Posts by lglethal 3902 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2007
Ive been trying to keep track of the HP Envy 17 for the last 2 weeks - it appeared 2 weeks ago, was gone a week later and has now reappeared today, but without specs...
The HP website seems to enjoy doing this sort of thing, so its no surprise that the Slate 500 has had an on-again off-again relationship with the website...
PS Any chance of getting a review of the Envy 17 when it finally arrives for real?
Lets try and look at this objectively.
The guy was driving and saw a cop car behind him. (It doesnt mention whether the lights were flashing or not - but lets assume they were - i mean, why else would you pull over?).
The guy pulls his car over and then jumps out.
Now for a police officer, when you pull someone over they stay in their car, you walk up, you have your chat and everyone walks away happy (or as happy as the driver can be if he/she's just got a speeding ticket!)
But in this case, the guy jumps out of the car straight away.
For the police officer that means one of two things a) he's making a run for it (in which case your out of the cop car with weapon drawn as fast as possible to start chasing them) or b) the person is being aggressive or has something in their car they dont want you to see. Either way i would probably be pulling my taser here as well.
It appears in this case that the guy got out to go to a friends house and after this became clear, the cop lowered the gun and was putting it away when it discharged. For me, i see no issues here.
What i do have an issue with is the automatic police reply that the guy was acting "aggressively". Is it too difficult for the police to stand up and say "Look, the officer drew his Taser because by jumping out of the car as soon as he was pulled over, the officer thought the victim might be aggressive. As soon as this was identified as not being the case, the officer lowered his weapon which accidently discharged striking the gentleman. We're sorry it happened, but thats life."
A bit of honesty like that might bring a bit of trust back to the cops, dont you think?
Having worked in a retail store in my younger years AND with the misfortune of being in the christmas department, i can tell you its a torturous time. Not because of the customers (although they're bloody annoying as well), but because of the god awful xmas carols that are played non-stop on repeat for the entire period of the christmas sales.
Its easily akin to "cruel and unusual punishment" and no doubt exists in the CIA's "Experimental Interrogation techniques" right next to waterboarding (although im willing to bet that many staff in christmas retail departments would much prefer an extended session of waterboarding to hearing "Come all ye faithful" sung one more bloody time!)
I can remember one year where Mariah Carey's Christmas Carols were played on repeat for 6 whole weeks, by the end of which, if id had access to automatic weaponry then you would have read about it in the evening news...
I hope for the staffs sake that the christmas carols dont start on August 2... if they do, id avoid Selfridges from about September 13... Trust me you'll hear why on the news...
Can the other companies RIM, Nokia, etc sue Apple for libel for his saying that there phones do the same thing?
If they take the independent tests that Consumer Report states that they dont suffer to the same degree, id say it seems pretty open and shut that Steve Jobs lied about the quality of another manufacturers product to sell more of his own. And if im not mistaken, that's an illegal act...
Antennagate - the soap opera that just keeps giving us more reason to hate his Jobsiness...
Im not sure if its still the case (cant check due to company firewall) but it used to be that if you typed "French Military Victories" into google and clicked the "Try your luck" button, you got taken to a fake google page that said "No sites found. Did you mean French Military Defeats?"
Sorry but that anecdote just seemed appropriate for some reason!
Its not quite clear in the article who actually pulled the plug on the deal? Did Microsoft pull out of the deal or was this an action on the part of the NHS?
The comment from the Microsoft spokesman seems to hint that Microsoft pulled the plug due to the money they were losing, but the NHS spokesman seems to be implying that the decision was there's in order to pass the decision back to the local Trusts.
Can you clarify this for us John? Or are both sides keeping quiet on the specifics?
On this topic, the English (and unless the report i read was wrong the Scottish as well) have been pushing for the goal line tech. Wales and Ireland have been saying no (i imagine because of the cost involved and the fact there leagues dont earn huge amounts of cash). Therefore its 2-2 and that leaves FIFA to decide.
So far FIFA have buried there head up there *ss... Will that change now? I dont know, but no doubt its bound to leave a bad smell in the air for all of us...
Question a) When did sued company apparently begin using the already patented technology?
