Posts by 45RPM

Hell desk thought PC fire report was a first-day-on-the-job prank

Re: This is a man's army with no room for cissies (or women or the ethnic persuasion).

@Robert Carnegie “This is a man's army with no room for cissies (or women or the ethnic persuasion).”

Remarkably, for the nineties, we had several women doing support and repair work - and they were amongst the best in the business. One was into extreme sports, and so definitely not a cissie, and another floored a bloke for pinching her bottom (so ditto). I sometimes wonder what they’re up to now - whatever it is they’ll be doing it hugely successfully.

I don’t remember any ethic minorities, unfortunately, unless you count the scouser and the pole.

Re: so..

@sabroni

What is pranking if not taking the piss out of someone for something? If we’d beaten him up regularly, or picked on him endlessly then I’d see your point - but we didn’t, and so I think that you’re being rather oversensitive. Yes, he was (is) a bit of a tool in my opinion - but I’m sure that many think the same of me (and, equally, many hold me in rather higher regard).

If you can’t find someone’s foible then you can’t take the piss out of them / prank them - luckily everyone has a foible to pick at. One of my foibles is my fondness for my classic cars (or, as my colleagues would have it, old bangers). This weakness of mine has been used to prank me, although none to any particularly great extent since I don’t mind having the piss taken* (on the contrary, I’d be worried if the piss wasn’t taken - I’d hate to have made so little impact that I was ignored). And since I’m not prone to throwing tantrums, or overreacting, I’m not a very entertaining target for a prank.

* I went to boarding school. Can ya tell? You develop a thick skin quite quickly.

Yes, I have been involved in a PFY pranking. The PFY concerned was one of the suit, tie and briefcase type (opposed to the rest of us in jeans and t-shirt) and he was very proud of his company issue Rover 214 (which, in his mind, was very sporty). He'd turn up with a glint in his eye and a snap in his heel, the epitome of bright eyed and bushy tailed. Where the rest of us just grabbed a toolkit (necessary screwdrivers, install CDs, Floppys, spares and so forth), he'd carefully decant the bits he needed into his briefcase (a wholly unsuitable receptacle for the job). Had it been me, I'd have opened that case in a slovenly, can't be arsed, listery kind of fashion - but he always opened his case quickly and smartly like a door to door salesman.

We thought it'd be a damn good idea to booby trap his case and then send him out on a job with a tame, and thoroughly briefed, client. The booby trapping consisted of strong elastic rigged to snap his case shut again just as quickly as he opened it, and the briefcase then filled with packing chips. Nice.

A few hours later the client (Hello, Nige!) rang with a fit of the giggles. The plan had gone off without a hitch. PFY had turned up smartly, smarmed his way up to the supposedly ailing computer and (before checking to see if anything was really wrong with it - and nothing was) whipped open his briefcase- which snapped shut again in a blast of packing chips.

We didn't see the briefcase very often afterwards.

Basic income after automation? That’s not how capitalism works

@Loyal Commenter

3. - Not a problem. There are enough sprogs being born right now to deal with the short term. In the longer term, robotics is advancing at such a pace that decent human simulacra will be available thereafter. In fact, I wouldn't bet against such androids being available before the babies born now reach working age - and that's the real problem. Oversupply of humans for a dwindling number of jobs, which will result in societal unrest caused by bored, unemployed, humans. As to the pension funds, the cost of living will likely continue to drop as 'cheap' robots replace 'expensive' humans in many roles.

4. - Immigration isn't the problem and never has been, despite the whinging of the brexiteers. The vast majority of the UK workforce was born here (surprise surprise), but (alas) many of us Britishers seem to have a peculiar sense of entitlement and want to land in a well paid plum job from the off, rather than working their way up to it. And if the plum ain't available from the start then they'd rather claim benefits. So it isn't really surprising that less entitled, more willing, bodies from other parts of the globe should be employed in, let's say, more menial roles whilst the lazy Britishers lie on the sofa, watching Jeremy Kyle, and screwing the pooch with their Brexit votes. That said, I do feel that anyone immigrating to the UK should be subject to the same rules on child count as everyone else - so don't come to my dystopia (a dystopia being the practical implication of a utopian dream - it never quite works out!) with more than two kids unless you can afford to pay child tax, or have no objections to being sterilised.

