Posts by Anonymous IV

Vatican sets up dedicated exorcism training course

A load of [Papal] Boolean

<insert witty reference to XORcism here>

Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?

>

"in Notepad (or whatever the equivalent was in 1992)"

Probably edlin...

...which I don't miss -->

For a very long time I thought that LinkedIn was a more sophisticated version of Edlin...

(Later I realised that it actually was!)

Shopper f-bombed PC shop staff, so they mocked her with too-polite tech tutorial

Re: He simply takes the kettle, opens the lid, shows them the lead inside the kettle,

The problem would not have occurred if the manufacturer had put a large sticky label on the kettle lid saying LEAD IS INSIDE KETTLE.

FYI: Processor bugs are everywhere – just ask Intel and AMD

I'm sure you will be able to insist on a replacement CPU if you can prove that you were guaranteed a certain level of performance from your current one.

Microsoft whips out tool so you can measure Windows 10's data-slurping creepiness

Re: No brainer

"No brainer" is not only the title but a description of the previous comment's content.

People want a less-intrusive version of Windows, not some random alternative.

'There was no monetary incentive for this' = not what you want to hear about your tattoo

Re: Life changes, tattoos don't

> the woman in front of me had the two words "seriously moody" tattooed on the back of her neck

In blue ink, I hope?

Talk about a positive mental pl-attitude: WD Ultrastars shed disks without hit to capacity

SSD manufacturers' olde saying

"Plattery will get you nowhere..."

Drone crashes after operator failed to spot extra building site crane

> 3DR's demise is an interesting lesson in self aggrandisement (a disgruntled DJI exec helped set 3DR up), a poor business model and inferior tech

The probable problem is that he couldn't take it with him...

Cortana. Whatever happened to world domination?

Standard action - turn Cortana off...

... on any new Windows 10 box, remove all the tiles, run ShutUp10, then...

Follow by getting rid of all the non-Microsoft cr*pware which the manufacturer has 'helpfully' installed for the user.

Engineer named Jason told to re-write the calendar

Re: July and August must Go!

> But lets not let facts get in the way of good story telling.

And let's not bother about spelling, punctuation, capitalisation, and other such niceties which could make it easier to read comments, especially when they have been written in green ink...

Re: JSON?

> I once came across a Norbert on a course

His Mediterranean friend would have been called Sorbet...

Disk drive fired 'Frisbees of death' across data centre after storage admin crossed his wires

Re: What no-one has mentioned yet... - DRUMS

> When I visited the machine room in Claremont Tower at Newcastle University in 1978 or '79, they had a drum acting as the swap space on the IBM System/360 Model 65.

I did my MSc Computing course using this machine in 1972/3 - it was actually a 360/67 (a 65 with the IBM 2301 drum) running the Michigan Terminal System (MTS), a quite decent time sharing system of the time, and only superseded later by VM. [I assume that it lasted until 1978/9?!]

Re: Those were the days, when a computer was really engineering

> IBM 3270 drives, I assume relatively similar from the description with all the adjustments made by turning screws 25% or a turn clockwise or similar...

The IBM 3270 was a CRT terminal. You may be thinking of a 3370? Take your pick from the drives featured in the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM_magnetic_disk_drives

Lock them up and throw away the (don)key

Re: Speciesist profiling and discrimination of the worst kind.

>...if some cows did it they would have been given desert as well!

Gobi, no doubt...

When it comes to ML, reports of JavaScript's death are exaggerated

> ⠀rectliinear_chicken_count = 0

What did Python say on encountering this misspelled variable name?

No artificial intelligence in there!

Royal Bank of Scotland website goes TITSUP*

Re: RBS?

> You see the morons at the top see that "Oh the company is losing money, eh? Better scale back operations. Start making people redundant and offshore all the IT."

You are Fred Goodwin and I claim my £5...

OVH data centres go TITSUP: Power supply blunders blamed

Re: "Small Earthquake In Peru - Not Many Injured" *

The BBC headline you quote http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/73785.stm is a slight and much later rework of the supposed Times headline written by Claud Cockburn (1904-1981) "Small earthquake in Chile, not many dead" thereby winning their "dullest headline" competition.

He is also known for the truism: "Never believe anything until it has been officially denied."

