blighty teen boffin builds nuclear reactor INSIDE CLASSROOM

thenim

Re: Excellent stuff

Couldn't have said it better my self (though I'm in IT), I'd much prefer it if kids were taught to be curious and explore (by 'splodin) rather than by rote!

Larry Ellison: Technology has 'negatively impacted' children

thenim

I call bollocks, the fundamental problem these days is drive-by-parenting. My parents wallopped a good education into me, irrespective of the distractions, and I will ensure the same to mine. The same cannot be said for the rest of the statistics.

Technology can play an important role in development as long as it's closely monitored by parents, it's the lazy fools who treat it as child minding that contribute to the large statistics that weigh against technology.

It's human nature to blame everything (and everyone else) besides one's self.

Survey: Yoof too COOL for Ferraris, want state-sponsored hybrids

thenim
WTF?

Since when did...

19-thirtysomethings count as yoof?? I was always under the impression that said yoof were below voting age..

In this new classification, I guess I'm a yoof as well then?? WTF? Frankly I will argue with the research, it's bollocks, I own a hybrid but hanker after something more decidedly environmentally unfriendlier that goes like a bat out of hell, needs to carry my progeny safely though...

Boffins find ALIEN WORLD orbiting the Sun's LONG LOST TWIN

thenim

Re: Rigorous Logic vs. Methane Spirals from Uranus

Let's all give up and wait for the Messiah then shall we? Mmmkay? So we can all exalt in the glory of heaven...

HP: This Xmas, get the SACK... and not the one filled with presents

thenim

Re: Another Mangernism

How very apt, some of thes folks should read the first chapter of When will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? by Carlin, it's entitled Euphemisms...

NASA Mars tank Curiosity rolls on old WET PATCH, sighs, sniffs for life signs

thenim

Re: So, seriously for a moment

What you patently fail to realise is that space exploration requires baby steps. We can't just go into warp drive from day one. It takes time and a measured approach, currently we don't have the technology to get that far in a reasonable amount of time - atleast to keep the population interested.

So little steps, ISS, explore mars using rovers, land on an asteroid or two, may be think about technology for a manned mission to mars, and then who knows what next. It's slow, and requires lots of patience - unless you can indeed develop the next impulse drive or warp drive - in which case, feel free to drop your local space agency a note...

Universal Credit: £40 MILLION and counting's been spaffed up the wall on useless IT gear

thenim

Re: "£91m in IT assets will be worthless five years from now"

I still haven't worked out what this means as well... Is this some form of IT speak I've yet to encounter?

thenim

Re: Split

On the contrary, 125 mil is bloody expensive, I'd wager that in reality for the overseas coders, the total costs are probably in the region of 10 mil if that, the rest is for the suite monkeys...

Someone *cough* Accenture *cough* are getting a nice payday at the expense of the UK taxpayers...

IDS finally admits what EVERYONE ELSE already knows: Universal Credit will be late

thenim

Re: wading in for a kcking

People aren't arguing against the said system or concept, there is little argument that such improvements are needed. The problem that folks with a little common sense have is the the implementation farce that normally happens - all we hear is writing off x hundred million or y billion pounds for this or that, and it's delayed by a further z years...

Does not leave much confidence in the folks involved in the whole process... This is what happens when you get a bunch of suite monkeys to design and build a technology solution. They focus on the cornflower blue icons rather than getting the fucking thing to work!

thenim

Sad state of affairs...

That we are now so used to this type of cock-up, that it is now accepted as the norm rather than the exception.

It still staggers me the amount of money involved in these contracts and how little accountability these fuckwits have. If a private corporation has a department that wrote off a cool 140 mil, heads would roll! Slimey fucking politicians, waste of air...

iSPY: Apple Stores switch on iBeacon phone sniff spy system

thenim

Re: paranoia

These days, it's difficult to not to anything that isn't highly illegal... Given we are by default all terrorists and paedophiles...

Obama's US website woes won't hurt us, says NoSQL Euro chief

thenim

Re: Surely...

I'm not talking about the concept, I think there is general agreement (even amongst my Libertarian friends) that the concept is sound, it's the implementation that's been a disaster - I think you have to have deeply rose tinted spectacles to view this as anything but.

