Moderator Alan

Recent Actions

• Commented on A message from our UK sponsors
  Brevity is the soul of wit and all that, but you might like to give a little more context to this comment. I'm assuming you mean that Charlie could use a Virtual Private Network to appear to be in a...
• Commented on Why I don't self-publish
  I have fixed all three links in your comment. All three cases had missing white space between the link and surrounding punctuation. (I would suggest using the preview function and checking in those cases where you embed a link.)...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  Sometimes this moderator doesn't get to check the pending folder for several hours. If it gets over about a day, it's probably too late to sensibly retrieve a comment and drop it back into the conversation. At the moment, I...
• Commented on Political failure modes and the beige dictatorship
  The automatic filters have been working overtime for some reason on the comments on this entry. I don't know why, but about 10% seem to have been held. As of now, they've all been reinstated. I expect more will get...
• Commented on Incidentally ...
  Sorry about the comment eating - we had an outage of the underlying database that require restarting (and by Charlie). As you will realise, it's now back....
• Commented on Of Blood and Honey, And Blue Skies from Pain
  Unfortunately, using post numbers rather than the reply link is a little unreliable, since posts may end up being dropped (duplicates usually get trimmed out if they've not both been replied to) and restored (back when the filters used to...
• Commented on Of Blood and Honey, And Blue Skies from Pain
  The last 4 novels I've read have been fantasy, of that particular sub-genre London Police Procedural/Horror. As a variety, it requires believable policemen to set against the strangeness of the supernatural. (For those wondering, the books are books 2 and...
• Commented on Of Blood and Honey, And Blue Skies from Pain
  Greg:- I've dropped your second comment too. Really, don't try to go there, no matter how right and fair you think you are....
• Commented on Of Blood and Honey, And Blue Skies from Pain
  Droid - the reason I'm dropping your (two) original comments is not that I think you're wrong and Greg is right. Nor do I think that the British Empire was blameless in its dealings with its citizens and subjects. The...
• Commented on Of Blood and Honey, And Blue Skies from Pain
  Comments by droid removed. Please do not throw the term 'genocide' around. Also: Greg and others - I do not want this thread declining into a flamewar about the rights and wrongs of the Empire (British or other)....
• Commented on National Talk About Something Else Day
  Hmm, Okay. So that's two* comments since the return that have tripped the suspicious filters, yours and one by Greg (and in his case, he'd done a pretty good job of convincing them he was not quite kosher before the...
• Commented on National Talk About Something Else Day
  We do have another possible spammer. Should a 'RichardGinn' actually have something of relevance to say, he should avoid talking about the latest Nike footwear in such ... promotional ... terms. (Branded shoes, their added value being almost entirely in...
• Commented on Status update
  An expert is someone who apparently knows more about something than one does. So yes, there are experts in just about everything....
• Commented on Status update
  I'm trusting that I don't have the same problem. But then I have an account here, so I'm not using the Google ID...
• Commented on Meta: comments
  For general information, as far as moderators on this blog are concerned, there is a pair in the US (Dan and Sean Eric), and Charlie and me in the UK. When you see me post, it's almost always as a...
• Commented on Olympics 2012: A Bruce Schneier Moment
  I wonder. You don't suppose anyone might have worked out some system, I dunno, maybe using triangulation on lots of satellites, that could pin down your position to a few yards? And the position of a stadium too? Nah....
• Commented on Admin note
  I can't speak for Charlie here, but this recent article is typical of many people's views on PHP....
• Commented on Going dark
  An alternative (which Charlie may or may not permit) is that the contents of the two booths are swapped. If this is permitted, then the whole energy/momentum thing, for surface transport, becomes a whole lot easier. You have a loadmaster...
• Commented on What Amazon's ebook strategy means
  I think there is a confusion here, between intermediaries (someone who takes a product and sells it on, perhaps aggregating, perhaps retailing, perhaps just moving it from one place to another) and value-adders. An online store or a bookshop is...
• Commented on Blank slate: politics and context in the 21st century
  And of course, altitude. Which means that depending on where in Switzerland it came from, if it came from there, it would be different. I've eaten a meal in a restaurant at 3500 metres in the Oberland. And also at...
• Commented on Home again
  No matter which candidate is chosen, there's one possible scenario: come the election itself, a semi-credible third candidate comes out of the woodwork. At that point, depending on where in the spectrum that third candidate is, either Obama's vote gets...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  Even in the UK, there are different levels depending on whether you're in Scotland or in England. The Scottish build regs are, for some reason and I can't think why, somewhat more attentive to that matter of building insulation. Having...
• Commented on Blank slate: politics and context in the 21st century
  I would propose that execution is a large part of the experience though. It's the genotype/somatype thing. Potato? Heretic!...
• Commented on Blank slate: politics and context in the 21st century
  where $ethnic_recipe can travel the World electronically rather than everyone having to go to $nation to visit a restaurant that serves it. In theory, yes. On the other hand, I have yet to see the recipe that was actually complete...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  I concur. I suspect that this tale has been embroidered somewhat in the transmission....
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  Frankly, I consider the iPod turning wheel thing one of the most hideous bits of UI I've ever encountered, and wonder how on earth Apple persuaded people it was a good idea. I can only assume that people liked it...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  What is this 'grey' and what is this 'brown' of which you speak? Black. Black polos, black chinos, black shoes. If it's not black, I don't tend to buy it....
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  Since it seems a wide-spread practice in Europe, how is municipal composting done there? I can't speak for the whole of Europe, but in our district (North Herts for the record), it's as follows. We have two wheelie bins, which...
• Commented on Normal service ....
  *snort* Yes, that could be ... problematic. (I did have to follow the link to work out what your point was.)...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  What is this 'red' and this 'white' of which you speak?...