Posts by tfewster
107 posts • joined Friday 18th May 2007 00:42 GMT
damp squi[d|b]
Sorry, it's deliberate reference to a joke from the show:
http://theitcrowd.wikia.com/wiki/Divorce_trial_of_Douglas_and_Victoria_Reynholm
IOS 4, released in 2010, didn't run on the original iPhone; As there were no more bug fixes to IOS 3, I'd call that "out of support" after 3 years.
Even worse, I bought an iPhone 3G in April 2009 just before the 3GS came out; When IOS 4.3 was released in March 2011, it didn't support the 3G. (I always wondered if I could have returned the 3G as "not fit for purpose" under the SOGA, especially as it was on a 24 month contract with O2 ;-)
If only...
.. someone could create an app for these mobes that transmitted the speech directly to a receiving mobe that then output it in an audio format, so the meatware on the far end could interpret it and query any misspellings, rather than a speech-to-text encoder that means the driver has to look at the screen. You could call it a far-speaker or "tele-phonic" app.
Yes, I'm aware that even hands-free (tele-phonic) communication is distracting to the driver, but at least they can keep their eyes on the road.
Re: Phew!
Could have been worse - e.g. "Capgemini staffers pulled out by the fuzz"
[ab]using Amazon
This year I checked peoples Amazon wishlists and bought elsewhere, using the handy "Bought this somewhere else" feature of wishlists to try to make my point known.
It's been painful - many items on Amazon can't be found elsewhere, or are at much higher prices. Delivery times have been poor, and tracking orders a pain.
In conclusion, I'd be happy to pay 10-20% more for goods from Amazon for the convenience and quality of service.
The cost
£4.6bn in annual TV advertising revenue / 25 million households = £184 per household p.a.
hidden stashes
Yeah, it would take me days to assemble a pile of stuff to take a photo, and SWM(S)BO would take the opportunity to make me justify every item once it's in view. On the other hand, she promised to sort out her book/clothes/shoes while she was on half-term holiday but didn't, so I have the moral high ground at the moment.
Re: oh so familiar
Is that you, Sue?
I'm pleased to say I've just dug out a 10 year old, 2 generations superseded, Unix software set of CDs - because I need it to save the day at work. I'll buy you a fourth wardrobe with the bonus I get ;-)
Re: Here's an idea
http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_233_one-step-solutions-to-fixing-economy_p20/#1
Posted in Ten... all-in-one inkjet photo printers
Re: When is £300>£499?
And Reg Hardware is less than helpful:
Cost per page: Brother printers "as low as Kodak"; Kodak ESP "no lower than Brother"; Kodak Hero "Lowest" @4.1p
Print Quality: Brother - "ragged?"; Kodak ESP "better than Brother"; Kodak Hero "the same on all papers"
Fortunately you can get the info on the Kodak ESP 3.2 from from http://www.reghardware.com/2012/07/07/review_ten_budget_inkjet_all_in_one_printers/
As always, a summary table would be helpful (And would make recursion obvious)
Posted in Ten budget inkjet printers
How hard could it be to summarise this in a table?
For a comparison, copy/paste the following into a text file, save as a .csv & open in a spreadsheet:
Budget All-in-ones,Price,Rating,Print Quality,B PPM,C PPM,B p/p,C p/p,ADF,Fax,Cassette,Card Reader,Carts,Connect,Dimensions,Display
Brother DCP-J125,£65-90,70%,Fair,3.2,,1.6,7.6,N,N,100,Y,,USB,,Colour LCD
Brother MFC-J430W,£90-108,65%,Poor,7.7,4.8,2.6,7.6,20,Y,100,Y?,,USB WiFi,,Colour LCD
Canon PIXMA MG2150,£49,65%,Good,6.9,1.7,3.2,7.8,,,,,Tri-Colour,USB,,LED
Epson SX235W,£50,60%,Poor,3.9,1.1,1.5,10,,,,,,"USB, WiFi",,-
Epson Stylus Office BX305FW Plus,£90,60%,Fair,3.8,1.3,2.6,9.5,Y,Y,,Y,,,,Mono LCD
HP Deskjet 3050A,£40,80%,OK,6.4,2.2,4.8,11.8,,,,,,USB WiFi,small?,Mono LCD
HP Photosmart 5510,£70,90%,Good,9.2,4.6,2.2,6.6,,,,Y,Separate,? WiFi,,Touchscreen
Kodak ESP 1.2,£69,80%,Good,8.1,3.5,1.6,4.4,,,,Y,Tri-Colour,,,Colour LCD
Kodak ESP 3.2,£79,75%,Good,8.6,3.7,1.6,4.4,,,,,,,,Colour LCD
Lexmark Interpret S405,£50-133,70%,OK,6.8,4.1,3.9,11.5,Y,Y,,Y,,? WiFi,large?,LCD
This is based just on the article (apart from the unmentioned WiFi on the Lexmark, but given away by the "WiFi" logo!). If anyone's interested, I'll do some research & fill in the blanks.
