* Posts by CrazyOldCatMan

6335 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2015

Barnet Council reckons Capita's dropped the ball on outsourced services

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: I'm shocked that someone has found Capita wanting. Shocked, I tells ya.

He hasn't really been catholic and neither has the Roman Church since the Reformation

And it isn't particularly Christian either - and hasn't been for a long, long time..

Blighty: We spent £1bn on Galileo and all we got was this lousy T-shirt

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: " I think there's a good chance the madness will come to an abrupt end. "

Conservative party is viewed as the cause of this chaos (as in fact it was) this might make them unelectable

And my private opinion is that quite a few moderate Conservatives and Labour types will end up either forming a new centrist party or joining the Lib Dems.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: It'll be like decimalisation all over again, but spelt decimation due to a shortage of letters.

Then we joined the EC and it’s transformed our country for the better.

Shh.. don't blow their minds with actual facts from actual history. Admittedly, it would be a small explosion..

(I'm convinced most brexiteers have forgotten the 1970's and, in their minds, we go directly from 1940 to 2018..)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Porcine aviation

At least we don't have to disband the Royal Navy, armed forced and RAF under the one-state one-army plan officially announced

Ah yes - the old "unofficially announced" ploy. As in "I ate too much cheese one night and dreamed it"..

(And the UK has a veto in the EU - so anything that *we* don't want isn't going to happen..)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: FUD Central Nervous System @amanfrommars 1

That nearly made sense to me.

Am I going mad?

No - your brain is simply tuning to a different channel.

Of course, to the outside observer the difference might be inperceptible..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Those of us who voted in favour wanted a clean break

And really, really, really didn't understand international finance, treaties and trade.

Here's a hint: Treaties and agreements that we have signed up to for the last 40 years don't magically disappear just because you want them too - any more than the mobile contract that you agreed to a month ago (and now want to cancel) will cease without you paying a leaving fee.

It's not a difficult concept and only someone with either something to sell or very little brain indeed would realise it.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Well, who'd have thought it?

David Davis was undermined COMPLETELY

Given how little effort he put into his job (as conveyed by ex-Civil Servants and his own public appearances) I fail to see that there was anything to undermine..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Well, who'd have thought it?

Boris and co will be long gone (unless he becomes PM by some freak of nature

I think we can pretty much guarentee that his political career is pretty much over (apart from remaining an MP).

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Trident

The Trident missiles don't use GPS

..since it probably won't be available in the case of a hot war - all those EMP bursts will fry the majority of satellies pretty quickly..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: FFS

Of course the Scots wanted to stay in. They profited the most from the EU's generous farmer-sponsoring

Your argument breaks down completely when you realise that another major farming region (Cornwall) votes leave in big numbers..

Lush scrubs its card-processing servers squeaky clean

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Or, in my case..

UK retailer specialising in handmade cosmetics ranging from soaps, shampoos, body creams

..and providing me with the inability to breathe unless I hold my breath when walking past the always-open Lush door..

Feeling your airways slam shut at the stench of mixed smells coming from Lush isn't fun.

Shocker: UK smart meter rollout is crap, late and £500m over budget

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: pros of the smart meter

And more than once I've left the oven on after cooking

Repeat after me - your incompetence does not constitute my emergency..

(Harsh - maybe a bit. But forgetting to turn off the oven after cooking has an easy fix - a small poster tacked/bluetacked above saying "Have you turned off the oven?" might help..)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: How are these supposed to save energy

Hence the Toyota Pious

I have a Toyota C-HR (uses the same Hybrid mechanism as the Prius). It's cut my petrol usage down to less than 1/3 of what it used to be..

(Yes, I'm aware that there's an argument that says the resources used to make a car are sufficiently enormous so as to make it a bad idea.. But since the expected replacement time for a car in my possession is 10-15 years[1] I reckon that I'll get my moneys-worth)

[1] Apart from the Morris Minor (made in 1966) - we've had it almost 25 years. If they did a hybrid system upgrade for it, we'd get that done too)

Oh, I wish it could be Black Friday every day-aayyy, when the wallets start jingling but it's still a week till we're paiii-iid

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Interesting...

