* Posts by MJI

6855 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2009

Microsoft Bing is 10: That thing you accidentally use to search for Chrome? Still alive and kicking

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Multimap

As above OS mapping is excellent.

Firmware update borks Bose boxes: Owners report crackles on Lex-i of the soundbar world

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Re: Firmware

My last TV required 3 or 4 software updates to keep working.

First was due to BBC bending rules on service naming. Rather than 01 BBC1 02 BBC 2 03 BBC Choice 04 BBC News 24, suddenly 1 on TV up pops the news, 7 BBC1 and so on.

Then there was another

Finally an update to enable CAM support so I can see those not very good pay channels.

AFAIR Two visits from Sony and a couple of updates on a card to shove in the port on the back.

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At least worlds best sound bars not affected

Only some Bose shit

Planes, fails and automobiles: Overseas callout saved by gentle thrust of server CD tray

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Re: Brad, of course, was in Europe

Good job our military swear allegiance to the Crown.

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Re: Why not Cinderford?

What a place.

Some good pubs in the area, but the locals are weird.

Even as far east as Maisemore, but get as far as Longhope and abandon hope.

Introducing 'freedom gas' – a bit like the 2003 deep-fried potato variety, only even worse for you

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Mushroom

My gas just reached freedom.

A bit noisy but I can't smell it.

I wonder if it would burn though?

Let's make laptops from radium. How's that for planned obsolescence?

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Re: Milk Snatcher

One of the best things she ever did!

I detested school milk

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Re: C-90s

My mum had two, one after another. My Dad had various including GS850.

I had a GP100

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GM Valve seals

The first year of production larger Ecotec engines had cheaper by 1p each valve seals, beancounters at work.

They failed at around 5 to 8 years.

They are red in colour, older and newer were green.

I replaced 24.

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Was it early 2.2 2.6 or 3.2?

They used rubbish valve seals

Exclusive: Windows for Workgroups terror the Tartan Bandit confesses all to The Register

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Re: I changed the start up & shut down sounds.

737 land?

What sort of land?

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Re: Aye laddie...

Send him one!

Bye bye boss!

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Re: TCP/IP?

Networking on WFW was client server

AFAIR two programs needed to be ran

NETX

IPX

Can't remember much else but that was how mine was connected.

Login, start Windows.

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Swap N & M

Most confusing pair to swap

Wine? No, posh noshery in high spirits despite giving away £4,500 bottle of Bordeaux

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MP3

MP3 isn't that good.

If a device can handle raw uncompressed or a better encoding why not?

I find MP3 can sound flat compared to CD.

Let's check in with our friends in England and, oh good, bloke fined after hiding face from police mug-recog cam

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Re: Actually not

I read somewhere that more fighters were being produced than lost, that we would have just used further north airfields.

In few words they did not have a chance of beating us during BoB.

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Re: "very nearly conquering Britain"

They would not have been able to land a large enough force to do much beyond spending the rest of the war inside a POW camp.

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Re: WTF?

Waxy Lemon thankyou.

TR is the name of a pop star most well known for 2468 Motorway.

Quite a catchy tune as well.

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Re: WTF?

I think you are after the name waxy lemon

If poking about Doctor Who's TARDIS in VR sounds like fun to you, better luck next time

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Re: Not interested

My favourite new ones are

Blink

Heaven Sent

Turn Left

Girl in the Fireplace

Human Nature/Family of Blood

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SJS not SJW

Sarah Jane Smith

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Not interested

Just not, a big delay is fine, no problem.

Why?

Because the Chibnall version is shit!

RTD and SM had some excellent episodes, this last series is similar in quality to that Peter Kay episode.

And I have been watching since Jon Pertwee.

Microsoft emits free remote-desktop security patches for WinXP to Server 2008 to avoid another WannaCry

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Better update then.

Got an old PC somewhere for spare use.

Main PC (triple boot) has an XP boot I rarely use.

Japan on track to start testing Alfa-X, fastest train in the world with top speed of 400kph

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Re: Yes, trains.

At least the UK is not too embarrasing still, we may not have the super fast lines, but still have an extensive 125mph network.

The Shinkansen network along with the TGV network are world class high speed rail.

Our lines are basically at capacity.

