* Posts by GremlinUK

30 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Mar 2008

Mind your language: Microsoft set to swing the axe on 27 languages in iOS Outlook

GremlinUK

Re: You vill parle Amrecianish Da!

Who are you to judge what level of daily use is useful to a given community?

IBM to GTS staff: Not volunteering to leave with a redundo cheque? We'll give you a helping hand

GremlinUK

Yes, generally speaking. Though there are organisations who'll throw people out with 24 hours notice... and learn to regret it via the Industrial Tribunal system... and actually, not learn at all, and do it again five years later. (Some bosses just can't seem to learn)

Customers in 'standoff' with SAP over 2025 end of support for Business Suite: Who'll blink first?

GremlinUK

Re: "Delaying [..] may be a less attractive solution"

Ah, the Oracle school of customer relationship management!

US Air Force inks deal with Raytheon on Windows 10 (and other) support for ARSE

GremlinUK

Re: Windows 10 in the Military near the frontline?

Where can us mere mortals get this version of Windows 10?

Does it also disable all the call-home functionality under the hood?

Original WWII German message decrypts to go on display at National Museum of Computing

GremlinUK

TNMOC is not "Bletchley Park's National Museum of Computing". It is it's own self.

It's also a damn sight better at presenting the story of computing than anything on the neighbouring site, for a much more reasonable entry price. Don't bother with Bletchley unless you want cryptography-lite and Churchill-the-hero. If you want the real thing, go next door.

OK Google, why was your web traffic hijacked and routed through China, Russia today?

GremlinUK

Re: Long on indignation, shortish on facts

1. Yes. Users were prevented from contacting Google's servers. (at least, I was)

2. if you read the rest of the article, it says that the Chinese server black-holed the packets at least for some of the time, and so, Yes, the other packets were arguably stolen, but who knows if anything was able to inspect them.

Beyond iTunes: XML boffins target sheet music

GremlinUK

Another alternative to XML

Can I put in a plug for ABC notation - I've used it for generating sheet music and midi files for several years (http://abcnotation.com/). It's quick to write, human-readable (unlike most XML formats of any complexity), and controllable in layout and there are several open source tools available, my personal favourite being EasyABC (http://www.nilsliberg.se/ksp/easyabc/).

Magic streaming beans? Sure, have my cow - music biz

GremlinUK

Surely the music biz should love streaming. From getting us to pay every time we shift format: from vinyl, to tape, to CD, to MP3, back to vinyl, and on to whatever DRM-burdened lossless codec is flavour-of-next-month, they get us to subscribe monthly to a service that effectively mean we're ALWAYS listening to the radio and own nothing at all - effectively paying EVERY time we listen to a track.

No wonder I want to keep my CDs - at least I have a chance of doing my own format shifts, sticking with the format I want to use, and not having to have a fast mobile or internet connection just to listen to music I BOUGHT three times already!

Misfortune Cookie crumbles router security: '12 MILLION+' in hijack risk

GremlinUK

Seems odd to me that the CVE link doesn't go to the CVE. How can anyone act on a CVE that nobody can define properly?

Fed up with poor Brit telly and radio output? Ofcom wants a word with YOU

GremlinUK

Nope, on two counts. I rarely watch commercial TV, so don't give a damn about it, and ITV gets some of the license fee too, and has done for a number of years.

GremlinUK

I'd like to know why the Freeview broadcasters think they can get away with different levels of service for the same levels of license fee. Depending upon where you live in the British Isles (and I include the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands in this), you get varying numbers of channels, but everyone has to pay the same license fee. This means that I (as a resident of the Isle of Man) am subsidising UK viewers/listeners TV and radio. Not on, I tell you, not on!

Windows Defender Offline: For PCs too hosed to go online

GremlinUK
FAIL

"Windows Defender Offline Beta walks users through the steps required to set up the boot disk."

... when you've downloaded it where? On your machine that's too sick to talk to t'internet?

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

GremlinUK
FAIL

200 pages?

When was the last time you received a 200 page motherboard manual. The readable part of every motherboard manual I can lay my hands on (and that's quite a few with my history of building PCs) never exceeds 100... and they're usually full of pictures.

You buy a complex product like a motherboard with the expectation of building a PC, you better bloody well pay attention to the documentation or on your own head be it when you blow both it and the $100 CPU you want to put on it.

MSI were absolutely right, and more power to them!

Sony explains PS3 Slim's loss of Linux option

GremlinUK
FAIL

PS2 compatibility

I have a stack of around 50-60 PS2 games, and when I found out that the UK PS3 had poorer backward compatibility than the US/JPY versions, I decided that a PS3 would probably be a waste of time & money, so didn't bother with buying one. Now that they've removed that compatibility all together, I know that I'll never be buying one, slim or otherwise.

So much for backward compatibility not being a 'purchase intent driver'!

Net sleuth calls eBay on carpet over shill bidding

GremlinUK

No skin off my nose...

... to say I'll never use eBay again.

Once upon a time (around 2000), it was worth using. Now the bargains have gone and the place has such a diminished reputation that I feel I lose nothing by sticking to 'conventional' retail sites instead.

Isle of Man e-bike trial loses racers

GremlinUK
Thumb Up

Re. Oh well...

