* Posts by Hollow

21 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2011

BT and Virgin sue over £10m state-funded Birmingham broadband

Hollow
Stop

something is amiss here....

I'm wondering if there is something we're not being told in the articles that are written about this situation. Did Birmingham council perhaps mislead Virgin into thinking it would spend it's £10,000,000 with Virgin, in order for them to construct the infrastructure in the Birmingham area, in order to get their co-operation and expertise in a field that they would otherwise know nothing about, then stab them in the back by deciding to do it all on their own?

I'm with Virgin and BT here. BT was privatised because of the simple fact that governments are CRAP at running services like this. Look at the DWP and the NHS for prime examples of just how badly governments run public services, far better for it to be run by a private company that has an interest in keeping it's customers happy and improving services.

It's probably worth pointing out here, that I left Virgin Media years ago and will never use them again, because the exit service I received, was absolutely dire. Also, I left BT nearly a year ago in favor of Sky, because I was getting 2 - 4Mbps max and I knew my line was capable of 16Mbps, which I now get on Sky.

As you can see, I'm no fan of either of these companies, but a government, local or national, building, managing and running the services related to this kind of infrastructure, is a recipe for disaster, where they'll end up having to sell the whole thing off to VM or BT at some point anyway, likely at a MASSIVE loss to the taxpayer.

Safer conjugal rights via electronic skin

Hollow
Holmes

Re: Don't get something here...

Why do radiographers wear the big lead aprons and stand behind blast shields when taking an X-Ray, yet you get to sit there in your Jeans and T-Shirt right infront of the big nuclear camera? It's called essential exposure, you don't expose yourself to radiation unless you have to. It's why you stand there for the X-Rays without protection (Because you need the X-Rays), but the radiographer takes those steps for protection. I'd say Mrs Dabbs needs this radioactive treatment, but I'm guessing Mr Dabbs and the little Dabbs don't and so are advised to take measures to avoid exposure.

Apple, Samsung blast away in patent case closing arguments

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FAIL

Seriously people!?

All you fanbois that claim Apple invented the smart phone, or revolutionised the world, or claim no one wanted a Samsung phone before this are clearly just full of shit!

I bought a Samsung E900 from an Orange store in the UK back in 2007, just before I went back to live in New Zealand for the second time around. It had a partial touch screen, with a slide out keyboard, apps, an online app store, could do everything all other phones had been able to do up to that point (MMS, Email, etc.). When the iPhone came out, I was living in NZ, one of my colleagues camped out all night to get it, only to be disappointed that it didn't even do half the stuff my £90 Samsung did!

Prior to my E900 I had a Sony Ericson something-or-other. I can't remember the model number and it got broken in a house move and thrown away, but it was blue, had a full touch screen, it ran Symbian, with apps galore and was not even the top of the range phone available at the time, nor was it the first 'smart' phone, but we're talking 2005/2006 here, LONG before the stupid iPhone came out.

I've avoided iPhones like the plague from minute one. My colleagues have them, some of my friends have them etc. Every time I use one I just feel superior, because my phone (Currently Samsung Galaxy SIII, previously SII and prior to that an S) does more, feels better in my hand and looks better than theirs does! I wouldn't have an iDevice if you paid me!

Do I accept that Apple brought out the first, full touch 'smart' phone? No, I f***ing don't! Do I think they marketed their device so well that a bunch of people think they invented the concept? Yes, because that's what apple does! My best mate is a chef, he owns a restaurant in South London, knows very little about tech, but has both an iPhone and an iPad, he asked me what it was I 'do' again the other week, when I replied that I work in cloud, he asked me 'Oh you mean that thing Apple made?!'.

They are exceptionally good at convincing people they invented things that in reality they stole the technology to make and then ploughed tonnes of marketing funds behind! They did it with the original GUI for Personal Computing, they did it with the mouse, they did it with OSX, iOS, etc, etc, etc! Most people think they actually created the first MP3 player too! Apple has never really innovated ANYTHING! It builds on existing tech and then markets it as it's own creation, I dare you to provide me with one example of an Apple 'Invention' where the tech didn't already exist!

Why don't the best techies work in the channel?

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Flame

Channel? Which one? 5?

I've worked there, but never called it 'The Channel', I'm guessing it's a sales buzzword? Either way, I ended up leaving the resellers and outsourcers I worked for, because I got sick and tired of being treated like shit, paid naff all and getting constantly stressed out that I wasn't actually helping anyone, except my director to make more money, which is very much NOT what I got into this game for!

I even ran my own little outsourcing outfit for a while, but I went bust, because I couldn't lie to customers and did a good job, priced honestly and only provided what was actually needed. Some might say I should have hired a sales guy to do the selling and then just get on with it, but I would have felt far too dirty!

