* Posts by BongoJoe

1327 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Apr 2010

Windows 10 upgrade ADWARE forces its way on to Windows 7 and 8.1

BongoJoe

Re: I'm confused

This bit of I-70 has signs saying 'Eagles on Road'. Now that would be something worth seeing.

Here in Wales all we're told is that we have Mud on Road.

Not quite the same as those FM Rockers of yours.

Why voice and apps sometimes don't beat an old-fashioned knob

BongoJoe

Re: It certainly seems to have downsides

The same here when I first moved to Antwerp. I waited for the appointed hour for the police to come by and, more or less on time two of them did.

They sat down, got out a folder from a briefcase and started to ask me questions. It was pleasant enough but it didn't take me long to think that, really, in front of me weren't too policemen but two clerical workers just taking notes. They were clearly in a department which did this day in and day out and all that they did was to turn up at people's apartments and ask them questions.

I then considered the fact that they were armed. I have no idea what they would expect in their day to day duties and what hazards they were likely to face other than the occasional paper cut or a stabbing from a paperclip that warranted them to be tooled up.

Google puts Android on a diet, names it after the first thing it sees under the sink ... yes, Brillo

BongoJoe

Buzzword ahoy

What on earth is "end to end functioning"?

Is that like a digestive tract when produces shit that no-one in their right minds would wish to handle?

Creationist: The Flintstones was an accurate portrayal of Dino-human coexistence

BongoJoe

If you're talking about string quartets, I'd say definitely *not* greater!

Clearly you haven't been introduced to the numbering system as used by Messrs. Lee, Lifeson & Peart.

Cheesy video shows ex-Gooners pronouncing 'Huawei'

BongoJoe

Re: If it was Newcastle

The start-up music would be a Sports Direct advertisement.

Land Rover's return: Last orders and leather seats for Defender nerds

BongoJoe

I've had three series II, a 24v series I (immigree from the Libyan Desert) and a modern Freelander.

I was thinking the same as Phil. None of those are Defenders. Four of my five were proper Landies; you could always identify them by the eternal drip on the passenger's left leg and the moss growing within the windows.

I am still baffled by the fact that my current Landie has a stereo. Until this series I didn't realise that they could be made to be quiet enough to warrant one.

Wheely, wheely mad: Petrolheads fume over buggy Formula One app

BongoJoe

Re: F1 the dullest sport on TV?

golf is in the number one spot and tied for first place with watching paint dry.

It would be if golf were even a sport.

BongoJoe
Coat

...or steering wheels on the wrong side.

Anyway, the app isn't frozen. It's just waiting for someone to overtake...

VR rift OPENS UP: Total Recall Technologies hurls lawsuit at Facebook's Oculus

BongoJoe

Re: At last! The business use case for VR

y2, Shirley

Mobiles at school could be MAKING YOUR KID MORE DUMBER

BongoJoe

Irony Alert

I just hope that the the Irony Alert Flag has been raised due to a purposeful and playful El Reg and not by a subEditor having had a mobile during his English lessons...

Never trust a developer who says 'I can fix this in a few minutes'

BongoJoe

Sales

Project Managers were, in my experience, people who were dropped onto you only to give you grief, provide you with charges that made no sense and never spoke to you but only told you things.

You'd get a PM for your 'team', aka yourself, after Sales had sold an application or project to a client which hadn't been designed or written yet. Sales droid would have been in the pub for a lengthy drawn out expenses paid-for marathon with client and have decided on the train home, pissed-up, what was required and when it was to be delivered. If there was an element of consultation then it would have only have been between Sales droid and PM over another lengthy pub session.

Then and only then would I hear about it. Of course a pretty chart from PM being the only form of project requirement and he having a near fatal hangover he wouldn't remember what was required to any useful level. The Sales droid would by now have oozed over to another client and all I was left with was a chart full of milestones and little clue as to what I was supposed to do.

I now work for myself.

Ex 'Tech City' chief Shields appointed junior Fun minister for internet safety

BongoJoe

Aside: Which is a question that most Newcastle United fans ask of their managers...

Lightbulbs of the future will come with wireless extenders and speakers

BongoJoe

Re: Essence of fail

David. Did you ever work for Alcatel? That's the sort of thinking that was behind all of their home products.

BongoJoe
Mushroom

Rattle and Hum

So, if I shove on some Deep Purple at a proper volume then what on earth is going to happen to the light bulb when the late lamented Jon Lord rips into Space Trucking?

BongoJoe
Big Brother

"Winston Smith. Please stand where I can see you."

SHOCK! Robot cars do CRASH. Because other cars have human drivers

BongoJoe

Re: For Sport.

Ah, the ol' rock n' roll tour bus.

Pakistan URINE STORM: Google Maps chokes off user editing

BongoJoe
WTF?

Re: All but given up trying to help

I just looked at OpenStreetMap and I am amused to see that someone has put a mountain in my garden*.

In fact the area where I live appear to be littered with mountains which, thankfully, in the real world aren't there to bother us.

(* perhaps I ought to get an army of cartographical diggers and lorries and move it back to Powys where it belongs)

BongoJoe

Re: In this fair-sized town

Modern day commuting just gets tougher and tougher...

