* Posts by graeme leggett

2467 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2007

Brit telcos warn Scots that voting Yes could lead to hefty bills

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: If prices go up, we'll know who to blame.

"thay have armed border guards at every crossing?"

Not these days, but I remember the news during the 70s..

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: As an Englishman...

can I state that, as an Englishman, @Lost all faith is not speaking on my behalf

Archaeologists and robots on hunt for more Antikythera pieces

graeme leggett Silver badge

What they really need

Is to find the manual for it.

I believe a few talented individuals have constructed fair representations of the mechanism from the analysis of the parts found but do they know what it's actually for?

Oh noes, fanbois! iPhone 6 Plus shipments 'DELAYED' in the UK

graeme leggett Silver badge

Don't follow the way this works

I know I'm slowing down with age but...

Apple allocate a number of phones for sale prior to announcement.

(these are for retail sale, sale through other shops, sale online, sale other online etc)

Said electro-goodies are then piled up in warehouses ready for dispatch.

A number of people unable to get to (or not wanting to be seen in?) a queue outside a shop, place orders online.

These orders >> number allocated, so all orders delayed?!?

You'd think that those who baggsied a phone first in pre-order before the allocation was reached would get theirs when it was available. Everyone after then has to wait until the next load arrive on blighty's shores.

Is there something I'm missing, save a few neurons?

Italy's High Court orders HP to refund punter for putting Windows on PC

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: If

"Maybe we need a corollary to Godwin covering the use of cars an analogy"

That'd be Goodwood...

Scottish independence: Will it really TEAR the HEART from IT firms?

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Scotlands Last Chance

It's not the last chance of independence. The last chance of independence is the one where they vote for independence and then go independent.

There's nothing stopping another 5 or 10 years (or however long) passing and if there's a political will for another referendum, then there will be one.

By comparison, the bid for Irish home rule (a devolved government) started in 1880-ish. It was in 1922 that the independent Irish Free State was created.

graeme leggett Silver badge

Plenty of job opportunities

While Scotland may already have regional offices for many functions carried out across the (current UK), they will need to create head offices for those organizations based futher south.

They'll want their own: DVLA (Swansea), UKAS (not the university one), IPO, Companies House, MHRA (all London), HSE (Liverpool), Space Agency (Swindon?), Ordnance Survey (Southampton), Met Office (Exeter), Medical Research Council, UCAS. So many acronyms and abbreviations needing an extra "S"....

They'll also be able to nationalise the railways - all change at Carlisle and Berwick, something that may or not be called "Royal Mail". And other fun stuff.

They'll also want a Staff College for their armed forces as they are staying in NATO.

NHS grows a NoSQL backbone and rips out its Oracle Spine

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: The numbers don't add up

Some stuff will be entirely internal to the surgery system.

A GP could have a consultation, write a prescription, book the patient back for three more visits and it could all be internal up save the prescription being sent to HSCIC for the central records eg the GP Presentation Level Prescribing Data (available for download in monthly chunks if you fancy flicking through it)

But initiate a scan, or some tests and the messages are sure to start flying....

Former Bitcoin Foundation chair pleads guilty to money-laundering charge

graeme leggett Silver badge

Sending the wrong message?

Not commenting on the specifics of this case, but in general

If a banking executive or other money handling organization can make a problem disappear through the application of money, then isn't there going to be the temptation of taking a chance in the expectations (hope?) that the funds accumulated can be used to avoid prison if it gets found out.

Would the guarantee of a prison sentence if convicted of these sort of "white collar crimes" be more or less likely to keep people on the straight and narrow?

Data entry REAR-END SNAFU: Weighty ballsup leads to plane take-off flap

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Next up: flying in circles

from same website http://www.vc10.net/History/incidents_and_accidents.html#XR806 Brize Norton 18 December 1997

interview without coffee for culprit(s)?

Good luck with Project Wing, Google. This drone moonshot is NEVER going to happen

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: I still think of the local shop

Just for safety's (and privacy) sake, you could make the drone follow the line of the roads so that it doesn't overfly anyone's property and cause annoyance etc.

Don't forget to put some wheels on it for soft landings. In cases where trees and other overhead obstacles compromise flying it could then use the wheels to do part of the journey on the ground. Don't forget to make it a strong colour so it can be seen - yellow or red are good.

