Posts by dogged

RIP Sir Terry Pratchett: Discworld author finally gets to meet DEATH

Re: Oookk. OOK.

or possibly

SQUEAK

It's sad but also not sad

because of the Alzheimer's.

As it turned out, he never lost his marbles entirely and he didn't end up in a depressing hotel in Switzerland, far from a home that denies people their final release from pain and misery. He died in his own bed, with his family on a pleasant-ish* spring day in Wiltshire.

That's called "winning".

* ie - perfect for Terry.

BBC: We'll give FREE subpar-Raspberry-Pis to a million Brit schoolkids

Re: No, silly!

Three costs. They also now have to compensate all those broadcasters who already bought the full series of Top Gear from BBC Worldwide.

Not quite like the BBC Micro

This doesn't cost the same as a small car.

Google gives spit n' polish to world's most expensive Chromebook

Re: preordered

the useless OS and the pathetic storage?

Re: use the sd card for the os...

I think you mean they're not used in ChromeOS.

At this point it is traditional for a billion fanboys of various stripes to leap in declaring that if you cannot change the OS - even due to keyboard choices - then it is a piece of shit and probably evil and almost certainly tied to the NSA, typical Microsoft.

Oh wait.

$17,000 Apple Watch: Pointless bling, right? HA! You're WRONG

Re: Clickbait

I didn't see a UKIP angle.

But then, I wasn't looking for one.

Legalising London's bed-hopping economy is POINTLESS

Hmmm.

I expect this will be clamped down on fairly quickly. Those laws will start being enforced.

Why?

Because of statistics. Among the population in general, around 2% are housing landlords. Among MPs, over 30% are housing landlords. Mainly in London. They buy the house, let it, expense the mortgage, nice little earner for our upstanding representatives.

More lets will reduce the rents and they won't want that.

MOOCROSOFT tosses seven proper tech courses online at edX

> If you're a professional developer, it's a piece of piss learning a new language - just open notepad++ in one screen, and google on the other.

But that won't get me a potentially useless certificate.

> The jury's largely out on employer and headhunter attitudes to this kind of achievement.

Tell you what. Let's find out. As a deve/architect these days, I haven't done any Powershell and the gap in my knowledge is bugging me. I'll do the Powershell course and put it on my CV and see if it gets noticed. $90 should be an affordable tax write-off, especially when converted to proper Sterling monies.

Hurry up and just SLAP GOOGLE, MEPs fume at EU commish

Re: Wrong

I didn't know Peter Mandelson posted here.

I guarantee 100% of those MEPs have received something from Google - search results.

What do you think they've received from Microsoft?

Re: What?

> you get lumbered with all the tedious EU trade harmonisation regulations, but with zero say in them.

So? we don't actually get any say in them anyway. At least that way we'd stop actively paying for bureaucrats to invent ever more tedious trade regulations.

Re: What?

@nematoad -

Poor research, I suppose. Yes, the kind of arrangement Iceland and Norway have. An open, single market. No legal authorities. No MEPs. No commissioners. No representation on the Council of Ministers. No nett contribution. No CAP. No CFP.

And, you know, so what if the EU does stupid things to itself from then on? Not our problem.

The single most anti-EU politician I remember (including Nigel Farage!) was the late Tony Benn. And he was very definitely a lefty. He was also appalled by the EU's corruption and lack of democratic accountability.

> MEPs backed him despite having no say whatsoever in resolving EU antitrust cases

MEPs have no say in pretty much everything of importance. The whole system is horribly broken from the point of view of democracy and accountability.

And that, as an aside, is why I favour leaving the EU and striving for the kind of arrangement some of the Nordic countries have going. Open trade area, absolutely nothing else. Because the EU is a democracy in the same way that Google does no evil.

Out with the old: the end of Microsoft support can be your storage opportunity

wat

The bit that confuses me is where you say the upgrader will need some help.

No they won't. All those .mdf files are backed up (they are, right?) so you rip out the old server, take a hammer ot the spinning rust, fire up the new server and restore the .mdf files.

You now have a later version of SQL Server. Go you.

Yes, it may take a little fiddling to recreate a cluster or a fast-cache environment but the database? That's easy.

PayPal pays $60m for Israeli predictive security start-up

Not really. The USA has been (on aggregate) the single largest sponsor of terrorism in the world since the 1950s. Cubans, IRA, Contras, Mujahideen, thousands of others.

