Posts by Individual #6/42

Help! My printer won't print no matter how much I shout at it!

Re: HP LaserJet 4

AFAIK those things will be the only thing to survive Armageddon. I sold mine and it’s JetDirect card 5 years ago for the same as I’d bought it for.

University of Cambridge to decommission its homegrown email service Hermes in favour of Microsoft Exchange Online

Begging for cash

I had a look at the Student Run Computing Facility website. It is hobbled by a reliance upon donations which come to around £300 a year. If any greybeards are up for supporting these guys may I direct you to srfc.net/donate/ .

Three UK: We're sending you this SMS to warn you not to pay attention to unsolicited texts

Typical

I get a monthly email from an international banking entity that just says:

“Notice

Your statement is available. Click here to login and review”

It’s worse than most phishing attempts but is genuinely from them. Doesn’t even address me by name!

Time to patch your lightbulb? Researchers demonstrate Philips Hue exploit

Is this just Hue?

As Zigbee is used by a lot of other networks?

Sync your teeth into power browser Vivaldi's largest update so far

Lazy keychain

Rather annoyingly Vivaldi's keychain items have still not been changed and are called things like "Chrome Safe Storage". This can overwrite Chrome preferences that use the same names. They've promised to fix it (four years and counting...) but yes it's a known issue.

BT pushes ahead with plans to switch off telephone network

Does anyone know

If my (backup iun case of power-cut) battery powered dial up modem will work over a VOIP connection?

10 PRINT "ZX81 at 37" 20 GOTO 10

Glad to hear I wasn't the only one playing silly buggers

with self modifying code and the gosub stack. Have an upvote

My tuppence

My First: computer, introduction to machine code (there weren't any assemblers that I knew of) and lessons in ram management (PI-PI took up fewer bytes than 0) and counting chip cycles for alternative instruction combinations. Who counts chip cycles nowadays?

I managed to fill 16k with a reverse engineered (and enhanced) RM 380Z Star Trek exploration and combat program typed out and debugged over weeks. I had never had any trouble with the RAM pack once I'd used milliput to fix the design. Happy memories.

Remember the Yorkie pizza horror? Here's who won our exclusive Reg merch...

adn thnak you from the depths fo Firday afternoon.

No finer end to the week.

Morrisons launches bizarre Yorkshire Pudding pizza thing

Truly international

Fill remaining space with doner kebab meat and garnish with 1/4 tomato and chilli sauce. Serve with that beer that you keep meaning to try but it sounds horrible so you had a few pints of proper beer first to give yourself a run up.

Alka-seltzer for dessert.

Tuesday's AWS S3-izure exposes Amazon-sized internet bottleneck

The best resiliency I saw

was so robust that the director demonstrated it by literally pulling the plugs on the machines one by one and watching the rebalancing to another site.

I asked what happened if we started at the other end of the farm. We pulled a few plugs and watched as the lauded system fell over and cried (metaphorically).

For $deity's sake, smile! It's Friday! Sad coders write bad code – official

Cause and Effect reversed

Bad coding makes unhappy coders

HomeKit is where the dearth is – no one wants Apple's IoT tech

Interesting but not borne out by experience of user wants

It's obviously only limited data but the only IOT things I'm into are LIFX and Hive. HomeKit integration is the #3 most requested feature on hive (after graphs and radiator thermostats) and the #2 most popular topic on LIFX's site after "I can't connect to wifi".

The customers want it. It's just a pain and cost to implement and pulls people into an apple experience instead of a Hive or LIFX one. The gap is still there for a manufacturer to fill. Elgato's Eve is looking like the best option so far but nobody's going to hit mainstream until a hardware manufacturer sorts out the option of physical buttons. Flic etc, do the job but inelegantly; even Apple requires you to use an iDevice.

World eats its 10 millionth Raspberry Pi

Pedantry ahoy

What's the point in providing them with an SD card when the Pi 3 uses MicroSD?

Vodafone: Dear customers. We're sorry we killed your Demon

Sending an email

To all 11 people on my contacts who use a demon email address, asking them to let me know their new ones. It's not just the customers who are affected.

Brits who live in 'smart cities' don't really know or care

And since when did asking customers help?

"We'd like a device to clear the horseshit off our streets, new quills for our pens and fresh vellum".

A truly smart city would be one that you don't have to live in.

