Posts by Dodgy Pilot

Can 24/7 porn rescue Google TV?

I was going to work for Vivid - until they said I had to work a week in hand.

ok... I'll get my coat ...

Canada founded on 'relentless pursuit of beaver'

The leisure activities of my Canadian friends certainly lend credence to the Beaver hunt theory.

New Canadian Emblem: A Polar bear, wearing a maple leaf, stroking a Beaver.

I'd vote for that :)

Assange loses High Court appeal against extradition to Sweden

He should be jailed indefinitely. Not for offences already mentioned, but for being so bloody annoying.

'Ghost hunter' set to become Tory Euro-MP

Wayland... I warned you not to eat that cheese you found at the back of the fridge....

BT gets 14 days to block Newzbin2

"In my opinion, all he's done is order a gate to be placed on a field. With no fence around it"

What a cracking analogy. Nice one Sir.

This case could indeed set a very alarming precedent that is going to cause all manner of trouble over the next few years.

TomTom Go Live TopGear Edition

I think I'd prefer a James May edition, although the POI narrative might require a few extra TB of storage...

Clarkson should be deported to the USA where I'm sure he'd fit right in.

El Reg in email address blunder

Oh quit worrying and whining... it's not like El Reg could possibly have spelt them correctly anyway.

An ode to rent-a-nerds and cable monkeys

"never trust anything you are told in a meeting called to thrash out a spec - find the person who is actually going to use the software and take them to the pub"

Hurrah !! This man is a wise man !

Laptop shoots spike into owner's hand

I think this is an April fool's joke. Yes, I know it isn't April, but with the time/date server going awol last week problems like this were bound to happen.

Intellectual Ventures wages patent war on Motorola

Lost Purpose

Patents and Copyrights should be good things. They were designed to protect the individual or company that was smart enough and worked hard enough to make something new.

Being able to transfer a patent to another party goes against the whole spirit of the system (in my very humble opinion) and that ability should be banned - now.

Chaos feared after Unix time-zone database is nuked

"What I find odd is that the first thing that David Olson knew of it was a court order. Any reasonable person would have sent a letter first before taking action."

Indeed. I understand that under both UK and US law, this is a requirement. Judges have been known to throw cases out when this first (common sense) step is omitted.

Put down the Java manual

Surely the single most valid reason for avoiding Java now would be Larry Ellison ?

Innovatio targets Wi-Fi users with patent suits

I think the term "Banker" was originally a typo but they figured it sounded close enough.

Crystal Acoustics MediaMatchBox

Not for me

I was quite interested in this - until I read about the poor remote.

Assange™ pens world's first unauthorised autobiography

You sign a contract. You get paid a huge advance. You spend the advance. You then decide you don't want to play any more but won't refund the cash.

Assange is a grade A+ super-prat and deserves all that he gets thrown at him.

I'll wager he was a spoiled bed-wetting bullied little brat when he was a kid but I'll bet that's not in the book.

MPs: 999 HQ revamp FAIL cost £469m

Who is to blame ?

Somebody sat at the head of the table and directed this fiasco. Who was it? Nope, I don't know either and sadly, I'd bet a penny to a pound that they are now in another position which will allow them to screw things up and then hand us the bill.

I'm pleased to see public spending under more scrutiny these days but it's also time that people are held accountable. Whoever held the leading role in this incredible foul-up needs to pay the price for their part in it.

Office 365, Hotmail and SkyDrive hit by outage

Hmm... cloud services already have a poor reputation for reliability (let's not even mention security and/or privacy) so it is quite understandable that those of us who directly feel the pain when things in the cloud aren't working aren't too impressed by it all. At least when things are local you have the opportunity to actually _do_ something rather than sit there hitting the refresh button on a status website hoping, praying for news.

Luddites - no. Concerns of a real and practical nature do not make us Luddites.

I'm sure, as you point out, that the Cloud will get its act together as it matures, but for now at least - it makes me (and many others) rather worried.

