Posts by wolfetone

So, EE. Who IS this app on your HTC M9s sneakily texting, hmm?

THINGS, not this. F**king auto correct.

Barney should speak to his brother Barry Scott. He's good at making this go away.

Apple: Relax, fanbois! We never meant to read your heart rate during wild wrist action

"I's thinking of you, honey!"

It's all I've ever done, baby.

You know damn well an Apple employee's wife/husband had a quick peek at the heart rate app on their watch and asked them "Jonny, why was your heart rate at 120bpm at 11:30pm when you were downstairs watching TV?"

Split decision: Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi convertible

"You implied that MS Office might be more useful than LibreOffice. That's heresy around here, even though it's also true."

It is true in the specific scenario I stated. I use LibreOffice in an office where Office is king. The problem is the spreadsheets I update my overtime on uses macros and formula's etc that LO breaks. Cue lots of angry people in accounting.

The minute LO stops doing that, and other annoying things, Office can go to hell.

I'd quite like the 3 down voters to at least explain what was wrong with what I said?

I bought the T100 when I was in Canada last year and it's been fantastic. It's the only machine I have that runs Windows, so it's handy when playing the odd simple game on Steam. Also, to me, it makes Windows 8 sensible and easy to use - but then again any machine with a touchscreen makes Windows 8 good.

However, it only has 32GB of storage although I have put a 32GB Micro SD card in to it for more storage. And it's locked to WIndows, so I can't put Linux on it (and even though some people have, the results have been poor).

Still, comes with Microsoft Word and it's more than handy when editing a spreadsheet that's full of macros and funny crap that LibreOffice tends to break. The T300 may well be the next purchase to replace it!

Queen's Speech: Snoopers' Charter RETURNS amid 'modernisation' push

Re: Well...

They hold a majority of 12, so if the rest of Parliament vote No, it isn't that far out to think 12 Tory MP's with a conscience could vote no as well.

Who am I kidding. It's hard enough to find 1 Tory MP with a conscience, let alone 12.

Creationist: The Flintstones was an accurate portrayal of Dino-human coexistence

Re: Who actually cares?

"It matters because people with this mentality meddle in everything.

*Should* (hypothetically) he prove this, it would then be used as credentials in other arguments, such as (anti)Immunization, teaching creationism in mainstream education, criminalizing bunking Sunday Service (ok, I'm going a bit tinfoil hat - but you get the point)"

I'm not sure of your examples. I went to a Catholic school, I was taught creationism, but I was taught in Science about evolution and the Big Bang. A funny thing happened there, I was given the choice like the rest of my peers. I, personally, decided to sit on the fence. I'm not old enough to have been around when Jesus was about, nor am I old enough to see the "missing link" that still hasn't been found to prove beyond doubt the theory of evolution. Neither party has solid evidence to stand up and say "I'm right, he/she is wrong".

But all this causes is problems, arguments, people start being dicks to other people. Whether God or a chemical reaction created the Earth shouldn't even be a priority for people - but it continues to be. Wars have been started over this, people have been shunned, made to feel like idiots and driven to unspeakable acts because the mass collective say they are wrong. Columbus was ridiculed when he said the Earth wasn't flat by people who believed that it was, because their truth was more correct than his.

What I'm getting at is the fact we live in a world where we will have a mobile phone for every person on the planet - when a lot of the people will never own a phone. We live in a time where there is a huge drought in California yet Business is allowed to continue to plunder the remaining reserves from the taps of the locals. We live in a world where we are told it's absolutely fine for people to make huge sums of money cheating the tax system but scorn and hate people who have to steal out of the bins of Tesco just to feed their family.

Where or how does Creationism vs Evolution begin to help the above problems? It doesn't. It just gives people more of a reason to be dicks to each other.

Who actually cares?

What benefit other than satisfying curiosity does this serve? It doesn't matter one iota to anyone whether dinosaurs and humans co-existed or whether God created the world or we're all descended from monkeys.

If it led to a cure for cancer then I'd be more bothered about whatever this clown or Dawkins had to say.

Land Rover's return: Last orders and leather seats for Defender nerds

I do like those Discovery's actually, I suppose they'd be a bit more refined than the Defenders.

However, don't those Discovery's suffer from a rotting boot floor? A mechanic who used to come in the pub I used to work at said he was buying them up because a lot of people have them but never realise the floor is rotting away until it's too late. But I suppose if you know what to look for you can sort the issue out in time.

When I worked as a lecturer for a college in Birmingham, part of the course I was delivering meant we had to go to the Land Rover plant in Solihull where the Defender is made. The process is all manual, people with big machinery welding panels together etc. It is, for all intents and purposes, the same as what you see in those old films of the car industry from the 1950's.