Black milk??

Now with added charcoal. To make sure any nasty toxins are mopped up.

Alternatively - proper stout. No - not that stuff they make in BlarneyLand, but the stuff they make in the Midlands (and sometimes in Laaandun)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Today IS payday...

...as the 25th is at the weekend

We get it (oo-er!) on the last Thursday of the month. Whether we want it or not..

Bordeaux-no! Wine guzzling at UK.gov events rises 20%

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Canada?

Yes, Ice Wine. Might not be your bag if you don't like dessert wine

Too much sugar for me - even in my pre-diabetes/heart attack days..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Going by recent Gov sponsored Health advisories

Perhaps the Gov should be walking the walk on the old 'no amount is healthy' lines that have been spewed out of late

Amusingly, the British Heart Foundation (and the NHS) recommend that a glass[1] of red wine a day is really good for your heart.. They do, annoyingly, suggest that a daily limit of 3 units (and at least two days a weeks with no alcohol) is in order as well.

[1] Does a bottle count as a glass?

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: cost of French wines

I hear the Adrian Wall is not the absolute north limit for winemaking anymore

Amusingly, some of the English white sparking wines (don't call them Champagne even though the Champagne method was invented here..) scored higher than Champagne in a blind taste test. By French judges..

British red wine isn't really there yet - despite our summers getting warmer, we still don't get the degrees of time and intensity of sunlight needed to really generate a full-bodied red wine. Some of the vineyard in Kent make perfectly quaffable light reds though. And very, very good white wines, sparking or otherwise.

There are wines you like and ones you don't. There are times and moods, and wines to go with

This is so true. One persons fine wine is anothers vinegar.. (my wife, for example, doesn't like light, acidic reds. Sometimes I do..). But we agree on a number of wines - two of them are even French (Cabalie and Rex Mundi[1] - both full reds from the Cathar region of France)

[1] Given my beliefs, I probably shouldn't like a wine named after a belief from the Cathar version of Gnosticism.. but I do

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

from where it WAS invented, namely the Thracian valley

Pretty sure that various other countries were making wine before Thrace was even a thing.. Pikiwedia seems to suggest[1] that the oldest archological evidence of wine is China, followed by Georgia, followed by Iran..

None of which are Thracia.

[1] If you trust 'the encyclopedia that any nutter can edit'..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

never buy for the ticket buy for your palate

Many years ago I had a (very, very good) American boss. He always used to order Chateauneuf Du Pape (on the basis that our French colleagues had recommended it). I like CNP but it is a tad expensive..

So, one day, I steered him in the direction of Rioja. He switched to drinking that thereafter. Pick a good one and they have easily the quality of CNP.

My wine taste varies - sometimes I fancy a good Portugese wine, sometimes a fairly cheap French one. Other times, a rough-and-ready Italian chianti.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

I don't get the obsession with European wine. They aren't as good, in my ill-informed opinion, as new world wines

Depends on the vineyard and winemaker.. Judging/dismissing a whole region is somewhat akin to judging a whole nationality.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Daily Mail and some of the more extreme Russian media (strange bedfellows aren't they)

Not really - they have a remarkably similar world-view..

Black Friday? Yes, tech vendors might be feeling a bit glum looking at numbers for the UK

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: It's worse than Christmas...

Hallowe'en was invented in Scotland as a Pagan festival thousands of years ago

It's been part of European culture for thousands of years - most pagan cultures have an equivalent of the day of the dead. So not necessarily invented in Scotland.. (Unlike brochs)

The US version comes primarily (and I could be wrong here) from the Germanic strain.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: It's worse than Christmas...

Same as Halloween (do you get that stupidity in the UK as well?)