Question b) What was the revenue of sued company at that time?
Question c) What is the revenue of sued company now?
If the answer to a) Is a long time ago; the answer to b) not so much; and the answer to c) a sh*tload; You have a troll...
Any questions at the back?
This is a robotic bomber aircraft. Not an air superiority fighter. So obviously you didnt even read the article. Well done for entering auto-rant mode based on a picture and the words BAe...
Additionally, this is a technology demonstrator. It is not going into production, it is not planning to be sold. It is being used to develop new technologies for UAV's. And as with most new technologies they will eventually find there way down to other products that we do use every day (you know what Teflon is, yeah? Well that started off in the Space program on a technology demonstartor)...
"... all you're doing is shifting pollution from the car's exhaust to the power plant's stacks."
Yes thats true, but the power plants stacks are a hell of a lot more efficient. At least a degree of magnitude more efficient usually. So whilst electric cars are not the green wonder that the environmentalists would like you to believe, they do still reduce pollution.
The list is kept secret, the reason being (so they tell us) is that if the sites were made public would be kiddie fiddlers would know where to go (once theyve bypassed the firewall).
Yet there will be a route to appeal to your site being on the list.
Am i the only one seeing a disconnect here?
Conroy is an utter disgrace, and so is Gillard for backing him. But whats perhaps even more disgraceful is that our main opposition party is refusing to say whether they will keep the firewall idea or not after the forthcoming election (naturally they will, being right wing god-botherers). As it stands i think i will be donkey voting because none of the parties represent me anymore...
"There is no finer, purer, or rarer gem than the diamond"...
Umm actually there are many gems rarer then diamonds. When discussing gem rarity, diamonds are about as abundant as fat people at an all you can eat buffet, in comparison to most gems that is...
If it was so rare, you wouldnt see every chav wearing it, would you? I mean you dont see Sapphire bling everyday do you?
Considering how often "mission statements" change (at least once every new president), will they update this hash code each time?
Will it be a way of being able to keep track of the old cyber boys in the club? I can see them all sitting around the officers club smoking cigars and comparing hash numbers...
She was ordered to undergo councilling and attend AA meetings. She basically didnt do that by missing 9 appointments in 6 months. That is why she is going to jail...
She was let off when a large number of normal people woudl have been imprisoned. She was ordered to stop drinking and to go and talk to the people that can help her with her other issues. She didnt.
So right now, my sympathy levels for her are at about the same as her blood alcohol levels will be for the next 90 days...
Whilst i agree that bankers should be sent to porridge (with perhaps a few drawn and quartered for educational (and entertainment) purposes), saying that she didnt deserve to go to Jail is bollocks.
She drove under the influence not onced but twice! She put the lives of a lot of other people at severe risk. Hell the first time she was so drunk or high she drove into a hedge! She deserved a pinstriped jump suit the first time but she was given a suspended sentence with a whole bunch of rules to follow. She's broken those rules so now she goes to the big house. Justice for her crimes is served.
Just because someone else committed a different crime doesnt make her crime any better.
Im sorry but did he really think no one would notice when all of a sudden 42 of his releases suddenly made it into the top 50? What a plonker!
If he had slowly and steadily over the course of a few months brought his releases then no one would probably have noticed... *Disclaimer - i naturally dont condone this*
But what an Utter Twit!
If you add extra capacity on the line but not at a consistent rate (like wind power) you have to keep the other plants on in case you suddenly lose your wind power. Additionally, it takes about 2 days to turn off and restart a coal or gas plant so unless you can guarantee 2 days of continual supplies of wind then you cant turn that plant off.
The perfect example of this is Earth Day in Australia. For 1 hour of the day as a minimum, everyone turns off all power, air con, etc to cut their energy use. (Its a guesture nothing more!) The irony is that, its the Hydroelectric schemes which are shut down for the hour because hydro can be turned on and off again quickly. You cant turn off the coal/gas plants like that...
So you should check the facts before accusing someone else of not being educated...
I must say ive enjoyed some of these lovely responses. Especially the spelling ones. How mature.
But in the interest of solid discourse, let me respond to some of the more pertinent points.
