Posts by John Brown (no body) 28765 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2010
"Of course it wasn't a mistake, error or cock-up. Zuck wanted to offend and piss off a great many people, wanted to attract peoples ire and have to make grovelling apologies, so obviously would have done it deliberately."
In the long run, all publicity is good publicity.
I wonder what the odds are of making that particular mistake on the that particular day?
"His clarification was quite clear:"
Even before I got to your post with the clarification in it, after reading the article and the comments vilifying this GrubHib bloke, my brain is going "what the fuck did these people read that I missed?"
It seems pretty clear that he's simple taking Trump at his campaign word and stating that if Trump was one his employees publicly stating these views then he'd be fired.
US politics is nasty. The campaigns even nastier. It seems they have legal carte blanche to spout off any old lies, accusations and threats with no proof or substantiation. Even after they've been proven to be wrong, they still repeat them. Again and again. Both side did it, but from what I saw, Trump was the worst of them. I guess freedom of speech means you can say whatever you like, even if demonstrably wrong or even downright illegal. I fully support the GrubHub blokes right to tell his staff that Trumps example of "demeaning, insulting and ridiculing minorities, immigrants and the physically/mentally disabled " will not be tolerated in the workplace. Isn't that sort of behaviour illegal anyway in the USA? Don't they have discrimination laws that trump freedom of speech?
"The price seems high as I got nearly as much cardboard with my industrial 2.2m high MDF & steel shelving,"
I was wondering why the packaging was not part of the desk itself. It does seem odd to pack a flat pack cardboard desk in more cardboard which then needs to be disposed of. It would make far more sense to use the desk itself as the packaging in some way, e.g. the outside of the packaging would be on the inside of the assembled desk so any labels or transportation marks don't show.
I've seen some very complex shaped/folded single piece cardboard boxes which are a triumph of engineering design and origami. Surely someone could design cardboard furniture which includes the packaging in the design.
"Amazon - the world's largest supplier of cat beds!"
I think you'll find El Reg has already given that crown to HP in their Aboxalypse now series.
A little while back I got some downvotes for comparing the "ownership" of the F35 with the "ownership" of Windows 10.
The only significant difference is that at least when Windows 10 was forced on so many people, there was no upfront-cost. Who gets to choose what updates are required and when, who decided when and how it can be used etc seems remarkable similar.
This is WaaS, Warplanes as a Service. Is the s/w management in the cloud?
"But our remote user were different."
That's because remote users have to book a call out that likely isn't going to be same day or, for software issue might mean not only a long phone conversation, but the user actually having to type stuff instead of wandering off for a coffee while the "expert" fixes it.. Local users are lazy because they have an "expert" on tap whenever required.
Of course now we have remote desktop access and the like, some remote users can be just as lazy.
"A lawyer friend and I joke that we are people who walk backwards on social occasions."
I was fixing a PC for a doctor once. In his surgery. Having more jobs to get to, I just wanted to get it fixed and get out (hardware support only) but he kept on with "while you're here, can you just..." type of requests. The usual stuff of, "how do I print this, why do I have to do that, why can't I just..." etc
Eventually I mentioned the nail infection on my big toe and what should I do about it. "See your doctor", he says. "Ok, bye then" sez me,
"One demonstration I remembered was an incandescent lamp bulb and a common household fluid. Impressively destroyed the room it was discharged in."
Almost banned. The first stages have been implemented. Now we know the real reason. That evil commie Chinese fiction about global warming was never the real reason!!!
The Home Guard Manual produced by the UK MoD is still available in PDF form from many, many sources. It shows all sort of wonderful things in words and pictures, such as how to sneak up and slit someones throat, how to strangle/kill with cheese wire or similar, how to make Molotov cocktails, how to turn explosives/home-made hand grenades into "sticky bombs" to disable/destroy vehicles and many other "useful" techniques for defending your country from violent invaders.
"One of our local school systems suspended a kid last fall, just after the time change, because the kid wisely carried a flashlight (torch) to his bus stop. Problem was this flashlight had a "pistol grip." System superintendent issues platitudes about student safety and “Students should be cognizant of any item that may be considered a weapon and not bring those items to school.”
He obviously wasn't black, I take it? If he was would you be reporting a slightly different story involving Police, guns, SWAT teams?
"I look forward to the time when someone realises that you can kill people with rocks and tries to ban rocks."
Obligatory Douglas Adams (RIP) quote
“We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.”
Obviously he was a closet terrorist who sneaked subversion into his alleged comedy!!
"Not sure what to say. Is this a terrible lack of joined up thinking or oddly reassuring that the panopticon still isn't here yet?"
No, it's just half-arsed legislation combined with cheap as chips IT automation. It's the same reason you need an age check when buying plastic picnic cutlery from a supermarket because knives!!!!
