* Posts by Really Anonymous Coward

34 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Nov 2012

What happens when What3Words gets lost in translation?

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: A new game

It's an endless game but how they managed to include this word in the set I'll never know

https://what3words.com/dots.dots.dots

Take a 14-mile trip on an autonomous Scottish bus starting next month

Really Anonymous Coward

Only the Scottish Government could crow about an automation scheme that turns a one person job into two...

Edge computing set for growth – that is, when we can agree what it is

Really Anonymous Coward

Rebranding exercise

Is it just me, or does any concise definition of "edge" make it sound exactly like what everyone did in the 90s before the same vendors/consultants pushed "Cloud".

Just about to dust off my old VBA applications and now claim they're following best practice doing the processing nearest the data...

‘Fasten your seat belts, raise your tray table, and disconnect your Bluetooth headsets from the entertainment unit’

Really Anonymous Coward

Bluetooth for at seat entertainment is going to be interesting with 200 people pairing all at once - how will they make sure people pair their own device to their own seat?!

Select few to watch World Cup in 4K high dynamic range colour on BBC iPlayer

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: Yeah...

"if Wikipedia are correct..."

F1 was purchased by Liberty Media (now renamed Formula One Group).

Liberty Global owns Virgin Media, CWC, UPC, bits of ITV.

Liberty Media and Liberty Global aren't the same company, but they are both run by John Malone.

UK's Just Eat faces probe after woman tweets chat-up texts from 'delivery guy'

Really Anonymous Coward

The delivery driver is employed by the restaurant directly. Any data breach has been done by the restaurant (well actually the driver)

Seems like people are confusing JustEat with Deliveroo/UberEats.

Obviously JustEat should consider dropping restaurants who don't live up to their standards, but they're hardly the first port of call. Any more than it's Yellow Pages' fault if you use it to look up a dodgy plumber.

Apple: Our stores are your 'town square' and a $1,000 iPhone is your 'future'

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: Apple copying Microsoft?

Issues in Germany? "iPhone Nein"

Samsung Note 7: Probably the best phone in the world. Yeah – you heard right

Really Anonymous Coward

Usb-c?

What was the point of the EU insisting on a charging standard only for it to change?

Happy s7 owner (10 years on HTC couldn't stomach a 10)

If NatWest texts you about online banking fraud, don't click the link

Really Anonymous Coward

They've not spoofed a number, just using the caller ID string "NatWest" which is the same as the bank uses for official texts, and means the message comes up in existing threads on most phones.

The message is

"We have identified some unusual activity on your Online Banking. Log In via the secure link http://95.141.35.213/default.aspx to avoid account suspension."

Of course anyone with sense then logs in using the normal website not a non-secure link.

Page looks like a reasonable copy of the normal login page, asks for the normal subset of password/number. On entering a customer number of 11111111, then comes the switch - to avoid suspension please enter all your bank account numbers to unlock access.

So all in all it's quite sophisticated.

Zero. Zilch. Nada. That's how much Netflix uses its own data centres now

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: A familiar smell

Have an upvote sir. Would anyone who's made this sort of thing work at any scale care to explain?

I've worked in loads of loosely coupled environments - but not in the sense anyone would want to boast about!

Remember Netbooks? Windows 10 makes them good again!

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: Windoze XP

Later netbooks came with 7

Eighteen year old server trumped by functional 486 fleet!

Really Anonymous Coward

If it was a P2, he was lucky not to have to switch from AT to ATX and hence need a new case as well!

Bah humbug. It's Andrew's Phones of the Year

Really Anonymous Coward

But which one to buy?

One Huawei handset that at £469 is a similar price to Sony/Samsung/HTC, and another that it's hard to get in the UK.

Would it be too much to recommend some of the fabled "mid-range"?

I'm looking to replace an HTC One M7, criteria

Not phablet sized

Good screen res (M7 is 1080p/4.7")

Better camera than I have now

Won't smash into a million shards of glass when dropped

Lasts a full day

A Z5 compact with full res screen would be ideal but everything seems to fall short in one or more areas, especially battery.

Virgin Media daddy Liberty Global swoops on Cable & Wireless Communications

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: Watershed indeed...

As others have said, the original Cable & Wireless split itself into CWW and CWC, the former was consumed by Vodafone pretty quick. Leaving CWC as the only company claiming succession to all the history.

So for more takeover mind-bending: CWC, which traded as LIME throughout the Caribbean, recently took over regional broadband/TV competitor Columbus Communications (trades as Flow), a major investor in which was ... John Malone.

It's currently rebranding all it's consumer services to Flow (possibly due to LIME's reputation), and was corporately rebranding as "C&W Communications", though the latter at least seems doubly redundant now!

Tinder Plus charges oldies MORE to ogle young hotties' pics

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: Obvious question

UK age discrimination legislation only applies to employment, not to the provision of goods/services.

Canadian teens cuffed over alleged Snapchat child sex pics ring

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: Child facing child pornography charges?

That's exactly the point, it isn't regardless of age. If they had all been adults, it wouldn't have been a crime. Shitty thing to do, but not criminal.

Red Hat ships piping hot Ceylon to curry favor with Java-weary devs

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: Question on Development

I assumed the Ceylon name was a playful nod to Java (both being hot drinks and islands), but the project logo is a picture of an elephant. Not one drinking tea.

