* Posts by Tim Jenkins

468 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Oct 2007

Page:

How I nearly sold rocket windows to the crazy North Koreans

Tim Jenkins

Re: Fingers crossed...

"the norks are crazy as a bag of frogs"

Way, way crazier than that. Try the translated output of the Korean Central News Agency, available daily at http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm

"The responsibility for this grave situation entirely rests with the U.S. Administration and military warmongers keen to encroach upon the DPRK's sovereignty and bring down its dignified social system with brigandish logic... We formally inform the White House and Pentagon that the ever-escalating U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK and its reckless nuclear threat will be smashed by the strong will of all the united service personnel and people and cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means of the DPRK and that the merciless operation of its revolutionary armed forces in this regard has been finally examined and ratified."

In the same bulletin:

"In such numbers as female quintet "On High Hills and Rough Roads in This Land", male solo "We Will Never Forget" and dialogic poem "Daily Increasing Pleasure of the People" the performers sang high praises of the boundless reverence for Kim Jong Il, who pursued the original Songun politics, leading the army and people to victory and demonstrating the dignity and might of the country.

Some numbers gave audience deep impression as they helped the audience look back upon with deep emotion the life-long devotion made by the Generalissimos who dedicated themselves to the country and the people as well as the loyalty and persevering fighting traits displayed by the preceding generation.

In numbers like mixed chorus "Masters of This Land Say" and female solo "People Are Always Single-mindedly United" the performers sang of the ardent reverence for the dear respected Marshal Kim Jong Un and reflected the will of officials of the Union of Agricultural Workers of Korea and agricultural workers to devote their all to the prosperity of the country true to his leadership. "

Probably not available on iTunes, sadly.

Review: Renault Zoe electric car

Tim Jenkins
Pint

Where do I sign up?

"this review will no doubt draw the usual flak from libertarian yahoos who seem to object on principle to any product even partly inspired by the need to try to reduce the all too obvious causes of climate change"

For that line alone, sir, a beer.

Cheers!

Boeing outlines fix for 787 batteries

Tim Jenkins

Re: insulation/electrical tape

"the batterypack is a ticking timebomb"

I'm imagining more of a bubbling, fizzing kind of sound, possibly followed by a pop/hiss kind of thing...

Samsung's new Galaxy S 4: iPhone assassin or Android also-ran?

Tim Jenkins

Re: What is so compelling?

"Sure it has a lot of sensors"

Still missing, though, are the breathalyzer, mass-spectrometer (for avoiding that Ben Fogle spiked drink moment, with secondary use as a coke/ketamine/ecstasy quality tester ), and (to tie up with certain 'specialist' apps) a penile turgidity cuff fitting; after all, the damn things have vibrated for years...

Samsung please note; I'd prefer $s to Wons.

BT engineers - missed appointments

Tim Jenkins

I've had the frustrating experience of TWICE moving into new-build properties and have BT insist that the buildings postcode does not exist when I've tried to have a shiny BT-branded master socket enabled with a telephone circuit. Makes you wonder how their engineers managed to find the place in order to screw the sockets to the walls.

Tim Jenkins

Re: Not one but two

We had a very nice but extremely stressed OR engineer arrive for a mid-morning job in Machynlleth, mid-Wales. His next appointment (as dictated by the master 'puter at Openreach) was in Oswestry (50 miles east, 1.5 hours driving time if roads are clear, 3+ hours with roadworks, tractors, caravans, wind-turbine transporters and straying sheep), and the one after that was in Barmouth (60 miles west from Oswestry, 30 north from Machynlleth). Even before he left us, there was clearly no way the third job was going to be possible before that customers site closed, but there was apparently no way to change his pre-set schedule to visit them first, then head east and finally return to base after office hours. All OR's estimated travel-to-site times are apparently based on a 'national average', which round here is about as useful as a 4G handset down a slate mine...

Proto Steam box may feel your arousal, hints Valve daddy

Tim Jenkins

Re: Interesting times ahead

And, most importantly, will it have Half-Life 3 (or possibly HL2Ep3) bundled as an exclusive?

That way they might sell more than a handful of the things...

