Posts by Newt_Othis

Microsoft quietly slips out patched patch for Outlook – in camouflage

KB3101488 is borked too

Outlook on our test PCs falls over about four or five times a day since this little nugget of joy was installed.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3118497

Not a great set of patches this month.

Intel reinvents the PC as giant 'Black Brook' fondleslab

Water damage in 3,2,1

Oh yes - lets put our incredibly expensive gadget in the middle of the table, surround it with glasses of water and play a game that has four people reaching across said table.

Microsoft buries Sinofsky Era... then jumps on the coffin lid

Re: OEMs lack of innovation

"What we should have are CD/DVD drives that are accessible by having the keyboard hinged and the CD/DVD disc pops in under there."

I vaguely remember a laptop that had just such a feature. It was motorised and took a satisfying amount of whirring and clicking before the CD popped out. As a young lad, fresh to IT, I thought it was the mutts nuts.

Microsoft pulls faulty Exchange 2013 patch HOURS after release

Not the only dodgy patch this Tuesday

MS13-066 is also causing problems to ADFS servers, as we found to our displeasure yesterday.

Microsoft have pulled it, but not before the damage was done.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2843638

Now you can control ANY Win 8 kit with your EYEBALLS

String

A while back I mused over a simple/cheap way to convert traditional non-touchscreen monitors to something able to control Win 8.

My system involved a series of spring-loaded pulleys (attached on the edge of the screen) and lengths of string looped around your finger. Moving the finger would result in movement in the pulleys which, in turn, transmit the data to the PC.

Obviously, clicking is an issue, so a third string is attached to the thumb to facilitate this. Additional strings can be added for advanced functions (zooming, scrolling etc).

MEGAGRAPH: 1983's UK home computer chart toppers

Arrgh

My eyes! My eyes!

Microsoft and Skype to axe world's most popular IM client early 2013

Artistic skills

May I just congratulate you on the skilfully photoshopped image used for this story on the front page!

Aussie retailer accuses UK shops of HDMI 'scam'

Been doing this for years

My dear old Dad was talked into buying a £25 SCART cable when he bought a cheap DVD player a few years back - even though it came with one.

The sales 'assistant' told him the that ones that come in the box were very cheap and may "catch fire".

B@$t@rds.

Stop sexing up IT and give Civil Servants Macs, says gov tech boss

Jim Henson just rang...

...he's missing a Muppet.

Three-day gaming session kills Chinese man

Title

And so, Farmville claims another victim.

UK tech retailers are rubbish

Just a suggestion

To prevent future customer/staff communication failures I propose the following scheme:

On arrival, the customer is invited to choose a colour coded hat that conveys their intentions. The hat colours could be, for example:

Yellow - I am just browsing. I neither need nor want your help. Please leave me alone.

Orange with blue stars - I am looking for a particular item and may require assistance.

Purple and cyan stripes - I have a rough idea what I want and will need expert assistance to reach an informed decision.

Light green with a black pinstripe - I know exactly what I want and do not require an extended warranty.

Similarly, the staff could also wear colour coded waistcoats to help customers:

Scarlett with gold spots - I have no desire to help you and my knowledge is poor in any case.

Black and white 'cow' pattern - I am willing to help you but my knowledge is also poor.

Magenta swirls on a tartan background - I am willing to help and have excellent knowledge, but only speak Polish.

Beige with brown piping - I'm on my break, fuck off.

The staff uniforms could be further augmented to help determine their seniority:

Junior staff should wear red noses, large flappy shoes and curly wigs.

Senior staff/managers should wear aviator style sunglasses and sport bushy mustaches (fake or real). The store manager would wear a deely-bobber with gold stars.

I'm sure that would improve everybody's visit to the store.

Donkey Kong Country Returns

Save your pennies

I'd hold back on Epic Mickey if I were you. The general consensus is that it stinks.

