Posts by Mark Eccleston

When civilisation ends, a Xenix box will be running a long-forgotten job somewhere

Guilty

When a new COTS system was being put in place there was a bug that shrunk a fixed width file by 9 digits when the field was blank, and another that did the same, but then performed a calculation with the misaligned fields. The fix was to be deployed shortly by the vendor and they needed two temp jobs to correct the outputs before the next processing step.

The temp programs were called the Calculomangler and the Defloobler. Years later, when returning to the same project, I was surprised the fix had not been made and the program names had been added to the daily process documentation.

Europe dumps 300,000 UK-owned .EU domains into the Brexit bin

Re: The EU has a top level domain?

Sounds like a big scr.eu y.eu to holders of those domains.

Engineer named Jason told to re-write the calendar

Just change their calendar order...

..to alphabetical: AADFJJJMMNOS

It might take them some time to get the hang of it, but problem solved.

Termination fees for terminated people now against the law

Re: I would have thought that

I can see if the contract is just for the telephone service, but unfortunately a lot of the contracts cost is usually for the hardware. You are essentially paying for your latest cellphone over a period of 2 years. In Canada they mostly got rid of early termination fees and all you owe is your remaining portion of the hardware you took when you signed up. If people (the estate) no longer owe for the hardware they have not paid off when they die then that is just either going to increase the rates for phone plans or companies may decouple their phone plans and hardware.

Kaspersky so very sorry after suggesting its antivirus will get you laid

Re: An On-Purpose

Fine, but don't call it a mistake. Either don't apologize, or accept culpability. Don't do it halfway.

An On-Purpose

I really hate it when organisations or people claim something that was a mistake when they apologize. The ad was deliberate, not a mistake. It may have been an error in judgement, but certainly not a mistake. The term mistake diminishes the apology as it takes no ownership. It also makes it seem like it could happen again. After all, mistakes happen.

Proper use of the word mistake:

Oops, I dropped a cup onto the floor while trying carry three back from the sink and it broke. That was a mistake. Next time I'll be more careful and take them one at a time.

Improper use of the word mistake:

Oops, I slept with your sister when you were on a business trip. I know I shouldn't have. It was a terrible mistake. Please forgive me.

or

Earlier today an inappropriate image appeared in in our product. It has been removed and we deeply regret this mistake and sincerely apologize for the offence we caused with this image,

Doctor Who: Oh, look! There's a restaurant at the end of the universe in Hell Bent

Re: I was worried about the return of the tedium...

Acting with his eyebrows.

Canuck reader threatens suicide over exact dimensions of SPAAAACE!

Lot of A's in space with Fonzie there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtW6wS3z97Q

Tennessee bloke cuffed for attempting to shag ATM – police

Re: UltiMate Security

I doubt it. His described condition in the article might make getting a coherent PIN number from him difficult, but he seems more than willing to dispense his DNA freely.

Are you experienced? The Doctor Who assistants that SUFFERED the most

Re: I want closure!

Duh....Nitro-9 accident.

The Solar System's second-largest volcano found hiding on Earth

Re: East?

Only if you go the long way.

HTC woes prompts 'leave now' tweet from former staffer

Re: Quality is key

Yeah. I had an HTC Magic and an HTC Dream. After about 7 months the dream would show full connectivity, but would not receive calls until your rebooted it. My carrier offered me a reduced price on the Magic as a replacement. After about 7 months it kept umounting and remounting the SD card. Replacing with different brands of cards did not resolve it. All data on the cards were corrupted.

After spending large amounts of money on HTC in a small amount of time and being told they were not under warranty, I went with other manufacturers.

Despite the good reviews of their latest offerings I am still wary of HTC.

Wales slams Amazon over lack of Kindle support

Re: You can get the bible in klingon for kindle

Of course you can get the bible in Klingon. There is a whole empire of Klingons in this quadrant. Who ever heard of the Mighty Welsh Empire?

Skype 3.0 lands on Android tabs, says all your bass are belong to it

Galaxy Nexus

The proximity sensor that turns off the screen when In a call and holding the phone to your ear no longer works on the new version.

iPhone 5 unlocked US prices placed on Apple website by accident

Unlocked in Canada

In Canada you can but them online or at the local apple store unlocked http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone5

$699 CAD for the 16 GB model

Google shakes up Android Jelly Bean to fend off malware meanies

Yes

IF THE HEADLINE WANTED TO PROJECT THAT IT WAS ANGRY AND SHOUTING

Microsoft 'didn't notice' it had removed Browser Choice for 17 months

Re: Still in the updates....

Go into "Turn Windows Features On or Off" in the control panel and uncheck Internet Explorer. It will then not appear in the updates.

