Posts by jeremyjh

BA CEO blames messaging and networks for grounding

Re: Hardware vs software

There may not yet be such a verb, but keep saying so and there will be.

How would you pronounce 'Cyxtera'?

Pretty sure it's a silent x and is properly pronounced "shit-error".

Isn't that logo's insane width meant to evoke the HP rebrand?

Guessing valid credit card numbers in six seconds? Priceless

Re: Card not present?

Really? I can think of one that doesn't ask for a CVV in the normal course of a transaction. It begins with A, ends in N and has six characters in its name.

MacBook headphone hell

Re: There is zero need for a 3.5mm to Lightning converter

Nope. There's a cable to Lightning male (charge and sync), but no adaptor for Lightning female (to accept Lightning-connector-endowed accessories).

New MacBook Pro beckons fanbois to become strip pokers

Re: Esc

or just hold the Fn key and the function keys will appear.

By far the bigger dealbreaker is that the 13in MBP with Touch Bar is £1749.

Three posts lacklustre results, angrily mutters over O2 merger rejection

Pedantry

Er, having voted in a referendum to leave the EU doesn't mean we don't have to stick to the rules. We're still bound by them right now. We haven't left yet.

Also, if we're to stay in the single market, which is still a fairly good bet, we're also likely to have to swallow the rules.

London's 'automatic' Tube trains suffered 750 computer failures last year

Re: The key advantage of ATO wasn't covered

This isn't just geological pace - a lot of it is to do with what else will continue to use the Network Rail tracks on which the extremities of the service will continue to run.

Re: RE: Anonymous Custard

That overlays the lines but the Carto Metro map is useful because it shows track layouts, platforms, lengths of interchanges. Not that useful for getting about town. Very useful for understanding why things are the way they are.

Tupperware vehemently denies any link to storage containerisation

Well...

...if they've got the money to spend on wasting your time and theirs with lawyers, then I would politely suggest that their products must consequently be more expensive than strictly necessary for the adequate storage of pre-prepared food and beverages, and take their kind suggestion of substituting with generic items performing the same purpose.

Citrix bakes up Raspberry Pi client boxes

Re: Internal Power Supply?

$89 (£61+VAT).

My first thought was that I'd certainly struggle to buy a Pi, an SD card, a safe PSU, a case, and pay someone to assemble those things and install software, pay someone to test that all of that has happened correctly for sixty quid.

Then I checked. I could buy all the bits from Pimoroni for c. £46. ex VAT, delivered. So that's £15 for customised software, making the PSU internal to the case to help with swapping out units and avoiding endless bent/broken microUSB plugs, and after-sales service all coming from the same place.

Extortionate. And presumably if you order really quite a lot of these, there's a bulk discount.

BT blames 'faulty router' for mega outage. Did they try turning it off and on again?

Re: Redundancy?

Mine didn't hit one nine. After two outages lasting entire bank holiday weekends and killing all cable services, I gave up and switched everything.

They may yet have the last laugh though. On an exchange-only line. No FTTC available.

'Dodgy Type-C USB cable fried my laptop!'

Re: Who ever designed..

I've got a 5-year-old MBP that is doing substantially better than its PC laptop equivalent would be. But it predates soldering everything to the everything else and then coating it all in glue.

When customers try to be programmers: 'I want this CHANGED TO A ZERO ASAP'

Re: What are the odds?

Bosch seem to love this. I have a toaster with a power switch that isn't the thing that lowers the toast into it. This seems mainly to be so that +/- switches and flashing lights can be used for things that really just want a slider.

BBC risks wrath of android rights activists with Robot Wars reboot

Friday nights, Sundays... both.

http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?adv=0&q=robot+wars&media=all&yf=1923&yt=2009&mf=1&mt=12&tf=00%3A00&tt=00%3A00#search

There are all the listings...

Day 2: Millions of HSBC customers still locked out of online banking

Awful service when it does work

Online account management for my new HSBC credit card seems to consist almost entirely of a system which triggers the printing of letters. Even Virgin Money's site can take change of direct debit instruction online.

I've lost the remote! Fury as Samsung yoinks TV control from its iOS app

*facepalm*

For goodness' sake. I have a Samsung Smart TV and I've given up using the smart features because they keep removing them. The model concerned was sold with the following features which have since been arbitrarily removed:

- 'On TV' - a fancy EPG with pictures. Presumably withdrawn because someone had to be paid to provide the pics/listings for it.

