Posts by Anonymous Custard
350 posts • joined Friday 25th July 2008 07:33 GMT
In other words we’ve simulated a hapless user.
And they couldn't find a real PHB in the office anywhere to test it properly? Or even set up an internal webserver rather than an FTP one to do it?
How many "hapless users" FTP stuff these days?
Re: ...Windows 8 and its successor, Windows Next
I was wondering more when Jasper Fforde's lawyers would be getting on the phone.
Contradiction in terms?
Larson-Green is an ex-programme manager and an interface expert; she worked on Metro and was responsible for the introduction of the Office 2007 Ribbon - something that confused users of Office
That's the strangest definition of expert I've seen in a long time...
Re: Any old iron?
Nor me, which might explain the 10+ year old desktop machine in my study that does just fine under WinXP with a couple of GB of memory and an old Opteron in it. It's a frankenPC with the guts of a few old ones added to its original Tiny set-up (there, that shows how old it is).
Supplimented by a little Acer Aspire One for couch-surfing - it happily does what I and the family need it to (how much processing power does my kids playing Club Penguin need?!) and will probably continue to do so until the motherboard or PSU go pop.
It ain't broke, so I don't fix it.
In other news
Pope announces he is catholic and relieved looking bears seen leaving woods...
Having spent a couple of years now differentiating machines by being able to hypothetically do things that most people have no need or interest in doing, the fact that people aren't doing them and so don't need capable machines is surprising?
Web browsing, email and social media stuff hardly take much processor muscle, but are what most people want. Even streamling and media stuff like youTube are more limited by your connection than your processor in most cases...
Re: Usage FAIL
You'll probably find that Apple or Samsung or the Swiss Railways or someone have a patent on future history.
I'm sure the USPO would probably approve it anyway.
I know Win7 Explorer certainly is
As the error box that pops up about 1 in 20 kindly tells me before the whole thing crashes in flames before restarting itself phoenix-like.
Re: w00t!
Yeah I just love the numbers that topics like this can throw around. It's part of a course I sometimes give to new entrants to our company, and when you can pick up a (not very new) iPod for example and tell them that there are more transistors in the little box you hold in your hand than there are people on the planet it really gets their attention.
Especially given there are still some of those people who were born before the transistor was invented...
Re: "Fondletops"
Just what I came here to say as well.
Although for some reason I also now can't get the mental image of Essex girls out of my mind.
Someone pass the brain-bleach please.
Re: Why downgrade from Win 8 ? Upgrade from Win 8!
Or alternatively download a few Linux iso's, burn them to CDs and do a livedisk test. Then you can confirm what hardware/drivers work and don't without even touching your HD before you commit to anything.
Did that with an old laptop whose Win XP resolutely refused to drive its wifi card and reliably recognise and/or connect. As it turned out all three distro's I tried picked it up and connected first time, which was quite a pleasant surprise (as I was beginning to suspect the wifi card itself was fubar'd).
So what about existing HP-Win7 Machines
So in addition if I want to rebuild my existing HP-Win7 laptop, I'll just get the old original drivers from the recovery partition (presuming they're actually there) rather than any updated ones which HP may have issued between when the image was made and now? And with this statement also no way to download updated ones aside from a third party source?
So basically I need to join the back of the queue of people above who're going else where whilst sticking Linux on the remains of the HP. Thanks for nothing HP.
Handbag hoover
So basically if they put this into the iPhone-Whatever-Number-It-Is-This-Week, they'll turn it into a weak mini hoover that will slowly suck up all the fluff, dust and cruft in the handbag or pocket in which it sits, thus filling up the innards with crud even quicker than the fans on my laptop seem to fill its innards?
Hence rather than cooling it they'll probably end up making it overheat more until it's opened up and cleaned out. Hey, what do you mean it's almost impossible to open an iPhone up? That'd mean you had to replace it every few months instead...
And to say nothing of how effective this would be in a phone that's immediately put into a case.
Re: Cornish sand
Some of the rocks probably are too, with all the Radon gas coming from the crust down there too.
“Give me the child for his first seven years and I'll give you the man.”
No thanks, given I've got two daughters...
Just pray that there's intelligent life up there for him to find...
...cos there's certainly bugger all down there at the BBC.
(With apologies to Eric Idle, although it is another opportunity for the two of them to do the Galaxy Song together and this time not change the best bit by leaving the punchline in).
Posted in Edible iPhone case goes on sale in Japan
Python-san?
OK, I now have the mental image of a sumo-style Japanese Mr Creosote being offered "just one wafer-thin iPhone" and eating the case, phone and all?