Native Americans arrived to find natives already there, fossil poo shows

Re: you must be mistaken

Actually the universe is only 7 years old and was created by the Great Zabu.. On that date we were all created in our current forms, complete with false memories, jobs, diverse cultures, religious beliefs, and complete back history.

Zabu has a sick sense of humour. All hail Zabu.

Asteroid zips past Earth

Hardware Problem?

I saw the video attached to the article. Are you sure all this fuss is not just from a stuck pixel on the monitor?

Super sushi-bot churns out 2,500 rolls an hour

I see no rolls

They are not rolls they are pouches of Inarizushi.

Techies beg world to join the 1% on IPv6 launch day

Cisco, hah!

They put they support IPv6 on the box, but the e4200v2 I got would not do IPv6 over my PPoE connection using PPP. The only option they had was automatic native or manual IPv6 tunnel. I went out and got an Asus RT-N66U. I now have a dual stacked IPv4/6 site as well as a test IPv6 only site at home.

Cisco has to do more to support IPv6 than say they do so on the package.

Eric Schmidt flicks INTERSTELLAR TOWEL at top tech fair

Total Perspective Vortex

Eric Schmidt held the press conference while eating a piece of fairy cake and telling the crowd that he was, in fact, the single most important person in the universe.

Student suspended for posting random satire on YouTube

Well I am now on the fence.

I went and viewed his videos. The first was ok. The 2nd he references his teacher and starts with the following statement:

"Mr. Feneley gave me an early presentation date because he is sick and tired of me not showing up to class. In retaliation, I made this film as taboo and unrelated to the project as possible.

Enjoy, you short-fused bastard."

The video segment ends with him exploding his teacher with laser beams.

ISPs under pressure to control online porn

Give the children porn

"We are talking about preventing children from having access to inappropriate content, and how we can work with ISPs to make it that little bit more difficult for them to do so"

So they are going to make it more difficult for ISPs to prevent children from having access to innapropriate content.

It may be just me, but isn't that the revesrse of what they are intending?

Bacon thief leaves rasher on door knob

IT Angle

CCTV cam

Porn-browsing Oz minister quits

No one says it was at work

The words used were "admitting using his parliamentary computer to visit porn and gambling sites."

It just says he used his computer to visit the sites. My guess is that he used his work laptop at home.

Diesels greener than electric cars, says Swiss gov report

Not even close

The correct units are Olympic pools per light year.

Pentagon confirms attack breached classified network

hmmmm

Maybe someone should invent a machine to goes "bing".

If you give a tour of a facility be sure to wheel it out to impress the brass.

Fragrant tech thief stalks Whitehall

Measure twice, cut once

Do you mean:

shame so many El Reg posters do not apply the engineering concept of "Measure Twice, Cut Once" to their thoughts before posting...

Poisoned Angelina flick hits torrents

Apple denies the flaw

The users are just playing it wrong.

And if it was a flaw it exists in many other players.

Press conference to follow.

'Holland wins World Cup' declares CBSNews

Be prepared: Write two stories

...then post the wrong one after the game finishes.

Oops.

Google seeks interwebs speed boost with TCP tweak

reboot your computer

or nbtstat -R

Home Office passport fraud sweep flops

Only £77.50!!! Great deal

I had my passport renewed from Canada and it was $260 CAD or about £170.

Final Fantasy XIII ate my Playstation

A little research

Call me a cretin, but our division was given the Apple shuffle as gifts. When iTunes 8.2 was released everyones shuffle stopped working. The Apple forums were inindated with requests for help and Apple released an "unbricker" tool that worked in some instances. In most instances the PC could not see the shuffle anymore when it was inserted.

If you look at the Apple forums and tech support you will find some history on it.

I suppose a 100% failure rate for a few hundred employees is statiscally possible, but unlikely.

Not the first time from a manufacturer

Apple bricked iPod shuffles a few years back with their iTunes update.

Unfortunatelly iTunes license says it is not repsonsible for hardware damage. Worked out great for Apple. The first and last Apple product I owned.

Men at Work appeal Down Under plagiarism ruling

Of course you would wait

Wait 30 years for it to rake in revenue then apply for 60%. If you alerted the band to the infringment in 1980 they would have removed the riff and you would have no one to sue.

Microsoft pulls Windows 7 balloons from Euro 'launch parties'

Addition vs. Deletion?

How do we know that the balloons were not added to the US ad, rather than removed from the EU one?

When ISPs hijack your rights to NXDOMAIN

Rogers in Canada started this a year ago

Rogers started this about a year ago. Previously my poorly typed URLs when unresolved would be redirected to Google and the one that I meant to type would usually be on the top of the list.

