Posts by mike2R

Space station 'naut supplies Reg with overhead snap of Vulture Central

Chip on your shoulder much? London is an awesome city with an awesome history, it isn't its fault it makes you feel insignificent.

Shocked Zynga investors get a penny per share

What I've learnt from reading the Register over the last two days: Zynga has higher revenues than ARM.

YouTube's hilarious cat videos could soon cost you $5 a month

Re: YouTube would need to offer a better way to find content

They are hardly going to be charging for access for infringing material.

There are actually some very good pieces of original content on Youtube these days, and I'm not talking cat videos. Though I have to admit I'm a bit pressed to think of any I'd actually pay for personally, but it may work for some people.

Huddled immigrant masses face 'British values' quiz

Re: History and culture

My understanding - I don't claim any expertise - was that Jutland was an attempt to destroy *part* of the Royal Navy battleships by trapping them into fighting piecemeal. Not simply setting out to go toe to toe against the entire fleet in order to fight a decisive battle for naval dominance.

Anyway metal ships are boring and don't really count.

Re: History and culture

"Trafalgar was a key historical event in the history of the United Kingdom, but it is hard to say it is a defining event of British (or even English) culture any more than the hundreds of other related events."

It marks the last time the Royal Navy was challenged in an all-out fleet action. Literally from that point until the carrier age, Britain was the uncontested naval power of the world. Nations that fought Britain might try to go after her trade ships, or act where the navy was weak. But no one tried to assemble a battle fleet and fight head on.

I'd say that this had a pretty profound impact over the direction of British culture for the next century and a half or so.

Ofcom anoints broadcaster: Local TV is nearly here

Television you say?

I remember them.

Pop tix touts slung in the cooler for 4 years after £3m web scam

Re: Hmm...

"They probably didn't work directly as a merchant, but used a 3rd party web payment processing service to take the payments for them."

Still strange that that firm let it go through. Presumably they were left with the bill. You here loads of stories of Paypal freezing peoples accounts because they are worried about this sort of thing - indy computer games trying to fund themselves on pre-orders pre-Kickstarter, or a new business that opens a few month before Christmas and is unexpectedly successful, and then is driven out of business because it has its funds withheld, leaving it unable to purchase stock to fulfil all the orders its taken.

The other thing I don't understand is why they needed customers at all... They had the compliant merchant account by whatever method, surely it would have been much easier just to buy a load of compromised cards from someone who's hacked a database somewhere, then just run the transactions through themselves. Apple got stung by someone listing an App with them and then doing that I seem to recall. Cue loads of outraged iApp developers when Apple started deferring payment for months.

Getting a merchant account with no trading history, putting £3mil through it, and being able to get the fund out quickly enough to pull a disapearing act... that is pretty magical.

Since these were online purchases, the people who lost money would have been able to do chargebacks and be reembursed. The party who actually stood to lose the money was whoever issued them their merchant account. And banks are very well aware of this exact risk, which is why they behave like such bastards to new small business who want merchant accounts. So how did it happen in this case?

Possibly their was some identity fraud involved. Pretend to be someone who had a long history with that bank. Or someone who had enough assets to provide a directors guarantee for the entire amount. Again banks are aware of the risk, so it must have been pretty well done.

Not magic. But it is certainly remarkable.

Cameron's speech puts UK adoption of EU data directive in doubt

More like:

Cameron: "If you don't do as I say I'm not playing"

Europe: David, you lost the election remember? You aren't Prime Minister any more"

Entire Reg readership would fill 205 Olympic-sized swimming pools

Re: All very well but

Assuming the sheep was in inter-stella space, and not pointed at anything with gravity sufficent to capture it, to the ends of the unverse.

Kim Dotcom's locker may be full, but the cupboard is bare

Re: Mega dumb

Reality cheque?

Record numbers of you are reading this headline right now

Re: "a quarter that of The Sun"

Topless Playmobil?

Drop that can of sweet pop and grab a coffee - for your sanity's sake

Re: Correlation != causation

I didn't get the impression that the author of this article was taking it entirely seriously...

Little spider makes big-spider-puppet CLONE of itself out of dirt

Re: ummm

"All it needs to know is that what it is building scares off predators."

