Posts by The Unexpected Bill

Facebook: Your boss asks for your password, we'll sue him! Maybe

Here's what I don't get...

Why would anyone ever turn this information over to a potential employer? I think that would be a huge warning sign. After all, what might they ask about next? Political leanings, hobbies, religion, sexual orientation?

Laws probably vary by jurisdiction, and even then I don't know that a potential or existing employer could force anyone to do this, other than through the order of a court of law.

There was a story on National Public Radio about a man who was told to divulge his Facebook credentials when he re-applied for a job, so I guess it's spreading.

Obnoxious opinions: A) I'd never bank on Facebook choosing to do the "right thing". B) I'm still so very glad I don't have a Facebook account. (And yes, I know that this could well be extended to other forms of social networks beyond Facebook.)

So, what IS the worst film ever made?

Re: every

I can think of one...the 1999 remake of Gone In 60 Seconds.

Not that the original film wasn't interesting, it just didn't have much of a story line.

Apple antagonist Proview unveils its own iPad

I've seen that before...

That's basically a Compaq iPaq Internet Appliance (either the IA-1 or the IA-2, I don't recall which one is which). The iPaq CRT monitor's OSD behaves identically to a Mag InnoVision monitor. There is some relation between Proview and Mag InnoVision...

Proview's rendition has a different color scheme, but every other aspect of the design is identical to the Compaq product. These two Compaq products were members of the ill-fated Internet Appliance "craze" of the late 90s/early 2000s. They featured a National Semiconductor Geode CPU and booted into Windows CE from a DiskOnChip device.

I found one on the curb. It's still moldering in my basement, as I never had much luck getting it to boot into anything other than the copy of Windows CE on the flash memory disk.

FCC (finally) cracks down on BLARING! TV! ADS!

Well....sort of...

> Bingo, no noisy ads, no effort! And no monthly subscription :-)

...isn't there still a requirement to use SchedulesDirect with MythTV?

I know. I hate to be *that* soldier (to paraphrase the BOFH)...

(I played with it a while ago and it was strongly hinted that using SchedulesDirect was required. I figured that MythTV could do the same as a $5 garage sale VCR and accept simple start/stop times. It seems I was wrong, though I never really got it running and lost interest because I don't know when the last time I *cared* about TV was...)

Magnavox TV Volume Limiter

> Does anyone know if this was effective?

I have a 19" Magnavox* table TV with the SmartSound feature available in the menus. Said TV dates from 1997, has been an excellent set and continues to work very well. (My only real complaint is that the firmware turns the closed caption decoder off after every power cycle, but it's only one key to turn it back on...)

Yes, the feature does work very well most of the time. When turned on, the overall audio level drops slightly. I suppose it simply watches for a sudden spike in the audio signal and cuts the amplifier's gain.

* kind of ironic that the word Magnavox is said to be based on the Latin for "great voice" ... or maybe it means that outright. I'm nobody's idea of a language scholar.

Ten... mono laser printers

Laser Printers

The Dell printer looks so much like a Samsung laser printer because it probably *is* a Samsung laser printer. If you look at the driver files, you will probably find that they are thinly disguised, with the version information for each giving away the truth. Likewise with the self test page if it's got one.

While on the subject, Samsung has some very credible low cost laser printers, and while I have no experience with anything newer than a 2006 model, their drivers were quite good for Windows and Macintosh systems. (It's also been my experience that while Samsung did "chip" some of their toner cartridges, they will usually continue to work until they really are empty.)

HP's low cost laser printers aren't too bad mechanically, but someone at HP seems inclined to turn their print drivers into a complicated mess. Even the low end LaserJets were free of this scourge for a while, but I fear it has spread to them as well.

Although not the subject of the review, a used laser printer is worth considering for some...especially if it's an older HP LaserJet series machine. They run almost forever on cheap supplies and usually only ask that you put in a new set of rollers and pick pads every few ten thousands of pages you run through one. A LaserJet III probably isn't a reasonable suggestion for anything other than very basic printing needs and is likely to have a lot of miles on it now anyway, but a LaserJet 5, 6 or 4050/4100 is a pretty reasonable bet.

The Secret of Monkey Island

"Never pay more than twenty bucks for a computer game..."

The Secret of Monkey Island succeeded where almost no other computer game or gaming system ever did--it sucked me in around the early 1990s when I came into a copy the way I suspect a lot of people did. (A neighbor gave me a bunch of "old computer stuff" at the time and one of those things was a cracked copy of the program. Most of it wasn't old, just unwanted.) I was probably too young for it at the time, as I never managed to get off of Melee Island.

Fast forward to the mid-2000s when someone else was giving me their old computer stuff. (Notice a pattern here?) Most of it was the usual junk, but buried deep in a box was a LucasArts multi-game box set that looked new. A few of the disks had bad spots, but nowhere that mattered and soon I was playing once again, with my eye on actually seeing it through to completion. I completed the game while waiting in a car dealership, playing it on a Compaq LTE 5000 laptop.

I always loved the soundtrack, whether played on a proper soundcard or PC speaker (weren't those the days?) The newer version of the game in that box set had better (MCGA) 256-color graphics and no longer required the "type in the year this pirate was hanged" test at startup. I still fire it up every now and again on a PS/2 Model 70 and spend a few hours puttering around with it. This and the modern Rigs of Rods stand alone in holding my interest.

Extra points awarded if you knew that the title of this post was actually something you could choose to have Guybrush say at the end of the game.