Strategic SIEGE ROBOTS defeated by 'heavily intoxicated' man, 62

Tim Jenkins

Re: "vandalism of government property"

For those (hopefully) few Reg readers who don't know it already, can I direct you to the masterwork that is 'Watchbird' by Robert Sheckley?

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579

Should be required reading for all those in the drone/robot/AI business...

Microsoft techies bust data centres, pull plug on Bamital botnet

Tim Jenkins
FAIL

Re: @ Tim Jenkins

Only when my Steam games all run on it ; )

But seriously, my reply was to a post pointing out that Microsoft inflicts hundreds of millions of potential (or actual) botnetted PCs on the world because of their refusal to patch 'illegal' installations of XP. If, (as I suspect) most of the owners of 'legal' XP SP3s are unlikely to wipe-and-reinstall with a free operating system or Windows 8 (no application or settings migration from XP to Win8, remember?) come April 2014, this 'dirty' pool will only grow larger until natural attrition finally kills off the last of the XP hardware, which could take a while*.

*My 'best' XP box is a 4GB 2Ghz Core2Duo Thinkpad, very low mileage and about 4 years old, but running a 13 year old OS because it's an ex 'business' model and shipped with licence downgrade rights from Vista. I'd fully expect it to last another 4 years, but the OS effectively self-destructs in about 420 days...

Tim Jenkins

Re: Microsoft should change their policies a little bit IMO...

Not to mention the April 8, 2014 end of support for all those perfectly legal, fully patched and completely functional XP SP3 boxes out there (three in my house alone), which will then be wide open to the "all-but-inevitable attacks criminals will unleash against the OS once the flow of patches ceases." (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/07/windows_xp_two_years_until_support_ends/)

'Gaia' Lovelock: Wind turbines 'may become like Easter Island statues'

Tim Jenkins

Re: If your names not down your not coming in..

"...one nuclear power station provides as much power as 3,200 industrial wind turbines, without the environmental damage..."

Mind you, the ex-residents of Pripyat and Fukushima Prefecture may have a different opinion...

UK way behind pack on broadband speed in Europe

Tim Jenkins

Not such a good thing if FTC arrives in your area. Being close to the exchange makes it more likely you're on a pair coming from the exchange itself rather than a nice upgradable green cabinet (BT refer to this as an 'exchange only' line), which means your only hope of better than ADSL2+ is FTTP that may well not be on offer. Apparently something like ten percent of all households are likely to be in this situation, and it's emerging as a major issue in the whole scheme.

BT's 'six-month free broadband' offer is a big fat FIB - ads watchdog

Tim Jenkins

TANSTAAFL

Also worth noting that this generous offer is for their 'Option 1' broadband product which has a 10GB pcm volume limit and £5 / 5GB 'excess use' charge, but you'd have to refer to their website to discover that 'feature' as there's no mention (aside from the product name) on the multiple mailshots we've had promoting it. At our current household rate of data consumption, that defines 'free' as about £35 data + £10 line rental pcm...

Is this possibly the worst broadband in the world?

Tim Jenkins

Re: Reg hack uses site to raise beef with BT?

With a little digging online, you can find a Qwest (American ISP) firmware for the HGV2700 that runs more stable than the BT-stock and gives you US-strength wireless too. Be aware, though, that these 2-Wire units have a known issue (which I can confirm from personal experience) of failing to download single files of 2GB+ in size.

Lovefilm does a Wii after rival gets loaded on new Nintendo

Tim Jenkins

Not so dusty

The Wii attached to our 12-year-old TV (by component leads) is our main media consumption device; the kids use it for iPlayer and me and the Mrs are currently watching Breaking Bad S4 at one a night via Netflix , having just got through all the available Sons of Anarchy (even the completely bogus Oirish episodes). After that, I fancy Californication, and then perhaps Skins. In fact, now she's not zombied out in front of Downton, I don't think either of us has watched any 'broadcast' television for ages, and if it wasn't for Juniors Cartoon Network addiction we could probably do away with the Sky subs altogether.

LG claims UK Ultra HD TV first

Tim Jenkins

Re: What's it like for skintones?

A 'female variety' Reg reader and iPad owner who likes looking at boobies....

