Posts by RobThBay

India makes buying a used cow easier than buying a used car

So if someone in India calls tech support.... which country does it go to?

Competitive techies almost bring distributed disaster upon themselves – and they didn't even find any aliens

I was doing the same thing with about 50 PC's until an enthusiastic employee wondered why the computers were left on all night. I told her she could turn the screens off but leave the computers on in case we needed to update them overnight. That worked for a while until noticed the seti logo in the tool tray on most of the computers.

US Air Force shows off latest all-electric flying car, says it 'might seem straight out of a Hollywood movie'

Hmmm.... a one person flying thingy.... anyone remember the jet pack that Sean Connery wore in an old James Bond movie?

Start Me Up: 25 years ago this week, Windows 95 launched and, for a brief moment, Microsoft was almost cool

Giant banner

I remember seeing a *huge* Win95 banner hanging down the side of the CN Tower in Toronto during the launch.

iPhone soon to be Hecho en Mexico? Taiwan's Foxconn, Pegatron mulling going south of the US border – report

My 2017 VW Golf was made in Mexico.

Blackberry used to manufacture some of their BB10 phones in Mexico.

Whoa-o BlackBerry, bam-ba-lam: QWERTY phone had a child. 5G thing's newly styled

My BB Passport is still going strong. I use all the time, it has been powered up for years and still lasts 2-3 days before needing charging.

The only quirk I've noticed is that it needs to be restarted after crossing time zones otherwise images attached to text messages don't arrive.

Eagle-on-EGLE* violence: American icon sends govt-flown drone hurtling into the waters of Lake Michigan

Since when is $950 considered pricey for a drone? Especially when the government is involved.

It sounds like he was operating BLOS (beyond line of sight). Isn't that frowned upon by the US gov't?

NASA to stop using names like 'Eskimo Nebula' and 're-examine' what it calls cosmic objects

Don't forget Red Dwarf

The tv show.

Re: Intresting...

And Kitchener, ontario (also Canada) used to be called Berlin. There's even a place called Swastika in Ontario.

Two large flightless birds walk into a bar... The pub's owner was not emused *ba-dum tsh*

I was wondering about term toileting as well. What word or phrase did he really use?

Not-so-paltry towers to float: Vodafone reveals IPO plans for mega European masts biz

To bad they think to name it Fawlty Towers.

China successfully launches Mars probe that packs an orbiter, lander, rover

"...yet another display of China’s emergence as a scientific superpower."

I would have it thought is was yet another display of China's emergence as a massive IP thief.

Pakistan pitches ‘most relaxed tax structure’ in the world to tech investors

Re: two thirds of humanity are within four air hours of Pakistan

Air hours?

Does that include time spent at the airport waiting in line or seated in the plane while it's taxiing around airport?

Trump's bright idea of kicking out foreign students unless unis resume in-person classes stuns tech, science world

Re: There are a broad number of reasons why Trump’s approval is falling

The trump fanbase of pandemic denying "I ain't gonna wear a mask because it violates my freedom" are starting to catch Covid and probably won't be around to vote.

Your 2.3m Instagram fans won't stop the FBI... Web star accused of plotting to launder millions from cyber-crime

Re: FBI Special Agent Andrew Innocenti

I guess Noinnocenti would be the surname of an unlawful relative.

China's internet watchdog freezes 10 too-trashy online video services before they undermine socialism

Re: Vulgar content

I'd forgotten about Naked News. Yay Canadian content!

Folk sure like to stick electric toothbrush heads in their ears: True wireless stereo sales buck coronavirus trends

Dr Who

Funny that no one has mentioned how much the apple airpods resemble the recent Cyberman ear pieces.

Huawei's EMUI 10.1 update shows Chinese mobile giant hunkering down for the long haul without Google wares

US English?

English vs 'merican

Roof -> Ruff

Turbine -> Turbin

Been -> Bin

Those are only a few examples of 'merican. :)

845GB of racy dating app records exposed to entire internet via leaky AWS buckets

Can we say blackmail these days?

So... master and slave tech designations are being "updated" to something more generic. Just wondering what the word blackmail will get updated to?

Frenchman scores €50k compensation for suffering 'bore-out' at work after bosses gave him 'menial' tasks

Re: placardisation

Wow, I thought I was the only to get treated that way by an employer. I managed to hold out for 6 years but the boredom and BS was not healthy.

They've only gone and bloody done it! NASA, SpaceX send two fellas off to the International Space Station

Trump should have been in the passenger seat of Elon's Tesla when it was launched.

Luckily I was called away from my screen during the Stable Genius' appearance.

Photostopped: Adobe Cloud evaporates in mass outage. Hope none of you are on a deadline, eh?

Adobe have a free product called DNG converter that gets updated once in while. It converts raw files (even the from newest cameras) into Adobe's DNG format which can be read by old versions of PS and Lightroom.

Gone in 9 seconds: Virgin Orbit's maiden rocket flight went perfectly until it didn't

9 seconds

Hmm.... were they using a single digit counter??

Embrace and kill? AppGet dev claims Microsoft reeled him in with talk of help and a job – then released remarkably similar package manager

Not surprised

MS has done that before.

I remember *years ago* when MS was talking about buying Simply Money. Then all went quiet, the deal was dropped and MS Money appeared.

SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon cleared to hoist real live American astronauts into space

Thanks for clearing that up. Seems odd they're still on EDT at this time of year

Live coverage

NASA live....

https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive

EST not EDT

There's only 4 hrs difference in the summer. 5hrs difference in winter (daylight savings time).

So launch at 4:33pm EST is 8:33 pm UK time.

Looking forward to it,

Alibaba to serve up Kentucky Fried smart speaker, with a $1.4bn side of e-commerce integration

KFC for breakfast??

Eewwww...yuck

Beer gut-ted: As many as '70 million pints' spoiled during coronavirus pandemic must be destroyed in Britain

Going to waste?

I thought beer usually went to waist.... :)

Worried about the magnetic North Pole sprinting towards Russia? Don't be, boffins say, it'll be back sooner or later

Re: @ Dinanziame

Or bird migration?

ALGOL 60 at 60: The greatest computer language you've never used and grandaddy of the programming family tree

The edit/compile/run cycle

"When your edit, compile, edit, compile cycle starts to get above about 10 minutes, you start to pay an awful lot of attention to your source code..."

I remember those days, except I was using punch cards instead of paper tape. Those long turn-arounds forced you to desk check your code and spend time debugging it properly.

Russia admits, yup, the Americans are right: One of our rocket's tanks just disintegrated in Earth's orbit

Hhmmm..... a spaaaace Roomba

Singapore releases the robot hounds to enforce social distancing in parks

K9

All it needs is a big Tom Baker style scarf.

Bye, Russia: NASA wheels out astronauts, describes plan for first all-American manned launch into orbit since 2011

Re: Look at 'em

Who could forget Bob and Doug McKenzie?

ICE cold: Microsoft's GitHub wrings hands over US prez's Trump immigration ban plan

Invisible enemy LOL

I wonder if his invisible friends helped him decide who the invisible enemy was?

Hhmm.... does that mean the invisible enemy of my invisible enemy is my invisible friend?

Police drone fliers' wings clipped to prevent them bumping into real aircraft

Mixed measurements

Why is altitude given in feet while horizontal distance is given in metres?

Iran military manages to keep a straight face while waggling miracle widget that 'can detect coronavirus from 100m away'

Re: Hmmmm...prior art?

Frying pan lid and dowsing rod...that was my first thought when I saw it.

Reminds me of those tv commercials selling "gadgets that you just have to have...but wait, order a 2nd one and only pay the shipping..."

The masks were there to hide their laughter as they announced this thing.

A paper clip, a spool of phone wire and a recalcitrant RS-232 line: Going MacGyver in the wonderful world of hotel IT

Ahh... yes... the good old days of RS232 and wrestling with handshake/flow control lines trying to get equipment from different manufacturers to work together.

After reading this story I went down to the basement and started poking through some boxes that haven't been touched in ages. Guess what I found besides some DB25 and DB9 connections? My old 25 pin breakout box!

We could all do with a bit of empathy in our systems, says Mozilla as it ships Firefox 75 in the thick of global pandemic

I'm glad I decided to go with the ESR version. No unneccessary "improvemrnts", just security updates.

NASA reveals the new wavy Martian wheels it thinks can crush the red planet

Mach?

Hmm... mach 1.7.

Is that mach 1.7 in the Martian or Earth atmosphere?

Bose shouts down claims that it borked noise cancellation firmware to sell more headphones

I bought a pair QC25's years ago when they were clearing them out to make room for the "new & improved" QC35. I'm glad I did, no firmware updates, it uses a normal AAA battery, etc.

Rocket Lab wants to break free, hopes next mission is more 'A Kind Of Magic' than 'Another One Bites The Dust'

Re: Ring any bells?

"We cannot compete on performance or price unless we somehow cheat...."

Just like the way they took out Bombardier's C Series passenger jet. Hmmm.... their jet is *way* better than anything we've got....let's get our gov't pals to slap on a crippling tariff.

Whoa, whoa... Tesla slams brakes on allegations of 'unintended acceleration' bug: 'Completely false and was brought by a short-seller'

Re: Missed a few

You beat me to it :)

Nothing like Yankee English.

We use an American app for our vehicle and driver logs. When I asked why they spell litre as "liter" they said something along the lines of... the rest of the world spells it according to international standards... we spell it the US way.

Is there alien life on Earth? Maybe, says Brit 'naut. Well, where did they come from? How about this far-away cluster. Or this 'Godzilla' galaxy...

What about Trump?

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Trumpo-The-Magnificent as an example of aliens among us.

Starliner: Boeing, Boeing... it's back! Borked capsule makes a successful return to Earth

Re: eleven hours off on the clock

Or the acceleration caused the sand to flow through hourglass quicker than expected.

Oi, Queenslander who downloaded 26.8TB in June alone – we see you

I'd forgotten about ZIP disks. I remember thinking they were a much better solution for moving data between locations instead of wasting a non-reusable CDRom.

Pablo Escobar's brother is Medellín in the foldable phone biz, sniffing out new markets

There was phone in the video with the "ladies"???

Boffins hand in their homework on Voyager 2's first readings from beyond Solar System

Pointing to where Earth will be

I find it amazing that Voyager knows where to point its antenna so that Earth will be in the right spot when the signals arrive here.

Virtual inanity: Solution to Irish border requires data and tech not yet available, MPs told

An outsider asks....

This is probably a silly question......

Wouldn't it be easier if the UK handed over their piece of Ireland? No more complicated border problems and Ireland would be a single country.