* Posts by JimmyPage

3213 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2010

Web crash and pricing errors hit Argos

JimmyPage Silver badge
Happy

Argos - back from the brink ?

Last week, I had a 3TB drive I bought from Argos in March fail.

With the usual trepidation 30+ of dealing with "customer service" I dug out the receipt, and contacted their CS dept via Facebook.

To cut a long story short, less than an hour later I was returning the faulty drive to an Argos-in-Sainsburys (that wasn't there in March). I was originally happy to settle for a like-for-like, bit the assistant gave me a choice of a straight refund and a £20 bump to get the 4TB version (which wasn't around in March).

It wasn't in stock - but was delivered 3 hours later (same day).

So glitches like this aside, it seems someone has pumped some capital into Argos.

Same day delivery 100Mb/s entry level broadband... who'd live in the sticks ?

44m UK consumers on Equifax's books. How many pwned? Blighty eagerly awaits spex on the breach

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Happy

er (showing age)

an occult bookshop owned by former Led Zepplin guitarist on the Kings Road, London ?

The new, new Psion is getting near production. Here's what it looks like

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Thumb Up

Great start ....

How can we stop it being bought up by some megacorp and stripped of what makes it good ?

I *do* like the Debian angle ....

HSBC biz banking crypto: The case of the vanishing green padlock and... what domain are we on again?

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Pint

@VinceH

I applaud your dedication and zeal. But don't you sometimes wonder if it's actually worth it ? Especially with such a spectacularly useless shower as HSBC (or BT, or Virgin, or Barclays ....)

Have one of these, you'll feel better ->

JimmyPage Silver badge
Stop

2009 ?????

8 character passwords were obsolete in 1989 ....

As an aside, has anyone else encountered that wonder of design: the website that doesn't know the rules for the database ?

There has been more than one "professional" website I have come across where the database fields allows [x] characters. But the login page only allows [y] where [y]<[x].

You'd think that the account creation or change password pages would be the same .... only they're not.

Result. No one with a password > [y] can log in .

F-35 firmware patches to be rolled out 'like iPhone updates'

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Stop

Dear God, no ...

It's bad enough when your sat nav* crashes/freezes/reboots. But the whole vehicle (OK airplane here, makes it worse)

*Or sat-nav app. I've had both fail at 70 on a motorway.

Google rushes to curb Oreo's massive appetite for your 4G mobile data

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WTF?

Oh fuck off !!!!

Surely, *surely* SURELY there is an A4 list of go/no-go sanity checkpoints for EVERY SINGLE RELEASE.

As a developer, and a development manager, it would have been the first thing I would have wanted from my dev team - even before the first line of code was written.

But then that's years of experience, and knowing that if you don't, then your latest release *will* crash on startup in front of your most valued customer.

Dude who claimed he invented email is told by judge: It's safe to say you didn't invent email

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Unhappy

1971 ....

so why do most people still reach for a phone ?

Thousands of hornets swarm over innocent fire service drone

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FAIL

The whole article is a spectacular damning ...

of the current breathless talk of "AI" ...

We still can't make a machine which can take on *individual* flying insects.

(Or am I just grumpy after a summer trying to swat flies ????)

China's cybersecurity law grants government 'unprecedented' control over foreign tech

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Stop

Re: especially with the massive anti-foreigner sentiment going around

Where ? China, or the UK ?

Police deny Notting Hill Carnival face recog tech led to wrongful arrest

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Flame

Re: No accountability

It's great - you can even remove an innocent mans head with seven dum dum bullets and get away scott free.

Is it possible to control Amazon Alexa, Google Now using inaudible commands? Absolutely

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Boffin

Defence ?

Presumably there is an opening for a prophylactic devices which sprays out random inaudible noise to prevent this trick working ?

'Driverless' lorry platoons will soon be on a motorway near you

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Stop

Bullshit antennae are twitching ..

