Posts by Clay Garland

Apple store detains teens for installing iPhone game

I know this is the reg, and the cool thing to do is to bash apple, but. . .

I've dealt with people who have done similar things to this in my hotel before. The event liekly went down like this, a store employee saw the teens doing this, and politely asked the teens to stop and they refused. The employee called to store manager who probably asked the teens to leave, and they refused to do so saying something none too clever like, "It's a free country." To which the store manager, like the jewish jeweler in snatch, should have replied, "Well it ain't free shop, now is it, so fuck off." The teens probably refused still, and that's when the store manager called the police to escort them from the building since they refused to go without confrontation.

Apple forbids Windows users from installing Safari for Windows

Probably not the first

company to make a minor error on their EULA.

Dreaded Blue Screen of Death mars some Leopard installs

All I know. . .

I have so far installed Leopard on 7 systems. 3 clean installs one Archive & install, and 3 upgrades. The three upgrades were on a 1.25 GHz eMac, a White G5 iMac, and a 20" New iMac. The three upgrades were to fairly standard machines with no hacks, but lots of varying types of software installed. All flawlessy installed in an hourish in most cases. The one A&I was a Mac Mini, after installing, then using migration assistant, everything worked fine. The three Clean installs were on a Powerbook G4, a G5 Tower, and a Mac Pro, the Powerbook took under an hour, the G5 about 30 minutes, and the Mac Pro, this is the first gen Mac Pro mind you, 13 minutes to install Leopard. So far I've had no problems with any of the installs.

AMD finally goes native with Barcelona

@ Nick

Perhaps they are slightly faster per clock cycle, and the integrated memory controller helps in some instances, but for server tasks, the FB Dimms rock, and there isn't enough of the antiquated MHz myth philosophy to talk away a 50% performance defecit. Give me any server related task, and I guarantee you that a pair of the 3.0 GHz XEONs will turn these new Spaniards into a smoking pile of burnt silicon. And don't start about how The 5300 series isn't a true Quad core, because the new Tigerton chips are supposed to come out this month. I love competition, and AMD chips used to eat Intels for lunch, but it ain't so anymore.

Wow.

I reall thought that AMD were going to put up a fight. Instead they release a part that's about 70% as fast as the one I got in my Mac 6 months ago.

Pee-powered battery unveiled

Apparently.

Judging by the name of the product, simply dropping a grogan on the battery, or popping it up the ol' fruit basket, and expecting a recharge is pie in the sky.

Xbox 360 Elite games console

Lots of fanboys in here.

I have a 360. I love Gears or War, Forza, PGR3's alright. But let's cut the bullshit. The PS3 is far more powerful than the 360. The problem is, that with the head start that microsoft got by rushing essentially undertested consoles out the door, in addition to the stupid easy API for the 360, has encouraged developers do develop for it first and the PS3 second. There have been very few games developed from the ground up for the PS3, resistance is one, and it is a stunner. Most of the PS3 games, unfortunately, are PC or 360 ports, based on DX, with sloppy code slapped on to make them run on the PS3. Those games are not optimized for the cell processor and thus run rather sluggishly. All things being equal, and looking at this from a power standpoint alone, the PS3 mops the floor with the 360.

LG J10HD home cinema system

I don't know.

Seriously, for nearly $600 US, I'd better be getting better than a 2.1. ESPECIALLY, considering that for a $300 permium I can get a Harmon/Kardon 7.1 Surround sound system with an HDMI Switching receiver and a 1080i DVD player. For now tho, I'll stick with my Yamaha 2600 and my Klipsch Speakers run through my 50" Hitachi display.

iPhone unlock procedure posted

My iPhone makes my life easier.

I have used probably fifteen mobiles for work. None, and I mean none, from the Pearl to some crappy old thing from LG have come close to what the iPhone does. With very little effort, I have a complete bash shell running in my iPhone. I no longer have to carry my laptop around to work on access points. I can simply get in proximity with my iphone and run whatever commands I need to to repair them on the fly. I can install software updates using FTP and manage all the settings from a device fits in the palm of my hand. Even though the things that I mention are not standard, they aren'y exactly hard to accomplish. I defy anyone to claim that their device does these things better than the iPhone.

