Posts by EddieD

Not too bad...

...but still very annoying (fortunately my boss is very patient)

One 2.5hr chkdsk d: /r later, and I'm back up and running - the restart must have been done for a file or two.

Back on topic...

Preview pane in Outlook - I seem to remember that I switched that off a few years ago when there was another scare about auto-executable code as an attachment, and never switched it on again, I don't have that version of PowerPoint installed, nor do I use Forefront , so I didn't need any of the updates that caused the hassle. Marvellous.

Hmm...

It took me about an hour of web searches, an hour of preparation, and then an hour of tentative tweaking to turn my old Shuttle into a Hackintosh - full blown OS-X on my (almost) generic hardware - and it ran more than adequately. I shortly after nuked the partition, I just did it as an experiment.

It strikes me that if I, as a wannabe IT bloke can do that, if you want an X-Serve-a-like, it shouldn't take a smart real IT bloke/Server Admin too long to figure out how to load the X-serve binaries onto a generic rack mount server box.

Mad bastards

The lot of you are totally bonkers.

Please keep it up!.

One reviewer's list, is one reader's argument..

And publishing this list gives us a chance to argue and give our lists.

I'd add in Populous, Elite, Dungeon Master, Civilisation,

Death of this, death of that...

In the 20 odd years I've been bluffing my way in IT, the death of <insert platform/language/whatever> has been a recurring theme - thin clients will kill desktops, Java will kill platform specific programming, clouds will kill data centers.

No, they won't - at least, not yet. In my very limited experiences, what I've seen is that new technologies get incorporated in an additional scenario - the new technology gets deployed alongside the older technology (I refuse to call any technology under my own age as old, so Cobol is still cutting edge, okay?), and we get a synergy, or at least, an expanded total.

Maybe certain technologies do get largely superceded - but I still see impact printers working alongside daisy printers, I still have various old CRT monitors lying around because I need them for my work (don't ask), and so IM(very)HO, there will be a need for some reskilling, but the old techniques will still be required.

I'm reminded of a crap joke...

A man has cancer, and just before he dies, his relatives have him preserved in liquid helium.

From his perception, he just wakes up, and wonders where he is, and a guy comes in and says "Amazing, we didn't think it was going to work, but we're desparate, and spent all our resources to revive you because John, we need you - it's the year 9999, and we understand that you're a COBOL programmer..."

Priorities...

Before rolling out the penis extension speed increases, please could we have the 20+ year old wiring that supplies my district of Edinburgh upgraded so that we can get 10Mb speeds working?

Pretty please?

Say what?

I've been carrying on liters of Bombay sapphire, wine, and whatever from the duty free shops regardless of the pointless ban on fluids - the fluid check is usually before all the retail concessions, and in the few places I know that it isn't, e.g. Athens, you get a sealed transparent plastic bag to lug your liters of Bombay Sapphire onto the plane - there was no way that the retail concessions were going to let a minor thing like a "ban" on fluids stop them separating you from your hard earned lucre.

too late...

Like the Bit Wrangler, I was going to mention the urban myth about the uses of rhino horn in eastern cultures...

http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/news/chiefeditor/2010/07/rhino-horn-and-traditional-chinese-medicine-facts.html

"Ironically, it seems the only condition rhino horn is not prescribed for is a lagging libido."

Sod the ISPs

The ISPs have oversold their networks - they persuaded us to cough up for this unlimited, super-fast, ultra nifty broadband whilst quietly sniggering to themselves as they thought that we would never be able to use all this bandwidth. They therefore sold the same bandwidth to 20, 30, 50, whatever number of other users, at the same time, and they are now finding that we /can/ - and will - use that bandwidth that they don't have, and now they find ways to cheat us of what we have paid for - download caps/bandwidth shaping/protocol capping, you name it.

In any other industry, they'd be guilty of fraud, but our numpty governments get lobbied, the watchdogs pass the buck and we get screwed.

The ISPs need to work out what they can deliver, and sell that.

Miracles == very, very lucky

One of the gotchas that seasoned god-botherers always trot out is that believing in god is of necessity an act of faith, and any "proof" will erode faith (c.f. the babel fish argument) and therefore any miracle /must/ be able to be explained as a natural occurence, for who is it that makes natural occurences occur, at the right time, so that you know that you are beloved of the heavenly host, none other than Jehovah, Yahweh or any other name you wish to give to which ever mythical entity gives you the ability to get through this vale of tears.

Of course, when I speak to my invisible friend (and he answers) - I get prescribed diphenhydramine, and have all sharp objects taken off me. TANJ.

