I used to work on a helldesk for a financial company that supported remote branches that had no local techie. One chap landed a call about a file server that wouldn't boot and after supposedly trying all of the usual booked an engineer (which cost the company) to go out and check it. The engineer arrived on-site, pressed the eject button on the floppy drive and went home. Needless to say my colleague got thoroughly chewed out for that.
Posts by RoninRodent
43 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Oct 2013
Outsourcer didn't press ON switch, so Reg reader flew 15 hours to do the job
Mars water discovery is a liberal-muslim plot, cry moist conspiracy theorists
You lucky devs: It's Microsoft Office 2016 ... and VBA lives on
AF-FIR-MAT-IVE: Second suspension for robot-voice helldesker
At one of my phone jobs (many years ago, not a helldesk) there was a guy who would answer every single call in a different accent. Sometimes if the caller had an accent he would mimic it if they spoke first. His accents were really good too.
This place had a script which he kept to and was a total professional other than the accents so whilst management weren't overly happy with it they couldn't actually find anything other than the accents to reprimand him for. None of the callers ever complained. His defence was "well, would you have a problem if I was genuinely from Scotland or somewhere else where an accent was common?"
WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg
US watchdog POKES STICK at Google's Android over rival-blocking allegations
The Amazon app store sits alongside Google Play on my Android just fine. What is to stop Microsoft and others creating a competing store?
Don't like Google Play? Fork the AOSP and put your own stuff in it. It isn't like MS doesn't have it's own handset business.
MS and Nokia complained? Was that one exec complaining in different voices?
Get whimsical and win a Western Digital Black 6TB hard drive
Windows 10 Edge: Standards kinda suck yet better than Chrome?
Chill, luvvies. The ‘unsustainable’ BBC Telly Tax stays – for now
I haven't owned a TV in more than 15 years (am 38) as the quality of all of the channels was so poor it just wasn't worth it to me at least. Endless repeats, rubbish soaps and when reality TV started replacing all of the other content I just threw in the towel. I kept paying the fee for a few years as they kept threatening me with things like "if you have a computer you need a licence". In the end I figured bring it on.
Inspector 1 turns up with a skip in his step thinking he had caught somebody. He visibly deflated when I offered him tea and asked him to help himself to the cupboards and attic.
Nothing for a few years and another one turned up and this one also thought he had bagged a winner. He actually looked angry when he left.
Not heard from them since.
I have not used the iPlayer once. I might cast an eye over the "news" (I use the term loosely) section of their website on really slow day at work if I run out of internet to read but honestly they could shut it down tomorrow and it would be months until I noticed.
On the plus side I barely know who Simon Cowell is and don't see what the fuss is over things like X Factor and Britain's Got Talent. They can't be that bad can they? :)
Windows 10 bombshell: Microsoft to KILL OFF Patch Tuesday
Re: Just like Windows Phone
> But now with Android the dominant phone platform, you'd think Google would have the muscle to push back and INSIST on them being able to update Android themselves, regardless of manufacturer, as a matter of security. Make it a condition of carrying the Play Store and all of Google's special Android sauce. What manufacturer (apart from those like Amazon who have their own infrastructure) would refuse to carry that and hamstring their phones? Why wasn't this forced with Lollipop?
Google: Release updates in a timely fashion or else.
Carriers: Ok, we will stop using Android then.
Google: ...
That is why. Android might be popular because it is convenient and free to use but it is not the only option.
Google recognised this and de-coupled everything they could from the base OS and included it in Google Play. This allows them to push as many updates as possible via Play whilst side-stepping the carriers. Try disabling Play and see what still functions. It is not a perfect solution but this is a battle Google really can't win as they have no real options. Push the carriers too hard and they drop Android. Release the updates themselves and carriers can't add their crapware so they drop Android. Include the carriers crapware themselves and Google then take the blame.
Frontier promises it won't 'dumb down' Elite: Dangerous for Xbox
> In the next couple of months, Frontier plans to release another upgrade pack, dubbed "Powerplay." Frontier isn't saying what's in it, but it's likely to include more features for collaborative play and allow more equitable sharing of bounties between hunters.
A couple of Redditors have been digging around in the client and found references to a possible Arena Commander-style game mode which is effectively deathmatch in space so it may be that.
