Posts by Chris 239

Crane horror Reg reader uses his severed finger to unlock Samsung Galaxy phone

Re: "on the other hand he was fine"

Yep, same here! Imagined him being trapped in the incident that severed the finger and having to pick it up off the floor to unlock his phone to call for help.

Activist millionaires protest outside Jeff Bezos' homes to support tax rises for the rich

Re: the rich being richer than them.

What utter bollocks!

"bring money into the US for it to be taxed and then sent out of the country again" this is TAX on profit not revenue why would it go back out of the country? they are retaining the money outside the US waiting to it slip it in when they have applied enough grease to your government to get a tax holiday so they can pay more of it to their rich shareholders.

"US has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world" https://taxfoundation.org/publications/corporate-tax-rates-around-the-world/#Rates

There's many places higher, e.g. France, Germany, Japan, Brazil, India but don't let the truth get in the way of a good rant!

Terminal trickery, or how to improve a novel immeasurably

Re: Novel interference

@dvd.. I'm the same with beer and golf.

Yep, you're totally unique: That one very special user and their very special problem

Re: ran out of ram

"universally known" ? - um, where I worked we called then "virgin urgers"

There was also the very un-PC and racist mnemonic for the resistor colour code!

I haven't bought new pants for years, why do I have to keep buying new PCs?

Re: I still have some pairs of trousers that are that old

I would vae a large selection of clothes from the 80ies onward except I got married 13 years ago and SWMBO insisted I throw most of it away. Shame really, around now would probably be back in fashion! It was probably going out of fashion when I bought it - would have been nice to actually wear fashionable clothes! :-)

Seagate UK customer stung by VAT on replacement drive shipped via the Netherlands

Re: But, but

Is you sarcasm detector on the blink?

Re: But, but

Says the person too chicken to put his name to his post. Oh the irony!

You think the simple servants responsible for most of the Brexit trade arrangements will be held responsible (you don't actually think Boris's bungling pals got involved with the details or will accept an iota of responsibility do you?)

SpaceX powers through bad case of wind to nail Falcon 9's eighth droneship landing

Re: Seconded

"high resolution pictures of Pluto (for example) are .....non-pedestrian"

True but the legacy space industry (eg. Boeing) deciding not to bother developing booster recovery because it's too hard or they assume the customer will always be happy to pay to build a new one is shortsighted, arrogant and is now costing them SpaceX is eating their lunch/launch.

Windows Product Activation – or just how many numbers we could get a user to tell us down the telephone

Same here because I've always worked for large companies that can/could afford their own servers and IT dept (aka busses and bus mechanics).

I'd say it is like a small startup bus company that doesn't have the capital or want to be in debt to to buy the bus and so leases the bus.

Re: Revenge needs to be had...

Maybe, but back then MicroShaft * even (allegedly) blackmailed PC makers into not selling PC without a Microsoft OS so effectively applying a Microsoft TAX onto the entire PC market.

That and other anticompetitive practices explains the hatred for Microsoft and lack of sympathy for your comment shown here.

* other hateophones are available.

Two clichés, one headline: 'No good deed goes unpunished' and 'It's always DNS'

Re: Life Lesson

Wasn't never lending your favourite books covered in the book?

SpaceX cargo ship splashes down off Florida with science in tow – but what we want to know is how space wine tastes

For science? - pull the other one! and make sure it's got a nice head on it :-)

Agriculture research! pull the other one - I know it's made from plants but wine is not agriculture. Someone realized they could make some cheap plonk worth a fortune by sending it to space and back!

Otherwise surely they would have drunk some of the wine in orbit - you know for science!

As that experiment has apparently still to be performed can I please offer myself as a volunteer to test a variety of alcoholic beverages in orbit. (but not Whiskey - horrible stuff!).

Theranos destroyed crucial subpoenaed SQL blood test database, can't unlock backups, prosecutors say

" are not convinced this was an innocent mistake", masterful understatement you have there!

Here's hoping there's sufficient other evidence to lock up these fraudsters. If the judge has to make an judgement of deliberate destruction that could be a grounds for an appeal.

Cats: Not a fan favourite when the critters are draped around an office packed with tech

Re: Heat detector

You remind me of something from a while ago.

My folks are lucky enough to live by a river and have a narrowboat, this was mostly used as a floating shed and study and the side door was open most days. Their cat used to like lying on the bunk in the boat and when getting off the boat used to leap up from the floor over the door sill and onto the bank.

They eventually got around to going on a boat trip and took the cat with them.... I've still got a picture of the horrified cat trying to stop and reverse direction in mid air like a cartoon cat when it discovered the bank no longer there.

Turns out cats can swim pretty well if they have to!

Trump fires cybersecurity boss Chris Krebs for doing his job: Securing the election and telling the truth about it

Re: You see Trump, now blaiming the voting machines.

I'd like to see a world where the standard of living in the "other countries" levels up such that there is not enough to gain by outsourcing production to those places or any other.