El Reg lobs iPhone at Genius Bar

Well, I have not problems.

I have absolutely no problems with the iPhone. I can type very quickly, and I have rather large, sausage like fingers. The lack of 3G is not an issue as I am never too far away from a wireless network working in a hotel. THe only time I'm on Edge really is in my car, and then I MIGHT, press the stock ticker to see where my investments are while I'm at a stop light. Here's a news flash. . . Nobody gives a shit if you don't like the iPhone. How about you give us a substantiative article that tells us of ACTUAL problems with the phone, not things that you don't like because you're to goddamn cool to like them. Call me a fanboy, you are certainly entitled to your opinions, but I'm typing this on a Toshiba. It's just that this article pisses me off for being hollow drivel, not because it insults a product that I happen to use and like.

Apple iPhone

Here we go again

You can call me a fanboy whatever. I honestly don't care. I do like Apple products, but day in and day out, I am surrounded by a Wintel world. One, Apple have never claimed that it is the first internet phone, simply the first phone that displays the internet in a fairly standards compliant manner. Second, by changing the way we look at mobile devices, I'm simply saying that while it may be lacking a feature here, or a feature there, without being biased, it is hard to fault the phone at what it does do. I can bitch for days about what I hate about my blackberry, what I didn't like about my RAZR, but I can't really do that about my iPhone. My iPhone just does what I want it to without too much of a fuss. As far as touchscreens go, sure there have been touchscreens on other devices before. Have they been made out off high quality glass??? No, they have been crappy plastic. Has a phone or any other device for that matter ever had such a high resolution screen? No. The iPhone even easily logs into my exchange web access without so much as a peep, making that AJAX Exchange app I wrote useless. I have a hard time faulting the iPhone for what it does, I don't bother faulting it for what it doesn't do, because it was aimed at the center of the bell curve, not the fringes. That's all I'm trying to say.

Yup. . . Sausage fingers.

Yeah, I have relatively large hands. Large enough in fact, that if I lay the first knuckle of my thumb on the edge of the iPhone, the tip rests less than a centimeter from the opposite edge of the scree. Apologies for the wacky description, but I'm trying to give scope here. Needless to say, my fingers are big, but the iPhone does an incredible job of interpereting what I'm trying to say, and does an equally excellent job of fixing common spelling errors. The first message I typed from the phone was with no corrections whatsoever, I sent it as the phone interpereted it, I didn't check for errors. The second message, all I did differently was pause to access the punctuation menu which really becomes second nature after a few sessions. I really like everything about the iPhone so far. I'm never far enough away from an 802.11 network to want for fast internet access, and I love the way that the phone handles certain phone things like missed calls (it lists multiple call times), and voicemail. I'm no Apple shill, but to say that this is no better than current offerings is to be absolutely oblivious to the truth. Mark my words. This phone will change the way that we look at mobile devices forever.

Re: Pedantic

I can easily get punctuation. I was simply trying to type as fast as humanly possible on this tiny keyboard. I've seen far worse text come from blackberry users. At any rate, I don't see any problem using the iPhone for text, email, etc. If you don't like it, don't get it, but don't knock the thing until you've actually used one for a reasonable length of time.

Regards,

Clay Garland

The first

Id wager that im likely the first bloke to actually post to this thread from an iPhone as you can see I have no trouble at all typing on the keyboard an I am far mor sausage fingered than the author good day

Two year old's IQ on a par with Hawking

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking doesn't possess an uber-genius IQ. The reason that I think he may be such a prolific theorizer may be, sadly, that he has little else to do. I have a tremendous respect for Hawking having met him in person on two occasions, and I do not question his intellect. But where Einstein formulated his theories through a near magical relationship with time and space, Hawking seems to develop his through sheer persistence. Regardless, Hawking has long solidified his place in our history as one of the great thinkers, and rightfully so.

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking doesn't possess an uber-genius IQ. The reason that I think he may be such a prolific theorizer may be, sadly, that he has little else to do. I have a tremendous respect for Hawking having met him in person on two occasions, and I do not question his intellect. But where Einstein formulated his theories through a near magical relationship with time and space, Hawking seems to develop his through sheer persistence. Regardless, Hawking has long solidified his place in our history as one of the great thinkers, and rightfully so.

