Posts by cosymart

Threads versus Twitter: Shouldn't we be happy the wheels are falling off antisocial social media?

Stitch

If a message on Twitter is a Tweet is a message on Threads a Stitch? :-)

Virgin Media email customers enter third day of inbox infuriation

Re: "small proportion of accounts"

In this household it was 50% as mine was up and running fairly quickly but for SWMBO it took two days.

Parts of UK booted offline as Virgin Media suffers massive broadband outage

It's Orf

Only half down at the moment, emails are borked as is the website but internet access seems to be OK.

Lenovo Thinkpad X13s: The stealth Arm-powered laptop

Requires Office

"The thing is, though, that to get the best out of this, you will need to observe an almost monastic asceticism: pay the extra to unlock Office" Why not do what most sensible people do who want Office but don't want the abomination that is the 365 version. Just buy a stand alone pro version of Office 2021 for under £20? One big advantage is that you don't need to be connected to the mothership to do your work.

Hold off on that 2046 Valentine's date, asteroid might hit Earth

23 Years

Only 23 years to find a replacement for Bruce Willis.

Most Londoners would quit before they give up working from home

Management

The real issue is managers who don't know how to manage other than the head round the cubicle with a "hello". A tad difficult with unoccupied cubicles :-(

Thunderbird email client is Go for new plumage in July

I Like Outlook

Let me clarify not the 365 version but the standalone version that you can have multiple non-microsoft accounts with. Accompanied with lots of folders and rules that posts the incoming emails to. It works and works very well!

Re: See me after class

So those with the !Yahoo addresses didn't make the cut :-)

BOFH: Generating a report the Director can show the Board – THIS is what AI was made for

One line.

"We wait a few seconds for the Director's 2-bit processor to catch up." Love it :-)

Forget the climate: Steep prices the biggest reason EV sales aren't higher

Sensible EV

I'm interested in an EV as our next car but I don't want one based on the heaviest top of the range SUV with the fuel tank switched for a battery.

Windows 10 – a 7-year-old OS – is still having problems with the desktop and taskbar

Try this :-)

"If the resolution doesn't work, users can try restarting the Windows device, according to Microsoft." Nothing beats the old tried and tested switch it off and on again :-(

Royal Mail customer data leak shutters online Click and Drop

Facts?

" The service, which allows customers to print labels...." Followed by the comment "Who even owns a printer these days?" I think if you read your own article you have to own a printer to use the service.

Allowing interns to copy and paste again El Reg?

Microsoft fixes printing gremlin, ends that block on Windows 11 upgrades

Bet ya can't wait to slap that Windows 11 on your machine

Bet ya can't wait to slap that Windows 11 on your machine. I'm sticking with Windows 10 thank you if only to stop the One Drive bloody takeover!

Firefox points the way to eradicating one of the rudest words online: PDF

Hate Columns - Agghhh!

I hate, hate, hate anyone who produces content for reading on a screen who puts it in columns especially if they use PDF format.

Don't, just don't - sob.

How I made a Chrome extension for converting Reg articles to UK spelling

You mean they use a barrel? I thought they were fished out of a small bin.

Lufthansa bans Apple AirTags on checked bags

Re: Unchallenged acceptance of the no-transmit rule for mobile devices...

As for using Mobile Phones (Cell phones) at petrol stations/gasoline filling stations (USA translation). Lots of signs stating not to use your mobile phone but somehow it's ok to pay by phone within inches of the "do not use your phone" sign. See the advice! www.ukpia.com/consumer-information/mobile-phones-on-filling-station-forecourts/

>>>> handy icon.

No, working in IT does not mean you can fix anything with a soldering iron

Other way round

I have this the other way around as I am am electronic technician or was.

We were on holiday in Sweden staying at a swedish friends house when I had the request to look at a laptop with the dreaded BSD. As we were being hosted I found it difficult to refuse so I rebooted the laptop and was met by a string of screen messages all in swedish! I asked the lady of the house to translate but as most of you are aware error messages are not that helpful at the best of times so translating from swedish to english by a non-techical person was a recipe for disaster coupled to which any input needed was also to be in swedish. After a short while and even more BSDs I had to admit defeat.