Re: Cruel and unusual punishment?
If I were Judge Koh, I'd ask to be excused, because one trial already with Apple and Samsung is more than anybody should have to experience during their career.
Only if the rest of us can also be excused from having to read about it any more as well...
Posted in Virgin launches TV Anywhere streaming
Re: Was excited...
And if it's anything like SkyGo or iPlayer, depending on how far you work away (ie outside a UK IP address) then it may not work anyway, at least without a UK VPN or other such IP tomfoolery.
At least iPlayer has its desktop version for downloading and offline usage, albeit with having to remember to stick all the stuff on your HD before you go a-wandering...
A better thing to fix - First page lag
Personally the thing I want is for them to repair whatever they did a few weeks back which is now causing Chrome to sit there with "Sending Request" in the status bar for a fair amount of time before it decides to load the first page you try and go to after opening the thing.
It's obviously doing a DNS search or something similar, which depending on time of day (and your ISP/DNS set-up) can take ages. IE and FF don't do it, but it happens irrespective of ISP used (my travelling netbook does it whether I'm at home or on the road).
Please Google can you sort this one out! I know from looking on the net and their forums that I'm far from the only one getting hacked-off with this glitch, especially when I just want to quickly look something up and it takes minutes rather than seconds.
Whilst you're waiting - Oolite
Both for this and for the Antique Code Show to actually cover the original, definitely check out Oolite.
Single player, but free, open source and with a very active and friendly crowd behind it, both in terms of developers and mod'ers. It is set up to allow add-ons (OXPs) of which there are literally hundreds (and more being written all the time), so you can tailor the experience to the gameplay you want. New missions, new ships, new weaponry and all sorts of great eye candy are all available, many of them of professional quality.
Plus if you have problems, questions, suggestions or just want some interaction with other players (and the dev's and mod writers) there's a very active and friendly BB as well - indeed the friendliest one this side of Riedquat...
But for the Elite:Dangerous - right on commander, although as with the mythical Elite IV (which this may be redefined as), breath shall not be held...
An understandable mix-up
Bletchley Park, Bletchingley - I'm sure there have been less likely sat-nav and map-reading cock-ups...
There are about 120,000 Windows Phone 7.x apps in Windows Phone Store, according to Microsoft. It would be a disaster if Windows Phone 8 was incapable of running those existing apps.
That doesn't seem to have stopped them doing the equivalent with Win8RT though?
Am I missing something here?
Or does there seem to be a lack of an arm actually holding the camera in the photograph - it appears to be free-floating and separate?
When they said the Martian sand tasted like Hawaiian sand, they weren't dropping a conspiracy hint were they? Or did the rover ask a passing Martian to hold the camera and take a shot for him like any trusting tourist would?
Re: you could drive the Torrey Canyon through the wriggle room
Indeed it was. Due to a navigational error, it was shipwrecked, caused an environmental disaster and sunk.
Draw your own analogy.
Or not having one at all...
Milk
Black coffee = simple coffee - with or without milk
Have they invented black milk now?
Love 'em or hate 'em, you can't argue with that sentiment.
Nice one to the fruity firm - Apple supporting the Big Apple (and surroundings).
Does it come with free laser eye surgery to remove the limiting factor?
Well you know what they say...
...it's the nice thing about standards, there are so many to choose from.
Re: Evolution
Well you learn something new every day :) That said given what a marvel Colossus was, it's not a huge surprise...
Indeed I was actually watching a (repeat) BBC Timewatch on the very subject last night about Colossus, Tommy Flowers and Bill Tutte. If you're quick (and in the UK) it's still available on iPlayer for a couple more days:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016ltm0
It's a shame that all the secrecy was needed - Flowers and Tutte should have their names up there with Turing and Babbage.
Evolution
Brings to mind also the evolution in the circuitry and silicon that goes to make the things up. Amazing to think that in less than 1 human lifetime (65 years this year) we've gone from the first transistor (Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley in 1947) to modern microchips. 1 germanium point contact on a desk to a few billion in a device that fits in your pocket.
I occasionally give a course to new recruits about the history of such things, including a few little nuggets for newbies:
* You can fit about 60 million modern transistors on a pinhead, and about 2000 across the width of a hair.
* If your house had shrunk at the same rate as transistors have, it would now be microscopic.
* In the time it takes to switch from ON to OFF, a beam of light would travel about 0.1 inches.
* Modern PGA chips have one transistor for every 2-3 people on the planet.
It's always a fun course to give, as it opens their eyes to quite the scale of what they're getting into (IC manufacture).
