* Posts by d3vy

1633 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Mar 2014

Why the Apple Watch with LTE means a very Apple-y sort of freedom

d3vy

So am I understanding this right... if you get the apple watch with the eSIM you dont need to have your phone with you, but you still need to own a phone.

Im guessing from this then that the watch is capable of pairing with the phone over, Bluetooth, WiFi and now Cellular data? but cant use that cellular connection to do anything else?

Or have I completely misunderstood this and you need to have the phone and watch in close proximity for them to work (in that case what benefit is stumping up for the LTE watch)

d3vy

I had multiple phones on a single number for many years (car phones and the like) however the operators didnt like it and it never made a mainstream reason to exsist (why would a car have a SIM... )

Thats interesting, My car has an optional sim card accepting module that I didnt buy - I thought it would be a pain in the backside having two numbers/having to take the sim out of my phone to use in the car esp when it pairs with it over BT automatically anyway... Never even thought that there was a possibility of getting two sims with the same number!

123-Reg customers outraged at automatic .UK domain registration

d3vy

Re: Little to do with automatic renewal

"Oh, by the way, you'll find out about it from a IT news website."

Or you could read your emails.

d3vy

They are getting round this by warning users in advance that they can opt out...

So they have not done it automatically but they WILL unless you opt out now.

I got the same email, Im going to let them do it and then disable the autorenew, that way it costs them something and me nothing - nothing more than my time anyway...

d3vy

The list of outages omits the time that they deleted all of the active virtual servers during a clean up instead of the inactive ones.... and the backups that belong to them...

El Reg is hiring an intern. Apply now before it closes

d3vy

Re: Want a remote one?

They will send you to every apple event that they get invited to.

d3vy

Re: I've made a few tweaks to the copy so the intended audience will understand

"Stop trying to talk like a teenager, grandpa. It's hella embarrassing"

Yeah, you should prolly stop too.

d3vy

Re: Is there Fondue?

""A Comp-Sci degree and you're paying £9.15 an hour?"

Yes, it's an internship, typically used by the inexperienced to gain real world working experience in an industry before moving into better paid employment later.

Long gone are the days where a degree automatically got you a well paid job... Proven industry experience is way more valuable.

Apple: Our stores are your 'town square' and a $1,000 iPhone is your 'future'

d3vy

Re: Genius Groves?

@lord elpuss

"FaceTime - first mobile video calling that actually worked well"

The first iteration of this required a WiFi connection and wouldn't work on a cellular connection. So it was either NOT mobile or didn't work well... You can't claim both.

d3vy

Re: Genius Groves?

"Since I've never owned an iPhone, those are the only ones I can think of offhand."

You forgot that time back in 2009 whenever copy and paste was a mind blowing innovation. Truly "magical"

d3vy

Re: These "new" iPhones

"clearly this began the design process before any bezel-less Android phone shipped."

Because android phones don't go through a design process before going into production and being shipped?

Or are you suggesting that Apple take so long to design and build something that other companies can do it in a fraction of the time?

Dude who claimed he invented email is told by judge: It's safe to say you didn't invent email

d3vy

Its absolutely absurd that ANYONE can claim to have invented email.

Maybe you could claim to be the first to implement it.. but email is a natural progression from postal mail and telegraph messages.

This is no different from the [Existing Technology] *On a mobile device* patents.

Atari shoots sueball at KitKat maker over use of 'Breakout' in ad

d3vy

Re: @AC

I know its been several weeks now and this might never be seen but :

"Not if they're undernourished, which mothers will tend to be when having babies in impoverished areas where even clean water isn't a given. Compromised bodies result in compromised immune systems."

Even under nourished the mothers immune system is more developed than that of the infant.

d3vy

Re: @AC

"Counterpoint: The mothers ALSO needed similar access if they were going to have any chance of breastfeeding their babies (since what they drink tends to pass on in the breast milk). Dead either way."

>> Actually no, the mothers tend to have much more developed immune systems and their bodies naturally filter out most of the bad stuff.

"They even dressed up their salespeople in fake nurse uniforms for a while."

"Can you prove that claim?"

