Posts by Mark Simon

Norway mobilizes against IE 6

Modern?

"Norwegian web sites are campaigning to have users dump Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 for a modern browser."

I must have misread this. IE 7 and "modern" in the same article. Obviously put there for comedic effect.

Apple routs rivals in sat survey

Anything but Vista?

One obvious reason to be happy with Apple is that it doesn’t include Vista.

Microsoft SKUs Windows 7 clarity

OS X

Let’s see. I might go for OS X. No, wait. I want the advanced features so I’ll go for OS X. But I don’t want it to be too hard to use, so I’ll get OS X. Business or personal? Better get OS X just in case.

Etc

iPhone and iPod Touch dominate handheld web traffic race

Missed Metaphors

Loved the Missed Universe type metaphor. I suppose their hobbies are mainly traveling and meeting people and they’re all aiming for World Pieces. Perhaps, like the real thing, they all look good, but disappoint with their chosen talent.

I wonder where the horse race came in. Shouldn’t it have been a cat fight?

'Bart Simpson' punts Church of Scientology

Who cares?

The Simpsons has barely turned out a good episode this century. Maybe Scientology is all that keeps it going, because it sure isn’t quality.

Cartwright is, of course, entitled to use her own voice, and if it happens to sound like Bart Simpson, well, that’s the way it goes. I believe, however, that Fox is legally entitled to govern the use of the name.

Did Warner Brothers have anything to say when Mel Blanc used his voices to promote Amex cards?

US lawmaker wants health warnings on video games

Useless warnings

Clearly there must be a link between any activity which promotes or glorifies violence and violent or aggressive behaviour.

The link between brain dead adults and moronic behaviour, both in themselves and in their unfortunate offspring must be stronger.

What about all of those notices on cigarette packets that warn of a horrible death, or a life of misery? All they do is desensitize the user into ignoring any warning as a waste of space.

Sun MySQLers barred from Oz

Immigration Department

My understanding is that you have to fail an IQ test to work for Immigration in this country. They have a track record for moronic decisions which include deporting residents in error, rejecting legitimate entrants but accepting criminals, and generally making a dog’s breakfast of the country.

Hotmail users bitch and moan about new interface

Hidden Agenda

Seems to me that M$ is just trying to prove what it has always maintained: you get what you pay for. Fee web browser (Internet Exploiter), free web mail (NotSoHotMail), anybody who voluntarily relies on them is being punished for their ignorance.

Oddly, though, the competition don't seem to get the hint. They do insist on supplying a service or product that actually does a good job.

Google: Guinea pig brainwaves prove video ads 'compelling'

Whom are they trying to impress?

I suspect that the main target of these advertising gimmicks is the advertisers themselves. Any technique that cons the advertiser into thinking they’re onto a winner must be compelling enough for them to fork out a few more hard-earned dollars ...

Microsoft sued in China for black screen of death

Legal vs Moral Right

Obviously, M$ has a legal right to enforce its license. Hijacking and holding your system to ransom is nor normally considered a nice way to do it, and is probably illegal in most countries.

On the other hand, how many users over the world have been forced to pay multiple times for Windows? Buy a PC or laptop, you probably bought another copy of Windows. Replace your hardware, you probably bought Windows again. M$ has no right to complain about lost revenue.

Aren’t the real pirates the ones who ambush you, and demand your money?

eBay: don't come on our US site without protection

Not the First

I saw this sort of anti-competitive behavior some years ago during the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Because Visa was a major sponsor, you could not buy tickets with your Mastercard.

What sort of moron imagines that while you are on the phone, purchasing your tickets, you're going to rush down to your bank and pick up a Visa card?

Paris, because, well, it's Paris logic at work here.

Burned by Chrome - Fire put out

Invalid Contract

As far as I am aware, any contract that includes nonsensical or impossible requirements, such as

... by clicking reading this sentence you agree to give me all of your money, name your first-born after the Marx Brothers, end world hunger, resurrect Elvis and show Paris Hilton to be a sensible, intelligent and useful member of our society ...

automatically invalidates itself. Surely this must apply?

