Posts by Joe 37

Musk's Starlink rockets to 4 million subscribers

Re: Did you know...

What am I missing here? There are two hydrogen atoms in a water molecule. No more, no less.

Bouncing cheques or a bouncy landing? All in a day's work for the expert pilot

Re: VGA port = serial port

Ethernet port connected to an RJ11 connected to the phone line. Generates a line fault for BT to play with.

RJ11 plugs really shouldn't fit into RJ45 sockets.

My late father (a professor) discovered that one. At least I caught it before BT got called out at considerable expense.

IPv6 is built to be better, but that's not the route to success

I own an ex Stock Exchange Sun server of approximately 2000 vintage. Which even then, 20 years ago wanted ipv6 addresses for all 12 Ethernet ports, which it didnt get then or now

Electric car makers ready to jump into battery recycling amid stuttering supply chains

Re: "Less than 5 per cent of lithium-ion batteries are recycled today"

I'm 61. I think I might still have the Ladybird book promising fusion by the time I was 10. Think I read that when I was 8. Must search the shelves round here to see if I still have it..

Energy breakthroughs are always ten years away.

Where is my flying car?

Re: "GM is projecting an all-electric future..."

Not double.

From a back of a fag packet estimate based on the cars on my street. Looking at a 1 for 1 replacement (Which we all know will never happen), we need 6x our current generation capacity plus another 2GW for the French interconnect which it appears there is a desire to weaponise. Currently we have something like 80GW generating capacity - call that the equivalent of 80 large nuclear plants.

We use around 82GW normally...

So we need something like 480GW generating capacity for a 1:1 replacement with ICE vehicles.

So where are those 480 large nuclear plants going to be built?

Wind - yeah right. you cover every square inch of the UK that ever gets any wind and you are still building 478GW of nuclear capacity.

BOFH: 'What's an NFT?' the Boss asks. In this case, 'not financially thoughtful'

Re: Turings?

Still happens - took me about an hour to persuade a Co-op in London that a Scottish fiver was actually cash. Even when I got bored and offered to pay by card even though it was only 4 pints of milk I was buying.

I suppose fungible is as fungible does...

BT to phase out 3G in UK by 2023 for EE, Plusnet, BT Mobile subscribers

Re: Rural coverage is still very poor

Try AB36 8YP. If 3G goes then I get no signal at all (On 3). O2 nominally offers "4G" but at bitrates that make 3's 3G look better. EE and Voda offer 4G but only at bitrates bettered by a 1993 modem..

Revealed: Perfect timings for creation of exemplary full English breakfast

Re: add condiments to taste.

I get mine quite a long way from Sheffield (399 miles by road).

Aldi stocks the stuff at least intermittently.

Unlocking news: We decrypt those cryptic headlines about Scottish cops bypassing smartphone encryption

Re: What the fuck is...no comment

The issue isn't the cops - it's the government enabling them.

Cop Strathclyde was notorious for being too big. So what did the Scottish Nazi Party do? They let Cop Weegie take over the rest of the cuntry. Which led to senior cops from Weegieland wander all over Scotland going. "That's nice, it'd going to Glasgow"

Like all the horses and dogs. Which oddly enough are always needed in Glasgow regardless of the need elsewhere.

Queen Nikki FOAD horribly.

Re: Remote access

When it comes to trans crap - ask the Minster for Higher Education. For an afternoon.

Who doesn't buy the trans fascist crap.

And got sacked by Queen Nikki (May she die and rot in Hell forever)

That magical super material Apple hopes will hit backspace on its keyboard woes? Nylon

Re: Apple keyboard malfunction issues and IFixit.

I learned to type on an Olivetti typewriter in a desert. Sand got into everything. And I had to cut a lot of stencils for a Gestetner machine. So I learned to beat keyboards to death with my fingers. Which I still do.

I buy the cheapest garbage keyboards and replace them about three times a year.

IBM Model M's can handle the battering but cost a fortune and drive everyone nearby mad with the noise. I have killed some of those too.