A few years ago I got out of it all, went to work for an insurance company as their IT manager and now I work in cloud, for a medium - large international startup, doing back line support of all things. I'm treated considerably better, I get great pay, great benefits, work from home, plenty of time off, sick pay, it's kinda wicked really, but the problem now, as someone else said, is what next? I'm being approached recently for CIO roles, CTO roles, Technical Directorships, but do I really want to go back to working in an office, with a bunch of idiots I don't want to be around, trussed up in a suit and tie, licking the arse of the guy above me and sweet talking suppliers I know are going to rip me off? FUCK NO!

Problem is of course, I don't really want to go out on my own again either, as it was cold out there, because I'm too nice, too honest and too good at what I do for my own good. I could stay where I am in cloud, wait for my annual pay review, which is likely to follow inflation, but not much more, as I'm a massively under-used resource these days. My other option of course, is to go contractor, but in development again, instead of systems. I'm being approached recently, for PHP and Perl roles of all things, worth over £90k if you're contracting. Then of course the downside comes, you have to run it as a Ltd VAT registered company, any time off you take, you lose all your pay, no healthcare benefits, or extra time off to stop you from burning out.

To sum up? Why don't the best techies work in the channel? Because we've already been there, got the FUCK OUT and are not going back, in any capacity, for all the money, magic beans, coffee, mountain dew and stupid bonus reward schemes that make us feel like sales pricks, in the world! You can keep your channel, you can keep your stupid rewards schemes, your pink shirts, your frilly, smilie talk and just get bent! The decent techies do the real work, that you lot who choose to stay in the channel and play the game, are not capable of!

Apple OS X update puts elderly Flash out of its misery

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Joke

Problem: Apple forces you to do stuff you don't want to do constantly

Solution: Stop using Crapple devices!

Google to FCC: Protecting Street View coder didn't derail probe

Hollow
FAIL

Re: Whilst that's true....

~s/would not have done this deliberately/must have done this deliberately/

Hollow
Thumb Up

Whilst that's true....

....this is mostly the fault of the ISPs for sending out routers that don't use an encrypted network key by default.

Most 'dumb users' out there (about 90% of those with internet and apparently about 3% of the readers of this site) have no idea what a network password is, one of my non-techy friends, actually asked me to remove his, as it was a pain in the ass having to type it on all new machines he added to the network, lol!

He collects scrap metal for a living and doesn't have the first clue, or care, about online security. The upside is, I refused to remove it, as would anyone capable of doing so I hope, so he's got that layer of protection, albeit not a very strong one. Lots of ISPs however, still send out bog standard routers, with WiFi enabled and no network key or any level of encryption, if he had one of those ISPs, he wouldn't have that layer of protection, because he wouldn't have a clue how to implement it.

We techies, have made it a plug and play world for the non's, it's that simple.

On-Subject - Did Google mean to slurp it? Yes, of course they bloody well did! Any competent engineer doing this would not have done this deliberately. You can accidentally NOT save data when you intend to, but you can't accidentally save it when you didn't mean to!

US judge orders Apple, Samsung CEOs to get a room

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Thumb Up

Re: Patentdome

This one, DEFINITELY! From now on, ALL patent disputes should be settled this way, I bet the blood suckers......erm sorry, I mean lawyers, wouldn't be so interested in taking the cases any more!

Cloud WAR! Open season on Amazon for cloudy rivals

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FAIL

How the hell......

...do you write this article, without even mentioning RightScale.com?!?! I mean seriously! You talk about IaaS and PaaS and all the individual clouds own management portals, yet absolutely no mention whatsoever, of the one thing out there, that makes cloud "Truly usable", come on Matt, WTF!

Apple drops 'thermonuclear' patent bombshell

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WTF?

Oh for gods sake! ROFL!

I fell for this completely, I didn't twig at all, that it was an April Fools, until I read the comments. Just goes to show that literally NOTHING surprises me in the whole patent war thing now. I actually laughed when I read it, not because I thought it was a good April Fools post, because I just can't help but laugh at the patent crap they keep throwing, if I didn't, I'd cry.

Ceglia fined for failing to show evidence of Facebook ownership

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Coat

Hackers!

Considering some of the hackers Facebook employees (i.e. some of the best, headhunted from various top string tech firms), would it be entirely unreasonable to suggest that he *HAD* the evidence and now *doesn't*?

Year of the Penguin - el Reg's 2011 Linux-land roundup

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FAIL

No future for the desktop?

