* Posts by Iain Griffiths

31 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Nov 2008

Toshiba invests $1.76bn in flash fab production line, WD kinda peeved

Iain Griffiths

Re: I Am Really Confused

Its a case of there's loads of money slushing about - just the numbers on the accounts are fecked.

Used to work for their now completely fecked computer division.

Somewhat the times and hubris caused that, but it seems incumbent in the whole company - total whirlpool of insular thinking,

The number of times they were 6 months behind the curve and then gave up - well I'd have about £6.50.

But the number of times they were ahead but didn't recognise it, gave up then went back and built something worse - that's probably another fiver.

Blighty's 24-hr Universal Credit outage caused by upgrade glitch

Iain Griffiths

Re: Oh for crying out loud

Because it was assessed by ATOS and scored no points. It was fit for work.

Business users force Microsoft to back off Windows 10 PC kill plan

Iain Griffiths

Re: End of days - beginning of a new era

Have another go with linux cos iplayer seems to work for me

Brexit Britain: HP Sauce vs BBC.co.uk – choices that defined voters

Iain Griffiths

Re: Richmond Sausages are Irish.

From

http://richmondsausages.co.uk/legal-and-privacy/

Kerry Foods Ltd, 66 Cookstown Industrial Estate, Tallaght, Dublin 24 Ireland.

Iain Griffiths

Re: Ironic...

And Richmond Sausages are Irish.

Boris Johnson 'NIGHTMARE'

Iain Griffiths

Charlie has code worded the whole Brexit mess as CASE NIGHTMARE TWEED.

Fleet of 4.77MHz LCD laptops with 8088 CPUs still alive after 30 years

Iain Griffiths

We had a load of those up till 2000 in the server room. Used for some weird dial up program to the bank (not payments IIRC but invoices ? can't remember. Was very sad when the last one got given to the Marketing Hall of Fame (The Dusty Cupboard of Doom and Forgetfulness)

Mind you, the company I worked for was Toshiba. We had the little models of Laptops in the shape of biscuits used in Marketing form the mid 90's in a display cabinet.

Duracell powers into cloud storage market

Iain Griffiths

Aren't Gillette now part of Proctor and Gamble ?

So we could get Persil registry cleaners ( whiter than white) ?

God knows what they'd do with the Fairy Brand ....

What a plot of nonsense: Ten Master master plan FAILS

Iain Griffiths

Anthony Ainley was rather badly served by his scripts - JNT wanted the pantomime villain and forced AA to camp it up big style. According to some sources AA's did give a much more complex performance only to be told to be more camp.

Wish there was some footage of those performances to compare.

There's a lovely fan interview recording of AA talking about Dr Who as he's driving about. .

Microsoft CEO shortlist down to EIGHT ... appropriately enough, perhaps

Iain Griffiths
Happy

Alan Mulally ? Wow, good to see cricketers get on after they retire.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/player/17121.html

Fed up with Windows? Linux too easy? Get weird, go ALTERNATIVE

Iain Griffiths

how about this for obscure

http://visopsys.org/

Not sure what his day job is but his sometime evening job is a singer in a pop-punk band. Not my cup of tea though

shehitmefirst.com

How City IT is under attack from politicians, diesel bugs, HR

Iain Griffiths

That sounds like ...

The guy who writes the ITShambles blog ....

well worth a read ... in fact get him on teh Reg

http://itshambles.wordpress.com/

PM Cameron calls for modern, programmable computers! (We think)

Iain Griffiths
Thumb Up

he meant +1 Like computing on Facebook

Brits on benefits: 'Dole office site only works on PCs over 10 YEARS OLD'

Iain Griffiths
Facepalm

Ah, they're using Siebel .

All makes sense now - probably something like 6.3 or 7.0.

Hell even 7.7 there was a 18 month wait for a patch for IE7.

Problem is based on originally using MS's Java VM, which was broken. Then using ActiveX's to give all the bells and whistles.

Watch the skies: SPACE HEDGEHOG plunges to Earth in Oxfordshire

Iain Griffiths
Alien

Its actually a Clanger in disguise , reccying before the invasion.

I for one welcome our string soup eating overloads

Word wonks insist GIFs are really JIFs

Iain Griffiths
Coat

Wasn't there a tv ad about 10 years ago

where the makers of Jif said it was now pronounced Cif?

Doctor Who to hit small screen on 1 September

Iain Griffiths

Re: Heartbreaking Exit? (Speculation)

Except that the series is split 5 Xmas Special , 7 in the new year sometime.

The Ponds are leaving at the end of the 5th Ep.

Can YOU crack the Gauss uber-virus encryption?

Iain Griffiths

Re: AMFM?

CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN - from Charles Stross' Laundry Series of books . Lovecraftian Spy Trillers

Iain Griffiths

Re: Hang on, I've read Digital Fortress!

BASHFUL INCENDIARY ? is That you ?

Oracle acquisition gets Larry more Involver(ed) with Facebook

Iain Griffiths
Go

Well that's one way to kill Marketing on Facebook Thumbs Up

They'll up the licencing costs by about 1000% plus knacker the support and make the software difficult to use and install with a myriad of bugs and illogical settings.

Slow the Marketeers down and cost them money .