Back then, and this was 2009, the guide said production would cease in 2 years time. Production would then be moved to India as emissions aren't an issue over there. I gather from this that the actual manufacturing of the vehicles could not be made more emission friendly.

It is such a shame though as this is a Land Rover. It's not a mickey mouse Range Rover Evoque (based on the Ford Focus platform), it's not the poncey Range Rover that isn't well made any more. A friend of mine now works for Land Rover on the production line and he said he would never buy or own a Range Rover as he know's how they are built. That comment gives weight to comments I've heard from owners of Range Rovers who say the new ones aren't as good as the old ones in terms of build quality.

I would also think that the cost of second hand Defenders will go up as the new replacement Defender looks absolutely awful. They have had years to come up with a suitable replacement, and they pick that?

Chap mines Bitcoin with PUNCH CARDS and ancient mainframe

Inspired, I'm going to get my IBM PC-XT 286 machine and see how long that will take.

I can't wait for it to make me millions :)

Windows and OS X are malware, claims Richard Stallman

Regardless of how he goes about it, he's right in what he says, and should be shown more respect than this.

Adult FriendFinder hack EXPOSES MEELLIONS of MEMBERS

I look forward to these details being made public so I can email those girls in my area without paying for the service.

Microsoft's certification exams: So easy, a child of six could pass them. Literally

Re: Nice

"Its all a bit pointless - if my son's IT lessons are anything to go by he should have been learning powerpoint not word. Seems my Sons IT teacher thinks Powerpoint is at the cutting edge of IT. Apparently putting hyperlinks into your presentation to make them 'interactive' is all the rage.

Powerpoint is used for english homework too rather than say, a word processor, like er... Word.

But fair play to the lad, word is an overcomplicated crock of sh1t these days and anybody who can make that monstrosity do something vaguely useful and keep the intended formatting gets a tip of the hat from me."

When I was doing my GCSE's in 2003/2004 we had to do the exact same thing as you describe above. It's nice to know classics never die.

But this is endemic in education. I went on to deliver a "web design" course at College and the documentation/lesson plan I had to deliver basically started with "All websites on the internet use tables for layout". I went straight to the person who built the course, told her this was wrong, and she said "Well it's on the syllabus".

No it wasn't, it's the fact that she had drawn the document up back in the late 90's/early 00's and only changed little bits here and there when the curriculum changed. As long as the students demonstrated the skill of structuring a website with a table then that was enough to pass the exam. It was, however, complete shit and if they went in to a web design agency boasting that as a skill they'd have been laughed at.

If I had my time again, I wouldn't even bother my head about doing IT at school or college, and do something like this 6 year old has done and do something vendor specific.

Robots.txt tells hackers the places you don't want them to look

"Luckily for you there's a solution to this, just organize the site so that the pages you don't want indexed have one or a few common roots and then there's a special file you can put in your root."

Would love to say I hadn't thought of this, but it's not possible with my current employers. So it's easier to just leave the job than do that - which I'm doing.

"You've clearly never run a website of more than a few pages."

I have, several, and can you imagine how many pages I've had to prevent from being indexed by Google?

For every page that's added to a website, it wouldn't take much to add that page to Google if the process was simple. Copy/paste URL to Google, click submit. Job done.

And yes I know this, but it's not required any more where as before it was a benefit to your website if you did so. Google could take up to two weeks to index any change in your website, so it was better to inform them of a change instead of them waiting to see if one happened.

I've always thought that Google and the other search engines should require you to submit the pages instead of crawling them. It'd be more secure, and it'd give them a better a way of filtering the spammy "Buy a Cam Girl for one hour and receive 2 Viagra pills free".

Man sues Uber for a BEEELLION dollars over alleged theft of concept

You know what, I had the same idea around the same time. I'm not suing though, because Uber did it better than me and it was inevitable a service like Uber would come in to existence.

Feds: Bloke 'HACKED PLANE controls' – from his PASSENGER seat

Does this mean Ryanair flights are safest, as they have no on-board entertainment other than that crappy paper magazine?

Steve Jobs movie gets October release date

Re: FTFY, wolfetone

"A pure work of faction has fictions elevated to realisations via virtualisation means and ..... the sublime micro management of macro memes.

And is that in what would be surely highly classified, and easily considered and classed as just a sophisticated global media operation, the present reality of the process of cycling events and unfolding news tales which are used to construct the visions which deliver the future its temporary existence ..... para-permanence in the brains and consciousnesses of the masses and the plebiscitary?"

U WOT M8?

Finally

A pure work of fiction for 2015.

