Posts by Phil O'Sophical

Beat it, freetards! Dyn to shut down no-cost dynamic DNS next month

Re: So what are the alternatives that people recommend?

When Dyn pulled this on me last year I paid them for a year, while I found an alternative, but have now switched to no-ip. I am now ignoring Dyn's nagging to renew, they'll get the message eventually. One advantage of no-ip is that many of the standard home ADSL routers support it, so there's no need to add some custom server & scripts. Just configure the router as you used to for Dyn.

Sure, there are technically more sophisticated approaches, but for home use to let me connect back to my Mum's network when I need to, KISS is still the best approach.

USA opposes 'Schengen cloud' Eurocentric routing plan

Re: even more exclusion?

"content not available in your country".

if its paid for by my bloody TV license then I want access to it.

Which is the whole point, of course. The bits that aren't available to the UK have been paid for by BBC Worldwide, the BBC's commercial arm which is legally not perrmitted to supply services in the UK under the terms of the BBC charter. They have not been paid for by your bloody TV licence.

Driver drama delays deep desert XP upgrade

After years of installing Linux on all sorts of hardware I've never had any problems such as you describe - just install a mainstream distro.!

You mean a stable Debian release isn't mainstream? I've spent 30-odd years working with various Unix flavours, and Linux is by far the worst for "dependency hell".

Clearly not, because Linux would have "just worked". :)

Well, "just worked" after 3 hours of installing package A because package B depends on it, but finding that C only works with A version 3, which isn't compatible with the latest B so you have to download the beta B sources & recompile, except the compilation needs header X which uses a predefined keyword only present in a newer update to the compiler, which won't run on your kernel version until you update module Q and spend an hour googling how to configure it. Oh yes, and then there are the 27 Perl modules you need to get from CPAN so that the Makefile runs to completion.

BT Tower to be replaced by 3D printed BT Tower

And a very happy April 1st to all at El Reg

As WinXP death looms, Microsoft releases its operating system SOURCE CODE for free

Z80 was better than 6502

Hey, them's fightin' words, pal...

Revealed: What the US taxman really thinks of crypto-cash Bitcoin

$$$ you spent on that ASIC miner, plus import taxes, and they'd quite happily be taxing you on the electricity supply used to run it too.

But wouldn't those be expenses incurred while earning the bitcoins, and therefore allowable against tax?

Stop fondling that slab and shag, says Durex

You can get ones that glow.

Ancient telly, check. Sonos sound system, check. OMG WOAH

Where does the time go?

Time is money, and the TV manufacturers want more of ours. All change!

HP bypasses Microsoft in device-as-a-service assault

And of course "recurring revenue" is "recurring expense" when viewed from the other side.

If this is "device as a service", does a standalone laptop/tablet with all your software and data installed become "service as a device" ? Unplug'n'play, so to speak.

Ray-Ban to produce Google Glass data-goggs: Cool - or Tool?

Re: Like the Blues Brothers reference

Think of the processing power you could get in a pair of Wayfarers!

Nevermind the processing power, think of the battery life. You could go, oh, hours before having to recharge.

Re: Ooooohhhh Shiny-shiny

Hope I can still get them without Glasshole circuitry.

It will be interesting to see how it falls out. I can well imagine this sort of scene:

"Hey, those Oakley glasses, are they the Google spy ones"

"No"

"You sure? Take them off, I don't want you recording in here"

"No, I need them to see"

"Hah, think I'm stupid? That's a lens there, isn't it? Get outta here, pervert!"

Bit like when MFI (reputation for cheap crap) bought Hygena (reputation for decent mid-range kitchens). Instead of seeing MFI as a more up-market company, people just said "Oh, Hygena kitchens, they're just MFI crap now. Perceptions can go either way...

Schoolkids given WORLD'S CHEAPEST TABLETS: Is it really that hard to swallow?

Re: All the world's knowledge

As a teenager I was envious of my neighbour's complete printed set of Encyclopedia Britannica, which cost hundreds of pounds. Now I can get the whole thing on a DVD for £9.99. Forget Encarta or Wikipedia, use a real repository of knowledge.

The plot to kill Google cloud: We'll rename Windows Azure to MICROSOFT Azure

Re: When will the next name change be?

What is so special about azure?

It's a sort of "Little Blue", isn't it? Maybe one day they hope it will grow up to be a Big Blue?

In the meantime it doesn't have so far to go to get to Blue(SOD) when it crashes.

It's 2014 and you can pwn a PC by opening a .RTF in Word, Outlook

WTF does a document format have to have executable capability?

Has anyone suggested that it does, or that this is where the problem lies? Most bugs like this work by corrupting the code of the tool that is processing them, for example by overflowing internal buffers with data whose length is incorrectly declared. The file just contains data which happens to mean something to the CPU, it's the buggy utility that is tricked into executing it.

BOFH: On the PFY's Scottish estate, no one can hear you scream...

Re: This would be funny except ...

an urbane composter

I've heard of refined fuels, but isn't that taking it a bit far?

