* Posts by Bobthe2nd

49 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2012

A BBC-by-subscription 'would be richer', MPs told

Bobthe2nd

Content Generator

Its not sensible to compare the BBC against Netflix. Netflix just buy and stream, they dont for example operate worldwide radio broadcast services or film/commission work.

Therefore £150 or whatever it is, seems good value even if it was just for their science output.

Never mind bungled Universal Credit rollout, Maude wants UK to be 'most digital' gov by 2015

Bobthe2nd
Stop

Re: DVLA?

@Diogenes - Much as I like your scenario, I'm not sure you are thinking outside the classroom and to the development of large scale enterprise solutions.

I expect that the application process is to build the database record with the picture to follow. This therefore gets the user to enter their details and not for them to manually write it all out, post it and for an expensive data handler to re-enter the data. This would provide a reference/tracking number for the DVLA and also the user for queries, plus ensures that the user is culpable for the quality of the data, ie. not lying on the form vs data keyed incorrectly and thus the DVLAs negligence.

Ten top tech toys to interface with a techie’s Christmas stocking

Bobthe2nd
Facepalm

Re: Tado

You'll get a 100% saving on wasted fuel if you turn the heating on when you actually get home

ESA readies Rosetta for next year's comet touchdown

Bobthe2nd
Megaphone

Re: fix a leak in helium tank?

Slight disconnect, think reg meant workaround;

Paolo Ferri, head of the planetary missions division at ESA’s Esoc space operations center in Darmstadt, Germany, said Rosetta operations teams have the luxury of the 2.5-year hibernation to develop software to operate the satellite with three and, if necessary, just two reaction wheels.

“Obviously if we had to operate the satellite and work around this problem at the same time, we would have a more serious situation,” Ferri said in an interview. “The hibernation period means we do not have to rush to a solution.”

The propulsion problem aboard Rosetta is in the form of a leak in a helium-pressurization system that enables the propellant reservoir to direct fuel to the probe’s on-board thruster engines.

Ferri said ESA had planned to repressurize Rosetta for future operations, allowing the satellite to maximize fuel efficiency. They have now decided against that because of the risk of aggravating the leak. The resulting operations will mean Rosetta will use more fuel than it would otherwise and will fly a less-efficient route. But Ferri said the consensus is that it will still have enough fuel to complete its comet rendezvous in mid-2014.

More here;

http://www.spacenews.com/article/esa-controllers-buy-time-fix-glitches-comet-chaser

World-leading IT expert? We'll fast-track you into Blighty, promises PM

Bobthe2nd

I just started my own IT services company and had to endure the hour chat with the business bank manager to get a bank account. (Barclays free banking for a year (only reason) )

He was polish and spent most of the time telling me I should outsource all my coding work to his mates in Eastern Europe as they are cheaper and would do a better job.

Much as I admire their apparent go getting style, I found the whole thing quite offensive to be honest, that somehow nobody in the UK would be able to do the work to a high standard.

I thought I was being DDOSed. Turns out I'm not that important...

Bobthe2nd

Why not just leave such things to people who know what they are doing *... how much SPAM on the internet is because people have a fiddle setting some email server up with no clue?

* this includes having enough CPU power and bandwidth

MPs back call to boycott low-taxed tat from Amazon over Xmas

Bobthe2nd
WTF?

Sort your own mess out first..

"£2.4m in corporate taxes in the UK last year, despite the fact that its sales were £4.3bn and it got as much as £2.5m in government grants to expand its warehouse operations in Scotland."

Maybe MPs should take some of their own medicine, why give a company £2.5m in grants when it makes £4.3bn in sales?? How many votes does that buy, or is the benefit realisation a seat on the board in a few years time?

PlayStation 4 a doddle to fix: Handy if it OVERHEATS, for instance

Bobthe2nd

Re: On Amazon...Roughly 40% of owners seem to have issues...

There are an awful lot that arent Amazon Verified Purchases... so anybody could be writing a review.

Sonos and I: How home media playback just gets SO FRUSTRATING

Bobthe2nd

Relax

Relax and just buy a Synology (NAS) a PS3 and an Amp... Synology will stream music, video, photos via DLNA to the PS3 which you fibre into your amp.. that pretty much covers everything except MKV

What more do you need?

BT Openreach boss QUITS to quench ambitious thirst

Bobthe2nd

"Our commercial programme to bring fibre broadband to two-thirds of UK premises is almost complete, whilst BT’s public sector broadband partnerships are making good progress," Garfield said.

