Posts by whileI'mhere

We need to be first on the Moon, uh, again, says NASA

Re: I've seen this before

"What's Apple TV? Do I have to get cable?"

Yes but they'll change the plug design every few years forcing you to throw out the old cable and buy anew.

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

Re: No to cups or spoons

"And measuring a cup of cold butter is just a mess..."

Yeah - it gets weirder because that's why they have sticks of butter. A stick is a genuine standard measurement.

Thank you, FAQ chatbot, but if I want your help I'll ask for it

Had similar issue with a Volvo map update. But it does carry on where it left off when you turned the engine off, so over a few journeys it was finally done. As you've never done it, are you certain yours will start from the beginning again every time the engine is started again?

A smarter alternative to password recognition could be right in front of us: Unique, invisible, maybe even deadly

Re: On a related topic...

You ARE supposed to bin them and put a new fresh one on from time to time, you know (or wash them if they are those cloth ones).

All I want for Christmas is a delivery address that a delivery courier can find

It's vocal CORDS!

Vocal chords? Really, Dabsy?

I despair.

IBM insiders say CEO Arvind Krishna downplayed impact of email troubles, asked for a week to sort things out

Re: 4.2 billion emails a week?

Well most of them are people replying all to the company-wide email someone sent about the printer not working, telling everyone else not to reply all.

IBM email fiasco complicates sales deals, is worse than biz is letting on – sources

Incompetence Buggers Migration

How many remote controls do you really need? Answer: about a bowl-ful

Re: Mother knows best

"I just programmed them all for 'TURN TV OFF', so it didn't matter what he pressed."

Hmm. So how did he turn it on? Another of those remotes, with all the buttons programmed to turn it on? And another for volume up and another for volume down? And a fifth for channel cycling? Each remote carefully labelled as to its function.

I think that's a system that might just work. ;-)

UK's National Cyber Security Centre recommends password generation idea suggested by El Reg commenter

Re: using your pet's name as a password could make you an easy target

That's just pollocks.

As UK breaks away from Europe, Facebook tells Brits: You'll all be Californians soon

Re: privacy, what privacy?

But the UK law currently makes the same provisions as the EU law. I fail to see how Faceberg thinks this is legit until the UK law actually changes.

Can't quite remember the name of the song stuck in your head? Hum it and our AI will take a guess, says Google

Headline writers slacking

Really, El Reg, I expected better from you than:

"Hmm mmm egregious web monopoly mmm-mmm hmm radicalizing video algorithms mm"

Expected more like:

Super-google-algorithm-tells-you-what-you're-humming

Sues-you-next-for-copyright-the-writs-will-soon be-coming

Brexit border-line issues: Would you want to still be 'testing' software designed to stop Kent becoming a massive lorry park come 31 December?

Re: I am sure Boris will be on holiday when the $h1T hits the fan

"She has an excellent track record."

Not least at the Cheltenham race track.

Re: Stockpile your popcorn

"Coronavirus has dealt them a get out of jail card."

They can blame who they like but when there is physical violence at empty supermarkets, blaming the EU will not get them off the hook.

Smile? Not bloody likely: Day 6 of wobbly services and still no hint to UK online bank's customers about what's actually wrong

Re: Vindicated

"I was with RBS when they had theirs, then TSB and now Smile. Is it me?"

Yes. Please tell us where you go next so we can all avoid it.

After IBM axed its face-recog tech, the rest of the dominoes fell like a house of cards: Amazon and now Microsoft. Checkmate

Re: Not quite equivalent

Amazon suspends sales for a year, during which they can figure out how make it work when everyone is wearing masks, so it becomes 'useful' again.

Contact-tracing or contact sport? Defections and accusations emerge among European COVID-chasing app efforts

Re: Testing! testing!

THIS!!!!

Tinfoil hat brigade switches brand allegiance to bog paper

Re: Friday

The Applied are Boffins? I think you mean Bouffants.

California man served with restraining order for allegedly 'stalking' Apple CEO Tim Cook

So this guy was doing an Apple stalk. Well, he did it first - nobody pipped him to it. He's rotten to the core, of course.

Please check your data: A self-driving car dataset failed to label hundreds of pedestrians, thousands of vehicles

"The mysterious patent owner, Voice Tech Corp, turned out to a brand new company in Texas, USA, and it's address was someone’s bungalow,"

There seems to be one missing word and one erroneous apostrophe in the extract above.

Aw, look. The UK is still trying really hard to be the 'safest place to be online in the world'

Re: Halfwit?

