Posts by The commentard formerly known as Mister_C

Apple ends corporate COVID mask mandate

Re: Can't they just tweak one of the employee phone apps...

Sounds like William Rees Mog and his "sorry to have missed you" notes. Being Apple, they have an app for that...

Psst … Want to buy a used IBM Selectric? No questions asked

Re: Comments to On-Call articles

My guess is the date - April 10 2020. We had other things on our minds back then. Like half the world moving to WFH and the other half trying to buy flour so they could learn how to bake banana bread.

Chinese booster rocket tumbles back to Earth: 'Non-zero' chance of hitting populated area

To quote Tom Lehrer

Don't say that he's hypocritical

Say rather that he's apolitical

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?

That's not my department" say Wernher von Braun

(the song ends with)

You too may be a big hero

Once you've learned to count backwards to zero

"In German, oder Englisch, I know how to count down

Und I'm learning Chinese!" says Wernher von Braun

Apple-1 prototype hand-soldered by Woz up for auction, bids expected to reach $500k

I wouldn't be too concerned about the amount of lead being ingested by holding solder between one's teeth. It would be insignificant compared to the Tetra Ethyl Lead used to enhance the octane rating of petrol back in the day.

I would be more worried about having my face close to the soldered items and breathing in the flux fumes...

Everyone back to the office! Why? Because the decision has been made

Re: And the award for ...

It's a Dabbsy piece, so

Chairman of the board / bored

with utube link to video might be more appropriate

Don't hate on cryptomining, hate the power stations, say Bitcoin super-fans

Re: Guns don't kill, bullets do

Are you referring to the popular beat combo "Goldie Lookin (Block) Chain" by any chance?

You can buy a company. You can buy a product. Common sense? Trickier

Re: 'twas ever thus

Possibly a misunderstanding between Austrian German and Prussian German. He wanted "racial cleansing" but they thought he said "people's cleaner".

COVID-19 contact tracing apps were suggested as saviors. They sometimes delivered

Re: Turn Bluetooth off...

I don't have Bluetooth enabled on my phone or 5G and I haven't caught Covid. 100% correlation.

You can't argue with statistics like this.

Fish mentality: If The Rock told you to eat flies, would you buy my NFT?

Is it when one uses one's smart phone as a torch?

Happy birthday Windows 3.1, aka 'the one that Visual Basic kept crashing on'

Re: GFP

@AC - you are Muphry and I claim my five pounds.

Scientists repurpose hoverfly vision to detect drones by sound

Re: Drones delivering explosives...

Amazon Primed

Japanese startup makes baby carrier-style sling for 'Love Robots'

I for one

would like to praise El Reg for an April 1st story that demonstrates that the truth is truly stranger than any fiction.

For the Reg team ---->

The month I worked for DEADHEAD: Yes, that was their job title

I'm disappointed

Nobody has spotted that the oldest person working for the startup had the job title "Director of App Development". aka "DAD".

for shame on you all.

<wanders off mumbling about kids these days>...

OVHcloud datacenter 'lacked' automatic fire extinguishers, electrical cutoff

Re: Who else wants popcorn?

We (MrsC & I) prefer "AutoCorrupt". Just seems more apt

Unable to write 'Amusing Weekly Column'. Abort, Retry, Fail?

Re: something to do with a file-level flimgerboo being unable to circumtudinate its snickdangle

silently

Re: My favourite error message

Qmail has several error messages that include "sorry". My fave is "I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out"

BBC points Russians to the Tor version of itself

Re: "shut down"

He's with the RAF. Don't do weekends, don'tcha know

Proprietary neural tech you had surgically implanted? Parts shortage

At one point in time (late 80s to early 90s) the official TdF signature tune was "tour de France" by Kraftwerk. Yup, German band doing French icon.

@Jake - saw Wild Willy Barrett and the French Connection a few years ago. Their encore is Ca Plan... - I sang JBJG and enjoyed every second of it...

Re: Noises

Many years ago, work provided me with a WAP enabled Nokia that would accept some MIDI files as ringtones. I downloaded several from a film-and-tv-themes website and, after having to discard many good tunes because they weren't coded "just right", had several on my phone to entertain and annoy co-workers.

