Posts by Hyphen
58 posts • joined Friday 19th February 2010 10:42 GMT
Re: Yes...
"I have a couple of metro apps, such as thetrainline"
Pro tip... ditch TheTrainLine and book through any of the railway operators' websites. Save yourself the ridiculous booking and credit card fees TTL charges.
Personally I'd recommend eastcoast.co.uk or firstgreatwestern.co.uk - both use modern booking engines superior to what TTL offers. The layout makes more sense, and you can see with a swift mouseover what trains are available for a particular tticket, OR what tickets are available for a given train. Oh, and you can use any of these sites even if your journey doesn't involve travel with that particular operator!
Re: I'm glad I don't live in Brighton
A surprising number of places around the UK like to claim that... I've heard Manchester, Sheffield and Swansea claim the same thing too.
(though looking at those maps, Swansea seems the most likely of those three to take that crown)
Re: Huh.
@kain preacher
"Ye times has changed. It's now recommend to Take the SATs in your JR year in HS.
Ps if I had of waited to take the SATs at 18 , that would of meant waiting 6 months after I graduated from HS."
If you "had of" waited, maybe you'd understand English a bit better. It's highly "recommend" ;-)
Mobile Twitter?
Why link to the mobile version of Twitter? It looks awful on a full size screen!
Re: Touch down
Upvoted, as a Notts lad me-sen ;-)
Re: Have to agree
"I understand Nvidia has marginally better Linux support than ATI"
At work we recently had a kind-of-trial (but in frontline service) project which required the use of very small form factor boxes stuck to the back of monitors on the VESA mount. We went for Acer Aspire Revo machines. All running Linux (Ubuntu/Debian).
Really nice machines to work with, Nvidia Ion chipsets, did everything we wanted. 25 of them in service, everyone happy.
This month we were asked to extend the trial to 10 more locations. Could suddenly no longer purchase the Ion-based machines, and the only thing we could get our hands on had ATI cards onboard. OK, we expected some issues.
So they arrived, set them up, they didn't do the graphics processing out the box we required for the project. Downloaded, compiled, installed the official ATI driver. We were then left with a FUCKOFFMASSIVE box in the lower right corner of the screen saying we were using an unsupported driver. HOURS of Googling failed to resolve this. Same on both available choices of Linux flavour.
In the end we stole small PCs from elsewhere and hid them in the ceiling... :-(
Well that's a Hyphen FAIL!
"to have massively increased"
"topics covered do seem to have"
El Reg seems to be going that way at the minute. That and never proofreading. The number of silly little mistakes (spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc) which have been popping up recently do seem to have massive increased. Then again, I'm not sure if it's just me but the number of articles and breadth of topics covered does seem to have increased of late - maybe I should just stop moaning!
Back to the point, I agree. I'm a Kubuntu user (since Unity fecked me off) but would have appreciated a screenshot without having to go and search for it myself. Even a link to an example would have done - I had a very brief browse of the MintBox (just for pictures) but still don't know what the UI looks like! I know it's only 30 seconds to look, but it's more effort!!
Posted in Word wonks insist GIFs are really JIFs
Re: the pronunciation of other acronyms
I demand to know where I buy a Joovc television to watch my Doovdé on. Maybe I should buy one from Hoomv.
Why is this news?
I'm dealing with routing issues every other sodding week when staff complain they can't access such-and-such a site. This is a BT Infinity line BTW.
Why do these constant BT issues never make Reg news?
Re: emails deleted.
In a lot of places (think NHS) it's actually mandated that employees KEEP all their emails, etc - this is usually in case someone puts in a FOI request or something later.
Re: Cracking suspect.
I want one.
Re: This is down to...
Michelle, this probably has stuff all to do with the NHS - when they make these CD images they just press "Export" in whichever manufacturer's PACS system they use (and there are enough) and you're at the mercy of whatever Philips/Agfa/Siemens/etc/etc decided to write.
That said, there is the odd trust who likes to build their own CD frontends - these usually come written in VB :-(
We receive patient discs from a very wide geographical area when people visit us for healthcare. I'll agree - the general standard is dire. It's a nightmare trying to actually get the images out of some of them.