1) I will disclose now that i am not in IT, i am in engineering. So whilst i cant comment on the particular woes of your industry i can talk of my own. We also have a large flux of sub continent and asian engineers. I myself am also not european, coming from that small island just off Asia called Australia. I did find it highly amusing that the moment non-european came up everyone instantly started slagging off the sub continent. Its a bit like everyone else in the world immmediately thinking your in London if you say your in England, no?
2) I cannot comment on IT degrees in the UK, but the majority of engineering degrees (at least mechanical and related engineering degrees) i have seen have been 3 years. With 1 year for a masters. I have had people try to justify this by saying that they fit more into the courses in the UK then elsewhere, but thats just bollocks. I still stand firmly by the fact that 4 years of intense study is just about enough to turn out a bachelor level engineer. Anything less then that and your not an engineer. Also considering the knowledge of some of the young UK graduates ive met ("Umm can you weld mild steel?") there are some serious knowledge gaps... Perhaps about a years worth... And no i dont believe that Australia has the best higher education in the world. The German & Dutch graduates ive met have been hands down the best skilled young grads ive had the pleasure to work with...
3) The test to come to the UK on a highly skilled migrants visa or the Tier 1 Migrants now is an incredibly hard test to pass. At the present time you require at least for engineering a masters degree (thats 5-7 years of higher education for everyone outside of the UK), and be already earning approximately £35,000 a year. Fail either of these and your out. Number of years experience counts for nothing. You can thank the Home Office for that. Oh and did i mention it costs ~£600 non-refundable just to apply?
Now i cannot comment on the company sponsorship route, as i have not done that and maybe that is where all your complaints are located, but if thats the case then obviously thats the Home Offices fault and you should be directing your angst at them and making them raise the bar. In Europe, your position has to be advertised for 6 weeks before a non-EU person can be employed on a Work Permit. Does the Home Office do this? I very much doubt it.
But the main thing to consider is where do you honestly think the reduction will come from, the Tier 1 with its already staggeringly high requirements or the company sponsored route? And which one gets the abuse that your all talking about... hmmm... lets think...
4) There seems to be a lot of hatred for the sub-continent IT Professionals and Engineers, which i can understand to some degree. Ive worked with some who were atrocious, but ive also worked with some who were amongst the best engineers ive ever worked with. However, i find that there is a large cultural difference between the sub continent and the west. In the west, in engineering and IT, we want creativity, innovation and problem solving. On the sub continent, these things are not the products of their culture. Unfortunately this is not something that most management realise. If you provide the engineer from the sub continent with a routine, a method of doing something that goes from a to b then you will get optimal results, and that is how they are best uitilised, freeing your innovators for crerating new routines/programs/etc.
If you have a problem with someone in your company who appears to be a numpty from this line, then trying take 5 minutes to put them on a task that they can follow from a to b and see how well they do it. If they are not up to the job and doing it very well after a short period of time, then OK, yes you have yourself a drop kick, but the majority will find that the person works well in this role. Its a cultural difference and when handled correctly (assuming you have a process for which this sort of routining is viable) you will get a very productive team member.
If your from a company where this isnt achievable, well then all you can do is try to drill it into your managers head that your new colleague is useless. Try telling them that a graduate would accomplish more and that you are more then happy to train a new graduate, if they get one, and bring them up to speed. You might get lucky....
5) I made a mention of low cost eastern europeans which someone took as me attacking the IT skills of eastern europeans. This was not the case. This article talked about the overall high unemployment rate in the UK and that stoppping or reducing the number of non-EU migrants was going to have an effect on this. That is to a large degree bollocks! The highest percentage of unemployment in Britian, as it almost always is worldwide, is that of unskilled labour. And guess what, you dont receive a large number of non-EU unskilled labour, not with the rules i described above. So naturally what you do get is non-UK EU unskilled labour. So there will be no effect on the vast majority of umemployment in the UK by these new rules. All it will do is make the UK an even less desirable location to come to for the highly skilled engineers and professionals out there.
I await your "informed" responses below...
But did you and your colleagues ever try not molly-coddling these unskilled prats?