Indeed, or even perhaps the abacus?
Re: i want one
Hmm... Wife or frikin' laser?
Depends if you try and mount it on her head in lieu of a shark?
Competition time?
We need a competition here, with suggestions and voting and such. If SPB-followers can come up with PARIS and LOHAN/REHAB, shirley we can have a few more backronyms to rival TIFKAM?
Re: Class
True, but neither is it Charlotte Uhlenbroek...
Class
Not as good as the original version (especially it's lack of last-line wrap-up) but still fun.
Just a shame that they have to get a theoretical physicist to present a show on biology and evolution, when there are other more directly qualified candidates around.
Imaginatively scary?
Is the slideshow supposed to be made extra-scary by leaving it all up to our imagination?
(and yes I know about the send a correction link - I did that before posting this)
So Disney Princesses include Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, Jasmin and now Leia?
Posted in Japanese toilet can save penalty kicks
And in other news...
...the BBC deny that it's Japanese remake of Dr Who is suffering from budget restrictions.
Blame the hardware?
Unsurprisingly, Redmond blamed the hardware.
Umm, this was a Surface launch - Microsoft make the bloody hardware don't they?
To (slightly mis)quote Groucho Marx
"A child of eight would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of eight."
Re: May be a bug or may be a feature
But in principle, you may be uncertain until you actually try it ;)
App-store
Browser developers should adopt an App Store-style model and deny the installation of browser add-ons obtained from outside this ecosystem by default
Doesn't Chrome already do this, at least in the current version?
I seem to recall a couple of weeks ago trying to install an extension that wasn't from their store and being blocked because of that fact?
Re: Bloat
Thanks - I'm at the stage of just playing with Linux at the moment (my machine came with Win7 Home Prem which does what I need it to, but I like to see what's what elsewhere too) and so wasn't so sure if it was removable or not.
Anyway my partition changed flavour yesterday from Ubuntu to Lubuntu, which seems somewhat more happy on the machine (an Aspire One) anyway. But have a pint anyway for the educational tip :)
Re: Maybe
But they can't hide under it if it's up?
And another one here...
Also occasionally nagged by my better half to have "a clear out".
But that said her mother did ring up a few months back complaining that an electronic somethingorother (I forget what it was offhand) had stopped working. Diagnosed as a failed power brick - cue reading of power requirement label, shufty through my version of aforementioned boxen, appearance of fully working power brick kept after its associated gadget went tits-up and lo, one relatively happy mother-in-law, at least briefly.
Not to mention the walk-on cameo role that a couple of handfuls of old memory chips made a while back as visual props when I had to give a training presentation about my job, which seemed to rate all sorts of brownie points from the PowerPoint droid giving the course.
So here's to the boxes of cables, all coiled up and nests for mice (and keyboards).
How to run a small chip company
Give a previously successful large one to this shower and wait a few months...
Bloat
I recall one of the old "selling points" of Linux vs Windows used to be that it was streamlined, and there was nothing in there that you didn't want/need as bits could easily be added or removed as required.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but whilst this Amazon Lens can be turned off, it looks like it can't actually be removed. So here I'm carrying around in Dash something that I actively turn off and don't need/want/use, but must still carry around in the search coding?
And it also seems somewhat at odds with the other article on el Reg today about Canonical pushing Ubuntu as an XP replacement for business. I'm sure most businesses are going to love the idea of Canonical's servers asking Amazon's search engine every time a user searches for a locally stored document (or the content therein) if they accidentally haven't disabled all such commercial lens features, or they've been re-activated or added by an update or even by local user action.
I'm serviously wondering if the Linux partition on my netbook will need to change flavours soon to something that isn't bloating.
Hum
All but a truly perfect transformer will hum/buzz/squeak/make noise to some extent, it's fundamental electromagnetic physics of how they work:
http://www.aip.org/pnu/2004/split/690-1.html
The linked article relates to large transformers (power substation-types) but the little ones in the power supplies will have the same basic effect, just scaled down (in size and volume).
But of course there will also be some element of build quality coming into play. Depending how well the thing is put together and anchored, plus also how much other magnetically susceptible material is close by that could get attracted/repelled by the changing magnetic field then all sorts of noises could probably occur. If the frequency causes bits in the supply to vibrate, then it'll sing merrily to itself and anyone who is nearby.
And if the current draw changes, then so will the current flow in the transformer, hence it's electric and magnetic fields thus also the noise it makes.
So VM could be using a cheap or dodgy batch of transformers which may not be adequately mounted or secured. What are the chances of that? :)
