Posts by Craig 2

You had one job... Just two lines of code, and now the customer's Inventory Master File has bitten the biscuit

I think this is where my spelling pedantry comes from: Looking at code with the knowledge that just a single misplaced character can wreak havoc. Even when it's not critical to conveying the message, spelling errors trigger me!

Days after President Trump suggests pausing election over security, US House passes $500m for states to shore up election security

A successful technique considering you both posted comments.... Oh, wait.... shit

Raytheon techie who took home radar secrets gets 18 months in the clink in surprise time fraud probe twist

Re: Editing

Tickbox in the comment entry area for "This is a correction"

Still published as a comment (For the glory)

Icon fixed to pendant (For the lulz)

Staff get a feed of all correction posts.

Separate metric for "You have made x corrections" as long as a staff member upvotes it.

Brit telcos deliberately killed Phones 4u, claim admins in £1bn UK High Court sueball

Re: Supposed to give a warning

Cars accidents are generally in a public place so fair game. Secretly recording conversations where you would have a reasonable expectation of privacy could be a different matter.

Hot, synchronous DRAM: Next-gen memory tech spec DDR5 lands

Re: I’m disappointed!

"Sorry, but I have nothing actually useful to contribute to the discussion."

Welcome to The Internet....

Microsoft takes tweaking tongs to Windows 10's Start Menu once again

AKA the "more lipstick" update...

CERN puts two new atom-smashers on its shopping list. One to make Higgs Bosons, then a next-gen model six times more energetic than the LHC

A whole new level of exotic...

I thought my shopping list was exotic when I added avocado for the first time...

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes: UK man gets 3 years for torching 4G phone mast over 5G fears

Re: He used the wrong excuse

True, the crime of being a stupid fuckwit carries a life sentence...

Microsoft blocks Trend Micro code at center of driver 'cheatware' storm from Windows 10, rootkit detector product pulled from site

"The code is definitely there and someone had to write it"

Absolutely. It looks like the code literally reads as "Is certification testing active?" If so, pretend everything is ok, otherwise carry on....

It's a bit like customer phone support when the boss is/isn't standing next to you.... :)

AT&T slapped down for its '5GE' ads: You don’t have a proper 5G network, so stop saying so, says watchdog

The whole basis of the nomenclature of 4GLTE is that you have 4G as the base technology and `LTE` are the enhancements made over time to give improved performance. The AT&T usage is pretty much the exact opposite!

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

In honour of their penchant for reinventing themselves every 5 minutes, you should change their moniker likewise and just use everyone's suggestions.

Facebook defers $3bn of infrastructure spend because it's hard to build bit barns when you're working from home

Re: Colour me surprised...

Don't forget Instagram, gotta post those "day# of lockdown" selfies!

'Non-commercial use only'? Oopsie. You can't get much more commercial than a huge digital billboard over Piccadilly

Aliens Ate My Buick - Loved that album! Total madness.

"I used to enjoy taking photos of other companies' failures," Ben told us, "and sending [them] to my colleagues in the office to make ourselves feel better about our own."

Now there's someone who's honest with themselves! I'm sure we've all felt that little glow as we hear of competitor's tales of woe :)

Microsoft attempts to up its Teams game with new features while locked-down folk flock to rival Zoom... warts and all

Ooooh... top new "feature" you can change the background! Plus what sounds like a kludgy hack to get it partially working with Skype. Honestly, if they stopped re-inventing stuff every 6 months they might stand a chance of having something stable and feature-rich. Sigh.

Microsoft cops to 775% Azure surge, quotas on resources and 'significant new capacity' coming ASAP

Re: “We are expediting the addition of significant new capacity"

"Trolling them is not called for."

Now there's a genuine first for Microsoft!

Google warns against disabling websites during Coronavirus pandemic

Re: Yes, Google

Gotta keep the revenue from those bot advert impressions coming in! Can't do that if the website is offline...

Netflix starts 30-day video data diet at EU's request to ensure network availability during coronavirus crisis

Re: Money back

Yes, I'm sure you need that extra £2 a month to go and hoard more bog rolls...

Reducing bitrate. If bandwidth is the capacity, bitrate is the load. It's better to prevent saturation in the first place than allow automatic measures.

Also, it's a sign of our hedonistic existence that during the first real pandemic in modern times, Netflix availability is a concern!

Microsoft Teams gets off to a wobbly start as the world and its cat starts working from home

Re: WFH...