Ten... digital voice recorders

@UltraDisk Voice Recorders

If I may, let me start by thanking you for coming to the Register forum and responding to the review and questions about the UltraDisk voice recorders. However, the whole file system thing sounds a bit confused...NTFS isn't a partition type, it's a file system. In any case, Mac OS X (from 10.2 on up IIRC) does support read only access for NTFS formatted storage devices with any other software being required. Read/write support for FAT32 is defintely present in Mac OS X (and I believe Mac OS 9 as well, but it's been a looong time). If the UltraDisk recorder presents itself to the computer/operating system as a USB mass storage class device, surely it would work fine with a Macintosh (less the software, of course)?

As a Reg Hardware reader who is located in the United States, I'd also like to ask if you have any plan to enter the US market with your products. I do like the small form factor and the convenience it implies.

Al Gore wants to borrow your Facebook and Twitter accounts

Shoot, why not?

After all, Al Gore _invented_ the Internet, don'tcha know? (imagine that in the most sarcastic looking font available, and you'll have my meaning)

(I don't even play on any of those social networking services, and I never intend to.)

Mine's the coat with the 40-year-old refrigerator that outcools many newer ones in the pocket...

Domino's to serve pizzas on the Moon, apparently

Domino's Pizza

(it'll surprise me if I'm the first to say it...)

It's Domino's Pizza...does anyone really eat that stuff? This is the same company that once ran a radio ad with people saying terrible things about their product, after which they claimed to be "improving" it. From where I was standing, their pizza went from bad to worse around that time. At least it's cheap.

Therefore, I postulate that it makes little practical difference if their new location is indeed intended to be on the moon. Although I'd love to know how they plan to get it there...

Sony calls time on 8mm video format

Sony Stuff

Has it really been a year since the Walkman announcement was made? (The answer is no, not quite.)

Earlier this year, I was introduced to minidisc for the first time, with a Sony MDS-JE510 component unit--the first minidisc-anything I'd ever seen in many years of seeking out assorted pieces of audio equipment. (It's a slippery slope and I recommend not ever getting started. The stuff only multiplies!) It required near-heroic efforts to get it working again because I assumed it had worked from the factory. So many bad solder joints and the replacement of a few bad parts later, it came to life. It's still running today.

All I can say is that it is really too bad minidisc didn't really make it. It is everything cassette tape wanted to be when it grew up. Titling, full random access...really the only thing not to potentially like (other than the SCMS infestation) was the ATRAC compression and to my ears it never caused any problems. Then again, maybe I would like it. I'm still making mixtapes on high-bias cassette (remember those?) with a 1981 or 82 era Technics cassettte deck.

I'm also a latecomer to the 8mm video format. I never used conventional Hi8 machines, but I have a somewhat low end Sony Digital8 Handycam that I purchased secondhand not all that long ago. Despite its being a relatively low end model, it does a phenomenal job and has some nice features (slow frame rate recording, time lapse recording, stereo microphone, a light, some onboard video effects). If the Wikifiddlers are to be believed, Hi8 tape is actually a "safer" storage medium for the DV datastream that all Digital8 machines use due to its wider tracks. I gather that most of the modern Handycam product offerings don't do half of the stuff this one does (no Nightshot in particular). From what I've seen, today's flash-memory based cameras might be "better" due to no moving parts, and they might shoot HD video (something I have no interest in), yet many of them don't do as good of a job as the old Digital8 Handycam does. The cheap ones in particular tend to be fairly nasty, especially in lower light conditions. At least the 8mm tapes remain available and reasonably priced.

I'll get my coat. It's the one with the book of technological wonders that never made it, and a DAT Walkman in the pocket.

Name that donkey: Barbarella battles Bathsheba

Hmmm...

If those are the choices, I'd have to say that I like "Bathsheba" the most.

To think that a little commentard such as myself may in some small way influence the naming of a donkey that is far away from my own part of the world...this is The Power Of The Internet(tm).

El Reg iPhone app rated a flaccid 12+

This is a title (first time I've done that!)

That'll be the Paris Hilton angle revealed at last!

Yes, I'll get my coat. Thanks.

Mozilla to shift 12m surfers off 2-year-old Firefox 3.5

Why I'm (mostly) on Firefox 3.5 even today...

First of all...to those who are crashing out of Fx 4...you have a bad extension, corrupted profile or faulty operating system/underlying computer hardware. You can downvote the comment, but I'll guarantee to you that one of those things is the problem and not the browser itself. And no, I'm not a Firefox "fanboi" or any sort of apologist. I have no affilation whatsoever with the Mozilla organization.

The good news is that Firefox 4 does in fact run on Windows 2000, and it runs quite well. So if you "have" to upgrade a computer running an older (Windows family, at least) operating system, you can, as long as that computer has enough RAM and processor capability to run the newer browser. A reasonably fast Pentium 3 (866MHz+) will still pull it off.

Otherwise...I'm less than totally impressed with Fx4. Call me cranky, say I need to take my pills...but I want my status bar back. (Yes, I've got a status bar extension installed, but something so close to the core of the browser's UI should be a selectable option.) I'm not thrilled about the relocation of the stop/load button to the address bar and don't care for the fact that the Add Ons manager is no longer in a small window of its own. In fact, the only thing I've really liked so far about Fx4 is the ability to highlight a URL in text and have contextually appropriate options (open in new window/tab) appear when I right click said text.

