* Posts by Stu Wilson

99 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jan 2008

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PC component scavenging queue jumper pulled into line with a screensaver

Stu Wilson
Devil

BOFH vs PFY?

Pretty evil that one

Chemical plant taken offline by the best one of all: C8H10N4O2

Stu Wilson
Pint

Instrument Artificer

Nice to see that title still around, from one old tiffy to another, cheers

Mines the one with coffee

Audacity users stick the knife – and fork – in to strip audio editor of unwanted features

Stu Wilson

Re: Bodacious

No way!

Dude!! Yes Way!

Damn, I was gonna post that one but you beat me, sniff. have a upvote or three

Anglian Water fishes for on-trend laundry list – including low-code work – in £24m trawl

Stu Wilson

AWS

Anglian Water services and websites were running on AWS up until earlier this year, but no longer

They've all migrated and bezos no longer gets their cash

Freshly outsourced Home Office project: Overseas student visa IT slammed for delays

Stu Wilson

£36 OVRO

yes, if they happen to be from one of the 30 odd countries specified and has to be registered within 7 days of entering the UK.

Note BRP's are for any 'durn furriner' not just the list of baddies that CT want to keep an aye on, and only required under certain circumstances or if the visa stay is longer than 6 months

The secret history of Apple's Stacks

Stu Wilson

Re: Stardock is still around?

Best Windows software ever, Start10, converts that rubbish tiles menu back into a usable menu and gives you control over the shyte Cortana search (aka off thank you very much)

If only it could put back all the settings menus into actual useful apps instead of the crappy windows touch enabled widget thingys i'd be happier

But then I'm glad I can turn it all off and use OSX instead, the advantage of virtualisation :D

Mamma Mia! UK film fans forced to Q as Vue's website craps itself

Stu Wilson

Re: Seamless???

Actually no, I can believe that, see the comment above

The queue system for the **_** core codebase involved pushing a JSON object into a SiteCore message queue object as payload, and then and having a queue handler pull the object and try to process it.

Things that never really worked very well:

* its a queue and was therefore single threaded (last time, I remember, the attempt to make the queue multi-threaded failed with a distinct inability to lock an object without race conditions)

* Auditing and the lack of it

* Failures were deleted or moved into a SiteCore bucket (i.e. forgotten)

* zero logging

Boss sent overpaid IT know-nothings home – until an ON switch proved elusive

Stu Wilson

Re: “...hated us for being over-paid and under-skilled.”

My money would be on the build/installers, lowest paid button clickers in the IT chain

1) insert cd

2) boot the machine

3) press button 1, then button 2, then button 1

4) wait 10 minutes

5) eject cd & power down

6) rinse & repeat

Stu Wilson

Re: “...hated us for being over-paid and under-skilled.”

So the BIOS boot sequence had been set to CD-ROM first?

Bad practice to leave it like that for any enterprise machine for just this reason.

Beyond code PEBCAK lies KMACYOYO, PENCIL and PAFO

Stu Wilson
Devil

Re: Pedantic

How about FFS ~= Fat Finger Syndrome?

Boss visited the night shift and found a car in the data centre

Stu Wilson
Mushroom

Some people can sleep anywhere

I once was bivvying whilst out with the REME. They decided that they were going to run a Live fire exercise during the night to surprise us grunts. Apparently I slept through it until the the SM hauled me out of the bivouac by my feet.

There were grenades, smoke bombs and small arms fire just feet away.

People are talking about a BT Global Services sell-off again

Stu Wilson
Coat

Loss making

Once upon a time the core unit of BT Global Services (Syntegra aka BT Syntegra aka BT C&SI) was the only profit making part of BT.

Once BT chose to pull Syntegra back into the BT fold, they pushed all the loss making parts of BT into the new BT Global Services bucket, and then pissed in it.

Now it's the worst performing unit in BT arse-nal, go figure!

Waiter? There's a mouse in my motherboard and this server is greasy!

Stu Wilson

Pet Food manufacturers are the worst

I will never, in my life, ever forget the smell of a cat food manufacturer (if anyone remembers the UK lawsuit from the 90's about tainted cat food, it was them)

Basically, congealed blood from thousands and thousands of tonnes of dead meat, seeping into the concrete and under the flooring. One contract sparky had to lift the flooring to find a fault with some network cabling, put his head down the resulting hole completely unprepared for the stench and subsequently lost his breakfast/lunch. He never came back.