Would love to see the real stats... it feels like a mighty big one third... damn lies and statistics

In a meeting with a woman? For pity's sake don't read this

Bobthe2nd
WTF?

Re: My Vendors have to be level set about my company

"level sets the vendor"

What the heck does that mean? Is it like setting expectations?

The Raspberry Pi: Is it REALLY the saviour of British computing?

Bobthe2nd
Boffin

Mind your language

What would be your recommendation for a programming language for a youngster at high school..

C++ sure its useful but what about the combination of PHP/Jquery/Jquery Mobile which seems more appropriate for the internet/consumerist generation?

Torrent site isoHunt to close

Bobthe2nd
Mushroom

Latest block buster film for a £1 please

I would be interested if the film companies put up their own private tracker torrent site and you paid £2 a film or £10 a mth or similar and you could then download it on release day and keep it. Almost like Netflix which seems to be doing fine but I hate streaming (lack of bandwidth my end).

There is always going to be peeps who wont pay but I believe a lot of people would pay for a high quality legit rip but without the hassle of going to the cinema and sitting next to a jerk.

I presume they cant be arsed to try it because they have backed themselves into a corner now and it would look like a massive climb down, plus they wouldnt be able to help themselves from bolting on another 1hr of adverts before the film.

Vodafone and Verizon update relationship status: $130bn worth of complicated

Bobthe2nd
Thumb Up

Commendable

I commend Vodafone on being able to pump such a large amount of money back into the UK economy but without it being diverted to pay for eavesdropping, paying for nosey councils and various bureaucratic activities that generate nothing for the country.

Anybody who has a private pension plan should welcome it....

Snowden journo's boyfriend 'had crypto key for thumb-drive files written down' - cops

Bobthe2nd
WTF?

Re: Does it actually matter?

"Apparently he spent 8 of those 9 hours waiting for his lawyer, not being questioned."

I thought part of the "terrorism" act meant you didnt get access to a lawyer unless you were charged?

Marissa Mayer in Vogue fashion shoot

Bobthe2nd
Trollface

Re: Stop it

It should have been more realistic though, maybe photograph her in the kitchen washing the dishes...

Sky falling: 119,000 Brits flee O2, Be after Murdoch broadband gobble

Bobthe2nd
Trollface

Sky Fall

I guess its true, the smack down on benefits is impacting Sky's bottomline.. from broadband to Sky TV when you have to pay for it yourself instead of it being paid for you, maybe you take a look whether its worth the money or not.....

Paypal makes man 1000x as rich as the ENTIRE HUMAN RACE

Bobthe2nd
WTF?

@Zmodem

You seriously would use a debit card to buy stuff on the internet???

UK.gov to drive stake through heart of big IT outsourcing deals

Bobthe2nd
FAIL

Re: Location

"The OFT is examining whether competition is working, whether small suppliers are being excluded and whether big vendors are making interoperability difficult"

Yeah I can see that moving everything into a G-Cloud ie. a gov. secure multi-million pound data centre (dont forget the standby data centre) thats right up the street of the small IT provider...

Brit fantasy artist sues James Cameron over Avatar world

Bobthe2nd
FAIL

Tree of Life

Or maybe James Cameron had been on a trip to Disney World Animal Kingdom?

FLABBER-JASTED: It's 'jif', NOT '.gif', says man who should know

Bobthe2nd
FAIL

nah mate

Jif is what you clear stuff with my gran still has some in the cupboard, gif is a picture format... end of

Game designer spills beans on chubby-fancying chap with his stolen Mac

Bobthe2nd

Re: Nice, but..

LOL nice one JetSetJim.. its not a case of having a camera pointing over the fence into your neighbours garden where they are likely to expect a degree of privacy. Its more like your neighbour stealing your camera and sticking in their front room!

You obviously have no idea what the Data Protection Act is or covers, do you get your legal advice from the Daily Mail? :)

Dubai splurges on 700hp, 217mph Lamborghini police cruiser

Bobthe2nd
FAIL

Cameras

Would it not have been cheaper to put some average speed cameras along the notorious road and an army of peasants to wipe the lenses each day?

Mars to go offline for a month as vast nuclear furnace gets in the way

Bobthe2nd
Facepalm

Re: We need a relay

Dont get all the excitement myself. Snow is caused by a collision of warm and cold weather systems so you would therefore expect it to snow at the start of a winter period and at the end of one. Plus I believe its more likely to snow in March than December and since March was only last week whats the big deal.