Beyond that...I'm probably going to stay on Firefox 3.6 (or 3.5) with the majority of my systems. (And for those who are wondering why I might be sticking with Fx3.5, I'll tell you. There was this really, really useful little "Image Properties" window available in the contextual menu when right-clicking any image on a web page. It bought the farm in Fx3.6, only to be replaced by a window that seemingly has to process every image on a page before it'll do anything.)

Yes, I could probably figure out how to develop an extension that restores these capabilities.

@ZimboKraut -- it's been a while since I've had anything to do with the inner workings of a Firefox extension, so this is worth what you paid to hear it. (Hopefully not much.) Furthermore, it may well send your browser down in flames, throw all your furniture in the trash, tell the world your darkest secrets, insult your mother or worse--so consider yourself warned. If you look at the package that makes up your VMware extension, there is a declaration within one of the files making up the extension that tells Firefox which versions may safely use it. You may try bumping this value out to something that is greater than whatever it is currently set to. I can't recall exactly where this lives, but some quick Giggling ought to turn it up.

I'll get my coat.

'Upgraded' Apple iMacs lock out hard drive replacement

That's pretty dumb...

Many hard disk drives produced over the last decade have an onboard temperature sensor whose data can be gleaned by communicating with the drive through SMART. Practically all drives produced in the last five years do.

So why would Apple need to monitor the drive's temperature in any other way? A company that has the ability to design its own CPUs and other custom logic should know better than this.

Beats me--they did the same thing (with a temperature probe coming from the circuit board, no changes to the drive itself) in the Time Capsule, and I *know* those drives reported their temperature via SMART.

All in the world this will do is leave owners of these machines high and dry after Apple has forgotten they ever made such a thing and nobody sells custom adapters any longer. And no, I don't dislike Apple products--but this is still a very *stupid* thing to do.

Reg reader lost for words over blank HP keyboard

Blank Keyboards

It's a pity that the seller doesn't ship to the US. Probably wouldn't be cheap even if they did.

(Yes, there probably is someone in the US with similar keyboards. I can't be really be bothered to look--they're no Model M. Yes, I've got a couple of similar ones with letters on.)

Now if someone's got a letter-less Model M... (and no, I don't mean "pull all the keycaps off" - it doesn't feel the same if you do)

Five amazing computers for under £100

Couple of other submissions....

I'm surprised that no desktop PC made the list, so I guess I'll suggest not just one, but two, potential entries.

First off the bat, how about Compaq's Deskpro EN...available in desktop, tower/desktop convertible and SFF cases. They're dirt cheap ($5-20 or maybe less), still somewhat common, will run about any OS (my testing covered Windows 95 through 7--and 7 actually ran passbly well--OS/2, Linux and PC-BSD) and appear to be extremely reliable. (Only one of many I have quit, and an cheap-n-nasty PCI video card got it going again.)

After that, how about the Dell OptiPlex GX620? There's a huge supply of them on the secondhand market with SFF, desktop and tower versions available. Shop around and you can find them for less than $100 (or its equivalent), sometimes a lot less.

Death threats against 'worst song ever' YouTube teen

@Ally J / @Jason Bloomberg

I'm going to have to remember the phrase "autotuned bratling". People are going to wonder why I'm laughing like that...

- - - - -

As far as the "freedom to hate goes", the old argument is that with great freedom also comes great responsibility...or, as it's commonly phrased, "don't yell "fire!" in a crowded theater when there is no fire". So...while I'm quite free to say that I might not like this young woman's singing and think she should stop or even less polite things than that, actually *threatening* her is definitely crossing the line. There's no point in doing that, but there are all kinds out there.

As it is, I haven't heard the young woman sing, don't really care one way or another and think it's truly unfortunate that there are some people who feel it is right to threaten a person over their beliefs/orientation/religion/opinions/abilities/whatever.

Seagate sucks up Samsung storage biz

Nothing against Seagate...

I just don't like all this consolidation in the storage market. Having a *choice* when it came to buying hard drives was very nice at times...now it seems that there will just be two left standing: WD and Seagate. If I want any more SpinPoint drives, I guess I'd better get them while the getting is good...

I don't consider Toshiba a serious maker of hard disk drives. So far as I know, they don't make desktop drives and their mobile drives are garbage.

It comes as a surprise that Seagate does not already have a market in places like China...most, if not all, of their drives are made in China these days.

Feds indict poker sites, seize domains

I see they're still using the same bozotic web designer...

I wonder, other than a case of "look at how big and mighty *we* are", why it is that the sites being taken down are replaced with these ridiculous flashy banners? Is it supposed to scare people? Violate accessiblity guidelines? Smear an individual's good name before or regardless whether they are proven guilty in a court of law?

There are some very interesting (and by interesting, I mean "troubling") things going on here.

Binary dinosaur drive found alive and breathing fire

Couple of old PC clones still going here...

Most notably, I've got a Zenith Data Systems PC (8088) and a Kaypro Professional Computer (8086) that are both going strong. The Zenith is floppy-disk only territory while the Kaypro had a Seagate ST-251 hard drive installed sometime in the early 1990s, or so says a printout that I found tucked in the bay above the drive.

The ST-251 still works well, yet due to its use of a stepper motor to drive the read/write heads around and its tendency to drift out of alignment due to changes in climate and position, it needs to be low-level formatted.

I had some other "neat stuff" in my collection, including a fully functional Apple III and a fully loaded Apple IIe. Too bad I had a basement flood that washed it away.

