Posts by launcap

HTC Desire Eye: The Android superior selfie shooter

Re: Tittles are for toffs

How about jots? Are they for toffs too?

Boybanders ONE DIRECTION launch DoS attack on open-source bods

Re: Lordy...

>We're doomed, I tell ya. Doomed.

Time for a hard rock hallelujah?

(OK - so it's an i instead of a y.. so sue me)

REVEALED: Titsup flight plan mainframe borks UK air traffic control

Re: There's legacy, and there's legacy

> meaning Nats has to train programmers in Jovial just to maintain the antiquated software

Could be worse, could be using TPF.. (scary thought - for a while, and may well still be, every input into the Galileo reservations system went though some of my code - and it was code explicitly made non-reentrant by use of spin locks as the low-level routines it was using were not reentrant themselves)

I was quite proud that I didn't manage a ctrl-1 or ctrl-3 catastrophic with that code..

(And my wife worked in the comms team - the people who took the insanely variable data from airlines and sanitised it so that it could be understood by mere mortals - someone from SwissAir wrote an interpreted database-driven data parser language that took pseudo-BAL instructions and ran them on the fly.)

Cool stuff - and even in the early 90's we had code that first saw the light of day in the mid to late 60s.

This week it rained in San Francisco and the power immediately blew out. Your tech utopia

Re: Still Going

>Time to buy some beach front property in East Bay when San Francisco

>becomes the next Atlantis...

Or buy property in SF for when the rest of the US slides into the Atlantic/Pacific leaving SoCal as a small island adrift in the sea*

(*) subject of a Sci-Fi short that I read many, many years ago. Time, red wine and having to work for a living have dulled the memory of the author..

US Navy's LASER CANNON WARSHIP: USS Ponce sent to Gulf

Wot?

Can that not extend the range by using the appropriate crystals? I'm sure that T2 Amarr crystals would do it..

Re: Pretty feeble compared with Phalanx

> and feeds it into the accelerating rail.

Until the rail deforms because of the torsion and heat generated. At which point your nice shiny slugs are now coming out off-axis and start to shred the rail/crew/hull..

Re: ACME MIRRORS INC

> long enough to take down that madcat before the LRM batteries

hmmmm.. Madcat II. My favourite (albeit heavily customised) mech..

DoJ's extra-territorial data demands: now Ireland is baulking

Baulk/balk

One means what you wanted to use, the other doesn't..

Docker: Sorry, you're just going to have to learn about it. Today we begin

OpenVZ

I use Proxmox (http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Main_Page) at home. Initially, most of my linux stuff was done via OpenVZ.

After several years, I now have no OpenVZ containers - only KVM virtual machines. Why, I hear you cry?

OpenVZ sucks for using a regular linux distro in - they all seemed to want special tweaks and post-install hacks to work properly. And don't even try to use the various update mechanisms in an OpenVZ container - they *will* break and leave your container an unsupportable mess that can no longer be patched.

KVM uses more CPU/RAM/IOPS but at least the distributions tend to work correctly. And some even support virtio properly..

Simplez: OLD SCHOOL TECH can SAVE the MEERKAT

Aha!

I can finally work out which of my cats is stealing my wine! Must be the cats, I don't remember drinking *those* bottles..

IDC: iPad sales crash incoming ... Win 8 killing 2-in-1 typoslabs

Re: No news

> Courageous of IDC to forecast all the way out to 2018. Would be nice to

> see how their previous forecasts have held up.

How very dare you! Holding them to their predictions? How very.. functional of you, thinking that their 'predictions' are good for anything other than pleasing their corporate paymasters.. (and generating a bit of cash from page impressions serving ads to those of us unfortun^w clueless enough to not run adblockers).

CERN's 2014 Xmas gift from the Large Hadron Collider: Two new baryons

Re: Critical checks

> I presume everyone involved made a sanity check

Too late. All that peering into unfiltered reality has already made their mythos score higher than their SAN score..

Google bags huge Times Square ad space for New Year's

Display pwned in 3.. 2.. 1..