First rule of team work is that you start off helping the new guy get up to speed but if they're a complete numbskull with no aptitude, then you make sure managament know it, and then leave them to flounder. Its harsh, yes, but if they cant do the work theyve been hired to do, then they dont deserve the job. Obviously this doesnt apply to graduates no matter where they come from but if someone is claiming to have 5 years experience in C, but wouldnt know the difference between a mouse and a keyboard. Its not worth carrying there *ss over the line.
Its too easy for the situation you describe to happen, so its best not to play along to the Management BS game...
Of course its the fault of myself and my dirty filthy highly educated non-european fellow foreigners, that are responsible for the high levels of unemployment and the low intake of graduates into british companies.
It has absolutley nothing to do with the poor education standards, the 3 year courses to learn engineering (when the rest fo the world does at least 4 years), and the influx of cheap eastern european labour which means that english luddites and chavs no longer have there jobs pumping petrol or doing low skilled manual labour for a living. No it of course has nothing to do with these things... *rolleyes*
Pffft, i thought with the change in government that policy would stop being made on the front page of the Daily Mail... I guess i should have known better...
"... government policies may change noticeably."
I think your being a tad over-optimistic there, Lewis. We all know that governments have a stated Ostrich techinque (involving sand, their head and some creative burying arrangements) when any information comes to light that contradicts their own agenda...
I hate to say it but nothing will change... money will be wasted on new quangoes, "green" energy sources will contiunue to be propped up, and at the end of the day, you and i will pay our taxes and watch the politicians p*ss it away...
Is it too early to head to the pub, i feel the need for some reason...
The plane returned to the terminal after the discovery of the maggots, all of the passengers got off the plane, the crew cleaned the aircraft and then the passengers got back on and took off (except for the maggot passenger of course). I can only assume that the passengers were told to take there carry on luggage with them when they got off the plane. That would have also meant that one of the chuckers (sorry: baggage handlers) would have had to go on board and remove the maggot passenger's checked in luggage from the aircraft as your luggage is not allowed to fly if your not on the plane as well...
@ Peyton - it says on the BBC article that the woman was planning to sue the airline. The information might not have been in the reg article but that doesnt mean it didnt happen...
It actually states on other news sources that it was another passenger that brought on the rotting meat. No i have yet to find a reason why. But the BBC was kind enough to elaborate that the person who did bring it on, did not make the flight when it eventually did take off (im guessing they were answering some very interesting questions at airport security), but that they did manage to fly on a later flight. Its also not clear whether the meat made the later flight or not...
Come on El Reg use those investigative juices, the people want answers! :P
It was another passenger, that for some unknown reason, brought a container of maggotty, rotten meat on a plane in (an obviously) unsealed container and placed it in the overhead luggage compatment. And so the other passengers are trying to sue the airline...
Gotta love the average americans logic, dont you?
What i would really be interested to know is how this package got through security in the first place, considering the level of hysterical paranoia associated with any flying in the US! I guess security were too busy perving on the full body scanners to pay much attention to the carry on luggage...
& I suppose that raises another point - who on Earth carries meat on an aircraft in their carry on luggage? And more so who carries rotting meat anywhere???
Considering that you can buy an EeePC or similar for the same price with the same size screen (but in colour) and it can do more then just read books, I still cannot understand why someone would buy one of these?
The small one has a purpose (although i still think its too expensive for that purpose), but this one at this price... Go buy an EeePC, its far more useful, just as easy to read off and only slightly heavier.
When this drops to $200 then maybe it will be better value then an EeePC, but until then...
Sorry but i really dont see going 100% Open Source as being anything but an ideological gain. Its already been shown by an analysis on The Register (i cant be bothered finding the article, it was only a couple of days ago) that the spending on licences is not a big deal in the grand scheme of government run IT.
When compared to the costs of new implementations, increased cost of maintenance (yep you actually need an IT person with a brain to handle most open source backhaul/maintenance, and that costs money!), increased staff training, etc. I would say the costs savings are fairly negligible.
I wont deny that there are some proprietary programs which should be dumped completely for their open source counterpart, not for the savings but for the honest work improvements that they provide. But as a general rule, for me this is back end parts of the system only.