- This 'Smart View' remote software, that is no longer remote software.

These features were not described as time-limited when promoted, or at the time of sale.

Even if it isn't, this should be against consumer law. My TV was sold by the retailer with a 5-year guarantee. Wonder how far I'd get pursuing a claim on the basis that parts of the TV don't work any more?

Net neutrality: How to spot an arts graduate in a tech debate

Re: @DavCrav - take the road network for the UK.

As an arts graduate (the horror!), I'm glad you said that.

That said, even the fact that I'm typing this here probably marks me out from other arts grads.

Halifax's '24/7' online banking service is down YET AGAIN

Sounds like their press office could use some press training.

El Reg regains atomic keyring capability

Re: Just be careful

Mine decided it would be best to undertake this reaction on the school drive. Outside the Bursar's office.

Turbocharged quad-core Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed, global geekgasm likely

Re: I absolutely do not need one of these

Ordered mine already, should arrive tomorrow or Wednesday. Now to work out what I want it for.

TalkTalk and Three want to make it easier to switch mobe networks

I'll believe it when I see it. The process is a lot easier than it used to be, but the last time I left Three it took the best part of an hour of telling them I was definitely leaving to extract the promise of a code.

Edit: I'm currently a happy Three customer again. For now.

Scrapping the Human Rights Act: What about privacy and freedom of expression?

Re: In 1215 at Runnymede, do da, do da.

With a spot of luck they won't still be in a position to rush it through by then.

Not sure if anyone else will be better though.

Roll up for El Reg's 3G/4G MONOPOLY DATA PUB CRAWL

Re: Beer?

Nothing wrong with it at all. As long as it's decent lager.

Brits stung for up to £625 when they try to cancel broadband

I wonder...

The new 18-month contract after moving house is certainly something I've experienced. As a tenant in London, it's sure a good way to make sure I can never afford to move my broadband.

*cough* Virgin Media *cough*

Mobe battery flat? These ELECTRIC PANTS will pump things up

Re: Damn...

A gas turbine might just be the answer.

LG offers BRAIN-SAVING CANCER-BL... er 'good luck charms'

Bacon sandwiches

A good friend of mine (sadly no longer with us) and his vegetarian friends took over the Meat Society at their university. They then discovered that the constitution of said society bound them to walk around Freshers' events handing out platters of cured meat, which to their credit they duly did.

History does not record if this was productive in terms of Veg Soc membership. But the fennel salami was tasty.

Vodafone's Euro revenues slump by nearly TEN PER CENT

Lost my custom

When it became clear that they didn't have any interest in providing a sensible allowance of mobile data, even with 4G, for a sensible price, I left.

I'm not a particularly heavy data user, but I resented the risk of being charged for another big lump of data, even if I only used a small chunk of it.

Three-yaarrgh! Major UK mobile network's data goes down

Mine too

I don't know when/if it started working again, as I'm using work's wifi. But I can tell you that it went off for me at 0910. I was on the bus, using Personal Hotspot, and suddenly found that I wasn't any more.

Swap your old iPhone for a new one, Tim Cook tells British fanbois

The importance of shopping around

Bloody hell. Let's hope the prices they offer are better than the estimate. I just got £186 for my 4S from one of the recyclers. I could perhaps have got more by eBaying it, but that would have taken time and effort.

And yes, I did get a 5S. The best feature for me is the newly larger screen size. Larger, that is, than a 4S, given that I didn't have a 5. As for the fingerprint thing, not fussed at all.

NHS tears out its Oracle Spine in favour of open source

Have to agree, David Dawson.

I really, really hope that this goes well.

What the plan appears to be is to replace the Spine with a new version that can do a lot more, and to find a more efficient way of doing it in the process. They're building on a principle that has worked, even if it's not being done by bodging things onto the current code.

If it comes off, and vaguely on-time and on-budget, maybe some other government departments will start to question the way they go about things too.

Apple: Now that you've updated to iOS 7... YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK

It's fine.

Eventually, they'll get over the shock of the change and realise that it's all new and shiny.