Where there's a will, there's Huawei: US govt already eases trade ban with 90-day reprieve

Re: Not smart

I watched an episode of The Grand Tour where they showed how good the Chinese were at putting up roads/motorways, even over difficult terrain.

But have you ever driven on one of those roads. I have done many thousands of miles on one. The potholes big enough to swallow a double decker bus are a hint to the quality.

On the Central African plateau routing a road due East-West may not have been the best idea either.

London's Metropolitan Police arrest Julian Assange

Re: Interesting timing ....

Really, really don't try Jan Smuts, Bulawayo, Harare, Lusaka or especially Charles de Gaulle then. The worst of those by a long way was CdeG.

Want to learn about lithium-ion batteries? An AI has written a tedious book on the subject

Really, really needed an editor let loose on it.

The style is eye-bleeding even by the standards of academic science writing. One would not normally add a thirty word chunk between commas in the middle of an otherwise ten word sentence.

Some of it is plain gibberish - very reminiscent of schizophrenic writings known in the trade as "word salad".

So the style is appalling, the content stuck together in loosely related chunks. And written by a barely literate machine.

Letting this loose on buzzword bingo would be a sight to see.

I'll have my eyes closed...

This is not, repeat, not an April Fools' Day joke: 5 UK broadband vendors agree to pay YOU daily rate for fscked internet

Not before time

Since 1992 I've had the line from post to house replaced three times. And the line card replaced twice. OK once was a lightning strike which took out hundreds of lines.

All of which took long periods to get fixed. Worst was two months. For which BT expected me to pay for two months of no service at all.

Fortunately there will be an alternative in a couple of months. Unfortunately that alternative is run by Vodafone.

£220k fines for dodgy dialling duo who didn't do due dil on data

Counting the seconds till these two outfits are liquidated.

Many of these fines are never paid.

Jail the scum.

Sysadmin trained his offshore replacements, sat back, watched ex-employer's world burn

Re: "How to use a barometer to measure the height of a building."

4) (with stopwatch) drop barometer - Newton is your friend.

Famously, James Clerk Maxwell opted for 4 in an oral exam at Edinburgh University. He never did graduate from there. Then got the chair of physics at Marischal College in Aberdeen where he was made redundant when it merged with Aberdeen University.

He and Scottish universities never got on.

BCC is hard, OK? Quite a lot of orgs blurted your email addresses in GDPR mailouts

Re: Doh!

Or; my pet hate.

Idiots who use "Reply to All" on every ********** single email.

Outlook makes this far, far too easy.

It is an option that ought to be hidden under thirty menus. In the last thirty years of email use I've used it once.

So why, **********ing why is it an option at all?

Forget cyber crims, it's time to start worrying about GPS jammers – UK.gov report

Re: Wow

Once upon a time I was asked to set up a wireless network. In a welding shop.

Told them it wouldn't work. Refused to go any farther with the bad idea. They got someone who would.

It didn't work oddly enough. It would work if nobody was welding but...

Outage at EE wrecks voice calls across the UK

Not Ofcom that is responsible for the sewer that is premium rate fraud. At least so they keep on saying while passing the buck to Phonepayplus or whatever they call themselves now.

A "Regulator" that allows the frauds to go on so they can get bigger fines out of them. Which funds them. The regulator is a fraudster itself.

How to scam $750,000 out of Microsoft Office: Two-factor auth calls to premium-rate numbers

Which also shows what a sewer the premium rate phone industry is. As far as I can see, it exists only to defraud people.

Maplin Electronics demands cash with menaces

Re: Remember the days...

".and I can remember when it was a mail order only operation.

Abs they would also send orders to France and Germany."

And Zambia. But that was 30 years ago..

Computerised stock management? Nah, let’s use walkie-talkies

If it were less than 600 miles away this might be a useful hint..

Re: Unnamed Retailer

But now are a badge of Do Not Buy Under Any Circumstances.

I have Karrimor body armour.

