* Posts by Danny

30 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2007

Greenpeace pushes Ballmer to intervene on climate

Danny
Coat

Every real IT professional knows...

Real computers take in trees on one end and blow black smoke out the other!

Mine's the one with the "Advanced BOFH" manual in the pocket.

Michael Dell faces questions in crime-camera case

Danny
Pirate

Only New Orleans

THIS is how you do corruption. The rest of you are amateurs.

Love my home town, Jean Lafitte didn't die in vain.

Obama embarks on car emissions cutback

Danny
Coat

Well....

There goes any chance I'll be buying a new vehicle in this lifetime. I actually haul equipment so a pregnant skateboard is worthless.

Mine's the one truck keys in the pocket.

Revolting French workers bite 3M's balles

Danny
Coat

Fortunately this was France

Here in the states kidnappers have a disturbing habit of getting dead (SWAT teams, snipers and all that).

Mine's the one with the "Get Out of Jail Free" card in the pocket.

Canadian cops cry for BlackBerry wiretap

Danny
Black Helicopters

@ Theory versus practice

Nah, politicians are pretty much the same everywhere. Reasoned arguments take too much work and besides there might be a legitimate counterargument. Better to stick with irrational scaremongering and appeals to baser instincts.

I wonder how much it'll cost the Canadian government if the bill passes and companies move to other alternatives.

Bush Obama sides with RIAA in P2P fight

Danny
Flame

Shock? Outrage?

Why? The "entertainment" community is among Obama's biggest supporters. Why wouldn't he continue the policies that made them so much money?

Beyond that, DOJ isn't known for major policy shifts regardless of who is in the White House. Shouldn't come as any surprise that their position hasn't changed.

Flames because LA could stand another burning.

Prof pooh-poohed in pig-v-whale hippo genealogy brouhaha

Danny
Joke

I wonder how many boffins....

Samson could have killed with the jawbone of a hippo?

London stab murder rate entirely normal, says top stats prof

Danny
Joke

Only in London

Still bringing knives to a gun fight...

Superfast-charging batteries? Whoa there, MIT

Danny
Flame

@Sarah Bee

Thanks, I now have coffee all over my shirt.

The mind boggles at the havoc one could cause with a rapid discharging 100Ah battery.

Flames because.... well just imagine the pinch you could make with that!

Texas Memory Systems punts Texas-sized SSD

Danny
Thumb Up

Data processor's wet dream

I remember back in the day of having to create a virtual RAM disk (when RAM wasn't cheap) in order to get my file processing jobs to complete in my lifetime. Now you have a chunk of hardware that probably works an order of magnitude more efficiently.

18K USD is cheap at the price for some of the companies who will be using it.

Israelis develop 'safe' plutonium: good for power, bad for weapons

Danny
Coat

@ Dennis RE: Americium

Obviously you've never been to Alberta.

Mom stole daughter's ID to shake pom-poms

Danny
IT Angle

@If someone is mentally ill

If the doctors decide she's stable and safe enough for society they can petition the court to reduce her sentence (unlike people sent to prison). The court has to pick a term and 3 years is typical for non-violent offenses.

And the story is a bit funny if in a twisted fashion. I'd point out that people getting dead *shouldn't* be funny but the annual Darwin Awards is a well visited site.

Plod punishes PC-reliant businesses

Danny
Unhappy

"Right to remain silent"

Dex, that's an American thing. Most countries, now including the UK, have no such right. You are correct here (I'm an American myself) the police can not compel you to hand over the password to your encrypted data. Unfortunately our friends across the pond live under RIPA and are presumed guilty until proven innocent.

The parliamentary system has served my cousins (literally) well for the past couple centuries but it does have it's weaknesses.

Tell Santa to bring more assault rifles

Danny
Thumb Down

@*sigh*

You aren't being a pedant but you point out exactly why people here in the US are stocking up. The fact is most people, including this article's authors, don't know what an "Assault weapon" IS.

By definition a military assault weapon is fully or selectively automatic and; fires a high or medium velocity rifle round. A 3 round burst is still automatic fire.

ALL automatic weapons regardless of round or burst are controlled in the US and have been since the 40s. In order to legally own an automatic weapon you must hold a federal firearms license that requires a fairly extensive background check to obtain and isn't particularly cheap to maintain.

The last "Assault Weapons" ban in the 1990s didn't actually ban ANY automatic weapons of any type. It was a cosmetics bill that banned large round clips and bayonets and a couple of semi-automatic rifle stock types. All it did was make a lot of formerly legal weapons a lot cheaper for thugs who don't care what the laws say to obtain. Way to go there.

And a shooting in L.A. by a couple of thugs isn't really news any more than a bear taking one in the woods is.

Judge OKs lawsuits seeking Dubya's lost email

Danny
Stop

To the "sedition" drumbeaters...

Sedition isn't a crime here in the US. In fact it's considered protected speech in most cases.

And treason can only be proven with 2 eyewitnesses to the same act of "aiding and providing comfort to the enemy". No, not even attempting to overturn the Constitution qualifies as treason. Otherwise Congress would be lined up and shot every couple of years. Not a bad idea really...

Get your facts correct first people.

Inmate hacked prison network, broke into employee database

Danny
Paris Hilton

Massachusetts

This is the People's Republic of Massachusetts we're talking about here. Nothing more need be said.