I wonder who will be the first? And what they would display..

Ofcom tackles complaint over Premier League footie TV rights

Re: No option?

NFL coverage isn't *quite* as bad - you get the late Sunday game on C4 (with very few adverts and actual proper analysis from someone who knows what he is talking about) and the rebroadcast Sunday night game on British Eurosport (with US-quantity adverts sadly). Games at Wembley are also covered live on C4 with the Superbowl being carried on BBC as well.

The majority of NFL games are on Sky Sports - so I subscribe for just the 4 months involved and drop it for the other 8 months (remembering to drop it a couple of weeks before the Superbowl as it takes 30 days from the change to come into effect).

You can. of course, pay for NFL live and get access to every game for the regular season for a mere $199 - with clients for every major tablet O/S (iOS/Android) and a workable client for Windows and OS X. But then you miss the sparking Sky Sports chat..

Amazon: Put our ALWAYS ON MICROPHONE in your house, please. WHAT?

Re: In a couple of years

> Hi, I'm Echo, and I'm your friend till the end. Hidey-ho!

Hi! I'm Echo! Your plastic pal that's fun to be with! How can I irritate you today?!?

(Need a large hammer icon)

Re: Lunacy

>>'You wait until Apple bring out a version - that'll sell like hot cakes.'

>Gawdelpus, you're probably right.

They (already) kind of have - except theirs is mobile. And has a funny name starting with S..

Redmond top man Satya Nadella: 'Microsoft LOVES Linux'

Microsoft loves linux

.. and hugs it, and squeezes it,

And calls it George

:-)

Want a more fuel efficient car? Then redesign it – here's how

Re: Depends on assumptions

> But how many cars these days can only do 30mpg?

Mine - 1.8L Honda FRV (Automatic). It might be my driving style (surely not!) but around town I get 25 MPG. Open motorway gets me to about 33..

I'd love to still be able to run a manual (likewise still be able to ride a motorbike) but arthritis in various joints cuts that idea out.

Apple's new 'iPad Air 2' sliced open, revealing (possible) A8X core

Re: I suspect

Or even (please, please) an new 17" Macbook Pro.. mine is getting a bit long in the tooth!

Russian hackers exploit 'Sandworm' bug 'to spy on NATO, EU PCs'

> someone has to open a weaponized Powerpoint document

Not always - if you are using Outlook and have auto-preview on it can get opened automatically..

Netscape Navigator - the browser that started it all - turns 20

Re: Ah, Netscape Navigator! I knew it well, Horatio

Hmm.. Demon. In the early days anyway - before it got borged and reborged..

One of the reasons I chose Demon was because it had lots of FAQs on getting my Slackware linux install to autodial via my Zoom 14.4K modem on demand. Then had FAQs for doing bonded lines on Home Highway. The had FAQs for securing SMTP servers in the shiny new DSL era.

Stayed with them (and kept my 158.152 address) right up until I had to deal with their new offshored, scripted, "I'm sorry sir but I have to talk you through all the tests you did last time you phoned us just so I can tick the box before calling BT to fix the issue you have had several times before and have a known fix for" spiel. Icon is because of what they became, not what they started as.

IDNet were quite a relief, and have stayed that way.

Re: Cello and Winsock

>Lynx on a 2400 bit/s modem was my introduction to the webernet

Ahh.. youth! I remember my 1200/75 baud non-autodial modem in the early/mid 80's. Dialling Almac. (yes, yes, I know it wasn't the collection of tubes but it was part of a (sort of) world wide network in FidoNet).

Kids today etc etc etc

Philip Morris seeks pay-per-puff patent to help you STOP smoking

Re: Brought to you

>Morris Minors were cool.

And still are (or at least my wifes MM is..). and tax free :-)

Be Your Own Big Brother: Peeking at pussy

Re: I'd like a cam collar

>this means she tries her hardest now to get rid of collars, and she's very good at doing so

Our previous generation of cats were too - we gave up after 3 collars per cat disappeared within an hour of being fitted..

