Posts by Jolyon

Police send Reg hack CRB check database

Very capslocky

Flagging is pointless as either someone should be allowed to export that much data or they shouldn't - no one will react to a notification that someone has done something they are permitted to do and by the time it has been emailed to a journalist it is far too late.

Similarly password protecting an Excel file is next to useless and near-impossible to enforce.

Putting information to which there should be limited access in contact with tools that are designed for the easy dissemination of information (and both SMTP email and Excel are really very good at this) is the problem and removing the convenience these tools bring is bound to affect how people work - there's really no point doing anything that doesn't.

Responsibility

"Why emailed to El Reg? Because of that goddamned autocomplete feature. Microsoft, in their drive to dumb down the computing experience for Joe and Jessie Sixpack, have a nasty habit of implementing features like this without thought for the downside"

Now I'm as happy to blame Microsoft for crap things as the next commentard but I'd consider it beneath me to slate them for my failure to to take responsibility for my own actions.

It's a sodding useful feature; like you I wouldn't turn it off.

And, as the article points out it was Novell's email software that was being used. Even if Microsoft invented Autocomplete of addresses (did they? doubt it.) it is a bit much to blame them because another firm copied it and then an unlucky wally failed to check what it had done.

Vendors bet on England World Cup fail

Hmm

So if you have the funds you could buy the kit and lay the England win for the same price on a betting exchange.

Free stuff _unless_ England wins seems like a better option.

Must be possible to finesse this further.

Lib Dems demand niceness, ignore technology

Is it really that important?

Stupid idea, sure, but sufficient to affect a voting decision?

Not a big enough deal for me.

Tories put ID cards, Contactpoint on manifesto hit list

Thanks

Thanks for responding and explaining your standpoint.

Still reads like a puff piece though, unfortunately.

Yesterday's opener

"The most remarkable thing about the Labour Party manifesto ... is how unconcerned it appears to be with civil liberties"

- something the Labour party would not want people to be talking about - is considerably more negative than today's

"The Conservative Party Manifesto, published today, is a slap in the face for all those who have been claiming that there is very little difference between the two major parties when it comes to policy."

- something the Conservative is very keen indeed to stress.

Not that I believe the Reg has any obligation to be unbiased.

Microsoft slams coffin lid on Vista

Behave

'Coffin lid', 'killed', 'left entirely at the mercy of hackers'

All a bit OTT.

Helpful to remind people that support for Vista with no service packs is coming to an end - anyone getting an SP on will be grateful of it anyway - but no need for the misleading spin.

iPhone 4.0: iAds, multitasking, and 98 tweaks

Everyone has iAds

My grandma and my dog 'ol blue (iAds iAds iAds)

The pope has got it and so do you (iAds iAds iAds iAds iAds )

C'mon everybody we got quilting to do (iAds iAds iAds iAds iAds)

We gotta break down these baricades, everyone has iAds!

But is it good iAds ior bad iAds?

Microsoft roasted for Office 2010 standards FAIL

Taken for a Ride? Leave them all behind.

"This decision adds to the rationale as to why people need to simply leave Microsoft Office behind"

Agreed.

But for many people MS dragging its heels on this won't be enough to push them into actually making that step.

And whatever format MS does support will remain a de facto standard as a result keeping the balance on the side of continued MS Office use.

I can't see any business deciding to move away from the product that is most likely to guarantee them and their documents compatibility with their clients / suppliers / applications.

New Reg comments system ready to launch

Need more voting options

It's all well and good being able to vote posts up and down but in the quantum era I think something more multidimensional would better fit the flavour of our time.

When we can also vote things top, bottom, strange and charming then we'll truly have a service that reflects its users.

Dell bars Win 7 refunds from Linux lovers

Shill schmill

No one is restricting your right to choose.

What you are objecting to is not getting something non-standard for as low a price as something standard.

If Dell or Microsoft are not meeting their obligations then they can be made to come into line - this is a matter of law not principle.

Cheaper

Its simply cheaper to buy them already assembled *with Windows bundled*.

My, that is a viable choice for the average consumer!

Do you honestly think the average consumer wants to install an OS? Phones aren't sold like that . . .

Do you honestly think PCs would be cheaper if Dell supplied theirs without Windows?

So what's the difference between no OS and and OS that will disappear when you install a new OS?

They payment to Microsoft irks you?

Then buy one of the many machines that is available without paying MS anything. You will pay more but you will be doing the world good.

The average consumer wants Windows

Whether or not they should, they do.

That is precisely why Dell does this.

It might be wrong, it might be stifling innovation, it might make you stamp your feet but it is true.

You expect me to buy services from you?