Oh, and don't get me started on the trusts which don't encrypt their discs...!
Re: Another reason (if one were needed)
PDF and TIFF? Can't say I'm a fan of that idea. That's again using proprietary stuff (are there any patents stuffed up the sleeve of PDF, a la GIF?) and, well, the whole thing is just fairly unmalleable. How best would you import into your new system from a PDF?
I don't understand what the NHS buys to make everything so incompatible. These days everything should be using the DICOM standard for storing, transmitting and sharing medical images. It's been around since 1985, so most people should have caught up by now!
DICOM, more usefully than TIFF (or PDF) stores the image but also stores several shitwads of metadata information about the picture, such as patient name/ID/age/etc, when the image was taken, what it was taken of (i.e. Right Knee), then lots of other useful information such as exposure time (in the case of X-Rays) or co-ordinates (in the case of MRI/CT scans). It also allows for annotations to be stored which can be superimposed on the other end if required.
Source: I implement and maintain PACS systems.
Re: something is amiss here....
It's not so much a "dump" but it's part of contractual arrangements.
The overwhelming majority of private hospitals in the UK have no emergency facilities and are just acute centres performing routine operations. Whilst many will have something resembling an intensive care unit, these are only staffed when there are patients scheduled who would require it post-operatively.
In the interests of patient care a patient will be transferred to the local NHS hospital should something go wrong, because they have the facilities to deal with this. It's not often things do go wrong like this (as I say, this is mostly routine) so for the private sector to build, maintain and staff such facilities just wouldn't be economical.
I work in a private hospital and although we undertake work from many trusts in a fairly large area (to keep NHS waiting list times down), we have a contract with our local trust such that we can transfer a patient if necessary.
Re: Handwriting
Assuming you don't also work for the same place, does your pharmacist wife know how many InfoSec rules she's breaking showing you that? ;-)
Re: eh?
I went to an Insight event in Manchester the other month where Microsoft had a stand.
I'd previously tried W8 on the PC and was horrified by it. All the usual stuff, where's the start menu, how do I shut down? Fucking hated it.
When I tried it on the Surface it kinda made sense. However, when I tried to put it into Desktop mode the guy watching stopped me.
My only conclusion is that it's just not ready for either platform. They're sacrificing both for the benefit of neither. I just can't understand the business model.
Also mate, if you're reading, cheers for Keith.
Re: Sounds great...
MythTV.
At the end of the day this reshuffle of the EPG makes bugger all difference. Every channel retains its Network ID and EIT ID. Not retuning will ensure you keep your old channel numbers and it will break NOTHING.
Re: leics lags again
Three of the many reasons to not live in Leicester!
FFS... the DH are clearly bored now the theatrics of their near-bankruptcy of CSC are over. Time to send another company bust?
(actually, let's hope Crapita bids - I would harbour no negative feelings for them losing £fucktonnes)
To be fair...
"continually frustrating China Mobile by failing to build an iPhone designed specifically for its home-grown 3G standard TD-SCDMA"
To be fair, if you're paranoid enough to want to go out of your way to build your own standard so as to avoid a dependence on Western technology, don't expect any Western technologists to want to support it!
Re: Offline install?
"You get a message telling you that your system is unable to verity the program with Microsoft"
Ah, so another message the user will blindly click yes to.
Kobeissi's point still stands - if this is stored on the client end then it wouldn't NEED to ask you to go online to verify, it'd be able to do it there and then. And if you're offline, the likelihood of you installing some software which wasn't yet on your cached list would probably be fairly low.
I'm surprised there wasn't (or I didn't hear about) such an uproar with MS IE SmartScreen. As I understand it, Firefox does the same thing, but caches a list of bad wobsites locally.
Re: Do you still need to put up a warning banner..
There's some vagueness about this. If you don't use cookies at all, you don't need to care.
If you use cookies for "functionality" (such as remembering somebody is logged in), you don't necessarily need to worry (though continue to a bit IMHO), because logging in implies use of it.
