Posts by TeeCee

HTC Desire

Re: Triband?

HTC sez:

Network Bands

Europe:

HSPA/WCDMA: 900/2100 MHz

GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz

Asia Pacific:

HSPA/WCDMA: 900/2100 MHz

GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz

I'd take that as a "no" then.....

RSA says it fathered orphan credential in Firefox, Mac OS

Re: Hey!

Try telling Google, who've plastered "Google groups" all over the linked thread.

I guess that someone must have taken their dibs off Usenet briefly so it belongs to Google now.

AOL to sell or shutter Bebo

Eh?

You really think that the sort of people who actually do useful stuff like bridges, sewers, skyscrapers and high speed trains aren't doing it 'cos they're tied up playing silly buggers on Facebespace?

It's the "B Arkers" we're missing here, so I don't think that human endeavour is in danger of coming to a stop. Now you mention it though, my telephone's a bit dirtier than usual.....

Microsoft roasted for Office 2010 standards FAIL

Hoist by their own petard.

If MS had just stuck with .doc (which world + dog understands) and provided read/write compatibility with OO, everyone would have been happy apart from a few diehard standards nazis.

By shoving out .docx they've manged to comprehensively piss off just about* everybody. Anyone else as gobsmacked as I am by how long it takes the compatibility addon for Office 2k3 and below to read a .docx? Presumably it does this on its hands and knees, picking up individual characters with its teeth.

If anyone out there reading this is using a newer Office version, do the world a favour and turn off the "x" format output as it's shit. Thank you.

* 8 out of 10 chair throwing monkeys, who expressed a preference, said that they thought .docx was great.

T-Mobile bribes fanbois to trade iPhone for...Windows Mobile 6.5

Accurate analogy?

Of course your Kia will work quite happily for as long as you want it to at minimal cost, while with the Merc you'll be paying a never ending series of eye-wateringly large bills.

Than again, maybe the analogy holds here too?

Oh.....hang on....HTC hardware? This one's busted.....

Microsoft phones coming next week?

Confused? You will be.....

"... that could lead to considerable market confusion...."

A cynic might be tempted to suggest that this is in fact the whole purpose of the exercise.

Chinese hunters capture 'yeti'

Fun with journalists.

1) Capture a furry animal. Any will do, but one that's not commonly seen in public is best.

2) Shave it.

3) Release where it's likely to be seen / caught.

4) Run a sweep on what name the world's press is going to pin on this one.

5) Get coat. (Unless it's already missing due to the actions of the mysterious and hairless "mythical, coat-ravaging hell-beast" - exclusive pictures in late edition).

iPad security broken in less than 24 hours

Re: getting stuff for free

"... these subscriptions do not provide a reasonable value proposition to the user?"

Isn't that "people won't pay for stuff they're used to getting for free" translated into weasel words?

Are you in marketing?

Discovery blasts off to ISS

"Metcalf-Lindenburger"?

Can I get fries with that?

Microsoft pulls plug on Intel's Itanic

Well nearly, anyway.

"Basically, IBM was about the only one to not drop chip development (of the PowerPC/POWER line)."

Who's feeling smug for sticking it out and not drinking the Intel kool-aid now then?

What'll be hysterically funny in the not too distant future will be the sight of HP running around like headless chickens when Intel decide to cut their losses.....

Computer pioneer and Gates mentor Ed Roberts dies

Re: 19602?

I guess someone roughed out a timeline for this story in Excel.

El Reg April Fools 2010

@MobiFan

I like to think that that one was posted using the new iAprilFool standard from Cupertino which omits the midday cutoff, as it is outmoded in an iWorld that cuts across iTimeZones.

Firefox plans fix for decade-old browsing history leak

Re: Excellent idea!

That's quite easy to implement too.

Simply replace the jscript engine and the flash plugin with something that drops your "Crappy Web Design" logo prominently onto the page when either is invoked.

Ofcom asks for dibs on Olympic DAB stations

Giving it up after the event?

Is that 'cos Ofcom reckon that England doesn't stand a cat in hell's chance of getting the World Cup in 2018 or is it that Footballing events of global significance are organised by smarter people who are more efficient in their use of the airwaves?

Apple files 'in your face' iPhone patent

Obvious question.

