Posts by slack

China Mobile, you can kiss good Pai to America: FCC to ban 'spy risk' telco from US

Serial crony and bootlicker Ajit needs to fook off and pai.

Doom at 25: The FPS that wowed players, gummed up servers, and enraged admins

I was working on a ship back in '94 or so when I got my hands on a copy of Doom.

It took about a week until the IT guy and I were blasting away at each other, another for the bridge to get on board during their down times . After that the black gang and anybody else with access to a computer was fighting the good fight whenever they could. Happy, happy days and nights.

Agree with the above comment -- it was the sound and music that really iced the cake.

Please, pleeeease let me ban Kaspersky Lab from US govt PCs – senator

A politician says something stupid and possibly xenophobic to burnish their credentials with the hometown rubes and grab some attention?

Fetch my fainting couch....

Penguins force-fed root: Cruel security flaw found in systemd v228

AFAIK Pat V doesn't own a donkey. ;)

Re: Hate systemd?

Came to reference Slackware, happy to see I was beaten to it.

Microsoft's Service Fabric for Linux hits public preview

Anybody want to translate the MS market-speak article into English?

Microsoft won't back down from Windows 10 nagware 'trick'

Re: F*** another fail for IT in the eyes of ordinary users

"Oh, and a small point, the CAD tool I was using to design a small boat is now broken."

Perhaps you dodged a bullet: if you were designing it on an MS operating system it would probably have sprung a leak right when you needed it most and sunk. And Ballmer might have danced around at the launch!

SatNad and his cohorts are starting to make Ballmer look like a technology guru.

House passes broadband bill despite promise of White House veto

Re: Congressional Idiocy

It's a low bar to Limbaugh under...

Building a better society from the Czechs' version of Meccano

I'm glad I'm not the only one who saw the plotter and immediately thought: WANT!!!

Thailand: 'The nail that sticks up gets hammered down'

After living and reporting in Thaland for over 30 years, I tire of these ignorant "tourists" who don't speak Thai, don't understand the culture, politics or people, yet dribble a bibful on the situation.

Presumably they can spell 'Thailand' correctly though...

'We're having panic attacks' ... Sony staff and families now threatened in emails

Err...

Problem: Nobody is going to see the crappy films your company is making.

Solution: Hire Bain & Co to placate some rapacious shareholder, toss in $250m in "overheard and procurement savings", add "Sony Pictures had a crap approach to passwords and access controls, but the concerns were dismissed by Sony execs because requiring staff to memorize complex passwords was too much" and top it off by promoting to Veep of Info-Sec the guy who said "We’re trying to remain profitable for our shareholders, and we literally could go broke trying to cover for everything,".

What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Misty-eyed Ray Ozzie celebrates 25th birthday of Lotus Notes by tweeting about it ...

I worked for a company whose owner got the Notes fetish on some business trip.

We went from a productive, happy environment to a "You forgot the cover sheet on your TPS reports" hell almost overnight. Forms that took 15 times longer to try to use than the previous systems (where we simply filled in a spreadsheet and attached it to an email with a set of cc's), support staff whose stock answer was along the lines of "You shouldn't want to do that and anyway what it CAN do is this, and would you like fries with that?".

The best (worst) part was that it was a company that encouraged you to use your own laptop so you could work from home or the road etc but on MY laptop I ran Slackware and of course Notes client didn't work so I had to set it up all over again to dual boot or risk getting looked upon with disfavour as "not a team player" by the idiot company owner. So screw lotus notes and the twats who foisted it upon an undeserving public.

Linux systemd dev says open source is 'SICK', kernel community 'awful'

Re: Hostile leadership vs hostile software

"Name a major distro that's not using systemd? That's not using pulseaudio?"

Slackware.

Say goodbye to landfill Android: Top 10 cheap 'n' cheerful smartphones

No mention of Nokia X?

I never had any use for a smartphone until recently and I hate the standard fiddly look of most Androids and even iPhone - I have fat fingers and bad eyes.

I got a Nokia X and it's been very useful. I think the Windows style UI is better for phones (and I am an avid Slackware and OS X user who normally has no time for anything from MS). Any app I wanted has been available from one of the many stores online and the only software I have had any issue with is Firefox crashing all the time, but the Opera and default browser it came with are good enough. I can ssh into my home servers when away if something goes wrong with them and I got a Midnight Commander-esque file app which is the bee's knees for moving things around.

The lack of a webcam is a benefit imho as I have no use for them, the built in camera is shit but it'll do in a pinch for insurance photos and the like and I never have much hope for any camera with a focal length of 0.5cm anyway. Music, radio and video playback is fine and the dual-sim management is slick and handy. 60-ish quid here in Thailand and it was money well spent.

