Posts by DJV

A Norsified Linux for Windows and OS X wobblers

Some direct links to it would have been nice!

http://elementaryos.org/journal/freya-beta-1-available-for-developers-testers

NSFW: Click here, watch iPhone 6 being TORTURED

Re: Is it just me...

Agreed - they should torture test something else instead. How about Iain Duncan Smith?

Flames - well, it's just appropriate!

Blood-crazed Microsoft axes Trustworthy Computing Group

It was...

It was probably only ever an empty office with a big sign on the door anyway!

Microsoft's axeman Nadella fills baskets with 2,100 fresh heads

Steven Sinofsky's already left!

Sony says year's losses will be four times deeper than thought

Re: Some continuity required??

"5 or so years ago Sony tellys were the best"

40 years ago, more like!

'Broken code' costs Yelp half a mil in child privacy dust-up with FTC

Half a mil!

Oops!

iOS 8 Healthkit gets a bug SO Apple KILLS it. That's real healthcare!

HealthKit

Why do I keep reading that as HeathKit? Brings to mind old DIY radios and hifi from the 1970s!

Was Earth once covered in HELLFIRE? No – more like a wet Sunday night in Iceland

Slap

million -> billion

Otherwise, good point!

iPhone 6, Watch: Hate it or really hate it, Apple's now a $604.77bn biz

Re: love em or hate em

This: http://explosm.net/comics/3678/

Cave scrawls prove Neanderthals were AT LEAST as talented as modern artists

@Dr Who

With your moniker I'm surprised you hadn't suggested that it said "Hello Sweetie!"

Are we there yet, are we there yet? Ballmer 'like a small child' upon buying basketball club

Probably the first inkling a player will get that he's been sacked is a chairleg mysteriously appearing in his ear hole.

BOFH: The current value of our IT ASSets? Minus eleventy-seven...

"we LET IT GO for a SONG"

Classic!!

I’ve never paid for it in my life... we are talking Wi-Fi, right?

!not

"If you don’t not want not to not receive no information from our carefully chosen (ha ha) partners, do not add an untick here unless you don’t not want to not to."

Brilliant, made my day!

Astronomers scramble for obs on new comet

Re: Java

And, double yuck, you need to jump through several hoops to get the damn thing to display its non-aliased blocky mess! Having done so, I assure you it's not worth the effort!

Multiple user accounts coming to Android phones 'n' slabs

Maybe you should learn to use the "Tips and Corrections" link under the article, instead! Anyway, that typo is in a quote from another source over which the Register has no control.

Khronos unveils OpenGL 4.5, broadens OpenCL 2.0 language support

Re: Silicon Graphics

They did try to ring them but couldn't get through as, apparently, their phone bill hasn't been paid since 2009.

IBM boffins stuff 16 million-neuron chips into binary 'frog' brain

@psyq

He did model a cat brain - as soon as it was turned on it did what cats normally do, and went to sleep.

Why do Reg readers deserve the big bucks? Here's why...

Agreed! It's even worse than the redecoration of a video rental room at a place I once worked. The room was redone in bright red and orange colours - the 2 lads running it had headaches after a couple of hours.

Brit kids match 45-year-old fogies' tech skill level by the age of 6

@ Swarthy

Yeah, but suppose you don't like it and want to change your mind?

Re: Brain Overload

Regarding number 1 - you are Homer Simpson!

Homer: Oh... and how is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course and I forgot how to drive?

Kiwi satellite earth station recycled – as radio telescope

Excellent!

I'm now waiting for Jodrell Bank to come up for offer on Freecycle!

Microsoft: IE11 for Windows Phone 8.1 is TOO GOOD. So we'll cripple it like Safari

MS crippling IE

Well, they're certainly experts at that - been doing it for years!

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

Please

Name and shame!

What's that? A PHP SPECIFICATION? Surely you're joking, Facebook

@Robert Long 1

"creating a fucking file"

Er yes, Java - millions of ways of creating and accessing files, not one of which does exactly what you need it to do!

YES, iPhones ARE getting slower with each new release of iOS

"No one does, in fact, optimise code."

Speak fer yerself!

My personal code library (used on the web sites I build) has been refined many times over the years to cut unnecessary code, and to make it faster and more efficient!

Maybe I'm just weird!

Just TWO climate committee MPs contradict IPCC: The two with SCIENCE degrees

@Pete 2

"What is really happening is that the government has identified a "thing" that the general public believe in and that they believe it is a bad thing -- one that should be stopped."

I have identified a "thing". It is called the government and, over recent studies, I have determined that it is definitely a bad thing. Question is - can it be stopped?

Hi-tech Fagin couple used Apple scam cash to fly pickpockets to UK

Suitable punishment:

Off with the goolies!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04clpd7h0b0

Child diagnosed as allergic to iPad

Re: RE: Stainless Steel watch backs

Sounds a bit like a guy I once worked with in a piano repair workshop. Any tool (screwdriver, pliers etc.) he used would be covered in something resembling rust within a few days!

ISPs 'blindsided' by UK.gov's 'emergency' data retention and investigation powers law

So what is the point?

Of Cameron and his cronies?

Not a damn jot!

Get ready for LAYOFFS: Nadella's coma-inducing memo, with subtitles

"We help people get stuff done."

"We hinder people when they're trying to get stuff done."