FD also registered the trademark Elite: Deadly recently but no clues as to what that will be yet.
Pirate Bay data now tugged by IP-address-tracking current
Anybody using TPB is operating in the open anyway and any logging by CloudFlare is just an extra layer on top. A lot of people using torrents do not understand their IP address is clearly visible to anybody else in the swarm and tracing them is trivial. I rather shocked a friend when I showed them the "peers" tab on his torrent client and did a whois on several of the addresses as they thought the whole thing was totally secure and untraceable.
If you are going to torrent TPB is the very last place you should use as it is nothing but a pool for police to fish. I don't even see why they insisted on getting it blocked in the UK as having it available is nothing but a boon for the authorities.
Future imperfect: A UK broadband retrospective
Re: Hmmm the Alcatel 'Snotblob'.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! MAKE IT GO AWAY!!
Sorry, the memories of this thing are still strong in my mind.
I had bonded ISDN and when I asked about upgrading to DSL the helpful chap at BT informed me that I would have to pay off my remaining ISDN contract, there would be an ISDN de-installation fee (~£200) followed by a DLS installation fee (~£200) and a year lock-in.
When I finally got that all sorted out one of those horrible green things arrived. Every machine I plugged it into started to BSOD and it happened more and more frequently until I gave in, rebuilt the machine and moved the "frog" to another machine on the LAN. Every machine (a variety of chipsets) worked fine until it had that bloody Alcatel driver installed and worked fine again after a wipe. Many online gaming sessions ruined and being the "techie" responsible for it in a shared house I got most of the blame.
Eventually I got rid of the frog and replaced it with something else (can't remember what now but I was desperate) and we planned a fitting end to the green thing. We ran it over with a van several times and set fire to the remains.
Mine is the one with the medication in the pocket.
Elite:Dangerous goes TITSUP
Re: not standing up for the game but
Have you actually played the game? I have been playing since beta and I have seen them manipulate the universe right down to commodity prices in realtime with my own eyes so yes it is run on the server. At one point an exploit was found with a specific mission type and that mission type vanished from the bulletin boards within the hour. There is a very good reason why it is always online and part of that reason is security/anti-hacking.
XML downloads? Well, I guess it could be done but what happens when 1 client doesn't get that download and becomes out of sync with the rest of the universe? No way that could go wrong.
Re: not standing up for the game but
> If there's no DRM aspect involved, then why not offer a local server download option now so people can run the game privately, solo and/or just with their own friends?
Because they would like you to keep playing their version as the more players on their servers the more these players influence the ongoing story. As there is no subscription model they want you buying paint jobs and other such fluff to help keep the lights on.
> No bodge, just code AI for computer generated players that does the same job instead of real players. Playing solo you don't see the players anyway so it makes crap all difference who's generating the "dynamic" data.
They would have to do it for a lot more than just commodities but it would be possible with some work. That leaves you with fairly static trading, combat against AI only and a fairly bland selection of pre-baked missions. There would be no story and nothing in the universe would ever change. I admit that the universe is a little empty right now since things are just beginning but the offline mode would have been much emptier.
> The backers though wearing rose tinted glasses expected Elite in the style than Bell & Braben. What they've got is another solo Braben mess.
What many of the naysayers seem to want is the same exact game they had 30 years ago with some flashy new graphics. There are other games that have delivered that style of experience many times over the years and adding another one to the pile wouldn't really be an achievement. What backers wanted was an evolution of Elite taking it to the next level and most of the players feel they have mostly done that. Almost all of the reviews I have read are positive too (though they all admit there are issues that need working on).
The reason is because FD can continually tweak the game by seeding events and storylines whenever they want to as well as adding new story/mission types over time that can involve many players at once. Without that everybody is in their own hermetically sealed bubble of pre-made events and the only combat you would ever get is against AI. Personally I think online was the right way to go as dogfighting other players is infinitely better than dogfighting AI.
If you want that bubble there are other games that give you an Elite-style experience but FD are trying to evolve the game not just regurgitate a HD remake of the original.
Re: not standing up for the game but
You are badly misinformed. The removal of offline has nothing to do with DRM. Everything in the game is controlled by the servers right down to the market prices and availability. Without the server nothing works. They could have bodged some code in for commodities, ship and module availability but it would be very static and bland compared to the online version.
