Maybe they're not completely certain about the legality of their Lego rip-off, and they think that if they don't advertise too blatantly Lego's lawyers might not notice it.
Posts made by Malenfant
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RE: Toy WTF
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RE: UK government showing they are modern?
It is not only pensioners, it is for all Social Security claimants, including those working on low pay who need Housing Benefit in order to pay their rent. The idea apparently is that soon everyone who claims social security will HAVE to do it online.
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RE: UK government showing they are modern?
Except it only went live a couple of months ago. And it references operating systems that weren't available at that time. So even if it was started seven and a half years ago, even if it had been made available seven and a half years ago, that's no excuse for releasing it without updating it to work with the technology around now.Or do you think that Internet Explorer 10 was around in 2006?
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RE: UK government showing they are modern?
Also note that this system cost £2.4 billion
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UK government showing they are modern?
Behold the advice page of the new UK Department of Work and Pensions online claims system. Note that this is brand new, only been available a couple of months.
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RE: Epic context menu
It's a bug in Firebug. Uninstalling Firebug and restarting Firefox fixes it. It appears to still be in the latest version (or at least it was on Saturday).
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RE: Weird mouse behaviour
I've changed nothing else. When I take this one set of batteries out and put others in it works perfectly again. I know the solution is to stop using those batteries, and I have, I'm just curious about what causes this behaviour.
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RE: Weird mouse behaviour
But this isn't giving a low power warning. The power level is showing as fine. It is sending incorrect signals to the sensor. The laser doesn't seem to be any dimmer, and I can't imagine that would have the effect described anyway. When batteries are running out it just responds less. What aspect of low power, or even higher than expected power, could cause erroneous information to be sent to the sensor?
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Weird mouse behaviour
I seem to be getting into a habit of putting non-coding related questions here, but still.
So, I have a wireless optical mouse. It's very good, works beautifully, very sensitive and accurate. Recently I bought some new rechargeable batteries as the old ones were getting, well, old. For some reason, when I use these new batteries the cursor moves on it's own. Not even predictably, sometimes it works fine, sometimes it jumps all over the place. Even when the mouse isn't moving. The cursor will stay stationary for a bit, then start jumping around the screen. This has continue through several uses and recharges and even seems to be getting worse. Other batteries, whether rechargeable or not, work fine with it.
I can't for the life of me think of a property of batteries that could cause this behaviour. Anyone got any ideas?
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RE: What is a test server?
I never said that any of this was my fault other than the obvious mistake of writing the check the wrong way round, which is mitigated somewhat by the severe time constraints I was forced to work under.
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RE: What is a test server?
This reminds me of a wtf that I was a part of several years ago. I needed to make a change to a company administration system due to a change in the reporting protocols in Ireland. We only had one customer who dealt with Irish companies and they wouldn't allow us access to their data. We only got told about the change a few days before it went active so I didn't have time to set up a test database, so I got the customer's IT department to clone their database so they could test my changes.
A side wtf was that after discussing the changes with the customer, they had an entirely different understanding of what was needed to me, and my boss insisted I did it their way. I made the changes, gave them the new program, and they tested it on the cloned database. Of course I soon got a response that the changes had been done wrong, and they then told me it should have been done exactly as I had orignally said.
So, I made the new changes and sent it to them for testing. Shortly afterwards, I got a response saying I had done it wrong. I had reversed the check in the update script and changed all the non-Irish customers instead of the Irish ones. No biggy right? It had been run on the cloned databse so I could quickly reverse the check, re-test and all is well. Nope, the customer had run it against the live database without testing first. All non-Irish companies now had incorrect reporting dates set up, and of course there was no record of what the old dates were. Cue panic, now 12,000 odd companies in their database have invalid data.
Fix turned out to be not too bad, although it pushed it close to the deadline. First run a script that takes the correct dates for non-Irish customers from the cloned database and changes them in the live database, then run the amended update with the check the correct way round. A good illustration of why testing is important.
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RE: Change your password? $19 please.
It's not exactly a major WTF, but it certainly is what I would call odd behaviour. I have inactive accounts on several MMO games I don't play any more. On all of those I can log into my account, change my password, change payment or contact details, or any other standard account management functions all without having to re-activate my account. I would expect all similar account systems to behave the same.
