Posts by Big-G

Hey, I wrote this neat little program for you guys called the IMAC User Notification Tool

Acronyms Acronyms

The first in a new generation of mainframes was shipped from the US to our London HQ. Instead of pressing buttons and setting switches, the operator would boot the mainframe using a mini computer, to control and partition the system. The little orange CRT screen reported boot progress by showing the acronnym, start and end of each stage. The final and successful stage would be reported as "CUNT.. Initialized". The design engineers were eventually persuaded to refer to the Control Unit Numerical Table as Control Unit Numerical List, and asked, in future, to consult the Acronym Research And Selection Executive Holistic Online Editor

1,700 lucky Brit kids to visit Apple Stores for 'Year of Engineering'

Teaching ?

Just like "food education" involves a visit to Tesco, another class gets "taught" how to become consumers. Now they've really lost the plot

BT, beware: Cityfibre reveals plan to shovel £2.5bn under Britain's rural streets

Not the 'rural' part of Milton Keynes , apparently

Having splurged a few pence on some targeted social media ads, this early adopter in Milton Keynes responded, but was told no, not available to my address at home or work. Both are in the Unitary borough of Milton Keynes, one a village the other a town , 8 and 10 mile north to be precise. Not that I'm in the least bit surpised

Yahooooo! says! its! email! is! scrahoooo-ed!

Seems to be back now

Mm, sacrilicious: Greggs advent calendar features sausage roll in a manger

And....

......where's the IT angle on this bucket of words

Indian call centre scammers are targeting BT customers

On the TPS list, and during 30 months with EE just the odd few calls we could blacklist. After 4 months with BT, and ExDiretctory, and still on TPS list, been getting 12+ unwanted/silent/spam calls per evening, now reducing since blacklisting all international and 'unknown' callers and adding numbers to the list weekly ... I think, no CONVINCED, that BT , or someone with access to their customer DB is selling this info . And the only thing I can do is once again switch providers at the end of the contrick. Although this process can be sweetened with new customer financial/value incentives, its fundamentally wrong that I need to get on this little merry go round every year, because the operator of one of the country's critical national infrastructure treats data security as a joke!

EE looks at its call charges, hikes a bunch, walks off giggling

Making the case for disruptors...

...like whatsapp, and dualsim phones, it should end in tears or BT/EE, however, if it werent for the near monopoly, being created by their merger, I would say, bring on their tears, but I fear customers may well share them.

Met Police to slash hundreds of IT jobs, hands £216m outsourcing gig to Steria

Re: What did happen to May's grand vision for the bizzies 'puters?

Better off with one police force/service (delete as you see fit) . Which makes 42 to many command and control systems, 42, too many call handling and crime reporting systems, 42 too many purchasing systems, 42 too many ... not including British Nuclear Police, British Transport Police, Ministry of Defence Police, and possibly Royal Parks Police if they're still around.

Blocking mobile adverts just became that little bit easier

So it's really about carriers getting their share

"......which the mobile networks want to encourage to share revenue."

.. a form of corporate blackmail it would appear.

Broadband routers: SOHOpeless and vendors don't care

Re: OpenWRT?

..and, apart from polishing your halo, your point is ?

£150m, three years... TWO base stations. Gov.uk? You guessed it

It is. Mainly due to the fact that many basic civic services are now online, just think taxes etc.and the intention is to have all government and public services online only. 3G is now an 'old' standard, and it's surely more economical than having a phone land line, just for broadband at your home . Try living in a rural not spot and you'll soon see for yourself, and I'm not talking weekends and holidays.

...so glad and relieved to learn I'm not screaming alone.

Online tat bazaar eBay coughs to YET ANOTHER outage

Ebay still not up according to my ISP (TalkTalk)

Cable thieves hang up on BT, cause MAJOR outage

Since when did severing fibre, bring any scrap value from copper cables?

Analyst says Brit rail broadband plan is TRAIN CRAZY

You've all missed the point ...

Which was, saturation press coverage, ( http://bit.ly/1aKeiZQ ), of a political headline grabbing piece of spin. A bit more follow up and questioning from hacks and editors, along the lines of this article, would have been welcome, but that would involve boring work, detail and original copy. Detail, what details? who the hell has time for detail these days?

