Posts by SiempreTuna
124 posts • joined Thursday 17th November 2011 12:43 GMT
Don't know but it sounds like fun: how do enrol? :D
Posted in Ding! Dong! —the witch is dead!
Not quite sure I would call destroying the entire industrial base in order to beat the unions 'right' exactly ..
In the 70s we at least had the real economy plus the 'invisible' economy (basically the city gamblers). The Thatcher legacy is that we now have an 'economy' that's equal parts city gamblers and property-related Ponsey scheme.
Posted in Weird interview questions
At one interview, I was grilled by 10 interviewers each firing really, really tough technical questions at me. I was doing OK-ish, then we got to one that left me totally flumoxed. I said I had no idea and asked what the answer was. They said they didn't know: all the questions were about problems they'd failed to solve. Guess the one that beat me was crucial coz I didn't get the job.
Re a question about my attitude to diversity in an interview for a govt job: I answered with a list of previous girl friends. Got that job.
Heard about the following:
Q: what would you pitch to your previous employer to increase our sales to them by 15%
A: (long meandering reply)
Q: if you were the buyer at your previous employer, would you be convinced by that?
A: No
At least they were honest.
Posted in FAIL - the most incompetent IT pros
My favourite: we paid a consultancy a fortune to convert an app that we calculated was saving the company a minimum of £100 million a year (in the 80s when £100 mill was big money).
When we came to test the code, we saw some very strange results. I investigated and found that in the crucial part of the code, a couple of hundred lines of the original had been converted to a single comment that read: "I couldn't understand this so I left it out".
And that part of the conversion had been done by .. the principal consultant.
Another consultant, when asked why his code wasn't commented and looked like he'd had a fit at the keyboard, said in perfect seriousness "It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand".
He might have been the guy who gave an urgent fix I'd written a critical failure (= absolute no go) for .. a typo in a comment.
Another time, at a trading company, an operator chatting to a mate in the server room, leant on the emergency power cut off and killed all the servers in the building. There was a pause of maybe 15 seconds before every phone in IT lit up with irate traders screaming about their screens going blank.
Posted in Who coined the term 'App'?
I think the question should be "who coined the term application?" because I'm sure whoever they were talking to coined "app" around 30 seconds later.
I've lost count of the number of stories I've read over the years about awesome advances in battery technology that will increase battery capacity two fold, ten fold or in this case so many fold that a battery a few square millimetres in size could start a car.
What I want to know is: what happened to 'em?
Coz they all say they'll be on the market in 5 years, I've been reading about them for 10 years but my phone battery still only lasts a day
Posted in Paying a TV tax makes you happy - BBC
BBC is a bargain!
The problem is that, outside of the BBC, the TV market is gradually becoming a Sky monopoly. Virgin, TalkTalk and the rest are essentially Sky re-sellers.
Sky currently costs most people around 3 or 4 times what the price of the TV license - for a stream of adverts occasionally interrupted with brief program breaks. If you remove the - very reasonable - license fee, the BBC will go the way of other independent TV stations and Sky will be left with an effective monopoly. How much are they going to charge then?
Sure, Sky has a lot of political support, particularly on the right: they have a bit of a history of influencing politicians .. and not for anyone's good but their own.
Lots of people with stuck keyboards this morning - v strange ..
Good luck at the WSJ - you know all that stuff your Vulture boss called bollix about? You can start believing it all again :)
TF the BOFH is Back!
.. is just me thinks el Reg has been getting a bit serious of late? Like nearly everything actually has actually had an easily discernable technical angle?
Just not on ..
Posted in What happened to Odds & Sods?
Re: BOFH template restored - now with navigation for all content
You mean .. it's not his diary ..?!
The Guy was a Douche ..
Sounds like he thought he was in a Carry On movie ..
Fixed ..
.. for the UK site. The google.com still gets some dodgy links, but mostly in Chinese or Russian.
Re: Writer was intent on high risk of failure
Motoring journos do seem to be ridiculously anti anything but petrol. There was a recent 'story' about how petrol cars were actually cheaper to run than diesels over the a typical 3 year ownership period with average mileage, if you took into account the higher purchase price.
What the headline calculations excluded (to be fair, it was mentioned toward the end of the story) was the higher price you also get when you come to sell the diesel car. Which actually made the diesel cheaper. And the story false.
How ..
.. are they going to replicate that essential jerky movement of the characters in the orginal?
Without that: what's the point?
Posted in Reg Readers love their gadgets
Advertisers, Start Queuing Here!
.. can't see any other reason for that survey except something to wave under the nose of potential advertisers .. well, assuming other people answered very differently to me
Also ordered around 17:07 ..
.. delivery quoted as 3-5 days. But then I ordered the less popular 16GB (apparently there are plenty of people who are even tighter than me - who knew?)
E-mailed the Reg to thank them for not letting the great unwashed know about the new stock until after I'd got my order through - though it seems Google have a lot more phones this time: the 16GB model is still showing as available .. in 6 weeks :)
It's all OK ..
.. everything was found in his flat.
And we all know that data on a USB stick can't be copied ..
Oh .. hang on ..