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RE: Phone company security
For a starter, there should be no way for them to know the first two characters of your password.
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RE: BT small print WTF
Actually, I believe this is a legacy from the way BT was originally privatized. They are a telephone company and there is a requirement to maintain this as their primary function even when selling other services. BT are not allowed to sell you broadband without you having a BT line, whereas other ISPs can. I don't know the exact details, and can't be bothered to look them up, but I imagine there is a regulation that stipulates a minimum amount of calls in order to keep the pretence that this is primarily a telephonic contract.
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RE: Video card wtfery
The signal out of range is actually not a fault in any way. I guess it depends on the monitor, but when I turn off my computer but not my monitor (LG Flatron in case you're interested) it says signal out of range. The same thing happens on my friend's (a Philips TV with PC mode). Neither monitor ever displays a no signal message, just signal out of range. As it is a fairly old card, and has been used in several different computers (my friend is very unlucky with his computers, they break in odd ways often) I'm going with the card being on it's way out. It wasn't overheating, it was barely warm.
An weird thing with this card, in his last computer, an old Compaq machine, the correct nVidia drivers would never work with it. Despite it being a PCIe card, the only drivers that would work were the nVidia AGP drivers. PCIe drivers would only work at low resolution, AGP drivers worked fine. I could never explain that one either.
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RE: Video card wtfery
This makes sense. I strongly suspected that there is something wrong with his graphics card but I'm a software engineer not a hardware engineer so I was unable to understand how the card could display something different to what the computer was sending. Thank you for clearing it up. I will advise that he procures a replacement card, although in his current circumstances this may be difficult, hence the fact that he is using such an old card.
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RE: Video card wtfery
Signal Out of Range most often just means that the monitor is not getting a signal, either because the computer is switched off or the card/driver is faulty.
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RE: Video card wtfery
The behaviour was the same on two different monitors (I didn't bother mentioning that as I didn't consider it relevant) so I doubt the monitor had anything to do with it.
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Video card wtfery
Ok, this one made me say wtf out loud. I am possibly including more detail than the story requires because I would be interested if someone could explain how this happened, or possibly tell me how I'm TRWTF.
I was asked by a friend to fix their computer. The graphics card (Nvidia Geforce 5500 PCIe, old I know but still) had stopped sending a signal to the monitor. The monitor simply reported 'Signal out of range' whether the computer was switched off or not but the system was working - you could hear it start up Windows XP and shut down following the correct key presses. I removed the graphics card, gave it and it's connectors a thorough clean,and reconnected it. No change. The motherboard had an internal graphics adaptor (some kind of Intel Integrated Graphics, I didn't pay much attention to exactly what) so I again removed the Nvidia card and reset the BIOS so that it would use the internal card (had to remove cmos chip because there was no screen otherwise). this worked fine, BIOScame up, booted into Windows with no problems, if a little low resolution. All good.
Next thing I did was ensure he had the drivers for his card (a file on the harddrive, latest Nvidia drivers) and completely remove the installed drivers. I then rebooted into BIOS and swapped the video configuration over to PCIe, switched off, reinstalled the card and rebooted. All fine, video works fine, Windows boots up and finds new hardware. I cancel it's wizard and run the setup program from the hard drive. Now, this is where it gets a bit iffy. When I attempt to run the setup AVG reports it is virused. I remember hearing about this, and also that the general consensus was that it is a false-positive, and since he doesn't actually have internet access at the moment I go ahead anyway. Installs fine, asks me to reboot, reboots fine except that it is now asking me to run chkdsk. I know I should let this run, but I figure he can do it later, I don't want to be here all day so I cancel it.
Now, here is where I say WTF!. His monitor screen stays on the blue chkdsk screen, but the computer boots into Windows. I hear the start up sounds, I make the correct key presses and I hear the shutdown sound, computer shuts down and the screen returns to Signal out of range. Note: right up till the monitor reports signal out of range it is still displaying the blue chkdsk screen with 1 second left to cancel before it starts.
