* Posts by ChrisBedford

294 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Feb 2012

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Windows 10 April 2018 Update lands today... ish

ChrisBedford

Re: Focus Assist

constant bloody updates. If I wanted to send this much time managing my PC I'd have become a systems administrator.

Stop being so bloody dramatic. If they didn't do updates you'd moan about that instead. "Constant" updates = once a month, BFD, and it happens after hours (or didn't you set your working hours correctly?)

ChrisBedford

"Bit late to call it April update, no?"

No. It's still April.

Aah but it's the "1803" version. Definitely a bit late for that nomenclature.

ChrisBedford

Couldn't be something Microsoft is doing to sabotage Windows 7 by any chance? Nah, not our old buddy MS... [and so on, and so on]

Hey buddy, we've all heard the anti-MS / pro Linux rants. B-o-o-o-o-ring. Wind your neck in and put a sock in it.

ChrisBedford

1. It landed. One of several PCs I was working on last night started downloading it

2. Delivery Optimisation has been around for years. I have no idea how it is being touted as something new.

Boss sent overpaid IT know-nothings home – until an ON switch proved elusive

ChrisBedford

They really don't make them like that any more.

Uh no, TG they don't make them that expensive any more.

There's always lots of discussion around how wasteful it is to replace rather than repair, but for the price of say a LaserJet 2000 - especially given inflation adjusted money - you can easily buy 10 years' worth of this month's model, with toner replacements.

SpaceX blasted massive plasma hole in Earth's ionosphere

ChrisBedford

Re: Meter GPS no big deal?

your bum is being kicked for 100 mm discrepancies that shouldnt be there

What absolute bollocks. GPS is not specced to be accurate to 100 mm, so you should be using something more accurate if you are working to that sort of tolerance.

In the building example above, for instance, using GPS as a substitute for a land surveyor is a piss-poor excuse and just downright lazy. You'd deserve to have your bum kicked - right out of a job.

ChrisBedford

Re: "...still need to reach '[orbital] velocity'..."

Balloon McBalloonface carries the satellite and continues to float up slowly, straight up and up and up..., and gently deposits the satellite payload into a geostationary orbital slot. Where of course, it stays.

Ummm. You posted this as a joke, right? You do realise a balloon (aka lighter than air flight) can only take a payload as far as there is air? And that geostationary (or any other) orbit is "somewhat" beyond that?

ChrisBedford

Loaded with emotive superlatives

I had thought El Reg was relatively immune to the desperate sensationalism of tabloid-style reporting, but apparently I was way off the mark there.

Ex-Google recruiter: I was fired for opposing hiring caps on white, Asian male nerds

ChrisBedford

Re: Political correctness BS

"centuries of racism, sexism and bias mean that ..."

You are seeing the world with the spectacles of the New Marxist Left.

Naah, you are seeing the world with the spectacles of the new Trumpist Right.

RIP... almost: Brit high street gadget shack Maplin Electronics

ChrisBedford

Re: Well at least

Yeah I agree, having to change the batteries in my mouse once every 18 months is such a pain...

Yup, it's also such a nuisance not having a wire getting caught under the edge of the monitor stand, getting in the way of my coffee cup, or dragging papers around the desk.

User had no webcam or mic, complained vid conference didn’t work

ChrisBedford

Re: This one, every time

"Thus a simple question would resolve it: Do you mean ..."

Indeed, I often think IT support people are needlessly arrogant (or themselves a bit clueless) about users' ignorance. So they can be dumb clucks, and they often use incorrect terminology, but I guarantee there are fields *you* don't know about so give them a break. If you aren't patient and don't have people skills you shouldn't be in support.

Which is not to say some users shouldn't be allowed to touch computers. There are some irredeemably thick people out there, and it sometimes feels like I've met all of them... until, that is, I read these columns in El Reg.

'Please store the internet on this floppy disk'

ChrisBedford

Re: I'm not sure what's worse

"The number of times these pictures have turned up with 50 Shades of Grey in either print or video form in the picture is impressive. Some have had a few R18 films..."

So what. Fifty shades is mainstream, the movies might be adult rated but are not illegal and anyone who denies having looked at anything in this category is either lying or over 80.

What about when the glass door or shiny chrome finish clearly shows the picture was taken naked... and in at least one case I have seen, dangling. Eurgh.

