Posts by Lindsay T

Radioactive hybrid terror pigs have made themselves a home in Fukushima's exclusion zone

Have you ever face a wild boar/sow? Any of them will scare the sh1ts out of you. Aggressive doesn't begin to describe it and they're fast and agile. Given half a chance, the domestic pig isn't far behind either.

Man found dead inside model dinosaur after climbing in to retrieve phone

Re: I was wondering how they found him.

Odour?

I think he laid himself open to a bit of mockery by managing to find a unique and absurd way of dying. Other than the fact that it was probably deeply unpleasant, going out on a blaze of publicity has its merits, possibly more so than the mundane lingering exits most of us will endure. So let's be a little sad but hail this hero's ingenuity.

File this next to Mars bars under 'things that should not be deep-fried': Marks & Spencer's Colin the Caterpillar

There's more than one Scotland

The reason your Aberdeenshire correspondent was unaware of deep fried Mars bars is that the heathens that eat it are all west of Stirling. We righteous east coast chaps have a sophisticated cuisine such as onion bridies and mutton pies (pehs in my home town). None of us from anywhere ever go to Edinburgh so who knows what they consume there; probably babies and pet kittens.

Take Note: Samsung said to be thinking about killing off Galaxy phablet series

I had the original Note (still do in a cupboard somewhere) and loved it but can't justify the price of the current model. I'm using the original Pixel XL and would really like a shiny new phone but then I ask myself why. It's working well, it does everything I need so no new toy. It's like cars. A decade or two ago 50,000 miles was time to trade in. Now I do 100,000 over 4/5 years with little trouble. Again, I would like to change after a couple of years but I've learned sense. Sorry dear manufacturers, I do like this year's model but .......

Let's... drawer a veil over why this laser printer would decide to stop working randomly

Re: Well, you say that but ...

A few years ago a wide flat valley near here had its "once in a hundred years" flood (that happens every thirty). It was only when they took an aerial photo that folk realised that all the old farmhouses and steadings were built on imperceptible rises and remained dry while the modern dwellings flooded up to window level. Our ancestors were not quite as daft as we imagined.

Brit accused of spying on 772 people via webcam CCTV software tells court he'd end his life if extradited to US

It seems to me that what he is alleged to have done must be a crime in the UK so let justice take its course here.

Honey, I shrunk the battery: Something's gotta give as iPhone 12's logic board swells to accommodate 5G chippery

Re: Just curious

Exactly. I suspect that most of us run a very similar cyle. My tablet gets heavier use some days and needs a charge during the day, which is a pain in the ****, and unacceptable in a phone.

Tim Apple. Larry Oracle. Ginni Layoffs: It works so why the heck not?

Many years ago, the Matron of Moffat Hospital was a Miss Moffat. As this made remembering her name a bit less difficult, we tried to suggest that the Matrons of our other hospitals change their surnames. Disappointingly, none thought our msster plan to have much merit.

Raytheon techie who took home radar secrets gets 18 months in the clink in surprise time fraud probe twist

Re: Did he not

Living in MA, there was always the sea.

Re: Editing

Having been educated in an era when grammatical errors were swiftly followed by physical pain, I like to think I don't do typos. However, my confidence in that regard is usually shattered about 5 microseconds after I hit the send button. You are forgiven Mr. Editor.

TomTom bill bomb: Why am I being charged for infotainment? I sold my car last year, rages Reg reader

Re: NEVER put your home address in your GPS!

My "home" is miles into the deep dark wood. Hope they enjoy the trek if they nick my car. Fortunately it's old and decrepit so not at much risk.

Lifetime?

TomTom's idea of lifetime and mine are just a wee bit different. A few years ago, I bought my wife a TomTom satnav with lifetime updates. It now cannot access any further updates as it is now beyond its lifetime. TomTom defines lifetime as the lifetime of the product line! While we got a few years with updates, the irate blogs out there suggest that some found a lifetime lasting only a couple of years. TomTom are scoundrels and Waze is the answer.

Never let something so flimsy as a locked door to the computer room stand in the way of an auditor on the warpath

All auditors become adept at bypassing security of all sorts otherwise we wouldn't get the bad guys. That said, almost always the important key is in the key safe, the key for which is always secreted in the boss man's top left hand drawer. We were nearly beaten by one guy who put it in the top right hand drawer. Very clever but we figured it.

Of course, a decent auditor leaves no trace of ever having been there. Set a thief ..........

'Software delivered to Boeing' now blamed for 737 Max warning fiasco

"Bean Counter" Here

This "bean counter" spent his career attempting to ensure that the organisation had sufficient resources to undertake the work it had taken on to a proper standard or, if not, to undertake only that which it could satisfactorily bring to a conclusion that met the needs of the customer and stakeholders. Most accountants (a) have a well developed conscience and (b) know that allowing an organisation's integrity, standards and quality to fall short is a route straight into the arms of the insolvency practitioner.

