* Posts by Iain 15

41 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jul 2009

'I feel violated': Engineer who pointed out traffic signals flaw fined for 'unlicensed engineering'

Iain 15

Self description

Reading the court order it seems that he was prosecuted fir describing himself as an engineer. If he had written exactly the same email with the same work but described himself as a mathematician there would be no case. So the issue is not so much free speech but the use of a badly drafted regulation to try to obfuscate and prevent the exposure of revenue-generating

Student Loans Company burns £50 million in IT project superfail

Iain 15

Existing software

I worked for a debt management company and I know there are many many off the shelf account management software solutions for debt management, all of which cover everything you need for the SLC to operate effectively. Instead of tendering for products from scratch civil servants need to actually do some real research in the real world, rather than just talking to a few unscrupulous company BDs who take advantage of their willful ignorance and persuade them that what they really need is a brand new set up at twenty times the price.

MILLIONS of broadband punters aren't getting it fast enough – Which?

Iain 15

Nospeed

BT toll me all my internets was falling out of the wires in the house. Was they making lies to me?

Bethesda all out for 'Fallout 4', fallout for global productivity foretold in countdown

Iain 15
Joke

You might be interested in...

Acme Knicker Untwister (1 Unit) £769.99 (+£9.00 p&p)

Other users purchased "Shoulder De-chipper" (1 Unit) £235.00 (+£75 p&p)

The Register Monopoly Pubcrawl Mobile Map: Vodafone wins Voice

Iain 15
Flame

Re: I call shenanigans.....

Agreed, I have Vodaphone for business and EE for personal. There was a recent nationwide coverage survey which found EE at the top and Vodaphone at the bottom, this is definitely reflected in my personal experience. Vodaphone coverage is terrible nationwide. Perhaps they spent all their money on central London because they are shortsighted and narrow minded. I have also heard that Vodaphone have the least ambitious 4G roll out plans of all of the networks; my general impression is that they are all sh*t and no shovel.

Happy birthday MIDI 1.0: Getting pop stars wired for 30 years

Iain 15
FAIL

Re: One really cool feature...

And then along came USB midi and undid all that good work. Now I am stuck with isolators in every port just to keep the buzz down.

British bookworms deem Amazon 'evil'

Iain 15
Stop

Re: What sort of cretin buys a Amazon Swindle anyway?

Amazon offers a free Kindle app for Android and Apple which I make full use of thus alleviating the need for a stand alone device.

Any storm in a port

Iain 15

Re: I used to have the same problem

This is true, however I have discovered that, especially with low profile devices, manufacturers are required to fit the ports upside down. In fact my current PC has correctly orientated usb ports on the rear but due to the arrangement of internal components the forward facing ports are not. Likewise with my two laptops, 15" and 11" respectively, no prizes for which is upside down. Bring back cylindrical connectors!

Euro boffins plan supercomputer to SIMULATE HUMAN BRAIN

Iain 15
FAIL

Re: Wrong target?

Hell, let's not bother with that technology and innovation crap at all, apart from farming, crop rotation, desert growing corn, aquaducts, medicine, law and order what good has technology ever done us?

How can the BBC be saved from itself without destroying it?

Iain 15

Re: "guess what you still have to pay"

You admit having a TV. You need a licence. Strict liability offence I am afraid

Iain 15
Thumb Down

Re: "guess what you still have to pay"

Unbelievable freetard. You admit benefiting from something you refuse to pay for.

Lucky not everyone is so selfish, but I guess so long as you are ok the rest of the world can go fornicate itself. I comfort myself with the knowledge that you are a random number selection away from criminal prosecution.

Bethesda promises fix for Skyrim Xbox graphics glitch

Iain 15

Not so in my experience, or is it only Win7? (inst on xp)

Too many cooks spoil the data warehouse broth

Iain 15

Everyone knows

the number of sysads to a project is inversly proportional to its efficiency

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Iain 15

I think the suprise comes from the fluidity rather than the detail. Compare: GTA IV's dreadful port to PC. It is a lesson that most other developers should learn. I am quite happy to have slightly poorer textures so long as I can play the game on my 4 year old PC. And that is the point I think, a good game should not have to rely on kick-ass HD graphics to make it enjoyable.

So, what's the best sci-fi film never made?

Iain 15
FAIL

Been there

Pretty sure the brief was for ones which were not already films?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062168/

Australians can’t read or count

Iain 15

Sometimes

I love the definition of sometimes - I don't think there can be a man in the world who doesn't 'sometimes', make a mistake in following instructions. Anyone ever failed to put together ikea furniture? Bam! 8 million plus 1

Gates, Woz, and the last 2,000 years of computing

Iain 15

Weirdness

I guess it feels weird because the pace of change in computing has been so fast when examined in the context of other technological advances. For example, the development of the rifle from musket to Kalashnikov took some 400 years, whereas a similar rate of advance has taken place in computing over a mere century, which is only just outside of a lifetime.

NASA 'naut falls off bike, misses shuttle launch

Iain 15

Gaffer Tape

See bottom right hand corner of pic - clearly the shuttle is begin repaired in the finest traditions of all bodgers everywhere

AT&T chief: 'All your iPhone are belong to us'

Iain 15

Stickiness

I am not sure about US contract law, but here it would be consider an unfair term (Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977) for a consumer contract to contain a penalty clause greater than the total remaining value of the contract at any given time.

