Posts by Anonymous Custard

Windows 8 'sales' barely half as good as Microsoft claims

Splayd

I used to think you could convert a lot of things [to an all-in-one smartphone] but I'm older and wiser, I think. You end up with a 'spork' - a combination of a spoon and a fork. It's no good as a spoon and no good as a fork.

They do actually exist (an example being the Splayd, and ironically they're actually quite good for the job.

As for the software, one has to wonder why there isn't any kind of industry-standard way to judge this. Or would that be too simple and straightforward rather than allowing all the trickery and marketing wordplay that now goes on?

Builder-in-a-hole outrage sparks Special Projects Bureau safety probe

Re: bet you can get

That would be his house?

Of course, after the last time of being well and truly in the doghouse, the power, plasma TV and comfy sofa are all now required for the next time of being sent there for his own comfort perhaps?

Re: Killjoy statistician Nazi here

@ Kubla Cant - I think you're mixing them up with traffic lights and other road markings.

Re: Massive oversight

And where's his ear defenders, to protect from any future verbal about being down an unsupported hole?

Risk assessment?

Shouldn't he also have a wad of fully completed (in triplicate) risk assessment forms in his hand? Or at least stuffed in a suitable pocket for use in breaking falls and possibly for lighting aforementioned fag in the woods?

And is the mask due to being in your proximity and the remaining effects of the chickpea diet?

Excess all areas

Don McMillan

Reminds me of the classic Life after Death by PowerPoint

Re: Hmmmm....

I wonder what the fear of PowerPoint presentations is? Exousiastigmiphobia?

Experience? Entirely sensible self-preservation? Garberphobia (after the lady who coined the death by PowerPoint phrase)?

Or howabout Illiteraphobia - the fear that the presenter thinks you're illiterate and so has to patiently read every word of every slide that he has like a script, without actually adding anything to it?

Stroke my sexy see-through backside, says Jobs from BEYOND THE GRAVE

Re: Prior art

And my missus' old HP laptop, whose trackpad isn't differentiated at all from the rest of the case in front of the keyboard (the wrist-rest bit) except for the clicky buttons at the bottom.

Bloody infuriating it is too when you try and use it, as you never know quite where the edge of it actually is so your fingers are forever going off the side of the sensing area and your cursor suddenly stops whilst your finger merrily continues onward across the case...

Lets say that lasted all of a couple of minutes before a rodent was hunted down and summarily stuck in one of the few USB ports the thing has.

NASA on alert: International Space Station springs a leak

It could have been worse

At least he and Shatner only talked a couple of months back, rather than doing a duet...

Brit adventurer all set to assault ex-Reg haunt Rockall

Re: Must ask

...and suddenly Rockall briefly has a lighthouse, or at least a signal beacon

Re: Rockall Times

Me too. I also wonder if it's time to bring back the Rockall Post Office too.

I've still got some of those stamps around from the 2005 expedition Lester was on.

NEW ITV Player app IS HERE ... for Samsung fandroids only. Ha ha

Spoilt for choice...

So it's the new app which only works on Sammy, or the old one that is apparently incompatible with my 4.2.2 Nexus7.

I would feel hard done by and missing out, except I can't remember the last time I actually watched anything on ITV.

Ray Harryhausen, king of stop motion, takes final voyage

RIP Ray

RIP to the creator of the monsters of my childhood.

CGI may look better, but the magic is less. A farewell to the master.

Move over Radeon, GeForce – Intel has a new graphics brand: Iris

Re: Promises, promises

And good luck finding a CrystalWell product for the desktop. Cos according to all sources I've seen about them so far, basically there won't be any - it's mobile (ultrabook mainly) only on the roadmap.

Re: No thanks. Still don't have a reasonable linux driver for the original one

Would be nice to have decent Windows drivers too for most of their silicon - at least some that support OpenGL and similar stuff.

And where are the actual specs for these new chips, not just meaningless graphs without any context, detail or background? So proper comparisons can be done, rather than this all singing fashion show of dressing up old stuff in new clothes?