As the iPhone is the inveterate willy-waver's penis substitute du jour, what sort of person goes around with one strapped to their head?

DIMENSIONAL PORTAL INCURSION AT THE LHC!

I know how this one ends.

In the midst of the doom and flickering lights, to the background accompaniment of screaming, the crackle of gunfire and the occasional THUD of a grenade, an elderly woman in a pinny wanders into the lab, towing something behind her.

She wanders around, carefully studying the skirting boards. After a while she selects a wire, seemingly at random and pulls it from the wall. She then plugs in her "Numatic Henry" vacuum cleaner and switches it on.

Suddenly, every single electronic device in the entire complex ceases to work as one. The dimensional portal winks out and the lights come back on. Humanity is saved!

Cash-strapped trolley dollies in nude calendar protest

Now I'm confused.

Where the fuck am I supposed to send my splenetic, foaming mouthed, unholy twat-o-tronic turdspurt of righteous indignation at the filth on offer in the, er, Daily Mail?

"Air Comet went titsup..."

The second photo supports that, although the first would seem to indicate that there's a bit of titsforward in there too.

How come I never get fly on airlines that have top totty like that as cabin crew? I always seem to fly "Air Dungeons and Dragons" judging by the plentiful supply of Gorgons and Battleaxes I encounter.

AMD tempts gamers with multi-monitor Eye candy

"...how much it might set you back."

Doesn't really matter. If you can run to lashing out on six decent matching monitors and a proper mounting system for them to go with it, the card'll be pocket change.

New Reg comments system ready to launch

Oh dear.

".......if you're not happy, we'll do our best to remedy matters....."

I'm afraid that bit gave it away rather early doors for me. I just couldn't for the life of me figure out why the f*** you'd go straight to that position from "suck it up, arsehats" without at least experimenting with just stuffing your fingers in your ears and going "lalalala" whenever we complained.

I like the very wide comments section though and it should stop those pesky formatting snafus whenever anyone posts a long url or title, keep it up!

Mobile calls to get much cheaper - probably

Finding the 800m quid.

3 gave you the answer: "more unlimited bundles".

Those'll be the ones where the vast majority of the subscribers don't use anywhere near the capacity they're paying a shitload for each month and the minority that try to find that the actual value of "unlimited" is rather less than they had assumed.

Italian toads predicted L'Aquila earthquake

"Explain THAT, science"

Cat's have really good hearing.

To a cat, your Ford Focus / BMW 318i / Maserati Quattroporte / whatever sounds subtly different to all the other Ford Foci / BMW 318i's / Maserati Quattroportes / whatevers out there.

Cat associates sound of approaching car (which can be detected from a considerable distance away - see the first point) with your return.

Cat learns that greeting your approach is more likely to result in affection and / or grub than remaining on the sunny end of the sofa.

Reward reinforcement is a powerful behavioural training tool and, whether you planned to or not, you have trained your cat to do this.

Here's a better "get rich quick" plan.

This one also removes the slight inconvenience of being dead and thus unable to enjoy your new-found wealth.

Patent the concept of earthquake predicting frogs and then sue God for infringement.

Italian Toads can predict earthquakes?

Quick, somebody ask Berlusconi when and where the next big one's going to be.

Associated Newspapers, GMG to pool newsrooms

I only have one thing to say.

Be careful what you make jokes about, someone in the dead tree side of the business might take you seriously in their endless quest to reduce costs at all, er, costs....

Are you a 'supertasker'? Probably not

Could be worse.

Could be Belgians. SIngletasking seems to be a bit of challenge there as they somehow manage to make a right horlicks of driving while not doing anything else.

Superneologisms.

So, if you are an Australian bloke driving along with a jar of sauce in your lap, does that make you a "Supertanker"?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/19/pasta_sauce/

Microsoft teams with Google in name of privacy

Re: actually

Swings and roundabouts really.

I wonder just how on message Google, MS and others would be were the US thinking of addressing data access for businesses rather than just government agencies? You know, something like the sort of Data Protection legislation kicking around in Europe with penalties for leaking private data, control over what you may and may not hold, a prohibition on giving / selling it to world + dog without the permission of the data owner, etc?

IIRC that the current situation across the pond is that if a company leaks sensitive personal data, only certain states oblige it to even bother telling anyone. I never cease to be amazed at the Yank obsession with what power their government has over them while they happily let the corporate world get away with murder.