Oxfam, you're full of FAIL. Leave economics to sensible bods

Re: Deiberately missing the point???

Did I mention that I would make keeping an empty property a punishable offence?

Sounds like a fast way to create a housing shortage, and push up rents. Are you sure you're not a capitalist landlord in disguise?

Re: Deiberately missing the point???

Tell me you own an apartment in central London

No, nor any desire to own one. I have no desire to live in a big city, and would only live in London as a last resort, if I couldn't find a job elsewhere. If I did have to live there I'd rent so I could get out as fast as possible.

or at least that you can afford the rent there.

Yes, I could. Maybe not for a penthouse, but a decent 2-bedroom one wouldn't be a problem.

Happy now? :)

Re: Somehow this came to mind....

Firstly, we have a labour surplus -- more workers than jobs.

That presupposes the fallacy that the number of jobs is somehow finite. It isn't. Weatlh creates new jobs, which create more wealth. Not evenly distributed, of course, but the system wouldn't work if it was. It is inevitable that there will be (and always has been) more workers than jobs, otherwise there would be no scope to create new jobs.

And secondly, we have a new "consuming class" who, if they work at all, don't do anything so indispensable that anyone would notice if they withdrew their labour.

That's not new either. The difference is that, in the past, such a class was small and funded from inherited wealth. Today it is larger and a substantial part is funded from redistributed wealth, in the form of social welfare.

It's worse in France

Amusingly the French press picked up on the report, and looked at the situation under what they described as their "much-vaunted social model". They found that the situation is even worse, the 5 wealthiest French families own as much as 30% of the poorest, with one family taking 20% all by itself. As the paper said "so, the wealth gap is France is certainly abyssal. As much, indeed more, than across the channel".

Ohh, M. Hollande, I'll bet that smarts. Not often France beats the UK when you don't want it to :)

Re: Unless they're from the lucky sperm club they've got negative wealth

Unfortunately it seems that human nature is that some always want more than others and are not happy being equal.

True, and I personally think that's a good thing, it encourages progress.

Equally, of course, some always are happy with less if they can get it for the least work, and that's fine too. We shouldn't waste time trying to push them to do more if they don't want to, for example by forcing them to go to university if they'd be happier living in a caravan and farming an allotment. Each to his or her own.

Re: Deiberately missing the point???

What they will never do is unseat the landed gentry and prise the majority of those assets out of the hands of the descendants of someone awarded in the dark annals of history for some forgotten act of loyalty.

History clearly shows otherwise. Land today is far more widely and evenly distributed than it was even 200 years ago. My father's often-unemployed dad paid rent for a council house that was on land owned by "the city". My dad eventually owned his own house on land that has previously owned by a Viscount somebody (amusingly, the deeds showed that when the land was sold the original family retained the hunting rights. I'd love to see them try, "Tally Ho! Mind that patio chair."). Here in 2014 I own my own house and land, and paid off my mortgage at a younger age than my dad did. No lucky sperm, no rich benefactor, just taking advantage of opportunities when they appeared, and bloody hard work all round.

Sure, there are still plenty of very wealthy people around, good luck to them. We all have the chance to get there, or part-way at least. Not everyone could be bothered to try.

Re: Capitalist pigs

Get together with a few like minded souls, buy a bit of land, farm it and achieve self sufficiency. Make music, art and love together. Show them you're not cogs in their capitalist machine, and that actually you'd prefer to live, to create, and to play

What a shockingly tedious, mediæval, way to live. I'll stick to capitalism any time, it may not be perfect but at least that way I can earn the money to enjoy my life, not piss it away in a hippy tent on a remote bog somewhere.

Re: I am shocked

I am very surprised to discover that I live in a social democracy. I was under the impression it was a constitutional monarchy

The two terms are not mutually-exclusive

only without the constitution.

Of course there's a constitution, it just isn't written down neatly on one piece of paper headed "Ye Olde Conftitution".

Star Wars movie to start shooting in UK this summer

Re: As much as I loved Star wars

expect music and dancing and laughter

Thank goodness Maria von Trapp just died, we'll be spared the Sound of The Jedi...

Blighty goes retro with 12-sided pound coin

Why not bury a RFID tag in them?

Because they're made of metal?

Help a hack: What's in your ultimate Windows XP migration toolkit?

Think out of the box

Willowra may be remote, but it isn't on the moon. Send one guy with a pickup truck or light aircraft to collect all 8 PCs and bring them back to the nearest place with a decent internet connection, upgrade them there in comfort where you know that you can download the drivers that you inevitably forgot to put on the DVD, add extra RAM etc. as necessary. Then send them back all shiny & ready to go.

PAF! MPs go postal over postal location data sell-off by Coalition.gov

Re: Ownership matters

wish to assign the main post code to the whole district.

I don't understand how this can be the case. A postcode refers to a street, or part of one, at most. Street number + postcode identifies a house, how can anyone put a postcode for a "district" on a letter?

MH370 airliner MYSTERY: The El Reg Pub/Dinner-party Guide

Re: Another interesting hypothesis

completely decimate the craft

But they'd have found the other 90% by now, surely?