That way you can have trade and all the benefits that brings without workers either losing jobs or getting exploited.

But that needs a level of education of the populace and honesty and expertise from the people in power that I don't see happening anytime soon.

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

Re: Something similar

These days every Windows 10 computer does that ! - It's called "updating" I think.

HP: That print-free-for-life deal we promised you? Well, now it's pay-per-month to continue using your printer ink

Re: Chargeback

Yep, I think in the UK at least if the Printer cost over £100 *, but the CC company don't have to recover the money for you, they are liable to refund you themselves. You can get your money back from the credit card company under Section 75 if you bought the printer with your credit card and you are not getting what you paid for...

The CC company can then decide to chase HP to get their money back if they choose too.

* mind you not many consumer level inkjets are over £100 are they?

Suspended sentence for bank IT worker who broke into his boss's webcam because he didn't get a payrise

Being invited down to the police station for an interview under caution and given the 3rd degree sort of gives it away.

Did I or did I not ask you to double-check that the socket was on? Now I've driven 15 miles, what have we found?

Re: Why are sockets switched?

@P .V. Jeltz (nice username, how is the poetry coming along)

A kettle is designed to run at a particular voltage, if a 120V kettle is to have the same power as a 240V kettle it must be designed to present a quarter the resistance and draw twice the current.

If you plug a kettle designed for 240V into 120V it will draw half the current and have a quarter of the power because P = I x V and your brew up will be delayed, if you plug a 120V kettle into 240 V please warn me first...

PS I've always wondered why we use "I" for current.

Elizabeth Holmes' plan to avoid her Theranos fraud trial worked out about as well as her useless blood-testing machines

Re: The ages of humankind

All things made of you know what stinky stuff......

Re: Wait a minute ...

I'm guessing the logic is I'm going to lose the money so might as well spend it staying out of prison for as long as possible.

Or spend half while hiding half?

Burning down the house! Consumer champ Which? probes smart plugs to find a bunch of insecure fire-risk tat

Re: Not just smart plugs!

Unless you stand there watching your shiny iThing charging for however long it takes I don't see the benefit of an off switch on it on safety grounds.

OTOH I often wonder what standby power they consume - probably very very little but x a billion or so and it's probably a decent sized power station worth.

Salon told to change ad looking for 'happy' stylist because it 'discriminated against unhappy people'

Re: Wouldn't it be nice

and sadly it works for the head of the previously free world too these days

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

I wonder

I wonder if they have relaxed the rules this year and all his ex colleagues are now working from home - confidential data and all!

Wouldn't that be the final irony for the poor bloke!

Re: Editing

But then you would not get credit (or abuse!) from your fellow commentards or the pleasure of publicly shaming the almighty vultures.

I think this and ease of commenting is why people put corrections in the comments.

Manchester, UK seeks IT-slinger: £235m for number-plate-and-fines system to clean up vehicle emissions

Re: Northwest

That may be true, but it's far more entertaining point out mistakes in the forum! :-)

When a deleted primary device file only takes 20 mins out of your maintenance window, but a whole year off your lifespan

Re: You know you've been reading El Reg too long…

The real measure you've been reading Register forums too long is when Amanfrommars posts start to make sense!

Hey, Boeing. Don't celebrate your first post-grounding 737 Max test flight too hard. You just lost another big contract

New laws needed

For many years the higher ups in big companies have used the concept of the legally responsible entity being the company to hide from the consequences of their actions.

So saying the company does not deserve to be in business is saying the company is responsible and while that may be right it's also ignoring that actually it's people that are responsible and should be made accountable. And the people that would be worst affected by the company failing would probably not be the people responsible.

One or two scapegoats will or have been found in Boeing but I bet a lot of the people that are responsible for MCASgate have escaped any reckoning.

We need new laws to make higher management personally responsible for the behavior of the company they run, that way they might take the "safety first" or "Your privacy is important to us" mantra as something more than marketing BS.

Barclays Bank appeared to be using the Wayback Machine as a 'CDN' for some Javascript

You should have left the image and logged the traffic and after a while presented them with an invoice for the service. Could have made a killing!

Apple: We're defending your privacy by nixing 16 browser APIs. Rivals: You mean defending your bottom line

Horrified

So any web site can start a pwa that sits there hovering up data and draining my battery.

Marvelous! What douchbag thought that was a good idea!

BT and Serco among bidders competing to run Britain's unfortunately named Skynet military satellite system

"some that do a reasonable job" um..., maybe the office cleaner?

An Internet of Trouble lies ahead as root certificates begin to expire en masse, warns security researcher

Re: What time is it, please?

Thyme dilation ! love it! :-)))

Microsoft's own operating system should finally start working on its own hardware ... 'in the coming weeks'

Wtf are you talking about

This is not about some weird edge case homebrew hardware it's about hardware designed and built by M$, you know, the same M$ that make this OS!