Then one magic day I got a Rogers/Yahoo ad list. I could opt out with a cookie. When you did this you would get a Rogers/Yahoo 404 page with an option to resubscribe to the ad list.

With that and them packet shaping my VPN connection to the office (2 MB transfer in 15 mins on a 6 Mbps line) I switched ISPs.

Funny thing is they promote both of these network management techniques as a way to improve overall customer satisfaction with the internet experience.

Philips Cinema 21:9 56in LCD TV

Really a stretched 42" tv

So, let me get this straight. I currently own a 50" 16:9. When watching 16:9 I get the full 50". When watching a cinematic bluray I get the bars above and below. What it seems I am paying extra for is the loss of a full 50" 16:9 HD picture, so that I can watch a cinematic movie without bars. hmmmmm.

Average UK broadband just over half advertised speed

Corrective Billing

@Soruk

it is not their fault on the speed that the clients receive, but on how they bill their customers. A signal strength reading from the aDSL gateway will show the max speed the line can offer. as well, the ISP is aware of the speed its customers are connecting with it. If you, as an ISP, can only offer your customer 1Mbps and they are paying you for 8 Mbps that is wrong. The ISP's will gladly sign you up for their top of the line package and provide you the lowest speed, all the while taking your money for their premium service.

Although you and I are probably well aware of the discrepancy between aDSL speeds ordered and received, most people are not. They happily pay for their 8Mbps service, not realizing they could be paying less than 1/2 of what they currently pay and receive exactly the same speed.

This is how it is the ISP's fault.

Street View ghost spooks Cardiff medium

The 21'st century is when it all changes

If you look behind her and to the right you can see the Torchwood hub. She may have come through the rift.

Science-boosting thickie questionnaire backfires

And the correct answer is....

If you read the Wikipedia article and the OAA article it states "About 71% of the surface is covered with salt-water oceans" This is not the answer to the question "How much of the Earth is covered by water?" It excludes lake and rivers, which are freshwater.

The correct answer is 74%

http://www.cdli.ca/CITE/water.htm

Even Reg writers make mistakes.

Facebook breastfeeding pic takedown gets backs up

Not a free speech issue

As pointed out in some articles this is not a freedom of speech issue. This is a private website with it's own rules that users agree to abide by. The Terms and Conditions and User Agreements layout what you can and can not do. The site has limited the types of pictures it wishes to post onto its servers. As a user you agreed to this when you created an account. These rules limit what you can post and protect you from what others post.

Although other people in this forum have singled out America for its moral conservatism there are much more 'conservative' nations on the planet in which breastfeeding pictures are not culturally acceptable.

Facebook is a site designed social networking, not social activism. The views of a portion of users in one part of the world are not necessarily the views shared the rest.

Living in a country that allows me the freedom of speech and expression to show pictures of myself breastfeeding does not allow me to post pictures of myself performing that act on a server owned and operated by someone else in violation of it's rules. What it does allow me to do is upload the pictures to another site that allows them, or buy my own domain name (ie seemebreastfeed.com) and host my own breastfeeding site that would allow myself and others to post pictures according to my TERMS OF USE.

Batman sues Batman over Batman

In a set of related stories....

The city of Austin Texas is suing the creators of the Bionic Man;

The city of Prince Nevada is suing the creators of Wonder Woman;

and the city of Dildo Newfoundland is suing the adult film industry.

Kentucky judge OKs 141-site net casino land grab

Turkey, Iran, China and ....

Just follow the examples from the countries listed above and order the ISP's in Kentucky to filter out the gambling, and the evolution sites while they are at it, from the end users in his home state.

After all gambling is an insult to Kentuckishness.

Wikipedia plumbs the filthy depths of plumbing

Training?

I'm curious as to what sort of training one would receive in Canada as shown in the external link, "Plumbing Training in Canada", in the pic.

Paris cause well.....

Men could have kids with chimpanzees - gov must act

Book of Genesis?

And God Said:

I love every Chimp I see

From Chimpan-A to Chimpanzee

and it was good.

Illegal immigrants spared the gamma-ray scanner

Airports

It would therefore be reasonable to assume that EMF radiation from airport metal detectors would violate the same law. As well all luggage should be exempt from x-ray scanning in case an illegal were smuggled in a suitcase.

Bloke finds missus working in brothel

and the cat.

This week in Canada

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2008/01/06/4755767-cp.html

Apple sued over i-Bricks

They Bricked IPod shuffles a while back too

iTunes 7 locked up 1st generation shuffles. Both my friend and myslef both lost our shuffles on the same day. The internet is full of user groups of people trying to get it to work again. Have not seen a class action lawsuit over that one.