Re: Cats have some strange people.

>They're not like dogs, but the social cues are there

Well quite. And (since I was programmed by cats from an early age) reasonably easy to read.

Confuses the hell out of dogs though - the major indicators are completely opposite (dog put ears back == submissive. Cat does likewise == prepare to get shredded. Same applies to tail wagging and lying on their backs..)

Researchers: Trolls have dark tetrad of personality defects

Re: so, what's your favorite text editor?

> emacs or vi?

joe..

Microsoft confirms Surface NOT DEAD YET, next-gen version coming

ObSportsAnalogy

>Microsoft says it's still committed to its Surface tablets despite disappointing sales,

"The [team] released a statement that the [manager] has the full confidence of the Board and will remain in place for the remainer of [his/her] contract.

Any allegations of him/her/it were seen at the local job centre last week were categorically false.

Dear Reg readers. I want Metro tiles to replace all icons in Windows. Is this a good idea?

Re: Tiles

>paradigm created by NeXTSTEP, OpenStep and GNUStep

Followed by DUBStep?

Take THAT, hated food! It's OVER, tedious chewing! Soylent strikes back with version 1.1

> So if I wish to feast on breakfast bacon butties tomorrow, I'll need to get some in

M&S do some olive and chilli chiabattas that go fairly nicely with good bacon..

Hmmm.. bacon...

NAKED CELEBRITY PICS LAW BOMB dropped on ad giant Google

Techdirt..

.. has a little more explanation:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141002/07015628701/lawyer-victims-nude-celebrity-hacks-threatens-google-with-100-million-lawsuit.shtml

I suspect some scumb^Wlawer is trying to cash in with the hope that Chocolate F^HMountain will quietly pay them off to stop them making a fuss.

George Clooney, WikiLeaks' lawyer wife hand out burner phones to wedding guests

Re: sign of the times

> purchase clothing that changes colour according to the wearer's body temperature

Already done - I had a t-shirt in the mid-80's that did exactly that.

Are you a fat boy? Get to university now, you penniless slacker

Re: Flaw in the argument

>By the time you have washed your bakers, peeled them and chipped them

You don't have to peel potatoes to chip them - just sayin'..

UK.gov sinks another £1.6m into Internet of Stuff spec HyperCat

Re: WWW

> Nor will you have other cats when you click on a Hypercat link

I think my dominatrix senior female cat (name is Kelda.. and she lives up to that name every day!) might have something to say about unapproved minions^Wcats coming into the house..

SCREW YOU, Russia! NASA lobs $6.8bn at Boeing AND SpaceX to run space station taxis

Re: Hail, Hail, Hail!

>President Obama has made it clear that the greatest nation on earth

I didn't know he had the authority to talk on behalf of China..

Ok, OK, mine's the red overcoat with the copy of Long March in the pocket..

Read The Gods of War for every tired cliche you never wanted to see in a sci fi book

Re: Ian M

> EE Smith's Lensman books, which are available as free ebooks.

> Dated, especially the romance

And the casual racism, the overt sexism etc etc.

Not noticeable to an 8-year old child back in the 70s but all too jarring now.

Re: @Steve Crook - DVD double bill

> I'd go for it. Films only have to be entertaining

I present the evidence: Dark Star.

Enought said..

Found inside ISIS terror chap's laptop: CELINE DION tunes

Re: Neat list they've got there...

>...I think the only thing missing from it is a certain book

> written by one Abdul Alhazred...

I get confused - is that the one about Hastur, the one that Hastur is in or the one that doesn't mention Has^&)76* <Carrier lost>

NHS grows a NoSQL backbone and rips out its Oracle Spine

Re: The numbers don't add up

"It processes more than 500 complex messages a second."

Is that all? In the late 80s/early 90s I worked for an airline CRS processing 20K entries/second of a *roughly* equivalent complexity.

Mind you, we had a nice big S/370 (actually two - one for comms and one for agent entries) to play with and as much DASD space as you could fit in a football (UK edition) field-sized room. And a nice dark room to trap newbie tape monkeys in.