Google Nexus 7 2013: Fondledroids, THE 7-inch slab has arrived

Ok so I fancied owning one when I read this. Checked the 12 year old Nectar account, and hey presto, had enough, so got down to Argos and the 32GB version was mine within the hour for a lifetime of points and an additional £4.99 . Good job I planned on getting one of these all those years ago.

Love it Love it, Love it.

UK mulls ban on tiny mobiles to block prison smugglers

Look up the definition of 'charger' in Henri Chariere's book, "Papillione" ! Pretty sure this was written before we had mobile phones.

Fried-egg sarnies kick off Reg man's quid-a-day nosh challenge

Re: Make some Real (additive free, fresh and honest) Bread cheaper than bought

Machines ok , but recipes usually call for more (unneccessary ingredients, like sugar an dried milk) plus you may need to experiment to get it right, cos it's darn difficult to feel and adjust midway and if it ain't right you get waste...ergo use of the original machines.. hands...have a look at them, they really are marvels of engineering. But really...whatever makes your toast, freshly home made is still in the long term cheaper, more nutritious, fresher and longer lasting, and tastier, than the bought stuff.

Make some Real (additive free, fresh and honest) Bread cheaper than bought

Best of luck , and if it helps, here is a recipe for making a loaf of realbread,

Tasty, Nutritious, longer lasting and cheaper than anything bought. Makes you feel good having made it too!

Strong Bread Flour 500g (When you buy 1.5Kg can be as cheap as £1, but avg is £1 per kg)

Water 300g (if flour is white, 320-340gr if wholemeal)

Salt 9g

Yeast 10g (avoud this cost by making your own "sourdough starter" with just flour, water and recipes from Google.

Mix water with salt, and add to tflour, then add yeast, and mix, then cover and rest fr 5-10 mins, then knead for 8-10 mins. Shape into a ball and place in a bowl, covered and leave for about 45 mins (if in spain. 1.5hrs if in cooler blighty. When doubled in size, re-shape into a ball, place on a baking tray and again wait 45mins/1.5hrs, until doubled in size, then bake in a preheated oven at 250degC for 10 minutes, then reduce temp. to 210degc for 15-20 mins. Loaf is ready when a tap on the bottom side sounds hollow.

Amazon makes BEELLIONS from British customers, pays pennies in tax

Re: Easy Money!

Oh and by the way, you wont know you're being charge VAT (as opposed to CAT ;-0) until you buy some and see your invoice ! How's that for a hoodwink?

Easy Money!

There's more than one way to fleece a punter, and Amazon use every trick in the book .

Running a small Microbakery, I buy Flour from them. The Invoice shows them charging Cat at 20% on the goods (Flour), P&P is nil , therefore product = Price+20% vat. But Flour, being a basic ingredient food stuff is not subject to VAT. Complain to Amazon and they quickly refund, as they have done, EACH and EVERY TIME for the past 12 months. Why hurry to change the systems if only a small percentage of punters notice, and those that do , are offered profuse apologies and a refund.

I wonder what happens to the VAT collected from those who don't realise that such goods are not subject to VAT?

EC competition concerns stall UK's superfast broadband plans

Stuff em!

Oh FFS!, re-nationalise BT/Opengap, tell em to get on with putting FTTH everywhere, and then re-privatize it!

Or better still, stop creating private monopolies and get some real competition going!

I'm mad as hell and I'm not taking this any more!

Acer Revo RL100 media centre

Tesco ?

Curious, which Tesco model are you describing?

Minister 'C*nt' promises £50m to get fabtastic fibre for all

who's kidding who here?

Apparently, the Beeb are going to pay for it! Now, who pays the Beeb all their money? and why are the BBC providing superfab shopping grocery shopping facilities to the masses?

And did you know that the 'new trial" exchange, is conveniently located close to BT's R&D centre in Martlesham Heath? Presumably, for this reason, The Los Angeles Times reported back in Mar 3, 1994, that "...British Telecommunications planned delivery of interactive multimedia services to homes Trials are under way in Kesgrave England .and that the Tehran Times, reported on |fibre to the Cabinet trials back on Oct 14 2008, ..."BT's Openreach will run a small trial in early 2009 involving 30 homes connected to the Foxhall exchange in Kesgrave, Suffolk. "

Presumably, the minister received no money from BT for making the BT promotional ad for BBC Breakfast TV & Radio.