To be more cost and routing efficient you could make a bigger one to carry more parcels and packages, though initially the rotors might not be up to the job and it would need to use the wheels. Tell you what, take off the rotors and give it a new name - how about "Van"

graeme leggett Silver badge

bread and circuses?

A completely unjustifiable thought no doubt, but could this be a bit of distraction on google's part.

Electric cars, delivery drones, and the like. Some of which work, some of which won't but all publicly burning up cash.

So when the man in the street asks his neighbour, "what does google do with all that advertising revenue?" His neighbour says "driverless cars". "Oh, really", says the man, "did you watch the game last night"

Meanwhile, somewhere underneath a dead volcano, google execs are assembling the progenitors of the master race......

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Stated Goals

Perhaps I've misunderstood, but a defibrillator needs to be on location, or very near by, before the emergency. Hence the push to get the automatic kind (AED) into shopping malls, community centres and the like.

picture on this page http://www.bhf.org.uk/heart-health/life-saving-skills/defibrillators.aspx shows one marked "IPAD" (apparently from Public Access Defibrillation )

The BNP can rip off your works for ‘parodies’ – but only if it's not racist

graeme leggett Silver badge

The protection comes across as an exception from the ability to interpret someone else's work if the "parody" is used in a manner that may be an offence.

But then I'm not a lawyer, so what would I know...

'Enterprise' ends ten-year mission: Choc Factory's biz services now Google for Work

graeme leggett Silver badge

Presumably they enable collaborative practices, so why not "Google for Workgroups"

Boiling point: Tech and the perfect cuppa

graeme leggett Silver badge

Going by the devices shown

"there any special gadgetry for those with a taste for tea"

No, there is no special gadgetry, but plenty of traps for the unwary to be parted from his money.

If you want boiling water, take a container, put water in it, apply heat. remove heat before all the water has evaporated. if you can't be around to monitor this fascinating process, any of the large supermarkets will sell you something that will do this for less than a tenner.

If you want water at a certain temperature less than boiling, get a calculator and work out how much tap water (about 11 degrees C typically?) is needed to add to the boiling water to get the right result. More fun and cheaper. You can save the money for trying out different teas.

If you need a lot of boiling water on tap, get a Burco, or a Hydroboil wall mount - your kitchen will look like the annex to a village hall but call it "retro". At the same time, get one of those teapots that take about a gallon of water. Even if a synod of thirsty prelates turned up you'd still be able to say "more tea, vicar" before refilling.

Nokia: Read these Maps, Samsung – we're HERE for the Gear

graeme leggett Silver badge

I find mine gets quite warm round the back, and I need to have it on charge or drain the battery.

Whether that's the way it hammers the GPS, or is still using the data plan to grab traffic flows, I don't know. Or perhaps the case doesn't help.

But it's still a good app for giving directions.

Ofcom will not probe lesbian lizard snog in new Dr Who series

graeme leggett Silver badge

Proportionate response?

So 6 complaints out of a viewership of around 8 to 9 million - seems quite underwhelming.

How many complained about the portrayals of other things in the episode, eg

1) setting a non-dangerous T-Rex alight

2) the Doctor threatening a Victorian homeless person (played by Brian Miller, Liz Sladen's husband if you're interested) and possibly robbing him

3) Organ-harvesting robots

4) The Doctor pushing (or not?) a sentinent being to its death

graeme leggett Silver badge

The Time Monster

There's worse than than the coathanger gizmo. I think I recall some appalling (by modern standards) sexism as well.

If you want the science ideas (but not necessarily explanations) try something with Christopher H Bidmead's involvement

Researchers camouflage haxxor traps with fake application traffic

graeme leggett Silver badge

Historically sound practices

Same principles as the invention of the 1st US Army Group and British Fourth Army in the lead up to the Normandy landings. For the deception to be convincing, it not only has to look right but also behave right. The Allied preparations included some fake installations and camps but a lot of authentic looking signal traffic.

Perhaps they could also make the systems browse the internet during lunch hours.

Anyone invented a honeypot that is actually a Q-ship?

Cracking copyright law: How a simian selfie stunt could make a monkey out of Wikipedia

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Andrew

As Andrew Orlowski (and the UK IPO) writes "copyright is an automatic right". It needs no registration in the UK. The IPO doesn't record copyright, it handles the registration of Trademarks, Registered designs and Patents.

