Posts by Andy1

The tabloid press (Daily Mail) chose to ignore that £145,000 of the £200,000 was for legal costs and sensationalised the story by making the 200k the headline figure and not explaining anywhere in the article that this wasn't the whole truth. This of course sent some into a tail-spin about how much the couple were getting and the other half about how much the Sussex Police had wasted. They could have settled without months of lawyer time but they tried to minimise the damage only to end up wasting eye-watering amounts of public money and together with the amount they spent on their fruitless investigation it all came to around a cool Mil.

What possible reason would there be to hack into this research, isn't it supposed to be shared between nations. Or is it to wreck the computer system the data is held on or possibly a ransomware attack. Come on journos try and find out why it's really happening.

Remember the Sinclair Spectrum interface II, this had an RS232 interface. The manual labelled all the connections BUT they weren't labelled as to what they were they were labelled as to what they should be connected to at the other end, much head scratching required to get a connection working.

It looks like the tank was already a bit pre-crumpled before it collapsed. The panel beaters finished it on a Friday afternoon after a good liquid lunch.

Drone delivery services seem so vulnerable to malfeasance. Could it ever make commercial sense given the probable attrition rate. Even if they don't actually have to land but lower the payload on a string how easy would it be to catch one before it departs. How many deliveries would a drone have to make before it pays back the its cost.

A few years ago at this time of year I had a problem with my Virgin Media landline. After they said they couldn't fix it for two weeks I emailed the chief exec of Virgin about the problem explaining that the phone was essential for receiving calls at Christmas. Amazingly I had a reply from his PA saying they were going to get it fixed post haste. An engineer turned up within 48 hours and said they would have to pull through a new cable to my house. This made no difference to the problem so after about two more visits they eventually sent someone more senior who changed an amplifier in the green box in the street. I'm guessing this was more expensive than the cable so they tried a cheaper fix first and only the more senior eng had the authority to change the amplifier.

I just went to the Firefox addon site and installed UBlock well wouldn't you know it I retuned straight away to this page and UBlock reported the blocking of 5 requests attributed to El Reg. I now know the meaning of "Biting The Hand That Feeds IT(self)"

A.

Having worked in the battery industry for 11 years, people who know me often say "I read or saw on the news about this great new battery that's been invented, where can I buy it?". I have to explain each time that it's only a theory or perhaps a prototype and the publicity is all about asking for money to develop it. There have been so many such as the one based on piss. Yes, you actually piss on it to make it work. Then there was the one that is the size of a CD case you can start a car from. Oh yes and the dodgy Russian who tried to kid us they could make one out of piezoelectric material which you embed in your shoe and when you walked it recharged. They never came to anything, surprise surprise!!