They have said that if they ever have to shut the servers down they would release the server-end daemons and databases so you aren't cut off from the game. They announced this before release and I can only think of one other game company that did that (and that was well after they shut down).
If you are going to spread information at least fact-check it first eh?
Re: Elite has so far never worked for me
Support are absolutely flooded in the wake of offlinegate + launch + holidays. Something like 18k tickets have been logged in 3 weeks and by the time they realised they had a problem it was too close to the holidays to recruit new support staff. Many of us think the offlinegate lot are intentionally flooding support to try and ruin the game. They are certainly griefing new players.
If you have posted in the support forums several players (myself included) are doing their best to help but obviously there are some things we can't fix.
Space Commanders lock missiles on Elite's Frontier Devs
Re: As much depth as TOWIE.
> Combat is clunky and slow, the deliberate crippling of yaw movement sounded like a good idea at first, but in practice, it's a forced mechanic that just doesn't make the slightest bit of sense in space.
If yaw was faster then combat would be 2 ships at a dead stop swivelling around (turreting) which is why they gimped it.
Horses for courses. You don't like that game and you are entitled to your opinion. I personally love it and many others do too. It may have it's faults in the current state (and I am not so blind I don't see them) but it has a long way to go yet.
I still don't understand what all the fuss is about. Admittedly a few backed a primarily online game relying on the offline mode do have something of a point but they still backed an online game.
The reasoning for the withdrawal is based on how the game has evolved as whilst it started out as a remake it has evolved far beyond that. Not only are the commodity prices, ship and module availability dictated by the server the entire universe is which wasn't the original plan. Frontier can curate the universe and trigger events, inject custom missions and that sort of thing. They could provide an offline version by bodging in some code to control the markets and provide some basic mission templates but it would be a very bland and empty experience which would be totally sub-par compared to the online version. Reviewers would pan the offline version tarnishing the reputation of the online version. The announcement wasn't handled well and the timing was simply down to the fact they kept looking at ways of producing a decent offline mode for as long as they possibly could.
The solo mode is there for those that don't want multiplayer so you get the curated universe and all of the ongoing events but you will never see another human player and unless you add people to your friends list you will never hear from another player either.
The chief reason many threw their toys out of their prams was that if Frontier even shut the server down you couldn't play anymore. £40 for a game you can play for free for (hopefully) many years didn't enter into their thinking. It isn't like other games ever shut down. Frontier also said (before they had even released the game) that if they ever shut the servers down they would release an archive of the server back-end for users to roll their own.
> Love the graphics in Elite Dangerous, but when they began promising in-game advantages for real cash (second ship etc) I realised that they'd lost the essence of what I'd wanted and walked away.
This is absolutely not the case. You cannot buy anything but cosmetics for real money. I think you are confusing the kickstarter backer rewards as backing to a certain level got you an improved starter ship. If you bought in during beta you got the mercenary edition and a few digital bits thrown in and if you could upgrade a pre-order to the merc pack.
Space Commanders rebel as Elite:Dangerous kills offline mode
There has been a lot of uproar about this but the bottom line is that they have moved so much stuff to the servers they physically cannot produce an offline version now. All of the commodity prices, background simulation, module upgrade availability, bulletin board missions, injected events and I suspect even the NPC AI are run from the servers.
Ok, so you could quickly whip up a a bit of code for commodity prices, ships and modules but that still leaves you with an largely empty universe. Do you really want a version where trading and combat is all you can do?
Solo mode is just fine. You still get a whole dynamic universe but you don't have to deal with spotty 13 year olds making assumptions about your mother.
I have some sympathy for those without internet or very spotty connections but then how were they going to be getting their patches? It was billed primarily as an MMO after all.
Ab phab: Apple is Britain's coolest brand YET AGAIN
Re: Only one one the list
> Anyone that thinks Apple is cool, obviously isn't. Something that sells by the multi millions can never be on a hip-list. Hip and Cool are what makes you different from others......definateyll not that which makes you the same.
Couldn't agree more. 2012 specs at a premium price and Apple fans still think they can tout it as the best thing ever. It just goes to show they care about the brand more than the actual products.