>> Yes, https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/nestle-baby-milk-scandal-food-industry-standards

Third paragraph.

You're welcome.

d3vy

Re: Next to Microsoft and Oracle, Nestle are now practically emissaries of Jesus

Anon, you say the problem was that nestle didn't react quickly enough... It's been 40 years and they're still doing it... They are reacting at glacial speed.

Don’t buy that Surface, plead Surface cloners

d3vy

Re: Man up, Nancy . . . @AC

IBM is the only manufacturer that I have come across who provide full exploded diagrams for their laptops (There may be others but IBM make them easy to find and free).

Conversely I had a run in with Toshiba recently where the phone droid on the parts line was not getting what I was saying to her "I need a replacement digitiser and glass for a P845t..." this was greeted by them asking for a part number... which I didnt have, I asked for an exploded diagram of the screen so that I could be sure that the (expensive) part that we were ordering was definitely the right one only to be told that they are proprietary and could only be supplied to authorised retailers.

The result of that was that Toshiba lost a £400 sale and I bought a full damaged second hand machine on eBay with a working screen for less than half the price.

Singapore court awards $2.9m over bad job reference

d3vy

Re: Trump dollars

" I'd never have to worry about having them in my wallet!"

True, at the tmrate he's going we will all be bartering with bottle caps by the end of the year.

FYI: Web ad fraud looks really bad. Like, really, really bad. Bigly bad

d3vy

Re: Why am I not surprised?

Part of the price of every products rice is advertising,so see the ad or not, we are all being affected.. if it costs companies 10x more to advertise do you think they take that hit on profits.. or pass it on to the consumers?

Nokia's comeback is on: The flagship 8 emerges

d3vy

Re: Same old, same old

"If you are throwing phones away due to ageing battery, you are a mug, and deserve to own an iPhone"

Strangely iPhone batteries are by far the easiest "Non replaceable" batteries I have ever seen, two screws a ribbon cable and a bit of peelable glue.. and you're done.

iPhone 3/4/5/6 battery replacements take around 5 minutes each if your not in a rush, not done a 7 yet but cant imagine that its that difficult.

Compare that to my HTC One M8, Ive had that apart to replace the camera before and now that the battery is fading I can honestly say I'd rather just let it die and but a new one than take it apart again - the battery is at the back under (But taped and glued to) every other component. Just getting the screen out of the case is an undertaking in its own right, four screws, a sucker, brute force and a handful of plastic spludgers its a wonder it didn't snap.

That said, I'd still rather have the HTC - I've had it four years now its stood up to being dropped, stood on, thrown round the gym, frozen overnight in a tent in wales. The back is so scratched an dented it could easilly pass for a decade old and its working perfectly* and the screen is like new.

* other than the battery fade that is to be expected - and the camera failure - but that's because I dropped it it a puddle, still the only thing to break was the camera!

Apple bag-search class action sueball moves to Cali supreme court

d3vy

I used to work in a small PC shop, they paid us minimum wage and worked us 48/54 hour weeks (One week on one week off weekends & long shifts) To add insult to injury at 7pm they would lock up the shop and then come and check us with metal detectors and go through our bags - added an extra half hour to the day as many of us did a car share so could only leave when then last person was checked.

At the time it didn't bother me as it was a first job in IT and I didn't really know that it wasn't the norm... Looking back none of us should have stood for the conditions there - metal roofed warehouse with no airflow so boiling in summer and no heating so freezing in winter.

The ridiculous bit was when the owners found out I could "do web stuff" I was given the job of selling off all of the old stock and second hand crap that no one else wanted, this meant that I was given a key to the stock room where I could remove items pack them up and put them in my OWN car boot so that I could then drive them to the post office.

No one ever checked waht was taken out, what went into the car or that the stuff I was posting had been paid for - had I wanted to I could have sent myself anything I wanted - obviously I didnt but I could. They still insisted that I was scanned at the end of the night though - even though if I had nicked anything Id have had ample opportunity to do so during any of the many times during the day that I came and went of my own accord.