Naked at 30: Osborne 1 stripped to its chips

Couple of thoughts...

First of all, thanks for an interesting article and exploration. Some years back, I rescued an Osborne 1 from "Curbside Discount" along with a bunch of software. Apart from a burnt out bulb in the power button, it worked quite well. I certainly did not go as far as you did in taking it apart, mainly out of fear of breaking it.

If you can find a copy of Peter A. McWilliams' Personal Computer In Business book, it will be an interesting trip down memory lane...and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Mr. McWilliams was none too fond of the Osborne 1 and made that perfectly clear. He felt the screen was too small, the fan too loud (of which more later) and the character font unclear. His description of the screen's phosphor color was also not to be missed--"several shades of orange, not unlike a punk rocker's hair" IIRC. He also disagreed with Adam Osborne about screen size--Peter's thought being that bigger screens were the way of the future while Adam insisted that smaller screens would be all you'd see. In their own ways, I think both men were right.

(If anyone out there still has the supplement to this book that is mentioned at the back--I'd love to know about it. Likewise, I think there was a much later version published in the 1990s that I can't seem to find now.)

I was surprised to see that your system had what appeared to be a green phosphor display, and found the lack of a cooling fan interesting as well. Every O1 I ever saw had the cooling fan underneath a sliding door in the handle. I don't think there was a black and white version of the display--I definitely did not expect to see a green one!

As for the display, it's probably fixable. You should turn down the brightness and contrast dials before the screen gets a permanent line or a "belly button" burned into it. I would bet that the failure is either bad solder or dried up capacitors that have drifted far from specifications over the years. Bad solder could be determined by poking at the CRT board with a **well insulated** object. If you're not comfortable around very high voltage electronics, see if you can get a knowledgeable friend to help--and maybe you could owe them a favor or buy them dinner?

Anyway...that's a pretty cool walkthrough of the system. Thanks again for doing it and sharing the result.

HP taps Google's print server in the sky

@thecakeis(not)alie Uh, check the date?

I think you're taking an article seriously that isn't meant to be taken seriously.

What I want to know is how you find a cloud printer once you've used it...someone really ought to do a mashup and then it'd really be Web 2.0 compliant.

(Of course, there is something to be said for a printer that the users can't find, because if they can't find it, they are a lot less likely to break it by pushing buttons and hoping for a miracle.)

German Green extracts tracking info from mobile operator

@bill 20 - 30th Mar 11 14:33 GMT

TV shows have a long running habit of doing stuff like this, or at least the ones made in the US do. One rather high profile show (who wants to guess at its name?) on CBS once showed a late model G4 iMac in a close-up camera shot, ostensibly displaying a screenshot of its hardware configuration, which reported it to be running a "Generic Operating System", version and build number 5.0.2195 (Windows 2000's build number, if you were wondering). I'm one of these strange people who enjoys sitting there and watching for this stuff, and it shows up absolutely all of the time. I'm not complaining...I like it and it's usually more fun than watching the program in the normal way!

I don't assume malice when stupidity will do, so I guess the writers just don't have time or the expertise to fact check everything. Plus, I suppose, some stuff simply sounds better when it's been embellished or totally fabricated.

In reference to the article, that is just one of a few different reasons why I do not carry a running cell phone with me. I would grudgingly admit to having a little prepaid phone, but it's turned off 95% of the time. Most of the time, it ends up resting in the house because I have no desire or need to be *that* connected to the world.

Chilean clock-cooking could cause computer chaos

What chaos?

Years and years ago, Microsoft supplied a little goodie known as the "Windows NT Timezone Editor". It was even backported to Win9x as part of the Kernel Toys series, where the help file was sure to point out that this version was "so compatible, it even says Windows NT in the title bar".

(Now, why is it I can't remember this week's password?)

That tool was the only way to go if Microsoft didn't offer an update package for your version of Windows when the US changed some of its DST rules.

Around that same time, Apple did the same thing for Mac OS X, although they did not release it for older versions. I'm sure the Linux/Unix, BSD, OS/2 and whatever other operating systems you might care to name all adapted somehow as well. After all, if even Microsoft was smart enough not to hard-code timezone info into Windows...it should have been obvious for everyone else not to.

So, what's to stop anyone from simply doing the same for Chile and its time zone(s)?

I'll bet I'm not the first to mention this... :-)

Steve Jobs screws my wife (out of $944)

VulturePad? I like it!

Well, I'll admit that I've wondered if Prickett Morgan indicated a middle name or hyphenated dual surname, so I guess you've cleared that up. Idle hands and all of that. :-)

Okay...back to the real point of the article. I recently came into a first-gen iPad (64GB/WiFi if you must know) and while I've got to say that it is truly slicker than snot on a doorknob...and frankly I'm glad it hasn't got a camera in it...after many hours of messing around with its built in web browser and some of the other applications, I still don't see what the iPad's real purpose is. What does it want to be? Why do I need one and what will I do with it?

On the other hand, I do have an Amazon Kindle (3G+WiFi/latest generation hardware) that is used primarily as a reading device. I don't browse the web with it much, but it does what it does very well and the fact that Amazon is paying for the 3G service only makes it more appealing to me. I haven't had the problem with mistaking the device's e-ink screen for a touchscreen, but others certainly have, so there's something there. The lack of color in the screen really doesn't bother me that much.

With flash memory, of course, there is no need to worry about magnets. It'll take a lot more than that to corrupt anything.

