* Posts by Bassey

1131 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Sep 2008

Stephen Hawking both British and not dead

Bassey

NHS saves lives

I would be interested to hear from our American readers whether or not this could happen in the US.

My wife and I had a baby on Feb 2nd this year. The Brits here will remember the day. The country was shut down due to snow. He was fine for a while but, after a couple of hours, developed problems requiring an operation. Operations on new-borns require 2 specialist paediatric anaesthetists - the nearest setup was many miles away at Alder Hay, Liverpool. Our son was placed in a specialist incubator and we were collected by ambulance and driven, with Blues and Twos, through the snow to our local airport. We were placed in an air-ambulance and flown (at very low altitude, to protect the baby) to Liverpool airport - which was closed. They opened the airport for us to land (in thick snow) where another ambulance collected us and drove us to Alder Hay. It was now midnight. The surgical team operated on him from 01:30 to 03:00. We were put up in Ronald McDonald house for two nights and were taken home by the same combination of Ambulance-Air Ambulance-Ambulance that Wednesday.

We were never asked for insurance or payment. Ronald McDonald (a charity) asked us if we could pay for the cost of our room - we were more than happy to - but that was the only money we paid out over the whole thing. He's fine now, by the way.

Could that happen to two ordinary people in the US without health insurance? I'd be really interested to know.

Google File System II: Dawn of the Multiplying Master Nodes

Bassey

I'm glad I'm not

I'm glad I'm not in charge of the project to move the whole of Google from GFS to GFS2. Good luck to whoever is. I hope they are wearing massively reinforced underwear when the time comes to press that button!

Robot cauliflower harvesters to replace vanishing migrants

Bassey

Did this

I did this for several years during school and later university. It's a perfect job for all the students who are complaining there are no seasonal jobs to go around because of the recession. Of course, it's hard, physical labour and involves wielding a big, heavy, very sharp knife so the Student Union/Elf'n'Safety brigade would probably put a kibosh on that!

Noxious algae menace Brittany beaches

Bassey
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Sounds good

Anything that stops horses riding (and shitting) on beaches has to be a good thing. And if a few of their over-bearing owners get caught up as collateral damage then all the better. Can we get some of that over here?

Vulture 1: Calling all electronics wizards

Bassey

Syringe?

You're planning on launching a hypodermic needle to a high altitude and then let it fall back down to earth?

Kodak Easyshare M420

Bassey

Greed with above

£70 bought me a Casio Exlim with 8.1mp, a case and a 2GB SD card. It's fast, the image stabilisation works a treat and 90% of the pictures it's produced so far have been 1st class - and that's in the hands of my (nearly) 60-year-old mother for whom I bought it as a birthday present. For £170 I'd expect the camera to take the memory card out, load it in the PC, copy the pics over, select the best one and print it for me (though I am a tight-wad).

Apple blueprints warranty Big Brother

Bassey

Dead simple

A) Don't buy them

B) (in the UK at least) a Warranty does NOT limit consumer rights - even if that is exactly how most companies try to use them. I had a repair for a disintegrating stylus silo on an XDA MiniS rejected because the water sticker had activated and this "invalidated the warranty". I pointed out that my repair had nothing to do with water, I wasn't applying under the warranty and if O2 REALLY wanted to stand up in court and claim it was I'd be happy to give them that opportunity. A manager promptly appeared apologising profusely etc. etc.

Global banking collapse fails to dent broadband

Bassey
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Astonishing

So people find it easier to cut back on variable-cost, optional purchases than fixed-cost, long-term contracts. Who'd have thought it, eh?

Nissan turns over new Leaf

Bassey

Re: Nigel Callaghan

I don't get your "Really this is only a commuter and pottering round town vehicle, so with annual mileage of perhaps only 5K" and "We need a leccy car with a 500 mile range minimum". My Clio is used primarily for commuting with a bit of running around (we have a larger "family" car for when the kids need transporting). I have a relatively short commute of 35 miles (round trip) but it still does 12,000 miles a year. This is an absolutely perfect commuter car for anyone with a round-trip commute of 80 miles or less (bit risky pushing it to the full 100!).

Also, our council provides free parking spaces with free re-charging for electric cars (not sure how the justify that, but that's a different discussion). So, for £15k (£20k less the government £5k subsidy) I can drive to work, park for free, have the car charge for free and then drive home without the battery even getting close to running out. And, as long as I'm reasonably careful, I should be able to get a couple of trips out of it at the weekend without having to pay to recharge it at home.

