* Posts by qwertyuiop

259 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jun 2009

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Fridge-size probot headed for comet touchdown

qwertyuiop
Pint

Official unit?

Is "fridge-sized" now an official El Reg unit? If so, can you give some guidance on interpreting it in more conventional units? For example, I own both a "beer fridge" and an "American style" fridge freezer - one is roughly a 2 foot cube and the other is about 6 feet high, 6 feet wide and 3 feet deep*. Which of these is officially "fridge-sized"?

* obviously this latter is the beer fridge!

In the next four weeks, 100 people will decide the future of the web

qwertyuiop

Re: a thought

Wow! The Pilgrims had chocolate?!?

Amazon's AWS opens data center in Germany – just as we said

qwertyuiop
FAIL

US will still get your data

"...requests for data from the US authorities had to be legally binding – via court order – and couldn’t be over-reaching"

I can't help but think this is either very naive or deliberately deceptive. The datacentre may well be in Europe but Amazon is a US company and, as we know from the Microsoft ruling, the US courts regard data as being within the scope of a court order irrespective of where it is physically held. Unless and until Microsoft win their case it's largely immaterial where your data is held.

Sysadmin with EBOLA? Gartner's issued advice to debug your biz

qwertyuiop
WTF?

How do I "horde" something?

"...a recommendation to horde cleaning supplies..." - I suppose if we got everybody in the office to keep one item then that might count. How many people would we need to qualify as a horde?

</pedant>

South Korea faces $1bn bill after hackers raid national ID database

qwertyuiop
WTF?

Re: Classic error

"Oooh: don't tell me you were born here - you have an NI number. So your NHS card will do the job"

Could you explain the link between NI number and NHS number? They're different numbers issued by different organisations.

Irish data cops plan long soak in CASH BATH: Gee thanks, Facebook, Twitter, Google

qwertyuiop
Facepalm

Re: Naval gazing

Naval gazing? Do you mean they spend all their time looking at boats? No wonder they aren't very effective against Google et al.

Women! Worried you won't get that Job in IT? Mention how hot you are

qwertyuiop

Re: Why?

@Mage

Ummm... I said we didn't have MUCH use for spanners, not that we didn't have ANY use for spanners. My point really was that there are lots of kinds of engineers, not just mechanical engineers so why the default assumption that engineer = mech. engineer?

qwertyuiop
WTF?

Why?

Why does engineering = spanner?

My degree is in Electronic Engineering and we didn't really have much use for spanners. I strongly suspect that Prof. Sharples who was Head of Department hadn't ever used a spanner either.

MOST iPhone strokers SPURN iOS 8: iOS 7 'un-updatening' in 5...4...

qwertyuiop

Re: Why I didn't update

"or plugin to a pc and use iTunes, you know the tool apple built to service iDevices" - and there was me thinking that iTunes was the product they acquired when they bought SoundJam MP in late 2000.

Adobe swallows Aviary, hopes to stuff Creative Cloud into mobes

qwertyuiop
WTF?

Why?

I just don't get this. Why on earth would I want to use their cloud service in the first place and if I did why on earth would I want to do it on a mobile device?

I shoot high res images in RAW format and edit them in Lightroom. I'm seriously considering buying a much bigger monitor than my existing 24" one so that I can edit more easily. Does anybody seriously think they can do anything worthwhile on a 5" screen using a touch interface?

Joan Rivers promotes iPhone 6 from BEYOND THE GRAVE

qwertyuiop

Re: iMmortality?

Surely the iMedicine store would be an optician? (Optomterist for our US cousins)

IT blokes: would you say that lewd comment to a man? Then don't say it to a woman

qwertyuiop

Re: Surprised..

I read and re-read and re-re-read your comment to make sure I'd seen it properly. Are you calling the author a liar? To me it sounds like you are because there can be _no_ "other side" to this which justifies it.

Kate Bush: Don't make me HAVE CONTACT with your iPHONE

qwertyuiop

Re: heard similar please before

"The world is flooded with Dead bootlegs, but some of them are superb"

Which was partly why the Dead's approach was so clever. Back in the day, *GOOD* bootlegs of any band were usually pricey compared to official recordings and, of course, the bands saw nothing of that money. By making bootlegs ubiquitous, the Dead greatly reduced that premium.

There is an interesting philosophical question here: were these recordings bootlegs? Given that their production had been officially facilitated by the band, and thereby tacitly approved, it could be argued that they're not bootlegs at all but "official" recordings. At the very least they are official unofficial recordings!

qwertyuiop

Re: heard similar please before

I'm a very old git - probably old enough to be the dad of most commentards here. I remember US band The Grateful Dead who had a novel approach to this sort of problem.

