* Posts by AMBxx

2714 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jan 2014

American Express inks blockchain deal: Will use tech to pay UK folk who bank with Santander

AMBxx Silver badge
Paris Hilton

How many?

Santander UK – specifically for payments from American Express customers in the US to their suppliers in the UK.

How many transactions can there be? Seems very specific.

Paris cos she doesn't understand blockchain either.

Amazon Key door-entry flaw: No easy fix to stop rogue couriers burgling your place unseen

AMBxx Silver badge

Re: Good idea but

There was a big box like that available in the UK about 20 years ago. Very early days of online ordering. As far as I know, it's no longer available.

Just no demand at the time. Whether it was just too early of flawed in some other way, who knows?

How about that time Russian military used a video game pic as proof of US aiding ISIS?

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Joke

Re: "The Russian ministry of defense is investigating"

The pictures that Russia put out were genuine. The scheming western media replaced them with pictures of a video game.

Ivan

xx

Storage Spaces returns to Windows Server's semi-annual channel

AMBxx Silver badge
Facepalm

Stop mucking around

It's the Microsoft Hokey Cokey.

Put the feature in, the feature out, in, out, in out, shake it all about.

Google aims disrupto-tronic ray at intercoms. Yes, intercoms

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Thumb Up

something new and shiny

Just tell the kids what time they're expected. If they don't turn up, they go hungry,

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Re: How quaint

Alternatively, most DECT phones have the ability to page and make internal calls.

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Big Brother

OK Google

Tell my wife to bring me a beer.

I wonder how far up me she could push the little speaker.

BlackBerry Motion: The Phone That Won't Die

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Playing Candy Crush

You had nice warm hands though!

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Joke

Re: Motion

No, it's toilet humour. Somebody from the Carry On team is now working in marketing.

First the Priv, now the Motion.

Next the Kasi, with the robustness of the brick-built.

80-year-old cyclist killed in prang with Tesla Model S

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Lots of butthurt Tesla owners here?

There aren't lots of Tesla owners anywhere.

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, look out for must-have toys that are 'easily hacked' ♪

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Re: specific sequence of events huh

How far though? I had my ear bent by a security bod a few years ago about Bluetooth sniper - Bluetooth with Pringles tube or something to extend the range of BT.

Think the US is alone? 18 countries had their elections hacked last year

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Mushroom

Re: Who is Marc Rich?

What nobody wants to admit is that any decent Democratic candidate would have beaten Trump by a landslide. The only Democrat who would have done worse is Bernie Sanders.

On the other hand, any decent Republican would have beaten Clinton by a landslide.

If we get the politicians we deserve, the Americans have done something really bad!

Your next laptop will feature 'CMF' technology

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Thumb Down

Sopmething pretty for the ladies?

Could we be a little more patronising? How about a better shade of pink?

Munich council: To hell with Linux, we're going full Windows in 2020

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Windows

Council Vote?

Why are councillors voting on this? Surely, they provide IT with a budget, IT decide how best to spend it based upon council requirements.

Bigger question - why didn't they check availability of software on Linux before the original migration?

Metal 3D printing at 100 times the speed and a twentieth of the cost

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FAIL

Inject printers cheaper than Laser printers

You sure? nice and cheap to buy, but the ink!

China-owned Opera touts big comeback

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Big Brother

No thanks

Chinese owned, Facebook and WhatsApp integrated? Who isn't receiving your browsing data?

Logitech: We're gonna brick your Harmony Link gizmos next year

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Re: Idiots !

I had one of their Squeezebox thingies. Really nice product, but failed buy Logitech who were always ready to release a successor.

Last time I buy from Logitech. I'm sure both the users of their universal remote will say the same.

Where hackers haven't directly influenced polls, they've undermined our faith in democracy

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compliant citizenry to be in complete agreement

That's where the benevolence ends and the secret police start.

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Coat

Re: Democracy

When a dictator fails, they swing from a lightpost.

When a democratically elected politician fails, they write a memoir and retire to the House of Lords.

The most efficient system would be a benevolent dictator. No shortage of available dictators, problem is the benevolent part!