If you use cookies for "tracking", you have to warn. Though you apparently don't have to provide an opt-out.
Re: The cookie law
Or, what a bunch of websites I've seen are doing...
You click 'YES' and the site uses cookies and doesn't bother you again.
You click 'NO' and the site uses cookies to remember your preference. Kinda defeats the entire purpose, really.
Re: Genius, in a way.
Upvoted, solely because I hate the PRS bollocks we have to put up with.
We're forced to pay for a fucking PRS licence in our waiting rooms (this is a hospital; there's little leniency) just so we can put BBC News on for patients. However, because we ONLY pay for these areas, this makes it illegal for me to put my (paid for!) Spotify account on in our office of two. I'm paying royalties every fucking month, but this is somehow irrelevant?
Beck? No opinion.
They did... it was 302. You would have had to re-scan for it, and it was only showing events sporadically (I'd them have rather kept it on constantly) but still.
Re: Last four CC digits as security question?
My bank emails me every month to inform me that my CC statement is ready to view. They prove themselves to be my bank by using the last 4 digits of my card number...
Admittedly there's no "click here to log in" links or anything, but it does now worry me a little that this information is being accepted by CS to allow control over an account. Especially as the aforementioned bank's servers are seemingly unable to use TLS when they send the emails out.
Re: Not an as
Maybe it wasn't an ad from El Reg's PoV (you probably didn't get paid) but I imagine the sysadmin would have done for shameless publicity like this!
Though I must say, I do feel sorry for the guy - at least there's nothing like this in my line of work... though I am expecting our Internet bandwidth to go to shit over the next two weeks!
Re: 12 sites down
"Are Plusnet any good?"
I share a bus with half their CS workforce every morning (based in Sheffield); from observation they seem fairly clued up guys.
Not had reason to use them though.
Re: Upgrade tradmil
Eh??
Umm... The discount argument aside, if I pay £500 for each version and I get EVERY version, that's £1500 per 3 years. (example figures, I don't need/use Adobe software)
If I skip three versions, that's £500 per 3 years.
How exactly is that NOT saving money?
Re: Hmmm..
"I always thought two jags was one of the better politicians of the last government."
Agreed, he's a straight talking Northerner who likes his food, and I can relate to that!!
Oh, and I'm actually one of about 8 people in the UK who was a supporter of the M4 bus lane - see http://www.cbrd.co.uk/indepth/m4buslane/ for why it works.
<runs away>
Eh?
So by trying to save money, time and energy on maintaining a small Exchange server, you're now maintaining four AD boxes?
I appreciate the redundancy etc aspects, and I doubt they'd need as much maintenance as Exchange (though if you set things up right, an Exchange box for small business really doesn't need much time spent on it) but this to me seems the opposite of what cloud computing is supposed to achieve!
Greene King IPA?
Seriously?
I don't think much of Abbot in the first place but you PREFER that 3.4% watered down crap? It's horrible. It doesn't even taste much of beer...
Then again, I avoid Greene King at all costs anyway - poor beer, poor pubs.
Re: Crystal ball time
...although TETRA is based on the same GSM technology, the cops tend to operate their own base stations which wouldn't be shut down in an event like this.
It also uses majorly different frequencies, so wouldn't be affected by normal GSM/UMTS frequency jammers.
Public Internet
When we worry about putting things on the Internet, we tend to use a VPN. Why can't these boxes just fire up their own VPN connection to Voda's servers and then communicate solely on internal addresses?
Customers won't be able to route traffic down that connection so Voda wouldn't need to put billing on the wider Internet. I doubt there are many pieces of consumer tech which would deny standard VPN tunnels.
Posted in Virgin Media broadband in two-day wobble
Oh what I would give
Oh what I would give for a Virgin Media connection[1], even WITH these routing issues.
I'm currently seeing ~75% packet loss on my BT ADSL connection.
This is fairly usual when it rains. BT claim there's no such problem and that it must be CPE failure. According to India, there's apparently no such thing as a master socket and I must be keeping my Home Hub (I'm using a 2Wire Business Hub) in the rain for this fault to occur! I did try to argue that if I subjected the Home Hub to rain I'd probably see 100% packet loss, but they ignored me.