There's an awful lot of noise here, but fuck all real detail.

My first instinct is to note that unless and until the law is changed (and that won't happen anytime soon with Brexit clogging up the schedule) it would be illegal to allow a vehicle on our roads that is not under the DIRECT CONTROL of the driver.

Yes, you can have all the gadgetry in the world. But until that pesky law is changed, it will be a human that takes the fall for anything bad.

That's point #1.

Point #2 is that lorries are subject to specific regulations regarding the time a driver spends driving and resting. Those regulations will still have to be respected, since (point #1) that's the law. And a driver "resting" while the other driver drives is not counting as resting.

What is really happening, is that some lorries, fitted with "self driving" technology are going to be babysat by professionals who (I hope) have a very clear contract with their company.

The fact that the UK press is hysterically reporting this uncritically as some sort of revolution is pathetic, but not unexpected.

Nasty firmware update butchers Samsung smart TVs so bad, they have to be repaired

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Stop

So who pays ?

for the customer to move the TV around to get it fixed ?

PC sales to fall and fall and fall and fall and fall for the next five years

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Stop

PC plugging shills

seems to be a lot of shills on this board today, downvoting the statements of the bleeding obvious.

Is this the new paradigm ? Just outshout news you don't like ?

If at first you don't succeed, you're Microsoft trying to fix broken Excel 2016

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Meh

When the only tool you have is Excel

every problem looks like a spreadsheet ....

Google's Android 8.0 Oreo has been served

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Flame

If this upgrade is anything like the last ...

I had a WIleyfox Swift which was note-perfect for 15 months.

Then Android 7 was pushed out.

Since then:

1) Bluetooth keeps forgetting pairings

2) App settings keep getting forgotten

3) The Vox SIM will randomly be dropped, requiring a restart (this is doubly annoying as it can happen when driving, at which point the phone asks what SIM to use for calls before it will make any).

Firmware update blunder bricks hundreds of home 'smart' locks

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Thumb Up

Back in the early days of the internet ...

a lot of marketeers idea for the corporate website was a page with a phone number ...

What was it Henry Ford said ?

If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said "faster horses"

Comp sci world shock: Bonn boffin proposes P≠NP proof, preps for prestige, plump prize

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Boffin

Isn't this related to chaos theory ?

Where despite knowing all the start variables, you have to iterate rather than calculate ?

Not another Linux desktop! Robots cross the Uncanny Valley

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Stop

Re: BBC TV programme "Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots" is

amusing, but not science.

I knew it was a crock when towards the end of the second slice, the sceptic-scientist was breathless with excitement when the Bristol robot demonstrated how it "learned" to count to two, and "learned" what a ball was.

At which point, I would have said "Great. Now count out two balls". Which of course the stupid hunk of machinery could NOT do. Since despite all the "hey wowness" they had tried to dupe us with, the thing was clearly NOT leaning like humans do.

The older I get, the more I realise technology has failed us. Or maybe it's just me ?

Brit firms warned over hidden costs of wiping data squeaky clean before privacy rules hit

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Mushroom

Re: Once we leave the EU, this silly nonsense can be binned!

Only if we don't want to do business with the EU.

GoDaddy gives white supremacist site its marching orders after Charlottesville slur

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Flame

Re: RE : Brexit

We were told before Brexit that if it happened it would dominate UK news for a generation.

That's starting to look like the understatement of the century.

Assange offers job to sacked Google diversity manifestbro

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Black Helicopters

Not related to article ...

but since Assange has managed to get his name on air again ...

Is there any appetite amongst commentards for a "Tell us the story about YOUR worst houseguest ..." type thread ? Primarily based on overstays, but I'm sure there's scope for other behaviour.

Might lighten the summer break ?

Si vous comprenez ces mots, vous êtes français ou l'intelligence artificielle de Facebook

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Thumb Up

Re: Come on Commentards !!!!

Fair point ...