None of the other staff were checked when going for fag breaks or for lunch, so I assume any thefts that took place happened during the day rather than at the end of the night!

Revealed: The naughty tricks used by web ads to bypass blockers

d3vy

I dont have a massive problem with online advertising, I know content providers need to make money.

That said I did last year install a popup blocker, which gets disabled for sites that Im happy wont spam me with crap. The reg is a good example, 3 tech adverts on this page - I can live with that.

When I open up the local newpapers site and get 15 adverts for "Millionaires in my area wanting to share their secrets" etc thats when I start to get annoyed.

I dont even particularly mind targeted ads, when they work - If I search amazon for something I dont mind If I get adverts for that thing on other sites for a while.

Firmware update blunder bricks hundreds of home 'smart' locks

d3vy

"Lockstate Connect, which is a subscription-based service that allows full remote control of all compatible smart home devices."

Subscription based service.... Three words that mean I wont ever own a product.

At some point this company is going to decide to stop supporting these locks, they will shut doen the servers and your back to having a dumb lock a $600 dumb lock (With the added bonus that its probably also hackable) - Ill stick to physical keys thanks.

UK taxmen slammed for tech glitches rampant on child benefits website

d3vy

"But no doubt it was designed and built by people who do everything they can to avoid tax and national insurance through IR35 and other scams. Maybe you're one of these"

Ir35 is a tax avoidance scheme?

Hahaha.

You don't know what you're talking about do you?

d3vy

"Don't have kids if you can afford them without any help from others, it really is that simple..."

And if you can afford them but your circumstances change I'll lend you a wood chipper so you can dispose of them.

Petition calls for Adobe Flash to survive as open source zombie

d3vy

Re: It's Legacy Tech

"Yes, nothing, except possibly the enormous effort required."

And cost.

I wanted to play some dos based games a while ago and they just wont work well when emulated.

So I though, "I know Ill jump on eBay and pick up a 90's era machine for a few ££"

How wrong I was, back in '98 I built an (at the time) kick ass machine.

AMD K6 266MHz processor

32MB Ram

4.3GB HDD

15" Monitor

Voodoo 3 Graphics Card

It cost me around £450

To buy a machine on eBay with the same spec now I'd need about the same money again.

Wish I'd kept it now instead of binning it.

d3vy

Re: Please, No!

@Tim99

"So record all of the possible permutations and combinations separately, and edit them together into a different format of media"

Lets look at an example, a firm favourite from the golden days of flash, the 1990s - Joe Cartoon Frog in a blender.

Go and google that *Simple* animation with at most 10 interactive buttons and tell me how long you think it would take to convert to something usable that worked in a close enough manner to not lose the meaning of the original.

Now, thats obviously a daft example, no one is going to waste time converting that, but its a simple application and it would be massively time consuming - imagine the same for a bigger - more useful resource, why bother with that when the people that need it could just use the open source version that is being asked for here...

Think of the resources serious and otherwise which will be lost if we can no longer run flash.

d3vy

Re: Please, No!

"How about, as a last resort, playing it through a nice large screen with a decent audio output and recording it onto another device?"

Well for a start that would turn a dynamic & interactive presentation into a static one... At least I've never seen a video with a working button....

d3vy

Re: Destroy the culture too

Could you point to the open standard that was around in the mid 90s that could have competed with flash?

Jodie Who-ttaker? The Doctor is in

d3vy

Re: The good old days

"Time was when part of watching a program was to be surprised by it. Now every interesting thing about a program is spilled before it airs. I wonder if things will swing back when people get bored of knowing everything in advance?"

I actively avoid watching movie trailers now as they seem to have become *all the best bits of the movie in 3 minutes*.

The last time I got sucked in was passengers, the trailer made it look a bit tense "Theres a reason we woke up early" had me thinking, aliens? conspiracy? Awesome! What I actually watched was one of the story arcs from some future sequel to love actually.

d3vy

I can imagine describing the series to someone...

>>Its about an alien.

OK

>>They travel in space

Awesome

>> They travel through time too

Brilliant!

>> When they die they just shape shift into new bodies

GREAT!!

