Posts by DJV

Walking while texting can – OUCH! – end badly, say boffins

Less often nowadays. I think the WWF has put them on the endangered list.

UK.gov recruiting 400 crack CompSci experts to go into teaching

Re: By Gove! I think he's got it!

Yeah, but, remember, this is Michael Gove you are talking about. Most teachers hate him and the crap he normally spits out. He just got lucky this time around when pulling random ideas out of a hat (though I'm sure he'll find some way of cocking the whole thing up before too long).

Bing Maps COCKUP: Oracle UK HQ is 'Elvis Impersonators' joint

Mislabelling

They also mislabelled Windows 8 as an operating system...

And the winner of the most reliable disk drive award is ...

Seagate

I knew I'd been right to avoid their crap for years!

Amazon patents caches for physical goods

Prior art

See any Road Runner cartoon where Wile E Coyote orders something from the Acme company and has it delivered within 10 seconds.

Tales from an expert witness: Prior art and patent trolls

Patient Trolls

Are those the ones that hide under hospital beds?

Virgin Media spanked by ad watchdog over 'in your neighbourhood' fibs

@NightFox

Ah, they'd probably been using Apple's Map app!

Murdoch EYEBALLS Twitter with $25m buyout of news aggregator Storyful

Agreed! One can only hope!

Microsoft yanks Surface 2 DIM SCREEN of DEATH fix in update snafu

Re: And....

I'm still using a Microsoft Internet Keyboard Pro (about 13 years old). The hand rest is now almost completely smooth. It usually gets ripped to pieces once every 3 or 4 years to extract the shite* that's accumulated under the keys ;)

* Well, not exactly shite, probably more like bits of sandwich, biscuit crumbs and half a ton of cat fur...

That keyboard was obviously one of the few decent things they ever made (unlike Vista, Win 8, ME and a host of other old truck).

IT bods: Windows XP, we WON'T leave you. Migrate? Chuh! As if...

Indeed...

I've still got a Windows 98 PC around just for playing Myst! ;)

Apple's iPhone plant didn't kill UNDERAGE TEEN factory worker

@Oninoshiko

Well, I hope that was the mostly decent 1981 BBC TV version and not the awful 1960s film or the dire 2009 TV remake.

Firefox reveals new look: rounded rectangles

Re: Tabs on bottom...

Classic Theme Restorer

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/

Phew!

It's about time someone took a large mallet and started hitting the Firefox developers around the head with it until they get the message to "STOP FUCKING UP OUR BROWSER!"

However, good news, there's an add-on called Classic Theme Restorer which can restore various "deleted" options including the add-on bar and "Tabs not on top" amongst others.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/

And, yes, it works fine on Australis!

BT jabbed by ad watchdog AGAIN over fibre deployment fibs

@ Chris Church

Yes, it's a lie. 50% truth ISN'T the truth! Jeez!

Basically...

...sorry we lied today. We won't do it again (until tomorrow).

Bastards.

Buggy software in need of patching? Hey, we got that right here – Adobe

Totally agree

They sent me an email the other day telling me to change my password (hadn't realised I still had an account with them - I think I once downloaded Adobe Air to see what it was all about).

I went to their web site and looked for the option to cancel/delete my account - no such thing, of course! You have to speak (well, chat) to someone online who had to put a case through for deleting the account. When he asked why I wanted to delete my account I reminded them of their crap security + the fact that (apart from the occasional use of Flash on some web site - though its usage is on the way out, thank goodness) I don't actually use any of their junk software. Finally, they reluctantly agreed to delete the account.

Tossers!

KRAKOOM! iPad Air explose in fireball, terrified fanbois flee Apple store

Maybe...

Maybe they should name the next one the iPad Water - it will be able to put its own fires out then.

How my batch process nightmare was solved by a Wombat

OMG!

So many truths in that post. Wish I could upvote you more than just the once.

10 Types of IT managers from hell

Re: Keep it simple

Know what you mean! However, I am now glad that I am in a very small "company" with a brilliant (ahem) boss - it consists of:

1) Me

End of list.

@Crisp

Ah, thanks - reminds me of this.

Bucket? Check. Toilet plunger? Check. El Reg's 50 years of Doctor Who

"So worried were the Beeb by its viewers’ potential inability to process more than one televisual event they re-broadcast the pilot."

I was always under the impression the BBC had been deluged by requests to repeat it as so many people had missed it.

"Then the BBC ended the Doctor’s run in 1996"

Nope, they ended it in 1989 - 1996 was the "movie" that they hoped would result in a new series.

Fleet of driverless pods to take over Milton Keynes town centre

I can't wait for Jeremy Clarkson to test drive one on Top Gear!

How to spot a coders comment

Most informative comment

The "most informative" comment I ever saw was on a non-trivial piece of Perl. Most of the code was undecipherable in the first place, but the most complex part was blessed with a single comment (the only one in the whole script) that simply read:

# This is a skanky hack!

Oracle brass past and present tapped for Microsoft CEO - report

I wonder...

Did their chair throwing abilities get tested?

Best Buy: Bring us your cowering, unwanted Microsoft Surface masses

"unwanted first-edition Surface RT"

That will be all of them, then.

Microsoft: We're nearly OUT OF STOCK of Surface 2 and Pro 2

So...

