Posts by John Brown (no body)

Re: Now You've Done It

"aww maybe I should have went with 1000 Amp?)."

Yes, you should. Then you could have a Tesla Supercharger in the garage :-)

I once got sent to an address to fix a computer. The customer was a magazine publisher. I was a little surprised to find the address was one half of a semi-detached house in a leafy London suburb. I knocked on the door, expecting to be greeted by one of the company senior staff or the owner who lived there and maybe worked from home (that'd not be first time that happened to me). Imagine my surprise to find this was the actual offices of the business and about 20 staff worked there busily creating those industry-type magazines that get given away for free.

Re: Somewhat curious...

But is it more than even the cost of administering and distributing the "partial" refunds? Just setting up and administering the refund system is probably taking a couple of man years of labour.

"Aaaand this is why cloud-based IoT is fuckingly retarded."

But is the easiest and cheapest way, in the short term, to get "click and play" for the average user. Without it, most of these IoT device would never sell. Oh, wait....

Re: Ah, yet another joy of IoT

...and yet, despite these sorts of stories appearing even in mainstream news outlets, people still keep buying into the next shiny version and being bitten. Again and again.

Re: Gravity...

"Look at a photon, it is divisible, it can be split between slits in a slit experiment. So its made of multiple parts"

It isn't, it can't and it isn't.

Even with my GCSE A level physics from 35 years ago, that sentence made me pause, think and then jump to bit where he said "bollocks", at which point I agreed with him :-)

Re: That vendor's track record for reparability is miserable

"I've had a few el cheapo US$5-10 earbuds, and they last less than a month of everyday use."

I usually get at least a year out of mine. Maybe it's because my parents lived through rationing during and after WW2 so it was instilled in me from an early age to be careful with stuff and look after so it lasts a good long time. eg I always place my phone on the desk. I see many others who just casually throw theirs on the desk. A couple 100 quids worth of relatively delicate electronics and they chuck it around like some disposable coffee cup. Likewise those people who see actors slam down the lids/screens of their laptops for dramatic effect and then do the same with their £400-£1000+ laptops. Some of them even have the nerve to profess to be "green" and carry re-usable coffee cups with them. I wonder how many coffee cups they need to "save" to neutralise the shortened lifespans of their devices?

Re: I continue to be baffled...

I wonder if the Apple business model is based on this:

"Narcissists might have "grandiose" delusions about their own importance and an absence of "shame" - but psychologists say they are also likely to be happier than most people."

It does seem to fit at least a sub-set of the fanbois who may not be "perfectly average human beings"

Re: Removable stem seems like a reasonable suggestion...

Well, they DO experiment on them and perform vivisections on live Apples WITHOUT aesthetic!!!

Re: Where were you 20 years ago?

You forgot the Assyrian invasion and their cuniform.

Re: Where were you 20 years ago?

"And where has instant messaging come to in the intervening 40 years? We now have emojis... Give me the good old days!"

Yes, there are reasons why the Ancient Egyptians moved on from hieroglyphics. Kids never seem to learn from the experience of their elders.

Re: Where were you 20 years ago?

I think that was about the time I played with Doom or Duke Nukem and had a go at taking photos of the local shopping centre to mock-up a 3D walk through. It's didn't come to much in the end although id did work after a fashion. A while later, StreetView appeared. If I'd lived in the US I might have had some patents on the idea and be posting this story from my private island.

Re: "the FBI has a larger database of over 640 million faces"

"More likely they come from a variety of sources so may (I can only assume) contain many same/similar faces eg from licensing, passport or other sources."

With that many identified images it should make for a good test of the system to do de-dupe dry run. Especially since they are likely all front on mugshots/passport/driving licence images.

Re: Surprise surprise...

This is hospital pagers. The NHS are about the only people still using pagers. I doubt anyone is thinking i investing in upgrading the system. (Yes, I am aware the NHS *love* their pagers because they work reliably in places mobile phones can't reach)

"Someone can absolutely be prosecuted under the Wireless Telegraphy Act for receiving something they shouldn't that was unencrypted and it has happened. An offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act has probably also been committed if someone knowingly intercepts private messages intended for someone else without their permission. "

Anyone remember the days when the Police radios used VHF/FM and were broadcasting just above the frequencies allocated to public broadcasting? Quite a few commercial radio receivers would tune just far enough out of band that you could hear the Police. Not that I ever did, of course, no sir, not me.

Trusts are not always geographically contiguous and often overlap and/or interleave, but yes, plotting the known data is very likely to point to a specific hospital and therefore the trust name.

Re: Paul Flowers

"AKA the Crystal Methodist, you've got to love red tops they do come up with some pearlers from time to time."

Well, they each get a chance for gold every day. And even a stopped clock is right twice a day :-)

Re: Impossible task

For a highly dense population centre, that sounds like a good business model. Very highly specialised, fast response for a good ob and probably still cheaper than the big chain plumbers/home repair businesses.

So I fixed it.

Judging by the knots, you were neither a sailor nor a boy scout :-)

Re: Based on the tiling story I would have thought Dabbsy's Bog would be appropriate...

Only several? You must be new here! :-)

"On the plus side for Dabbsy, half of them will probably head to France (the other half Germany), so he'll have an even bigger selection of tradies that wont turn up to fix things as scheduled! Brilliant!

It's win-win right?"

Sort of. Isn't Dabbsy living in Spain now?

Re: I lost a T470 to a cup of latte six months ago

"Turns out those little draining holes at the bottom of the keyboard are no match for a hot cup of freshly ground, freshly brewed, whole milk latte."

No, but they are a nice idea and do help with more minor spills. They also help retain the evidence when a user reports the keyboard or the entire laptop not working and outwardly it looks all nice and clean because they did such a good job at cleaning the externals up. Now, if they'd come clean right at the start, they'd have got a new keyboard or a new laptop as required, but noooooo....now there's an out of warranty repair or scrapping of the laptop AND the cost of the service engineer call out who removed the keyboard, sucked air through his/her teeth and said "that'll cost ya". (said service engineer call out being part of the warranty ONLY if it's a warranty fault, which on site support would normally triage properly so as not to incur those costs)

Re: ties

"This is why ties were fair game for anyone with a pair of scissors in most of the early Silly Con Valley. Ties are, quite simply, dangerous ... especially around prototype hardware. Not even IBM's Field Service folks wore ties."

That's why I complained about our new lanyard style ID badges. I even played the H&S card, since we also fix printers, but still got told they were the only option. So bought my own clip-on badge holder. No one has said anything in three years.

Re: Tobacco smoke

"Maybe it depends on the wood but I find it quite pleasant."

It does. But some people who may be hard of thinking, seem to think they can just burn anything in them without realising they are breaking the law,