Homer Simpson's email address hacked

555 Numbers

The US 555 number was never official, though parts of it are left unused. AKA Klondike numbers, which the Simpsons episodes routinely use.

The Internet has example.net and example.com, both of which are reserved for this sort of thing. A few more interesting ones would be nice.

Australia, BTW, has reserved 7010 and 5550 in all states for fake phone numbers.

Almost half of malicious sites tied to 10 networks

Great Firewall of China

Here's an idea. Why don't we turn China's firewall backwards. That way, we're protected from all of their malware, and they can find out what's happening in the real world, including the rest of China ...?

Microsoft urges Windows users to shun 'carpet bombing' Safari

Firefox. Problem Solved

Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML

Attackers hose down Microsoft's Jet DB Engine

Sandbox

A while ago MS Access started to pop up a message about blocking harmful expressions. All that showed is that they have a flimsy approach to security and integrity.

All scriptable environments should have a sandbox mode, which removes all access to the outside world. That doesn't mean that you can't also have a non-sandbox mode which requires user interaction or digital certification. That's it, problem solved.

Spammers crack Gmail Captcha

The irony of it all ...

Are these the same spammers who invented image spam? When spam filters started using OCR, they started to distort the image to bypass this.

So, if I understand correctly, captcha is a technique used to disguise spam, and make it harder for humans to register. it is machine readable by spambots but not spam filters.

If I understand correctly.

Opera hits Microsoft with EC complaint

W3C

Microsoft is a member of the W3C. These are the people who actually make the relevant standards.

Now, either their rep sleeps through meetings, has a serious learning difficulty, or is some sort of double agent. Otherwise, why is it so difficult for a company the size of Microsoft to code things that everybody else seems to get right? Unless, of course, their coders are struggling with the tools they've been saddled with ...

World's oldest Roller goes for £3.5m

Let's see if I got this right ...

That's 3.5m for a very old used car with no Aircon, nor Air bags, no CD or remote central locking and has probably been round the clock a few times.

I'll be they saw the buyer coming in from a distance ...

Mozilla rubbishes IE Firefox security study

And the winner is ...

"In the three years since then, Microsoft has fixed 87 vulnerabilities in various flavours of IE while Mozilla has patched 199 vulnerabilities in Firefox products."

Or, to put in another way, Microsoft has yet to patch how many bugs, vulnerabilities and flaws?

China condemns high-tech outsourcing

Peaceful use?

".. satisfy China's demands for technological development and the peaceful use of space for the next 30 to 50 years"

Let's see if I got that right. The peaceful use of space for the next 30 to 50 years. After that, perhaps, we can expect what sort of use?

This emergency alert has been cancelled by Hotmail

Re: Not an idiot, just a student

... the difference being ... ?

Most students get an email account. Most people with Internet access get one or more free email accounts, usually with Web access. So, who needs to rely on Hotmail for emergency use?

Mark

Doomwatchers sound Windows and IE vuln alarm

Third highest?

"Secunia rates the vulnerability as "moderately critical," its third highest rating on a five-rung severity scale."

Alternatively the vulnerability could have been rated as "moderately uncritical", its third lowest rating on a five-rung scale ...

Mark

Microsoft Windows patent will spy for advertisers

Who would trust Microsoft?

I had to check the calendar to make sure this wasn't some sort of April fools' stunt.

Why would anybody want a company which seems to have cornered the market in security flaws let them anywhere their desktop?

And how would that be affected my Microsoft's own security software which should be stopping this kind of thing?

Mark

So what's in a URL? The Reg URL?

.co.uk, of course

One of the best things about The Register is that it's not American. While I would normally encourage the .com tld as a global presence, I think the .uk highlights the charm and the integrity of the site to those of us in the rest of the world (ie Australia).

Microsoft needs 'off switch'

I thought Apple inveted the tester-pays solution

Wne Apple was developing OSX, they also decided to charge for beta test copies. The trouble was that it didn't stop there. Those of us who then paid full price for version 10.1 found that we were still beta testing an unfinished product, and being asked to pay full price again for 10.2.