Guess it makes for cheap, gap filling news stories though, versus the expensive smuggling a reporter into North Korea investigative journalism type stuff. Anyway off topic.. :)

Public cloud will grow when experienced IT folks DIE

Bobthe2nd
Facepalm

Reality Check

It wasnt so long ago every man and his dog was offering network connectivity, now you probably get your connectivity from just a handful of providers. The same with desktop machines, now you probably get them from Dell, Fujitsu, or IBM.

Now its the turn of server infrastructure, much as you like to think your server you personally hand built will never die that isnt the case. You therefore would not be crazy to outsource this commodity to someone else, who has all the expertise inhouse (not in the head of some smartarse) and 24/7 support, every piece of spare hardware to hand. You couldnt hope to replicate this yourself unless you want to give up your life and sleep next to the server.

Time to move on guys, its not the 90s anymore

Yahoo! makes Brit teen app maker VERY RICH with Summly buy

Bobthe2nd

Fair play

Good luck to the guy, though what was special about the App? (I dont have a smartphone so genuine question)

Fujitsu pulls a muscle, drops out of race for £530m broadband pot

Bobthe2nd
FAIL

see definition incumbent

It was always on the cards for BT to win it and I suspect they will just outsource it back to the big consultancy firms to do all the management and BT will just provide the shovels.

It happens all the time, this will save BT money and ensure they aren't undercut during the bidding, whereas the government like pissing away other peoples money, looking important, running bid round after bid round.

Netflix cracks wallet to spur open source cloud development

Bobthe2nd
Meh

The new outsourcing model

Is this the new outsourcing model, prize money payable on delivery and only if we like it!

No result, no cost... Interesting method

PayPal enters 21st Century with developer tools refresh

Bobthe2nd

Sandbox

Fixing the sandbox site IPN tool so you can actually test your site properly would be a good start.

If only there was a well known comparable UK based offering that didnt insist on merchant accounts.....I'd dump Paypal so fast!

RBS and NatWest FAIL downs services across UK

Bobthe2nd
Thumb Down

Re: FAIL felt as far as Oregon

I cancelled my Smile account when they introduced that stupid two-factor authentication, having your wallet to hand for the card pretty easy, but then having to remember where you last left the stupid calculator thing, putting your PIN number in it... 100% hassle

Bobthe2nd
Devil

Re: FAIL felt as far as Oregon

M&S Bank... pretty pictures on the debit card which the wife loves

SpaceX Dragon eventually snared by ISS

Bobthe2nd

Re: I wonder

We need the Japanese in space... like the car and the motorbike we need the West to get it roughly right and then the Japanese to polish it up and make it super reliable.

Moscow's speed cameras 'knackered' by MYSTERY malware

Bobthe2nd

Re: Most excellent

I was thinking they should replace speed cameras with noise cameras. Since typically noise is more a nuisance than speed. The additional benefit being that the faster you drive the more noise your vehicle makes, so it catches people who race around in 30mph zones, motorbikes and people who dont maintain their vehicles to a decent standard.

Star Trek saviour JJ Abrams joins the dark side: Star Wars VII

Bobthe2nd

Re: Brilliant

I appreciate lens flare is abrams trademark.. but its getting pretty tedious now and there was so much of it in Enterprise to the point where it started to detract from the film for me.

Bobthe2nd
Facepalm

Re: Ughhh

... transporting to a ship at warp, come on. (Kevin Smith has talked at length about things like this, where a piece of science-nonsense irks the fans). But come on, the ground rules for transporters have been around for years, it's just fucking wrong.

So Star Trek is fact now, I thought it was science fiction... Where can I find warp drives, replicators and holo decks then?

Have Brits fallen for Netflix, or do they still LoveFilm?

Bobthe2nd
FAIL

Games

When comparing providers ensure you use the same units.

Lovefilm do films AND games.. Netflix do films only and just low quality streaming, so its not comparable.

Disney World slaps pay-by-bonk stalker cuffs on grown-ups

Bobthe2nd

Though I'm not sure what is more annoying.. queuing to get on a ride.. or queuing, then being ushered into a room to be mind fucked for 15mins by a Kodak commercial before getting on a ride..

Hackers warn: We'll hit US banks... again

Bobthe2nd
FAIL

Joomla is ok to start with....

