Posts by TRT

Last rites for the UK's Online Safety Bill, an idea too stupid to notice it's dead

Re: The Reg goes all EFF, yet again

And kittens.

Re: The simple solution which surely only fools cannot recognise or realise

There were, but the powder was white, not black.

Re: "Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear."

The secret seems to be in the haircut.

Re: Not holding my breath

I've forgotten... what was this article about?

Re: Computer MOT

Thank goodness 10 is your lowest supported version. My version number is much higher... 95.

Re: Computer MOT

"The issue was that a car had hit the green box at the end of the road,"

There's one round here that where that sentence would be followed by "yet again."

Re: Computer MOT

Yes. The engine had already cut out, and the ignition wouldn't even turn it over.

Re: Not holding my breath

Well there WAS the ECDL... so a logical step to have an eMOT, and then comes excise duty of course, and the Information SuperTollRoad.

Brainwaves rock! Scientists decode Pink Floyd tune straight from the noggin

Re: patterns with regression-based decoding models.

Sky Arts showed the David Bowie self-promo video "Love You 'til Tuesday" on Sunday. That's a 20 minute trip to Tripsville. Even has the original video for Space Oddity in it.

Re: Sounds like...

I noticed it in the CD section of Brighton library whilst browsing one day, way back in 1987. Saw the names... borrowed the disk... was enchanted by the utter lunacy, humour and charm of it. Over the years, whenever I remember, I try to get the DVD of the film. Haven't succeeded yet.

Sounds like...

music from The Body.

BOFH: Zen and the art of battery replacement

Re: Danger of escalation alert

You're thinking of the one with 1.21 jigawatts

Re: Danger of escalation alert

Third party liability cover.

Ah. Their special lunar excursion project. It certainly wasn't a moon LANDING.

Cruise self-driving taxi gets wheels stuck in wet cement

Re: Wet concrete

A human would be tempted to write their name in it with a stick.

Cops cuff pregnant woman for carjacking after facial recog gets it wrong, again

Re: Perhaps facial recognition isn't the issue

And the evidence goes further, m'lud. The defendant was identified from the CCTV images using a facial recognition algorithm.

A facial recognition algorithm?

Yes, m'lud. It's the practical application of an electronic system for rapidly scanning a collection of photographs of known offenders in order to identify a probable suspect.

Is it now? How fascinating. Amazing what they can do nowadays. Please, continue...

Thank you, m'lud. After being picked up by the police officers the defendant was found to be in possession of a deluxe model inflatable companion, whatever that is.

The deluxe model is the one with the genuine hair and realistic skin-feel.

ChatGPT's odds of getting code questions correct are worse than a coin flip

Re: Estate agents

I once went to view a house that was described as having "An enormous potential"... Turns out there was a national grid pylon in the back garden.

Hm

An articulate, thought provoking and insightful article. Plenty of explanation, well written.

Obviously by an AI, so I don't believe a word of it.

How to get a computer get stuck in a lift? Ask an 'illegal engineer'

You could stand there helpfully shouting PIVOT! at random intervals as they try to get it up the stairs.

Or alternatively materialise, say, a professor's office on a landing part way up the returning staircase and open the door so they could make the first turn before dematerialising again, leaving some poor chump to create a 3D computer simulation model to work out how to either get the now stuck object all the way up or how to get it back down again without cutting it up into smaller pieces.

Re: This sounds familiar

Good lord. I worked on one of those in a factory in Trafford Park in 1982 as a youth doing a one week work experience. The factory wasn't by any chance making tasty meat products was it?

Re: We had a similar incident

Not to mention the sudden change in load which, between floors, shouldn't happen. In some designs of lift it's possible to stop it between floors just by a couple of people (or one hefty person) jumping simultaneously up in the air and landing heavily. Well within the total tolerance etc but the RAMP is what's important.

BOFH: WELCOME TO COLOSSAL SERVER ROOM ADVENTURE!!

Re: I miss Infocom...

You wake up.

The room is spinning very gently around your head. Or at least it would be if you could see it, which you can't.

It is pitch black.

> inv

You have:

a splitting headache

no tea.

Orkney islands look to drones to streamline mail deliveries

Re: Floating drone

Except if someone programmes in a Kolvoord Starburst...

Arc: A radical fresh take on the web browser

Tried it.

Hate it.

What does Twitter's new logo really represent?

Re: Sniffing joss sticks.

Especially ones described as "elan musk".

Re: An X Man

Was it a musky smell?

On the record: Apple bags patent for iDevice to play LPs

In terms of modularly connecting a device...

