* Posts by BristolBachelor

2200 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jan 2009

Samsung pips rivals with 1TB internal 2.5-inch drive

BristolBachelor Gold badge

Did you say Craplin?

That's what we started to call them. They used to be a good electonics supplier, but when they started selling electric showers and then all sort of other crap, they went down hill faster than Greece's credit rating.

Find another supplier for HDD. But check how they package them (just sent back 4* 2TB disks to Amazon that had just been loose in a box; 1 was dead on arrival, 2 more failed in the next 2 days, then the 4th started playing up...)

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Facepalm

INTERNAL

Says it on the title of the article too. Normally, 12.5mm drives cannot be used internally, so the first 9.5mm high (2-platter) drive with 1TB would be the first normal internal drive.

Now my beast of a laptop can apparantly take 12.5mm drives, so does that mean I should be able to get a 1.5TB 3-platter drive for it soon (for when I am away from network?).

Site appeals feds' unprecedented domain seizure

BristolBachelor Gold badge

@ Mark 65

"I look forward to them seizing google.com"

No you forget. The American government is there to serve the (American) corporations. Google.com is an American corporation, and the government is a servant of them (although paid). Meanwhile Rojadirecta is from an axis of evil* country.

*Axis of evil means not America or under American control (yet).

BristolBachelor Gold badge

World DNS?

Why does the world DNS have to follow America?

What would happen if the DNS servers in other countries started ignoring all the land-grabbing going on over there? (Rhetorical question)

To be honest, I don't understand why international TLDs like .org and .com are still under the control of the American government. They can have .US and play with that all they want.

Aussie censor bans Dead or Alive

BristolBachelor Gold badge
WTF?

Double sad

"including up their very short skirts" is a bit sad really; maybe it's funny for a 10 second laugh, but then, really?

"may violate child pornography laws" WTF?? Honestly?? Are drugs now free for use in Sweden too? (I once worked with a Swede, you don't have to answer that!) Yeah, the picture on the screen is of a character that didn't exist 10 seconds before you turned the console on, therefore they are under *** and hence it's child porn, even though it's probably not even porn.

*** Put here an arbitrary number that varies from state to state and depending on what year it is...

IATA: this iPad could BRING DOWN A PLANE

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Joke

Cell blockers

So you say that if devices can upset aircraft because of their emissions, then we should fit devices into all aircraft to cause emissions?

Is this because you deliberately want to upset the aircraft? (Where's the half-baked icon)

BristolBachelor Gold badge
FAIL

Fail

"In one instance, while two laptops were being used nearby, a clock spun backwards and GPS readings started going off"

Also while someone was walking along the steet eating a hot-dog, a car crashed. Car crashes are caused by fast-food....

Living, biological raygun produced in lab

BristolBachelor Gold badge
FAIL

Laser?

So it was a laser, but only if you added the other parts of a laser to it? When I worked on lasers, the mirrors were a pretty fundamental part of the laser, especially how reflective they were.

I've had myself altered into being a car. Honestly, you just need to add a few parts to the outside of me, and I'm a car. What's more, with these parts on the outside of me, driving around as a car, I survive the whole experience and can continue to drive around...

Council fined for randomly emailing personal data

BristolBachelor Gold badge

paid the price?

"...said the council had paid the price for failing to handle sensitive data appropriately..."

Really someone in the council should be responsible for ensuring they do the right things (even if they don't have the title 'data controller'). What happened to them? Have they had their hands cut-off? Slap on the wrist even?

Fining the council does nothing except further punishing the people of Surrey, since there will be less money to pay for ther services.

I'm glad to see the ICO starting to grow some teeth, but I think that they need to be bared more often, and used against PEOPLE who are the cause of the issues.

Microsoft loses Supreme patent fight over Word

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Trollface

@AC

No, I think you have mis-interpreted what was meant. When (s)he said:

"Like SCO vs. IBM, M$ did steal..."