The issue then wasn't fans with smartphones - given that they hadn't been invented - but with fans who were recording the gig on audio tape. The Dead's solution? They set up a roped-off area which had been carefully chosen to give "good sound" and invited fans to set up their recorders there. This wasn't a trick, the recorders were allowed to run and the fans came back and collected them after the gig.

When asked why they positively encouraged taping they argued that since fans would find a way to tape the gig anyway they would prefer that any recordings that were being circulated were of good quality and didn't dtract from their performance.

Assange™: Hey world, I'M STILL HERE, ignore that Snowden guy

qwertyuiop

Meanwhile...

...can we all take a moment to remember Chelsea Manning who, unlike Assange, really _IS_ imprisoned and really was tortured. Her torture continues as the US Army appears to be reneging on its earlier promises to allow her gender treatment - http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2014/08/18/attorneys-for-chelsea-manning-promise-fight-if-pentagon-doesnt-grant-gender-treatment

qwertyuiop

Re: He needs the attention, but still...

Aah, the South Yorkshire Police. That fine upstanding force.

<cough>Hillsborough<cough>

Cracker takes control of 200 rooms in Chinese hotel

qwertyuiop

Re: The lesson to be learned here...

OK... so you get your kicks by buggering the blinds... Each to their own. I'm not judging you, it just wouldn't do it for me!

Pentagon hacker McKinnon can't visit sick dad for fear of extradition

qwertyuiop

Re: And when Scotland gets independance

....and the ECHR was largely written by British lawyers when it was drafted in 1950.

Riddle of odd bulge found on moon is solved

qwertyuiop

When life gives you lemons...

...grumble briefly because they're not limes then reach for the Tequila and salt!

Don't put that duffel bag full of cash in the hotel room safe

qwertyuiop
Coat

Re: If everyone has their own number ...

Actually, I've done a hack on certain makes of PIN pad and managed to download ALL of the PINs! Here you are:

0000

0001

0002

0003

0004

0005

US authorities round up ILLEGAL DINOSAURS for repatriation

qwertyuiop
WTF?

Re: Logic - logic - logic and a little history

"removing and preserving them" - would that include removing the original colour from them (they would have been painted, not plain marble)? Even the British Museum shamefacedly admitted 15 years ago that they had been damaged by "heavy handed cleaning" whilst in its possession (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/543077.stm).

REVEALED: Google's proposed indie music-killing contract terms

qwertyuiop
Facepalm

Re: Must suck to be an musician in these days...

"That is on top of the problem of music where you have to differentiate yourself from all the bland crap out there. I've heard quite a few good bands, but have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of terrible bands."

There FTFY.

"Indie" doesn't have a monopoly on pretentious bands/fans or on bad bands either.

Tor is '90 per cent of the net' claims City of London Police Commish – and he's dead wrong

qwertyuiop

If you're ever unfortunate enough to need surgery why don't you try making this comment to the surgeon who's about to operate on you, or the anaesthatist, or anybody else who will be responsible for your care? They, after all, are "...in the payroll of the Public Teat..." too.

NHS slammed for MAJOR data blunders as scale of patient info sell-off is revealed

qwertyuiop

Re: auditing

It could be fun to organise a campaign to hit them with Subject Access Requests from a vast number of people....

US Marshals seek buyer for Silk Road's Bitcoin

qwertyuiop
WTF?

Why is it ironic?

"...irony in the fact that the U.S. Marshal is selling an asset with demonstrated potential to facilitate crime..."

Why is it ironic? Most LEAs seize items from criminals and then, if they have resale value, auction them off in this way. So fast speedboats that have been used to run drugs into the US, or fast cars used in robberies, etc. are all sold. These have (demonstrably) been used to facilitate crime but nobody seems to think their sale is comment-worthy.

'I run my business from my phone' says Benioff as Salesforce shovels $93m into the furnace

qwertyuiop
WTF?

"...from my phone..." Really?

I'm always bemused by these folks who reckon they can run their businesses from their phone. Really? I mean, really really?

Sure I appreciate you can read and send emails and stuff. You can probably read text documents and very simple spreadsheets, but as soon as the content becomes at all complicated - graphs for example - can you really read and understand them? Or dense tables of figures? Even supposing you can, can you really write a lengthy (I'm thinking several pages) document for the board or similar?

If you'd said tablet I could amost believe it, but phone? No.

Mae Microsoft yn addysgu Swyddfa, Bing, siarad Cymraeg*

qwertyuiop

Re: The main point to remember here is...

And as for "Welsh isn't even standardised", neither is English.

Perfectly true, except that written English is pretty much standardised within the UK. The choices of "xyz English" in MS Word are on a national level - UK English, US English, Australian English, etc.

My point in my earlier post was that Welsh wasn't standard in places 70 miles apart which is hardly the same as saying that English isn't standard between places 3,000 miles apart (or more). Now if we were arguing non-standard Welsh on the basis of "Welsh" Welsh vs. Patagonian Welsh then it's a fair comparison, but that's not the basis of your argument.

qwertyuiop
WTF?