Which might resist an airgun.

Re: Shoes

Best fitting boots I've ever had were issued to my grandfather in 1916 after the last pair rotted off his feet at the Somme.

I was seriously unhappy when they fell apart.

I've a narrow heel and a wide foot - and small feet. Apparently in 1916 this was normal.

Doesn't seem to be now.

Re: Shoes

I have small feet. And my left foot is half a size bigger than my right.

And size 7 men's shoes are hard to find.

If getting them made for you didn't cost such stupid money......

Re: the retailer

I've been there.

The boots that didn't last 200 miles. My opinion of Karrimor has hit the floor.

In the RSA they used to sell neat "bullet resistant" kit. If it was of the same quality as their footwear I'd hope nobody is after me with a blow gun.

I have a 40 year old Karrimor rucsac which is actually decent.

Same outfit sells "Dunlop" branded boots. They are just as bad.

Re: Feet like flippers?

Where's the tip of the hat to Douglas Adams?

Vaizey: Legal right to internet access, sure. But I'm NOT gonna die on the 10Mbps hill

If I could get an actual phone line it would be a good start. The USO for voice telephony used to involve everyone paying £200 to get a line in.

Nowadays, BT want nearly £30,000 to install one in the Cairngorms National Park. The so called USO only applies to the first £8,000 of the install cost.

I'll quite happily take a 10mbit data only line instead. But the "USO" will doubtless be so BT and its pals can cherry pick what and where "Universal Service" applies.

Mud sticks: Microsoft, Windows 10 and reputational damage

Re: Windows 10 is going well in corporates

No they won't.

Point me to one large scale deployment - as in 100k or more devices.

Irish shun beer, whiskey in favour of … wine

Re: Alcohol Action Ireland

Once had vodka and Coke on my cornflakes as the milk had gone off.

Never again. And that was 35v years ago...

The paperless office? Don’t talk sheet

Re: The Paperless Office

Someone I worked with used to work with a financial services company. They had just employed a lad to come in in the middle of the night to refill the printers as the daily 3,500 page report apparently had to be printed. Every freaking single day!

Don't know about you folks but I read extremely quickly and there is just no way I could read that much in any 24 hour period. Let alone every 24 hour period.

Eurovision Song Contest uncorks 1975 vote shocker: No 'Nul point'!

Feeling smug :)

Last watched TV 25 years ago.

Another in the long list of things I haven't missed.

Watch out, er, 'oven cleaners': ICO plans nuisance call crackdown in 2016

This nightmare is where our politicians of all parties want us to go. The spamming scum get paid for spamming us. Get rid of PhonePayPlus! Get rid of the ICO. Replace them with an organisation that gives a shit..

And doesn't reckon that public bodies are its only target.

Go after the scum using Indian call centres.

And stop UK.Gov and NHS.net bodies from handing out fake Caller ID.

Have you ever heard of an organisation called PhonePayPlus?

The police don't want to know they refer you to the "regulator"

Sorry guys! Fraud is fraud.

Don't ask the guys who profit from the fraud - AKA "PhonepayPlus" whose imposed "fines" fund them to sort you out.

They don't care.

And don't listen

And don't act against spamming scum.

Re: Call Screening Phone

My (NHS) employer is not prepared to release any real numbers. It hands out a fake number that cannot be answered.

This IMO is criminal and I'll get a list of the fake CLI they issue to be blocked by all sane persons.

TPS is a waste of time. Who operates the database? It was Wetherseal - the worst offenders of all.

Classic Tory "self regulation"

Scum phone calls/texts/emails seem to be from people who give the current government lots of money.

The telcos don't care as they are getting paid.

The telcos encourage premium rate fraud as they get paid.

Make the telcos responsible for what they pass on. Problem is "Net neutrality" has just died. Or that's what they are going to scream.

The day the telcos stop profiting from fraud is the day premium rate numbers stop existing.

