* Posts by EddieD

1117 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009

NASA flies plane through Earthly shadow of Kuiper Belt object

EddieD

Dang

"So enough with the conspiracy theories, okay?"

Oh dear, they've got Simon under control now.

'My dream job at Oracle left me homeless!' – A techie's relocation horror tale

EddieD

Also in British English.

If there is such a thing.

The Cambridge dictionary gives "Absent a detailed plan, the project was doomed from the start" as an indicative sentence.

Former GCHQ boss backs end-to-end encryption

EddieD

Pah.

He's just an expert, what could he possibly know that the Classicists and PPE politicians don't?

Microsoft's Azure chief: What's good for cloud is good for on-premises too

EddieD

Re: "I'll forgive him Silverlight - good implementation of a bad idea."

"Good implementation? With all the bugs and vulnerabilties it had???"

Less* than Flash though, I think...

*I'm not sure you can count the bugs/vulnerabilities in Flash, so I'm using less, not fewer.

Roland McGrath steps down as glibc maintainer after 30 years

EddieD

"Roman emperor Diocletian?"

I gave you an upvote for knowledge, as it slightly outweighed my instinct to give you a downvote for being a smartarse.

Good luck building a VR PC: Ethereum miners are buying all the GPUs

EddieD

Phew...

I'm glad I got my 1070 when I did - I just glanced at Amazon and just about everyone is "Not in stock" "Delivery in 2-4 weeks" or similar - and the price has rocketed.

Daft, imo. I think (and I'll admit that I'm normally wrong when I think) that just like when BitCoin was the cryptocurrency de jour and ASICs rapidly outstripped GPUs as the mining engine of choice, the same will happen with Ethereum, and the gamers and both VR freaks will get their hands on the GPUs again.

Actually, thinking about it, Ephemerum might be a better choice of name.

Virgin Media biz service goes TITSUP* across London

EddieD

Won't be the last...

Today Virgin, Tomorrow BT, there's always some fibres just a sneeze away from being cut.

We're getting more and more of these frangile fibre thingies that are worming their way through soil, and today it was some borough councils, not too serious, but London City Airport are remoting their ATC via fibre - okay, they're using three redundant connections and they that say "it will be impossible that all three would fail together"

Triplicated Infrastructure terminated so unexpectedly prematurely.

Hmm.

On the couch with an AI robo-doc asking me personal questions

EddieD

It might not all be bad.

At least an AI doc would listen to all your symptoms and hopefully not suffer from the form of paradoelia that human docs do when any symptom you mention is a symptom of what they want you to have "Stubbed your toe? Ah yes, IBD" "Sneezes and sniffles? Ah yes, classic compound fracture symptoms" "Sodomised your Mother? Have some viagra".

Well, that escalated quickly: Qualcomm demands iPhone, iPad sales ban in America

EddieD

Humongous upvote for the Threads reference, probably the most realistic, and chilling, representation of the country after a nuclear strike.

Scared the crap out of me when I saw it as an impressionable teenager, going back to it in middle age wasn't much better.

Back on topic - I've been wondering if something like this would occur ever since Apple started to make their own chips.

RED ALERT! High-speed alien fugitives are invading our Milky Way

EddieD

Hmm

Are they in Klemperer rosette formation?

Windows Insiders with SD cards turn into OneDrive outsiders

EddieD

Re: An insider build.

Aye you can report bugs.

But using it for your day to day system or for a production system is specifically stated by Microsoft as a bad idea as things may not work, systems may get screwed up, functionality may not be what you expected.

Whinging about it on Reddit, saying "WHAT A FECKING LIBERTY" rather than saying "In this preview build, losing ResFS or FAT32 access to OneDrive seems to be bit of retrograde step" is just stupid.

It's a beta. It's not meant for general use. Report errors, post about errors, say why you think it's a bad idea.

Reacting like 3 year old who has spat out his dummy is just lame.

EddieD

An insider build.

So, technically, a beta, not a release copy?

Annoying, irritating, and probably a damned stupid idea, but isn't the purpose of betas and previews to test things before general release?

And don't folk on the insider program get warned that things might not work the way that they think that they should?

Methinks the insiders protest too much.