Too Naked for the Nazis streaks to literary glory

Alan Coring

Been done before http://www.deutschlanduberelvis.com/blog/2011/11/let-me-explain.html

Eighteen year old server trumped by functional 486 fleet!

Long liven silicon

Abu Simbel kept on marking the 22 February for a few thousand years. Though it needed a reboot in 1968 that included an adjustment; I think for procession.

The Register's entirely serious New Year's resolutions for 2016

Is this humour?

Because sufficiently post ironic corporate speak is indistinguishable from actual claptrap.

How to build a real lightsabre

Gases

Well the colours would imply that Jedi smell of swimming pools whilst the Sith get squeaking voices, Maybe that's why they get used to growling all their words, so they don't sound like Darth Alvin.

Most developers have never seen a successful project

Some project managers

Non story. I recall one manager who could honestly state that after 10 years of his job he had never completed a project, let alone been able to claim one as a success. If a project is key to the survival of a company then screwing it up will always affect the company's long term viability. So what?

Apple's iPad Pro: We're making a Surface Pro WITH A STYLUS over Steve Jobs' DEAD BODY

"First of all, it incorporates palm rejection"

http://mashable.com/2015/09/09/hands-on-ipad-pro-apple-pencil/#x1w1UXMVFakG

You can rest on the screen

The innovation is that you can rest your hand on the screen. It's detected as <>iPencil and so is ignored whist writing. There's no engineering innovation, that's never been Apple's way. They've just built their own Surface for those that want one. It runs Office, Onedrive and iOS apps so you can work as you like. Expensive but reduces cannibalisation by the productivity crowd.

No, Siri – I said PAWN stars! New Apple TV gets voice, touch control

Content holders don't see their products as fungible

The copyright laws are stopping a decent TV experience and Apple are caught between content providers in the same way as everyone else. They've done what they can with universal search but Youview and Freeview plus have been trying similar with the UK providers and that's had similar results. They've got an app but all that does is accesses each sub-app (iplayer, All4 etc).

Amazon are not going to put content on a provider's box until they abandon FireTV and each cable company thinks they should be paid extra for losing their monopoly, making deals unrealistic.

Let me know when I can ask Siri to cache me the latest TV series that's not been licensed for my country. In the meantime I await the glut of Spectrum games being ported to AppleTV.

Space Commanders lock missiles on Elite's Frontier Devs

If I'd wanted a connected game I'd play Eve

Just glad that I didn't sign up for any of the extras for a game that I can't play offline. The great thing about algorithm generated content was that it doesn't need to keep phoning home. Love the graphics in Elite Dangerous, but when they began promising in-game advantages for real cash (second ship etc) I realised that they'd lost the essence of what I'd wanted and walked away. It's not the first bait and switch I've fallen victim to and is unlikely to be the last. I just find the rationalisation by Braben etc rather sad.

This Christmas, demand the right to a silent night

Generation X.2 can use the off switch...

As my offspring reach an age where they can have mobile devices I find that, for the majority of the time they turn off the wifi and the cellphone capabilities. This is partly because they don't want to be tracked but also they have no desire to be emailed or texted constantly. They might play minecraft but their messages pile up and they drop by each other's houses to talk and gossip.

Grumbling " I don't understand kids these days..."

Rolling the ATTACK DICE in King of Tokyo

Level Up!

I recommend you grab the Level-up expansion to differentiate the monsters with 'evolutionary' abilities such as Gigazaur's heat breath or The King's roar. Don't bother with the Halloween expansion.

Our system handles £130bn and it's BUST. Want the job of fixing it? Apply to UK.gov

Re: Cheapskates

But no one will ever admit that you failed, so in theory it's a never ending source of income...

I'LL BE APP! Apple renews LiquidMetal contract, Terminator rumours flood interwebs

Grognard

Can I have my psion 3mx form factor if they can make adequate hinges?

Bendy or barmy: Why your next TV will be curved

Ideal for people on their own

Without wanting to get into long discussions this seems like a rehash of arguments about quadraphonic systems that give perfect sound reproduction as long as you sit in one place in the room. I'd estimate most people watch TV at 20 degrees from the perpendicular and will find these a frustration.

Doctor Who nicked my plot and all I got was a mention in this lousy feature

Top marks for referencing Marcus L. Rowland

Who wrote Queen Victoria and the Holy Grail, and also did a lot of work on Space 1889, which had Victorian adventurers on Mars in airships..errm he may have got some of his ideas from elsewhere too...

