"University of Edinburgh computer science undergraduate Andrew Johnston"
or Andy , for short
Posts by mark 63
902 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
Santander's banking website craps out
Darth Vader is a pansy
Why British TV drama is crap – and why this matters to tech firms
Friday 20th July 2012 11:26 GMT 
I love a good long drama series i can sit down with a dvd box set, and through all my research and discussions with mates i seem to end up with US stuff.
U.S
Breaking Bad - best drama ever
The Walking dead
Falling skies
The Wire
Sons of Anarchy
Firefly ( if we're counting sci fi )
BattleStar Galactica remake ( more than just sci fi)
U.K
Being Human
The lottery ( good , cheap , but just a miniseries )
Day of the triffids (1981)
Survivors (1978)
so what am i missing in the uk?
preferably something thats not a police / detective theme
Scotland Yard collars seventh computer-hack suspect
YouTube blurs faces to protect the innocent
Thursday 19th July 2012 12:22 GMT
Re: Err... public protest
well AC - Atrocities, warcrimes and police brutality are not exclusively perpetrated at public protests
Witness intimidation occurs at many many situations and at all levels from getting a kicking from the local thug in the pub fro 'grassing' to mass graves ordered from the very top.
Raspberry Pi rolls out speed surge Raspbian OS
Wednesday 18th July 2012 12:59 GMT 
to ,er, play devils advocate here,
I think its great that people are tinkering with these things , and that school kids can get a grasp of the real low level architecture - and that programming dosent just mean setting up your own facebook page. (how many kids will go for it though?)
but I , Like the kids , want to see results fast, (i've done a bit of assembly and other stuff , i get it, i dont really wanna go back)
If wanted to make it into a touch screen mp3 player for my car ( i already have the hardware for this) how the hell would you go about that? in this "arm based SoC" wtf that means.
I'd rather get a laptop , a cut down version of winxp , and download the already existing front ends OR maybe program the front end mysself in vb, just to get it how i want it.
a *more* impatient person wouls just use a slab these days.
so what am i rambling about? i dunno i guess i'm saying it needs a very special person to be intrested, I'm special , but not that special.
another thing - its great that its 2" sqare or whatever , but when youve put kbd,mouse n LCD tv on it , its a lot less portable than a , well , anything
wheres the "dont hit me!" icon ?
Cumbria County Council: We'll sort our own ICT support, thanks
McDonalds staff 'rough up' prof with home-made techno-spectacles
Much of China still has rubbish net connections, stats show
Tuesday 17th July 2012 12:00 GMT
statistics.....
I think if the british govt were trying to network a country the size and terrain of china theyd be struggling too!
... and if you look at the land mass / fibre ration in canada thats probly not good on paper either
and OZ really is crap ...
However I just declared this office an independant country - and we have excellent connectivity throughout!
Gambling site's 'no strings attached' offer had strings attached
Tuesday 17th July 2012 11:49 GMT
Re: 1. Exploit human weakness. 2. PROFIT!
i dunno colin , I wrote a little "double your bet" script in excel , with those odds
and it worked. It reprted "biggest losing streak" and capital required etc.
It wouldnt work in real life because of
a) tables have max bets
b) the huge amount of capital required for just a few consecutive losses
Friday 13th July 2012 08:57 GMT
Re: This, if nowt else
yeah but if you bet online on horses or football etc, no amount of table-tipping is gonna change the result - you just didnt have to walk down to the bookies with the other addicts.
same as a fruit machine or a poker machine in a pub *can* fuck with the odds without being online.
But i fully agree with "gambling is a mugs game" and i dont do it.
"I discovered the perfect business - people come in ,empty their pockets, and leave!"
-Mr. Burns
Friday 13th July 2012 07:33 GMT
I'm confused!
"cannot withdraw less than £30 from their accounts with it and that they must have "wagered" that amount before those winnings could be withdrawn"
Thats more than misleading!
That means you must lose a further £20 before you can withdraw £30.
no, wait, that means you must *win* £30 before you get any money - and how much would that cost?
no, wait, if you win £30 with the free tenner you cant have it ,
so you must *bet* £30 and then you can have it, if you've got £30 in winnings?
does that apply to all withdrawals or just the first?
Thats like the lottery saying "No , you cant have the 3 mill because you havent spent 3 mill with us so far"
US, Iraqi lawn chair balloonists blown out of sky
Apple Store staircase flagged as Peeping Tom black spot
Phishers use less strident subject lines to deliver new cunning attacks
Friday 13th July 2012 11:50 GMT
same ol
I dont think that changes anti phishing advice at all
"dont follow links from spam in your mailb wether its claiming to be your bank or offering you a bigger penis."
