Posts by heyrick

Re: hostile environment

"It didn't feel like the friendly safe place I remembered growing up in."

This.

I have fond memories of growing up in the south in the eighties. Left in 2002. Watching the news, talking on the phone to people I know, hearing the amount of drivel that's ripped directly from the front page of the Express and treated as actual fact.... it's really not the place I remember.

I, too, have no reason or desire to ever go back. Not even for a Victoria Sponge made by people who understand cake (for all their boasting about culinary perfection, I've yet to find anything that resembles cake in northwest France - the "quatre quarts" is....dismal).

Re: Its very easy to detect ground based broadcasts

"MEANS we can have 1024 separate channels"

...and still nothing worth watching.

Re: I see you still think linguine is 14cm...

It's fine. I'll eat them all...

( where's a Cookie Monster icon when you need one? )

Re: Well it's a start...

"so as to only expose the features available in that model."

I had a cheap Daewoo VCR back around the turn of the century/millennium. Inside, a big circuit board that was bereft of anything. A couple of big chips, some meaty transistors, and a lot of emptiness.

Something that stood out was a series of holes in two lines, with one wire link across the first pair. I removed that and soldered in a bank of little DIP switches.

And shortly after had NICAM, HiFi stereo recording, LP mode, and something else (I forget).

It was probably cheaper to fit the exact same hardware into everything, and use some links inside to determine what was enabled on that particular model. But, still, if they can do that then what justifies the cost of the bells-and-whistles model?

Re: How about...

"peddle drugs, pick your pockets, or steal your car at gunpoint."

...download a movie.

Wow, the lines are getting really blurry nowadays.

Re: Another nail in the coffin of x86?

As with the previous post referring to "not good enough", it's worth mentioning that it appears a lot of reverse engineering at a really low level took place. They picked Intel, they showed the vulnerability. Point made.

Now it's up to them later, or somebody else, to figure out how to make this work on AMD, ARM, etc.

Re: Too Far Gone

Maybe because one has yet to write "Top 10 hacks for getting money quickly"?

[and yes, the phrase "life hacks" makes my blood boil, especially the number of things that ought to be obvious to anybody with a functioning brain]

Re: So many tales

I tell them I work with embedded devices, repeat some dimly remembered stuff from my 6502 days, and make it quite clear that XP is the last version of Windows I've ever used or touched.

If they still persist, fine. It's my free time outside of work hours, so it's €80 per hour (or part hour) including travel time, and anything done will be documented and I'll expect a signed receipt (to stop the "you were the last person to touch this so fix this totally unrelated problem for free" wheeze).

That usually gets an astonished reaction and "f off", which I'm quite happy with. F off indeed. I used to provide support for tea and cookies. I got taken advantage of. No longer.

Re: After 25 years use ...

"with a decade of vendor support"

I wonder if the level/quality of support is/has/will change(d) now that someone else is pulling the strings?

Re: Between this and Nominet...

"is trying to fix Boris Johnson by overhauling democracy"

Well... Nah, it's Friday, let's leave that be...

As for the "DNS system", there are two parts to it. The first is the technical part of matching textual names to numerical IP addresses. That, glitches aside, pretty much works as defined.

The other part is the method of allocating what names are to be associated with a given address. That...is somewhat more broken, with TLDs seemingly created not so much according to need but more for generating money. Plus the idea to buying interesting sounding words to flog at a vastly inflated price. Then there's the part about artificially raising prices because... (especially when you're the monopoly and people can't go elsewhere)

That would be more like fixing Boris Johnson by holding him accountable.

Re: Additional Features Services and Innovations

Upvote, because Prime Video is possibly the most frustrating video service interface I've ever encountered. It's almost as if they don't want you to watch anything. Or maybe the same twenty things over and over?

Re: Once upon a time...

I use a combination of UBlock Origin to restrict what can run scripts and stuff, Cookie Autodelete to allow cookies and then delete them after 120 seconds (except for whitelisted sites), and a don't track me Google link unmunger to convert the ping-to-mothership search links into links that actually go where they say they go.

All runs happily on Firefox for Android (60.something, the slightly older not-broken one).

Re: The ram I tends not to die like SSDs do

I've seen RAM failures - usually as a result of running the things too hard in too tiny a space with poor ventilation.

A bad SIMM that frequently messed up and caused all sorts of havoc in a tower PC (where it was located just above the processor in a rats nest of wires and cables) worked flawlessly in my RiscPC. That SIMM must have thought it was on holiday!

Re: Root Cause Analysis

Neither upvoted nor downvoted, but it seems to me that the state that you call "asshole" is just a modern equivalent of long-time practice. Whether it be nations abusing security to spy on each other, or proper dodgy blokes fleecing unsuspecting people, they both have long histories predating electricity, never mind processor cache technology. It's unfortunate that problems in processor design [*] have made this situation possible, but it is what it is.

* - you can have security or you can have speed, pick one.

Re: I believe that Seagate disks are made outside of the EU

"arrangement where UK citizens can spend 90 days in any 180 within the EU"

Don't you also need a work permit if you're going to....work?

Re: The 8 glasses of water a day myth

"be ready for a shroud if you felt a bit ready for a cuppa"

Uh, isn't that basically "morning"?

God knows, I'm practically dead until I've had a few cuppas...

Re: Pointless

That is set to work in the night (8pm to 8am). However, the thing wouldn't only affect half the screen. No, this is the AMOLED wearing out. The presence of the visible Firefox buttons is evidence of that...

"when was the last time you checked for firmware updates to your home router?"

Never. It does it automatically itself.

"I also wonder how many ISP's actually maintain their routers"

Now that's an entirely different (and pertinent) question. Given my experience (Orange France), they seem to actively support the last two or three models, but the updates are not very frequent. They seem to like to roll out updates in early August. You can tell because stuff that used to work is suddenly broken until (a few weeks later) they push out an update that works. Must be the summer trainee doing the testing...

Re: Remember 1776 ......

"The Sahara and Antarctica would be better prospects for colonisation."

I think the idea is that since we're doing such a fine job of buggering up this planet... wishful thinking... oh look a whole new planet to break.

Re: Point

"Will Google and Facebook reign forever?"

Wasn't MySpace where it was at, and AltaVista the best search engine?

Things come, things go. Arguably Google will be more resilient as they have their fingers in more pies, but all it really takes is someone somewhere to devise something perceived as "better".

"still very twitchy whenever it comes to submitting financial details..."

A recently had to transfer a large (for me) amount of money from my usual account to the one with the chequebook. So all the details were set up, and my first transfer was for one centime.

When I saw that had arrived, I could then transfer the rest. It helps to check and double check.

Re: So what do atheists believe in...

"... not obeying the law, apparently."

All this demonstrates is that some people are dicks. The belief, or absence of a belief, in a supernatural sky fairy does not change that.

Forward it to the nurseries - don't they have some degree of liability for installing the system in the first place?