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Comment How much??? (Score 1) 134

What the actual?

A boring (but reasonable quality) analogue bassinet can be purchased for less than £75 in the UK (approx. $94). I got to £325 ($406) for something analogue but high-end.

For a motorised bassinet with the range seemed to be £160 ($200) to £475 ($594).

Even the most expensive allows for $1100 to spend on a webcam for the room. For that money I could set up a dedicated server so that my data stays entirely mine without being sent to someone else and still have money left over!

What person in their right mind spends $1700 on a crib - they've obviously got some serious money to burn (waste?)

We'll be paying subscription fees to breathe at this rate!!!

Comment Oo-aarrr! Jim lad! (Score 2) 259

I'm not saying that I pirate content (wink!), but the whole raft of services available at huge extra cost just isn't worth the time digging through to find what's wanted, let alone the cost.

Instead (anecdotally, of course) I understand that it is actually faster to head over to one of the torrent aggregators, pop in a quick search and then wait for the required content to download.

Then a copy is available to be rewatched at any time.

Gouge me and I'll gouge you right back! And then I'll help all my friends to do it too...

Comment Reminds me of HHGTTG and pseudo-fractures (Score 1) 203

Copy pasted without permission (of course):

The major problem which the medical profession in the most advanced sectors of the galaxy had to tackle - after cures had been found for all the major diseases, and instant repair systems had been invented for all physical injuries and disablements except some of the more advanced forms of death - was that of employment.

Planets full of bronzed, healthy, clean-limbed individuals merrily prancing through their lives meant that the only doctors still in business were the psychiatrists - simply because no one had discovered a cure for the universe as a whole, or rather, the only one that did exist had been abolished by the medical doctors. Then it was noticed, that like most forms of medical treatment, total cures had a lot of unpleasant side effects. Boredom, listlessness, lack of - well anything very much, and with these conditions came the realisation that nothing turned, say, a slightly talented musician, into a towering genius faster than the problem of encroaching deafness. And nothing turned a perfectly normal, healthy individual into a great political or military leader better than irreversible brain damage.

Suddenly everything changed. Previously best-selling books such as ’How I Survived an Hour With a Sprained Finger’ were swept away in a flood of titles such as ’How I Scaled the North Face of the Megaperna With a Perfectly Healthy Finger But Everything Else Sprained, Broken, or Bitten Off by a Pack of Mad Yaks’. And so doctors were back in business - recreating all the diseases and injuries they had abolished - in popular, easy-to-use forms.

Thus, given the right and instantly available types of disability, even something as simple as turning on the Three-D T.V. could become a major challenge. And when all the programs on all the channels actually were made by actors with cleft-palettes, speaking lines by dyslexic writers, filmed by blind cameramen, instead of merely seeming like that, it somehow made the whole thing more worthwhile."

Comment Renewables first...? (Score 1) 50

I was just going to post "What a complete joke!" and leave it at that, but...

Can we have solar panels and rainwater capture first? I get that FAST internet is cool and relatively cheap to install but this is not a win. It's a fluffy "we've actually managed to do something" by a crippled lame duck government.

I have found that 40Mbps is typically perfectly adequate for a normal family of four, one of whom (i.e. me) is a HEAVY data user with a lot of data in the cloud and elsewhere. I don't run my own server, but I use close to 500GB a month on my own, forgetting the family.

The UK is on its knees because of the poor choices made for our housing stock for the last 50 years. It has been left "up to the market" and then that market has been tilted in favour of the mega-capitalists to make huge profits at the expense of local communities.

The government of the UK is morally bankrupt. We need a new breed of politicians who aren't just in it for the money but actually want to improve the lives of the people they serve.

I guess we're screwed...