One day, I had to take a team on a site visit to an unused factory unit. We'd just got through the gates when my boss rang me. Cue much laughter as we drove into an empty yard with the theme from "The Sweeney" blasting out...

Journalist won't be prosecuted for pressing 'view source'

Only in the USofA

On this side of the pond Renaud would be described as "a sophisticated hacker".

Almost there: James Webb Space Telescope frees its mirrors and prepares for insertion

Sounds like the bureaucratic equivalent of "for want of a nail..."

Worst of CES Awards: The least private, least secure, least repairable, and least sustainable

Quote of the century

"If you don't know what an NFT is, I am honestly jealous of your life"

Unfortunately, given the rate of production of marketing bull, the NFT part won't be fungible...

Not looking forward to a greyscale 2022? Then look back to the past in 64 colours

"giving away a child for every child you purchase"

One of the many reasons Mrs C doesn't like me 'helping' with grocery shopping was due to the time we saw a couple with two very young babies in a carry cot on their trolley. My comment of "ooh look, buy one get one free on babies" got one up vote - from the new dad - and two down votes. The babies didn't vote either way.

Not the kind of note you want to see fluttering from an ATM

Re: Alternatively, there’s the pure, human induced idiocy at our local Tesco

Possibly named cash_0, cash_1, cash_2 and a PHB saw 1,2,3 and gave the order to disable number 2

On Christmas night, a computer logs a call to say his user has stopped working…

2021 Carolling

"He knows when you are sleepiiiing," she chundered, good-naturedly. "He know when you're awaaaake…"

he knows when you've been tested and have got to isolaaate...

Happy Crimble Mister D

It's on me --->

Playing jigsaw on my roof: They can ID you from your hygiene habits

Re: ID from spa-aaaace

Shame it was a school building a theatre in the basement. I've been involved in a hotel building a ballroom (i.e. wedding reception room) in a basement that used room-in-room to cut down on noise transmission to the remainder of the hotel. Trouble for us was that the outside room was already built...

Firestarter

Address labels, delivery advice pages and pre-printed returns notes all get used as kindling for our log burner too. With the exception of labels stuck to polythene mailing bags or labels made waterproof by the sender's use of selotape which get burned in the garden incinerator when we have a clear out. Our temporary store for these is a large paper bag marked "dirty burn" but now known (thanks to a chisel-tipped marker pen and my poor handwriting) as the "dirty bum" bag.

Tech Bro CEO lays off 900 people in Zoom call and makes himself the victim

Re: Hmm ...

MrsC hasn't eaten Cadbury's since that happened. And neither have I.

(full disclosure - we have an excellent chocolatier in town so Kraft sort of pushed us in a direction we were happy to go).

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

Black week season

Which will presumable include the "pre BF" promotions that are appearing now that the marketing idiots have killed sales in the run up to BF...

And the latest marketing tosh email I received ... "Celebrate Giving Tuesday with PayPal ❤️" Evidence of a B-Ark survivor amongst us.

Cisco tells UCS owners they may have a screw loose – in the server chassis

Looking forward to a "who me" from the unfortunate who pulled the cable.

And an "on call" from the techie who spotted the sliding power supply.

The Ministry of Silly Printing: But I don't want my golf club correspondence to say 'UNCLASSIFIED' at the bottom

Re: I had a brush with a bunch of senior lawyers

And were the passwords the same?

International Space Station fires rockets to dodge chunk of destroyed Chinese satellite

Re: Misleading headline!

RIGHT ON COMMANDER!

Mine's the one with a 5 1/4" disk in one pocket and a novella in the other...

AI algorithms can help erase bright streaks of internet satellites – but they cannot save astronomy

Re: This is worse than it sounds.

This is how it ends

"But looking on the bright side it might take out a few starlinks on the way past."

Hey Honey, there's something wrong with the internet. Oh shit.... <icon>

Amazon hasn't launched one internet satellite yet, but it's now planning a fleet of 7,774

so my car might not ever be able to drive itself?

One click, one goal, one mission: To get a one-touch flush solution

Reverse click-and-collect

"This strikes me a being a bit like a grocery shop claiming "We're located just around the corner!" when in fact you have to drive the first 27 miles to get to that particular corner they're just around."

I (used to) regularly ask our supermarket till staff about their carry-to-your-car service, just like the "ask us about..." sign requested.

"Yes, certainly. Where's your car parked?"

