Co-Pilot - it's time for Microsoft to get back to basics. QuickBasic needs a new release/lease of life, co-pilot brings the old style Microsoft authenticity of Mr Gates to your coding skills.
Posts by JASR
41 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jul 2007
Win a slice of XP cheese if you tell us where Microsoft should put Copilot next
The UK is running on empty when it comes to electric vehicle charging points
Wednesday 28th July 2021 11:41 GMT
Events
As highlighted by Mrs JASR getting stuck a weekend ago in motorway hell - 5hr journey became 10hr, due to many accidents.
She was in petrol/diesel car, and having been stationary in boiling heat for 2hours, dived into the next services for a comfort break.
Whilst there, the queue for the electric charging was enormous, as presumably EV people who'd been stuck in the motorway traffic, using the aircon, now had very limited space to charge, along with the charge waiting time.
God knows when some got away.
The problem will just get rapidly worse, service stations need to be adding capacity weekly.
Super-antique-fragile-and-it's-XP-alidocious, even though the sight of it is something quite atrocious
Like a celeb going bonkers with botox, Google injects 'AI' into anything it can
Thursday 18th May 2017 10:13 GMT
According to the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39958028 :
'Or, and this feature drew a massive cheer here, you can point it at the sticker on the back of a wifi router - the one containing the long password you need to enter - and the app will know it’s a wifi password and automatically connect you to the network without the need for manual input. '
err... isn't that just swiping passwords and sending them back for analysis... I know everything is now, hopefully, https in Google land, but still...
It's paydaygeddon! NatWest account transfers 'disappearing' (not really)
Yahoo! is! not! killing! Messenger! today!, just! the! desktop! client!
Swivel on this: German boffins build nanoscale screwing engine for sluggish sperm
Who's right on crypto: An American prosecutor or a Lebanese coder?
Tuesday 24th November 2015 09:13 GMT
Fingerprint unlock
Most new smartphones have a backdoor - fingerprint access.
Unless the criminal's body is mangled, then it would be trivial to obtain fingerprints of a suspects digits, transpose them to a gummi bear and unlock.
Unless the criminal has had time to shutdown their phone - which generally disables the fingerprint unlock on initial boot.
El Reg celebrates Back to the Future Day
WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg
WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg
NASA's Dawn gets intimate with Ceres
Yet another Android app security bug: This time 'everything is affected'
One USB plug to rule them all? That's sensible, but no...
Faux pro-IS Facebook shot down within hours of launch
EasyGroup continues bizarre, time-travelling domain crusade
Tuesday 3rd March 2015 09:36 GMT
I had a working customer relationship with a company that was called Easy-'Word'.
They had nothing to do with Easyjet, (or at the time any 'Easy' associated businesses), their logo was completely different (no orange, was black/white/red, totally different font).
They had been going for about 5 years with that name (inclduign a small website), and were starting to expand.It's only when they ramped up their online presence, that Easy group's lawyers came calling... coincidentally as Easy Group moved into the same business area as this company...
Upshot, big company lawyers force small business to change name after various legal moves (and finanical muscle) were employed.
Same old, same old: Big Money beats small money.
Virgin Media goes titsup AGAIN. The cause? Yet MORE DNS strife
New Development. Where do we go?
Thursday 10th October 2013 13:20 GMT
Re: Dev Platform
Hi Mog0.
Yep, it's bugs are a right pain if you are on bleeding edge. We tend not to be on the bleeding edge, and hence keep our customers hair attached.
Note: Database is multi threaded since v11 (2009), and web server since v13 (2012)
As per original post, I was just mentioning my own experience, as it seems to have mimiced the original posters early experiences... and now, also, yours :-)
Thursday 10th October 2013 12:08 GMT
Dev Platform
Our main product has been developed in time through various languages, Retrieve4GL (Sage Line 100 DOS language), Clipper 86/87, 5 and 5.2.
We also had a parallel (albeit far behind in feature set) product written in 4th Dimension (a database/IDE/runtime client/server all-in-one product) for use on Mac's.
As Clipper was coming to the end of it's shelf life, we started dabbling in Visual Objects and also Visual Foxpro, to see if they were worthwhile development platforms to take the product forward.
We wanted a cross-platform product, hence dabbling in Visual Foxpro 3... luckily we didn't go that route, as VFP3 was the last version for both platforms.
As Visual Objects was also proving to be a non-starter, we pulled out the old 4th Dimension Mac product, and with 4th Dimension becoming a cross-platform product, we quickly ramped up the feature set of the 4th Dimension product and created an export from our Clipper product and import for the 4th Dimension version.
4th Dimension, evolved it's name into http://www.4D.com , and as it's products matured, they added more features, (all built into the same single product/exe file)... odbc, web server, sql server, php server.