Stu Wilson
Devil

Re: I'm not surprised in the slightest

There was a similar complaint, from the late 80's, in a town I worked in at the time where the local fish 'n chip shop owner was busted, somewhat ironically, for busting his nut in the batter used for the fish, et alii, prior to dipping the fish and frying.

He got nicked because one of the old dears who worked for him came into work early for her pay packet and then narked on him to the local rozzers. At court he said he'd started doing it "because he hated everyone who came into the shop, and wanted to put one aver them all"

Cue jokes about baby batter, sausages etc

Drunk user blow-dried laptop after dog lifted its leg over the keyboard

Stu Wilson
Coat

I have a knife!

Once upon a time (1999 to be precise) in a land not so far away (Sunderland), there was a Sales Director with a laptop.

He was working late one evening in his kitchen, his very expensive Sony Vaio laptop on a stool whilst he ate a late supper.

In bounds his dog and with one swish of the tail, the dog knocks the £2000 laptop off the stool and onto the floor. The Sales Manager cried 'woe is me!' when he picked the laptop up and it was dead.

'But I have a knife!' he exclaimed, 'A nice shiny, pointy, kitchen knife and I'll open up this expensive laptop with this knife and fix it myself How hard can it be?!'

And lo, the Sales Director takes the pointy knife and takes the laptop apart with gusto, saving screws here and there, although some fall away and are lost in the mist of time. But alas, the laptop resists the pointy ministrations and he cries foul 'Away with you to the cretins at IT!"

The following day, wrapped ceremoniously in a plastic bag from Waitrose, the laptop did make it's way to the IT Manager and the foul petard was foist upon the unsuspecting IT minions for repair.

The sight was beholden with distaste, the laptop in pieces, missing screws, case carved up with a pointy (but shiny!) knife. Alas, the laptop was no more. Resistance was futile, and the minion dared to say that the Sales Director should not have used his shiny knife and should pay for a new laptop under his own aegis.

'Nay!' went the IT Manager schill, ''Twould behoove you not to malign your betters! Off with your head!'

And so the Sales Director was given a new shiny expensive laptop and the pieces of the old were given unto the fire as a sacred offering, to be whispered about in IT forums forever, or until the end of Friday.

TL;DR

Sales Director breaks laptop, tries to repair it with a kitchen knife and butchers it irresponsibly, and expects IT to repair it. Gets away with a brand new laptop and not even a slap on the wrist.

User jams up PC. Literally. No, we don't know which flavour

Stu Wilson

Re: You missed out

My brother, who owned/ran the towns local computer shop termed those as 'cases by Gilette®'

Basically the cheapest, shodiest cases where the steel was cut/stamped but not rolled over so the edges were sharp as fsck, hence the moniker

Bought a new Mac Pro? 1-in-100 chance it'll destroy your data

Stu Wilson
Coat

Re: Not a mac fan

The Sale of Goods Act 2003 indicates that "stores" must offer a refund, repair or replacement, whichever the customer chooses, so unless Apple is the retailer, this is not a factor.

The story does specifically state that the source comes from at least two resellers.

The manufacturer of said goods has no such limitation for an item under guarantee. if a item is found to be faulty, they the manufacturer are the arbiter of which method of resolution is required. The manufacturer can repair or replace the item, whichever they want, and the consumer has no choice in the matter.

So Apple are going beyond their legal requirements in this matter.

Steve Jobs' death clears way for Broadway star to play Woz

Stu Wilson
Thumb Up

Arrested Development Development Development

Jeffrey Tambor FTW

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001787/

Now Windows 8 goes into the ring to face Apple's iOS

Stu Wilson
Trollface

mine was *yawn*

Win8 running on, basically a laptop without a keyboard, fan whizzing away, and the heat being generated is just mom-u-ment-ally silly.

so it runs nice and fast, I'm sure it would look nice and fast, but unless they can get it to run, and run well, on commodity ARM (or god forbid Atom) hardware, then the Metro UI is gonna be wasted money on MS's part.

Certainly who else is going to use it? Not those people with desktops, and those people with tablet/laptop abortions won't use it except for the first minutes to show their friends.

