* Posts by Neil Hunt

19 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Oct 2007

Valve's Half-Life

Neil Hunt
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Re: Arrrg!! etc

Me too! I still have the card floating around. A Voodoo graphics accellerator card will come back and be useful again won't it? My newer video card only has about a Gig of memory more than the accellerator!

;-)

The problem with Foxtel’s call for NBN copyright cops

Neil Hunt

Re: 'Kim Williams of Foxtel...'

He is now, yep.

Browsium rescues HMRC from IE6 – and multimillion-pound bill

Neil Hunt
Unhappy

I'm not sure I understand

So let me see if I understood this article. The Aspire Consortium quoted roughly £35 million to upgrade 85000 desktops to Windows 7 and IE8/9. I assume this included hardware costs.

Browsium came along and said, hey, we can upgrade you NOW to IE8 by installing a plugin on every desktop so that your old applications will still run, but we won't upgrade you now to Windows 7 and IE9 as it would break too many applications.

I have a few questions:

a) Who is going to support their XP environment once Microsoft stop doing so?

b) When are they going to upgrade their desktop hardware and Windows version?

c) When are they planning on fixing their applications so that they're not so locked in to a particular browser?

In the end, they're still going to need to spend the £35 million pounds or whatever it is to upgrade their hardware and OS.

Anyway, it's the start of the long weekend here (it's 7pm and I'm still in the office in Perth), so I'm off.

Champagne at CSIRO after WiFi patent settlement

Neil Hunt
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Re: Neil

Yep, you're right, silly me.

Neil Hunt

$1US = $1.04AU at present. The Australian dollar has been at or above equity with the US$ for about 18 months now.

Neil Hunt

Re: Question

According to the ABC radio reports this morning, the patent expires at the end of next year. It was issued on January 23, 1996. Patent number is 5,487,069, at least for the US. Apparently the CSIRO failed to get patents for Russia, China and India, but the next target is European companies.

Google's 'Instant' search engine goes mobile

Neil Hunt
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Ugh

Surely it's not only me that switched it off. It was irritating, but the worst bit was forcing me to have only 10 results, when I've had 100 for donkeys.

'Minimalist, whimsical' Google search given Bing-like overhaul

Neil Hunt
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Change for changes sake

I hates it.

Whatever happened to the email app?

Neil Hunt
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Ahh mutt!

Until I started in a new company which enforces Notes, I used Mutt exclusivly. Now it's only at home. I love it.

Transformers up for seven Razzies

Neil Hunt
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Father of the year candidates, clearly

The whole point of being a Dad is taking your own kids out, not passing them off to others to raise for you. Case in point, I'm taking my little girl to see one of The Wiggles shows in a few weeks, not palming her off on some other poor sap.

Google launching its own navy?

Neil Hunt
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@AC

Radio Goooogle

Boom!

3,400 votes vanish from Florida election

Neil Hunt
Paris Hilton

Obviously...

... they're just getting in early before the big one happens in November.

Was it just me, or was GWBs speech at the convention remarkably similar to the Nashi literature before the Russian election?

http://lrtranslations.blogspot.com/2007/02/nashi-election-broadsheets.html

A lot of things like: "When he takes office next January" and very similar language.

....

Paris, because I don;t think she'd be able to keep track of the ballots either, but at least she'd look good trying.

Now Hollywood is chasing UK downloaders

Neil Hunt
Joke

@Dark Hippo - "alcohol isle"

Now there is a place where I would like to spend some time!

Vista 'perfection' dream over for iPhone?

Neil Hunt
Paris Hilton

Vista and stableness

I've been using Vista for a few months now - Ultimate 64bit - and I find that it is a heck of a lot more stable than XP SP2 (or 3). It's also highly usable.

I also have an iPhone that is a seriously good piece of kit.

I pay my bills by supporting Solaris servers and writing open source software, so I don't exactly qualify as an MS fanboi (or a fanboi of any description for that matter)

Paris cause I don't think she's a fanboi of anything - well except making dirty movies.

Security shocker: 75% of US bank websites have flaws

Neil Hunt
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My bloody bank

Uses a bloody four NUMBER passcode to get in to the online banking, and the most god awful keypad to enter it. The keypad is in Java, randomises the numbers, and makes you wait up to a second between mouse clicks. Nothing like a good old peak over the shoulder to get your details.

I've complained to them several times. I've sent them the PCIDSS documents, and still it's the same bloody thing.

They also email you your statement, and then have the nerve to charge me $2.50 if I want it posted to me.

Fortunately I only use this account for my savings, so can avoid ever logging in to the website, and if I'm desperate, I'll call them.

Grover

After Debian's epic SSL blunder, a world of hurt for security pros

Neil Hunt
Paris Hilton

Thanks for the notification

Quite some time ago, I stopped reading things like the Secunia mailing lists or Bugtraq, as I am only the TL and not the admins responsible for this sort of thing. I have too much to do in my day without needing to worry about this sort of thing. Perhaps I need to go back to reading these lists - or at least the weekly summaries - so that when my admins don't find out about such a critical bug, I can "let them know".

I'm about to walk out of my office, and have a word with the "security" admin, and find out his plans for patching the 42 servers with multiple vulnerable certificates on each. Fortunately most are generated in house, but there are a few that will require new certs from the authorities.

It's good to know that The Register is still an excellent site for pertinent info in this rapidly moving IT society.

Paris, because well I think even she would know about this sort of vuln if it was her very well paying job to know about it.

Oh Michael, can you please come in here, NOW?!

...........................................

Five misunderstood Vista features

Neil Hunt
Flame

Vista - I like it

Now I'm not an MS fanboi, in fact I'm a Unix team leader with many years of Unix and Linux experience, but I went and purchased 64bit Vista a few weeks back to install on the newly built computer, after having used Vista Business on my laptop at work for quite some months, and you know, I quite like it.

I think the interface is excellent, I like the search feature in the start menu, I like that I can easily start apps as an admin without needing to run as an admin all the time. I like that I can restrict my three year old to only a cpl of applications, and limited computer sessions - he likes the Nick Jr website. I like it.

I find it fast, responsive, and overall a lot more usable than XP.

I love Media Centre as well.

Neil

BOFH: Shiny new computer room

Neil Hunt
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Top quality

Thanks Simon for giving us a quality story!

Kiwi brewery offers lifetime's beer for stolen laptop

Neil Hunt
Joke

Australian vs New Zealand beer

While it's true that the vast majority of Australian beer is utter rubbish, we do have a fantastic micro brewery industry - certainly here in Western Australia.

At least our beer isn't as bad as the Septic Tanks!

Why is American beer like sex in a Canadian canoe?

'cause they're both f*ing close to water.