Posts by Farmer Fred

UK telcos didn't collude to put Phones 4u out of business – judge

P4U was a dead duck long before Skodafone and Nothing Nowhere pulled the plugs. Many factors played their part, but advertising campaigns that inferred that their potential customers were window licking inbreds has to rank fairly highly on the Ratner scale!

Intel offers desktop chip that can hit 6GHz if everything goes right, you can keep it cool, stars align, pigs fly

Re: It Computes OK.

The question is this: given that God is infinite, and that the Universe is also infinite...would you like a toasted teacake?

Blighty's buying another 17 F-35s, confirms the American government

Re: F-35A

A is for Awful, B is Bl**dy Awful

Toshiba's nuclear power plant business runs out of steam

Re: Hmmm

Yes, but he's going to need some new fast breeders to keep up with his requirements for weapons grade materials.

Boeing's 747 to fly off the production line for the foreseeable future

Re: Is UPS really that clueless?

No, they are saying (or trying to) that the need to shift freight around is being driven by internet shopping - hence the need for more jumbos.

BOFH: There are no wrong answers, just wrong questions. Mmm, really wrong ones

Re: 2B) or not.

"I am not an axe murderer - I have no problems with axes, it's people I have issues with and axes are very good for resolving those issues."

Maplin Electronics demands cash with menaces

Overstaffed and overpriced...

Ditch the overstaffing and cut prices around 30% and the might have a viable business. I went into one on a trading estate at 6:30pm one Wednesday evening and there were two staff that I could see out back (playing football with a lump of bubble wrap), three wandering the empty aisles and two on tills with no customers... now I'm no HR specialist (although I do work in retail), but I do think that level of staffing would be more commensurate with a Saturday!

I always chuckle when I recall the three way branding split - Maplin (consumers and small stores), MPS (business customers) and Mondo (superstores instead of corner shops) - I said back then that it wouldn't last and would push them over to a more consumer oriented operation.

BOFH: In-depth IT training needs a single-malt distillery

Wrong approach

Personally I would have invited the director to join the trip as a bribe to bend the rules and allow the PFY to come along... the bastardry being that I would engineer a situation on day one involving a sedative, the director, three tubs of lard, a goat, a Filipino ladyboy and a smoked salmon... thus providing ample ammunition for future "negotiations"!

That said, the brown paper bag is one of my favourite tricks - although I prefer the air-bags that tend to be used to protect stuff in transit these days as with the paper bag you have to avoid rustling the paper!

Reg readers battle to claim 'my silicon's older than yours' crown

Eurobeeb

I knew of an early eurobeeb (circa '83) still running daily up until late '13 on a pick and place machine - it had to go as there wasn't an easy way to transfer new placement files and hand entering all the data was too cumbersome! Sadly I was half an hour short on saving it from being hammered into pieces.

Windows 10 mobile upgrade coming in December

Re: Great picture.

Wasn't 95/98 on something like 26 floppies? I seem to recall doing an install of something where disc 21 had a bad sector gdut, gdut, gdut, gdurrrrrtt, gdut, gdut, gdut, gdurrrtt, gdut......

3D printer blueprints for TSA luggage-unlocking master keys leak online

Exactly...

This is why I never put anything in my hold luggage of any value/importance - those little locks take about 10 seconds to bypass even on good quality hard cases. Plus there is also the risk of your bag being sent on a round the world trip - especially if you are travelling via LHR T5!

Camera-carrying DOLPHIN SPY caught off Gaza

Ah, but are they effective against mind controlled giant squid?

Doom, Mario, Pac-Man level up to video gaming's Hall of Fame

Don't forget....

An honourable mention has to go to Nokia Snake, Qbasic Gorillas, Scorch and Asteroid.

Yes! It's DRONE PORN. And we don't mean shiny pics of UAVs

Re: Strange

I'm no expert, but it seemed to me that it a lot of the scenes the relevant body parts are not close enough for anything much to be happening anyway - I suspect that's partly why the scenes change as soon as the drone gets close. I've seen harder material on channels 4 & 5!

LOHAN wraps Kickstarter tin-rattling at £30,725

Re: Still pending word from the FAA...

...erm I think you are thinking of the Vogons, who are generally somewhat easier to deal with than the inhabitants of the so called "Land of the Free (subject to terms and conditions....)".

Thinking about it ... given the increasingly similar appearance of the two & that the output of much of the American music industry increasingly resemble Vogon poetry ... I can understand your mistake.

LOHAN acquires aircraft arboreal avoidance algorithm acronyms

A bit weak, but...

Nodal

Operating

Program

Avoiding

Nasty

Tree

Strike

LOHAN seeks stirring motto for spaceplane mission patch

Veni, vidi, edi arvina

Or

Veni, vidi, bibit cervisiam

Ego me tunica...

SCIENCE explains why you LOVE the smell of BACON

Re: I miss real bacon..

>> Yorkshire Puddings

Flour, eggs, milk & a pinch of salt - into a tin with some hot veggie oil (or fat) and into a hot oven

>> fish

Similar mix to above, coat fish and into boiling veggie oil (or fat)

>> chips

Peel and chop some humble spuds, soak in water for an hour or two then into boiling veggie oil (or fat)

... not rocket science

>> curry from Bradford

ah, you have me there...

BT Sport scores own goal with £897m Champions League footie rights deal

Re: To be Fair

Actually the two boxes are because pre V5 versions of the Home Hub do not handle VDSL, whereas the HH5 does, installations with pre V5 have to use a separate modem. For office politics it was decided that Openreach would supply modem where required.