Posts by TchmilFan

BBC exterminates AI experiments used to promote Doctor Who

Re: He's The Doctor not Doctor Who.

Who’s on stage?

What's brown and sticky and broke this PC?

London, 2003-ish

Minor commotion in the office, my desk’s around a corner so I can’t see what’s going on.

By the time I stand up, I can see one of our Senior Designers running back to the desk with paper towels.

I think, “Ho ho, we know what’s happened here”

Walked over.

Designer, sheepishly, “I spilt some water, but managed to mop it all up. Didn’t get any in the keyboard” And she was right, this was the time when Apple thought it was a good idea to encase their keyboards in a nice transparent acrylic matter collection device, so there was always some evidence of lunch or liquids left in the bottom.

The back of their desk faced me. Experience told me to wipe the bottom rear edge - damp.

Me: “Did you wipe the whole desk?”

I touched the top of her Mac Pro (Dual CPU, maxed out RAM, fancy display card). Wet.

Before I could reach for the power switch… Bzzzzzt, pop. Black screen.

Replacement mainboard.

Aerial cable tangles are still being strung up, but carriers are slowly burying the problem

Re: The problem with burying: you need a map..

Our Mumbai Khar West office used to get cut off regularly when yet another digger sliced through the lines. Went to WiMAX in the end… then Covid came along, PHB decided not to keep the contract running (sensibly actually, no-one in the office and no servers) but when we tried to get it turned back on after lockdown… “We don’t offer WiMAX anymore”

So we moved the office instead.*

*There were other factors.

Japan's ubiquitous convenience stores now serving up privacy breaches

Something something pun about Horizon

At least, no-one’s ended up in jail because of this Fujitsu blunder.

Two signs in the comms cabinet said 'Do not unplug'. Guess what happened

Re: Not only two signs...

This is fine until “management” decides they need some extra storage space and you come back after a holiday only to find the combi lock’s been removed and combustible non-IT stuff piled on the shelves.

New Outlook feature: It freezes up when dealing with tables in emails

...and on Mac, don't dare to use emojis

Outlook for Mac, each time you run Outlook, first time you use an emoji or receive an email with an emoji in it, results in a spinning beachball for almost a minute as it does, er, something. It's not like they could just use the Apple emoji font... oh well.

When forgetting to set a password for root is the least of your woes

Re: Nobody told me I wasn't allowed to do it.

Conflation indeed. The other one is “Timbuktu”

(For non-listeners, in “Cabin Pressure”, the pilots often play games to pass the time)

DOUGLAS (protesting): No! No, I’m sorry, I’m done.

MARTIN: No-no, fair’s fair, Douglas. You promised if I joined in with Flight Deck Buckaroo, I could pick the next game.

DOUGLAS: But I hate this game!

MARTIN: Yes, and I hate Flight Deck Buckaroo.

DOUGLAS: How can you hate Flight Deck Buckaroo? It’s a terrific game! And it’s educational.

MARTIN: There is nothing educational about seeing who can disable the most instruments without setting off the recorded warning.

DOUGLAS: Yes there is! You find out all the things you don’t really need! Like altimeters.

MARTIN: No, this is educational. So, welcome to round two of Beat the Manuals!

Please, tell us more about how just 60 hydrogen-powered 5G drones could make 400,000 UK base stations redundant

Re: Coverage be damned...

I can assure you, sir, that we would have multiple redundant safety features built in to the system to counter any error... for example, the avionics suite will be licensed from Boeing, an acknowledged world-class provider.

North Korean hackers pwned cryptocurrency sysadmin with GDPR-themed LinkedIn lure, says F-Secure

Re: @Paul 87 - It's an old disease

See also TCP/UDP for Chrome

Apple promises third, no, fourth, er, fifth time's a charm when it comes to macOS Catalina: 10.15.5 now out

I'm still saying no to Catalina on production Macs

Apart from new kit (obviously), I'm still not taking production Macs any further than Mojave.

Catalina is another "Sierra", it's needed an, er, "Alto Catalina" jump ever since it was obvious things hadn't quite worked.

cmd.exe is dead, long live PowerShell: Microsoft leads aged command-line interpreter out into 'maintenance mode'

Re: Microsoft only have themselves to blame

but.. but... DevOps

DevOps is cool

What do you mean you work in small business and only need to do thing X once every 3 years for about two users at a time?

NO! You must learn all of Powershell. Oh, and by the way, we've replaced the command you used a year ago. WHY AREN'T YOU PAYING ATTENTION?

Okay, we used to give you a GUI, where you could just click on a tick box and it would set it for your whole organisation, but now, you can write a 20+ line script to do that.

