Posts by Kiwiiano
-
Hard News: When "common sense" isn't, in reply to Felix Marwick,
Email
Felix Marwick
At the time I didn't think my head hit the road that hard. However, when I checked the helmet 6 weeks later I got a hell of a a surprise to find a whacking great crack right through it.
I shudder to think what might have happened if I hadn't been wearing my lid.I worked in a Lab where helmets were tested and it is VERY clear that if you fall or get knocked off your bike you should replace your helmet. Over & over they demonstrated that even when the owner was convinced that hadn't hit their head, tests on the helmet showed they had and the helmet had sacrificed itself protecting their brain. More important it was FAR less able to protect them if they continued to use it and have another accident. It didn't matter how cheap or expensive the helmet was.
Re the fears around helmets and hair: if you want to see messed up hair, check out the head injuries ward. Having 3/4 of your head shaved REALLY ruins your hair-do! -
Hard News: Switched on Gardener: to what…,
Email
I wonder if Ms Collins will instruct the Constabulary to spend up to five years tracking down the $111,000,000 that's missing from David Ross inc?
-
Hard News: Fox News: I know, right?, in reply to Gareth Ward,
Email
He doesn't have to worry about the 47% who don't pay any taxes because it is his job to worry about the 1% who don't pay any taxes but do fund his campaigns.
-
Hard News: Paying for what doesn't come…,
Email
Perhaps a solution will be to devise micropayments like iTMS/Apps. I find myself faced with paying such trivial amounts for stuff I don't even think about it until the Visa bill comes in and then it rarely adds up to more than a decent bottle of wine. Gone are the days when software cost so much every purchase was carefully considered for days.
Surely in this modern day lots of 20-50c payments or a dollar here or there is no more complex than the volumes of spam or stock exchange fiddles that slosh back and forth across the globe? -
Hard News: The not-so-Evil Empire, in reply to kiwicmc,
Email
Retina MBP a throwaway after 4 years? Judging by the MacBooks still going strong in their ex-factory state, I would expect the RMBP to see 2020 out easily, unless we see HUGE strides in the OS that renders them 'under-achievers'.
On the other hand, I've seen several 3-4 year old Acers or HPs that are staggering.....
-
Hard News: The not-so-Evil Empire,
Email
I just struck an example of Apple's Evil Empire, I went to iTunes music looking for the Andy Griffith Show theme and struck pay dirt! "American Originals" which includes not only the TV theme but several other fondly recollected tracks from the distant past. But Holy Hell ..... NZ$34 for the album.... I don't even pay that much for DVDs, ever!
Hmmmm let's try Amazon.... Veery interesting.... US$9.99 for the CD or MP3 download of the same album. Even allowing for exchange rate differences, that's a helluva difference, and it can't even be attributed to the better quality of OSX or Apple hardware. -
Speaker: Properly Public: It's our information, in reply to John Holley,
Email
I just opened CERA in Safari and copied a page into TextEdit. Don't think it's locked very tightly, if at all.
The scanned paper pdfs would just have to be interpreted by OCR software or just a regular human being retyping it. It's pathetic that they think scanned paper can't be copied. -
Hard News: Someone has to be accountable…, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Email
Don't knock Win 98 until you know what it's running on and what it's asked to do. It's apparently amazingly fast on modern gear that is designed to shovel vast videos etc around but when it's just crunching numbers can be so fast that users accuse it of having crashed when there's no apparent response after they hit [enter]. In fact it has completed the calculations between when they hit the key and looked up at the screen and they are staring impatiently at the result, not the data entry.
It's age also means most of the bugs have been beaten out of it plus the Black hats are no longer interested. -
Email
I can understand some reticence by the Greens until they have the opportunity to study the new developments carefully. The ramifications of Monsanto's machinations have damaged GE's reputation badly.
To some anti-GE is a religion, but we have no problems dealing with the expectations of Israeli importers that shipments of kosher beef patties should NOT have 'less than 1% pork content' or the requirement by Saudi importers that we are forbidden to even store products destined for Israel in the same freezers as their Halal purchases. Or even the demands from German inspectors that our meat is processed on stainless steel even though countless bacterial counts demonstrate that using pine wood surfaces is safer due to inherent antibacterial qualities of pine, plus it's kinder to the cutting implements.
-
Email
I can't figure out why the powers-that-be haven't used reaction time tests to determine driver impairment by any cause, alcohol, illegal or legal drugs, fatigue, dementia, stupidity, whatever. Even the simple ruler test will pick up that someone shouldn't be in control of a car. Dangle a 12" rule in front of the testee, with their finger and thumb ready to try to grab the rule as it is released. A drunk will be lucky to react in time to catch the rule at all.
Another version used a Palm Pilot, that displayed random dots on the screen, requiring the testee to tap them with the stylus to make them disappear. The tempo of the dots' appearance slowly increased until they couldn't be cleared, giving a pretty good indication of the ability of the driver to respond to the unexpected. There's any number of cheap handhelds that to handle that test.