>> They've got two hearts

Stop talking Im sold, I just want to watch it now!

>> Oh, and boobs.

WHAT?!?!? Theres no way Im watching that shite.

Im fairly sure its been hinted at that the Dr doesn't even need to regenerate into human form - I might have imagined that though.

I've said it before... I've put up with several series of Capalldi* Im hardly going to tune out because of this!

* I dont have anything against him, he was alright but not great.

Nearly three-quarters of convicted TV Licence non-payers are women

d3vy

"Go to the USA and see what happens there, mostly crap, at least the BBC sets a high standard which other channels have to try and emulate."

Ive been, the range of choice was astounding... you could have total crap with adverts every 5 minutes or utter shite with adverts every 10 minutes.

At least theres some decent stuff ad free on Netflix over there...

d3vy

"that many people just for two and a half telly channels and some radio, why?"

Off the top of my head :

BBC1 , BBC2, BBC4, CBBC, CBEEBIES*, NEWS24, BBC Parliment, then theres the relegated to the internet BBC3.

And as for "Some radio"... Bit of an understatement? there are at least 5 national BBC radio stations and then regional ones dotted around the country... "Some" doesn't quite cut it.

* Worth noting that the BBC runs the only kids programs that still seem to have some focus on being slightly educational.

d3vy

1) Name something that the BBC still does well. Their commentary on Wimbledon this year was truly atrocious - I thought that some of the commenters were perhaps on hard drugs.

>> News, Drama, Local Radio, Nature Programs, Comedy - there is literally something for everyone.

2) No, they are not 'making in-roads to slimming down', that is unless 'slimming down' means increasing their management spending while not addressing waste and unused resources.

>> I cant really comment on that, not enough info.

3) In this age of record and watch later, adverts are something that can be bypassed or easily skipped.

>> The age of watch and record later is on its way out, streaming is the future and you cant skip those ads.

Of the content providers available the BBC has the most that I want to watch, iPlayer is better than any other streaming service available... And dont get me started on the quality of BBC radi compared to other stations - I tried a local station the other day ore adverts than music.

d3vy

"No it won't the technology is already there in freeview receivers, virgin media boxes and satellite boxes. What scares the BBC is that very few would actively subscribe."

Good job that the BBC content is only delivered via TV isnt it... Imagine if they had a stack of FM radio stations* and everyone had an FM radio in their car THAT WOULD BE A NIGHTMARE - good job thats not reality isnt it?...

* For some reason everyone forgets about the radio when discussing the TV Licence....

Kid found a way to travel for free in Budapest. He filed a bug report. And was promptly arrested

d3vy
Joke

FFS, its all getting a bit silly isn't it? I merely raised a point about the ADULT in question being referred to as a kid

Clearly some ones pedant nerve has been struck.

To that all I can really say is... Grow up and act your age ;)

d3vy

Mattje

You also failed to read my whole comment, which was not aimed at the subject of the article but the reporting of him as a child in the headline.

d3vy

"You were oh so wise and mature as soon as you turned 18?"

Probably not.. though maybe (at 18 I was in stead full time employment and looking to buy my first house with my partner) , but that's not the point, I don't care if your 18 or a 50 year old man child you are legally an adult with all of the responsibilities of such at 18.

d3vy

Challenge 21 is to challenge anyone who looks under 21 for ID, if you can prove your over 18 there's no legal reason for a sale to be withheld.

Your argument does not alter the legal definition of adult.

d3vy

"You seem to have fallen into the trap of assuming that all 18 year olds are mature, responsible, level-headed-adults..."

Not at all, but by all reasonable definitions you cease being a kid at the age of 18 - he is over this age so is legally no longer a kid. Maturity does not come into it.

My point of course being that the more we pander to these immature *adults* by referring to them as kids the worse the problem gets, we are reinforcing the attitude that they dont need to accept responsibility for their own actions because they are 'not all growed up yet'.

I read an article the other week that some people don't consider themselves to be "grown up" until they hit 30... Jesus, what kind of messed up generation are we raising?

None of the above rant has any bearing on the subject of the article who I dont believe has referred to himself as a kid at all, its just the way that its being reported that I object to!