On another note I have the coolest and most innovative way of hammering nails in right here. It absolutely is not a small rock with an Apple sticker on it even though it looks kind of like one. It took years of R&D to develop and is covered by a patent covering "roughly round with one flat surface" that we totally invented. Anyone want to buy it for £1000? It just works!
Boffins propose security shim for Android
Re: It's the humans, stupid, and boy, are they stupid
If you have Jellybean or later (not sure if it works on older versions) you can install AppOps from the play store which lets you remove individual permissions from apps. It also tells you exactly what permissions an app has if you can't remember and if the app is actually using those permission rules or not.
For example I can see a list of everything that has access to "messaging" and for each app I can see exactly what access it has. The Android entry can read, receive, write, delete and send SMS as you would expect. AirDroid can too but I can see it hasn't done so in months (since I last read my messages on my PC). I can revoke each individual permission from any app I like.
What's in your toolbox? Why the browser wars are so last decade
> Safari and Internet Explorer lag a little bit when it comes to the bleeding edge of web standards because they update less frequently, but both are capable.
I have one response to this. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. You clearly know nothing about browsers.
Aggressive caching when told not to cache and not obeying the W3C standard padding box model by default are just 2 ways IE has wasted a lot of my time in the last 2 weeks alone. If I counted up the sheer number of hours I have spent tweaking sites that work perfectly in every other browser to also work correctly in IE over the years I would be looking at a very large number indeed. If every web designer could bill Microsoft for the time they spent satisfying that utter piece of crap until it behaves it would bankrupt the company.
IE is "capable" as a browser in the same way as 2 tin cups and a piece of string are "capable" as a modern communication method.
XBOX One will learn to play media from USB and DLNA sources
Re: Genius!
> How come it didn't come with DNLA built-in? File formats aside that seems like a glaring omission from something that only works when connected to the telly.
2 words. Microsoft arrogance.
When they did the big announcement for the xbone the entire presentation was on how it was a "media centre" and a "social networking hub" with a VERY small section of the presentation showcasing games (you know, it's actual function). Anybody with a brain knew from this presentation that the xbone was going to fail.
Basically they restricted the ability to get video from anywhere but the paid marketplace in the assumption that it would force lots of music and video purchases from the store.
Months later they realise that this hasn't happened and they have basically lost the next-gen console war so now they are scrabbling to add features to help boost sales. First Kinect went from "always on" to "can be switched off" as "always on" was universally slammed, then it became an optional addon and now they are scraping the barrel. Expect more free game deals soon.
London cops cuff 20-year-old man for unblocking blocked websites
Re: Prediction for the next step
I agree with this. Back before Kazaa and their ilk appeared a much bigger file sharing network existed on IRC and the catalogs I used to see there had several terabytes of music alone on individual file servers and this was in the days where you couldn't buy a 1TB drive. Warez sites migrated around with files split into spanned archives and mirrored on several (usually free) hosts to help avoid takedowns. You had to know where to look for content and IRC isn't easy for non-technical people either. File sharing was never mentioned by the authorities in those days. Those IRC chat-rooms places still exist today and yet I have not once heard any mention of IRC and file sharing over the years.
Then Kazaa/Morpheus appeared which were easy enough to the technically clueless to use making illegal downloads a simple search and click affair for non-techies and boom - big news. Then the whack-a-mole started and each time they kill off a file sharing service another one pops up. By the time BitTorrent appears the younger generation (and many of the older generation) have basically stopped caring whether content is legal or not and it has gotten so big the authorities now can't stop it.
Now they are trying even increasingly desperate, pointless and unfeasible ways to try and stop it. Even worse is they are poisoning legitimate content with DRM, unskippable ads, FBI warnings and geo-locking making the illegal content far more attractive than legal content seemingly without realising it is totally counter-productive. The authorities are doing far more to accelerate piracy than actual pirates which just goes to prove just how clueless contents providers are. Until legitimate services offer the same or superior content to the illegal ones as a reasonable price the problem won't go away and even then it will just reduce it some as there are always those that want something for free.
NUDE SNAPS AGENCY: NSA bods love 'showing off your saucy selfies'
Re: Why am I not surprised by this?