Best shot: Coffee - how do you brew?

graeme leggett Silver badge

Easy to make

One heaped teaspoon and pour on boiled water from kettle.

and when I saw the phrase " air of Camp " I thought, well if you like chicory....

I am a tea drinker (coffee gives me indigestion)

Renegade NSA, GCHQ spies help fix Tor vulns, claims project boss

graeme leggett Silver badge

Cynical, moi?

They leak the easy-to-find vulnerabilities, to make it harder for other nations' spying efforts....

US Copyright Office rules that monkeys CAN'T claim copyright over their selfies

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: The USCO say what?

well, as the article says "...Copyright Office, the matter is formally settled" - in the US.

Which is good for wikpedia/Wikimedia Foundation because they rely upon US copyright law. In their own words "accepts content that is free in the United States even if it may be under copyright in some other countries"

But if another country found that it was Slater's copyright, then in that country he could claim royalties. I guess it depends whether he thinks it's worth the fight.

Is it an iPad? Is it a MacBook Air? No, it's a Surface Pro 3

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: @Arnaut the less RE"......... but for the mass market it just costs far too much....."

are glossy screens easier to clean than matte ones?

Stand clear! Will HTC's One act as a defibrillator for Windows Phone?

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Not sure I agree with the author

"text reader (e.g. SMS.."

My Winphone has read text messages out to me since I bought it last year. When I have headphones in anyway.

Personally, I think the unbundling of the audio (music, video, podcasts, third-party apps) under the "Music" tile was a bad idea; though now the podcasts feature does work in the UK (on the other hand, it took them long enough by which time I'd found a very good Podcast app to make up for the gap)

Installing apps on the SD card a good one, again a bit late to that party. Good for me; not because I fill my phone with apps but because I find that the free phone memory space gets slowly eaten up (I suspect the system caches photos from the social media notifications etc)

New voting rules leave innocent Brits at risk of SPAM TSUNAMI

graeme leggett Silver badge

It brings in a modicum of income for the council, which is not of itself a bad thing.

But it's only reasonable provided the product electorate are properly informed and enabled to make the decision for themselves.

In the olden days, the likes of 192 would have to copy the names and addresses off a printed copy - which would be one way of slowing them down...

Chrome update to raise alarms over deceptive download bundles

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Interesting solution...

7. User selects next search result

8. Goto 4

graeme leggett Silver badge

Or go through control panel, Java and under the advanced settings, scroll all the way to the bottom to find "suppress sponsor offerings"

Totes AMAZEBALLS! Side boob, binge-watch and clickbait added to Oxford Dictionary

graeme leggett Silver badge

just used my library service on line subscription to OED

and these new words aren't showing up.

got "smartphone" though - first use 1980.

Google hops into bed with Brit red-top: Cooks up 'draw an app' coding compo for kids

graeme leggett Silver badge

slightly different approach needed?

"...that you can learn something useful about programming from scratch in an “Hour of Code”.

Perhaps the first thing useful to be learnt about programming could be a half-hour beforehand in which it is explained what programming is, and how it is used.

[My son - 9 - has been using Scratch at his school. And has shown a passing interest in it outside of school. He also learnt the name "C#" somewhere along the way. I couldn't explain what C# is or how it differs from Scratch, let alone any other C-language, but he can now namedrop "Assembler", "Fortran", "Pascal" and "BBC Basic" as well (it's the least I could do)]

Crypto Daddy Phil Zimmerman says surveillance society is DOOMED

graeme leggett Silver badge

basic premise faulty?

Strikes me - using Facebook as an example - that on the whole, the people of the developed nations aren't that bothered about privacy.

might be quite some time before a critical mass is achieved.

World's only flyable WWII Lancaster bombers meet in Lincs

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Aviation geeks

http://www.warplane.com/lancaster-2014-uk-tour.aspx

the Canadian museums website listing.

with a bit of luck and an atlas you might be able to figure out observation points in-between as well. Or use flightradar24 if they have transponder on.

Nuts to your poncey hipster coffees, I want a TESLA ELECTRO-CAFE

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Hi, have we met before?

Well, you could always start up a conversation with "is it me, or is the coffee here rubbish?"

then segue into either remembering when all you could get was Mellow Birds, or when "all this" was factories/slums/field

graeme leggett Silver badge

meanwhile in the real world

Majority of British small and medium business is fuelled on caffeine drawn from PG Tips and Nescafe Gold Blend - bought en masse from Macro (other wholesalers, and equivalent drinks, are available).