BongoJoe
Trollface

...which is perhaps the best use for jet-skis...

BongoJoe

Re: The new 'improved' Google Maps

a stupid compass icon which no help at all

I do agree. I look at that and wonder each time which end is supposed to point North.

My own Wayfarer compass in my shoes were more useful.

Chill, luvvies. The ‘unsustainable’ BBC Telly Tax stays – for now

BongoJoe

Sanitation?

it’s hard for a resident to avoid sanitation or street lighting.

Thankfully we don't have street lighting. I can see street lights a few miles away down the valley and it amuses me to think why the people there are frightened of the stars.

Sanitation. Well, Dŵr Cymru supply the water and the waste goes into the cesspit. Neither of which have little do with the local authority.

And I still don't watch the BBC nor pay the telly tax.

Small WordPress sites leaking like sieves

BongoJoe

Re: Get patching. ®

Ah, but it may be one of these Known Unknowns...

Kiwi company posts job ad for Windows support scammers

BongoJoe

Ugh

I've worked for "I'm ever so funny" managers before and, as a rule, they weren't.

The advert has served its purpose.

HP lifts lid on Autonomy lawsuit claims, but Lynch cries BOLLOCKS

BongoJoe
Megaphone

New Picture Requred

You need a new picture for HP. One with their snazzy green coffin.

DEFCON 23 to host Internet of Things slaughterfest

BongoJoe

Fancy Bosch Oven

I have fancy Bosch oven. No idea why but I have.

It's, on the whole, great. It is a little annoying when there's been a powercut as there are five, yes FIVE, different clocks to set on the thing after a power cut and there's no way that it can go into a UPS: not that I would want it to.

Sometimes I try to cook something and I find that ti's giving me an error message so I have to fiddle about with the controls (after looking in the manual) or sometimes going to the consumer unit and turning off the power to it for a while (the swtch to the power is behind the cabinets in accessible until the day we move).

Yes, it's all very intelligent and sometimes for too intelligent for its own good. Why would I want to risk hackers buggering it up? And why would I want an Internet Of Things attachment to it anyway?

Things tend to go in at different times when I cook something so I can't really do it remotely as it's not a crock-pot slow cooker. So having access from somewhere within an hour away would be pointless as (a) anything not too far away would have poor mobile coverage and (b) I'ts not goint to put the garlic mushrooms in at the last minute.

And the last thing I need is some twat in an Wisconsin basement buggering up my Sunday roast because he can.

The ideal way to cook sunday lunch is to sit nearby with a glass/bottle of red, sip gently and read the papers whilst the lamb slowly roasts in the kitchen next door and not driving like a lunatic the A470 looking for a lay-by with a mobile signal so that I can pull in to tell the open turn itself on.

That's what one of the five clocks is for.

Word to your mother: Office 2016 preview flung at world + dog

BongoJoe
Mushroom

The Last Good Thing in Office was when were were permitted to have more than 64,000 lines in a spreadsheet.

Other than that, there was nothing added of real worth.

In the meantime we've lost the ease of replacing menu items, adding VBA commands into the menu with ease into the right menu and generally making Office work for that particular client.

Now it's simply a mess designed by a committee of 'designers'. And that's not even looking at the price tag!

Apple to devs: Watch out, don't make the Watch into a, well, a watch

BongoJoe
Mushroom

Re: I can see their point, sort of

Design Experience?

I would trust that's been done ages ago in an office somewhere before the first watches came out of the factory and is something only experienced by a few.

Of course what Apple want is to restrict the 'Design Experience' so that new developers can't share in it.

God, how I hate these twatBadgery words and phrases. Experience, Solutions, Paradigm, Zeitgeist and the like. These, and their users, need to be nuked from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

BongoJoe

Re: Bongo

No, not to all of it.

BongoJoe
Thumb Up

I have to say that I am impressed.

Anyone who is old enough to remember Tina Charles and have the eyesight and steadiness of hand to do this procedure deserves a doff of my cap.

Apple Watch shipments: Pick a number, double it. Hey, it worked for them

BongoJoe

Re: Smart watches are so yesterday

SmartRings are so this morning, yey.

SmartNippleClamps are the thing of tomorrow!

BongoJoe
WTF?

Hang on a minute

I live in Wales and I certainly don't want one, not even if the spoken and written interface is in Cymraeg Gogledd.

Elon Musk wanted Google to buy Tesla, says ex-Vulture's book

BongoJoe
Flame

Well, if El Reg want a picture of a Barbie & Ken Pile of Crap aka Freelander on fire than I am sure that I have got one of mine on file somewhere.

Microsoft: Hey, don’t forget Visual Basic! Open source and new features coming

BongoJoe

Re: Open source VB6 programming

I am not surprised because they'd only embarass themselves if they did - by virtue that it does more than they claim.

For example, the official line used to be (it may still be, I don't know) from the MVP dweebsphere that there are no pointers nor any way to use them in VB6.

Which comes as a bit of a surprise here because I use them to build linked lists and binary trees rather than the Collection objects because my own linked list classes (written in VB6) run around seven times faster than their precompiled collection objects.

