Posts by Bob Starling

That's it. It's over. It's really over. From today, Adobe Flash Player no longer works. We're free. We can just leave

Re: Flash! Flash! I Love You....

If more upvotes were allowed I'd give you more

Brits are sitting on a time bomb of 40m old electronic devices that ought to be recycled

Re: As I rather did say around here a few times

You certainly did and your article

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/31/rare_metals_mineral_reserves_talk_preamble/

is a good read.

I enjoyed your book too.

A day in the life of London seen through spam and weak Wi-Fi

No longer station

According to information board at Waterloo last week the new words are "calling point"

Nikola Tesla's greatest challenge: He could measure electricity but not stupidity

You have my vote

Dabbsy, I have alway enjoyed your contributions and admired your use of English.

Today with your comments on country and western singers you have soared in my estimation.

Dabbsy for PM.

Microsoft working to scale Blockchain for grand distributed ID scheme

Re: What is the fundamental purpose of ID?

One ID to rule them all and in the darkness bind them!

Car trouble: Keyless and lockless is no match for brainless

Reminds me of the time

When I was stood outside my hire car, pressed the unlock button, heard the unlock thunk but found the doors were still locked when I tried to open them.

Spent about 5 mins repeating the lock / unlock sequence, hearing the locks move but still found all the doors locked.

Finally realised that my car was parked a couple of spaces away and I had been trying to get into an identical hire car. This was at a public beach by the way - I would have checked the registration if I'd still been in the hire company car park.

On the couch with an AI robo-doc asking me personal questions

"Serves me right for buying IoT furniture. Either it has been hacked or my settee responded to a dodgy email and refused to pay the ransom."

Brilliant!

Forget robot overlords, humankind will get finished off by IoT

"as robust and secure as a kitten crossing a motorway"

Love it.

Google may just have silently snuffed the tablet computer

I don't remember what I just read

I am a goldfish

The Rise, Fall and Return of TomTom

Wish my BMW had a TomTom based SatNav built it

Instead of the c**** system it actually has.

Security gurus get behind wheel of driverless car debate

Updates?

I see the potential for endless controversy here.

Assuming that in-car software will require updating at intervals who will be responsible if an incident is the result of a bug that's been fixed but not installed?

Will car owners be obliged to install an update even if it includes features they might not find desirable such as automatic detection of motoring misdemeanours or phone-home movement tracking?

Maybe I should have become a lawyer.

Lester Haines: RIP

That's an unwelcome shock

So many times I have enjoyed an article here and checked back for the author to find it was Lester. Condolences to his family and friends.

RIP, you will be missed.

Sanbolic smoke ball was no mere puff: Citrix preps new Melio release

Did Citrix insult your mother?

Seems like there's a bit of an agenda in your spin on this news item. "Inflict it on customers" is hardly neutral not to mention the "interesting strategy" and "bold move" comments in the last paragraph that any Englishman will recognise as terms of abuse.

Never even used Citrix so no agenda of my own, just a perception that you have gone beyond the usual Register sarcasm.

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Are you sure Wally's in here

Net neutrality: How to spot an arts graduate in a tech debate

Prompted a memory

Of an arts graduate I knew who was employed by a large arms company as an experiment in providing an alternate view to the engineering types. He soon found that he and his colleagues became known as Snotty Nosed Arts Graduates aka SNAGs

Hitting a SNAG had a whole new meaning.

Bring on the Music, Apple: Spotify ups the ante - and money pot

Re: Interesting...

You know you can upset people by arguing with facts don't you

Erik Meijer: AGILE must be destroyed, once and for all

"a scrum runs up the field passing the ball to each other"

I spend a fair bit of time watching rugby and it seems that these days a scrum is something that starts with an attempt at organisation that rapidly turns into a collapsed heap with a random assignment of blame and punishment as a result.

Come to think of it that's not a bad metaphor for a lot of software development but I don't think its something to aspire to.

Creating more harmony around end user computing

End User Computing

I remember when "End User Computing" was interpreted by IT departments as having a verb as the opening word. Maybe times are finally changing.

Big Beardie's watching: Gaze into the screen... it shall gaze also into you

Niqab is starting to look like a great idea

Either that or extend the tin foil hat to cover the face.

Ten classic electronic calculators from the 1970s and 1980s

HP calculators rewired my brain for RPN so thoroughly that I am almost incapable of using a regular calculator. I was ridiculously pleased when I found a HP11C emulator app for my smartphone.

Google backs gallery of computer-crazed female boffinry at Bletchley Park

Does the gallery include Verity?

If not, it should.

Radar gremlins GROUND FLIGHTS across southern Blighty

Non news. Really?

I'm somewhat concerned by the statement in that BBC news link that the problem was caused by a "rogue flight plan" and required a reboot to fix. I would have hoped that a system like NATS would not fall off its perch merely because of a bit of bad data.

Apple's new TV allegedly spotted... in Canadian office

Voice Recognition

is going to add a whole new level of fun to those arguments over what to watch.....

Hunt refers News Corp/BSkyB bid to Competition Commish

Well isn't that so cosy

News Corp conveniently provides government with excuse to avoid making decisions on their grab for BSkyB for a couple of years. I wonder what they expect their quid pro quo to be?

Just more cynical crisis management like keeping Rebekah Brooks in place in the short term to act as a bullet catcher.

11.6in sub-notebooks

Nostalgic here too

Yep, 4:3 screens allow you to read so many more lines of code. I use a 15in laptop with 1050 pixel deep screen. I'm sure I don't want to carry a widescreen laptop that can match this. !progress.

Murdoch's paywall: The end of the suicide era?

Its about the iPad really

I just know I'm going to give in and buy the thing.

If it allows me to read papers on the web comfortably as I eat my lunch then I will no longer be buying the print version of the Times every day. So at worst I'm looking at £2 a week instead of £5 or £0 if I find I don't miss the Times columnists too much.

I never click on adverts so charging for the online version is the only hope Rupert has for rescuing any income from me. I would imagine he'll come out ahead too given the margins of newsprint vs online costs. Shame about the local shop though.

HP Envy 15 'Lynnfield' Core i7 laptop

Yet another useless letter box screen

Was liking the sound of this machine until it got to the screen resolution. 768 deep is a waste of time, I'll never buy any laptop with less than a 1000 pixel deep screen.

Microsoft stalks, poaches Apple retail staff

Does that mean Microsoft stores won't take money either?

I tried to shop in the Apple store Kingston recently. Picked various items off display and looked around for someone to pay. Gave up and left after 5 mins since there was no sign of anyone taking money anywhere. Payment desks aren't cool I guess.

Why would Microsoft want to copy these muppets.

Sites pulling sneaky Flash cookie-snoop

Ta for the information

Didn't know about this. Went browsing and found that you can see what sites have been storing information and do some management of blocking etc using the following link.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

Verity's further education

Watch out Australians

At the rate they're digging their hole you are about to be joined by some OU idiots.

BT and Phorm secretly tracked 18,000 customers in 2006

This amused me

Phoned BT Broadband support to complain about possible interception of my web browsing by Phorm. They didn't have a clue what I was talking about and they suggested that I call BT's internet abuse support team.

Some unintentional honesty there?