Posts by VulcanV5

Re: As I read that

Dorry to have to correct you, but . . .

We purchased our Garmin Nuvi satnav with "free lifetime map updates" SIX years ago. Garmin has been true to its word ever since.

By comparison, we paid more than £23,000 for a Nissan Qashqai in mid-2015, only later discovering that Nissan UK's 'Connect' satnav was using a map dating from 2013. (There'd been no map updates in 2014).

At the time of its first annual service, we asked the supplying dealer if it would update the satnav for us as by then it was three years out of date.

The dealer said sorry, but no. The manufacturer doesn't support updating of the installed satnav each year. You have to buy a new SD card yourself. (The rate from Nissan UK is now £109 per updated card.)

Garmin hasn't charged us a cent over and above the original £60 purchase price paid 6 years ago.

Thankfully, we found plenty of suppliers on eBay, from one of whom we've just bought a 2019/2020 Nissan satanav SD card complete with speed camera alerts: £18.00. (In a fortnight's time, Nissan UK is going to launch its all-new Qashqai and will be hoping its existing customer base responds to hyped-up "invitations" to the "unveiling" of the new model at their local dealership. The dumbos running the company clearly haven't worked out that if you stiff your customers once, you've lost 'em for all time. Goodbye, Nissan .)

Re: And hopefully the summary

Not just the Government. A wannabe Prime Minister (remember that glorious pre-election moment:hey: I could be Prime Minister soon!) called Jo Swinson, vacuous leader of even more vacuous political party the Liberal Democrats, was on the Post office Board and well aware of everything that was happening to Britain's subpostmasters.

And to think: Jo Swinson could've been Prime Minister. . .

Re: Perfect timing?

"Also who gets this money? Nissan? Renault? I'm failing to see how those foreign car companies taking tax cash benefits the uk as a whole."

The money goes to the UK car dealerships as well as the motor manufacturer.

By dint of manipulating the obsequious British motoring Press into pronouncing its £33,000 electric car as the "future of motoring", Kia has pretty much sorted out for itself a nice profitable future -- along with all its dealerships in the UK.

All that's needed are infantilised motoring 'journalists' (sic) who'll say anything in exchange for a foreign trip freebie and loan of a Press car for a week or so, and a national governing political party susceptible to motor industry lobbyists and indebted to major corporate donors whose business potfolios include car dealerships.

Re: Do not buy Chinese made goods.

@Torchy: in which case, it'd be best not to buy anything. Because almost everything you buy will have components that originated life in that vast scumbag Communist state. . . a place, and a regime, whose existence is knowingly perpetuated by Big Commerce of a Capitalist West which wants the lowest manufacturing cost to maximize profit / executive pay / execuitve bonuses. If you want to change the way we do stuff, don't blame the Chinese or attempt to block 'em. Go after the major Western producers who, adly for them, wouldn't be able to make their $billions without cheap Chinese labour. And of course, when you've done that, and you wake up to the alarming discovery that the pension funds are no longer able to provide the returns they once did, maybe think again.

Re: The AI Effect

Fascinating. I remember enquiring on a Games forum last year what a particular poster knew about "the AI Effect" seeing as how he came on as being so incredibly knowledgeable about everything.

He replied: "Nah. I don;t use it anymore. The M6 may not be the best way for heading up north, but it beats the A1 any day."

Reluctantly, our household has had no option but to continue using Google search because though tempted by the privacy claims made on behalf DDG, StartPage and others of similar ilk, tall have proved themselves long on piety but short on performance.

Repeatedly, search results from DDG and StartPage have been nothing like as comprehensive as those from Google, their inadequacy so serious that time and again references to stuff which turned out to be not merely relevant but particularly helpful have been entirely omitted.

One of these days someone, somewhere, is going to run a comparative test of the quantity/quality of search engine results by the Evil Google and the Saintly DDG and similarly noble StartPage. In the meantime, the myth will presumably continue to be perpetuated that DDG is in some way a credible alternative to Google when, in fact, it isn 't.

Re: Again, and again, and again...

Where is diplomatic immunity?

Because at this sensitive time in relations between the UK and the United States of Trump, it would be very diplomatic for US prosecutors to abandon their desire to be a Lynch mob.

Re: If the FAA can be forced to do its job

Kudos for the best post on this thread, and fo ra timely reminder of the crux of the problem: that Boeing's "values" go no further than Boeing's stock value. . . one which is set to diminish further as Airbus's success continues to grow. Boeing loathes Airbus. It has been clear for several years that what Boeing needs to protect its future in civil aviation is an Airbus killer -- obviously not merely one a/c, but one would be a start.