> But I wonder, if they intercept a 13 year old's sexy pic, will someone charge them with child porn? I'm guessing not since they're above the law.
Given that GCHQ, with aid from the NSA, spent 2 years collecting millions (possibly billions) of images from Yahoo! webcams as part of Optic Nerve and they admitted "it would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person" and "between 3% and 11% of the Yahoo webcam imagery harvested by GCHQ contains 'undesirable nudity'" what percentage of that contained underage users? Nobody would believe that percentage is zero and yet there have been no arrests.
That says it all.
Missiles-on-rooftops Brit spy Farr: UK gov can slurp your Facebook, Twitter ... What of it?
> If the intelligence services happened to hoover up some internal communications accidentally, they could just not look at them without a warrant.
As they have no oversight and nobody would know they looked at it and as they can't be prosecuted it wouldn't matter anyway. With no deterrent the above statement is worthless. He may as well say "we promise not to look, honest!"
> He also said that even when analysts did happen to violate people’s privacy by accessing their internal communications in error, people shouldn’t worry because they’d probably forget what they saw anyway.
See.
I once saw leaked pics of a certain female celeb I wasn't supposed to see. I haven't forgotten and neither would the analysts if they "accidentally" saw something interesting.
> “British residents are being deprived of the essential safeguards that would otherwise be applied to their communications - simply because they are using services that are based outside the UK,” Privacy International said in a statement.
Incorrect as shown above. We are being deprived of the essential safeguards that should be applied to our communications because the spooks are above the law, above reproach and not held to any form of oversight or accountability.
The Force of tax breaks brings Star Wars filming to Blighty
Re: Filmed in the UK for the tax breaks,
Normally I would have agreed with you but so far we have seen shots of a Millennium Falcon model and some form of giant rat-beast so there may be less green screen and more scale models than we are assuming.
http://metro.co.uk/2013/07/29/star-wars-episode-7-to-see-less-cgi-and-more-models-and-real-droids-3902277/
http://www.tmz.com/2014/06/03/star-wars-episode-7-millennium-falcon-set-photos/
http://www.tmz.com/2014/06/02/star-wars-episode-7-set-photos-secret-pics-new-creature/
Android is a BURNING 'hellstew' of malware, cackles Apple's Cook
Re: Idiot misses the point... on purpose?
> You should upgrade to the latest OS, always, because you need the latest security fixes. Obviously, you upgraded from iOS5 to iOS6 easily, this is not possible on Android. You need to get the phone manufacturer to release a new version of Android for your phone, which he has no inclination to do coz he wants you to get the new shiny one.
It has already been posted that this is completely incorrect unless you have Honeycomb or earlier which is nearly 4 years old. As of Ice Cream Sandwich Google have decoupled almost everything from Android and linked it to Google Play. This allows them to deploy security updates without having to upgrade Android itself.
> Android phones are crap because they sync everything to the cloud ... now you can disable some of those "features", but it remains a sieve.
By default it only synchs your contacts and email and only if you sign in with a Google account.
> You are often stuck with an outdated OS and with multiple apps that have similar confusing names, some of which are malware/adware.
You only have multiple apps with similar names if you have installed them. That is user choice not something dictated by the OS. Your claim of malware is pretty ridiculous too unless you are downloading from dodgy sources and side-loading as Google checks the store contents just like Apple do. I have yet to see a malware-infected app from the Play store and I have been using Android since Froyo. I admit there is more than on Apple devices but that is only because Apple is far more restrictive with what you can do with their devices.
Apple = locked down walled garden where you can only do what Apple allow. Very old devices don't get updates.
Android = More open platform that allows the user to decide what they do and don't want to do. Very old devices do not get updates.
2 sides of the same coin and neither is "better" than the other - it is just preference. Just pick which one you like. Pretty simple really.
Snowden never blew a whistle, US spy boss claims
John McAfee declares war on Android
HARD ONES: Three new PC games that are BLOODY DIFFICULT
Re: Less than generous respawn points ... rehashing whole swathes of levels again and again
> Having a respawn 2 seconds ago makes the game a 1 on 1 battle each time. Yea I beat that last mob/boss. Save carry on beat the next, save.