IN YOUR FACE, Linux and Apple fans! Oculus is Windows-only for now

I'm OK With This

I'm a Linux user, and I'd like something like the Oculus when playing Euro Truck Simulator 2.

But, the fact that it's owned by Facebook who I wouldn't trust with my own week old piss, I can do without it.

Jeb Bush: Repeal Obamacare and replace it with APPLE WATCHES

Only in America could people:

a) Think free health care for the masses is a bad thing

b) Think a watch can be the cure for the country's ill health

c) Actually give any of the Bush family the time of day

A right or wrong time to go?

Thanks both of you for the help.

The report made it's way to my inbox yesterday, and there's a solitary paragraph in there that says I should be commended for the work I've done. But the rest of it just smacks of a lack of trust. Unfortunately, the CEO and myself aren't in the same office together for another 10 days where they wanted a meeting about the report. It'll be a short meeting, as I've no intention of continuing with the work and will resign.

On the bright side it gives me a bit of space to figure out where to go next. Whether I go to a "digital agency" or do some contracting on a freelance basis. Who knows, but I know I'll be happier away from this job and that is the main thing.

Once again thank you both :)

Re: A right or wrong time to go?

The modernisation of it has taken so long because it was just me put in charge of it. There are 7 other websites or other systems that I have to look after and also sort out while all this is going on. The system itself handles 1,700 users and over 60,000 individual records. The system when I go to it was already 5 years out of date, doesn't work on mobile devices and was hard for a user base of computer illiterate people to use. And the modernisation was down solely to me. I asked for help, external contractors, and I was only give the assistant about 9 months ago as I said.

I have been proactive about it, management never listened to me. I was 3 months in to it and said I needed another person in to help make it manageable. The response was a no. So 3 months later I asked again, with the project already falling behind. Again I was given a no. I've worked 12-16 hour days on it while other projects effectively stalled. Then 12 months ago I asked for help a 3rd time and I was told to go and get someone which I did.

"Why? You said that right from the beginning you were basically in complete control of the whole IT side of the company. What has gone wrong with the project for which you can not be blamed?"

This is a difficult one for me to answer without giving too much away about where I work. But the people "on the ground", the 1,700+ users are very quick to point fingers of blame at anyone but themselves. It's a very, very negative organisation in a lot of respects, and these people are the cause. Just today I had a phone call from a user moaning (verge of shouting) at me that our system was really slow on her new PC and it was absolutely fine on her old machine. I have changed nothing on the old system, and no one else reported issues. This isn't a one off, this is a daily occurrence basically.

"Well the new CEO is a fairly recent thing, so it seems that you weren't happy there before that..... No - you made the decision. If you'd really wanted to leave, you would have left. On the other hand, it really doesn't seem like you're putting your heart into this project."

Well the CEO is a recent thing yes, but what happened here was I spoke to my line manager (which itself was a new thing only installed a year ago for both myself and a lot of others) and told him how I felt and how I think it was best if I did leave. He said I shouldn't go, he wanted to see me complete the project, and that this new CEO was a silver bullet that was needed.

Again you are right, I think I am worried about losing face. But I wouldn't say the project has become too big or less interesting. I never had support when building it, and that was denied to me by the people above me. But the same people above me I feel are sharpening knives for me. To put it this way, the people the new CEO got to come in told me separately that I'm not in an enviable position with my role and that one of them thought it was a mini miracle that I've done what I have done. I don't mind making a fool of myself but I draw a line when I feel I'm being set up for a fall basically.

Thank you for the forthright comment though, not sure why you needed to take your coat with you? It's fairly mild outside...

A right or wrong time to go?

I work for a small company/charity as their IT Systems Manager, and I've been here for just over 2 1/2 years. My job is varied and broad, effectively encompassing anything that has a keyboard. Primarily though I'm employed to maintain a system that holds the records of my employer's members. The system is accessed by my employer, and other people outside of the organisation.

I have had absolutely no guidance from the top, so I sat down for a week looking at all the various systems we had and devised a plan of action to modernise what we have, consolidate the systems making it easier to maintain, and provide a better user experience to the users. My CEO at the time let me go along with it, and so that's what I've done - on my own - since I started.

About 9 months ago I was (finally) allowed to recruit an assistant, and he's been alright to be honest. But I literally had to stamp my feet and whail alot to get the extra help. Up until then, I was supposed to look after the IT both externally and internally, build the new systems, and provide tech support to the people in the office as well as those external users who use the bespoke systems we have.

Because of all this, and the scope of work (which other parts of the organisation decided needed doing - without consulting me) the project has dragged. It was meant to be released in January this year, but has now been pushed back to September this year.

