Author Topic: A random thread for small computing things that don't really warrant a thread of their own (Read 299561 times)

Biggsy · « **Reply #425 on:** 07 February, 2016, 04:44:38 pm »

SSDs are not always lighter and more power efficient than 2.5" HDDs, and they can't work any more quickly when the interface is slow. Use your phone instead anyway.

...That didn't work, did it? Really, I'm such a fan of SSDs that I even use one with my TV via USB 2.0 just because it's silent.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #426 on:** 07 February, 2016, 08:36:10 pm »

Phone?

Ha ha ha ha ha klonk.

^^^^ Sound of Mr Larrington laughing his head off.

I've got an old 60 GB iPod Classic as well as a newer 160 GB one so may well find myself experimenting on the former

Ashaman42 · « **Reply #427 on:** 08 February, 2016, 07:01:48 am »

Why, when viewing yacf on tapatalk, does everyone's avatars show up blank except for Phil W's?

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #428 on:** 08 February, 2016, 12:59:32 pm »

It would appear one of my USB disks has died on its arse. "The first NTFS boot sector is unwriteable". followed by "All NTFS boot sectors are unwriteable. Cannot continue. Format failed. Format failed."

So bad they told me twice.

Ham · « **Reply #429 on:** 09 February, 2016, 10:17:20 am »

iConfess

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.littleiapps.confession

Dibdib · « **Reply #430 on:** 10 February, 2016, 07:22:30 pm »

Thought this was cool. Someone on imgur has visualised an old modem handshake and annotated it with what it all means:

http://i.imgur.com/5Dq6K2U.png

There's video too, for extra credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvr9AMWEU-c

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #431 on:** 11 February, 2016, 12:18:22 pm »

Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia not the Messiah but rather a very naughty Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia.

ian · « **Reply #432 on:** 11 February, 2016, 01:05:48 pm »

Quote from: Mr Larrington on 11 February, 2016, 12:18:22 pm

Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia not the Messiah but rather a very naughty Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia.

There's actually a very valid reason (in the final paragraph) – payment mechanisms are authorised by the touch ID system.

Crap article anyway. Some people have been affected and US legal firm eye class action suit. Really.

Dibdib · « **Reply #433 on:** 11 February, 2016, 01:13:26 pm »

Quote from: ian on 11 February, 2016, 01:05:48 pm

Quote from: Mr Larrington on 11 February, 2016, 12:18:22 pm
Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia not the Messiah but rather a very naughty Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia.

There's actually a very valid reason (in the final paragraph) – payment mechanisms are authorised by the touch ID system.

Crap article anyway. Some people have been affected and US legal firm eye class action suit. Really.

A good reason, yes, but a very poor response from Apple. I don't have a problem with Apple locking the touch ID/ApplePay functionality if it suspects the home button has been compromised, but permanently bricking the entire phone seems disproportionately harsh.

I expect at some point their message will change to "if you have this error code please bring your handset to the nearest Genius Bar so we can verify your handset and reset the error code".

ian · « **Reply #434 on:** 11 February, 2016, 03:22:20 pm »

Apple always respond like that. It's their ironic calling card. Not exactly news. Next up, Microsoft run around headless chickens after Windows problem uncovered.

Mostly a gripe at sloppy journalism, that story is over a week old and mostly about lawyers might sue someone. Yeah, really. Still, it makes a break from those stories were they simply annotate things people have said about something on Twitter.

Anyway, they can't really win. If they didn't lock down compromised phones, there'd be a stories about someone having their credit card maxed out through Apple Pay.

TheLurker · « **Reply #435 on:** 12 February, 2016, 06:21:55 am »

We really need an "effing div"* thread for computery things.

Me. Yesterday. I wrote the following and it didn't even register as utterly, utterly wrong until (inevitably) it crashed.

if (myCollection.count == 0) {
anItem = myCollection[0];
:
:
}

Take me out and shoot me now.

*Although what you'd call such a thread for html idiocies is a puzzle.

Phil W · « **Reply #436 on:** 12 February, 2016, 07:51:10 pm »

Quote from: Ashaman42 on 08 February, 2016, 07:01:48 am

Why, when viewing yacf on tapatalk, does everyone's avatars show up blank except for Phil W's?

Because I ticked the special checkbox

Dibdib · « **Reply #437 on:** 18 February, 2016, 07:06:48 pm »

Quote from: Dibdib on 11 February, 2016, 01:13:26 pm

Quote from: ian on 11 February, 2016, 01:05:48 pm
Quote from: Mr Larrington on 11 February, 2016, 12:18:22 pm
Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia not the Messiah but rather a very naughty Mega-Global Fruit Corporation of Cupertino, USAnia.

There's actually a very valid reason (in the final paragraph) – payment mechanisms are authorised by the touch ID system.

Crap article anyway. Some people have been affected and US legal firm eye class action suit. Really.

A good reason, yes, but a very poor response from Apple. I don't have a problem with Apple locking the touch ID/ApplePay functionality if it suspects the home button has been compromised, but permanently bricking the entire phone seems disproportionately harsh.