If you thought Dell were worth buying before why not continue to recommend them now? I can't beliieve they were only on your suppliers list because you believed their business practices were exemplary.

I won't buy services from someone who gives bad advice because of a point of principle; don't assume that your issues are my issues.

Maybe someone should bring teacher an Apple.

That isn't evil business ripping off hard done by schools that's an idiot making a bad purchase.

"We bought a load of things that obviously wouldn't do what we wanted and then had to buy more stuff to get the job done."

@ BigYin

Do we need consumer choice (to a greater extent than it exists already) or is standardisation more of a benefit? Discuss.

-

@ whichevertard said that in a free market we could buy PCs without operating systems, we can buy PCs without operating systems now. Some manufacturers would always choose to include a standard operating system with each machine so that a) It would do something without the purchaser having to install an OS and b) so that they coudl offer support knowing that the OS at least was a known factor.

Virgin Media to demo 200Mb/s broadband tomorrow

Folk you

If you keep your crops and animals (would love to know what you personally produce in this line BTW) then the towns and cities will buy from elsewhere - we already import a lot of food as I am sure you are aware.

The deal is not internet for food, it's internet for profit.

There might be a reasonable argument for placing broadband internet in the class of utilities that must be supplied to all but it is not currently the case hence the divide.

There's an election coming up, I do assume you'll be voting for a party that favours equal provision for all rather than one that favours letting markets decide these matters.

Manhen.

Microsoft cuts out paste

I very rarely use copy & paste on my phone

But when I do I really, really want it; would be incredibly frustrating not to have it.

Clunky or fiddly I could understand on a touch phone but absent is just not good enough.

Sky to pack pubs with 3D TVs

Disagree

Plenty of pubs survive on football audiences.

I am fortunate enough to have four pubs within a three minute walk of my house and one I visit principally for watching football. It is rammed for big club games and packed to the point of bursting for competitive England games.

On these occasions the crowd there easily outstrips the other three combined even if they offer good beer or live jazz or decent food.

I'm sure there are areas where the opportunity to watch televised football doesn't drive business in the same way that a good wine list or comfy sofas might but with a decent catchment area and a mixed potential clientele such as you'd get in most town centres or all across larger cities Sky can help good management keep a pub going.

I'll get you tickets at half that price

Or under one-sixth if I'm being fair which whoever sold you those wouldn't.

Six hundred quid is about a tenner short of my adult season ticket @ WHL

'Health and safety killjoys' kill cheese-rolling race

Stupidity

Every time I think people complaining about this country can't get more pathetic someone like this comes along to prove me wrong.

Carrier apathy depresses Google Phone outlook

Why?

Why would anyone care?

Brown promises Budget in a fortnight

On his watch

Agree he was there when this happened but suspect that rather like going to war with Iraq events would have been little different whoever had been holding the parcel when the music stopped.

Boom shock. A lack?

There was certainly a boom in house prices between 1997 and 2007.

And between 1997 and 2007 banks paid about £270 billion in bonuses in the UK.

You are right though that this didn't reflect any great boom in the mutual funds a lot of pensions are in and given that they pay bonuses whatever it may not reflect any boom of any sort anywhere. Bloody socialists.

And you're right that public sector pay did well in terms of percentage increase relative to private sector pay. I assume this lead to a great surge of the best talent from the private to the public sector in response to the riches available there 'cos that's how it works, right?

Apple yanks Wi-Fi detectors from iTunes

Same but different

So it's the same behaviour but it's not wrong when Apple does it as it is not yet a monopoly?

That's not *much* of a justification really, is it?

Asus will hit e-pad market this year

Psion?

Was that one of their niches?

In which case it must be time for someone else to come along with something to replace all those old Epoc / WinCE machines.

BBC confirms death of 6Music, slashes online budget by a quarter

BBC Charter

The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows—

...

(b)promoting education and learning;

(c)stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;

(d)representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities;

(e)bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK;

...

6 Music is a very good fit across all of these core requirements of the BBC Charter and as it is the sole reason I've bought four extra DAB radios for the house I'd say it is also succeeding in promoting the switch to digital.

I am very disappointed that culling rather than cost-cutting is seen as the solution for this station and it is hard not to be cynical about good BBC product being axed at a time when commercial interests in the same sector are struggling.

That speck overhead is the point

It's not a populist station and it is not on the mainstream broadcasting system.

It is however much loved by the people that do listen.

So it is not popular in the way British Rail was but it is popular in the way British Rail wasn't.

BBC to cull radio stations, halve websites in painful biz review

Yes, ditch R1 or R2

6 Music is easily the best music station we've ever had and fits the BBCs remit really well.

It would be a shame if it was abandoned leaving us at the whim of commercial interests.