Now, all through this time, my love of the work and the people I work with have degraded to the point where on Bank Holiday Monday I dreaded going back to work. I thought there was so many other things I could do, get some enjoyment out of what I do, than go back to the place and chip away at this project that I've had no support with. This feeling was further compounded this morning when I received 30 emails in my inbox, 15 of which were spam, and the rest were emails moaning how such a system didn't work or that another system needed to do something else. Mix in to this a change of CEO who last week brought in two IT guys from their old work to "review" our systems and the IT plan that we have. All of this I could have provided them with, but they didn't ask me and they got someone else in to do it.

So right now, on the afternoon of Tuesday, I'm sat here with my Thunderbird turned off, my phone calls on divert, wondering whether it's time for me to call it a day. I feel I should, as I don't know how I'm supposed to stick around until September to see this project finished - which is essentially my baby. I thought the same back in December last year but was convinced to stay around.

Really the only thing keeping me here is the project I'm working on. For pure pride than anything else I want to see out what I started. But the other half of me is concerned that this project I put out will be lambasted, hated, effectively useless, making my working life more of a hell than it is already. I'm still incredibly fucked off over my new CEO's actions as well. But ultimately, I don't want to let the people I work with (the ones I get on with anyway) down by leaving before the job is completed.

While this is a rant, I don't know, but I'm hoping someone reading this who has a few more years experience than me can offer some guidance as to whether now is the right time to go or should I just finish the project then exit, stage left? Or stage right, I'm not really fussed in the direction.

Get paid (airline) peanuts with United's new bug bounty program

Bug Hunting

It can take you to places you've never been to before...

Look out, law abiding folk: UK’s Counter-Extremism Bill slithers into view

Re: One party state

"Come back Clegg, all is forgiven."

The membership of the Lib Dem's has increased by 10,000 since the election - I'm one of them.

The fight back has started anyway. TUSC, The People's Assembly are all mounting from the left, the Lib Dem's from the middle, the right are blowing up with a coup in UKIP.

Politics at it's finest.

Re: One party state

"Also reintroduce fox hunting, because fuck yeah why not?"

I hear that they'll also be reintroducing slavery, but won't discriminate by colour or race. They are a lot of things, but racist isn't one of them.

It’s Adobe’s Creative Cloud TITSUP birthday. Ease the pain with its RGB-wrangling rivals

Have you tried Shotwell? I use it on Debian and I like it, although by the sounds of it you're more hardcore with your photography than I am.

UK safety app keeping lorries on the right side of cyclists

Re: 100M£

There are two main problems with cyclists and motorists on the road.

The first is drivers of vehicles who don't use their left hand mirror. We've all seen examples of motorists failing to use their mirrors properly even when cyclists aren't about. They think it's an optional extra or something you use to make sure they're looking good.

The second problem is cyclists themselves. Any idiot can waltz up to Halfords, buy a bike and set off. They may have never been on the road in any capacity other than a bus, and think they can use both the pavements and the road whenever it suits them. Oh, and those traffic lights are for motorists only apparently.

My point of view is that anyone who uses the road must have a license to do so, to indicate some level of training. Drivers of cars, mopeds, trucks, buses etc all must have licenses and insurance. Cyclists, even though they are supposed to use the road and not use the pavement, are exempt from this. Which is stupid. My point of view has been compounded by a few incidents where the cyclist caused me to change direction or stop - thankfully not resulting in any damage.

First incident was driving in the town and I came up to a T-junction. No lights etc. I'm slowing down to stop at the give way, and this f**king idiot of a w****r on a bastard BMX nearly went in to the side of my car bonnet. He was on the pavement doing some daft speed (this was at the foot of a hill). Then the moron waved me on. He, waved, me, on. As much to say "after you fella". No helmet or anything. And another incident not involving me but happened to a friend was when he came up to a roundabout, looked right to see if anything was coming, there wasn't proceeded to drive forward when he hit a cyclist. The woman, wearing nothing more than a dress (so no helmet) decided it was a good idea to cycle on the road, anti-clockwise around the roundabout.

The idea to train motorists to respect cyclists is a good idea, but it shouldn't be the only idea. It should be mandatory for cyclists to undergo proper instruction and have a license and insurance. It's only fair, and can at least mean education is being delivered to every single user of the road.

Jamie Oliver's ministry of malware served slops AGAIN

Re: Yeah

"Seems he is too tight though to pay for real web support... I mean he's not a youtube chef, he's an internationally known chef and if he can't be bothered to spend money on his website in 2015 when the web is more than just a passing fad, it's his fault."

