* Posts by BongoJoe

1327 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Apr 2010

Is it humanly possible to watch Gigli and Battlefield Earth back-to-back?

BongoJoe

Re: Dumb lists

Because it is 'art' and the inclusion of Brando made it a 'great film' according to the beardies at the Grauniad or someplace.

Netadmin wanted for 'terrible, terrible, awful job nobody wants'

BongoJoe

Re: Microwave

in my first job I wasn't allowed to use a screwdriver as I was 'software development' and that was a hardware tool.

Somehow I found said device, for which I wasn't clearly qualified, useful for prising EEPROMs out of sockets but it still got me in a hell of a lot of hot water for using one.

Microsoft: Flunked our test? Fear not, techies...

BongoJoe

Re: and yet . . .

And nowhere, in any of the certification marching and chowder slurping does any of this appear to make the radar screen. This kind of performance would be categorically unacceptable in any other industry or business.

Which describes how I feel hence my lack of enthusiasm for anything certified for the last fifteen years.

Once upon a time I had the MCSE and the MCSD and found that what I was taught/told/indoctrinated wasn't anything like Real Life.

My favourited was being told in a very strong manner by the twonks at Redmond that pointers weren't in VB6/VBA and thus doing "pointer stuff" wasn't possible. Despite my showing them code on how to make a binary tree they still denied it.

It wasn't part of The Facts (TM) even though they had coded it in there themselves so I was wrong and what I was doing was Wrong and Couldn't Exist.

Thus was the start of my falling out with Microsoft.

Windows 10: The Microsoft rule-o-three holds, THIS time it's looking DECENT

BongoJoe

This Outlook thingy

Does this then assume we're using a different version of Outlook that I have installed here on my desktop from Office 2010 or is this going to be some web thingy which is going to be nothing but webHotmail again?

I would be excited, well marginally interested, if MS made a desktop version of Outlook sort of work on a tablet and handled MAPI correctly.

Otherwise this is all web stuff that I don't wish to have nor need. And, anyway, I have my Outlook crammed full of useful VBA and I wonder how that's going to work on the phone.

But what does interest me is this mega screen display hologram thingummy jig. If this can work with Eve Online then I may just have to get one machine just for this. Otherwise I will happily stick with Win7/XP hereabouts because there's nothing here for me as we're seeming hell bent going down this "Everything is a tablet rather than a monster desktop and everything is an app and not an application" mindset.

Your anonymous code contributions probably aren't: boffins

BongoJoe

Exactly

If it's code without any strong Type on the web then it's most likely examples of code from Microsoft itself.

Video nasty: Two big bugs in VLC media player's core library

BongoJoe

Well, if no-one is able to access the machine then it makes no difference if it is supported or not. And are all of the bugs, exploits, holes stomped on, fixed or blocked in the latest o/s? No.

Then it doesn't matter two hoots what I use.

Secondly, there are some compatability issues with the later o/s which aren't in the older ones for some applications which MS have 'promised' to fix and haven't.

And, lastly, shove XP on a new machine run a massive database bashing exercise (say a few million SQL queries) then do the same on Win7. Compare the run times for both.

And if you are still disappoint (sic) then, fair enough, I deserve that downvote.

BongoJoe

Or perhaps Win7 doesn't let your dodgy apps run rampantly through the system raping whatever they like along the way? ;)

I wish my apps would do something fun and interesting like that but, alas, they don't.

I should have made my post a little more clear; I meant the development platforms on XP are more solid than on Win 7 and they move faster too which is why my live data cruncher runs on XP as I can't hang around all night for W7.

Mind you, if I could only find my Win2K disks...

BongoJoe

Perhaps he prefers to use a stable system. As I do for my development; the Win7 machine is too flaky compared to XP.

Dongle bingle makes two MEELLION cars open to exploit

BongoJoe

Blaenau Ffestiniog?

'If you see a stylus, they BLEW it' – Steve Jobs. REMEMBER, Apple?