Deltics, they made the hairs on the back of your neck raise. You do not get it until you stand near one and can simply feel the raw power.

I still remember my first time seeing one close up about 40 years ago.

I do have a soft spot for 50s as well. There was something about English Electric locomotives.

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Railway engineering

There has been some fantastic engineering in the UK.

Brunels main line, superbly laid out in 1830s and still suitable for regular 125mph operation but APT-E tested at over 150.

Churchward getting steam locos just right for the GWR that they had not changed that much under Collett and Hawksworth.

Stanier taking the Churchward ideas into the Duchesses.

Gresley with the high speed ECML Pacifics.

Riddles making sure 9F was 10 coupled.

Miller with the HST.

All the unsung engineers who worked for EE, Brush and the other companies. Who worked closely with British Rail to produce some excellent Diesel and Steam designs.

There are locos in service now nearly 60 years old running reliably and being reconditioned for another decade of operation, the engines in them started in 1930s and the latest version is still being built in France (after the gutting of GEC by the pair of incompetents).

The last major BR coach design is still world class for safety, ride standard and is normally found sandwiched by the worlds fastest Diesel locos.

Anyway a final note about the East Coast Pacifics and Gresley not wanting Diesel.

Quite simple, the LNER could see that large steam engines were much more suitable for their services at the time. Speed was not an issue with regular 100mph operation. They could see that the future was electric, hence the Manchester Sheffield and Wath electrification with pre WW2 designed locomotives.

The LNER were looking at large electrics to replace the A4s not the two generations of Diesels used from 62 to still today.

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Re: Scream ifyou want to go faster

The HST is the most punishing environment ever found for a Diesel power unit.

Personally I like the 16CSVT, but I have found some internet footage of a pair of D18-25 and a 16CSVT working hard together. And the train they were pulling had stupidly fast acceleration.

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Re: Well....

IC 225 is a non tilting APT-S driving motor car as a locomotive with some sub Mark 3 carriages.

Came after APT

HST was the fallback

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Re: Well....

The orginal plans were for gas turbine due to light weight and cheap fuel.

The prototype was electric powered, the squadron sets were going to get a driving motor coach (what became a class 91).

POP the test rig

APT-E the gas turbine powered experiment

APT-P the WCML prototypes

APT-S the production version

If BR had been allowed to build a production version with the snags removed we would be travelling in it today.

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APT was world class and better than Pendodildo

APT, was a very good design and those first 3/6 trains were APT-P P for prototype.

They ran in two sets coupled power car to power car.

The tiliting gear was world class and still better than the Pendodildo. Faster too with over 160mph done.

The tiliting gear in the Bombardier cross country is more APT than the Italians.

APT - hydraulic rams controlled by G force sensors.

Pendodildo - screw jacks controlled by lineside transponders.

My source is impeccable, he invented the tilting train and was on the APT-E project.

Main difference between APT-E and APT-P active tilt was the failover mode.

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HST - Quality Trains

Lucky you, we are losing them for those rubbish Hitachi things.

Want to swap?

HST - lasted 40 years simply because it is that good!

Google puts Chrome on a cookie diet (which just so happens to starve its rivals, cough, cough...)

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Re: doubleclick lives in my

HOSTS on the PC works fine and does the job.

Do I need to do anything else?

My wife made me take facebook out

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Re: doubleclick lives in my

One text file, no problem.

Don't want too many devices anyway between PS4 and internet.

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doubleclick lives in my

HOSTS

US foreign minister Mike Pompeo to give UK a bollocking over Huawei 5G plans

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I feel sorry for the Arch Bishop

Having to put up with the overzealous religious nutbag.

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I trust GCHQ more than some

overblown windbag

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My thoughts too.

Not realising he was leaking hence the denials.

So many incompetents in one place.

May Day! PM sacks UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson for Huawei 5G green-light 'leak'

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Re: We can conclude ...

My view is simply that he is not evil nor traitorous but simply an idiot.

Why do most parties have incompetents and idiots in positions of power or responsibility?

The only reason the current goverment is hanging on is that the main opposition is even worse.

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Re: 50 Million, Try 2.7 Billion

Chris Fayling is a complete and utter twat.

Needs sacking, may be deselecting. Totally incompetent.

I noticed no one has reminded us about his cancellation of railway electrification schemes, forcing the purchase of Electro Diesels to fill in those gaps.