AMD chief condemns Intel 'abuses'

Ehem. . . Monopoly?

Last I checked, AMD were gaining market share until they got PWN3D by the Core and Core2 Architectures. Intel is playing fair, and AMD just lost the technology lead.

Leopard gets dose of Solaris ZFS

Well, I guess. . .

I guess this means that I will wait until Leopard to do a clean install.

Jobs chucks Leopard titbits to Apple masses

It's worth it.

Having wallowed in XP for so many years, and I still do run both platforms, I can safely say that it is completely worth it, for me at least, simply not to have had to deal with the rubbish Activation, WGA, system failure for as little as adding a hard drive or memory. I don't know if Vista is any better in this respect, but for the time being, I'm very happy with my OS.

140mph YouTube boy racer facing jail

I ran from the Cops. . . Once.

Once, while travelling to my grandparents' in Savannah, GA, at about 3 in the AM, saw a distant blinking in my rearview which I identified as police lights. Thinking to myself, "Those are way too far behind to be for me," I glanced down at my speedo. Lo and behold, I was doing 105. I thought to myself, hmmm, 35 over, that's probably a loss of license, and this is likely just a Crown vic chasing me, I put my foot in it knowing that the subie would probably do 160-170 easily. It did, and according to the speedo I hit 166, on a deserted interstate highway mind you. I zipped off the next exit a few minutes later and camped out in a dirty crapper for a half hour to let the fuzz lose the trail. From then on I have never done any speeding.

Military love affair with videogames intensifies

Nah nah nah, you got it all wrong.

This is the first phase of the United States' fully automated warfare system. In said system, people log in over their broadband connections, pay $14.99 a month, and get to control a robot overseas in a real battle. Several robot specifications are available for use, from nearly silent spy robots, to the heavily armoured heavily armed interceptor robots. After every battle, provided that your robot survives, you get medals, and you can purchase upgrades for your robot, say, upgrade him to a 7.62 NATO weapon instead of the paltry 5.56 NATO that most soldiers get to play with. This program is designed to offset the decrease in enrollment in the armed forces, as well as the plummetting physical fitness of the average military aged male in the US. The top brass are calling it the MMOWG, and expect it to be the next big thing for the millions of denizens who honed their mousing hands slaying countless krauts in classics such as Call of Duty and Medal of Honor.

PC or not PC? Ten desktops on test

Let's do a comparison shall we?

Mac Pro:

Dual Quad Core 3.0 GHz XEON

2 GB Ram

2 500 GB HD

Dual Port Ethernet NIC

nVidia 7300 Graphics

Mac OS X Server 10.4 Unlimited Users

Price: $5253

Dell Power Edge 1900

Dual Quad Core 2.66 GHz XEON (slower)

2 GB Ram

2 500 GB HD

Dual Port Ethernet NIC

Integraded Intel Graphics

Windows Server 2003 With 5 User CALs

Price: $5680

Yup, those macs are WAY overpriced. Not to mention that if you get a Mac, you won't have to hid it in the back room because it's so bleedin' ugly. Microsoft Fanboys should really do some side by side comparison instead of merely spouting too oft said platitudes that are no longer viable.

Apple to use Sun's ZFS in Leopard

I think. . .

I think he may be simple using the few mac terms that he knows, along with some derrogatory language. Good times.

Calif. firm sues Sony over the way it makes Blu-ray disks

I've got a patent.

Has anyone patended the use of a penis in the manufacture of human? I think I may go for that one, and sue sperm banks into oblivion. Just think, I could negotiate 10% of all semen-based revenue!

Illinois baby issued with firearms permit

Amen. . .

Gun laws, good game. Permits. . . Perfect. Bans? Hell no. When you pass a law banning guns, only the peopl abiding by the laws are affected.

Vista goes gangbusters

@ Micha Roon

You forgot, "or aren't willing to pay a small premium for a quality machine that runs OS X."

