Posts by Liam Pennington

Everything Everywhere consummates merger

But....the name....

I would assume "Everything Everywhere" will be ditched by the spring? It's clumsy and embarrasingly smug.

Treasury pulls plug on Wiki-cutback site

Flawed....

The site asking for cut back suggestions was always going to falter under the Wiki-format. They should have allowed only comments on a set of pre-determined headings, or a traditional questionnaire format. It /is/ encouraging to see such crowdsourcing from Government, but it appears both Coalition and Labour parties are unable to fathom how to use teh interwebz correctly.

The Register comment guidelines 2010

Coming to this party rather late...

But yeah, given the state of other forums (fora?), El Reg is far more open and liberal (small "l") than most. I've not had all my comments posted, c'est la vie...

Beeb dubs Facebook users 'saddos'

What's really sad....

Is I spotted the quote and have now got it as my Facebook profile picture.

Twitter topples over

Tw**t

Those of us who don't mind a bit of live-tweeting events like the World Cup or the XBox Kinect launch or other such life-affirming events do get out the house when Twitter falls down! It has been failing more often these past few weeks, one wonders if the servers really can cope with so many 140-character opinions on the oil spill, ConDem governance, Big Brother, the World Cup....

Street View prowls Outer Hebrides

Oh Great

You see, I went camping on Eigg and Canna to escape this sort of thing. What exactly is there on Uist that Google is so desparate to scan?

Philips waves farewell to point-and-press remote controls

Men Of Habit

Just want to flick to and from Top Gear on Dave to Sky Sports News. If this makes it easier, fine.

Why teachers fear Callum, Chelsea, Connor and Crystal

Yes well...

I was called "something of a mad professor, like a lightbulb without a shade. Bright but bloody annoying". That was pre-Oasis, mind, now any old soul is called Liam, it just won't do...

(And no British child should be called Brooklyn in any case.)

California skateboard dude swipes Reg logo

Is it me...

It looks like one of those creatures from old Bugs Bunny cartoons, the ones in space?

Paris, because she knows all about head...

Ofcom top of Tory deathlist

Erm...

So a Conservative Government would be resposible for ruling on whether a programme or advert overstepped the grounds of taste and deceny

Ooooh dear.....

Fifty Quid Bloke, meet Spotify's 14p man

I heart Spotify

More often now than not I am turning to Spotify rather than putting on my CDs. It's just far more enjoyable to flick through songs I've not heard for ages and some faves than the physical act of choosing a CD - or even my barely used Windows Media Player.

But like all free Internet services, no-one can be bothered paying. "You can't get owt for nowt" exists very much across the net users. So Spotify will have to make it more enticing to sign up for the premium service - maybe stopping free users creating playlists? Or more adverts?

11 Time Lords plan charity shindig

Time waits for no man...

Certainly not those actors who have aged somewhat, erm, naturally since their time in the TARDIS. Dare I suggest that this idea, whilst fan-fap tastic, is best left to fiction of a particular type rather than an expensive slot in a telethon squeezed between tap-dancing newsreaders (yawn) and Jade Ewan singing her [already forgotten] Eurovision classic?

Gov tries to work out if anyone is visiting its websites

Oh dear indeed

Although this has prompted me to go to Google Analytics to find my daily readership is back up to, erm, eleven people.....

Site news: Unique commenter handles coming

In before...

Mark0001 is taken....

Coppers prowl Sheffield's Letsby Avenue

And more....!

Don't know how many are on street view, but some others for the

schoolboy in you....

Twatling Road, Worcestershire (SJ 99314 74689)

Bell End Green, Pickering (SE 71919 96803)

Cocklands, Charminster (SY 68186 92510)

Ballsdown, Godalming SU 95658 35484)

Wolfram Alpha - a new kind of Fail

Fail, you are.

I tried playing around with this yesterday, but felt so close to breaking something I had to leave the room.

Put in "Preston", and yes, lots of info. Put in "Preston, MP" and you get nothing. Try my date of birth, and there comes half a page of info I could get from Wikipedia. Try the last UK general election, and again, the political confused the mathematical mind.

Like a calculator, the programme only seems to work when users input what it expects to be input. But web searches are not so ordered and predictable.

I suggest Wolfram Alpha goes back to, well, beta....

GeoCities demolished

Signs you're getting old

I remember the clammer to get a GeoCities website back in the day, when it was the only way for non-techie types to have some kind of site on-line. Pre-MySpace, pre-Web 2.0 Now look at us, i can't believe GeoCities was still going!

Kiwis go all black over copyright enforcement laws

@Nic_Brough

El Reg are ensuring that the anti-Twitter tidalwave starts here!

