Posts by Martin-73

'I don’t want to see another computer for the rest of my life'... Brit Dark Overlord cyber-extortionist thrown in an American clink for five years

It is. We have to prove stuff. The septics just need to suspect. Utterly farcical treaty.

Re: Five years - Not Enough

It's to do with America. And like Germany during the years running up to WW2, the Führer will be associated with the country, until it dies. (either him or the country)

Ancient telly borked broadband for entire Welsh village

Re: OFCOM

Maybe a couple of decades ago. These days they don't give a monkey's. People calling from easily identifiable UK companies despite the TPS list?... they don't care. BT themselves supplying 'wifi extender plugs' that can wipe out shortwave for hundreds of yards... they won't do bugger all :(

Re: More to the point

That utterly does my head in. "anyone else having trouble with virgin wifi?"

No, because virgin don't supply wifi. They give you the kit that YOU use to generate the wifi signal with

0ops. 1,OOO-plus parking fine refunds ordered after drivers typed 'O' instead of '0'

Re: And this ladies and gentlemen...

I genuinely wonder about the nuances of this... having been harrassed by a private parking company for a horrible 2 years. Is there a law against me having an LCD on my license plates that simply blacks them out... and flipping the switch when entering ANPR range?

Other options include parking out of range, using my keys to open the ANPR camera mast's access cover, and unplugging that shit.

Re: And this ladies and gentlemen...

Let's leave aside the fact the DVLA should not be sharing personally identifiable data in the first place. I had a huge fight with them over this. Hint... i won. Never paid the ticket from a private bunch of bastards they leaked my data to. (no i was NOT avoiding paying for parking)

Re: good grief

1 million cars is plausible and doable in 6 digits. fewer if you use letters. ?

Re: good grief

letter, 3 digits, letter [DL] used to be good for identifying Isle of Wight registered drivers hereabouts. They were usually very good drivers, as the isle of wight does NOT believe in road signs, so they had a sixth sense

Re: good grief

That sounds spectacularly stupid. And the site you posted is a .com, not a .gov... and timed out. Illinois was always weird

Re: good grief

That brings to mind the sketch from the Two Ronnies where Mr Corbett claims to have an 'A reg'. As indeed he did. LOL

Re: And this ladies and gentlemen...

To be fair to the government, literally EVERYONE KNOWS their own license plate... the issue arises with hire or loan vehicles.

I can 'proceed without you', judge tells Julian Assange after courtroom outburst

Re: Blackmailed

They gave away the fact the government were acting illegally. If that's a crime in itself, then the system can fsck off.

The government are representatives of the PEOPLE. Therefore the PEOPLE have a right to know EVERYTHING they do. National security is horse shite.

Re: Blackmailed

Yes, I was witness to that in the US. It rather ruined my love of the country.

I did, however, get away with telling a rather obnoxious cop to go f*** himself a few days later when his sgt decided we were in the right.

With a million unwanted .uk domains expiring this week, Nominet again sends punters pushy emails to pay up

You are a Bastard. A capital B Bastard. (this is a compliment). Now i am watching the video on youtube. And it will be in my mind for weeks.

Well played

Everything's falling apart. The Moon is slowly rusting up – and it's probably Earth's fault

Wait.... was the Clanger's planet the Moon?

[no, srsly!]

Happy birthday to the Nokia 3310: 20 years ago, it seemed like almost everyone owned this legendary mobile

If I recall correctly, the aerial was superfluous but people 'expected' it

Re: I'll See Your 33xx and Lower You

Yes, +1 for the 5110 (or PCS , 1800MHz equivalent (5120 maybe, it's been a while)) were de rigueur for early adopting 'pay as you go' types. The 3310 was a premium device. The 5110 and variants were the iconic 'you find them everywhere and they can't be destroyed' phone, at least here in Blighty

UK govt: It's time to get staff back into the office! Capita: Hey everyone... about that...

Re: Capita's entire 'raison d'etre' is fales

Probably one of thatcher's scheming evil b... I mean the conservatives

Capita's entire 'raison d'etre' is fales

So shut them down. Not the offices, the entire damn company. Public sector stuff should NOT be outsourced, that's why it's public sector.

Bloody thatcher, what a cow

'A guy in a jetpack' seen flying at 3,000ft within few hundred yards of passenger jet landing at LA airport

While the guy is clearly a mental midget....

He is at least proving that we are in fact living in the 21st century. With lockdowns and politics and a global plague i was wondering.

Icon because (a) he should have used one

and (b) I suspect he soon will be a passenger in one.

Relying on plain-text email is a 'barrier to entry' for kernel development, says Linux Foundation board member

Re: You don't have to be old to hate HTML emails

I haven't been bound by a legal update to terms from ebay or paypal for well over a decade due to them sending updates that when viewed as text/plain are entirely empty.

Um, almost the entire Scots Wikipedia was written by someone with no idea of the language – 10,000s of articles

Re: Local 'languages'

I firmly believe en_US should be renamed USAnian... (not joking)

It would eliminate a WHOLE RAFT of nitpicking about spelling and so forth...

Re: Local 'languages'

Your mask slipped, but... he was you, me... he was all of us

Re: Enough

Yes, I follow a few linguistics podcasts. Quite educational... welsh basically means 'foreign, untrustworthy' :( Which is sad.