Former Grateful Dead muso sues YouTube

@Metallica

I have lost at least a sliver of respect for the Dead. Garcia would never have stood for a statement like this. He may have had a slightly more utopian view of society than most of us, but maybe that's the pill that we need. This smacks of Metallica's attacks on Napster, accepting "shady" copying as long as it helps you, then turn your back on your fans when you can no longer perceive a benefit, whether or not there actually is one. The Dead was primarily a live act, and why anyone would think that a person is going to consider watching a 3 inch version of Touch of Grey on youtube is going to deter people from attending the potfest that is/was a Dead show, is beyond me.

Fujitsu claims 'world's smallest Vista PC' title

Vista!?

Vista's mediocre text rendering makes things hard enough to read on my 13" laptop, I shudder to think of how terriblev vista must look on a sub 6" screen.

Sony posts big Q4 loss, blames PS3

Wal-Mart

I'd wager Wal-mart is partly to blame for Sony, and other electronics manufacturers' shrinking profit margins. When Wal-Mart opened the pandora's box that is sub-1k 37" plus televisions, it really gave the manufacturers of the devices and other retailers, who until then had been gouging prices, a swift foot to the bollocks. Sony's PS3 strategy could potentially prove a very lucrative one tho, the licensing rights to Blu-Ray will more than make up for losses provided that Sony can plant enought PS3s in the hot little hands of consumers that Blu-Ray becomes the preferred Hi-Def format.

MS update ate my CPU cycles

No Surprise here.

Well, Now my Win XP install uses about 60% of one processor when it's idling. OS X. . . 4% of one processor.

Honda to debut hydrogen fuel-cell car in 2008

Unique = Ugly

By comparison, the Prius is the evil stepsister, and the Civic Hybrid is Cinderella. Owning a civic hybrid, (it's the old lady's car, I drive a G35), I have to say, I chose the Civic because of it's un-fugly styling. Sad thing is, honda is likely exactly right when they say that the people who want to be perceived as green likely want something that looks different than anything else out there, be it ugly or not. On a side note, the tax credit granted for the purchase of a Hybrid vehicle is something akin to a tax break for the rich, but only the rich who support a liberal candidate. Incredulous.

iPods 'mess with pacemakers'

I love it!

I love how a story about MP3 players in general always becomes a story about iPods. I'm sure that this affects all MP3 players, but note how only the iPod is mentioned. Now, I know granny blow dries her hair, and it would stand to reason that a device consuming upward of 18 amps would interfere with a pacemaker more than a device using a miserly .22 watts. Go figure.

AMD Phenom X2, X4, FX processor specs leak

I'll continue as usual.

My Mac Pro consumes 600 watts of power constantly. And I leave it on 24/7 running BOINC. I figure, if I can cure some disease by spending an extra 17$ a month on my power bill, I'll do it.

Apple pledges green glasnost

Agreed.

If you read the entire article on Apple's site, some environmental watchdog has come up with a totally bogus formula to figure out the recycling percentage for PC's. The formula assumes a 7 year cycle for PC replacement. . . 7 years? I know people, ordinary people, old people, who are on their fourth Wintel box in as much time. While my grandfather is still using his CRT iMac that runs at a paltry 600MHz. Thing is, Windows boxes and their manufacturers, have convinced Joe Consumer that they are disposable, and they are treated as such. Most Macs, on the other hand, are likely either in the possession of their original owner, donated, or recycled. Once Apple's recycling plan ramps up, I don' see Windows PC's ever being recycled with the same frequency as Apple machine, not only because they are designed to be disposable, like a polystyrene coffee cup, but also because Mac users tend to err on the side of affluency, environmental awareness, and intelligence.

Jesus appears in Samsung Flash memory chip

I once. . .

. . .Took a photo of a tortilla chip that had a hold in it that looked something akin to a dolphin.

Oh, Dear.

NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Amongst their weapons are fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope.

Dell Linux is go

I find KDE.

I find KDE to be the more windows like of the X managers. I like some of the features of both distros and wish that you could install only the features that you wanted.

Excellent.

Ubuntu generally has excellent driver compatibility, i.e. the only Distro to handle my Intel HDA audio's digital output out of the box.

