Posts by wolfetone

NASA's Orion: 100,000 parts riding 8 million pounds of thrust

3 Screens?

Next they'll be telling us there's just two buttons on the control panel. A Big Green one saying Go, and a Big Red one saying Stop.

Intel shows budget Android phone powering big-screen Linux

Fairly sure Ubuntu either did this or were talking about it. And with their OS I would say we're closer than we all think to having something like this happen.

If Ubuntu were to bring this feature out tomorrow on one of their new phones, I would gladly put myself in to debt to buy one.

Black Monday: Office 365 down and out in Europe

Re: A message to all who thought Office 365 was a good idea

"So you missed this round. And? All I have to do is wait :)"

Touche my friend, touche!

Re: A message to all who thought Office 365 was a good idea

Ah, sorry, this is going to be a bit awkward but I use Office 365 and mine has been fine all day.

Sorry to piss on your bonfire there buddy x

Ukraine has a Eurovision pop at Russia

I'm sure Putin is bothered.

The paperless office? Don’t talk sheet

Paper, Baby

And lots of it.

Under-fire Apple backs down, crafts new iOS to kill security safeguard

I came here looking for an argument with El Reg. HOW DARE APPLE BACK DOWN FROM THE FBI.

Then I read the article, understand what it's about. Now all I can shout is GOOD! BLOODY APPLE THINKING THEY CAN SCREW THE CONSUMER OVER! WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?!

All is well with the world, until tomorrow at least.

Sir Clive Sinclair in tech tin-rattle triumph

What's The Point?

There is a long running argument regarding emulation and whether it's better than the real thing. Sometimes it is if the hardware or game is stupidly expensive/rare/too big to put in your house, sometimes it isn't. And the times where it isn't better is when the original hardware is still stupidly cheap, the games are cheap and bountiful, and it doesn't take a lot to make them run or store.

The Spectrum falls in to the latter camp. It's still relatively cheap when compared to other micros of the time. The BBC Micro commands upwards of £80 for a good one. I bought a Spectrum 48k last week for £30. In it's original box. It may even be an Issue 1 although I haven't opened it up yet to find out. It's actually tiny, taking up no more space than a book, and it isn't too hard to download a game for it and stick it on your phone and play it through the Speccy. It'll also work on modern LCD/LED TV's although you need to tune it in via the analogue port - standard behaviour.

The problem this device has, for me, is that it offers absolutely nothing of value to the end user. Yes you can play it on the go, yes it looks nice, but that's it. Most of the people who like these things have a smart phone, and there are PLENTY of emulators around that can do the job this can. And there are several add ons that give you a joystick and buttons to play not just Speccy games but C64, Mega Drive, N64 games etc. And for those who don't like mobile games, you can pick your emulator of choice for your OS of choice.

If you want the proper experience, just go on eBay and pick up an old Speccy and do it properly. You can replace the membranes for £10(ish) and various other easy modifications like using composite AV out instead of the RF unit. Do it properly if you do it at all.

Trade union threatens work-to-rule action over HPE Lancashire job cuts

Re: When will unions learn?

Oh to be back in the 1800's when the boss could make workers do whatever he saw fit, and sack them on the spot if they didn't - or couldn't - do what was asked.

We have rights as workers for a reason. If the workers didn't have a voice, didn't have a way to express their opinion regarding a decision made by management in a way they can understand, we would all be working in a coal mine for 16 hours a day.

Unions work. Period.

Pilot posts detailed MS Flight Sim video of how to land Boeing 737

Don't Show This To Michael O'Leary

He'll go ahead with his idea of having just the one pilot, then have a policy of asking passengers to fly the plane for a surcharge. If you pay before you fly you'd save 50% though.

FBI iPhone brouhaha sparks Apple Store protest in San Francisco

Re: Jihadists will be celebrating

Jihadists will be wondering what the fuss is about, seeing as they all use Nokia 3310's and take the battery out of them and put the phone under a rock before going to their meeting place.

All-American Apple challenges US gov call for iOS 'backdoor'

Photos of the two of them with guns, looking all mean and nasty. It's this sort of thing that works really well in news reports, which will then be used the next time the subject of encryption being evil comes up.

Patch ASAP: Tons of Linux apps can be hijacked by evil DNS servers, man-in-the-middle miscreants

Re: this story only really came out yesterday

"Wow. You should work in government."

I would but I don't have a pig fetish.

Re: this story only really came out yesterday

"So it's when the story breaks that's important to you, not when the vulnerability is introduced?"

Yes, because more often than not opportunists will only know about a problem like this until it goes public. These type of people would be scrambling this morning to find out how to exploit this, at which point the machines would be fixed.

It's not ideal to have these issues in the first place, but the people writing this software are only human. So more often than not, the fact a problem is introduced in itself isn't a problem. It's how it's handled that matters, and Linux developers have proven yet again that these things can be fixed in an appropriate time frame.

Re: what happened to

"It's 2016 and clicking a link can pwn your Linux pc"? Worried about how much it would upset the freetards??

True. I mean this story only really came out yesterday and this morning Linux machines around the world are being updated as we speak.