Why does this design smack of a wired connection? I mean, a dongle that plugs into a standardised connector e.g. USB and enables a wireless interface with the iPad / screen that can then be mounted to meet the user's convenience. It shocks me how similar things like the Tesla in car display is very much a tablet on an articulated holder. The lifespan of a tablet is what? 3-5 years? Of a car, 30 years to be conservative. A row of automotive rocker switches that can be serviced easily - 50 years plus. Replace / upgrade the computing component of a car... now you're taking a break from disposable consumer tech. Question is, do you actually need to do that? Apple's forays into mounting things are very limited. It's mostly up to third party suppliers to do innovative cases and mounts. That's all I see this as. There was a modular mobile phone mooted a few years ago.

Infineon to offer recyclable circuit boards that dissolve in water

I was going to say this is ridiculous but...

It actually seems quite a good idea. It would take time to prove, I think, and obviously there are going to be snags and non-use cases. But hm.... interesting.

Douglas Adams was right: Telephone sanitizers are terrible human beings

Re: Real Sanitizers

Seven and a half million years old in fact.

And THAT'S just from waiting for it to complete booting to the Windows 11 desktop.

Re: Real Sanitizers

You could always, you know, fashion a pair of Thai sticks into curling tongs or something.

Re: Real Sanitizers

And telephone sanitisers are mentioned in episode 6 of the TV series. There's a "dead" one in the first hibernation pod that Ford and Arthur come across.

Re: Real Sanitizers

You mean The BBC TV Series? The radio series was a BBC series.

Re: Real Sanitizers

I feel old now. I remember listening to it on my bedroom radio alarm clock well after lights out. Our science teacher at boarding school, a few months later, managed to get cassette tape copies of the whole series and played them at lunch time to the pupils she thought might be interested and amused by it.

LG to offer subscriptions for appliances and televisions

Re: Subscription washing machine programming?

My washing machine just broke and when I was booking a service visit, during the call Hotpoint tried to sell me a subscription to something akin to Calgon-by-post.

Re: Full of bugs

LG EPG stinks. Slower than a tortoise on Mogadon. BUT it's got a good panel in it.

Subscription washing machine programming?

Softeners as a service?

Producers allegedly sought rights to replicate extras using AI, forever, for just $200

Re: Likeness lawsuits be damned!

Ah but can you only sell your likeness to one studio? Or can you ~'work" for multiple studios?

Ezekiel 25:17. "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children."

Re: Groundbreaking

Sometimes it's easy to tell. I think. Obviously computer generated. Dead give away.

Re: Technically...

Eventually AI will replace the director as well... Actually that would be a good project to put the wind up them.

Re: "address concerns of being replaced by AI"

I saw the front end of an aircraft turned into a restaurant called "Steaks on a Plane". Genius.

Clingy Virgin Media won't let us leave, customers complain

Re: Telephone

It's dead easy to remember as well.

0118 999 881 999 119 7253

And as for the phone...

IP phone now. That's all they do. No POTS.

Re: I had no problems.

Really? I told them I was moving to a remote research station in Norway and thus wanted to cancel my TV/broadband/phone (which I never got due to capacity constraint at the roadside) bundle. They wanted an address for the final bill, so I gave them my parent's address which is 400 yards down a private, unadopted road. They STILL offered to simply transfer my contract to Norwaegian research station, and when I gave them an address on Svalbard, they reluctantly admitted that they didn't actually have any service at that location. But would I like to transfer the services to my parent's house... which in those days only had plain old copper telephone, and even now only has fibre to the first 10 yards of the road at the owner's expense. It almost had to resort to faking a death certificate to get out of it. Even then I reckon they'd have put a TiVo box in my coffin.

If they put as much effort into providing a decent, reliable, cost effective service as they did into customer retention then they wouldn't need customer retention.

Microsoft whips up unrest after revealing Azure AD name change

Rubbing a candle in the runners can help with that.

Cops told: Er, no, you need a wiretap order if you want real-time Facebook snooping

Can we charge the police...

with wasting court time? This is such an obvious and flagrant attempt to snoop without the correct legal process... If they'd even found anything they'd have had that evidence thrown out for having been obtained illegally.

I mean, a warrant to obtain communications in the investigation of a crime is fine... I mean, communications which showed the planning of a crime or crimes prior to the commitment of a crime... but this request was for communications not yet in existence. Why? Prevention of a crime? Attempting to intercept an admission of guilt? Definitely interception anyway. Obviously so. I'm shocked they even had the cheek to try it on.

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

Add to that the danger...

of dropping a keyboard in such a way that the keycaps come off. Get those the wrong way round when you push them back and only the most proficient touch typist will be able to log in.

Security? Working servers? Who needs those when you can have a shiny floor?

Re: That's actually not a hard problem to solve

Ah, the perennial problem of coins in the washing machine is soon to be a thing of the past in the brave new world of the cashless society. Cashless, I dare say, because of having to keep buying new phones.

BOFH: Cough up half a grand and we'll protect you from AI

Re: Its a cunning wheeze

Long billion and short billion. Similarly trillion.