@ KDE!

I know about kubuntu, and have it installed, but I'd like to be able to switch between the two easily to decide which delivers better performance.

@ Steve

I agree, now, let's just see if Dell has the grit to stay in it for the long haul. It's a tightrope walk for MS tho, they can't do anything overtly anti-competitive, but we all know that they will but the branding iron to Dell in whatever way they can. They could choose to increase the price that Dell pays to them decimating Dell's business model of razor thin margins and high volume, they could opt to not sell Windows to Dell at all, we'll just have to wait and see. I wish they would build a distro around KDE instead of Gnome since, in my experience, KDE seems to function more reliably in Ubuntu. Currently, I am unaware of an easy way to switch between the two. We'll see, but it's a step in the right direction.

'It'll be ugly when half the software industry goes away' - pundit

If I ever. . .

If I ever start a poultry-based shop, Flock IT already has my business.

Gateway ships quad-core desktop into US stores

Hateful comments welcomed.

Mac pro Configured with 2 GB of Ram, 2 2.66 Ghz processors dual core XEONS on a 1333 MHz bus, a 500 GB HD, compared to the dell with 1 Quad core Processor at 2.66 on a 1066 MHz bus. Mac = $200 cheaper.

Home Secretary bigs up fingerprint-activated iPods

Amazing

It really is amazing how an article that has little to do with an iPod save for mentioning it once, is somehow an open invitation for every Apple hating individual to come on here and post.

I know how we can fix this.

<swift>

Why don't we just make it against the law for any minority to use an expensive cell phone or handheld device. They can keep using the original sony walkman, and the original nokia phone.

</swift>

Vista – End of the Dream?

@ Vista end of a dream... by Anonymous Coward

As a matter of fact. . . You say that installing OS X on a machine not made by apple is very difficult, I beg to differ. With three simple patches, if you know where to get the patches, I was able to install OS X on my non-apple media center which is a machine cobbled together with an Asus P5LD2 motherboard, an nVidia Graphics card, and an Intel Pentium D 805. I subsequently took this drive, mounted it in a drive caddy, went to my school, dropped it in machines made by three different manufacturers, a Dell, and HP, and an IBM. The drive booted all three machines without a hitch, and all major functionalities worked. Now, considering that I can't take a windows Drive from a Dell and move it into another Dell without the OS going titsup, I think you might be wrong about this one captain.

The Author reads backward.

I like that he refers to pages 308-209, does he reas bottom to top, right to left, much like a cross between hebrew and japanese?

CEO Dell: We're losing our religion

Dell 2.0. . .

Well, the cornerstone of their "new" business model is to essentially copy Apple and have their own retail stores. Only problem with that idea is the fact they they will probably end up in the same place ans the maligned Gateway store. Why? Apple has unique products, sold at unique stores, that are pleasant to be in and staffed with, for the most part, employees who wish to be genuinely helpful. Dell, however, will be trying to emulate this model with bland products, in bland stores, with dumb clerks trying their best to make a commission by saying whatever computer mumbo jumbo they can muster up in hopes of confusing the consumer into buying something that they likely do not need.

Apple TV hackers called to create open source set-top

Just what I wanted. . .

A set top box that runs on an uber s-video connection instead of Py/Pb/Pr or HDMI. Excellent choice.

UK airline pilots spot giant UFO

Please. . .

Can we get some google earth verification of this? I don't believe anything until google tells me that it is so.

QuickTime, not Safari, to blame for MacBook vuln

I think. . .

I think it's more likely that the flaw is a combination of the two programs, probably Java generating some data, or doing something that it isn't supposed to do, since web java is supposed to play in a sandbox, and then quicktime, when presented with data that is totally unexpected, after all, you can't test for every possible case, and hence overflowing with some executable code causing a remote shell to pop up.

Program Names govern admin rights in Vista

In addition.

I hear that Vista will "heuristically" detect any application called iTunes, OpenOffice, StarOffice, Quicktime, Flash, Firefox, or Opera and force the user to download an "appropriate" alternative, be it Office 2007, Windows Media Player, Internet Exploder 7, or Silverbollocks.