Really these guys are using Joomla? Joomla is a slippery slope, its all to easy to need something thats not in the framework, so you install a plugin for this, a plugin for that and before you know it you have a dozen plugins all of which you cant be 100% sure are safer. I must have moved on to at least 4 different forums plugins as they became unmaintained. The last backup was pushing 1Gb so something was definitely screwed somewhere!

Keep an eye on the log files its interesting to see the number of attempted attacks against the admin login page.

I starting learning php as a background thing and after about 12mths had learnt enough php to write my own framework. Rebuilt my site from scratch in about 3 weeks, now I just update the database via phpadmin and the articles on the site run under read only rights. Site with files/gfxs came in at approx 40Mb.

So in conclusion Joomla/Wordpress are ok to kick something off, but long term you should learn to do it yourself so you understand how your site works!

Hacking bazaar ExploitHub gets hacked, database leaked

Bobthe2nd
Thumb Up

lamers

Not heard that word for ages... nice :)

Samsung's smart TVs 'wide open' to exploits

Bobthe2nd
FAIL

Re: I don't want a smart TV.

Not heard of a HDMI cable???

I thought smart TVs were a waste of space, but then I bought one for the lounge connected with a wireless dongle. Its ability to link into my LAN to stream movies from my NAS and built in Apps to stream movies from LoveFilm etc. with zero hassle and just one controller! Suddenly makes the dumb TV in the front room which is connected to a PS3 to achieve the same thing, look very old skool and over complicated.

How exciting that someone could tap into the USB which only holds recorded TV programs.. and who actually uses a web browser on a TV?... sure that will cause sleepless nights...

Apple updates maps to remove Australia’s ghost-city in the desert

Bobthe2nd
Thumb Up

Re: Blame blame blame

During a recent closure of a motorway, I noticed a satellite crossed out sign next to a diversion sign. I presume this is to try and convince people to use their eyes and follow the signs and not just follow the satnav!

UK climate expert warns of 3-5 degree warmer world by 2100

Bobthe2nd

Re: Issue with these models is...

Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary.

Ah the Lib Dems again.. is it just me or are they like the crazy granny of the family (coalition) that should be locked up in the attic and not let out

Revealed: The gift that keeps on giving to Oracle ... is dying

Bobthe2nd

Re: Effective lock-in

This is also known in the trade as risk mitigation. So it costs $ per year but then it may cost a lot more if you break your system, or have to run 2x systems in parallel while you move it over, redesign solutions etc etc

So its not the first place I would look to save money..

Assange needs to get some sunlight and fresh air, say Ecuadoreans

Bobthe2nd

Masked Ball

Is not the solution a masked ball, lots of guests, slips out with the crowd, private diplomatic flight etc. etc.

Far Cry 3 game review

Bobthe2nd

Re: Dont give a damn

Obviously that worked out well for you, hence your post here bitching off video games. It might surprise you but its pretty normal for girls under 40 to have bought a console and they even play games these days, once they've finished the ironing.

Real sci-fi space ships coming at last? NASA tests nuclear engine

Bobthe2nd
FAIL

Re: what have NASA got against space?

I'm guessing that maybe doing science is getting in the way.. and well you now humans not being designed to live in space and therefore have to take their environment with them all the time.

Endeavour: donuts and a Toyota ease shuttle's drive through L.A.

Bobthe2nd
FAIL

Re: Is Toyota now an American company, then?

"You gotta love American ingenuity and salesmanship. "

The article doesnt state that Toyota is an American company, you might want to look up the definition of ingenuity, ie. it doesnt mean you own anything, except imagination

British Waterways charity mapping data handed to Google for free

Bobthe2nd
WTF?

Re: data wants to be free

Data shouldnt be free as it has value. The UK taxpayer has paid for the collation and maintenance of the data and then hands it over to a company to make profit (advertising) out of its/our dataset for free.

Who is paying for the upkeep of that dataset? err the UK taxpayer... who is the mug here the UK taxpayer.. You might swallow the Google mantra of everything should be free so it can pre-emptively defeat any competition but as far as I'm concerned its more of a Wormtongue company especially with the current government.

</end rant>

Linus Torvalds drops F-bomb on NVIDIA

Bobthe2nd
FAIL

Or..

He could just install Windows which would work out the box and then spend so time with friends and family... life is to short to be playing around with video drivers come 2012