I can't remember the last time Windows could do that. Usually takes them a few months to even acknowledge the problem doesn't it, let alone fix it?

New Monopoly version features an Automatic Teller Machine

Well there goes my main strategy of being the banker and syphoning off cash for my own purposes without anyone realising.

Facebook tells Viz to f**k right off

We really are in 1984 aren't we?

You can be an individual and do what you like, how you like. But it must be in a way we see fit and it must not offend a single person.

Conformity from Facebook.

UK to stop children looking at online porn. How?

Impose Fine On Parents

This is the simpler solutions - and the correct one. They need to take responsibility for policing what their children see and do. If they have substituted their attention for an iPad without any supervision then it really is their own fault.

Argos offers 'buy now pay in 3 months' deal

Re: Because data protection

That's the thing with Data Protection, no one really understands it and hope you don't either.

I have had calls many times from people wanting to discuss something with me, they then drop the line "For Data Protection can you confirm your name...", and I'd tell them no. They say they need it to verify who I am, at which point I tell them that for Data Protection purposes I can't give out my personal information to someone who I don't know. They tell me who they are, and I give them a false name. Sometimes it's amazing how far the call can go when you say your name is John DeLorean, otherwise they get pissed off and hang up.

Time acquires Myspace, creates 2004's most fearsome media giant

Re: Possibile Pheonix

Well that's what the problem was with MySpace. Everyone who was on there loved it as we could connect with other people our own age. Then our parents got on it, and that immediately meant we left to go to Facebook as that was too new for the older people to understand.

Luckily both my parents thought the computer was far beyond their comprehension so never bothered to use it. The closest the old fella got to using a computer was asking me to get RTE radio on it so he could listen to the football. The mother uses the Sky box, and that's her limit.

Possibile Pheonix

To be honest I think MySpace has a chance with the yoof. Think about it, if you're younger than 25 you'll have never knew MySpace existed. Make MySpace a bit like WhatsApp, then it's a cash cow again.

Sick and tired of modern Windows? Upgrade to Windows 3.1 today – in your web browser

From memory Windows 3.1 and 3.11 don't update. So really this is the last bastion of protection from the evil claws of Windows 10.

Although I'd plumb for Windows 3.11, it has a TCP/IP stack. 3.1 didn't.

Mirantis: OpenStackers, it's us or Amazon...

Re: Not so sure

A project I have is currently on a VPS and I've been looking at the various cloud options. The one thing I absolutely hate are companies who aren't clear on their pricing. So Mirantis falls in to this area for me, so I'll avoid them because of that.

Then again, if you have to ask the price of something you probably can't afford it.

Offers? Opera's board likes Qihoo, says shareholders should too

Firefox, meet Opera

I wish that Mozilla would look at what happened to Opera and realise that the fun side projects and useless minority features they seem hell bent on implementing in to Firefox ultimately dooms the browser. No one cares about having a Firefox OS. All people really care about is having a fast, efficient browser that is open source and isn't from Google.

There is plenty of money in Mozilla - too much I feel - so there should be no excuses. Do your job Mozilla and make Firefox great.

Silent Nork satellite tumbling in orbit

Re: " Soviet SS-1 "Scud" powerplants"

"Either a bad joke or you don't know your history."

Wasn't the coat icon a clue?

Re: " Soviet SS-1 "Scud" powerplants"

"Itself based on a version of the V2 engine."

Which itself was based on a version of the V1 engine.

Ex-TalkTalker TalkTalks: Records portal had shared password. It was 4 years old

Not Surprised

Why would a company bother spending lots of money in their IT systems, when if it's perceived that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? Money spent securing internal systems that customers can't see doesn't return any profit on that investment. At the end of the day, the business exists to make money for it's shareholders, not to keep customer data secure nor deliver an amazing customer experience. They want to get away with the bare minimum, and when something goes wrong the PR department spin it as "well it was a sophisticated attack and we take every effort to protect our customer data" and "our customers privacy is very important to us".

Liars. Their customers dollar is important to them, not the fact their details aren't secure and can be sold to all and sundry.

Picking apart the circuits in the ARM1 – the ancestor of your smartphone's brain

Maybe she doesn't want to talk about it, or divulge these things.

Norks uses ballistic missile to launch silent 'satellite'

Re: No Oil In North Korea

@Neoc:

"Nope, the main reason the USA (and the UN) is dragging their feet is NK's old pal China."

I'm afraid that just isn't true. China are just as pissed off with NK as the rest of the world is at the moment. The simple matter is it isn't financially viable for the USA to go in to NK and blow the place up.

No Oil In North Korea

So therefore the USA can't be bothered to invade them.

Fleet of 4.77MHz LCD laptops with 8088 CPUs still alive after 30 years

Say hello to the new Tosh, the same as the old Tosh.

What's more impressive in this article is the keyboard. That thing must be worth a load of money now.

What's it like to work for a genius and Olympic archer who's mates with Richard Branson?

You know you're in trouble when some clown thinks Microsoft Access is a viable database.

