Posts by Rob Cooper

Apple's secret iPhone app blacklist

Quelle Surprise

I dont know why people act all suprised when they see this sort of behaviour from Apple.. I have never seen so much lock in from one company (and no, MS are no where NEAR as bad as Apple for product lock in).

You buy your overpriced iMac, iPod, iPhone, iCantThinkForMyself all of which will only work as they should with each other, failing to realise that Apple are ALL about control.

Always remember, just because MS aren't perfect, it doesn't make Apple good.

MS are bad for smothering the market, yes, but they are getting better, more open. They are starting to realise they cant go on pissing off the masses and losing market share. I can happily go home to my "buggy, bloated OS" and do what the hell I want with it, connect pretty much any device, whatever.

Apple seem to be going the other way, more closed doors, more lock in, less interop. I just feel for the many people that have shelled out a lot of cash for a crappy over-hyped product by a crappy over-hyped company.

Snoop more, share less - Home Office spurns EU advice

Who to Vote For?

Labour, Tories both talk bollocks and have never done little good..

LibDems would do worse.

Who is left? The BNP? Maybe they will actually right all the wrongs. They will prob have my vote, we need something different.

Hell if they screw up, they are only doing what Labour/Tories would have done anyway :\

MPs lambast BBFC over Batman

I Agree

Had a convo with a colleague about it at work, who wanted to take his 6 year old son. I said i wouldnt..

It amazes me how they cover up GSW's (which you can see on the news) Yet clearly show the Joker and his amazing disappearing pencil trick (where he smashes it into someones skull, obv killing them).

I also agree with the comments made on knife play, there is too much of that already.

I think it should be a 15, not suprised though as most certificates are too low for films.

Stormtrooper helmet sales still legal in Britain

I think this is a Win/Win

Lucasfilm have won their side of the battle on their turf, we won the battle on ours.

I think it was a fair and just decision made. In a British courtroom! Who would have thought it!

Now if only they could get more judges like this involved in violence, murder and rape cases! We may have a country worth living in! :D

Microsoft crowbars Live Search into Facebook

*yawn*

Blah blah, MS, Vista, Bad, Piss, Whinge, Bitch, Moan, Boring, Boring, BORING!

Is Google better than Live? - Yes, but Live is improving fast,

Has Vista got anything to do with the topic? No.

Do Anti-MS Zealots have anything better to do with their time? No.

Does anyone really give a crap WHO does the search in that little itty-bitty box on Facebook? NO.

I'll get my coat, be at the bar waiting for people to talk about technology rather than bitch about the people that make it. "Stella and a packet of crisps please love".

Ballmer upset by Apple cart

@Thomas...

I agree with everything you said EXCEPT "kill Silverlight".. Are you nuts? Silverlight is great!?

I am a MS dev, but I am in no way a fanboy. I too have been saying for a long time they need to consolidate their efforts. "Market Leader" doesnt mean "We do everything" it means "We are the best at what we do". There is a subtle yet HUGE difference.

Focus on revamping/improving Windows, enforcing standards and increasing (their already vastly improving) "open doors" approach..

I'll get my coat, this thread is just gonna be a non-MS fanboy rant. *yawn*. Pint 'o Stella and a packet of nuts plz. kthxbye.

Microsoft, Facebook, Google box clever on really big systems

Great Stuff

More open source, the better. And it's definately a good thing to see more obviously money-centric peeps doing it (read Facebook and MS). I think we are at very interesting times in the software world.. There seems to be a lot of changes going on inside all the software big daddies, changes in attitudes, everything..

Love the fact that they uploaded to Google Code.. Although it's probably not an insult.. Google Code is good. We should see the big guys working together more like this.

Ubisoft pirates game fix from pirates

Great Display of the Awesomeness that is DRM-Free!

What a waste of time and money, and ultimately the effect on people that have PAID for the game losing out! This is NOT ON.

As an example:

I play WoW (I am a geek, so what?)

I went to website.

Downloaded trial.

Good game, I want.

I click "upgrade to full"

I pay.

Game downloaded.

Done.

Why should anyone else been any different. Blizz have done a great job in making it EASY for me to PAY AND PLAY. Theres no fucking rocket science there. The quicker and less painful it is for me to get the damn thing running, the more likely I am to punch my CC details in and pay for the product!

DUH!

US sees first airliner flight with laser defences

Waste. Of. Money.

Been said. Scaremongering. All your wallets are belong to us or you will DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!

TERRORISTS ARE EVERYWHERE, THEY STAND ON THE STREET CORNERS WITH SAM's AND THEY WILL KILL US ALLLL!

PLEASE SEND MONEY.

Another great reason for more national debt, and higher air fares for the consumer.

I'll get my coat.. And the boat abroad.. Enjoy a nice cruise on the way.. Unless..

THE TERRORIST SUBMARINES!

I can't go anywehere!

Hackintosh maker gets legal greeting from Apple

I hope they lose

I hate to say it, but I hope Apple lose. People are so quick to poince on MS when they force ANYTHING on you, be it a browser, a "security" update or a freaking dialog box.

Apple should be thankful to get more OSX users out there, they should be supporting these guys not trying to crush them with the fucking oversized ego. Its a compliment to your software Apple, yes, they are saying you're hardware is overpriced. But guess what, IT IS.

Grow up Apple, you cant stay in this game thinking your perfect, people are getting better and better at demanding MORE. And quite frankly, your lame strategy will come around and bite you hard in the ass.

Home Office unveils tagtastic immigrant control plans

Another Waste of Taxpayers Money

Or you could just deport them outright.

Come back when you have a visa, or we will deport you again.

Its not rocket science. You are not supposed to be here. Go home.

Paris because she thinks like our government. Not much.