There is no measure. She's just a fuckwit.

Cover for 'cyber' attacks is risky, complex and people don't trust us, moan insurers

The link to "a number of high-profile court cases brought by insurance companies against their own customers" is in fact a link to ONE case of a client suing its insurer. Quite the opposite.

(Mondelez suing Zurich for refusing a claim.)

Will Asimov fix my doorbell? There should be a law about this

"part of the European Rubber Duck Mountain?"

I think that technically it is the European Rubber Duck Pool. But we have got out, picked up our towel, and will be drying ourselves off for the next 11 months while we wonder which of the now available shark-infested waters to swim in. No more rubber ducks for us!

"be happy to do their jobs for the good of the state"

L'état, c'est moi.

Re: You are confusing EU with Europe

"And because I love Europe so much, I want a better EU."

So on balance it would probably have been better to remain and work harder to change it for the better. Leaving it is certainly not going to enable whatever flavour of 'better' you think it ought to be.

Mandatory electronic prescriptions was the easy bit in NHS paperless plans

I've been through both of those systems with my GP. (Shudder)

Now they are using Patient Access software and it does seem to be a great improvement, so far.

We read the Brexit copyright notices so you don't have to… No more IP freely, ta very much

Re: TL; DR

Some fruit is not susceptible to automated picking. But carry on with your sweeping and inaccurate generalisations...

Traffic lights worldwide set to change after Swedish engineer saw red over getting a ticket

Re: Would someone explain

"The issue is people who entered the junction on green, but couldn't exit the junction before the lights went red. I.e. Amber wasn't long enough before the lights went red."

The article failed to make that clear. Does make more sense.

But. again, if I entered the junction on green, amber's length is irrelevant. Absent a yellow hatched/box junction, I might be prevented from exiting the junction (e.g. by stopped traffic ahead) when the light turn red. I do not get a 'red light infraction' fine for that. It is - and should only be - all about when you enter the junction. Unless there is a MINIMUM speed limit then all the tinkering in the world with amber light periods cannot prevent someone being in the position of leaving a junction when the light is red. The case you note implies there must be an assumed minimum speed for the amber light period to be calculated.

Re: Would someone explain

If you have legitimately entered the junction (crossed the line) on amber (under circumstances described above) what on earth does it matter if you are turning right or left or going straight on and/or whether the light is red before you leave the junction? Either you entered the junction legitimately on amber or you did not. I really do not understand what all the rest of the fuss is about.

Mike drop, DXC-ya later! Lawrie immediately ejects as CEO from IT outsourcing giant

Re: FailCEO

"Jo Mason, if you haven’t already, start sweating profusely. Sal looks like he’s plenty capable of cutting his own steak. Which means, you represent no “tangible” value whatsoever."

While Mikey is Chairman until Dec 31 she can rest easy. If Salvino takes a day longer to sack her, he will have proven his lack of competence.

She can find another job by then. I'm betting it will turn out to be some form of domestic employment. (Mikey will still someone who can deal with his meat.)

Firm fat-fingered G Suite and deleted its data, so it escalated its support ticket to a lawsuit

Re: FailCEO

"And ice crystals."

All hail our cloudy providers.

DXC: Slashing costs affects ability to attract, develop and retain staff? Who'd have thunk it!

This guy will not be at DXC for long. His "openness" and implied criticisms are tantamount to saying "no" to Mikey.

Mikey does not like "no" and people who say it swiftly "depart".

But should you really be boasting that you were also on the call? It's bad enough from DXC mgt perspective that the content of these calls gets leaked, but if they believe employees are sitting with El Reg journos on their calls, they'll end up only being accessible from DXC office numbers (not that they have the technical capabity or competence to arrange that, in all probablilty).

What made a super high-tech home in Victorian England? Hydroelectric witchery, for starters

Re: Acceptable?

Didn't "those pesky Prussians" also have something to do with that other Bonaparte - Boney M?

Fun fact: GPS uses 10 bits to store the week. That means it runs out... oh heck – April 6, 2019

Re: FailCEO

They may have been less agile but were still just a very long slow waterfall, irrespective.

The BMC in OpenBMC stands for 'Burglarize My Computer' – thanks to irritating security flaw

Re: "Burglarise" ?

So if you were burglarised it was presumably done by burglarizers, who later burglarisered your house because they were burglariserisers?

(Burglers burgle and burglarisers burglarise. Buglers play for the Buggles.)

