Posts by Horridbloke

Steelie Neelie 'shocked' that EU tourists turn mobes off when abroad

Re: Funny thing is

I once got a "Welcome to the Isle of Man" roaming text whilst in Wales (Amlwch to be exact).

Tata says USA rejecting HALF of Indians' work visa requests

IT'S CHEEEEEAAAAAP!!!!!

"Much of the widely-alleged benefit of offshoring sounds like a typical tunnel-vision fantasy of a stereotypical accountant."

Bingo. I while ago I worked at a UK software outfit that had been bought up by US dot-com lunatics. At one point there were several IT professionals from India visiting the officers on six-month stints and supposedly learning the ropes. The phrase "Don't worry, you're not training up your replacements" was uttered numerous times. A development office was opened in India, the folks there got access to our CM system and the fun really started.

I'm sure there are lots of educated, capable and very well motivated technical types in India, but the people we were asked to work with were about as good as a random UK-born chav would be if plonked into a development role and expected to produce with no pertinent training. Of course there were language problems to contend with as well. I had the impression the US overlords had travelled to India and hired the cheapest people they could find there.

This was all a bit ironic considering the cash the people stateside were burning on nice offices and perks, but given they didn't respect the engineering function I suppose it made sense.

Bangable poster firm Novalia makes printed 'leccy keyboard

Re: @fibbles

"Tried that as a student project"

Well done on at least trying it.

Stephen Fry rewrites computer history again: This time it's serious

Re: Somebody put it far better than I could...

Err, I don't think anyone is suggesting Stephen Fry is an idiot.

He's famous primarily for having a lovely voice and the veneer of cosy authority the BBC and advertisers go for. He's done very well on it and that level of success doesn't come without a good dollop of initiative and drive but why should anyone take any more notice of him than, say, Keith Chegwin?

Somebody put it far better than I could...

Stephen Fry: a stupid person's idea of a clever person.

Bottom falls out of Nokia's network rump

Perhaps...

... they could start making toothbrushes.

Seagate's LaCie whips out bonkers posh silver-plated storage ball

Too tasteful...

I want a USB backup device embedded in an life-size Elvis statue.

A private Dell makes sense. Doesn't mean it'll work, though

Reminds me of another company...

This "handling" of their suppliers.... Are Dell the Tesco of IT?

Apple prepping 4K resolution 12.9-inch MaxiPad – report

Re: Seems a bit pointless

I see some "jaggies" on my Nexus 7's much smaller 1920*1080 display, even though my eyesight is past its peak. The main offender is Google Earth and it could probably be addressed via antialiasing, however it could be addressed even better by upping the physical resolution. I bet the average user would benefit from increased text clarity, even though they might not conciously notice the difference. So yes, 4k on a relatively massive 12" tablet makes sense.

Microsoft hires Pawn Stars to shaft Google

@Peter Gathercole

Thanks for that. I really enjoyed the Ghost In the Shell tv series a decade ago and I've just watched that offending advert. I don't think I've ever seen anything miss the point so badly before.

Oh, and cheers for the heads-ups about the new GITS...

PlayStation daddy on new PS4: She's ALL 'PLAY', NO 'Station' this time

@TechRenegade

I just downvoted you for complaining about downvotes.

PUNISHMENT gluttons: The Dr Who monsters that come back for more

Re: The Master

I thought portraying The Master as Tony Blair (the whole "Harold Saxon" thing) was quite inspired.

(Certainly better than the "General Belgrano" allusion in one of the Christmas specials.)

LG's curvy Flex phablet and its self-healing bottom escapes Korea

Re: “self-healing” bottom

The spice isn't the problem, the squid-and-spring-onion pancakes can be though.

If your bosses tell you you're 'in it together', don't ever believe them

If your employer considers you a resource...

... then they can't reasonably demand you don't.

X hours per week, Y days notice when resigning, and don't do anything to the IT that they can come after you for.

Right royal rumpus over remote-control 'RoboRoach'

Re: Cockroaches have a long and proud history...

This isn't scientific experimentation though. At best it's a demonstration of a biological process but that seems pretty tenuous to me. It looks like an attempted commercialisation of some of the experiments towards insect-based surveillance that were reported a few years back, but really it's a new expensive way of being a dick with a smartphone.

