Posts by DJV

Blighty's online pr0n gatekeepers are begging for a regulatory beating, says digital rights org

But will they leave the USB sticks around in bushes in the local park like they used to leave the magazines?

Greatest threat facing IT? Not the latest tech giant cockwomblery – it's just tired engineers

Re: Estimating Software Projects

Excellent! Not heard that before so I did have to go look it up. Apparently it was Tom Cargill of Bell Labs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule

We asked readers what DXC should be known for... and of course you came up with the goods

I C what you did there...

Alexa, are you profiting from the illegal storage and analysis of kids' voice commands?

Re: As for this being in T&Cs or Privacy Policy..

Upvote for the Freefall link - it's nice to find someone else that follows it!

Hate your IT job? Sick of computers? Good news: An electronics-frying Sun superflare may hit 'in next 100 years'

I know Joules, he can't be trusted at all...

His piano playing on that late night show isn't bad, though...

Like using the latest version of Microsoft Office? Love Offline Files? Not for long!

Re: Why is this being reported?

"I guess I'll be hearing for them in the next few days"

Please take a photo of the look on their faces when you do the "I told you so" speech!

Re: Sup with the devil...

The workaround is to NEVER use Office to open the file - use something more reliable, such as LibreOffice.

There's a reason why my cat doesn't need two-factor authentication

Re: Simple

That's a very catty remark! Meeeow!

Alexa Conversations: Amazon's AI assistant is about to get a whole lot more like Clippy

"without needing to remember their username and password"

No, no and more NO!

Sunday seems really quiet. Hmm, thinks Google, let's have a four-hour Gmail, YouTube, G Suite, Cloud outage

No, unfortunately that's just normal for archive.org.

Microsoft: A new Windows 10 build arrives while another remains in hiding

Dang! That was my first reaction as well!

Pass the bucket...

Gaze in awe at the first ever movie of a solar eclipse from recording long thought lost forever

Re: Fascinating

"I wonder how many other gems like this are hidden away moldering in some dusty archive"

I expect you'll find them several layers below the Doctor Who Marco Polo episodes.

Chinese bogeyman gets Huawei with featuring in EE's 5G network launch thanks to bumbling BBC

Re: Reserved

Oops, sorry - my knee accidentally jerked there...

NAND down we goooo: Flash supplier revenues plunged in first quarter

Yay!

Cheap SSDs!

(for a while)

We ain't afraid of no 'ghost user': Infosec world tells GCHQ to GTFO over privacy-busting proposals

But, Shirley, your second statement contains redundancies, given that the government ARE the bad guys?

It's the curious case of the vanishing iPhone sales as Huawei grabs second place off Apple in smartmobe stakes

ARK

Hmm, maybe that stands for something like Android Replacement Kernel...

...ok, so I'm struggling with the 'K' as it's likely they'd stick with a Linux kernel underneath.

Or maybe it's called Ark because they intend signing up other mobile makers two-by-two!

SpaceX takes a leaf from the Microsoft playbook and stands down Starlink for an update

"A number of websites for non-central government websites are now inaccessible to IE and Edge users on Windows 10"

So, it's not really affecting that many people then...

If poking about Doctor Who's TARDIS in VR sounds like fun to you, better luck next time

Ah, nice - a proper TARDIS - not the half-hidden, shadowy, cheapo thing Whittaker has been saddled with (but then again, I suppose it matches the quality of Chibnall's scripts - sigh).

Your FREE end-of-the-world guide: What happens when a sun like ours runs out of fuel

Re: The World Will End

I see lots of words that are, individually, mostly correct and understandable but your post, taken as a whole, has completely done my head in. Have you been taking lessons from amanfrommars?

Japan's mission to mine Mars' moon is cleared – now they've filled out the right paperwork on alien world contamination

Re: Correct approvals?

Well, they asked him - but decoding his reply back into English will take another couple of centuries...

Re: Barsoom!

Bonsai!

P-p-p-pick up a Pengwin: Windows Subsystem for Linux boffins talk version 2

I thought...

...Pengwin was named after Benedict Cumberbatch's inability to pronounce penguin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GHPNKUMf70

AI has automated everything including this headline curly bracket semicolon

AI newsreporting

I think that having my local newspaper company* employ AI technology couldn't make their reporting any worse than it already is - which is to say that it often reads like it's been composed by a nine-year-old and is guaranteed to contain typos that any wordprocessor will highlight without any difficulty.

*Archant, if you must know.

Re: JavaScript

Maybe the TV program/film makers didn't understand how to obfuscate properly!

Re: Dabbs has been told right

And genius probably(?) knows the difference between "it's" and "its".

Zavvi tells customers: You've won VIP tickets to Champions League final! And you've won tickets, and you've won tickets, and you, and...

It reminds me...

...of a time when I was a kiddie in the 1960s and on holiday with parents at some UK coastal holiday resort (time has erased the memory of exactly which one).

