if I walk into a bar and ask for a screwdriver, I'm going to get something entirely different than I would if I were to ask for a screwdriver at the hardware store
Same if you asked for a screw, too, I'd imagine...
Alpha's "only" a tropical storm, but the latest track forecast has it going right over Haiti.
From what I understand of Haiti, if it's edible or burnable, it's been eaten or burned - so there's virtually no tree cover left in some places. The wind isn't the problem; I worry that the rainfall will bring flooding, mudslides and mass death.
I was hounded as well. In the end I emailed them and said that their threatening letters were scaring my budgie. It must have got their attention, because I got a very nice personal email back from them, explaining why they were hounding me and how they'd go about making it stop. Since then, they've pretty much gone away (though they still have to send someone round to check that my microwave isn't a cunningly-disguised TV), and they're being a lot nicer than they were.
Imagine a worm that doesn't send spam, doesn't install backdoors, doesn't do anything - except replace your MSN emoticons. Your friend types a smiley, they see a smiley, you see "Would you like to have sex with me?" in the default font. Multiply by a few million, toss in a few corporate users - all hell would break loose!
It's probably just as well for humanity that I'm an HTML/Javascript guy and can't do real programming for shit...
I recently reinstalled Win2000 (after 3 years - not bad going, for me). Not being particularly keen on donwloading 3 years of updates for NIS2002, I bought NIS2005 to get a bit of a head start. Big mistake.
On a clean Win2000+SP4 machine, NIS2005 added a full minute to the boot-up time. The more I put on the machine, the worse it got.
I'm going to wipe the disk again, and put AVG on. NIS2005 can go in the bin.
Far better to avoid going to work in the first place. If I'm going to slack on company time, I'd rather do it at home, or at the beach, or pretty much anywhere but work, thank you very much. And low-tech solutions are usually the best - the ones where you know some 1337 sysadmin isn't going to be able to dig up evidence against you.
My favourite low-tech solution, like so many good ideas, was invented in desperation. Beautiful sunny day, and I was supposed to go and cook hamburgers in a sweltering kitchen which was in an airport terminal - and the terminal was essentially a massive greenhouse. No way. There's really only one way to guarantee getting out of work when your work involves food, and that's to have food poisoning or diarrhoea. But everyone gets the shits when the sun comes out. No problemo.
I prepared a squeezy bottle, filling it about two-thirds full of water, cleared the route to the toilet, and put the lid down. Then I went back into my room and called in sick.
"Hello, is that Gav?... Sorry, Gav, I'm not going to make it in... diarrhoea, I think it was the fish I had last night... Gav, I know every other bastard has called in sick already, but I'm - hold on!" With that, I ran, phone in one hand and squeezy bottle in the other, along the hallway, burst into the bathroom, flung the seat up with a clatter, sat down, pointed the squeezy bottle between my legs and down into the pan, squeezed it and groaned like hell. Squeezing and releasing the bottle would result in a wonderful mix between high-pressure-liquid sounds and farting sounds, which echoed around the pan and in turn the bathroom. Acoustically, it was perfect.
Finally, gasping, I said, "Gav, you still there?...Sorry man... yeah, you're right, I'd better have tomorrow off too."
I had to buy some factor 50 sunblock so I didn't have an awkward tan to explain, but by God it was worth it.
I've almost gotten to the point where I consider a phrase like "makes its own gravy" to be written wrong because of the missing apostrophe, because it's so common -- even in advertising copy, for pete's sake.
And that, right there, is half the problem. The education system completely fell apart some time ago; the first batch of kids to have been failed by it have now gone through uni and into the media, where they serve to corrupt the remainder of the populace by example.
The language is doomed. But I intend to fight its demise.
Sitting in an A320 at Stuttgart last summer, wondering why it isn't going anywhere. Eventually they tell us that one of the thrust reversers didn't deploy on landing, and they're trying to persuade the computer to open both of them at the same time.
After an hour and a half of this, the captain tells us that they're "just going to try rebooting the aeroplane". You should have seen some of the passengers' faces, especially when all the cabin lights went off and the air conditioning fell silent...:)
Slashdot Mirror
slashdot design looks strange today
You just want me to commit a felony by refreshing it to see if I see what you see, don't you?
in the microelectronics space, it is actually very small
I thought everything in the microelectronics space was very small...
if I walk into a bar and ask for a screwdriver, I'm going to get something entirely different than I would if I were to ask for a screwdriver at the hardware store
Same if you asked for a screw, too, I'd imagine...
Think of it as aiding natural selection.
Rename calc.exe. Job done!
Ever wonder why I don't pay for it?
When I see something worth paying for, I'll pay. Until then, they can whistle for my subscription money (and my ad revenue - blocked those too).
Java icon? WTF?
It only kills the stupid ones. I don't know what the birds are complaining about!
Bugger. My mod points expired.
That's the most sensible and balanced Microsoft-related post I've read in quite a while.
Alpha's "only" a tropical storm, but the latest track forecast has it going right over Haiti.
