* Posts by Gordon 10

3872 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2009

Multiplayer Elite to debut on May 30th

Gordon 10

Gavin Smith

Tempted to get the Gavin Smith novel - his stuffs the best from a new British author since since Richard "Altered Carbon" Morgan IMHO.

iPhone-stroker-turned-fandroid sues Apple over iMessage text-slurpery

Gordon 10
Facepalm

Oh FFS

Yes its a pain but Apple post a clear help topic on how to avoid this and there are dozens of third party guides as the complainant notes. Basically you just de-register your mobe number with iMessage before fleeing the platform. Admittedly they could make it a lot easier to do so - an unsubscribe message or similar springs to mind but its merely an inconvienience - I fail to see how you can attach any financial significance to it in anywhere but America.

It annoyed me when I moved but how that translates in a lawsuit is beyond me.....

Stock and awe: Top City biz takes £32m hit after software upgrade axed

Gordon 10
Alert

Kudos to Brewin Dolphin

Most Financial Services firms would just declare the program to have "succeeded" or no longer relevant due to "Operational changes" or "Market Conditions" and then never mention it again in an act of collective corporate amnesia.

Either they have lowballed the costs, or they actually have a CIO with guts or the CIO's sucessor wants to stick the knife in....

Granny's Guardian: Acorn BBC Micro hero touts OAP watchdog kit

Gordon 10
Mushroom

Re: Hmmm...

Ahem - ZX80 - if by bedroom programming you mean typing it from a magazine then knocking the powersupply at line 299 of 300.

Classified LOHAN payload is four-eyed beast

Gordon 10
Flame

Re: Today is not a day to mention bacon.

MMM crispy ---->

You mean I shouldnt mention the bacon buttie I had from the staff canteen at 9.30am this morning dripping with butter and brown sauce?

Ok - I wont.

SpaceX wins court injunction to block US Air Force buying Russian rockets

Gordon 10
Mushroom

Re: national security

That Russophobia might be directly as a result of one of their Fat Cat mates being offed with Polonium in their nations capital by one of Putins mates. (alledgely)

Inventors: Feast your eyes on fuel cell tech that'll power up Internet of Thingies

Gordon 10

Re: Renewable?

I think you are exaggerating slightly. It doesn't have to be miraculous just within an order of magnitude of the petrochemical industry at the same scale.

Care to point at anything that says a hydrogen economy will be much much worse than an oil based one?

BSkyB broadband growth chopped in HALF

Gordon 10
Happy

Happy punter

A happy ex-BE sky user here. Tried to jump ship to virgin and after they were total cockwombles I ended up getting an ex-BE deal with sky. Jumped from DSL to fibre with a years free line rental - so had the added pleasure of telling BT to shove it tootoo all for cheaper than my old BE package excluding the BT charges. Their dedicated BE switching team up in Scotland somewhere did a brilliant job of swapping me over with nary an issue. Couldn't recommend them highly enough.

DreamWorks CEO: Movie downloaders should pay by screen size

Gordon 10
Joke

In related news

Googles stock prices shoots up as analysts revise Google Glass shipments upwards by 1000% post Dreamworks putting their policies into practice.

Up to 500 GP practices to test plans to share patient data

Gordon 10
WTF?

500 - How many!!!

Approx 11,000 surgeries in the UK according to google. Assuming taking Scotland out takes it under 10,000.

That means over 5% of surgeries are going to get their data Borged in the trial.

FY very much NHS. "Trial"my arse

Nod Labs forges one (Bluetooth) ring to rule them all

Gordon 10
WTF?

wft

Why on earth has this got processors in it and running android? Shouldnt it be handing off the processing to a phone, and saving its power budget for the comms necessary?

In other news I've been able to control other humans rather than technology almost since birth. My ring can clear a room in seconds.

Japan, Europe to shake hands on China-deterring tech deals

Gordon 10
Thumb Up

Hooray

The news that Japan is creating a DARPA-clone can only mean a Mecha is only days away from being deployed on Tokyo's streets. I look forward to both my Office block and Apartment being smashed by our new metallic overlords.