Boeing's "values" were and are such that money was at the core of its considerations: you can't develop and build and sell a completely new aircraft nowadays without expenditure of $millions by both manufacturer and client

.

And Boeing knew that at the very top of the management pyramid and at every seat around the table in the Boeing boardroom. And thus it was decided to challenge Airbus on-the-cheap. Take an existing aircraft and modify it (and hey, if hardware problems develop as a result, no matter: this is the era when everything is easily sorted with a software fix: easy-peasy!) and assure existing and prospective clients that the new Boeing brings with it no significant on-costs -- it isn't even necessary to spend money on additional training for crews: after all, the 737 MAX is just another 737, folks!

Except, it wasn't and isn't. And was blatantly not a 73-800 sibling to anyone who ever saw it in the early stages of design, whether they worked at Boeing (or ran Boeing) or not. With those thumping huge engines pushed so far forward on its wings so as to avoid the undersides scraping along the ground, the 737 MAX was visually portended a disaster-waiting-to-happen long, long before any actually did.

So. No mystery about Boeing's values. The company put the value of itself first and last. Hence the 737 MAX, the Airbus killer that turned out -- pretty much inevitably -- to be a people killer.

Boeing as a corporate entity will, I'm sure, regret the deaths of so many who departed this life courtesy of the 737 MAX. But I'm guessing that such regret is as nought to the annoyance felt at the highest levels over the fact that one of the 737 MAX's victims should, of all people, turn out to have been Ralph Nader's grand-niece.

Re: late capitalists

@ Drew Scriver: "Companies keep at their abuse. But consumers keep buying their wares".

Dumbed-down consumers, that is. Of whom there are many millions, all served by dumbed-down or corrupt media.

I well remember the gushing reviews for the newly updated Volkswagen Passat that appeared in motoring magazines and on motor review websites not long after the Volkswagen emissions scam was exposed.

A friend of mine bought a new Volkswagen Polo around that time. When I asked him if the emissions scandal bothered him, he said 'no: all the manufacturers are probably at it. So what can we do about it? Answer: nothing."

I hope his fcucking Polo has cost him a mint. (Here in the UK).

"Proven and respected industry professionals" are renowned for chasing after key positions in companies with small turnovers and massive reputational damage. It's a well known fact. They rush to answer recruitment ads such as: "Proven and respected industry professionals urgently needed to replace knuckle-dragging sociopaths on our payrol."

Re: What?

Thanks you, Doctor Syntax. I've been wondering how best to describe what passes for intelligent / intelligible discourse on social media. Your revelation that on Facebook, he sad so / she sad so / they sad so is much appreciated.

Re: "The company kept very quiet"

But you should NEVER 'talk' to what may pass for a Customer Service department of ANY energy company operating in the UK. 'Talk' (unless you've gone to the trouble of recording, transcribing, and having it all independently verified) is not in any way an archival procedure that safeguards the record. 'Talk' is deniable by the energy company -- and very often is.

Over-billing as a result of seemingly deliberately untruthful 'final readings' has long been a nice little earner for unscrupulous energy companies (of whom there are many). The only way to deal with them is initially via email and then Royal Mail Next Day surface post, the cost of which can be claimed for at the end of the complaints process.

So. . . don't ring anyone, and don't talk about 'I'll tell the enargy regulator' because that's ridiculous: no ordinary domestic user can "talk to the regulator", never has done, never been able to, never will. That's why the happy clappy and largely useless friend-to-all Energy Ombudsman 'service' was set up: to get between you and the regulator.

Re: not a surprise

Time and again, I encounter comments on threads like this to the effect that investors are stupid because they're shoving $billions into stuff that's worthless.

Actually, they're not stupid at all. The world is full of dirty money -- drugs, terrorists, organised and disorganized crime as well as individual mega-fraudsters -- and it has to be laundered somewhere, somehow.

The remorseless rise of utter crap Hollywood-style movies says it all, as well as the exponential growth in property prices in London and other major cities. Dirty money needs spending, ditty money needs cleaning: the maddest of the mad offerings from Silicon Valley as well as movie production and property purchasing provides for that (and yes, recipients of funds on that scale will always have more than a faint idea of where it came from and how it was accumulated.)

Re: I cannot understand why HMRC pursues contractors so much.