However, this is not uncommon as we've seen the UK, where any government IT project costs at least a billion pounds, typically takes a few more years than planned, and eventually ends up writing off half the assets/costs (for example the new benefits system recently wrote off a cool $200 million, which is a third of the cost of the obamacare thing..) For a small country, we're particularly good at wasting a fuckload of money on hot air...

thenim

Surely...

"website kept crashing and has been only sporadically unavailable to US citizens trying to log on.." would imply a good thing?

When infact, it has been a total and unmitigated fucking disaster... :) According to my US colleagues...

What's wrong with Britain's computer scientists?

thenim

I somewhat agree...

Companies need a good balance of both. Without creative individuals, you don't get sudden jumps in progress, you may get steady evolution, but nothing remarkable.

Conversely, if you had a bunch of creative folks, you won't have anyone interested in just getting things done, as everyone would want to create shit...

So, most progress is made when there is a good mix of both types of folks or if you are really lucky individuals who are creative and don't mind just getting shit done.

thenim

Re: Your choice of degree is an example of lateral thinking

@AC, I have to disagree somewhat..

My own opinion on this is that CS practitioners solve what they think is the problem, Engineers really solve the problem at hand in the simplest possible way. Okay, it's not "proper" CS, but does the fucking job...

This I believe explains the difference in cost between Government IT projects (infested with CS practitioners) and projects like CERN (infested with Engineers...) One is pretty successful, the other delivers lots of hot air...

Visual Studio 2013: 50 Shades of Grey not a worry for MONSTER dev TOOL

thenim

Re: Visual Studio

Double bollocks, anyone who thinks an ide defines the programmer is a misguided, egoistic buffaoon. Write code in what you are most comfortable and productive in, not someone else's misconceptions...

What does the NHS’s new IT plan really want to extract from us?

thenim

Re: How else is the NHS supposed to do this?

The argument is not against the system, it's required. That's a given.

The debate is about who has access to the data? and wtf they plan to do with it? And importantly how much does it cost? All three are pertinent questions, which don't appear to have clearly defined answers.

I don't like this concept of private companies being given my healthcare data (even if it's anonymised!) It's none of their fucking concern...

The ULTIMATE cuppa showdown: And the winner is...

thenim

typoo..

Any tea which requires milk to drink it is not really tea! It's also crazy to assume that all teas have the same brewing time! Frankly, I am rather disappointed...

Red Hat ships piping hot Ceylon to curry favor with Java-weary devs

thenim

Re: Bad Name

I take exception the first paragraph, the name Sri Lanka came in to effect in 1972, even though we had obtained Independence in 1948! Sounds like a daily fail style generalisation of a whole subcontinent - educate thyself!

NOTE: I'm not in favour of the name, but have no opinion on the new language, it's come and, it'll go, inevitably.

thenim

Re: Question on Development

Erm, the "hardware" provides a fixed, specific instruction set, it is the job of the compiler/interpreter/virtual machine, whatever, to translate the code which the programmer writes to the above instruction set. Hardware is agnostic to the latest fad sweeping the interwebs, more instructions may be added to fascillitate common tasks that previously took multiple instructions, but that's entirely down to the vendor.

On a side note, slightly miffed at the chosen name, as this was the colonial name given to the country of my birth by the Brits! And I see what you did there with the title, tsk, tsk tsk..

Watch out, MARTIANS: 1.3 tonne INDIAN ROBOT is on its way

thenim

Re: Excuse me India

@wolfetone that's utter bollocks! Urban re-generation programmes are exceedingly expensive, especially in impoverished nations. This $75 mil is about 10 rupees per person in a country of 1.2 billion people, wtf is that going to do to the average person's life? Sweet FA!

Small manageable sums like this spent on scientific advancement benefits society as a whole (think of esteem, inspiration [both of which are sorely lacking]) not to mention encouraging some healthy competition. It's amazing how some people have such a short term view... <sigh/>

As for folks moaning about UK aid; seriously - how naive are these folks?

Meet the 'KARDASHIAN Phone' – what Apple bods nicknamed the iPhone 5s

thenim

hey, I like my Lexus hybrid. Since when has it been a chav mobile? Clearly I'm not keeping up with the Kardashians....

Why a Robin Hood tax on filthy rich City types is the very LAST thing needed

thenim

Re: Time for some damping

Most exchanges already throttle transactions. I don't see this helping though...

Congrats on MP3ing your music... but WHY bother? Time for my ripping yarn

thenim

let someone else do it!