Deploy <insert favourite manga here (no hentai please this is a family website)>.

FCC seeks $48K fine from mobile phone-jamming driver

Gordon 10
Flame

Jebus

Its not complicated. Just enforce the laws you already have.

Fine drivers using phones without a handsfree kit. Fine them hard for talking on a mobile, much much harder for Texting & facebooking. Take their license away for a second offence.

Anyone stopped with a phone on the dash within reach without a bluetooth headset or other handsfree kit should be asked to place the phone in thier glove box or pocket.

Faster Macbook Air pops out: What, a NEW Apple thing and ZERO fanfare?

Gordon 10

Re: Wow

@AbelSoul

Minor downvote for no knowing that most Vaio's are absolute pigs to hackintosh well. I should know - I've tried. Lots of custom hardware chippery for Hardware buttons and the like. Lucky to get a clean build working well.

Russia 'incompatible with the internet', cries web CEO 'axed by Putin'

Gordon 10

Re: Smarm

A quarter of the full price. Half of the uncle-sam's rust belt discount price.

Sueball-slingers seek stake in bankrupt Bitcoin blunder bunker MtGox

Gordon 10
WTF?

Somewhat puzzled

I cant quite make sense of this. Are Sunlot offering to re-incarnate the exchange for everyone - or just those that are part of the class action - the maths doesnt add up.

ie is this an attempt by the US creditors to screw over the rest in return for settling the class action?

It's spade sellers who REALLY make a killing in a gold rush: It's OVER for graphics card mining

Gordon 10

A market for the big boys?

Surely there is a market for Nvidia or AMD to market something between a GPU and an ASIC? Possibly a FPGA tuned for Cryto currency algorithyms?

There must be something out there that whilst not quite having the time to market and efficiency

of an ASIC from a specialist vendor, is *just* general purpose enough to have some longer term lifespan?

This is all off the top of my head of course - feel free to tell me where Im wrong....

US judge: Our digital search warrants apply ANYWHERE

Gordon 10

Re: inevitable

Or the much aborted plans for SeaLand.

Gordon 10
Stop

Re: inevitable

@JimC

You've missed the point somewhat. There are already access procedures and laws in place that cover this sort of thing - so your point is somewhat moot.

The story is about a narrow minded judge using a very broad interpretation of a USA-ian law to try to do an end run around international law and treaties propably in the interests of a TLA who has dirt on him.

Who fancies a billion-quid bonanza? Just flog the Home Office some shiny walkie-talkies

Gordon 10
FAIL

Please dont ask

Crapita to tender, please please please please.

Though given the companies they have Borged have a decent share of the Emergency Comms market I suspect Im wishful thinking.

Sat comms kit riddled with backdoors for hackers – researcher

Gordon 10
Meh

Re: Not a good example of a security document

Interesting to see downvotes but no rebuttals. Which leads me to assume the OP is broadly correct.

Probably big deals from a purist security standpoint but probably reasonally diminished risk once actual use cases are taken into account.

ie whats the monetisation/propaganda benefit for criminal gangs or individuals.

Does it meet the proportionality test for State Actors. ie could they gain similar results with another approach?

The fact that the Authors approach seems to have been theoretical in places also casts doubt on the level of alarm needed for this.

Also I think the Authors may have missed an opportunity for more alarmist headlines by suggesting that MH370 could have been p0wned by these vunerabilities.

Reg man builds smart home rig, gains SUPREME CONTROL of DOMAIN – Pics

Gordon 10
Mushroom

Vari-light IR dimmer switches

For simple work it from the sofa tasks - I think Vari-Light IR dimmers are hard to beat as they work with any IR learning remote. John Lewis also sold them as their own brand.

Most of my house is set up with them. Living and Bedroom are controlled from a Harmony and an All-In-One remote respectively. The Harmony is great and its powerful enough to be bounced off 2 walls to reach the switch - the all in one is a one wall/Line of Sight gizmo.

Any of the modern androids with an IR port would also probably work.

In both cases I can control switches that I dont have ideal LOS to.