There is presumably more, but this dial up 'not-spot' user has no money left!

Why shopping of course

..next time, pay attention to the minister, numpty!

Shareholders sue HP over Hurd's sex scandal probe

Applaud, or not

On the one hand, I feel like applauding the decision to go to litigation, but on the other, I sense a revenue opportunity for the lawyers. Yet another drain on the heard earned pensions of us mere mortals, damned if we do and damned if we dont.

Forget the Jesus Phone, here's the Rude Phone

Those Austrians again!

Austria permits personalised number plates, with the proviso that it must be preceded by the first letter of the city where the vehicle is registered, i.e. WElREG-1 if in Vienna, or SELREG1 if Salzburg. So when the international greetings card co. Anker International had 5 cars in Vienna registered, they read WANKER 1 through WANKER 5. Somewhere there's a photo of all 5 parked in line in the company parking lot!

Faster broadband for free?

When is a BT Customer not a BT Customer?

When they use cable...stupid! The rest of us are still BT customers, albeit indirectly, of BT Wholesale. The £1.20 P&P offer is only available to BT "Total Broadband Customers" , so if you use another ISP, then you'll have to fork out the full amount of £7.07 on top of p&p.

This does make me wonder though, whether or not this is an "infrastructure or legacy issue" affecting all customers of BT Wholesale, and whether or not they should also offer the devices at a similar cost, via "other ISP's". After all I would imagine that BT Total Broadband is able to source these devices at similarly massive volumes & discount, available to BT Wholesale, so why should they not also do the same, and offer them under similar terms via "other ISP's" or "their customers", which in turn means those BT customer who are not BT customers.

Confused? I wouldnt blame you if you were. BUt I cant help feeling I'm being done over, after all BT is offering to FIX an inherent flaw in their own infrastructure for a small fee to one customer and a bigger cost to other customers, even though the problem is the same for all copper wire customers.

Spanish court in favour of topless celebs

WTF

What the flip has this to with IT, Sci. Tech or anything of relevance to our stumblings?

You seem to have mistaken me (for one) for someone who gives shit!

And another thing......... I'm seriously considering starting a campaign to make The Reg a Celeb Free Zone. Anyone else with me?

How about the tag line: Ignore a Celeb today! Go on try it!

Some firm named Unisys does something

What a relief!

For these last Ahem! years, it seems I was not alone in trying to fathom out the meaning of all that marketing doublespeak! .

Want faster broadband soon? Move to Kent, says BT

Remember Sir Iain Vallance's offer..

..way back when, befre ADSL had been heard of? .... to lay fibre to every single home in the country, on condition the goverment removed the restriction on their licence, prohibiting them from carrying TV programmes.

What a pity they werent taken up, cause then they would have been easy to break up.

As it is, the licence restriction was dropped recentl.

Too little too late !

Still ruled by a Monoploy!

Thinks like a Monoploy.

Talks like a Monoploy.

Acts like a monopoly.

If I didnt know beter I'd say it was a deliberate government ploy to subjugate us ?

When will those we've put in charge, realise this, and break em up, or make em pay for licences by infrastructure investments, ot something creative like that.

BT = Bloody Theives,

Signed:

Bitterly Twisted !

Milton Keynes council embraces WiMAX

It gets worse

So I live in a village outisde Milton Keynes, yet I also pay the "MK Community Charge"

Might I be able to receive this as a DSL alternative?

Why does it take the council to 'invest' in providing an alternative to BT?

Will I get it in my area?

Funny this, but completing the rather pedantic online form (..... doesn't recognize spaces in the postcode or telephone no'!....) to see if I could get it, but the submission process fails to work...... some file missing! Suggest I tell the 'webmaster' Well I wouljd if I could but even using the trusty dog and bone is a failure, cos all I get is a default "please leave a message" option, as it seems no-one' at home!

Am I any better off?

Am I surprised?

Will I re-try later?

...Do I look bothered?