Block this: Using satellites to plaster ads over our skies could work, say boffins

Re: Somone will invent a suitable ad-blocker

I'd chip in to a crowd funder to do that.

Sage denies misleading customers over perpetual licensing, users not happy

Re: Imagine; two centuries ago; when your mother bought a fine china bowl

@ Chris Coles

You are "TheManFromMars" and I claim my £5

Signed A Surf.

Tetchy trainee turned the lights down low to teach turgid lecturer a lesson

Way Back

In the late 60s we had a college electronics lecturer who would appear at the start of the lesson, give a quick preamble and place a pile of OHP slides next to the projector and give whichever student was sitting closest the job of feeding the slides onto the OHP. The lecturer would then disappear with the parting words that he would return 5min before the end of the lesson to answer any questions.

Datacenter migration plan missed one vital detail: The leaky roof

What?

So who starts a building refurb without consulting with the faculty dept?

Software fees to make up 10% of John Deere's revenues by 2030

Some folk here are going off at a tangent.

@nobody who matters - It's called the internet (magnified by a large % if you are on El Reg). If you have just bought a shiny new PC you have a very steep learning curve. If you are a dyed in the wool subscriber you are trolling :-)

GM's Cruise revises self-driving software after San Francisco crash

Re: Disabled unprotected left turns?

1) Failure 1 Calls "Frank" "Dave"...

2) The vehicle just takes you to the nearest airport that doesn't have unprotected left turns. Might be a long journey :-)

== Bring us Dabbsy back! ==

We were promised integrated packages. Instead we got disintegrated apps

Re: You are doing it wrong.

Changed "The Wizard Smart Knob"

Enough with the notifications! Focus Assist will shut them u… 'But I'm too important!'

New car

I bought a new car in the Summer and after a few weeks managed to understand the varous icons and beeps emanating from the dashboard - A few months later and I am driving home at night and I hear a strange high pitched beep accompanied by an orange dashboard icon that looks like an angel. In fear of my life I pull over and investigate, apparently it is a low temperature warning frost alert. On closer inspection the icon is a representation of a snow flake set in a triangle and for some unfathomable reason is set to come on below +6C All through the winter this annoying thing would ping into life :-(

Apple forgoes cooling systems in M2 MacBook Air

Re: Adverts

Adblock Plus works here - what ads?

NanoAvionics satellite pulls out GoPro to take stunning selfie over Earth

Re: Junk

Nah, been doing it for years :-)

Leave that sentient AI alone a mo and fix those racist chatbots first

Re: Fleshy Ones

If they are truly "welding robots" bolting them to the floor isn't going to stop them rising up is it?

No more fossil fuel or nukes? In the future we will generate power with magic dust

Re: So hard to choose

See icon>>>>>

Amazon to spend $12b on five more datacenters in Oregon

Contacted

The Register reached out to Sweek for further comment; we'll let you know if he has any..... See subject.

BOFH: The evil guide to upgrading switches

Re: So tempting

Here on the correct side of the pond it's Good Friday tomorrow and a bank holiday, hence the early BOFH :-)

Microsoft slices Windows 11 update size by 40% (no, not by cutting hardware support)

Re: Microsoft slices Windows 11 update size by 40%

Don't be silly, what would they have to do prior to Windows 12 in 3 years time?

Square-shaped hole in workers' wallets after payment system fails at peak tip time

High time companies paid their staff a decent wage and this fudal payment system was outlawed.

Ransomware victim Colonial Pipeline paid $5m to get oil pumping again, restored from backups anyway – report

Criminal to pay Criminals?

I thought that in most jurisdictions it's illegal to give criminals money especially for blackmail?

