* Posts by The Wegie

60 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Nov 2010

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Support chap's Sonic Screwdriver fixes PC as user fumes in disbelief

The Wegie

"I have a colleague who used to do that..."

Ouch! Was this used as evidence in the subsequent divorce?

Latest F-35 bang seat* mods will stop them breaking pilots' necks, beams US

The Wegie

"...that's on the light side for a grown adult."

<cough>

There are these creatures called women, you know. I'm currently 57kg at the age of 52. When I was younger, slimmer, and fitter, I used to regularly struggle to get over 50kg. And I'm not a midget, I'm a bog average 1m 62cm.

BOFH: Free as in free beer or... Oh. 'Free Upgrade'

The Wegie

Or Kyocera

That degree of nasty brings back memories I thought I'd suppressed of trying to ride herd on an early Kyocera multifunction printer bought by a cheapskate boss because it was the cheapest on the market.

It's 2016 and Windows lets crims poison your printer drivers

The Wegie

I did uninstall Flash...

And the web/desktop version of Virgin's TV Anywhere service stopped working. Sigh.

UK.gov finally promises legally binding broadband service obligation – by 2020

The Wegie

Most rural constituencies are larger -- both in area covered, and size of the electorate -- than urban constituencies. It's one reason why the planned reduction in size of the House of Commons down to 600 MPs will hit Labour much harder than the Tories, as most of the seats that will go will be relatively small urban ones, that are overwhelmingly Labour-held.

They do, however, pretty much weigh the Tory vote out here in the sticks. The sitting MP here has a majority bigger than the votes cast for all the other candidates combined.

Microsoft now awfully pushy with Windows 10 on Win 7, 8 PCs – Reg readers hit back

The Wegie

Took me three goes to get rid of it on my laptop as well.

Funnily enough, I disinfected my husband's lappy a couple of days later, and it stayed hidden on the first go. If I had an evil mind, the fact that my dsl modem hadn't been switched off at any point would leave me thinking that they recognised the IP address...

Audi, Seat, Skoda admit they've been fiddling car pollution tests as well

The Wegie

Re: Never mind the fines, think of the SAVINGS

Bosch are supposed to have first warned VW not to use the siftware to cheat in 2007.

Www.ibtimes.co.uk/vw-scandal-carmaker-was-warned-about-test-rigging-software-2007-1521442

Can your code survive crappy 2G? This open-source traffic controller will test it

The Wegie

Somebody sell National Rail a copy

So that they can work out how useless their app is round here, where GPRS is all there is...

Millions of voters are missing: It’s another #GovtDigiShambles

The Wegie

Registering wasn't that much of a problem...

But the data relating to my address was. The postcode was correct, but the house name and village were wrong, and there was no way of changing them.

Apple Watch: Wait a minute! This puny wrist-puter costs 17 GRAND?!

The Wegie

Re: Bye bye upgradable laptops

Take another look at those screen specs. As long as the beast is upgradeable, it kicks seven shades of shit out of any other lappy screen out there.

'Utterly unusable' MS Word dumped by SciFi author Charles Stross

The Wegie

"I don't know why anyone would use Word for creative writing"

He doesn't.

But there are these creatures called publishers, who pay you money and market your writing, and they do their editorial document flow almost entirely in Word...

Police stats inflate the number of guns actually stolen in Blighty

The Wegie

Re: Shocked

"Not defending the current state of affairs. It's a load of bull. But there isn't strictly a ban on owning or using a pistol."

True, but I don't think one can now imagine the way my dad and his co-worker used to keep a single shot .38 humane killer wrapped in a duster under the seat of a Land Rover. Anybody nowadays cheerfully asking their 8 year old daughter to trot over to the car and get the gun and ammo so that he could dispatch a poor animal is going to be having a very long chat with the plod and social services!

Mobile coverage on trains really is pants

The Wegie

Re: Nonsense!

Brum - Euston last week, and Euston via Rugby to Crewe on the way back were positive miracles of connectivity on O2 (HSPDA+ for about 60% of the journey) compared to the horrors that await once you make the mistake of venturing any further west into Shropshire. Apart from the HSPDA signal that sits firmly inside the Shrewsbury ring road (and never ventures beyond) and a localised patch of almost decent 3G in Ludlow, the county is a giant sucking black hole for data: nothing escapes the event horizon. If you don't know where you're going and don't have the most up-to-date timetables saved as PDFs on your phone, you're absolutely stuffed for working out any travel hitches.