Just for the record, I'm Apple all the way and I like what MS have done with Metro, it is actually starting to look good on a larger screen but I just know they are going to fuck it up.

The curse of Google?: Android licensees fail to cash in

Stu Wilson

no one saw the troll icon obviously

@heyrick

Analysis done on the Android market showing that the churn on apps and developers there is much higher than at other store, and that applications are up to 20% more likely to no longer exist after 1 year than on on the iOS App store.

[quote]This is, of course, your cue to tell me that there's no such thing as an iPhone 4 specific app that won't work on earlier models[/quote]

not all all, but the inverse is more true, I have apps that have never seen an update since they were first released 3+ years ago, they still run on both my iPhone and iPad.

[quote]"or that the phone you buy actually connects to the store you want since the carrier removed the Google store and put in their own?"

Cite a reference please. [/quote]

it was a hypothetical situation, one that given the carriers penchant for fucking around with stuff is only a matter of time IMHO, especially if Amazon actually build what everyone thinks they are building.

[quote]HOWEVER, you can use an alternative - such as Amazon's offering or even (if you allow it) install apps from just about anywhere. Can you do this on a standard (non-hacked) iPhone?[/quote]

No you are very correct, but then the iOS store has more apps than every other store combined anyway, and oh yes, a lot less Trojan apps also.

[quote]And this is a criticism of Android's Market how? Does Apple *guarantee* that an app will be both available and the same 'cost' when it comes time to upgrade your phone?[/quote]

Showing a small amount of ignorance there, once you purchase an app from Apple you can use it on any of your iOS devices, since it is linked to your account not to your device. Lose or have your device stolen, you sync a new one and everything is back.

And also it gets better, since the latest announcement of iCloud etc, since I have a few banned apps (pulled for licensing restrictions such as Delicious Library, VLC for iPad etc), they are fully available to download under the new version of iTunes, free, since I had already purchased them I will be able to use and run them until such point as iOS evolves whereby they no longer run.

For me, I actually happen to _like_ Android a lot, its so much better than anything else out there, but it suffers massively in UI stakes. It is unintuitive, too techy for the majority, and lets be frank, sometimes the UI is plain ugly.

The first time I used an iPhone, it was intuitive, easy to use and the other half she managed to pick it up, unlock it, and make a phone call without any supervision or help from me. Considering when I first picked up an Android phone, I had to be told what to do. And TBH I don't want to have to learn how to use a phone, it should just do what I want it do.

I've wasted so much time in my life trying to work out how to do stuff with gadgets/phones that someone else thinks is a good way to implement, that the iPhone was an absolutely fresh breath of air and one Ill be sticking with for a long time to come.

yes there are some things I can't do with it, but they are far outweighed by the fact that is does everything else I NEED it for superbly well.

Stu Wilson
Trollface

AC === Atrocious Comprehension

Apps = sure, you can't use iPhone apps on Android.

Music = oooh, i'm pretty fricking sure I can use any music I've paid for on any of my devices because theres no longer any DRM

Android apps = so does this mean app A that only works on 10 phones, will work on your new phone? or that the phone you buy actually connects to the store you want since the carrier removed the Google store and put in their own? or that the app will still be free and available when you upgrade?

Consumers have choice, and the its pretty obvious from recent reports, the only choice that they have willingly made is too buy the iPhone and spend oodles and oodles of cash with Apple.

Everyone else just happened to buy a phone with a big screen they can play ad-supported Angry Birds on.

Vote now for the juiciest LOHAN backronym

Stu Wilson
Facepalm

upskirt?

I know La Lohan is notorious for flashing beaver, but being under the ballon and seeing up the skirts has probably got to be easier than trying for the money shots

Harry Potter Web-2.0 'Pottermore' offering unveiled

Stu Wilson
WTF?

dont know what the hell Sony has to do with it

except sponsored by Sony.

It's being completely developed in-house by the UK digital agency TH_NK, based in Newcastle and London

The best sci-fi film never made: Also-rans take a bow

Stu Wilson

surely this was ripped off by...