5. ¿¿¿!!!???

6. We never lost it.

Alternatively, either:

1. Don’t automate (so that there are plenty of jobs for all). This is an obviously silly idea since it results in the sort of shitty build quality and strikes that the seventies were famous for.

2. Automate everything that can be automated and incentivise people not to have children - thereby reducing the population and hence the demand for jobs. Get the population of the UK down to 30 million or so and we could be self-sufficient (if necessary), and a lot greener. We might even build up some eco-credits so that we can continue to enjoy eating meat and driving cars and doing all the fun things that we’re occasionally told we have to give up for the good of the planet. Personally, I agree that we need to fix the planet - but the easiest and best way of doing that is to stop polluting the world with more of us. More than two children? Punitive tax (or sterilisation for those who can’t afford the tax). No children by the time you reach retirement age? Fat bonus in your pension. And with increased automation we don’t even need to worry about a shrinking workforce - because that’s one of the objectives that we should be seeking to acheive.

Mercedes answers autonomous car moral dilemma: Yeah, we'll just run over pedestrians

It depends on the situation surely? After all, the occupants of the car are effectively wearing a tough suit of armour. It might well be worth dinging the car a bit in order to protect the squishy pedestrian or cyclist - no matter how daftly they might be behaving.

All the same, I'm glad that I'm not responsible for coding that software!

My best mate bought himself a brand new Mercedes SLK. It rusted. This announcement just demonstrates that, not only can Mercedes not be bothered to build their cars properly, they can't be bothered to put the effort into considering complex ethical problems fully and designing their software accordingly.

Buy a Mercedes? Not if you paid me.

For what it's worth though, I understand that their commercials vehicles are rather good.

Smell burning? Samsung’s 'Death Note 7' could still cause a contagion

Re: Time to Think Different(ly)?

@Rainer You're probably right. I didn't mean that Samsung should do those things though - I was merely suggesting things that are different. I don't know what Samsung's 'Different' should look like - just that I think it needs to stop following the pack and strike out with its own, radically original, idea. Get everyone copying it for a change.

Time to Think Different(ly)?

It has been said that the Note 7 shipped when it did just to steal a march on Apple. One pundit even went so far as to blame these failings on insufficient testing necessitated by the hurried release. Probably bollocks. Certainly smells like bollocks to me. But I'd venture to suggest that Samsung might benefit from stepping back and thinking differently.

Whether you like it or not, Apple's products sell because they are different. They differentiate themselves by their design (a phone without a keyboard? A computer which can slip into an envelope and has no removable storage? A workstation which looks like a miniature dustbin? Say it ain't so!) and by running a bespoke OS rather than the same OS as their competitors.

Perhaps Samsung could do with some of this different sauce. I'm not advocating that they build their own OS (if anything, I'd advocate that they don't fiddle around here - the radical move would be to ship a device with the OS exactly as Microsoft or Google intended it to be). Perhaps though they could try building a device which is entirely, and easily, repairable and recyclable. Perhaps the components could be interchangeable so that a degree of upgradability could be ensured. Even more radically, perhaps they could build their next devices out of recycled components.

In any event, I argue that Samsungs best strategy isn't to be a Korean Apple. It's to be Samsung - and have the whole world envy it just for being that. So, a new niche Samsung? What's it to be?

Apple to automatically cram macOS Sierra into Macs – 'cos that worked well for Windows 10

Re: Good.