For 12,000 miles at 9p a mile plus a saving of £4/day parking I'm saving £2000 a year. So the car is basically free within 7.5 years (yes, ignoring running costs!). Where can I put my name down?

CRB check failures rocket ahead of massive expansion

Bassey

@ Chris W

> That's exactly the sort of thinking that falls into the hands of politicians pandering to the masses

Marvellous. How glad I am to have someone like you looking after my best interests (i.e. whatever you tell me they are). With people like you to tell everyone what to think and correct them when they go wrong it won't be long before the evil politicians all fall on their swords and we can go back to living that free life of endless summers, jumpers for goalposts and cheeky scamps having their ears tweaked by the local bobby. God bless the queen, guvnor!

Mozilla Labs' Weave 0.5 aligns Firefox planets

Bassey

foxmarks

It's not only been available in Foxmarks for years (minus the history synch) but, as Foxmarks is cross-browser, I can synch it with IE8. And yes, there are sites that look better with IE8 or only work with IE8 - all Microsoft ones, obviously, but it's still handy to have all my bookmarks and password history waiting for me on the odd occasion I fire it up.

Sorry, Opera who? No use claiming you invented something if no-one ever gets to hear about it!

Microsoft to launch UK ad-funded online video player

Bassey

Re: Silverlight

It's flash for the six month trial. Silverlight thereafter (if successful). and no, I don't have the foggiest why they're doing it that way around.

El Reg to launch space paper plane

Bassey

Git Wizard 1

It is, after all, an entirely pointless stunt designed to garner maximum publicity.

Elgato EyeTV Sat

Bassey
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Re: Sleepy

OFF TOPIC but no-one is forcing people without terrestrial to subscribe to sky. I live in an area with bugger-all terrestrial and I've been on the sky freesat service for the best part of a decade. £80 for a Pace skybox and £10 for a card from Sky gets you about 200 channels (of complete crap) with no monthly subscription. I like a paranoid conspiracy theory as much as the next bloke but the option is there if you want it...

ON-TOPIC I'm obviously missing something because the description makes this sound like the worst kind of crap imaginable - for £180????

Last chance to vote to cut phone termination rates

Bassey
Happy

Nice! :)

"one has to wonder where else the operators would get that revenue from. Perhaps they would just content themselves with lower profits for the good of the people" :)

HP excessive packaging world record put to the test

Bassey

Genius!

Certainly beats the occasion I ordered a 3-in-1 printer and printer cable from Amazon and the cable arrived in an identical box to the printer (and at the same time). Was too dumb(founded) to take pics unfortunately.

Microsoft's mobile marketplace opens for submissions

Bassey
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@ Sleepy

"So there's 30 million devices in a hundred or more different form factors with different feature sets and screen sizes and OS versions, with 90% of their owners never having installed third part software or an OS update, versus 45 million near-identical iPhones and iPod touches, with 90% of their owners familiar with downloading applications and OS updates."

Yeah, and did you know that 80% of statistics are made up on the spot!

AVG update gags iTunes

Bassey
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Does iTunes still download random pieces of software without asking?

I always thought iTunes behaved like malware - which is why is was removed and replaced with MediaMonkey sometime around the point the "Software Update Service" went and installed that crappy browser of theirs.

I'm surprised some of the move sophisticated "Behavioural" detection algorithms don't flag it up as malware from time to time.

Pentax Optio W80

Bassey

Eh? Sacrilege

Whilst there are a few snobs around who would sniff at the idea, fine malt should ALWAYS have a drop of good, warm water added first. Particularly if it's one of these high-strength special bottlings.

Right, with that off my chest I can carry on and read past the first line now.

Feminist org declines nude calendar cash

Bassey
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Seems fair enough

I've never been convinced about all this "self empowerment" stuff. At the end of the day, they're making money by selling pictures of themselves in the buff. Most women I've met who would describe themselves as feminists have turned out to be a bunch of moaning, whingeing, men hating bores with a massive persecution complex but give this lot their due. They set themselves up to promote women for their talents, rather than their "talents" and £600 isn't enough to buy their principles. Good on them.

O2 coughs to data failure

Bassey
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Re: lansalot

> Are they saying they run the entire data network with a single-point-of-failure?

No. The article clearly states that not everyone was effected and that you could try one of their other APNs.

What's wrong? Did you get tired after reading the first couple of lines so just made up the rest of the article in your head?