Extreme trainspotting on Britain's highest (and windiest) railway

EddieD

Re: 2 attractions now

You should really add in the West Highland Line - from Tyndrum to Mallaig there is really very little else in the UK that can compare with it for sheer beauty...regardless of whether you get the Jacobite Express from Fort William onwards.

EddieD

The Snowdon train deserves its own article, it's such a fascinating mechanical achievement in its own right e.g. the carriage isn't physically coupled to the engine, in case the engine derails and drags it down the mountainside...as happened on the opening day of the railway...

SpaceX halts Intelsat 35e launch twice in a row

EddieD

Re: "Twice in a row..."

Sloppy phrasing...two days consecutively...

Microsoft: We'll beef up security in Windows 10 Creators Edition Fall Update

EddieD

Fall update...

I still haven't been offered the current Creator's update, so I'll probably get this in time for Christmas, if Santa is feeling particularly mischevious.

Enhancement of security tools is one thing though, enhancement of security another.

Google hit with record antitrust fine of €2.4bn by Europe

EddieD

"We respectfully disagree with the conclusions announced today. We will review the Commission’s decision in detail as we consider an appeal, and we look forward to continuing to make our case.”

Translation: "You bastards. You're never going to see this money as we're going to spend at least as much as the fine, if not more, keeping it in the courts using every delaying tactic our highly paid lawyers can think up, for ever and ever and ever, or at least, until hopefully the time when EU disappears up its own arse".

EDIT: I'm pleased with the EU for recognising the unfair leverage that companies including Google can wield, but fines cannot be a solution, as there are too many way that such behemoths can mitigate such paltry amounts - Alphabet had revenues of 90Bn last year. Other solutions which block these strategies, up to and including e.g. blocking the websites offending, have to be considered.

Blighty's first aircraft carrier in six years is set to take to the seas

EddieD

Ev'rybody down!

EddieD

Dang, I forgot

Much kudos for the Navy Lark reference.

Still one of my favourites.

"Everybody down!"

EddieD

Time to grab the snapper

Since she can only leave the dock at high tide, and get under our three bridges at low tide, and according to this, she's still in dock, there will be a few hours from 5pm to 11pm where some good snaps can be obtained as she sits in the middle of the Forth.

Darkness to fall over North America from a total solar eclipse

EddieD

Re: My home town...

"Phone users in particular will...."

Phone users in 1999 didn't have cameras in their phones....

Other than that I agree with you - when I go to fireworks display the amount of puny flashguns trying to light up the light is ludicrous...

Smart burglars will ride the surf of inter-connected hackability

EddieD

Giving things "intelligence" is a bad idea

Sorry for the boilerplate quote, but a bit of wisdom from Douglas Adams seems appropriate.

"It should be explained at this point that modern elevators are strange and complex entities. The ancient electric winch and maximum capacity eight persons jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetic Corporation ‘Happy Vertical People Transporter’, as a packet of peanuts does to the entire West Wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital. This is because they operate on the unlikely principle of defocused temporal perception - a curious system which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing, and making friends that people were previously forced to do whilst waiting for elevators.

Not unnaturally, many lifts imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up or down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways - as a sort of existential protest - demanded participation in the decision making process, and, finally, took to sulking in basements. At this point a man called Gardrilla Manceframe rediscovered and patented a device he had seen in a history book called a staircase."

Please do not scare the pigeons – they'll crash the network

EddieD

Re: Winged Rats? No, but Tree Rats, yeah, had issues with those.

They sell squirrel (grey only) at my local market.

It tastes a bit like wild rabbit, but is a tad tougher, and needs slow stewing. Also, there's not much meat on them so you need at least one per person.

Red squirrels can't be eaten as they taste horrible due to a secretion from a gland near their kidneys.

Gay Dutch vultures become dads

EddieD
Pint

Definitely a beer needed

For the subheading.

Even as a confirmed (and often loathed) punster myself, I could not repress a groan when I saw that brilliant one liner.

Slainté mhath!

After reusing a rocket, SpaceX tries reusing Dragon capsule for ISS resupply

EddieD

Stuff making a roux - I'm British and I'll want a decent cuppa when I'm in LEO, and if my milk separates, there will be hell to pay.

The nuclear launch button won't be pressed by a finger but by a bot

EddieD

Re: We will all go together when we go

You can never quote the good doctor enough...have an upvote.