The original point of motor racing (2-wheel and 4-) was to challenge the inventors and manufacturers of the day to better their machines. What better challenge for electric motorbikes than a course that pushes the fossil fuel variety and their riders to the limit already. The 37 mile Mountain Circuit is perfect. Who cares if the first few bikes don't make it round. The same was the case when the TT began back in 1907. Better luck next year. :)

Isle of Man gov gets social

GremlinUK
Go

tax haven?

"So if the Isle of Man is strictly regulated and not a tax haven at all, why do all those companies base themselves there? The weather?"

The corporation tax rate is very low... that does not make it illegal, simply competitive.

If a person or business is legitimately domiciled in IOM, and therefore taxed there, why should any other tax authority be able to say there's anything wrong? The bigger economies of this world can't have the free market they want in one area, and stop smaller economies competing with them in areas where they can.

Google's comic capers: what they really meant to say

GremlinUK

firebug

The only downside to Chrome is the lack of a firebug equivalent. the V8 javascript debugger is soooo 1980's.

Otherwise, lookin' good to me. And as for the Anonymous Coward posting: 'Queer eye for the straight Google guys ' ... what a load of bollocks.

Who will be the next Doctor?

GremlinUK
Thumb Up

Conscious

It's unusual for the Doctor to be unconscious when he regenerates (though I don't think it's the first time), so maybe he has more control that in prior occasions. Note also that his 'daughter' (seen earlier in this season) was seen to regenerate whilst remaining in her original form... it might yet happen. And as the article says, RTD is fond of blowing prior settled issues - this may well be another.

I do think Robert Carlyle would be an excellent Doctor, though. :)

easyJet warns Expedia: 'Hands off our flights'

GremlinUK
Unhappy

Agent or pimp?

Rather than just say that agents add absolutely no value, they do provide a marketplace you can check for availability of the product. Just keep in mind that (for the VAST majority) their only motivation, their ONLY motivation, is their commission cheque*. Or in shorthand, whenever considering their role, change the name from 'agent' to 'pimp'.

* apologies to the extremely rare examples of individual agents who actually seem to derive a simple pleasure from doing a good job. I've come across maybe two in my entire life.

Eclipse will be watching you very closely

GremlinUK
Flame

amanfromMars

Someone, nay anyone. Please tell me what amanfromMars means! At the moment (having read his comments for the last few months), I struggle to see what he brings to the comments pages other than a bandwidth cost to the Reg.

UK electricity crisis over - for now

GremlinUK

@JonB

I never suggested the IOM had replaced the entire 2GW supply. Between the four power stations the island has about 135MW generating capacity, some of which can be exported through the 40MW capacity sub-sea cable to the UK.

GremlinUK
Coat

Clarkson...

(like me) lives on the Isle of Man. Which, by the way, was providing electricity to the UK grid to help out when all this was going down.

Mine's the one with three legs.

Yahoo! faces battle for the board

GremlinUK

Greedy shareholders

He and his cronies just wants their slice of the $47.5bn.

Profit motive - a wonderful organising principal for an economy for the benefit of all.

</sarcasm>

MoD begins full UFO-files public release

GremlinUK
Thumb Up

Conspiracy theories

I always thought that the greatest argument against government organised conspiracy theories was that if you look at the gross level of incompetence displayed by government in every-day matters (like info-sec, or economic management), what makes you think they could lock down information so completely that nobody credible ever leaks it.

As Fraser said, "Never presume a conspiracy where good old fashioned incompetence and idiocy is a far more adequate explanation."

Intel said to feed Google solid state drives

GremlinUK

Hard disk rename

Perhaps 'off-line storage', or 'hard storage' would be preferable?

Terror on an Olympian scale

GremlinUK
Stop

Refuse to travel

<blockquote>The director of Transport Security and Contingencies (TranSec) assured the audience that the government was continuing to invest in counter-terror technologies and was conducting screening trials of new technologies at stations to see how well they worked and, importantly, the extent to which the travelling public was willing to accept them.

The results so far were encouraging. The vast majority of the travelling public in the UK were happy to comply with the security arrangements. In fact, she'd been surprised by how few refused to undergo security screening.

</blockquote>

The reality is that those who refuse to undergo security screening are simply not being asked to do so because they're avoiding the means of travel that require it. Consequence: it appears that few object to screening.

Alternatively, we just put up with it because we know there's no way we'll get on the damn plane if we kick up a fuss.

Max Mosley loses battle to get sex video off web

GremlinUK
Go

Wider context

Max Mosley is the head of a global federation that represents motoring safety and racing throughout the world. Like the chief of any such sized organisation he is expected to be seen to uphold a higher standard of ethics and morality than 'Joe down the pub'.

Bye, bye, Max!

Ofcom climbs on Byron bandwagon

GremlinUK

Well, duh!

"it is parents who are going to have to take responsibility for how their children consume digital media"

... boy, what a slow news day that must have been.

Of laptops and US border searches

GremlinUK
Stop

It's simple...

I won't be taking my tourist dollars into the US whilst such unconstitutional behaviour persists, regardless of whether I'm carrying my laptop with me or not.

Will they be copying the contents of the memory card in my phone next? Or my SIM card address book?

Clearly, it is control-freakin' idiots that run the theatre that is airport security.