* Posts by DrStrangeLug

124 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Feb 2008

BOFH: GOATSE? No, I said goat fetis... you know what, forget it

DrStrangeLug

Honestly I have never

Configured a netware print server to add a header page with the printing user on it, then weeks later add an "auto-print on inbox rule" before signing the user up to wife-swapping mailing list.

Berners-Lee: 'Appalling and foolish' NSA spying HELPS CRIMINALS

DrStrangeLug

Won't somebody think of the children?

Do you really think we'll get anywhere near a reasonable debate in this country?

The day we get anywhere near that some terrorist activity will occur and news media will spend days days pandering to it demanding that more be done to stop them. I didn't think it a coincidence that that army drummer died just after the communications bill was shelved.

Blighty's telcos set to CHOKE off another fistful of piracy gateways

DrStrangeLug
Go

If the worse comes to the worse

You can always find solace in the arms of SpotFlux.

Digital radio may replace FM altogether - even though nobody wants it

DrStrangeLug

There's a difference

You can't sacrifice utility and ease-of-use on the holy altar of efficiency.

Other than another radio spectrum auction, exactly what does scrapping FM radio get us?

Coding: 'suitable for exceptionally dull weirdos'

DrStrangeLug

No, this guys is right on the money. We shouldn't teach people to code.

(Go with me on this guys, restriction of supply leads to increased demand . Less programmers higher wages)

Leaping SpaceX GRASSHOPPER ROCKET jumps 2,500ft, lands safely

DrStrangeLug

Clearly...

Clearly they used mechjeb. Cheats!

Techies with Asperger's? Yes, we are a little different...

DrStrangeLug

We're not sufferer's , we're the future.

I think we need to help those suffering from Technical Ability Disorder (TAD).

TAD sufferers can be the fairly mild type, who need to call help when the printer jams or routinely double click everything. But there are so many serious sufferer's, the one who can't use series links on satellite boxes, or send every email in capslock with no full-stops. These are the full Untechincals. As the world moves on they must either have constant help or retreat to Amish like homes where technology rises no higher than the electric oven.

TWELFTH-CENTURY TARDIS turns up in Ethiopia

DrStrangeLug

Be free soon

With the 50th anniversary coming up the first epsiodes will be coming into the public domain.

Grand Theft Auto V: Violent, sweary and amazingly ambitious

DrStrangeLug

I've not even looked at the single player yet.

I waited to long to buy it and it's sold out.

Microsoft, Nokia and the sound of colliding garbage trucks

DrStrangeLug

Meanwhile....

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, the android powered Lumia 940 is taking market share away from the Samsung Galaxy.

Sigh.

Web showered in golden iPhone 5S vid glory - but is it all a DISTRACTION?

DrStrangeLug

It'll be the..

iTerminal !

It works just like a tablet but you have this pair of external input devices , one with a lot of buttons for typing and another analog input device you move around a flat surface.

Specially designed for people to use while at a desk.

Why Teflon Ballmer had to go: He couldn't shift crud from Windows 8, Surface

DrStrangeLug

Do we really want a good CEO at MSFT?

I'd rather he had stayed for twenty years.

Given their track record I do not want to see Microsoft rising to dominance in ANY tech sector ever again. People accuse Google of doing evil but compared to 1990's Microsoft they're saints.

The terrifying tech behind this summer's zombie assault

DrStrangeLug

Found a good 3D film

I'm totally against 3D films and whenever I take the wife to a film we always pick the 2D version .

I've seen about 6 films in 3D, largely because we used to live in a small town with only a 2 screen cinema and if you didnt grab some films in 3D then you had to wait and risk not seeing it until you got it on DVD.

Then we saw Dredd and , frankly it worked. The 3D actually added to the film, due to what they were trying to show. But even that was 3D or nothing, we couldnt find a 2D showing that weekend.

Hundreds of UK CSC staff face chop, told to train Indian replacements

DrStrangeLug
Mushroom

Training your replacement.

Replacement : "So how do you configure the database backup script?"

Original Employee : "Well first you DELETE FROM USERS WHERE ROLE LIKE '%MANAGER%'; ...."

1953: How Quatermass switched Britons from TV royalty to TV sci-fi

DrStrangeLug

The late great Nigel Kneale, truly a man that can put the scare young children without flooding the set in false blood.

ACLU warns of mass tracking of US drivers by government spycams

DrStrangeLug

The easy solution

Someone write an mobile phone app that can be use to read the license plate and identify police cars (marked and unmarked) and report their position online in real time.

See how quickly laws restricting the use of ANPR get rushed in then.....

PM writes ISPs' web filter ads for them - and it must say 'default on'

DrStrangeLug

Is it a national blocklist ?

Whats on the list - do we get to see what we're opting in/out of?