We have almost the exact opposite of this with draconian restrictions on corporate data use while governments act as if they are above the law (and usually get away with it). Somewhere in the middle of that lot is the correct approach.

London council loses thousands of kids' details

Bad hair day?

You know, terrible Barnet.

The flak jacket please.

Your internet policy sucks, US tells Aussies

Wheelspin / TORUM

Hang on a minute. Surely if you stick an effing great V8* through a live axle on something with no weight over the rear wheels, wheelspin is practically guaranteed?

Is this supposed to be a way of screwing additional tax^H^H^Hfines out of Ute drivers?

*Ideally one with more litres than can be easily carried by a large german bird at the Oktoberfest.

Woman finds Romanian living in shed

"no times at all"?

Sounds to me like you need a better shed, they're obviously being put off by the poor quality accomodation you're offering.

I once owned a house with a crap leaky shed and nobody lived in that, so it must be true.

BBC ices launch of free iPhone news app

Optimisation.

Of course, silly me. Providing a seperate access mechanism specifically to keep iPhone users happy rather then telling them to use the in built browser (so good it provides the Real Internet Experience, remember?) and maintaining this system in parallel with the one used by everyone else is a valuable use of the BBC's resources.

Unfortunately, the new BBC charter as of 1st Jan 2007 gives them a handy "get out of jail free" card here: Section 4 "Public purposes", point f: "...helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies...". So if its new and a "communications technology" they're entitled to piss money on it.

Probe spots Pac-Man on Saturnian Death Star

Bloody Banksy!

He gets everywhere doesn't he? Even if he denies it was him, it won't stop a couple of enterprising lads carefully sawing Mimas into pieces and flogging it on eBay.

Mine's the one with the cans of buntlac in the pocket.

Radio lobby 'hides' 2m analogue receiver sales

Not so.

I bought a clock radio a while back. I've never used the radio bit as I wanted a clock.

Many years ago, I had a mains powered electric[1] alarm clock. It was a "Westclox" product IIRC. Try finding one now at a sensible price that doesn't have a bloody radio built into it.

[1] i.e. one that wakes me up without my having to remember to wind it or change the batteries[2].

[2] I'd settle for a battery powered one if it provided some indication of the battery state rather than just giving me an unexpected lie-in once in a while[3].

[3] i.e. whenever it's seriously bloody important that I be up on time. c.f. Sod's Law.

Lords: Analogue radio must die

Oh, really?

"To go back on this policy now would risk turning confusion into an utter shambles"

@The house of Lords: Try sticking your fucking heads out of the window and having a look outside once in a while. In the real world an "utter shambles" would be an improvement on the current situation.

Apple uncloaks deep details of its 11 iPad apps

That's handy.

In future it'll be easy to tell the mere berks from the complete arsehats:

Mere berk: Sharp-suited git who spouts a load of cobblers to the accompaniment of a PowerPoint slide deck.

Complete arsehat: Sharp-suited git who spouts a load of cobblers to the accompaniment of a presentation from his iPad. This peppered with such phrases as "I'll just connect your projector to my iPad", "I'll just open the presentation on my iPad", a learned discourse on how much better / easier / more cool than PowerPoint it is and a certain amount of foot shuffling when someone asks for a copy of the presentation....

Video giant embraces Flash-phobic iPad with HTML 5

Too damned right!

There's an obvious mind-numbing stupidity here.

Let's just suppose for a moment that Ogg Theora did not, as yet, exist. HTML5 would, of course, implement H.264 as a "no brainer" and all browsers would natively support H.264. Now explain how writing Ogg Theora in that world would be anything other than an exercise in futility.

Now take the world we actually have and think about the future. Yes, we really should have stuck with plugins (aka. the devil we know) rather than adding bloat* to browsers.

Some standards exist to ease cooperation, some only serve to stifle innovation despite the intentions of their authors. I believe that HTML5 video is firmly in the latter category.

*Also, feel free to substitute the words "increased attack surface" for the word "bloat".

Million pound Usenet indexer found guilty

That defence.

"......mainly used to search for Usenet discussions rather than binary content."