Atoms star in ball-bothering boffins' Big Blue movie

Re: Or do they?

Nah, it'd have to be Particle Man by They Might Be Giants...

Brits on benefits: 'Dole office site only works on PCs over 10 YEARS OLD'

Re: Question

Suddenly the reason for el Reg's recent article on Mosaic becomes clear...

Mosaic turns 20: Let's fire up the old girl, show her the web today

Re: Trumpet Winsock

that takes me back :)

Was just thinking the same - fond memories of university days and hacking around the split install of Win3.11 that was used (part local, part on server) to run both Win32s and WinSock.dll properly.

Also being a fairly regular user of Lynx, and then seeing Mosaic for the first time and quite how nice the graphical web could look when all you'd had before was text and ascii art.

And my kids still don't believe me when I say that when I was their age (30-odd years ago) we had neither mobile phones, satellite TV nor the internet/www/text messaging/Facebook/Twitter (at least in common use by Joe Public for the first and last).

A sure-fire way to really make me feel old ;)

Outsourced space trucks battle for US middleweight lifting title

Re: Space will soon no longer be the exclusive domain of governments!

And that of course is more the groundbreaking bit, rather than the technology itself.

It's certainly headed in the right direction (after too many years of virtual standstill), but there is of course the risk that by going toward the private sector we go right back to this being very much national rather than international (cf all the talk in the article about American jobs) and the pioneering of areas further out than our atmospheric attic going back to being a Wild West race with all its inherent duplication of effort from nation to nation (or corporation to corporation) and costs going up again as profits are taken.

Arguably if the ISS was truly international, then why are the Chinese and probably soon the Indians going to have their own stations also flying overhead? If done properly anyone who has the capability to get stuff up there should be invited and incentivised to join the team.

Inside Secure snatches BBC iPlayer downloads from Adobe

Re: The latter

It's also nice to have it when streaming isn't an option - eg on a business trip (on a plane without any connection, abroad when you'd fall foul of the IP restrictions and generally when hotel wifi speeds are crap).

It's nice functionality I have on my old netbook (when Adobe AIR doesn't go tits-up and break the whole lot, which is seemingly more than occasionally of late) to pre-load a few shows and chomp through them over the week or so I'm away. Would be even more handy to have on my Nexus 7 too, for sheer portability reasons.

The healing hands of guru Dabbs

Re: Been there...

Never underestimate the powers of percussive maintenance, or the threat thereof...

Re: Similar effect

Personally I find the power of my healing hands is amplified by their holding of a large hammer or similarly solid percussive maintenance device.

Re: The disappearing computer problem...

Ooook!

An IT Helldesk Natural?

... I almost certainly do not know how to solve any user’s computer problem. Yet I do exactly that every day.

... I have deliberately developed an air of cynicism...

Rolling my eyes at colleagues' requests...

Not sure it's the fairy dust - you sound like a helldesk natural to me from those snippets. Either that or there's an air of recreational sledgehammer-wielder about you that the tech can subtly pick up?

Movie bosses demand Google take down takedown notices

Also kinda reminds me of Sir Terry Pratchett's response at being told he was the most shoplifted author in Britain.

Or at least his response about being told about his supposed response about being told he was the most shoplifted author in Britain, to be slightly more accurate.

<---Mine's the one with the coat in the pocket...

Nokia shutters Shanghai store as Chinese stay away in their billions

What year are we in again?

That analysis also suggested that brand recognition for Nokia as a smartphone producer collapsed from 91.6 per cent a year ago to 38.2 per cent in 2012

Umm, either that was an over 50% drop in about 3 months, or you've been using Google Calendar again Mr M? I thought a year ago was 2012?

Leaked memo: Apple's iMessage crypto has DEA outfoxed

A life of crime

So is Apple's latest iPhone going to be the smartphone of choice with those bent on a life of crime?

Isn't it already? I would have expected it to be, as probably many of them cut their junior crim teeth by mugging people for the things.