I can't really understand all of the downvotes here. Savescumming is it is known requires no skill as you say and some games (like the new X-COM) have anti-savescum code. Save right before the tricky bit and blindly mash buttons until you beat it through blind luck. Rinse. Repeat. That is definitely not learning how game mechanics work it is exploiting bad mechanics to save you from having to learn how to actually play the game.
Having to replay a level or having to go back to the last enforced save point (if you can't just save whenever) isn't so bad but I still have nightmares about those games you couldn't save at all. Power cuts, dodgy power packs/cables and "Turn that thing off and come eat dinner young man!" all featured in my youth.
KCOM-owned Eclipse FAILS to cover up the password 'password'
Want access to mobe users' location, camera, phone ID? EXPLAIN YOURSELVES - ICO
Re: choice of apps
Actually there is a reason most apps need to read "phone features". If you are playing the latest Angry Pigeons and somebody calls you how is the app to know it needs to step aside and let the phone app pop up so you can answer the call? It needs to read incoming call status which is part of "phone features".
That said there is nothing stopping that app monitoring your calls and more explanation is which "phone features" the app needs access to as many other thangs are lumped under the same name.
No anon pr0n for you: BT's network-level 'smut' filters will catch proxy servers too
Re: First they came for the DNS
Lots are saying that changing DNS servers will bypass it but it won't. CleanFeed, which is used for the blocking, isn't as limp as a DNS block. Left to the government it would have been that useless but BT actually produced a fairly decent blocking system when they implemented CleanFeed. It was supposed to be used to block kiddy pr0n only but surprise surprise the government hijacked it.
Oi, Obama. Rein your spooks in, demands web giants' alliance
Re: Dear 8 Heavyweights
If the requests come with a court order they can't which is the problem. Courts are just rubber-stamping any old request from spook agencies and if the companies refuse to action the requests they will get slapped with heavy fines for every day they do not comply.
The only solution is to get the governments to rein in the spooks in which I what these 9 are trying for. They also know that is just going to result in a claim they are and a gag order preventing those companies from saying otherwise. It is a token effort at best.
UK.gov's web filtering mission creep: Now it plans to block 'extremist' websites
Re: I have a problem
> However, if I refuse to say yes or no to the filters will I be able to access the internet.
The filters will default to on as pushed for by Cameron. Say nothing and you get the "Government approved" sites only.
> Now they are saying that the same filters that will block access to Porn will be used to block access to sites which are extremist but no one has defined what constitutes extremist
This is the entire point. They won't classify it because then they can add whatever they want to the block list and nobody can say "that doesn't follow your rules". You can't see what is on the list and presumably if your site ends up on the block list you have nobody you can appeal to to get the block lifted.
The original proposals were just about porn but later stories mentioned violence, drugs, tobacco, alcohol and a whole bunch of other stuff. I am not fooling myself into thinking that once the block goes in that all of that and more will be blocked.
> If these things come to pass, then I for one will sue my ISP for refusing me access to the service
They will have no choice but to change their terms and conditions as the ISPs are not in control of the block list. They have no more control over it than you do.
HOLY how-did-we-get-here?: Batman Arkham Origins
Re: Arkham Sidescroller
> With more than three combatants, you can't knock anyone out without their buddy coming along and interrupting the sequence. Not to mention being surrounded by seven guys with automatic weapons and all I can do is knock one down for four or five seconds.
You aren't supposed to focus on just one goon when swamped for this very reason. Hit goon A once, switch direction and try hitting goon B. Even if goon B is out of reach bats should leap towards them and the hit should connect. Keep bouncing between the goons and it stuns each long enough for you to hit a few more. If you pick your directions carefully you can keep yourself away from attacks. Sometimes one might get close to you before you are ready so just use a counter as the counter will interrupt the combo.
I messed up inside GCPD and got swamped by about 30 cops but survived by doing this. It is also how you get the really big combos by chaining the goons in the same combo.
> The repetitive moves to take down a boss are also irritating. Having to repeat the same sequence three times over is just unimaginative.
I'm not too far into Origins but they seem to have addressed this to some degree. The Deathstroke fight requires you to mix it up and if you keep doing the same thing you are dead pretty quick. I really enjoyed that one as each time I thought I was making progress he switched tactics on me.