Nasty Flash advert

Very nasty

In Safari on 6.0.5 on Mountain Lion, pages with that blasted O2 ad are virtually unresponsive and impossible to scroll properly. No other pages/sites affected, so it's down to this particular ad.

More Brits ditch Apple tablets for Amazon, Google, Samsung kit

Suspect Apple are still laughing at least most of the way to the bank...

Apple have lost market share. But they've sold a lot of iPads. This is natural - the competition for serious punters just wasn't really there a year and a bit ago. That's now changed.

I own an iPad, an I'm perfectly happy with my purchase. Except that the girlfriend seems to always be 'borrowing' the iPad and I barely get to use it. But a Nexus 7 would be very tempting, given its cheapness. In fact, so would a Nexus 4 in place of my iPhone.

I'll probably keep paying the Apple 'idiot tax' because I'm used to it all. But what I suspect is happening is that a lot of the more casual users, and in particular people who maybe haven't got a pile of cash to burn through just at the moment, are being tempted by devices that are far cheaper than the iPad but lack very little indeed in terms of comparable features.

AMAZEBALLS: Buy a doomed Apple TV, get a replacement free

Have one, works fine. Famous last words...

I have one of these 3rd-gen Apple TVs. Sold the 2nd-gen one for a massive premium to jailbreak fanatics. Had no problems with it.

It's useful for what it's useful for. I like Apple kit, so it wins for me because I have other Apple kit with which it is well integrated.

That said, I'm not a total obsessive, and it shares the TV stand with a Samsung smart telly, a PS3 and a VM TiVo. Between all of these things, enough usually works that I can watch what I want.

Hold on! Degrees for all doesn't mean great jobs for all, say profs

Interesting

"Dunno, after years in IT I'd say the best degrees (that aren't hard sciences/engineering) would be English and Psychology."

I'm an English graduate working in a technical job involving web development and some general IT (we're not a vast place). My English degree is one of the most highly-regarded going. Of course, it didn't teach me IT skills. That's what I did with my spare time. As a result, I have a more interesting job than many of my coursemates and I take home a little more money too.

There are core skills that should come with any good degree, around research, deduction and problem-solving. Some humanities graduates have an above-average shot at being articulate and communicative too. Some.

For some jobs, there will obviously be a preference or a need for formal training, but for a lot of IT-related jobs, someone who has enthusiastically learned the skills independently of any course can easily be as good as someone who's been kipping at the back of a lecture hall on a Comp Sci degree. Particularly if they've been writing code that's actually been used in the wild, worked collaboratively on larger projects, been tinkering with a monstrous home lab, or whatever else is relevant. Obviously, they're going to need to demonstrate competence as well as enthusiasm, but real-world experience often trumps what may have been a broad-and-shallow undergraduate degree with little content directly relevant to the job applied for.

Apple said to be testing 46, 55-inch big-screen TVs

Why would it be the end of the TV licence? The launch of a new brand of TV is completely irrelevant to the future funding of the BBC.

It's not that you're not entitled to your opinion on the TVL. Even when it's at odds with mine. It's that the very mention of a TV in an article that isn't about the telly tax shouldn't rationally lead to this kind of nonsense.

Londoners can bonk their way to work without Oyster cards TODAY

Erm

The TfL information doesn't mention Mastercard once. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/26416.aspx

It says any contactless card carrying the symbol shown at the top of that page. Visa Paywave cards carry the symbol.

Unlocked iPhone 5 on sale in US, cheaper than UK - but not cheap

Re: Let me add to the chorus of comparison FAIL chanters

Oops, calculator fail. Yes, £440.83. So, we're being done for the eight quid an top of what I said before. Damn them.

Let me add to the chorus of comparison FAIL chanters

£529 - VAT = £432.20. In USD at today's mid-market rate, that's $694. So we're being screwed, but for approximately the thirty quid that the iPhone 5 costs on top of the 4S' launch price. Not a vast difference, although irritating - presumably it was an adjustment made to try to ensure that Apple always come out on top, even if the pound shifts a bit.

Seriously, there should be some sort of punishment for reporters who can't figure out the effect of VAT. It's not hard.

Apple 'less innovative' at laptops than Lenovo

Apple-hating folk are as irrational as the sheeplike masses.

Apple's products are very good. They're less exciting than they were, but still very good.

