* Posts by jonathanb

2530 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Aug 2009

Ford: Our latest car gizmo will CHOKE OFF your FUEL if you're speeding

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Oh...

So if you are in Northern Ireland, driving towards the Irish border, and you see a (100) speed limit sign ahead, at the border, will it rev up to 100mph, or slow down to 100km/h?

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: hold up a 30 sign

You only see (70) signs in Scotland. In England, we have ( / ) national speed limit signs, so you need to know if you are on a dual carriageway or motorway, in which case it means 70, or another type of road, in which case it means 60, and it is lower if you have a trailer attached to your car.

Another GDS cockup: Rural Payments Agency cans £154m IT system

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Well.....that's a shock

Well obviously if you try to sue one of the suppliers, they can point their fingers in 39 different directions at other people that might be to blame instead of them. Not all at once obviously, as they probably don't have that many fingers.

UK government says goodbye sat navs, hello Xbox, e-cigs and Spotify

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: I prefer

Me too, but I prefer white ceilings.

Improved Apple Watches won't get more expensive? Hmmm

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Total compensation

Rising labour costs, certainly.

You can argue that part of your income is a barter transaction of healthcare rather than cash, and because healthcare costs are rising, and you receive the same healthcare as before, your wages are rising by the same amount.

jonathanb Silver badge

But if you had a whole page of calculations to re-do, it would take maybe an hour with a slide rule, a sheet of paper and a pen, whereas a spreadsheet can do it in considerably less than a second. That the total cost of performing the calculation in terms of equipment plus wages is much lower than it used to be.

Musk: 'Tesla's electric Model S cars will be less crap soon. I PROMISE'

jonathanb Silver badge

Or the heating. Petrol and diesel cars take waste heat from the engine, but electric cars presumably require actual electric powered heaters which will drain the battery.

Telly chef Jamie Oliver in embarrassing infection double shocker

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: bet 'Umble Pie is off the menu

I don't think his food hygiene is any better - http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/may/09/jamie-oliver-butcher-inspectors-mouse-droppings

Swedish prosecutors finally agree to London interview for Assange™

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Good for him… maybe?

His concern is about being extradited from Sweden to the USA. Serving time in a British prison for breach of bail won't lead to him being extradited to the USA. He would be sent home to Australia on realease from prison. Whether or not that's a problem, I don't know.

Siri, you're fired: Microsoft Cortana's elbows into iOS, Android

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Microsoft pathetic spin

Another thing, when I'm on the train, going to work, it tells me to jump out of the train, walk to the nearest bus stop, take the bus to the next train station, and get back on the train to continue my journey. It also can't cope with the idea that you might drive part of the way to work, then take train/bus the rest of the way, nor can it remember where my car is currently parked.

Sometimes it will tell me to turn round and go back home rather than continue on the next stage of my journey.

The idea of crossing the road to get a bus that goes in the correct direction is completely alien to it.

It randomly wants to send me to various shopping centres that I sometimes visit. For example, when I am on the train going home, I'm supposed to jump out of the moving train and take a stupid combination of buses to go to a retail park miles away that I would normally drive to.

Thanks a lot, Google, for snatching .dev for yourself. It's not like the rest of us wanted it

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: ScrewYou.IGotMine

What benefit does .google offer over .google.com?

UK call centre linked to ‘millions’ of nuisance robo-calls raided by ICO

jonathanb Silver badge

Are there no prisons?

Prison would be the perfect place for scum like this.

A gold MacBook with just ONE USB port? Apple, you're DRUNK

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: @Andrew Its called drinking your own cool-aid

It's not really the right price point for a school kid. The HP Stream is more the sort of thing they would get.

Microsoft cuts Facebook Messenger, Google Talk from Outlook.com

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: "Doubling down"

Doubling down is a betting strategy where every time you lose money on a bet, you bet double the money you lost in an attempt to win back your losses. It's a very high risk strategy that can bankrupt you.