@jmch: "I do blame the government that nominally sets the rules. I blame even more the companies who pay huge sums to lobbyists, government entities, think-thanks etc to get laws written for them in a way that they can game the system and save obscene amounts, next to which the huge amounts they pay to get what they want are a relative pittance. And the government officials allowing this are doubly fools for being so cheaply bought."

Sorry to disagree, but there's very little that's foolish about government officials playing fast and loose with legislation and indulging the profit-chasing money-grubbing of various private sector enterprises -- generally, the bigger the better -- until such time as said officials are due to take early retirement from the Civil Service. At which point, the well-known revolving door between public sector and private sector spins again and, by remarkable coincidence, the same officials who over the years have been so lenient in regulatory matters in regard to certain companies, find themselves in plum jobs at senior management or Board level at those same companies. 'Tis the way the world work, sadly, and is tolerated by an electorate too du and too inert to campaign for the demolition of that revolving door.

Re: So-called Amazon!?!? Better in my day!

I'm thinking you're the bloke from whom I bought some 386SX bits via a BBS sales deal around 1994. If so, Mr Omidyar, I'm here to tell you the stuff didn't work and I want a refund. (By the way, what are you up to nowadays? Still in San Francisco?)

Re: "straightforward explanations" ???

@ bob, mon! Thanks for being kind enough to take the trouble to provide that link. Mulling over that now-ancient typescript is not too dissimilar to Danny's flight simulator: the reading time duration is, if only for a brief time, akin to a life simulator, an experience providing insights into the existence of a remarkable human being. So sorry that his own journey here is over, but the shuddering hell of Parkinson's is no kind of life at all, for anyone.

Generation Moron rules the waves. . . and so much else, too.

Didn't any of the US Navy's 'senior management' (assuming such exists) ever bother to actually try out the touch-screen control system for themselves? Despair could've set in at that stage, rather than later. From El Reg's description, it seems what was installed was a needlessly complicated set-up intended principally to demonstrate the cleverness of the moron who coded it -- as is the case with so much else.

The other day I wanted to play a single track on an album of MP3s I've compiled over the years from my own collection but no. Apple decided what I wanted to do was open every single home-made album and decant a total of 480 tracks from which to then attempt to find the one I'd already nominated.

The older I get, the more tired I become of the morons out there who wish me to conform to their way of doing things.

Re: 75th aniversary of D-Day

Go on then. Tell us.

What exactly happened on June 4th 75 years ago?

Re: To play devil's advocate...

@ "If they'd wanted positive press out of this, they could have made a big noise about having a project to create these pictures for wikipedia, without having to include their branding in the pictures themselves."

Unforuntaely, you're attributing to an advertising agency a level of intelligence it doesn't have.

Re: Bit of a crap deal

I remember the day my then nextdoor neighbour was given a so-called 'mobile phone' by his employer. This would be somewhere around 1986, I think. The only reason I knew my neighbour had something no-one else did in our street (and was therefore, possibly, a Very Important Person) was because he was standing at the point where his driveway joined the road and so if anyone happened to look out their front window, they'd see him there, conversing with what appeared to be a small brick held to his ear. As I have no interest in exploring the state of someone else's mental health, I didn't say anything to him about his odd behaviour, but mentioned it the following weekend 'over the garden hedge'. He informed me he was using A Mobile Phone (something that works without wires, yeah?) but which, mystifyingly, didn't have "good reception" (nor did the tacky hotel around the corner from where we lived at that time) and so he had no alternative but to stand out there on his drive to make and receive calls. I suggested he maybe walk a bit further to the nearby red GPO phone box if he felt in need of exercise.) For at least a week, he was to be seen at the bottom of his drive. When a family friend dropped by one evening and happened to espy him, she asked my wife if there was something wrong with him. My wife said oh, he's harmless enough: one of those deluded blokes with a very small brick which they like to wave around in hope of impressing people.

We've long since moved from that neighbourhood. I do wonder though what other men with small bricks will do to show how important (and/or how stupid) they are that they can afford to throw loadsa money away on 5G.

Re: Evidence

@semtex451: It's not "journo's" (sic) whoever they might be who have "free license in Headlines, grammar is never applied in part, to make us read the article" but Subs (sub-edtors, who are underwater versions of journalists and very often failed reporters or failed English language teachers.) Headlines are written to fit a space in the page design, and may be clever or prosaic. El Reg's are rarely (if ever) the latter.

On the evidence of your defective pedantry, it would seem you yourself are a failed English language teacher: '"audience played noise at'" music festival" when they mean "audience were (sic) played noise at music festival"' is even more incomprehensible than the average railway platform announcement. Well done!