Space truckers starring Dennis Hopper and the Dorffmeister

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120199/

Boffins demand: Cull bogus A-Levels, hire brainier teachers

Stu Wilson
Troll

as if i *really* didn't think this was sarcasm

that would be under the labour leadership in the 70's

Bummed-out users give anti-virus bloatware the boot

Stu Wilson
Megaphone

someone has forgotten something

you can run visturd on 256mb, it just doesn't run very well. XP will love you for anything over 128Mb

I remember running windows 95 on 4Mb RAM, and it ran very well indeed.

Stu Wilson
Gates Horns

bloatware

i dont remember which version it was, but MS Office went from being on 3 or 4 floppies per product to being on 100+ for the full suite.

My memory says it must have been around the time of Win95.

Stu Wilson
Coat

I haven't ran AntiVirus for over 5 years

of course, I don't run Windows either.

/mines the one with the hackers guide to OSX in the pocket

iOS 4.2 multi-tasking comes to the iPad

Stu Wilson
Unhappy

LockOrMuteGate

dibs on this new word.

to be honest, I'm in the Lock button camp, im much more used to locking the orientation with the button as a much more useful feature that muting the iPad.

here's the process under 4.2

hold the ipad in the desired orientation

(optional rotate the ipad to the last locked orientation if currently holding it worng)

swipe the lock image

double press the button

swipe back to the orientation lock (at the last count that was 4 swipes on my ipad)

hit the orientation lock

rotate the ipad to the new orientation

hit the orientation lock

heres the process under 4.1

hold the ipad in the desired orientation

click the button off

click the button on

IMHO Apple 'ave seriously dropped a bollock here

Google accused of hard-coding own links in search

Stu Wilson
Badgers

and..

Google Wave

Google Video (does anyone even remember that before they bought YouTube)

Google aren't the golden goose, they lay a few lead eggs now and again.

Fifa 11 vs Pro Evolution Soccer 2011

Stu Wilson
Joke

sorry this ins't realistic enough

if Heskey isn't falling on the floor very 5 minutes, how are we to respect these games?

Ten... iPhone 4 accessories

Stu Wilson
Thumb Down

hate to say it but the Etch is awful

that was my pick from the free case party.

the plastic back feels cheap, the rubber is nice in feel, but its not sturdy enough

especially (and here's where every single rubber case iv'e seen fails so far with the exception of the Speck HD), at the bottom of the phone just above the dock connector, the rubber there is too thin and it catches on everything and breaks too easily. having said that the button substitutes on the Etch are easy to press and use.

back to the Speck HD, the rubber around the case is much stiffer, with a good feel and because of the stiffness, the case is very hard to get on and off for this reason. The case feels very sturdy around the phone, and very solid when held but this is the Speck's downfall, the button substitutes are ridiculously hard to press, most especially the lock button on top.

I have to physically hold the case in one hand and press hard with the other hand to activate the button. considering the button can be pressed easily with one finger using one hand out of the case, its a major fault for me.

The iPad is killing laptop sales

Stu Wilson
Jobs Halo

and me

RichyS

I'd definitely recommend the iMac/iPad combo, my MacBook is as the title suggests hotly anticipating a new owner on ebay, 8 weeks after getting an iPad, it's was unused for all that time.

Heavy lifting done on the iMac, couch surfing etc, all done sweetly on ipad.

Stu Wilson
Jobs Halo

reminds me of...

... that MS advert for Mojave, where the "new" windows version, all those people looking at the screen with no idea ho to use the new OS.

UI design has come a long way since I first used a mouse in '83, and sometimes yes Apple isn't the company innovating in hardware, but in software usability, they should be on every software designer's reading list.

Vodafone volte-face on Galaxy S

Stu Wilson
Jobs Halo

certainly one of the nicer things...

...about having an iPhone is the complete lack of carrier branding (aka fucking up)

BOFH: Lies and the lying liars who lie about them

Stu Wilson
Thumb Up

Farmer Sutra

had me with the tissue out mopping up...

...coffee

iTunes disses doctorates

Stu Wilson
WTF?

reminds me of someone

I have come across an IT manager for a medium sized manufacturing business who had his full title a la Rimmer* in his email signature

the day he started work there when the other half forwarded an email from him asking what it meant.

i told her he was a sanctimonious twat with a Napoleon complex, which was clearly born out when after 2 weeks, the internet was locked down tighter than a submissive's nipple clamp, and scunthorpe disappeared from the map.

also any emails containing the letters 'xx' were designated as spam. this was caught by one of the engineers working at the company whose name was Petroxx who suddenly stopped getting any email whatsoever.

