Posts by fredds

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

Re: don't forget

The blinker fluid is VERY expensive, and has to be BMW, Audi, Tesla brand.

Mint 21.2 is desktop Linux without the faff

Re: Minty fresh.

You have a great username. I went with Ubuntu until 10.10 when they changed to unity desktop. Swapped to Mint and stayed with it. User friendly and just works.

Watchdog calls for automatic braking to be standard in cars

Re: Cars kill about the same number as guns

In Australia, the majority of gun deaths are due to members one criminal family murdering members of a competing criminal family, usually with an unregistered/stolen handgun. Years ago, after a couple of massacres, we decided that nobody needed a machine gun, or even a self loading rifle.

It's official: BlackLotus malware can bypass Secure Boot on Windows machines

Does it affect linux boxes?..yet.

Learn the art of malicious compliance: doing exactly what you were asked, even when it's wrong

In the army, if you do something well, you then get to do that task whenever it occurs. It was jokingly called performance punishment.

Know the difference between a bin and /bin unless you want a new doorstop

Fail

Earlier this year I was following some instructions to install a program, and managed to delete libc6. The machine would get half way through the boot sequence, then stop. It seems that everything relies on that library. I tried booting into another distro on a USB stick, tried apt, wget, and a few other things, but basically had to re-install the O/S. Fortunately had all my personal stuff on /home.

Vivaldi email client released 7 years after first announcement

Re: Does it import Opera's mail? Asking for a friend.

Loved Opera and its mail client. Had been using it for 20 years until my computer was destroyed in a house fire. Nothing else comes close.

*Thunk* No worries, the UPS should spin up. Oh cool, it's in bypass mode

Re: new site built directly on a flood plain with the IT hardware in the basement.

Yes, a lot of discussion about the follies of building on flood plains in Australia at the moment.

Machine learning the hard way: IBM Watson's fatal misdiagnosis

Re: One doesn't imply the other

Douglas Adams was a programmer, and knew that 42 represented the *, which can mean anything. So the answer to the question of "life, the universe, and everything", means anything you want it to be.

Swooping in to claim the glory while the On Call engineer stands baffled

Re: Hey Rob!

1800's were good cars. With another 50HP and an extra gear it would have been great.

A lightbulb moment comes too late to save a mainframe engineer's blushes

IIRC they use mnemonics to remember some of their checklists, saves being distracted by pieces of paper. I think they use paper when the checklist is too long.

What do you mean you gave the boss THAT version of the report? Oh, ****ing ****balls

Re: I did this ...

Ah, picnic at hanging rock, one of the great Australian movies..not. Three times I have believed the hype when advertised on TV, and on each occasion, quit after 20 minutes of utter boredom. Have learnt my lesson now. You have my deepest sympathies for having to study the wretched thing.

Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz? Detroit waits for my order, you'd better make amends

Re: OK, I'll take one for the team

Bonzer is an Australian slang term meaning good or outstanding. Wheeze is a lurk or event.

It's always DNS, especially when a sysadmin makes a hash of their semicolons

Smart would have to be the most abused word in the English language at the moment. It is everywhere, and usually can be translated as dumb.

Funny, that: Handy script for wiping directories is capable of wreaking havoc beyond a miscreant's wildest dreams

Re: ElReg asks ...

Today is Pungenday, the 24th day of Bureaucracy in the YOLD 3186

Cool IT support drones never look at explosions: Time to resolution for misbehaving mouse? Three seconds

Re: Switching on the "monitor stand"

Install windows on it

Exclusive: Windows for Workgroups terror the Tartan Bandit confesses all to The Register

Re: Pine

Evolution is still being developed, and works on linux and windows (allegedly)

User secures floppies to a filing cabinet with a magnet, but at least they backed up daily... right?

Re: Then there is the "send me a copy"

I have a coffee mug with that cartoon on it.

Sniff the love: Subaru's SUVs overwhelmed by scent of hair shampoo, recalls 2.2 million cars

Re: Progress?

As far as I know they are still controlled by a switch, activated by movement of the brake pedal. Operates quicker, and doesn't rely on having pressure in the system, or keeping high pressure fluid out of the switch.

Core blimey... When is an AMD CPU core not a CPU core? It's now up to a jury of 12 to decide

Re: Ryzen

As I recall, AMD won the race to get a working 1Ghertz chip to market. Some fuckwit Oz PC mag tested it, and then had the gall to say " do we really need such fast PCUs?" I kid you not. This was back in1999/2000

BOFH: State of a job, eh? Roll the Endless Requests for Further Information protocol

Re: more, more, more!

It is called performance punishment. If you perform too well, you get more things to do.

A 5G day may come when the courage of cable and DSL fails ... but it is not this day

can't wait

I would love to have 5G. Currently living on the outskirts of a rural town in Oz. ADSL2 speed has dropped to 5Mb/s due to crappy lines, NBN will never be seen in my street, fixed wireless is 5Km away, but there are a million trees in between, so no signal, and satellite is a joke. BUT, I do have a mobile tower 300m away, and can get 50Mb/s on a good day, with about 35ms ping. Can't wait.