DevOps! DevOps! DevOps! (You're still using Insta - TikTok!) DevOps! DevOps! (You didn't go to the cool party?) DevOps! Trying to maintain the mystique and inaccessibility of IT? DevOps!

Nnnnnnaaaaarrrrrrghghghghg!

Hey, fatso. If you're standing desk-curious, the VariDesk Pro Plus won't break the bank

Re: Glasses

I had do-it-all glasses with Transitions lenses, wore them all the time, but now keep them as backups.

Why? At a wedding reception, they took the photos outside and everything looked fine apart from the "cool dude" with his sunglasses on.

Class-action sueball over refurbed iThings will ask Apple what 'as good as new' means

I am cancelling my subscription forthwith

The Registerbot forgot to insert "fanbois" at every opportunity.

Shurely some mistake.

Finally in the UK: Apollo 11 lands... in a cinema near you

Re: Those who watched this might also like.....

Agreed. If they do a repeat tour of IMAX cinemas go see it.

That tracking shot in launch control... so good.

Idle Computer Science skills are the Devil's playthings

One more slip and he’s out with 0 notice and shit references.

... provided he’s show promise, otherwise out out out.

That’s not inventive, that’s just stupid. Wrapping it up in mollycoddling “curiosity” is bullshit. You can be curious without fucking things up.

If he didn't realise that the box that was created to do repetitive tasks quickly then took the very repetitive task and did it very quickly, then he’s missing the point. That’s not a BOFH, that’s a user with little knowledge making poor decisions.

RIP Peter Firmin: Clangers creator dies aged 89

Re: Attention to detail

‘Ullo little old lady

I was a long time Chortlon and Jamie fan. I was a little older than target, but still at school. Always hoped that ITV (remember when we only had 3/4/5 channels?) were showing either of them on days when I was “ill”.

Thought Fenella the Witch was brilliant. REGIONAL ACCENTS!!

Jamie! (Wordsworth)

Jamie! (Wordsworth)

A great theme tune.

Every major OS maker misread Intel's docs. Now their kernels can be hijacked or crashed

Re: "You can always tell who those who never used an Amiga are..."

Superbase!

There’s a Proustian rush I wasn’t expecting today.

Suffering satellites! Goonhilly's ARTHUR REBORN for SPAAAACE

Big Up to MCCFE posse!

Ordnance Survey intern plonks houses, trees, rivers and roads on GB Minecraft map

Dear Register hacks,

A basic hyperlink to somewhere non-Registery and more Ordnancey would be nice.

Tying us in that awful Youtube skin doesn't help things.

Anatomy of OpenSSL's Heartbleed: Just four bytes trigger horror bug

Re: Simple script?

Uther, can we get some muffins in here?

E-book him! Entire Judge Dredd back catalogue gets iDevice treatment

Re: Drokk it!

Drokk it, indeed - I didn't know they'd reprinted Zenith either.

Oh flaps.

What did the Romans ever do for us? Packet switching...

Re: "The next generation of network was the railway"

Didn't say the canals weren't Big Engineering (having done a bit of Industrial Archaelogy I can bore you to tears on the subject) and yes they had a pretty big impact but they were not next gen: they were an extension of already apparent engineering principles. Of course, cast-iron meant that stronger and larger bridges could be built but most aqueducts were still granite/wood and puddle clay affairs with the appliance of a bit more thought and more construction.

By no means the same effect as the invention of the steam locomotive/iron rail/consequent speed-between-distant-towns combo.

As far as canals go, there's a natural progression from boats on rivers, ditch-digging and bridge-building. First known navigable canal was around 510BC - not new.

Aqueducts started around the same time (although water-carrying ones admittedly) - not new and a couple of the ones into Rome are still being used.

Navigable ones in the late 17th - not new

Locks - the Chinese some time - can't be buggered to look it up. - not new.

We joined all the dots and improved locks, summit canals, aqueducts in the 18th.

Yes, a gap of a few centuries that perhaps makes it look like a big leap but there was no impetus for us to do it until the industrial revolution brought the need: many of the resources were inland. Up until then there was no reason for county or national scale projects. Not enough money and not enough people either!

But still, from a technological point of view, canals really are only boats floating down a man-made river. (Sorry for the disjointed sentences, I'm only half concentrating on this).

Re: "The next generation of network was the railway"

re https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canals_of_the_United_Kingdom

I'd argue not. The canals were not, from our point of view, next gen. They didn't need or result in a step change in any other technologies (apart from lock building). Canals were just watery roads. Yes more payload, but still at horsey speed.