Comment Re:It is a bad idea, but not for these reasons (Score 1) 110

Might I suggest that you have cause and effect muddled? Please keep in mind "Hate the game, not the player". Please forgive me for some heinous generalisations, but on balance everything below is correct for the average UK citizen. Full disclaimer: I'm not a teacher, but I know several very well. I went to a private fee-paying school. I grew up in a Conservative household with right-wing, capitalistic views. At the time I thought Maggie Thatcher was awesome. Over the last 15 years or so I have become utterly disgusted with the Tory Party: the constant lies, the obvious skulduggery, the financial theft from the general public and the horrendous disregard for the future. The system of education in the UK would appear to have degraded over the last 50-60 years or so despite (actually please read "specifically because of") constant "updating & upgrading" by our politicians. In most countries, but specifically the UK, the posh/ rich/ elite are in control and they are very protective of themselves and their own. They have a habit of making rules/ regulations/ laws/ policies which on the face of it seem fair but have a nasty habit of handing them ever more power and wealth. Key to this is education. If you have the money you can ensure that your kids get a proper, rounded, well-balanced and thorough education by paying for them to go to a private school. If you don't have the money then your are stuck sending them to the local state operated school. That should be fine if the funding was correct, if the facilities were adequate, the number of properly qualified teachers per pupil was sensible, and the requirements for the contents of the curriculum were sensible. However, by a series of what appear to be very sinisterly calculated moves, the Conservative Party, over a period of decades has torn our national institutions to shreds by continuously cutting funding and meddling with policies. Every few years new policies are introduced that effectively dumb down the education provided to the average citizen in the UK. The question is "why?". The answer is simple: Control. Control allows them to keep power & make money. If the general population are too poor, too ill-educated, too busy, too glued to the TV/ smartphone and too stressed to think critically and question their overlords, then the overlords maintain and grow their political and financial power without having to fight for it. They are simply handed it by a population that has been hypnotised into being compliant mushrooms. The worst thing they have to deal with every now and again is a strike, which they blame on everyone else but themselves. Indentured servitude with an invisible cage is still just slavery. Our population is running hard to stand still and the politicians are constantly blaming "THEM!" (pick whoever/ whatever you like to fit in there - it's the way that right-wing politics actually works with knee-jerk dog-whistle statements). Worst of all, we have been persuaded that this is all in our own best interests!!! Meanwhile, the posh/ rich/ elite send their kids to have a proper education so that the cycle can repeat all over again. Blaming the unions is not fair. Teaching is an honourable profession and one of the most important ones. Teachers should be treated with respect and paid properly. The UK government has underpaid teachers for decades. They **DESERVE** a proper pay rise. As do nurses, doctors, the police, firefighters, and most other public service employees in the UK. I would hope that in all countries, not just the UK, getting a good education isn't considered a privilege for the few but should be considered a basic right for all. Why? Because we are reliant on the next generation to look after us when we are old and frail. The last thing we need is a country filled with people who cannot make simple but sane, rational decisions for themselves. We desperately need a well educated population capable of critical thinking on an individual basis. We do not need some kind of hybrid meritocracy/ kleptocracy where the top 1% allow the rest of us to serve at their feet. How to make the change? Educate our children!!!

Comment Overreach by the EU... (Score 1) 212

Every time I read about the overreach of the European Union I can't help but think of the Owner Trilogy by Neal Asher. They were written in 2011 (and on) and the future it paints for mankind is bleak but essentially caused by the overreaction of the various government blocks to aggressive capitalism and bad behaviour of mega-corporations whilst global warming takes full effect and the population of the earth explodes. As sci-fi space opera it's quite good. As a warning to the political situation that can arise out of generally good, liberal policies that are successively press-ganged by one lunatic populist politician after another, it is absolutely fantastic. In the light of the situations in the UK, America, Russia and China, each with our own brand of despotic tyrant in charge I think you might enjoy it.

Comment Surely you use DropBox, Google Drive, or other (Score 1) 399

Create folder, then put the relevant documents into that folder and wait for them to sync. Get person on the phone... "What's your email address?" Share folder with them and tell them they will have 30 minutes to download it. Remove their access to the folder - rinse and repeat to new person(s) as required. Unless you actually want to provide the document in a protected format, this avoids all issues with software compatibilities and is pretty secure, except for what the recipient might do with it after they have it, but then if they have been able to decrypt it with their personal key, then they could take screenshots if nothing else to compromise your security...

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