* Posts by Pat O'Ban

32 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Aug 2007

Social media vetting for US visas go live

Pat O'Ban

@Number6 I also assign everyone a unique email address

Are you disappointed/surpised at the number that actually get passed on? The worst was my Apple email, which I could be 99% sure no other entity has, but since the mega-leak recently, I got so much spam that I changed it. Never had to do that with anyone else.

Phil Collins and supergroup exposed as cloud investors

Pat O'Ban

With Emo Philips! He's no son of mine.

Google employs super clever rich people to basically rip off Slack

Pat O'Ban

The snake eating its tail

Google Ventures is an investor in Slack

https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/31/slack-confirms-120m-fundraise-led-by-google-ventures-and-kpcb-at-1-12b-valuation/

and helped them do their design and wrote a very good book about it

http://www.gv.com/sprint

Did your in-flight entertainment widget suck? It's Panasonic's fault, claims software biz

Pat O'Ban

Virgin America

I recall Virgin saying they used Linux. Found an article (nearly 10 years old tho) here https://techcrunch.com/2008/03/27/all-about-linux-2008-penguins-fly-an-interview-with-charles-virgin-airs-head-of-in-flight-entertainment/

Busted Windows 8, 10 update blamed for breaking Brits' DHCP

Pat O'Ban

My kids now know

Type "cmd" into that stupid Cortana thing

ipconfig /release

ipconfig /renew

This is when (until just now) I thought it was my recently purchased routers fault

Thought I was going mad tbh

UK.gov was warned of smart meter debacle by Cabinet Office in 2012

Pat O'Ban

Not compulsory?

Whilst you do have the right to refuse a Smart meter, you can not refuse a replacement of an meter that is past it's end-of-life. At that point "your" meter will be replaced by a Smart meter. It may be a decade or more away in some cases, but for safety reasons there will be no choice, mainly because "dumb" meters will no longer part of the operator's inventory.

'Faceless' Liberty Global has 'sucked the very soul' out of Virgin Media

Pat O'Ban

Our-soul more like

The worst customer experience I have had was with Virgin. They stalled and lied at every level of management. In the end I gave up pursuing my complaint (of causing significant damage to my property), as it was costing me too much in lost time on the phone. They have much faster broadband here than BT, which I would like, but I'd rather stick with BT (yes BT).

Hollywood offers Daniel Craig $150m to (slash wrists) play James Bond

Pat O'Ban

Re: MiG fighter?

Sounds like El Reg is getting behind and going full-thrust for Larry Ellison

VMware: Amazon's cloud calculator a load of flatulant FUD

Pat O'Ban

Missing the Point

Deploy on VMWare, and maybe develop on AWS? With the genius that is Docker going to 1.0 we are going to have to find something else to moan about.

Never mind the jetpack, where's my 21st-century Psion?

Pat O'Ban

Poqet PC

I was given a Poqet PC after I pulled an all-nighter fixing the server software of a well-known courier. I loved the fact it ran full MS-DOS on 2 AA batteries, so I could work on the train and so on, although I mostly used it as a terminal emulator to log on to Unix servers. The modem was bigger than the PC! A few years ago I gave it to the Computer Museum in Cambridge. I have no idea if they now have room to display it.

Snowden: 'I am still working for the NSA ... to improve it'

Pat O'Ban

I really think he does have nothing

Part of his plan surely was to pass it off, as he must have known his tech would get torn apart wherever he went. I would say that there are encrypted version(s) out there in the "cloud", which is sort of ironic.

Who's the best-built bot that makes the US military hot? SCHAFT!

Pat O'Ban

At Last!

Absolutely, totally and completely the best headline this year!

Report: Secret British spy base in Middle East taps region's internet

Pat O'Ban

Reason for 2008 cable cuts?

At the time it was thought to be sabotage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_submarine_cable_disruption

Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet creator Gerry Anderson dies at 83

Pat O'Ban

F.A.B. S.I.G. R.I.P.

