* Posts by Anonymous Custard

2789 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2008

Curiosity Rover digs into humanity's first alien sand dune

Anonymous Custard

A potent voyager?

One image released by NASA suggests it's sand all the way down

You were expecting turtles?

Anonymous Custard

Or a black monolith?

Google cloaks Android in Red Screen of malware Dearth

Anonymous Custard
Joke

Re: Dearth mauls malware

Is he from SW: The Force Awakens?

Microsoft pitches lobotomized Cortana for iOS, Android handsets

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: ("remind me to buy milk when im at tesco" "which tesco?" "any" "OK"

You've got Tesco free wifi available, but no mobile phone signal at all.

At least according to my missus, when trying to use her Tesco Mobile phone in two of our local stores...

If it still works six months from now, count yourself lucky

Anonymous Custard

Re: Never had a problem with my own PCs

Hmm, my Latitude E7450 here at work must have got mixed up then. Last month it managed to get through two motherboards in 10 days, which is made even worse by the fact that for 7 of those 10 days I was on holiday.

Even the visiting Dell tech that had to come back to replace the first replacement motherboard with the new second one couldn't understand quite how it had gone tits-up again, especially given the thing had sat in the IT department cupboard between his first repair and me getting it back, pressing the power button and getting sweet FA out of it again...

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

What happens in Blackpool...

As with my incorrectly assembled colleague, perhaps I am at fault. Perhaps I have just been unlucky, no doubt caused by not purchasing a twig of heather off that crone in Blackpool back in 1974. I had my chance and blew it.

Hang on, so you were on a jaunt in Blackpool in 1974, and you feel at-fault for an incorrectly assembled colleague? Are these two facts linked? And are you entirely sure that basque was for HLW, although I draw the line at wondering at the crone's potential other involvement?

Speaking as a man who was apparently conceived there (information I wanted to know about as much as the rest of you lot did too), enquiring minds aren't sure that they want to know...

Darkode 3.0 is so lame it's not worth your time reading this story

Anonymous Custard

Re: Overconfident much...?

...and a hard boiled egg?

Spanish village celebrates Playmobil nativity

Anonymous Custard

Or a new lab coat, preferably in black given her (approximate) age...

Galileo, Galileo, Galileo good two go

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Re: Meter.

Or possibly more appropriate for us lot, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgbNymZ7vqY

BOFH: How long does it take to complete Friday's lager-related tasks?

Anonymous Custard

Re: admin obverhead

You're lucky, ours is still in place.

That said its not the worst part, as we now have a centralised document management system that's so fiendishly complex that no-one outside HR/quality has a clue how to find anything, and they get narked when you ring them up and ask them to get documents for you as it's at least a factor of 10x quicker than trying to do it yourself.

Plus given how long it would take and the hourly rate that some of our colleagues are on (sadly not me, more the sales drones) calculating quite how much retrieving a given document actually costs the company in terms of salary paid for time spent could be quite amusing (or scary if you're a beancounter)...

Still at least we got the expense system simplified as before it took so long (due to needing so much admin and so many sign-offs) that some of us started putting the interest that was accruing due to the gap between bills arriving and the owed funds to pay them onto the expense system too. Amazing how quickly the chief beancounter can move when that kind of fire is lit under him...

Anonymous Custard

Ah yes, the old "Do you want to sit here talking about how to fixing it or just let me actually get on and do so?" chestnut. Especially when the admin and discussion comes wrapped up in a request involving PowerPoint.

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Time and money

Brings to mind the sadly all-too-often repeated mantra around here, from we coalface minions to those up in the ivory towers...

"So do you want us to spend the time making Powerpoint, having meetings, discussions and brainstorming about the problem, or to just actually get to work and fix it?"

So why exactly are IT investors so utterly clueless?

Anonymous Custard

Cheap at twice the price

What that, you say, you want to develop an app that launches apps for running apps? Sounds cool, take £1m!

Why does this bring running Android apps under WIndows Mobile to mind? Other than the price tag would probably have been more than a mil...

Oh and doesn't filing this Friday gem under the Jobs category seem slightly odd to anyone, rather than the normal home of bootnotes or suchlike?

Lights, power, action! Smartplugs with a twist

Anonymous Custard
Trollface

Chindōgu

You have to wonder if America has decided to reinvent/remake/reboot (in the Hollywood sense) the fun Japanese art of Chindōgu and are just messing with our minds?

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Would tend to agree, although I'm not sure modern UK legislation would allow it? I have a recollection (which may be wrong I freely admit) that plugs these days have to be the moulded type that are part of the cable, rather than the older "wired on" type that you could disconnect if needed. Hence you're not going to be able to replace the plug, at least without chopping the old plug off and stripping the wires back (if aforementioned rules allowed in this elf and safety world).

To be honest I can't recall a recent electrical purchase which didn't include such a moulded plug arriving on the end of the cable. Indeed it has caused a couple of annoyances when I've wanted to feed the cable through a small gap/hole and not been able to as the plug and connectors at both ends were too large, even if the cable diameter itself would have been fine.

Anonymous Custard

Re: Totally Pointless

That was my thought as well (and in my case it would possibly actually cause more energy wastage, as I'm notorious for "popping out" and forgetting I've left the phone sat there in the charger.

Plus given it's currently iPhone only and has to have the Bluetooth pinging away more than a submarine in a Tom Clancy novel, it's not exactly conducive to not having the phone away from the charger anyway.

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: Utterly idiotic

I'm wondering at what point these cutting edge designers will find out that the Japanese got there years ago with the venerable art of Chindōgu, and quite what effect it would have on their psyche.

Anonymous Custard

Re: @Anonymous IV Life's too short

Would have to agree (have an upvote too) - always nice to have this kind of semi-humorous articles on a Friday morning to tide us over until BOfH/Dabbsy in the afternoon, to keep the prospect of doing any work on POETS day away...

Microsoft rides to Dell's rescue, wrecks rogue root certificate

Anonymous Custard
Joke

Re: "Dell's dumb DLL"

Just beware that it may lead to a core dump later on, although hopefully not a BSOD...

US gourmets sizzle in bacon-scented underwear

Anonymous Custard

Re: Love them both

I dunno, the former's good for the morning after the later.

And both are arguably treats that married men don't get so often...

Anonymous Custard
Joke

Re: Yeah, you like bacon, I like bacon, now shut up about it and bring me some sausages

I dunno, if you are your other half are both bacon lovers, these could lead to a good old sausage-fest after their removal...

What the world needs now is Pi, sweet $5 Raspberry Pi Zero

Anonymous Custard

Re: Interchangable micro-USB ports?

I just got a reply from a guy a RPi Foundation. Only one of the two has data lines, the other doesn't and is dedicated power only (but of course the former one can have a normal hub plugged into it via a USB OTG cable).

And the HDMI is actually a mini-HDMI, so again adaptor or suitable cable required. But there's an adaptor kit available from the PiStore which covers both, and is £4 and equally as out of stock as the Pi Zero itself.

Anonymous Custard

Re: @Vorlamd

I got me from the pound shop. You can maybe guess the price...

Anonymous Custard

Interchangable micro-USB ports?

Can someone who already has one confirm is one of the micro-USB ports dedicated to power only, or are they interchangeable?

I know the "larger" Pi's (seems funny to write that, given the size of a 2B) can be powered via the GPIO pins with a bit of care and adaption, so I'm just wondering if something similar could be done here to double the available USB ports for peripherals (with the addition of a couple of adaptor cables if needed to bring them up to full size).

I know you can just add a hub, but just wondering about possibilities...

Anonymous Custard

Re: "you can get composite video from the 3.5mm jack"

"What 3.5mm jack?"

Ah yes, good point :) I'd read somewhere else that it had one, and took the part on the right hand side as it, but a closer look validates you're right...

It's also going to be interesting that the USB port (the one that isn't the power supply) also seems to be a micro-USB. No issue for the headless hobbyists, but for people who want to hang hubs off it's going to be another cable/adaptor needed to go between USB and micro-USB (presumably an OTG cable or similar).

Anonymous Custard

Re: Where did the Micro:Bit from the BBC get to?

It's due to be giving to Year 7 students (including my eldest daughter hopefully) early next year.

Not that I'm already pondering how we can make use of it or anything, or for that matter wondering if the Pi Zero is what the whole Micro:Bit project should actually have been...

Anonymous Custard

Pi vs Pie

Says a lot about progress that you can now get a Raspberry Pi for about the same cost as a slice of Apple Pie in many restaurants....

I bet the LOHAN boys are going to be drooling over it, although I'm a little surprised that it has HDMI rather than using the space for additional USB or similar stuff more useful to the kind of hobby crowd who'd be using the smaller versions like this (running headless, especially given you can get composite video from the 3.5mm jack if you need to see what you're doing directly).

Also the lack of Ethernet would put a dent in using it as a media player, given the limitations of wifi speed for streaming and even local sourced HD material.

But still sounds like a great new toy to play with and hobby-up. And I can't help thinking it's more what the BBC Micro:Bit should have been.

Sneaky Microsoft renamed its data slurper before sticking it back in Windows 10

Anonymous Custard

Re: I'm not one for foul language,,,

It's just a shame that the old saying about "Roses by any other name" also applies to compost heaps, even if the smell isn't as sweet...

Anonymous Custard

Re: My corporate Windows 7

The problem with most corporate PC's is getting the Admin Command Prompt in the first place. We humble minions wouldn't be trusted with admin rights, or else we might actually make the machines usable with some judicious pruning and uninstalling.

UK gov sinks £25k into Pi-powered cyberdesk

Anonymous Custard

Re: Mmm-

@hplasm - not sure about a dangle of bollocks, more an utterance of them...

Anonymous Custard

Should someone perhaps show them an 80's or 90's desk with the wire racking underneath to stand your tower PC on?

Or even a more modern desk where the gap between the underside of the desk and the top of the separate drawer unit under it is the perfect height to accept a closed laptop wired up to a monitor, keyboard, mouse etc on the desk surface...

Anonymous Custard
Terminator

Cyberdesk personalised settings

And don't forget have it wirelessly (or by Bluletooth) connect to the chair so it instantly sets itself up to your preferred height, back angle, arm position and all the other stuff that various people who've sat in it whilst talking to the person at the next-door desk just had to change and adjust...

Of course this could also lead to endless fun and games if the security is as lacking in the set-up as it usually is in IoT rubbish and you can set up chair Mexican waves or rollercoaster rides across the office...

Video malvertising campaign lasted 12 hours? Try two months

Anonymous Custard
FAIL

Greed

...VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) proved insufficient for advertisers, who demanded an extension to execute code in advertisements.

At which point they should have been told exactly where to go, taking their crap with them.

I personally have no issue with "subtle" ads on web pages, as in ones that are static, small (both in dimension and file size) and simple. What I object to is having both my bandwidth and eyeballs hijacked by people who think adding a movie or interactive box to a webpage is going to either enhance the page or their chances of me actually being interested in the product being spammed at me.

Indeed in almost all cases, it has exactly the opposite effect of putting me entirely off the product and ending up negative and evasive toward it. And that's just the legitimate advertisers, let alone the malware scum that the door they opened up lets in also.

And people wonder why ad-blockers are doing such good business? With all this crap there's an argument that they're to be included in the anti-virus/anti-malware toolbox.

Struggling to understand Docker? Let's start with a Minecraft demo

Anonymous Custard
Joke

Marxism

To quote that well known technological futurist, Groucho Marx:

“A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.”

Love your IoT gadget but could you keep the noise down?

Anonymous Custard

Re: Breakout areas!

Or even ancient arcade machines with bats, balls and bricks...

Anonymous Custard
Thumb Up

That Friday feeling!

Wahay! Dabbsie back on a Friday afternoon! Nice to have things back where they should be, to give us something more interesting than work to do until beer o'clock.

