Posts by MarmiteToast

Hundreds of millions 'wasted' on UK court digitisation scheme

Re: Agile is OK for ...

This is a common misconception - agile doesn't mean "no design" or "no planning", you should be doing that regardless of the size of your project.

Silly

Agile as a paradigm doesn't work without end/business user engagement. Unfortunately most IT departments don't get this and transform themselves anyway.

Beeb flings millions more £s at Capita for telly tax collection

No means no

I haven't bought a TV license for over 3 years now and don't watch any TV (live/catch-up or whatever). For the same price I get a Netflix and Amazon Prime subscription with some change left over. Much better value for money.

I haven't had too much trouble with Crapita, although they really don't understand what "We won't ask you again for 2 years" means. I've constantly re-establishing with them that "No, I don't need a license".

Ten-year-old Windows Media Player hack is the new black, again

Comeback?

Making a comeback? This never went away.

SimCity 2000

Try a 386 SX-25

Only took me 6 months to figure out how to make a boot disk and get it running. Not all that bad for an 11 year old though.

WORLD temporarily FREED from BURDEN of TWITTER!

I thought the sun never visited Woking!

AT&T defends FaceTime price gouge

People use facetime?

I thought it was just the gimmick to sell iPhone 4, just like Siri was the gimmick for the 4S.

Seagate mulls flogging precious drives at auction

I smell an opportunity

1. Be a hard disk manufacturer.

2. Open a trading desk.

3. Control supply by stopping/starting production.

4. Buy/Sell options/futures.

5. Treat traders like rockstars.

6. Mark to market accounting.

7. Get employees to invest in own company (optional).

What could go wrong? ;)

Xbox 720 to double-up as a DVR

Why do they call it the xbox 720?

Because when you see it you turn 720 degrees and walk away.

Lenovo pitches two-CPU ThinkPad

People don't just whip out their laptop on a bus or the tube to watch a movie, it's just unpractical. It'll always been on longer train rides or planes where you can set it up comfortably and don't mind waiting 20 seconds for windows to boot. It would be better using the budget and space to provide a bigger, longer lasting battery.

London Stock Exchange floored, again

Not surprised

Having sat in a data centre for 8 hours,ready to test, waiting for their operations team to figure out what they needed to do on the weekend before an exchange upgrade this comes as no surprise...

Google will build 1Gbps fiber networks to the home

@Jason Bloomberg

I for one welcome our new Google Overlords.

Sorry, can't post on slashdot.org at work....

Googlephone sales off to a sluggish start?

Ugly

Am I the only person who thinks the phone looks ugly?

DVLA data powers likely to be abused by foreign officials

They could...

At a bare minimum:

1. Log all access

2. Allow people to register abuse ala TPS

3. Revoke access for those found abusing the system

Although this is kind of closing the gate after the horse has bolted.

Johnson refuses to intervene in McKinnon extradition

oh

Sorry I've downvoted you. You imply that Ministers should be able to overrule the courts when they like, that's rather disturbing...

Sure it's not going to do Mr Johnson any favours in the court of public opinion but this is the right action to take.

Channel 4 to become Channel 3D tonight

TV in Scotland?

@JMB

Didn't realise you got TV up in Scotland let alone 3D programmes

UK gets final warning over Phorm trials

@Oliver Jones

> By Oliver Jones Posted Thursday 29th October 2009 13:30 GMT

>> "Spoil your ballet paper on election day. It's the only way to ensure none of the incompetent >> idiots get in."

> Errm, no, it's one good way to make sure your vote won't count! If you're just going to spoil your ballot paper, why bother going out to vote? Either way, the outcome will be the same.

The point of spoiling your ballot paper is that every spoilt vote is count and acts as a vote of no confidence in British politics

Apple applies for in-call music swapsies iPhone patent

Prior Art

Unfortunately there's plenty of prior art in various tv shows/movies. I for one remember an episode of South Park where cartman sends a picture to Kyle while talking to him on the phone (without having to do anything more than take the photo).

Apple fail.

BOFH: Aspie no questions

Poor

zzzz, this is the first BOFH I couldn't be bothered reading to the end... very poor

Microsoft knew about Xbox 360 disc-scratch problem, employee claims

Not what I expected

I know quite a few people who have had scratched disks and they *haven't* moved their console around while turned on. Unfortunately Microsoft refuse to replace the actual drive and instead you have to replace your games every month.

The Mother of All Demos — 150 years ahead of its time

@ShaggyDog

No, in the article he mentions that it took 150 years for people to realise the power of the printing press and asks whether it'll be 150 years for this. Strange way of putting though I agree.

Online Black Friday sales better than flat

Carousel Fraud

Anyone else suspect that VAT cuts are just a way of improving the carousel fraud figures?

Facebook wins record $873m fine against smut spammer

@Ted Treen

If you had a 5-12 year old, would you let them on the internet unsupervised? Should they have a facebook at that age?

Although I agree with the sentiment.

Who's got more cash? Apple or Microsoft?

@Matt Bradley

Vista doesn't have noisy fans either.

Facebook rattling tin in Dubai?

@fred

Oh he did, just it was to get rich quick, not build a sustainable business.

Police collar kid for Wi-Fi pinching

@Neil Hoskins

And now, thanks to the reg, we all know OU computing certificates aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

AT&T throws iPhone users free Wi-Fi

London

London has terrible 3G coverage... I'd dread to live out in the wilds.