The Wegie

Re: Almost every developed country seems to do much better

Ah yes. Reading to London. Where the biggest black hole in O2's abysmal coverage was always right outside their HQ in Slough.

£150m, three years... TWO base stations. Gov.uk? You guessed it

The Wegie

Ever tried seeing if the bus or train is running on time in a not-spot? The National Rail app for android resolutely refuses to provide real time train data on anything less than 3G, which is a bit of a bummer out here in the middle Marches. Am I going to get home in time to make the bus? Do I need to call a taxi? Buggered if I know, because all I'm getting is "sorry we couldn't retrieve the data" all the way from Pntypool to Ludlow!

Major problems beset UK ISP filth filters: But it's OK, nobody uses them

The Wegie

Re: Opt Out more likely

I just had a look as well.

"Child Safe" was off, but "Virus Safe" was on by default.

Switch off "virus safe" (I really don't trust Virgin to keep me free from viruses) -- big orange warning. No save settings button.

Log out.

Log in again. Virus safe back on by default.

Switch off no-script filters. Reload page. Click switch off. Still no save settings. Peer suspiciously at screen. Log out.

Log in again. Virus safe back on by default.

Peer suspiciously at browser settings. Reluctantly pause Ghostery. Switch off virus safe. Log out.

Log in again. Settings saved. Bastards.

NEW, SINISTER web tracking tech fingerprints your computer by making it draw

The Wegie

Re: and Ghostery tells me,

El Reg are amateurs compared to the Grauniad. 18 trackers on one page!

Ironically, the page on which Ghostery was reporting was devoted to an Edward Snowden article...

iWatch watch: Apple tags sales bod from luxury Swiss watch firm

The Wegie

Re: A luxury iwatch

Philip, all luxury or mass-luxe brands have a skunk works producing interesting things. Some of them make it into production. Most don't. All of them are aimed at adding cachet to the brand.

The vast majority of Tag's watches sell in the mass-luxe market. That's why I said that "prices top out pretty much where most of the serious watch brands start" -- 99.9% of Tag's product will sell in the below five thousand pounds ($8,500 at current rates) bracket. In fact, I'd go further and say that as their products are available on the high street, most purchases will be in the sub thousand pound bracket. The V4 is to the rest of Tag's line what the F-40 is to the Ford Motor Company.

And because Tag has historically been very good at selling in the below a grand for a sports watch market is why Apple want Tag's head of marketing (although I have to agree with Ralph B about the sheer awfulness of most of Tag's advertising).

The Wegie

Re: A luxury iwatch

Tag Heuer are hardly a luxury brand. Their watches can be bought in any high street, and the prices top out pretty much where most of the serious watch brands start. Mass luxe, possibly -- which would explain the hire. Apple obviously need somebody who can persuade people to part with serious dosh for what is essentially a commodity watch.

Facebook 'manipulated' 700k users' feelings in secret experiment

The Wegie

Re: First comment: Useless research from the "DUH!" dept.

"Next it will be the individually crafted reorder of your newsfeeds being monetized for ad-slinging (actually product placement) purposes."

Which is exactly what the "top stories" newsfeed already does if you allow it.

Creepy Facebook urges users to pester friends about their SEX LIVES

The Wegie

Re: Not exactly fake

Ah, another sibling born on the 1st of January 1905. You're looking good for your age!

BOFH: Oh DO tell us what you think. *CLICK*

The Wegie

Re: Oh, to be a fly on the wall...

I'm not certain that anybody would survive the experience, but I'd pay good money to watch Dominic against the BOFH in an interview...

Back off, Siri! Microsoft debuts Halo beauty Cortana

The Wegie

"As the only use I'd have for voice control is to send texts to people while driving, I'll get interested when it does something intelligent with the Irish and other non-English names in my phonebook. "Intelligent" means asking me how to pronounce them when it doesn't know (or gets it wrong). This is a problem that can't be solved by just evolving the backend, as that can't discern cases of the same written characters having different pronounciations like "MarIE" and "MARie" (I know one of each);"

Having had the pleasure of attempting to explain at times to various USAians that no, it's not MarIE, it's MARie, and yes that is a perfectly valid Irish pronunciation of the name, I await the freezing over of hell that your request involves in the sure and certain expectation of its non-arrival.