Just to clarify (I'm sure you're aware) that it doesn't need to 'know' anything (which is a good thing since it is just a spider afterall).

All it needs to do is behave according to how its genes dictate, and if it gets a small advantage over its peers in terms of becoming a reproductive sucess by behaving in this way, then these genes will over generations become more common and more refined within its species.

Schmidt 'very proud' of Google's tiny tax bill: 'It's called capitalism'

Re: @Mike2R (weird)

LOL, thanks Tom.

"...flaw to avoid offending the Gods."

Oddly appropriate since the lack of proof reading was due to me trying to comment without the boss realising I was posting to a forum ;)

Re: weird

Not only that, I imagine executives of publicly traded companies are legally obliged to serve their shareholders by minimising their tax bill. So we have the bizarre site of committees of people who make the laws, railing against people for obeying them.

Why don't they do something useful and change the damn laws?

Archaeologists uncover 'Unicorn's lair'

Re: Catching one...

And how do you find a virgin?

Right. Start with the unicorn...

Scoop! The inside story of the news website that saved the BBC

Re: Definitely a success

Ah, probably something different then. The CSS gets rid of the Watch/Listen and In Pictures sections.

The principle is the same though, since the BBC seems to have a nice html structure and lots of class names. When you see the bit you want to eliminate view source, find the containing div or whatever of the thing you want gone, and set it to display:none. If it isn't nicely named you can probably kludge something with child selectors.

Re: Definitely a success

If you are talking about what I think you are by mini-slideshow thing, try this in a user style sheet:

div.list-wrapper {

display: none;

}

Japan firm offers mums-to-be 3D printed unborn infants

Re: Something extra to embarrass junior with

That was my thought. Thank fuck they didn't have these around when I was a tadpole.

British Ruby conference cancelled after diversity row

I was honestly about 3 paragraphs in before I stopped wondering why the Register was so interested in the gemstone business.

Four in ten Brits have had to change all their passwords to foil crooks

"IWF analysts encountered more than 12,000 such images and videos spread over 68 websites."

Bloody careers adviser never even *mentioned* that option...

Populous

Re: £15 - 25

GoG has Populous 1 and Populous 2 at $5.99 USD each.

They also have something called Populous: The Beginning at the same price, that was apparently made in 1998, has some good reviews from GoG users, and I don't ever remember hearing about...

I feel a purchase coming on... I've already played their version of Populous 2 and it is every bit as good as I remember it.

If you see 'URGENT tax rebate download' in an inbox, kill it with fire

Re: Uh ... Duh?

You're saying the meme should be nuked from orbit? Because it's the only way to be sure?

Facebook wunderkind admits share price Zuck-up on stage

While not trying to be a "portal" (as I think it was called) certainly helped, we probably forget how much better Google was than its competitors when it came out. It simply worked considerably better.

And their real success was in figuring out how to do search engine advertising properly. Before Adwords, search engines used to monitise by charging for inclusion or for results. ie they either tried to make people pay to be spidered (reducing the quality of their results by not including/keeping up to date the vast majority who didn't pay), or by essentially hiding advertisers within their organic results (reducing their quality in exchange for cash).

Google had this idea that you could put clearly delineated ads that were triggered by search terms, squaring the circle of how to maintain quality search engine results while making so much money that it needed to be delivered in container ships.

RIP Neil Armstrong: The reluctant American hero

RIP

The Economist's obituary put it quite well I think: "it is one of the few events of the 20th century that stands any chance of being widely remembered in the 30th. "

So true. In a thousand years the heroes and villains of the last century will be almost unknown. You can imagine names like "Hitler" being almost unknown outside of historians who specialise in the period.

Not "Neil Armstrong" though. As long as there is a human race that remembers its history, children will learn that name, and they'll go outside on a clear night, and shut one eye, and use their thumb to block out the moon. And they'll think of Neil Armstrong all those years ago, doing the same thing in reverse.

Assange's fate to be revealed at high noon

Re: Legal basis?

"Unfortunately, what will likely happen is the Plan C will happen - the UK will challenge Assange's right to political asylym (as I understand it, the right only applies if your own or host country is persecuting you - the US is neither) in international court, thus dragging it out another 12+ months meaning we never hear the end of it."