Not to mention the bling aspect of things, along with the BMW or similar motor.

Mars to go offline for a month as vast nuclear furnace gets in the way

Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be a sun-shattering kaboom!

Now where did I put my Illudium Q -36 Explosive Space Modulator?

But this time to blow up the Sun, as it spoils the view of Earth (and possibly Venus).

<-- As close as this place gets to Marvin the Martian...

Torygraph and Currant Bun stand by to repel freeloaders

Re: well the DT paywall doesn't bother me

Near the beginning (the Android app) when it couldn't even manage spaces in comments, and then a few weeks after that when it was bloated, still not overly good with comments (although OK then with spaces) and had other issues with size and synching.

Just had a quick look again - looks a bit better now, but still seems to be missing some basics like being able to search articles? Or being able to see comment vote counts or indeed vote?

The only thing it seems to give is offline caching, and that looks to be all or nothing for both articles and for comments?

Re: well the DT paywall doesn't bother me

Which reminds me, have the many and varied glitches in the el Reg app been looked at yet, or is the web page still the way to go?

Given the mess it was before, somehow methinks the bookmark in Firefox is still the route to go.

Blighty's revolutionary Cold War teashop computer - and Nigella Lawson

Re: @Gavin re Nigella Lawson

And her father indirectly (ish) helped kill it off, as the article also says. Although there a somewhat more nasty way of things coming full circle than just looking at the lovely lady.

Re: Er...

I'd also wonder about calling the programs that the things ran "apps". Given how hard-wired they were (literally for the early ones), even programs may be stretching it a bit I guess.

Really enjoying this series of articles though, although using a terms that's only been around for a few years in relation to a machine of this vintage caused some serious mental gear-grinding.

Are you in charge of a lot of biz computers? Got Java on them?

Re: Updates

And isn't the Java updater the one that also tries to spam you with things like the Ask toolbar and other crap that you don't want, but that it will merrily add if you just click-through rather than remembering to untick the various boxes first?

Of course it also will ask every damn time, rather than remembering that I've said no to the last dozen times it's asked me if I want to weigh down my browser with unwanted junk in the vain hope that I might suddenly want it this time.

Come on, just patch the holes, make it compatible and get it to work without all the nagging and backdoor installs, then we may keep up better.

Help save the endangered QUANTUM OWL, pleads Reg man

Re: Something for the weekend?

@Dominic - sounds good, although as noted there are none on the website (at least none that haven't already happened) - how often do they occur?

Indeed a quick web search found me the page advertising the March one we just missed, and that page seems to have recommended content pointing to two of them in 2009? Hardly inspires confidence in the institution.

http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?id=00000000848&action=displayContent

Looking through the listed upcoming events, there's only one more listed as family friendly (An evening with Simon Mayo and Itch on Sat 18th May 6-7:30pm). And aside from one item there's nothing at all listed beyond the end of June - not even the Christmas lectures. Surely they must be planned more than a couple of months in advance?

Something for the weekend?

Aside from the lack of family membership, it also seems that most of the events are on weeknights. Fine if you're a Londoner, but for those of us a bit further out (Home Counties etc) it gets a bit more complex. Many a time we've had good days out in London on a Saturday or Sunday (Science Museum, London Aquarium/Eye, Nat Hist Museum, Museum of London etc etc) with the kids, but a week (schoolnight) lecture would be a no-go.

So in addition to family membership, how about some events/lectures on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon that could involve (and be aimed at) those younger proto-scientists too?

Next from Microsoft: 'Blue', the Windows 8 they hope you don't hate

Re: Lipstick on a pig...

Come on - that's an insult to pigs. I mean, bacon sarnie, sausage sarnie, chops, the bounty is endless!

I'm not sure what put me off more in the video, what was being presented or who/how it was being done. Either way, no-go from me either.

Another iPhone passcode bypass spell revealed

Re: teachers...

Kinda brought to mind this story from a web-wandering earlier. Why did we never have teachers like this when I was younger?