Yes. Of course, we've had it in one form or another for several thousand years (as has most of Europe) but lately[1] it's become the tacky US version of trick or treat[2].

[1] As in 'during my lifetime'. Which (I suspect) is a bit longer than some commentards.

[2] And we don't even do it right (and neither does the US now) - look up the original meaning of 'trick or treat'. It didn't automatically involve handing over lots of diabetes-causing sweets to kids..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Black..er..November?

You'd think they don't know the meaning of "FriDAY"

Last day of the working[1] week, following which there is alcohol[2] and curries/Chinese/Thai/[insert takeaway food of choice here]?

[1] I use that work with a deep sense of irony. After all, we work in IT and that's not really working hard is it boys and girls?

[2] Or not, as your choice may be. For me, still alcohol, just less than there used to be.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: It's because

27.79% of Britons are stupid. That is the percentage of voters who didn't vote in the brexit poll

Some of us don't vote for other reasons[1]. Admitedly a very small number (probably less than .0001) but still don't because of our beliefs rather than being stupid.

[1] Long and complicated but down to my religious beliefs.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: November 23 is Buy Nothing Day

then you've severely underestimated my alcoholism

Or overestimating your ability to plan stuff in advance :-)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

mendacious marketing

Oxymoron alert!

(Marketing is the team that hold the customer down while sales screws them..)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

But I did get a new shower tidy for £20 less. Struggling on the IT angle with that.

Somewhere to hang your waterproof shower speaker so that you can hear all the server alerts?

(I have a few more straws to clutch at..)

In Space, Still: 20 years since Russia hurled first bit of floating astronaut hostel into orbit

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: "Floating"

The reason that it is not colliding with earth is not lift but the fact that it has been carefully accelerated to move "sideways"

In other words - falling towards earth but cleverly managing to miss?

Net neutrality is heading to the courts (again): So will the current rules stand or be overturned (again)?

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Don't you just love

'Free markets' always tend towards abusive monopolies. That is why you need regulators.

I think that was Pascal's point..

(And regulators don't really help when they are being run solely for the profit of the industry that they are supposed to regulate..)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Yes, this will happen

U.S. Constitution, it's CONGRESS that makes the laws

Then maybe, just maybe, they should get their collective fingers out and actually do something?

Other than partisan name-calling of course.

Talk in Trump's tweets tells whether tale is true: Code can mostly spot Prez lies from wording

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Accuracy

Will the Real Bombastic Bob (tm) PLEASE STAND up?

Be careful what you ask for..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Covfefe

Some of us do just fine on 4 hours sleep per day

Any less than about 8 hours for two days in a row is a shortcut to a guarenteed migraine for me..

Is Google's Pixel getting better, or just more expensive?

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

unhealthy sprinkling of viral spew on the AstroTurf

Oh - the irony. A fawning review of a problematic device done by an A/C who then accuses naysayers of astroturfing..

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: That's because back in the land of reality....

Hmm.. So, how much notice do we take of someone who is A/C yet so vehement in supporting Google?

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: RE: Topperfalkon

I can't recall ever having to reboot my HTC One

I didn't either - it spontaneously rebooted itself at random intervals. I suspect a hardware issue since putting on a custom ROM didn't cure it.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

2013 Nexus 7 on which the screen remained firmly bonded

I had one of those too. It did, however, suffer from the flash degradation slowdown that seems to have bedeviled the N7-2013.

Microsoft: You looking at me funny? Oh, you just want to sign in

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Excuse me for being thick

So why not TPM? It serves the same function

No - TPM is a secure enclave (mostly) on the PC itself. It can be used to store the certificates/credentials needed to validate an authentication but an external input (password/PIN et. al.) is still needed.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: I Don't Get It...

how do they know it's you, and not just the person who's stolen your device

They are relying on you keeping your PC and authtication device in separate places.

In other words - they don't and will happily inform you that "it's your problem" if someone steals both devices.