Who is going to perform the operation?

A kid? Probably not given the need for some money, a smart phone, a steady hand and a concentration span.

A teacher? I doubt this would pass muster from an ethics perspective for school teaching in the UK.

An adult outside of the teaching system? Well anyone who might be interested in this is probably already slow-poisoning their family and neighbours.

Perhaps some researchers somewhere would benefit from this ready-made kit?

Galaxy is CRAMMED with EARTH-LIKE WORLDS – also ALIENS (probably)

Re: BOFFINS

"I don't think the rest of us should have to Google words..."

Yeah, save us from ever having to learn anything..

@AC

"Also Jesus Christ was an Allien"

This is a common misunderstanding arising from a fifteenth century mistranslation. Jesus Christ was actually Alan.

Locked into fixed-term mobile contract with variable prices? Not on our watch – Ofcom

For pity's sake, don't buy a phone on HP

Well done to Ofcom for this action, but IMPO entering into a two year phone contract is a pretty silly thing to do anyway - anyone who falls for the free-smartphone-on-the-fifty-quid-a-month-deal shouldn't be allowed out on their own.

I've use a thirty day rolling deal for a while now and every six months or so the service provider phones me up and tries to trick me into entering into a longer term contract. I don't mind these nuisance calls because they correlate with the deals on offer being rejigged, so I know it's time to check their website then call them back and ask to be moved to the new better deal.

Of course I'll look pretty silly when we enter a hyperinflation phase.

Oracle says open source has no place in military apps

Do you see what Oracle is doing?

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Extreme ultraviolet litho: Extremely late and can't even save Moore's Law

Re: Slipped place

I make a 450mm diameter circle to be ((0.45m/2)^2)*3.141 = about 0.16 square metres in area.

A nano-Rhode island is, going from wikipedia, 3.14 square metres.

A wafer is therefore 0.16/3.14 = about 0.05 nano-Rhode Islands, or 50 pico-Rhode-Islands.

(I think.)

Hollywood: How do we secure high-def 4K content? Easy. Just BRAND the pirates

Re: Digital signature conundrum

"Exactly. And you could add a few thousand bogus watermarks for kicks"

Now somebody's suggested that I expect the watermark itself will be cryptographically secured...

... oh, and the technology licence to secure it will put another $5 on the cost of everyone's player.

@Nightfox

Will there still be anonymously purchasable and playable physical 4K media as at present, or will everything be delivered online to named subscribers / UV account holders?

LIVE, my beauty, LIVE! Nokia revives dead phone with LIGHTNING powered Frankencharger

Re: We do what we must, because we can.

For the good of all of us (except the ones who are dead).

Microsoft: Surface is DEAD. Long live the Surface 2!

Re: How much an Ultrabook costs?

" If you're so sure about it's failure, what do you have to worry about?"

We're not worried. We're laughing.

Shopping list for Tesco: Eggs, milk, bread, tablets (the £60 7in Android kind)

Re: Hudl

I would have a lot more respect for Tesco today if they had called this thing the Tesco Value Tablet.

Korean stealth-scraper plans will turn 450 metre tower INVISIBLE

Too ambitious

The technology needs to be demonstrated on a shed first.

DARPA: You didn't think we could make a Mach 6 spaceplane, so let us have this MACH TEN job

Re: Simple solution

The massive plane will probably need JATO to get off the ground.

Have you tried turning it off and on again - oh, you did: IT Crowd RETURNS

"YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR..."

Finest and most deserved parody ever.

David Attenborough warns that humans have stopped evolving

Re: Natural Selection vs. Evolution

"There is a downside to all this choice; some of us choose not to breed."

That's a self-limiting problem (if it's even a problem at all).

Give us a break: Next Android version to be called 'KitKat'

Re: How long til the "deep fried mars bar" build?

It will the one after the "Curly Wurly" release.

Microsoft's $7.1bn Nokia gobble: Why you should expect the unexpected

“Stephen will go from external [candidate] to internal”

Did Elop ever actually leave?

Samsung to bring 55-inch MONSTER curvy-telly to the UK

Price...

I remember seeing a big plasma widescreen for the first time back in the mid nineties. I think the asking price was about six thousand pounds, so these new-technology screens are nominally a comparable price, but taking inflation into account much cheaper. I won't be remotely surprised if they are available for a few hundred quid ten or fifteen years from now.