This new tatctic would rely on a recent unpatched drive-by vulnerability being available , rather than the old method which will work purely on user stupidity
'Extreme' solar storm speeding straight towards Earth
Microsoft tightens squeeze on TechNet parasites
Chemical giant foils infected USB stick espionage bid
Gov: How can renewable power peddlers take on UK's Big 6?
Wednesday 11th July 2012 11:51 GMT
Re: Heads in sand - all of you!
correct Richard , I was just using "solar panels" as a euphamism for some happy, dreamworld , la la land , fits all solution.
Many Nuclear plants right now is our best bet .
Unfortunately last time this came up mr blair thought otherwise and knocked 3 of them back
Tuesday 10th July 2012 15:39 GMT 
Heads in sand - all of you!
So we're waiting for the oil to run out before we think about renewable alternatives?
(or at least get too expensive, which is about now given all the 'horizontal drilling' n stuff)
When youre sitting in your front room , in the dark, freezing your tits off , licking out the last can of dogfood and hoping the furniture barricading the doors holds off those less fortunate you'll be saying:
"D'oh , if only we'd built some solar panels"
Sharp bungs Dell and pals $198m to silence TFT price-fix spat
Aus cyber-safety unit loses punters' info in the post
Japanese boffins demo EV on-the-move charging
Monday 9th July 2012 08:13 GMT 
me n my car weigh 1500kg
If this is all in the name of environmentalism , systainabilty , global warming, clean energy ...
then The whole "car" concept needs to go. people need to move on trains or buses , or conveyor belts - or just work out where the hell they want to be!
In the future the idea that when millions of people commuted miles to work , they increased their ground footprint by 100 times , and their mass from 70kg to upwards of 1500kg - by getting in a car will laughable
we dont have the available energy or space to carry on like this
Europe's prang-phone-in-every-car to cost €5m per life saved
BOFH: The back-up backdown smackdown
Trekkie pays £45,000 for rusty shuttle
Arts & social-sci students briefly forced to do useful work at Foxconn
Rare AutoCAD worm lifted blueprints from Peru, sent them to China
Tech fault at RBS and Natwest freezes millions of UK bank balances
Vatican subtly shifts its position on The Blues Brothers
Apple must be tried for the bug in every fanboi's pocket
PFY vs Bearded 80s Netscape Bore: BOFH
ICANN eggfaced after publishing dot-word biz overlords' personal info
Friday 15th June 2012 09:27 GMT
"For many of the big brand names applying for new gTLDs, the fact that they had to file personal data about their officers and directors – needed for ICANN's background checks – was a much higher barrier to the programme than the $185,000 fee."
So many of our big brands are run by dodgy geezers?
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"They are going to be livid" PMSL
Stephen Fry's Pushnote goes titsup
Hitchhiker shot while researching 'Kindness of America'
All of Europe's data in US servers? We're OK with that - EC bod
Wednesday 13th June 2012 11:23 GMT
the whole thing smells of either bribery or extreme nievety (sp)
and i dont think the data protection act is properly coded for new things like the "cloud"
on a separate note:
"We really need to drive growth and jobs in the future,” she said."
Great - lets give all the data storage jobs away to johnny foreigner then!
is there anything else not important we can hand over?
how about we outsource the military?
Blighty's new anti-bribe law will do more HARM than good
Wednesday 13th June 2012 10:53 GMT
"and what we did abroad with Johnny Foreigner."
You can say that again. Marching in and stealing all their shit and enslaving people was outlawed in the country long before it became against foreign policy
(1) Jamaica and slavery,
(2) the Irish famine,
(3) the Opium Wars and Taiping Rebellion (though not the Boxers),
(4) the Sepoy Rebellion,
(5) the colonization of Egypt,
(7) the settling and revolt of interwar Palestine,
(8) Indian independence,
(9) the Suez Crisis,
(10) the Mau-Mau Rebellion,
(11) the suppression of the revolt in Malaya,
New UK curriculum ramps up lessons in SPAAAACE
Tuesday 12th June 2012 11:32 GMT 
thought they *were* doing that
As alistair nted above - when did that stop? thats what i did at school.
I Guess it was around the time that some bright spark said:
"Why the hell have we got three separate science lessons? Thats just a waste - we could roll them all into one and get the kids all scienced up for a third of the effort"
Biting the hand that feeds IT