The great and powerful Oz (broadband network): Revs rise, but nbn™'s exec bonuses don't

I would love to have fixed line broadband, but that is never going to happen. Fixed wireless?, no, there are a million trees between me and the tower, so no signal. Satellite, don't make me laugh. However there is a mobile tower 600metres from me, with both optus and telstra, so 5G will suit me nicely. And optus just put in a dedicated fibre line to the tower.

Grad sends warning to manager: Be nice to our kit and it'll be nice to you

Re: Sometimes violence is the only answer

Bloom County is a great comic. Bought the 5 volume set, which started from the very first sketches.

Trainee techie ran away and hid after screwing up a job, literally

Re: He started a new life

MONEY. They wouldn't fossick around in people's mouths otherwise. I worked as a dental mechanic for 40 years, and they are tight as fishes arseholes. Also, didn't have the university requirements to be a doctor or vet, so went for the next best thing.

BOFH: We want you to know you have our full support

Re: This isn't even comedy any more

Comedy mainly consists of commenting upon life's foibles; with a twist.

Microsoft's foray into phones was a bumbling, half-hearted fiasco, and Nadella always knew it

Re: Hand up...

Yes, I remember that, and documented the whole sorry episode.

Windows Phone 7 is set to outgrow Android and IOS over the next few years

IDC forecast puts Microsoft in second place by 2015

By Dean Wilson

Thu Jun 09 2011, 15:16

WINDOWS PHONE 7 (WP7) is set to outgrow the rival mobile operating systems over the next few years, according to a report released by the International Data Corporation (IDC).

Microsoft’s late-comer smartphone OS is expected to grow its market share from two per cent in 2010 to 3.8 per cent this year, a downward revision of IDC’s previous forecast in March of 5.5 per cent.

That’s a relatively tiny share of the market, particularly for an OS that many people would consider a potential third rival to join in the battle between Google’s Android and Apple’s IOS, but the real strength of Windows Phone 7 will appear during 2012 to 2015, the report predicts, when IDC expects to see WP7 market share increase significantly to 20.3 per cent.

BOFH: Defenestration, a solution to Solutions To Problems We Don't Have

Re: BOFH is playing the long game

One of the funniest scenes ever was the time he proposed marriage to the female checking his books.

Intel's Atom C2000 chips are bricking products – and it's not just Cisco hit

ironic

Recently, google was looking at ARM chips for its servers. The following is a quote from the article.

But Intel has been in this game for a long, long time, and as a consequence can bring process advantages and expertise to bear that mean the chance of Google being able to actually develop a better general-purpose chip than Intel is slim.

Intel is going to be taping out 14nm low-power chips next year, which will combine excellent performance with a lower-than-usual power draw. ARM processors, by comparison, will be pumped out of fabs operated by TSMC, Global Foundries, and Samsung, among others, which are thought to be running at the high-20nm node at the moment, and may move to 20nm by end of 2014.

“With over 50 server, storage and communications designs based on 22nm Intel Atom C2000 (Avoton) SoC launched in September, we are well on our way in leading the low-power 64-bit system-on-chips (SoCs) segment,” an Intel spokesman told El Reg. “Today, Intel Atom is still the only available 64-bit server SoC offering leading energy efficiency and performance and we expect that to continue into next year and beyond as we approach yet another generation of 14nm-based SoCs.”

BOFH: Password HELL. For you, mate, not for me

Re: "I rarely get cold calls"

Tradition was, you gave the executioner a small bag of coins, which guaranteed a single, clean chop. One guy decided to be cheap; took 7 hacks to remove his head... painful.

After-dinner Mint? Stylish desktop finale released as last of the 17 line

Re: Mint has worked with ALL my hardware

Google came up with this.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=147071

If that doesn't work for you, maybe a better answer somewhere else in the forum.

good luck

Pete

iiNet struggles through five-day outage to get thousands back online

DNS?

If tim99 could ping various places on the net, then it would seem that iinet/TPGs dns server was not working. Maybe they have gone the same way as telstra, who earlier this year rolled out automatic updates to their modems, pointing to telstra's dns servers. When it proved possible to get around this "update", they did another one which prevented changes.

Boffins unwrap bargain-basement processor that talks light and current

google Orac3. A guy in Australia made his interpretation of Orac. Look for results in bit-tech.net.

It is a very long article, which is well worth it if you like reading about invention and perseverance.

Plenty of pictures if you want to skip bits. It is a truly novel and interesting computer.

cheers

Pete

Rooting and modding a Windows Phone is now child's play

Re: Warning: Actual Windows phone owner here

Maybe winphone passed the pwn2own test because there are not enough of them to make it worthwhile.

I remember this being used as an excuse why linux was more secure than windows.

Twin Adam Sandlers shake El Reg's movie unwatchablathon team

Then there is that classic example of Oz film adored by all the cognoscenti, "Picnic at Hanging Rock"

That tripe is so boring, I have never managed to get past the first 20 minutes.

