Ah, but we're not talking about people in general, we're talking about politicians! ;) I think levels of being able to predict them could be measured in terms of how easy it is to herd cats - Predicting a smart politician - herding 9 cats. Predicting a dumb politician - herding 6 cats. And, it also occurred to me that during the 2000 American Presidential Campaign George W. campaigned down a centrist line, along with playing the, "I'm not too smart, I'm a man of the people," card. Then in power he lurched to the right. Not wanting to get into the rights and wrongs of such an action, but it hardly smacks of predictability? <thinks>Just realised how much I've typed in response to a one line reply. People might well be thinking I'm in rant mode...:~</think>

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com www.fotofader.com

I agree with you in that everyone seems to know how to solve everything, until they actually look into it and realise it's more complicated than they thought (or, even worse, they don't realise how complicated it is and try and carry on anyway). My understanding of the situation in California is that continual referenda are leading to a somewhat dysfunctional government. I think that's what makes me angry as well - people piping on about how things should be done such as your list when they don't have a clue. I may be meandering slightly when I'm drawing a parallel between this and people not liking their politicians to appear too smart - WTF! They're meant to be running the country! They should be smart! Would you want a dumb doctor/lawyer/programmer etc!!! I do strongly agree with your point about how you have to work back to the problem the person does have, and that they might not know the best solution. Whilst a person giving a "turn the firewall up" line might be one of them, there will be a lot of them who are more of, "I've got too much spam, what can you/I do?"

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com www.fotofader.com

I have to say that this is really one of my pet peeves - non-technical people suggesting the solution! Do they think that the technical person won't know how to fix it? Do they think it makes them look smart??? What they should do is quantify the problem and ask what should be done about it. i.e, "What can you or I do to reduce the spam?" This, "turning the firewall up," makes them look excessively stupid.:mad:

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com www.fotofader.com

LinkedIn recommendations? Man! I've seen glowing recommendations for ex-colleagues of mine who were complete numpties. Had considered getting recommendations for myself there, but I though if everyone can get a good recommendation, what's the point?

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com www.fotofader.com

Not quite the same sort of level, but I did something similar figuring that a boss of mine wouldn't read the documentation I wrote. Hence, in the FAQ I added a question about the effectiveness of the Crane Kick in Karate Kid. Sure enough, after "reviewing" my documentation he said it was OK...

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

"they look at me as though I have too heads." Oh dear! ;P

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

Oh the irony! Sensationalist reporting of an investigation... leads to... People not taking the MMR jab... leads to... Sensationalist reporting of prople not taking MMR jab... I would love to know where this is going to lead now, but I don't quite have the imagination....

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

I think you've hit the nail on the head there... much like the TV that is watched, the newspapers/magazines that are read - at the end of the day the companies producing this media have to sell it to someone. But I wouldn't say that this is a modern thing - there are plenty of rubbish movies from the past, but they will have been forgotten about, and there are some classics being produced at the moment. This year I watched, "The boy with the striped pyjamas."[^] I reckon that will still be considered a good movie in 50 or 100 years time...

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

Noooo!!!! You've got that all wrong! It's not the Mac that's not working, it's the browser/web site/something else ;P

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

Hi, I'm having a problem with session state being lost in the live environment when using Internet Explorer Versions 6,7 or 8. The application I am working on is www.rugbyroundup.com[^]. The behaviour should be that when a user selects a country they get a different country based page, with different Fixtures and Results available. Then, when clicking on the various Leagues, they should stay with that country. For instance, if you were to select England, followed by National 1 you would still see the England Bar after selecting the National 1 League. This is happening correctly in Mozilla Firefox. However, in Internet Explorer, after clicking the League, the Country setting returns to international!!!:mad: (this can be seen by the change of the flags towards the top of the page). What is equally infuriating is that when testing against my local development version, it functions perfectly on both browsers!!! I've done a bit of investigation into the problem. As the page is using IFRAMES I had a look at the article Session variables are lost if you use FRAMESET in Internet Explorer 6[^] but after giving the various resources the appropriate HTTP Headers the problem is still occurring. I also looked at the Trace when the pages are being run - here is a summary: LIVE ==== Mozilla Browse to index index fires twice with same session variables select country index fires twice with same session variables Got to League Fires twice with same session variables IE Browse to Index index fires once with correct session variables. Select country index fires twice, Second time, the Country code is changed, almost reset Local ===== Mozilla Browse to index index fires twice with same session variables select country index fires twice with same session variables Got to League Fires at least once --- does fire twice - page load occurred twice, thread stack was overflown... IE Browse to Index index fires once with correct session variables. Select country index fires once with correct session variables Select League league.aspx fires once with correct session variables. I would be grateful for any help with this problem

Vincent www.pub-olymp

Mark it with a pen on the screen?

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

I think so, there's one in the Coronation Tap in Bristol (serves very strong cider) that opened up to my room back when I was at University. At least, that's the best explanation I've got for getting home...

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

This punishing of parents for the kid's actions has been tried before - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7880936.stm[^]

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

My iPod sang these lyrics... I had to rewind to hear them again. Of course, the song was 'Junkhead' by 'Alice in Chains'. So the user being referred to is not that one that a visitor to CodeProject would commonly refer to.

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

I always remember attending a lecture on the Environment and Business. Being to mainly Engineering students it was fairly male dominated, and a fairly large group as well, probably about 200. The lecturer was, I guess, in here early 20s, and seemed a bit shy. The mistake when she was to say 'organism' was as inevitable as it was funny...

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

So... I guess you could have a password policy which says you're not allowed to increment your password by 1 every time... though that wouldn't consider the problems of the ex-employee being able to use the account for a few days anyway. [EDIT] Correcting the you're. I'm off to commit Seppuku[^]

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

modified on Friday, January 16, 2009 5:43 AM

Well... firstly Mr. Y shouldn't have given Mr. Z his password in the first place. And if he did - then Mr. Z should change it straight away. Even if he has to change it regularly, then Mr. Z would have several days to access Mr. Y's account anyway! And... what's the betting that the change is simply incrementing a number by 1? PS - should have been clearer in my initial post that it was why passwords need to be changed on a regular basis... you would certainly need to change them if someone figured yours out!!!

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

I am often left wondering why passwords have to be changed at all. I can't see how it provides additional security... the best answer I could find was that a back of the envelope calculation back in the 60s showed that a brute force attack would crack a password within 30 days (OK missing details here, couldn't find the details through Google...). It would appear that this is a, "Well, we've always done it like this," policy.

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

Yup, there are a few people using it... Twitter accounts of Obama, Britney Spears hacked[^]

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com

Leaving the keys in the ignition of a running car isn't necessarily the brightest thing to do. Sometimes old fashioned elbow grease might be the better option... http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=defrosting+cars+stolen&meta=&btnG=Google+Search[^]

Vincent www.pub-olympics.com