I start the computer again and this time allow it to run chkdsk. This runs fine, it reports some lost data from the AVG installation and recovers a few sectors, then displays the XP loading screen. Then the screen goes black. No picture, no signal out of range message, but it still boots into Windows. Again I close it down, and now the card has completely stopped working again, signal out of range message even though Windows still boots up.
I repeat the whole process from the start, still using the same potentially virused driver, and this time everything works perfectly. I get the system competely up and running and it seems ok. To finish, I advise him that he needs to completely clean his system preferably with a reformat and complete reinstall and I will download the graphics drivers anew for him.
So, can anyone explain how the blue chkdsk screen was able to remain visible even though the system had booted into Windows?
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RE: Not exactly coding related
Well, I've rebooted several times now, used boththe win XP and the windows 7 partition to browse the internet and play games. Computer is behaving exactly as it was before this all started now, no problems at all. The problem arose mysteriously, stayed for about 24 hours (pretty much exactly I think, although I didn't actually note down times) and then disappeared just as mysteriously. I have no clue what caused it or what fixed it.
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RE: Not exactly coding related
Even more bizarre behaviour. I took it round to a friends' house and connected it via a usb external drive bay. Exactly the same behaviour. Two partitions work fine, the win XP one reports as unformatted. I take it round to a second friend's house and do the same, all three partitions work fine. I can grab all data off the supposedly borked partition so I do so. I take the drive back home, and now it all works fine. Will boot into win XP as if nothing had happened. The problem disappeared as suddenly as it appeared.
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RE: Not exactly coding related
I didn't do anything to the drive except reboot. I don't have a linux installation handy to try gpart, but I have tried windows equivalents. The problem is that they all see the partition as perfectly normal with no errors. It is only windows that doesn't recognise the formatting.
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Not exactly coding related
Ok, so I have a weird problem that baffles me, maybe some of you can help.
I have a 400GB harddrive. It is split into 3 different partitions, 1 holds WinXP, one holds Win 7, one holds my media files.
I was in the process of moving over to Win 7, slowly mind you, so most of my day-to-day data is on the winXP partition.
All of a sudden, the WinXP partition reads as unformatted to windows. Bios will boot off it up to the point that Windows takes control, then it bluescreens and resets. The Win 7 partition reports it as unformatted. Partition Magic installed on the Win 7 reads the partition correctly, says it's NTFS formatted, will resize it, but windows still reports it as unformatted. If I put it in another machine as an external drive it reports as unformatted but the other two partitions work as normal.
I'm at a loss as to how to recover the contents of that partition. Any ideas?
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RE: Together, we can find a cure
Taking ANYTHING written in the Daily Mail at face value is foolish in the extreme. After all, the article even includes the 'bendy bananas' nonsense as a reason to criticise the EU, which was debunked years ago. Reading the article carefully, what appears to have happened is that someone asked for a ruling on a specific advertising claim he said he wished to place on a bottle of water, and the ruling came back that it would not be allowed. No new laws or regulations are involved here, just an advisory on wether this claim is allowed under existing laws.
Of course, nowhere in the article does it actually tell you precisely what this proposed claim was, just that it involved something to do with water and dehydration.For all we know, he could have been claiming that this specific brand of water is the only way to cure dehydration.
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RE: Bad website design
I called in to their office today, to check how my application is going, as I haven't heard from them. I commented on how poorly designed/coded the form is, and the lady replied 'Yes, it is slow isn't it?'. I think that's the least of their worries regarding the site.
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Bad website design
I have just applied on-line for a flat with Chester and District Housing Trust (Website: www.chesterhomechoice.org). I lost count of the number of times I said WTF while filling in this form, so I thought I would share it with you guys for your amusement.
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RE: Win2k Task Manager suddenly borderless
Thanks. This also explains to me how it happened in the first place, must have double-clicked without realising it.
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RE: Win2k Task Manager suddenly borderless
Hmm, border has mysteriously reappeared, but I've still no idea why it
went away. Any insight on this would be appreciated for future reference -
Win2k Task Manager suddenly borderless
Odd question, I know, but the border on my Task Manager seems to have
disappeared, I have no idea why or how. Any of you know how to get it
back?