From what I understand of Haiti, if it's edible or burnable, it's been eaten or burned - so there's virtually no tree cover left in some places. The wind isn't the problem; I worry that the rainfall will bring flooding, mudslides and mass death.
Florida will be fine. Haiti? I'm worried.
I was hounded as well. In the end I emailed them and said that their threatening letters were scaring my budgie. It must have got their attention, because I got a very nice personal email back from them, explaining why they were hounding me and how they'd go about making it stop. Since then, they've pretty much gone away (though they still have to send someone round to check that my microwave isn't a cunningly-disguised TV), and they're being a lot nicer than they were.
What's more, being a Brit, I have to pay for it by law :-(
Only if you watch TV. I gave up on that drivel ages ago.
Oh, but think of the fun you can have!
Imagine a worm that doesn't send spam, doesn't install backdoors, doesn't do anything - except replace your MSN emoticons. Your friend types a smiley, they see a smiley, you see "Would you like to have sex with me?" in the default font. Multiply by a few million, toss in a few corporate users - all hell would break loose!
It's probably just as well for humanity that I'm an HTML/Javascript guy and can't do real programming for shit...
Chicken. Cats taste like chicken - everybody knows that.
Then again, a big cat - maybe more like turkey?
Agreed. It sucks royal ass.
I recently reinstalled Win2000 (after 3 years - not bad going, for me). Not being particularly keen on donwloading 3 years of updates for NIS2002, I bought NIS2005 to get a bit of a head start. Big mistake.
On a clean Win2000+SP4 machine, NIS2005 added a full minute to the boot-up time. The more I put on the machine, the worse it got.
I'm going to wipe the disk again, and put AVG on. NIS2005 can go in the bin.
I'd feel a whole lot more sympathy towards Symantec if Norton Internet Security 2005 didn't depend on Internet Explorer.
Yup. In my last place they had this ridiculous rule. I went through the phonetic alphabet three times.
Three sets of quotes correctly nested, but can't spell "a". God, I love it here.
Beneviolent? Interesting concept. How does that work?
If web developers stuck to W3C standards than this wouldn't even be an issue.
And browser developers. If browser developers stuck to W3C standards, web developers wouldn't even have a choice.
Far better to avoid going to work in the first place. If I'm going to slack on company time, I'd rather do it at home, or at the beach, or pretty much anywhere but work, thank you very much. And low-tech solutions are usually the best - the ones where you know some 1337 sysadmin isn't going to be able to dig up evidence against you.
My favourite low-tech solution, like so many good ideas, was invented in desperation. Beautiful sunny day, and I was supposed to go and cook hamburgers in a sweltering kitchen which was in an airport terminal - and the terminal was essentially a massive greenhouse. No way. There's really only one way to guarantee getting out of work when your work involves food, and that's to have food poisoning or diarrhoea. But everyone gets the shits when the sun comes out. No problemo.
I prepared a squeezy bottle, filling it about two-thirds full of water, cleared the route to the toilet, and put the lid down. Then I went back into my room and called in sick.
"Hello, is that Gav? ... Sorry, Gav, I'm not going to make it in... diarrhoea, I think it was the fish I had last night... Gav, I know every other bastard has called in sick already, but I'm - hold on!" With that, I ran, phone in one hand and squeezy bottle in the other, along the hallway, burst into the bathroom, flung the seat up with a clatter, sat down, pointed the squeezy bottle between my legs and down into the pan, squeezed it and groaned like hell. Squeezing and releasing the bottle would result in a wonderful mix between high-pressure-liquid sounds and farting sounds, which echoed around the pan and in turn the bathroom. Acoustically, it was perfect.
Finally, gasping, I said, "Gav, you still there? ...Sorry man... yeah, you're right, I'd better have tomorrow off too."
I had to buy some factor 50 sunblock so I didn't have an awkward tan to explain, but by God it was worth it.
I've almost gotten to the point where I consider a phrase like "makes its own gravy" to be written wrong because of the missing apostrophe, because it's so common -- even in advertising copy, for pete's sake.
And that, right there, is half the problem. The education system completely fell apart some time ago; the first batch of kids to have been failed by it have now gone through uni and into the media, where they serve to corrupt the remainder of the populace by example.
The language is doomed. But I intend to fight its demise.
it certainly can use some polish
No way! It's unusable enough in English!
Sitting in an A320 at Stuttgart last summer, wondering why it isn't going anywhere. Eventually they tell us that one of the thrust reversers didn't deploy on landing, and they're trying to persuade the computer to open both of them at the same time.
After an hour and a half of this, the captain tells us that they're "just going to try rebooting the aeroplane". You should have seen some of the passengers' faces, especially when all the cabin lights went off and the air conditioning fell silent... :)
(In the end they disabled the thrust reversers.)
Thanks AC, but it turned out to be worse than that. Fixed it now.
Get this: I had to edit the config.xml because the mic volume was shown as 256, when the maximum is 255.
How the hell am I going to talk my girlfriend through that?! "just works", my ass.
Call quality is bloody good though, once you get used to the delay.