Oregon can't stop people from calling themselves engineers, judge rules in Traffic-Light-Math-Gate

Re: FailCEO

"Tight rein', 'loose reign', 'free rein' "

Umm - 'loose reign' is probably less to do with horses and more like not paying due care and attention while in charge of a monarchy.

Want to hack a hole-in-the-wall cash machine for free dosh? It's as easy as Windows XP

Re: insurance

"Makes sense, given the banks are also insurance brokers."

No. No it does not. Brokers are agents - they sell insurance but do not write it. They do not underwrite or carry third party risk. Conversely, for many risks that you might assume they would insure against, they may choose to self-insure (i.e. just take the risk and suffer the loss). The fact that banks sell some forms of insurance to customers has no link to why they may or may not be insured by a insurer for acts of theft or criminal damage.

Must listen: We've found the real Bastard Operator From Hell

Re: Fucking Awesome

"Someone has a career waiting in the wings."

Yes. Yes, they do.

This is art. In Tate Modern it would have strokey-beard critic types .... well, stroking their beards.

Creaky systems 'cost lives': Health secretary Matt Hancock pledges to solve NHS IT woes

Gosh. If only we had a NATIONAL health service. That has always been a fiction.

Nah, it won't install: The return of the ad-blocker-blocker

Re: Branded Advertising

"Hendrix Lives" is a slogan, not a brand, nor an advert.

British Airways' latest Total Inability To Support Upwardness of Planes* caused by Amadeus system outage

Reminds me of an apocryphal WWII RAF exam question for pilots. Something like 'you are the pilot flying Winston Churchill, the PM, and his staff to an overseas conference when the rear cargo hatch blows open and WC is ejected from the plane. How do you react?' The answers varied from ' swoop down and catch him', jump out with a parachute and catch him', to 'divert to RIo and disappear'. The correct answer was, of course, 'adjust rear ailerons to compensate for reduced weight in rear cargo compartment'

Mastercard goes TITSUP in US, UK: There are some things money can't buy – like uptime

Re: Backups and redundancy, FFS

Did you dictate that using some voice to text thingy? I can only assume that "wants" was meant to be "once", and as for a "baster" (turkey baster?) CC company, my mind boggles.

Re: Cash is King

According to some stories last year (?) a £50 note is not cash. Rather, it is a drug-smuggling/criminal proceeds money-laundering device. Apparently they are so rarely used by normal people and disproportionately used by those types that some central bankers and law enforcers want high denomination notes removed from circulation.

And anyway, what with the advent of super jumbo extra outsize choccy bars and the price of the stuff in general, I reckon a couple of said bars would not get much change out of £50 these days.

UK pub chain Wetherspoons' last call: ♫ Just a spoonful of Twitter – let's pull social media down ♫

Re: Brillaint

Several years ago I was heartened to see the French media regulator tell the French public broadcaster's TV news guys to just stop advertising their Twitter ID on air, as it was de facto advertising for a commercial entity on the public airwaves, and other social media were available. They probably long since lost that battle, but an admirable stance, for sure.

Best thing about a smart toilet? You can take your mobile in without polluting it

Re: FailCEO

"...and it's the new office - not sure about client meetings though."

I seem to recall some time ago (1970s?) seeing a film extract on Barry Norman's Film programme of that year (if only I could remember which year) where the concept was to reverse eating and shitting. The extract showed a company board meeting taking place with everyone on a shitter, free to raise the lid and let rip, while those needing any food or drink had to excuse themselves to a small ante-room and do it in private, quietly. It was, of course, a foreign-langauge film. Wish I could find out what it was...

Web searching died the day they invented SEO

Re: The B ark.....

Like an ice pick, but used to make holes in cats instead.

Well if they are looking for 'snorkles' they may wish to search for 'snorkels'

DXC confirms veep level shake-up in new world order

Re: Night of the Long Knives

"This company isn't a Board run company. It is the private plaything of PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN and CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, Mike Lawrie."

FTFY

(Appropriate corporate governance also not a big thing in Lawrie's world.)

Ever wondered why tech products fail so frequently? No, me neither

Re: FailCEO

THIS! "Screwfix £20 polish up nice as well."

Bought a pair of own-brand steel toecap 'Chelsea' style boots from Screwfix for £40. Would have expected to pay 2-3 times that at a 'shoe shop' selling brands. Workwear can often be very economically viable.

Nest's slick IoT burglar alarm catches crooks... while it eyes your wallet

Re: Rasberry Pi to the rescue?

Which piece of your mind is that, then? The bit that craves some peace?