IT workers grumble about lack of career path

Bassey

Be interested to know what they had in mind by "Career Development"

The only career development I've ever been aware of was to go from being in a technical role to being a people manager with the odd bit of technical work thrown in to stop you getting bored. And, having seen how god awful most technical specialists are at people management (the classic case of being promoted out of anything you are good at until you find something you can't do and get stuck there) I've turned down every attempt by my company to "promote" me into management.

I don't need it. I get those sorts of kicks outside of work by being a parent and a mountain rescue team leader. In the office, I'll stick to doing what (I hope) I'm good at. I don't need the hypocrisy of spending years complaining about how crap my bosses are only to become a crap boss just for a few extra grand a year. And I'm happy to admit I would be a truly terrible manager.

'No more CCTV', cries top CCTV cop

Bassey

Not quite the gist

If you listen to the whole interview he isn't saying we have enough camera's or that we should never increase. He's just saying we have too many camera's for the resources available at the moment. We should stop for a while and plough that money into people, training, systems and procedures so that we can start making the most of the CCTV cameras we have today.

He didn't actually say it but it was implied that he would then be happy for the crappy, poor quality cameras to be replaced and for new, high-quality cameras to go up.

To suggest he was in some way anti-cameras or believed there were enough does not represent what I heard when I listened to the whole interview yesterday evening. He was quite clearly pro-cameras and believed there was an assumption amongst the public that, when crime takes place, someone will be watching on a CCTV camera and the perpetrators will subsequently be caught. He clearly believes the public backs ubiquitous CCTV.

Mozilla downplays risk from unpatched flaw

Bassey

Re: Weary

Unless your house it about a mile long would it not be quicker to walk to one of the other PC's, lookup the recipe, print it off and walk back to the kitchen?

And if your house is a mile long a) Well done, b) Why are you cooking?

OpenOffice bug/feature stirs 'horde of angry chimps'

Bassey

@ OkKTY8KK5U

"Not that I haven't submitted bug reports and even voted on them - it just becomes clear that the devs don't care. Just like the Microsoft response "shut up and deal with it" to complaints about the execrable "ribbon" they inflicted on their users. "

Did you ever consider that it might just be a case of not everyone agreeing with your point of view? I believe MS published the results of user studies into the ribbon interface and those who didn't like it amounted to about 4.5%.

Sorry to disappoint your obvious sense of self-importance but, far from sticking our heads in the sand, us developers do listen and we tend to act on what the majority of users want, not just what you want.

Bassey
Stop

Did anyone read the article?

There are at least half a dozen comments above along the lines of "Why are OO devs being so lazy/pig-headed and refusing the fix the bug?".

Read the fecking article will you? It isn't a bug. It is meant to work that way. You may or may not agree with how it works but that's an entirely different matter. If the software is designed to work one way and that is how it works then it doesn't need fixing!

The spec might need changing but then you've (potentially) got a lot of people who ARE expecting their hidden data to be removed who are going to be really pissed off. I must admit, it's annoyed my both ways, depending on my mindset at the time. Sometimes I'm expecting it to remove everything and that's great. Other times it's caught me out. Same goes for Excel.

But please read the damn article before mouthing off about how stupid/lazy/inferior-to-you other people are.

Opera slams Microsoft's Windows 7 E move - again

Bassey

Re: Bilgepipe

> If I want Firefox then wouldn't I have to install IE first

No. Most magazines come with a DVD filled with umpteen different browsers. Also, how many people only have access to one PC nowadays? It's a very simple matter to download (as an example) the setup.exe for firefox from another PC in the house or a friends computer, stick it on a USB key and then run it after installing Windows 7.

Although I think the whole thing is ridiculous. No one is making Apple remove Safari from OSX. If a user REALLY wants a different browser on the PC before they buy it there are any number of PC builders who, I'm sure, would be only too happy to stick Opera/Firefox or whatever on there to get a sale.

For people who know nothing about PC's, Microsoft bundles a browser. For those of us who know what we're doing, the choice is there. I really don't get where the problem is?

Would you leave your child alone with a cabinet minister?

Bassey

BBC Interview this morning

There was a very funny interview on BBC breakfast this morning. They did there usual job of getting two polar opposites to argue the toss. One, a children's author (never heard of him, never heard of his books) and the head of a teaching union. The first, deliberately leading question went to the author with the obvious expectation that he would be frothing at the mouth about this afront to his reputation.

The interviewers were quite visibly pissed off when he cheerily admitted he thought the plan was an excellent idea and saw no reason why he shouldn't be vetted in the same way as everyone else.

Clearly, the researchers had not done their jobs. Rather than a slanging match we ended up with an intelligent, articulate author presenting a well-reasoned argument. Most un-BBC.