Re: Re: I wonder
Year 1: We outsourced our service to save money! Bonuses all round!
Year 2: We insourced our service to improve service! Bonuses all round!
Repeat.
Funny how my spellchecker recognises "outsourced" but not "insourced"
Re: Work Blunders
> he got his root access taken away...
But he'd just gained valuable experience! That gut feeling that makes you pause before hitting return because something isn't quite right..
OTOH, someone who makes the same mistake twice deserves no mercy
Re: Good work, El Reg
+1; but with one correction
"Proof that the average journo writes bollocks as doing [select * from useful_careers] was too hard for them"
Re: Licence fee
I worked it out as approx £200 per household per year, to completely replace all TV advertising revenue with subscriptions. But I'd settle for 3 minutes of "comfort breaks" every 15 minutes. They can show what they like then, so long as they give me a decent transition/warning notice that the programme is about to restart.
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/2/2012/05/19/dish_networks_at_odds_with_broadcasters_over_ad_skipping/ (2nd page of comments)
MagSafe patent
I just love the (wikipedia) article on MagSafe:
MagSafe works exactly the same as the magnetic power connectors ... from the early 2000s have... Apple exclusively owns US Patent No. 7311526 ("Magnetic connector for electronic device", issued in 2007)
Fail, for the USPTO
Re: Income
Except no-one knows it's your work, because EvilCorp have stripped out the EXIF data & don't attribute you.
Posted in HP-Oracle Itanium smackdown starts
Re: Come on, HP
Even if your assumptions were true - What do HP have to gain from letting Oracle get away with this?
I'd be interested to see Oracles P&L statement for oracle on Itanium - i.e. "what will it cost us to bin our most important enterprise software partner?"
Disclaimer: I'm an HP-UX lover, but don't necessarily love the ugly step-sisters - Itanium & HP Corp.
Re: Just what I needed...
"There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives" - US Army Demolitions School
Well done NetApp
You're announcing a paradigm that EMC seem to...have had for a while!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/14/emc_vmaxe/
http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h8125-storage-tiering-sql-server-vmax-wp.pdf
I'm not a storage guru, so feel free to enlighten me on how Goldilocks is "new" compared to "fully-automated storage tiering (FAST VP)"?
Posted in Ten... Star Wars videogame classics
Re: Never understood...
Never hit that bug - I must have destroyed the so-called Invincible half a dozen times in the same storyline.
The STD Badi Dea was a bit tougher - Relentless waves of TFs, TDs & TBs. If you destroyed 5 out the 6 of each squad, the last would suicide so a new wave could spawn.
And one STD would hyperspace out once you knocked its shield generators down. Tried it with a Y-Wing, but never had time to disable it with Ions
Still, 16 out of 18 (I think) ain't bad.
But Tie Fighter bored me. Too much defending stupid allies, useless wingmen, not enough shooting everything that moves.
Re: Obvious Solution
Agreed, move ISPs - And with no penalties if the old ISP has broken the contract by failing to supply a reasonable service. Making them pay costs would be even better - e.g. changing your email address*
* Yes, I know you can have a persistent address, run your own mail server etc. But 99% of the world shouldn't need to.
@ h4rm0ny Re: Very sad
I'm assuming you have a Pipex Business contract - you didn't make it clear, which is probably the reason for the downvotes. Home user support bad; Business customer support good;
@Neil Barnes Re: The (low) price of ad-free TV
Actually, the £2.4Bn _is_ for TV; The other £1.2Bn covers the other media. So you get 4 ad-free channels + content for about £100 p.a. The point of my post was that for an extra £200 p.a. (we) could replace advertising revenue with subscription revenue and have dozens of ad-free channels showing quality original content from around the world. Which _does_ make the BBC look expensive.
As to the cost of advertising being included in the product - Unfortunately ad-free TV wouldn't eliminate advertising agencies, but it might make them pay more to create an interesting ad* ** and pay more for the limited TV slots that wanted to use the ad-revenue model - Keeping up the revenue and enabling creation of more quality content.
*If I recall correctly, it used to cost about £1m to create an ad and £0.25m per showing in peak time; So skimping on the creation was a false saving.
