* Posts by Tompkinson

19 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Feb 2010

Seven months of Basil Brush on YouTube: Er, boom boom?

Tompkinson

Re: Not so bad

Soo.

Now how many neurons is that utterly useless piece of information taking up? I have forgotten nearly all the maths I once knew (which was quite a lot) but I can remember what a panda hand puppet I last watched in the 70s was called.

Basil rules.

Aboard the GOOD SHIP LOLLIPOP, there's a Mobe and a Slab and a TELLYBOX

Tompkinson

Re: Nexus 7 2012 gets Lollipop, gets faster!

Dead right. My only iThing was a 1st gen iPod. Apple couldn't drop OS support for it fast enough and apps disappeared just as quickly. Nexus all the way from then. My iPod is now a permanent in-car MP3 player.

BUT my N5 is great and I don't need a phablet. And the lack of SD in the N9 is very silly. Expecially as they are not doing a 64GB/128GB model to make 300% extra profit as Apple do.

It's a Doddle: Amazon inks train station parcel deal with Network Rail

Tompkinson
Headmaster

Re: Wonderful Idea

Nice rant sir!

May I congratulate you on one thing: While getting rather over-excited and wearing out a well-known profanity, you did spell goddamned correctly. An irate, well-read Englishman, very refreshing.

I cannot say the same for the author of this article. It may be two corporations from the New World that are setting up this service with the help of what's left of British Rail but this is Great Britain and our railways run between railway stations. If you want to see a train station, catch an aeroplane across the Atlantic Ocean.

I QUIT: Mozilla's anti-gay-marriage Brendan Eich leaps out of door

Tompkinson

So, who's discriminating now, Mozilla?

"explicitly including LGBT equality and marriage equality"

If Mozilla are treating everyone equally surely that should have said "regardless of their sexual orientation". Smells like bias to me. Better start a hate campaign against Mitchell Baker.

Or maybe time to see sense, show some balance and feel pity for all the haters out there.

As WinXP death looms, Microsoft releases its operating system SOURCE CODE for free

Tompkinson

Yes but Z80 was better than 6502, 68k better than x86, Betamax superior to VHS, Apple System 6 & 7 better than DOS, Windows 3 & 95 but Gates' marketing and tactics were waaay better than everyone else's.

El Reg BuzzFelch: 10 Electrical Connectors You CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT!

Tompkinson

The award for the worst connector ever goes to...

The UHF TV connector aka Belling-Lee IEC-169-2. Still in use 90 years later on the back of all digital tellies at frequencies approaching 1GHz when it was only ever meant to carry the BBC's medium wave stuff. Truly disgusting, but nobody dares get rid of it.

Tellies also seem to have a monopoly in sh*t connectors cos the SCART runs it a very close second.

Station to station: Ten DAB-Bluetooth combo radios

Tompkinson

Re: Seems a tad odd

Well spotted - this review seems to have sneaked under the Orlowski radar.

Yes DAB radios are still a very long way off being low power which is why Pure only support their own rechargeable packs - expensive but they do the job. The 2xAAA batteries in my 1995 Sony pocket AM/FM radio last longer than the average iPhone screen.

As for in-car radios, the Pure Highway is OK but is DAB only. If your car comes with a factory-fitted DAB radio, and if the DAB signal drops it will switch over to FM if it can find a matching station.

But the radios reviewed here are neither pocket nor car radios. If you want big sound then batteries will never last long. My kitchen does not do 70MPH along the M62. They have Bluetooth so you're not screwed if you don't have an iThing. So they are probably good at what they are supposed to do.

NASA pic: DOOMED ice Comet ISON literally had snowball's chance in hell

Tompkinson

Sun Probe

Comet ISON died because they didn't call on the services of International Rescue. It worked for Sun Probe so I'm sure The Tracey Boys, Tin Tin (mmm original gurrl power), Thunderbirds 3 and 2, Brains and Braman could have saved the day.

Tough luck, bumpkins! Blighty broadband speed gap misery worsens

Tompkinson

Free money! But sold out.

A bit like our broadband. Village near Cambridge, 600m from the exchange, 20Mbit/s connection but frequently 0Mbits/s actually available because of massive conention for a feeble total bandwidth. I am paying for something I don't get - I call that fraud. I have a great idea, I will buy from an ISP who does not use BT for wholesale connections. Hang on - oh.

SURPRISE! BT bags more gov broadband cash - this time in Bucks & Herts

Tompkinson
FAIL

Don't hold your breath

BT have taken 2 1/2 years to not finish the installation of fibre to our exchange after we were one of the Race to Infinity winners. We are told it's a technical and manpower problem, but we know otherwise - it's the money cos it's costing plenty more than they expected. I fear that even Herts and Bucks might get fibre before I do. So don't listen to BT's promises, they can't keep them, they tell porkies and they certainly don't have enough competition.

BT to slap overalls on 1,000 new bods in fibre broadband boost

Tompkinson

Re: Engineer

Err I think you're getting a bit confused there, this is not black and white. Most electronic products and systems now depend heavily on software engineers who are every bit as responsible, intelligent and well qualified as civil engineers. You try re-training a squaddie to write device drivers, communications protocol stacks and signal processing code. Granted they don't have to sign off bridges and tunnels and buildings which could kill people if cheap concrete had been used, but be careful who you slag off. You know your iPhone/Blackberry/Android? Its complexity makes the last car park you built look like it was made by navvies with shovels and a bucket. See what I did there?