Ahhh, that explains all the loo roll panic buying....

Morrisons puts non-essential tech changes on ice as panic-stricken shoppers strip stores

Re: "throughput of goods is in excess of the usual Christmas peak"

Just buy a copy of the Daily Mail - I can't see any other reason for wanting to.

Wipe your arse with the Daily Mail and your backside will end up with even more shit on it..

Very little helps: Tesco flashes ancient Windows desktop on Scan-As-You-Shop device

Re: Handheld shopping...

Said employee is probably instructed to do the exact opposite ie. Pick oldest stuff first to help with stock rotation.

If I remember rightly one supermarket even made an advertising point of saying "we will always pick the freshest" for online orders because of the public's worry about this very issue.

US government grounds drone fleet (no, not the military ones with Hellfire missiles) over Chinese espionage fears

Re: Easy easy espionage

Not sure why Kevin got the downvotes, you're both saying the same thing... I would imagine no "obvious" backdoor would ever be engineered into a device, but an intentional bug could be left in along the lines of: Buffer overflow here gets remote execution there... Then they can legitimately claim bug if it's discovered.

The whole "lets give exploits cool nicknames" thing is another matter, I'm not sure if techno / sci-fi thriller films are copying reality or vice versa.

German scientists, Black Knights and the birthplace of British rocketry

Regularly run/walk/ride up the downs around the Needles Battery and there are loads of interesting structures. Of course most of them just look like lumps of concrete or fixings poking out of the earth so some historical context from the article is great. There's also tunnels etc. in the cliff facing Alum Bay which are worth an explore if you're adventurous :)

Hospital hacker spared prison after plod find almost 9,000 cardiac images at his home

Re: hahahahah

This is one of those cases where the meaning of a word is evolving over time and usage. Hacker to me means someone with technical skills, whether compromising a computer system or picking an electronic lock. To some people, hacker could mean they simply used their easy-to-guess password.

Image-rec startup for cops, Feds can probably identify you from 3 billion pics it's scraped from Facebook, YouTube etc

Re: Cat memes will save the day!

Forget the Feds! Eventually, cats will be able to identify everyone who isn't a cat lover, then we're REALLY in trouble :)

APEX predator? Chinese phone-flinger Vivo teases upcoming concept phone

Re: Except for the fragility issue...

Pop-up selfie camera could also help with privacy concerns of cameras being activated silently without the user's knowledge. Hard to miss if it appears unexpectedly. (I assume it's motorised?)

Selfie camera occasionally gets used as an ad-hoc mirror, or for checking injuries from falling off the MTB... :)

Dell slathers on factor XPS 13 to reveal new shiny with... ooh... a 0.1 inch bigger screen

Re: That price..?

In these modern times you don't think Dell actually PAY Microsoft for Windows licenses do you? More likely MS are paying Dell...

Fuming French monopoly watchdog is so incensed by Google's 'random' web ad rules, it's fining the US giant, er, <1% annual profit

Re: Deceptive units.

"per 100 sht".

No way a single roll lasts 100 shits.

Brother, can you spare a dime: Flickr owner sends mass-email begging for subscriptions

Flickr can fuck right off... that is all.

You had one job, Cupertino: Apple's Intelligent Tracking Protection actually gets tracking protection

It's a double edged sword....

Well done Dave, you've made our competitors look foolish and incompetent... muhahahaha

Oh wait, that was contributing to our billions of dollar advertising revenues! You're fired Dave...

Beware the trainee with time on his hands and an Acorn manual on his desk

Re: Ah the good old days

God, the Econet * commands were so much (dangerous) fun..

I played Elite soooo much but only made it to `Deadly` on the school computers. Countless hours wasted outside the station blasting endless Vipers.

Bad news: 'Unblockable' web trackers emerge. Good news: Firefox with uBlock Origin can stop it. Chrome, not so much

Re: Grrr....

"The lowest-level of penalty is applied if you are found guilty of gaining access to a computer without permission (or officially known as “unauthorised access to a computer”). This crime holds a penalty of up to two years in prison and a £5,000 fine"

Applying £5k PER infringement should force even the largest corporation take note. Of course, sending the CEO down for a couple of years wouldn't hurt too :)

Grrr....

Software methods that circumvent browser security measures should be considered hacking. ie. Unauthorized computer access and prosecuted as such.