I'm so sick of people saying that! There is no way in hell, I'm ever going to switch completely to a laptop/netbook/tablet and use only web apps, it's just NOT going to happen, so stop trying to tell me I will!

We have a tablet in the house, my partner loves it, but for her graphic design work, she still returns to her desktop. I have both a netbook and a laptop and a Galaxy S, but I do 98% of my daily work on my desktop, that's not likely to change, ever!

I'm with Robert E A Harvey, why does hibernate still not work properly, why do not all printers just plug and play the way they should? Linux has SO much going for it in desktop, which is still just as important as it ever bloody was, and yet it still falls over with simple tasks like being able to plug in a cheap printer or run 2 versions of an app in different desktops, WTF people! Stop whinging about the bloody web and get on with the desktop for crying out loud! Let android deal with the web, it's doing a damn fine job, Ubuntu is a Desktop OS!

Apple's TV killer 'on shelves by summer 2012'

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FAIL

32 and 27" iMac anyone?

As per the title really. Are Apple really going to outdo Samsung, LG, Toshiba, Sony and the likes, who've been making these things for decades? We have 3 Samsung Smart TVs in our house, all 3 have wireless, iPlayer, Freeview built in etc. etc. No doubt Apple will hold their usual ridiculous price tag, that only zealots and the idiotic will pay for, so what exactly is this going to do to "crack" TVs? The only thing I can imagine, is literally a 32 and 37" imac, complete with mouse and keyboard, but also comes with a handy remote shaped thing, that no doubt they'll aim to patent, because no one has ever used one of those before!

Boycott forces Go Daddy U-turn on anti-piracy law backing

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Meh

Probably has more to do with....

.... the new ownership. New owners of companies are notoriously more cautious than founders. Founders get where they are by blackmailing, stealing, lying, thieving, cheating and basically being as underhanded and down right dirty as they can possibly be, people taking over a company are always far more concerned about public opinion and share value, if public opinion begins to affect or look like it's going to affect share value, the new owners back things off, apologise and do damage control, this looks to be what's happened here I'd guess. That's also not to say they won't start supporting it again around March?

Go Daddy boycott threat for backing hated anti-piracy law

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FAIL

Pirates are essential

... and anyone who says otherwise is a complete retard. If it weren't for pirates, we might still be sailing ships with actual sails, firing canons rather than missiles and torpedos etc. Technology is developed to meet a need more than anything else, it's to scratch an itch and one big itch, is piracy, always has been, always will be. We'd still be using VHS and our computers would still be slow and shit without pirates too.

Regardless of what some of you goody two shoes idiots may say about pirates being scum and lowlife, they're the reason half the innovation that goes on, goes on. In order to keep innovating a reason is needed. Profit is not a reason, because people will keep buying the same stuff if they can, so profit will still be made by the corporations, but nothing will be developed as fast. Sure we need to keep them under control, but that's what the innovations are about, this SOPA bollocks is the same as the bloody patent war bollocks, it's a corporate entity thinking "What's the easiest way I can make more money, without actually having to fight back, I know, I'll litigate and make everyones life miserable and poorer"

In the SOPA case, it's the media industry who can't be arsed to find a new way to do business that makes it harder for the pirates to do anything about it, in the patent wars case, it's companies like Apple wanting to stay as top dog, they don't want to have to KEEP innovating, because they're crap at it, they want to stop others using what's already there, so that they then innovate instead and Apple can then steal it, patent it and make profit.

Before any appletards reply to this, go look up how Apple and Microsoft even got started, go look up what they stole, to get where they are today, sad as it is, if they hadn't been PIRATES, we'd still be using black and green console screens for our desktops. Apple even flew a pirate flag above it's HQ for a while!

Iran spy drone GPS hijack boasts: Rubbish, say experts

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Thumb Up

@Brainwrong

...Sadly the most likely circumstance, it's guidance computer was likely coded in Ruby, making it that much easier to induce a bug :D

Why your tech CV sucks

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WTF?

You sir, are THE unemployment problem!

This article is disgusting, it completely and utterly encapsulates the recruitment industry, stupid, idiotic, arrogant arseholes who wouldn't know a good applicant if it hit them in the face!

Why do we put our education on our CVs? Because it took us a bloody long time to get, in some cases cost us a fortune to get, because most employers look for degrees or relevant vendor qualifications and that was the reason we spent so much time and money getting them. We could of course just leave school and tell you that "I can com-pooo-tor" if you like? Fucktard!

Those who can, do, those who can't, teach, those who can literally do NOTHING, recruit! Most recruiters don't have a CLUE what my job entails, they have NO idea how to write code, how to build a server, how to set up a network, half of them barely know how to turn on a computer in the first place. "I can't turn the damn thing on, look" ........... "That's the HP logo, not the on button, let me help".