Posted in LG ramps up fabless chip plans - report
F*** Fabless Chips ..
.. where are the Nexus 4s?!!
IBM - formerly the World's Biggest Plumber
.. as I recall, in the 80s, IBM was most famous as the World's Biggest Plumber on account of all of it's big iron being water cooled.
As well as heating universities, their other big boast was that there kit was 'proven', i.e. YEARS behind everyone else's. Not that there were many everyones out there: IBM essentiall was the computing market. The next biggest company - DEC - were absolutely tiny by comparison. And also tried to do a Windows-y O/S around the same time as OS2 - DECWindows - which also sank without a trace. Along with the company.
Re: Hmmm...
Finally! A Mercedes that looks right without a Taxi sign ..
Shirley that's Contempt of Court
Again.
This time the judge HAS to bang some senior Appleite up :)
Posted in We don’t talk any more... on the commute
Re: Gerard Hoffnung's advice
Was that the guy who had a chapter on the "Sex and the British" which was, in its entirety "The continentals have sex lives. The British have hot water bottles".
And the sequel, a few years later, said "The continentals still have sex lives. The British now have electric blankets".
Posted in We don’t talk any more... on the commute
Re: "Mild horror combined with sarcasm and sexual arousal"
Hardly tough to imagine: try any teenage girl watching Twilight ..
Re: Confused
It may not be an 'official' Reg position, but climate change denial articles must outnumber the non-'stupid' by about 10 to 1. Surprising, given it's generally pro-science, pro-rational approach to most other things ..
Anyway, you have to congratulate Josh Tyrangiel: sayin' it like is, bro
Posted in EE 4G LTE review
£56 a month and the data is LIMITED??!!!
They clearly think it's 2004 again. And with luck, they'll get the same low, low levels of take up they got back then. Anybody signing up for these 'deals' clearly has to have more money than sense and an insatiable desire to be reemed.
Re: Behold....
Funny.
Wrong, but funny.
AAPL didn't break 600 until March 2012. I forget when Jobs died, but APPL was trading somewhere under 400 for most of 2011.
Missing the point ..
.. the reason the Mini doesn't have a Retina display is so that the Mini 2 can get one!
Duh!
I know Apple treats their fanbois like eejits, but even eejits need SOME excuse to piss away sackfuls of cash. Holding back obvious features for the next upgrade has worked so well with iPods, iPhones and iPadMaxis. Remember the original iPhone? It's spec was like 2 to 3 years behind the competition on release so Apple-ites had no trouble justifying the 3G upgrade when that came out.
Working ..?
Not sure that a phone with no sound could, strictly speaking be called 'working' ..
Impressive, never the less.
Things appleites will do to try to justify buying a 5 ..
Re: Idiots!
Rubbish!
It was Wembley for an early form of Quidditch.#
All the smaller stone circles (everyone knows Stonehenge is not a henge) were training grounds.
I like the brand, but not enough to pay the same for one of their phones as I would for a Samsung or an iPhone.
They did really well initially by offering good phones for excellent prices. They were briefly flavour of the month and suddenly able to charge premium prices. Now they're very definitely not this month's flavour but still want the premium price.
Maybe they should try knocking down their prices again ..
Re: "a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology...
"I wonder if they are trying to take over and cancel science"
You clearly don't keep up with US politics: that's PRECISELY what the Religious Right (US equivalent of the Taliban) have been trying to do since Regan reached out to them in the 80s. It's not even a secret: they have quite openly stated their aim - to make the US a Christian republic in much the way Iran is a Muslim one - and step one in the game plan is undermining science teaching in American schools by getting things like Creationism taught alongside evolutionary theory.
The extraordinary thing is how effective this has been: the proportion of students - even on science courses - who arrive at US universities rejecting evolution is scary. Can't remember the exact figure but I think it was upwards of a third.
To be fair, organised religion has much to fear from rationality: when the basis of your business is irrational belief - dictionary definition of faith - then evidence and thinking risks destroying everything. I guess it's no coincidence that the majority of scientists are not religious - or Republican.
Fortunately, organised religion has millenia of experience manipulating people - sew a few seeds of rational doubt (not hard when rationality and science is all about testing and re-testing theories), then follow up with a storm of BS and enough people will fall for it to put the issue in doubt. The idea that you're being really clever seeing though some huge conspiracy that's fooled everyone else is extraordinarily seductive. With people who think they're rational, appealing to scepticism is an amazingly powerful and effective ploy.
It's not just religions, of course. Look at climate scepticism: a few seeds of doubt about some tiny, largely irrelevant point buried in a couple of papers and suddenly 40% of the population reject decades of peer reviewed research from thousands scientist in dozens of universities. The real irony? Most of 'em think they're being rational!
Tipping?! At Starbucks?!
What, in case the $4 for a 50c cup of Joe wasn't reaming you quite deep enough?
Re: There aren't any
They still make Horizon?!!
Who knew ..?
Fair enough ..
.. makes up for me NOT ringing
What the regulators are missing is that phone complaints are a revenue stream these days. Switching 10p/min 'help' lines for 0800 numbers would give the companies an actual incentive to improve service.