Consumers beware! Ofcom's seen a scary new mobe nasty: APPS

Re: Protect and Survive for phones

I'll wait for the Raymond Briggs cartoon.

Re: Sorry about this but...

internet pronunciation of "fracas"?

Ban Minecraft? That's jive, Turkey!

Re: Turkey is a corrupt, filthy, backward shithole

I love Turkey and the Turks are a very welcoming, friendly, generous people. With great food, secular attitudes and a determination to see the bright side of everything.

I don't know where you went. Must have been a UKIP fact-finding trip.

Re: it encourages the raising of pigs for food

> And, if you think about it, cows give meat and skins, chickens give meat and feathers, whereas pigs only give meat.

o rly

Pro-ISIS script kiddies deface Dublin Rape Crisis Centre site

Re: Dublin Rape Crisis Centre

@Jim 69 - some things should make you angry. The fact that the country I lived in and loved does this kind of horrible thing is a good reason to be angry and foam-flecked.

Go to Holyhead some time where the ferry lands in the UK. You see girls arriving in tears and girls leaving in tears. Sent away from their homes and their families in order to prevent them losing their lives, dreams and ambitions via a heart-breaking (but beneficial) operation, denied even the opportunity for their mam to hold their hand. It's wrong. Not the abortions, those are absolutely right if those girls are to stand any chance at living the life they choose.

But the policy on contraception and abortion in the RoI, which is criminal. It's an attitude ISIS would be bang alongside. Couple that with the abuses of the Catholic church, the corruption in Irish politics, the disastrous entry into the Euro....

As stated, my ma's Irish. I lived there for years. I even remember a few words of Irish from school (which is a few more than most Irish people do) . I just can't help but think, on reflection, that if the British government hadn't delayed the Home Rule Act due to WWI, the country would be in a lot better shape.

Oh sure, Ireland would be whining about independence just like Scotland does and pretending to be oppressed but we'd have avoided the terrorism and deaths, the tacit collaboration with the Nazis, the Euro, much of the poverty and a whole lot of paedophile priests.

And the policy on women's rights and reproductive health would not be made by allegedly celibate men who wear dresses.

Re: Dublin Rape Crisis Centre

@splodge - there's nothing racist about recognising that for example, this is a savagely cruel abomination.

My mother is Irish so I am unlikely to be "racist" against Irish people even if that were actually possible. However, the Irish government is run like a pre-Francis branch of the Catholic Church and Irish laws about reproduction and families are just horribly, despicably wrong.

You didn't know about this? Oh, then you just downvoted out of some misplaced nationalism, which makes you an idiot. Or you agree with this? In which case, that makes you a disgusting individual and I hope you get a particularly painful fatal cancer.

Dublin Rape Crisis Centre

Is that the place where if you get raped and then find out you're pregnant, they lock you up to stop you getting an abortion by going to the UK where we're not fucking 14 century lunatics?

Vodafone: Can't make calls on our network? Use Wi-Fi

O2 offers TuGo, which is app-based VoIP

I think you mean "O2 offers TuGo, which is great if you want it to take half an hour just to type a text that will then refuse to send anyway". As for call quality... there is no call quality.

TuGo is, basically, non-functional.

Bulk comms spying is not mission creep, insists UK foreign sec

Re: Am I allowed?

> Hence Dogged, did you seek permission before broadcasting the C* word?

Yes I did. I said "Am I allowed to call this guy a cunt?"

Did you miss that bit?

Am I allowed to call this guy a cunt?

What a cunt.

An uncomplicated Buffalo in SOHO: The LinkStation 441D 4-bay NAS box

> Windows Mobile 7.5

No such thing, sorry.

On topic, will it serve PLEX?

Apple slips out security patches while world goes gaga over watches

Re: Hype and cover

I'm waiting for the Stephen Fry review.

Re: It gets better - apparently

Could be worse. Could be Bono.

I don't know. But they don't claim to create godlike perfection and then peddle crippled Foxconn hardware so I don't see the relevance of your whataboutery.

Critical fixes?

But they just work, don't they?

Filthy – but sadly frothy – five door fun: Ford Focus 1.5 Zetec

Re: Warning - C-Max is shit.

I think it's specific to the C-Max although I hear that the B-Max is similarly stupid.

Re: Warning - C-Max is shit.

@jason7 -

> I can fit two rear child seats in my i10 so...?

