Is it just me that can't really get behind a company that releases a product that nobody except themselves can actually write an app for, and having to wait for "WatchOS 2" (possibly the dumbest construction I've ever heard of, seriously, it sounds like something out of a spoof) in order to get the tools to do useful stuff on the watch?

I read somewhere that Apple didn't allow you to make apps that have a watch face on them. Kinda blows out quite a lot of ideas before you even start.

Typical Apple - let's sell millions of device that have only a handful of apps out for them. And typical Apple lovers? They go out and buy that in their MILLIONS. I just have not understood the fascination with this company since even the early days of computing.

You cannot teach those who are not willing to question their own beliefs. This is self-evident in things like science, etc. If you cannot question yourself, then you cannot learn.

Yes, children can be brainwashed, which may TRANSMIT stupidity to them, they might become stupid or ignorant by proxy, but there's no cure if they aren't willing to learn, no matter the reason.

Education only works when people are receptive. It works in children because they are receptive to anything and everything, which is why we have to protect them. But even some children have inherited, "caught", or otherwise had bred within them stupidity - which prevents their education almost immediately.

Think of the "I don't need to learn this, I'm going to be an X when I grow up" crowd.

Education is a cure, but only if the patient is willing to admit their own addiction to stupidity and actively work to cure it. And that's 90% of the job, not what they then go on to actually learn.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. You can the stupid to education, but you can't make them learn.

Nope. Completely agnostic / atheist (I'm agnostic but if you really made me choose an answer, then I'm vastly tending towards the atheist).

But my characterisation of something this stupid as stupidity is not based on religious beliefs. Singing, praying, chanting, making funny noises, spraying the room with incense, thinking good thoughts, even swearing at it etc. WILL NOT FIX YOUR PRINTER. It's as simple as that.

There doesn't need to be a religious bias in this to understand that.

The fact that you think I'm doing this on a religious basis is quite amusing, in fact. It doesn't matter what religion you are, hoping your computer will get better isn't going to do that. At best, pray to find someone who knows how to fix it. But expecting an broken inanimate object to suddenly start functioning again without doing something as simple as pressing keys on it, or booting some disc, or even wiggling some cable, is just bollocks of the highest order.

No matter what you believe created the universe.

In the UK, you could actually be done for false advertising. Psychics, mediums, etc. are strictly "entertainment purposes only" and cannot claim to change your life, luck, etc.

I know, I have a side-hobby of taking advertising literature that I find for such things and complaining when it misses off the legally-required disclaimers.

There is no cure for absolute fucking stupidity.

1) Your stats are bollocks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The UK is 100th based on incarceration rates. US is #2. Some tiny British colonies in the middle of nowhere are higher than the UK but nowhere near the US. Technically only the Seychelles is worse, but that's because the only fair measure is incarceration per population, and they have a tiny population.

2) "Most censored"? Bollocks. Please go look at some proper British broadcasting. We have shows that only exist to take the piss out of politicians, in doing so risk libel suits almost every time, and yet it's shown on prime time by the BBC themselves. The same shows that basically made a mockery of "super-injunctions" live on air for several entire episodes and regularly take the piss out of the BBC themselves. Fuck getting away with that in China or Korea or even the US.

3) Your "actual" imprisonment figures? Probably about right. But murder won't see you out in 5 at all. Nearer 10. Think half the prison sentence if you're a good boy, and murder carries higher prison sentences than firearms offences alone. However, don't forget that many "murder" charges are the same incident that results in a separate firerarms charge too. (P.S. It's called rehabilitation. A significant portion of US income comes from prison work, however. We don't have that shit. You're in prison to rehabilitate... if you don't, 10 years is 10 years. If you make the effort to, yes, you can be out in less if you keep your nose clean).

4) The UK does not allow firearms in private hands without a licence, so our firearms laws are MUCH stricter. Which results in significantly reduced instances of firearms offences and deaths.

5) Humans Rights Act / holding cells? Then sue if the cells are not lawful. Where's the legal definition of a holding cell is and where it's banned? It's not hard to find a lawyer willing to take on such cases. The fact that it's not really happened means it's bollocks.

6) Maggie Thatcher? Fucking really? I wasn't born on the day she came into power, yet I'm middle-aged. Give it fucking up already. You're talking about things over 35 years ago. Back then Jimmy Saville was hosting prime-time TV and Jim Davidson was still considered funny.

The rest? It's opinion and you're entitled to it. But making up bollocks that's one Google away from being revealed as a lie, and dragging out Maggie fucking Thatcher destroys your credibility, which is why no-one listens, cares or understands you.

The fucking US has more censored TV. They don't even show other Olympians winning when you they show the Olympics. They have more backwards firearms laws, and much worse incarceration conditions and rates, not to mention that shit going on at the moment with officers shooting beating people for no reason whatsoever.

If you think the UK is bad, please fuck off out of it (if you're in it).

Then neither are basically all of the accented characters:

ÃéÃÃÃ

ÃÃÃÃ"Ãs

Quarter, half, most of the currency symbols, etc.

Extended ASCII is pretty bog-standard. But my point really? I press the pound-sign (or the other characters) on my keyboard, and Slashdot can't render them. Facebook can. The Register can. Every forum in the world can. But not Slashdot.