@Andy Taylor

Agreed. Professionals who require an older OS, for whatever reason, will either not have Automatic Updates turned on, or will choose to decline the OS install when prompted. For everyone else this is a good way of ensuring that Macs have the latest patches - even for clueless users who wouldn't think to check the App Store, or understand the significance of a new OS if they did (Hi Mum!)

My only proviso is that the update doesn't get pushed out to Macs which aren't able to use it.

EU turns screws on Android – report

Re: Typical EU

@Planty

Microsoft and Apple are way more anti-consumer than Google

Quite right. Because it's in the consumer's best interests to mine their data for information and then sell it to advertisers. You might not care about this of course, and accept it as a fair price for a cheap device and a free operating system (which will probably never get updated on non-Google hardware), but I'd argue that such practices are not in the consumer's best interests. But then that depends on how 'consumers best interests' is defined - and your definition is unlikely to be the same as mine.

My definition of 'consumers best interests' demands that my data isn't sold to advertisers, that the app store I use is free from malware, and that I receive OS updates for as long as possible (ideally for four years or more).

Google does pretty well on the 'free from malware' score, but security on Android still doesn't match up to the level iOS attains - and this is mostly down the fact that only a small percentage of devices are able to update to the very latest software, with its attendant security updates.

On the other hand though, and whilst I think that the EU is being a little silly on this, the many commenters who write that Microsoft and Apple aren't in the spotlight because they don't have a monopoly have a very good point. There are certain responsibilities that attend the front runners which don't apply to those at the back of the pack. I don't believe, for example, that Robin owners have ever been much troubled by motorway speed limits - but, unlike Android owners, I don't remember the possessors of faster cars complaining that they were being unfairly penalised vs. Robin drivers.

Shit - that was a bad analogy even by my standards!

Ladies in tech, have you considered not letting us know you're female?

Re: What a load of old bollocks

@AC nobody knows if Action Man is well endowed or not. He could be hung like a rogue elephant. But we can’t get his plastic pants off to find out.

@Dr Stephen Jones

Damn straight. But I’m including ‘Atheism’ as a pseudo-religion here too. In my experience, and I accept that others may have had more positive experiences, anyone who feels that they need to mention their belief system is likely to be inclined to try to ram it down your throat. And that could be disruptive to the team dynamic - whether the system that they’re trying to ram is Christian, Atheism, Judaism, Islam - whatever. I’m delighted for an applicant to be one of those things, and I might even be happy to discuss (politely) over a beer / tea / coke whatever - but I’m not happy for it to be such a defining feature of their character that they feel it merits mention above less divisive interests such as cycling / tennis / painting / football / writing poetry / playing in a band etc.

Similarly, I wouldn’t be very interested in someone who puts their politics or sexual preferences front and centre. I mean, we all have a belief system / political viewpoint / sexual preference - but that doesn’t mean we should be sharing them freely in a work context.

@Steven Roper

Well said that man. And perfectly good reasons for trimming down the CV count too (well, if too many CVs come in then it's impractical to give them all an equal amount of attention). Other causes for filing in the round shiny cabinet of infinite capacity (as long as it's emptied every day) are hobbies which include religious activities, frequent misspellings and claiming to be an expert 'in Microsoft' (Microsoft what!?) but laying out the CV using spaces and tabs rather than the layout tools provided.</rant>

Re: Typical attitude from the unoppressed...

@AC "The only way to be truly fair, is to not give your unconscious brain a chance to activate its prejudices - a blind audition."

I don't necessarily disagree - but then you have to mandate that all CVs are purged of anything which gives away the authors sex (regardless of what sex, religion, nationality, sexuality the author is). Little things like Name, Educational History, Hobbies could be a giveaway, and perhaps even the Address might provide a hint. It's not a bad idea, per se, but I don't think that its workable - at least, not without rendering the CV (an important first step before interview) essentially useless.

Re: What a load of old bollocks

@Pompous Git

Doesn't that just come down to good manners though? I wouldn't interview someone who'd provided a false name either, although it is a good deal easier to check these days (I imagine - I wasn't doing much interviewing in the 1970s, being far more interested in my Action Man and his torrid relationship with my sister's Sindys).