It meant that SCO did steal...

London Ambulance Service downed by upgrade cockup

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Trollface

Bristol not like London then

In Bristol the ambulance is not always on the way in 30-40 seconds. It may still be parked at A&E with the last passenger still inside, being treated there because there is no room. For a "minor" injury like broken pelvis, a 2 hour wait or more could occur.

Then there's the issue of the satnav not being up to date, and whole housing estates not existing. I think in that case they recieved the address as Co-ords and the satnav just said it was in the middle of a large field!

Cybercrime figures 'as true as sexual-conquest scores'

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Trollface

Nothing to do with cyber-crime

"a handful of people extrapolated to the whole population"

OK you have just decribed almost every single survey ever (except the census which is 2 handfuls of people extrapolated).

"surveys… are so compromised and biased that no faith whatever can be placed in their findings"

Again nothing to do with cyber-crime. ISTM that reports based on surveys are just a way to lie using the science of statistics to claim that it's true.

Another Groupon ad complaint upheld

BristolBachelor Gold badge

First time for ASA?

The ASA always says this:

"...not to use the ad again in its present form..."

But I think that this is a first?

"...and in future it should hold documentary evidence from suppliers that pre-discount prices were correct."

It's not even slap on the wrist, but perhaps ther might be a real punishment next time? Companies will not learn from repeated "don't do it again", but a hit to the bottom line or even better a fine for the MD may help.

BristolBachelor Gold badge

worth

"Product is seldom worth anything OTHER than the marked price..." is this sarcasm? I find it hard to tell sometimes.

I see lots of sh... ahem "stuff" at marked prices far far above it's worth. (Windows 7 springs to mind)

Apple bars WinXP users from iCloud

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Trollface

IE9

"The latest version of Microsoft's browser, released this year, does not – and will never – run on Windows XP"

Didn't they say that about IE8 as well? (Before people started shifting to Firefox, Opera & ilk instead)

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Devil

What about Apple users?

I know a few people who dual boot their MACs (or use VM) because they have to run a few windows programs. All but 1 use XP as their version of windows.

Do they now have to pay the MS tax to run Win7 on their MACs to access their iEverything when in windows mode?

Brit censor stamps on The Human Centipede

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Coat

@PT

What I was trying to get at was that LT was banned because someone said "That is disgusting, people should not be allowed to watch it"

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Coat

The right

"who give the right to one adult to say what another adult can or can't watch?"

That would probably be a quango type thing. You could try speaking to your local elected non-representative, but I doubt it will help.

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Stop

@downvoter for Blofeld's Cat

I'm at a loss as to why you downvoted here (are you David Cooke?)

For example, it was quite famous here (Spain) that Last Tango in Paris was banned for the same reasons as this film here. No, I don't want to watch that film either, but that doesn't make it right to stop everyone.

What about all the news reporting videos and pictures. When they say that no-one is allowed to see them either, then that's OK too?

Porridge for Ofcom IT boss in £500k software fraud

BristolBachelor Gold badge
FAIL

deterrent ?

"This sentence will hopefully serve as a deterrent to others who are similarly tempted to abuse their positions of responsibility."

I'm sure that there are a few people who would happily do 2.5 years of rent-free, living with free food / internet & X-boxen for 500k. Especially since he only has to serve half of it if he is bad, and if good, even less with parole. You would be able to get out early to spend the money!

Explosion at Intel's 'Fab 32' Arizona chip plant

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Trollface

Shoe on the other foot

No; fires and accidents happen everywhere. The lack of posts in this article is probably because it's hard to twist this particular article into a "They are all bad, evil people and we are the best" comment.

I'll get me coat

Has Steve Jobs killed the consumer hard disk industry?

BristolBachelor Gold badge
WTF?

Verity or Troll?

This is a Troll article right?