Amazon wants me to WEAR NAPPIES?! But I'm a 40-something MAN

The Wegie

Oddly enough

I rarely get breast enlargement spam. Plenty of penis enhancers and "natural testosterone" spam though.

Maybe the spammers know something that I don't. Have I really been deluded thinking I was a woman for the last 40-odd years?

FANBOIS' EYES ONLY: United Airlines offers FREE MOVIES on iOS kit

The Wegie

I'd be more impressed

if United spent the money on deep-cleaning those flying cow-byres they use for their US domestic service and employing some customer service staff who didn't have the winning personality and conversational style of Rosa Kleb.

Got a Netgear router from Virgin Media? Change your admin password NOW

The Wegie

I would ask a) what kind of moron leaves the wifi enabled on a superhub anyway? and b) surely everybody knows to switch it to modem mode and use your own router? But a quick look at my network preferences shows four Virginmedia superhubs in this block of flats...

Google Glass: Reg man tests tech specs

The Wegie

They are supposed to be making them compatible with prescription lenses.

However, as I've spent the last couple of decades spending ever more money to get the perfect invisible pair of glasses (contacts and I no longer really get along, alas), the glassicles completely defeat the purpose as far as I'm concerned. Not to mention the weight factor -- the aforementioned invisible glasses are rimless, have ultra-thin-and-light lenses, and earpieces titanium wire, and they still feel heavy and uncomfortable after 12 hours or so -- the glassicles would mean a return to the days of earache.

Dixons Retail and Carphone Warehouse mull merger

The Wegie

At least you're a guy, PhilW. Try being a woman and getting service that isn't a) condescending crap or b) ignoring you because some spotty 17 year old boy has come in at either establishment. They truly deserve each other.

How the UK's national memory lives in a ROBOT in Kew

The Wegie

Re: Informative article.

The Botanist is also a microbrewery with a range of Kew-themed ales. Additionally, what was The Rose and Crown on the other side of the Green now does an excellent range of craft beers.

Google makes Gmail EVEN NOISIER, or should that be nosier?

The Wegie

And that is why . . .

I finally gave in and started using Thunderbird as my email client for Gmail.

BBC's Clangers returns in £5m 'New Age' remake

The Wegie

Re: Why can't they write some new programmes?

You think The Italian Job was bad? Just wait until you get to the final paragraph of the BBC press release, er, news article: "The £5m production is already under way, and is being co-produced by US pre-school TV channel Sprout, which will broadcast the programme in North America."

MS Word deserves DEATH says Brit SciFi author Charles Stross

The Wegie

"quit complaining and finish the next Laundry Files book."

The next Laundry book was probably the source of the rant, as it's just finished and is in the editing process.

Boffin blends benevolent beer

The Wegie
Pint

60/-

So, basically, this guy has gone to all this effort to reinvent Sixty Shilling?

I think I'll just have a pint of Belhaven 60/- instead.

Windows NT: Remember Microsoft's almost perfect 20-year-old?

The Wegie

Re: Booting up

You are a better man than I. The old NT 3.51 boot floppies finally got thrown out when we moved a couple of years ago.I think the earliest thing I now own is a copy of win2k.

Hold it! Don't back up to a cloud until you've eyed up these figures

The Wegie

Re: Doesn't surprise me ...

Even a home user can generate vast amounts once you start playing around with video. I'm currently taking my recordings of this year's Tour de France and encoding them in mp4 so that my brain-dead Sony Bravia can play them off my NAS and I can have some space back on my DVR. The raw data files run at something like 160 GB!

Apple hires top Amazon search exec to take over Siri

The Wegie

Re: LOL

You ever tried to use the search system on Amazon lately?

<shudder>

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 review

The Wegie

Re: Soft buttons in landscape mode

"Wonder how hard it is to accidentally trigger the soft buttons when holding it in landscape mode?"

It was a pain only for the first couple of days. After that, you adjust.

The Wegie

Not one for the ladies?

"Certainly not a phone for the ladies which after all is 1/2 the market."

Um, let's see now. I'm five foot four, female and slim. I also have a Note 1 which fits in all my pockets and have no trouble holding it with one hand.