The problem with VB6 is that Microsoft never really understood what a good tool it was.

What's Meg Whitman fussing over: The fate of HP ... or the font on a DISRUPTIVE new logo?

BongoJoe

Re: thanks for that link

I understand that Mangement Types are no longer permitted to use the phrase 'brain storm' as it may cause offence to those with seizures or something.

And where, pray, is Low Hanging Fruit?

BongoJoe
Coat

"Freedom from external control or influence"

It clearly symbolises the above.

You know, as in 'Autonomy'.

BongoJoe

Re: Green Rectangle

That perhaps what exactly what it is.

Bearded hipster designer dude spent too long getting his flappy frappe coffee from bearded barista before sending over a screenshot of his design masterpiece and all HP received was this.

Selfie sticks BANNED by Apple: No hipster tools' tools allowed at WWDC

BongoJoe

Re: Can someone sum up the article for me...

I keep getting confused at the 'ecosystem' part; I then start to think of what's in my garden pond.

Struggling through the Crystal Maze in our hunt for a spare CAT5

BongoJoe

Bell

Years ago, before they knocked it down, I used to work in Bell Telephone in Antwerp and the first we'd know of a move would be when a Jobsworth (he would be the one with the small greasy moustache) and a Workman (the fellow with a brown overall) would turn up at your desk.

Jobsworth would look at his clipboard in an officious manner and whisper something to the Workman who would clag a sticker on your desk corner marked something like "18/F/12" and walk off.

You knew that you were about to be moved.

There was no point in asking the Workman where you were going as he didn't know and the Jobsworth wouldn't tell you. "It's not possible", he would say in his Flenglish and move on and put another sticker on someone else's desk.

We may still be working for the same department but we could end up anywhere. And usually did.

And did our department manager know of this move? No. It was all down to some mysterious department somewhere else which decided these things and when we landed in the new place we'd either carry on as before or see if the manager of those around us wanted a new body on his team.

Little wonder that they knocked the place down.

Videogame publishers to fans: Oi, stop resurrecting our dead titles online

BongoJoe

If Cyan, or whomever, updated the Myst cycle so that they worked on modern machines and without QuickCrashTime then I'd be willing to pay good money for it.

Otherwise, I'm with the freetards.

Yours, etc, lost in a maze of twisty passages.

Oh, hi there, SKYNET: US military wants self-enhancing software that will outlive its creators

BongoJoe

ADA

Wasn't this the purpose of this strange Algol derived monstrosity?

BongoJoe

What happens when the military have new hardware to lob at people? New communications techniques and methods? Nothing is going to remain static for 50 years unless they write code which handles today's equivilent of teletypes and keep them supported whilst newer stuff comes along.

This sounds like a committee from hell being formed.

El Reg offers you the chance to become a Master Investor – for free

BongoJoe

Re: @ dogged

The fact that it's in London alienates me.

Microsoft uses Windows Update to force Windows 10 ads onto older PCs

BongoJoe

Re: Strange

I've just nuked the update service. That's more reliable in the long term.

Ex-cop: Holborn fireball comms outage cover for £200m bling heist gang

BongoJoe

Re: Hollywood Eat Your Heart Out

The strange thing is that I just watched the excellent Belgian series, Salamander, the night before this news broke...

Streaming tears of laughter as Jay-Z (Tidal) waves goodbye to $56m

BongoJoe

Re: Streaming? more like Steaming

I find it annoying when the original vinyl album's track order changed for CD and then it just sounded plain wrong

Microsoft drops Do Not Track default from Internet Explorer

BongoJoe
Pint

Re: No

I'd trust any server-side DNT as much as I would a Welshman at a sheepfarm

Says a Mr Jones. Care to share something with us?

Dot-com intimidation forces Indiana to undo hated anti-gay law

BongoJoe

Re: I wonder how they're going to know?

I am more concerned about pizza being served for the wedding breakfast.

Refusal in this case is in the interests of good taste.

Project Spartan: We get our claws on Microsoft's browser for Windows 10

BongoJoe

> Sebastian a

I just can't imagine that Microsoft will make their searching less than painfully slow. Back in the earlier days of Windows their search engine was dreadful and had an interesting concept of what indexing in the background means.

If I want to search for a file name, or part of a name, then may I recommend the free utility called Everything?

$250K: That's what Lenovo earned to rat you out with Superfish

BongoJoe

Re: Suckerfish

Nobody remembers anything any more. It won't hurt them for more than a week - if that.

Well, there is still the Ratners' Effect which sometimes plays its trump card.

BongoJoe

Re: Heads will roll?

I will never buy another Sony again after they threatened to sue me for buying a laptop in the US and then daring to to try to register it with a non-US address so that I could get technical support for it under their 'worldwide warranty'.

Over the years following the Sony television was replaced by another brand, the home cinema amp was replaced, the digital camera was replaced and so on...

The rootkit palaver happened after this time and that would have been the final straw for me if I were still using Sony gear as I consider this Superfish to be more misguided than Sony's rootkit which was, as far as I am concerned, intentional and downright evil.