Typical speeds

Whilst Virgin are to be applauded for adopting the typical speed approach, I have a few reservations about companies doing their own monitoring - their own blurb states that it's the typical speed attained by 66% of their customers - thus eliminating the 33% that could drastically lower the "typical speed" - e.g. me. I rarely reach anything above 5Mbps on my 10Mbps connection, but Iknow that I'm in a minority, my friends who are on Virgin Broadband get extremely good connections, I'm just in an area that was wired very early for cable TV - it's a conservation area of Edinburgh, dishes were not allowed, so the cable company (I can't remember which one, it's been through so many variants, eventually being Telewest..) saw an opportunity, and a captive market, and the wiring is a tad antiquated. I will say though that it is very, very reliable, I've only had one outage of my broadband, lasting about 2 hours, in the last year, so I won't mention the traffic shaping...oops..

Instead of allowing a self-selected basket, Ofcom should be more pro-active in insisting that the typical speeds must come from an overall group of customers, otherwise it's not that much more accurate than the "up to" figures normally quoted.

Good.

Maybe we can stop the jokes about the Scots and deep frying...we draw the line at Mars Bars.

And, as a point of fact many, many years ago, at some flash place in London, I had deep fried ice cream.

It seems that those not north of Hadrian's Wall are more into the cholesterol packing fry ups....

Not rocket science

Why not ask for your TV license number when you first use catch up...it would be relatively trivial to check for concurrent use.

Not really an issue.

If you have mail, you normally have Facebook access - something on FB screwed up for me in February so my email advices stopped arriving, the support has been roughly the equivalent of a chocolate teapot, and I don't miss it particularly, and it also means at least google no longer get to see what I'm doing on Facebook.

I dunno, kids these days...

Eny fule nos it's a /flying/ fuck you take at a rolling doughnut.

Battery life

It's a bit gluttonous... I recently bought the K-x, and I get about 1400 or so shots from a set of 4 Lithium batteries.

Nothing is original...

In a book by John Brunner called Stand on Zanzibar, written in about 1970, and set in 2010, a fashion designer Guinivere Steel, had introduced something she called "Nipicaps" - which are what these are. Maybe his estate can sue for plagiarism.

It's a pencil

I always thought that pencils were forbidden because of the problems with graphite dust in the electrics, but a quick wiki (Writing_in_Space) show that they use them, along with a wide variety of other implements.

Oh bollocks...

Another good product succumbs to feature creep...and it will, like iTunes, be a forced update.

I'm a geek, sorry, IT professional, I don't do "social" - I live in a cave and like it there, please leave me alone.

Spotify lite, pretty please?

Won't happen

Google will use it's financial resources to tie this up for years and years...the only folk who will benefit will be lobbyists and lawyers.

Wow.

That's just beautiful.

I never could afford a Hasselblad, nor would I ever need one, but that is artistry.

Good on you!

"Gwent Police asked The Register to consider not publishing a story about its serious data breach saying it would undermine public confidence in the force, but we declined."

I wish you could have one on me this evening! Have a good one!

And not a word on the BBC website

It's really very sad to see how completely slanted their coverage of this debate has been - they are meant to be impartial, but this debate has shown that their impartiality is limited by context.

Nearly there...

I just want a phone, but, I have to admit, with T9 and the ability to display text. Everything else is superfluous. Colour - don't need it to display text. Camera, sorry, no. I have several digital cameras, each for their own niche (and several film cameras too). Video - no. Internet - no. Social networking - keep it. GPS, 3G, whatever - no.

I know that for a lot of folk, these things are either needed, or equally importantly, wanted, but I have yet to see the need.

The most important feature it must have is an off switch.

No 3d for me

I see these stereoscopic 3D thingys as a series of cardboard cut-outs dancing in front of an infinity cyc. No depth - which having seen Avatar is appropriate....

Holographic imaging on the retina, gief....

Vive la difference...

Okay, I don't know german.

What I do know though is the difference between British and mainland Europe kebabs - on the mainland you can eat a doner kebab /before/ you go to the pub, and you don't have that nagging sense of post-pitta regret afterwards.

Easier said than done...

A lot of sites don't allow special characters, others don't discriminate between lower and upper case (WoW, I'm looking at you...), so often the user has to accept a lower level of password security than they would like.

I'm a wee bit in the middle for security - I don't allow my browser to store passwords for what I think of as sensitive sites (and I don't use web based banking at all), I use different passwords for different sites, but I have to confess that I don't change them often enough.

OTOH, if anyone wants to hack my mail, all they'll find is how dull my life really is, and if I did have my bank account compromised they'd be the lucky recipients of 3 groats 2 shillings and thruppence ha'penny - I'm lucky in a way, what you don't have, can't be taken...