Preventive policing? Don't even think about it

Danny

2nd amendment...

Now you know why we made the right to keep and bear arms the 2nd amendment right after the right to say what we want and associate with who we want.

An armed society is a free society.

Hands on with SanDisk's SlotMusic SD-not-CD player

Danny
Thumb Up

RE: CDs?

At 1GB of storage who says the music HAS to be compressed? The little chip stores more than a conventional CD. If the chip/media price continues to decline I could see this becoming a real alternative to buying CDs. Actually, I could see this replacing DVDs if the 8GB cards ever drop in price. No need to rip, it's already in digital form. If RIAA is telling the truth *cough cough* and you're paying for music, why NOT make it available in the form everyone already uses?

The SlotMusic player is still a FAIL. My SANSA View can do everything this thing does plus play movies (on a teeny tiny screen).

Daughter cremates mom on improvised barbecue

Danny
Alien

The Cereal State

And you wonder why Americans refer to California as the "Cereal Bowl"? Because it's full of nuts, flakes and fruits!

We think Arnold may not be from this planet. Present or future.

Tata launches 'public' Cisco video conferencing

Danny
Paris Hilton

Not a good value...

Even the current vid conference technology doesn't come close to replacing the "face to face" meeting. At best it's a step up from conference calls, with all of the disadvantages and none of the advantages (anyone for a quick BF2142 session?).

So why would one pay three bills an hour to stare at a screen? Even assuming you're already located in one of the cities in question, if the meeting is only for an hour or two what's the advantage of video here? You wouldn't use it for a sales presentation certainly and any other kind of "important" meeting usually involves ACTUAL important discussions before and afterward over drinks. Can't see that happening "virtually".

When you stop and consider how *inexpensive* high quality webcams and large screen monitors are these days, paying that much for video conference services makes sense how?

Paris because this sounds like something she'd think up.

EU slaughterhouses may get animal welfare officers

Danny
Coat

The only rights animals have...

Is to be tasty off the grill.

Raised on a farm, unimpressed by veggies.

Mine's the one with a 22 pistol in the pocket.

BOFH: Remote access malarkey

Danny
Gates Horns

@hmmm

You're not thinking like a true BOFH. Why kill a luser when it's more fun to completely destroy their lives instead.

Did the width move for you, darling?

Danny
Thumb Up

Exact same format for articles and front page?

I think the pain is really when you try to READ the articles when it comes to fixed width, forced font. I'm reading this page today from a Vaio with a nice wide screen and a 3rd of it is grey and it's a lot harder to read than before because of the tiny Ariel font we're stuck with.

Do you really have to use the same style sheet for the articles you use for the front page? And seriously, using a non-serif font for something longer than a paragraph?

The overall look isn't bad but someone needs to go back to graphic design school and take the class on use of white space and fonts again.

Oh, and thanks for bringing back the Odds & Sods link. It's the only decent entertainment I get during the week.

'Idiot' pulls cables, downs ISPs at Telecity

Danny
Paris Hilton

@BOFH

Err... didn't Simon just pen a nice story about cabling cowboys? My how life imitates art.

Paris because she's clueless too.

BOFH: Burying the hatchet

Danny
Thumb Up

@ Wow.

Whaddaya mean sad? I got more laughs out of this thread than I did from this week's BOFH.

And that's saying something.

UK BOFHs face psychometric dissection

Danny
Alert

@ Good idea

"Most of the admins I've ever dealt with were kind of "difficult". They need to learn to think like the users do and speak the language the users speak, as anyone should do for their customers"

What drool and look around with a vacant expression? No thank you I'll stick with the tried & true insulation tester.

I keep a rubber hose as backup for those days when the battery runs down under unusually heavy load.

Next you'll be asking cowboys to start "empathizing" with the cows. Pervert.

Lesbos climax as lesbians lick Lesbians

Danny
Happy

RE @ A political angle

No, we have San Francisco for that.

Cap, trade, subsidise - Obama's energy plan goes off piste

Danny
Thumb Down

I think Tim misses a point here...

And that's no matter what the scheme, it's the end consumers who will pay for it. Even now, most if not all electrical producers here in the states directly pass on the cost of fuel to their end users. All taxes are likewise passed on.

So the end result is that ANY program or scheme that increases the cost of producing electricity will be passed on and that will affect the public at every level, not just the cost of heating/cooling the home.

Given that the economy is already in the toilet, just how do you think adding more (government mandated) costs will go over with public? Not very well. Whether you call it a tax (and it is one) or cap and trade it still amounts to another federal tax on energy consumption. And what do economists say about removing money from an economy already in distress?

I wouldn't worry too much about the promise of subsidies. Washington is very good at making sure money coming in gets wasted on as many boondoggles as necessary for congresscritters and senators to get re-elected. Those "subsidies" will evaporate like mist on a hot griddle once the tax money starts rolling in.

If you're going to regulate emissions, regulate. Let there be a debate about the social and economic costs both for and against. These pseudo-capital games are just that, games. You're creating an artificial market for non-existent goods.

For truth about Europe, read The Reg

Danny

@ FlatSpot

More a matter of where our immigrants are coming from these days.

US seeks mini-Imperial Walker mule-bots

Danny

They invented a mule replacement in 1940....

It's called a "jeep". It seems anything done right once is worth doing over and over again poorly.