As for their attire, I don't care about hair length - but I'd like them to come to interview smartly dressed, even if they spend every day of their working lives with me in jeans and a t-shirt (as long as the jeans and t-shirt are clean and presentable, and the t-shirt doesn't have any vulgar slogans on it (like 'Make America Great Again', for example!))

What a load of old bollocks

Why should women have to disguise who they are? Men don't. If anything the onus is on men to treat women as they'd expect to be treated themselves.

Think about it. Last time you were giving a talk at a conference (if you're a chap) when was the last time you were asked a question like "so how do you find developing, as a man?" Ever? Never? Ah. Never. Thought so. It's not interesting. You get asked about the cool things that you've done.

And so it should be with women. Their sex isn't interesting, what they've achieved is. So ask about that, respect them for that, employ them for that instead.

And remember, chaps, it's not emasculating to be a feminist. It's emasculating not to be one.

Panasonic wants you to wear Li-Ion batteries. The ones that explode

Re: PCMCIA

Rummaging through my drawers (fnarr fnarr) this weekend, I found:

• 2MB PCMCIA Card

• 8MB PCMCIA Card

• Modem PCMCIA Card

• Ethernet PCMCIA Card

• Wifi PCMCIA Card

• Wifi Cardbus Card (Cardbus being the compatible successor to PCMCIA)

• USB 2 and Firewire Cardbus Card

• Titanium Powerbook with Cardbus slot

Oh, and the realisation that I should sell / throw away some of this old rubbish.

On a different note, aren’t many of us already wearing Li-Ion batteries in our smartwatches? Imagine the agony if one of those goes on the fritz? I can take my coat off faster than I can take my watch off (in my case, a Seiko Chronograph - so not very smart, and not very likely to explode - but still, lots of people have smart watches) - and a watch battery is pressed quite close to the skin.

So no, I don’t particularly have a problem with this. I don’t want one - and I certainly wouldn’t advise smart pants (what are pants called in the US? Or does everyone in the US go commando?) - but I don’t imagine that clothing related problems will be all that common.

BOFH: There are no wrong answers, just wrong questions. Mmm, really wrong ones

Where can you be found in 20 minutes time? a) The Pub b) The Pub or c) The Pub

What will you be drinking? a) Bitter b) Lager c) Stout

What time will you be back in the office? a) Monday b) Tuesday c) Wednesday

BOFH: The case of the suspicious red icon

@adam payne

Yeah, in the dim and distant past (before I embarked on a career as a bit-bender), I had one of those. Her shiny new, just delivered, computer wouldn’t turn on. Lifeless. Nothing. And it had worked perfectly in our lab, before delivery, when I set it up for her. I went through the usual questions, including ‘did the packaging seem damaged in any way’ before a tiny nugget of suspicion caused me to query whether she’d plugged it in. I mean, it did seem odd that the monitor wouldn’t power up either.

She hit the bloody roof. How dare I patronise her! Didn’t I realise how much she spent on a support contract? I’d better get over there now and fix it. My boss, the spineless wimp, agreed - despite the significant problem that I was in Birmingham and she was in Bridgwater, and that all the other support guys were either out on a job, sick, or skiving.

So I drove to Bridgwater and discovered that she was quite right. She had plugged the computer in. And the monitor. And the printer. All plugged in to a multiway extension cable. Which was also plugged in. To itself. I left. Cursing. And embarked on a career as a programmer - which is mostly more satisfying, and keeps me away from the lusers. Oh, and I can happily code while drunk (although not when pissed out of my skull). Which is a bonus.

