Posts by JohnG 1644 publicly visible posts • joined 27 May 2007
There's been the talk of more severe sanctions, then the attack on the British embassy compounds and the subsequent withdrawals of so many European diplomatic staff. Iran has now suggested that, if there are more sanctions, they might close the Straits of Hormuz, thereby cutting off an international shipping route and, perhaps more importantly, the supply of oil to the USA. If I was living in Iran right now, I wouldn't be that bothered about Press TV's status in the UK.
Looking at recent UK case history, it seems that cyclists don't necessarily die when they mow down and kill pedestrians - and they can expect to get off with a fine. Motorists, on the other hand, are lucky to escape prison.
About road noise: many high end luxury cars make no more noise than a Prius at low speeds (i.e in either case, the noise is almost entirely from the tyres).
I was under the impression that he was thrown off the flight because he refused to turn off his toy prior to takeoff and because he abused staff who wouldn't go along with the "rules don't apply to celebs like me" concept. This also means that a plane load of people had their travel delayed by one arrogant git - I hope he gets prosecuted.
You beat me to it. My printer wouldn't use the colour toners which had reached "0 pages left". When I swapped the two "empty" toner cartridges, the other suddenly needed replacing, despite previously showing some pages left. Added to this, the printer refused to print B&W, once it had decided it didn't have enough of the colour toners. I'd love to have firmware that would allow me to continue printing until I decide the printouts are too faint.
I started with Hollerith cards and WATFOR Fortran. I can also remember the long wait followed by a syntax error or a problem with the job control cards. One of the saddest sights of that era was when someone dropped their stack of cards...
We also had teletypes which gave us access to BASIC, along with Lunar Lander and Star Trek. These also had paper tape interfaces,.which were used much as one might use a USB stick today (I had several paper tapes of ASCII art).
"The offense took place in the U.S. It was executed from the U.K."
So, you believe that US law applies to people anywhere in the world? By the same token, I guess the USA would be happy to extradite US citizens to Turkey (a US ally in The War Against Terror) for referring to a genocide of Armenians on Turkish Internet forums, in breach of Turkish law. Or people in the USA promoting freedom for Tibet on Chinese forums, against Chinese law. Or US Christians promoting their religion via the Internet in Saudi Arabia.....
"All this kind of micromanagement will do is create a paranoid workforce, and completely destroy anything resembling morale and productivity."
Exactly! Management with so little trust in their employees that they deploy such a system shouldn't let those employees in the door to handle sensitive corporate data or take responsibility for activities which could determine the success or failure of the organisation.
There has been at least one case where a restaurant have been told they cannot refuse to employ a local (with qualifications and experience) solely on the basis that the language of their kitchen is not English and that they would rather employ someone from Bangladesh.
I can't see the point of the curry course though - there are perfectly adequate catering courses, which also include the prerequisite food safety and hygiene elements.
The snag with that idea is that so many companies are in foreign ownership and jobs have been/are being exported. Which is why this engineer is writing this in Germany, having followed work here over a decade ago.
What we do know from recent statistics is that many of those skilled workers brought in (Tier 1 visas) to resolve non-existent skills shortages are now in catering, cleaning or other unskilled work.
"...if it's true then there's a wonderful irony in American's spending money imposing a trade ban which prevents Cuba from getting decent internet access, while at the same time subsidising satellite access for individual Cubans."
I guess it comes down to who gets to do the monitoring and filtering of unacceptable sites/material - the US government or the Cuban government. It seems unlikely that either would encourage Cubans to have an unadulterated version of the truth.
Buss said it was the reporter who'd brought up the subject of "fornicating" in a chat with the trusting mayor. "The reporter started asking him things like, ‘Oh, what about if Prince Harry went chasing after one of your daughters?’”
...and there you have it - be very careful what you say to a reporter, especially when they start "a friendly chat". One would have thought that an old politician would have known that.
It is all about oil and mineral rights in the Antarctic.
I read an article written by a women living on the Falklands but originating from Argentina. She mentioned showing groups of visiting Argentinians around (e,g, relatives visiting war graves) and their surprise to find that the locals speak English instead of Spanish and that they are basically, British.