I don't doubt it. Your i10 is a sensible little car. The Ford Focus C-Max is a marketing stunt designed by a retard.

Re: Warning - C-Max is shit.

@Flatpackhamster - the C-Max was provided as a courtesy car while an '09 Civic was in for repair. Front passenger and driver seats were pushed all the way forward and as upright as possible.

I was prepared to go along with this - even though it means it leaving it to the other half because she might - at 5'10" - stand a chance of actually fitting behind the wheel whereas I - at 6'4" - stood no chance whatsoever but even then, the seats were actively pressing against the child seats which is unsafe - you need an inch of clearance for them to be effective.

For the record, both seats fit in the Civic and I can (just about) ride passenger. Both fit in my RAV4 with the seats fully back.

Re: Warning - C-Max is shit.

I've got a 2 year old and three week old baby. The law states they must be in car seats and the rear-facing ones do better in crash tests.

Any "family" car that can't fit two rear-facing car seats is a failure.

Warning - C-Max is shit.

I don't know how many of you have driven the C-Max, it's marketed as a family car with lots of space.

It handles like an elephant on a beach ball and wallows like a pig but you expect that in a family car. What you don't expect is for it to utterly fail at being a family car too.

To the point, then - this is a "family car" in which you cannot safely fit two rear-facing child seats because there isn't room. So much for "spacious". It also fails in carrying lots of stuff around. Sure, you can fold down the rear seats but they don't fold in. This means all that lovely boot space effectively already contains the volume of three big suitcases before you ever pack anything.

I wanted to like the C-Max. It looked like a good idea. It isn't. It's a fucking stupid waste of a car. Don't get one.

Linux kernel devs adopt Bill and Ted's excellent code of conduct

Be fair. He only said "set up to". He didn't say whether it had worked.

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

Re: Crapita

Yep. I was confused until this line happened -

> Capita, which runs the Data Communications Company (DCC) responsible for rolling out the programme

And suddenly everything made absolute sense.

£280k Kickstarter camera trigger campaign crashes and burns

Re: Bah!

I've never sued anyone, or wanted to.

I merely stated that Haje could.

Re: Bah!

> And the English love of the lawsuit for no reason rears its head once more. I despair of my mother country sometimes.

This from somebody who lives in America.

Re: Bah!

I don't know which article you read or which project you're talking about, but that absolutely did not happen with Triggertrap Ada.

Stop it. Seriously, If I were Haje (I'm not) I'd be inclined to see damages for spreading that kind of story. Everything that was raised for TT Ada was spent on TT Ada.

Happiness Manager?

I know Haje. He's a nice guy. He also confirmed for me that Triggertrap do not have any employee with the title "Happiness Manager".

Stop kicking him while he's down.

Office for Mac 2016 Preview: This letter will self-destruct in 60 days

Re: The aticle needs to be re-written a bit

I think that would be an opinion piece rather than a report.

And it would only be your opinion piece.

And nobody cares about your opinion.

Re: So, so happy ..

I think I'm going to go around all the car sites and post at the end of every non-Toyota review about how happy I am with my Toyota.

Because being a massive bell-end is obviously cool these days.

Intel slaps Iris Pro GPUs into Core i7 silicon to woo desktop gamers

Intel graphics? For games?

We're talking Candy Crush Saga and Fruit Ninja, right?

Because no, it will not run Crysis.

UK spaceport, phase two: Now where do we PUT the bleeding thing?

Re: North East

North West. North West Wales, that is. Anyone who's been to Hollyhead knows that once there, all you want to do is leave. There's already the ferry port, I reckon the option of escaping into space would prove popular given that it's sunnier, warmer and less fucking miserable than Anglesey.

Also, you could drop the spent casings on Birmingham which is a bonus.

.hotels. .hoteis ... not a typo but a window into ICANN's baffling world

hoteis? Plural?

There can be only one.

Samsung-Microsoft deal will bundle Office 365 with Android Knox

Re: The note 4 is king of bloatware.

> And now the creepware Google is joined by the NSA creepware MS?

I'm sorry, do you come from a reality where Microsoft aided and abetted the NSA for years and Google didn't?

Because in this reality, Ed Snowden's documents show that Google certainly did. As did Apple and all the telcos.

If you want to differentiate Google and MS, you could possibly go for the fact that MS only spied on you for the NSA but didn't also sell you to advertisers.