Rent a virtual desktop from Amazon: 35 bucks a month (PC not included)

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: Licensing

The cost analysis on the links claims $0 for CALs (vs not-$0 for on-premise solution) - did The Reg ask the PR rep from Amazon to comment on this?

British ankle-biters handed first mobe at the age of SEVEN - Ofcom

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: Mine aren't getting phones yet

No, he's winding up his kids.

In my day it was being told that the ice cream van only played music when he'd run out of cones

Sysadmin Day free give away

Really Anonymous Coward

Regulations...

http://contests.about.com/od/sweepstakes101/f/VoidinQuebec.htm

Virgin Media: SO SORRY we fined your dead dad £10 for unpaid bill

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: What are they sorry for?

Unlikely. The error codes in the responses (ARUDD files) a single character code. There is a fairly standard list of values.

They probably managed some sort of regression...

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: Outstanding

Most interfaces to BACS work in the same way. When a payment is declined a reason code is returned. One of the values for this code is definitely Payer Deceased (I have set up interfaces to these systems myself)

Most Billing/Payment processing software lets the Operator perform different actions based on the code.

For example, insufficient funds might trigger a resweep. A similar message is sent if the account details have changed (to let the operator update their records).

Payer Deceased should of course route it to the manual team, and cancel the DD agreement so no more payments.

Given this team exists, this is probably how it's supposed to work. I'm guessing a bug got in the way...

Paying a TV tax makes you happy - BBC

Really Anonymous Coward
Stop

Rubbish...

Don't want to pay a TV Licence - don't watch TV.

On the other hand, unless you can avoid buying anything advertised on TV, you're paying for ITV and Sky, whether you have a TV or not.

Yet to be convinced the former is less fair than the latter.

Britain's passport and ID service seeks facial recog tech suppliers

Really Anonymous Coward
Unhappy

IRIS is dead... the e-gates are the replacement.

Main issue with IRIS was that you needed a special appointment to get the scan. The level of detail needed to identify you from the full list of users wouldn't be in the normal photo. The new gates should be better since they read your passport too, but I've yet to hear anyone not have the same issue as the above posters. (Haven't got a biometric passport yet myself)

Photoshop fakery exposed by fake Photoshop tool

Really Anonymous Coward

True, but the Dove adverts . The "real women" still have shapes unobtainable to most, and at least as likely to inspire all the negative feelings. Maybe slightly more because they are branded "real". At least supermodels are named to suggest they're remarkable.

e.g. the 'curvy' one is no more than a size 14 (less than the UK average), the 'freckly' one who was apparently ashamed of them is absolutely stunning looking.

Not being a teenage girl I've no idea if the education side of it is any better!

SimCity 2000

Really Anonymous Coward
Thumb Up

Agreed - was waiting for this article after I saw the earlier piece on the original, which inspired me to fire up SC2K in DOSBox as well! What's funnier is that SC3000 wouldn't play on a more modern laptop, didn't seem to get on with XP. Brilliant, humorous and addictive!

Must admit it's a lot easier when you can race through a few hundred years to build up some profit.

@Piro - boxes and proper manuals! Didn't the SC2K one dedicate half the book to essays on urban development? I remember buying SIMFarm as a 'classic' game too, and it having similar farming tips.

200 million office workers gagging for a... Microsoft Surface?

Really Anonymous Coward

Exactly... Nothing displays until someone makes a comment. I only got here to make it by figuring out the URL.

One of today's other articles had an apologetic comment from a member of staff to start it off.

Really Anonymous Coward
FAIL

Reg: We want our site to look snappier

Designer: Let's move the comment link up a bit

Reg: And show the number of comments

Designer: And if there are zero comments

Reg: Show zero

Designer: Ah, zero, zip, nada... got it.

Axed staffers hijack HMV Twitter account: 'We're tweeting LIVE from HR'

Really Anonymous Coward

The Guardian articles on the subject suggest she herself was that intern...

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: Acronym

I thought the 'acronyms must be words (ish)' thing was just in American English

Amazon: We have great cash flow - it flows straight out of our hands

Really Anonymous Coward
FAIL

Re: Question on this

@Turtle_Fan

News Corp is an American company, not UK.

Windows 8: At least it's better than ‘not very good’

Really Anonymous Coward

Re: !!!

How do you find Control Panel without Metro - right click where the start button used to be and select it. Or add the icon to the desktop.

You can close a Metro app by dragging it downwards.

The various finger gestures have consistent mouse equivalents, but it takes third party websites to summarise them properly. The information density of the MS documentation is worse than Metro apps!

One trend I've noticed with recent MS products, and I include Windows 7 and the Ribbon in this, is that it is less obvious what to do when just playing around, but if you know what you want to do it's easier to find it. I wonder if this is the reason Alastair finds Windows 8 better when doing 'real work'.

However on the retail side, and against tablets, it has to impress the customer when they play with it in store. (Unless you don't stock it in shops...hmmm)

The early days of PCs as seen through DEAD TREES

Really Anonymous Coward

In the mid-late 90s (between Windows becoming popular and mass home internet access, which the article seems to skip), PC Plus, PCW and so on were all 500 pages, the mighty Shopper pushed 1000. Still remember 30+ page adverts for Software Warehouse which continued into the days of Jungle.com (so c.2000).