Parents decided to take us all to see the Des O'Connor show on the local pier. On entry everyone was given a copy of the programme (this was back in the days when they didn't cost extra!) and hidden inside the programme was a bingo card. At a point during the show Des said that they were going to try something different for this show and that everyone should pull out their bingo card. As we did so a smiling scantily-clad young lady wheeled on a flash new bicycle, which we assumed would be the prize. Then Des started calling out the numbers and we started crossing off our numbers. We were doing extremely well and had all all the numbers crossed off apart from one. Then Des called out the next number - and it was our missing one!

So, my entire family jumped up and shouted "House!"

However, so did everyone else in the audience. Yep, all the bingo cards were (deliberately) the same! Des creased up with laughter for several minutes and then said it was one of the funniest moments he'd ever experienced, especially the initially surprised and perplexed looks on the audience's faces until we'd figured out the joke.

Lightning speed – how fast is that again? Virgin plugs in another 102k to superfast broadband

"While there is a lot of talk on network build, Virgin Media is delivering"

Not on IPv6, they're not! It's still only rolling out to a few customers.

Great disturbance in the Force as Star Wars' 'big walking carpet' is laid to rest

Sad news

RIP Peter.

However, I do notice that so many people are noted as having died "with their family by their side". So, I think I'm going to avoid having my family by my side as much as possible in the future as it seems to be a major cause of death!

Personality quiz for all you IT bods: Are you a chameleon or an outlaw? A diplomat or a high flier? Vote right here

"But I still have all my hair"

You lucky bastard! Mine is retreating over the horizon at an alarming rate!

Self-taught Belgian bloke cracks crypto conundrum that was supposed to be uncrackable until 2034

Re: It wasn't running Windows then

Windows 95/98 could run for at least 49.7 days without crashing if you didn't give it anything to do. Of course, attempting to get the PC to do anything useful was often a recipe for a blue screen of death long before the 49.7 days were up!

Eggheads confirm it's not a bug – the universe really is expanding 9% faster than expected

"before we do something irreversibly stupid"

You mean we haven't aready? Coulda fooled me!

Is that a stiffy disk in your drive... or something else entirely?

Is that the one where she manages to cram an entire 5.25" full height hard disk into the 3.5" floppy drive completely crushing the floppy (stiffy) disk that's already in there?

Node.js version 12 is now out: Let's pop the hood and see what's inside this JS runtime

JS would seem to have come a long way since then

Yep, those snowflakes can now pwn your entire network!

All we wanna do is talk torque: Taiwanese boffins spin a better way to switch MRAM states

Well that'll put the RAM manufacturers into a bit of spin...

...whether or not they're Dead or Alive.

Surprising absolutely no one at all, Samsung's folding-screen phones knackered within days

@Andrew Heenan

No, that was Microsoft Bob.

Let 15 July forever be known as P-Day: When UK's smut fans started being asked for their age

"Its"

But if you want "It's": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6UaU_Dzysc

A quick cup of coffee leaves production manager in fits and a cleaner in tears

Not useful if the cleaner can't speak or read the Queens English.

Or is colour (or plug) blind!

Why is it...

...that the comments for a "Who me" are always better than the original article?

"we were still working out just how things like Windows did work"

Microsoft are still trying to figure that one out...

User secures floppies to a filing cabinet with a magnet, but at least they backed up daily... right?

Sigh...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pore

Be wary, traveller: There is no going back if you step over the Windows 10 20H1 threshold

My insider test build (in a VM for safety!) tried to update to 18875 yesterday and then promptly failed with error 0xca00a000 and reverted back to 18362. So, probably SNAFU then - seems par for the course.

Apple disables iPad for 48 years after toddler runs amok

Re: Three year olds can't read

Amateurs! I came out of the womb reading War and Peace!

The Reg takes a trip over the New Edge. Mmmm... New Coke with extra fizz

Menus

Obviously, they have been covered...

well, covered up completely so you can't find them!

MS Account

Avoid like the plague!

I only use my MS Account in a VM* - other than that my PCs (7 and 10) always quite deliberately use a non-MS account as I always attempt to do my best to reduce the slurpage.

* for testing the latest bug-ridden Insider joke!

Microsoft realises more testing wouldn't hurt and plonks Windows 10 May update into Preview ring

Dark Mode, Light Mode, Meh...

If only there was a Windows 7 mode... sigh...

Rust never sleeps: C++-alike language tops Stack Overflow survey for fourth year in a row

I laughed when I saw...

...that WordPress was the most dreaded platform! Having seen for myself what a mess it makes under the hood, it doesn't surprise me...

See: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-platforms

Town admits 'a poor decision was made' after baseball field set on fire to 'dry' it more quickly

Re: Why not construct SportsBall pitches with proper drainage

How dare you come around here with your sensible suggestions!

Centrica: Server fault on Wednesday caused Hive to crash on the Tuesday. Yes, yes, that's what we said

"the press office had not responded to our call for comment at the time of writing"

Don't worry, they'll get back to you last month.

You were warned and you didn't do enough: UK preps Big Internet content laws

Meh...

Sajid Javid decided to make it a personal issue: "I'm giving tech companies a message that they cannot ignore," he said.

I bet they're quaking in their boots... </sarcasm>