BongoJoe

"The quote was in reference to the opinion that if your phone needed a stylus then the user interface design was poor and not fit for mobile use."

That's an interesting thought but one I would disagree with. I had a Sony Ericsson P800 (I think) which came in My Little Pony Shade of Blue. That had a thin stylus (bit of plastic) and it was great for texting as the handwriting recognition was far faster than my typing one fat fingered.

Even with the swooshy keyboard on the modern smartphones I could write faster and with more accuracy on that Sony Ericsson.

Facebook poaches design talent from Toronto firm – fate of staff unknown

BongoJoe

Re: Evil Corp Speak

Perhaps there is just the one person left on his own wondering why he was the only one not to be poached...

Go Canada: Now ILLEGAL to auto-update software without 'consent'

BongoJoe
Terminator

Windows Updates

You know, those things which update your machine and reboot automatically despite when you specifically have turned the autoupdate off and it does it in the middle of a long overnight data bashing run thus mangling everything.

I'll vote for this.

‘Whatever happened to Vladimir Putin?’ and other crap New Year prophesies

BongoJoe

Re: The most useful of these will be a cloud-connected zipper fly for men’s trousers.

I suppose your icon of choice was the nearest thing available to a man crying out in pain.

Scary code of the week: Valve Steam CLEANS Linux PCs (if you're not careful)

BongoJoe

Re: It's shit programming

I think that it's going to take some time before someone finds a better howler that one...

...unless, of course, they find my source code.

BMW: ADMEN have asked us for YOUR connected car DATA

BongoJoe

Re: Only intermittently connected.

Ditto here when my Landie makes a larder filling intermittent connection with a stray sheep.

Comcast sued for – you guessed it – allegedly SCREWING OVER CUSTOMERS

BongoJoe

Re: Comcast sucks schweaty monkey bung.

"For $DIETY's sake - don't switch to satellite. If you think you have latency, throughput, and data cap problems now, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

I have friends in Upside Down Land somewhere in the boondooks in the middle of some heat blasted desert, scrub, bush or whatever you wish to call it.

They find using the interweb hopeless for anything other than eMail because of the latency and any form of instant messaging just is impossible if they want something 'live' going on.

If one uses something with a high latency then it's just best dealing with the internet as something that you post and it will get there. Rather much, really, like the modern day postal service.

BongoJoe

Re: Sorry, I do not get it

I think it works on the principle that if you have a lower than average rating and a lot of requests for credit ratings are logged then the next company will assume that you failed all those previous tests.

In the UK similar requests are recorded too and too many can also drop your rating because if you start to apply for lots of things; new car, new broadband, new rental agreement, new this that and t'other then it can look like you've failed a pile serially and you're shopping around for one which lets you in.

It's a crap system. I have a low credit rating as I do everything in cash, don't owe anything and this also can bite me in the bum.

Boffins: It's EASY to make you GRASS YOURSELF UP for crimes you never did

BongoJoe

I was going to write something flippant but the more I think about this the more serious this revalation appears to be.

If this turns out to be so then the implications can be terrifying.

- A political party wishes to gain election. Seed false memories of immigration issues which blighted your childhood or perhaps you now 'remember' being out of work when the other lot were in power. On the other hand since we've been in power Things Have Never Been So Good., etc.

- A law enforcement agency wants to get a reult.

- A jihadist or political extremist cell wishes you to do their dirty work. All of a sudden you remember the offensive slight against your $DIETY or your $COUNTRY

This is straight from Philip K Dick whose books are becoming more and more the manuals for the near future.

Kiss your Glass goodbye: Google mothballs techno-specs (for now)

BongoJoe

Re: About turn

Everyone?

When this was announced I believe my response was along the lines of "I'm not touching that peice of wankboi shit with a proverbial."

David Cameron: I'm off to the US to get my bro Barack to ban crypto – report

BongoJoe

Re: We will try!