** How about the ASA being the judge of "good" ads? If viewers complain that an ad is boring, they could prevent it being shown again :-)
Absolutely agreed on the purpose of advertising; It's fine if you don't have access to a search engine when you think "I want a widget that does X and Y"; It's OK if you live in a cave and never thought of X and Y as being useful. But as the best advertising is word of mouth (enhanced by t'internet), the old Awareness/Interest/Desire/Action model is only effective on a limited % of the viewers
@Arctic Fox RE:"Do you want to live in a capitalist or communist regime?"
Yep, hence the troll icon. Maybe a "Joke Alert" would have been better?
Oh, by the way - Did you warn them about 9/11 etc.? http://xkcd.com/875/
The (low) price of ad-free TV
Television advertising revenue in the UK = £4.36bn in 2011 / 25 million homes in the UK
So to replace that advertising revenue, you would need another £174* on the licence fee, to be distributed across all the channels. That's just £14.50 a month on top of your "service provider" fees - BBC licence + Sky subs
*Call it £200, as the ad + trailer time MUST be replaced with actual programs!
It would be more expensive in the US:
US advertising revenues in 2011 = $171.7 billion / 160 million homes = $1000 p.a.
More reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom#Licence_fee_expenditure
BBC: £145.50 for colour * 25 million homes in the UK = £3.6 billion in 2010 => 2.4bn on TV (66% of BBC revenue on ad-free TV). A bit expensive for just 2 ad-free channels?!
Posted in Does Britain really need a space port?
Re: Build high
I see the Joke Alert icon, but just in case - I'll save you the walk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
Re: AC Re: @Philip - govt regulation
Yep, and the standard defence from British banks was "The government didn't stop us from doing something stupid, so it's the governments fault". Not "the government _made_ us do something we regarded as stupid"!
@perlcat Re: @Philip
True about the feds mandating loans for the poor, but that would limit the banks over-exposure to $10K on a $50K house. Multiplied by 160 million houses (worst case, from US Census data), that's just $1.6 trillion the US would have to cover, equivalent to 3% of the _entire_ US housing "value" of $48tn (160m x $300K, the average price)
According to Ben Bernanke, ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveschaefer/2011/12/06/bernanke-there-was-no-secret-bank-bailout-and-it-was-only-1-5-trillion/ ) bailout loans peaked at $1.5tn, though the banks allegedly needed between 7 and 24 tn - due to their irresponsible leveraging they had to sell assets at fire-sale prices. Though SOMEONE had the cash to buy the assets - actually, my self-invested pension did quite nicely out of buying depressed bank shares.
And British banks were under no compulsion to buy toxic US assets or over-leverage loans to Brits
So I'd blame the US feds 5% and the banks 95%.
Re: the senators know this
When you say "pay what you pay", do you mean $30,000 p.a., which should cover their "share" of education, policing etc., or do you mean 31% ($310,000 p.a. for someone on a million a year)? $170,000 in taxes is not "less" than what you paid, though it's a lower percentage of a millionaires "hard earned" income.
i.e. Do you want to live in a capitalist or communist regime?
Secondary question: If the media report the % rather than total tax paid: Are they communist sympathisers?
Re: Oh yeah?
Sorry mate, I don't believe direct advertising works on me either. If it can't engage my Interest, or even Awareness, it's not going to produce a sale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_%28marketing%29
It so happens that I have an iPhone; The first one I got was a 3G, so I didn't fall for advertising hype. When I started looking for a replacement (smart) phone for my previous 5-year-old phone, I did my research and got something that "just worked" - in my considered opinion, and to the disgust of my Android-bearing peers.
True, I had to be aware that a variety of smartphones existed, but that didn't come from looking at ads.
TV? Mainly recycled comedy. Films? Last went to the cinema in 1998. They'll be on Sky soon enough. Games? If they're still selling well 6 months after release, they're probably worth playing. Car? A Toyota Avensis, because taxi drivers regard them as comfortable, reliable etc.
OTOH, without advertising dollars there would be no WWW as we know it. So please, Mr Advertising Agency Exec, keep pumping out your ads for the 90% who CAN be influenced by shiney-shiney
Cartels
The government gets its backhander through Insurance Premium Tax, so no incentive to drive prices down.
I find IPT to be the most offensive tax; Mandatory car insurance: Government takes a cut. Cut police numbers so people have to take out theft insurance: Government takes a cut. Run down the NHS so people buy healthcare insurance: Government takes a cut.
We should be getting refunds, rather than paying 3 times over...
Re: Extras?
It has nothing more for the serious fan - No better quality, no extras that a serious fan couldn't find elsewhere and MISLEADING ADVERTISING as to the extras included. So yes, it's a ripoff.