"On the drive at home." (Quite true as we tended to use Mrs_C's car).

Windows 11 Paint: Oh look – rounded corners. And it is prettier... but slightly worse

I'm currently trying to learn AutoDesk Inventor (via the 30 day trial license) on a second hand HP Z230 workstation. 16 gig ram, 3.3Ghz Xeon processor. It handles the 3D cad with ease.

win10 has told me it can't handle win11.

Toyota needs more than its Cheer Squad to deal with chip shortages, as five more home factories forced into idleness

Re: So nothing to do with work from home?

"household appliance makers are making models that were supposed to have WiFi connectivity without that feature"

I do hope that's true and that customers go out of their way to buy WiFiFree. That way the manufacturers might start to realise that there is still a market for non-internet enabled toasters.

3D printing site Thingiverse suffers breach of 228,000 email addresses amid sluggish disclosure

"will these members be contacted or have their passwords automatically reset?"

No and No. Most TV users don't expect to hear anything from the unresponsive team at TV these days.

I learned of the leak because TV user rssalerno posted a message in a TV group (then read about it on el reg, Gareth posted his story at about the same time. Confirmed that my account is one of the "handful" via "have I..."

Password is unique to that site, but changed it on the site and updated my password manager just in case some joker wants to upload anything to my account.

How not to train your Dragon: What happens when you teach an AI game sex-abuse stories then blame players

Re: I

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

Cardinal Richelieu

Cheeky chappy rides horse around London filling station, singing: 'I don't need petrol 'cos he runs on carrots'

Re: whisper this very quietly

Thanks for the warning. Had a word with my ISP and got a bit bag of 1s but their stock level on 0s was zero.

Happy to trade with anyone who can help out.

whisper this very quietly

Round our way the skip companies are quoting four working days' notice for exchange (or removal) of skips. Best get a couple of empties put on your driveway just in case you need to get shut of a mattress...

Years of development, millions of lines of code, and Android can't even run a toilet

Re: DOOM!!??

"What abut crysis?"

Or in the Ladies - can it spot cystitis?

We're all at sea: Navigation Royal Navy style – with plenty of IT but no GPS

Re: Reg units need not apply

D'oh.

Muphry's mathematical cousin has been at my keyboard again.

Re: Reg units need not apply

"one nautical mile equals 3467.2452432 yards" certainly would be a stupid conversion.

1nm(*) is 200 yards. Or 10 cables. Or 100 fathoms.

But be careful, 100 fathoms of cable-laid rope is really 3 x 120 fathom hawser-laid ropes.

(*) yes, i know a nano metre is slightly shorter.

Re: Glider units

Upvote for their chutzpah.

They need a hug.

Astro Pi 2: New Raspberry Pi hardware with updated camera, sensors to head to the ISS this year

Re: Can only be called

My first thought was Yes, but on reflection it's No. Just in case.

icon --- >

"Let there be light"

Glasgow firm fined £150k after half a million nuisance calls, spoofing phone number, using false trading names

Re: To avoid these

Agreed.

And when the real person tells me who they are (i.e. doctor's surgery), I explain why I gave them the silent start. I have _never_ had anyone be anything other than understanding about the tactic.

One day it will be a smart scam merchant, at which point I will ask what their mother thinks about how they earn a living. No, wait - I'll ask her myself next time I see her working a street corner.

Yup, I'm very sympathetic to scam callers

Italian stuntman flies aeroplane through two motorway tunnels

Re: Wings

Similar, but slightly different as it involves four wheels (and - spoiler alert - some flight)

Mister_C senior told me a story about two duty-free sales reps who had enjoyed the hospitality of the chief steward on board a docked ship. They decided that a race back to the hotel would be fun.

The first set off to drive round the 400 yards long dock shed.

The second thought he'd take a short cut through the shed - drove in though the dock-side door and out through the lorry loading door on the opposite side. He'd forgotten about the loading platform and achieved 4 feet of altitude very briefly before gravity booked him a meeting with a tow truck and the transport manager...

Spring tears down math geek t-shirt listing because it dared to mention the trademarked word 'zeta'

Re: Wow

I wondered about how ACS would approach "I am the Alpha and the Omega" wrt trademark infringement, but your comment more than trumps mine. Popcorn will be on me.