How many did they actually make then? Did it reach as far as double figures?

Snowden's email provider gave crypto keys to FBI – on paper printouts

Rand Paul

Blimey, I didn't think an intelligent Republican actually existed! Good for him (though I suspect he accidentally joined the wrong party).

French data cops to Google: RIGHT, you had your chance. PUNISHMENT time

Well, at least the popcorn sellers should do well out of all this!

Fondling slabs during takeoff WON'T end in a fireball of death - report

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-09-10/

Google's latest PRIVACY MELTDOWN: Web chats sent to WRONG people

Re: Not Surprised

Ah, I see what you did there - upvoted - pretty good as the DAB article was the one I'd just read prior to this.

Shopping list for Tesco: Eggs, milk, bread, tablets (the £60 7in Android kind)

I just wonder...

...if the OS will be stuck at 4.2 forever or if it will actually get updates to 4.3, 4.4 etc.

Douglas Adams was RIGHT! TINY ALIENS are invading Earth, say boffins

Now...

...if they can be found at 42km above the earth then the boffins would definitely be right.

Oracle revenues miss expectations – AGAIN

How sad, my heart bleeds...

All I want is for VirtualBox to get out of their clutches before they have their magical "screw it up" effect on that as well.

Google cooks web dev teaching tool for Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi **badwagon**

BADwagon? Was that deliberate?

Microsoft announces iPad amnesty for fanbois

Microsoft should take their comedy show to the fringe! Gave me a few laughs anyway!

Biz bods STILL don't patch hacker's delight Java and Flash

Java and Flash

The sooner both of them are completely replaced in the browser by HTML 5, the better.

Autogyro legend Ken Wallis hangs up wings at 97

Lovely chap. Met him at a Dr Who event in Holt, Norfolk back in 2006 where the streets swarmed with daleks (along with a couple of dubious cybermen whose costumes were held together mainly by duct tape). I've got photos of him sitting next to Little Nellie and signing autographs for a queue of youngsters.

Cheers Ken.

Windows 8.1 to freeze out small business apps

Please...

...read this: http://www.wikihow.com/Use-There,-Their-and-They%27re

Facebook strips away a bit more of your privacy – but won't say why

I already do

So far, I've only ever come across one advert on FB that I was remotely interested in. I mark all the rest as spam (or some other inappropriate option from those available).

UK gov dials 999 over Serco prison escort fraud claims

Criminals squared.

So, a bunch of criminals have the job of (supposedly) moving another bunch of criminals around. Good job we don't have a bunch of criminals for a government who could get up to no good.

Oh wait...

NASA: Full details on our manned ASTEROID SNATCH mission

And if that doesn't get off the ground...

...then we just need to wait until around the middle of the next century when the daleks will conveniently chuck rocks at us from space.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Daleks%27_Invasion_Earth_2150_A.D.

Marc Andreessen, Pat Gelsinger in verbal VMworld brawl

Off with the cloudy birds.

Andreessen is obviously living happily in cloud cuckoo land. The rest of us have more sense than that.

Acorn’s would-be ZX Spectrum killer, the Electron, is 30

Atom

I assembled a few Atom kits for a local computer shop in the early 80s. Not too hard apart from attaching the keyboard to the PCB. You had to get around 120+ stiff, springy wires protruding from the keyboard into the corresponding 120+ holes in the PCB... simultaneously - it was a real bugger (to put it mildly).

NASA: Earth II may be hiding in unexamined data from injured Kepler

Re: whats it doing now

You're wrong!

Asus will bung 'Nexus 7 2' fondle-droids on Blighty's shelves this month

@AC 03:14

You forgot the sarcasm tags...

Microsoft cuts Surface Pro price by $100

Re: offer says it expires on August 29th

I'm not wholly unexpecting for one to fall out of my Cornflakes packet one morning...

Apple crushes all competition in US Brand of the Year survey

Epson "fave printer vendor"

Hmm, unfortunately, they've not been my "fave" for donkeys.

My first printer was the Epson FX-80 connected to my Commodore PET. It lasted about 18 months and then blew some internal component which a local company managed to fix at hefty expense. In the late 80s I bought an early HP Deskjet - that lasted ages without fault and was passed onto another family member where it did stirling service for several more years. I'd replaced the HP with an Epson 700 Photo (if memory serves) colour inkjet which suffered from the usual ink nozzles drying up problem and died 2 weeks before the year's warranty was up. Epson replaced it with a refurbished 700 which lasted a while but still couldn't clean its ink nozzles if I didn't use it for a few weeks. At least with the HPs they are part of the (bloody expensive) ink cartridges. I vowed never to have another Epson printer again. Currently happy with an el-cheapo Dell-badged laser!

Mars, bringer of WAR: Quatermass and the Pit

Re: Thanks El Reg

Maybe so, but have you heard of Quatermass?

UK gov 'still failing' at procurement, says Commons committee

Title too long...

You could have just stopped at "UK gov still failing" but most people realise that anyway...

Fifty, fired and fretful: Three chaps stare down CAREER MORTALITY

Re: I really hope...

After being made redundant for the 4th time in my life in 2005 I decided life was trying to tell me something about working for other people. So, I went self-employed and now often have more work than I can handle!