Win for everyone else.

Ballmer says 500 MILLION 'users' to 'have' Windows 8 in 2013

Iain Griffiths
Mushroom

Re: As much as I like the Windows 8 Metro concept....

Splitting mobile/tablet and desk/laptop makes decent sense as the input devices are totally different.

OK Mobiles and tabs can have keyboards, but they aren't natural bedfellows. So Apple have made the distinction and it works - MS have Winphone7/8 and should be stretching that to Tabs not shrinking the desktop. Someone at the top needs to actually think (big stretch), which devices match each other more and why.

So win8 willl be a dogs breakfast and MS will lose more ground - not that I am sorry , might mean a better mix of systems all round and less crap we all have to put up with.

Sci Fi recomendations?

Iain Griffiths
Go

Charles Stross is pretty good and depending on what you like :

There's more classic sci-fi in Singularity Sky ,Iron Sunrise, Glasshouse, Accellerandro.

He's also done some more HP Lovecraft crossed with Spy thrillers with his Laundry Series . Rather more fun.

And 2 Near future ones in Halting State and Rule 34.

Neal Asher is popular with his Polity series - although I liked the Spatterjay sub-series the most.

Ken McLeod's fall revolution series is very good as well .

Not keen on what I've read so far with Dan Simmons but give it a try .

As like others above Iain M Banks,Stephen Baxter, Alistair Reynolds and Peter F Hamilton are worth a look ,

Ubuntu 12.04 hits beta, brings smooth Unity for marching masses

Iain Griffiths
Linux

Hiding Launcher ?

It s been doing that since Molested Marmoset.

Personally don't get the hate about Unity - its simple enough to use - and I can find most things - the search in Nauseuous Newt/Obese Otter works as you'd expect (and I'd expect it to find GVim ok) as far aas I can tell . Occassionally therese been something i couldn't get it to do in an obvious manner - but its not like you don't get that in any other UI .

I'd like to be able to move the launcher somewhere a bit less in the way as hitting back on the browser can cause the search to pop up if you aren't paying attention - but configuring the mouse keys sorts that.

A few more configurable things with it would be nice , but its not terribly essential to me - its a browsing/gaming machine with the odd bit of developement dicking about .

If I was using a bit more heavily then yes I can see it being annoying - but for the role I use it for, nothing wrong with it .

Microsoft sharpening axe for marketing heads - report

Iain Griffiths

Marketing?

MS and marketing are uneasy bedfellows - long time ago they could spout about whatever feature their next version would have and it would stop competition in its tracks . Then that feature would either not work or would be quietly dropped ("whither WinFS").

Now it hasn't quite the same clout as the world has moved on.

Folk ask "does it work on my ......"

MS has to live in a world where they can dictate and haven't worked out how to. Marketing isn't the answer (and to be honest anyone who saw the Bill Gates /Jerry Seinfeld ads should realise this .)

They need to realise that they aren't in the same business as they were 10 years ago.

This might be it , but it actually looks like they are just shooting the messenger. Course that depends on whether they are actually listening to what's actually going on in the world, and not rearranging the deckchairs.

Ubuntu's Oneiric Ocelot: Nice, but necessary?

Iain Griffiths
Linux

I've already named it ...

I've been calling them even more silly names ever since I installed it last year.

Lurid Limpet

Molested Marmoset

Nauseous Newt

and now its Obese Otter

Next one I'll probably be calling Pervy Pigeon

Death of netbook exaggerated, says researcher

Iain Griffiths

Novatech

Novatech do netbooks with no OS installed - so you bung lurid limpet or whatever silly name the new umbongo distribution is called.

Coalition promises to kill three-quarters of its websites

Iain Griffiths
WTF?

What do they mean ?

Well, what do they mean by website ? Separate infrastructure and hosting ? different URL ? what ? by all means consolidate the hosting to save money, that would be the first step , but don't drop information until you know its not being used, Surely that's sensible .

Blighty's first home grown war robot takes to Welsh skies!

Iain Griffiths

OK its a bit more than this....

But its a remote controlled plane. The basic technology has been around for donkeys years. I guess its got some kind of encrypted channel (ooh), and some hyped up signal transmission and a few other goodies (like anyone will actually tell us - but still - £900M? Nice work, if you can get it .

Why not cheap and cheerful? Swarms of the buggers of cheap planes acting as a swarm , you can't shoot them all down and you get cheap and extensive coverage? Probably missing something , but if anyone wants to offer me a job to make up this stuff then call me, I've got loads of this stuff, I watched Battle of the Planets as a kid

Take-Two sues over death of Duke Nukem Forever

Iain Griffiths

Re What were they hoping for

>That's a long time. The only thing they can hope for here is a 10+ year old idea, 10+ year old >engine, and a customer base that's 10+ years older.

Wasn't the problem was they'd restart every couple of years with a different engine (Quake , Unreal, whatever the latest one is). So they took too long to do the game that it became out of date before being finished . Should have just got it out on an older engine and then worked on the next one.

DARPA wargamer calls for US X-Men superplane fleet

Iain Griffiths
Black Helicopters

Crickey I designed that!

19 years ago for my Design GCSE. Worrying to see the US rummaging round my folks attic for ideas.