Same etymology as 'to welch on a deal'

Disclosure: I'm half welsh but never sure which half :)

Re: International Recognition

I suspect the 49% of England that wants independence is just seeking to distance itself from the utter fsckwits in westminster, who don't represent ANY of the countries of the union, just their own damned selves

Re: Wee radge bastard

I thought it was one step UP from that...

Icon: it's a pint of IrnBru

Epic move: Judge says Apple can't revoke Unreal Engine dev tools, asks 'Where does the 30 per cent come from?'

Re: Switching to Android

With Apple, doing it just to be bastards would be completely within their ethos.

This PDP-11/70 was due to predict an election outcome – but no one could predict it falling over

Ah that lot takes me back... having sky digital put in when it first came out, and the guy saying he had to take the existing analogue dish away as part of the free install deal. I pointed to the 1.4m dish with multiple LNB's on a special boom to allow the same dish to hit multiple sats, yep including 13 degrees east, as well as 19.2 for Astra and a few newsfeed satellites which could be interesting in the wee small hours.

He said 'ah, yeah... i'll just say it fell to bits on removal'

Re: Woking

Had a house we did wiring in where the kitchen lights would trip the breaker... turns out the previous owner was a BIG fan of downlights. I counted 27 lights in the kitchen alone. The upgrade to LED's resulted in a fairly enormous surge when the lights were put on (due to the bulk reservoir capacitor in the GU10 lamps).

Solved by fitting a C6 instead of a B6. (the loop impedance readings were adequate to allow this, and the kitchen's being redone next year)

Re: The elevator did it

Indeed, with a nokia 5110, my 97 car stereo sounds like galloping horses. Same exact stereo on 3 or 4G instead of 2G... silence.

Re: The elevator did it

Yep, some parts of the system used 100-0-100 too if i recall. Even telephone systems had 100v available for various bits of apparatus toward the end of the electromechanical era.

Re: The elevator did it

These are a few of my least favourite things

Marketing: Wow, that LD8 data centre outage was crazy bad. Still, can't get worse, can it? Finance: HOLD MY BEER

Re: Issues are piling up

Ah so you're their CEO...

Putting the d'oh! in Adobe: 'Years of photos' permanently wiped from iPhones, iPads by bad Lightroom app update

Re: Class action suit in 3... 2... 1...

Pretty sure you can't limit consumer protections like that.

TalkTalk, Three, and Virgin Media, come on down! You've all won a prize for... not being that great at something!

Re: Virgin Media Internet

Would NOT touch virgin with someone else's rented bargepole. Asked them about internet, but we're not in a cabled area... but they still at the time supplied ADSL via the virgin.net domain. As soon as they merged with vermin media... the ADSL dropped every 3 minutes. Regular as clockwork. It was absolutely deliberate, to gain revenue due to their 09xx style customer support numbers. utter shower of bastards.

PLUS they claim to provide fibre internet... I suppose the centre core of a coaxial cable is a type of very thick metal fibre, but .... no, it's not. They're liars and evil

'Get out of my office, you're being a pest!' Yes, son. Toymaker releases work-from-home-themed play sets

I did specify en route. The route is up to the imbiber :D

Icon coz a chaser is as close as we get to a tumbler of the good stuff

Re: Stuff that, I want one of these!

Yes, I'd forgotten that detail. I do hope it is still true. It would mean the officer deploying said weapon would have SOME empathy with the victim/perp/recipient

Re: Stuff that, I want one of these!

Definitely not arguing against the use of the devices. But arguing against the general concensus that they don't kill.

Re: Stuff that, I want one of these!

American Police call them 'less lethal'. Which is generally correct

British plod say 'they cause no lasting harm'. Which is disingenuous

Taking in all the distilleries en route, i hope?

Re: Stuff that, I want one of these!

Unless one is the police. Then it's fine.

Sorry, side rant about 'stun guns'.

They're dangerous says plod.

Plod uses stun guns:

Oh they're not dangerous

Oh what a feeling: New Toyotas will upload data to AWS to help create custom insurance premiums based on driver behaviour

Re: That's settled, then.

Study the Haynes manual?

Sun welcomes vampire dating website company: Arrgh! No! It burns! It buuurrrrnsss!

Re: Thanks For The Mental Image\Flashback

I am guessing the single downvote came from a prudish septic.

yes i said it

Re: Inappropriate garb? Me? Probably daily ...

better out than in, of that organization. timing sucks

Re: Inappropriate garb? Me? Probably daily ...

Drink to her memory :)

Re: "Come on the bus?" anecdote of the week...

Indeed. Sigh... a binge watch is in order

Re: For those that are not aware of who Gimlet is .....

Better than scorpion stare.... (must re-read)

Re: For those that are not aware of who Gimlet is .....

I indeed own a gimlet.

Ok it's a (UK) terminal screwdriver that got sharp to uselessness. Then i found a new use

Helps when fixing random crap to other random crap :)

Re: Inappropriate garb

*snarf*s the 'brightest spark in the muzzle flash' quote. Have a beer as compensation

Re: Inappropriate garb

Asking ahead of time probably got you a few plus points before the interview even started.