* Posts by Steve I

365 publicly visible posts • joined 29 May 2012

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Mr Angry pays taxman with five wheelbarrows worth of loose change

Steve I

Just remember...

...this is the government we're talking about, not some efficient organisation.

RIP Samsung 'Death Note' 7

Steve I

Fortunately for Korean exports, sales are up at 'South Korean Fire Extinguisher and Smoke Detector Inc' (SKFESD are a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics)

Cats understand the laws of physics, researchers claim

Steve I

Cat's just love to f*ck with peoples' minds.

3,000 years ago they were worshiped as gods - they have not forgotten this.

Bloke flogs $40 B&W printer on Craigslist, gets $12,000 legal bill

Steve I

"Yeah, we're all just a big bunch of jerks on this side of the pond. So maybe we ought to call in all our loans to UK going back to WW II."

Christ - there's gratitude for you. It it weren't for us Brits, you'd all be Spanish.

Typewriter for iPad review

Steve I

Re: "for iPad"

"If it's Bluetooth, then it should work with any computing device, not just iPads."

True, but if you said that, you wouldn't get the "LOL - iPad owners are so stupid" comments...

How innocent people 'of no security interest' are mere keystrokes away in UK's spy databases

Steve I

Re: Very Sloppy Headline Writing

You misunderstood, didn't you?

This is "Yes, we have installed CCTV in the bedrooms of every citizen in the UK without them knowing and yes, the video feed from the CCTV camera in YOUR bedroom is available on the monitors in GCHQ, but only if you tune the monitor to the right channel and we ask our agents to not do that."

Watch: SpaceX finally lands Falcon rocket on robo-barge in one piece

Steve I

Re: Congratulations etc.

Lighten up - Space X's achievement is amazing. And you're never going to re-write history and pretend that Von Braun didn't build the Saturn 5 :-)

https://xkcd.com/984/

Steve I

Re: Congratulations etc.

Yeah - especially as NASA were the first to show that for real rocket science, it's not enough to use Nazi technology, you need an actual Nazi...

Let's shut down the internet: Republicans vacate their mind bowels

Steve I

Idiot. What he meant was...

not shut down parts of the Internet, but to shut down people speaking Arabic! and other Muslim (sic) languages. After, the US probably invented them, right? The US should be able to stop people using them.

European Patent Office fires up lawyers over claims of cosy love-in with Microsoft

Steve I

Re: Are you kidding me?!

"I would guess that people actually working there are incredibly bright."

They are. You need to speak 2 languages for a lower-grade job and 3 to be a patent examiner. (out of the official english, French and German). You also need a decent degree from a recognised uni, but a lot of the examiners have PhDs.

I worked there as a z/Os & Linux contractor and would have loved a permanent role (just missed out due to the aforementioned restructuring) - it's a friendly, relaxed place to work, with no 'Rah! Rah Rah! We want profits!" attitude.

Espacenet (Google it) is a public gateway to the patent databases (there's over 130 but not all are public) and has some cool/funny stuff - try and find the patent for the foot-mounted dildo. It made me and my flatmates laugh when we read it...

Apple's Watch charging pad proves Cupertino still screwing buyers

Steve I

Shame the Ikea furniture with Qi-compliant charging pads built-in won't work...

Surface Book: Microsoft to turn unsuccessful tab into unsuccessful laptop

Steve I

I'm surprised that Apple haven't done this with the Macbook/Macbook Air yet - a machine that can switch between OS X and iOS modes with the ability to remove the screen for an iPad Pro experience. If the detached screen could also be switched into OS X when not joined, or perhaps paired with a BT keyboard then that would be nice too. (E.g. grab screen to take to work for some iOS fun/videos on the train. At work, realise you need to carry on some serious work so get the BT keyboard you keep at work, connect, switch to OS X, work on document in iCloud).

Michigan sues HP after 'botched' $49m upgrade leaves US state in 1960s mainframe hell

Steve I

Re: Simple - port to a modern mainframe

"yeah, sink in even more money into the mainframes. what a great idea!"

No - lets replace it with some toytown computer system. How hard could that be? Oh, hang on...

HAM IN SPAAAAAACE! ISS astronaut contacted by Gloucestershire bloke in garden shed

Steve I

If it had been me...

...just for a laugh I'd have asked him if he'd had a credit card or loan from a UK bank within the last 10 years and had he been paying PPI?

Pan Am Games: Link to our website without permission and we'll sue

Steve I

Re: "...mockery..."

On the subject of driving, they say that "All roads lead to Rome." Well I went along the M4 the other day and ended up in Bristol, so that advice was bollocks.

Abort, abort! Metal-on-metal VIOLENCE as Google's robo-car nearly CRASHES

Steve I

Re: A World's first: an Audi that aborts a lane change.

I used to have an Audi - by moving my seat forward, I could get a bit closer to the car in front.

Voyager 2 'stopped' last week, and not just for maintenance

Steve I

Will our future intergalactic overlords, alerted to our existence by this bauble, cut us some slack for preferring vinyl?