Apple exec behind Maps and Siri to exit One Infinite Loop

Pat O'Ban

Dixons Bloke

They also got rid of that Dixons bloke

Go Daddy flogs 50 MILLION domains

Pat O'Ban
Devil

Elephant Killer Parsons is a Premier League CU Next Tuesday

I moved all my domains away when I found out Parsons shot a wild elephant dead. Very glad I did. And like @Andrew Moore and his friend, I found it to be a deliberately complex process.

Schoolkids learn coding at GCSE level in curriculum trial

Pat O'Ban

It already happens.

My kids learn to program at school and will do CS GCSE. My wife has just persuaded the head to adopt CS GCSE. No harm in more promotion mind.

Search visionary retires from Microsoft's Bing battles

Pat O'Ban
FAIL

Bit slow on the uptake

"rather than pursue natural-language query, he's trying to understand what eBay's 97 million registered users are looking for through greater analysis of the data they create while conducting their searches."

Google's Peter Norvig eloquently talks about the benefits of this approach in a 2004 podcast

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail382.html

Teen sells Perl cloud startup to ActiveState

Pat O'Ban
Headmaster

CPAM?

It's CPAN

Asus Eee Pad Slider

Pat O'Ban
Thumb Up

It's a gigantic...

Psion 5!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5

Oracle and NetApp dismiss ZFS lawsuits

Pat O'Ban
Thumb Up

At Last!

An article with some links in.

Dawn raids catch 9 for massive iPhone 'fraud'

Pat O'Ban
Thumb Up

Genius Age Countdown

Mr Oates. The age countdown there was pure class; why has no-one commented on it? My lottery numbers are sorted now.

IBM declares undying love for Mozilla's Firefox

Pat O'Ban

Which browser?

HotJava - http://java.sun.com/products/archive/hotjava/index.html

Now owned by Oracle.

Apple's iPad - the tablet with the data center soul

Pat O'Ban

Interesting Address

Right near a place called "Newton". Coincidence? I think NOT!

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=35.668663,-81.219778&spn=0.051321,0.07699&t=h&z=14

Nikon D90 digital SLR with HD video recording

Pat O'Ban
Stop

The Worlds First?

Apart from the Casio EX-F1 that was launched a year ago and I've had for the last four months.

Is Google's culture grab unstoppable?

Pat O'Ban
Stop

It's not all evil.

Take a look at http://www.archive.org/about/about.php. They're still scanning, with the help of many libraries that have refused Googles terms, and some are using the kit that MS donated when it abandoned their scanning project. You may like to do a piece on this, they deserve the publicity. Happy New Year.

U2 tracks disappear from YouTube

Pat O'Ban
Stop

They've pulled this stunt before

A CD went "missing" just prior to the release of Vertigo.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/jul/17/arts.netmusic

Pathetic.

Mashups haunted by past experience

Pat O'Ban

Is anyone surprised

Everywhere I've worked, there's been "Folkware". The only way to stop it is to engage with the users and find out what they actually want. On current form, it's never going to go away.

Confusion marks StarOffice anniversary

Pat O'Ban

Why Sun bought StarOffice

Sun bought StarOffice so it didn't have to pay license fees to Microsoft for Office/Windows. Prior to this, Sun employees had dual boot Solaris/Windows machines. Windows was not allowed to touch Sun's network, so to read a Word attachment, they had to download it using Solaris, then reboot to Windows.

So, what's the first rule of Reg Club?

Pat O'Ban

A rule of Reg Club

Use the word "boffin" in all articles alluding to invention.

Republicans hammer Brit artist's Bush

Pat O'Ban

What is the source for all torn up grumble?

A Bush! <rimshot />

The difficulty of validating systems and users

Pat O'Ban

Usual link-less El Reg article

One failed Google later, I'm none the wiser about Nabu. A link would have been nice.