Can I get in ahead of the crowd and say

MARRY ME, PLEASE ; )

New Tosh drive can wipe out 4TB 'near instantaneously'

Tim Jenkins
Flame

Bang, and the dirt is gone.

35mm film canister of thermite, magesium ribbon, external HDD caddy.

You can even buy them ready made with a built in safety fuse:

http://www.alibaba.com/product-free/112717680/thermite_fire_starter.html

Why do Smart TV UIs suck?

Tim Jenkins

"I'm still waiting for the LoveFilm app, too"

Probably stuck in the same development hell as their Wii Channel (announced by snail-mail spam in August, still not here in late November):

'The LOVEFiLM Instant service is coming to your Wii, we're just taking a tiny bit of extra time to make sure every feature, part and piece of design on the Application is working as we'd expect it to.' (support@lovefilm.com in response to my query last week)

Netflix on our Wii gets used every day; great for finding the next episode of SoA as 'Recently Watched' is the default startpoint, less good to locate anything new, but we've got a season or two to go yet...

Bond's Walther PPK goes digital: A civilized gun updated

Tim Jenkins

Re: Bond's options were limited.

As a further reminder of just how long ago we first met him, Bond recalls being present at both the Ardennes in 1944 (while under machine-gun fire in Dr No) and Berlin in 1945 (in The Man with the Golden Gun, out-machoing Scaramanga). We also know he earned his '00' prefix (which signifies an agent who has killed in cold blood, not the 'licence to kill' invented for a film title) during the war by assassinating a German cypher expert in New York (presumably prior to Pearl Harbor) and a Norwegian double-agent. Sadly, Fleming never expanded on these incidents, which would make Bond, assuming a birth date in the early 1920s, now 90+, and one of the dwindling number of veterans of WWII (though, confusingly, of American and Russian military campaigns).

Tim Jenkins

The Bible to be Read as Literature

When we meet Bond in Casino Royale (book*, not film) he is carrying the .25 Beretta (a model 418, made even thinner by having the grip panels removed and the resulting gaps taped over, and with the foresight sawn off). For someone routinely trying to conceal a firearm under formal evening wear, this does not seem an unreasonable choice, and it's worth noting he never fires it during the course of the plot. It's his failure to be able to draw it from its "flat chamois leather holster" at the end of From Russia, with Love that causes its retirement (and a rather painful shin injury) rather than any lack of stopping power.

*Any true Bond fan, should, of course, regard the books as the prime source; a completely lost world where a real man would drink a pint of spirits, smoke 80 high strength cigarettes, consume departmental-issue Benzedrine in champagne to prepare for a night of high-stakes baccarat and then survive an hour of carpet-beater-to-the-genitals questioning. And people call Daniel Craig a tough guy...

ICO fines council £120,000 for crypto email fail

Tim Jenkins

Re: Ok I'm struggling here....

"the Council's own legal department had neither the skills nor the software to decrypt messages"

The external solicitor was missing a trick here. By sending every email to the council encrypted, they could have had a lovely time billing them for dealing with all the resulting 'huh', 'wtf' and other puzzled responses...

Curiosity photographs evidence of ancient streams on Mars

Tim Jenkins

Re: Looking for the wrong things

National Lampoon called from 1984; they'd like their joke back...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lampoon%27s_Doon

Last remaining reason to order an iPhone 5 disappears

Tim Jenkins

Re: Terrible article is terrible

Perhaps, if looked at side on, it might make someone think of a teeny tiny aircraft carrier with no planes on it...

Google acts against prostitution app after complaints from Congress

Tim Jenkins

Re: Right to tell...

"...the less others can insert themselves between her and the customer..."

unless, presumably, they've paid extra for that?

Capita and pals get £500m for ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE call centre

Tim Jenkins

Re: Zombie Apocolypse

I always go for a magnum pistol / sniper rifle combo, with a pipe bomb or Boomer bile for those 'busy' moments...

Scots council: 9-yr-old lunch blogger was causing 'distress and harm'

Tim Jenkins

Re: Argyle and Bute Statement

Even more astounding; a sensible, measured and reasonable response from an elected official to an internet sh*tstorm. This story gets better and better...