Never trust a developer who says 'I can fix this in a few minutes'

Steve I

Re: Just another day in the life

"I dream of getting work as a ... lion tamer"

You need your own hat. One that lights up saying 'lion tamer' in great big neon letters, so that you can tame them after dark when they're less stroppy.

Apple will cut down 36,000 acres of forest in 'conservation scheme'

Steve I

Re: Forestry != woodland

You genuinely cannot open an iPad box with tearing the box or dropping the iPad ion the floor?

Audi TT: It's NOT a hairdresser-mobile, the dash is too flash

Steve I

Re: LCD everywhere

I had a TT and discovered i could get a bit closer to the car in front by moving my seat forward...

A gold MacBook with just ONE USB port? Apple, you're DRUNK

Steve I

Re: 1 USB port? Seriously?

"what do you use an SD card for??? i expect you want a dvd drive and a 9600 baud modem too?"

Yes. And I want to be able to swap the tray-loading dvd drive for a floppy drive (better still, a ZIP drive) or an extra battery.

Apple Watch: Wait a minute! This puny wrist-puter costs 17 GRAND?!

Steve I

Re: Bye bye upgradable laptops

You're right to be angry when your last laptop only lasted you 9 years and now is probably only worth a couple of hundred $£$£$£

Bigfoot now visible in commercial satellite images

Steve I

Maybe, maybe not. But you'll be able to say to Dominos 'That's was never an 18" pizza you delivered - it was 12", tops!"

Apple Pay a haven for 'rampant' credit card fraud, say experts

Steve I

Re: thanks Apple, now I'm living the dream!

Is entrusting credit card verification to banks as irresponsible as giving a child matches?

Steve I

Who's to blame..

The Bank of England have been slammed that their new banknotes allow rampant fraud, banking experts are claiming.

The problem is that whilst the notes themselves contain various security measures and are hard to copy, banks are being lazy and not checking the notes presented to them carefully enough and consequently are allowing people to deposit Monopoly money.

IT knowledge is as important as Maths, says UK.gov

Steve I

Re: Any skills learnt

I never mentioned a pedestal. If you want to put people on pedestals because you feel threatened by their skills or experience, then that's up to you. But don't do it just to insult them.

Steve I

Re: New Way?

I was born in '67 :-) Been doing MVS/OS390/zOS assembler since '87 and never heard the phrase in connection with it before. Just shows that there's nothing new...

Steve I

Re: Any skills learnt

"It doesn't mean that. You need to get down off that pedestal and go and learn about some other programming languages"

Enlighten me then if I've misunderstood. What does it mean?

By the way - do you think real programmers don't use 'goto'?

Steve I

Re: Any skills learnt

"assembler on an IBM mainframe.."

You get an upvote for that alone. I thought it was just me.

When I realised that all this "Pass by reference or pass by value" bollocks was just a new way of saying "does the register contain the value or the address of the value?" I mentally slapped my forehead.

Apple drives itself round bend: Pities the fool who inks deal with carmakers – source

Steve I

Re: Dark secrets in Cupertino...

So, umm, let's follow your logic here: Apple are building a car, so they can steal patents, and then sue people for infringing those patents.

Sorry - I missed something. Why do they need to build the car?

Steve I

Re: Dark secrets in Cupertino...

You know, it really isn't that easy to create lots of patents and then sue people for using them.

At the bare minimum, you have to invest a new best way to do something. If it isn't the best way, then other people will just do it differently and not infringe your patent.

Amazon's delivery drones shot down by new FAA rules

Steve I
Joke

simple solution...

Just have the operator follow the drone in a microlite aircraft.

Hacker catches Apple's Lightning in a jailbroken bottle

Steve I

Re: I wonder why Apple customers don't sue for such things

Can I sue Sony because I can't play Xbox One games on my PS4? It's mine so I should be able to do what I like with it.

Steve I

Re: I wonder why Apple customers don't sue for such things

"I mean when you buy something, it's your right to use it in any way you want.". The trouble is, you don't buy software - you licence it. And the licence says what you can and can't do with it. If you don't like the term of the licence, you return it and if you don't return it, your agreement to the terms is implicit.

Also - sue over what? Go ahead and do whatever you like with your iDevice - if you want to wipe it and install Linux on it, go ahead. It might be difficult but you can't sue for that. It'd be difficult to fly to the Moon on it too, but that's another thing you can't sue them over because you think they should have provided that option

You're getting confused over between Apple making it hard to modify the software on their iPhone (which is the reality and which they are entitled to do) and your fantasy of Apple having to provide an easy option for users to do/install whatever they like.

I'm not defending Apple here - I'm just clarifying your thoughts :-). Try it with an Samsung device - you bought it, so it's yours to do what you like with. And if you can't reverse engineer & customise their proprietary additions to Android and install them on your Nokia or sell them on the Google Play store then is that something you can sue them for too?

You can't sue someone because something you bought won't do something it wasn't advertised to do.

Zoinks! Is that Mystery Machine Apple's SELF-DRIVING FAMILY WAGON? You decide

Steve I

At least we have some insight from...

...a random member of the public:

""It didn’t have any markings on the sides of it or anything. I couldn’t figure out what it was,” Concord resident Melissa Lewis told her local TV station."

