It's enough to make me wonder whether the place I was contracting at a couple of years ago still runs Windows 2000. Discovering that was a bit of a shock to the system.
Posts by breakfast
1557 publicly visible posts • joined 24 May 2007
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July 14, 2015. Tuesday. No more support for Windows Server 2003. Good luck
LOHAN seeks stirring motto for spaceplane mission patch
The final score: Gramophones 1 – Glassholes 0
'Apple is terrified of women’s bodies and women’s pleasure' – fresh tech sex storm
LG unfurls flexible SEE-THROUGH 18-inch display
The Windows 8 dilemma: Win 8 or wait for 9?
Wednesday 9th July 2014 13:06 GMT 
Excited for the update
I look forward to the next update to Windows 8 - when I got 8.1 it killed my wireless card in a way that has -as yet- to be fixed by either the maker or by Microsoft. It is certified as Windows Compatible, though, so I guess I must be imagining the constant network dropouts as must all the other users of the same card. Probably our own fault for having a computer that uses a part from an obscure manufacturer like Intel, I guess.
I can't wait to see what essential parts of my system stop working with the next "update" - maybe the screen? Or the keyboard? It's like a special lottery.
Fortunately I'm not doing much Windows development at the moment so I just run Mint on the machine most of the time. It seems to work fine...
Lords try shoehorning law against revenge porn into justice bill
Wednesday 2nd July 2014 16:59 GMT 
A counter-service?
I guess the ideal situation would be for prospective partners to be able to find out whether someone was the kind of person who posted revenge porn. That would work as a fairly clear deterrent to them and the expectation of never getting laid again would possibly stand to deter the poster too. If it didn't, stop them, it would perhaps serve to remove that particularly tiresome type of boor from the gene pool, which would be no bad thing for the species as a whole.
Wednesday 2nd July 2014 16:33 GMT
What about when the subject was asleep half uncovered by the duvet and their creeper partner took their picture?
What if both people believed the pictures were kept private but somebody else stole them off a hard drive, phone etc?
There are some pretty clear cut cases here too. Do people not deserve protection in those kinds of case?
Researchers defend Facebook emoto-furtling experiment
Facebook: Yes, we made you SAD on PURPOSE... for your own good
Retiring Reg hack explains how bass playing = tech reporting
Monday 30th June 2014 11:49 GMT
I got an old bass defretted once and through the cunning means of having the fret gaps filled a different colour to the frets, it wasn't too hard to adjust by ear when my eyes missed. Eventually my hands kind of learnt the positions and it wasn't too hard. I was never much of a fretless player though.
These days I have somewhat switched to g**tar and occasional mandolin, which do get noticed a whole lot more by the audience, though my standard in both is probably considerably lower. Good bass playing is, unfortunately, invisible to anyone who isn't also a bass player.
BBC: Bumpkins, hobbits need fairer coverage
Friday 27th June 2014 14:06 GMT
Bumpkin 4rr loyfe
As a borderline bumpkin myself I have noticed that there is a lot of reluctance to talk about rural issues and more specifically to talk about them with people who live in the affected area. At best you're going to get a representative from the NFU ( the one union for whom the government will bow down abjectly at their slightest whim ) rather than someone who knows the actual area that the story is about.
The last foot and mouth story broke just very near to where I live. Various journalists and reporters were consistently found waiting outside the farm where it happened for days. I did not see a single story on the topic that spelled the name of the farm correctly in spite of the fact it was right there. Not to mention reporters stomping around through fields where they risked spreading the pathogen further. That week I realised that I just wasn't cynical enough about the news media.
Friday 27th June 2014 14:05 GMT
Re: The BBC is biased
That isn't just the BBC, though, is it? It covers pretty much all the mainstream media. It often seems as though if you could turn the M25 into a 500 foot high wall, it would take weeks for anyone in the media ( or parliament, come to think of it ) to even notice.
Even after they did and the whole thing was the biggest story of the year, it would still be six months before the chumps at Defra realised.
You want a medal for writing a script? Sure: here it is!
BOFH: You can take our lives, but you'll never take OUR MACROS
Black hole three-way: Supermassive trio are 'rippling' space
New MH370 search zone picked using just seven satellite 'handshakes'
Friday 27th June 2014 09:28 GMT
Re: They haven't got a clue
I find it interesting how hard most of us want to search for a deliberate explanation. The idea that there are large areas of the earth's surface that we know almost nothing about and that are not constantly surveyed seems to concern a lot of people. There is a great fear that nobody is in charge, that events can be truly contingent.
The world is a big place in which accidents happen. Sometimes a tragedy is just a tragedy and that is the human context in which you need to look at it.
If there is a terrorism element to this, it is most likely to relate to the cabin being isolated entirely from the crew compartment so if there was a problem in there nobody would be able to do anything about it. Finding what went wrong is the part of this search that would make the biggest difference for everyone not directly linked to the flight.
Microsoft tests HALF-INCH second screen to spur workplace play
TIME TRAVEL TEST finds black holes needed to make photons flit
Tuesday 24th June 2014 15:06 GMT
Re: If you accept multiverse interpretations of quantum physics
If you accept a strictly deterministic single timeline where the future and past are equally fixed as each other then the grandfather paradox also evaporates - the evidence that you can't kill your grandfather is that your grandfather did not die. Or at least he wasn't murdered by a time traveller before he could beget your parent. If you were able to travel into the past, your actions would be a matter of record.
Longer flights burning more fuel can cut planes' climate impact
Auditors blast Blighty cops over binned multi-million pound IT project
Thursday 19th June 2014 13:21 GMT
Re: Agile approach?