Other time wasters are Caligula, The Postman always rings twice, and that rubbish where Julie Andrews gets naked.

A budget phablet, what a curious thing: Reg puts claws to the Lumia 1320

Good idea for many reasons, mainly ease of use for the fat fingered or those with failing eyesight.

The next step would be to pair it with a bluetooth headset, with optional vibrate, so it could be kept in a pocket. Then add a small display to indicate who was calling. And it would need good battery life.

To fel with you! There's an NSA spook in my World of Warcraft

The Horde must be terrorists, they speak in code all the time, eg.

Ogg thak drgg blah.

'Climate change is like Y2k!' - Oz senator

Yes, the climate is changing.

No, it has nothing to do with carbon dioxide, because a gas comprising 0.04% of the atmosphere is not going to affect it.

What people are annoyed about is the carbon trading, which was going to make a few people rich at the expense of many.

Cow flatulence, gas emissions much worse than thought - boffins

Carbon dioxide, 0.04% of the earth's atmosphere.

Methane, 0.00017%.

There is no way that these two "greenhouse gases" would be able to warm the earth.

Yes, the climate is changing, but it has nothing to do with those two gases

Fed up with Windows? Linux too easy? Get weird, go ALTERNATIVE

Re: Emacs

Yes, all it lacks is a decent text editor.

Only 1 in 5 Americans believe in pure evolution – and that's an upswing

Re: Let there be.....Ignorance?

There is no evidence at all for macro evolution, so who is teaching fairy stories?

No evidence for primordial soup, amino acids do not spontaneously form proteins. Scientists estimate 80 proteins needed for the simplest conceivable living cell to function. How are you going to get the correct number doing the correct job in the same place. A membrane is needed to enclose them, but it must pass the correct nutrients in, and waste products out; how does it know how to do that by accident. Then the cell must have enough DNA to replace its proteins, and to replicate itself. All by accident. Just about every living thing appears suddenly in the fossil record, with no gradual lead-up. Look up Cambrian explosion.

No FTTH under alternative Oz NBN plan, says Oppn. leader

FTTN

Two weeks ago, got ADSL2 via FTTN; speedtest, 17Mbps.

This is basically what the libs are offering.

I am 2Km from the node, and 5Km from exchange, with crappy lines.

As I live in a small country town, estimate FTTH would arrive at my place in 10 years.

Fast enough for me

New nuke could POWER WORLD UNTIL 2083

Re: And how do we get at the existing stuff that's buried in various sealed sites?

The storage facility in Nevada was never used, because the lunatics wouldn't allow the waste to be transported.

Study fingers humans for ocean heat rise

memory

As someone who was around in the 70's, I can remember scientists claiming it was getting so cold that we were heading for another ice age. So .15C in the last 40 years is just getting back to normal.

Arctic Ocean may be releasing its methane

PPM

Could somebody please enlighten me. We are told that the rise in CO2 from about 300PPM to 400PPM is going to cause catastrophic rises in global temperatures. But when I do some maths on the figures, I come up with 3-4parts in 10,000. So a rise of one molecule of CO2 in 10,000 molecules of air is going to heat the planet. That is astounding insulation material, maybe scientists should be looking at CO2 to insulate houses and factories.

Tas Uni helps align ice observations

worry

"I just wouldn't fancy being around in another fifty plus years. Just maybe this work will make life in the 2060s a little more endurable."

Why wouldn't you want to be around in 50 years? The earth is not warming any more, that is why global warming was dropped in favour of climate change. Australian scientists in antarctica drill the ice every year to measure thickness, it is getting thicker. Their data is more accurate than that from a satellite. Sea levels are going up by about1.3 per year, as they have done since the last ice age. We had the medieval warm period a thousand years ago and the little ice age 400 years ago, so the climate is always changing.

Don't worry, be happy

Antarctic ice formed at CO2 levels much higher than today's

iced

Land ice is increasing in the antarctic. Australian scientists, who have been there for a long time, drill a series of holes every year to measure the thickness, and it is increasing.

cheers

Fredds

Boffins grow brains in petri dish

Alternative

Or you could have the brains from Australian politicians, they aren't using them at the moment.

Extragalactic black hole particle fountain awesomeness

welcome

I, for one, welcome our magneto-hydrodynamic overlords.

Moving to Windows 7: Is it worth it?

advert

Well Tim, that was a nice MS advert you produced, I hope they paid you well.

"XP fails to take full advantage of today’s hardware in areas such as power management, graphics and multimedia." Why is that, one operating system rendering graphics with a video card, or playing noise through a sound card,is much the same as any other.

IE9 won't work on XP, another reason to use firefox.

Vista was not a step forward, it was, and is, a steaming pile of shite; have a look at this article.

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

Win7 is a bit more shiny but it still has problems, and no real compelling reason to update.

Bite the bullet, change to Ubuntu and use the money you save to train people on it; couple of hours should see them up to speed. They update every six months, for free:)