Google's answer to the Pixel 2 XL CRT-style screen burn in: Lower the brightness

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Re: It's a great phone

My BB Priv has lots and lots of physical buttons. Wouldn't swap them.

It has the nav buttons on the display. They're a pain in the rear.

Lord of the Rings TV show shopped around Hollywood

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Happy

Re: Scouring of the Shire

I'm more fortunate - my wife is incredibly intolerant of long-winded films. Only lasted 20 minutes or so of the first film. Didn't bother beyond that.

On the plus side, I only watched 15 minutes of the first Harry Potter film and 30 minutes of Mamma Mia.

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Mushroom

Re: Scouring of the Shire

>> glossy, fomulaic boxed set productions

I know I'm risking a stack of downvotes but that sounds a lot like the films!

I have a horrible image on one 40 minute episode devoted entirely to one long-winded speech.

Pixel-style display woes on your shiny new X? Perfectly normal, says Apple

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Re: Problem for OLED

Agh - someone had to mention sunlight visibility. Never a problem with my Lumia 1020. The magic on Windows Phone would automatically adjust the colours to improve the display. Worked really well.

Now I'm stuck with Android - can't believe it succeeded. If only MS marketing had removed their collected heads from their arses, we'd still have more OS choice.

AMBxx Silver badge
Windows

Re: 'most modern cars will struggle to reach'

My first car (actually my Mum's) had dashpots. I have no idea what they did, but every couple of weeks it was my job to check the oil level and topup.

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Coat

Re: 'image persistence' or 'burn-in'

I'll take your manual choke and raise you an odd lever to cut off the diesel supply to stop the engine.

When are we getting an 'ancient git' icon?

AMBxx Silver badge
Boffin

Problem for OLED

My Lumia 1020 was the first OLED phone I ever used. Great display, used for 3 years and no sign of any problems. Is it just higher resolutions, or has something changed?

Seldom used 'i' mangled by baffling autocorrect bug in Apple's iOS 11

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Re: Sixty years later

My old BBC model B had a fauly A key that would often double-type. I never did get far in the touch typing tutorials - every error meant you had to start again.

The ZX Spectrum had 40 faulty keys - all made out of a nasty grey rubber.

The EU is sooo 2016. We're all about the US now, say Brit scaleups

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I sell to UK, EU, rest of world. The only place I need to fill out extra paperwork is the EU - the ECSL to show that no tax was due and that no tax was paid. Utterly pointless. Sales will be much easier (for me, at least) once we finally leave.

Forget One Windows, Microsoft says it's time to modernize your apps

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Outlook daily on home office

Maybe not in your case. I'm suffering 2 or 3 crashes per day. Not sure if I should purely blame Outlook or the MS CRM plugin. Both written by MS though.

AMBxx Silver badge
Windows

Dear Microsoft

Stop pissing about.

Leave the kiddie stuff to startups.

Fix Windows 10 (only need to stop spying on your users).

Keep improving SQL Server

Stop Outlook crashing

Keep up the good work on Visual Studio, but see point 2 about kiddie stuff.

AMBxx Silver badge

Re: So what is the strategy ?

Not one, many.

Another day, another cryptocurrency miner lurking in a Google Chrome extension

AMBxx Silver badge

Re: As long as I am asked

What if it's not your electricity though? I have a website hosted on Azure. It's not especially busy. All I'd need to do is detect the number of current users. If nobody there, then thrash the living daylights out of the server.

Is there something available to do this? Could even setup a free shared instance and run it day and night.

HMRC's switch to AWS killed a small UK cloud business

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If HMRC want to smooth out their processing, all they have to do is offer discounts for early filing.

My accountant gives a discount if we send everything in early. Gradually drops month by month. If you send stuff in January, you're paying quite a bit more.

Microsoft exec says ARM-powered Windows laptops have multi-day battery life

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Re: Computational Power, Battery Life: Pick one.

I'd just like a laptop with a super screen like this, but running a lower powered CPU. Most of the time, I just need to connect to a server. Laptop work is limited to browsing and email.