What if my commercial site is wrongly put on the list, how does my company appeal this ?

Play the Snowden flights boardgame: Avoid going directly to Jail

DrStrangeLug
Go

Slap in the face

Could they put him up in a soyuz and de-orbit it over Cuba?

BOFH: Go on, beancounter, type DROP TABLE asset;

DrStrangeLug
Happy

Ah, good old BOFH, a role model for modern IT professionals everywhere.

Whenever I get those stupid "Would you like to us your opinion of our site?" crap I always sign of with my nom de plume, DROP TABLE SURVEYS; .

'Liberator': Proof that you can't make a working gun in a 3D printer

DrStrangeLug

Not the original liberator.

"Nobody serious has used single-shot firearms in combat for well over a century."

The French Resistance used them. the (AFAIK) first Liberator Gun. It was a cheap one shot metal pistol designed to be small and easily manufactured in bulk, so it could be dropped to resistance members in occupied countries.

It wasn't even designed to be easily re-loadable, the idea being you would use this easily concealed pistol to kill a German and take their better gun.

Snoopers' charter rests in shallow grave - likely to rise again

DrStrangeLug
Childcatcher

Please won't somebody think of the children?

Because over 99% children will spend the majority of their lives as adults.

Think about whether you want them to spend their adult lives with the government watching everything they do online.

Brit robot programmers banged up for £500,000 tax evasion

DrStrangeLug

Hiding the money and not declaring it is what got them, not avoidance like amazon, google , starbuck , and every other multinational.

If they'd created a GoldLogic in Ireland or somewhere with low tax and rented the company name back to the UK branch they'd have gotten away with it.

Björk gives up trying to Kickstart Android music app

DrStrangeLug
Alien

Bjork?

I thought the mothership had picked her up long ago.

Microsoft blasts PC makers: It's YOUR fault Windows 8 crash landed

DrStrangeLug
FAIL

Windows 8 suffers from one big problem - MS wanted in on phone and tablet sales.

I was being shown windows 8 laptop by a salesdroid over xmas and I was stroking the screen trying to get it to respond .

"It's not a touch screen" the droid said

"It's a touch screen user interface" I replied

Littlest pirate’s Winnie-the-Pooh laptop on the way home

DrStrangeLug
Stop

Hey microsoft!

Did these people boot this laptop?

Does the Windows license cover use by a third party without permission of the license holder ?

Elon Musk envisions small town of vegetarians on Mars

DrStrangeLug

Dreamers

Part of me is thinking this is one of those blue (or muddy pink) sky scenarios that wont get anywhere.

But where would we be without the dreamers?

Better luck next time Blofeld! Five Bond plot myths busted

DrStrangeLug

What about moonraker?

Any mathematical estimates on the probability of launching 6 shuttles within an hour and all of them working as intended ?

Snoopers Charter is for 'incompetent criminals, accidental anarchists'

DrStrangeLug
WTF?

The logical extension

Would be to outlaw VPN connections without a permit. Otherwise this law is useless.

And probably violates Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Vote NOW for the vilest Bond villain

DrStrangeLug

There's a difference

Between a villain and a henchman (goons? hired goons!).

Put up two seperate poll's one for the main baddie (Blofield, Drax, Goldfinger, etc) and another for the henchmen (Jaws, NickNack, RandomTask, etc).

Oi, missile boffins! Stop ogling web filth at work - Pentagon

DrStrangeLug

Leave them alone

As long as they're wanking away they're not starting uncalled for wars.

Reborn UK internet super-snooper charter to be unveiled today

DrStrangeLug

We could have had this years ago

If we had lost WW2.

LOHAN seeks failsafe for explosive climax

DrStrangeLug

Using a feeding tube for the pull in

To avoid the fail-safe line tangling , couldn't you fit a hollow tube through the swivel fitting and feed the line through that ?

By the way , isn't there a break the balloon where helium is to be fed through ? I'm imagining it's tied into a knot like a childs balloon. Couldnt you tie it around some simple pressure drop detector instead? Unlike like the air during lift the balloons internal pressure will suddenly change upon bursting.

Blighty's PC market fell to its knees in Q4

DrStrangeLug
Windows

Have we reached saturation?

Perhaps people have realized that they dont need a more powerful or a better user experience when all they do is turn it on and double click the browser.

When all your computing needs are prefixed with "http:" why would you need to upgrade before it breaks ?

George Lucas defeated by Stormtrooper helmet man

DrStrangeLug

All up for grabs

The judgment references the 1988 copyright designs and patent act.

Section 52 of that acts reads that any use under license of an artistic design through an industrial process renders the design applicable for public use 25 years after the end of the calendar year it was first marketed, so long as it was marketed in the UK.