I expect at some point their message will change to "if you have this error code please bring your handset to the nearest Genius Bar so we can verify your handset and reset the error code".

Apple have apparently rolled out an update to stop this happening, unbrick any affected phones, and are telling users who have bought a new phone out of warranty to contact ApppleCare for reimbursement.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #438 on:** 19 February, 2016, 06:30:28 pm »

Quote from: Mr Larrington on 08 February, 2016, 12:59:32 pm

It would appear one of my USB disks has died on its arse. "The first NTFS boot sector is unwriteable". followed by "All NTFS boot sectors are unwriteable. Cannot continue. Format failed. Format failed."

So bad they told me twice.

I just plugged it into a different PC. It works

T42 · « **Reply #439 on:** 23 February, 2016, 09:07:33 am »

Clearing out our office store-room on Sunday I turned up my old Stano-Data pica ruler from 1978: one of these:

http://www.amazon.de/Standardgraph-8405-Stano-data-II/dp/B004Z4UWIC

A wee bit yellowed but otherwise still perfect. Pleased about that.

Pingu · « **Reply #440 on:** 24 February, 2016, 01:19:24 pm »

Quote from: Famous Internet Search Engine

503. That’s an error.

There was an error. Please try again later. That’s all we know.

Thank-you, very helpful

Pingu · « **Reply #441 on:** 27 February, 2016, 11:24:28 am »

Does it really require 50-60% network utilisation to update a couple of FLAC tags?

Pickled Onion · « **Reply #442 on:** 27 February, 2016, 12:25:11 pm »

Quote from: Pingu on 27 February, 2016, 11:24:28 am

Does it really require 50-60% network utilisation to update a couple of FLAC tags?

Yes, you can't change something in the middle of a file on disc, you have to read the file off the disc and write it back to the disc. So if it's on a disc elsewhere on the network it has to go via the processor that knows how to change the file, and FLAC files are not exactly small.

TheLurker · « **Reply #443 on:** 29 February, 2016, 07:38:50 pm »

Coo. According to MrsLurker's sea noise generator* today is Friday the 54th of January 2017. Can't wait to see what day it thinks tomorrow is.

*Meditation. For the use of.

Update. 1st of March. And today isn't Tuesday the 1st of March. Nope. It's Saturday the 55th of Jan. 2017.

I would love to know how they're calculating this. I'm assuming it's on the basis of a tickcount or similar and I can't imagine that they're that pushed for space that they couldn't use a standard library for the conversion. *Baffled*.

T42 · « **Reply #444 on:** 06 March, 2016, 09:42:10 am »

Rummaging in our storeroom for an extension bar just now, I came across a copy of Microsoft C plus utilities on 5-inch floppies - about 15 of them.

Kim · « **Reply #445 on:** 06 March, 2016, 01:17:40 pm »

Quote from: TheLurker on 29 February, 2016, 07:38:50 pm

Coo. According to MrsLurker's sea noise generator* today is Friday the 54th of January 2017. Can't wait to see what day it thinks tomorrow is.

*Meditation. For the use of.

Update. 1st of March. And today isn't Tuesday the 1st of March. Nope. It's Saturday the 55th of Jan. 2017.

I would love to know how they're calculating this. I'm assuming it's on the basis of a tickcount or similar and I can't imagine that they're that pushed for space that they couldn't use a standard library for the conversion. *Baffled*.

Fascinating. How old is it? Maybe it's run out of lookup table and it'll just keep adding days to Jan 2017...

TheLurker · « **Reply #446 on:** 06 March, 2016, 04:44:08 pm »

Quote from: Kim on 06 March, 2016, 01:17:40 pm

Quote from: TheLurker on 29 February, 2016, 07:38:50 pm
Coo. According to MrsLurker's sea noise generator* today is Friday the 54th of January 2017. Can't wait to see what day it thinks tomorrow is.

*Meditation. For the use of.

Update. 1st of March. And today isn't Tuesday the 1st of March. Nope. It's Saturday the 55th of Jan. 2017.

I would love to know how they're calculating this. I'm assuming it's on the basis of a tickcount or similar and I can't imagine that they're that pushed for space that they couldn't use a standard library for the conversion. *Baffled*.

Fascinating. How old is it? Maybe it's run out of lookup table and it'll just keep adding days to Jan 2017...

About two years old, although there's no saying how old the code in it is. It's only a 2 digit display so I'm letting it run on to see what happens at 99.

Mr Larrington · « **Reply #447 on:** 08 March, 2016, 12:12:30 am »

Since when did just playing an mp3 file via iTunes make it "newer" than the backup copy, at least in the eyes of Robocopy

Pickled Onion · « **Reply #448 on:** 08 March, 2016, 06:46:15 am »

Has iTunes decided to helpfully update the album art for you, or something like that?

ian · « **Reply #449 on:** 08 March, 2016, 07:12:55 am »

Play count.