I had to call PlusNet (I just switched) and the guy tried to have a chat!
"What's the weather like where you are?"
"Not raining 10p bits on me. Bye"
Is it that time of the month again already?
Thought we'd had this month's Battery-Miracle-Tech story ..
I assume El Reg has a fill-in-the-blanks proforma for them:
<name of publicity whore> has announced <buzzy name> which will give batteries a <random percentage> improvement in <price / capcity (delete as appropriate>.
Etc etc ..
Final line is always:
<buzzy name> will be a commercial reality within the next five years.
I've been reading these stories for .. seems like forever, but strangely my phone still doesn't go six months between charges and spare batteries still cost more than 10 cents.
Where's the Bullsh*t icon when you need it ..?
Given Apple ..
.. would take a 30% (is it?) cut of the probably-not-that-huge advertising revenue generated by a Google Maps App for iOS, you have to wonder why Google would want to do one.
I think I read that Apple was paying Google around $1 billion annually for the maps app in the past. And that had no turn-by-turn, as Google saw that (correctly, so far as I'm concerned) as a really great USP for Android.
I'm sure the Apple maps will improve over time. The Android one has. And Apple are busily recruiting all available ex-Google Maps devs ..
Hello - sorry, Goodbye Moto!
Admittedly, your man doesn't seem to have done much (except help p*** off customers, if posts on El Reg are anything to go by) in the last 7 years, but all the same ..
Another Research Paper Brought to You by the University of the Bleedin' Obvious
So a trick cyclist finally listened to the BS that's been coming from Republicans, Tea Party types and (invariably industry financed) climate skeptic 'researchers' .. only 30 years late.
Climate deniers almost certainly also believe the CIA shot Kennedy and poisoned Marilyn Munroe: they're people who will ALWAYS believe dumb-ass conspiracy theories before dull, peer-reviewed research.
Have 95% of scientist declare water is wet and they'll deny that.
It's no coincidence most are also religious: i.e. people who see 'faith' (the ability to delude oneself that the palpably false is true) as a virtue and who are happy to kill anyone with the temerity to point out 'facts' (the stuff that proves they're talking b*llocks).
Compatability ..?
Didn't I read something about compatability issues with the Intel silicon? Like they only run apps that are tweaked for 'em?
Otherwise, it looks really cool.
Agree about JB, though: I mean, this is Google, FFS! They have absolutely no excuse for punting something with 1 year old version of the O/S.
Ketchup is a CRIME!
Any time, any place, anywhere, but particularly when it's ruining perfectly good bacon. Would hang furry dice in a Ferrari?
Actually - don't answer that.
All you you need is plenty of lean bacon, a bit of mustard - preferably English rather than way-too-wussy French or Amer-cun (but y'know, in an emergency ..) - and some rustic BROWN bread, preferably with seeds or nuts. That bap looks pretty good.
Foamy white stuff just ain't bread - you'd be better off using a kitchen sponge.
Re: Scepticism is useful
Err - sticking to a blind assertion that, whatever the evidence, burning ever more fossil fuels is the ONLY answer to ANY question (that basically defines the 'climate sceptic' position) is NOT scepticism, it is - at best - cynicism, more accurately, blind stupidity.
Re: "Saving the Planet?" a new route to Hell on Earth!
Talk about over-reaction!
How does asking you to please buy a slightly less monstrosly inefficient car or to please things turn off when you're not using them equate with jack booted Nazis and Soviet gulags?
Really: get some perspective.
NOOooooooo!
Do we have to encourage old folks to use computers? Have you tried helping a fuddy use technology?
"So which ear do you want me to press on the hamster?"
"What little arrow thing?"
"I can't find the 'Any' key .."
Their dementia v my sanity - it's a no brainer
All very interesting ..
.. but how do I check if I'm infected and if so, get rid of it (whatever 'it' is)
Posted in Sony unwraps James Bond's new Droidphone
Re: Xperia V?
It is absolutely insane that we all happily buy really expensive outdoor kit, that's actually designed to fail when taken outdoors.
And as long as we continue to buy this stuff, there's absolutely no incentive for phone companies to make their mobile phones fit for purpose. Think of all the lost sales from phones that got exposed to rain - or just get taken oudoors in places like the tropics where there's 90% humidity.
Never Mind What It Is ..
.. how do I find out if my PC/Mac/VM/(no-one has an MS phone so forget that) is infected and if so, how do I get rid of it?!
Re: @SiempreTuna
You don't see quite so many people with houses full of dogs/rodents/snakes/fish and those that you do also seem a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic, though my guess is the source of those problems could lie elsewhere.
The affects of toxoplasmosis are pretty well documented - there's really not too much *seem* or *some* or *certain* about it.
There is also a strong corrolation (obviously, appropriate provisos apply) between the sudden increase in cat ownership following a fashion for all things Egyptian in the C19th and an increase in reported cases of various psychoses, including schizophrenia. Of course, it could just be coincidence ..
I'm assuming you're a cat person ..?
As for the accusation regarding cheap jibes: guilty as charged. But really, people who eat so much cat poo? Least of their problems ..