They got agreement on this?

I'm intrigued by this. As an Englishman who spent eight years in Wales one thing I learned is that there doesn't seem to be total agreement on the Welsh language within Wales - and I'm not even straying into the Welshification of English words.

I worked in IT for the NHS on a system which produced large amounts of output on pre-printed stationery which had to be in both English and Welsh. In the office we had two "native" Welsh speakers, ie. people who had grown up with it as their first language at home and, in one case, in school. One of these chaps was from North Wales and the other from South Wales (bearing in mind we are talking about a country which is only about 70 miles from North to South).

Anything that needed to be translated into Welsh was sent to these two who would each produce their translation, and these invariably disagreed in quite major ways. We're not talking about the equivalent of one saying "don't" and the other saying "do not", I mean BIG differences. The two of them would be locked in a small room and not let out until they had come up with a version that they could both (reluctantly) agree on.

That was the easy part. Because we were a government department the translation then had to go off to the Welsh Language Unit at the Welsh Office to be vetted by their expert. A week or two would pass and then the "official" version would be returned which would always be materially different to any of the three previous versions.

So my question is, how on earth did they get agreement on the "official" version to go into Bing etc.

Vinyl-fetish hipsters might just have a point

qwertyuiop
Devil

Old gits like me who were around when vinyl was the only medium will remember the messages that the mastering engineers sometimes scratched into the space between the runout grooves in the centre of the record.

The best example is probably on "Heaven and Hell" by Vangelis. This has an incredibly large dynamic range and apparently took many attempts before they got the compression right to be able to fit it onto the disc. The runout message reads "And it was!".

Cost-cutting Barclays bank swings axe on 5,600 IT and ops bods

qwertyuiop
FAIL

Re: I'm sorry, but ...

There *MAY* be a grain of truth in what you say. I've worked in IT for 35 years now and in every organisation I've worked in - public and private sector - some or all of these applied. BUT...

...the problem that Barclays will have is that the second this announcement was made (possibly even before) all the really good people will have retrieved their CV and mailed it to the recruitment consultant or website of their choice. They won't hang around to see if they'll get a payout, they know their worth and they'll be off.

Barclays will make redundancies from whoever is left and it's inevitable that the calibre of their IT department will lurch downwards.

I speak from experience!

Yeah, suck it, Foxconn. 'Pegatron' 'nabs' '15%' of 'iPhone 6' 'production'

qwertyuiop
Devil

Prediction

I'm going to stick my neck right out here and risk making a couple of crazy predictions. Despite Apple bringing on Pegatron to help with production:

i) there will be queues outside Apple Stores worldwide when the new phone becomes available. Some people will queue several days, many will queue for several hours, just to be able to buy from the Apple Store as soon as the phone is available. Meanwhile many others will just turn up at Carphone Warehouse or similar outlets at 9:00, walk straight in, and walk out shortly after with their new phone.

ii) despite massive demand for the new phone being oh-so-predictable (see the launch of previous phones, plus (i) above) Apple will run out of stock within a day or two at most. They will thereby generate acres of free adverts in the form of newspaper stories and hours of free TV adverts in the form of "news" stories about the phone being so popular it has sold out.

OK, I know these predictions are really out there but I just think they might come true.

Brit chap weaves silver bullet for wireless health scare bollocks

qwertyuiop
WTF?

Airport scanners?

What kind of effect would a pair of these have when you walked through a metal detector at an airport security check or if you were asked to step into the scanner? "Honest officer, it's just my silver-thread chuddies..."

Laser deflector shields possible with today's tech – but there's one small problem

qwertyuiop
Coat

Re: "spin and a highly-reflective coating"

Sadly, by making your idea public, we're all now free to clad our spaceships in 70's sparkle

What's the betting that Apple will still be able to get a patent on it?

Grad student creates world's thinnest wires – just three atoms wide

qwertyuiop

Re: Boring

...two atoms wide...

I think it's his brain that's two atoms wide.

Nominet bins Optical Express' appeal against 'It ruined my life' website

qwertyuiop
Coat

Re: But Branston Pickles Did ruin my Wife!

You certainly know your (pickled) onions!

Schoolkids given WORLD'S CHEAPEST TABLETS: Is it really that hard to swallow?

qwertyuiop

Re: Trade not aid Hmm... aren't we missing the point here?

Give a (wo)man a gun and (s)he'll rob a bank.

Give a (wo)man a bank and (s)he'll rob the whole country!

Actually, there is an Arapaho word for 'pliers'

qwertyuiop
Devil

Don't blame the server!

"...while we take the tooyo'oenoo' to the BuzzGasm server."

Surely it would be more appropriate to take the tooyo'oenoo' to Mr Haines?