Of all the organisations that might prefer quality over other concerns you'd have backed BBC radio.

Westminster politicos told to grasp Vista nettle

FUD?

I promise you I am not evangelising Microsoft products when I say that I do not accept that support costs remain more or less unchanged.

I have managed to get 1500 or so desktop machines running Linux into a area of UK govt. and it is not easy to justify costs. It is just not true to say "the difference between running an OSS operating system and a Windows operating system is licencing cost" - in a TCO model the OS licence cost is negligible and having a supported Linux desktop (or indeed server) OS is more or less the same in this respect as a Windows licence anyway.

As you say there will be MS only software in any non-tech organisation and so some form of windows will be running somewhere - with the attendant increased support costs from the loss of homogeny.

It is just about possible to make the numbers work if you place a stateless Linux OS into a setup that already has heavy investment in some form of application virtualisation - that gives you a reasonable reduction in the desktop system TCO which more than offsets the low extra support cost but anything more than what is effectively an embedded Linux in a thin client and it stops being something you can fit into a typical IT budget.

The reason this sort of thing doesn't happen is not some great conspiracy nor is it due to complete incompetence - good people who know their jobs and who often would enthusiastically welcome OSS cannot justify the switch in financial terms because there just isn't any great reduction in overall costs from dropping the OS licence fee.

Probably something in that

But once you are in a position where you have someone to beat up you find the price advantage of OSS is lost and price is seen as the key driver for OSS.

It is possible to make secure Windows systems and difficult to move to a Linux desktop without having to abandon at least some applications at least some of which will be critical.

I've been through this sort of exercise and ditching Microsoft is neither easy nor cheap however desirable it may be for all the reasons people seem to think are too obvious to state here.

World of Google zombies mistake news story for Facebook

Link cleaning

I don't know why I am trying to defend this but I'm feeling charitable this morning so ... going via a search engine does have the advantage of cleaning up poor typing a bit so 'facebok', 'facebbok' and 'facebokk' all produce results that link to the genuine facebook page.

Given the typing skills of some of these people and the prevalence of phishing these days it almost makes sense for them to behave this way.

Paris because she probably understands that entering something the wrong way can mean extra mess to clean up.

Elbow.

Arse location skills of users or unsuitability of product and arrogant, unhelpful, unwlecoming and patronising attitude of the people who evangelise it?

Wreck of 1930s flying aircraft carrier dubbed 'historic'

Good article, Reg.

There's definitely something alluring about these machines; I'm another who would love to see a full-sized version in flight.

I think one of my former colleagues from Berlin went to work for the German company mentioned in the article - there's still some mileage in the idea.

Spain to get Europe's first major-vendor smartbook

Old fashioned?

"I fucking hate this corporate assumption that people don't want their own storage."

We all want our own storage, no doubt about that.

But isn't putting a bit (or a lot) of storage in each device a bit last century?

I don't want my VM images on my phone or my backup set on my bedroom radio and I don't want my entire media catalogue on a portable web browser or whatever niche this machine would fill.

I'd expect to be able to stream to it from my home NAS (whether that's across my home network or over the internet) so I don't need to carry a hard drive full of duplicates of stuff around with me.

Arab conned into marrying bearded lady

Beer?

I am not an expert (in religions; I'm very good at beer) but I think booze would not be allowed.

Paris because she too revealed her hair to a man who subsequently treated her like sh­it.

Google forced to use humans to support Nexus One

Do you have any of those three phones you mention?

Or are you just flapping your, um, fingers and parroting the reviews and specification lists that you've read?

Your opinion that "[t]he Nexus One is superior to the iPhone in virtually every way" is of no use to anyone if you have not in fact used both.

Brits take iTablet moniker for 12in iPad rival

Interest peaked

Mine peaked at the title and has diminished significantly from there.

I hope being such a pedantard doesn't provoke a fit of ... temper from the moderatrix.

Paris because I enjoyed her version of Twin Peaks.

Who ate all the iPies?

Not fan friendly?

Fine by me.

I liked the Apple IIe and the new iMac all-in-ones look lovely but other than that I haven't been won over by any of their computers.

Until the iPod touch.

Which is great; genuinely easy to use and convenient - switches on and connects quicker than my phone, good enough email support, very good browser, some good news apps, social networking, a few games, streams media - all in all a near-perfect household gadget.

But a bit small.

So rigid brand loyalists might be disappointed but I'm delighted and I'd guess Apple won't actually *lose* any zealots with this product so they'll be pleased to pick up a few people who see this as something they'll actually use.

Steve Jobs uncloaks the 'iPad'

Misjudged? Fact? Or more arsewater?

Are the sales for this device disappointing then?