I wouldn't say he's being too tight. While he knows a fair bit more about cooking than I do, he won't know as much about the internet or websites than I do. For all we know, the company he has in place to build or maintain this website could have the single best contracts manager ever known to man.

Jamie: "What the hell is going on? What's this about the website being hacked again?"*

Company: "We are just as shocked as you. We have the best people looking at this and we'll sort it out"

Jamie: "You said that last time! Don't you know what this is doing to my credability?"

Company: "I understand Mr.Oliver, but these people are persistent. You have my word that we are doing everything we can to stop this. But I tell you what, why don't, as a gesture of goodwill, do extra work on the site? For free?"

Jamie: *Thinks a bit* "Hmmm, OK. But don't let it happen again"

If someone who doesn't understand the internet is told a lie by someone he trusts to know everything, then the lie becomes fact, doesn't it?

GCHQ puts out open recruitment call for 'white hat' hackers

Re: While the salary is attractive

"£28k is attractive? Please don't move to London."

I wasn't looking at the White Hat job, there's a Web Development role at GCHQ Cheltenham for £45k.

While the salary is attractive

My soul has a price, and the salary doesn't meet the reserve bid.

Spotify springs bloody leak as losses grow to $197m – report

Re: Must be fucking nice

"Become a banker"

Politician may be easier. You get £60,000 per annum (excluding expenses), and if you're like Ed Balls and get sacked, you get £80,000 redundancy.

Yes, you get redundancy when people think you're crap at your job and vote for someone better.

Theresa May: Right, THIS time we're getting the Snoopers' Charter in

Re: On the bright side...

Doesn't mean it'll be an automatic no though, which is what we need. The Lib Dems were always against this, but 8 people won't stop it going through. I just hope the SNP and "Labour" (if it can be called that any more) have the sense to kybosh this. SNP probably will, the other red-Tories not so much.

Malfunctioning Russian supply podule EXPLODES above Pacific

I was hoping it'd fall on Conservative Party HQ overnight, but like Labour having Balls this afternoon, it didn't happen.

Too much Appley WRISTJOBBERY could be BAD for your HealthKit

Re: When should I stop caring?

An Apple telling you to eat fruit?

I smell a monopoly.

VOTERS! This Election: Vote #Smart, Vote #Digital

"Lulu is looking good for an old bird. I wonder could I make her sing 'Shout' if I could give her one up her Lulu"

English GCSE FTW!!!!

Boeing 787 software bug can shut down planes' generators IN FLIGHT

Re: Two Things

Suppose the FAA have learnt their lesson then from the tombstone regulations then.

Two Things

1) In development, surely there would have been a time when the engineers looked at the lack of generators being on and think "Hmmm, this is very strange. I wonder why this is happening?" - but done nothing OR didn't notice it. Equally as bad.

2) For the FAA to issue the directive this means that a Dreamliner must have already experienced this issue.

Not pro-Bono: Russian MP wants Apple to face stiff action for cramming 'gay' U2 into iCrevices

If Putin thinks the cover is bad wait until he hears the album. He'll personally deliver nuclear weapons to Switzerland as punishment.

MONSTROUS iPhone sales are CANNIBALIZING iPads, gabbles Apple CEO

Re: Buy "almost new", sell older

MoneySavingExpert is on The Register forums.

Who knew?

Debian ships new 'Jessie' release with systemd AND sysvinit

Re: "needrestart"??

"I assume you don't care about kernel upgrades then"

+1 from me.

Linux isn't WIndows, so doesn't need restarting. However if you update or make a change to the system it may need a restart - although not immediately. I'm looking forward to what Ubuntu will be doing in regards to updates as they've said you won't need to restart for changes to take effect. Until then though, don't update your machine if you don't want to restart. The computer will thank you for the 8 hours it spends idle without user interaction.

Citroën C4 Cactus BlueHDi: A funky urban crossover

"A funky urban crossover"

You misspelt "A f**king ugly crossover". It's Citroen's Allegro.

Cash register maker used same password – 166816 – non-stop since 1990

Re: Hang your heads in shame!

Didn't they do something similar a few years ago in Florida when Al Gore was trying to be President?

Don't worry, Apple hypegasms haven't gone in the WRISTJOB ERA

I thought Wanker Bangle would have been better.

Ubuntu 15.04 to bring 'Vivid' updates for cloud, devices this week

Re: Debian community?

I would say Ubuntu is the better looking, attention seeking cousin of Debian.

Having used Debian for years, and currently using Ubuntu for a short time before Debian 8 comes out, Debian is still far and way the better distro. Ubuntu has more commercial clout, but Ubuntu would be nothing without the Debian community.