The party I vote for is Plaid Cymru as if we ignore all the fables that seem to surround Plaid (cue the downvoters...) they actually stand for a lot of what people here are asking about.

If one watches Question Time and sees that rare occurance of a politician talking sense then, evens offered, it will be Elfyn Llwyd.

There's two problems with Plaid, unfortunately. First is that they have no influence or interests outside of the principality and, secondly, outside of the Welsh heartlands (I am looking at you South Wales) they're wiped off the map by Labour voters who have voted Labour because they've always voted Labour and shall ever more do so even when Labour were in their lot didn't improve.

Out of all the parties from all over the UK this lot are by far the least worst but, alas, they will never have any say in things unless South Wales gives them a few seats and there's another hung parliament.

BongoJoe

Re: A request

I think that's their plan. They panic the moronics, bugger things up as you say and then insist on staying on to solve the problems that they caused and then the aforementioned moronics vote them back in again because of imminent $THREAT.

Rinse, repeat, retire to the speaking circuit in the US and profit.

You make it sound ever so random when in fact it's a well crafted plan.

'F*** you', exclaims Google Translate app, politely

BongoJoe

Always thought

That that diagram of the Babel Fish was back to front. If it feed on sound waves and excreted the right language wouldn't it be inserted in the other way around?

Preserve the concinnity of English, caterwauls American university

BongoJoe
Coat

Words already lost include

Irony

Remember Corel? It's just entered .DLL hell

BongoJoe

Re: Brings back memories

I remember buying Corel Draw! 3 which was a great product back in the mists of the distant eighties.

Version 4 onwards was simply either broken or too bloated to run.

Windows 7 MARKED for DEATH by Microsoft as of NOW

BongoJoe
Headmaster

Re: A definative date

2020 surely will be the Year of the Spell Checker...

The Invisible Library – a playful, timey wimey, spook adventure tale

BongoJoe

I was thinking more of

Where is Attrus?

Ghosts of Christmas Past: The long-ago geek gifts that made us what we are

BongoJoe

Bobbin Tanks

What about making tanks from a cocktail stick, a large elastic band, a bobbin reel, a washer and a section of candle?

BongoJoe

Re: To this day

I discovered this the hard way.

I knew that various reactions would remove the oxide from one compound to another (forgotten the term now) and one day I had an aluminum bicycle seat pillar that had oxidised into the frame.

Having no end of school donated magnesium ribbon in my blazer I then stuffed the metal into the pipe and then lit it.

Thankfully I did this outdoors. My father wasn't pleased with the result.

Ex-Microsoft Bug Bounty dev forced to decrypt laptop for Paris airport official

BongoJoe

Re: My thoughts entirely...

I can't help but agree. Here there is no high-speed broadband so attempting to copy about 20GB up to a cloud or anywhere would take more than a whole day.

No cellphones in cells, you slag! UK.gov moots prison mobe zap law

BongoJoe

Re: Solution

Good idea. A disused slate or coal mine, for example.

End well: this won't. European Copyright Society wants one EU law to rule 'em all

BongoJoe

Which means that everyone will have the same rules, the British will follow it or suffer hefty fines and everyone else won't.

Ugly Microsoft code NUKED Bing and Yahoo! – report

BongoJoe

Re: I guess

I just had vision of iTunes having to be installed on the welder...

But at least that is one tool which one will be holding correctly.

Elite:Dangerous goes TITSUP

BongoJoe

Re: Another One...

Oh, wow. That was a good one!

Never heard of that one and, you're right, they've then some way to catch up. I am somewhat surprised that it was allowed to get anywhere near to boot.ini in the first place.

BongoJoe

Another One...

This was supposed to be the MMO which was going to knock Eve Online off its perch,

It's going to have to really pick its socks up now.

‘Get off of my Cloud’ Verizon tells users ahead of 48-hour maintenance outage

BongoJoe

Re: WTF?

I get your point but until we're getting years of two thousand days in length then a 48 hour outage isn't going be within the 99.9% parameters.