Not sure how unfortunate it is...

As I see Ecuador deserves some sort of response for what has been a deliberate and unnecessary annoyance that they have caused. There's a sort of poetic justice in having them have to put up with Assange in their cramped embassy for a few years.

Re: Legal basis?

"If the UK government think it is worth a major diplomatic incident in order to satisfy the extradition to a 3rd country of an individual who faces no charges...."

This "no charges" thing is dishonest. People who know very well that this is simply a normal attribute of a different legal system are using it to try muddy the waters.

It is a fully in-order extradition request that has been exhaustively tested in UK courts. End-of as far as the UK is concerned. This should move to Sweden and be argued there.

First full landing site and colour pictures back from Mars

Re: Bobak Ferdowsi

Can't remember what it was, by I saw some hilarious clip where an American was interviewing a black British man, and he was getting more and more irate because she kept referring to him an "African American".

Chip and PIN keypads 'easily fooled' with counterfeit cards

Re: Levels of card fraud are at their lowest since 2000.

While you are obviously not legally responsible for fraud done on your card with chip and pin, in practice it may not matter too much.

The bank will work on the assumption that you made the transaction and are lying about it, and will probably do their best to prosecute you. Since they are responsible for covering the fraud rather than the merchant, you won't get the easy "we don't care, here is the money" attitude you get with cardholder not present fraud.

Apple's new Safari snubs older Macs, drops Windows version

Re: the poor orphaned mac pros

And hopefully your poor orphaned Mac is not still on 10.6 or earlier, since it seems 10.7 has disappeared and can no longer be purchased from the App Store.

Planned obsolescence, this is Apple's install base. Apple's install base, say hello to planned obsolescence. Or have you already met?

Asteroid miners to strap 'scopes to new Virgin Galactic rocket

Re: 1,500 accessible asteroids?

Not sure that "scam" is right. "Rich man's toy" perhaps, or "ego trip" if you want to be cynical. But I don't think the investors are really expecting a huge chance of a big pay off.

Re: Valuable stuff?

"Returning material to earth, although perhaps important from a PR point of view probably doesn't have a very good economic basis."

I wonder. The asteroids themselves can presumably provide something to use as a propellant, so all we have to do is add energy and we can move any amount we want. Maybe (from one of my favourite sci-fi books) get whole asteroids into Earth orbit and then start mining and refining them there. Add a space elevator (or maybe figure out a way to just drop stuff down from orbit), and there really isn't much limit.

Retina MacBook Pro nukes Apple's green credentials

Re: @Steve Todd - Vintage = not supported?

Check out this page:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1752

Over 5 years is "vintage", Apple has "discontinued hardware service" on them (except in California who apparently told them to go stuff it). Over 7 years is "obsolete" - nothing at all and even service centres can't get parts.

So if you have to have an Apple supplied part installed by an Apple tech... I deal with a LOT of Mac users, and I know that many of them will find a use for machines of that age and older. Hell I've SOLD machines older than that, and to people who knew exactly what they were buying. Maybe Apple will make an exception for this laptop, but if you'd bet on it then maybe we can talk about this bridge I have for sale :)

Believe me I'm not a Mac hater, I've worked closely with Apple hardware and Apple users for over 10 years, and as Samuel Vimes might say, I've earned the right to criticise them. And there are rather too many incidents of upgradeability being restricted, or the aligning of various Apple polices force a machine into uselessness before the user is finished with it, for me to believe it is entirely accidental. I'm sure they don't go crying all the way to the bank when a customer buys a new machine earlier than planned...

Re: Yes you can replace the battery

Except by the time you actually need to replace the battery, it will be a "vintage" machine that is no longer supported by Apple stores.

And that's if you are willing to pay 200 USD for a new battery in the first place.

Honestly there is no way that non-upgradeability is anything but a bad thing. It will prevent some of these models having their useful life extended down the line, which is bad for the owner even if you don't give a damn about the environment.

Phishers jailed for lifting over £300k from student loan applicants

Re: quick, arrest everyone.

He presumably had to actually develop the websites as well.