Plus it's bright green.

Sorry, chaps! We didn't mean to steamroller legit No-IP users – Microsoft

They haven't unborked anything yet from where I am sitting. Does anybody know where we can send a strongly worded email to voice our displeasure?

"legitimate subdomains resolve as expected"

So MS thinks that my little host serving up pics to family and stuff is somehow illegitimate? Is it because I won't let their poxy software run on it and I don't bother writing kludges into css files to work around their shitty browser?

Microsoft's anti-malware crusade knackers '4 MILLION' No-IP users

Add me to the list of people burned by this today. Unreal.

Years of happily toddling along with no-ip and then out of the blue I get zapped by MS through no fault of my own. Screw them.

Assange loses appeal against extradition to Sweden

Re: Stinks

"As far as I am concerned Assange is a douchebag but WikiLeaks itself is a great idea if it was run with appropriate oversight."

This.

I've tried to watch his new show on RT but he is an insufferably annoying prick, his aims may be in the right place, but his smug self-promotion is nauseating.

I think he's toast now and will be cooling his heels for a long time in a US prison soon. They'll go all out to charge him with anything and everything they can think of just to get an extradition.

It's time to end the Windows Wait

Optional

If you are still using the OS that requires a reboot virtually every time the mouse is moved then this might be an issue.

For the rest of us it isn't.

Android 'stands on Microsoft's shoulders', says MS lawyer

Cry me a river

"These devices have moved from having a rudimentary phone system to being a full-fledged computer, with a sophisticated, modern operating system"

If that is true then they have done it despite MS, not because of anything MS has managed to botch together and foist off onto the gullible..

Stallman: Did I say Jobs was evil? I meant really evil

Optional

Came to make some comments but it seems they have all been covered, but anyway..

I respect Mr Stallman for his amazing contributions but he seems to be tilting at windmills nowadays.

I like my iMac very much, I like it more when I'm using it to virtualise Slackware or run GIMP and various other things on what has proven (for me) to be a flexible and pleasing platform.

Stallman should lay off Jobs since Jobs is now dead and focus on things that matter.

Ballmer: Uninspiring performance and a small package

Optional

One gets the impression that Ballmer is living on borrowed time. MS and the world will be better off once that incompetent creep gets his marching orders.

Apple Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Part One

Underwhelming

Despite all the hype I haven't seen a convincing reason to ditch Snow Leopard yet. My iMac and MacBook (both core 2 due, 2GB) both perform fine and I have no use for the App Store stuff as far as I can tell.

Looks like I'll sit this one out for now.

New Sony hack exposes more consumer passwords

I need a job

I know sweet f*ck all about computer security but I'll work for beer. I think I will send my CV to Sony.

Apple fanbois leak secrets of Mac OS X Lion

title

I am not seeing any compelling reasons to upgrade from SL yet. Quite the reverse actually if they are going to try and make OSX act like iOS

Ace Reg reporter in career suicide shock

Congrats

Hope the new gig works out well for you.

Major Facebook redesign, smoothed-off Zuckerberg unveiled

One of these days

I'll get around to setting up a facebook account.

I am sure it must be great..

Hey kids, wanna build your own Vulture 1?

Hunh?

Why not release the plans in an open format?

PARIS joins the 17-mile-high club

The right stuff

Heartiest congratulations to all involved in this super project.

Margaret Thatcher celebrates 85 years

Fun!

Rescue the miners and then chuck that hideous, disgusting, hateful old hag down the hole and bung it up with her nauseating offspring.

Major would make a fitting plug if they could use Tebbit to ram him down.

How do you copy 60m files?

LOL

"Richcopy can handle large quantities of files, but can multi-thread the copy, and so is several hours faster than using a Linux server as an intermediary"

Richcopy is not so fast that there is time to defragment an NTFS partition with 60 million files on it before CP would have finished."

Wut?

SCADA worm a 'nation state search-and-destroy weapon'

AC said

"Is this a credible, unbiased source of information and analysis or an untrustworthy font of sky fairy propaganda?"

Despite its name the CSM is not a bad read most of the time and has won a bunch of Pulitzers over the years.

Boffin-botherer's LHC doomsday case thrown out on appeal

Title

"Accordingly, the alleged injury, destruction of the earth, is in no way attributable to the U.S. government’s failure to draft an environmental impact statement."

Ok, I laughed, whoever wrote that has a wicked sense of humour.

