* Posts by Jason 24

208 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2009

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Testing CarPlay with Apple’s most expensive ever accessory

Jason 24

Re: Beat me to it

"I am sometimes forced to share a ride with people who do not follow this philosophy and I find it rather disturbing that they deem their ability to yack away to be more important than the wellbeing of themselves, their passengers, fellow motorists and possibly pedestrians"

On the flip side I find it just as annoying when my passenger thinks I'm ignoring what they're saying while I navigate a 3 lane roundabout.

No, I'm not ignoring you, I'm trying my level best not to have us both killed!

Capita: O2 call centre staff exodus is premature evacuation

Jason 24

Screwing themselves?

With that many people leaving and looking for new jobs I'm not sure I'd want to stick around, every other job in the area will be snapped up in 6 weeks.

I hope they all tell Capita to jog on and walk out on time.

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Jason 24

Snakes... much better than passwords.

Attention sysadmins! Here’s how to dodge bullets in a post-Ashley Madison world

Jason 24

Re: Why do people use work email for personal use?

We recently went to migrate a customers domains and emails onto our server to run hosted exchange for them.

Just as we were about to press the big red button someone noticed that ex wives and all sorts were still using their old work email address for their personal email and had their entire lives tied into that domain, and so moving them all was just a big no. The cost and security risk to us in allowing people who did not have a commercial contract with us access to the servers just didn't add up.

So the company set up a new domain minus an "S" and have switched their main email addresses to this. Lord knows what headache that is causing them.

Ditch crappy landlines and start reading Twitter, 999 call centres told

Jason 24

"it is a concern that making a voice call to contact the emergency services is not something that would feel natural to them."

The gf won't even ring a damn take way, so it inevitably leads to me basically relaying the order and having to correct everything twice as she changes her mind.

So yeah, I can see this being an issue of not feeling "natural", particularly for people even younger than me (26) who have possibly never had to make an actual call in their lives.

10 things you need to avoid SNAFUs in your data centre

Jason 24

Re: Arse!

It's ok, the IT lot before me here had the marvelous idea of ramming a 2 prong EU plug into a 3 prong UK socket.

Amazingly the firewall ran for 8 years before it finally burnt out (literally smoking) last week.

Even Apple doesn’t mess with Taylor Swift

Jason 24

Re: Youtube?

Problem with Youtube is having to keep the app open and the video playing, which is a huge drain on a smart phone battery, not great when you're on the move.

Jason 24

Re: OMG

I thought they had, with Tidal? http://tidal.com/gb

Buy with your head, drive with your heart: Alfa Romeo 4C Coupe

Jason 24

Re: HiFi.

At least they've gotten rid of Blue&Me, I've got one of those units in my recent Alfa purchase (159 2.4 diesel, the 200bhp model) and the damn thing is bricked and won't respond to any updates on any of 20 pen drives.

So I've gone for a pioneer head unit with parrot + radioapp + mirror link in the hope that one of them will work half decently!

NEVER MIND the B*LLOCKS Osbo peddles, deficits don't really matter

Jason 24

Re: An excellent example ...

"We, across Europe, pay 10 times the world average for healthcare. Yet lifespans are less than a year longer."

Is that possibly a case of hitting the point of diminishing returns? We weren't meant to live forever.

EasyGroup continues bizarre, time-travelling domain crusade

Jason 24

Please set up a kickstarter when he comes at you, I'll chuck a few bob in!

BOFH in mugnificent return to Cash'n'Carrion

Jason 24

Got one in the house too...

Brit iPad sellers feel the pain of VAT-free imports

Jason 24

Re: Caveat Emptor?

Hopefully we'll get enough people stung by dodgy imports that they stop trying to buy the absolute cheapest and switch back to buying from proper companies.

Ofcom tackles complaint over Premier League footie TV rights

Jason 24

Stadiums

I can understand only wanting to sell 41% of games, if every game was televised there would be less incentive to go to the ground to watch. If anyone watched the recent Man City game in Russia where the supporters were banned from the stadium you'll know that the atmosphere is a huge part of any game.

I am noticing a round and round pattern forming with BT, Sky and Virgin, all whinging to Ofcom cos "it's not fair that they can rip consumers off but I can't".

