Posts by caffeine addict 898 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jun 2007
"The scheme has been criticised for not providing an Apple version of the app to scan your passport and face."
I seem to recall (6 month old memory of a R4 interview) that this wasn't the HO's fault - rather that Apple restricts access to some of it's sensors (RFID? NFC?) and wouldn't allow the HO to use them.
It's cars that bug me the most.
I first noticed it in Burn Notice when they damned nearly had a themed ad break for a Hyundai part way through the plot. Then weird lingering shots on stereos and reversing cameras in White Collar and Designated Survivor.
I get why they do it. And I don't overly mind it. I just wish they did it _better_.
Every Bond movie there's a list of product placement things appears in the press, but I don't think I've ever been overly aware of them watching the movies. The fact he liked Astons one year and BMWs another wasn't the end of the world. I guess the only thing that annoyed me was when it was briefly Ford focused and you had roads that only had Ford cars on them...
I can't decide if I should upvote or downvote this.
On one hand, telling someone to not flash expensive stuff is basically victim shaming, and some people buy Apple stuff for more than just the appearance.
On the other hand, it's pretty unlikely the laptop would have been nicked if it was black and a little chunkier, and for most people the OS they use is pretty irrelevant. Also, you get to save half the original purchase price.
A cable lock attaching the laptop to the table sounds pretty pointless to me. Unless it's really obvious (in which case it makes you look like a tit and a greater target as soon as you leave) then all it's likely to do is yank the laptop out of their fleeing hands, sending it crashing to the now coffee soaked floor.
Best protection is the one used by my old boss - when he got a new laptop he stuck gaffer tape around the hinge area so it looked like it was broken. Of course, this also meant it looked like we couldn't afford new laptops... :/
Working for a small zombie company (that's already been a star of On Call) the MD / CEO / salesman / pain in my arse once announced we all needed to list our desktop and server passwords on a piece of A4 that was to be put in the (only) (unlocked) filing cabinet in our office.
He got quite narked when we gave him an alternative suggestion for it's location. Probably because it would have made his cycle home quite uncomfortable.
Doom Bar is gaining popularity in East Anglia too, but it's just the one brew and I'd guess most people couldn't tell you who brewed it.
But, the map seems a bit confused about beers vs brewers anyway.
Still, Everards or Marstons* in the midlands, Fullers in the SE, and even GK** are vastly better options than any of the u-bend lagers in the rest of the country.
* Isn't Marstons owned by GK now?
** GK beers are a lot better than 20 years ago, but they need to be informed that not everything needs to be an IPA / Abbot / Speckled Hen variant.
Ah, the mid 90s when the Web was basically Universities and big companies. And we mocked the stupid with "AOL".
I suppose we should probably blame Berners-Lee. It was the web that made the general public want the internet. Or maybe Andreessen for adding the img tag...
Christ I feel old.
I stopped neighbourhood cats coming into the garden and terrorising our elderly mogs using one of these : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Original-Stream-Machine-Water-Shoots/dp/B01CLSRI76/
Basically about two litres of water forced out of a 5-10mm hole as fast as you can push the plunger in. You can't aim the thing, but you don't need to. Add something noxious but harmless like black pepper, chilli, or lion piss (if that's you thing) and I'd expect it to put off most things.
What am I missing? Why do the systems need to know the milliseconds since it was started, rather than the milliseconds past an arbitrary time? Something that could reset every time the umbilical was unplugged, 00:00 UTC went by, or the pilot got up to shag a steward(ess)?
The black box needs precise timings. The internal indicators just need to be reply in a timely fashion. No?
In any sensible world the penalty clauses within the contract would have been invoked by now, with EE having to pay the continuing costs of keeping Airwave running.
This assumes that the HO, Police, Fire and Ambulance lot haven't all been regularly moving the goalpost. History says this won't have been the case.
Bitching about the lack of decent cell coverage is a real first world problem, but when the emergency services are relying on it doesn't it have to have real coverage? I live in a Cambridgeshire town that (until recently) had a world renowned hospital in the middle of it. But no cell coverage on any network from 2G upwards.
Probably a damn sight cheaper though than chucking £5bn at a Brexit alternative though...
Seriously, what the hell is the relevance of Brexit to this? Yes, there have been talks about brewing our own GPS-alike, but nothing else in this story has been about Brexit. It doesn't have to be brought in to every comments thread...
I'm sure coincidences are coincidental, but it's interesting that Galileo went down a month after GPS glitched.
Would be nice to have something truly independent. Maybe that what old Jimmy Wales is saving up for. (Actually, that's a point, what happened to ElReg's anti-wiki posts? They were more frequent than BOFH posts at one point.)
That's not fair!
Twice they've very carefully blocked the catflap at my house.
And on more than one occasion they declared my back garden a "designated safe place". They're so respectful of safe spaces they didn't even open the gate, preferring to lob the package over the fence into the long grass that pretends to be my lawn.
Another "as I understand it" answer...
The MAX isn't unstable. But it is "differently stable". That difference means that it would need retraining and re-certification. The problem with re-certification is that the rules have changed since the 737 was certified, and re-certification would involve fixing lots of other bits as well as retraining pilots.
By putting the MCAS system in place, they tried to make a computer tweak that "differently stable" system to replicate the previous stable state, meaning no re-certification was needed because nothing had changed.
Which I could understand if we weren't talking about aeroplanes...
With all of these planes grounded, do the airlines have any grounds (ha!) to sue Boeing for costs?
That's the way to make them do things differently next time. A couple of million quid fine from the FAA is nothing. A few billion in lost revenues from airlines the world over? That's a whole different prospect.
There's never been a better advert for Airbus.
Wish, for no apparent reason, currently thinks I want to buy myself a gift of bondage apparatus. And it's slowly becoming more and more hardcore. There must be something I've bought that triggered a keyword. Either that or people who buy knock-off Lego are statistically more likely to be perverts...?
I was once doing some electrical work in my grandparents house when my grandmother came in and told me the hoover wasn't working. I explained that it was because I'd turned the power off, and it would be off for another ten minutes.
Ten minutes later I (and the opinel knife I was using) were flung across the room. Moments later, my grandmother appeared to tell me the hoover had stopped working again.
I kept that knife for years. The brown streak of copper wire that had plated itself next to the missing chunk of steel seemed an apt reminder not to give people short timescales...
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