* Arnold Judas Rimmer Bsc Ssc ("Bronze swimming certificate" and "Silver swimming certificate")

Beware the blizzard of torrents of Starcraft 2

Stu Wilson
Thumb Up

preordered for £25

I'd had my SC2 on pre-order with Spamazon since 2008, at £25, and they have this lovely pre-order price guarantee

o how I laughed when it retailed at £45

Apple iPhone 4

Stu Wilson
Flame

no fixin' required

@Mr Burns and AC (assuming Smithers)

No fixin' required, just needs a s/w update apparently.

It does amaze me the amount of negative press Apple gets her at El Reg, or even the amount of vitriol spewed by people who have no clue in the comments, but at least one of you had the balls to sign their name against it.

It's a bloody good phone, but if it didn't exist, then I doubt the current crop of phones would be anywhere near the current state of technology.

Android wouldn't be a competitor, WebOS might actually have saved palm, and Windows 7 would be out in 2011 (oh wait, the last is probably still true)

Stu Wilson
Jobs Halo

fair review

nuff said

not seen either of the two issues, no signal drops or face detection issues either.

phone is a veritable piece of technolust/envy and I'm very happy with mine, of course i've got no friends with one yet, so no facetime for me.. :p

Diary of a somebody - life in iPhone 4 land

Stu Wilson
Jobs Halo

i came, i queued, i got my iphone 4 and had a fun time too.

quote "No other phone manufacturer has these stock issues at launch every single time they launch a product."

thats because no other company sell the amount of products in the same time scale as Apple, worldwide.

ref a/c

quote "The Motorola RAZR sold 120 million units alone before you even factor in their other handsets."

... over the full 4 year lifetime of the product

and how many of those were repeats? shit I had 4 Razrs because they were so shit, freezing, rebooting, overheating. I had 3 replacements under warranty within 4 months.

Inevitable Mac OS X 10.6.4 update problems surface

Stu Wilson
Jobs Halo

3 here

you know there's a laundry list of thing that can go wrong on any update

but i've got 3 macs here all updated fine with no issues.

Apple slapped with lawsuit over 'iAds' monicker

Stu Wilson
FAIL

poster prolly wont read this either

since he didn't read the article and read the bit about Apple having already negotiated the rights from Cisco on using the iOS name.

O2 to step back from unlimited mobile data deals

Stu Wilson
Coat

fully agree

... but hell, if Always Tits-up & Tripe can do it, I'm sure O2 are thinking they can get away with it too.

mines the one with the iPad sized pocket

Stu Wilson

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

you are in luck , T-M announced iPhone 4 today.

Stu Wilson
Jobs Halo

...only one thing to say

... the bastards

Regent Street blocked by iPad fanboi swarm

Stu Wilson
Megaphone

old proverb

a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

The numbers of "tablet" devices projected to arrive inthe next 6 months is huge, and those that are here (Crucnhpad or whatever its being called this month) are failing miserably.

The HP Slate when it arrives will fall apart after a year, because thats how HP make stuff, BUT WebOS on the slate should be a good fit, I'd certainly like to play with one if the price is right.

The winners from the trailing group IMHO, are going to be the Android based tablets, as long as the user experience is concomitant across the range, otherwise it's going to splinter just like Android on the phone already has, with the same sort of backlash against the manufacturer's that has already been seen.

Stu Wilson
Jobs Halo

no reason to have a title here

funny that, i'm betting the percentage is 0.

the difference being that whatever you want to call them, sheep, fanbois etc, actually WANT the product and are prepared to camp out for them.

Is their want your want? probably not by the tone of your post, but that doesnt mean that they are wrong and you are right.

I'll be getting an ipad, not a netbook or another laptop, it will replace my aging MacBook whose sole purpose was for surfing on the couch and in the kitchen because I am of the personal opinion that it's what I need for the job I will use it for.

Apple in shock public attack on Adobe

Stu Wilson
Thumb Up

this tile is overly zelaous!

very well said.

'iPhone 4G' loser outed

Stu Wilson
Jobs Halo

should have used the Joke ALert

since you've been down-modded by someone with no apparant sense of humour.

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