Only 7 plots...probably only 6.

Pro-Assad hackers break into AFP Photo wire Twitter feed

Bashar declares Zombie Apocalypse

"Killing children and using them as soldiers"? = he's accusing Obama of necromancy

Apple threatens to ruin peace worldwide with voice-controlled iMacs

Old Joke

ask coworker with voice control "What's the command to format a drive?", followed by "Are you sure?"

Apple seeks cable connection for set-top box

Saying goodbye to my millions

But an Apple Television could just be a 40" screen with wifi or powerline built in. Clean lines and one cable (for power).

The Apple iTV then sits in a cupboard and serves up whatever flavour of service you want via apps and "HDMI over WiFi" (possibly powerline). Users control the lot from ipad/pod/phone over bluetooth.

This allows Apple to gatekeep Netflix, cable, Sky and even Youview; your PS3 could be plugged in to the iTV , keeping a screen with one cable as the 'face' of the TV.

'Sacrifice another goat!: iCloud is Apple's biggest failure before Google

Sorry but my mileage varied

Google just caused a load of sync problems, duplicating events and contacts. Icloud just works (for me). Some analysis would've supported the suthor's arguments but I guess neither the fruteloops or the chocfans like to give out that sort of data.

Mobile operators mourn death of embedded 4G

Depends upon definition

I've been 'tethering' ever since I could connect my Psion 3c via IR to my old Ericsson T39 with had a contract for WAP. I've gradually moved on to laptop via DUN Bluetooth and then Wifi four or so years ago. It's only recently that operators have decided that this ought to be a separate income stream, ten years after they've been giving it away.

The Pirate Bay torrents printable 3D objects

Brilliant

This way I can download that rare lego Star Wars character and have him printed off in time for tea!

Pay-by-wave: At least it's better than being mugged

Old school

How about having to enter a pin onto your phone to activate the mechanism? Seems like something to put on an unlock screen?

UK punters happy to pay £3 to top up e-wallets

Tobin Taxes to kill economy - in micro

Even the greediest cashpoints only take 2:50! How on earth do they think that £3 will encourge e-wallets over the handy numbered pictures of the Queen?

Schoolkids learn coding at GCSE level in curriculum trial

Didn't this used to be an O level in computer studies

Mine's the one with "Programming the 6502 processor" in the pocket.

Apple Snow Leopard update sets stage for Lion

complaining about it 'not working'

If you don't link to the support site or provide details this just looks like trolling.

I've never had any problems with printer or scanners, just remember to dump the software that comes on the discs and use the Apple provided drivers.

Plus shouldn't somewhere called Greyskull have belonged to the skeletal guy anyway...

Contract can be formed by company's actions, High Court rules

What's the news here?

Offer, Acceptance, Consideration, Intention to create legal relations.This seems like first term contract law. What am I missing?

Apple iPad 3 to sport 3D screen a 'dead cert'

No portrait mode presumably

Highly suspect this is tosh.

Libya fighting shows just how idiotic the Defence Review was

But who would have got those old Tornados?

If the Libyan government had offered to take them off our hands we might have been looking down the wrong end of a technological disparity.

Google disappears torrent terms from autocomplete search results

But autocorrect still works

Type "Linux turrent" into Google and it automatically corrects to "torrent". So even if you can't type you'll get your warez through the Goo.

Olympians threaten ICANN with lawsuit

Not Sun Tzu, Miyamoto Musashi

Apologies to the honourable gentlemen

IOC gone rabid

Whilst abhoring cybersquatters and their ilk I'm afraid that the IOC's attempt to trademark all the elements of Mount Olympus (Named well in advance of any games) and Five Linked Rings (Prior Art Sun Tzu) have become excessive of late. Thankfully they've not gone after the Percy Jackson books but frankly I cannot see any rationale for special consideration.

Youth of today demand mobile payments

Surely more to do with

the fact that young people often get their bill paid by their parents. Of course the young are crying out for new way of getting money off mum and dad.

Star Wars set for 3D rehash

Nooooooooo!

No other comment.

Jailbreaker alert: Apple TV runs iOS

It's very close to failing

Steve seems to be selling us a TV box that can download games and use a touch and motion sensitive controller with second screen. Smart but it's now all about the content.