Hated smart meters likely to be 'a costly failure' – MPs

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: UK market specifics

There are other companies that have experience in messing up government IT contracts, eg EDS, Crap Gemmini, Assenter and Serco.

Apple Watch: HOT WRIST ACTION plus slim $1299 MacBooks - and HBO TV

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: hahahaha

It has the same number of connector sockets as an iPhone. One 3.5mm headset socket, and one USB C port in place of the lighting socket for charging, external display, external storage or anything else you might want to connect to it. Nowhere near enough IMO.

The SHOCKING storage truth: Everyone's buying spinning rust

jonathanb Silver badge

I'm pretty sure they aren't using flash exclusively. They most likely use it to cache frequently accessed data.

Google wins fight to keep Adwords FBI drug sting docs secret

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Probably not about dodgy pharma sites at all

I agree that Canada isn't a dodgy third world backwater. That means that Canadian pharmacies can only issue prescription medicines if supported by a prescription from a suitably qualified doctor. There are pharmacies in the UK that let you order prescription drugs online, but you have to send your prescription to them by post.

'Why Digital?' Seriously? You plainly don't Get It enough. Or at all

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: tell me more

Their room full of servers is a "private cloud".

Apple Pay a haven for 'rampant' credit card fraud, say experts

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Bah!

That's fine, but the Social Security Number should be treated as a name, not a password.

Acer enters Windows Phone fray with cheap Liquid M220 mobe

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Seriously? Still on about apps?

Does here transit connect to the GPS trackers on my local buses, show me where they are on a map and tell me how long it will take to arrive at my stop? Or does it just do route planning based on the timetable which bears little relation to reality?

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Seriously? Still on about apps?

Most people have a niche requirement that is served only by iPhone or Android. In my case it is the App for my local bus service. Most people in the UK for example, don't live in London, but that is the only city that has enough Windows Phone users for a local transport app.

GAMIFY your FRIDAY with our Public Sector Innovation Bingo!

jonathanb Silver badge

Where are the clouds?

We can't possibly take it seriously if they don't have clouds.

MEGA PATENT DUMP! Ericsson, Smartflash blitz Apple: iPhone, iPad menaced by sales block

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Conspiracy theories...

Apple probably has a store there. Ericsson doesn't need to have a presence anywhere.

Tim Cook chills the spines of swingers worldwide

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: But But...

Attach the watch to your key ring and put it in your pocket.

Photoshop daddy: 'I’m not happy with body image issues it creates for a lot of women'

jonathanb Silver badge

Better, yes, but not far better, they are basically the same apart from colour balance.

I, ROBOT ~ YOU, MORON. How else will automated news work?

jonathanb Silver badge

"The public offering of Amalgamated Durables hit a peak of £2.79 at launch."

You need to reprogramme your robot to tell it that UK share prices are quoted as 279p unlike the rest of the world, unless of course you want to send the hedge funds' automomated trading bots into panic mode because they think it has crashed to 2.79p (£0.0279).

Ministry of Fun tries again on mobile mast planning permission

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: huh

But as the different frequencies have different ranges, it may not always make sense to share. Three might want to put a mast in a place where Vodafone has decent coverage from other masts.

SCC bags universal credit hosting contract

jonathanb Silver badge

And the disaster needs to be recovered from.

Soz SMEs, we're not interested in your direct biz

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Evidence

You can find out if they are a small or medium company from the accounts they file at Companies House. If they don't file accounts at Companies House because they are a sole trader or partnership, then they are almost certainly small.

Who uses the Universal Credit system? ALMOST NOBODY, says report

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Benefits of benefits

You get higher employment by removing the 100% effective tax rate that these people face at the moment, so there is a financial benefit to doing a few hours of work. For some people, the experience gained from these few hours of work per week will lead to more work in the future and eventually a full time job.