"That's why the Galaxy Note 7 had an innovative feature that physically set fire to the files on the phone (well, okay, to the phone itself) every so often in case some of them were dangerous."
You raise an interesting point sir. Has anyone ever checked the Amazon or Kindle accounts of the the "victims" of these exploding phones of firey death? Is this book burning by remote control?
"I can't help but wonder why you alerted WH Smith to the presence of these books with the obvious intention of getting them removed from distribution, and then provided the names of the books in your article."
What struck me as most odd wasn't just the books being named specifically, but the article being padded out by telling us exactly what the books contain, just in case the titles weren't enough to whet the appetite.
Now, as many have said, attempts to ban knowledge doesn't really work. Over a long period of two or three generations, that knowledge may be rare, but never entirely gone, so I'm not really in favour of censorship, but the current UK laws on dissemination of knowledge "likely to be of use in terrorism offences" must be pretty close to being broken just by the article alone. I mean, it's almost as bad as posting a link to a site which contains links to pirate videos !!!!11!!!one!!11
"and the Conax socket (for paytv card) never worked properly. Sony refused to fix it or help in any way."
Why didn't you take it back to the seller and demand a repair or refund then? Yeah, it's Sonys fault it never worked, but unless you bought it direct from Sony then your contract of sale was with the seller. Even if you did buy direct from Sony, same thing applies. It doesn't work,, from new, repair or refund.
If one part of a country secedes from another part in a democratic fashion, then there will be serious negotiations on the "national" infrastructure, including military resources with both sides wanting to retain cordial relations.
I very much doubt it would happen anyway, but the general feeling I'm getting from the comments is a lot of hate and revenge-like comments, "cut them off", "take back everything", "dam the Colorado". If, as has been said California is a net contributor to the US federal budget, then any negotiations would take into account that California paid for that federal infrastructure, including a portion of the military.
There seems to be an assumption from many here that it would be a forced secession on hostile terms, effectively a revolution and a possible civil war. As with the last civil war, it's worth remembering that there are Californians in the military and many bases plus much military equipment in California if a worst case scenario ever happened.
Likewise, why would the rest of the US "cut off" California, block the roads, shut down pipelines etc.? Do you really think the *only* way out is a hostile way?
"How effing thick can a man be? Put him on some basic science classes for god's sake!"
To me, this seems to be one of the downsides of the US political system. An incoming President surrounds themselves with all of their own advisers and political appointees. So even as President, they don't really ever see the other side of the coin.
Is there anyone in the Whitehouse with actual clout who stays across administration changes?
"How well do they think California's farmers would do if they had to pay market rates"
Errr, what? Rivers flow where they will. You don't have to buy water from an upstream country if the water flows on down to yours anyway.
Unless you think Arizona is planning some big dams and some rather large inland lakes.
Yeah, there might be problems with amount of flow and who uses which amount of water and that might cause some tensions, but still, the water will generally flow where ever the geology makes it go.
There are plenty of countries around the world who mange to live and use the water from rivers which originate in other countries, sometimes passing through more than one other country.
"To be fair, neither of them were. What people don't understand is that they don't vote for a PM they vote for a party, but the political system has become so personality driven it's hard to see the difference. Once the leader of the elected party steps aside the party can choose a successor, its just that if it happens to be in government we end up with a new PM."
Exactly my point. We never vote for a Prime Minister unless we happen to live in the party leaders constituency, they win, they retain the leadership AND the head of state invites said leader to form a government. There has been at least one instance in the past where the monarch chose a person not even elected to Parliament and asked him to form a government, which he did, and therefore was truly an unelected Prime Minister.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector
That was interesting. As an outside it seems pointless bother with the electoral college at all, at least for those states which enforce voting only for the pledged candidate.
My reading of the process and the background for why the EC exists seems to be a safety valve put in place in case an outright corrupt nutjob "wins" and so can be rejected by "the great and the good" but the system itself has been subverted into a rubber stamp "tradition" process. Probably by a lack "great and good" people.
"And it is a fact that damn few US citizens understand the process."
Sadly, that's not a problem unique to the USA. Here in the UK we had people claiming Gordon Brown was never elected as Prime Minister and again, that Theresa May was not elected as Prime Minister.
"How many US citizens (let alone people in the world) actually understand this process?"
Probably not many :-)
I was interested to see from the count stats that it appears Trumps party merely retained their share of the vote, Clintons party lost some of their share and the overall turnout, despite the press reports of "mass turnouts" amongst certain racial groupings, remained more or less the same. As an outsider, it seems to me that Trump "won" based on either Clintons supporters not turning out or voting for one of the other candidates in protest. In other words, Trump didn't "beat" Clinton, Clinton lost her own supporters to "don't like our own candidate, vote for anyone other than Trump or Clinton"
"Enjoy your victory lap.. but enough of the lies from the right pretending they are reasonable, Trump has told enough lies for everyone."