HP Inc's rinky-dink ink stink: Unofficial cartridges, official refills spurned by printer DRM

Re: The 'quality' of its printers was enough to do that

@Fred Flintstone

Oh mine does the clunking thing too - but only when 'parking' the cartridge over the waste sponge. Other than that, it just makes a soft zhush, zhush… zhush, zhush… noise. It's pretty good. And I'm intrigued to see what the print quality is like with a new cartridge, given that the 18 year old cartridge is still perfectly legible (albeit stripy and a bit spattery). No tractor feed though - strictly friction (It's a BJ-100 FWIW)

Re: The 'quality' of its printers was enough to do that

@nijam - thanks. I knew something was wrong. Serves me right for bashing away on my phone on the train - doesn't make thinkin', let alone typin', any easier.

The 'quality' of its printers was enough to do that

Never mind the dodgy cartridge shenanigans, the printers themselves were rubbish. I had an HP multifunction job that cost me the best part of £300 (on the foolish assumption that a more costly printer would be better built). I only used genuine ink in it. Its faults were numerous:

1. It defaulted to a screensaver which displayed advertising, rather than just dimming or turning off the display when the printer wasn't in use.

2. When it ran out of ink in any cartridge all functions on the device stopped - including scanning which, last time I checked, didn't use any ink at all.

3. It died terminally, less than two years old, before finishing its second set of cartridges.

I replaced it with an Epson - which, so far (four years after purchase), works perfectly (no advertising, scans even with no ink) other than weirdly being unable to remember the time (which doesn't bother me)

My best printer though is an Apple LaserWriter 8500, the best part of twenty years old, which works perfectly (all functions) even with my home refilled toner cartridges. It sits on my network and happily prints from my Windows, Linux and Mac computers. Next trick is to get it working with iOS.

I was also surprised by my old Canon bubble jet which I pulled out of the loft a few weeks back (it's been there since about 1998). I turned it on and, without changing the cartridge (in the interests of experimentation), printed a test page. Astonishingly it worked. The printed page was streaky as hell - but perfectly legible. I might get a new cartridge for it - because it's clearly better than most of the shitty printers being pedalled these days!

The next Bond – Basildon or Bass-Ass? YOU decide

Re: Here is an idea

That would make for an awesome film! Screw who Bond is - the point of view could be the secret sauce to make the new Bond film stand out. And, to up the tension, the audience could be in the dark as to who Bond is - at least initially. Henchmen going down at the hand of an unseen aggressor. Is it the chap who looks suspiciously like Mark Strong? Or is it that dude who might have been seen in TV shows like Luther? Or maybe they got a little too close to Kate Winslet?

Re: In the absence of a poll…!

@E2 - because I think (s)he'd have to be British by birth rather than by adoption. But maybe that just shows a lack of imagination on my part. It might be quite nice, and certainly very relevant, for him/her to be the child of immigrants though…

Re: Aidan Turner

Wouldn't his ears get in the way? Tovey's I mean, not Turner's.

Re: Black Bond, Female Bond? Why not a French/ American/ Chinese Bond...???

@Graham Marsden - Why not 'force the Bond character'? He's been a comic slimy perv (Moore), a potential family (Australian) man (Lazenby), a thug (Craig), by turns suave and bored (Connery), pointless (Dalton) and outclassed by his gadgets (Brosnan). All very different characters - and different from the character in the books too (educated, upper class). Changing the colour of his skin is a minor change by comparison, and if you're going to change the colour of his skin - why not change Bond's sex too?

As to changing nationality, why? The thing is that there are many secret agent films with American stars (Bourne and Hunt being the most obvious). France has Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath. I'm not familiar enough with spy films from other countries - but I feel sure that each must have its own spy adventurers. But there aren't many British black, asian or female spies - and, last time I checked, the British nationalities do seem to include quite a few women and non-whites. So why shouldn't our greatest fictional hero represent them too?

And yes, if you want him to be gay, I'm fine with that too.

Re: Siri as Bond

Sophie Okenedo? Good call! Have an up-vote.

Re: In the absence of a poll…

@AC - because he’s proven, a known quantity, he has star quality. But yes - I agree. Cast someone else. Cast someone unknown. I don’t really care - as long as the actor has screen presence and believablility. Oh, and I’d prefer it if it wasn’t just another white bloke.