The language has evolved to allow native SQL statements, in addition to it's traditional query/'venn diagram style' sets.
Now, it's not perfect, (as if anything could be!), and we are now pretty much tied into it, but it has served our purposes well.
The ability to just copy a single folder on your PC/Mac, and suddenly you have a working database/web server/sql server/IDE, is many degrees of complexity different, to say SQL Server+IIS+IDE. It makes it also relatively simple for our customers, who know they have one server App, which takes minimal configuration for it's setup, and then for the client, either a browser to open, or the client software to simply copy in and run.
I post, only becuase you appear to have had a similar early development path as our product.
Murdoch machinations mean Microsoft must rename SkyDrive
Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei 'likes' Facebook despite ban
Facebook disses Effin Irishwoman
Apple, Google apps face smut and violence ratings
Wednesday 30th November 2011 00:26 GMT 
Apps rating...
I don't think the many religious apps (Christian, Islam.. etc.) will look kindly on having their violence rating set at 5.
Just look what filth and violence you can read about them:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/cruelty/long.html
...and yes, I am aware, it's 'sceptics', for the Queen's English speakers.
Apple greenlights browserless Firefox app for iPhone
Scareware sellers fool Google with file switch
Brits take iTablet moniker for 12in iPad rival
El Reg launches 'Comment of the Week'
MS opens up Security Essentials downloads from today
iPhone + naked ladies = headline gold
Men far worse than women on password security
Wednesday 2nd September 2009 15:50 GMT 
Moderatrix
Does the Moderatrix also check for Asterix usage? Is she refering to Vitalstatistix with regard to the Simpsons? Can she deal with the Cacofonix of Flamers this article could induce, or has El Reg got a Fulliautomatix Unhygenix filter on? Does she normally feel a bit of editting Dogmatix when perusing comments? Would she like an Obelix erected in her honour for dealing with it all? Oh I do hope she's not a bit Geriatrix. Answers on a Postaldistrix to ? And to think I did all this Justforkix.
Rogue international ‘M&A advisors’ target Brit ISP customers
Google's email service goes down
Tuesday 24th February 2009 15:41 GMT 
Change to interface...
When it popped back into existence, I had Ads displayed for the 1st time in a few years (use CustomizeGoogle Add-On in Firefox), which was a bit strange - they have now gone again \0/.
And then I noticed that new mail, is not bolding the sender's name anymore - the subject still is - (or it looks like a different font at lest).. so maybe they updated the web code and it all went a bit ... Pete Tong?
Google cedes Belgium to Germany
Please don't leave me... bitch
Tuesday 19th February 2008 22:46 GMT 
Back in 1997...
Oh yes... thanks for bringing that up...
I was stuck in the middle of the Irish Sea bobbing about whilst the hushed, becalmed, engine off, cinema closed, tannoy announcing boat, paid it's respects... My partner and I continued to play travel backgammon in muted conversation (read: fear of being stabbed in the eye by possessed zealots wielding plastic forks), as the rest of the poor souls incarcerated in the metal tub, sat quietly crying into their tabloid headlines, and staring in wonder at the pics showing acres of wilting shrivelled florist bottom-line bonanzas laid across London's landmarks.
Not that i'm a cynic. ;-)
Exploding Flash catalogue rocks Dutch e-commerce site
Wednesday 6th February 2008 14:07 GMT
'pot-smoking Dutch'
I've been asked to point out (by my Dutch partner) that not all Dutch web designers, or even all Dutch people are pot smokers.
Bloody stereotypical cockney rag writers. Tsk.
The Dutch are, however, generally quite tall, wear bright clothes, like bicycles, call hills mountains, like the colour orange, have a bloody big airport for their capital, lots of canals, a few old windmills, lots of new windmills, quite tall, have a bloody big port, speak english better than most of the English, have only 2 male haircut styles (short and shortish), have decent roads, have decent trains, have a generally decent attitude to life, hate the French speaking world, lost an empire as well... and they are quite tall.
I like the place! :-D
Caught on camera: the Downfall of HD DVD
ISPs nominate UK record industry as top internet villain
Beeb's iPlayer reaps streaming traffic dividends
Thursday 10th January 2008 16:29 GMT 
License fees
I'm guessing the iPlayer is fully restricted to UK IP's -. Which makes sense to me, it's only going to be a small proportion of Broadband users in the UK, who won't have a TV ....the iPlayer allows License payers, another way of accessing programmes they have paid for.
In a similar way that the BBC website now carries adverts - if your IP is NonUK - I would have hoped the iPlayer could stream paid for adverts for NonUK viewers, before the programme.
They do it with their own self-serving 10-15second inhouse advert clip, so why not allow longer paid-for adverts for NonUK IP's? Another revenue stream for the BBC sounds good to me.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