Japan to start stamping out rubber stamps and tearing up faxes as new digital agency given Sept. 1 start date

Electronic Banking

I volunteer with a small charity and we prefer cheques as we can bank these free, we are also happy with BACS payments. Any other type of transaction costs us money: Hire or purchase of card reader, % of transaction, connection to the internet. So why go digital?

Don't cross the team tasked with policing the surfing habits of California's teens

Where's The Story?

Read this waiting for the story/punch line.... Slow news day this week?

How to ensure your tech predictions catch on in a flash? Do the mash

Fireball XL5

Fireball XL5 had the best intro music: https://youtu.be/F8C8pyuOO5U

Website maker Wix embarks on weird WordPress-trashing campaign, sends 'influencer' users headphones from 'WP'

Exit Strategy

I toyed with using Wix for the sites I look after but didn't like the 100% tie in that they operate with no export option :-(

Forget GameStop: Keyboard warriors and electronic trading have never mixed well

Re: The illusion of real time

As the "oh SH*T" moment occurs an experienced climber pushes away from the rock face. This is to clear any nasty obstacles on the way down and hopefully encounter a grass slope rather than the boulders at the base of the cliff :-(

Oops moment

A colleague was adjusting a microwave link and prior to the tweak decided that it would be good to speak to his opposite number on the other tower via moble (cell) phone so they could synchronise their actions. They agreed a course of action: Switch off towers, make adjustments, affirm safe to switch back on via phone call. Bet you can't guess which tower was routing the phone signal.

My bad! So you're saying that redacting an on-screen PDF with Tipp-Ex won't work?

Re: HMRC still has wrong/internal .pdf version of SA100 tax return posted for year 2017

Your problem here was that you "reached out" to them. Had you simply contacted them Robert would have been your fathers brother long ago.

The Fat iPhone, 11 years on: The iPad's over a decade old and we're still not sure what it's for

Re: Seniors

The problem (is it a problem?) is that many people, especially the Seniors (hate this but it works) see the iPad as meaning tablet computer and many don't even know that there are alternatives :-( Getting to be a bit like Vacuum = Hoover.

Ministry of Defence's cyber warfare drive is helping burn a hole through its budget, warns UK's National Audit Office

The MOD needs "Cyber" you can count tanks, warships and planes. Try and count "Cyber" :-)

Solving a big, yellow IT problem: If it's not wearing hi-vis, I don't trust it

Data Entry

We were involved with a similar role out and hit the problem of preparing the system with existing data. Decided to call upon the services of the, soon to be made redundant, typing pool and they were brilliant! Once they got going and realised that each data sheet was identical and they had to tab through each field including null values the stuff was going in at fast rate. One problem, they were entering the data that fast and being touch typist they very rarely needed to look at the screen the screen refresh rate was struggling to keep up and the buffer could only cope with so much. We had to ask them to pause every 5min to allow the buffer to clear and the screens update :-)

The Huawei Mate 40 Pro would be the best Android flagship on the market – were it not for the US-China trade war

Re: Phone review?

Have more upvotes ^^^^^^^^^^

Business top brass are terrified their companies will simply be collateral damage in a future cyber-war

Any War

In all wars there is collateral damage, why should a cyber-war any different? The probable good thing about a cyber-war is that the collateral damage is less likely to kill people.

Be very afraid! British Army might scrap battle tanks for keyboard warriors – report

Costs Lots

Tanks are very expensive to purchase, maintain and operate. The Challengers are at least 30 years old technology and for some reason they are never in the right place. The next big battle/war is going to be fought where???? So the next MBT design needs to be capable of what??? Using what technology????? The lead time between concept to ready for action is 10 years+ minimum.

Easier to win the lottery yet the MOD is expected get it right :-)

Backup a sec – is hard drive reliability improving? Annual failure rate from Backblaze comes in at its lowest yet

Lies, damn lies and Statisitics

The only way you can compare reliability is to place many samples of each drive in identical situations for a period of years. The current method of seeing how many complaints/comments each type of drive gets is flawed as we don't know things like sales. Seagates get lots of complaints but that might be because they sell twice as many? So overall they could be more reliable. IMHO :-)