80-year-old cyclist killed in prang with Tesla Model S

ChrisBedford

Re: The Man Who Fell To Earth

"On balance, it would seem to be more likely that the car hit the cyclist than the cyclist hit the car. Under UK law (and based upon common sense) this would make it the car driver's fault (unless some mitigating circumstances can be found)"

...mitigating circumstance like maybe the old codger fell or swerved or shot out in front of the car, for instance. Let's be fair, not many 80-year-olds are completely as wide awake as, say, the average 40-year-old. Facts are facts. Yes I know, "collision avoidance", but with the best will in the world, and the best programming and brakes and suspension and anything else you can think of, you can't avoid 100% of collisions.

Attention adults working in the real world: Do not upgrade to iOS 11 if you use Outlook, Exchange

ChrisBedford

Re: Bastards?

Anti-competitive behaviour.

where's a regulator when you need one

Regulators would be applicable to open standards. Exchange is a proprietary standard, with published interfaces. If Microsoft makes changes on the fly, that's their prerogative (and their problem, when you consider interoperability). Might not be to everyone's liking, but that's what happens when de facto monopolies develop.

ChrisBedford

Bit late now

I updated to 11 so long ago now I've forgotten when it was, so this warning is just so much wasted space and reading time...

It's happening! Official retro Thinkpad lappy spotted in the wild

ChrisBedford

touchpads, pfft

so why do they ship crappy touchpads with laptops? It's obviously possible to make one that works

IBM came up with that *HUGELY* inferior pointing-stick-thingy that looks like a pencil eraser in the middle of the keyboard - what in the blue blazes were they thinking?!?

ChrisBedford

Reactionaries everywhere

Of all the *NOTEBOOK* computers ("laptop" is an old term that vendors haven't used for 25 years) ever released, the IBM Thinkpads that this model emulates is probably the ugliest. All sharp corners and that rubbery stuff only looks good for the first 3 minutes after you take it out of the box.

Also (in South Africa anyway) Lenovo's after-sales service is probably the worst I have ever encountered so even less incentive to buy one of these horrid things.

I say, BING DONG! Microsoft's search engine literally cocks up on front page for hours

ChrisBedford

Re: muhaha

@DagD

Colonel: Get on the horn to British Intelligence and let them know about this.

top marks for this frivolous mis-use of a futile imagination :D :D :D

The Next Big Thing in Wi-Fi? Multiple access points in every home

ChrisBedford

Re: messing with meshes

Mesh APs are still not a panacea for crap WiFi performance

No, not panacea - solution.

It's not just signal strength that matters, but signal integrity

Yes, that's what a mesh means.

Methinks you haven't understood what a mesh is, exactly. It's not just a bunch of APs all shouting as loud as possible, it's an intelligently managed collection that acts more like one AP with distributed antennas, but with each one able to moderate its signal strength according to usage.

ChrisBedford

Is 2.4GHz viable for such a use of wi-fi?

Certainly it is

Not to mention microwave ovens

Umm I don't think you get enough leakage from microwaves to affect your WiFi. They are after all very carefully shielded against radiating.

I have recently installed a Ubiquiti UniFi mesh which covers both 2.4 and 5 GHz and it works very very well. Costs a "bit" more than conventional WiFi access points / repeaters but by golly it's worth it when you have a large number of people and difficult geography to support. The management software is great, and gives some fascinating insights into what's going on in and around the house.

In this particular scenario (a rambling two-storey guest house catering for up to 19 transitory and 3 permanent users) there are 6 access points, 5 upstairs and one on the ground floor, providing fantastic, seamless coverage. No latency, just smooth coverage (not a lot of enter-device traffic, it's pretty much all device-Internet). Most devices that aren't iPads, iPods, or MacBooks use the 2.4 GHz band.

Here's the astonishing part: at any given time there are 100+ (yep, over a hundred) visible APs in the neighbourhood. This is an ordinary suburb in Cape Town, not high-rise, not even high density cheek-by-jowl housing. OK, only the UniFi software can show me those SSIDs, and obviously many of them are unusably weak, but still... over a hundred, and zero noticeable interference.

I had another customer near the International Airport - right by the runway threshold - and conventional WiFi just didn't work. As someone else mentioned here, turn up the power and you only make a small difference for a short while. Installed one of these meshes and it was like night and day.

ChrisBedford

If Comcast's support people can control wifi following a script, surely software would be able to do a better job automatically?