This one shall pass! Not even a flesh wound from ‘Monty Python’ SPACE ROCK

BongoJoe

Re: So really, REALLY close then.,

As someone who lives in the middle of those two I would be really concerned about that headline.

Renault Captur: Nobody who knows about cars will buy this

BongoJoe

I wonder if I am the sort of person then that this pile of crap is aimed towards. I know bugger all about cars, I see them as a tool nothing more or nothing less.

I want to knw if I can get myself, wife, dog and assorted wheelchairs and what-not into the thing, whether I can get half a ton of wood in the back and up my lane to the cottage. If I can, then I am interested.

I don't even know the model number of the Landie that I have nor do I know the registration number come to that (I can recognise the thing in a carpark; it's the one that recently caught fire) and that's enough for me.

And anyway, if one wants a thrill out of drving then I suggest that one can get a thrill out of any vehicle given the circumstances or the road. Any straight line road is dull after a while anyway; when I worked in Germany and tore up and down the autobahns in my three and a half litre white car at over 110mph and I found that thrill went. Now try to go around a badly designed roundabout in the wrong gear in, say, a Micra, and then things do get thrilling -- will it oversteer at the wrong time or will it understeer? There's no way to tell other than to get one's boot down and find out.

Going around same roundabout in a car that hugs the road at 3G is relatively dull because you know that you're going to get there.

If one can't get a thrill out of driving that then perhaps you're driving it right and that will never do.

I'm sooooo green: The Beginner's Guide to Krautrock

BongoJoe

Re: Welsh Krautrock, anyone?

Thanks for this. I get a lot of my Welsh language stuff from Sadwrn but I have never heard of this band.

I shall have to investigate. Diolch yn fawr.

Google unveils Windows 8.1 zero-day vuln – complete with exploit code

BongoJoe
Trollface

Ninety Days Is Never Going To Be Enough

It would take more than that to get one of their designers from the Halo TV Studios or Funky Website Department, strip them of their trendy beard, out of their designer chinos, into an old pair of jeans and t-shirt and teach them to write code.

The days of wall-to-wall developers with badgers in their beards have long gone.

BongoJoe

It's the same with Office. If a bug isn't fixed in one version then if it isn't fixed in a product update then the same bug will be there forever as only new bugs will be fixed.

UFOs in the '50s skies? CIA admits: 'IT WAS US'

BongoJoe

You may laugh, but the International Dyslexia Conference was held up here in North Wales back in the 80s or 90s.

I often wondered how the delegates read the maps.

BongoJoe

The Welsh

UK retailers in TABLET PRICE SLASH BONANZA

BongoJoe

Re: But Has Anyone Found something To Do With Them?

I use my Tablet (Hudl 2) as my Kindle device. Not only that when I am doing my daily database runs I can sit downstairs with the missus and drive the computer upstairs with it via a VNC app.

I use my main machines in my upstairs office for most of the time, mostly development and laptops when I need to (they usually sit into the studio now) and now the tablet is for all those useful things where I don't need a keyboard and I wish to be sociable.

Hipsters ahoy! Top Ten BOARD games for festive family fun

BongoJoe

Re: Still can't beat

I shall have to get my knife sharpened; I haven't played postal Diplomacy for over 25 years and it's the one game that I do miss. And the slow deadlines makes for very interesting off-table interactions.

I must see if some of the old postal crowd are still active or even alive; even if it's for eMail based games.

BongoJoe

Still can't beat

Diplomacy.

BongoJoe

Re: Get Civilised!

Indeed Hartland Trefoil (or similar). My copy is in the loft next to the Red Bear White Moon or was it the White Bear...

The orginal game was simply beautiful to look at with a board with no writing on. A classic game.

Reg man confesses: I took my wife out to choose a laptop for Xmas. NOOOO

BongoJoe

Re: Choices

Get her one of each colour?

BongoJoe

Re: I see you has the colour

Surely the trick to a happy marriage is to refrain from calling the Memsahib "the Little Woman"