I'm not really trolling per se, just kind of responding to the article. Hopefully you'll get a blue cover for your new iPad soon enough...

Apple Mac OS X: A decade of Ten

It doesn't seem like ten years ago...

Right now I have a copy of the Mac OS X public beta sitting on my desk. I've never run it, though I did try to boot it up on a Power Macintosh 9600/350 a couple of years back. It only got so far before locking up. I never did try to troubleshoot it.

I remember hating to see the clean, classic look and feel of Mac OS 9 and prior vanish in OS X, but it didn't take long to get used to the VASTLY improved stability and actual pre-emptive multitasking! These days, even considering how much simple charm (is that even what I want to say?) the Classic Mac OS has, I'm not sure I could go back...

BlackBerry bans drink-drive apps

Drunk driving is very stupid...

I'm not a fan of these checkpoints, and I do my best to avoid them if I somehow come to know that one is around.

Why? I was driving along fairly late at night when I saw this distant scene of flashing lights and what looked like the elevated bed of a flatbed towing truck in the distance. To me, it looked like an accident and nothing that I wanted anything to do with, much less interfere. So I turned around rather hastily in a parking lot (without signaling my intention) and was almost through it when this police car (no lights of any sort on, not even its headlights) snuck up behind my vehicle. Turns out the police really weren't very happy that I'd turned around, and they also weren't happy that I hadn't signaled. (Do you believe that was the only reason? I don't. I'm sure they thought I was possibly drunk and looking to dodge the checkpoint.)

That's how I got the only warning on my driving record...and to be quite frank, it made me mad. I really call into question how putting a road block right near a busy intersection in the dead of night is any less potentially dangerous than a drunk driver.

BOFH: In distributed denial

Absolutely Hilarious!

Everyone will just have to keep wondering why I'm laughing like I am. My keyboard was very definitely in danger at several points in this story. The fact that I've done the whole surreptitious wireless keyboard and mouse installation only makes it funnier.

@AC 19th Mar 2011 12:55 GMT

You're remiss on your BOFH history...it's likely something that is only available to Register Platinum level cookie users, as opposed to us normal "lead cookie" types, the same as one of the BOFH stories was.

In case anyone thinks I'm serious, I'll have a bridge to sell on the eighth day of this week.

Fukushima one week on: Situation 'stable', says IAEA

Thanks for the reporting...

Compared to the other reports about the disaster, Lewis, your reporting has been very well worded and thought out. I don't think there is any doubt that the situation is not great, but it doesn't call for the hysterics that some news outlets are engaging in. (One case in point--an article on the Huffington Post--was written so badly, stating that the Fukushima reactors had gone "China Syndrome" already--that I almost wanted to reach through the screen and smack the author for being silly.)

I don't think you've got anything to be sorry for, although the tone of this article does come across as a bit defensive of your position on the issue.

Apple 'gay-cure' app severely slapped

Why does it matter?

I realize that I might come to regret making this post, but I'm somehow driven to climb up onto my obnoxious opinions soapbox and extense once again. You have been warned. :-)

I just don't get why someone's sexual orientation and preference matters the way it seems to. (Although, thankfully, it seems to be mattering a lot less than it used to.) Are people really so sad as to care who you spend your life and satisfy whatever intimate desires you might have with?

The question is mostly rhetorical, but I've been asking it to myself for years and have yet to find a really good answer. (In other words, this isn't your invitation to flame and be rude.)

Okay, there. I said it. (And now that I have: I'm not in a relationship, not looking, probably never will be, have no real desire to be and this has more to do with a great desire to do "my own thing" than anything else. I haven't given much thought to my own orientation, though I know that I'm not into women at all. I have a very independent mindset and am not good at pleasing other people unless I want to be.)

Moving to Windows 7: Is it worth it?

In a word, the simple answer is...

"No".

If the software you have is working well on your current version of Windows, and does everything you need, why put yourself through an upgrade?

The actual answer is a bit more complicated and depends upon a number of factors. You do have to consider that older operating systems frequently lose support for newer applications. Security update support ends at some point for all systems, which is probably the real deciding factor for a lot of business operations. So far, though, Windows XP refuses to die and (so far as I know -- may vary depending upon who you ask) has the largest user base of any release of Windows thus far. And so far, any software that I can think of or would want to run...well, it runs just fine on Windows XP.

(In truth, I'm still using Windows 2000 as a production OS on many machines, though not any longer in a commercial setting. I'm not stupid. Well, OK and perhaps more honestly, I'm not that stupid. It simply does what I want, need and nearly all of the programs I use regularly run just fine on it.)

The operating system just doesn't matter like it used to, and that's a fine concept by me.

Microsoft releases IE9 for chip happy Windows world

I was wondering when 'someone was going to say'...

...and I agree wholeheartedly. Microsoft was, arguably, one of the first* to include a browser with their operating system. And what did it get them? An anti-trust action. Now everyone includes a browser with their operating system.

I'm not saying IE was great, but at one time, the Trident rendering engine behind it was quite nice in terms of speed. Check the requirements for IE6 SP1 and you'll see they listed as a 486DX2-66 processor as the minimum CPU...which wasn't unreasonable for the less-scripting intensive sites we had back then.

All I'm saying is that Microsoft made something of an innovation and drove the rest of an industry to do the same thing. Maybe, in that way, they did more to revitalize the market for a competing web browser than you'd realize at first guess?

