* Posts by leeph

33 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Aug 2010

UK IT supplier placed on ASA naughty step over 'misleading' HDD ad

leeph

Re: 2nd hand

I may be wrong here, but I'm fairly sure hard drives don't have an 'idle' mode themselves - isn't it that the controller turns the drive off itself under an idle condition - in which case the powered on hours counter wouldn't be ticking, thus 40,000 hours is actually 40,000 hours of spinning and wear on the motor bearings.

leeph

Re: 2nd hand

"Innocent until proven guilty" - yes, but also "ignorance is no defence".

leeph

Re: Blowhard

I would go further and say that he sounds like a right twat.

Amateurs find the 'HOLY GRAIL' supernova – right on our doorstep

leeph

Re: Who cares who is first to photograph?

Telegram? I'm not convinced telegrams supported hyperlinks...

Microsoft to RIP THE SHEETS off Windows 9 aka 'Threshold' in April

leeph

@John 172

There's another big flaw you've hit upon - you absolutely *SHOULD NOT* have to spend time to 'learn' where Microsoft has hidden core features. I'm an IT admin and I have many users running Win8, so I would say I'm somewhat familiar with the interface, but even then I sometimes have to shout out in the office 'where've they hidden the log off button again?'

An OS should be designed such that all core features are intuitively located so that users instinctively know how to get to them.

It's a good job Microsoft have made a web browser so easily accessible in Windows 8, because most people need to use Google every 30 seconds to look up how to do something that was obvious and easy in almost all prior versions of Windows.

THAT is why Windows 8 is crap and THAT is why it doesn't, and won't, ever sell well.

Windows 9 will be Windows 7 with an option for a touch interface if you want it. That is what Windows 8 should have been all along.

leeph

Yeah...

... those people probably have iPhones.

Google embiggens its fat vid pipe Chromecast with TEN new supported apps

leeph

Re: I won't read this

Why are people voting down my comment? Are you actually saying 'embiggen' is a good word to use?

Shame on the bloody lot of you English-destroyers.

leeph

I won't read this

Sorry but this article is completely null and void due to use of the non-word 'embiggen'. Of all the other words in the english language that could be used, why do these hacks insist on making up horrific new ones?

Oooh! My NAUGHTY SKIRT keeps riding up! Hello, INTERNET EXPLORER

leeph

Marketing idea

Those marketing dudes should have spelled it 'Inorie' so that at least it has the letters I and E in it.

Vulture 2 spaceplane STRIPPED to the bone

leeph

But...

... will the bugger actually fly? Has the shape/design been tested in actual flight?

Brit boson boffin Higgs bags Nobel with eponymous deiton

leeph

I'm just annoyed that acclaimed broadcasters still pronounce boson as 'bosun' - i.e the shortened nautical term for a boatswain.

It's 'bows-on' damnit!!

'British Bill Gates' Lynch laments HP's Autonomy 'botch-up'

leeph

Re: Love the typo

There are so many typos in this article that it's almost embarassing to read.

Vulture 2 spaceplane rises from the powdered nylon

leeph

I dun geddit

I dun geddit... is the block of powder being broken down to be fed into the printer, or is the block of

powder the result of the printing process, and the plane is hidden inside? If the latter, I really didn't think that was the way 3d printers worked...?

It's really not obvious from the text OR the pictures.

Users rage as Fasthosts virtual servers go titsup... again

leeph

Re: Recommendations please!

Can you fix it when it goes wrong? No?

A bit like companies that host with Fasthosts then?

That there is the problem. It's all fine, until it's not. And then you're stuffed.

leeph

Re: Anyone Surprised?

Proliant isn't a make.

Stephen Hawking nixes Intel voice upgrade plan

leeph

Re: I know that voice!

More like Dr Sbaitso - that thing was way ahead of its time, as I remember it.

Irritating as hell, too - always answered a question with another question.

Official: Cloud computing invented by two technophobic old geezers

leeph
IT Angle

Hopelesslly deluded...

'Cloud', as one of the previous commenters said, is just 'the internet'. Where did people think websites and their data were stored before 'the cloud' came about?

Anyone remotely technical knows 'cloud' is just a marketing buzzword, designed to reel-in those management types holding the purse strings, who think it's an impressive - even revolutionary - new way of doing things. Unfortunately, if you try and tell them that, they get all upset, as if you've burst their pretty little bubble.

Techies have been colocating services for decades - it's just the wan pipes that have evolved (got faster+cheaper), not the technology behind what we do with them. The sooner management get their heads out of the cloud, then we can all get back to reality.

New blow for Microsoft Surface: Touch Chromebooks 'on sale in 2013'

leeph

Re: cum?

I stand corrected!

Vodafone goes titsup for BlackBerrys in mobile data outage

leeph

Odd

Odd - didn't you think it might be an idea to check with your carrier whether there were any known outages? It's not like there haven't been many recently...