How NSA spooks spaffed my DAD'S DATA ALL OVER THE WEB

I prefer to think of your Dad as the presenter of "Local Heroes"

"Hullo! This week on Local Heroes, we're in Penge!" or something like that. An excellent programme.

(Aaaagh! My eyes. Make the glowing bike go away.)

Much better than the contemporary version of "Tomorrow's World" - that was already being neglected in the same way of everything else sciencey, fiction or non-fiction, on the BBC viz Dr Who, QED, Horizon.

Flashman and the Mountain of Disk

I must say that I prefer the old Pan covers...

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7247/7731978874_bb48f5c319_z.jpg

The buggers went and changed the covers before I got a full set. A rum lot - publishers.

Troll sues Apple for daring to plug headphones into iPhone

Re: Which is the bit that they claim is novel?

An aircraft is a *very* mobile mobile-communications-device, you can sit inside it too.

I should patent a mobile communications device that you can sit inside (possibly with more than one seat - conference calls, you know?), flies gaining lift by using wings or a spinning, bladed wing-system and forward thrust from the use of a newtonian reaction motor… with a headset that uses one 3.5mm jack plug

Are you an IT pro? It's no longer safe to bet your career on Microsoft

Re: Good one! -Notes

Back in the days of the still not quite standard £2000 286, I was in on a secret squirrel manufacturer-only Notes test*. Instantly hated it with a passion.

*That's what they told us, anyway. Ooh, may have been '92

> MS chooses not to include Outlook in consumer bundles of MS Office, if it did so then the pressure to ditch Notes would become unbearable.

Er, because of all those home users buying Notes?

North Korean GPS blocking sparks cyber war fears

Oh goody. Going to Seoul again in June.

Modern electrickery is quite handy on the way in to Incheon.

Take a look at the approach charts http://www.opennav.com/pdf/RKSI/RKSI_INSTR_APP_CHART.pdf

Notice the big "Do not fly" line?

It's also quite prone to fog, the airport's on an island and there aren't many major landmarks for navigating until you're on final. I don't know but they're probably using GPS augmented ILS (anyone?) so any jamming's not going to be too helpful.

Re: Naughty, naughty

And for your further titillation... Nork is near Sutton in Surrey.

Oh the hilarity!

Potent proton pulse to BOMBARD EARTH Tuesday morn

"Corona truck"

Blimey, back in the Neolithic, weren't they?

mmmm, raspberryade and 2p for returned bottles.

ize/ise etc.

-ize is actually original British English. We've only recently started using -ise, the burger eating warmongers have just hung on to it.

Inspector Morse even uses it to solve a murder.

Voyager probe reaches edge of Solar System's 'bubble'

Peach?

Butterscotch, surely. After all the universe is beige. (http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~kgb/cosspec/)

That may also explain why Angel Delight isn't as good as used to be - it's thinning out as the universe expands.

The new touchy-feely Doctor Who trend: Worrying

I'm sorry but

...mention of Pond, Song, Leela and no-one mentions Peri? Now, maybe Peri in Amy's policewoman outfit? Oh crikey.

-----------

I'm by no means a Whovian and, being of the late Pertwee/Baker vintage, I quite like the Smith instar BUT the nouveau humans-are-great and awfully clumsy look-gay-people! schtick is what annoys me (Some of my best friends are gay/black/French/real).

While it's laudable that they're trying to influence people into being more accepting, it's the crappy way that it's shoe-horned into the plot with feeble excuses like there's no reason why he should be of any particular persuasion: indeed not, but do you have to do it in such inept way? It's like deciding that they're going to make vegetarianism more acceptable and then in every fourth episode show someone slaughtering a cow and the Doctor says NO I QUITE FANCY A LETTUCE , ACTUALLY (Lettuce's are cool). Okay, this is pretty much a whinge against the stylings of the now absent RTD but the humans are the bestest ooh they're marvellous stench still hangs around.

The lack of a scientific perspective is sad but that's symptomatic of most TV output nowadays. It's all bums-on-seats dahling. If it's too difficult they won't understand it. At least that's the view of the Execs and the directors and writers that have grown up with that culture.

Don't get me started on the Torchwood labia of the world thing.

Room-temperature brown dwarf spied just 9 light-years off

These are the stars that are closest to me

Sheldon will have to start again.

http://thebigblogtheory.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/s04e05-the-desperation-emanation/

First reports on XM-25 Judge Dredd smartgun in A'Stan

Actually...

... a marking round isn't a stupid idea but use a NIR or UV dye (provided they can be made indelible).

Andy Farley: I miss mucking about <ahem> I mean practising with the 3-inch.