Pucker up?
Why does it always seem like the acronyms IoT and KISS are mutually exclusive?
Or is it just another differentiator between something driven by engineering principles and marketing ones?
Posts by Anonymous Custard
2796 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2008
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My Nest smoke alarm was great … right up to the point it went nuts
User couldn't open documents or turn on PC, still asked for reference as IT expert
Microsoft warns Windows security fix may break network shares
Thursday 29th September 2016 14:02 GMT
Public networks with NAS drives?
Microsoft offers a fix for this; if you change your network to “private” or “enterprise”, it should start working again.
Wouldn't almost everyone have one or other of those set anyway in the kind of scenario where you'd be dealing with shared drives and NAS's? How many of those do you generally find on a public network?
4K-ing-A! Roku bangs out broad range of new streaming boom boxes
Thursday 29th September 2016 10:27 GMT
I think you mean Honey I Shrunk the Audience!, but aside from that entirely agree as well.
Disney have replicated it a few times, there's also a Bugs Life one and a Muppets one at the various parks. The latter is particularly fun, but works on the same principle of 3D plus environmental stuff too.
The best one though was undoubtedly Soarin'. Same idea again, but with wind and scent effects coupled with wonderful images of flying around various locations and the unusual "seating" position of being basically in a hang-glider mock-up.
Nissan reveals self-driving chair
Microsoft preps defence against the dark arts for enterprise customers
Thursday 29th September 2016 09:27 GMT
Given how badly Edge works here with a lot of our websites and applications (due to its streamlined lack of support for various bits that they need to run properly) and how much we still have to rely on IE11, I'd certainly second that in the corporate environment.
Of course I guess the websites and such should also be looked at, but we all know how that story goes in the corporate world.
It's Pablo Pic-arsehole: Turner Prize wannabe hits rock bottom
Tuesday 27th September 2016 08:03 GMT
Re: Next year
It'll be severely challenged by my entry - I propose to enter the absurd concept of art by installing an idea for the post-modern world.
Or to put it another way, just by leaving a completely empty display there full of even more hot air than currently exists around the topic. Meanwhile I'll be down the pub with a few pints of real workmanship...
Behold the fruit of your techie utopia: A $43 San Francisco fog-infused martini
Thursday 22nd September 2016 10:53 GMT
One born every minute?
And then there are the assholes who sell $43 martinis.
True, but only sustainable if there are people hip* enough to actually buy them for that price...
PT Barnum was a visionary in that respect.
* aka dumb and/or pretentious as translated for those of us in the real world
Microsoft deletes Windows 10 nagware from Windows 7 and 8
Apple wants to buy Formula 1 car firm McLaren – report
Thursday 22nd September 2016 07:54 GMT
Re: That'll be MacLaren soon then...
Given how the current McLaren is running, and how it keeps throwing bits of engine and such out (OK I know that's technically Renault rather than McLaren) it could arguably be convergent technology between the two...
I'm sure there are some days when Alonso and Button must wonder if they've ended up with a pram by mistake.
World+dog to get retro classic Commodore 64 for Christmas
What's Chinese and crashing in flames? No, not its economy – its crocked space station
Two Sundays wrecked by boss who couldn't use a calendar
Friday 16th September 2016 13:19 GMT
Re: At least make sure your contract include TOIL
This sounds horribly familiar from a few years back during one of the downturns, when our paid overtime got cancelled and replaced with TOIL.
Unfortunately even though it was a financial downturn, we still had plenty of work to actually do. And the management got rather upset when I asked them to increase the 300 hour TOIL limit as I'd max'd out, especially when I pointed out we hadn't got any time to take any of it, and that if I just took it all alongside my normal holiday and bank holiday entitlement, I'd come back in February (this was said in September).
Worked out quite nicely, with a couple of months worth of hours getting paid off conveniently close to Christmas...
BOFH: The case of the suspicious red icon
'Power equipment failure' borks EE's data services across England
Paint your wagon (with electric circuits) but leave my crotch alone
Friday 2nd September 2016 13:29 GMT
Re: Heat & Electronics & fans
Sounds like the old Archimedes that used to sit in the lab when I was a student (going back 20 or so years ago) which worked fine in winter, but in summer required a periodically refilled beaker of liquid nitrogen to be sat in front of its air intake for it to operate for more than about 10 minutes before giving up with heatstroke.