Fuck it doesn't even support ASCII, let alone Unicode.

Try doing an English pound sign:

£

Nope.

You can argue semantics ("can do" vs "can legally do"). Fine.

Until you sell the house and have to do those home reports. Because if it's not up to spec, or the new homeowners find this post, that's a criminal act. You can say it's as daft as you like, it's still illegal to do and can come back to bite you years later - e.g. have you noticed that high-power switches (e.g. cooker switches), terminal covers, consumer units, etc. are date-coded in most instances now? How do you go about explaining the 2015 date code on something in a house you bought before then, sold after then, and have no works receipt from a Part-P installer for? It's actually just illegal. And you can be made to pay someone registered to come in, strip it out, and do it properly, at any point.

Fuck, if your windows aren't FENSA-registered-installer fitted and you sell your house, they will make you pay for insurance for them now (assuming your buyer is happy to accept that) unless you can provide a valid cert from an installer for them.

We were all taught to wire plugs in school. That's the extent of the works you can legally undertake on your electrics now. It's actually part of the Building Regs now, so selling house means it can crop up and it's treating just like knocking down walls, stripping out firewalls, playing with the gas, etc.

"And no, an electrician doesn't test every single phone and laptop before it gets plugged in because WHAT FUCKING PLANET ARE YOU FROM."

The UK. Where PAT testing of every "portable appliance" is mandatory for schools.

Yes, we have to test every single cable that gets plugged in. For precisely the reasons stated (student buys cheap-shit Chinese charger rather than expensive Apple charger and ends up catching the classroom on fire... been there, seen it, done it).

The outlets in questions are NOT for public use. There may be ones for public use on some trains, but not on the Overground (those are locked ones, with a hex-key, for cleaners only).

It has nothing to do with neurotic dictators - UK and EU electrical law is just stricter. You can't modify cabling in your home without being Part-P certified, you certainly can't modify cabling in a school without being insured and certified and ALL portable appliances need to have an annual test (and/or a test before first use) unless they are literally brand new out of the box.

Same as the last 15 schools I worked in (state, private, primary, secondary, further, consultancy, permanent position, it doesn't matter).

Technically it's theft. You've cost the rail company money (pittance though it may be) and potentially risked a fire by plugging an unknown device into an electrical socket.

Even in my workplace, that will get you disciplined. You at least have to get a PAT test before you can do that and it's only by the goodwill of the employer that they let you use the sockets.

Incredibly petty? Maybe. But that's not the point. And getting aggressive about it is what really gets you arrested and in trouble, you could have talked your way out of the first "arrest" without problem but it may have made you late for work.

But, yes, technically, it's not your socket, it's not your electricity, the sockets are CLEARLY marked that you're not allowed to do that, you didn't ask permission.

In my workplace (schools), we have told off parents for doing exactly this during open-days, etc. They just wander into the school and plug into the first socket they see and then leave the device on and charging and wander off.

We use threat of the same law to stop them doing it (but we probably wouldn't go so far as arrest, but arrest is NOT a charge - people always confuse this distinction - you arrest somebody to stop them leaving while you work out if they've actually committed a crime that anybody cares about), but we're not worried about the electricity cost as much as the electrical safety implications. If their cheap shit Chinese charger catches fire and burns down the school, we don't care who was liable, but our insurers and lawyers sure will.

And I'm not talking tiny state schools, but large independent (private) schools where pissing off a parent costs you more money than you earn in a year if they pull their kids out. But still we don't let them do it.

It's petty. But it's still theft, effectively (the name of the charge is just a specific one for theft of electricity). Arrest may be an overreaction but arrest is not charge. Getting aggressive over something you know you shouldn't have done (no matter how petty) gets you arrested twice, and certainly charged at least once.

Don't plug into other people's sockets without asking. And if you can't ask or think the answer might be no, don't plug into the socket anyway.

And then there's the question of how did you activate the socket because all the UK train sockets I see are keyed with a large hex-key in order to turn them on. It's not just a case of plugging in by accident not realising the socket wasn't for public use.

HTTPS interception? Pretty bog-standard nowadays, you shouldn't need to explain what it is on here.

Why it should break non-web stuff? Fuck knows. You need to sack your IT team or get them to make exclusions for the sites you need.

Joining your computer to a tethered phone and then later reconnecting to the corporate network? Sackable offence in my workplace.

You're both being dickheads. But the question is really do you *need* access to external git/svn/etc.? If so, then working around it in such a way is not the way to do it.

"This website is blocked.

Category: Whatever.

If you wish to unblock, please contact Administrator."

Anything else is just open to abuse and you may as well not have a web filter at all (P.S. This has NOTHING to do with your firewall).

You still have voicemail? That's cute.

The rest of the world moved on from the 90's.

My Android phone has a data measuring tool built-in and also warns and stops when you hit the limit. It's not rocket-science, it's already there in the settings on any vaguely recent phone (fuck knows about Apple, because I don't care about them).

If you don't have a vaguely recent phone then install something like Onavo, which does exactly that.

Also, if you're doing 2Gb on a mobile, stop using the mobile for data, connect to Wifi, or up your package. How hard is this? Pissing about shrinking images hasn't done much since the days of Opera Mobile and WAP.

This is Slashdot and you HAVEN'T worked this shit out?