* Posts by jai

2310 publicly visible posts • joined 8 May 2007

Tech distie Tech Data tears up last THREE years of profit numbers

jai

they probably do, but assume it's the bank that's at fault and not themselves

Syrian hacktivists hijack BBC Weather feed

jai

so it's the Syrian's that are to blame for the snow coming down outside the window this morning? damn their eyes!!!

Hong Kong plans cavernous underground data centres

jai

Neil Stephenson

someone's been reading the Cryptonomicon from the sounds of it

Bottomless, unsatisfied Xbox widow cuffed after boyf flees nookie

jai

Re: Pix or it didn't happen.

here you go:

http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4901817041161148&pid=1.7&w=190&h=145&c=7&rs=1

Samsung Galaxy S 4: A slim stripper with palms hovering over its body

jai

Re: Ooo matron

welcome to El Reg, you're new here are you?

Report says #Facebook #to #adopt #hashtags

jai

Re: Shift-3?

it's not a special character. it's just option-3 instead of shift-3

it's not windows having to type a whole series of numbers to get a Euro symbol

Trip the fight fantastic

jai

Re: Square Syndrome

an why can't i get her to do the probably-physically-impossible handstand move when pulling herself up a ledge anymore?

Ten serious sci-fi films for the sentient fan

jai

Here's another suggestion

Big ideas? Exploring the human condition?

Then may I suggest the original, Carradine, Death Race 2000

If that's not a commentary on the human condition, in a (then) futuristic setting then....

A shame they copped out with the remakes

jai
Headmaster

Re: No love for Dune?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287839/combined

you know it was also a mini-series recently:

Dune (2000):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142032/combined

Children of Dune (2003):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287839/combined

jai
Terminator

Re: Blade Runner

I sadly know almost by heart having seen BR more times than my wife cares to remember!

and soon, all those memories, will be gone, like tears

in

the

rain...

jai

Re: Good choice..

i'm a big sci-fi fan, but not a fan of horror

somehow, i only saw sci-fi in the trailers for Event Horizon and figured any film with Sam Neil has to be good right?

so completely came as a surprise when the horror begins in the movie.

still, damn good film, despite the lack of sleep i endured afterwards. wish i could bring myself to watch it again

jai

Thirteenth Floor is great. like all great sci-fi films, you should get to the end and go "oh? what?"

jai

I liked Chronicles because it didn't try to imitate Pitch Black. They're both very enjoyable in different ways, so neither detracts from the other, in my opinion.

Marvel: 'Come and get 'em! 700 first-issue comics! FREE!'

jai

Comixology

use the ComiXology app

the Marvel app is basically the ComiXology app, but only showing Marvel content. The DC app is the same, but with DC content. Get the original ComiXology app and you get all the content from both, with all the features.

and digital comics in these apps are great to read. switch on the guided view mode, it just shows one panel at once, and moves you from panel to panel when you tap. makes for an almost animated experience when reading, plus avoids accidentally reading ahead when there's a big panel on the right page that grabs your attention.

now, if i could just get the original Death's Head comics on there....

Six things a text editor must do - or it's a one-way trip to the trash

jai

Re: Stob - never one to let facts get in the way of a good rant...

how do you know that isn't the icon that offends her? perhaps she liked the old when she used to use it?

jai

Re: There is only one thing a text editor needs

i use a text editor as a tool, to make life easier. i could just concat all my code onto the end of a file, i guess, but using a text editor makes it easier to spot mistakes and type in lots of text.

having to type in the commands to control the app as well as type in the text i'm typing doesn't make life easier at all.

jai

the one thing a Monday morning needs...

...to make it bearable:

an article from Stob to get me through to the end of the day.

Bacon sarnies can kill: Official

jai

Re: Why is bacon "processed"?

the report states that even traditional curing methods produced the negative effects and so its included as processed meat. it seems that any effort to prolong the shelf life of meat has a negative effect on your when you eat it.

'Mainframe blowout' knackered millions of RBS, NatWest accounts

jai

Re: I doubt it

i was once told an anecdote. the major investment bank they worked for failed in it's overnight payment processing repeatedly, every night. Eventually they determined it was happening at exactly the same time each night. so they upgraded the ram/disks. patched the software. replaced the whole server. nothing helped.