John Lewis unzips mega Oracle ERP package

qwertyuiop

Re: Money pit

Sadly all too true. On the plus side, however, having had the pain of moving from multiple systems to a single one means that the next move will be a little easier as it's just from one system to another. Hopefully..

Google kills copycat TfL congestion charge payment ads

qwertyuiop
WTF?

Re: If those are scam sites...

But they're not taking money under false pretences! They offer you a site where, for a fee, you can complete your details which they will submit to the relevant goevrnment department on your behalf. They take your money and they do what they say, so in what way is it false pretences? You have the choice of using them or using the official website; you get the same result in both cases, it's just that one is a lot cheaper.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending them. They are preying on the gullible and less observant and I thyink we should find a way to close them down, but nothing they are doing is illegal unfortunately. Some of them do come close though where the design of their site closely mimics the colours and fonts used by the official sites. Is there no possibility of prosecuting them for "passing off"?

Yes! New company smartphones! ... But I don't WANT one

qwertyuiop

Re: iPhone 4S

@Joe 35 - I thought I'd addressed the ease of replacement by pointing out that I didn't need to take it into a shop. The fact it's also cheaper and more convenient is a bonus.

qwertyuiop

Re: iPhone 4S

Apple replaced the battery for £45? I can pick up a (genuine) Samsung battery for my S4 for about £25 - and I don't have to take it into a shop to have it replaced! Even better, I can charge it and carry it with me in case the battery in the phone runs out of juice. It's called convenience.

Retiring greybeards force firms to retrain Java, .NET bods as mainframe sysadmins

qwertyuiop
Thumb Up

Life in the old dog eh?

I got my first job as a trainee programmer 35 years ago this summer and learned COBOL on an ICL mainframe, later transferring to IBM mainframes. I remember in my second week at work picking up a copy of "Computing" and reading the banner headlines that COBOL was dead and soon nobody would be using it. I wondered seriously if I'd made a big mistake.

Time passed. COBOL became un-sexy and was never mentioned. Then the world woke up to the "Millennium Bug" and suddenly grey-haired COBOL programmers were coming out of retirement and earning mahoosive amounts of money. And now this article...

When Commander Grace Hopper "built" a language she built it to last!

Open MPI hits milestone with FORTRAN-ready 1.7.4 release

qwertyuiop

Mmmm... Fortran...

The first programming language I ever learned - back in the halcyon days of 1975. I bet more than 50% of El Reg's readers (and writers!) weren't even born then!

Jean Michel Jarre: Je voudrais un MUSIC TAX sur VOTRE MOBE

qwertyuiop
WTF?

Who needs it?

I'm quite happy to forego the ability to play music on my smartphone. I know I'm weird, but I much prefer my trusty old 160Gb iPod Classic for playing music. It's the only time I've bought a fruity device and only because nobody else makes an MP3 player with that capacity - I currently have 15,000+ tracks on it. Added bonus is that it docks in my car and I can listen to as much music as I want or read/send emails or browse without worrying that I've used up precious battery juice on music.

Fancy a little kinky sex? GCHQ+NSA will know - thanks to Angry Birds

qwertyuiop
Facepalm

Re: So once again the advertising companies s**t over your privacy

24/7/365 - so that will be seven years then (actually not quite seven years because of leap years)?

24/7 = "all the time", 24/365 = "all the time", but 24/7/365 is just silly!

</pedantry>

Plastic iPhone 5Cs? Nah, we'll flog India our OLD iPhone 4 models - report

qwertyuiop
WTF?

Can't agree

Given that a new iPhone comes out every year and true fanbois will queue up like sheep to get their hands on the latest model as soon as it's available, who keeps an iPhone for more than 12 months? It makes the Samsung phone with it's 18-24 months of ownership look positively long-lived!

XMAS SPACEWALK planned to fix ISS's dicky cooling gear

qwertyuiop
WTF?

What's the problem?

I don't understand what the big problem is here. If it's getting too hot inside why don't they just open the windows for a while until things cool down?

Fees shakeup: Freephone numbers will actually BE free – Ofcom

qwertyuiop
Unhappy

Re: Doctors

Unfortunately whilst they're a public service they are also a private business. GPs are independent private contractors who work for the NHS. Most of them own the premises they work in as well.

Blighty's winter storms are PUNY compared to Saturn's 200mph, 15,000 mile wide HEXACANE

qwertyuiop

Re: Security fixing...

It rolled under the settee...

UK parents to splurge £3 BEELLLIIIION on kids' tech gifts at Christmas

qwertyuiop
FAIL

Re: Bah humbug

Maybe if Christians hadn't attempted to hijack Saturnalia - a Roman feast dedicated to eating, drinking and gift-giving - they wouldn't have this problem. Most of us are doing what it says on the tin!

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