Shuddit, Obama! Here in Blighty, we ISPs have net neutrality nailed

Jason 24

Re: Pick your ISP and get what you pay for

Are you my doppelganger??

UK consumers particularly prone to piss-poor patching

Jason 24

Re: Java autoupdate

Mines been borked in so far as every time I click the icon in the tray it says "failed to download install files" and I have to go to the damn website and do it manually.

Has anyone ever tried to access ASDM after a java update (for the noddy monitoring stuff, not programming it!!)? Being told that java run time is not installed, but go direct to the path of the .jnlp file and it runs fine?

DVLA website GOES TITSUP on day paper car tax discs retire

Jason 24

Re: A little common sense is called for...

"So why, for the love of Mike, would you leave it until the last possible day?"

I thought this was SOP for any software release testing.... It is round here anyway.

Game pirates 'donate' compute power to Bitcoin miners

Jason 24

Re: Pretty much every game, OS, or application torrent has some form of malware.

Gotta agree, Steam has definitely moved me away from pirating. It's not so hard to just keep an eye out for when titles have a 70% discount and buy them then, that's near as dammit stealing anyway. Or at least the equivalent of buying 2nd hand, with the added bonus that the studio gets a bit of cash for the sale unlike 2nd hand games.

I have also bought a number of games on Steam that I have pirated in the past. I've no intention of playing them again, but a fiver or so for something that has kept me entertained in the past is well worth spending on.

China is now 99.8% sure you're you, thanks to world's-best facial recognition wares

Jason 24

Had this at Stansted recently...

5 of us coming back, 1 didn't have a chip in his passport so I went went and stood with him in the longer queue for pictures only, and we beat the other 3 lads out who went for the "fast" track.

Brits stung for up to £625 when they try to cancel broadband

Jason 24

Re: Setup costs

"And I imagine there are companies that will rent that kit as well."

I'd hazard a guess that that is part of the problem. Once upon a time to be an ISP you had build and own a physical infrastructure and employ well trained and highly paid staff to run it.

Now anyone can become a virtual ISP with minimal effort (compared to building a network across the country) and since you don't have highly trained staff to pay and you're happy with a smaller cut you undercut everyone who has to run their own networks, thus starting the race to the bottom.

Jason 24

Setup costs

"in fact they should often pay less, to reflect costs providers save because the contract ends early,”"

Expect that with the margins on Broadband being so slim it often means a customer has to be retained for 2 years before a provider breaks even on the setup cost, let alone making any money, so the providers are out of pocket if you leave early.

This may be different when a MAC code is used, I'm not sure what BT charge for processing them.

BT slapped down by BSkyB over O2 broadband 'switch off' porkies

Jason 24

So...

Who do I write to to complain about the ASA? Clearly they are not performing their advertised function of regulating advertising because so many complaints are being upheld after the campaign has finished running.

Virgin Media struck dumb by NATIONWIDE DNS outage

Jason 24

Re: yep, vm status pages are useless, as is the telephone status

"iv) planned, in what way?"

Planned as in "bollocks, I rebooted the wrong server". "Ah well, may as well do that maintenance since it's off anyway". "Oh shit, that didn't go to plan, what do we do now??"

I would suspect.

David Cameron defends BT's taxpayer-funded broadband 'monopoly': It's a 'success story'

Jason 24

Re: Gaps?

Exactly those gaps. Why waste time researching them yourself when you know someone else will do all the leg work and you can jump in at the last second?

Microsoft in 1-year Windows XP survival deal with UK govt

Jason 24

Re: Maths?

"£250 per computer (which is ever so slightly higher than the $200 "

$200 = £120, so it'd be considerably more expensive. I'd guess they just swapped $ for £ and then whacked an extra 50 on for Office/Exchange.

EE...K: Why can't I uninstall carrier's sticky 'Free Games' app?

Jason 24

Re: Not just on the Galaxy,

I've had it to, seems to have disappeared after stopping it, clearing the cache and then "uninstalling updates" from the settings > app menu.

Still, given me the kick up the arse I need to look at rooting the damn thing.

Morrisons supermarket hit by MASSIVE staff payroll data robbery

Jason 24

Re: worried?

Oh FFS stop it.