Injunction suspended: EU can buy Galaxy Tabs again

Not surprised ...

... that you logged in as "Anonymous Coward".

MPs slam 'unworkable' one-size-fits-all NHS care records' system

Oh...

and odds area about 1:1 that some mealy-mouthed politician will tell us that "lessons have been learned" from this debacle.

All I can say is that all these politicians are getting the most expensive education on the planet.

Boggling

Once again we're seeing Govt projects that have cost an absolute fortune fail horribly.

It would appear that the people given overall control for the management of these projects are ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of the project and are relying on the BS given to them by the vendors. Spec's are poor and there's no clear overview of what the project needs to achieve.

Add to that an apparent lack of negotiating for bulk pricing of equipment (common on large projects) and it all goes pear-shaped very quickly. And we (you and me) are paying for it all.

Why is no common sense applied where a qualified and experienced person is appointed to ensure that these projects meet sensible deadlines at sensible prices? I only work on relatively small projects but I know that I'd be kicked out on my ass if my projects ended up like these Govt ones do.

Ferr chrissake - Govt, get a grip and do things properly. You are spending MY hard-earned money and I want it spent properly.

Murdoch muscles BBC out of Formula One driving seat

Erkle ?!

Given the BBC's usual incompetence, when they say that the Beeb will show half the races, is it a safe bet to assume they'll show the first half of each race?

I love paying my licence fee to fund the beeb, oh yes. no, really I do. honest.

World first: UK boffins print out working 3D aeroplane

Now you can too !

Yes, you too can build whacky 3D objects in the comfort of your own home.

http://www.reprapcentral.com/vmchk.html

We've come along way since Blue Peter introduced to the wonders of bog roll and sticky-backed plastic!

question answered

Remember that the object is effectively encased in a tub of powder so any shape you are to make is supported until you remove it from the machine.

I work with this gear and it still makes me grin like a cheshire cat every time I see it :)

ANONYMOUS: Behind the mask, inside the Hivemind

Yooz all so Klever !

I feel so humbled by all your clever comments . Every time I try to read the article my eyes are drawn uncontrollably to the jubs.... my god, what wonderful jubs... and they come with cake too? I'll vote for that! :)

Bug-Byte Manic Miner

"no access to the Speccy source code" ?

If my memory serves me, Matt used a Tandy model 4 to write his code on.He also had a model 4P too which caused much droolage at the time! I don't think any of us had the original source code, we were given a speccy and a cassette copy of MM (or JSW) and left to get on with it.

I do recall writing some code to dump graphics from the speccy onto a little thermal printer which saved me some time (and eyestrain) when I wrote JSW. Probably still got them somewhere in the attic.

Dragon Miner

I wrote the Dragon versions of MM and JSW. A lot of hard work, no access to the Speccy source code and all the graphics were hand-coded from graph paper drawings to binary. I still have the listings somewhere. Oh, yes - there were 2 extra levels and yet if memory serves, the whole thing was only 22KB !

Hugely fun times, Mathew had a lot of Charisma and it's a shame his success was marred by too many hangers-on. Wonder where he is now?

Software projects was a very cool yet surreal place to be.

Happy times :)

Entire London 2012 Olympics' cultural events database held on Excel

MS Orifice

Excel is probably all they could afford after all the beer-vouchers they slurged out on the stupid logo.

Student geeks build Rubik’s cube solving bot

Collectively...

I think you'll find that the correct collective noun is a "Gaggle" of students.

Nokia launches new corporate font

Errr... ?

It's not April 1st already is it ?

DEC founder Ken Olsen is dead

This post has no title.

I cut my teeth on PDP-8i's, PDP-11's and uVaxen. Very very happy and exciting times - and the systems back then were a lot more stable than the pathetic offerings from Microsloth we suffer today.

Thanks to Ken and all at DEC - nothing but happy memories.

SMOKIN' HOT BABE gets job as computer geek

Ah Hah !!

I'm gonna buy one and call her Verity :)