Finally, head of IT decides enough is enough, takes a chair and a book to the data centre, sits in front of the server all night long to see what it's doing.

and at the time when the batch failed every night previously, the door to the server room opens, the janitor comes in with a hoover, looks for a spare power socket, finds none, so unplugs the nearest and plugs in the hoover. yes, you guessed it, plug that was unplugged was the power lead for the server in question.

just because you're a big firm, doesn't mean you don't get taken out by the simplest and stupidest of things

jai

to add some detail, if it's the same one, that would suggest that no one did any due diligence, or lessons learned, or root cause analysis or any of a dozen other service delivery buzzwords that all basically mean, "wtf happened and how do we make sure it doesn't happen again?"

you'll always get new issues that break things. such is the way of IT. no system is 100% perfect. you just have to put in as much monitoring/alerting and backup systems as you can afford to ensure any impact from outage to your business critical systems is as minimal as possible.

Pirate Bay to world: We're not really off to NORKS

jai

wtf?

NSWFW?

New South Wales For Work?

US lawmaker blames bicycle breath for global warming gas

jai

What about stairs?

I dunno about you, but sometimes I'm outa breath after using the stairs at work because it's "healthier"

But apparently I'm killing the planet .

For that matter they ought to tax people who can't leave their homes on time in the morning and so have to run down the road and over the train station bridges to catch their trains.

And that's not to mention the CO2 produced by people having sex.....

Sony: Can't beat Apple and Samsung, so let's be the Other Guy

jai

Or perhaps their own advertising for the PS3 - they're entering the Third Place....

BlackBerry Z10: Prices pruned despite eager iPunter interest

jai

Thing is, you'd expect the sales to have been much better from all those in "the BB way"

But that doesn't seem to be happening, so even the old BB devotees aren't flocking to the new device.

Perhaps they're all waiting for their current 2 year contracts to end, but can Blackberry really wait the, perhaps up to, 18 months for all their old customers to come back to them?

Apple 'insider' explains why vid adapter hides ARM computer

jai

Re: Are you kidding?

@OP - the point is that there is a single port on the iDevice, which is used for multiple functions, not just video out. one port, multiple adapters. not multiple ports, each with a separate adapter each.

you're obviously content to have a device with multiple ports, which you may or may not need. iDevices have a single port, which you at least need for charging and possibly for syncing. if you want to do anything else with it, then you buy an adapter, but not everyone needs video out. not everyone needs a GPIB interface. So the few that want a video out via cable have to pay a bit extra. the rest of us stream to our AppleTVs to get video on the telly, without having to pay even the $5 for the hdmi adapter you mention.

Mind-melded rats could herald organic BRAIN-COMPUTERS

jai

i know it's not what the experiment was, but when i saw the headline on the news this morning i assumed they'd just observed that when rat A thinks of cheese, so does rat B!

Stargazers spot first-ever planet forming in dusty disc

jai

boffins with brains the size of planets

and they can't come up with imaginative names for their telescopes.

Still, I guess there's no time to waste on daft names when there's planets being created. I mean, 10 years will go past in a flash! if they're not careful.

Apple CEO Cook's investor-meeting reveal: 'Dog bites man'

jai

Re: Bathroom?

Weird, it had never occurred to be that Bathroom wasn't a British word!

You learn something new everyday! And also, to everyone complaining about Apple stories on ElReg, this goes to prove they do have a use. Not only has this furthered by understanding of my own language, but also earlier contain a very useful discussion about depression and public message on caring for those so afflicted.

Super-fast super-massive black hole spins at nearly light-speed

jai
Alien

Re: Hmm

What prevents a black hole from spinning faster than light?

Matt Bellamy at the centre, shredding on his guitar

EyeSight tries to please MWC crowd with touch-free fingering

jai

can it tell the difference between different fingers?

i.e. can it tell the difference between when i'm using my index finger to scroll a webpage or move icons around, and when an app crashes and i flip my middle finger at the computer, will it be able to recognise that and issue a End Process command to the hanging app?

Ten smartphones with tablet ambitions...

jai

Take two devices into the shower?

No, I just take one HUGE one that's too big to fit into the shower anyway!

Brit firm PinPlus flogs another password 'n' PIN killer

jai

Re: Timeouts?

ATMs? really?

i know people who have their ATM pin written down inside their purse/wallet. how do you explain to them that each time they use it, the numbers of the code are going to be different?

and sure only the simplest of patterns are going to be used. anything remotely complex is still too hard for the average person to remember (can you recall without looking the patten used in the example?)

That Firefox OS mobe: The sorta phone left behind after a mugging

jai

Re: A somewhat harsh editorial...

I think the point was that, given that both iOS and Android have made progress and improvements since they were launched, it's strange to see FirefoxOS come out with so much progress and improvements yet to be made. Surely they've looked at a recent example from the competition and so should have made an effort to compete.

At least, that's how I read it.

jai

We can't stop here

lol reads like Fear and Loathing in Barcelona :)

Andrew's post at the end of the event will just read

"This is bat country"

Trekkies detect Spock's Vulcan homeworld ORBITING PLUTO

jai

Re: Kerberos ...

the vote was organised by SETI, who did that thing where everyone screen-savers formed a massive parallel processing to decode the radio messages from space, didn't they?

jai

Re: why ?