NASA's Human Spaceflight boss hits eject a week before SpaceX crew launch

Re: Going while the going's good

Um...it's a lot more than 250 metres, miles or even brontosauri between an LEO station and a moon orbit station.....

(But I agree with your concept whole heartedly.)

Car crash: Uber axes another 3,000 jobs, closes 45 offices as punters snub app during coronavirus lockdown

Pesonnaly

"each of whom I want to personally thank" - yeah, really!

Redefining the meaning of the word personally!

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

Bit late to this party but...

Redmond Turd Polishers

CPU Performance Destroyers Inc

BSods-r-us

Briny liquid may be more common on Mars than once thought, unlikely to support life as we know it

Note to Elon

Best take a barbie with you to cook them brine shrimp mate!

Re: @Paul Johnston - Life is more tenacious than you would expect

Try asking Alexa why the chicken crossed the road....

The answer always cracks me up.

Russia admits, yup, the Americans are right: One of our rocket's tanks just disintegrated in Earth's orbit

Re: Musings from the group W bench...

@ Chozo

Hmm? No! That would be like stopping your family from catching Covid-19 by shooting them.

The debris would make LEO unusable for a very long time, it would not grind itself down to particles, many space station/satellite killer size objects will remain, even if it did how is your play doh satellite going to catch more than a tiny sample?

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends, MPs told

Having some Tiles to help finding lost keys my expectation is that this simply won't work.

With a tile you are supposed to be able double click the button on the tile and the phone will ring so you can find it, my experience is that that does not work unless the tile app is running in the foreground.

Bluetooth tooth is great but not all it's cracked up to be.

Bezos to the Moon: Blue Origin joins SpaceX and Dynetics in a three-horse lunar lander race

Why airless?

Just put 15 psi less than usual and Bob is a relative. Make 'em run flats incase of punctures.

Possibly tongue in cheek but why not?

Getting a pizza the action, AS/400 style

Re: Pineapple good. Pepperoni bad.

I like thin, thick and deep pan but thin is the original genuine article first created in Italy and still the best IMO. The reason thick ones are popular in the UK (and I'm guessing the US) is that the thin ones here are mostly limp floppy things that fail to satisfy (oh er!). Proper thin ones are not floppy, they have bite and a bit of crunch.

Re: 56!

Or it orders 255 or 655365 pizzas!

A paper clip, a spool of phone wire and a recalcitrant RS-232 line: Going MacGyver in the wonderful world of hotel IT

Re: Common use machines should always use pigtail extension leads for USB

Yeah, I had that twitch too but at least Blackjack didn't call it the "hard disk" which both my mother and mother-in-law do.

Disk stuck in the drive? Don't dilly-Dali – get IT on the case!

You must be new around here!

Researchers trick Tesla into massively breaking the speed limit by sticking a 2-inch piece of electrical tape on a sign

@Phil

Except that their testing was on some sort of large unused lot with no hazards so 85 was not an unreasonable limit for the "road".

OTOH What is the highest limit on any public road in the US?, I'm guessing it is less than 85 and you would expect it to know that therefore ignore a sign that says 85

Hmm, how fast does a Tesla go on an unlimitted autobahn in Germany?

I've got way too much cash, thinks Jeff Bezos. Hmmm, pay more tax? Pay staff more? Nah, let's just go into space

Re: Alternatives needed

Language like "completely reduced" really gets my goat in a post otherwise written in adult language! It's nonsense! either just "reduced" or "completely stopped" is valid.

Blimey I'm losing touch! I thought 400gb SD card must be a typo but then I googled for it! Christ on a bike how feck do they cram something like 2 trillion capacitors into an SD card!

Re: @Dan 55 I disagree...

So disadvantaged wherehouse employees deserve to work at slave wages so rocket engineers can get a decent salary and pay taxes, stikes me he could afford to pay a semi decent wage to all his employees rather than only where the employment laws or job market conditions force him to.

I don't think the hostility is against how rich he is it's how his business exploits the weak in the name of profit. Of course the same is true of almost every other mega corp or super rich business owner, unfortunately it's part of the human condition.

As an aside I've noticed that prices on Amazon have been rising and often it no longer has the best prices for things. You can often find a better price by going to the web site of a specialist supplier. Amazon is banking on people either not noticing or being willing to pay a premium for next day prime delivery.

Fed-up air safety bods ban A350 pilots from enjoying cockpit coffees

Re: Trolly dolly?

You mean I can't refer to them as "Tart with a cart" any more? Please say it ain't so!

I was told this alternative by a stewardess so I reckon it's ok.

NASA is Boeing to get to the bottom of that Starliner snafu... plus SpaceX preps to blow up a Falcon 9

Re: Kaboom required

So would that be a kablooey?

Anyway, in the actual test the Kablooey was much later, after the capsule was well away. It looked more like a self detruct than a break up to me.

I guess thay have done lots of analysis and as you say Boeing are not doing an IFA test at all.