Limits to Growth is a pile of steaming doggy-doo based on total cobblers

Re: Added to my Lexicon of Useful Phases

From fallible memory it was first used here to discuss our previous government's policy based evidence making which they did a lot. This seems to have started in medicine where "evidence based" means submission to those who get to say what is, and is not, evidence.

Maplin Electronics sold for £85m to Rutland Partners

In the early 80's they quite happily posted stuff to me in Zambia. For a sensible P&P cost. But they weren't an expensive tat bazaar at the time.

Yahoo! Mail! users! change! your! passwords! NOW!

So their solution is to hand out your mobile number to all and sundry as well.

Is it just me, or is this "two factor" authentication just another data grab for Y! and the ilk to lose/get hacked/sell?

I want to play with VMs

Re: Get a bog standard PC and start using Oracle's FREE VirtualBox

Problem is the encryption stuff required by work blows up VMs horribly. As in reinstall from backup. Repeatedly. Now have to image USB sticks and decrypt them at home on a real Winders box. Which dies often. The encryption stuff sucks goat bits badly.

Guess which major US telco ISN'T cracking down on premium SMS spam?

Re: Funny thing there.

If only! Basically the entire reverse billed SMS scheme is a sewer of fraud colluded at by the "regulators" who earn their operating costs from these frauds. Which are criminal, but the "regulators" get their operating costs paid by "fining" the fraudulent scum. the police don't want to know as it is "regulated" by Ofcom. Who pass the buck to the "regulator" formerly known as ICSTIS, now called phonepayplus who ignore any and all complaints. I stopped bothering after the 400th complaint.

Unless they are sufficiently egregious to get a fine out of them to pay their operating costs.

A fine that will never be paid.

Furious Google techie on NSA snooping: 'F*CK THESE GUYS'

Re: Pot, kettle, black?

Indeed! If it hadn't been collected, their links wouldn't be tapped. There is (at least in theory) a possibility of oversight of the governmental bodies. Unlike Google.

LOHAN's mighty thruster poised for hot coupling

Heat the magnets

Neodymium magnets permanently lose most of their magnetic strength by 60C. Put them in hot water till they are weak enough for your requirements. By molten solder temperature they've lost pretty much all their magnet nature. Just soldering stuff to the tails can make them lose significant strength.

.

Forget 3D: 13,000 UK homes still watch TV in black and white

Their standard letter

once you've ignored them (I've not had a TV in over 20 years) a few times begins "What to expect in court" which amounts to demanding money with menaces - OIOW extortion. Which is illegal.

Go away and die horribly Capita, who have the contract for enforcement, renewed for another 8 years in 2011.

New I-hate-my-neighbour stickers to protect Brits' packages

Re: the secret

You too? They know me by name at the local PO - which I go past 4x a day on my way to and from work. The guy usually in there used to be my postie and would sign for anything that he could stuff through my letterbox. I was last asked for ID at the PO some time in the nineties.

Which isn't as bad as their making coffee for me at the local crematorium. Just don't ask.

Hasselblad CFV-39 digital back

Still won't replace the Sinar

Once it can do what a view camera can then I might be interested. My 40 year old Sinar F still does better.

Agreed entirely

What other reason would you have for not using digital? Tonal gradation depends on film size, nothing else. Can still tell the difference 40 years later. Gigapixel resolution may show it, but nothing I've seen yet will

BT rolls out new, 'competitive' consumer deals

BT couldn't run the proverbial in a brewery

ADSL working fine - but no dialtone on the line. Should never have called them. 9 weeks later the ADSL and dialtone came back. And they wanted me to pay for it till my lawyer wrote them a letter suggesting that paying for no service whatever for 9 weeks was not even slightly acceptable. No idea for how long I had no dialtone since i don't make calls from the landline.

Not to mention 11 hours on the phone to their indian call centres who read their totally inappropriate scripts to me every @%^$% time. On a chargeable number.... Just how does one reinstall Windows on a BT supplied router running Linux? With No non-BT equipment on the line at all.

BT cannot go bust too soon for me. QoS? What QoS?