Barracuda kills CudaDrive and Copy cloud storage services

Re: Yet another example

In spinning rust we trust

Shame

I use Copy, well I did, and I found it really good. The mover.io integration was brilliant dragging in data from Google Drive and Dropbox which saved me time.

Oh well, time to shift to OwnCloud then. At least if I decided to close that service for myself I can take myself outside and have a quiet word with myself.

WordPress under attack by whack-a-mole ad-scam malware

Re: Masses Against The Classes

Send your company to me, I'd do it properly.

But yeah, I would wonder what would happen if your website was compromised due to the permissions on your site being changed or updates being applied in an insecure manner. Personally I took insurance out in case something I do causes losses for a client, I don't think this is common for web agencies at all. If your company has a solicitor I'd ask them their thoughts on that.

Masses Against The Classes

The problem with WordPress is that everyone can use it, everyone can install it, everyone can butcher it to death. Yes it's popular, but unless the web agency that built the site in WordPress has a conscience then it's more than likely the updates are handled by the website owner. That is on the assumption they know there is an issue, and that they can apply the update, and that they can fix what inevitable bugs that will appear in one or many of their 1,000 plugins that they've installed.

I've said previously the best way around this, for those who can, is to roll your own CMS on top of a framework. I have done that in the past with Symfony, and I'm starting to do it again with newer projects, because the hassle of dealing with WordPress' bullshit just isn't worth it anymore.

Wanted! A browser to replace Xombrero

Lynx?

I can suggest PaleMoon. It's based on Firefox, but with all of the crap cut out of it.

Vivaldi has also been mentioned, while it's good it tends to hog resources. It did so in my case anyway.

BT blames 'faulty router' for mega outage. Did they try turning it off and on again?

Faulty BT Router?

They should replace them with a Billion router, like I did.

Be smart BT, like me.

YouTube "Error Occured" in videos to promote more advertising?

YouTube "Error Occured" in videos to promote more advertising?

I'm not sure if this is just me, or if it's something Google is up to with YouTube, but it's definitely annoying.

I run a Linux machine, and Flash is no where to be seen on my computer. I often go on YouTube, so I'm using the HTML5 video version of YouTube.

What I've noticed however is that, more often than not, a playing video will suddenly stop with the message "An Error Occured" etc. As annoying as this is, refreshing the page fixes the problem. However, it often means sitting through a different advert that you had to sit through previously. Meaning for the one video, you could actually watch two 30 second adverts.

As I said, I'm not sure if this is just related to me or if other people have noticed it. So I thought it'd be good to put this here and see if anyone else has noticed the issue - or con.

Google calls out Comodo's Chromodo Chrome-knockoff as insecure crapware

Re: FYI

But it would need to be listening to you all the time for it to be able to detect "OK Google" being said. This is a privacy issue and there should be a way to disable this or be prompted for it to be installed. That's the problem.

FYI

Google Chrome would install a binary on Linux systems automatically that took control of your microphone. The end user wasn't made aware of it, and it even made it's way in to Chromium. It was removed from Chromium, but not from Chrome (as far as I'm aware).

Just saying, for balance.

Safe Harbor ripped and replaced with Privacy Shield in last-minute US-Europe deal

Let me be the first to say.... horseshit.

BT broadband is down: Former state monopoly goes TITSUP UK-wide

Thanks BT

Nearing the end of my working day, and I thought "it'd be nice to go home, relax, and chill out to some Netflix". Now I hear my broadband is broken? Do you not know what damage can be done to a relationship if there is no Netflix for our chill?

Uni of Manchester IT director resigns after chopping 68 people

Re: co-op IT are dysfunctional

"probably because they're so basic! Colleague of mine is with Co-op its online banking is like something from 2002! Its so basic you can hardly do anything with it, compare it with Santander."

And? I have the same system and there's nothing I've wanted to do with it that couldn't be done with the interface. It does what it says on the tin, and I'd like to think because of it's simplicity it's more robust.

And yes, I "gone done" was meant to be "gone down". The coffee hadn't kicked in at that point.

Re: co-op IT are dysfunctional

While it may be dysfunctional, I can tell you (as a customer since 2009) that their IT systems haven't gone done.

Something that HSBC and Natwest can never say.

Little warning: Deleting the wrong files may brick your Linux PC

I always found I've had to disable UEFI to install Linux properly. I spent an evening with my new laptop installing Fedora, trying to work out why it wouldn't boot properly. Eventually I worked out how to disable UEFI, and it eventually sprang in to life.

I still view UEFI as poison and it adds no real value to Linux users. It's just something Microshite asked the vendors to put on the machines to "secure the computer" - translated, means "secure our profits".

Did water rocket threaten Brum airport Airbus?

Re: Strongbow?

"If you grew up in Birmingham you'd know that Basall Common is a proper posh neck of the woods. I mean its so far on the outskirts that people don't even speak with a brummie accent."

I could never afford a daysaver to find out :(

Strongbow?

I'd love to know where the Birmingham yoof can afford bottles of Strongbow. Growing up in BIrmingham all my friends and I could afford was a bottle of Frosty Jacks.