So when my misses has her >50GB of RAW files from her camera (each day!), where does she put them? I think it would take days to upload them with our available internet connection. Then she has to edit them on an iPad over Wi-Fi? Riiiight

And if they are stored on "the cloud", what are they stored on exactly? If they really are stored on vapour, I can see how that would be bad for the HDD industry, but I expect them to be stored on HDDs. Since "Tape is Dead" [sic] there will need to be multiple copies of the files on multiple disks, needing even more disks.

I'm sure it will happen eventually in the future, but I'm not holding my breath.

Hackers jailbreak iOS 5 in under 24 hours

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Joke

Like clockwork

So the jailbreaking is more reliable than the clock in iOS? :)

Germans completely humourless: Official

BristolBachelor Gold badge

German fork-lift video

Anyone who saw the German H&S video about fork-lift trucks that did the round a few years ago will know that at least some Germans have a sense of humur. At work we couldn't stop laughing :)

KurzFilmAgentur Hamburg

www.shortfilm.com

präsentiert

Attorney General threatens Twitter injunction-busters

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Thumb Up

New twitter banner

There will be a new banner for people in England...

You are NOT allowed to tweet about the following:

1) Imogen Thomas has been having lots of giggs.

2) Tony Blair failed an IQ test.

3) Police shoot-to-kill permission to rid London of photographers.

4)...

Out of curiosity did I get the name right for (1)? I don't know or care about it, so I just typed "Ryan Giggs" into Google, and it automatically filled in the rest in front of my eyes, without even having to press enter :)

RSA makes token offer to worried customers

BristolBachelor Gold badge

Seed numbers

I'm guessing that you need to know the seed numbers to veryify that the number someone typed in from their card is correct.

Since the number they type in goes across the net, I'm guessing that the machine that verifies it also has to be on the net.

If the machine verifying the number is on the net, then the seed to check it against must also be on the net (or at least a list of the correct numbers for the next 'x' weeks). OK, I guess you could argue it would be possible to have a challenge-response system over RS232 so the actual seed database is not on a networked machine, but that probably doesn't scale well :)

New 'liquid smart metal' can go hard or floppy

BristolBachelor Gold badge

3D metal printing

Been done. You have a tank of metal powder and blow a jet of it out over a laser. You move the nozzle / laser head around to make the part.

Seen an engine block with a crack in it repaired using the technology to show it off (I think it was at Photonics expo by one of the Manchester Unis about 14 years ago)

BristolBachelor Gold badge

Friction-free clutch

I had one of them when the gearbox broke, leaking oil all over the clutch plate. I cannot recommend it. It starts off really jerky, and then you loose all drive.

(A bit like getting up in the morning and going to work when you know the BofH will be there)

Somerset council review criticises Southwest One

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Holmes

SAP

"there had been problems with the introduction of a new SAP software system"

<-- Just wanted to use the new icon.

Slow And Painful

Seldom Acts Properly

etc. etc.

Spot-the-fake site launched

BristolBachelor Gold badge

@rentaguru

I might agree with you for things like Gooooochy bags or whatever, but they are not the only people with brands.

So if someone goes into a pharmacy with a prescription for a brand of drug, and is instead sold something else which is a fake, it's their own fault for being stupid? (believe it or not, fake drugs with real branding are not uncommon)

What if your server dies and HP says sorry, but it's a fake, nothing to do with them. Then you go to restore from backups, only to find that the tapes are fake, and although they passed verification when they were written, they became useless 3 days later...

BristolBachelor Gold badge

Re: Protecting who

I agree. This smells more like something to try to stop people buying Levis in Tesco to support the Levis agreed retailers (and the higher margins that they make in the UK). I don't see any reason to "protect" Sony from people buying Sony kit in Germany and then selling it in the UK.

I can see companies like Scan being left off the list because they buy parts from the "grey" market, despite the fact that they are more trustable and likely to be around longer to honor warrantees than a lot of retailers.

Spot the fakes would be better if it told you how to check (e.g. Sandisk memory cards) and had an easy way to report fakes centrally so that the perps could be stopped.

Two fat atoms get the nod

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Coat

Un-unium?

I think that my shower curtain already has these called ununium and suchlike (but sadly no unobtainium which was always required in my last company).

Even people who haven't seen Penny step out from behind it in the Bing Bang Theory think it's cool. (Does that mean I have sad friends?)

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Joke

Discovered in Russia

If they were discovered in America they would have to change the names from Copernicium to Copernicum and from flerovium to flerovum. I'm not sure why Americium isn't Americum as well...

OK I'll get me coat. It's the one with the alumin-i-um can in the pocket...

Adobe rushes out patch for all-platform Flash vuln

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Flame

Fecking fecking flash

And just to make it even better, you seem to need administrator rights to update it (at least on IE); Yeah!!!

Also fecking, why isn't it fecking dead yet? It's lasting longer than fecking SCO group :(

Union warns of strike action against HP

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Thumb Down

What's so special about this one?

"Thousands of IT jobs have been offshored. The UK IT industry still exists."

And thousands of people die in road accidents, but other people still live. I guess that it's not special to you until it's one of yours?

"The Market for IT staff managing offshored teams is healthy."

I see. You know where there are 200 jobs managing offshored teams?

What is actually special about this one, is that HP are probably saying that they are doing it to "save money" for the tax payer, but the union can then ask; how much does it actually save the tax payer? They will have to employ the overseas people, pay for the links to connect them to the UK, still pay for people here to manage them. PLUS the tax payer pays for the people who used to do the job, to sit at home while the 200 of them chase the job market for "IT staff managing offshored teams "

Virgin IT dept shocked by donkey-shagging Taliban

BristolBachelor Gold badge

Thought it was Virgin (ne: Teleworst)

When I read the headline, I just assumed that the Virgin (internet / broadband / fibre / teleworst whatever they call themselves this week) IT people looked at what their 50Mbit users were downloading...

Skype reverse-engineered and open sourced

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Devil

MS Previous response

"If he did all this legally, I hope MS do respond and I hope they get told where to shove their complaint."

When the messenger wars were on, and everyone was trying to make a messanger client that worked with the others, MS just changed the protocol each week and forced you to download the new version; cutting off the others (although they then added automatic downloading and executing files which got me off that treadmill very fast!)

However this time there are a few people or forked out for Skype hardware, and I'm not sure if they can be updated as easily.

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Thumb Up

Incoming Skype to SIP please

If this means that someone can hack together a simple Skype to SIP converter (within Asterisk is OK with me), and especially if I can run it on my QNAP, this gets my vote!

Gov 'skunkworks' to develop e-petitions system

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Coat

Efficiency in government?

Surely for efficiency, they would just put back the old e-petition system which allowed people to voice their opinion and would then automatically bulk send them all an email saying "NO" at the end. All they have to do is switch it back on.

As an additional function, it could add their name to the list of potential terrorists.

Yahoo! downs! mail! servers! for! essential! and extensive! work!

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Joke

Social crap

"...slotted more social media elements into the system."

So they put in some social carp for the 13 year olds, but not everything fitted, so they took out the email part?

What is UltraViolet™ and why should you care?

BristolBachelor Gold badge

Blurays you say?

Will it mean that I can play my Blurays in my Bluray player? Will I be able to play them on my Bluray laptop connected to my TV and actually have sound too?

Apart from that, I'm speachless. WTF happened?

Nokia betas some DLNA love

BristolBachelor Gold badge

Worse in fact

I find that most UPnP devices that are not DLNA are well behaved (even if they only support a small subset of possible containers and codecs). However it seems that once you put a DLNA sticker on something it refuses to work.

DLNA say that it is nothing to do with them, they just print the stickers. The manufacturer swears that their device is DLNA compliant; it must be the other guy. (Digital Lying Network Anarchy?)