Yep. But it's quite bewildering to those of not in the US how moderate Trump suddenly sounds compared to ranting and, what seemed to me, outright slander he uttered during the campaign. Compare his campaign trail comments about Obama with the comments he made after meeting him at the Whitehoue today. Likewise his recent post-win comments about Hillary Clinton.
It's a bit like a couple of boxers beating the shit out of each other and then going for a pint together afterwards.
It does make us outsiders wonder just what happened and what might happen once he's sworn in.
"That said, unofficially, my numbers suggest taht Italy has less McDonald's per head than any other European country I've been to. My girlfriend's town in Italy, you have to drive for about 20 minutes to find one. But then, you have to drive for 30 minutes to find quite a lot of things there too."
In the part of Tyneside I live, I can think of 3 McDs nearby. All happen to be about a good 20 minute drive away. Sorry to rub in how lucky I am!
Actually, there is one less than a mile away but thanks to the river, that's more like 30 minutes away.
Now that I think about it, the only fast food chain place that is really close by is a recently opened SubWay.
"I've seen one built in a Tudor-style building, on the approach to Slough, fairly recently - which I thought was fairly interesting, for what it's worth; so I guess that they're not totally unwilling to blend with their surroundings."
And to be fair <hack spit!> to McDs, they have finally almost completely eliminated the garish and tacky red and yellow plastic building frontages and gone for a more subdued, almost heritage style dark green and slightly more muted yellow, often with some wood cladding. They do look a bit nicer than they used to. Not that I'd go in one :-)
"I'm not one of those fish+chips on the costas people, but I would appreciate a decent pint of blonde in the sun, were it available."
You need to get away from the tourist areas, or at least keep an eye out for where the locals go to eat and drink. Tourist areas usually have higher costs so the businesses usually only sell the most popular generic products.
"The restaurant"
Please stop using McDonalds marketing terms. I don't care what they are called in the USA, in the rest of the world a McDonalds is NOT a restaurant. At best it might be a cafe, or in US parlance, a diner. A restaurant is a place where you go for a nice freshly cooked meal made from real food ingredients.and has a nice atmosphere.
A fast food place is just that. A fast food place.
"Brexit did not "cause" the pound to drop; this was caused by a bunch of brain-dead currency speculators panicking afterwards."
That's partly true. The Pound, according many economists, has been over valued for along time and was going to drop anyway at some stage. Maybe not quite so suddenly, and not by quite so much, but it had to happen at some point.
"Why wouldn't it be the current President and the person who was SOS at the time?"
That would be because a responsible leader has to take on the responsibilities and commitments already in place when they take over. They can try to move away from them if they choose, but they have to move slowly and carefully. Trump can't just pull up the drawbridge 5 minutes after being sworn in. He may be about to become president in January, but the USA still has to operate as "normal" and Trump cannot simply do as he pleases.
"I for one, look forwards to the next free and fair elections in the USA (due 2100AD - after Trumps worshippers are finally overthrown in the battle of New Jerusalem)"
Yes, I too am closely watching for his "religious advisers" to appear from behind the curtain. Especially one Nehemier Scudder.
"I find it interesting that Donald has consistently maintained that the election is rigged. Should he win, does that mean that the Democrats can legitimately call the result into question, and if so, what could he say?"
It all sounds frighteningly familier. The Brexiteers never really thought they would win so had no plans for what to do if they did. Trump claims it's all rigged against an "outsider", so how does he justify that now? Surely, as you say, if it's rigged, and he won, then by definition, it's a fraudulent and therefore invalid election.
"I understand the reasons behind it but I really hate that you can't defend yourself against 'minor' crimes."
You can, in most jurisdictions. But in many jurisdictions, it stops being "self defence" when you shoot the person from behind, ie s/he is running away and you are no longer in personal danger.
"It also seemed to have a 50% chance of dying completely during updates."
Is that in Windows by any chance? I've got Kodi running on Android, FreeBSD, Linux and couple of Pis (versions 1 and 2) and I don't recall any update going bad. I've never used Kodi on Windows, so this is a real question, not a nix/windows snark.
"An improvement on the Kodi I used to run on the Pi, because IIRC it saves bookmarks across the network, besides the usual MythTV frontend stuff."
FWIW, Kodi will work with a backend MySQL database keeping your library/watched/bookmark status consistent across clients.
Of course as you and others have said, MythTV is not Kodi. Certainly not on a Pi. The recording features on MythTV outstrip what Kodi can do for a start.
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