The fact that they called themselves "Newzbin", an obvious play on "NewsBin" (to quote the wobblypedia[1]: "one of the first news clients dedicated to downloading binary content from Usenet"), is a bit of a giveaway here.

Sawing off one of the few legs your defence has to stand on right at the start? Not a good idea.

[1] I make no apologies.

Brits still getting bull from broadband providers

Swallow on afterburners?

I think you'll find that jet-propelled swallows use "reheat" on this side of the pond.

Apple pries iPad moniker from Fujitsu

I was intrigued.

As to what a "commercial-kitchen Bump Bar unit" was.

I suppose it's called that because "incredibly cheesy old keypad, as used by Noah" doesn't get the punters through the door.

Anglia defends Oxburgh's eco network ties

Re: Whom do you suggest?

I'd have thought that a respected Statistician* would be ideal. You'd probably need one with a proven ability to keep a straight face when presented with something seriously amusing though.

* i.e. from a branch of science that has a very real and significant bearing on the subject, but with no axe to grind either way.

MSI tells 97,000 customers to 'Read The F***ing Manual'

MSI forums != MSI support.

One thing worth pointing out here is that MSI's support forums are a community effort and not run by "official" MSI support, although they are affiliated.

"The administrators and moderators of this Forum are not employed or paid by MSI, but are volunteers; we are just users like yourself. There are a small number of MSI support staff who do post here, but you are not in direct contact with MSI Support here. If you need to communicate directly with MSI, you should look here: How to contact MSI.". I guess that TFM isn't the only thing not being R'd here.

They're a very helpful* bunch, but anything that ends up being diagnosed as an actual product failure obliges you to go and register an official call with MSI support.

So, all those calling for whoever was behind this to be sacked, this would be a tad difficult as MSI would have to hire them first.

*Although woe betide any n00b who asks for help without reading the posting guidelines and including all the information requested therein in their request.

Steve Jobs spotted not hating Eric Schmidt

FYI.

Anyone dressed in oh so cutting edge expensive designer crap isn't rich and influential enough not to give a flying f*** what everyone else thinks.

Steve and Eric are rich and influential enough not to give a flying f*** what major Western Governments think, let alone the likes of us down here at "sticky things they found on the sole of their trainers" level.

Beijing erects giant pong-away sprays at rubbish dumps

Re: Slough, anyone?

I suppose that when they put an evil smelling sewage works in Slough they used the "Urban Regeneration" budget to pay for it?

Adaptec's caching card uses MS code

Re: Re: How long will they last

"It may be unusual to have a computer component with a finite lifetime......"

Those MTBF figures quoted on just about abso-bloody-lutely everything. What are those for then?

Everything has a finite life. Some things just have one that's so long that obsolescence tends to preceed failure.

Segway + motorbike = futuristic dorkmobile

Re: Viz.

No. The Fanny Magnet is the "Satsuma Castanet XR4 Turbo" I think you'll find....

Times websites want £1 a day from June

Priceless.

Well, it is at the moment anyway.

The new keyboard's going to set me back a few quid though.

It'll save 'em money!

They can replace all the content with one page containing a Flash video of tumbleweeds blowing around with the wind whistling in the background.

It'd be a great gag and a right, royal shame that nobody would ever see it......

Lads from Lagos pose as US troops to snare unwary ladies

Not a lot they can do?

The US army saying that they aren't interested in going mob-handed to A.N. Other country to kick seven buckets of shite out some people who have pissed them off?

That's a first.

'Switch to Century Gothic to save the planet'

Yes, but.

I thought that, but it does specifically say that they've done it for email and most of such print on one page (or more usually the top 10 or fewer lines of one page) in any font at around the 10/12 point size. So this argument's moot, bar for the trivial case of the odd very log one that happens to be exactly the right length to throw a second page when printed in CG that would not have been thrown in Arial.

I'm more interested in how they (or whoever) found this. Presumably someone, somewhere printed off the same several thousand pages of text in umpteen different fonts, carefully measuring the ink use for each run. I guess that to save the planet you have to kill it a bit first....

I'm also a shade ticked off that the winner didn't turn out to be Comic Sans. The indignant flamefest around here at the serendipitous confluence of two pet hates prevelant amongst the assembled El Reg commentards (ecofiddling and Comic Sans) would have been a joy to behold.