So a browser AND a copy of Notepad.

Sysadmins: Your best tale of woe wins a PRIZE

EBKAC

I've always preferred PICNIC (Problem In Chair, Not In Computer), simply because it is easier to work into conversation:

"Any joy fixing that issue yet?"

"Yeah, it was a picnic."

Simply nobody is rushing to beat the Microsoft licencing price hike

"the prices will go up further when the Euro drops more." - unless my brain is back to front, I think you have that the wrong way around - to bring sterling prices into parity with a weaker euro would mean cutting them.

Although the article says they'll be locked for a year

Top Facebook exec begs students: 'Click on an ad or two'

Re: Isn't that fraud?

It depends how the advertisers are paying. If they are paying per click then yes, this is blatant ripping off advertisers. The sort of thing that gets you kicked off any advertising network that cares about still being in business next year.

But if they are paying for impressions or pay for conversions then it isn't - the click doesn't change the cost to the advertiser; if anything it is beneficial to the advertiser since some of the people making the click may actually read the landing page, hence see more of the marketing, hence increased sales.

Will UK.gov crack down on itself for missing Cookie Law deadline?

Re: Essential for modern websites?

As I'm sure you know, some things won't work. Which isn't an issue for you since you are aware of what you've done, what it means, and can make an exception if you need to.

Discuss this with many of my customers, and all you'll do is make them hungry. It would be a problem, but this whole thing is so deeply flawed that I know I can ignore it without any consequences.

Re: Same old, same old

I suppose I could replace GA with some sort of browser fingerprinting. You can track someone quite effectively with a combination of IP address and the info they pass regarding their user agent. Doesn't leave a pesky cookie that someone can remove, or have any of those annoying first party/third party distinctions that can let people make decisions in their browser options either.

But I won't. I'm going to ignore this idiotic piece of legislation and carry on with Google Analytics. Which sets a first party cookie by the way, and if you suspect Google is using the data to do anything more than provide the site owner with statistics, why don't you sue them for lying in their terms and conditions, and stop bothering the rest of us.

Re: So Google Analytics now ok?

"That's the brilliant thing about this legislation. no one can say for sure."

Ain't that the truth.

I'm really not one of those massive anti-EU nut cases. Really. I don't even read the Daily Mail.

But this is the second time I've been directly effected by a piece of EU legislation, and the second time I cannot believe the utter incompetence of those who wrote it (or the UK government that enacted it without eliminating the idiocy).

WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) had this ambiguity where it said that it didn't apply to existing products, but it was utterly unclear whether this meant product lines that were already existing, or upgrade components for products that existed already. And there was no way of telling for sure. The official guidance was basically "read our minds and we'll take you to court if you fail." The confusion saw products removed from sale for legal reasons that were clearly compliant under either interpretation - small manufacturers just can't deal with that sort of uncertainty. (anyone dump their early PowerMac G4 computer because cheap CPU upgrades were withdrawn from sale at just the point in its lifecycle when you were looking for one? This was to save the environment...)

As far as cookies go, I suppose in theory I should rewrite the shopping cart so that it doesn't set a cookie until someone adds a product to their cart. And stop using Google Analytics. Bollocks to it quite frankly. I'll put something in the privacy policy and forget about it.

Disabled can't 'Go Compare' on price comparison websites

Re: Now watch ...

"The real killer punch though, is that from the ground up, there is no extra effort involved in making websites accessible.And there is certainly no excuse - all the tools you'd need to help you are free."

Why aren't organisations like the RNIB shouting this from the rooftops? More to the point, the real missed trick, is pointing out that about 90% of what you have to do to make a site accessible to people with visual impairment, is exactly the same as you do to make it accessible to search engine bots. A small site may not care (may not have even thought) about the disabled. But *everyone* cares about search engine listings.

I honestly don't think that enforcement is a viable option for online accessibility. It isn't like commercial property, most of the web is run by micro entities, in many cases non-commercial or making beer money from advertising. You might be able to get tough and make major commercial and government sites accessible, but that will still leave people shut out of most of the web. I honestly think that campaigners for online accessibility have taken the wrong approach - it has worked before in other areas, but by pushing a tough public line demanding enforcement in this area they have simply been largely ignored.