But still one of my top-5 films, no matter what format. And the fact that $ony hope they can bilk another generation with another crappy release is actually a tribute to the genius of the Pythons.
Re: Another nail in the coffin
Nope, the purpose of Windows 8 is to convince you to buy Windows 9
I'm copyrighting the phrase: "Windows 9 - It doesn't suck as much as Windows 8" and planning to retire off the proceeds.
Change requests or change control (AKA management)?
As I see it, the article is about Change Requests from the business (that spawn mini-projects) and have very little to do with Change Control (Change Management), i.e. putting a change into production in a controlled/managed fashion (often driven by the IT department).
Any process that confuses the two is likely to be...confused. And therefore useless. Having to justify the business benefits of applying security patches and beg every "stakeholder" + his dog to let you do the work, on top of the inflated test & implementation planning, drags out the day-to-day work so IT staff don't have time to handle actual Change Requests.
But back to the article - I can see how Change Requests would suffer from the problems listed - IF there's no program/project manager to link the ends & resources.
My most gobsmacking project experience? As the recently-joined Unix guy on a project with a clueless PM:
- Got the boxes installed & cabled up. Installed the OS. Installed monitoring & scheduling tools. Proudly announced in the project meeting that I'd done my job and the other teams could start theirs.
- Monitoring team wanted ME to raise a Change Request for them to start monitoring the boxes.
- Schedulers wanted ME to raise a Change Request and write detailed specs on what jobs there were - hmm, surely their task?
And so on, for every department - even if they'd been attending the meetings for weeks, they hadn't started their planning.
Apparently the Unix guys "always did that stuff". I told the PM it wasn't my job to write other departments documentation, but I'd help him compile a list of tasks for the project and the lead times so we could create a... "project plan", I guess you'd call it. He and the other PMs actually appreciated that help!
My boss backed me up and wanted me to help him drive the model throughout the IT function. But I got bored with trying to change the world and moved on to a company where tech teams cooperated and took responsibility for their own areas.
Posted in Ten... Satnavs to suit all budgets
Anyone tried Waze yet?
I've just installed it on a iPhone, hoping it will live up to its promises:
- A basic satnav with traffic updates;
- pre-caching your chosen route (on a WIFI connection) so you can minimise data usage during the trip;
- Real traffic updates from monitoring other Waze users rather than* flawed/delayed notifs from the Highways Agency or radio (or my built-in satnav/TMC).
* Don't know yet if it includes TMC - if it only uses other Waze users, a critical mass would be needed to make this useful.
My favourite HR balls-up - Not deleting the mail trail
A mail cascaded from manglement requiring technical staff to update our skills profiles in the database, so they could match skills to new projects.
A reasonable request, but the mail trail down from the top man also included the message to him from HR, saying "make sure they do it properly, 'cos they couldn't sell water to a dying man in the desert".
My motivation to do the task plummeted.
And as this is really about manglement rather than HR - Another favourite was:
During a cascade briefing, a Director told us "If you don't like (the recent changes), you know what you can do"
After a flurry of the best people resigning, there was another hastily-organised briefing, where the Director accused us of misinterpreting his words!
Re: freedom?
Good grief, 4 downvotes just because I _didn't_ slag off the the USA as being another country that treated arrivals as "guilty until proven innocent" ? Or because I asserted that some countries were more welcoming? Or maybe the downvoters think I should queue in turn like a good little Brit, giving up a little liberty for a little security (And just do the traditional Brit-grumble about dumb animals being treated better than humans)?
Oh well - at least it got _some_ reaction (see icon)
Posted in WTF is... scale-in?
Assuming it's not a rhetorical question...
...and that you're not just taking the piss out of IBM for what sounds like a backward step...
From the blurb, "scale-in" sounds like scale-up, but allowing consolidation, possibly including virtualisation. Scale down the number of boxes, the footprint, the unused CPU & memory, the management overhead - It actually makes sense!
Posted in 'Real time' PAYE pilot goes live at HMRC
Re: Good recipe...
Pain for who?
Now:
- Employer hands over (your) PAYE tax monthly or weekly, lumped together for all employees and tracks how much was paid for each employee themselves.
- At the end of the year, Employer produces P60s, breaking down for HMRC the total paid for each employee. HMRC credits you with the tax paid (May take months to process)
Soon to be:
- Employer hands over (your) PAYE tax monthly or weekly, with a breakdown. Or even has a second payroll run, with your tax being credited directly to your HMRC "account", so no extra paperwork.
- HMRC has real-time record of your credits.