Re: a female Bond

@AC, I’m up for that as well - but by leveraging the bond franchise, the film is likely to get more traction and more viewers. Let’s face it, you could well have said the same about the new Ghostbusters film - but if that film had been made under a different name I don’t think that it would have generated the interest and buzz (both positive and negative) that it did. And yes, the 2016 Ghostbusters is regarded as a commercial flop (despite being an excellent film), but it still made $224m vs. costs of $144m - which I’d call hugely successful, and probably more successful than it would have been if it had been called something other than Ghostbusters.

The Bond films can get boring very quickly unless they’re regularly reinvented. And their reinvention is what keeps them interesting, relevant and exciting. I think it’d be great if they underwent a big reinvention this time!

In the absence of a poll…

I nominate Idris Elba. I think that if 007 is to be kept fresh and interesting then it needs to be periodically reinvented - and Idris could make for a seriously gritty, hard as nails, bad-ass Bond. Slimy and sleazy have been done to death - I want to see a Bond who I can imagine standing up to torture or beating the crap out of his opponent. Idris is that man.

Or, and to amp the controversial (quite a lot), I’d pay to see Jamie Bond - played by Rachel Weisz, Naomie Harris or Kate Winslet. That would take quite a lot of reinvention since a female Bond would need to be significantly more intelligent than her male counterparts, since she’s unlikely to be able to overpower stronger opponents through brute force alone. Which isn’t to say that she couldn’t muster serious violence, if required…

Brexit makes life harder for an Internet of Things startup

Re: CE = Chinese Export

@PyroBrit The devil is in the detail - or, in this case, the kerning. CE, or Conformité Européenne, has been a mandatory marking since the mid eighties. Some Chinese manufacturers have sneakily appropriated it, modifying the logo ever so very slightly, and claiming that it stands for China Export. Who'da’thunk it? Dodgy Chinese company ripping something off and claiming that it's original and nothing to do with whatever they were copying in the first place?

I digress. The ‘real’ CE logo, that is Conformité Européenne, has wider spacing - put two circles side by side (more or less) and the left curves form the C and the E. In the dodgy rip off, the circles would overlap because the letters C and E have been jammed up against one another.

In the one you get some assurance that checks have been made, and rules have been abided by. In the other you get a warning that the item is complete crap and made with no care whatsoever, or concern for rules that might prevent it from spontaneously combusting.

I’ll bet that some of you already knew this, others will be paying more attention to the kerning in future, and most couldn’t give a crap. Okay. The nerdgasm is now over.

What's up, Zuck? FTC to probe Facebook for WhatsApp phone number mega-slurp

Re: Bright Side

@Grade%

Easily done. Just stop using Google and Facebook, the latter being easier than the former. I've quit Facebook and my life has improved immeasurably (no longer fiddling around checking for updates, I spend the time in the real world instead). Google is more useful than Facebook, so I'm not ready to go cold-turkey on them yet - but I could if I wanted (there are other options - Duck Duck Go, email from other providers and so forth). I trust Google marginally more than Facebook though. For the time being.

WikiLeaks uploads 300+ pieces of malware among email dumps

So was Julian Asshole’s big idea just to establish Wikileaks as the worlds largest malware market? Ecuador have got a real prize on their hands.

Snowden, for all his faults, seems to have his heart in the right place and seems to be working from the best of intentions. Assange, by contrast, is Donald Trump’s nerdy firestarting alter ego.

Brexit Britain: HP Sauce vs BBC.co.uk – choices that defined voters

Re: Class divide

@William 3

You need to be careful there. Including your age in your user ID could leave you open to identity theft…

Re: Ironic...@45RPM

@Kane - in part, yes. Also Taiwan, Japan, the US and so forth. A world machine. Who knows? Perhaps some of the components were made in the British Isles too, as well as final assembly. I'll hold it up as an example of what humans can do when they work together as opposed to digging insular little burrows, and trying to lock out people and products from other countries.