For pity's sake, you fool! DON'T UPGRADE it will make it worse

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: bébé

For Chinese, they have a US English Keyboard and they type in Pinyin which gets transliterated into Chinese Characters.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Doesn't the mac

Is voice recognition any better than last time I tried it?

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: bébé

The Alt key to the right of the space bar serves as Alt-Gr in Parallels.

BOFH: The Great HellDesk geek leave seek

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Opex vs Capex

And the auditors. Components are only opex if they replace an existing broken one.

El Reg chefs whip up Post-Pub Noshographic

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: The first step is missing

Do I really want to know what sort of wife you have if it is possible to collapse on her and the dog at the same time.

Linux clockpocalypse in 2038 is looming and there's no 'serious plan'

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Could this already be a problem ?

If you are 65 in 2039, you could well have taken out your first pension in 1992, so I would imagine that if there is a problem, someone would have spotted it by now. Most people these days taking out pension policies will be retiring after 2038.

Samsung buys LoopPay ... to be better at bonking than Apple

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Will work till the end of this year in the US

And when you swipe it, it tells you that you must use the chip, so basically the slot is there for American tourists to use.

jonathanb Silver badge

Mag stripe compatibility has more than twice the penetration?

In technologically backward countries like the USA maybe, but try presenting a mag-stripe card in a shop in Europe and you will get some strange looks.

Vodafone didn't have a £6bn tax bill. Sort yourselves out, Lefties

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: "Branch" line

If all their employees worked in Bhutan, and their products were all sold from a Bhutanese hosted website, then yes that would work.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: "Branch" line

They have a service company branch in the UK, and the Irish or Lux company pays the UK service company to do some work on their behalf, at the same rates that a third party outsourcing company such as Serco would charge.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: What a load of rubbish...

That only works if you are non-domiciled or non-resident, otherwise if you take the money out of the company anywhere in the world, you have to pay UK tax on it. If you are non-resident in the UK, you are probably resident somewhere else and will have to pay tax there.

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: What a load of rubbish...

If you can justify your claim that an independent 3rd party would pay £30k per year for your logo, then yes you could do that. In reality, they might pay at most £300 as a one off fee for logo design. Starbucks has to pay lots of money in advertising and sponsorship to make their logo as valuable as it is.

Inside GOV.UK: 'Chaos' and 'nightmare' as trendy Cabinet Office wrecked govt websites

jonathanb Silver badge

If you work in tax, there was loads of very useful information on the hmrc.gov.uk website.

Thecus N4310 4-bay: A NAS-ty beast for the budget-conscious

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: This or HP MicroServer

You can pick up an N54L for about £170. That's the model that was current about 2 years ago. I have the N40L, which is the previous model to that, and have absolutely no problems with performance.

UK.gov can't get farmers onto its Verify service – even to claim subsidies

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Slow connection

Government websites generally work very well in lynx. They are very good at ensuring their websites comply with accessibility guidelines, and compatibility with lynx is a good test of that.

KUSHINIKIZA! Google Translate SAVES BABY in Irish roadside birth

jonathanb Silver badge

I had some fun with Google Translate yesterday. In the middle of a list of countries, it had "Fruit salad". Macedonia is the Italian word for fruit salad, as well as being the name of a country to the north of Greece.

Free WiFi coming to UK trains ... in two years

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: As an American

Here, local services are typically 85-90 mph, intercity services are 125mph and international services are 300km/h (186 mph).

Gov.UK begs Google 'n' U.S. tech pals: Forget Ireland, come to Blighty

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: It's not just tax...

Given that 70% of all Euro denominated transactions worldwide go through the City of London, I don't think the fact it isn't our official currency is much of a problem.

Skin colour's irrelevant. Just hire competent folk on their merits, FFS

jonathanb Silver badge

Re: Amen, but where is our voice ?

You should say "White British/Irish", as discriminating against other whites, including "White Irish Traveller" is not PC.