* Posts by Martin

17 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Feb 2008

Unix world braces for geekgasm

Martin
Happy

UTC == GMT

UTC is the French for GMT as they couldn't bring themselves to use the Great British Correct Proper name for Real Time.

Lucky Mancs could get ID cards first, Jacqui declares

Martin
Unhappy

Seriously delusional

or is it the big lie?

"People come up and say they can't wait that long".

Or can she not detect sarcasm?

If she can seriously say that people are in favour of ID cards, with a straight face, her talent is unbounded.

Researcher warns of data-snooping bug in Apple's Safari

Martin
Thumb Down

Workaround is not correct

On his site (in the linked blog entry) he says that the workaround of deselecting Safari as the RSS reader is not sufficient.

As you say, it's light on details, but seems to be related to RSS only.

2009 - Thomas the Tank's journey to IT Hell

Martin
Unhappy

I give up

Ok, what does 'commodity dial tone services' actually mean? Is it meant to be good or bad?

Vista scrabbles for X Factor

Martin
Thumb Up

I'm a PC

I thought we'd had the I'm a PC adverts, starring Mitchell and Webb. They were quite good.

Virus writers go for Olympic gold

Martin
Alert

Vulnerable?

It's not true that all PC running Windows are vulnerable. Some of them are switched off.

HP shatters excessive packaging world record

Martin

Same thing happened to me.

I was working as a sysadmin a few years ago. We were about to replace a server, but in the mean time, HP rented us a few extra CPUs and memory boards for a couple of months until the new server was delivered.

All the software products are licenced per CPU, and some poor girly in Admin was very upset that they could get the CPUs to us the next day, but that the licences wouldn't be available for another week. Was this a problem? I assured flustered girly that we could probably manage somehow without the licences, as long as the CPUs turned up on time. Which they did.

And then the following week, we got a pallet delivered. Which contained, exactly as above, large cardboard boxes containing 2 sheets of paper, per CPU, per product. I seem to recall they were even in antistatic enclosures - but my memory must be playing tricks.

Even worse, at the end of the loan, we had a sternly worded letter that all products must be returned in pristine condition in original packaging. We had obviously kept the packing for the CPU and memory, but the licence stuff had been disposed of immediately. Luckily, there was an inkling of intelligence and humanity somewhere within HP, and our cavalier disposal of the packaging for the licences did not have any consequences.

Dissolving the plastic bag problem

Martin
Stop

Doomwatch

OMG - wasn't the very first episode of the Doomwatch series about a microbe that ate .. plastic! Causing aircraft to fall out of the sky and other such fun things.

It's all coming true, I tell you!

IM represents 'new linguistic renaissance'

Martin
Unhappy

Mathematically challenged

Arithmetic is probably not their strong point if they think that 2.4% is infinitesimally small. Consumer price inflation is about that rate, and I wouldn't call that infinitesimal or even particularly insignificant.

If 1 in 40 (ish) of the words you use falls into a certain category, that of abbreviations, that is going to be noticeable.

Grumble.

Ballmer bitch slaps Vista

Martin
Jobs Horns

Pure gibberish

"We have to make sure it doesn't get bigger still and that the performance and the battery and the compatibility we're driving on the things that we need to drive hard to improve."

How does someone who puts together sentences like this get permission to run a bath let alone a multinational company?

Or is it some sort of automated quote generator, like Buzzword Bingo?

You'll learn to love mobile TV

Martin

I agree

I only listen to the radio so I don't have to concentrate on driving(*). There's no way TV, on mobile or anything else, is going to become an accompaniment to driving.

* Mostly joking. But I also listen out for traffic reports telling me I can't get to where I want to go.

There's no way Ballmer survives Yahoo! disaster scenario

Martin
Stop

'snot SoHo

If you mean London, it's Soho, no SoHo. The latter is an abbreviation for Small Office / Home Office I think.

Yahoo! shares! rise! above! offer! price!

Martin
Dead Vulture

Please explain

I must be really stupid today. Please reconcile these three statements.

1) Yahoo shares are worth more than Microsoft offered for them

2) Microsoft offered $31

3) Yahoo shares are $29.

Can I go and work in the Stock Market, please?

Faster broadband through bonding

Martin

@Eddie Johnson

Pull that out, replace with .. wireless. Oh, wait.

Tiny, take-apart handset enters the record books

Martin

Is it really a phone?

How do you dial telephone numbers? Or is that one of the less important features of a phone that had to be dropped?

There was a review of an early Microsoft Smartphone which said it made a great PDA, but was hopeless as phone for talking to people.

Equifax asks customer to email debit card photocopies

Martin
Stop

Email is NOT secure

Email has no security. It might be reliable - but getting less so due to the quantity of spam.

As a former email system admin, I had the ability to look at any email while it was stored in our queue. I had no interest to do so, but sometimes a mail will stick in a queue if there is something wrong with the address for example. In that case, you might look to see if there's something obviously wrong. Addressed to Amason.com, for example. Or sometimes badly addressed emails can loop back.

To repeat, unencrypted email has no security. The chances of someone looking at it are low, but only due to the volume of email in general.

I have sent passwords by email, but not with reference to the account to which it relates. Normally I would send the account name by email and the password by phone.

IBM explores 67.1m-core computer for running entire internet

Martin
Alert

@Chris Morrison

"That was a 70's machine with a fairly ropey proessor (Alpha)."

Is that the Dec Alpha processor launched in 1992?