If the doctor wants to use a proprietary product such as Word well i say bloody well let him. Its hard enough to get into see a doctor without them now being away on additional IT training courses!
OK just 2 points that i thought should be mentioned:
1) Somali, even if it has no functioning government, is still a soverign state it would be HIGHLY illegal under international law to launch any attack on its landmass (so attacking pirate bases are a big no-no) without almost universal backing in the UN. Which lets face it is never going to happen... Same deal with sitting a couple of destroyers outside of Somali ports. International Waters starts 200km out, so you can sit outside that zone if you want but that does give a lot of room to play in...
2) People keep talking about equipping ships with guns or creating Q ships. But have you actually seen the size fo the freighters were talking about here? On most of these ships the sailors use bicycles to get from one end to the other. So if your being attacked at the front of the boat, it would take you about 5-10 minutes to get to the front to repel the attack. Additionally, Pirates dont advertise when they are about to attack (they use small zodiacs for a reason - they dont show up on radar). The larger mother ship is usually just a fishing vessel and it usually does not get anywhere near close enough to be recognisable as a potential threat. So arming crew on board these ships is a very good way to end up with a lot of dead people on both sides and potentially even more weapons in Somali hands. (A pirate at the moment has no reason to harm the crew of a ship as they get more ransom for an unharmed crew. But kill a couple of that pirates mates and he's going to be decidedly less caring about your welfare, whats 1 or 2 million dollars off the ransom in comparison to the joys of revenge?)
Truth betold if there was a real desire to stop the attacks, then there are only a few ways to do it, a) create a viable alternative for employment for young somalis so that they actually have a choice not to go into piracy, and b) halt (or at least reduce) the amount of weapons making it into the worlds hotspots. Unfortunately i dont see either of these options being explored right now...
... How do you tell the actual fishing boats from the ones with the pirates on them until you board them?
And how do you know, even if you are sure that there are pirates on board, that the crew actually sailing the vessel arent being forcibly made to sail the fishing boat for the pirates. A gun in the face is a very good incentive to do what your told.
Will you be the one that feeds the family of the fisherman taken out just because he happened to be mistaken for a pirate ship?
And dont forget, in the majority of cases where these pirates tend to get caught by the international navies, theyve usually thrown there weapons overboard and are pretending to be fishermen. Can you automatically tell the difference between a true somali fisherman and a somali pretending to be a fisherman? I certainly couldnt!
So yes whilst i would like to see some stronger action too, i can understand why at present there isnt. The West (for once) is being careful - kill one fisherman that feeds his family and you risk forcing his family into crime, piracy and other forms of extremism...
As they say in Afghanistan, accidently kill one man, create 5 more militants...
There was another "great" quote from Blaise Pascal, i paraphrase it here:
"I consider belief in god to be like a wager. If god does not exist and you go through life believing in him, you havent really lost anything at the end. But if god does exist and you go through life not believing in him, then you have a lot to lose. So therefore, i think its better to believe in god."
You have to love such sophistry, dont you?
For me, this isnt the case. Firefox used to take up about 250MB of memory with my usual 3-4 tabs open (which i still think is ridiculously large for just a couple of websites). Now with the new version, Firefox still uses 250MB but now i also have plugin-container.exe taking up another 250MB.
Sorry Firefox is gone from my computer and wont be making a re-appearance until it drops the bloat, which unfortunately i dont see happening anytime soon...
Does this new beta remove the hideous memory consuming plugin-container.exe that turned up in the latest update?
Heres a tip Mozilla, when something thats designed as simply a plugin manager uses the same amount of memory as the entirety of Firefox, thats what we call an excessive resource hog!
I'll try Firefox 4 when it comes out, but for now im shifting to Opera or Chrome...
maybe ive missed something in the law, but usually when your given a suspended sentence it means if you break the law again in the period of time set then its a "Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200" type moment.
It seems to me the neighbours let them get away with the rumpy pumpy, but then had to put up with excessively loud music. For me this just shows she has absolutely no regard for the neighbours and maybe a spell in chokey will convince her to show some respect. Instead i expect to read about her breaking the ASBO again in another 2 months...
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