Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Auckland City Nights, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Google Maps tends to be a lot dodgier the smaller/more local the store.
For sure. I just searched for "dairy" on my phone and it came up with one that's 2 km away, missing the 3 that are much closer. Tried "convenience store", and it got about 10 hits in the CBD, none of them vaguely close to the Wynyard Quarter. Which, incidentally is not marked on Google as having a pedestrian bridge, so if people wanted to use Navigation to get to them, they would be doing the old scenic route.
I've also noticed that it's not much good at finding cheap places to eat. Anyone who has gone to the trouble of making sure they're in Google is likely to be expensive.
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Hard News: Steve, 1999, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I've got a project on the shelf at the moment involving coding for the ATTINY13A , with a generous 1k of ROM and 64 whole bytes of RAM.
Heh, you anachronist, you. Do you also enact sword battles?
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So did most people back then, as the computer sure didn't have a help menu.
Yup and it wouldn't have helped anyway, because I didn't have the computer. When I say I learned it from a book, I mean I knew the language before I had even seen a computer use it.
It was the first time I understood the value of a good manual too. The VIC had the best introductory manual I've ever seen. That's why it sold so well, enabling them to build the C64.
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Hard News: Steve, 1999, in reply to recordari,
I had the predecessor ZX81. The hours of fun I had programming sine wave curves and playing Orbit.
Luxury. I learned to program from a book. Never even saw a computer up close until I'd gone right through several books on BASIC. Then a friend got the predecessor to the ZX81 - the ZX80. I hand wrote some games for it, tried them at his place.
It was probably the most stoked I've ever been in my life when I came home one day and my folks had got a VIC20. 3K of RAM. I wrote at least 50 games for it.
I was asked the other day at a job interview if I had any experience in writing tight code for smaller machines, like smartphones. I had to point out that my smartphone is 10 times more powerful than the first PC I wrote software on in the 90s, solving problems a hundred times more complex than what they were wanting.
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Hard News: Steve, 1999, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
I will never be allowed to live it down if anyone ever hacks any computer-related account I have, no matter the actual result. I have lots of incentive to care.
LOL, well that makes sense.
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Hard News: Steve, 1999, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
If nothing else, having something like your Facebook or Google account hacked might not be extremely costly, but it is really fucking annoying. (And can be used for some very malicious things.)
Strikes me as an extremely unlikely thing to happen. The cost would not be great. The cost of entering long passwords adds up every day. The cost of losing a hard password is not insubstantial either, have actually had that happen to me many times.
To me, having powerful passwords is a lot like putting 3 locks on your front door, all of which you have to open every time you want to come or go. It's overkill, unless you have genuine reasons to fear a sneaky break in.
Getting phished is more likely. That has happened to people I know and it was a bit of a pain.
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Smartphones still can't play MMOs
They can, I've spent a few hours testing one out over the last couple of months. I had an empire stretching from Avondale to Laingholm. But I gave it all away for a single kiss...
Password security? Cracks me up how much people obsess about it. Only my bank account is even worth bothering on a strong password, and even then, it does lock up after 3 failed attempts anyway, and sends me a text.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Stephen Judd,
You can only contradict successfully if you can find a way for the person with the wrong belief to maintain their self-esteem.
Yes, this makes it trickiest when they are most wrong. Sometimes it's impossible and you just have to make them feel stink. I think it's important not to rub it in, though.
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Hard News: Is that it?, in reply to Steve Barnes,
But what could you tie it to? Gold?
Other currencies are usually favorite choices. Whoever you do the most trade with. In our case, probably the USD, which conveniently also pegs us to the RMB.
The Singaporeans also take 35% of everyone's income into a super fund. They can do this on account of not really being a democracy.
It is conceivable that a majority of people could agree with super schemes, particularly if they come with immense tax savings (as they do in Oz).
35% is a big slice of income. I suspect that the main reason they can do that is because they have very good incomes. When you're really rich, you can save way more money.
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Hard News: 2011: The Year Of What?, in reply to Sacha,
which has not however deterred Don Brash
FTW. I, for one, welcome his enormous bald pate onto the pool table of politics, and hope he is potted off the break.
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