Posts by Phil W

Re: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Are you suggesting that Shift+Del for permanent deletion is a bad thing?

It's a fairly common key combo for that effect in a variety of systems, it exists in Windows explorer and Outlook. It's not like the 2 keys are close together and you could accidentally press both.

Re: God give me strength

I suspect that in reality, most of the leaders of the older core religions (i.e. Judaism, Catholocism, Islam) don't take certain things like their stories of creation literally. It is the more modern (relatively speaking) off shoot religions that seem to have a harder time with this.

Didn't the Pope make a statement a few years back saying the Bible is not meant to be taken literally? I was sort of hoping, probably in vain, that him saying that may have been the beginning of a shift toward a slightly more enlightened age for religion.

Re: I know I'll get downvoted but...

Partly because you were expecting downvotes and partly because I agree, have an upvote.

My Virgin broadband, phone and TV service has been pretty much flawless since it was installed 3 years ago. The one time I had an outage of any significance it turned out that it was scheduled maintenance and I'd thrown away the notification they sent me thinking it was junk mail.

The cause of the outage was obvious when I went outside and saw 2 VM vans down the street with dozens of cables hanging out of the cabinet.

My only slight gripe was that when my contract was up I had to ask them to put me on a different tariff that gave me faster broadband for less money, they had no problem doing it when I mentioned it though.

Re: Tipping Point

Yeah Intel took a risc and lost their arm....

Re: Machine recognition

Yes but the implication is that the set of valid butterfly images was also selected automatically, not just that the whole set was automatically selected as being butterflies.

Indeed. A young doctor's notebook is what I assume you're referring to, it is pretty good.

The Woman in Black is not a fantastic film especially, but Radcliffe's acting in it is not half bad.

Re: Confused author

Also agree on the not forcing them thing. But given that Windows 10 is supposedly going to be a free upgrade for 7,8 and 8.1 users is forcing the less technically astute to upgrade to a more up to date and supported OS a bad thing necessarily?

But more crucially from what I can tell the idea in the article that this is an update that's basically adware trying to get you to install Windows 10 is pure speculation. It may well simply be boot strapper for starting the Windows 10 install of you choose to do it, especially on Windows 7 where there isn't the option to present it through the store like they did for the 8 to 8.1 update.

"I would be LGBT!"

What, all four?

Re: Statute of limitations ...

Have an upvote purely for the use of the phrase "get all rapey with the natives"

Re: Fingers crossed!

Or perhaps it will have merged with some giant spaceborne entity, some of the letters will have worn off and it will claim to be a god named P'lae?

Re: Risk?

I'm not sure if it still is, but it used to be possible to create a project on Indiegogo such "The make me rich project" who's stated purpose was "to get people to give me some money for no reason"

Re: Badgers?

I thought it was badgers. Badgers, mushrooms and a snake.

It wouldn't be that surprising for it to be free, the benefit to Samsung is in it being a selling point for the device.

Re: "while no one would go to prison for false VAT claims"

In fact it will probably cost the tax payer more to sort it out, given the man hours required to unpick it all.

Re: Say what?

You've really hit the nail on the head for the most part there. No matter how wonderful and automated the software at some point there always needs to be hardware to run it, and that hardware still needs physically installing and does not always play well together particularly in a business culture where major purchases go out to tender and the cheapest always/usually wins.

Some argue that because of "the cloud" hardware is a thing of the past for most businesses but the reality is due to management/business culture still liking having someone to blame or go to for answers when things don't work, in house servers and datacenters still have their place. I don't believe that will substantially change in the next decade (or even 2 or 3 decades) regardless of the developments in technology.

The other issue is legal and political limitations such as Data Protection, requiring data to be kept in country meaning servers and storage are necessary to house it. Sure certain cloud services offer to let you pick where your data gets located but how many of these also have fine print saying backups may be stored elsewhere not to mention current political issues like the USA trying to force MS to hand over data stored in Ireland. Until or unless the landscape of these services changes a responsible company/ legal department is going to insist data is kept in house.

Fundamentally the longevity of IT departments and their staff is dependent on human issues not technological ones.

Re: @ Phil W: "campaign leveraging the recent Adobe Flash zero day vulnerability "

If you believe my use of Muphry rather than Murphy was down to autocorrection you are incorrect, I suggest you consult Google.

Re: Low end will probably be dropped

I agree, I think the 1GB RAM marker will be key. Devices like yhe Lumia 620 already work poorly with Windows 8.1 for some things such as making video calls. Dropping Windows 10 support for them will help push them out of the ecosystem and raise the baseline.

Re: Li Ka-Shing?

To be honest I would of just Li was Cashing in on an opportunity.

Re: Whole country?

Same here no problem here across 30 miles of Cheshire at any point this morning.

Re: Anal probes all round then?

Then we'll have a new use for Toblerone.

Re: 80%?

It's ok they'll get Stephen Fry on board to advise he's very up on his tech and can explain it all to them with brief but accurate summaries.

Re: Samsung and Seagate do it for me

I have a previous generation Freecom XXS drive, which is very similar except that it has a Mini USB 2 port and at the other end there is a flap in the rubber allowing you to remove the drive.

It is about 4-5 years old now and still going strong.

I did have a problem with it shortly after i got it, where the USB port detached from the PCB and since the USB port is directly on the HDD instead of a SATA port I couldn't get the data off. I sent it back to Freecom directly under warranty expecting to get a replacement in the post and to have lost my data.

To my extreme surprise they had repaired the one I sent them, replacing the socket with a more substantial looking one and better soldered joints. As well as this all my data was still intact on the drive.

Re: Obligations

"It's only a legal requirement because someone passed a law saying it should be."

You mean just like every other law.

"Better still, put the company information in headers where it can be used properly instead of in free text."

Um no. The whole point of the law is that the company information is readily available and human readable so that when receiving email from a company, particularly one you haven't dealt with before, you can quickly see any information you might need to know about who they are.

Re: indeed WTF

Likely because the USB is sometimes needed for update/diagnostic purposes.

However I'm sure it would be quite practical to make sure it is positioned in such a way as not to be so readily accessible for instance to the rear of the machine which is often inside a secure room where the refilling is done.