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Stop

Come on Commentards !!!!

Babel Fish.

That's all.

Sun's core in a real spin, but you wouldn't know just by looking at it

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Boffin

(obligatory quote)

But imagine how it would look ...

Why do you cry when chopping onions? No, it's not crippling anxiety, it's this weird chemical

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Stop

TL;DR but my option ...

is to not use onions. I hate the ****ing things. I also hate the received wisdom that "everybody" likes onions so they pop up (often unannounced) in ready means and restaurant recipes. Invariably chunky and uncooked (which admittedly makes it easier to remove them).

That said, if Mrs Page *has* to cook something with onions, it's cut them very fine, and fry them senseless before blending them into a (hot) curry.

Look out Silicon Valley, here comes Brit bruiser Amber Rudd to lay down the (cyber) law

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FAIL

But how do you ban ...

teatowel semaphore ?

Virgin Media mulls ditching 1 in 3 UK facilities, starts £20m spend audit

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FAIL

I have to ask ... what is the point of Virgin *Media* ?

I am a *massive* Virgin broadband fan. As I type, I am enjoying 45MBs d/l and 4.5 MBs u/l, and that is on their cheapest bundle. (When I had a separate business line, I was getting >100MBs).

But the media cruft ???? Pur-lease. No Sky Atlantic, for a start. And frankly nothing you can't get cheaper elsewhere. And what you can't get elsewhere isn't worth it.

Virgin Media reminds me of the book sent to an agent that was returned :

"Thank you for your submission. It was both good and original. Unfortunately the good parts were not original, and the original parts not good."

Slapping crap bosses just got cheaper: Blighty's Supreme Court nixes tribunal fees

JimmyPage Silver badge
Flame

And for those that have suffered as a result ?

How about people who had a valid case, but were unable to bring it ?

Presumably they can take whistling lessons from BoJo ?

Hey, hipsters. Amazon has 'space' for 450 new R&D roles in Shoreditch

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Flame

First job ?

Fix Amazons crappy filter system.

Expect the Note 8 to break the bank (and your wallet)

JimmyPage Silver badge
Meh

battery life ?

Unless it also packs a significant boost to battery life, it's a risky release ...

US vending machine firm plans employee chip implant scheme

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Stop

So they're going to make people into cyborgs ?

By the Kevin Warwick (aka "Captain Cyborg" ®) definition ?

AlphaBay and Hansa: About those dark web marketplaces takedowns

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Holmes

TL;DR -

Criminals are stupid.

$30 million below Parity: Ethereum wallet bug fingered in mass heist

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Thumb Up

Re: Tim Worstall, late of this parish

Some of the best articles in El Reg !

Feature snatcher Microsoft tweaks OneDrive

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Alternatively

just fill up OneDrive with crap ...

Reborn Nokia phones biz loses its head

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Thumb Up

Re: Oh for those days when you didn't have to continuously charge your cell phone

As a tech watcher, I'm flagging battery life as the Next Big Thing.

Smartphone tech is pretty much stalled (I've had mine for 18 months with no pressure to change).

Smartphone *application* is increasing daily.

The more we find we can do with our smartphones, the less we can afford to have them run out of charge.

I am still tipping the idea of someone offering a matched set of phones (think about a matched set of pistols) where you simply take the "hot" one out of the charger while the other charges, but they're mirrored, so no downtime.

The other push I am calling is accessibility. Those ageing techheads are still going to want to use their iShiny well into their 60s, 70s and beyond.

JimmyPage Silver badge
FAIL

Hard to believe

that as little as 10 years ago, Nokia were *the* mobile phone company of the world.

Everything else was an also-ran ... Moto(rola), Sony, Samsung. HTC weren't even in the top 10.

There has to be a documentary somewhere about what happened.

Yeah, WannaCry hit Windows, but what about the WannaCry of apps?

JimmyPage Silver badge
Megaphone

Reaping what you (don't) sow.