Re: After getting rid of curved TVs they reappear

Not at all, the screens are simply becoming more concave with time. Give it another couple of decades and we'll all have a cylindrical screen to sit inside (and shoot pretend bad guys from).

I was treated to a very quick go in a 360 degree Immersive Combat Environment chamber a while back - it was cool, very holodeck.

Getting worried, Assange? WikiLeaks spaffs out 'insurance' info

Re: You know what the data is don't you

Given the NSA's resources 400,000 CPU hours is probably under a minute in real time.

Comet brand yanked from its grave: Tycoon vows to open EIGHTY new stores

But what about...

Never mind the tarnished brand name, wouldn't this be "passing off"? As I understand it the guy has tried and failed to gain control of whatever's left of Comet-the-electrical-retailers but intends to use the Comet name anyway.

(The wiki "passing off" page refers to goodwill, so this might not apply in Comet's case.)

Despite Microsoft Surface RT debacle, second-gen model in the works

Re: The killer feature would be x86 emulation@ Byz

That's the entirety of the Reg readship isn't it?

Sony and Panasonic plan 300GB Blu-Ray replacement for 2015

Re: What's a phone book?

It's something Geoff Capes used to tear in two back in the eighties. Their IT uses are (1) an obscure measure of data quantity (2) adhoc monitor stands.

Numbers please...

Can anyone work out the traditional "Micro Live" metric : how many phone books could be stored on one of these disks?

Rap for rap chap in crap rap app flap: Jay-Z blasted by privacy bods

Could be worse

It's Samsung, we're lucky this app didn't come preloaded.

Unreal: Epic’s would-be Doom... er... Quake killer

I once tried to retrieve another beer from the far side of the room using the gravity gun - before remembering that I don't have a gravity gun and my name isn't Gordon Freeman.

Yahoo! announces last hurrah of ancient AltaVista search

Déjà vu

That list of retired things reminded me of the scene in "Life's Too Short" where Keith Chegwin, Les Dennis and Barry from Eastenders are sitting around discussing the best way to commit suicide.

Schwarzenegger says 'I'll be back' for Terminator 5 reboot

Do the math

Give each terminator film to date a score.

Plot these scores against the films' release dates.

Extrapolate the curve to the predicted release date for the next one.

Doesn't look promising, does it?

Re: Terminal 5

A T2 spin-off novel ("Infiltrator" IIRC) does indeed feature a terminator going through airport security, with all the fallout that implies...

Home Office boffins slip out passport-scanning Android app

Re: Meh...

"...that this app won't show"

Assuming the app isn't hiding anything the makers could always open-source it.

Reg hack prepares to live off wondergloop Soylent

@ " I am amazed that there are people so lazy..."

I know someone who is in his fifties and runs his own business successfully (and therefore presumably isn't a total fool). He exists almost exclusively on low-preparation processed crud: crisps, value brand pasties and nasty microwave meals. He is hugely averse to cooking. I was present the first time he chopped up an onion a couple of years ago and last week he successfully cooked some rice under my instruction, but it's unlikely he'll ever get into the cooking habit and I could see him downing gloop instead and paying handsomely for the "convenience".

Yes, it's pathetic, hence the icon.

All major UK ISPs prepping network-level porn 'n' violence filters

@AC09:57

"Hmm, maybe the blocking could be turned on if the household regularly watches teletubbies through iPlayer?"

Why should undergraduates be blocked from viewing porn?

Doctor Who? 12th incarnation sought after Matt Smith quits

Re: Pull the plug

I wouldn't take any notice of that, it's a rare year indeed when nobody threatens to resurrect Blake's 7.

Kinky? You're mentally healthier than 'vanilla' bonkers

Re: football

And the garments cost less.

Marks & Sparks accused of silently bonking punters over the tills

Re: Very easily

For what it's worth my card doesn't have a blatant hole, it's a barely-visible nick. Besides, the vendor doesn't handle the card for Chip & Pin payments.

Very easily

I nobbled the contactless elements in my credit cards using a craft knife a few months back. Chip and PIN payments were not affected. The NFC-capable phone came in handy to confirm an element was present and to confirm afterwards that it was dead.