I don't buy the whole Windows and IE "make it so much better together" argument and I think it's pretty dumb of Dean Hachamovitch to say something like that.. IE9 is a non-starter for me as I'm not running Windows Vista or Windows 7 and I doubt that I will be. Neither one has a design that I find useful or appealing. It's quite possible (and probably not that hard) to write code with case-by-case optimizations that are called into service for each operating system where they are needed. Having had conversations with Microsoft employees in the IE, Office and Windows divisions, I'd not call them stupid. (Opinionated and convinced that theirs is the best or only way: absolutely.) Yet that statement is pretty dumb and reeks of pure marketing.

* maybe not *the* first, but I'm far too lazy or busy (your pick) to research it now and see...

Microsoft calls time on Zune media player hardware

Zune was a mixed bag...

I remember when the Zune first came out and everyone at Microsoft was saying "this will be the iPod killer". Hmm. I guess it didn't work out quite like they thought it would.

In my role as a freelance computer serviceperson, I never even saw that many Zune players in use. People were using iPods or Sandisk players of some kind. Whenever I asked, many of the comments about Zune players were negative. Most people complained that the hardware was unreliable/fragile and technical support was not all that great. For me, it was a non-starter. An iPod mini and iTunes work on Windows 2000* while Zune's software claimed not to. (I have no idea if the Zune appeared as a conventional USB mass storage device or if it required the software.)

I also remember the Zune HD getting some pretty good reviews, and I did like the way it was designed. I've never seen one of those in the wild, but maybe I'll pick one up on the cheap and see what I think of it.

* yes, I'm going to beat the drum on that for a while. What can I say? It works relentlessly and it's paid for. And it might just be the best release of Windows that Microsoft ever managed to produce.

Microsoft says 'sorry' after Japan quake marketing gaffe

@skelband - explanation

Someone might well beat me to this. Who knows?

Twitter hasn't got a whole lot to do with this, other than being the medium. What's going on here is that someone within the Microsoft corporation posted a message to the Twitter site stating that for every response they received to their posting, they would donate some amount of money up to a certain value (seemingly $100,000 in this case).

Well...I'm relatively sure that they probably meant well, but here's where the problems start. For starters, how do we even know it's legitimate? E-mails purporting to be from some reputable corporation (including Microsoft, speaking in terms of legitimacy of their business, not quality of their product, so don't flame me) were sent around claiming a similar thing would happen. Only trouble is, they were completely bogus. And while their intentions might have been good, the whole part of posting it to Twitter and saying "respond to this and we'll donate" can really come across as a cheap, poorly thought out publicity stunt. I don't know that it was, and I don't pretend to pontificate in a way that would suggest I did.

That is basically the point of the article. Microsoft pulled off what could have been (and mostly was) perceived as a poor publicity stunt as opposed to just quietly supporting the recovery efforts in Japan.

By the way...just because it's been "that kind of a day"...those who are thinking that $100,000 doesn't buy a lot of cars...well, you're right. Congratulations. It could buy a lot of meals for those who don't have one, it can buy lots of cleaning supplies and many other little things that just might help a lot. I've been close enough to a disaster where the American Red Cross was involved, and I can say that their presence was an enormous help. Even though I wasn't particularly hard-hit by said disaster, I did help people who were and all of those buckets, mops and other cleaning supplies provided without reservation by the Amercan Red Cross were much appreciated.

As for these people's cars...well, I'd guess I'd say "let's just pull the engine apart, drain the water out, slap a new battery in and see if she'll go!"

Google juices VP8 open source video codec

There is a reason for the names...

...and while I cite Wikipedia on this, it does seem to be backed up by actual verifiable fact. On2 Technologies was known early on as The Duck Corporation.

http://www.duck.com/ now redirects to Google, check the IA Wayback Machine if you don't believe me.

Seagate launches XP-supporting 3TB drive

The problem is not one of the motherboard or BIOS...

...it's the simple fact of the matter that the MBR partition scheme simply runs out of steam past the 2TB mark. Having been to the 3TB line a few years back (using a real hardware RAID controller and doing entertaining things with it), I can say that 32-bit Windows XP will only recognize the first 2TB of any volume that is larger than 2TB.

A BIOS isn't likely to care as long as it can properly figure the disk geometry calculations and can pass control over to something that will take the system through the booting process.

What you need is another partition scheme, and that doesn't necessarily require a 64-bit operating system. A number of 32-bit operating systems will support disks over 2TB without incident, but Windows is not one of them. 64-bit Windows (XP x86-64 and newer) supports the GUID partition table (GPT), which can support really large volumes.

It seems that 32-bit XP and Windows 2000 before it are "aware" of a GPT volume but unable to mount and access it.

Unprecedented domain seizure shutters 84,000 sites

As the author of the cited blog post...

...I felt I ought to weigh in here. When I first became aware of this event having taken place, I was engaged and much of what you read was written in the heat of anger. As such, there are some corrections and amplifications due in the blog post. In due course, I should revise it. In particular, COICA is seemingly not a law just yet. The EFF has some very good information on it, so you may wish to look that up. The actions taken by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security aren't necessarily a part of this law.

I know that many of you are very busy people, but I'd like to ask you do something, just like the blog posting says. If you are a citizen of the United States, I'd hope that you will take a few minutes and write a letter to Mr. Morton and ICE if you feel it appropriate to do so. Do I know that it will help anything? No, I don't. Being the optimistic type, I'd like to think it would. If nothing else, it might produce a good indication that we are paying attention to what the people in our government are doing. While I can't tell you what to say, I would ask that you not do anything stupid or illegal should you plan to contact him. Keep it factual and to the point.

