Posts by BernardL 40 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Mar 2012
What I want from Twitter is:
* Posts from the people I follow
* in the order they were posted.
No more, no less. Either ad-supported or maybe 20 bucks a year. 11 a month or more? Nope.
Twitteriffic does that well enough, so far. Twitter's official phone app is frankly unusable.
Oh, and fewer Nazis.
I have a TomTom One, which is on it's second battery. I love it, TT still issue maps for it, and even the interface was obviously designed by someone who actually knows what they're doing.
The only thing I don't like is having to back up and restore the favourites every time a new map is installed. The system for making POI files is too much work.
...to the surprise of no-one who's ever seen (even on YouTube*) a Halon dump. Inergen is after my time, but it doesn't sound any better.
Moral of the story: if you're in the room with the supression system on auto - and you shouldn't be - and you hear the discharge alarm RUN, don't wak to the nearest exit. And keep running until you're out of the building and well down the road.
* other tubes are available.
PS: Legend has it that the Amdahl factory in Swords had a halon dump (in the 80's?) because someone left the system in the wrong mode. Apparently it cost 40 grand to refill.
PPS: 130dB seems way too loud for the alarm... I know they're supposed to be loud enough to drive you out of the room, but aren't there standards for loudness.
Unless the law's been changed since, the general rounding rule in Ireland since the euro changeover is that .49 or less rounds down, .50 or greater rounds up.
Therefore anything with a cash price ending in 5 cent can be paid for as is, 6 cent rounds up to the next 0 and 4 cent rounds down. Theoretically. Since this scheme is voluntary, the retailer may choose to accept 5 cent for the 6 cent item.
Also, if there's more than one item rounding has to be done once, on the total price and not on each item.
IANAL, but that's what we were told at the time of the changeover. I ran the conversion for one small part of the postal service. We, and the Revenue, and I assume all other government departments were told - and I mean ordered, not "advised" - that a) the conversion better go perfectly, b) in strict accordance with the rules and c) no member of the public was to lose out. If there was any doubt, round in favour of the customer.
You wouldn't get that attitude now. These days it's up to you to get away with whatever you can.
Text yes, it might be useful in certain circumstances. Easy to do; expand the existing system for people with speaking difficulties.
Social media? Don't be daft! I don't want my call for help "mediated" by a content-free ad network that might decide to send an ad for Farmville instead. i want the medssage delivered, immediately, and not through Utah or somewhere.
Dear 12yo: if you need help call 112. That's what they're there for.
Here's a question... why don't we teach people to use text in a major incident* like a bombing? It's much more likely to get through than a voice call.
* bearing in mind that the network will probably either be damaged, throttled for Plod, or overloaded.
Nah, Flecktarn's too dark and it blurs to black past 100 metres or so. You want something more like Pletsloring for foresty areas. Or PenCott.
For something on a skyline, it would be great if there was such a thing as a light grey/green camo that was useless for anything else... Oh, wait, UCP.
I'm really sorry about this, and with all possible respect to sparks and cleaners (both of my brothers are sparks)... But I never let either of them into my computer room.
I did the weekly cleaning myself. Any time we had to have workers in the room, I stayed with them. And we shut everything down, sometimes even including the PABX.
I was courteous, but firm. Apart from a lunchtime replacement of a failing RA82 disk drive, we never had any unscheduled downtime in the 9 years I was there.
Actually, it can take off ok, sort of, providing there's no FOD stuff around. Sorry, USMC, your dream of operating it from austere forward airstrips and pocket carriers in the ground-support role has gone up in smoke. The F35 has eaten the USMC budget for decades to come. Best thing they could do is scrap it and buy the A-10s that the USAF wants to get rid of.
It's landing that the F-35 has a problem with, at least if you don't want to melt the deck and everyone within 100m. Oh, and turning seems to be a bit of an issue. And short legs. And software that nobody understands. Oh well, at least it hasn't suffocated a pilot yet.
$!+
$! I worked at BT Gold during 1998 and early 1989.
$!
$! I don't remember ever interacting with Steve Gold, but I do remember very
$! well the huge fuss after the Prince Phillip Mailbox Hack. Word came down
$! from On High that someone had done a Very Bad Thing and it wasn't to
$! happen again. Or Else.
$!
$! Perhaps someone on the board was worried that a future knighthood might
$! be in jeopardy.
$!
$! Well played, Mr. G. I'll take down your Handbook from the attic and read
$! it again.
$!
$ LOGOUT
$!-
UPC Ireland have had this for a while on their Infinity DVR/WiFi boxes. They are rolling it out as an o/s update for their older routers now. They sent me an email about it, which tells you how to opt-out.
Opting-out is the first issue, it should be opt-in. That assumption by big business STILL hasn't been fixed. Second issue is that you have to log in to your account online, and click on a button to opt-out - you don't do that on the router itself.
A few years ago I would have said that sharing a small part of your WiFi was a public-spirited act. Now, It's just another way for yet another company (your ISP) to track your movements.
The Irish Government will huff and puff a bit, but will eventually do what the US Government asks. there are too many jobs and too much investment at stake to do otherwise.
The Irish /Courts/ are an entirely different matter. They have never recognised US legal extraterritorial reach, and never will. Otherwise we might as well tear up the Irish Constitution (flawed as it is) along with the US one.
If this issue gets anywhere near the Irish legal system, M$ can - and will - apply to the High Court for Judicial Review. And that will probably be the end of that for a few years, probably many years if they appeal it all the way to the ECJ.
In Ireland, network operators have to share sites already. This development is only a small advance on that. The only pity is that they don't usually have to camouflage the base stations, unless they're in an area where the Rich Folks live.
One minor advantage is that in small towns you can usually find the cop shop easily. Its the building with a bloody big radio mast with a ring of mobile phone aerials at the half way point.
I used to work in the nondescript data centre next to NatWest's unmarked data centre in an undisclosed North London suburb. They had two VMSclusters in that building, on separate floors. IIRC, the live cluster had 9 nodes in it, the hot standby had 8 nodes or so.
They're probably trying to migrate from VMS to some cloudy/JSP/.NET/web2.0/Ruby shite, developed in and remotely managed from somewhere on the other side of the world that they could exploit as cheaply as possible. UNIX/linux can be made fairly reliable, they just need a bit of work.
When it absolutely, positively has to work - and keep working - VMS can't be beat. Even now, despite HP trying to kill it through neglect. Bastards.
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