Posts by Dave 126

When dissembling a device, you can sketch it on a piece of cardboard. When you remove screws from the device, pierce them into the cardboard in the appropriate place.

Obviously this trick is only suitable for screws of a certain size.

>What are virii infections?

A piece of foreign matter stuck under the 'i' key on the keyboard, obviously!

>one of the main reasons they kept returning to me for more work was that I didn't "expect freebies" or try it on with them.

Exactly. If you are professional, warmly courteous and reasonably groomed (which some folk consider an extension of courtesy), ladies who are so inclined may take the initiative. If the ladies are not so inclined, then trying it won't get you anywhere anyway.

> So why is it acceptable to grope someone just because of what they do for a living?

As he described it, it was an accident. I did the same a month ago, hugging (and being hugged by) a friend goodbye - she was wearing a backpack and so to complete the gesture my hand had to be lower on her back than it normally would be, accidentally brushed her bum on the way to the small of her back. In no way could it have been mistaken for a grope, a grab or a slap, and she didn't appear to notice - even though I felt a small, inward pang of embarrassment.

It's no fun for me to touch any part of a woman she doesn't want me to touch, but if you're respectful and not bad looking many a woman may grab your hand and place it on her body. The thrill is in her expression of intent more than the tactile feeling. Intent is important.

Hugs don't always go smoothly - if I have facial stubble, it will sometimes catch on a woman's hair and pull some strands towards me as we part.

Then there is there is the question of whether to do two cheek kisses (the norm in France, Spain and other countries) or just one... we just have to go by context, and most of the time we get it right. Abashed giggles on both sides is usually the result if we don't. In some contexts, friends will kiss each other on the lips; I don't instigate it but some women (and men from some cultures) will.

We're strange creatures.

Re: Only that

>ladies of negotiable affection

That's one of my favourite euphemisms, as far as I know coined by Terry Pratchett.

>I think someone reminded the Chinese that if it goes hot hot, the only things left floating in the Chinese navy would be driftwood!,

And just wait til the cowardly Hun see the gleam of our British steel they run away crying and we'll all be home by Christmas, right? /s

If things got 'hot hot' between the two nuclear powers in question, it wouldn't just be people in Asia having a shit day.

Re: I'm waiting for ....

Hopefully, by the time that whisky bottles become as intelligent as a barman, my car will be intelligent enough to drive me home without my input.

I'm actually more likely to over-exert myself for a human partner than I would if I were just out for my own pleasure. In fact when I stumble over an oasis during an occasional arid period, I'm likely to find myself aching all over the next day.

What will do for the ticky-tickers of hedonists is the use of pharmaceutical substances - but over exertion can happen when dancing vertically, not just horizontally.

For some reason I'm now thinking of a Philip K Dick story about a colony on Mars being fed a narcotic that only produces a hallucinatory idyll when the user is playing with miniature models of pleasant environments.

Re: Poor instructions

>What was more interesting is that the number of the 'bumps' was such that when viewed under a bright mains filament light while spinning on the turntable, they should appear static (strobe effect) if the turntable was running at the right speed, but you had to look very hard.

@ 50 or 60 Hz? :) This is why there are four lines of dots on the platter of many turntables: two speeds of records, two common frequencies of domestic AC electricity.

Re: Not Snopes

>Stapling was a regular occurrence, if you were lucky, the staple would be in the top left corner and the disk would be untouched.

You could have got ahead of the situation by hole-punching the top left corner of every floppy, and doling out treasury tags!

Or just dole out A4 envelopes.

Staples are evil - just ask the person who has to the fix the photocopier!

Re: If I could have a dollar for every time…

http://arbitrary.name/blog/all/mac3.html

This fella shows the things he has removed from the CD slot from his Mac Mini, courtesy of his young children. His other blog entries show him to be a very bright man indeed, as I'm sure his children are. I mean, primary schools have toys where the child is expected to place blocks through slots, and putting foreign objects into CD slots seems to be a continuation of that game.

In previous decades, VHS machines suffered similar fates - I think you could even buy aftermarket panels to child-proof the cassette door. Small toys not too bad, biscuits and jam less so.

Re: Not Snopes

Part of me admires those users' resourcefulness and give-it-a-go attitude. It's probably the same part of me that found satisfaction in fixing a CRT monitor by smacking it smartly on the side.

The rest of me shudders at the idea they might just be the same folk for which the following was printed on a packet of cough lozenges: "For oral administration only".

Re: Universal Credit

>If we are just improving the lot of one portion of the population, and that comes at an overall cost to everyone else, then we need a more refined approach.

I'm not sure that we are only considering one portion of the population. At the moment, lots of people have too little work, and lots of people work too much to the detriment of their health, happiness and family relationships.

Bertrand Russell made a distinction between active leisure and passive leisure. Active leisure is walking to the pub, learning a musical instrument, pottering around in your workshop, laughing with your friends, baking a cake. Passive leisure is slumping in front of the television with a glass of scotch (because the working day has left your knackered).

If nobody was allowed to do more than twenty hours work a week, we would be more likely to adopt active leisure activities - which are better for our health, happiness and relationships. Healthcare costs would be reduced. Fuel costs would be reduced, because we wouldn't be in such a rush. When we were at work, we would be approaching our tasks with greater concentration and less resentment.

Re: Can't you find a different forum?

>Surely there are plenty of other places on the Internet to discuss politics? I come to The Register for technology news, not this crap.

Technology is developed and applied to reduce labour, so why the hell do you think a discussion about jobs is unrelated to technology?

We have combine harvesters that allow a single person to harvest acres of cereals. We have machines that move earth and mix concrete to build shelters. We have pocket calculators that do the work that was once done by specialist human workers. This has been the case for decades. It is presumptuous to assume that technology will have no further effect on our social and economic lives as we look to the future. To refuse to consider these issues is to be wilfully ignorant.

Go away and read up on human history.

Re: DNC - Remove the mote from your own eye

>The Daily Mail, home of the clickbait headline?

That is very true. However, they can't falsely attribute quotes to people without recourse, in the way that a Twitter account might.

Whilst we're at it, there is a Chrome setting that lets you mute the audio on individual tabs. Go to chrome://flags in a new tab. Search for the 'Enable tab audio muting UI control' flag.

Re: no! Fairly pointless, really

>If the crypto is public-key, with the private key kept in a safe country, the journalist in the field cannot be forced to decrypt.

Alas, nor can the journo in the field review the photos, or select which photos (from potentially GB's worth) she wants to send down a slow, unreliable ADSL line to her editor. Nice thought though. :)

Re: Shouldn't be hard for Nikon to do

You evidently missed the photos of men on the moon - taken by a digital Nikon, if you are to trust their digital signing.

Nikon's digital signing got broken after a couple of months if its release.

Even without border guards nabbing your SD card, loss is not uncommon. Maybe a reason to leave it in your camera and use a cable instead?

Re: Reliability?

Same here. I used to find Bluetooth a bit flaky, so it's a case of 'once bitten, twice shy'. These days though, depending upon the two devices, it can be pretty solid. However, Mr Rueger and myself can't be the only people who have some residual mistrust of BT's reliability.

For applications like smartwatches, where one needs to trust that notifications on a phone are passed on to a watch (or key fob, or headphones), reliability is crucial. 85%, to use your number, just isn't good enough.

My Huawei phone connects to my cheap Tesco BT speaker reliably, but my Sony phone refused to connect to a Ford Transit stereo on occasion. I've heard a lot of criticism of Smartwatches, but I haven't read of many complaints of patchy BT connection on the better known brands (i.e Samsung phone > Samsung watch, Apple > Apple, etc), so I get the impression that BT can be reliable these days if implemented properly.

Re: What iiiiis it gooood for? Absolutely nothing! (say it again)

>Hey tech companies - find a need and meet it, don't make a shiny widget and try to convince us we need to buy it.

I get where you're coming from, but what you say is easier said than done. How does a company identify a need or a desire amongst its potential customers? Let's look at some different approaches:

- Focus groups. Hmmm. As Henry Ford might have said: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse".

- The CEO wants it. Hmm, one assumes that the CEO became the CEO because he wasn't an idiot. However, his life style may be very different to that of his customers. This approach can work though - the Sony Walkman was born from a request by their CEO to his engineers, because he wanted some way of listening to music on trans-Pacific flights.

- Self-starting inventor or designer. This approach can work - at least you know at least one person wants the product. However, the designer might not realise how niche his requirements are, or he might get so caught up in the process of refining his design that he becomes blind to any larger market.

- Studying the target market. Unlike focus groups, this approach is more objective. At its simplest, it could be a time-and-motion study. It can be very labour intensive, and involve filming people complete day-to-day tasks, before spending lots of analysing said data.

- Samsung throw everything out there and see what sells. They made a range of smartphones of different sizes and lots of people bought the big ones. Lots of studies might have suggested that using a big phone with one thumb is a chore, but evidently users were willing to take a hit on that in exchange for being better able to show photos to their mates.

It isn't for me to say if any of these example approaches is superior - they have all at some point resulted in some popular products.

Re: Someone is lying!

The first Apple Watch what is generally referred to as Water Resistant - rain, splashes, perhaps a quick dunk in the sink are okay, but nothing more. If you wear it in the shower, don't subject it to the jet of water.

Water Proof means you can wear a watch whilst swimming - as Apple advertises their MK II models as being suitable for.

These are the long accepted terms in the watch industry. People can be confused by '30 Metres' or '50 M' waterproof, but the 'depth' is only a proxy for pressure.

Re: Casio

>It seems they did deliberately rip off the shape and size of the Casio calculator watches from the early 80s.

The size will have been a balancing act twixt battery life and bulk - and even now that compromise is unacceptable for some.

As for shape, once Apple had settled on a rectangular display there were only so many forms the watch could take.

Dolphins didn't 'rip off' the shape of sharks, but they appear similar because they are both subject to the same constraints. :)

Re: couldn't buy one

Indeed:

research firm IDC published a report estimating that Apple Watch sales last quarter were down 71 percent year on year. The figures weren’t surprising considering that Apple released the new Series 2 line right at the end of the July-September period, with supply constraints lasting well into the current quarter

- http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/6/13852560/apple-watch-sales-tim-cook

Re: Smart Watch needs a reboot.

>Aside from the security issues involved, the trouble is that all you're really saying is that a smartwatch would be useful if it was a smartphone.

That isn't what he saying. He wants a watch to function as a house key, a car key fob, or a bank card - if the security can be nailed down (a question of implementation, not concept).

What is notable about these applications is that they don't require a power-hungry display, or even a power-hungry continuous connection to his phone.

> Taking a phone out of a pocket is not difficult and takes only a second or two, so simply doing the same as a phone but on your wrist is not enough.

That is a second or two, repeated many times a day. And you might have muddy hands, or it might be raining out, you might have your hands full with shopping, or you might not want to bring your phone with you. I wear a conventional watch because I don't want to fumble into my pocket just to tell the time.

Do look around, there are a few takes on simply styled, analogue connected watches being released at the moment.

The appearance of Skagen watches might appeal to you, too. They're a touch too big for my tastes (44mm ish) but they are slim.