"So the question of whether software should be patentable is, in a sense, the same as asking whether a significant part of the technological innovation happening nowadays should receive patent protection."
No. It is down to the international treaties which the USA and many others signed up to. If the yanks want to bin those, I am sure the Chinese would be only too pleased to join in.
Now the world's population has reached 7 billion, we may need a cull - we could get by with fewer lawyers, especially IP and patent lawyers.
Oh no it isn't! MS thought that corporates would drop XP if they announced that they would finish XP support. What they had not considered is that the costs of upgrading desktops from XP is not the cost of the corporate licensing - that's peanuts. The problem is the disruption and cost of migrating all the applications - including all the bespoke bits and pieces which would have to be retested and maybe, rewritten for a new desktop. Then there's the disruption to users, retraining, etc. Many corporates are still taking the "if it works, don't fix it" attitude.
I had two slipped discs, for which I had MRI scans, MRI-directed steroid injections and finally, surgery with a 10 day stay in hospital. This was performed privately in Germany and all the bills added up to about 12K Euros. How can it possibly cost $1 million to chop off someone's balls?
You haven't been paying attention! Microsoft says there are 235 patents being breached but won't say which patents are involved. As others have commented, were Microsoft to reveal which 235 patents they are talking about, it is quite likely that the world + dog would find prior art or other reasons why Microsoft's claims are invalid.
"...the slightest bit sorry for this woman"
Ms Johansson is a professional actress near the peak of her profession, enjoying the fame and fortune that accompany her success. As such, she is likely to have number of people employed to help her maintain her fitness, appearance and public image - their advice and her own experience should tell her:
a) not to have any nude photographs of herself anywhere;
b) if she must have nude photographs of herself, keep them somewhere very safe.
No doubt there are many other attractive and talented young actresses who would like to have some of the opportunities enjoyed by Ms. Johansson and who would be prepared to take more care of their public image.
If you happened to be a dissident in a country with no democracy and a poor record on human rights and justice, you might be quite disconcerted that databases of Google, Skyhook, etc. could be used to determine your location. Your dismay might be heightened when men in balaclavas kick in your door and cart you and your family away, never to be seen again.
"There's no room in society today for people who insist on peddling ideas contrary to those of the masses."
Such people would be guilty of thought crime and wrong speak.
"We need to re-educate people like this..."
...in Room 101.
Luckily, Articles 9 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights give us all rights to freedom of thought and freedom of expression.
The German post office has been running a service called Packstation for some years. It works in conjunction with their subsidiary, DHL.
The Packstations are located throughout Germany, either in the lobbies of post offices (you use any valid credit or debit card to enter the lobby out of hours) or outside. Each Packstation has a number which defines its address. You can choose to have items delivered to a Packstation of your choice for online purchases from almost any supplier. DHL email you to say when your parcel is ready for collection and you use a packet id and a PIN to open the relevant locker at your chosen Packstation and retrieve your parcel.
I haven't used it since I got married :-)
http://www.dhl.de/en/paket/privatkunden/packstation.html
Miriam González Durántez is a non-executive director of Acciona, a Spanish company involved in wind power. She also happens to be the wife of our deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg.
Sir Reginald Sheffield enjoys a "modest" income (alleged to be about £350K) from a wind farm in Lincolnshire and is apparently in talks to build another one on his land. He also happens to be the father-in-law of our prime minister, David Cameron.
However, I'm sure that our upstanding politicians would not allow energy policy to be influenced by their families' earnings from government subsidised wind farms...
"Tablets have certain dimensions and characteristics that are dictated by the form factor."
Haven't we already established that in the "evidence" that Apple presented in the Netherlands court, they had doctored the photos to disguise the fact that the Samsung has a different form factor than the ipad?
"The boom times for house prices are over..."
Exactly - which means rental returns are actually very good at present. The housing market has highs and lows, much like the stock market. However, If you take a long term view, well maintained property in a popular location gives a reasonable rate of return and you always have the asset to sell.
My pensions funds are worth damn all because administrators didn't see the need to pass on high returns in the boom years and have had only excuses every time the stock market tanks. Gordon Brown's raid didn't help either. The drip feed of small sums seems to have mostly benefited the pension companies and the IFAs.
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