Happy Anniversary: What’s new, what’s missing in Microsoft’s giant mobile update
Thursday 18th August 2016 09:34 GMT
Re: Ahh makes sense now
Had just the same, both settings and wireless hotspot tiles vanished. Both easily put back though, but seems an oddity.
Liking the new flexibility with the notification shade though. I used to have 5 or 6 that I wanted there and all the rest I can do without, so now being able to turn some off and fully rearrange the others it's working very nicely.
Have to say that Win10 does seem to eat battery faster than Win8.1 used to. That said my Lumia 640LTE will still go 2-3 days at least before needing more juice, so it's not a desperate issue.
Intel fabs to churn out 10nm ARM chips for LG smartphones next year
Wednesday 17th August 2016 09:32 GMT
Re: Nose out
No it's not per the normal rules. That said, these days of FOUPs and mini-environments, it makes less of an impact than it used to with open cassettes all around the shop. Still not exactly good for the particle level though, especially if tools are open for PM (and doubly so for the people with their heads in the tools doing said PM's).
Last time I was in an Intel cleanroom it was surprisingly common to see exposed noses, especially given their normal American-style strictness of following rules and having everyone enforce them on everyone else.
£1m military drone crashed in Wales after crew disabled anti-crash systems – report
Friday 12th August 2016 15:03 GMT
Touchdown
Wouldn't a simpler system that maybe measured the weight exerted on the landing gear be somewhat more of a safe way to tell if the thing is actually on the ground or not? Presumably the thing has wheels of some sort, and one would hope the downward pressure on them when it's on the deck would be somewhat more than when they're dangling below it whilst flying (or preparing to land if they're retractable).
Or is it the old scenario when people think multiple highly complicated systems must be better than one simple one? All 3 wheels bearing weight = drone on terra firma, and then set about stopping it.
The curious case of a wearables cynic and his enduring fat bastardry
What next for the F-35 after Turkey's threats to turn its back on NATO?
Friday 12th August 2016 09:12 GMT 
Call a roofer
In spite of all the security worries, losing 100 F-35 orders as well as a reasonably large industrial partner would doubtless push the costs of the F-35 programme through the roof.
You mean they're going to have to build yet another roof for the costs to bust through, given how many times it has already done so?
I guess it'll keep someone in business anyway, even if it is just a builder...
Brexit Britain: HP Sauce vs BBC.co.uk – choices that defined voters
Wednesday 10th August 2016 14:55 GMT
Re: Ironic...
Ironic... ...that HP sauce is made in the Netherlands.
Not to mention the bacon it often accompanies commonly being a product of Denmark, to form part of that most British of delicacies, the good ol' Bacon Sarnie.
Although seemingly you can't wash it down with a mug of tea and still stay?
London's 'automatic' Tube trains suffered 750 computer failures last year
Brit network O2 hands out free Windows virus with USB pens
Microsoft: You liked Windows 10 so much, you'll get 2 more in 2017
West country cops ponder appearance of 40 dead pigeons on A35
Perlan 2: The glider that will slip the surly bonds of Earth – and touch the edge of space
Going! going! pwned? 200! million! Yahoo! logins! leaked! allegedly!
Tuesday 2nd August 2016 15:44 GMT
Plenty of other ways to scramble things up though:
* Using one of the words reversed.
* Key shifting on the keyboard.
* Removing the last # letters from the words (or the first, or a mixture).
* Adding something site-specific but easy to remember for each site.
* Set the keyboard to a different language but still type the words in the letters on the keys.
* Throw in a few specific non-standard symbols in fixed memorable places.
Mixing those and any number of similar techniques into what's already been stated can turn any fairly regular password or phrase into utter gobbledegook, even if typed in plain text.
The return of (drone) robot wars: Beware of low-flying freezers
Friday 29th July 2016 15:37 GMT
as its eight spinning razor-like rotors shredded the cat
Or in the case of my cat and his recent antics in the last few weeks (3 squirrels, 2 pigeons and copious amounts of mice), more likely we'd find bits of the drone in a trail going into the house, up the stairs and into his favourite hidey-hole for munching on stuff he's caught (or probably trying to in this case, as I doubt drones are that appetizing).