Apple's Ping has fatal pong, says CEO

Tim Jenkins

"Apple would work more closely with Facebook"

Trans: "We're planning to buy them after their their first public quarterlies with some loose change we found under Steve's futon, thus creating iFace"

Microsoft makes carbon neutrality pledge

Tim Jenkins

Hmmmmmm; choices, choices......

Say I'm heading a major tech company, cloud provider, web host etc. Do I choose to run my new data centre or power my office facilities, which represent the best of 21st century technology, from available, potentially unlimited low-carbon renewables; say hydro (Norway), wind (Germany), geothermal (Iceland), solar (Nevada) and/or nuclear, or do I tie myself to 18th century fossil sources which maim, poison and kill miners (Virginia), pollute indigenous peoples (Nigeria), fund repressive regimes (all the Gulf states) and enrich ex-KGB thugs, and which are on an ever ascending price, with finite availability and tenuous supply lines.

Frankly; who cares if climate change is human-influenced, or even happening at all? Renewables (and nuclear) for electricity is the future, if only so we can still have enough oil to have some cars, flights, plastic...

Virgin Media snags London Underground Wi-Fi monopoly

Tim Jenkins

UMA

Does that mean the Orange smart-phone models with Signal Boost (UMA) will be able to make and receive calls from the platforms?

That could cause some interesting 'discussions' with users of other networks...

40,000 XO PCs destroyed in Peru fire

Tim Jenkins

Re: And here *I* though...

Sadly, the built-in hand-cranked charger, despite being the single most remembered feature of the XO, never made it past the first prototype unit in 2005; it was judged to be too unergonomic and inefficient, particularly for use by poorly-nourished children. FreePlay Energy have one that clamps on to a table (http://www.freeplayenergy.com/page-view.php?pagename=Clamp-Charger).

Windows 8: Sugar coating on Microsoft's hard-to-swallow tablet

Tim Jenkins

"even a full reset might not lose much data"

Um; not exactly feeling a warm glow of security here. Last time I checked, 'might not' and 'lose much' aren't really great phrases to hear in the context of data integrity. Trying to blur the distinction between Metro and 'real' applications on the one hand (to sell more tablets), while relying on users to know if 'their stuff' is local or cloudy, would seem to be a little risky. I can just hear my father-in-law telling me he's 'refreshed' his PC, and it's working much better, but he can't seem to find his Office files...

HP caught with SIX Windows 8 PC packages up its sleeve

Tim Jenkins

Not the traditional SKUs then?

the really rubbish one

the one that looks bad, but kinda works, sometimes

the one that the EU insisted on

the one that you could afford

the one that you wanted

the top-of-the-range one that your boss plays Solitaire on all day

Apple chief thinks about his MOUNTAIN OF CASH a lot

Tim Jenkins

Re: Re: but how much of an area.....

Please show any rough working in the space provided

(and for extra credit, what is it in an area of whales?)

Toshiba Portégé Z830-10N 13.3in Ultrabook

Tim Jenkins

"...designing their notebooks to be difficult to open..."

Because it does wonders for the battery life?

Nominet to launch .wales and .cymru

Tim Jenkins

Re: Re: Re: Wales is not a country......

On the contrary, Wales IS a country. It is not, however, a sovereign state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdom

21st Century Sex: the shape of things to come

Tim Jenkins

It Gets Better

Just a minor quibble; the 'It Gets Better' campaign (www.itgetsbetter.org) is primarily to try and reduce suicide rates amongst LGBT teenagers who suffer homophobic bullying at school, rather than 'to try and effect change in attitudes towards sex' (which would be a description better applied to something like the Spanner Trust - www.spannertrust.org). IGB might have that as a side-effect, but the main focus is not necessarily even to do with sex itself, but rather issues around hostility to gender identity and same-sex attraction, which is subtly but significantly different.

Prada Phone by LG 3.0

Tim Jenkins
Joke

Vitamin C defficiency

What, no singe-edge razor blade storage and gold-plated straw attachment?

Sony Tablet P split-screen Android fondleslab

Tim Jenkins

mmmmm; shiny thing ; )

"it’s not yet clear just who the market is for something like this"

Presumably the same person who will buy a £1000 coffee machine from the John Lewis catalogue, which I like to think of as nature's way of balancing out the existence of the Argos one.