Mesh Computers goes titsup

BristolBachelor Gold badge
WTF?

Only buy one with a 6 year warranty then...

...and good luck finding a company willing to sell you a PC with 6 year warranty!

Seagate, WD should put a gun to Brussels' head

BristolBachelor Gold badge

Business transactions

I'm sorry, but where does it say that the EU is trying to stop any business transactions between non-European companies?

I read this as a warning that if these companies go down this path, then there is a risk that the EU may attempt to prohibit transactions between the new non-European company, and Europeans (because it would be to the detriment of those Europeans, and that the EU remit is to help those Europeans).

As it happens, I doubt that anything will come of it. We will end up with only 1 OS supplier, we will have to buy our OS from them, and each year it will become more expensive and seem to get worse (oh sorry I mean't to say Harddisks).

BristolBachelor Gold badge
FAIL

Re: Calagan

I have sent you £232 (4x £58) for you to supply me with 4x 2TB FLASH disks to put in my new NAS. The address to send them to is with the cheque.

How much they cost you, and where you manage to buy them from is not my problem; you seem to know of a source who have a flash equivalent to harddisks that I do not know about.

BristolBachelor Gold badge
FAIL

Stupid or deliberately obtuse?

So do you really think that the shareholders will allow a merger that means neither comapny can now sell into the European market? You think that they will merge and loose a HUGE number of customers? Well if they did that, yes Europeans would loose out. The point is that their shareholders would not allow that to happen.

The power that the EU market has is that they can prohibit companies that do bad things from selling to the market. That power means that companies will play by the rules (or pretend to). It doesn't matter where the company is registered. The power that the EU has is to prevent them doing business here, and it is up to the company to decide it they want to or not.

By the way, it has just been announced that Orange, O2 and Vodafone are merging. They have decided that they will now charge £100 per megabyte for data and £2 per minute for all mobile calls. Glad that you don't mind.

Tru unveils iPad local rate data-pricing for UK, US and Oz

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Mushroom

Spherical Objects!

<RANT>

Bollox are they adding countries "soon". They have been saying that they are adding Spain soon for TWO F&@¿#º YEARS!!

They said that I can have 1 SIM, and recieve calls to a Spanish mobile number and English mobile number on the same SIM, and that calls made in England to UK numbers can automatically use the UK number, and calls in Spain to Spanish numbers can automatically use the Spanish number, and an end to being shafted roaming and having to redirect all my calls....

Even if I see it, I might not believe it now.

</RANT>

Germany’s rights-holders hit freetards hard

BristolBachelor Gold badge

IP Address mapping

Shared or piggybacked broadband are not the only problems.

There have been cases reported in the UK where the ISP has handed out the details of a person as the holder of that IP address at the time of the incident incorrectly.

At least once, the person had even left that ISP so could not have been using one of their IP addresses. In other cases, it was proved that the mapping of IP address to subscriber was not reliable.

Total Recall rehash – exit Martians, enter Jessica Biel

BristolBachelor Gold badge
Coat

Kate Beckinsale

How can you mention that Bill Nighy and Len Wiseman are from Underworld, but completely ignore Kate Beckinsale in the film in black leather?

God there's no way I'm going to get any work done today now...

Fourth Euro star truck christened Albert Einstein

BristolBachelor Gold badge

Air replacement

I'm not sure what they do when they have to open an airlock; I don't know if they have turbo pumps to evacuuate the airlock before opening the outer door. It may be easier to just vent the air to space, and then replace the air later?

On the subject of just removing the CO2, I think there are scrubbers to do that, but maybe you get all sorts of things in the air and it might be a good thing to vent some of it occasionally.

Imagine if you lived in a completely sealed house with plants to convert the CO2 to O2. What about the other stuff? You know the gasses you get depending on what you eat, and the poisonous fumes given off by all that Ikea furniture as the glues and other things used to make it slowly evaporate from it?