Re: What now?

An iPad in each plane, connected to the existing satellite transmitter--now completely locked and secured--could do the job. Data sent in the clear for everyone to see.

What are the relative risks of a mysterious plane disappearance being foiled, versus a short-circuited ShinyGadget battery causing a fire and subsequent crash?

Or the advantages of everyone knowing where a plane is, versus the disadvantages of "terrorists" etc. knowing where every plane is?

What's the likelihood of unnecessary panic when some system glitch erroneously shows a flight as having disappeared, or going off course, when it's actually fine?

Re: "The satellite would thus know to keep one of its receiving assemblies aligned..."

ie downward at planet earth.

And for the other dimensions? Omnidirectional aerial, or a beam that can be steered around a 360° compass rose?

NZ bloke's drunken poker bet ends in 99-letter name

Not to mention Maverick, Dakota, Colt, and Scout McNealy, if you want an IT angle...

Re: Traditional

no-one has attempted to name a child with a URL/URI.

Uri Geller?

Re: Violence?

Ah yes, Bestiality Carter & siblings

Top UK e-commerce sites fail to protect 'password' password-havers from selves

The only way to educate people like that is in the pocket. Don't reject the account, just popup a message (and send an email) saying "Your password is insufficiently secure, we will apply a £200 excess to any fradulent transactions made from your account". Just like insurance companies do, the higher the risk, the higher the excess. Then send them a reminder every month.

If they choose to ignore it, on their own head be it.

Projector on a smartphone? There's a chip for that

Re: asteroids

Spacewar

vector graphics

In essence, the array creates a “light pen” that draws an image on a target surface as lots of discrete lines

Ah, I wonder where I put that Tektronix 4014 graphics library?

Show more Canadian made porn, insists Canadian government

Re: Closed captions?

Quebecóis language requirements.

You mean there's a French Letter quota?

Google's mystery barge flounces out of San Fran, heads to Stockton

Re: The Barge is...

Is microwave fast as fiber?

Faster. Propagation speed in fibre is ~ 66% of that in free space. Bandwidth is a different matter.

Cops probing 'unnatural' death of Singapore Bitcoin exchange boss

Re: What It Looks Like.

As much as I would like to see Radtke's death tied to Bitcoin

That's harsh. No matter how crazy the bitcoin business is, it's sad when a 28-year old apparently kills herself when depressed, for any reason.

Why can’t I walk past Maplin without buying stuff I don’t need?

Re: Two words (and an ellipsis)

So who will be next when Maplins disappears? Rapid?

http://www.conrad.com/ ?

Re: "In conjunction with Electronics Today International. "

Before Maplin there was Home Radio. Who else remembers them?

And Watford Electronics. And Henry's.

Still, if you can't leave Maplin without buying something, you should try Fry's in the US: http://www.frys.com/

Story gone

"2020 Cloud Computing will be the dominant IT trend"

2030 the Personal Computer will be reinvented by several independent start-ups who dislike the lack of independence they get from a centralized processing net with dumb tablets connected to it. They will point out the efficiencies and cost-effectiveness gained when every user has their own computer on their desk.

2031 Apple will sue them.

Blighty teen boffin builds nuclear reactor INSIDE CLASSROOM

Re: Almost certainly a stupid question...

£3000 for a small reactor vs several more for solar panals on your roof.

Maybe the school could apply for an alternative energy subsidy?

PayPal mudslingfest TELEVISED: Icahn and Donahoe go on telly

Re: Bah!

that the UK once made machine tools.

Still does, the MTA (trade association) estimates for 2012 were "output of machine tools, cutting tools and tool/work-holding equipment gives a total of around £960 million, of which £835 million was exported" and "UK machine tool manufacturing businesses employed 6,100 people at the end of 2012; this compares with 5,800 at the same point in 2011."

Not huge, but growing.

Voracious alien flatworm hits French in the escargots

Re: Escargots

The only good thing about escargots is the garlic butter they are served in. Just serve that with a nice fresh baguette straight from the oven, and a glass of wine. Who needs the brown rubbery bits?

Psssst. Don't tell the Bride, but BBC Three is about to be jilted

Re: How much does..

tripe like Strictly Come Dancing, The Voice, Eastenders, Dr Who cost to make?

A lot less than they earn by selling them abroad.

Very fabric of space-time RIPPED apart in latest Hubble pic

I wonder

If there's some distant version of NASA trying to figure out how to deflect asteroids, when one day someone spots this whole galaxy heading their way.

John Lewis to respray with coat of Oracle ERP: Don't worry, we won't be 'wall to wall' Larry

Re: Colour me dubious

incompatible schemas between legacy system 1..N and the destination system

True, which is why the single most important thing is to define the interfaces. Get that right, and everything else falls out OK. All too often this sort of rollout starts at the wrong end, picking systems & software, then trying to work out how to plug them together.

I actually have quite a lot of faith that JL can do this, it's a business that works because it knows its customers, and what they expect. Hopefully that will translate into being on the other side of the deal, but time will tell.