Posts by Dave Henderson 1

Self-taught-techie slept on the datacenter floor, survived communism, ended a marriage

Raoul soon now.

Linus Torvalds banishes masters, slaves and blacklists from the Linux kernel, starting now

I know. It was used in machinery long before.

I find it odd that a new technology would employ such casually racist terminology.

Mind you, my ancestors were guilty of slavery, I've no doubt. More than likely some of them were enslaved also. It went on a lot in the Old World. Raids here, raids there, tit-for-tat.

When I think of the casual racism that was expressed in my family when I was a young'un I think we've moved on a lot from that unthinking blindness.

I must admit the 'master / slave' terminology was a bit odd and makes me wonder who on earth first came up with that for computer use.

Otoh, the 'blacklist / whitelist' pairing is a perfectly acceptable use and nothing racial in its origin or content, as far as I know.

That's just a piece of over-sensitive manufactured offence and a load of bullshit.

A few reasons why cops didn't immediately shoot down London Gatwick airport drone menace

Re: Downwash it

Wow. That was incredibly stupid.

UK flights CRIPPLED by system outage that shut ALL London airspace

Re: @smudge

Bit of a corner-cut stand-by genset if it didn't have the basics of a low oil / low pressure cut-out before it went clunk. Even 30 years ago a decent panel wouldn't have allowed it to run up and hold without pressure being present. Then again, I used to see the most stupid cost-cutting on vital things that might only be needed once in a blue moon - then the kind of thing above would happen.

Global chocolate crisis looms

Must resiiiist..

Oh, the horror...

Diary of a Not-spot: The readers speak

Wireless rooftops and not-spots

I had similar problems with trying to get a rural BB connection long before ADSL was available to me.

Luckily, Vodafone were offering a fixed-price package for 15GB/month, so I simply bought a flat-plate 12dbi antenna, mounted it at the top of a 30ft pole and fastened that to the gable end of my building with suitable guy ropes. The total cost was about 60quid.

For the next three years I enjoyed rural BB via 3G across 4 miles of treetop height countryside to the nearest Voda cell. It was ok, but towards the end of the period, the traffic was getting heavier and the service getting worse, so I was glad to ditch it eventually and go for ADSL when it appeared.

Best of luck in your attempts, when it works, it's very rewarding.

Clive Sinclair unveils 'X-1' battery pedalo bubble-bike

I sense another

heroic failure in the making.

Twitter bomb joker found guilty

Once again...

... the CPS and the cops show us all what utter bloody fools they are. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

DVLA off-road system seriously off-message

Stick it to them.

About time the bunch of thieving blackguards were brought to heel. After all, it's nothing more than a flimsy excuse for tax-gathering and employing an army of otherwise useless mouths.

BBC iPlayer rejects open source plugins, takes Flash-only path

Not necessarily

Afair, the wording is 'capable of receiving and displaying' , so no, an old analogue VCR wouldn't count.