Posts by Whitefort

Ubuntu's Oneiric Ocelot: Nice, but necessary?

Dumbed-down Linux for dumbed-down people.

I admit it. I've been a total Ubuntu fanboy, and I've been using Ubuntu since Dapper Drake. Some of the versions sucked, but I stuck with them through thick and thin.

But this dumbed-down, workflow-roadblock, style-over-substance POS called unity is really the deal-breaker. As a stopgap, I'm on Mint Linux, and I'll either be staying there or (more likely) moving to Arch.

For me, a quote from another website sums it up nicely: "Unity makes my PC look like a Fisher-Price toy (and about as useful)"

Anonymous hacks Sony PS3 sites

@KB 1

"Why say that? What has Sony really done wrong other than pursue legal action against a couple of idiots..."

Sir,

Clearly you either have the attention span of a goldfish, or you've only recently started paying attention. Look back at Sony's antics over the past several years. Asking 'What has Sony really done wrong' is likely to produce more answers that 'What have the Romans ever done for us?'

Anti-religious campaigners smack down census Jedis

Help! Help! I'm being repressed!!!

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi! The nasty anthiest peoples shouted at me!!

Sony tweets 'secret' key at heart of PS3 jailbreak case

Am I doomed?

I screengrabbed the picture of the tweet and code. Does this mean that SonyCorp Troops will shortly be abseiling through my skylight with stun grenades and a black bag for my head?

China moves closer to a smut-free internet

Mao Tse Mandy...

Is it true that when Mandleson grows up, he wants to be Chinese?

Ubuntu's Karmic Koala bares fangs at Windows 7

Windows 7 has nothing to worry about.

From (until now) a Ubuntu fanboy.

Every 9 months I have a ritual. One by one, I install the latest Ubuntu on my 7 PCs and laptops, and set them up the way I like them.

Same thing last week, when the new Ubuntu appeared. Now, nearly a week later, all but one have had the *previous* version reinstalled.

Karmic Koala boots much more slowly than Feisty. The login screen is ugly as sin (unlike Feisty's classy, professional-looking screen. The list of features that now don't work across my range of machines is stunning. The desktop experience has been dumbed down to a point where it feels almost as 'nanny' as Windows.

If THIS is the Ubuntu that Shuttleworth thinks can go head-to-head with windows, I predict an EPIC fail.

Amazon eyes wander as Royal Mail strike looms

Oh God, no, PLEASE not more Citylink!!!!

My recent Amazon deliveries have arrived via Citylink, and the service has been utterly, UTTERLY crap. Even though I know they haven't been within miles of my home (I would see them from my workroom window) deliveries NEVER arrive on the day that their tracking website promises. Instead, they post a message that 'delivery was attempted but there was no-one there to receive the package'

Microsoft patches record number of security bugs

But will they keep their sticky paws off Firefox this time?

>>Maybe you should try the Firefox browser with NoScript, or Opera or Seamonkey ?<<

Except that Microsoft now feel it's OK to use their updates to introduce vulnerabilities into Firefox too.

MS warns of bumper patch batch

Oooh - another load of MS Malware??!!

Big patch, huh? I wonder how many of THESE will tamper with non-Microsoft programs on my computer, like the recent firefox disgrace?

Or that 'malicious software remover' that quietly deletes legally purchased and installed non-MS software (happened to me twice now)

No thanks. Patches are now turned off.

Microsoft, Asus launch anti-Linuxbook campaign

Reg needs to get the facts straight here?

"The Asus-hosted site"????

Here's a quote from the Asus forum:

==================================

umm, its not Asus thats hosting it. I have it as Mike Sharp Consulting.

Registrant:

Michael Sharp

Registered through: GoDaddy.com

===================================

It features an eeepc but it got sfa to do with asus.

Charges against London tube tourist snapper thrown out

Tourist = criminal?

A few months ago, I was visiting the UK (from Ireland) as a tourist. I was outside the British Museum, taking snaps of its impressive facade, when I was approached by two plods who politely but firmly insisted that they see what I'd been snapping - AND that I show ID, give my address, and let them search through my bag.