You get also get a Vari-light remote that can control up to 8 switches but its a bit more feeble and is LOS only.

Sorry London, Europe's top tech city is Munich

Gordon 10

Re: Tier one, tier two, etc

Good lord 4 downvotes? How many of them had Brussels IP addresses?

Gordon 10
Trollface

Re: Tier one, tier two, etc

Didnt you know? The mere fact it was conceived and executed by a bunch of faceless Eurocrats who are suckling at the teat of our taxes and who have failed every year to achieve a fully audited set of accounts makes it relevant.

Reg gets sneak peek of Getac's chunky TOUGH AS NAILS 8.1-incher

Gordon 10
WTF?

GPS as an option?

As above. I presume that means its wifi only? They might as well have gone the whole hog and created a 4G version and got the GPS for free.

So at 1099 will it really last longer than 5 cheapass android tablets in cheap waterproof cases?

Hic! Storage upstart DEY bought out by Australian wine merchant

Gordon 10
Joke

ADD

In other news 66% of Storage Startup founders have ADD and cant sit still long enough to develop and ship a product. Cheers for the cash VC's!

Kingston DataTraveler MicroDuo: Turn your phone into a 72GB beast

Gordon 10

Re: USB 3 Option

Presumably the USB 3 interface only works on your PC? Are there any phones that support it?

Gordon 10
WTF?

Eh? What do you do with your USB keys jump on them or do you just have ham hands? I've had some cheap pressed steel ebay chinese tat ones attached to my keyring for years that have gone a bit bendy - bend them back roughly into shape and they still work perfectly.

This time it's 'Personal': new Office 365 sub covers just two devices

Gordon 10

Re: Not again

pedant-ard.

Gordon 10
FAIL

MS Dumbasses

Yet again Microsoft shoot themselves in the foot on pricing, steadfastly ignoring the fact I can get the Real MS office for a fraction of what this costs, either through the home use program, or the standard home edition or one of the other heavily discounted edition.

Ok it wont work on my tablet but thats not a useful device for doing MS office type work anyway.

Honestly Microsoft are so frightened of not being able to match the revenue streams from "legacy" products that their insane pricing strangles new products at birth.

Feast your PUNY eyes on highest resolution phone display EVER

Gordon 10

Re: Pixel wars

Yes and no - they did start the pixel wars - but arguably they haven't encouraged them as much as the high end android manufacturers competing with each other. There have been 2 iphone retina displays resolutions and 1 ipad retina resolution. The android gang have pretty much brought out a changed resolution every year and within a year have had multiple retina class resolutions.

The rest of the OP's slightly odd post not withstanding - I think on this he has a point.

Reprieve for Weev: Court disowns AT&T hacker's conviction

Gordon 10

Finally some sense!

The clock is ticking on how long it will last unfortunately :(

Apple says iOS, OS X is immune to Heartbleed SSL bug

Gordon 10

Really?

Their Products maybe safe-ish but have they really checked every web server? Im sure if we looked hard enough we could find a few that arent running Apple software but some other *nix.

Icahn, but Iwont: Carl the investor pest ends war with eBay

Gordon 10
FAIL

So basically

He gets what he was after all along - a proxy on the board.

For shame Ebay.

Far be it for me to say he will then use this seat on the board to cause more unrest, or get more visibility into Ebay's financial performance so he can exit at the most profitable time for himself and his cronies.

Spy-happy Condoleezza Rice joins Dropbox board as privacy adviser

Gordon 10

Late April fools?

How could anyone be that out of touch with their user base?

Scandal-hit Co-op Bank's CIO hits eject button after one year

Gordon 10

Re: Maybe ...

Unfortunately I suspect the co-op is going further away from its roots towards another souless banking corp....

Whilst they should have never elected the chairman they did, you dont have to throw the baby out with the bath water by turning all corporate.

Cheat Win XP death: Your handy guide to keeping snubbed operating system ticking over

Gordon 10
WTF?

One Question

Why enable automatic updates if the VM can/will never access the internet?