But his nadir has to be the pizza company.

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Black Helicopters

It wasn't him it was

Chronos!

Says something that I can remember the pets names. Not keen on them, would prefer mammallian something like Snowy.

And in current affairs... Apple recalls three-prong AC adapters after some shocking behavior

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Plugs

I do not like the new plastic earth pin craze.

Lost a decent power output USB PSU due to this.

Only had one plug fail, pretty old, it just shattered.

Most though seem to stay plugged in.

My least favourite is a plug with PSU in it with a switch to the lights on the output side. This light I HAVE to switch off at mains after turning it off. A bad design.

Perhaps Apple should get MK to make their adaptor.

Sophos antivirus tools. Working Windows box. Latest Patch Tuesday fixes. Pick two: 'Puters knackered by bad combo

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Windows mail and Thunderbird

Yes gave up and used Thunderbird, much easier.

Has menus for a start.

Take your pick: 0/1/* ... but beware – your click could tank an entire edition of a century-old newspaper

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Re: destructive hdd check

Pegasus Opera reverse ok cancel, so you tend to click cancel if you do not read, until you panic click on OK because you want to cancel.

What a shit idea.

I do not at all blame myself and this is what backups were invented for.

Mind you they were not fans of us, a customer with it had lots of index errors, (Pegasus said backup) so we reindexed using a software product of Extended Systems which happened to support a few variants of that file type. We knew that format trashed indexes so used the server engine we use to not get any index errors.

Mind you some was the natural animosity between Nantucket and Fox developers.

Last week in space: Giant aircraft, asteroid impacts and exploding satellites

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Re: Stratolaunch vs Skylon??

Pegasus and carrier is confusing.

I keep thinking V/STOL jet fighters

Motion detectors: say hello, wave goodbye and… flushhhhhh

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Re: mandatory marigolds!

No problem since someone invented the tap and soap

Samsung's tricksy midrange teasers want your flagship catch

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I hate them

Work phones on contract.

So effing bossy it is unbelievable.

Keeps restarting stuff I NEVER use even after force stopping it. I want to run what I want!

Its replacement is still in its box, tempted to see if I can get a straight swap for say a Motorola or any other sensible phone.

RIP: Microsoft finally pulls plug on last XP survivor... POSReady 2009

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Re: She was a good ship

Ah

Windows Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

Absolute junk

We had one at work, it was crap. I was on 98 then XP then 7, ME user went to Vista then 8.

Razer – perfectly happy to sell you a laptop for over $2,000, but when it comes to fixing security holes... tough sh*t

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Re: Official sponsorship

I tried to watch the Playstation Academy programme on ITV.

The following was blurred out so stopped watching at the first break. Cars were just a blur.

It appears that they were driving Nissan sports cars 370Z I THINK (blurred out)

The game (Gran Turismo), studio (Polyphony Digital), console (Playstation), maker (Sony) alll blurred out.

So blur, head, blur, legs. Standing next to a blurmobile.

Worst ever case of blurring I have seen.

Prince Harry takes a stand against poverty, injustice, inequality? Er, no, Fortnite

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Re: That joke is too effing old

Hewitt

Just not possible as Hewitt is not the son of Prince Phillip.

Look at the pair of them Harry is a chip off the DoE block.

I find it so funny as people really get wound up by Prince Phillip, then get similar by Harry.

I get great enjoyment out of people getting wound up like that as it makes them out to be fools.

Oh and look at those ears!

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Re: A "fun" game is addictive.

Toxicity in games.

Seen it in SP games with casual PVP where hard core types wipe out everyone, why not sod off back to COD.

Yet a more hardcore MP game with a SP element was not toxic until the COD crowd got a free trial. They whinged like mad as it was slow and they got wiped. Lots of cheating accusations and the like, no it was a game played by older skilled slower players, not so much by kids.

Game 1 was a casual but fun MP aimed at the SP players to give the game life. Got toxic.

Game 2 was a FPS with story and a decent MP needing skill more than reactions. Toxic for a week then returned to fun.

It does seem to be that the COD crowd are most toxic.

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Re: tax it

Death Stranding - same engine as Horizon : Zero Dawn, developed from the Killzone SF engine. I am unusual as I like Guerilla Games.