If the UK isn't a police state yet, it seems to be getting there pretty damn fast.

Dear Obama: Please consider open-source a waste of your time

Yawn

>>>It's articles like this that make me wish el reg allowed me to filter out authors the same way slashdot does.<<<

Totally agree, and I just wanted to say so, even if it means patting the author's huge ego (yuck!)

by adding yet another reply to his pointless rant - which is presumably all he wanted, anyway...

Microsoft wants to get under your skin

BSOD

Gives a whole new meaning to 'Blue Screen of Death.'

Google to ‘anonymize’ user IPs after 9 months

Scroogle?

9 months?

Or, you could do your google search via scroogle.org, and avoid giving Google any data whatsoever.

Microsoft breaks IE8 interoperability promise

A beta release... so they'll remove this piece of stupidity, right?

"First, this is a beta release... the idea is to find issues like this so they can be fixed in the final release."

Yeah, right... Let's wait and see if this 'feature' is absent from the final version. Somehow I'm not expecting to be surprised...

AOL spammer jailed for 30 months

Harsh??????

Not long enough.

Not NEARLY long enough. I think about a month per spam would give them something to think about. These bastards are wrecking the internet.

Even better - a year per spam!!

( I have the words 'death penalty' running about in my head, but that might be a *bit* too harsh... maybe...)

Family Guy creator's sellout to Google almost complete

The good old days...

Ah, yes... I can remember Family Guy when it was really, hilariously funny....

But then, I'm REALLY old.

He totally lost the plot a few series ago - Google are welcome to him!

Intel says 'no' to Windows Vista

Yep, me too...

Gave Vista a trial, hated it. We still have XP on less than 20% of our machines ('just in case') but have Ubuntu Linux on the rest. We're finding that it runs lightning fast even on older PCs that were a bit sluggish with XP.

The result is that some proposed hardware updates aren't necessary after all - which is nice - and when XP is no longer viable we'll probably move away from Microsoft totally.

I never thought *that* would happen.

Virgin Media collects customer banking details on CD, then loses it

Why does NOBODY use encryption?

(except maybe terrorists and criminals?)

These days encryption is dead easy - download something like Truecrypt, walk through the easy wizard, and you can put state-of-the-art encryption on anything from a single file to a whole drive. It takes a few minutes.

I use it on my pen-drives in case I lose one. I use it on CDs of data. I'm a PC user, not a PC guru, but I can do this stuff because it's EASY. So how come governments and companies like Virgin are continually losing stuff that just anybody can read?

1,076 developers, 15 years, one open-source Wine

What a waste of time...

It might have been better if they hadn't bothered. Windows users considering a switch to Linux are continually told 'and if you NEED some of your windows programs, you can run them in WINE!'

This does Linux no favours whatsoever.

It still doesn't work on *most* Windows software. I've tried it on a whole raft of Windows stuff - games, graphics apps, text manipulators, databases, etc - and either they don't work at all or (even after all the required tweaking and tinkering) they're so slow/broken that they're useless. Potential Linux users should really be told, ' and if you NEED some of your windows programs, there's an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny lottery-winner-type chance that they might not run TOO badly in Wine.'

If only all those years of programming effort had gone into something useful...

Windows Vista has been battered, says Wall Street fan

Vista transformed my computing experience for the better...

... But maybe not in the way Microsoft expected.

I saw it running on various computers, and hated almost everything about it - system requirements most of all. I thought, 'Oh well, I suppose we'll eventually have to upgrade anyway -after all, what else is there?'

But before making the plunge, I decided that this time I would investigate this 'Linux' thing. Getting used to it was slightly painful, but probably less so than the switch from Windows 98 to XP. And we've been blown away by its performance, even on antique PCs that were still running 98 because they didn't have the power for XP.

I'm not a Linux 'fanboy' (Not quite. Not yet.) But at present I can't imagine what Microsoft would have to do to Windows to tempt me back. Also, I haven't had so much fun with computers since the days when I bought my Sinclair ZX81.

So, thank you, Microsoft!