Posts by Brenda McViking 397 publicly visible posts • joined 28 May 2012
It reminds the next generation that this is why you don't buy HP for anything serious.
I've had a couple of hp inkjets on their 99p instant ink subscriptions. £60 for about 3 years printing for the 20 or so government forms, boarding passes and 40 odd Christmas circulars I need to fill out annually is acceptable. Otherwise who prints anything nowadays?
I look forward to the next round of fines for this in 2035
Agreed, as someone who has worked with IT purchasing for a big corp, if it's not four figures (preferably 5) then you'll be in the area of hyper-focus of compliance as the only things costing $100 are dodgy expense claims and bribes. $2000-10000 is far more reasonable
I'm also questioning whether prime is worth the huge increases it has seen of late. I certainly used a lot of their second rate freebie services in the past but nothing I can't just ditch in a heartbeat. It's not the affordability though, it's the principle.
Ads royally stink. Way to poison your own well Amazon. As for pay to remove? If someone starts taking a dump on my doorstep I don't pay them to take it away, they get the hell off my property or face the consequences.
Equally if my pi-hole extricates all skunks at source without messing up the streaming, that's fine too.
I'm trying to think of a single consumer regulator I'm currently impressed with...
Ofgem - so pro consumer that they have removed all competition whatsoever from the energy market, and left the taxpayer to foot the bill
FAA - so safety conscious they allowed a fully loaded 737-MAX to crash. not once but twice. and have still re-certified it with no fundamental change to the fail-dangerous CoG position on the airframe.
FCA - still supporting financial innovation by denying crypto-currencies are used by anyone other than criminals. Successfully prosecuted 1 banking individual for the whole of the 2008 crisis, libor interest rate fixing etc
Ofqual - guaranteeing opportunities for young people by just making up covid exam grades for everyone.
Ofwat - year on year %+ improvements in recorded sewage releases from their industry and they've really stuck it to Thames water this time, leaving the taxpayer to foot the bill
Even Amazon, with their collosal elastic server resources propping their retail site up couldn't keep their pages from going down during the console frenzy, though restoration happened in minutes
Curry's is just predictably awful. They might be back up by 2022, the big question here is will anybody miss them in the meantime?
why does it need to stop? This is proper capitalism - great big behemoths that deliver utter shite to their customers, are badly run and providing crap service go bust. They're operating at a loss (so the taxpayer is getting great value for money then, shareholders are footing this bill) and they will be replaced by somebody else who should be less crap, and if they're not, well, the cycle continues. I'm failing to see the issue here this is absolutely capitalism at it's finest - fit, well run, efficient companies survive, those who are crap at everything they do die a death and are replaced.
The absolute worst thing to do is the bring it back into pubic ownership where it'll be just as bad but with no one ever being held to account, and taxpayers money just entering an ever-widening drain.
Did that precisely once (flight to a meeting in an airport hotel lounge before a flight home, 22 hours in all) before I said "never again."
I still travel a lot, but my rule is on company time, not my own, particularly if you get one of those jobs where airport staff recognise you more easily than your colleagues because they see you more...
Sorry, if I sign a licence contract stating that use of software is licenced in perpetuity, and then I get an error stating licence expired, due to guess what - the licence being time limited when I purchased one that wasn't allowed to be time limited, then they're in breach of contract. End of. This is exactly how breach of contract works - it's written in a contract what is expected and how things behave. When they don't behave exactly as written, it's a breach.
Sueing over it and wasting court time without seeking appropriate remedies - the thing that you mention is "strongly encouraged" (a shade of grey, this is black versus white), that's another matter entirely. This situation happened to me, though we didn't bother to release the lawyers on this occasion, we merely didn't order £7-figures worth of licencing from that vendor after our handful of testing licences failed to conform to requirements. The vendor would not have been able to fix it, for reasons I won't go in to. See icon for details.
And how do you then account for me, the idiotic luser, setting the system date 20 years into the future and then back to the current time? Not exactly your business as to why I've done that, but because I have, your software is now broken and you're in breach of contract.
And that's why you never make assumptions about your paying customers trying to "pirate" your software - you can start worrying about shit like that once you've cleared all your zero days, you have a 6 figure bug bounty which hasn't paid out in the last quarter and the last luser support ticket was dated 6 months ago.
I can confirm you're not.
I also sit in the no headphone jack, no purchase category too. I use headphones daily, frequently charge whilst listening, and am not buying other headphones when my current set cost over £200.
Another flagship device that doesn't meet requirements. NEXT.
