* Posts by John 61

64 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009

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Wales Audit Office boss sacked amidst laptop smut claims

John 61
IT Angle

@ratfox, et al

It has been a firing offence for quite some time. HM Govt writes "acceptable use" into your contract via a signed agreement. That's what got him fired. That said, pr0n is filtered out quite effectively by govt systems, and even legitimate stuff (e.g. adverts) gets you in trouble. Even if he took it home and used his own connection it's still misuse of taxpayers poroperty. I wonder how he got around the filtering s/ware?

Google slapped in domain name spat

John 61
FAIL

you would need to a really bad typist

on a QWERTY keyboard "trf" is what I get (gtrfoogle) pressing between the keys to get the R. A common problem on most PC keybaords is rollover, so you can't get groogle without using the extra finger and scoring a direct hit on it. When I type keyboard I usually get keybaord (see 2nd line). The same thing used to happen on my Acorn Electron. If it had been called goovle then they might have a stronger case.

The best (of the worst) patent claims of 2009

John 61
Go

Just imagine... if the boot alarm made it to the real world...

It's the <(soccer) World Cup Final/Superbowl/Ashes/Baseball or other sporting event>. I'll use football (soccer) as an example. "Here we are in the last minute of nomal time, in this <England/Brazil> game and it's <Stevie G> who has taken the ball all the way down the <pitch>, past <Ronaldo (the Brazillian one)>, he's taken one defender out, and another, can he get the equalizer to force Extra time?" (hysterical rising commentator voice over is getting more and more hysterical) "He lines up the shot and OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! his <insert sports company name here> boot wear alarm has gone off! NNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOO! <England> have lost the <2018 World Cup Final> here in <Milton Keynes!>". Insert your event/teams/players/playing area/locations between the angle brackets. Of course, this is nonsense as folk would be watching on digital TV and probably end up with no picture anyway. Go, cos they need the money don't they?

Why is USB 3 so slow?

John 61
IT Angle

127 devices on a USB controller??

Erm, who's barmy idea was this? Even on my old HP effort (a P200 job) wich only had 2 ports on it, I only managed to connect 3 devices via a powered hub and only then I had only low bandwidth stuff connected to it. It worked fine with a bit of creative use. Of course if you have a massive desk and an unlimited amount of money and time you could daisy chain stuff, but it would be so slow it would be unworkable. It's a bit like public transport: you can't get on the bus if it's full.

Dirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide

John 61
Flame

A cautionary tale... (a true sotry)

Acouple of years back, the guy over the road was beavering away on his PC, and quite a bit of dust had built up inside it. Being a switched on all the time school of computing he left it alone. Shortly after, it burst into flames, almost setting the house on fire. The fire brigade were there for about 3 hours, they managed to put the fire out, but the entire house was smoke damged. It took almost a year and 4 large skips to sort it out, the electrics were fried and all his furniture was condemed by the local council along with the rest of the house. It took ages to get it sorted out and liveavble again. He was in the middle of doing the house up to sell it, but this put the kybosh on that. Now he just wanders round looking miserable all the time.

My box is in a dusty area where spiders, earwigs, various other flying insects, and the odd wasp reside, but they are kind enough not to have taken up residence inside. I make a point of opening it up every 6 months or so, and using a small paint brush and battery vacuum cleaner (yes they do work) to clean it out whether it needs it or not.

Fire, 'cos that's exactly what happened.

ID Card scheme banking on 28 million volunteers

John 61
IT Angle

funny old game...

Politics... if I remember rightly the Conservatives floated ID cards back in 1994 (not quite sure about the year) and Labour objected.

Your phone is winding me up

John 61
Alert

forget calls...

Will you be able to play games on the things?

VAT Directive to change to end carousel fraud

John 61
Grenade

Don't forget...

VAT goes back up in January. :( That should help kill the January sales...

Miami health centre starts RFID soap snooping

John 61
Go

@ visitors are worse

It's this kind of stuff that should be blasted over the tannoy. A recorded message every few minutes and dispensers outside entrances. Maybe sensors could be put in the dispensers to activate the recorded message. That way no one gets in without cleaning their hands first. Obviously, this assumes that folk aren't allergic to the hand cleaning stuff.

John 61
Go

this idea has more merit and capability to be extended

RFID's could be incorporated into surgical instruments too, along with temperature sensors, perhaps. How many stories have you read where tired docs have left bits of surgical stuff inside folk (a lot here in the UK over the years, although recently I haven't seen any) and stitched them back up? This would save the NHS/insurers a lot money in avoided lawsuits. Prevention is better than cure/lawsuits.

Collar the lot of us! The biometric delusion

John 61
Jobs Horns

@ Keith T

Quote:

What we need for now is something better than what we have now. Achieving perfection is always something for the future.

Surely this puts you into an infinite loop?

*All* databases suffer from the same thing: GIGO.

Orange introduces mini-SIM

John 61
FAIL

erm.. here's a boring anecdote..

All three of my Orange 'phones didn't have the offending plastic card nonsense (even the one I put in the wash still works fine). The 10 year old brick phone worked fine too, just the fact that it couldn't hold it's charge forced me to upgrade. Now all the nonsense I said I wouldn't bother with (camera, internet etc etc) causes me not to use it for calls, defeting the whole purpose of the damned thing. There's also the irony of the Sims game where they all speak in garbled tones (they do it without GSM though)....

Wanna buy an old PC factory?

John 61
Pirate

the joys of foreign investment

This is what happens when things become unprofitable and cheaper elsewhere. Sometimes you lose out. I bet Sir/Lord Al won't be stumping up any dosh... but then again... You never know.

Berners-Lee hired as gov internet adviser

John 61
Boffin

Back to the future or more bureaucracy? Or both?

Maybe this is a match made in Heaven.

Webpages that meet XHTML and CSS standards look just like old (mind 1990's) websites without the CSS. A lot of the frilly stuff is now standard (such as fonts for example). A lot of websites don't meet these standards and those that do all seem to look the same. Giving the web away to corporates and advertisers is partially responsible for sites that don't meet these standards that Sir Tim advocates within the W3C. The problem is with these standards is that there is absoultely ton(ne)s and ton(ne)s of stuff that you should comply with and it will take years to read it all, whilst a lot of it is out of date. If you look at http://www.w3c.org the old 4.01 is still there and CSS2.1 is going to be replaced by CSS3 etc. Websites have to be accessible to *everyone* regardless of disability/setup. There is too much going on and this continually changes, so folk just try to do what's best with what they've got. If that happens to be Notepad and IE on a Windows box, how are they going to test on a completely different setup? If you do meet the XHTML/CSS standards, it won't be too frilly. If your site is designed to look good in print (not too diffcult to do) it probably only needs to verify as HTML 3.2, which was around 1997.

PS: John61 is good enough for me.

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