Swedish devil girls fingered on Street View

Bassey
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Amazing

I don't know how you do. A world-exclusive to rival anything from News International. Good work Reg!

Dell sets date for Vostro all-in-one UK debut

Bassey

This is what I've been looking for

We've been wanting an all-in-one with a decent sized screen that can be wall mounted for a while now. Lets hope, like the home XPS range, this comes in 24" varieties.

Oz cops turn to wardriving to fight Wi-Fi 'jackers

Bassey
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Re: David Haworth

So, by your reasoning, If I leave my car unlocked with the keys in the ignition it isn't theft if someone jumps in and drives off?

It's amazing how dishonest people always manage to justify their actions somehow. Hollywood charge too much/their films are crap/the cd I wanted wasn't available/was drm'd etc etc.

Reg readers crack case of the $23 quadrillion overcharge

Bassey

Fraud

To the couple of posters asking about this not being flagged as fraud or irregular activity, as others have mentioned, this amount almost certainly never existed in any financial system. It's just an error in the way the report was generated. Those fraud detection systems monitor transactions as they come in and look for certain patterns (a common one being several consecutive payments for a small amount - to check a "generated" number is actually an active card).

So no, VISA would not have flagged this up as fraud and blocked the card.

Microsoft invests $1m in IT girls

Bassey
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Pile of shite

What a pile of shite. Why aren't people donating millions to get more men working in nail-bars?

Sexism is sexism. There is no such thing as positive discrimination.

If women really want to be treated equally they need to get together and beat the living shit out of the few "feminists" whose constant "it's sooo unfair" bleating gives women a bad name (maybe starting with tennis players).

Men and women are equal but the sooner some people realise that they aren't actually the same the better off we'll all be.

Plod offered SIM confiscation powers by Tories

Bassey
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Excellent Stuff

The Tories. Tough on media scapegoats. Tough on the causes of media scapegoats!

Long wait for health records

Bassey
WTF?

Always wondered

How someone who can be SO incompetent as to put unencrypted confidential data on a laptop AND leave the damn thing on a bus can still be prescient enough to have made a note of the exact number of records and to what they pertain?

CBS, Comcast in web TV trial subs

Bassey

Re: Hollywood is overpaid

So might I suggest you stop paying $60-80 for a movie and $100/month for your telly? It's no use complaining about Hollywood. As you rightly point out, it's YOU who are paying the ridiculous salaries so grow a pair yourself and stop paying them!

Staten Island manhole swallows texting teen

Bassey
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Good idea

This is the sort of policy New Labour should be introducing over here. Leave all the manhole covers off to catch the inconsiderate little bastards that insist on trying to walk into me. It must happen four or more times every lunch time. It will catch the morons that use their umbrellas/big-tops-on-a-stick as battering rams when it's raining as well.

And can we have large brown bears at the bottom of the manholes?

Microsoft rubs Web 2.0 noses in SharePoint cash pile

Bassey
Grenade

Quick Question

We have lots of spreadsheets doing all sorts of things I'd rather they didn't (yes, we have an end user computing program but users will be users). At the moment, if we want to upgrade our version of office, we have to undertake a MASSIVE testing program (after we've got people to confess to the existence of these spreadsheets) to make sure things still work in the same way with the new version of Excel.

We've been testing Office 2007 SP3 for a while now and plenty of the more complex (read: VBA) stuff is not even backwards compatible with Office 2007 SP2.

If we were to switch to MS Office Web Applications and MS upgraded the apps (presumably on their servers) I'm assuming a proportion of our spreadsheets and VBA code could stop working over night. It's not like it's being pushed out and we can put it on hold. It's a web address.

Obviously, I have NO intention of doing this. Just a theoretical thing.

Most IT pros not planning on Windows 7 rollout

Bassey

Amazing

So 40.8% of SMEs intend upgrading to Windows7 within 15 months of it's launch? I find that incredible. I quite like Windows 7 (then again, I didn't have any major problems with Vista) but I won't be making a business case for our company to upgrade to it. That not too far from half of companies plan to before the product has even shipped I find almost unbelievable.

Brothel funds NZ lad's Olympic dream

Bassey
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Elite Sports

Since when was cycling an upper-class sport? Quick check on the GB entries in the Tour De France

1) Mark Cavendish - Isle of Man, worked in a Bank to fund his early career

2) Bradley Wiggins - Born in Belgium and his Dad was a cyclist - no blue blood the last I checked

3) David Miller - Born in Malta and his dad flew with the RAF

And I've known plenty of cyclists, sailors and rowers. A few of the rowers were public school but most of those in sailing were from the fishing community and the cyclists are as down to earth as you can get. Certainly more so than those oh-so-working-class footballers.