And I was about to ask whether you had a trunk in your boot, or whether it was a pair of trunks, or whether it was the trunk of an elephant or a tree. The first makes rather good sense albeit rather old fashioned to store things in wooden boxes nowadays, the second is fine if you're a man going swimming, and PETA are going to want to know if it's the latter so that they can hang, draw and quarter you before feeding you to rabid mob of ravenous vegans.
Yeah, I've purchased "perpetual" licences with key expiry dates in them lasting a mere 5 years. That supplier got dumped, just as we were about to order 7 figures worth from them, because of that behaviour. Lucky we check these things before placing large orders eh?
They also argued with us over how we were running it (on non-internet connected standalones with (deliberate) artificially high clock rates which meant that a day in the real word advanced the system clock by 1 month. so we hit a licence issue in just 2 months of running the test setup.) None of their business what my system does or how I've fudged it, I required a perpetual licence which means perpetual. not time limited.
Oh how that salesman cried. And oh how soundly I slept.
I can't think of a country that doesn't require the big chain hotels (Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Accor etc) to report foreigners staying to local law enforcement. I've been to Israel, India, Morocco, Germany, Turkey, Japan, China, Singapore and the UAE in the last past year - every single one wanted my passport on check-in, and most of them took a photocopy of it. The UK hotels do too if you're obviously a non-EU national.
What I don't get is why the retarded Android manufacturers keep bloody copying the stupid notch. I hate apple, I hate android manufacturers copying every frikkin useless apple "innovation" that the latest Jebusmobe implements. Just give me a non-locked down phone that I can use functionally.
Oh, and bring back removable batteries. I hate forced-obsolescence more than I hate apple!
Urgh. It is annoying, I do use this, and have done for the past decade. I'm also aware it isn't 100% reliable, but would prefer it's continued unreliable use rather than being cut off because of it. My hotmail account does carry a lot of my email, and the actual address (something like princess.von.chicken.pants44@hmail.com) is not something I'd choose nowadays. Indeed I set it up when I was 12, can you tell?
Alias is much better, as I can make it firstname.lastname@theiet.org and actually put that on things like a CV.
Trying to work out which organisations I gave it out to over the past decade is just an exercise in futility - I've given it to plenty of recruiters and do occasionally get decent headhunting offers through them, virtually always from companies and organisations where I've never seen their domain before, so it's not like I can actually inform people it's changed, because I don't actually know the majority of people who have the address to be able to contact them.
As for it being a free service, my chartered membership fees are in excess of 240 quid a year - so I don't think some semblance of a paid service is unreasonable. Still, at least we get a fair amount of notice to deal with it.
Maybe it is time to get around to setting up my own email server on an RPi...
If an animal or tree branch causes a short-circuit fault on a high voltage line like this, the system probably will temporarily trip (whether it does depend on the fault level but also the time a given fault level is present) but you have automatic circuit reclosers (ACRs) on such lines which will deliberately close onto the fault, and try 2-4 times to do so. Simply because, the amount of energy going through it will likely frazzle the thing to a crisp to the point where it stops being a conductor anymore, and there is no further problem to the system - most faults are transient, not permanent. After a few tries though, it will stay off.
As a resident of India, I couldn't agree with you (Jeeves, that is, not AC) more. Your downvoters are clearly unaware of the actual realities of living in the 3rd world. It's not "the west, but poorer," it's a completely different culture.
The key thing that needs to happen is getting the general populace educated. This of course will take a generation or more, whereas politicians whinging at whatsapp is something that can win votes in the here and now. The Indian Government also use SMS as a conduit for public information, so it's no surprise that villagers with categorically zero education being told through their smartphones that child rapists were spotted in the next village will drag non-locals out of cars innocently passing through and beat them to death, thinking they're doing the right thing.
They have been shutting off mobile internet to deal with this type of issue, and let's not forget, viral-style instant-messaging controlled by bad-actors caused major issues in London during the "I want a new TV" riots some time back, organised through blackberry messenger (remember that?). The UK gov whinged back then about secure-comms being outside their control. Is this really any different?
Given the insistance of the use of the lowercase "i:" ipp-od is the correct use from those of us who defend the language of the realm. If Messrs Jobs and Wozniak wanted it to be pronounced I-pod, then that's how it should've been spelled.
Blimey, is that the time? Must dash, tea with Her Majesty later, what?
During a graduate placement I used to browse websites such as el reg in a browser resized to exactly match the email preview window in outlook. I read a lot about various MIT hacker court cases and read several air accident investigation reports cover to cover.
Never did work out what I was supposed to be doing in those 8 weeks. My manager up'd and left on day 2 saying he was going abroad and would be back soon, and I never saw him again. HR couldn't move me as I was on scheduled rotation without 'bringing the entire graduate system to a halt,' so I was only able to move on when my next manager called me up to make arrangments for the next placement - I asked if I could start immediately and he agreed.