I changed from o2 to orange about halfway through an o2 contract but orange offered to, and did, pay the balance of the contract just to get my custom. Wouldn't be surprised if verizon do something similar for its prospective customers.

Netizens now Facebook more than they Google

Iain 15
FAIL

No conclusion

(More @comScore than @Reg) What are we trying to prove here? Facebook includes certain 'games' whereas google doesn't. I clock a lot more hours playing CoD than 'using' Norton, but what does that prove? Nothing. Try comparing like with like in future.

Porn and pirates hide Android's money maker

Iain 15
Jobs Horns

Pricing

"And, oh, one more thing: pricing - Google needs to set minimum pricing, as developers say Android phone customers are paying less than iPhone customers purchasing from Apple's App Store."

The obvious: Could this not be that Apple overprices things?

Facebook simplifies controls but continues exposing users

Iain 15

Protection

Whilst protecting the idiots is a very laudable and proper policy to have, like all IT you get out what you put in. So, if you have photos of yourself in compromising positions or an opinion that may get you sacked from work, don't put it on the internet. Assume no privacy.

DVLA off-road system seriously off-message

Iain 15
FAIL

Me too!

That is very interesting. I remember I registered a change of owner and sent off the requisite paperwork. I expected an acknowledgment but none was forthcoming so I called up. They had received the paperwork and processed it but I was told that the DVLA do not send acknowledgments for these docs. Funny how the story changes...

Samsung cosies up to PC World for UK desktop debut

Iain 15
Thumb Down

5 words

No user servicable parts inside

Opera alerts EU to hidden Windows browser-ballot

Iain 15
Stop

Seriously, now

He even admitted that there were better things he could be doing. I see the solution being worse than the problem, being that the browser choice window is kept 'on top' until it is dealt with. How annoying!

In the words of the unnamed woman at the sermon on the mount 'Leave it alone, give it a rest'

Microsoft's Hotmail flicks finger at UK students

Iain 15

Slightly unfair

Not that I am averse to occasional bouts of Microsoft-bashing, but the article title indicates that it was somehow intentional

Beijing erects giant pong-away sprays at rubbish dumps

Iain 15

Dangerous

I can only hope they are CFC-free

Nokia killed free navigation, alleges EU complaint

Iain 15
WTF?

Not getting something for nothing?

You mean I have to pay for a service I have the benefit of? Has the world gone mad?

Paris Hilton crowned 'Worst Actress of the Decade'

Iain 15
Paris Hilton

House of Wax

was not too bad a film. Anyway, she died fairly early on (spike through the head if I recall correctly)

Sony to demo 'world's first' in-box wireless tech

Iain 15

Insulated cases?

Say you had two identical pc's next to each other on a desk, as is not unusual. Would this not confuse the internal comms? Do or are the cases need to be insulated (somehow?) against this?

Most consumers reuse banking passwords on other sites

Iain 15

Container?

Is it decrypted with a single password? Seems like all eggs/one basket scenario?

British boffins talk up squeeze-to-control 3D mouse tech

Iain 15
FAIL

Ah, yet another...

solution to a problem which does not exist.

Sony ships chips for 560Mb/s Bluetooth beater

Iain 15

The REAL problem

Is that the name 'TransferJet' is too clumsy to make into a verb and will, therefore, never catch on.

'Something may come through' dimensional 'doors' at LHC

Iain 15
Grenade

Where's me crowbar?

Or, obviously, the more up to date Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator

NASA to irradiate monkeys for science

Iain 15

Igor!!

""Obviously, the closer we get to man, the better," said Eleanor Blakely, a biophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to Discovery."

Now there's someone with an itchy We-Belong-Dead-lever finger

Software update spikes certain Freesat set-top boxes

Iain 15

Smug

I have Goodmans Freesat box and love it, but, from problematic experience using a Windows PC with associated Update Tuesdays, I have the auto update switched off. I can then satisfy my geek-like urges to scour blogs and will only allow the update if it proves to be a non-FUp. I now feel fortunate that I have this policy! I originally adopted it because of the auto-updates annoying habit of updating when you switch on to watch, say Eastenders at 8, only to miss half of it while the whatever-speed download takes place

Missing dot sends Sweden tumbling off internet

Iain 15
Coffee/keyboard

Conspiracy conspiracy conspiracy

Mistake, my arse! Let us not forget that Sweden is the world leader in 'stealth' technology and infiltration gadgetry. I reckon this is a test of Sweden's new 'stealth' internet. They were in fact there all the time but the rest of the world COULDN'T SEE THEM! No doubt we will ALL shortly know EXACTLY what they were up to when the ransom demands start flooding in. For One MILLION dollars. Mawahaha.

Always knew the Swedes were up to no good. No-one can be THAT inconspicuous by accident.

Samsung readies 'space saving' 2TB external HDD

Iain 15

Knob

Whta does the knob on the front do? Obviously there is on and off, but does it then go on to vary the speed/power consumption of the drive? If not, maybe it should.

Sky switches on 3D TV channel in 2010

Iain 15
Paris Hilton

Of course

It will only really take off when they start making 3D porn. Kinda like the internet in that respect

Rockstar opens up about GTA-based film

Iain 15
Stop

Yeah

Cos movies made from computer games are always so successful. Doom, Resident Evil (they keep cranking them out though), Aliens v Predator etc