Yeahhhh... if Comcast's support people are anything like the average ISP support person in South Africa, this won't work. Not by a l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-n-g, long shot. The mind boggles at the thought, in fact, of an ISP call centre agent managing even the simplest home "mesh".

Also... these things are "tiny devices plugged into the wall", right? Getting signal from... ethernet over power, I assume? Yeah, works great as long as you only have single phase power in the house, and you only want 11 Mb/s or slower (not much good for streaming hi res video).

€100 'typewriter' turns out to be €45,000 Enigma machine

ChrisBedford

Re: There is quite a bit of that floating around Eastern Europe

[i]I couldn't have lasted a week without drilling a hole and taking a look.[/i]

Umm yeah the owner's not telling you what his grandparents told him about the 2 nazis he stuffed in there

Concorde without the cacophony: NASA thinks it's cracked quiet supersonic flight

ChrisBedford

Re: Engines

Exactly, there are two completely separate factors at play here: the supersonic bang (which on the NY-London route AFAIK always took place well out to sea) and engine noise. The article is written as if these were one and the same.

A major reason why most modern aircraft are cheaper to fly and quieter is the use of the wide "high bypass" engines

In other words Turbofans as opposed to turbojets I believe? Something like that, I read once a hundred years ago that there about 7 distinctly different "jet" engine designs but I couldn't be bothered looking them up now. Anyhow this can be seen in the shorter, fatter engine nacelles of modern airliners compared to the more pencil-like engines of the 70's aircraft. The problem with Concorde was you couldn't bolt bigger engine housings on the wings - they were enclosed in a box under the body where I guess there just wasn't any room for big fat engines and modifying that housing would have changed the a/c design too radically to keep its type certificate.

Huawei Honor 8 Pro: Makes iPhone 7 Plus look a bit crap

ChrisBedford

Yes but then you have to use Android.

I had a Galaxy S II for about 14 months and hated every second of it. I've had 2 iPhones since then and while there are still somethings that are a bit frustrating, it's so far ahead of the user experience I remember from the Samsung that the thought of going back makes my blood run cold. I think I'd rather not have a mobe.

Probably the worst part of Android as it was then was the predictive text and the stupidity of the keyboard, and possibly it has improved since then, but I'm just not prepared to take a chance. And no-one lets you the general public test drive a phone for a week before buying one so I guess I'll never find out.

Quite happy with my iPhone 5S, thank you, see no reason to change.

Mark Shuttleworth says some free software folk are 'deeply anti-social' and 'love to hate'

ChrisBedford

Given that most software folk are deeply nerdy, how is this news?

As Gordon Pryra says, probably 90% of a "community" is the silent people. But it's the same in real-world politics, isn't it: it's the voiciferous minority who drive all the rhetoric.

User lubed PC with butter, because pressing a button didn't work

ChrisBedford

It's hard to believe that a clear-cut case of user vandalism as described could not be unequivocally proved to have been exactly that - (a) the drive was full of butter and (b) it worked when the button was pressed properly - so if that's all there was to it, the techie in question should have been able to prove his innocence beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt. If not, I have to question either the truthfulness of the story or the competence of the techie - sure, I know there are dumb-ass companies that will allow (or attempt to allow) marketing drones to get away with s#!t like that, but, seriously now...

Trump's visa plan leaks: American techies first

ChrisBedford

Re: "SV companies ... weren't willing to offer adequate compensation"

That actually translates to "we want more scientists". The more who are trained the easer it is to keep the pay rates down. It was just as true 50+ years ago

Well apparently pay rates are already down, so actually you need fewer scientists, don't you?

In any event, equating "scientists" with "tech jobs" is like saying engineers and mechanics are the same - a mistake the press makes all the time, where I live and probably in the UK too.

CES 2017 roundup: The good, the bad, and the frankly bonkers

ChrisBedford

Touch Screens and Buzzing Briefs

I really don't get touch screens on computers that have keyboards. Either it's way uncomfortable to use ("Remember the gorilla arm") or I keep inadvertently touching the screen when using the keyboard, with all the frustration that ensues.

And apart from that, I wonder how many times you can accidentally close the notebook without first removing the Airbar before the lid hinges break. Try getting *that* covered under your Apple warranty.

Haptic jeans? You know how tight your trousers have to be for that to be effective? I've lost count of how many times has my phone buzzed silently in my pocket and I've not felt it - besides, as has been pointed out elsewhere, lots of times directions that are simply "left/right" are oftentimes misleading at best. This idea truly belongs under the "bonkers" column and I doubt it will be a commercial success.