US retailers start pushing $20 Ubuntu

From MS Guy - This is a GREAT thing.

Disclosure - I am a MS developer and I do have a thing for MS *IN GENERAL* (they are not PERFECT - but remember, just because MS isnt perfect, it doesnt meal Apple is good).

I think this is a great thing for software. Anything that heats up the competition is good. Do I think its good for the end user/consumer (you do remember those) I am not so sure. I had real beef with Linux when I had a go with several distro's (about 6 months ago) there was so much noise about "how much better it has become" etc etc yet it still took me 3 freaking DAYS, yes DAYS to set up my wireless network. This involved lots of forums, lots of crap in the command line, then I finally found a GUI wrapper that actually did the job (after a driver hack). Windows? Click click. Type key. OK. Wait a second. Done.

My point? Getting more options out there is good for the industry, it drives competition and innovation. But it needs to NOT be at the expense of the end user. The support *needs* to be there. Or all thats gonna happen is people will be out of pocket, feel like crap/stupid, and end up going back to Windows and it will just create a *real negative picture* of *nix for the "normies". This would be detrimental to *nix movement as a whole.

Europe drafts law to disconnect suspected filesharers

ISP's should just do THEIR job!

This is really starting to hack me off, its not down to the ISP's to enforce copyright protection. I can just see a ream of false positives and people losing a LOT of money (you can guarantee that it will be in the contract that if disconnected, you will need to pay the remainder).

ISP = Internet ***Service Provider***

BT starts threatening music downloaders with internet cut-off

Good Reason to Bin BT

This is just wrong on so many levels.. They have no proof, working on "reports" from an untrsuted resource that are going to exploit this for all they can..

I have a good mind now to go home, start a petition website, then create 1GB of crap sound files, named with the latest tunes from the crappy pop world and seed on torrent like there is no tomorrow.

Every BT user should then propagate these files and make BY destroy themselves!

FIGHT THE MACHINE!

Microsoft urges Windows users to shun 'carpet bombing' Safari

Pointless Comments FTW!

I love the way like 95%+ of the flames are from AC :D

Way to stand up for yourself..

I can see there a couple of people here that share my attitude.

"I use what I use because I am an adult. I can make my own decisions. There are things here that need to be addressed (namely security) and they should be, by ALL parties concerned. However, my judgement is that the fault lies with [X]."

The rest of you just sound like a bunch of hormonal teenagers that are obviously not getting enough love from wherever and need to vent on here.

Repeat after me, "I am an adult, I AM an adult"..

Do more people ever actually write comments on here worth reading? I am still kinda new to TheReg, need to know whether or not to unsub :)

FFS When Will People Learn?

I love the way Mac Zealots instantly dive on MS before even reading the article since it simply CANNOT be a problem with Apple software right?

Look, we are all into software. It doesnt take a genius to realise you can write buggy/flawed code no matter what company you work for.

The article clearly states that the problem exists within BOTH Windows and OSX. This means that the root source is Safari, which the article also clearly states.

MS have done the right thing issuing a warning, its a security RISK. Risk must be managed. I would rather know about a risk than brush it under the carpet and hope it will go away (which sadly seems to be what Apple want to do).

I think this is a nice display of how Windows/MS have had a real rough ride over the years. They have been at the forefront of the market, getting all the glorious backlash that comes with it. They are used to dealing with this sort of thing.

Apple? Not so much. Its funny how now they are rising in popularity that suddenly more and more security holes are being found. It should come as no suprise, THEY HAVE NEVER REALLY BEEN TESTED BEFORE.

Yes, I'm really not into Apple in any way shape or form. But I wont be a @ss and slate them. They've screwed up and need to fix it, not ignore it, the same as MS or any other software house should.

'Nuff said.

Google defends open source from 'poisonous people'

Damn Bus

Well.. The question is..

What if these two @sses get hit by a bus? Who do we turn to? NO IDEA because there is no mention of other names anywhere because names are just so damn poisonous!

This is just wrong.

I always think its nice to see the personal side of software. Just because you have a name it doesn't mean your a d!ck.

If I was working on some code and saw that Joe Bloggs had written some awesome code, a email his way saying "wow this code looks great" could really make him feel good about HIS PERSONAL contribution to the community/project.

Respect the people more, it doesnt mean they want to destroy the project because they would like a mention somewhere. One name in commnuity projects like SVN is just a drop in a pond.

"In Subversion we have no name. Elsewhere we have a name.. My name is Rob Cooper." (Fight Club-esque!)

When code goes bad: What to watch for

Tim Parker FTW!

Wholeheartedly agree with every point made there Tim!

I use mixed casing in my code, and I do not "play video games with the IDE and hope it turns into something compilable". I actually find that pretty offensive.

Code is very personal, its a reflection of your thought train and your decomposition of the problem to a logical solution, so I am all for developers having a style that they like. Software is a craft, and like any other craft, craftsmen will perform the same task differently. Some may prefix variables with a char to denote its scope, others lowercase, others may do both. Note that this may evolve base on the capabilities of the IDE (e.g. I prefix all controls on a form with the type to make it easier to find in intellisense)

As for hitting the shift key being a problem for a developer? WOW. Are you kidding me!? I would find your attitude much harder to work with than a coding convention that mixes cases randomly (as opposed to pascal/camel etc). I would actually find dashes (or whatever) much more annoying than a case change.

As Tim said, coding style is not a coding blunder. This article was about a crazy monolithic method which is/was completely bad design, the code itself could have been incredibly well-formed and highly readible (provided you work the hscroll!). It was just a lame design.

You remind of the kind of developer that wants to bring back i/j/k/x naming conventions because they save your poor little fingers a little bit of effort. That little "time saver" gets a feature in every refactoring book, it will make you famous! How could we all be so wrong! We must be playing video games!