Posts by Andy 12 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jul 2007
Bernard Matthews is suing the country Turkey for using the name Turkey on behalf of all the Turkeys (feathered type) in the world based on the premise that Turkeys (feathered type) were there first. Any damages given will be used to save Turkeys from the dinner table this Christmas.If he fails then he says he'll look like a bit of a Turkey. Which bit of a Turkey and whether he was refering to Turkey the country or Turkeys of the feathered variety is unclear.
I want to know when they started paying the TV license. Why should WE (cue in Dambusters music), the GREAT British public
who work hard all day, every day to pay OUR GREAT BRITISH TV license
so that WE, the GREAT British public, can have Eastender on weeknights and Strictly Come Dancing on the weekends
only to find that
WE, the GREAT British Public, are helping to fund our colonial cousins Geography Lessons.
What happened when WE, the GREAT British public, actually went to their countries in centuries gone by and killed them for the good of GREAT Britain?
Did they thank us?
Did they attend Geography lessons?
Did they willingly hand over all their nubile young ladies?
NO! So why should WE, the GREAT British public, now fund their education by allowing the BBC to put out maps of this kind for our colonial cousins to learn from?
A stop has got to be put to this kind of outrageous information giving. The Government of this GREAT Britain complain about the Brain Drain to our colonial cousins countries and yet the BBC is freely and publicly giving information away.
Down with the BBC.
My girlfriend teaches English at secondary level. She gave out an assignment to her 4th years (whatever that is called now) which was the first of their GCSE assignments. When she started marking them she noticed that little Johnny had suddenly become a marvellous story teller having not been able to string 2 words together for the last 3 years. She handed me over his essay and I scanned for easily searchable phrases. Within 30 seconds I had his piece of work in front of me thanks to Google. Stupid little Johnny hadn't even bothered to change a single sentence - cut and paste.
Call me old fashioned but I think that may be called cheating. The internet is a wonderful tool - it allowed me to prove he cheated, it allows me to follow how Lancashire are doing while I'm at work, it even allows me to buy chocolate and ice cream from the comfort of my own home and have it delivered. What it isn't is a teaching resource. You have to have some knowledge before it can become such a tool. Undergrads are there learn the knowledge that will allow them to be able to use such resources. Kids will always take the shortest route to success. People are surprised when I say that most kids coming out of University aren't employable these days - the reason is they don't want to put in the work - they don't read around the subject and then don't want to put in the effort to catch up when they get into work. Like everything else in this society the shortest route to something is always considered best until it buggers up.
Of course if the students had any brains they'd use yahoo or alta vista now instead of goolge as there's no mention of them being banned. I wonder how many of them even know that those search engines exist - after all they will all be aware of the media resources out there won't they?
The Be Box comes with no admin password, highly secure - NOT.
The main point is until RIAA come knocking with their law suit 99.9999% at least of the "general public" wouldn't know if their bb connection is being compromised or not.
The "great unwashed" really shouldn't be allowed anywhere near PCs, at least not ones with an internet connection that isn't supported by someone who knows what they're doing. If you don't know how something works and the risks involved then you really get everything you deserve. Never mind blame everyone except yourself. That culture is why you can now almost jump off a cliff and sue someone for the cliff not being fit for purpose if you don't manage to kill yourself. The great unwashed and the internet is like letting a 3 year old loose in charge of the shuttle - haven't got a clue what that button does, but, it's big, it flashes and I'm sure it won't do anything bad ...
I've spent too many hours fixing machines of friends and family who screw them up by just pressing that big, flashing f-ing button. I now charge everyone £200 per hour plus travelling costs to fix their machine (including my mother). Telephone support is £150 per hour and emails cost £100 per email. People never start a conversation with "My computer's broken" anymore.
There are some rich people out there who own there own in effect large commercial sized aircraft but don't necessarily fly it themsleves (see what John Travolta parks on his drive for example). Can they enter a cockpit they own during a flight?
What about Stelios at Easyjet, can he enter the Cockpit given he owns the plane?
Is George dubba ya allowed into the cockpit of Air Force One during a flight?
BTW I'm not calling George a terrorist ... honest .... really
The article is incorrect in terms of shared memory. What you have is 2 CPU sections which contain the North Bridge, memory and cpus and 2 I/O sections which contain the rest. Each CPU section contains 1 or 2 procs (SMP in the case of 2) and upto 6GB, 12GB, 24GB etc of memory. The 2 CPU modules are identical and send data to both I/O modules which then compare the results. If they're different then the I/O modules "shoot" one of the CPU modules, phones home for a replacement and you hot plug it. All of this is totally transparent with no downtime or pause in operation while the new part is being installed. You can even patch the OS while the system is still live for the most part. I believe only Microsoft's really big patches require a full reboot.
The article should actually say that in effect you get 2 procs and 24GB of memory in terms of what the OS sees (MS or Linux) even though you actually buy 4 procs and 48GB of memory. There's a licensing agreement with Microsoft to allow what is in effect 2 servers to run on just 1 license.
Stratus have an equivalent to the Non Stop Server which is the Continuum range which runs most of the big banks and stock exchanges (see the "About Stratus" on press releases). Having said that you don't get a Non Stop Server for the same price as an FTServer so yes we are comparing an articulated lorry and a pickup.
And no I don't work for Stratus (anymore)
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