Wikileaks US Army mole Manning charged

Well, I'm shocked!

"The Pentagon subsequently concluded that the helicopter crews had acted within their rules of engagement"

Apple adds 'make the web go away' button to Safari 5

cognitive toxins

would be a great band name

Windows Phone chief and Xbox brain exit Microsoft

Awesome

"Steve Ballmer is taking control of E&D."

This should be good for a laugh!

Google hails Pac-Man with retro gaming homepage

Check coolpreviews

The add-on devs have already admitted that the issue was because of a problem with their code, not Google.

Lufthansa offers iPhone 4G loser free beer

nifty

A pretty savvy move by Lufthansa to try to piggyback on the inevitable media whirlwind that will accompany the launch of the 4g.

Paris Hilton crowned 'Worst Actress of the Decade'

A title is required

Her contributions to the cinematic oeuvre are often overlooked. Time will show what a great, underrated, performer of the fine art she is.

I will always love her.

LEAVE PARIS ALONE! *tears*

Ballmer readies slate PC for CES

well

This should be good for a laugh.

It's always funny when MS release something they tout as "new"; if it isn't a mouse then it's guaranteed to be crap, especially if that idiot Ballmer had anything to do with it.

Magic Mice cast energy-sapping spell

Told to take batteries out

The solution I was given was to take the batteries out of the keyboard when not using it. FFS!

I can't be bothered doing that, I have found that switching the mouse off when not using helps a bit, ie I get about a week out of the batteries instead of a day or two. Apple had better pull their finger out and fix this.

How Google became Microsoft: A decade of hits, misses and gaffes

a good read

Thanks for that round-up, it was rather interesting.

Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

No thanks

I installed 9.10 on 3 identical desktops (2 Ubuntu and 1 Kubuntu) to see what it was like nowadays. It was a nice easy install but one of them flatly refuses to find its nic, the other two do fine.

I cannot get a Brother multifunction printer to scan despite hours and hours of reading. There are a lot of people with the same problem apparently. I had the same problem with Slackware 12.2 but a quick edit of a Udev rule fixed it, no such luck with Ubuntu. I put Slackware 13 onto the one that can't find its nic and it works perfectly.

The Ubuntu ones look good (17" LCD monitors) but the Kubuntu one has tiny, ugly fonts, especially in the terminal. The KDE GUI controls seem to be a bit spotty at times. Overall I think that I will be putting Slackware back on to the 2 remaining boxes as I find it a lot easier to manage than (K)Ubuntu, but that is probably only because I have a lot more experience with Slackware than anything else.

Microsoft security report shows worms are returning

Oh dear..

"Cliff Evans, head of security and privacy at Microsoft"

The only job in the world worse than being manager of the English football team.

/Paris because I lurve her

Microsoft applies lipstick to MSN butterfly

hmm..

MS sells an OS that should be used for nothing more than turning a computer into a nice typewriter.

/Paris beacause I loooove her

Apple Magic Mouse

Mighty mouse

Looks good and has to be an improvement on the mighty mouse, the tiny trackball is infuriating to clean all the time on both the wired and wireless models.

Apple preempts Win 7 with fresh iMacs, Macbooks

help

Look like good upgrades from Apple in general.

I am certainly going to get at least one of the mouses and with my extraordinary powers of self-restraint I will probably walk out of the store with a 27" iMac and new 15" MBP for the Mrs to assuage my guilt.

I hope 15 inches is enough for her.

/damn you Steve

Security boss calls for end to net anonymity

Twat

Presumably he'd also like everybody to run the same operating system, the one he's made so much money from selling his crappy software.

How to host your very own Windows 7 launch party

Read the host notes!

Just for fun I downloaded them, they contain gems like this on page 5:

"What do I do at the party?

Introduce • We’ll be making the computer uniquely our own by changing the desktop background.

Demonstrate

• Use Windows Search from the Start menu for any of the following: background, desktop, wallpaper, appearance or slideshow. Click on change desktop background.

• Choose photo(s) for desktop slideshow (pictures library > scroll to the folder > clear all > select photos).

• Change the picture position to fit. • Have picture change every 10 seconds. • Save changes.

TIP: Other customization features can be found here, too.

Guests’ hands-on exercise • Guests create a new desktop using the photos in “Party” folder in Windows Live Photo Gallery. • Who goes first?"

Are they joking? That certainly isn't my idea of a 'party' activity.

They cannot be serious with all this rubbish, I think abigsmurf got it right above.

EMC co-founder kills himself

Condolences

He sounds like a hell of a character. Condolences to Mrs. Egan.