Hope it's a permanent change back to how things should be...

One-armed bandit steals four hours of engineer's busy day

Anonymous Custard

Switch the switch...

Brings back memories of something that's happened around here a few times. I work for a company who makes semiconductor manufacturing kit, and said machines have two controller screens (one at the front for operators, and one at the back for maintenance technicians when the tools are under PM). Both controllers show the same info, and only one is active at a time, switchable between front and back with a nice button just beside each.

Over the (too many) years, I can recall at least 3 occasions where we've had emergency tool down customer calls and escalations that a machine has "just stopped responding". In each case of course we tell them to check that the controller they're trying to use is the active one, and they swear blind it is. Hence we send an engineer (sometimes involving a decent length drive, or even a flight) just to find that they of course haven't understood a damn word you said (or at least bothered to actually listen and check), and simply pressing the display switch button brings control to the screen in-front of them and suddenly everything miraculously works.

It's become a running joke over the years, given how much the hourly rate and travel expenses are for our engineers...

DS5: Vive la différence ... oh, and throw away the Citroën badge

Anonymous Custard

Alien?

When I look at that image of the central console/gearstick area (the picture in the middle of page 2), am I the only one who gets an overwhelming sense/flashback of Alien?

Reg reader achieves bronze badge, goes directly to jail

Anonymous Custard
Pirate

Re: Holy shit!

Nah.

Silver - your own set of evil henchmen and a dingy backstreet bar or nightclub to operate out of.

Gold - your own volcano lair.

Doctor Who: Nigel Farage-alike bogey beast terrorises in darkly comic Sleep No More

Anonymous Custard

Re: iplayer problem

Nope, plays fine for me all the way through.

Your taxes at work: Three hours driving to turn on politician's PC

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

Re: Gift or curse?

You also have to remember that until recently (at least up until Corbyn landed) the whole UK political system was fairly much red/blue colour-blind, given how difficult it was to tell the main parties and their policies apart...

Irish roll out obligatory drone register

Anonymous Custard
Headmaster

One would hope the net weight was negative, at least at sea/land level. Or else it's not the most useful of items...

Anonymous Custard

Closely followed by Wogan and Norton...

Einstein's brain to be picked by satellites

Anonymous Custard
Boffin

Re: Wait. What the ....

No, the science works all by itself, without any need of assistance from anyone (except mother nature).

You just need the scientists to try and understand the why and the how, if you so desire to do so.

The sun is going to come up, set and generally move about in the sky no matter whether you believe celestial mechanics, God and/or a huge Egyptian scarab beetle are causing it.

Space fans eye launch of Lego Saturn V

Anonymous Custard

It's also a shame that they've left the escape mechanism attached to the Apollo craft in the poster. The obsessive nerd in me would always be bugged by the whole thing being labelled as the craft if I had to make do with just the poster on my wall.

Still voted for the thing though, and agree with others above that the real thing (the actual rocket, not the lego) is a thing of engineering magnificence that should be seen before you die. Vivid memories of doing so when I was (much) younger, and being overawed by the sheer scale of the damn thing.

Let's get to the bottom of in-app purchases that go titsup

Anonymous Custard

Re: Re SCART -I think you'll find PAL is about as English as Queen Victoria ....

https://youtu.be/x7px5FZ9jD4

A slightly more up to date education, albeit not the "proper" video to go with it.

Facebook's laser-powered internet drone preps for take off

Anonymous Custard
Joke

Re: Be careful of the bearded one ...

Not to mention the fact it doesn't even look like a frikkin shark :)

The only GOOD DRONE is a DEAD DRONE. Y'hear me, scumbags?!

Anonymous Custard

Re: Alternative soundtrack

Or The Hunting Song as another alternative.

Anonymous Custard

A little soundtrack?

Tom Lehrer''s Hunting Song.

Always nice to hear him, and rather apt for at least the start of the article. ..

Caption this: WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Anonymous Custard

You lookin' at me?