Please also write your elected officials and explain the situation to them. COICA is a dangerous law and just another pebble falling out of a slippery slope.

I'm glad my site is back online. What other action I may yet take is uncertain. I've already written a letter to the attention of Mr. Morton because I feel the least he can do is apologize and possibly consider the ramifications of taking action before actually doing so. I hope that he will. (Again, what can I say? I am definitely an optimist.) (If he'd like to take me to task for telling him to f-off, he's certainly welcome enough to do so. I can't say that he would or would not have done the same were he in my shoes. Again, heat of anger and all that.)

Thank you for your time and consideration.

(disclaimers and such: I don't speak for anyone but myself, nothing here is legal advice, don't be stupid, don't do anything stupid, think before you act, and consult with qualified counsel if you are planning legal action. Thank you.)

Superphones: A security nightmare waiting to happen

Kids and computers...

I have to respectfully differ with your assessment of "non parents". I'm not a parent of any children and very likely never will be. (Bear with me on this.) I do have to temper what I'm about to say--yes, I know not everyone is a computer technician. And far be it from me to tell *anyone* how to raise their kids, everyone has to make their own decisions there. Even so, what I'm about to say is offered with nothing more than the hope it will be useful or informative. Take it for what it's worth, the 'rantings' of some random commenting dummy on the 'net.

(Yes, I feel I can get away with making some of the suggestions here that I do, because I'm assuming things about The Register's readership and feel pretty safe in doing so.)

I do have younger brothers, and I felt it important that they have access to computer technology. This was back around the Windows 98 days, and both of them had old Compaq Deskpro/M 486 class machines, the idea being that if they tore up an old PC, nobody would be too upset. There were a few lessons had to be learned around this point about how to treat computer equipment with reasonable respect. Of course, Windows 98 has no meaningful security model, and this also led to some interesting experiences. One brother deleted the startup files from his computer and the other experienced what happens when you go pr0n surfing.

As time went on, they got newer computers and moved to newer operating systems. One got a Lenovo laptop (upgraded from Vista to XP) and the other a Deskpro EN P3 with Windows 2000. At that point, they both had limited rights accounts. I took other measures to be as sure as I could that no issues would break out--I talked with my brothers about how having a computer is both of a wonderful privilege and a huge responsibility, installed AV software, and enabled operating system resident security features (system-wide DEP in particular on XP), amongst other things.

Now, granted, having a limited rights account on Windows has always been something of an uphill battle, but it was one that I fought and managed to win. I got their games and software working. It wasn't my first go-round, most of you here will know what it's like to get some stupidly-coded line-of-business application working in a corporate environment without handing your users any remotely privileged user account.

These days, one of them has their own computer that they purchased with their own money. As such, they do have an admin-level account (because it's their box). Yet they have gained an understanding of the machine, its power and how to stay out of trouble with it. (Still, I did do the initial setup, because they requested that I do so, and I went through dotting all of the i's and crossing the t's.)

So you don't want to do that? Don't have the experience? As a freelance consultant, I've worked with parents who are interested in getting their children a computer, and one of the first things I always say is "make the computer a family experience and know what is going on". When they do, it does make a difference much of the time. When you're involved and know what is going on, a lot of problems really do disappear. Even if you do have technical experience, it's not a bad idea to make the computer a family experience and to provide some guidance along the way.

I'd have to disagree...

...and hopefully I'll come across in a constructive way. (At least that's my intention, because I generally do enjoy your articles.)

It seems that the point about the longevity of a Windows installation has been beaten to death here already, but I just...can't...help...myself. My personal laptop is chugging along under Windows 2000 Professional (quite possibly the best release of Windows ever) and has been doing so since March 2005 with few issues. I have a Compaq Deskpro EN SFF box (you gotta love 'em) that is also running Windows 2000 Professional. It has been up for 399 days, 16 hours, 3 minutes and 20 seconds as I'm writing this. That is probably some kind of a record. :-)

I do have to disagree with your response to another commenter that "you're also perfectly capable of both using operating systems like Linux". Capable...oh, quite possibly/most probably yes. Desirous of doing so? Not yet. Linux keeps getting better all the time, and it's been a while since I had a truly impressive show of vitriolic behavior, but I'm not ready to use it as my primary desktop environment yet. (Look back through my commenting history to see my reasoning here.)

Now to the point of your article. Smartphones and their security risks...well, let's see. I don't implement corporate Wi-Fi access, and as long as the situation is mine to control, I won't. (I do have my reasons, and they're quite good.) The operation I'm in charge of is small enough that it's desktop computing stuff only, with only one laptop in use. There's no doubt that smartphones (or "superphones") can contract malicious software or that their operating systems have vulnerabilties.

I don't see either of those possibilities making up the largest threat to an enterprise. There are three others that come to mind. First, there is the well meaning employee who plugs their phone into a company computer's USB ports just because they want to charge it up. They usually mean nothing by this, but I've caught people doing it a time or two and had to tell them that they must not be doing this. That leads me to number two...when some smartphones are connected to a computer, they become a USB mass storage device. It won't take you long to realize that a virus-infested home computer can latch onto that storage, put something nasty on it and leave it to infest a corporate computer. Or, as much as I even hate suggesting this, there is the possibility of a malicious employee copying company data to the storage memory in their phone.