That's the first thing I did (hurray me!).

Microsoft building poo-powered carbon-neutral data center

leeph
Facepalm

Shit power

It is rumoured the same technology powered the creation of Windows 8 and its 'Metro' interface.

Anonymous takes down UK government websites in Assange attack

leeph
FAIL

Poor

The only thing anonymous are proving is that they're not clever enough to carry out the sort of attack that might actually cause any real damage - like stealing sensitive data from those departments they're targeting.

OK so they've hacked an online gaming service and a couple of backwater police departments, but is anyone actually feeling like the group is a threat to properly funded governments? No. They're nothing more than a bunch of spotty nerds with cock-rot, seeking attention from anyone who'll listen.

It's unfathomably pathetic, to be honest. But then so is Julian Assange.

Mars rover Opportunity spots WALL-E in crater ramble

leeph

Might be a rather ignorant question, but why do all these images have to be mosaics, and in some sort of strange false-colour? Why can't the rovers taken a Canon 60D up there and take some 'normal' pictures with 'normal' colour so we can actually see what it would be like through human eyes?

SAP hopes to embiggen its cloud with Ariba slurp

leeph

Re: 'embiggen' what a horrible word!

Pretty sure it's not even a real word. As far as I know, it was invented for an episode of 'The Simpsons' and some rather foolish people decided from then on it would be good to get it into general circulation.

Oh, the humanity...

'Kill yourself now' - Torvalds throws openSUSE security tantrum

leeph

Re: Re: Re: Yeah, Mr Torvalds Should Not Be Called A Moron

But most printers in schools and business are network printers, not USB.

iPhone users get iJustHadAShag bedpost-notch boast app

leeph
WTF?

Wow, another pointless, stupid 'fucking' app. Is this newsworthy? I'll answer that for you. NO.

Does your smartphone run Carrier IQ? Find out here

leeph

ping - the ultimate network scanner

"vzw-collector.demo.carrieriq.com, vzw-dis.demo.carrieriq.com and hupload-vzw99.carrieriq.com. None of the three URLs responded to pings at time of writing."

Author is showing their ignorance here.

First, those aren't URLs, they're hostnames. Second, the fact they don't respond to a ping proves absolutely nothing about the reachability of a host these days. In fact, a quick portscan reveals TCP/443 is open on these 'URLs' (sic) which is presumably the ingress point for collected device information.

Even if there were no TCP ports open however, it would be pretty unwise to assume the hosts were 'down' or otherwise incapable or receiving collected information. For example, an VPN daemon listening on a single UDP port using a hashing algorithm would be incredibly difficult to illicit any kind of response from without having the corresponding key (preloaded onto the phones themselves).

The only real use for ICMP echo these days is to check the reachability of a device that you know is a) unfirewalled and b) on the same network segment. Anything else is just likely to yield misinformation.

Record flight is step toward HYPERSONIC SPACE AIRSHIP

leeph

Ooh

Semi-rigidirigible

Brilliant

Foxconn churns out '150,000' iPhone 5s a day

leeph
Megaphone

@Anonymous Coward - If I hate Apple I'm blatantly not going to buy their products - thanks for your sage advice there.

What I dislike about Apple is the fact that their products are so 'mickey mouse' - but not content with providing functionally deficient devices, they proceed to charge the earth for it. I suppose the fact that so many people are prepared to buy these things (when HTC are producing far more functional products for much lower prices) underlies the fact that there are so many stupid people about.

And I hate stupid people. Don't you? They get in the way and cost us money.

I hate stupid people, ergo I hate Apple.

There's your answer.

leeph
FAIL

Errr...

Shouldn't it be 'Cupertinoan' rather than 'Cupertinian' ?

Anyway, I bloody hate Apple and their ridiculously crap products. And everyone who uses one. I spit on you.

George Lucas defeated by Stormtrooper helmet man

leeph
FAIL

Clever

Clever! 10/10 for observation, that man. I believe the author implied that in the original article - how banal of you to point it out for us.

Santander blames Firefox 4 for website fail

leeph

Santander notorious for badly coded sites

Aside from the fact that a bank this size (nay, any size!) should be testing their online banking sites against popular browsers using betas/release candidates well in advance of release date, Santander is well known for having badly coded sites.

Tried to apply for an online business banking account only for the form to repeatedly tell me my birthdate was incorrect.

In what way? Does it know better than I do when I was born?

Useless.

Want to use WD diagnostics? Buy Windows

leeph

This is not the primary reason to avoid WD

The WD software is surplus to requirements for Linux users since we (should) be running smartd (smartmontools) anyway. Lack of diagnostics tools for Linux is not the reason to avoid WD - the fact that their drives are complete cack - is.

I've got a Hitachi that has done 60,000 hours non-stop. In the same time period, I've had 5 WD drives fail at less than 20,000 hours. Gash.