Kids today eh? They think they invented it all...

Cave scrawls prove Neanderthals were AT LEAST as talented as modern artists

Re: Crude scrawl?

>Milton Keynes *is* an alien spreadsheet.

Aaand we're back in the world of The Laundry..

Gigantic toothless 'DRAGONS' dominated Earth's early skies

Re: ROC

A species confined to Autralasia is responsible for the Arabian stories about Rocs?

Tell me - did you do geography at school?

Microsoft Azure goes TITSUP (Total Inability To Support Usual Performance)

Cloud:

"All the downsides of mainframes without the benefits"

Top Gun display for your CAR: Heads-up fighter pilot tech

Re: Irrelevant observation number 1:

>Surely every car already has built in call handling (i.e. bluetooth)?

I'd love to know how to do that in my wifes 1966 Morris Minor 1000..

Oracle claims knockout blow in IP lawsuit

'Responsed'? 'RESPONSED'?

In which variety of the English language is that a word? I shall be cancelling my subscription forthwith!

Chomp that sausage: Brits just LOVE scoffing a Full Monty

Re: Carbs are the killers

>Rice is very starchy - you simply don't need carbs.

Different rice types have different starch types. Basmati rice (for example) has a slow-release starch (compared to normal long-grain rice anyway) - which is why it's better for t2 diabetcs..

WinPhone's Halo hottie Cortana to hit desktop in next Windows – report

Re: Am I the only one.....

>Who keeps reading it as Cortina?

No - and I suspect it's be as reliable as my old, much hacked-around(*) Cortina Mk 3.

(*) 2 litre-block fitted but still using the 1.6 carbs/manifolds. Nuts replaced at random with metric or Whitworth almost-fits. Split pins replaced by nails hammered through and then bent round. Fuel tank 'fixed' with bathroom sealant. Floor with some additional ventilation holes that made driving in the wet a soggy experience (and contributed to the interesting aroma inside). A coolant pump that regularly fell off, even when using araldite or locktite on the bolt threads. Finally sold for scrap for more money than I paid for it. Icon because that's mostly what it did - except when my Dad was towing me and had to brake sharply when a moron pulled out in front of him. His disk-brakes worked superbly. My (non-vacuum-assisted-because-no-engine-power) brakes didn't. Opps.

Russia, China could ban western tech if they want to live in the PAST

Re: Good luck enforcing those rules, Vladimir

> try taking a haggis, even tinned haggis, into those united states of america.

I shudder what their reaction to Andouillette would be..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andouillette

Sonos AXES support for Apple's iOS4 and 5

Re: Perfect use

>There aren't very many other companies that can keep their users

>marching to such an aggressive upgrade pace

Except maybe a small Korean company you may have heard of.. Oh - and a Seattle-based software and devices company.

And HP/Dell/Lenovo - new models every 3 months.

Motorist 'thought car had caught fire' as Adele track came on stereo

Re: I got told off my the police once.

>Took my lens out, cleaned it, waited 2 minutes for my eye to open

>properly again and put the lens back in

I did something similar (on the M25) but got a copper with a clue(TM). He was happy that I'd stopped rather than trying to carry on with less than 50% vision..

He was a bike cop. I've yet to meet one of those that didn't have a clue.

Re: @NUmbers

>These 'DIFFERENT COUNTRIES' may have completely different road rules

Like the US guys I worked with who wondered why they kept being pulled over after turning left at red lights..

The concept of "our traffic laws are different" hadn't occurred to them! I think our local plod used to haunt the lights near our office as an easy way of making their quota.

Dungeons & Dragons relaunches with 'freemium' version 5.0

Re: Paper shortages

>I would suggest checking out Pathfinder.

Seconded, thirded and fourthed. Been playing D&D (and Traveller, Call of Cthulu, GURPS etc etc) since the mid-80's and Pathfinder is one of the better ones I've played).

My other favourite was Rolemaster but it kind of lost its way.