Instead of the "I'll get me coat" icon we need a "I've got my towel" one!

Hands-on with Ubuntu's rudimentary phone and tablet OS

jai
Linux

"Also, you'll need to be comfortable using the command line"

but, i can't imagine there is anyone that would be thinking of putting an Ubuntu or similar linux-y OS on a smartphone that isn't a fully paid up penguin-fiddler and so already dreams in command line scripts rather than a visual medium.

Blackberry Z10 sales fail to impress analysts

jai

Re: ha ha....ha ha ha

I've never understood how analysts stay in business. its seems they never make mistakes, they just "revise their figures"

If my coding was consistently completely wrong I'd get the sack. I wouldn't get the chance to "revise my methods"..... ohhh and now i think i understand what Agile programming is all about and why Agile developers keep getting employed without ever delivering a finished product. :)

Happy birthday, LP: Can you believe it's only 65?

jai

lol i can't remember the last time i even took a cassette out of a case, let alone played or recorded on it.

so by that standard, seems the "is killing music" campaign worked well and put a stop to it!

Apple files 'iWatch' patent application

jai

Re: Didn't Nokia have a video of something like this

Is that not prior art?

it seems like nearly every patent application that gets reported here gets a comment about there being prior art.

and yet still the patents continue

seems to me that the US Patents Office dont really care about prior art. is it really an important part of patents, or is it just a urban legend that prior art is a consideration?

This 320-gigapixel snap of London is size of Buckingham Palace

jai

Re: 'Click to view the map'

Do you really expect me to click to download a 320GB jpeg over my puny broadband?

Do you really expect that they'd be able to afford the bandwidth costs of sending out the whole image file to everyone that clicks?

It's like google maps, it only loads the bit you need to see at one time. each time you pan or zoom it loads the next bit of view for you.

John Sweeney: Why Church of Scientology's gravest threat is the 'net

jai

Re: Sweeney

So bad fiction automatically equals an absence of Truth

the clue is in the word "fiction"

or do you lot have your own bloody dictionary too now?

jai

Re: Hmmm

and then a spaceship lands and John Travolta and a bunch of Psychlos run out and kill everyone?

Sony promises PC-based PlayStation 4 for Christmas

jai

game.co.uk

Well it seems Game.co.uk are taking pre-orders already.

Or rather, they want a £20 deposit from you, and then i guess they'll charge the rest of the price on the release date.

Trouble is, not sure I trust the Game brand, weren't they teetering on the brink of oblivion recently along with HMV and the like?

Think I'll wait until Amazon have it up for pre-order instead.

jai

Well we saw Killzone

And there was talk of Final Fantasy, which presumably is going to look mind-numbingly incredible.

I wonder if GTA 5 will still come out on the PS3 or if they will slip the release date a bit further to be part of the PS4 launch.

Is there going to be an Assassins Creed 4?

Surely they won't be able to resist putting out Uncharted 4 also.

and Gran Turismo, of course.... cept we probably won't see that until 2018.....

jai

Really? cos the only PS2 game i ever got around to playing on my PS3 was Shadows of the Colossus, and it looked really poor. And then they released the HD version for the PS3 which looked great so now there's zero need to fire up the old PS2 again.

With the PS4, you'll likely be able to stream PS3 games to play them, so you can sell all your old PS3 games via music magpie to raise the cash to buy access to the streaming version of the few PS3 games you'd actually want to play again.

jai

Re: Price...

@Captain Underpants

I disagree, i'd say that people who aren't audio/videophiles would be the ones who see value in buying a single piece of equipment that does the job of 3 or 4 (games / blu ray / dvd / streaming iPlayer/Netflix/LoveFilm / plays music / etc).

It's the audio/videophiles who will be wanting to spend even more on a high spec blu ray player that's seperate to their home cinema 7.2 surround sound system, and also a seperate dedicated dvd player because it upscales better than the blu-ray player does, and a dedicated NAS box somewhere for streaming their downloaded content, etc etc etc. The PS3 did all that stuff okay, but it wasn't the perfect option, if you were particularly obsessed with sound or image quality..

Most of the people i know that are non-techies and have gotten themselves a tablet are the ones who only really had a cheap laptop before, sitting on the coffee table. And now they've got a more expensive iPad instead. i'm not sure how that works, must be Apple's RDF in action i guess.

Oklahoma cops rake ashes of 'spontaneous combustion' victim

jai

Was there a tv nearby?

There's a well documented cause for SHC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blipvert

jai

Re: By any chance

"the life of a repo man is always intense"