Re: Ironic...

Yup. And, as a good Brummie, it was my sauce of choice for a bacon buttie. In a fit of pique, I stopped buying it when production left my home town - and switched allegiance to the very English Tiptree Brown Sauce. Why didn’t I switch earlier? HP Sauce is a vile and vinegary mess compared with Tiptree’s most excellent condiment.

That said, and despite my unexplained fit of patriotism (including English suits and shoes, a GT car which has ‘Made in England’ proudly stamped on it, a computer made in the British Isles and so forth) I’m very much a Remainer. I regard myself as a European, my oddly patriotic purchasing notwithstanding. I now feel faintly embarrassed to be British.

Breaking 350 million: What's next for Windows 10?

Re: Windows 10 did especially well

<pedant mode>

I believe the real reason for skipping 9 was because of badly written software which checked to see if was running on an appropriately advanced Windows by refusing to run on anything that reported as Windows 9* (matching Windows 95 and Windows 98 - and which, unfortunately, would also have matched Windows 9).

Apple didn't think of this when it released Mac OS X 10.10 - and one or two programs broke because 10.1 (the mathematically correct interpretation of 10.10) < 10.6 or whatever they were developed to run on.

</pedant mode>

Given that many potential customers are on XP, Vista or 7 - versions of Windows with a very different user experience to 10, and given that many are only interested in simple office task or Internet browsing (the tools for which are available for free), I wonder how many will upgrade to Windows 10.

Perhaps many, faced with learning a 'new' OS will choose ChromeOS, Linux (probably Mint or Ubuntu), MacOS - or even a tablet with Android or iOS instead. After all, if you have to pay and learn something new anyway, why not switch too?

Perlan 2: The glider that will slip the surly bonds of Earth – and touch the edge of space

Re: 90,000 feet

There are sound engineering reasons for gliders being (mostly) white. Most modern gliders are made of glass fibre or composites, and white is the most reflective colour that they can be - any other colour absorbs wavelengths which might well damage the aircraft. Metal gliders, like the Blanik or Pilatus B4, or wood and fabric gliders, like the Ka6, can be any colour you like.

Wood and composite gliders aren’t very reflective to RADAR - and even the metal ones tend to have a small cross section from most angles.

And as for radio - what good is that? We do have it, and we use it when necessary (check us out - broadcasting to you on 130.1) - but it doesn’t give you anything other than a voice. You won’t get range, altitude, direction or anything else from a radio.

On the other hand, the best pilots (whether commercial, military or private) I know have all been glider pilots at some point. The biggest blowhards pontificating on GA haven’t even sat in a sailplane.

Oh, and FTR, in the UK glider pilots use feet and knots - same as every other pilot.

My personal record, in wave, was 9.5k ft, in a blue L13 Blanik (which, sadly, was wrapped around a tree in a storm in 1990. Luckily, no one was in it at the time, or hurt - but a sad end to absolutely my favourite glider ever, and the one that I solo’d in)

RM to resell Apple, Lenovo, HP, Dell to YOUR children

RM committed suicide

RM killed itself. It had a ready market, and it could have done something truly innovative by selling a range of PCs and Tablets built around ARM technology (perhaps even the Raspberry Pi), at a much lower cost than its competitors. Instead, it did what British businesses of the last forty years have always done. It listened to the accountants and threw in the towel for the sake of looking proactive and successful in one year’s financial report.

So sad. So utterly pathetic. What a waste. I don’t blame Lenovo, Dell, Apple - or any other successful business. They only did what RM (and Acorn, Sinclair, Apricot and so forth) should have done. But our backsliding businesses are run by moronic accountants in the John Harvey ‘sell it all’ Jones mold.

And now we’re losing ARM too. Seriously, balls to this country. Whatever we do, as long as we let ourselves be run by accountants, we’re screwed.