Barcodes stamped on breast implants and medical equipment

ChrisBedford

Re: But how to know if someone has an implant?

@ Wzrd1:-

"But I imagine that, say, titanium wire bound round a femur to hold it together could just conceivably form a multi-turn coil, in which case it might be dangerous due to circulating current in a rather high resistance metal."

Only if you have some magical overriding law of physics that surrounds you and turns titanium into a ferromagnetic metal.

Last I heard copper wasn't ferromagnetic. However current is induced in copper wire loops. So maybe your theory needs re-thinking.

Security! experts! slam! Yahoo! management! for! using! old! crypto!

ChrisBedford

In! Other! News!

El! Reg! Continues! To! Use! Lots! Of! Italicised! Exclamation! Marks!

Readers! Irritated! By! Hackneyed! Technique!

Take that, creationists: Boffins witness birth of new species in the lab

ChrisBedford

Re: Maybe

A country [Americans] mostly populated by the descendants of people 'fleeing religious persecution'

Religious persecution? Really? So starvation, wanderlust, adventure, or anything like that played no significant part in the population of the country?

Seriously, dude, that's like saying Australia is "mostly" populated by ex-cons.

ChrisBedford

Re: Most of the creationists I know also believe in evolution!

Or maybe they just prattle on with no idea of what the theory actually is.

I think that's the more accurate assessment. Evolution is probably the least widely understood theory amongst the general public. Lots of people have the idea mutations happen to individual specimens, but that is probably only the grossest mistake. The "I was not descended from an ape" argument probably sums it all up quite well.

I think more people have a better idea of Relativity than they do of Darwinian evolution.

ChrisBedford

Re: frog becoming a giraffe - is it just me?

...or does anyone else find this incoherent?

[...]basically I accept the possibility of time dilation with an expanding universe, where some of the universe has experienced illions or billions of yaers of time while the Earth has not despite all being made at the same time. I cannot accept that God made light of a supernova only as light from that where the nova did not occur, if we see it then it happened.

I re-read it a few times but couldn't make head or tail of it. Not just this but pretty much the whole post just reads as a confused rant to me.

Hackers electrocute selves in quest to turn secure doors inside out

ChrisBedford

They seem to have no idea wtf they are doing

I think it's more like the person who wrote the article had no idea wtf they [the hackers] were doing, and wrote a dumbed-down version of the story as s/he understood it. Resulting in making the whole thing incomprehensible, but it's hardly the first news article I've read that is guilty of that.

ChrisBedford

Re: Push The Button To Exit

What I'm wondering is how they safeguard against someone sneaking in through these doors DURING a fire, hiding

Huh? With a human guard of some type stationed at said door?

Security sections aren't all complete idiots. I know the average rent-a-cop walking around with an ill-fitting uniform is a minimum-wage, minimum-IQ drone, but any company worth anything meaningful has somebody with a bit of brains in charge of the loss control department.

ChrisBedford

Re: Push The Button To Exit

rotating doors with single person sized vestibules that would turn just enough to allow one person through

Unbelievably annoying to try getting through this type of door (let's just call it what it is: a turnstile) with anything larger than a Tupperware lunchbox in your hand. Totally forget a substantial toolbox. Cue up the just as annoying bureaucratic process of getting clearance to bypass the turnstile and use the large (fire escape) door, after security has overridden the alarm, blah blah blah yawn...

User needed 40-minute lesson in turning it off and turning it on again

ChrisBedford

Re: Witless idiots

I think the problem is risk avoidance.

It's called an SEP* field. Can be driven by a single torch battery for up to 2 years.

*HHGG

ChrisBedford

Quite how the screen *definitely* had a green light and *definitely* had a "C:\" prompt is still a mystery 20 years later!!

No mystery. Users say yes if they think that's the 'right' answer.

Answer to that one is never to put words in their mouths, or ideas in their heads. Instead of 'can you see a green light' ask 'what colour light can you see'. Make *them* describe things to *you*.

ChrisBedford

Re: Always kill switch it?

You haven't used Windows for a while, have you? It's far more resilient to power interruptions now

Exactly, and if the user can't find the 'Power' button, how in the came of anything you hold dear is anyone going to talk her through opening Task Manager, let alone finding the rogue application and shutting it down?

Puh-lease.