As an aside, it is rumoured that Tom invented the vodka jello shot during his stint at Los Alamos - no liquids were allowed in the computer/machine room, so he made up jelly* with vodka so that he could have a wee dram when working.

*Sorry, I'm British. I can only say jello a very limited number of times...

Azure Portal rejects Firefox after certificate revocation SNAFU

EddieD

Last time this happened (that I know of) Microsoft pointed the finger at Akamai, as they handle the certificates - I wonder if this has happened again, but this time Microsoft aren't pointing at them.

I had to make a temporary change in about:config (and I was most disappointed as there were no dragons) to change security.ssl.enable_ocsp_must_staple;true to false, this morning I changed it back.

Certificates do seem to cause problems for many people, not just Microsoft - recently my employer changed the certificate on the wifi, and the queues I had on the helpdesk were formidable.

New 'Beaver' web server has exactly ONE user outside China

EddieD

Re: Wait...

Don't they have some laws preventing termination of pandas, which could make it awkward to do updates...

Drones over London caused aviation chaos, pilots' reports reveal

EddieD

Re: Hmmm...

Not the Hero 3.

Myself and the late, and very lamented, Lester agreed that the Hero 3's thermal window was ludicrously small.

Life is... pushing all the right buttons on the wrong remote control

EddieD

A lovely tale...

I love stories like this.

10 years ago, after a spat with VirginMedia, I got rid of my television service. I thought it would be a temporary separation, but it has matured into a fully fledged divorce.

I don't miss it. If I want to watch something, which doesn't happen often, I can wait till it's out on DVD, or, if I reallyreally need that fix of televisual entertainment so I can join in with the conversations at work about one of the many series which all sound exactly the same as each other, one of my friends with a Tivo or similar will record it and pass it over, and I can realise why I don't have a television service, and celebrate it with a glass of something liver-rotting and cancer inducing - paid for with the money I save by not having a television service.

See - the more you look at no television service, the more it makes sense.

And no remotes. Life is better without remotes.

Microsoft touts next Windows 10 Creators Update: It's set for a Fall

EddieD

Re: Updates yes, but please stop breaking working programs

Or - and I recognise that this is a pain - you can right click on any executable, select compatibilty, and turn off the scaling for that program.

London app dev wants to 'reinvent the bus'

EddieD

Regional variations..

I live in Edinburgh - we have a really good bus service. I

Good route coverage? Check

Good accurate info on times and arrivals by app? Check

Free WiFi? Check

Good arrival/service info at bus stops? Check

Reasonable pricing? Check

Hybrid/Electric vehicles? Check

If it hadn't been for the ludicrous splurge on the white elephant tram service, we'd probably have an incredibly good bus service, but LRT seem to be doing all of what this startup claims. I commute by bicycle - if I didn't I'd use the buses, not my cars, because up here, they work pretty well.

Fire fighters get grinding on London man’s trapped genitalia

EddieD

Re: Heavy Equipment?

Alas, if it's blocked the egress of the corpus cavernosa, there's nothing you can do, it's stuck like that...

Still, it's not the worse I've heard about... Back in the late 70s, there was a wonderful publication "World Medicine" that specialised in the slightly more chatty side of medicine. It had a scintillating vignette, telling the story of a couple admitted on the same stretcher, the man had got his prepuce speared on the wire of a partially expelled IUD, and the medic had to perform an intra-vaginal circumcision using modified obstetric instruments to spare his dick.

Sex sometimes seems to be more trouble than it's worth.

Only sometimes.

(You can't) buy one now! The flying car makes its perennial return

EddieD

Stop playing with your knob, and get on a real bike.

"Let's have a moment of silence for all those stuck in traffic on their way to the gym to ride a stationary bicycle." —Earl Blumenauer

Super Cali goes ballistic, Uber drivers are stocious (allegedly!)

EddieD

Re: "I reckon it could do with dropping the "are"............

"Since when did Reggie's subbies bother about grammar?"

At Chistmas, when they send her a card.

If the sober up and remember.

Microsoft's new hardware: eight x86 cores, 40 GPU cores

EddieD

The hololens is self contained - it doesn't require any form of machine

Decapitating Rockall: How a 1970s Navy expedition blasted the top off the Atlantic islet

EddieD

Extending the UK territorial claims to (possibly exclusive) fishing and mineral rights further into the Atlantic Ocean than previous limits?