Not sure quite what state the local wildlife is in, but he seems to have brought everything bar a Pokémon in over the last month or so...
Argos changes 150 easily guessed drop-off system passwords
Avnet sees Dätwyler's bid for Raspberry Pi slinger, raises to £868m
Thursday 28th July 2016 14:02 GMT
Farnell non-Zero
With regard to the banner photo, it should probably be pointed out that Farnell don't actually sell Zero's. Those are manufactured by the Foundation themselves at the plant in Wales and sold through their other distributors (Pi Hut, Pimoroni etc) rather than the bulk sellers like Farnell and RS. Those only manufacture and sell the "large" Pi's (B+, 2 and 3), for a relative value of large anyway.
Russian spy aircraft are flying over Britain – and the MoD's cool with it
Thursday 28th July 2016 12:14 GMT
Re: Drone on
Given the age of most of the listed aircraft I'd wonder about how much cash they would save. Although they could probably increase the income of a few aircraft museums by donating the things as exhibits.
Almost makes you wonder what the Americans use for the job, and whether the Wright Flyer occasionally takes a sabbatical from the Smithsonian for some more active duty.
Microsoft adds useful feature to PowerPoint. Seriously
Wednesday 27th July 2016 16:24 GMT
Re: "add any other overly fancy use of language and management terms at will"
@Geoff
acronyms - it irritates me when people use acronyms and then try and look smug when you ask what they are
Never ever attend a presentation on-site at Intel then, at any of their fabs. Your brain will melt and flood out your ears.
They are the only customer I know where you have to go into meetings with an acronym dictionary (I kid you not, we have an ongoing file in the office) and half the time you're still bamboozled by what they're presenting. It's like another language sometimes, probably deliberately so to ensure nothing useful goes out to we vendors and other minions not deemed worthy to wear the fabled blue badge.
Wednesday 27th July 2016 14:45 GMT
Re: Some years ago ....
Yup, you can put buttons in which jump about in the presentation, or indeed open other presentations or URLs and all sorts of other stuff. But it's a little too much for most PHB's in my experience, who seem to think that cramming in as much text and whizzy animation per slide is the way to get their message across best (and then just stand there reading the damn thing out word for word to ram the point home).
I've actually made up more than several reference "helper assistants" on various topics this way for use by engineering colleagues, which they quite like without ever quite realising it's all just PowerPoint.
Wednesday 27th July 2016 14:45 GMT
The best PPT show I've ever seen
Just to counterpoint some of the posts (including my own) above about the worst presentation/presenter they've ever seen, thought I'd post about the best I've ever seen.
Was a guy at a scientific conference a couple of decades back (back in my PhD student days). He had a footer running across the bottom of each slide which contained 2 or 3 cells from a cartoon story. As he went through the slides, the story was played out.
The icing on the cake was when he got to the last slide, where we were all of course expecting a conclusion summarising everything he'd been talking about (fairly well and interestingly, to give him his due) and he just said "and now I bet you all want to know how it ended..." and put up a slide that was basically completely blank except for the cartoons across the bottom, which closed off the story.
He basically got a standing ovation from the crowd as it was so refreshing from the death by PowerPoint we'd been suffering for the rest of the conference across several days.
Wednesday 27th July 2016 14:45 GMT
Re: Perhaps
- Using slide transitions and animation in the same presentation.
- Using more than one different animation effect on a single slide.
- Using animation on more than two objects on a single slide.
- Hiding the fact that what you've got to say is boring or irrelevant by having it dancing all over the screen and flying about like the Red Arrows in a hurricane.
As you may be able to tell I'm not a huge fan of PowerPoint animations, or their inherent eye-strain and headache.
Wednesday 27th July 2016 13:44 GMT
Re: Arsdel.....
How about dronedel - one to remove those who drone on just reading out exactly what's up on the screen without elaborating or explaining anything in any more depth than what's up there.
PowerPoint is supposed to be presentation software, not a reading tutorial. I think most people who are unfortunate enough to be exposed to it can already read to at least an acceptable level.
Harrison Ford's leg, in the Star Wars film, with the Millennium Falcon door
Wednesday 27th July 2016 11:12 GMT
They can't have been that fast, given one of the stormtrooper extras famously managed to smack his head on one.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