- The End
The only question in my mind is: Who thought the current system would be a good one?*
* I could be wrong about how it works, or there might have been an advantage in the days before businesses and HMRC getting computers. Feel free to enlighten me.
Posted in Over half of IT hires in Asia are duds
Re: "Water wet, fire hot"
No, they're not "cheap" if they're not doing the job as a department. If users are unproductive while waiting (longer) for fixes, that's a cost to be offset against the salary savings.
But try to get that through to management!
Re: "Double delete"?
Delete it from your inbox and empty the trash can immediately, before anything gets backed up.
Even as a non-techie in this field, I guess "undeleting" files on a suspects PC or mailserver would provide proof from the content of emails, if the logs showing communications between top execs at rival companies wasn't enough.
FAIL - because they did.
Re: For your amusement
Much appreciated, I'll take a look at Comodo Dragon for myself; FF eleventy-seven seems to grab about 150Mb for the first tab, then 10Mb for each additional tab.
IE 8 grabs 50-100Mb PER TAB - I usually have 50+ tabs open, so IE isn't an option for me
Re: *control*
Hmm, could that be why governments support Google & Facebook? Because establishing a right to delete your data would have severe implications for the State/police/credit reference agencies.
I agree that as long as you "use" Google/FB/The UK, they can hold data on you. But if you leave?
I can't see Google being badly broken just because they can't track you for targeted ads any more; Deleting your FB account won't remove photos others have posted with you tagged, or remove all your posts to other people. So I'm not clear why they would care so much as to come out with ridiculous statements like "break the Internet".
freedom?
..in the UK ... we have the right to freely move about without interference from the government or its agents...
I've often wondered what would happen if I just walked past Immigration control, especially when returning from within the EU, calling out "It's OK, I'm a British citizen, so the Queen wants you to let me pass freely, without hindrance." By never having enough Border Agency staff on duty, the Agency are effectively creating a hindrance to my "rights". Most other countries are more respectful of arriving people, be they visitors or returning nationals!
On the other hand, you would just have a longer wait for your hold luggage.
Re: For your amusement
Yeah - 'twas BS at the time, my Windows '98 PC had a better spec than that and was sluggish, so Fisher-Price XP wasn't likely to be better.
Just had to upgrade my Mums 1.7GHz XP laptop from 512MB to 2GB, 'cos it was getting slow - probably due to Firefox getting bloated (Tho' it may be web-page bloat rather than FF at fault).
Oh, was it just me or did anyone else see the hilarious advice in the Which? computing guide - "If your PC is running slow, consider upgrading the OS"?
Re: Simply love it here...
Actually, I think Keep Refrigerated made his reason clear - He can't find stuff in ShitePoint
I've had the misfortune to have to use it in 2 companies:
The first, a Government department, had search implemented but excluded PDF files so it wasn't reliable. Only the admins could add documents but it took them ages to do so, so everyone kept their own copy with their own changes. An internal website would be more appropriate and could implement Search easily.
The second, a huge IT company, lets anyone upload so useful info CAN be shared. They've created a standardised directory structure - mostly empty, but there's no way of telling until you navigate down to the empty folder. Search is completely disabled, so I have to open a Windows Explorer view and search (by document name) from there. A shared network drive would give the same functionality and be faster. (you can restrict access to network shares by userid)
I expect you'll say that they're using the wrong tool for the job, but if indexing/searching can be disabled, it's basically a crap product. And navigation is slow & awkward, and the presentation is ugly.
So there you go - Reasons, and familiar, reliable alternatives. As an end user, I don't care about the tech - I just want to be able to get at stuff that I know exists!
Let me see if I've got the timeline right...
2006:
Labour propose IMP
Public outcry
Tories & Liberals jump on bandwagon, condemning IMP
2010:
May: Labour lose general election (correlation does not imply causation, but their contempt for
the taxpayer was a major reason I voted against them)
November: ConDem do a U-turn and resurrect IMP
April 2012: Proposals become widely known, causing public outcry
??? 2010 Will Labour now condemn IMP ? Possibly on cost rather than moral grounds.
May 2015: General election. Might a "courageous" pursuit of unpopular* legislation affect the election campaign & outcome? Would the opposition parties take advantage of this in their election campaign?
June 2015: Target date for implementation of unpopular* legislation.
* Depends how you spin it
Re: Oh, if we're looking for worst films ever
Van Helsing was tongue-in-cheek fun. And it had Kate Beckinsale in it.
IMO, no way in the "worst" category.
Re: Many years ago....
Ah, but Watson was right! Bureau computing, where other companies buy time off the computer owner was the obvious way to go at the time, and we're moving back to that model with cloud computing...