I need to move to a cabled house!
[1] I called Virgin and offered to reimburse them for the full cost of the co-ax installation. No cost to them, plus at least 2 years' business on XXL. They refused.
FAIL!!
A great ROFL as I came in this morning...
The day after all this is announced, the Choose & Book portal fell over!!
http://postimage.org/image/ovt3dyn8/
Bugger :(
That is all.
Exchange 2010
Clearly you've not played with OWA in the latest version of Exchange.
...we're actually pushing for an upgrade to this so we can start doing away with Windows in some areas. The web client (even under Linux and Firefox) behaves so incredibly like Outlook it's unreal.
"Ok, clever enough that the exchange still knows that its a local call."
It has done for a long, long time. It knows it's local even if you dial the STD code *now*. If you dial a short number it automatically substitutes the dialling code anyway.
Anyway, in the mobile era this decision just makes incredible amounts of sense. Now everybody has a single unique number that's the same regardless of where you dial it from.
...unusual for Ofcom to offer some, erm, sense!!
Posted in Ubuntu deploys cloud-ready Ocelot beta
Ummm...
When I first started using Linux all those years ago, I did start with KDE - coming from a Windows environment and all.
However, when KDE4 was unleashed, I bit the bullet and learned Gnome - it allowed me to get things done with less of an uphill struggle than KDE4 seemed to require.
So sadly, whilst it was the answer a few years ago, I don't agree these days ;-)
Now I've not seen any screenshots or played with Gnome 3 yet, so I won't pass judgement, but based on others' comments I do fear I'll be ending up using XFCE (which I have found more than stable and usable on all my Mythbuntu installs).
No real difference...
No real difference to why Viagra and the likes are advertised in the US but not over here. You'll get it on the NHS anyway. Why would a drug manufacturer (or whoever) pay to advertise on TV for a cure to cancer when they can get it picked up in the mainstream press fairly easily, advertise to GPs and other healthcare professionals and get the NHS to pay?
(Yes, I'm aware Viagra (probably) isn't banned from being advertised, but meh.)
MythTV!
As per title.
SPADs
Whereas I was thinking about train drivers who run reds...
Posted in Apple dealers hit with Lion bar
"you pay for it via iTunes (easy)"
Not so easy if your organisation doesn't believe in / let the IT dept have access to / cannot justify / etc company credit cards.
99% of our (IT at least) purchases are made using purchase orders and subsequent invoices. The other 1% is made using cheques. The company does not believe credit cards are a worthwhile investment. And good luck finding anyone who's willing to get that on their personal CC and claim on expenses!
So yes, most of that process is easy, except for the bit where you give them £££ (or rather $$$) - the rest of it fails to fall in line then! Least Microsoft's partners (remember them?) will let us pay by PO - and Microsoft make all the downloads we've licensed easily available to download!
Pics or it didn't happen
I think I'd rather the pics than the music... ;-)
Posted in Cable thieves cost UK rail £15m a year
Very late
Even if you are very, VERY late, they still won't refund you if the problems were outside their direct control (which of course, all problems are!).
Delayed by four hours between Swansea and Manchester (stuck in Newport - ew!) due to cable theft - Arriva basically said "Not our problem mate, thanks for the cash"...
Arseholes!
Stay or Leave?
Hmm.
I don't like interface changes. I really, REALLY don't like interface changes.
I used to be a solid KDE man until KDE4 came out, when I begrudgingly moved to Gnome. Been happy with that for years.
WHY OH WHY is everyone in the habit of "reinventing" UIs? Vista. KDE4. Unity. Gnome 3. MS Office 2007. Is there anything I can just stay and be happy with?! Srsly, changing a well known interface just makes life DIFFICULT for people.
So what's left? Keep this 10.10 installation going forever more? Move to a different (preferaby semi-intuitive and bug-free) UI and re-learn everything anyway, just to be told in 24 months' time that they're changing that as well?