What would we do without her?

'Turn to nuclear power to save planetary ecology from renewable BLIGHT'

Steve I

Re: How convenient...

Big deal. If a closed financial system (the Earth) is facing collapse, who cares how many little bits of green paper move around to secure a solution?

Amazon: Put our ALWAYS ON MICROPHONE in your house, please. WHAT?

Steve I

Re: In a couple of years@ Seanie Ryan

"But it looks like toilet humour is dead. More's the pity."

You should try watching 'South Park'.

Steve I

Re: Lunacy

"the device is secure, both from hackers, and the NSA"

"You're naive. Dangerously so. No matter how ethical the company is, if they have any American legal attack surface whatsoever then they will be forced to give the keys to the kingdom over the NSA."

It was a rhetorical question and therefore correct. A device to access the entire Internet by voice that was totally secure and remembered everything you needed it to would be good. If someone said "Wouldn't it be great to have free, driverless cars that you could call when you needed one and could never crash?", then you can't reply "No - someone would charge for them and they would crash", because the proposal is that they are free and can't crash.

You can argue that these things can't be achieved, but that's all.

I know - very pedantic.

Sony Pictures struggles as staff details, salaries and films leaked

Steve I

What?

"Sony Pictures Entertainment could not be reached for comment".

Even after their home addresses had been leaked? Why didn't you just write to them?

Apple's strap-on will set you back just '$5,000' – what a BARGAIN!

Steve I

Re: Hmmm choices choices....

I saw it - there is no way a solid-gold watch (Apple or otherwise) will be worth £30 in a few years. Working or not. Unless the watch weighs less than 2g or someone finally cracks the secret of alchemy...

(Cue Percy and Blackadder...)

Steve I

Re: Hmmm choices choices....

"I wonder which will still be working three years later and may have actually increased in value while the other is worth just scrap or £20 for spares on Ebay."

You can buy broken, solid-gold watches for £20 off eBay? That's amazing.

You know, you haven't chosen wisely by bringing future value into a debate concerning something made of gold. Unless you were actually dismissing the Omega.

Pixel mania: Apple 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina display

Steve I

Re: Bad Apple

I doubt if anyone will be "bitten" by this I.e. Pay £2000 for it with the intention of using it as an external 5K monitor in target display mode ot to get gone and find out it doesn't support it.

Doctor Who's Flatline: Cool monsters, yes, but utterly limp subplots

Steve I

I though the Doctor's assistant's job was to be a plot device?

"Doctor! I'm just going over here... Oh, I've been captured."

<Doctor rescues assistant.>

"Thanks Doctor!. Now I'm going..oh, I've been captured..."

<Doctor rescues assistant>

"Thanks!. Now I'm just ... Well what do you know,.I've been captured..."

iPad AIR 2 and iPad MINI 3, 5K iMac: World feels different today – and it IS

Steve I

Re: Retina iMac

Portrait? Useful for 15" monitors maybe, for viewing portrait documents, but I can't see a use for it on a 27".

Apple tool: Buying an iPhone in a carpark? Find out if it's STOLEN

Steve I

Re: Interesting...

"This has been an option for years... unlikely a disgruntled employee could do it"

So it hasn't been an option?

Ab phab: Apple is Britain's coolest brand YET AGAIN

Steve I

Why is it that...

...some of the people here trying to define 'cool' probably think that telling a girl that they were up until 3am, recompiling a Linux kernel, is going to impress her. Which it won't Even when wearing your best tank-top.

iPhone 6: The final straw for Android makers eaten alive by the data parasite?

Steve I

Re: lets look at this in another way..

You really should stop feeling so smug and superior. Some people genuinely prefer the Apple ecosystem and buy an iPhone after an informed choice. Why else would peopl buy them if, as you say, it's just a status symbol yet everyone else despises them thus robbing them of any status?

Steve I

Re: lets look at this in another way..

If switching to Android from iOS was so easy for you, then I'm assuming you have no investment in the iOS/Apple ecosystem (iPhone/iPad/MAx datasharing etc) nor any iOS apps, iTunes films etc.

Which begs the question - why have an iPhone? Someone at work asked me if he should get an iPhone or Android so I asked what apps he wanted. "Apps?" he replied. turns out he just wants email, web-browsing, phone calls, messaging etc so I told him it didn't really matter what he bought.

Driving with an Apple Watch could land you with a £100 FINE

Steve I

WTF?!?!?

Is this just a random list of distracting things? Just, using an Apple Watch would be distracting but I didn't see the IAM issuing advice that the new Nerf guns would be distracting if small children were using them for a pitched battle in the back seat. Same for porcupines - a porcupine on the passenger seat is also distracting. Again, no warning. And that girl who I usually see walking up the hill near home - very distracting. Especially in summer.

Let XKCD's Randall Munroe satisfy your curiosity in this excerpt from his book, What If

Steve I

Re: It's excellent

"Bought it on Kindle, read it already. It's excellent. Couldn't put it down."

Well, no you can't - it's digital. You could put the Kindle down though...

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