Posts by Mark Rendle

Apple emasculates the iPhone

Yes, actually

I haven't really needed a personal music player until I joined the massed ranks of the Home Counties commuters quite recently. I have been putting off buying an iPod nano because I figured the iPhone would be a better option. I assumed it did all the things an iPod does identically to the way an iPod does them. I didn't really care about 3G or third-party applications or any of that nonsense; I wanted a phone (in the traditional sense: for talking to people) and an iPod in a single unit. If what is actually available is a phone and a crippled imitation of an iPod, then there really has been no point to the whole exercise.

Turing test challenges spam filters

Missing the point?

I can barely be bothered to read distorted text in captchas; why the hell do they think anybody is going to bother when it's just stock spam?

Red ring of Xbox death costs Microsoft $1bn

"Micro$oft"

Just fucking stop it, you boring twits. It's not funny, it's not clever, and the point it is supposedly trying to make is an empty truism.

Sole competitor comes second in cake-baking contest

Thank you

That's cheered me and my colleagues up no end.

Britain gets shiny new science minister

Wishful thinking

Maybe somebody at the Technology Strategy Board can explain to him how bloody stupid the ID card project is.

Arnold/Ted: Estelle Morris was a former teacher, she was a marvellous SoS for Education, until the media hounded her for something which was blatantly somebody else's fault and she resigned. Fie, gutter media types, hang your filthy heads!

Chilean scientists crack lost lake mystery

Death, hardship and class war

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Microsoft's Silverlight gets Linux treatment

Suggestion

On the subject of comment pages, could the system not automatically add a "Microsoft are rubbish" comment to any article even vaguely linked with the company? It could save an awful lot of boring morons an awful lot of time.

Brown splits DTI, creates ministers for biz & boffinry

DataBase ERRor!

I need to get out more.

Rivals torture consumers via Microsoft

This is a complete waste of time

Why even have the comments section, when every single time it degenerates (usually at the first post) into Microsoft-bashing and people whining because their PCs can't run Vista properly (Ultimate runs fine on my Optiplex 745).

Manhunt 2 banned

Re: Great news!

Andy S, that's a very odd comment. I can think of dozens of non-brutal, non-sadistic next-gen games, and even among the more violent fare such as Gears of War or Resistance: Fall of Man, there are none that compare to Manhunt 2.

Do you actually play videogames, or are you too busy reading the Daily Mail?

Steve Jobs: struggling to redefine the TV paradigm

Adrian, Webster

Do you have any criticisms of AppleTV that aren't also true of the iPod?

Microsoft clarifies Windows Server virtual licensing

English

And yet the antonym of both words is "more", which vexes me more than it should.

On the plus side, I'm not that bothered about Virtual Server licensing.

So what's in a URL? The Reg URL?

us.theregister.co.uk

Serve them right for appropriating .com in the first place.

TV ads too loud, industry watchdog says

Yeah, Paramount Comedy

Surely the worst offenders. Many's the time I've drifted off to sleep with an imported sitcom, only to be blasted awake again at the next commercial break.

Spam King arrested in Seattle

Good

As somebody who has had his e-mail address blacklisted by various spam filters thanks to this idiot (and others like him), I don't think I'm over-reacting when I say: I hope they hang the bastard.

iTunes Plus - plus user details that is

So what?

This shouldn't be a problem for people who dislike DRM because it limits their own fair use of material for which they have paid, should it? I want to be able to copy my music onto my various devices, and burn CDs which don't sound awful when I turn the volume up in the car. So why do I care if my e-mail address is in the files?

Creationists open biblical history museum

Re: creationism and evolution are both just theories

Wrong. Evolution is a scientific theory: logical, evidence-based (yes it is) and most importantly *falsifiable*.

Creationism is the lacks logic, is based on written religious dogma and is very definitely not falsifiable.

Suggesting that the two are equal is like suggesting that my uncle Keith's theory that space aliens run Channel 4 is as valid as General Relativity.

Virgin Media still claiming no usage limits

Worrieder and worrieder

I'm moving to one of these new developments in a month where there are restrictive covenants prohibiting satellite dishes, but of course the whole area has been pre-wired for cable. Of all the worries and stresses of moving, I think the prospect of having to replace my Sky+ TV and ADSL2+ broadband with Virgin Media is the worst.

Metal Gear Solid 4 delayed until 2008?

Obvious comment

This is understandable. After all, the dialogue for a Blu-ray disc's worth of cutscenes isn't going to ridiculously overblow itself.

George Lucas bitch slaps Spider-Man 3

Sam "Kettle" Raimi? This is George "Pot" Lucas...

The creator of Jar Jar Binks has surely lost his right to call anything else vacuous.

As for lacking story, well, so little happens in the Star Wars prequels my memory has fused it into one rather boring film. With a rubbish ending.

Virgin throttles national cable network

QFS

Of course, most of the traffic that needs throttling is people downloading Lost, 24, The Simpsons...

On the Office format wars

Lack of true openness in OpenXML

I am intrigued as to why, as an avid reader of various technical sites, I have not seen any of this "ad infinitum" coverage of OpenXML's in-fact-closedness. While I'm at it, I'd be interested to see any statistics showing that businesses are fleeing en masse to OpenOffice.org in the face of the huge improvements in usability that Microsoft are inflicting on the world with Office 2007.

Wanna copy of Windows XP next year? Forget it

Just a quick reminder to all you Linux proselytisers

NOBODY CARES.

That is all.

Adobe takes UK price hikes to new level with CS3

And in Europe...?

I'll bet it costs *less* in the rest of the EU than it does here, too.

PowerColor ATI Radeon X1950 XTX

That's "*very* affordable"?

In what world is a graphics card which costs marginally less than a PlayStation 3 *very* affordable?