When I was looking into this several years ago there was very little information provided about how to make your site accessible. I remember checking the RNIB website, and the only thing they said was that they offered consultancy services (seemed to be pitched at things like government organisations). This was at the same time as seeing an interview with one of their spokespeople threatening hell and damnation on websites who didn't make themselves accessible.

I've just had a look now and their site is much much better in that regard, but they were definitely slow out of the block. Five or ten years ago, accessibility among those who couldn't hire consultants was basically a matter of rumours on webmaster forums being swapped by sighted people who had no access to screen reader software. I ended up just making sure my sites were usable in lynx (a text browser) and adding a skipnav link, and generally trying to use logical html structures for the information, and then styling with css.

I hope this doesn't come across as a rant. Certainly not at you or your wife! But I do think that campaigners for accessibility have approached the issue poorly, although they may be remedying that. I'm certainly going to have a good look at the guidelines on the RNIB site.

Bought a new Mac Pro? 1-in-100 chance it'll destroy your data

Re: @Mike2r

Its true enough. I didn't actually tell him to fuck off of course. I gave him a full refund for the work we'd done and the products we'd supplied, without asking from them back, and told him we no longer wanted his business.

The point is not to be rude, the point is to break out of the master-peon relationship that such people assume exists whenever they pull their wallet out. To make it clear to them that I have more respect for myself than that, and I don't need or want their money if it requires me to allow them to humiliate me.

Or, with the majority of difficult customers, to know that I can do that if I want to.

Re: @Mike2r

To be clear, I don't tell the people like the poster I was replying to to fuck off. But knowing I can tell them to fuck off is an important release valve. It is my choice to continue to be polite, rather than being forced to endure it or lose my job, like that unfortunate Apple employee.

Re: @Mike2r

Dreams of my own 50 story tall glass fronted office tower died a long time ago. I find I'm pretty well adjusted to that.

That said, I'm unsure how refusing to serve a small handful of extremely rude people over the years could be considered the cause of that. These are retail transactions, for fairly expensive items sure, but there's no way they've cost the company as much of a week's worth of my salary.

Have you ever been on the wrong end of a conversation with someone who is using the power inherent in a customer-salesperson relationship to verbally abuse you? I am not talking about people with genuine complaints here.

As an example: the guy who we fitted a new hard drive for six months previously who's printer had stopped working, and who attempted to tear me a new arsehole when I ventured the opinion that the connection between the two events was less clear than he was making out. Oh and told me I was endangering his health by being confrontational.

If your career requires you to suck the cocks of people like that, then you are welcome to it.

"I can happily say that once when my powermac was one again being repaired I made an Applecare dude almost cry because the repairing was taking them forever and I told it to him not so nicely. He probably was used to starstruck Apple worshippers' apologetic calls to the mothership when their mac had *gasp* a problem. "

No, I think he was just stuck in a position familiar to anyone who works with the public. Dealing with an abusive customer who insists on taking out his frustrations on the nearest target, and obliged by his duty to his employer to take your shit without response. I could be generous and say that perhaps you didn't realise that he personally neither caused your problem nor had it in his power to solve, but I strongly suspect you knew that. Much more likely you are simply someone who enjoys tormenting people who are unable to defend themselves. There aren't many like you in the world thankfully, but there are enough of you that anyone who regularly deals with the public will recognise and loath the type.

Thankfully I work for a small company, and we have decided that people like you are not worth the money they bring in. We have a rule that you can tell one customer to fuck off per year; out the door, full refund given for their purchase, all future business refused. I've not had to do it anything like once a year, but by God having the option there helps my stress levels when dealing with misanthropes.

Why embossed credit cards are here to stay

Re: Click clack card readers

Heh, my local supermarket processed debit cards electronically but whatever method they used didn't actually check your bank account. Oh and they did cashback.

Was about 5 years after I graduated before my bank let me have a proper debit card again...

Public sector exempted from swingeing Microsoft UK price hike

I wouldn't trust the government to roll out a new carpet.

Switching OS across the entire public sector? There'd be fights in Whitehall for control of the single working abacus.