Whereas my LG V20 is more modern (Oct 16) than a G5 (Feb 16) and is on a September 2017 patch level. So it didn't even get 12 months of support before LG threw in the towel (Which I assume they have, seeing as I haven't had an update for 9 months now.)
Grass isn't greener...
Agreed.
If I get people saying "oohoo, it might be listening in" when they see my echo dot, i remind them they're carrying a hackable-device with a microphone that is connected to the internet as well. It's a mobile phone. I don't much care. I live alone and don't talk to myself.
notwithstanding the oblig xkcd issue of course...
The only notification I got (as I've just checked) was an email on the evening of Tuesday 17th (21:19) stating TSB would be down from 4pm on the Friday throughout the weekend. No text messages. So I got a full day's extra warning than those on twitter - lucky me!
Even 2 working days notice is pathetic from a bank for such a major shift. And the fact they're having issues today means it still didn't go correctly. I'm probably going to vote with my feet on this one and shut the account over it - that'll learn 'em!
The same TCAS that is so expensive to fit that only aircraft costing half a million tend to come with it as standard? and that doesn't work well with non-equipped light aircraft? Yeah, not a realistic solution, sorry. Even the comparitively cheap FLARM collision avoidance used by gliders would be an huge ask for drones, the lightest, cheapest model currently weighing in at a hefty (for a drone) 160g, the size of 3 stacked iphones and costing northwards of 700GBP just for the main circuit without an antenna.
Hahaha. We had a copy of Mario at school which used to get played a lot. Our IT support also used to remote-in when he noticed we were playing it, and it was a race to the plug to kill the connection before he found where in the NAS we stored it. Worked for about 3 months, then someone discovered the racing game easter-egg in excel 2000 which was a sort of developer credit roll.
And being part of excel, it couldn't be removed.
I have a HP WMR headset, coupled with a GTX 1070 laptop. The reason I bought it was because the laptop was £50 cheaper with the headset thrown in, so I'd have had to been stupid to turn it down. There *are* apps that allow it to be 'mixed' reality - i.e. those cameras on the front, show an image inside of what you're looking at, allowing AR with a VR headset. But, that feature is really not ready for prime time, and hence they didn't advertise it and instead have a stupid name. But this is Microsoft, so you all knew that...
I also haven't tried the Vive or Oculus rift, but plenty of the steam store games work with WMR, and they are a completely different experience to 2D gaming, it's a completely different league, and I would thoroughly recommend it.
Nonetheless, Microsoft don't help themselves - it is stupidly confusing as to what WMR even is, the treehouse (virtual environment that starts up when you put on the headset) has no way to link to Steam, and VR gaming is going to be THE critical use-case. The major advantage MWR has is the fact that there are no additional sensors to drill into walls. It's actually properly portable, requiring just the cameras and a 30 seconds setup in a new location.
None of this really matters though - having a PC to run VR is simply too costly. I paid £1300 for my system in December to replace a dying laptop, and being that you need a GTX 1070 or above realistically (it's gotta run 2880x1440 minimum at no fewer than 90fps to avoid motion sickness) - that's not mass market money, that's early adoption enthusiast money, and that market has to be nearing saturation as these things have been out for ages now. You'd have to be a monumental fool to buy a WMR headset over an Oculus when they're the same RRP. Not only that, you're in ethereum mining territory with GPUs that can handle VR, ramping the cost even higher.
The only way to resuscitate WMR is whether the xbox1X a) is due for compatibility, and b) has the horsepower to run it without causing Tarquin to spew. That, in my humble opinion, is an end of it.
I can only speak for myself. my Last 10 years I've had 5 phones. The first three, I never replaced the battery, they went obsolete too quick (Nokia N95/HTC HD2/LG Opt3D), the 3rd (Galaxy S4), I had 3 spares, swapped them virtually daily. Lasted me 4 years before a power key broke.
My current LG V20 has just one spare. I swap it out probably once a month when I absolutely need the 0-100% in 15 seconds that only a replacable battery can do, but the phone is only 10 months old - the batteries are for when it gets to a couple of years and the one inside is aged to the point where it's no longer performing adequately.
And I'll be the first to admit, yes, it's dead Jim. Planned obsolesence via welded in batts is just too good a prize for manufacturers to hand over to the customer in the age of peak smartphone. Nonetheless, the reason LG got my custom on my last phone was because it had a swappable battery. The only manufacturer left listening to power-users got my hard-earned. Nonetheless, the grass isn't greener - it last had a security update in Sept 17. 5 months ago. Unacceptable.