Technical foul: Amazon suffers data snafu days before Black Friday, emails world+dog

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: @Ken catalogue shopping

The default position of any cat is 'I am hungry, give me food'. This is just a test, however, to see how mallable your mind is

I think I've failed that test - many, many, many times. That's probably why we have seven cats (age range - 12 years to 1 year. Youngest cat was (at this time last year) a two-month old stray living in a friends garden. Now spends a lot of time sleeping next to the radiator..)

They aren't stupid. Just self absorbed

Cat intelligence varies enormously according to the subject matter. Food happens to be a subject that they have PhD-level intelligence in.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: I received this scam-like email - thanks for verifying El Reg

I don't have a bloody cat, never had and never clicked on anything cat-like

It's the universe telling you that you are missing something essential from your life..

(Almost was late for work this morning - $YoungestCat decided that my lap was an appropriate place to curl up as I was eating breakfast..)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: WTF?

Unfortunately, marketing departments have ensured that 'legitimate' emails are full of full page banners

Some time ago, our marketing team wanted a whole slew of twitter/FB/LinkedIn/etc etc buttons added to the bottom of every outgoing email. Even if we were willing to do that (email is a 7-bit ASCII mechanism dammit!) we managed to come up with a (cough) valid technical reason why not - the increase in file size.

The average email size (without attachments) was about 6K bytes. Once the buttons and associated JS were added, it balooned up to 200K.

We pointed this out to Marketing and let them know that increased costs in bandwidth and storage would be charged to them. Mysteriously, the request was withdrawn thereafter.

Oracle sued by app sales rep: I made tens of millions for Larry, then fired for being neither young nor male – claim

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: We only have her word for it

How hard it to understand this disctinction

About as difficult as you being incapable of understanding that Oracle will have to defend their actions in court and, if (as expected) she was fired simply for the crime of having an additional X gene, then they'll be shown for the serial mysoginists that they are..

Sounds like you'd fit in there well.

OnePlus 6T: Tasteful, powerful – and much cheaper than a flagship

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Past meets future

I was going to go for a OP6 but got put off by the price (I had a OP3 before). I ended up getting an Honor 10 - I use Nova Launcher so don't really care about the look and feel of EMUI.

The one thing that does bug me about the H10 is that it keeps popping up notification about the Huawei Cloud. The date I get an account there[1] is about the same as the heat-death of the universe..

[1] Needing an account on one mass-intrusive entity (Google) is bad enough. If the iPhones were more reasonable in price for a new-ish one I'd go back to Apple.

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: No headphone socket - no sale

I agree, losing the headphone socket is a real own goal

Not for me - I haven't used wired headphones in years. Other than linking the phone to the car, it's the only thing I use bluetooth for.

(I'm aware that this is an indivdual choice)

Court doc typo 'reveals' Julian Assange may have been charged in US

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: Bah!

a special team of fur-work experts can spirit the cat to a secret location

So, theoretically speaking, would the contact details of an elite squad of former military felines who escaped from unjust imprisonment and now roam the country solving crimes be of any interest?

Not that I know about such a team though. Obviously not!

(I have no wish to face weaponised hairballs being aimed at me)

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: No surprise

It can't be any surprise that the USA have an interest in him. He made it his job to annoy them

And then made the tactical error of supplying information to Trump (probably thinking that it would make him one of Trumps friends). Trouble is, Trump friendship is about as reliable as going to sea in a sieve..

'Unjustifiably excessive': Not even London cops can follow law with their rubbish gang database

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Met Police: 'We welcome the scrutiny'

.. and any suggestion that ICO staff are suddenly having lots more police problems are purely supposition..

Where to implant my employee microchip? I have the ideal location

CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

Re: 'One day he'll give up and take a dump on my pillow instead'

+1 for Brilliant use of nesting to the point of incomprehension :)

Well, in a former life I was a mainframe assembler programmer - old habits die hard.