Seminal adventure game The Hobbit finally ported to the Dragon 64

I had a TI99/4A and, for all its much vaunted 16bits, what I really wanted was a Spectrum. When I grumbled too much, I was given an Electron - which didn't really improve matters. And when I asked for computer games I was told to write them myself. Which is how I ended up where I am today. Thanks Dad!

I still have the TI, and a library of games for it. Its version of Moon Patrol is definitive, outside the arcade at least. But I don't play with it because I can play the actual definitive arcade version using MAME.

All of which is something of a sidetrack from The Hobbit, which is a great game (I played it on my first Mac), but which hasn't yet been ported to the TI.

Paper wasps that lie to their mates get a right kicking, research finds

It hardly seems fair. I mean, in this experiment, the poor wasp wasn't cheating - it was some bastard human with a toothpick full of falsehoods. It'd be like me writing "I'm a really nice, trustworthy, guy. Honest guv" in indelible ink on Nigel Farage's forehead and then sending him in to do battle with Paxman and Humphries.

The only difference being that I'd feel a bit sorry for the wasp in the former case, and I'd be mainlining popcorn in the latter.

Parliament takes axe to 2nd EU referendum petition

Re: Anti-democratic?

@fibbles I think the point is that leaving the UK is not like a general election. (**Crap Analogy Alert**) A general election is like choosing pudding at a restaurant. If you don't like it well, never mind, just choose another one next time. This referendum is more like choosing whether or not to chop your leg off. If you choose not to (the remain camp) then you can still change your mind next year - but if you decide that you can get by with only one leg (saving money on shoes) and change your mind later then you can't just sew it back on again.

Personally, I don't think that the margin of victory is sufficient for us to decide that we can get by with only one leg. Particularly when so many people who voted to leave are already regretting it, and the people who told us that we'd save money on shoes are admitting that they lied.

'Leave EU means...' WHAT?! Britons ask Google after results declared

In most elections and referendums, the politicians tell outrageous lies, wait a year or two to make it look as if they were trying to fulfill their promises and then say "Sorry ladies and gentlemen, we can't do what you wanted after all". And everyone tuts, and sighs, and life goes on.

In this case, the politicians (particularly those on the 'Leave' side) told outrageous lies and then didn't even have the decency to make it look like they were going to try to come through on them. Instead, as soon as they'd won, they had the gall to call their previous assurances 'a mistake'. Which is, quite frankly, taking the piss.

So what have we voted for? Well, we certainly haven't voted for decreased immigration and more money for the NHS. But, lucky us, we have got the runners up prize of a plummeting pound, a massive brain drain (freeing up more houses for imbeciles, coffin dodgers and racists), loss of our AAA rating, increased inconvenience in travelling to civilisation (the EU), the support of Donald Trump (nuff sed) and the undying gratitude of an unelected and unaccountable frog faced alcoholic.

Dell tempts hordes with MASSIVE DISCOUNTS on PCs

Presumably you have to pay full price for your shiny new Dell and then fill in a load of paperwork, in triplicate, and send off for your rebate (although not to a free post address). After several months, Dell will then send you a cheque.

Nice. Must get my order in now.

Lester Haines: RIP

Re: :'(

One of the finest contributors to El Reg, and the man who kept me coming back here even on those rare occasions when El Reg wasn’t performing at its best. He never missed the mark, and I will miss reading what he has to say and his views on food, science, drink and the world.

My condolences to his family and friends at this awful time.

SpaceX winning streak meets explosive end

Winning Steak?

With all that rocket fuel powering the barbecue, I think that the steak would have been rather overdone for me.

(RSS feed title was fat fingered)

NASA 'Kilo-Kitty' Super Pressure Balloon goes aloft at last

Quite right. Whales is the accepted unit of volume - Whales, KilaWhales and so forth.

I feel sorry for your wife. If you don't like her talking, why did you marry her?