FTFY

You 'posted' a 'letter' with Outlook... No, NO, that's the MONITOR

Re: But these are actually intelligent people ....

At one place I worked we (the programmers) instigated the use of fault sheets where other members of staff could report problems with the programs we were writing. The fault sheets contained boxes to specify which program it was, which screen/page of that program and a large box to describe what the fault was. I remember one coming in with neither of the first 2 filled in and, in the third large box, was written "Funny on screen" - magic!

Farewell Felix Dennis, deal-maker supreme of tech publishing

Anybody remember Soft?

Yes, and I still possess the copies that I managed to buy! Not quite the full run as I'm missing the Feb 1984 edition and anything that appeared after the March 84 edition.

Daddy, what will you do in the new security wars?

Re: HELP

Didn't you write it down on a post-it note? Yeah, it's probably that one stuck to the side of the monitor with your other passwords and bank details. You know, the one in plain sight from the window.

Verizon threatens Netflix in video lag blame game

Fantastic...

Must buy popcorn and get a good ringside seat for the fight!

TrueCrypt hooked to life support in Switzerland: 'It must not die' say pair

Re: CryptTrue

Or chuck it through an anagram generator and get:

Crept Yurt

Cry Putter

Pretty Urk

Ok, so maybe not!

Microsoft's NEW OS now runs on HALF of ALL desktop PCs

A direct link to the stats would have been nice...

Here you go

Gee thanks, Ofcom! BT 'pleased' to hang onto pricing 'freedom' for Openreach fibre product

Sigh

Ofcom = gutless, roll-over-and-die weed

Job for IT generalist ...

Interesting...

It's interesting how things have changed.

In 1998 I applied for a Java programming job at a "sunrise" company who were building a subscription-based educational web site. In addition to Java (which I had only been playing with for a week or so) my CV mentioned my other skills in C, Pascal, HTML, JavaScript, assembler (on several CPUs), Unix, BTOS/CTOS (yeah, go look them up!), Windows NT and several others. I didn't get the Java job as they looked at what I could do, and instead created and offered me a "Senior Programmer" post instead!

Maybe I was just in the right place at the right time.

DJV

Cloud computing is FAIL and here’s why

Agree

"Cloud computing is shite. It takes over everything you’ve got, then farts in your face and runs away giggling."

Couldn't have put it better! I wouldn't trust any of them with my data. I am paranoid when it comes to backups (having been bitten in the past). The irreplaceable stuff is backed up in 6 different places, one of which is not under my roof!

Quick Q: How many FLOPPIES do I need for 16 MILLION image files?

Re: 16-page document I was working on last night won’t fit onto a floppy

Still got some 5.25" floppies around somewhere along with some PetSoft Commodore PET programs on CASSETTE - Lunar Lander, Star Trek 3D amongst others! Not got any punched cards, though...

Vinyl-fetish hipsters might just have a point

Re: But, but...

Dunno about DRM, but back in the 70s I almost convinced a (hard of thinking) work colleague that if you looked extremely closely at the grooves you could see the lyrics. Well, how else would the singer know which words to sing?

NHS patient data storm: Govt lords SLAP DOWN privacy protections

Twats!

That is all

Google Glass teardown puts rock-bottom price on hardware

I'm waiting...

...for the ifixit.com breakdown for a comparison!

10 PRINT "Happy 50th Birthday, BASIC" : GOTO 10

Re: My first program

Some tricks for shop computers I used to employ were:

1) A POKE to the VIC-20 video chip to change the screen width from 22 columns to 23 or 21. This would cause anything on the subsequent lines to be offset left or right by one extra character each line. Really annoying for the shop assistants who couldn't figure out why their program listings were going diagonally down the screen.

2) Running a simple loop to copy the CBM-64 ROM into the underlying RAM, a POKE or two to keep it there, then a few more POKEs to change the SYNTAX ERROR text (now in RAM) to something far less pleasant. Then I'd stand back to watch kids (usually) cause an error and ask their unsuspecting parent what that meant!

3) Enter a short program into a Spectrum that changed the screen to 2 shades of blue, print "COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2", "64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BYTES FREE" and "READY" with a loop to flash a cursor. That got lots of people confused! I once even convinced someone that a Spectrum had had a CBM-64 ROM installed in it by mistake!

Google adds a sense of history to Street View with archive footage

Fuzz!

They've also re-run the algorithm that fuzzes out car number plates and faces. It's managed to completely obscure my number plate on the 2008 photo (originally one letter could just be made out), several bricks on the wall beside my front door (nowhere near the house number) and a bit of the tree in the neighbour across the road's garden! It HASN'T however, fuzzed out the face of one my cats sitting on the doorstep - maybe it decided the cat's face was fuzzy enough!

Murdoch says Microsoft needs 'big clean out'

Re: Clueless

A bit like:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-17/

BuzzGasm: 9 Incredible Things You Never Knew About PLIERS!

You missed these pliers

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/12/giant_pliers/

Learn about Microsoft Cloud OS

Learn about Microsoft Cloud OS

I'd rather not!

Worlds that could support LIFE found among 715 new planets

Re: Gravity?

Nurse, the tablets, QUICKLY!

Samsung flings sueball at Dyson for 'intolerable' IP copycat claim

Yeah, but if it had been £ or $ then el Reg would have spelt it BEEELLION!