Erotica 2011 stands firm against rise of the sex machines

Tim Jenkins
Coat

Neigh Safe For Work

Am I the only one who read that as 'pony pictures'?

Eleven - if you will - rocktastic music movies

Tim Jenkins

TOWIE

You missed 'That'll Be the Day' (1973) and its sequel 'Stardust' (1974). Great Brit-flicks to counter all that merkin tosh. Keith Moon, Billy Fury, Adam Faith, Marty Wilde, Ringo as character actors and even David Essex is quite bearable in the lead role. Shame so few people know about these; I mean, 'School of Rock', really?....

BT hires another battalion of troops to speed fibre rollout

Tim Jenkins
Mushroom

Bang!

So they're hiring ex-squaddies to blow things up our ducts.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

(on the other hand, aren't Ghurkhas really, really small....)

BT superfast home fibre plans fall behind schedule. Again

Tim Jenkins

Handy for Starlings

Nope - the line is overhead the whole run from the exchange, which I can see from a bedroom window. Nice for sync speed (a solid 7.4Mbs) but not so good for future upgrades based on alternative bearer medium. Still, when we get ADSL2+ out here (about 2020, on current progress), I'll be laughing all the way to the 'Bay...

Tim Jenkins

Duct tape?

...some of the trials involving around 1,000 properties were taking twice as long as anticipated due to duct blockages that needed to be cleared....

Um; my phoneline (and, I suspect, one or two others around the country) arrives via a tall wooden post at the end of the street, through an eyebolt under the roofline and then in through a windowframe on the ground floor.

Not quite sure how they'd 'clear' that.

Aussie fans of old BBC fodder get paid iPlayer offering

Tim Jenkins

Refund my bit of their budget?

I'd rather watch an hour of TG with about 60 minutes 'chopped out' to make room for adverts and trailers.

"Every Top Gear episode ever made, plus every related Clarkson/May TV show, all fit into a 500GB portable drive with room to spare. Plug it into a WD TV gadget and enjoy"

Urgh; just got a little bit sick in my mouth....

Apollo 17 Moon landing: Shock revelations

Tim Jenkins

How did they get in and out?

Um; very, very carefully?

"Armstrong initially had some difficulties squeezing through the hatch with his Portable Life Support System (PLSS). According to veteran moon-walker John Young, a redesign of the LM to incorporate a smaller hatch had not been followed by a redesign of the PLSS backpack, so some of the highest heart rates recorded from Apollo astronauts occurred during LM egress and ingress."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11#Lunar_surface_operations

There's more than you ever wanted to know about PLSS and LM hatch dimensions here:

http://www.xmission.com/~jwindley/lmdoors.html

Anyway, as any fule kno, the main problem with countering the Moon Landing Conspiracy theories is that by now the Clangers will have turned everything left behind into useful houeshold items, thus rendering verification impossible...

Man City boss quits over cancer email

Tim Jenkins
Facepalm

PEBKAC as usual

or perhaps it was evil h4x0rS who caused him to misunderstand the meaning of 'reply to all'...

DNS hijack hits The Register: All well

Tim Jenkins

David Levinson ruled 0K!

Yup - our l33t hackers will hijack the aliens DNS, causing them to die of acute embarrasment when their invasion webpages redirect...

(which is actually slightly more likely than the Powerbook-virus-transfer-to-the-mothership-mainframe-via-AppleTalk trick, tbh)

http://starringthecomputer.com/computer.php?c=54

Sky wins TV riot battle

Tim Jenkins

Give your eyes a rest

and try Radio 5 Live instead (also available online)

broadcast from Manchester, so on-the-spot. They had a journalist in their own buildings porch watching the fun outside and relaying news upstairs, relevant interviews with actual locals, and a really excellent presenter (Irish accent) who did his shift calmly and insightfully, and then spent the rest of the night walking (!) around the streets and phoning in reports. Well worth that days licence fee, IMHO.

First smut site erected on .xxx address

Tim Jenkins

"Finally, somewhere safe to w*nk"

Winking is dangerous? Who knew?

Page: