Posts by Heisenberg

Welsh council rapped for covert spying on sick leave worker

"I have had less than four weeks off sick in total over my entire career..."

Thanks 'Loyal Commentator', your post actually triggered a memory from the early days when I had a total w@nker of a boss, he was such an ar$e that after a couple of months I thought to myself I'm not putting up with this sh1t and handed my notice in. I guess I was lucky enough that at the time I had no dependants or financial obligations so didn't have to give much thought to it at all.

Were I in such a situation now it might be very different and I can imagine if the option to just leave was not there then life would quickly become an unbearable living hell...

I hate to be harsh, but there's something I've noticed. Now, I have had less than four weeks off sick in total over my entire career, spanning more than fifteen years. I have also never heard of any colleague of mine taking excessive amounts of time off for anything other than the C word. Certainly not for "Stress". Mind you, I've only ever worked in the private sector.

So what is it about life in the public sector that makes it making it so much more "stressful" ?

E-cigarettes fingered as source of NASTY VIRUS

We need the hard evidence...

If the hard evidence is not forthcoming then this is surely just another example of Vapo-ware...

Welcome to the fast-moving world of flash connectors

No Thunderbolt?

I would have expected Thunderbolt to be included in this list (or maybe it's deemed a sub-technology riding over the top of one of those mentioned?) It's certainly one of the fastest methods of connectivity in the consumer space today...

3D printed guns: This time it's for real! Oh, wait – no, still crap

Re: Don't see the problem

Sadly I suspect it would be knobhead's mate or little brother/sister who copped it in the head or neck...

LaCie Little Big Disk Thunderbolt 2 – dual SSD sizzler

Re: re. The exterior 'heat sink' ridges

As stated in the article, the emphasis is on portability for this piece of kit so the ridges are horizontal to allow for increased airflow, and hence GREATER cooling while moving at speed.

Apple CEO Tim Cook: My well-known gayness is 'a gift from God'

Re: Welcome to the 1950's

"were a persons sexuality is news!"

Unless I've missed something I believe you'll find that the majority of the world is still rampantly homophobic...

Applelutely fappulous: Fashionistas bow down before the JESUS PHONE

Back in the nineties...

"However, women regularly compliment me on my scent, more so than if I was wearing an expensive aftershave."

When you say "women", would you be referring to your mum and your gran by any chance?

Finally, a USEFUL smart device: Intel boffins cook up gyro-magneto-'puter bike helmet

Sex

I'm already quivering as I think of all the young ladies who'll doubtless constantly be hitting on me once I start wearing one of these babies...

BBC goes offline in MASSIVE COCKUP: Stephen Fry partly muzzled

Re: Could be for the best

"They would probably say that 1024 x 768 monitors are obsolete - but that gives a text size I can read easily. "

Have you tried using the so-called "Big Screen" version? I think this is designed for use by Playstations etc. and gives a slightly different view formatted for use on a TV screen.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/bigscreen/

I just tried it out at the above resolution and it seemed to work quite nicely...

NASA: Satellite which will end man-made CO2 debate in orbit at last

Re: Debate settler?

"Scientists are arguing over details, but are in broad agreement now. The big debate going on in public awareness is political in nature, not scientific. Facts have very little role in a political debate. This will change nothing."

I don't know you so don't take this personally but there is clearly a misconceived idea of the definitions of "Science" and "Fact" at play here. It would be very hard indeed to 'scientifically prove' anything in this realm. Also, consensus opinion is a red herring that should not really be mentioned in any serious debate on the subject as it is wholly irrelevant.

Pension quango's £18.5m project FINALLY goes live... 2 months late

Re: If only...

"If only there was a BOFH story poking fun at mission-critical systems based on Excel and Office macro's..."

I'd wager that globally, MOST mission critical data is contained in Excel spreadsheets...

How I poured a client's emails straight into the spam bin – with one Friday evening change

Your only mistake...

Your only mistake was admitting liability, never take the blame for a major F*&* up!!

Lesson one: always have your scape-goat/fall-guy in place before making any kind of change to a live system. My preference is to have at least one hapless dev standing by on the sidelines ready and waiting...

Apple: Scrubbing may not yet have cleansed iThings of BLOOD

Re: Not just BLOOD, Enviromental Issues Too!

My God! You mean these dastardly bastards are trying to decrease their costs and increase their profits? They should be strung up from their testicles (where applicable)!

The iPhone of the future will know you BY YOUR EARS

Re: I am not in the habit.......

"It's not an overbearing obsession with hygiene, though - just with other people's hygiene. :)"

You're a wise man in my opinion, the latest statistics show that 1 in 3 men never wash their hands after taking a dump!! When questioned why, the leading answer was that they 'didn't trust the cleanliness of the washing facilities'!

Apple plots HOME INVASION at WWDC

Re: I'm still wondering...

"FOR F^&* SAKE, OPEN THE F$%&ING DOOR..."

"I'm sorry, I don't have an option for "Open the shaking door", would you like me to search the web for that phrase?"

Kingston DataTraveler MicroDuo: Turn your phone into a 72GB beast

Aesthetically, it's an abomination...

I think I must have been buying my gadgetry from a certain fruity firm for too long 'cos I would not buy that thing on looks alone, it reminds me of something the dog coughed up on to the kitchen floor.

USA opposes 'Schengen cloud' Eurocentric routing plan

Re: even more exclusion?

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

One could argue that Fiona Bruce's underwear is paid for by the bloody TV license... Just sayin'!

China demands answers from US after 'I spy on one little Huawei' report

Seems strange...

If the NSA wanted to know if Huawei kit is/was sending information back to the Chinese government could they not have determined that technically through looking at the packets being sent, stripping a machine down to look for secret transmitters and so on?

Monkey steals iPod touch, loses interest in minutes

Everyone knows...

Everyone knows that monkey only like banana's, it's no surprise he turned his little nose up at an apple...

Indonesia plans 10 Gbps FTTP as part of 20-million-premises broadband project

Re: I applaud their ambition.

>>>Or "I want somebody to subsidise where I live"...

Er, nope. I just want decent broadband.

I applaud their ambition.

Living in "rural" Hertfordshire, not even fifty of the Queen's best miles from London, I am currently on 1.5 MBPS. What a fuc&ing joke!

Fee fie Firefox: Mozilla's lawyers probe Dell over browser install charge

Installed by default...

"Why don't they just include Firefox in their standard build?" I hear you cry. They could easily do that and this issue would simply go away. I doubt very much that would please Dell's puppet masters at Microsoft though. Far better to engineer some way to discourage people from ever requesting it.

Idiot's? No, I doubt it.

Hard-nosed, conniving, scheming b@stards? Hmm, more likely I think.

See me after class: Apple scores AAA rating from brand-botherer

Razor like insight

So let me get this straight, this new report demonstrates beyond repudiation that Apple are to be regarded a powerful brand?

F&*k, I did NOT see that coming!

Tired of arguing with suits? Get ready to argue with engineers!

Re: If it ain't broken ...

"And if only more IT kit was like that"

It was... in the Soviet Union and/or any other communist state (I don't include China among them).

In a free market economy, where businesses compete against one another for a share of available money/resources, IT is an essential way to get an edge over ones competitors necessitating a balanced portfolio comprising trailing edge, leading edge and bleeding edge technologies.

Million-dollar new disk tech could be USELESS for array vendors

Solution looking for a problem?

Are these shingled drives a lot cheaper or something? Where is their advantage?

Helium is perfectly able to be stored though, I have a cylinder of the stuff in my garage that I bring out every now and then to entertain the kids, great fun! :-)

'Wind power causes climate change' shown to be so much hot air

Re: Consistent

The problem with this, as has been seen in Germany, is that once the general public start generating their own leccy from renewable sources, all of which only produce the goods in certain conditions (sun is shining, wind is blowing etc.), you build a need to keep a certain level of generation capacity on standby to cover those lean times.

Now, keeping a traditional power station on standby does not come cheap (it can no longer pay for itself through making profit for the owner) meaning that someone has to pick up the tab. Hmm, who do you think that will be? Under this model we can expect to welcome in a new era of the most expensive power in the world by a long chalk. Woo - F***ing -Hoo!!!

Gamers in a flap as Vietnamese dev pulls Flappy Bird

Won't uninstall, help...

Hi all, I tried to uninstall Flappy Birds from my 5S but now it's saying "Error 0x80070079: The semaphore timeout period has expired" and I can no longer switch it off or get back to the home screen. In addition my ram is turning mauve. I've tried rebooting, I also switched it off and back on again and nothing seems to be working for me. Has anyone else experienced this and know how to fix it? Please help I'm absolutely at my wits end with this f^&%ing thing!!!!

James Dyson plans ROBOT ARMY to take over the world

Let me know...

...when Dyson buy into Fleshlight...

iPhone maker Foxconn to pump $1bn into new Indonesian factory

Cheap labour?

I'm guessing that the cost of labour is far cheaper in Indonesia than in mainland China? In this case it makes perfect sense to move operations across the water, after all why pay $5 a week for an eight year old factory worker in China when you can hire a four and a half year old Indonesian lad for a quarter of that?

WHEEE... CRUNCH! iPad Mini tops list of most breakable slabs, mobes

Other interesting 'experiments' to try at home...

1) Buy ten expensive cars and drive them at high speed in to a large boulder to see which one suffers most damage

2) Line up eight top of the range DSLR camera's and hit each with a 15KG splitting maul

3) Set fire to suits from a range of designers and see which one is still wearable afterwards

Qipp debuts 'Clippy for your STUFF' app

Where's the advantage?

If I need to oil the chain on my bike, I know this because my bike has started squeaking. If my snake needs to be milked I kind of have a way of knowing that too. What is the advantage of entering these items in to an app which will then just arbitrarily tell me something needs doing, whether or not it be true?

Barclays Bank probes 'client data sold to rogue City traders' breach

Are Barclay's actually liable?

The most interesting aspect of this story, for me, will be whether Barclays' get held liable for this or not. In the current environment it would not surprise me in the least bit to see some multi-million pound fine being dished out. And yet one could argue that, in this case, they are as much the victims as anyone else.

SkyMapper turns up oldest star ever found

Not completely unexpected...

Yes, this is just essentially confirming what I've been predicting for some years now...

Apple in bid to turn MORE and MORE humans into iPhone-stroking fanbois

Bombproof

I heard that the new iPhone with sapphire glass will be able to survive a 1400 mega-tonne nuclear detonation. Now show me an Android phone that could do that!

Is modern life possible without a smartphone?

Flat Earth Society

I feel like I've just walked in to a Flat Earth Society Convention!

I am the proud owner of a nice new shiny iPhone 5S and I can truthfully say that it is rarely more than a couple of feet away from me at any point during a 24 hour period. I am on it more or less constantly during my waking hours and when I am asleep it is sitting by the side of my bed as my alarm clock.

I use it as a music player/newspaper/library on my commute, I buy my train tickets and car parking on it, I check the weather and whether the trains/tubes are running okay before I leave. I run my business, file my expenses, track my fitness program, plan my daily nutrition on it. I do my grocery shopping on it and spend far too long adding and removing items from my Amazon basket.

I really could go on but i fear I've made my point, my iPhone has truly enhanced my quality of life by making things that were previously a drag, so bloody easy and convenient. A smartphone is an essential ingredient to modern life, without one, it's still a life, but not a modern one.

So, what I would say to all the flat earther's is "Get over yourselves!"

It's big, it's expensive and it's an audiophile's dream: The Sonos Sub

For a hundred pounds less.

...you could have bought yourself a B&W ASW610. I'm pretty confident in saying that this unit would, quite literally, blow the socks off the Sonos.

Security 101 fail: 3G/4G modems expose control panels to hackers

Re: A good example...

I'd disagree with this comment, I can personally think of very many legitimate business cases for a premium rate SMS, and sellers have to be free to charge what they want to for their goods and services, this is an essential component of a free market economy. Also this is a kind of victim blaming which conveniently lets the device manufacturers/providers off the hook for selling goods that are not fit for purpose. It is they who should be utterly lambasted.

Sinclair's ZX Spectrum to LIVE AGAIN!

Re: Why, just Why?

Thanks, I have to say it's, er, been a while...

Why, just Why?

10 print "Why, just Why?"

20 goto 10

Fancy a little kinky sex? GCHQ+NSA will know - thanks to Angry Birds

No issues on iPhone?

Seems that this is only an issue for Google/Android users then? Apple devices are mysteriously absent from any mention here...

Apple-aligned firm opens sapphire glass factory. iPhone 6 rumours, DEPLOY

Re: sapphire glass scratches ?

I've had my Tag Aquaracer for over a decade, I only take it off to sleep and I would describe myself as pretty active. Not even a hint of a scratch here. Kind of begs the question, and I don't want to diss your Seiko, but are there different qualities of Sapphire glass? Also, what is this going to do to the price of the next iPhone?

KC engineer 'exposed unencrypted spreadsheet with phone numbers, user IDs, PASSWORDS'

Where's the story?

If the laptop in question does indeed have hard drive encryption installed then I really don't see what the issue is? Maybe if the engineer had explained that to the customer at the time he wouldn't have kicked off?

Apple fanbois make it 'official', hook up with Internet of Fridges Things

Re: Everything

Belkin WeMo wall socket adapters would allow one to do this with anything that plugs in to the wall already. I have one myself and rate it quite highly, in fact I may buy a second one day. The feature I like is that it has a timer function that can utilise local sunset/sunrise data to turn a set of lights on at dusk and off at sunrise every day, now that's magic...

Boffins: Antarctic glacier in irreversible decline, will raise sea levels by 1cm

How things have changed...

I remember growing up in the seventies how England was such a cold, wet, windy place. Seems funny to think about that looking out of the window right now!

Think your brilliant app idea will earn some big bucks? HAH. You fool

Seems that Apple, Google et al love to trot out how many apps they have in their stores whenever the situation allows, what a skewed measure of success! This is then further compounded in the general media by stories of the "successful Apple having over a million apps", while also ran's e.g. MS, BB have only a couple of thousand.

So no incentive to employ any kind of quality control really while this KPI is king. The real measure of an app stores value would be something more like number of apps above a threshold of downloads, say 10 a day on average over the past month.

Resellers, distributors - your countdown to oblivion starts NOW

Which brings us to the second way we can view this, from the evolution point of view...

"Which brings us to the second way we can view this, from the evolution point of view. It's often described as the survival of the fittest but that's not really quite right. For it is the environment itself that does the selecting. You can be the fittest cheetah on the planet but you're not going to survive in a swamp as one."

In respect to biological evolution, fittest does not equate to physical fitness but rather as in 'fit for purpose'.

This explains why a very physically 'fit', but highly specialised company, when faced with new environmental pressures that it is not well adapted to suddenly finds itself no longer fit for purpose in the new context (think polar bear with no ice, still physically fit, no longer fit for purpose).

Brew me up, bro: 11-year-old plans to make BEER IN SPACE

Re: I'm surprised

Pint of Stellar Artois anyone?

I, for one, welcome our robotic communist jobless future

Re: Deja vu @ledswinger

I would suggest that those tasks would be handled internally, i.e. between myself, my wife, grandparents, neighbours etc. After all, how do many of us spend our weekends already?