Boss sent overpaid IT know-nothings home – until an ON switch proved elusive

You can stand on a Dell 1710 (rebadged Lexmark I think) as well. Company I worked for threw them out ten years ago after many years as they had come the end of their useful life. I bought one for next to nothing and it is still going strong.

Farewell, Android Pay. We hardly tapped you

Re: Most shops accept Amex these days,

Even found a filling station recently in Lockerbie that refused American Express although that is pretty rare. There's a other half way up the A9 though.

Want a Dell printer? Unlucky – they've just stopped selling them

My two very elderly UK model Dell 1701 lasers appear to be Lexmark under the skin. They have done tens of thousands of prints over the years and remain fast and reliable with excellent results.

Airbag bug forces GM to recall 4.3m vehicles – but eh, how about those self-driving cars, huh?

Re: I'm old enough to remember

The hard metal dashboards also often had sharp chromium badges on them, which is why I have a scar under my chin that reads "caidoZ".

Met Police wants to keep billions of number plate scans after cutoff date

I wonder how the rest of us would fare if we argued that we could not comply with the data protection legislation because our database was so badly constructed that we could not delete data no longer required for our lawful purposes.

Share-crazy millennials spaff passwords ALL OVER the workplace

Re: Passwords on Post it notes pasted to monitor

In the good old days many CRT monitors had a small flap below the screen under which were the brightness control etc.. Bring this back and you have a wonderful wholly secret place to keep the Post-it note!

RAF Eurofighter gets a Battle of Britain makeover

Looks Great

I understand all the techie stuff (I think) but doesn't it look great? How is it that a paint job designed to be purely functional looks so good? Or is it just our historical memory that makes it seem right? Answers from a psychologist please.

Openreach to trial G.fast in Swansea

In rural Scotland (but with an agricultural college and Forestry Commission offices on the same exchange) I get BT Business at around 3 Mbps if I'm lucky. Sometimes it's even fast enough to download a family photograph - as long as it's low resolution. Stories of such speeds as 500 seem as relevant as The House that Jack Built.

Gay marriage foes outraged at Mozilla CEO flap, call for boycott

"I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" as Voltaire probably didn't say. I may not agree necessarily with all Mr Eich said or did but his views were surely his right to hold.

I have downloaded Chrome.

No signal in Seascale? Countryside Alliance wants to hook you up

Hotspot

None of us over a certain age will be in any doubt about where Seascale is. If you can't find it on a map, try Windscale and Sellafield just next door.

Dell: Shhh, don't tell a soul, but the PC sector ISN'T doomed...

Dells Galore

As an accountant, I'm not sure that the figures necessarily show a long-term future for Dell. What does make me think there's a future is that I am in a good number of accountancy departments in nvarious organisations where the humble PC or laptop is the standard workhorse. For someone hammering journal entries into a ledger or processing a pile of creditors, there is no logical alternative at present. Yes, systems are becoming more automatic but the number crunching goes on. The same is true those who prepare reports, type letters, feed maintenance systems etc.etc..

I therefore feel that the death of the PC may be coming but it's not imminent. In Michael Dell's favour is that businesses are inherently conservative and Dell machines are embedded in many offices. I am typing this on a Dell laptop working wirelessly with our server and there's a Dell PC adjacent. My Galaxy Note is going too but I need the full-sized beasts for any serious work. A spreadsheet, which is my bread and butter, just doesn't work on a tablet. A 17inch laptop is the one I need.

Parallel import argument turns toxic in Oz

Big Threat?

I have been in and around IT since the early 1960s and, while not a supergeek, I might reasonably be termed a geriageek. I have also been a keen amateur photographer for at least as long. I have never updated my beloved OM2 and it still works like a dream, if i can be bothered to search out 35mm film. More relevantly, this house contains at least 5 high-end digital cameras and a plethora of others of varying ages going back to a Canon of nearly 20 years ago. None have ever had the firmware updated.

I accept that some improvements may have been missed and, in extremis, I do occasionally update the firmware in my more sophisticated IT kit but this threat, for most folk, is completely empty. The average user just doesn't care while the true enthusiast is well aware of how to get round such restrictions.

Good on ya Cobbers; your disrespect for overbearing authority is an example to us all. Now deal similarly with your traffic cops before their extreme ways infect those of us who admire you from the northern hemisphere.

'Porn lock' heralds death of WikiLeaks, internet, democracy, universe

Wide scope

Until yesterday, I had left the "porn filter" set on my smartphone expecting it to be of no great concern. Then I tried to access an article about Alexander McQueen, the late fashion designer, and found it was labelled as porn! Now I know he sometimes clad ladies in slightly revealing dresses but hardly pornographic. This is the problem; who decides what is unacceptable.

LaCie catches ultra-small USB Flash drive bug

Too small?

The smaller the flash drive, the larger the key ring you have to attach to prevent it dropping out of your pocket and being rushed to the redtops who will then gleefully broadcast your darkest secrets to the world.