An ex colleague of mine set up a service, shrinkdigital.com, ship the cds and storage, they do all the work. Could always listen on YouTube too, if you can't be bothered with the CD.

David Attenborough warns that humans have stopped evolving

thenim

Re: Who TF is David Attenborough?

You sir, are an ignoramus of epic proportions, please do humanity a favour and don't procreate.

US intelligence: Snowden's latest leaks 'road map' for adversaries

thenim

Re: @stuff and nonesense - While the Soviet Bloc was crumbling

oops, premature posting...

<continued>

... be shafted or be shafted, eitherways we the population are shafted...

</continued>

thenim

Re: @stuff and nonesense - While the Soviet Bloc was crumbling

Primarily because, if anyone were to stand up and voice concern, they'd be immediately labelled a terrorist paedophile!

So, it's either

Study finds online commentards easily duped, manipulated

thenim

I can't be the only one...

strangely compelled to balance out the votes in this thread right... can I?? ....

oh dear...

thenim

Re: Ok so who is fiddling the voting?

There I fixed that for you, the symmetry is maintained...

ULTIMATE cuppa contenders prepare to go mug-to-mug

thenim

rubbish....

Sorry, there's no Dilmah tea on that list, then it's not proper tea! All on that list are some bastard derivation of the real thing...

Yes I'm being snobbish, but then I'm from Sri Lanka, where the stuff is grown...

Boffins create tabletop ANTIMATTER GUN

thenim
WTF?

Re: Ré Not really “tabletop” size.

Hey, you cannot insult them now, it's a "disability"....

Partying, beer and C++: How to choose the right Comp-Sci degree for you

thenim

Re: I'm sure there were two girls on my degree course

@David, I was at ECS between 97-01, CompEng though, none of this "science" lark.... IIRC, last year they taught C++ (before switching to Java!), and still hacking away...

Facebook buys Dummly from outernet prodigy Dick D'Miner

thenim
WTF?

WTF

WTF2? Have the monkeys been at the typewriters again???

Microsoft’s so.cl network now open to all

thenim
WTF?

Re: So does everyone.

So your point is, that the fact I can't work out what it's for, implies that I'm actually dumb and therefore are grossly overestimating my abilities...

Interesting point of view - perchance you don't work in PR/marketing do you??

thenim
WTF?

and the point is......

I consider myself to be of average to above average intelligence, and I can't make head of tail of what it's supposed to do/be/for...

Annual reviews: It's high time we rid the world of this insanity

thenim
FAIL

Having participated in this lark at a very large bank for nine years...

I can definitively say, that it is simply the biggest load of bullshit. For two months of the year, there is intense focus on "reviews", and the number of reviews that one has to do can vary from 10-30 reviews (other people's in addition to your own.)

Most end up being a cut-and-paste job, and really, if you want to stitch someone up, it's the perfect way to do it (I know, I got stitched up* - and by that point, it's too late to do anything about it.) I really see no point in them, if your manager sees what you do day in day out, why is a written essay required to re-highlight your activities throughout the year. It's for this and budgeting that middle management exists because once the reviews are done, the next activity that keeps them busy is budgeting.

It's great if you are a junior though, means those without a clue stay out of your hair for about half of the year.

* - not sour at all about it, got a nice little pay-off when I was made redundant...

Boeing zaps PCs using CHAMP missile microwave attacks

thenim

Re: Immune Virtual Operating Systems for Attacking Defence Platforms ....

I'm convinced that amanfromMars 1is really a bunch of monkeys typing a combination of words together... I wonder if we are being "researched"...

Perth porkfest crowned ULTIMATE BACON SARNIE

thenim
Unhappy

Why always on Fridays around lunch time??

Especially when there is no chance of getting a bacon sarnie where I am....

Vote now for the ultimate bacon sandwich

thenim

It is on this basis, I voted for the first, the A90 is a little crispy for my liking....

thenim
Mushroom

6 Merkins I see...

Voting for the unholy creation that is the p**nut butter concoction...

May you be damned to a hell which has no porcine products!

thenim
Unhappy

Ye Bastards...

I live in a country which prides itself in the quantity of porcine meat consumed, yet a slice of bacon (and not very good one at that) costs £1.50. Consider ye selves lucky...

Oh what I'd do for a good bacon sarnie... (I'd even code for it...)

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