Posts by Steve Davies 3

Re: Friday afternoon

2:30 on a Friday afternoon? my, that is early.

How's about 4:30pm? A PHB wanted to make sure that we were all at our desks until 5:00 and the traffic jam outside meant that we couldn't get out of the car park until 6:30.

We moved the meeting to a Pub outside the area affected by the traffic jam. Everyone went apart from the PHB who was folornly waiting for us until one of us sent him a text asking where he was....

We had told him about the change of venue but he was so engrossed with his management reports he never read it.

Said PHB moved on very shortly afterwards. Heard later that he'd tried the same at the new company.

Sigh...

Re: "...the average speed of a UK broadband connection of 24 megabits per second (Mb/s)"

Well, if you believe the Virgin Media junk mail then 24Mbits is akin to a snail crawling up a pane of glass?

OTOH, the BT Backhaul can't take even 10% of this so why are we even bothering to discuss speeds that will probably never be reached until 2116. Even then the last mile will still be over single strand twisted pair copper PSTN quality wire so anything over 80Mbits is more than could be expected even with a following wind and les than 50ft to the Fibre Box.

Re: Reasons are probably many

Sanctions never stopped the Russians in the days of Communism. The number of VAX'en and PDP's that popped out of the woodwork post 1989 was huge.

Now? How difficult is it to move a .ISO over the interwebs eh?

Re: Nobody wants...

All those bloody automated test cases are all well and good but they don't and can't replicate the quirks of the average user who will try every know keypress in 5seconds in order to speed up the system.

I'm just spent two days getting to the bottom of a nasty UI interaction problem. Do this, this, this, then that and opps!

All has to be done within a minute or things going on in the background make it all work. Timing Sucks.

Can anyone write an automated test for this? Somehow I doubt it.

Systems are getting more and more complicated. Proper (not the automated type) Testing takes lots of time and even more money.

We used to put people in front of a system and tell them 'Go Break it'.

Lots of very obsure bugs were discovered that way. Why don't we do it now?

Answers on a pinhead please?

Re: Although you apparently can use it in a case of the Zombie Apocalypse..

Yesh. This point was discussed around 05:20 on the BBC Radio show 'Wake up to Money'.

This is IMHO far more intersting that this 'Lumberyard' thing.

It seems that El Reg is ignoring tips sent now. I sent it in around 06:45.

Zombies rule ok!

disclaimer, I'm old enough to have seen 'the Zombies' in the 1960's.

The question is now many more EULA's and T's & C's have this sort of legalese included?

Does it make the contract null and void? After all Zombies are a figment or our imagination aren't they?

Re: I can choose the things I want.

Oh, but I do choose what I want at least from the fresh food section.

But I shop locally. I have two Butchers within walking distance. One makes the best sausages in the land (IMHO). The Farmers market and farm shops (for veg) supply the rest.

For the 'dry goods' then mostly I'll buy the own brand not the overpriced heavily advertised branded things.

However, as an old grumpy, I eschew anything that is advertised. Not that I see many anyway.

Each to their own.

How about...?

A Blue LearJet with the Registration NW10NO

N for US

W10 for You know what

NO because Balmer wouldn't be seen dead using it.

This is a joke ok.

Sadly

far too many sites require 'googleapis' to be allowed through to even get the home page to work.

I really have no idea what crap it spreads on my system.

Pretty soon, ALL my browsing will be done from within a VM that gets restored every day with a clean image. Then F---You advertisers. I will never ever buy anything from Adverts served to me over the TV, Radio or via my browser. Got it?

Yours, a decidely grumpy old man at 06:40 in the morning and only 1 mug of coffee consumed so far.

Re: Stupid frequencies

While a Humax PVR might not be affordable for some people a plain old sat decoder (i.e. the Hummy without the Recorder) is around £30 and should be affordable.

Even my Mother can afford one out of her pension and now gets FreeSat.

Re: Ok FTC. Turn your guns on MS

There is no need to call anyone 'Shithead'.

Pushing Updates is not done by any Linux System I'd ever use.

I just two of my servers today. I pulled the updates with a simple command

yum update

That is as far as I know pulling updates not pushing them.

If however you still think that I am wrong then I must be living in a different universe from you. Long may that remain.

Re: meanwhile, at my place of work...

Same here.... opps too late. It went totally grey 20+ years ago.

Have an upvote anyway.

Re: I've heard of the obvious...

The technology used 20 years ago was probably based upon a resistive screen.

The underlying tech used today is far removed from that.

A patent covers a specifc method of doing something. The end reslult or the UI might be the same but the how is gets from A ot Z is unique. You can build upon work described in an existing patent as long as you refer to that patent in your application.

The devil they say is in the detail.

People thinking of developing something that might end in a patent SHOULD NOT Read any patents in that area. IF you do then you might be hit with a wilful damage lawsuit.

Leave any reading to your Patent Attourney to do when preparing your application.

Shhhhhh....

That was the USP for the next version

What about all those chromebooks being used in US Schools? What personal information to they slurp and send back to the Chocolate Factory?

tip of the iceberg perhaps?

Only time will tell.

Re: Hmm, the usual comments.

MS research seems to be a black hole these days. Things go in and nowt comes out (Apart from the horrid Metro disaster, just my opinion though).

These guys have probably made enough to retire so they may spend some time twiddling their thumbs before leaving MS, starting up anothe biz. Rinse and repeat anyone?

Re: Who ever designed..

Yep. Been there done that. Fried a few bits with the wrong PSU. I even triped the whole house the other day when putting in a power connector on some very old caddies with IDE Disks inside (USB2). These had a Bin Plug type Power connector. Another brand of device that used almost identical packaging uad the 12v wired around the other way. Get it wrong and things trip out.

All the new stuff that needs external power gets a stickly label slapped on the device and wrapped around the cable end of the PSU. The different colours allow me to easily detect the right power cable for the device. So far I've not needed more than 6 different colours.

Re: Zippy

Aberystwyth? Ah, I remember it well as a child. Closed on Wednesdays even in Mid summer.

As my family comes from Lampter we have a little local rivalry...

Time to make the switch?

Yes. You won't regret escaping from the Redmod Borg.

.

Re: "Offshore" data storage

You must be new here.

According to several US Laws nowhere on the planet is outside their jurisdiction.

anyway, the NSA don't care a toss where your DC is located. They just tap the cables in and out.

Re: You see, Yuri...

Because the Windows 10 version would require 837Mb of updates from the MS Mothership before it could function on Day 1, 945Mb on Day 2 etc etc

Re: There's a good and a bad side to this

Have you seen the size of suitcases that Japanese/Korean tourists lug around? Megsized.

You could get a lot of £50 notes in them. Note that I use £ rather than $ because currently, the pound is worth more than the Dollar unless you are a US company trading here who seem to use $1===£1 as the exchange rate. Grrrrrrrrr.

Re: Lingua Franca?

If that is all Facebork has then it does not bode well when it comes to trial.

FB should realise that Belgium does not have an equivalent of L'Academie Francaise. difficult when multiple languages are spoken in the country as a matter of course.

Give in FB before you get a lot more egg on your face. (French Toast Egg please)

Never have and never will sign up for FB so there is no point in banning me.

Re: Just

Well, according to JLR there is a replacment under development. At this point in time, no one should criticise Tata/JLR for lack of investment. They have sunk and are continuing to sink an awful lot of money into JLR. Wasn't a new £150M investment announced only a week or so ago.