Enjoy a tipple or five? You might need this AI system to tell you when it's time for a new liver

This is so full of holes.... off the top of my head maybe people predisposed to heavy drinking (a widely acknowledged unhealthy behaviour) are linked to lower education levels, thus reduced eloquence...

Hubble grabs first snap of interstellar comet... or at least that's what we hope this smudge is

Re: "based on its trajectory and speed, the comet had to originate from outside the Solar System"

Would you like to know more?

Welcome to the World Of Tomorrow, where fridges suffer certificate errors. Just like everything else

Re: Luddites

Hey, I still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea!

2001 fiction set to be science fact? NASA boffin mulls artificial intelligence to watch over the lunar Gateway

"Oh wait, of course! Buzzword bingo on the funding application."

Akin to boffins using suitable stimuli to elicit the desired response from rats (ie. politicians) in the maze...

Don't see the problem with it myself....

EU's top court says tracking cookies require actual consent before scarfing down user data

Re: Well that ruling has a timespan of about 30 days in the UK

Sounds like a massive trade deficit to me, which means that cessation of trade (which wouldn't happen) would cost the EU £56 billion of exports more than it'll cost the UK.

I suggest you go and learn the difference between percentages and values.

HMRC 'disciplined' almost 100 employees for computer misuse over 24 months

Re: It's not clear from the article what the offences were.

I would hope intentionally mis-handling the public's data would be grounds for instant dismissal rather than just a warning...

Re: Hammy The Hamster Lives!

Posted using my work laptop in work time.

Indeed, like the majority of traffic here I suspect. I wonder if The Reg could produce a nice chart of day & time of week compared to traffic & post levels...

Chinese sleazeball's 17-year game of hide-and-seek ends after drone finds him on mountain

I saw the drone pic of his cave and his major error was a bright blue plastic rain shelter above the cave entrance. Stuck out like a sore thumb from above. If he'd used even a bit of camouflage it would have been much harder to spot.

Time to check in again on the Atari retro console… dear God, it’s actually got worse

Re: There's an obvious way to deal with these customers....

"Atari needs to go dig up those unwanted copies of "E.T.--the Video Game"

There was a documentary "Atari: Game Over" that already did that. Check out the story, very interesting :)

Gearheads get their spudgers into an iPhone 11 Pro Max: Bi-lateral charging, anyone?

Re: Glass Back? Why?

I can only assume it's for the initial "ooh, it looks & feels lovely" before you stick it in a protective case...

Considering mobile phones are intended to be carried around all the time, they should be designed to take a bang or two. When you inevitably drop it you could try claiming a free replacement on the basis they're not fit for purpose. Good luck with that though :)

Outlook turned eBay into DD-Bay: Topless busty babe mysteriously fronts souk's emails

Re: If the avatar is still in your email client...

"Of course, the Reg journos should have dug up all this information themselves."

They asked one of the team to investigate 2 days ago but haven't heard from him since.

OK, let's try that again: Vulture rakes a talon on Samsung's fresh attempt at the Galaxy Fold 5G

Re: Why?

"Its just something for people to boast "Look at me and how well I am doing!"

If they do that LITERALLY then you're absolutely right, wankers.

If they have the money to buy shiny stuff and you get bitter and annoyed every time someone pulls one out of their pocket then unfortunately the wanker is you....

Allowlist, not whitelist. Blocklist, not blacklist. Goodbye, wtf. Microsoft scans Chromium code, lops off offensive words

Re: This is stupid

"What's next, changing the color names themselves?"

Well technically you guys over in freedomland have already changed the spelling of colour.

"But I identify as an integer"

Shut it $userloggedin, you're boolean and always will be.

Re: Devoting one's time to petty issues when there is so much to do

"Such a shame to see people at m$ raising such petty issues"

Don't blame companies for this, the only reason large corps dedicate time to this sort of thing is because there are too many "I'm offended" professionals out there. eg. The Tourettes charity complaining about the recent Fringe Festival joke.

Consider this: Person tweets about some innocuous reference in the code - Celeb notices and re-tweets it to billions - Massive publicity & calls to boycott - Billions wiped off share values - Shareholders lose money. <--- This is why.

No it's not Russell Brand's new cult, it's Microsoft's Office crew rolling out their Save Experience

Re: Consistency

Yep this is exactly why Win 10 is such a pain... Some configuration options have multiple ways of accomplishing broadly the same but with varying UI choices, wording and functionality.