Guy Glitchy: Villagers torch Openreach effigy

Re: That's the price you pay...

Search me, guv! Dunno who those 'whimps' are either, the ones with the intrusive 'h'...

OK, we admit it. Under the hood, the iPhone X is a feat of engineering

"it comes with a beautiful notch"

> The X's 1125x2436 panel is a significant improvement then. And it comes with a beautiful notch.

I'm sure that final sentence actually means something.

But what?

Fresh bit o' Linux to spruce up that ancient Windows Vista box? Why not, we say...

Re: Windows7 / 10 look+feel

Have you looked at Zorin for a Windows 7 simulacrum*?

BTW why on earth would you want your Linux to look like Windows 10...?

* one is in Boris Johnson mode!

Survey: Tech workers are terrified they will be sacked for being too old

Re: Bah!

> "I should read the manuals and keep the wholly."

OK, not even Google knows what "keep the wholly" means.

Can anyone enlighten me, please?

I presume it has nothing to do with "keeping holy the Sabbath Day"...

Re: Us old fogeys

If you can afford it, do volunteer work IT for a local charity or three. They are crying out for people who have learnt over decades of experience that backup is a pretty neat idea (just one example)...

Re: Automation since the 50s

> Resource (human/capital) management, is being automated now.

The progression is Personnel -> Human Resources -> Livestock Control...

Didn't install a safety-critical driverless car patch? Bye, insurance!

Re: It really

> > "How exactly are we going to produce the gigawatts of electricity needed to power all these cars?"

> You make charging at night when the grid has spare capacity significantly cheaper.

Correction: you make charging during the day, to use up some of that surplus solar-generated electricity.

Combinations? Permutations? Those words don't mean what you think they mean

Re: HSE

> Why aren't they wearing seatbelts in the picture?

a) because the car is not in motion

b) because they are Americans

c) they are young, so they think they will live forever

Windows Fall Creators Update is here: What do you want first – bad news or good news?

Re: Start menu

I've had Classic Shell cause a desktop restart loop following the previous major Windows update (v1703) - almost impossible to recover from - but reinstalling Windows 10 again from the ISO made Classic Shell work perfectly.

The opinion from the forum was that Microsoft probably screwed something up in the major or minor updates over the past year and more. Reinstalling from scratch was far more likely to allow Classic Shell to work.

After that I realised that all I wanted from Classic Shell was the Control Panel menu entry/desktop icon, which can be acquired by other means.

NHS: Remember those patient records we didn't deliver? Well, we found another 162,000

> I noticed she omitted to wipe the injection area with alcohol beforehand, presumably slightly increasing my chances of an infection, but I didn't say anything.

I've done 'finger-prick' blood tests at least four times a day for the last 12½ years without pre-wiping the location with alcohol. Perhaps I am now dead?

How much for that Belkin cable? Margin of 1,992%?

Re: Best practice is 3% margin?

> I thought it was interesting that there is a "Society for IT Managers" that was stating this.

Perhaps they are henchmen of the spectacularly-pretentiously-named "Worshipful Company of Information Technologists" which never fails to amuse me on the rare occasions they come out of the woodwork?

Or maybe it should be "hench-organisation"...?

Fancy that! Craft which float over everything on a cushion of air

Re: Dover

Hovercrafts weren't all wine and roses: in 1985 the Princess Margaret hit the breakwater at the entrance to Dover Harbour in high winds, killing four people and injuring over 50 of the 370 passengers. The hovercraft captain lost his job...

UPI report - note that this says only two died, which I think is incorrect.

More photos of the Princess Margaret and some technical data.

El Reg is hiring an intern. Apply now before it closes

Re: Surely another bonus of the role...

> Surely another bonus of the role would be getting to deal with all of us lovely El Reg community / forum members :-)

But look what happened to the much-missed moderatrix Sarah Bee - she left (over 6½ years ago, I am shocked to note, sob....)

我的天啊! China gives Weibo users a week to use their real names

Cliché reuse

Does 我的天啊! translate as Yahoo! ?

if not, why not?

'Driverless' lorry platoons will soon be on a motorway near you

Two points

1) This convoy is going to be implemented by wireless technology.