Finally...camera phones. This probably fits into the "malicious employee" concept above, but it could also be done without malice. It used to be that the camera modules contained in phones were of pretty dismal quality. These days, there are phones that will take pictures rivaling those of good quality point-n-shoot cameras and some will even record HD (or very close to) video. I've seen applications offered that allow phones to function as makeshift document scanners. (Heck, some digital cameras even have a "document mode".) In a less malicious sense, let's say someone at work is doing something "funny", interesting or whatever and someone snaps a photo. Well, maybe they snapped that picture in an area that's not open to the public? Or perhaps it reveals something in your building that an enterprising criminal or mischief maker can exploit?

No, I'm not a terribly paranoid person. I am nothing if not an optimist, but it's tempered with reality and the knowledge that not everyone is a sort of "reasonable person" who thinks before they do.

(...coat icon chosen because I like it, same as the "badgers" icon...)

SCO: 'Someone wants to buy our software biz!'

The Company That Would Not Die...

"We're betting against SCO being restored to its "former glory". "

In light of their somehow managing to stay around long after they should have faded away, I'd rule nothing out. My bet is on something of a balance between the two extremes taking place. It's also worth what you paid to hear it, so please keep that in mind.

PSP playing boy plunges onto railway

Peripheral vision?

I've just to ask, even though I know there is no way to prove it. Don't these people have or pay attention to their peripheral vision?

I suppose there could be some kind of disorder that makes peripheral vision not work, although anything like that doesn't spring readily to mind.

Consumers urged to step up wireless security

In a way, I'd have to disagree...

An open wireless network can be a godsend. Before giving up on my former ISP, the only way that I could accomplish reliable outbound connectivity was to borrow someone else's, hoping that it was connected to a different ISP.

Now, granted, I did meter my activities and I made sure to move around regularly so as not to impact any one person too much. I would certainly admit that there are people out there who would abuse an open connection. So it's a double-edged sword--useful but dangerous.

It seems that the wireless router manufacturers have made some great strides toward compelling people to use some kind of security when configuring their wireless network. This is, generally, a good thing.

Yet if you use provider supplied equipment, you may not have any good wireless security options--what springs to mind immediately are the Westell DSL/router devices being passed out by Frontier (a provider of telephone and broadband Internet services in the US) only support WEP at best.

Mexico demands apology for Top Gear outrage

Ding!

I'll let you know just as soon as I've checked on what's in the microwave.

Gates: Killing the internet is easy

Except when it's not...

Clearly, not everyone in Egypt lost connectivity. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina's web site has not only remained up, it is also offering some information on the events that are taking place.

http://www.bibalex.org/Home/Default_EN.aspx

Perhaps the "flipping of a switch" will indeed kill things off at the outset. That doesn't take into account what dedicated people can or will do.

iPhone crashes car stereos, Toyota warns

CAN bus and car radios

Too late--they already do and have for a while. Still, I doubt the world will end if the radio locks up. I suspect the worst it could do would be to hold the bus.

Most of the time, the communications that would be exchanged are minimal. However, in some later model GM vehicles, the radio is used to control various parameters and to play the door/headlight/seatbelt warning chimes.

Your call is not important to us

Customer Service

Here in the midwestern United States, most of us fax our lunch order into a local restaurant.

You know, one of these days, I hear the world's going to be in brilliant color instead of the black and white we have now. ;-)

Your tale is something that businesses would do well to heed. I'm of the belief that good customer service "sells" your business like nothing else can. I've been in that situation where I've wanted to pose a question to a giant company (Google was actually a very good example) and couldn't find any way at all to do it...just FAQs and user-to-user forums. Not that there is anything wrong with a user driven forum, only that sometimes all the users have a question and nobody's got an answer--or an official answer.

It makes no sense to me that a company as big as Google or whoever cannot possibly afford to hire on some telephone or e-mail support people. Of course, they're so big that the disgruntled rantings of a few loonies like myself aren't likely to put a dent in their business either.

Scareware mongers cough up $8m to settle fraud charges

Please, please tell me that....

...some of the legal punishment dealt to these people might involve setting some part of them on fire.

As inappropriately magnetized as my moral compass might be, this kind of scheme makes me incredibly angry at best and sickens me at worst. (Wait until you've seen a senior citizen who thinks they've really screwed up, are very upset or confused as a result and you'll know what I mean.)

Hopefully there will be some decrease in the frequency of this crap showing up. For the last few months, these have been the most common call I get. Still, I'm not holding my breath.

Forget Flash – content is king

All of you who are busily thinking this is obvious...

You'd be right, except it's not. One would think that designing a web site whose goal is to simply provide information in a reasonable format would not be hard. I guess it is. Really. Take a look around.

Don't get me started on Google. I remember when Google search results were more useful than they are today. Today, it seems like everyone is gaming Google to get their irrelevant and stupid search results put up first. Sadly, it's working. The real information--if it ever shows up--might not even be on the first page any longer. Other search engines suffer largely the same problem or don't index as deeply as Google does (meaning they don't even give you the chance of finding a buried gem). Want to prove the point? Do a web search on a random integrated circuit and look at the heaps of useless pages that usually are returned.

Having used car-part/car-parts in the past, I can say that while their site is spare, it's also quite functional. And chances are very good that if a part was ever on a car, either new or old, you WILL find it there. That carries a great deal more weight with me than flashy presentation (with or without actual Flush/Sliverlight/etc...) ever could.

In a few separate dealings, I never had a problem with anyone selling through car-part.