Chrome laptop would be fine if it could just run Windows app (that's not going to happen!)

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Re: Does it run...

If you don't leave your own home, chances are you've only seen laptops running Linux.

Japan finds long, deep tunnel on the Moon

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Re: The hole truth

It's Space 1999, just 18 years late.

The Google Home Mini: Great, right up until you want to smash it in fury

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I used to think that people that watched all the weather forecasts were a bit odd. They now seem quite reasonable compared to all the people getting constant weather updates via their phones.

PS Weather today is windy - all day, no need to check again.

Open source sets sights on killing WhatsApp and Slack

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WTF?

ability to have different accounts ?

So I merge stuff into multiple different accounts so I can keep it as separated as it was originally? That's a great leap forward, umm....

AMBxx Silver badge
Coat

Re: Am I alone in this?

Apparently so...

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Happy

Am I alone in this?

I like the separation of email, text, Slack etc etc. Means I can silo my communications between friends, business and specific customers. I certainly wouldn't want customers to know when I'm busy - my business is based around being available all the time.

First thing I do on a new phone is get rid of whatever overlay they've given me to combine everything (currently on BB so hub tweaked)

Perhaps the only time I'm happy with the current broken state of technology!

Magic hash maths: Dedupe does not have to mean high compute. Wait, what?

AMBxx Silver badge
Paris Hilton

unique mathematical hash

I must be missing something here. Surely a hash can only be unique if it's the same size as the block of data? OK, you could reduce that with compression and encoding duplicates, but surely it's still too big to be useful?

Help me out - what am I missing?

Fear the SAP-slap? Users can anonymously submit questions about licensing naughtiness

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Complex licensing

Maybe simplify the licence structure instead??

I only work with SAP BI, so not sure how the ERP stuff works. For indirect access - if you dump data into a spreadsheet, then work and distribute from that - does that count as indirect? Just how daft is it?

BlackBerry's new Motion will move you neither to tears of joy nor sadness

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reasonably good at getting Android patches

Hmmm - just announced that nothing before the KeyOne is getting Nougat. Patches on my Priv end next year.

Just hoping MS finally get their act together, but their fabled 'Surface Phone' is starting to look like something that should grace Kick Starter.

AMBxx Silver badge

Re: USP

Yep, my wife is a dedicated blackberry user. Nothing to do with OS or being some sort for fan-girl. It's the only phone that still comes with a keyboard. Currently using a Priv and hasn't commented on the change from BB 10 to Android.

Where's the Blackberry user icon?

Zuck shows Virtual Empathy by visiting storm-wrecked Puerto Rico in VR

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Unhappy

Ultimate Virtue Signalling

Won't be long until you see virtue signalling articles in press/blogs on how someone was touched by the suffering etc etc etc.

Microsoft's foray into phones was a bumbling, half-hearted fiasco, and Nadella always knew it

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Re: Digital UI

I've just switched from a Lumia 950XL to a Blackberry Priv. I have keys again. Proper typing!

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You've missed a step. Windows Phone 7 had also forced app developers to rewrite everything they'd written for 5 & 6!

As a lot of couriers were using Windows handhelds running Windows Phone 6, developers were then forced to rewrite, so went to Android instead.

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Microsoft to pay the most popular app developers

I'm sure I recall that happening (at least the offer to pay, nothing really happened)

Microsoft Edge shock: Browser opts for Apple WebKit, Google Blink

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Partly right. I've been using FireFox for years. Recent version was very flakey, so now using Edge. Recent updates have made it very usable.

Edge on Android will mean I can stop using LastPass and just rely on MS. Not sure that's a great idea, but more convenient.

Azure fell over for 7 hours in Europe because someone accidentally set off the fire extinguishers

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Re: The insane thing about it is...

Exchange is way more than just email.

I've recently moved from Exchange in home office to Office 365. So pleased to get rid of the admin overhead of Exchange. Every upgrade of OS was fingers crossed and way too complicated.

Yes, Exchange is too complicated for an email solution, but if that's all you think it does, you're missing the point.