If an unauthorised DD comes out of your account just ring your bank and tell them, the money is instantly recalled and the DD cancelled with no damage done, used it many times when "administrative errors" result in my monthly bills getting FUBARed by various companies.

Oh no, RBS has gone titsup again... but is it JUST BAD LUCK?

Jason 24

Re: Money problems

You appear to have commented on the wrong article, I think you should be over here - Telegraph

You've been arrested for computer crime: Here's what happens next

Jason 24

Re: Question.

Down vote withdrawn :) Sucks to be you though, they must have been really grasping at straws if they had to find evidence from another avenue!

On the whole though I do believe that the vast majority of plod are interested in doing a good job and don't want to cause unnecessary problems for people being investigated. Only takes a few jobsworths though to make it seem like the exact opposite.

Jason 24

Re: Question.

On the opposite end of the scale I had absolutely no issue whatsoever with them finding other stuff. I've a lot of music that's been ripped from various sources as well as more than a few films and when they got a tip off for kiddy porn and didn't find any they didn't press on anything else, they just nuked the hard drives and handed them back completely blank (yes, returned them, contrary to other comments on here).

Hell they weren't even bothered about the weed they found in the house when raiding, said they couldn't leave it with us and put it down as being found outside (was only about 30 quids worth, but still).

Therefore I do find it hard to believe however that they'd prosecute for trespass based on a grainy video they found, you must have had a real grumpy bastard looking at your case who was just out to get something. Unlucky!

Jason 24

Re: Question.

From personal experience (check my post history), if they are looking for kiddie porn and find non but find a few pirated films you'll get your disks back, but they'll be utterly wiped to the nth degree. So no, they are not interested in doing you over for a few films/MP3s if they can't find what they really want.

UK plant bakes its millionth Raspberry Pi

Jason 24

Re: Well done

<article>Education Secretary Michael Gove, who appears to have decided it’s more important to teach little'uns how to program than to use the technology they will sit in front of when eventually they enter the workplace.</article>

"So you're saying you, me, most El Reg readers, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Charles Babbage, Alan Turing all suffered because we weren't taught Word and Excel in school?"

I deliberately chose not to not take "IT" at GCSE level because I know it was actually "office drone 101", so yes, that section is completely off the mark.

Storage rage: Like getting a nice steak and being told to only eat 80% of it

Jason 24

Very odd article...

Someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?

As a general rule of thumb it's inadvisable to run anything at 100% all the time because you'll fuck it quicker than not. Would you red line your car constantly? Would you run an AC unit at 100% because it just about cools the room or do you install a second unit to alleviate stress on the first? Hell, do you ever sprint everywhere you go? Sure you'll get there quicker, but at the cost of being a sweaty mess?

As for capacity what happens when some muppet uploads an extra 100GB of data to that storage space and there's no room? It either fails or you get charged an extortionate "burst" rate until you bring the amount down or up your package?

Ministry of Sound sues Spotify over user playlists

Jason 24
FAIL

Re: Do they mix?

They do mix, but recently I'm sure I've found a few that start of mixing for the first 5-10 tracks but then after that they just seem to give up and the rest are just on one after another.

Telefonica and Arqiva set to mop up BILLIONS in smart meter cash

Jason 24
Stop

Re: The utilities will own our souls!!!!!!!!!!!

"It's not about turning off power to houses but to specific appliances. If a fridge gets turned off for the ten minutes"

And who exactly is going to be buying me a new fridge that supports this? My current one works fine and I've no plans to spend a fortune upgrading it to appease this lot of muppets.

Vodafone flashes bulging package at Brits: New 4G service to rival EE, O2

Jason 24

Sounds tempting...

My main reason for not having Spotify at the moment is a) 3g is simply to unreliable to jump and switch tracks as I see fit, I need to cache a playlist with wifi before setting off anywhere, so if I've selected a load of random crap the playlist is useless, plus b) 4g (which should be fast enough to allow me to just select anything at any time) doesn't offer near enough data allowance for me to freely jump anywhere on spotify without bankrupting myself, so I'll still be caching stuff before setting off anywhere.

Giving me enough data and spotify in one go, that is awfully tempting.... let's see what the first adopters make of the networks reliability first though...