Not quite enough in the Note 2 to tempt me down the upgrade path with a year to run on my contract, particularly as a lot of the software improvements are supposed to be coming to the Note 1 in the firmware update that;s already started rolling out in Germany.

Scientists: 'Castration is the key to a longer life'

The Wegie

" rapists - now there's a deserving test group."

I think you'll find that there's fairly detailed evidence from the Czech Republic for the efficacy or not of the treatment.

In fact I'm surprised that the investigators didn't use the Czech Republic to test their theories.

New gov.uk site hits beta, flashes SINGLE typeface to punters

The Wegie

Javascript for navigation. Sigh. It looks really ugly with noscript turned on.

As for the typeface, given that Cabin isn't part of either the Windows or Mac Os X standard font libraries, how many people are ever going to see it in anger?

How politicians could end droughts forever But they don't want to

The Wegie

Re: 15 desalination plants

Battersea Power station.

The Stag Brewery in Mortlake now that it's closing down.

The current WRWA waste disposal depot at Smuggler's Way.

And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head up in my end of town. Further east, there are considerably more possibilities. Part of the Tate and Lyle site would be an obvious candidate.

Goldman Sachs in email muppet hunt

The Wegie

Re: Audit?

The regs say that emails have to be kept. They don't say anything about whether they have to be online or instantly available. It's going to be absolute chaos in whatever offsite tape store Goldie uses.

Besides, anybody with any sense who wants to be rude about the client doesn't say so in an email that will be archived -- they send a Bloomberg instead.

World's Raspberry Pi supply jammed in factory blunder

The Wegie

Re: it's a silly typo

"It's a silly typo, it should read 31/4/12 but it wont really be pi day until 3 years time on 31/4/15 at 9:26:53 (and 589.)."

If you manage to find a 31st of April, you will have done better than Bergholt Stuttley Johnson did when redefining Pi as 3... and we all know what the sorting machine managed.

16 Sony Centres jump the tracks, liquidator hits the brakes

The Wegie

Re: Lost a few round here too

Yup, here too. And if you can't keep a Sony Centre running in Richmond upon Thames, there's really no hope.

As an example of how expensive the Sony Centres are, though. I just bought a 26" Bravia (don't laugh! It's the only bloody flatscreen that fits in the the space of our book shelves once I've taken out a shelf) from John Lewis online because it was seventy quid cheaper than the Sony Centre in Kingston. Somehow I suspect the Kingston franchise will be joining the Richmond one in the very near future.

Panasonic outs dual-core Euro-centric Android phone

The Wegie

Re: Re: Do Europeans go swimming a lot with their phones?

@Stuart McCarrick -- some of us are just people who habitually keep our phones in our trouser back pockets. The iPhone that is no more had hit the toilet floor from the back pocket many times before the day when the bloody thing popped out and headed bowlwards as I was sitting down.

Brits turned off by Smart TVs

The Wegie

Re: "smart" TVs

I've got one of those Sonys as well. Drives me up the wall with what it can and can't do (the not playing Apple lossless files being one of the current bugbears). Although it does actually play nicely with my NAS (Seagate GoFlex), which still startles me.

But if you asked my husband whether we had a "smart TV" or not, he'd be completely flummoxed and probably say no, despite the fact that he was rootling through YouTube on it a couple of nights ago . . .

Navy pays 2x purchase price to keep warship docked for 5 years

The Wegie

American Ship In Her Place . . .

We did that! The problem is that the USS Chesapeake got dismantled in 1812 to build the mill up the road from Portsmouth in Wickham (sadly it's now only an antiques shop rather than the flour mill it originally was).

Samsung Galaxy Nexus Android smartphone

The Wegie

How much?

A quick shufti at three.co.uk says free on a two year contract.

Pity about only 16Gb though. I'm in the market for a new phone -- my iphone 3GS having not recovered from an impromptu trip down the toilet -- but half the memory and no SD slot on which to store music or videos is not an upgrade, particularly when a screen like that is provided.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 13.3in Core i5 notebook

The Wegie
FAIL

Useless Battery

Non-removable battery, but power doesn't last anywhere near the length of a transatlantic flight plus check-in, let alone LHR-HKG or SIN-SYD? Yet supposedly this is a thinkpad for business? Utter fail.

El Reg in email address blunder

The Wegie

The emails are in plain text in the body of the message.

Definitely not what one expects to find in the <emails to ancient account box> in the morning.

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