What could possibly go wrong? :(

2) Presumably the 'guard' in the cab of lorries 2..n can be paid the minimum wage since s/he will just be sitting there, admiring the rear of the lorry in front. No need for any driving skills or experience.

And soon, like for trains, guards will no longer be necessary...

IT worker used access privs to steal £1m from Scottish city council

That's all right, then...

> Dundee City Council said in a statement: "Following the discovery of this crime, Dundee City Council has taken action to prevent a fraud of this type from happening again in the future."

Well done, chaps and ms-chaps! Lessons have been learned. Nothing can ever go wrong, now...

Back to the office for tea and medals.

Headless body found near topless beach: Missing private sub journalist identified

Re: Obvious and stupid mistake

> One look at any photo and it's obvious as hell the sub was a lot longer than "26 feet", snort. It's pretty obvious the length was 26 METERS. God help us from idiot writers who don't know the difference between feet and meters. Who gives length in feet of anything anywhere in the world outside of the the US?

You're quite right! "Feet" is a measurement of length, and "meter" is a measuring device. You probably were not thinking of "metre" since you spelled it wrong twice.

Who's the idiot writer now?!

British broadband is confusing and speeds are crap, says survey

> STILL waiting for BT nosuchReach to work out how to provide FTC when all houses in the village connect direct to exchange.

Quite straightforward: get Openreach to stick a cabinet outside the exchange, and wire all the EO lines into it.

Good luck!

Foxit PDF Reader is well and truly foxed up, but vendor won't patch

Re: Alternatives/ Replacement

> I'll give Sumatra a go, once I turn down the brightness on my monitor. I hope the app is friendlier on the eye than their website.

If you want to change the lurid yellow background to a friendly pale blue, add the -bg-color parameter after the executable in your icon Properties, such as:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\SumatraPDF\SumatraPDF.exe" -bg-color 0xF0F8FF

"Your 0xRRGGBB value may vary."

Linux-loving lecturer 'lost' email, was actually confused by Outlook

Re: New BOFH?

> ..and is Mr Dabbs on holiday?

I do hope so. It will save me the trouble of looking at a perhaps interesting headline, then finding that he had written the article.

Openreach kicks off 'rebrand' by painting over BT logo on vans

Re: Will it really make any differece?

> however there are many who do actually want these incredible speeds for many reasons.

... such as being able to download myriad Windows Updates faster.

Talk about a hit and run: AA finally comes clean on security breakdown

"We're so sorry..."

"... Uncle Albert."

Allusion missed.

Microsoft boasted it had rebuilt Skype 'from the ground up'. Instead, it should have buried it

Re: @Chris

> Are there other call-home functions apart from this?

Don't bother investigating - just use O & O's oddly-named ShutUp10 and 'check out' the Actions tab. Removes all dubious MS settings in one fell swoop.

Virgin Media admits it 'fell short' in broadband speeds ahead of lashing from BBC's Watchdog

Re: Rock and ..... place

I'm not entirely sure what "5mb" (millibits) would mean. Not even if it was supposed to be 5 millibits per second...

Re: New???

A&A? Yes, you get what you pay through the nose for...

Linux 4.12 kernel lands: 'Go forth and use it' quoth Linus Torvalds

Re: Safe and trusted

> What does Linus know that seems to be so beyond Microsoft?

Perhaps he is a better despot?

Oh wait...

Looking for an Ubuntu Unity close cousin? Elementary, my dear...

Re: Unity lives on a Yunit

> now if Micro-shaft would only allow the forking of Windows 7...

Good heavens, NO! That would move vague consistency towards entropy, defined as "lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder."

Research suggests UK consumers find 'fibre' advertising misleading

Re: can anyone really get

> 24 mb fibre to the house, 75 mb to my 4g phone

Surely we can forget the fibre/copper dilemma until people are clear about the difference between numbers expressed in MB, Mb, mB* or mb...?

* I don't think I've actually seen that 'unit', but included for consistency...

Cheeky IT rival parks 'we're hiring' van outside 'vote Tory' firm Storm Technologies

Response

Isn't this an instance where the MD/CEO announces to the press, "Deputy Heads must roll!"?

Fighter pilot shot down laptops with a flick of his copper-plated wrist

Re: Random PC reboots

Amazing! What are the chances of an organisation having a rock-crushing machine down the corridor?