BT scoops up Wales PSN contracts, elbows out Logicalis

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: geographic entity

I was figuring that although the money was being spent on for the benefit of public services in Wales, profits/senior management salaries were being dragged Londonwards and topping up the incomes of , say, estate agents in the M25 area

graeme leggett Silver badge

geographic entity

"Welsh Slough-based Logicalis"

headquartered in Slough for one business reason, but employing personnel within the principality for others?

any reason it couldn't go the whole hog and be a wholly Welsh company. If it had been a Scottish York-based company I'd have made up some jibe about a tartan fig-leaf, is there a Welsh equivalent?

Stalwart hatchback gets a plug-in: Volkswagen e-Golf

graeme leggett Silver badge

"deliberately styled to look like a petrol engine"

What happened to form following function?

sounds like a waste of energy in design on making it a bit prettier in belief it might edge a sale. While in reality, for most people these days the engine bay contains more arcane mysteries than a wizard's library and owners scarcely lift the bonnet except to top up the wash bottle.

design, if you must, for design's sake but make it look electrical not petrolhead: like something from Metropolis or ST:TNG

Farmville maker Zynga delays new games after losing 57 million users

graeme leggett Silver badge

already

Surely there are many nouns left in the dictionary to be put in front of the word "ville"?

mind you, the games -unless you throw money at them - illustrate law of diminishing returns so why shouldn't the business....

Twitter can trigger psychosis in users

graeme leggett Silver badge

what's that old axiom?

Something about the plural of "anecdote" and data.

more interestingly, how do they rule out occasional drug use as not a factor? (Not as in I dispute that drugs may/may not affect mental health but the methodology)

Now even Internet Explorer will throw lousy old Java into the abyss

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: pretty big peg

I found how to turn off "third party offers" from the java install the other day.

buried deep under the advanced settings...

HTTP-Yes! Google boosts SSL-encrypted sites in search results

graeme leggett Silver badge

and there was me

Thinking the best answers to a search query would be the ones with the right content...

But I'm still trying to figure out how biasing to https will improve google's revenue.

LinkedIn settles missed overtime pay case: Will pay $6m to staffers

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Need similar laws in the UK..

I'm afraid then @keef, that best you can hope for is Industrial Tribunal for constructive dismissal

keep clean, but also keep lots of notes, companies who are bad at management are usually bad at all sorts of paperwork so you might get a crack at illegal dismissal as well as unfair dismissal.

but as others suggested, you are better off out. And take them to the cleaners from there. A proud man might turn down any non-disclosure element of a settlement in order that the company's misdeeds are publicised. But a poor man might prefer the extra money

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Need similar laws in the UK..

You are already protected by various employment acts that have passed over the years.

what does your contract say about overtime? Does it specify the length of the working week?

Raise the issue with your manager, their manager, HR, talk to CAB, a union rep... But don't put up with it.

BANGKOK-BLOCKED: Thailand's dictators 'ban dictator sim Tropico 5'

graeme leggett Silver badge

Didn't even know such Sims existed. Sounds more fun than Sim Tractor and the like.

Also made me nostalgic for the boardgame "Junta"; we used to play it wearing sunglasses for added ambience (though as we were still a bunch of teenagers in Scotland of a wintry evening, much good it did?)

It's War: Internet of things firms butt heads over talking-fridge tech standards

graeme leggett Silver badge

interesting alliances

In general they seem to be made up of the companies that make their money out of networking, or devices. But not the companies that actually make the kit that might be expected to be joined over this internetmarketing bod's wet dream of things.

No Hotpoint or Honeywell, Miele or Bosch? Are these standards being develops, in isolation from the end devices? Orr will Bekoes et al be expected to like it or lump it.

Thirteen Astonishing True Facts You Never Knew About SCREWS

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: To be continued?

I think electric drills with torque "control" meant Yankee screwdrivers fell out of favour. Stanley don't do them anymore. Still they did the job at the time, and had replaceable tips.

But for real torque that you can get your weight behind, put a screwbit into a "brace and bit" drill.

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: No. 2

or - once you've lost the nut - "Machine screw"

ICANN can't hand over Iran's internet, bomb victims told

graeme leggett Silver badge

Re: Americans

Not an invitation to imitate Keith Moon, then?