Or is it just tardity of the first order for you to suggest you have access to any 'facts' about consumer desire in this case?

You might be right about turkey though - suspect many will be bought at Christmas.

Yep, people want these

One of the big UK football websites included a missive on their correspondence page today which signed off with a comment along the lines of the new Apple thing looking very desirable.

If they can get the people who like Hello Kitty and Manchester United they can safely ignore the people who could discuss levels and types of multi-tasking in depth.

Apples and oranges?

I'm not sure they're really competing - not for my cash at least.

Courier seems to be about input and organisation where the iPad is targetting browsing and grazing.

I'm not sure I'd want to read a book on either but I definitely wouldn't want to be holding two screens to do it. On the other hand if I was porting a corporate application interface I'd want pen input and connectivity.

The iPad might replace my TV, stereo, DS and photo album; Courier would step in for the work laptop, diary, notepad etc

Of course MS may well have other tablet designs in development - Gates was pretty upbeat about the concept a while ago and they've never abandoned it.

Made of arsewater

I don't want multitasking to any greater extent than playing music while browsing.

I do want a decent OS but I suspect that's actually what has been provided.

I don't need to be able to touch type on it and don't want flash, java, a camera or more storage.

I can afford one and as a grown up I don't feel the need to be embarrassed myself by the name a company chooses for its product.

I don't claim my requirements to be those of every other potential purchaser of the thing, that'd just make me look like a spoiled, stupid berk but for me it looks like something that'd get some use around the house.

I'd use one if I had one

I already spend quite a bit of time surfing, emailing etc on an iPod touch (which I don't use for music unless it is to stream it from a home NAS to a stereo with a dock).

The same interface witrh bigger screen is just a winner for me.

I don't care at all about Apple control of the device, I doubt the lack of multi-tasking will bother me and not having flash is a minor irritant at worst as I already block almost all of it in Firefox and seldom miss it.

There may well be far too many Apple zealotards but that doesn't mean they can't make good products and credit where it is due, this thing looks like it will have a role in my house.

All the way up to 91?

What TF does

"It looks like ... [an] iPhone - although with a more rectangular aspect ratio"

mean?

The answer is none. None more right-angled.

New music file aims to sink piracy using blogs and Twitter

Well at least someone's having a go

I'm not convinced it will work but it's one approach to resolving the conflict between music downloaders and music makers.

Obviously it's DRM - it's just DRM that they hope some people may want or at least tolerate.

And as ever it won't be the opinions of us regtards that decide the success or failure of the plan.

Vomit cannon to protect vessels from pirates, paparazzi

Slightly late

So I'm a tardytard but couldn't these be mounted on sharks to extend the range beyond 4km?

Apple's 'latest creation' debuts January 27

I already have a laptop and a phone...

Well of course not everyone does have both those thing - amazing as such a claim might seem.

My parents for example have a wall-mounted telephone and an old desktop that my dad uses and that's it.

My mum would welcome and easy-to-use more or less foolproof way of getting on the internet that she could use from the sofa. She doesn't want a laptop, she hasn't used a physical keyboard since she was typing up house details on an electric typewriter in the 80s so she wouldn't be put out by an on-screen one.

The same would go for my sister whose phone is no smarter than it needs to be to do text messages and who has a Mac desktop already but might like something smaller that can be passed around the family (individual logins and all that palaver being less relevant now everything her lot want is stored in the cloud).

Personally I might buy one instead of a new laptop - certainly I will consider one instead of the netbook I had been thinking of getting and there's no way an e-book is making it onto my shopping list while this product is in the offing.

It's a (yet to be confirmed!) consumer device and probably won't be marketed at the tech savvy - although I suspect many will still buy one.

There are plenty of people for whom this is not an obvious falls-between-two-stools product.

I think I'd use it

"my question remains, why do I need it?"

Well 'need' is a stretch, of course.

But I do find myself using my iPod Touch around the house a lot for email, non pub-based social networking, web browsing, pulling music from a little NAS etc to the point where I haven't actually switched on the laptop for more than a week.

A touch screen handheld is proving more useable than a portable PC with keyboard or a remote control media box / web browser.

And a larger version of the same basic device with an expanded on-screen keyboard (I now type faster on my iPod Touch than on my Nokia E71) would be something I'd like.

A bigger screen would also make the iPlayer / 4OD and news apps like the various broadsheets provide more attractive.

I can see one of these becoming the default device for the living room / bedroom.

But it would have to hit a pretty good price point before I'd pick it over a netbook type product (the iPod Touch having proved to be the first thing good enough to have taken over from my Psion Netbook in fact).

IE6 exposed as Google China malware unpicked

Can confirm

The sky is indeed not blue today here in northern Europe.