Also again seems like the primary school kids can work the machine better than the teacher could...

Potion containing unicorn blood?

Have you checked that it's not contaminated with horse?

Nvidia and ARM: It's a parallel, parallel, parallel world

Too Little Too Late?

Shame really given the overnight news about the next-gen Nexus 7 business going from Nvidia/Tegra to Qualcomm/Snapdragon. Given that's where a fairly large percentage of the Tegra 3 chips ended up (~80% by some reports), the future prospects for Nvidia may have taken something of a knock.

Microsoft issues manual on Brits to Cambridge exports

Re: Wot.. no outrage?

Not until the Daily Mail pick up on it anyway...

Re: Agree totally on the Take-Aways

It's also interesting to see how much the food is "tailored" (for want of a better word) to the local tastes, even across Europe. For example try ordering a sweet & sour dish in Italy, France, Netherlands and Germany and you'll get an almost completely different item.

Worst one was in the Netherlands - had sweet & sour pork once which looked and tasted like someone got a tin of fruit salad, tipped it into the container and then threw some chunks of pork in it.

As said above, the best ones are where both the cooks and ideally a reasonable number of the clients are of the country whose food is being cooked (usually the best way to get a good Japanese restaurant for sure).

Hmm

Now if they could just stop insulting our intelligence with some of their product and marketing moves lately.

But then I guess that's not limited to affecting us Brits, unfortunately.

Freeview suddenly UNWATCHABLE dross? It may just be a 4G test

Freeview suddenly UNWATCHABLE dross? It may just be a 4G test

Or just someone tuned to one of the ITV or shopping channels by mistake?

Googlification of Britain: Forget 'IT worker', we're all just 'digital' now

The tongue-twisting job title of government senior information risk owner

Sir Humphrey would be proud, at least once he'd stopped laughing.

Touch screens and greasy mitts: All you need is glove

Re: Lidl

The pound shop does a twin pack for a quid. Thinner and metal shafted rather than plastic, but they work well enough. I use one with my Nexus 7 - find it much easier to swipe-type with it than with my fingers.

Crack Bombe squad dismantles Reg encryption in an hour

To keep in the spirit of things...

Avpr gb frr gur obzor jbexvat ntnva, naq nyfb ratntvat jvgu fghqragf naq gur lbhatre trarengvba :)

AdBlock Plus BLOCKED from Google Play

Re: Web page

I must be, but I can't get it to work, with wifi on/off or a full reboot.

Adblock installed, set to port 26571 and localhost.

Was a bit mistaken earlier, it does work with Firefox, but if I try and access an http page via Chrome then I get an empty tab (but with its correct tab header). However if I try an https page then it works as well. Desktop or mobile versions of pages also don't help.

It used to work after Google did their initial messing about, but then they pushed a Chrome update and it all went south. Which I guess maybe the difference here?

Anyway, Adblock or Chrome....?

Hmm, well hello again Firefox.

Web page

http://adblockplus.org/en/android

As the link seems to be missing from the article (unless I missed it).

That said when I tried recently to use it again, even the localhost proxy work-around didn't work. Adblock Plus did run, but whenever I tried to open an http webpage in either Chrome, Dolphin or Firefox all I got was the tab title but an empty page. Turning off AB+ immediately allowed the pages to display properly.

Shame really as it was a useful app, albeit I guess one the Chocolate Factory felt their business model somewhat threatened by.

Comixology cloud fails to Make Mine Marvel

"Our teams are working around the clock to resolve these issues so that you can have the experience you've come to expect.”

Unfortunately as often happens with these giveaway things, they did give us exactly the experience we've come to expect :(

Shame as I was initially quite eager for this as well...

En Garde! Villagers FIGHT OFF FRENCH INVASION MENACE

Nah, they'll just accuse the French signals of being illegal immigrants, and demand that either all such signal carry proper electronic passports or are immediately deported back, after of course a lengthy trial and appeals process...