Microsoft faces second 'black screen' lawsuit

Give him what he wants

Tell him it's easy to fix, just uninstall windows.

Heck - write a program that will remove all windows files (but not personal files) and see how he likes those apples.

Intel shows off 'giant iPod Touch'

@Jolyon

Surely your money would be better spent moving to a nicer neighbourhood than buying an iPhone?

Verity's further education

Ok...

I for one will not touch an OU course based on this.

London and Wales to get fast fibre

'fast'

Dear Register,

You got me all excited that we'd be getting "fast fibre" rather than plain old slow 100mbit fibre. Turns out that fast fibre doesn't even meet my expectations for plain old slow fibre.

Finally launched: Nokia's iPhone beater

Headphone jack

Headphone jack on top... why!? I don't want the cable dangling over the screen while I try and pick music. Same as iPhone :( but not the touch :)

Furse should not resign, she should be sacked

Unimpressed

I cannot agree with Dan Wilkinson more, this article is geek sensationalism, wrote by someone with a poor understanding of this issues present.

How to stop worrying and enjoy paying for incoming calls

I'd pay...

Everyone has a friend who will miss call people so that others call them back and they don't have to pay a penny. Solves this problem, excellent!

Enterprise class mobility

@ Alexander

As soon as the enterprise apps and support come out for the iPhone the Blackberry is going to be firmly seated in 2nd place.

The only real advantage that it can maintain is the physical keyboard but seeing as most people only tap out quick yes/no replies on the road this amounts to very little.

I suspect you're just trolling though and any apple product is a target :(

Is Microsoft's Silverlight evil?

@GoatJam

So not true... more than 50% of the developers I've met have absolutely raved about Microsoft products. It's a misconception that the idealists represent a majority of developers, just like users most just see it as a tool to get the job done.

iPhone 3G to lure pre-payers to contracts - survey

@Mike Sullivan

... that you don't talk about statistics with your wife very much?

Mayor Boris to cover Porsche costs in CO₂ tax brouhaha

London would make no money from a £25 congestion charge

Because by now pretty much everyone knows how to avoid it legally at minimal cost. Same applies to the £8 charge.

It makes sense to scrap this as legal costs would just mount and Porsche would likely be the victors.

Ofcom flashes cash guarantees at BT for fibre investment

@Posts 1, 3 and 4

Or we could just you know not spend money on anything, no police, no NHS, no governance, no international aid... oh I could go on. Then we could all have fibre our our arses because it's clearly the most important thing we need. I just can't stand youtube taking 1 minute to load a video.

Intel fined $25m

Spare change

Intel reportedly found the $25m down the back of their sofa.

Boffins prove the existence of jet-setters

mmm

I wonder who was number 5.

DARPA awards 'Deep Green' battle-computer cash

@Robajob

Unfortunately I'm going to use you as an example here...

Can we please not start using Slashdot memes here! I've noticed in several comments and they should really stay on Slashdot.

Sun stretches for Flash dance

Margins

Sun could probably replace all their hard drives, like capacity for like, with flash based technology and still have a healthy profit margin on their hardware.

NHS IT loses key contractor

Lessons need to be learnt

It sounds like IT contracting firms need to learn from Railway contracting firms.

1. Offer to supply services at massively reduced prices to undercut competitors and win contracts.

2. Once contracts are signed re-negogiate contract and take government for as much money as possible.

3. ....

4. Profit.

Or maybe it's the government that has learnt from this.

Oh sorry wrong site for that.

Japanese customs reunited with lost dope

Prices...

To everyone who keeps commenting on how expensive this looks have you ever stop to consider that in a different country, say a country were the penalty for possession is more severe, it may be priced differently? No? I thought you hadn't.

BT industrial action is off - for now

Never had a problem with BT

<ramble>

Am I in the minority when I say I've never had a problem with BT? I can also say I've always spoken to someone with an english accent, within 2-3 minutes of calling and always had a fast resolution of any issue.

Moved in to a new house, phone sockets weren't working. Next day engineer comes out and fixes phone and rewires it to a more convenient position (free). Day after that engineer comes back to install longer lasting cable while being chastised by his manager (because the cable he used only lasted 50 years and not 75 years and they wanted to avoid engineer call outs in the future... go figure).

But the point is everything has been fixed.

The only time I've had better service is with LLU broandband in the old days when they used to take the whole line and not just the data part. The t'internet was running a bit slow so I decided to call Easynet up. Within *one* minute of calling they'd agreed to send an engineer to the exchange and less than two hours later they'd fixed the hardware down there (some other engineer had unplugged some of their kit).

</ramble>

MPs demand US spooks' guarantees on census data

@Paul Hargreaves

True, but then we'd have to put it down as an expense on the balance sheet. I can almost guarantee this wont be paid for upfront and will instead be paid for over many years in the same manner a loan is repaid.

Government announces shortlist for ID card contracts

Please let EDS get it

I'm strongly opposed to ID cars and I think this would be the ideal way to kill the project and make it seem like a really bad idea to try again.

Wii still king in US

And I thought they were dumb when they elected George W. Bush

but buying the Wii en masse?

I'll get my asbestos covered coat, thank you gents.

Temp workers to get equal rights after 12 weeks

hmmm

It's typically 2-3 times the permentant rate. e.g. a contractor will get £130k whereas a perm will get £50-60k. How is this going to work...