Having said all of that I now feel very old.

Damn kids, get off my lawn.

d3vy

You seem to have fallen into the trap of referring to an 18 year old adult as a kid.

Please rectify this.

Android-ocalypse postponed: Jide withdraws Remix OS from consumer frontline

d3vy

"repositioning"

I thought that the preferred term in the valley when your plans go to shit and you have to come up with something else before your house is repossessed is that you are "Pivoting"

Security robot falls into pond after failing to spot stairs or water

d3vy

Re: "is there actually a business case for this thing"

Yeah, definitely.

A previous employer had several remote sites which required looking after but didnt warrant full time security on site so they relied on CCTV (LOTS AND LOTS OF IT) with motion detection.

We also had a few mobile CCTV systems mounted on the top of vans that could be moved out to work sites left and then monitored from a central security office.

This bot would mean that there wouldn't be as much of a need for cameras everywhere as it could move around. It would also mean that there wouldnt need to be a call out for false activation of the motion sensors as you could send the bot to investigate.

I can definitly see a use case for it...

What I cant see however is a reason for it to be that big and land based.

Surely a drone that is capable of docking itself on some kind of charging station and connected via wiFi to to its "Brain" would be cheaper and faster.

I assume the reason this thing is so large is that it houses all of the computers so is fairly self sufficient - I dont see a reason for that.

d3vy

Re: Cheeze Petrel

Cheesoid kill self with petril.

Why petril not burn?

Ew! HTC jams pop-up adverts into people's smartphone keyboards

d3vy

Well didn't get this on the old One M8 that Im still using but what I did notice after a recent factory reset (Spring cleaning :) )

The remote control app has been replaced by "Peel Remote" which cannot be uninstalled and despite it not running (Well the service must be) renders its crap on the lock screen, It also occasionally serves me a full screen add when I unlock the device.

Needless to say that the app is no longer able to run, I might not be able to remove it but I've disabled the service.

The other thing that started driving me mad... "News Republic" another app that I cant get rid off that sends me notifications about news that might be relevant to me... but isnt. Another service that had to be disabled.

As much as I like my M8 if thats the way HTC are going then this may well be my last one.

€100 'typewriter' turns out to be €45,000 Enigma machine

d3vy

My mum had a clear out when I went to college...

Original NES, light gun, infra red controls and a stack of games.

Massive box of thunder cats.

Most of my SNES games...

I could have cried (I still might).

Adult toy retailer slapped down for 'RES-ERECTI*N' ad over Easter

d3vy

Presumably the person who complained was on their mailing list so already a customer...

What an utter w*nker.

Brit prosecutors ask IT suppliers to fight over £3 USB cable tender

d3vy

Re: Not just restricted to governments

I was declined a mortgage once because of an outstanding debt more than a year old. They couldn't tell me what it was so I wrote to Experian (this was before you could order them online) with my cheque enclosed with an sae and waited two weeks for the report to come back.

The debt? I had underpaid an orange mobile bill by £2.50 when at college and as I moved around a bit didn't receive the bills.

A quick phone call to orange confirmed that they were not bothered and just wrote it off.. two more weeks for it to come off the credit file and the mortgage went through.

For the sake of £2.50..

d3vy

"I found that sexually harassing myself was terribly boring..."

Yeah but I'm pretty sure my boss is shagging my wife!

d3vy

Re: @d3vy

Guus,

They were well aware of the size of the company and its all well and good saying I'm not legally obliged to provide it, but then they're not legally obliged to set me up as a supplier and give me work...

They put up the hoops, I jump through them. It's just how it works. :)

d3vy

"There's the bid document to complete, then the anti-slavery documentation, then the evidence of being an equal opportunities employer."

While onboarding as a supplier for a large services company I recently had to provide proof that we have at least £10m employers insurance in case we are sued by one of our own employees, that we have health and safety policies in place and *enforced*, that we are equal opportunities etc...

They also insisted that we provided proof that we have measures in place to prevent sexual discrimination and harassment in the work place.

The funny bit, Its my company, Im the only employee.