But...

In this post-ideological age where protests seem to be a thing of the past, at the first sign of outrage people reach for Facebook ro Twitter. If the "avatar Black Out" is a sign of how angry people are then it is a modern day sign of protest.

Spotify: We kick the tyres

Gets my vote

I've been usign Spotify since the turn of the year. When i cannot be bothered with downloading or my mediaplayer, Spotify is a great fallback. The ads are a bit annoying but it's a small price to pay (if you will) for the chance to listen to almost every song which pops into my head while I work.

For those with iTunes or somesuch it may not be perfect, but for the less technologically minded, it's a simple but very effective music-on-demand type service.

Google will tell your mates where you are

Hmm...

Anyone want to play a guessing game with me?

If we take the equation "F-P=x", estimate the value of "x"

F = fans of this tracking service

P = protestors against invasions of privacy or civil liberties

It appears that, as with Facebook, Twitter, et. al, people quite enjoy the concept without thinking of the connections to, say, ID Cards or undercover policeman recording the queues outside nightclubs...

BBC pumps 60 quid a head into Gaelic

BBC Regions

A point made further up here may need to be investigated further. I live in Preston, Lancashire, and with a standard kitchen radio can pick up BBC Radios 1-5, Lancashire, Merseyside, and Manchester. On a good day, BBC Radio Cumbria too.

I am not sure how many people tune in to these, but were the BBC wanting to cut money to help promote the langugaes of these isles, may I suggest "BBC Radio Northern England" to cut back on these 5 regional stations?

Think about how much money could be saved if the regional radio stations are merged in this way, something I would support.

I for one am in favour....

Gaelic and Welsh are languages spoken within the UK, and as the national broadcaster, the BBC should do all it can to promote and sustain those languages. Through other income streams they promote the non-English languages through the BBC World Service; it should do all it can to maintain viewers or listeners in Welsh or Gaelic.

If the viewing figures are falling, I suspect they may return to broadcasting Gaelic programming within later night BBC Two programming.

'Obama quits' spam recruits zombie drones

Superlative!

<i>the most "high-tech security bubble ever" ever</i>....EVER!

First Windows 7 beta puts fresh face on Vista

I am a rare case

I really like Vista, does that make me some kind of rare spieces round here?

W7 looks alright too...! Sorry for being honest!

Online crime maps go live

Lancashire?

No joy from the Lancashire plod website. Seems to take me on the proverbial goose chase around outdated minutes and PACT meeting notices.

Lanky?

Just been on the (awfully laid out and terrbily slow) Lancashire Constab. web site, can't find anything there. My postcode brings up a local community group meeting minutes from 2006, though....=/

Beeb names new Doctor Who

Doctor...Who?

My mum was right. You know you're getting old when police men (or in this case Time Lords) are getting younger....

Last major VHS supplier ejects from tape biz

Erm...

No way will Blu-Ray take over DVDs within 3 years. Why can't the two formats just run parallel to each other?

Three simultaneously cut undersea cables under repair

@ Cause

Now that ICANN or whoever it is will allow non-Roman script domains, maybe the Middle East will be isolated from the rest of the Internet (as it t'were) sooner than later anyway....

Mozilla Google relations strained by Chrome

RE:

The current IE security collapse (part 94) finally pushed me to go over to Firefox. I am liking my early little babysteps into the FF world, and probably won't go back to IE now...

...but I have heard far too many people reporting bad experiences with Chrome.

Microsoft's IE8 app dev survival guide

IE7 has a certain charm....

But how good to read that people who use IE6 are ignorant...from the company responsible for it. Niiiice.

Why the IWF was right to ban a Wikipedia page

I disagree

What absolute rot!

Wikipedia has a blacklist of editors because they are vandals, whose work is against the aim and cause of the project.

I am a proud Wikipedian, who wants the best for the Wikipedia project. It is not hyprocisy to call this censorship. It IS censorship. Wikipedia is not censored (see WP:NOT).

The IWF have not blocked the corresponding virgin killers page on answers.com, I notice, suggesting they are drawing attention (oddly enough) to their unelected, unaccountable body.

Vista SP2 to land in April 2009-ish?

But..but

I use Vista. I don't mind it, to be honest. I'm just a litle man with a laptop, who finds Vista and the funky windows switcheroony thing quite impressive.

Now I don't play games on line, or download music, so as a normal everyday basic user, Vista does its job..

All I can see coming for Windows7 is, erm, the Ribbon being introuced to Paint. WOW, there be progress...

It's official: Siemens sells out to Fujitsu

Oh great...

Just when my F-S laptop is beginning to go a little wayward and in need of repair, the company sells up!