The problems associated with downtime due to rebooting (and in this day and age only kernel updates should need a reboot) could be offset by a decent business continuity framework with dual servers.

Upgrade one while the other carries the load, and then switch and upgrade the other.

Of course that requires a finance department that accepts the "cost" of such redundancy is the "price" of permanent uptime. Which IME, they rarely do. Although they CAN tell you - to the penny - how much it's costing the firm when 1,000 employees can't do their job because downtime is needed to patch a server.

CoinDash crowdfunding hack further dents trust in crypto-trading world

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Facepalm

victims ... will be compensated in CoinDash tokens

er ?

John McAfee plans to destroy Google. Details? Ummm...

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Headmaster

Re: Was Google imagined by A.C.C.?

er, "Foundation" was Isaac Asimov (I.A.)

Jodie Who-ttaker? The Doctor is in

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Stop

Oh and female Timelords ...

Romana, anyone ?

JimmyPage Silver badge
WTF?

Er ... Dr. Who canon ?????

I know it's been pissed over from a great height since the "reboot", but surely every 70s schoolkid knew the Dr. only had a maximum of 12 possible incarnations ?

Or did Russell T. Shitforbrains "just decide" it was too inconvenient one day ? Like he suddenly decided the TARDIS was like any other spaceship you can see flying past, rather than dematerialising and materialising ?

When my (then) 15 year old son gave up watching Dr. Who because "it's a load of pants, Dad", I got the hint.

Shame, as there were some genuinely great stories pre-Capaldi.

Of course the most complete Dr. Who story ever was "Logopolis" ....

UK.gov snaps on rubber gloves, prepares for mandatory porn checks

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Big Brother

Conjours up the image ...

of "Approved by HMG" on jazz mags and sites. A picture of Theresa May smiling beautifically.

Man facing $17.5m HPE fraud case has contempt sentence cut by Court of Appeal

JimmyPage Silver badge
Alert

Thanks to a "procedural defect" in the wording of the search order

Hmmmm

generally UK courts (or judges are pretty relaxed about faults in the prosecution evidence. Certainly illegally obtained evidence is quite often used in prosecutions with nary a mention.

Which makes me wonder who knows who in this particular case ?

Don't panic, but your Bitcoins may just vanish into the ether next month

JimmyPage Silver badge

Re: In short, Bitcoin is structurally incapable of operating as a mainstream currency.

^The maximum possible number of Bitcoins is (iirc) 21 million - of which about half have been mined^

Which mirrors real world currencies based on *something*. There's only so much Gold/Silver/Diamonds/Oil/Whatever on planet Earth.

Yes, you can disconnect a currency from such shibboleths. But then everybody has to have faith in it's worth, which is a bit too close to religion for my liking.

Ofcom creates watchdog specifically to make sure Openreach is behaving

JimmyPage Silver badge
FAIL

If the government were serious ...

then all new build houses since (say) 2000 would have been FTTD as part of planning regulations.

What's that ? They weren't ?

I guess government isn't serious then. Certainly not worth listening to them when you can see the truth for yourself.

(And this is one area where you *need* state intervention).

Bupa: Rogue staffer stole health insurance holders' personal deets

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Coat

Seems like BUPA wanted to outdo the NHS

at everything.

Good news: Samsung's Tizen no longer worst code ever. Bad news: It's still pretty awful

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Boffin

Is it my age ?

First off, the example shown is *not* "comparing a variable with itself", it's returning the result of comparing a variable with itself.

Second off, that's not as crazy as it seems ... I have memories of such tricks being used to stand in for "return 1;" or "return true;" - particularly if you want to obfuscate assembler.

Thirdly (although it is BAAAAAD) practice, bear in mind that in some situations/languages, referencing a variable can actually run code (which could change the value of something somewhere).

All of that said, part of writing good code is it should make intuitive sense, which doesn't really apply in those 3 situations