Your CV checking agency does credit checks does it? Is this something industry wide? I don't remember ever agreeing to a credit check with an agent, I'm sure that's against the law!?

The reason people put their summer jobs on the CV and have a 4 or 5 page CV instead of a 2 page one, is because interviewers are more intelligent than recruiters, so they ask questions. If I don't put down that I spent 7 months doing nothing but DJing for a living in 2003, I'll get asked why I went from working in BTs back office to working for a finance company in Epsom, but spent 7 months out of work in between, at which point I have to start talking, once I start talking, I run the risk of saying something they don't want to hear, something that's going to not get me the job, if it's on my well thought out and triple checked CV however, they won't ask, because it's already there as 2 lines, briefly explaining what I was doing and where I was, this then enables me to just answer the techie questions that are actually fucking relevant!

I would absolutely LOVE to destroy the recruitment industry, it's nothing but a blood sucking whore with a bunch of zombies in their employ! You go for an interview, get pipped at the post by one other applicant, the recruiter won't ring you back! You ring their office and you get told they're "out", what fucking ever, you just don't want to talk to me because I didn't earn you any commission you shallow fuck! How about giving me some feedback as to why the other guy pipped me at the post? How about telling me what they liked about me, so I can make sure to do it again the next time you ring me up, in a months time, like nothing happened and you weren't an arrogant prick and send me somewhere else?

Recruitment, IS the reason for unemployment. All those broken websites out there in the world, Recruitments fault, I'd go as far as to say the whole PSN fiasco, that was recruitments fault, because no doubt Sony went to a recruitment agent to hire the developers and the ones who could secure the site and make it resilient against attack, spent their child hoods hacking things and playing with technology, instead of learning how to use Word or correcting their fucking grammar! My god you boil my blood, you arrogant, ignorant prick!

Android bakes bitter 20th birthday cake for Linux

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FAIL

Balder-Whatsit!

Lately I keep reading Google and Android hate-articles on the reg and it's starting to fog me off! The Apple articles are still there, but with less hate and more "understanding", it's almost like el'reg has a new sponsor that we don't know about!

I Re-iterate all the statements about forking being good, by design etc. and I also re-iterate the thoughts that Android won't make a blind bit of difference to Linux on the desktop, because it just isn't the same thing.

For me Desktop Linux just isn't there yet, but it's coming. I use it as a desktop, I haven't used anything but Linux as a desktop for years, but for the mainstream public, it's not there yet. That being said, my 5 year old and my 16 year old both have Ubuntu Laptops and my Mechanic Lodger is, since moving in here, running a SUSE laptop :D So maybe it's getting somewhere!

Worm spreads via RDP

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Megaphone

Until you've worked somewhere..........

.......that uses "companyname123*" as it's default password for all 300 users and will not let them change it, you cannot just write things like this off as "A secure password is all that's needed" lol, because regardless of the fact that may be true, there are thousands upon thousands of desktop machines out there with utter tripe passwords, both corporate and personal, with crap passwords, some of which are enforced by the sysadmins themselves!

Samsung refuses to buy HP's PC business

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FAIL

@Velv

That's a terrible joke on two counts, first HPs current high end laptops, the "Envy" looks considerably like a MacBook, they're just not being sued for the "look and feel" like Samsung are, which brings us to the second count, because the reason is, MacBooks likely outsell the Envy, unlike the iPhone and iPad, which are BEING OUTSOLD by the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab, and before anyone says that's based on price, you can get either the Galaxy S 2 or the iPhone 4, free on a £15 - £20 a month contract.

Personally I have nothing much against HP computers, other than their hardware is just not as good as it once was and their corporate printers are a frickin nightmare once they get to be a couple of years old.

Apple changed shape of Galaxy Tab in court filing

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FAIL

THIS is innovation ............

and look who's making it!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/18/samsung_tsv_rdimms/

No doubt Apple will patent a device that contains it one day and then sue Samsung for making something vaguely not too dissimilar, in colour and format! Cos let's face it, nothing else about the iPad and the Tab are similar really, even the curved edges, are curved in a completely different way!

Whether Apple doctored the images or not, this is ridiculous! Apple never made anything in black, with curved edges and a screen in the middle until the iPhone. Samsung on the other hand, well their TVs are black with curved edges and a screen, their photo frames are black with curved edges and a screen and my old Samsung e800, which I bought before the iPhone ever came out, was black, with curved edges a metalic frame around the screen, with part-touch screen and icons on the desktop, 3g capability and all that comes with it such as email etc. So I reckon Samsung should be sueing them instead!