I use Macs because I like Mac OS. I use Macs because they tend to irritate me less than Windows. I knowingly and willingly pay a premium for this.

I use iPhone because I like iOS. I use an iPhone because it tends to irritate me less than Android phones do. I knowingly and willingly pay a premium for this.

I use an iPad because I like it. I still think iOS has the edge as a tablet operating system. It has the best catalogue of tablet apps.

But...

I don't think people who choose other devices, be they Windows, Android, or whatever else, are stupid or have made the wrong choice. As long as people have thought about the device they buy in a rational way, taken some advice (not necessarily from me, before you ask), confirmed that the device will do what they want in a way that suits them, then that's all good and well.

And yes, one valid reason might be that they might be able to get pretty much the same functionality as I've just admitted to having above for the thick end of a grand less than I paid.

A pint because quite a lot of people should probably chill out a bit, preferably with ale.

20 years of GSM digital mobile phones

Re: Re-writing History

I had a couple of Orange SPV-and-similar-MS-phones. They were pretty flaky, but the thing that was great was the MSN Messenger client. I could chat with all my friends, even when stranded in rural Devon for a week, and the whole thing sipped data so sparingly that being wired to the thing 6-or-so hours a day cost less than £3/month on PAYG.

But no, they're a completely different class of device to the iPhone, which I resisted right up until the iPhone 4 on cost/scratchiness grounds.

Google's Brin: Elected officials should quit political parties

Re: Wanker

I spare my disdain for those who can't spell it.

RISC OS comes to Raspberry Pi

10 VDU 2

20 PRINT "PACKER IS A KNOB"

30 GOTO 20

UK's Intellectual Property Obliteration office attacked by Parliament

Erm, M Gale...

...the point is that the IPO are effectively encouraging a course of action that weakens copyright, and especially the ability of the individual to negotiate terms of use and pricing for works that they created.

These rights are vital to the operations of, for example, my employer. They're a magazine publisher.

So the point of 'this whole thing' is that Whittingdale and chums are asking the IPO to start behaving like the organisation they're meant to be, and not cosying up to Google and the like.

Amazon lends e-books free to Prime subscribers

Slightly longer period

Well, yes, you can get free 'Super-Saver' delivery. Which is fine for some things. But if it's a large or fragile item, that usually means that for no extra charge some bloke from "Craptacular Delivery Organisation" will drop-kick it over the wall and into your next-door-neighbour's pond for you rather than actually deliver it to your door.

New Mac mini: Business in the front, party at the back

Just ditching a Mac Mini...

...for another Mac Mini! At work. You're right - they're very fine desktop machines.

Apple to live-stream Tuesday's 'a little more' event

Actually found an unboxing video useful this week...

...it was set to weird music, but it did at least help me wind up which plug belonged to the 2nd gen Apple TV I was offloading for far more than I paid for it.

Back on-topic, though - watching the video showing off the keynote venue as we wait for the actual thing to start, it doesn't seem that low key to me!

Virgin Media's blighted SuperHub NOW comes with extra squeal (oink)

I have one...

...and I know this isn't going to make me popular, and is tempting fate but it's working fine.

It does reek of crapness, though. For something that a lot of people are going to wind up lumbered with right next to their telly, it has appallingly bright LEDs. And there's one on the side, illuminating VM's logo very badly. I am looking forward to correcting this with tape.

Google rolls out new, cheaper Chromebooks 'for everyone'

Thank you, Google, for saving me money

If this had been priced at the honest currency conversion plus VAT, which would bring it out at £155.08 + VAT = £186 with some marketing rounding to £189, then I'd have been sorely tempted. Even allowing for some fluctuation and going with £199, this would appeal to me as something to waste my money on and regret like I did that £249 Dell Mini 10v the last time I decided I wanted a laptop which was tiny and light on features and power. By keeping it above £200, you've saved me. Thanks, Google!

Nook pulls on backpack, heads for Europe and flings with foreigners

W madness

I'm excited at the prospect of a decent Kindle competitor. The devices look fantastic - a lot classier than the Kindle Fire. I can imagine that the kind of customers B&N will get from John Lewis/Waitrose will turn out to be precisely what they're looking for - people who will keep the device for a long time rather than be obsessed with having the latest model, but far more importantly are likely to splash a lot of cash on content.