@ El Reg - Surely Rare is better known as the creator of GoldenEye 64? (Although many of my faves of yesteryear had the Ultimate logo on them)

Filthy PCs: The X-rated circus of horrors

All I wanted was a nice clean desk job...

Many years ago I had to go and check a malfunctioning PC at the local crematorium.

I retuned it to the office and cracked open the case.

The entire interior was covered in a uniform gritty grey dust...

Two-year wait for Windows 8, MS blurts

@blackworx

Pedant? Maybe.

But when a company says 'It'll be out in 2012' it normally means pretty close to 31st Dec 2012 at 23:59

Microsoft sings Happy Birthday to Windows 7

See ya, XP

Also, from today, you can no longer buy a new machine with XP on it.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-xp/end-of-sale.aspx

Apple TV stripdown reveals mystery solder pads

Spectrum

Clearly the colours are magenta and cyan.

Dell Inspiron M101z 11.6in notebook

@ Tony

I put them down as being plus points of the Acer rather than failings of the Dell.

I may 'accidentally' place my current laptop too close to the dog and/or small child and hope for a M101z shaped prezzie at Christmas.

What's the catch?

Your intro suggests that there is an underlying problem with this able little machine - but I'm not sure you actually said what it was.

JooJoo tablet offered to Brits

Not like

Seen the Engadget review - shame.

Is it too much to ask to have a decent non-apple tablet?

Like

I possibly may have found something to put on my Christmas list.

Playmobil throws down animation gauntlet

Splitting headache

Good God, man!

Use a tripod!

(Otherwise, good effort)

German boffins produce sim of 'invisibility carpet' in action

Dare I say...

... that a functioning SEP field would be cheaper, easier and probably more effective?

(Where's that 9V battery gone?...)

Nintendo posts DSi XL promo

Brown - nice

Is brown the new black?

(Ubuntu - I'm looking at you...)

Dirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide

Grey dust

Reminds me of the time, years ago, when repairing a PC from the local crematorium.

The entire inside of the box was a uniform light grey. Thought it best to take it outside before using the air-duster.

-----

Just reminded myself of the last PC I air-dusted. Would have loved to see the expression of the spider that was evicted at an arachnid equivalent of warp speed!

Lite-on ETDU108 slim DVD drive

Apostrophes

Thank you for not writing the plural of DVD as DVD's.

Three critical fixes in store for MS November Patch Tuesday

Oh God - not more OCS updates!

If only we had an entire copy of our network suitable for test deployments of MS patches.

Still trying to get our OCS 2007 system back after the October updates hosed it...

Paramagnetic nanodot smartstuff offers 1TB micro-SD cards

@Manas Straw

I see what you did there...

(Goes off to find paper towel for coffee blotting duties)

Dell: Linux v Windows netbook returns a 'non-issue'

I like Ubuntu but...

... it just doesn't tick all the boxes on my AAO 150.

I have wasted quite literally days of time trying to get full screen BBC iPlayer to work above about 2 FPS. 'Cos that's what my netbook does mostly when the missus is watching one of 'her programmes'.

Windows 7 RC installed from USB in 30 mins - Everything worked out of the box. Even got fancy glass effects. iPlayer smooth as an android's bottom.

What's the best open source Windows back-up app?

SyncToy 2.0

I've been using SyncToy 2.0 - another freebie from Microsoft - to backup my info to an external HDD.

Sure, it's not a full backup of the OS, but I'd rebuild that from stratch if it Borked itself.

It's kind of a 'nice' frontend to robocopy - takes an age to run the first time, but subsequent runs are fast.

It lets you decide how aggressive the sync is - whether or not you'd like to replicate source file deletions to the copy.

Being a straight copy of the files means that it's easy to use and transportable, but it's uncompressed and the data is only as good (or bad) as the last sync. No fancy Time Machine stuff here.

Don't call me Ishmael

Planets

Planet names are great, but suffer from the obvious flaw of there not being many of them and you eventually get to Uranus.

(We use tree names BTW)