And good luck to this bloke. He's clearly willing to risk the ridicule he knew was coming his way in order to pursue his dream.

Datawind breezes into netbooks

Bassey

Could be nice

Might be okay - you'd need to play with one, find out the battery life, is there an SD card sot etc. - but I don't think I'd pay over £100 for one. You can get an Elonex Webook for £99 so I don't see why you'd pay 60% more for one of these.

SEC extends Jobsian health probe

Bassey

It's a tricky one

On the one hand, he is inextricably linked with Apple to the point where his health has a direct impact on the share price. On the other, he's just a bloke and perfectly entitled to take time off to look after himself without answering a load of questions.

In this case, I'd probably suggest Apple ARE out of order but not because they didn't publish every detail of Jobs' health problems. Any public company that has become so completely reliable on one individual without an obvious line of succession is in breach of it's duty to it's shareholders. I'd say the shareholders themselves should see this as a wake-up call and should be asking the board where the backup plan is?

ECB Cricket 1.0

Bassey

Sounds familiar

I've been using the plusmo app from cricinfo for ages on my Windows Mobile phone. Not only does it cover all that the ECB app does, but I get the usual ball-by-ball commentary from cricinfo. Not sure if it's available for iPhone yet but well worth a look if (like me) your corporate internet policy blocks sports commentary (for some reason, they don't believe following the Ashes, ball by ball, is work related).

Oh, and very low data useage as well - for those not on unlimited* data bundles

* unlimited data bundles are limited to whatever the hell we say they are so tough.

Too thick to boil an egg? Buy 'em preboiled

Bassey

"pre" boiled?

As the prefix "Pre" means BEFORE, surely a preboiled egg is an egg before it's been boiled. Or, in fact, just "an egg". If it's also been shelled I would hope it arrives in a little plastic bag.

A few years ago, the idea of someone selling boiled eggs would have been surprising. Today, it's rather "meh". I know catering wholesalers have been offering such for a long time. Sandwich shops will happily buy cheap, boiled, shelled eggs for making egg-mayo etc. But at 45p per egg, I can't really see these taking off.

Radiopaq slips out sound-boosting iPod Nano sleeve

Bassey
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Reveal hidden detail?

It's a compressed file. Unless it's going to the internet and looking up an uncompressed version of the file, the detail isn't hidden. It ain't there.

So, if the statement is even vaguely true (and not just marketing bollocks) what it is actually doing is having a stab in the dark and making up extra detail as it goes along. Although that probably doesn't sound quite so impressive in the marketing blurb.

Royal Society of Chemistry hunts Janet Leigh

Bassey

In fairness

Their analysis will be somewhat unrepresentative. The average shower waste doesn't include several pints of blood.

US starts emergency radio tests

Bassey
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Re GeorgeTuk

The 2012 Summer Olympics are in London. The 2010 Winter Olympics are in Canada (Vancouver, I think).

As for the radio, that is a good idea. Oh, hang on, we've been using a common, encrypted radio system across all emergency services (and most other services) for several years now. Still, nice to see you youngsters catching up.

Russians demand flying cars and telepathy

Bassey

I'd have thought

...with all the focus on that list on healing illness, repairing organs and living forever, a larger planet, food replicators and/or human sterilisation had better be pretty near the top of most peoples wish lists.

I don't fancy living for ever on a planet with a couple of hundred billion others all fighting over the last remaining scraps of food.

Oh, and for me it has to be teleportation. I could teleport into the bosses office, slap him across his smug little face and be out of there again before he realised what had happened.

Petrol station robbers cuffed after running out of petrol

Bassey
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Re: @ Sarah Bee

"What I don't think most techies understand is that as a group we are for the most part indicatively socially inept and .....are actually over weight middle aged men wearing double breasted suits"

How DARE you accuse me of wearing a double-breasted suit? I save that for weddings/funerals etc.

PS You forgot bald.

Firefox 3.5 - it's not a 'web upgrade'

Bassey
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Switch back

I'll have to give this a try. As a long-time Firefox user I've actually found myself using IE8 quite a lot recently. I found FF3 to be quite unstable and very slow with certain video. It was also crap at rendering outlook Web Access (yes, I know, probably MS's fault - but that doesn't help me!).

Downloaded last night but not had time to try it yet. I HOPE it's an improvement 'cause I feel dirty using IE8.