Agile is a fairly poor way of designing very large scale projects. See also the big IDS benefits thing. It's great if you are a start-up or if you are a software company, but when the project gets very big you start to run into architectural concerns that you need to know about from the start and situations where refactoring the code to integrate a new requirement is a non-trivial task.
That doesn't stop the practical day-to-day process stuff from being useful- standups, iterations, sprints, kanban boards and the rest- but as regards the big picture, being able to act on architectural requirements from the start can make a big difference to your development time and the reliability of your software but the concept of doing anything ahead of time doesn't seem to fit into the pure Agile approach.
DON'T PANIC: Facebook returns after 30-minute outage terror
POND SCUM shine a path to more efficient solar cells
Toyota catches up to William Gibson with LED hood
Monday 16th June 2014 13:33 GMT
Re: As seen last year in London
I saw a very eye catching black car the other day. It was not shiny black, it was black black. It was so black that it looked as though Disaster Area might launch it into the sun at any moment. When everyone has fairy lights all over their cars, that look will be even more distinctive.
Microsoft C# chief Hejlsberg: Our open-source Apache pick will clear the FUD
Monday 16th June 2014 13:29 GMT
Sheds a single tear
The thing about ubiquitous JavaScript, even when it is placed behind an intermediary language that automatically optimises things for you, is that it is a horribly designed language. By what awful happenstance did this become the lingua franca for everyone? Could browser makers not have a meeting and choose any one of the many well-designed languages that exist as an alternative standard? I mean it's usually webkit now anyway, right? Surely they could at least look at a different scripting runtime to bring in as an alternative?
Snowden's Big Brother isn't as Orwellian as you'd think
Egghead dragged over coals for mining Bitcoin on uni supercomputer
UK govt 'tearing up road laws' for Google's self-driving cars: The truth
Monday 9th June 2014 13:08 GMT
Re: Not allowed to drive unless
Microsoft branded vehicles will actually be comfortable and look fine, but they will only take you to three places, one of which is Slough, no matter where you ask them to go. Also they will occasionally download an update and just stop wherever they happen to be for ten minutes. When they crash, they will turn blue.
High power computing and awesome Chinese food? Sign me up!
Oh, wow. US Secret Service wants a Twitter sarcasm-spotter
AMD tops processor evolution with new mobile Kaveri chippery
Amazing never-seen-before photo of colourful hot young stars (Thanks Hubble)
Google: OK world, make our 'End-to-End' crypto tool SPOOK PROOF
Wednesday 4th June 2014 12:08 GMT
Secure by design
I have to say the phrase "JavaScript Cryptography" fills me with a little bit of concern, just because JavaScript is, by it's very nature, a massively shonky language. I know there are apologists and ECMAScript is getting better, but if I wanted to write something that had any serious security requirements I cannot think of a worse platform for it than JavaScript.
Google uses disruptive 'poem' tech to announce new Chromebook availability
Tuesday 3rd June 2014 13:23 GMT
The poem that was written here
Describing Google in its several spheres
Scans oddly but I'd bet
It owes a great debt
Not to Plath or to Keats but to Lear
I look forward to the day that Vulture Central transcribing all their stories into verse. Especially the ones full of acronyms and about storage. That will call for some serious rhyming dictionary antics.
Xamarin: Design an app for Windows, iOS and Android ... from one codebase?
Snowden never blew a whistle, US spy boss claims
Friday 30th May 2014 09:47 GMT
Funny thing about Kerry
Snowden really picked the wrong administration for this.
If the GOP were in power right now, the Democrats would be hailing him as a national hero and the greatest patriot of the last fifty years, but of course when it happens on their watch they can't say anything about it.
Tesla's top secret gigafactories: Lithium to power world's vehicles? Let's do the sums
Amazon turns screws on French publisher: Don't feel sorry for Hachette, it's just 'negotiation'
Ditching renewables will punch Aussies in the wallet – Bloomberg
Tuesday 27th May 2014 14:12 GMT
Re: If renewables can compete on price ...
In fairness, Australia has at least one very high output power source that the UK is missing for approximately 355 days of the year. That gives them a resource that should be a lot more predictable and easier to utilise than our wind or tides.
In places I've visited, once you get a little out of town, a lot of people aren't connected up to any grids, they just have small solar setups to power their homes. You wouldn't be able to do welding with it, but for lights and laptops it seems to work pretty well.
Spotify boasts 10 million paying subscribers ... Um, is that all?
Friday 23rd May 2014 09:47 GMT
Re: More Music = Less Revenue
Making music may be easy, but getting your music in front of people interested in listening to it has never been more challenging. Your competition is now a million bands of whom nine hundred and fifty thousand are terrible. Even the most ardent music fan is going to be hard pressed to search through that much awfulness in the hope of finding something outstanding- I have experience of this both as a fan and as a musician and the ability to make one's music easily available is definitely a double-edged sword.
Microsoft Surface 3 Pro: Flip me over, fondle me up
Beam me up Scotty: Boffins to turn pure light into matter
Indian climate boffins: Himalayan glaciers are OK, thanks
Tuesday 13th May 2014 14:26 GMT
Re: tinfoil hat time ... Alarmists, get in line!
I think fracking puts peak fossil a long way off, which is a shame because no matter how much Mr O stamps his foot and screams and throws his toys and tells us the data he didn't cherrypick is not real science, climate change is happening and peak oil might have been about the only thing short of working fusion that could mitigate it somewhat.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