Not quite weekly, however, incidents such as this are reported to the UK Airprox board, which has seen an exponential increase of such reports relating to drones. 2015: 29. 2016: 71. 81 incidents from Jan to Sept 2017 alone. Want some actual evidence rather than hyperbole? Here: Airprox Drone statistics;
It is an issue - it was a matter of time before an accident resulted, and unless something is done to mitigate this risk it will happen again.
Have you been on a modern packed 777/787/A330/A350 long haul in the back with 10-across seating in 3-4-3? there is naff all room anyway!
I see very little difference between that style twin versus a single aisler when it comes to passenger comfort, unless you're paying the 400%+ price premium over and above economy class for the bigger seats at the front.
Though I completely agree about air-related taxes. Britain in particular has absolutely criminal margins - as can be seen by the fact that your average city airport has more security personnel doing theatrical performances than Tescos has shelf-stackers. Still, at least we don't have the TSA...
You're aware for example, that a lot of birck and mortar stores can list and sell their stock on amazon? and a lot of them do. Our local hobby store was going to shutter due to lack of footfall. They put all their stock up on amazon and are now shifting 5x as much which is paying the rent.
Doesn't change the fact that the bricks and mortar store is economically unviable and from a business perspective, it is a questionable decision to keep it open, but as I keep saying to my Grandmother - shopping on amazon means that I don't have to go through to stupid rigamarole of driving to town, paying for parking and then finding it's a wasted trip because the shop doesn't have the item I want.
In my opinion Amazon aren't exactly going to reverse their business model which has always been disruptive, high volume, low margin, and offering their infrastructure to competitors for a cut of their profits, so no, I doubt you will see prices on everything skyrocket anytime in the next decade. And even if they did, Amazon are not an uncontestable monopoly.
Well no it isn't - a taxi suffers the golf bats problem. A fat lot of good it is if my car is in the pub car-park and not my drive, once I've sobered up and want to go for a match of golf on Saturday afternoon.
(I don't actually perform golf but I don't think it detracts from my point.)
Being British I too normally have the usual neighbourly contempt for the French and their involvement in anything.
However at least their government appear to have the guts to actually do something rather than sitting back and just taking it, which is more than can be said for those who apparently serve "us" in Westminster.
Citation needed. I have an LG V20 which has a removable battery. It's imperceptibly larger than any other large phone due to that fact - it simply needs a way to remove the back and some slightly more rugged terminals on the cell. I'm sure the extra thickness of the phone to accomodate that is measured in microns. Meanwhile the obligatory phone case I shove it in is probably a whole millimetre.
The galaxy S series with removable batteries (S5 or previous IIRC) were thinner than the competiting iphones of the day.
The compromise chosen by a lot of people is to carry around a power bank (battery) to charge their phone (battery), but at least that doesn't go obsolete when the phone gets replaced. removable batteries though provide 100% charge in the time it takes to replace them, rather than lugging a phone + cable + brick around for an hour. I don't change my battery very often, but when I do it's less annoying than the powerbank method.
On the last EU project I was on, my French, Dutch and German colleagues all apparently watched Allo Allo and told me over dinner how much they liked it. I was a bit surprised at that one, but then again, it just ruthlessly mocks the incompetance of every country involved, dunnit?
Ahhh, yes, the classic trick question US border put into your declaration: answering yes or no:
are you a terrorist?
are you a former nazi?
have you ever plotted to overthrow a democratic government?
are you bringing in firearms, explosives or communist material?
do you hate America?
are you bringing any foodstuffs into the US?
Guess how many jet-lagged foreginers running for 36 hours with no sleep don't spot that last one is often a "yes?"
Driving licence numbers will have been harvested from people trying to get car insurance quotes and passed to equifax for insurance fraud checking, and that will be their excuse for keeping it until year infinity + 1. I notice the usual suspects on the price comparison websites tempt you into giving driving licence numbers for "better quotes."
An example needs to be made of Equifax. I think the last 10 years of their UK subsiduaries' profits is a good starting figure for a fine for criminal negligence, ought to bring the risk-reward ratio into the realms of reality, rather than the current situations of no risk, all reward for profiteering from our data.
My guess was that Inmarsats lawyers knew damn well Ofcom would have to change their licence being as it transpried EU law was to force their hand, and thus took a calculated risk. Viasat might have been blindsided but so what?
Ofcom of course should be looking out for the interests of UK consumers and not private companies (albeit with scant evidence that they actually do). I'm not seeing downsides for the UK consumer here and thus conclude that it makes no difference to me if Viasat are a bit miffed, if they have a grieviance they're free to sue - from my perspective it doesn't make much sense to sue a regulator for changing a competitors licence from one which is potentially unlawful to one that is in compliance with EU law. The rules & regulations change, especially at the cutting edge of tech; history is littered with examples of this.
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