ChrisBedford

Re: Can you hold down the power button

US car companies. Who like to play the Microsoft UI game with their controls...

Mercedes, anyone? Although I suppose that's a US-owned company now so they caught the same fever. Where's the parking brake? Over there? Oh, I see. And to release it? Somewhere else? OK. Where the hell do I select the gears? Oh, on a stalk. Yeah, makes perfect sense, not. The last time I was involved in a MB rental I had to go back inside and find someone who could come out an explain the controls. And even he - a professional driver with Avis - couldn't explain everything correctly.

Brexit? We have heard of this, says Dixons Carphone CEO

ChrisBedford

Re: Hang on. ...

We've not left yet...

Yeh but the point is, the fear-mongering Remainers spent as much time howling about a post-poll economic crash (as well as all manner of other bogeymen, including but not limited to riots in the streets, meltdown of all nuclear power stations, and earthquakes) as a post-Brexit crash.

But apart from a small currency correction, which *HELPED* Britain's exports and from which the country is now rapidly recovering, NOTHING HAPPENED.

Strewth, as of this writing every comment here that deals with Brexit is uniformly negative about the country's economic chances following actual exit. Come on, do you think Germany and France are going to say no, we'll stop selling motorcars to Britain if you want favourable tax rates? I can't believe you support the concept of a "parliament" of smarmy underworked, overfed EMPs chauffered around in Mercedes Benzes, dreaming up 32-page documents that define what a banana can or can't look like, and overriding decisions by the High Court.

PS *NOT* a Farage supporter, he's the smarmiest twat of them all. In fact I'm quite surprised he gets even gets it.

Crashing PC sales don't stop HP Inc releasing two new ones

ChrisBedford

Re: As long as

I meant Windows 7 or maybe 8.1

7 goes out of support in less than 4 years

8 has that horrible "charms" bar that pops up every time you get near the right-hand side, and other inexplicable popups when you are scrolling around

10 with Classicshell FTW. Huge improvement on 8/8.1, I don't know what your objection is (apart from the still-kludgey mishmash of Control Panel / PC Settings screens, but 8 has that too. Worse.)

Surge pricing? How about surge fines: Pennsylvania orders Uber to cough up $11.4m

ChrisBedford

Re: Bootnote

until Trump gets voted into office - then the whole country will just be in one almighty state

...of chaos. God help us all if he does get elected.

Slightly off topic here

ChrisBedford

@ Dan 1980: TL;DR

I don't think anyone is saying or even implying that using Uber makes it legal.

But unquestionably, using Uber *does* send a message to the relevant Administration that it is a service that the citizens want.

BSODs at scale: We laugh at your puny five storeys, here's our SIX storey #fail

ChrisBedford

Re: I don't understand why people are running ad-signs on Windows

Agreed, especially when I see the awful video performance of computers that should handle Windows at least "OK". A local national chain pharmacy shows some of those "Just for Laughs" candid camera prank videos in amongst the ads, and the jerk-jerk-jerkiness is sometimes too painful to watch. Certain a stripped-down Linux with the right drivers would handle it much better.

False Northern Lights alert issued to entire UK because of a lawnmower

ChrisBedford

Unfortunately the University doesn't know what an aurora is

Unfortunately, auroras (Northern Lights) aren’t the only thing

...mmm only there's an identical, though weaker, effect over the Southern polar region known as Aurora Australis so you can't call auroras "Northern" lights can you.

ChrisBedford
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Well...

Nearly and auroraful mistake

Not nearly as auroraful as that joke.

ChrisBedford

Re: Intermittent interruptions...

spark transmitter cleverly disguised as a Weedeater

Many years ago I heard a report (may be apocryphal) of a LAN that worked only in short bursts, which turned out to have been affected by the pulse of an electric fence. Can't imagine who would be so dim as to run a LAN cable (and we are talking RG58, here) so close to the HT line of an electric fence, but I guess... early days + ignorance = dimness...?

ChrisBedford

Re: Lawnmower man

The thing that disturbed me the most was how long it took to find out that it was the cleaner who was disrupting their services

Umm yeah except that is a reference to one of the hoarier urban legends.

'Flying Bum's' first flight was a gas, gas, gas

ChrisBedford

It even beats the Antonov AN-225's 84 metres, but the Airlander's helium-based lift is only 10 tonnes (the Antonov is good for about 250 tonnes)

I'll bet it also falls a fair way short of the AN-225's top speed of 520+ mph.

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