The future of Not Reality is a strap-on that talks to my smarting ring

EddieD

Re: Meh...

I prefered the series 2 version of BTL.

Far more sinister.

YouTube TV will be huge. Apple must respond

EddieD

Saturation

I wonder how many hours of broadcasting are transmitted every hour of the day.

Gulp! Drones dodge spray from California's gaping moist glory hole

EddieD

Re: Bah!

Nah, a descending Shepard tone.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/DescenteInfinie.ogg

BT and Virgin Media claim 'broadband' tax will cost £1.3bn

EddieD

Why are they whinging?

They'll just push out another RPi x 3 rise to their customers and let them pay.

Nokia's 3310 revival – what's NEXT? Vote now

EddieD

Not the compact cassette.

It was an good medium in it's time, it was the job of the time, but at only 90minutes capacity* on something that is easily 10x the size of my music player which holds hundreds of hours, no randomise function, and the ability to spill its guts into the machine requiring painstaking retrieval...

Having said that, I'm fairly sure that the "skip track" function on modern players is the first thing to wear out - back when you had 20 tracks, they all seemed to be just right - there is a benefit to having limited storage, you only store what you really like.

On that list - the Psion 5 organiser wins, hands down, in my opinion.

*Okay, 120 minute cassettes were available. If you enjoyed the added bonus of wow and flutter applied to your favourite sounds, at no extra cost.

What does a complex AI model look like? Here's some Friday eye candy from UK biz Graphcore

EddieD

Re: Can someone explain

Make graphical?

That's my best bet. After "bibble", which was my initial reaction.

Virgin Media swallows 215,000 new fibre customers in Blighty

EddieD

VM

Pricier than a meeting of Dennis, Katie and Vincent, more latency than a boys public school dorm and the help line is as user friendly as a cornered rat.

When it works well, it's the canine cojones. When it doesn't, reach for the grog.

Cheer up, pal: UK mobe networks are now 8% less crap, tests show

EddieD

Sod the surveys

O2 coverage is Scotland outside the cities sucks. I know Bonnie Jockland is a wee bit rural, but I'm fed up of being on top of a hill wanting to share my joy* of being out in the fresh air** with my friends, but getting absolutely bugger all in the way of signal when my friends on EE or whatever are blathering away.

I should vote with my feet, but all my family are on O2, so when I'm in town it's useful.

*Okay, I want to brag.

** We have lots of that. It makes up for not having gigs, industry, life expectancy...

Two words, Mozilla: SPEED! NOW! Quit fiddling and get serious

EddieD

Fair comment.

I use Firefox as my default browser, and I like it.

Other than the periodic howls when I have to try and undo the UI changes that one of the all to frequent updates have inflicted on me that ruin my browsing experience.

Vinyl, filofaxes – why not us too, pleads Nokia

EddieD

I still have mine

Slight more advanced than most users quotes - I was late (and reluctant) to join the mobile age, but my 6610i still works wonders - when I lost my Lumia last August, O2 sent me a replacement SIM, I slipped it into the trusty beast, and powered it up - within 30s, it was powered up - it briefly asked for time and date, but before I could enter the data, it had them from the network and was ready to go.

And it can run for at least a weak between charges in daily use, and hold its charge for a very long time if switched off.

OTOH, it doesn't have a 19mega pixel camera...

NASA picks three Martian wet patches for 2020 splashdown

EddieD

Fast rocket....

If the launch was 2020, I'd expect the splashdown to be 2024 or so...

High tides: Boffins spy on dolphins baked on poisonous piscines

EddieD

Re: Further study required!

The Aztecs (or Mayans, or Incas...I'm a wee bit nebulous on which is which) did the same trick involving peyote and psylocibin but used a dog - they high priests drank dog urine, the lesser priests the high priests, and so on and so forth.

Certainly for the reindeer trick, it has important survival implications - whilst Amanita Muscaria isn't poisonous itself, other Amanita species are, and look similar. If the reindeer survived, the shaman had a better chance of not being terminally blitzed.

That guy using a Surface you keep seeing around town could be a spy

EddieD

Re: Disturbing...

The enterprise version can be configured to use WSUS (or whatever M$ are calling it this week) which bypasses the continuous update system, so machines update to the schedule of the sysadmin.