Ancient Earth asteroid strike that dwarfed dinosaur killer still felt today

Gordon 10

So

Are there any mass extinction events around this time that corroborate this?

Is there an iridium or ash layer like chickycluxal? (The dinosaur one)

Apple to flush '£37bn' down the bog if it doesn't flog cheapo slabtops

Gordon 10

Re: For $63Bn

You'd also think that for his stoopid analyst salary he'd realise that the laptop line starts at $799 well below the $1000 band he's quoting.

Analyst - possibly the easiest most pointless job in the world? Make blindingly obvious predictions and get paid, make wildly unlikely predictions get paid. Its win-win!

Gordon 10
Trollface

You wish

And the fact that the market shows that's generally true really boils your blood doesn't it my rabid little commentard?

Brit IBM prof gets life-changing 'Tech Nobel' for work in spintronics

Gordon 10

Thats stretching it a bit.

Fair play to the guy for getting this prize, but Im not sure Spintronics meets the first prize criteria.

•Awarded to groundbreaking technological innovations that enhance the quality of people’s lives in a sustainable manner

Groundbreaking yes, but how precisely has it enhanced our quality of life in a sustainable manner?

I could see Flash meeting those criteria but not a slightly denser hard drive.

Mt Gox's 'transaction malleability' claim rubbished by researchers

Gordon 10

Comprehension fail.

You and the rest of the commentards on here need to read the article more clearly.

It ONLY talks about the number of attempted Malleability attacks vs those that were sucessful. It says NOTHING about what proportion of Total transactions they were. So it could be 20% of a very small number or a very big number.

So in context its the same as saying 20% of attacks against an ATM are sucessful - it says nothing about the number of ATM transcations or the amount of cash involved.

Why won't you DIE? IBM's S/360 and its legacy at 50

Gordon 10

The above point on Micro-codes probably explains most of it...

Gordon 10

Ahh S/360 I knew thee well

Cut my programming teeth on OS/390 assembler (TPF) at Galileo - one of Amadeus' competitors.

I interviewed for Amadeus's initial project for moving off of S/390 in 1999 and it had been planned for at least a year or 2 before that - now that was a long term project!

Technology is murdering customer service - legally

Gordon 10

Re: BT

I'll take your BT and raise you a Virgin Media. Interactions over 10 years and 2 countries have convinced me a Leopard doesnt change his spots.

Least annoying helldesk - Sky - suprisingly comparable with the Tech Savvy types at Eclipse.

Deep desert XP-ocalypse averted as Reg man returns

Gordon 10

Out of curiosity

Whats all this permit to enter the desert business? (Im a pom)

UK regulators: We will be CHECKING UP on banks' IT systems

Gordon 10

to be fair Barclays

Not that I want to be - but they went absolutely mental on recruitment last year, nearly everyone I knew who was looking to move went there, so this was always on the cards, so most of the stuff at Barclays is just cyclical. No comfort if you were one of the ones affected - best thing to do is respond in kind by moving to a someone else ASAP.

'Hello, is that the space station? NASA here. Can you put us through to Moscow?'

Gordon 10

Re: Political Posturing

Do you really think they are comparable?

Comparing whats gone on in the Crimea to what happened in Iraq and Afganistan - I think I'd rather have Russia annex my country than America (and its allies) "rebuild" it.

At least me and thousands of others will be alive in a Russian prison than dead in a defacto civil war, or stripped and tortured for shits and giggles by rednecks in uniforms.

Although being in the UK we've more or less been informally annexed by the Leftpondians anyway.

Can you tell a man's intelligence simply by looking at him? Yes

Gordon 10

Re: To call the extrapolation invalid is putting it lightly.

Agreed - even if it was a biology degree how wide is the IQ spread going to be? Sorta self limiting to a particular demographic.

Snowden files latest: NSA and GCHQ targeted German satcomms

Gordon 10
Mushroom

A new low for GCHQ?

If this is true someone at GCHQ needs to be held accountable.

Misplaced zeal over terrorists is one thing - economic espionage that actually damages UK firms interests is quite another. The A380 is chock full of British tech that probably made its way straight to Boeing.