Government IT contracts to be scrutinised by UK competition watchdog

Jason 24

Don't the NHS have...

A nice shiny new system which allows them to order IT equipment with ease, cost us a few billion, can't everyone else borrow this?

Oh wait....

REVEALED: Google's GINORMOUS £650m London Choc Factory

Jason 24
Stop

Well I wish...

I had £650m to sink into a country that is making me no profit....

The Reg's best-looking reader reveals list of jobs for the beautiful

Jason 24

Re: Good looking on Radio

The trouble I tend to find with "beautiful" people is they are quite dull. You don't need to be exciting when everyone thinks you're amazing and fantastic to look.

It's about 4-5 months in you realise they don't actually do anything but look pretty.

Therefore they can't be any good for radio. Moyles wasn't pretty, but he was entertaining.

More than half of Windows 8 users just treat it like Windows 7

Jason 24

How long are these apps actually kept open for?

I know the only time I open a metro app is when something has reset the file type associations and it's defaulted back to the music player or picture viewer for mp3s and jpgs.

It's open for about as long as it takes me to hit alt+f4 before changing the association back.

The iWatch is coming! The iWatch is coming!

Jason 24
Flame

@owen

I think you'll find he probably didn't read the article.

Neither did I, I stopped at MacRumours on the second paragraph and went looking for the flame war

That $1,000 the lad in Lagos needed? Just email it with Google Wallet

Jason 24
Go

@NomNomNom

I hope you're being ironic with your own spelling :)

Weary quid-a-day nosh hack fears colonal mass ejection

Jason 24
Stop

Paypal only??

Can we donate by any other means?

I'm not having those cocks cream some off the top.

Google 'will be pulled back in front of MPs' on its UK tax affairs

Jason 24

Re: Commission?

You're both quite right in what you are saying and I certainly wasn't implying otherwise, tax is paid on where the sale is made.

Google is, it would seem, is trying to say that they have absolutely no sales at all in the UK. Only sales people work on commission, so if bonuses are changing that a very good sign of commission being paid, meaning that Google is lying to us here.

I don't know where it gets us exactly, but it shows them being dishonest in these statements at least. It's up to our politicians to decide what to do with this information.

Jason 24

Commission?

Surely this is as simple as checking what bonuses are paid to these "non-sales" people? If their bonuses are changing month to month then there's a fair chance this is actually commission being paid to the staff, which means they are sales droids, regardless of where the deal is technically rubber stamped?

ISPs: Get ready to slurp streams from Murdoch's fat pipe

Jason 24
Go

Re: Who else has left already?

"Then got offered half price for the next 12 months and decided my moral values would be sidelined"

Yeah, just wait til the service becomes abysmal in the next 3-4 month, you'll be wishing you hadn't agreed to that, it's a 12 month tie in at the lower cost (I've just had the same offer and told them where to stick it).

Mac code is en route, bye bye bethere, hello Andrews and Arnold!

Hard luck lads, todger size DOES matter: Official

Jason 24
Happy

Re: Surely in this world of equality,...

Have an upvote for the mental image that gave me, haha!!

Official: Sky to buy O2 and BE's home broadband product in £200m deal

Jason 24
Pint

Re: Sky's planned acquisition may upset some of the subscribers who are with O2 and BE.

Check out Andrews & Arnold, seen them mentioned in the comments on the Be post and it all sounds above board from reading their site, will be asking for my MAC in the next couple of months.

I think they've missed the point that BeThere has technical users, not consumers, we happily pay a bit more because we know we get more bang for our buck and we need that extra bit of bang.

Here's to hoping Sky have bought an empty network

A Beer for BeThere, they served us well

Reg readers scuffle over the ultimate cuppa

Jason 24

Re: Tea making

Simple solution to that - I point blank refuse when anyone is offering to make a cuppa so I then don't owe anyone either.

I never let anyone near my cup, partly because most people can't stand the stains left from the previous week, but mainly because they just never get it right!

Microsoft tries to sell home Office users on subscription pricing

Jason 24

Is anyone really suprised....

MS staff are keen to show that sticking with them would save the country money

Council staff are keen to show that the changes they implemented have saved money

If either set argued the other way they'd be sacked, and no one wants that.

The number can always be fudged depending on your view point.

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