Posts by Matthew 3

Am I missing something?

They are only talking about demoting the illegal search results. So anyone who wants a dodgy MP3 will simply click straight to page 5 of the search results, won't they?

Brilliant line.

"...the internet has been running a bit slowly recently."

"Did you call Vint Cerf?"

Worth a punt on definitions?

Since the word 'paedo' literally means 'child' there must surely be a legal defence to that angle?

Without the addition of the suffix '-phile' it could be argued that the only criticism here is an accusation of immaturity.

Processor?

It seems that Samsung are again supporting two processors - either a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 or one of their own Exynos ones, depending on market.But my understanding is that Cyanogenmod's developers prefer the Qualcomm. Anyone yet know which processor the UK will get?

TCO?

A 60W incandescent bulb that's three times more efficient than before will still lose over 50W of that as heat. But if you're comparing it with a 6W LED, the inefficiencies surely don't change the fact that it is still cheaper to run for the same amount of usable light?

Leaving me here in the desert? Wow, Dad really doesn't like Apples.

H&S

It's always fun to deliberately trip over a 'Caution: wet floor' sign and then complain about the hazard.

Customer service...

"...a regulatory regime similar to that of the UK would mean significantly less broadband investment, higher prices and bad customer service."

Because American telecom companies are famed for their high quality customer service...?

Brings back memories

My former employer sent our jobs to India and also expected us to train our replacements. We also exhibited a staggering lack of commitment to that task, not least because our redundancies were involuntary.

There was lots of schadenfreude when the newbies were asked to shut down one data centre for maintenance and instead accidentally shut down every single datacentre, globally.

The estimated losses were far greater than the gain from losing all those years of experience and goodwill but, hey, they were cheaper...

Don't the British government have a spare range?

I'm sure that I read that the British government have an unused IPv4 address range (51.0.0.0/8).

Surely that would be worth a couple of billion to someone?

So why not sell it and reduce the deficit?

Best lesson is experience.

My old employer had an office in Manchester's Arndale centre at the time of the IRA bomb. All the backup tapes were in a fireproof safe, inside the sealed off powerless building.

Fortunately an unaffected ISDN2 line lasted just long enough to take a full backup...

"...hard to wean off of it." Seriously? "off of"?

*sigh*

Didn't the IT Crowd already cover these?

"Damn these electric sex pants!"

Link

Outside the city...

... where 5 meg broadband is the stuff of rumour and legend, these drives still provide a valuable way to move data between machines rather than just download everything each time.

But it is a worry that NTFS' file system may soon be overwhelmed by a giant volume set, created from all of the millions of USB drives plugged into it. :-D

Us Brits use a cooler car

When we make a self-driving car we go for a Bowler Wildcat. Just sayin'.

Link

Bitcoin hard drive?

For a better return on investment, why not send a Reg reporter down to the Newport landfill to search for James Howells' hard drive containing £4 million worth of bitcoin?

It's not just Switzerland

If I lived in the Channel Islands I'd be looking for an angle here. They did it with CD deliveries, for a while, and I'm sure they'll try and do it again.

VAT doesn't apply there - they're not in the EU.

Let their constituents judge them

If each MP knew that their local electorate were approving every pay rise or expenses claim there'd be a lot more honesty in the system. And a big improvement in representation too.

At the moment every MP can lie their way into power and then just sit tight for years. If you're lucky they might need to make a few more creative promises in time for the next election but for too many it's just a job for life. These types need constant reminding that their primary obligation is supposed to be towards the electorate who put them there.

Flyspray?

Surely they'd like that? It must make their lunch easier to catch.

BlackBerry

I remain convinced that BlackBerry's slow slide into oblivion is because their licensing arrangements are straightforward. If you don't have enough client licences the console will tell you, with a list of how many you have, how many you've used and a negative number if you've gone over.

Simple. No wonder nobody thinks they'll last much longer.

Insurance comparison sites?

Does this mean that comparison sites would be illegal?

If it means the end of the meercats and the opera singer I think I could live with that.

I've been amused that IE 11 removes the 'MSIE' token from the user agent string. This is to ensure that the old CSS hacks and workarounds required on some sites - to support IE6, 7 and 8 - aren't inadvertently sent to IE11 (now that they are, belatedly, no longer needed). A 'like Gecko' tag has also been added for further consistency with other browser types.

It's a long overdue change but has the amusing side-effect of making an Exchange server misidentify the browser and load the crappier Outlook Web App interface. A server-side update is needed to fix this.

Used to be a fan

I first started using TomTom back in the days when it had to be installed on a PocketPC with a serially-connected GPS receiver. Postcodes required a third-party app which fed co-ordinates back to TomTom's app.

But they're a spent force now. I use Waze on my phone. It's free, I get realtime hold-up data and I can see live travelling speeds on the roads. If I ever get bored of it I can install another app. Why would anyone pay for a separate device that offers no more functionality than you get for free?

Backstabbing by another name

I was TUPE'd as part of a UK FTSE 100 firm wanting to offshore its IT to an Indian tech firm. Immediately we all lost our final salary pensions and were signed up for a standard alternative one that offered far worse terms. We were all also thrown out of the employees' sharesave scheme, losing the chance to buy shares at a discount.

Within days of the transfer we were all told we were 'at risk of redundancy' and asked to train our (cheaper) Indian replacements. These people were allegedly paid the same as us although their compulsory bed-and-board deductions while they were in the UK apparently made up a significant proportion of their salaries...

It's hard not to assume that the whole process was intended just so that our former employer could deny laying people off to the press - "No, guv, not us. We TUPE'd them. We're nice and ethical!"

It's those 'Where were you when....?" moments

Tom Baker was my first Doctor, so he's the best. I can still remember, with startling clarity, where I was at the shocking moment when he turned into Peter Davison. Until 2001 that was my equivalent of what my parents called 'a JFK moment'.

I didn't think much of the next couple, as the series wound down, but Eccleston wasn't bad, Tennant was better and Matt Smith was somewhere between the two. I'm just glad it's back.

Have a jelly baby...

Noting the absence of a power lead in the pic it occurred to me that Apple are missing a trick. For the extra hundred quid they should have put an inductive plate on the base so that you could power it through your desk. The one remaining unavoidable wire gets hidden away and the aesthetics go uncompromised by even so much as a solitary piece of cable.