Prior art
See any Road Runner cartoon where Wile E Coyote orders something from the Acme company and has it delivered within 10 seconds.
Posts by DJV
2539 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Aug 2009
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Amazon patents caches for physical goods
Tales from an expert witness: Prior art and patent trolls
Virgin Media spanked by ad watchdog over 'in your neighbourhood' fibs
Murdoch EYEBALLS Twitter with $25m buyout of news aggregator Storyful
Microsoft yanks Surface 2 DIM SCREEN of DEATH fix in update snafu
Thursday 19th December 2013 21:15 GMT 
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...
Apple's iPhone plant didn't kill UNDERAGE TEEN factory worker
Firefox reveals new look: rounded rectangles
Wednesday 20th November 2013 17:56 GMT 
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
Buggy software in need of patching? Hey, we got that right here – Adobe
Wednesday 13th November 2013 09:59 GMT
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
How my batch process nightmare was solved by a Wombat
10 Types of IT managers from hell
Bucket? Check. Toilet plunger? Check. El Reg's 50 years of Doctor Who
Thursday 31st October 2013 13:19 GMT
"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
How to spot a coders comment
Friday 25th October 2013 09:26 GMT 
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
Best Buy: Bring us your cowering, unwanted Microsoft Surface masses
Microsoft: We're nearly OUT OF STOCK of Surface 2 and Pro 2
Snowden's email provider gave crypto keys to FBI – on paper printouts
French data cops to Google: RIGHT, you had your chance. PUNISHMENT time
Fondling slabs during takeoff WON'T end in a fireball of death - report
Google's latest PRIVACY MELTDOWN: Web chats sent to WRONG people
Shopping list for Tesco: Eggs, milk, bread, tablets (the £60 7in Android kind)
Douglas Adams was RIGHT! TINY ALIENS are invading Earth, say boffins
Oracle revenues miss expectations – AGAIN
Google cooks web dev teaching tool for Raspberry Pi
Microsoft announces iPad amnesty for fanbois
Biz bods STILL don't patch hacker's delight Java and Flash
Autogyro legend Ken Wallis hangs up wings at 97
Thursday 5th September 2013 12:37 GMT 
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
Facebook strips away a bit more of your privacy – but won't say why
UK gov dials 999 over Serco prison escort fraud claims
NASA: Full details on our manned ASTEROID SNATCH mission
Marc Andreessen, Pat Gelsinger in verbal VMworld brawl
Acorn’s would-be ZX Spectrum killer, the Electron, is 30
Friday 23rd August 2013 12:55 GMT
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
Asus will bung 'Nexus 7 2' fondle-droids on Blighty's shelves this month
Microsoft cuts Surface Pro price by $100
Apple crushes all competition in US Brand of the Year survey
Friday 26th July 2013 17:47 GMT
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!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