Unless all those toys in the late 70s were hand made then most of the prime star-wars designs now go to public domain in the UK.

Press body looks at its naughty bits as hacking scandal grinds on

DrStrangeLug
Big Brother

Deckchairs on the Titanic

While selling news in tomorrows chip wrappers is a business heading for obsolescence, the business of gathering news and distributing it to the public is not going to go away. IMHO PCC really needs to look at reforming itself into a standards body for all news business, not just those who press ink down onto mashed up trees.

Back to gaslight, coal and steam power - it's the future

DrStrangeLug

Cycle it back into plants

Could you take this "pure" co2 and put it into sealed greenhouses to grow plants? They would have to be large, agreed, but the best method of carbon sequestration is surely photosynthesis ?

Steven Moffat promises 'darker' Doctor Who

DrStrangeLug

Dont break it in two!

Seriously, stop halfway through until the Autumn?

"Oh look, battlestar stopped for half a season every year, that must be why they won all those awards!"

It's official: Nokia bets on Microsoft for smartphones

DrStrangeLug
WTF?

Should have been android

Seriously, is it some mark of status in the IT world to regard Google as your competitor ?

I think Nokia hardware is great, let down by their OS. An android N97 would be fantastic. But no, "Google is our competitor." says Nokia. Rubbish. HTC, Samsung, LG, Sony - they're the competition.

This will turn into a coalition of losers.

No new strings for Guitar Hero

DrStrangeLug
Stop

Warriors of Rock failed for a reason

Its called the Pro Guitar Controller.

Frankly anybody interested in these games is salviating over the pro guitar and GH had a bad year with warrior of rock.

Poor IT contributes to DWP errors

DrStrangeLug
FAIL

Top down IT procurement at work

My GF used to work at the DWP and from what she's told me their IT provision is disgustingly and inflexible. Requirements are determined and written at a level far higher than the actual lowlies who sit at the keyboard, and consequently they never get a system that makes their job harder.

The whole thing needs redoing from scratch with proper stakeholder involvement. And by stakeholders I mean people who do the actual claims processing, not managers who get nice food from contractors during sales meetings.

Hacker unshackles Kinect from Xbox

DrStrangeLug
Happy

I know why

The Kinect is being sold at a loss, with MS making money back from licensing for the titles. If people start buying it without buying any of the games then they lose.

What they don't want is other people write (for example) a sign language reader and packaging it up with the hardware they've sold at a loss.

DARPA, NASA team on '100-Year Starship' project

DrStrangeLug
Stop

Waste of time.

100 years time ?

Put that in context - could the late Victorians have envisaged what was required for project Apollo ?

"The construction of the balloon would require a considerable increase in rubber from our plantations in the colonies. Also the gentlemen space travelers would have to be from the gentry classes because her majesty would surely request an audience upon their return ."

EU Parliament calls for pan-EU copyright law

DrStrangeLug
FAIL

Typical

There was always a demand for multi territorial licenses. But the rights holders loved parceling up rights by territory and selling them individually so it never happened.

It seems obvious now but it never occured to people that some were pirating material [from abroad] simply because you couldn't buy it .

The Phantom Menace took three months to get a UK release. Thanks to the threat pirates we got an official theatrical release of Revenge of the Sith within days.

Court slaps down coppers in photography case

DrStrangeLug
Pirate

Paging Mr Bin London....

Of course, all this goes out the window in an emergency or terrorist attack, when the plod become heroes again.

Whats the betting something will "slip" through net soon ...?

Daily Star is sorry for Grand Theft Auto Raoul Moat blunder

DrStrangeLug

Paywall?

And the newspaper industry is hoping to sit behind a pay wall and expect people to pay for journalism of this quality ?

Government lunatic magnet goes live

DrStrangeLug

Ignore

And I'm sure they'll just ignore all suggestions with the word "canabis" in it.

Artificial 'black hole' generator fashioned out of circuit boards

DrStrangeLug
Go

Anti-GATSO?

Can you stick one of these in your car and not trigger a speed camera?

IT Crowd gets fifth series run

DrStrangeLug

Didnt find it funny.

The Big Bang Theory though - that space rocks!

Carmakers boost e-car noise standards for vision-impaired

DrStrangeLug

Make It sound like...

I dunno, perhaps a car? You can already get a V8 soundeffects which plugs into your car stereo, making your little 1.0 micra sound like a mustang. Just install one of those by default and have a waterproof speaker under the bonnet, next to the horn.

LimeWire knackered by US courts

DrStrangeLug

Secondary Liability?

So under this precedent doesnt General Motors now have a secondary liability for speeding tickets ?

Doesnt Colt have a secondary liability for gunshot wounds or murders ?

For that matter doesnt sony have a secondary liability because it produces DVD-RW drives?