Tompkinson
Flame

Re: Engineer

Main thread: Don't expect fibre broadband in a hurry, BT have been making lousy progress and feeble excuses for 2 years where I am, 3 miles from Cambridge. BT have no effective competition. Someone call the Competition Commission.

And.... all you fine Engineers are correct. Trouble is that in Europe it's Ingineur but an engine is a motor/moteur, different words you see? But in English they have the same root, so the chaps who tended to the coal mine pumps and who stoked the fires in the steam locomotives became known as engineers, and we are never getting away from that. In Europe, Technician is also desirable and respected for a job title, but over here, despite many Technicians training and studying hard to learn their job, they still want to be called Engineers. Don't get me started on management consultants talking bollocks about "business process re-engineering" and bankers selling "products". Rant over.

SpaceX Dragon eventually snared by ISS

Tompkinson
Pint

Re: I wonder

These are really exciting times for space flight. NASA has finally shed itself of the nice looking but shockingly expensive, dangerous, out of date and worst-solution-for-just-about-every-job Space Shuttle which was so expensive it stopped any real manned spaceflight progress for 30 years. Now we have SpaceX developing their systems with a total spend to date of about $1 billion over 10 years. Compare this with NASA's 1965 peak budget of $40 billion per year at 2013 prices, (or $100 billion if kept at the same 5.3% of federal budget) and you see that SpaceX really are shaking things up, both unmanned and manned. Great stuff. I feel inspired for the first time in 4 decades.

HP: AUTONOMY 'misrepresented' its value by $5 BILLION, calls in SEC

Tompkinson
Thumb Up

Re: note to self

Selling massively overpriced cheap stuff to stupid customers is very fashionable. HP sells expensive ink and Apple sells expensive flash memory, both of them for about 10x the going rate. Reap what you sow - next stop for a mugging, Cupertino.

Vote now for the WORST movie EVER

Tompkinson

Re: The Core

The Core is one of the best comedies of all time, laugh a minute.

And to save me replying twice, I second the vote for Starship Troopers 2 - Primark budget and looks like it was filmed on VHS with the lights out. Stunningly bad. Bad miss, El Reg.

The amazing shipping container: How it changed the world

Tompkinson
Devil

Tatlinger caused the Credit Crunch

Sort of. Bear with me on this Tedious Link...

Containers revolutionised shipping. London dockers didn't like it and striked like it's 1969. Felixtowe, etc. ate their lunch. London docks withered on the vine. My Dad who had worked in the merchant navy and London shipping lost his job, had a nervous breakdown and eventually died at 60 - thanks a bunch Tatlinger. London Docklands Development Corp was formed. We got Canary Wharf, trendy docklands apartments, City Airport, Docklands Light Railway, and London became very attractive for shallow yet ambitious fast buck money grabbers to work in. Thatcher encouraged the "Me" attitude which persists to this day. Fred The Shed and his mates went too far. The rest is history.

ASSANGE GRANTED BAIL

Tompkinson
Paris Hilton

Tommo

Liu Xiaobo says stuff the Chinese govt don't like, they lock him up and the Swedes (no doubt with a nod from the US of A) give him a Nobel prize. And the Chinese get all pissy about it.

Assange publishes stuff the US govt doesn't like and the Swedes slap on a convenient sexual assault charge that was previously thrown out while absolutely no pressure whatsoever was applied from Washington, and the yanks come up with an espionage rap.

Not at all hypocritical double-standards?

When are the Chinese going to give him a prize?

Paris, who will do whatever suits her own self-interest at the time.

Blighty's stealth robojet rolls out a year late

Tompkinson
FAIL

Tommo

Expect to see this baby operating by the 2030s. Why? In the early 80s BAe with MBB of Germany started the Experimental Aircraft Programme, a bit like this one and I should know, I worked on it. This morphed into the EFA/Eurofighter/Typhoon (a real world-beater says The Reg, but the world as it was in the 1980s apparently) which first flew in 1994, the first were delivered to Germany in 2003 and it finally started real service with the RAF in 2008. Only 25 years. Woohoo.

Anyway, ROTM will happen long before then.....

Tories moot breaking up BT Openreach monopoly

Tompkinson
Unhappy

"Rural" spots are cash cows

I know. I live in "rural" Cambridgeshire, 2 miles from the M11, 600 metres from a Virgin Media cable that goes past my large commuter village without stopping, 4 miles from the centre of Cambridge and 3 miles from Cambridge University's Computer Laboratory and Microsoft Research UK, where they are working on advanced networks!

My local exchange is massively congested, can't even watch low quality iPlayer in the evenings. I have tried compaining many times but I get "not our problem guv" from the ISP, and it's impossible to contact BT Wholesale. BT don't care because on exchanges where they have no competition, they are allowed to charge much more per customer and they don't need to invest because we have no alternative. So it's easy money, and they are in no hurry to let anyone else in. D'oh.