Posts by Léon

Amazon UK pulls Scientology exposé for 'legal reasons'

Bah

It's sad that Amazon lets itself be intimidated by Scientology (lawyers). There are enough books on any type of religion but almost none (critical, that is) on Scientology. It makes you think they have something to hide. But ... a religion that has to stop people from voicing their opinion? Even the really extremist religions allow you to be critical about them (as long as you don't accompany the criticism with pictures of certain prophets) but nothing can touch Scientology?

Mine is the one putting a copy of the book in your jacket.

Ubuntu 8.10 - All Hail new Network Manager

Package upgrade

Hm, i don't know if gimp will be a more useful upgrade than openoffice. I'm going to 'convert' my wife's laptop from winxp to linux and one thing she'll want to do is open docx files. She won't know the difference between the old and new version of the gimp and probably won't miss the improvements.

Hubble fired up and ready for action

posted from where?

> Posted in Space, 24th October 2008 06:43 GMT

Wow, that el Reg!

Yahoo! board! adds! Icahn! allies!

I! love! Yahoo! stories!

I don't read them always, but the title makes me smile all the time :D

Dutch unlocked iPhone site takes €700,000 then goes offline

Re: Typical greedy ripoff cloggie...

On behalf of the Dutch that act nothing like you just described, i apologize for the horrible way you've obviously been treated all your life. That said, I'm sure that with a less than bitter attitude people will start treating you a whole lot better though. Give it a try, it could be just you that people are reacting to. To say that "the natives here in NL" are acting in a general way is kind of ignorant, if not a little childish.

Hadoop: When grownups do open source

HDFS

We're currently setting up a HDFS cluster on top of which we're going to store large image files. Currently somebody is trying to get our application to talk to the Hadoop API so things actually can be stored, because the FUSE 'plugin' (i know it could be a better description, sorry) is still in development and lacks several functions we need, such as setting permissions. Its projects like these that make me wish i could understand C(++) so i could actively help out. Funny thing is that we were looking for a DFS and later learnt that Hadoop is more than that.

Man buys $1,000 worth of iPhone pixels by accident

@Matthew Joyce

Check! Well, apologies and new thing learned then!

@Adrian Esdaile

If you're going to make an attempt at being geekish, please do it right and add a slash between ~ and the filename, else it won't work.

Ten years old: the world's first MP3 player

Re: I still have my PMP300...

Well, there exist LPT/USB convertors but the price of these roughly equals that of a new device ;)

Btw, if you can't use the Diamond software, try Dreaming of Brazil

Opera hits Microsoft with EC complaint

10 reasons I'm glad for IE

1- i can use it to go to www.getfirefox.com

2- the IE Tab plugin for Firefox would be useless without it

3- i can pay my bills faster (my bank's website only supports IE)

4- i don't need to install it seperately after installing Windows

5- more competitors arise on the market

6- works with Active Directory policies

7- articles like these and the comments they spawn

8- i liked it better than Netscape Navigator

9- my scripts can depend on it due to its availability

10- most people know what you mean with IE. Can you say the same for FF or O?

okay so the last one was kind of hard for me to think of ... Come on, it's difficult to think of 10 good reasons :P

RE: I'd of

Would it be really ironic in the context of this article to point you to Firefox and its NoScript and Adblock plugins now, which can block those pesky ads?

Who bloody cares?

So you have IE with Windows, so what? Nobody, not even Microsoft forbids you to install another browser. Which you can then use instead of IE. Nobody is forcing you to use IE here, people. The first thing i do whenever i installed Windows is download and install Firefox. I then try not to use IE for anything anymore, except for those badly-designed websites that can't handle anything but IE. Is Microsoft knocking on my door like a Jehova's Witness and try to get me back to IE? No. Does IE force you to make itself the default browser? No. So what if they bundle *their* software with the product *they* sell? You're not forced to buy that either! I don't really like Microsoft and their products, but come on! Equal opportunity to sell your product is nice and everything, but let Mozilla make their own OS first and then they can bundle their browser with their own software too.

Oh, obviously i'm not a lawyer (no need for this disclaimer i suppose), and so i make comments that are probably dumb in the eyes of others :)

And now i'm off to sue KDE for making Konqueror their default browser. It should be banned!

What? It integrates into the desktop too? Monopoly! Yeah, i know i chose to have KDE and i should have known that they have 'bundled' this software. Yeah, i know i could have installed something else but i feel like whining.

Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's

I asked and got this answer

"I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE SAYS, I HAVEN'T GOT HIM ON ANY LIST ANY TIME SOON!"

DivX comes to the Xbox 360

Irony

It's funny when you realize that the original DivX ;-) codec was actually a reverse-engineered codec originating from Microsoft. Who would have thought that this same company would officially support it?

Grisoft acquires LinkScanner

accents

I take back what i said. Apparently the accents being messed up just shows in the preview section of the comments. In the 'final' page it is displayed correctly.

drops connection?

[quote]LinkScanner sits on a user's computer and monitors the outside world for exploits. When it detects one, it drops the connection, which prevents the attack from succeeding. It then reports the incident back to a central database so it can warn users who try to visit the same destination.[/quote]

I'm curious though how the connection can be dropped while still being able to report to a database? Don't you mean that the access to that specific site is blocked? Without a connection it's kind of impossible to report to an external anything.

PS: el Reg can't handle accents in usernames .. tsk tsk

Macs seized by porn Trojan

@Abdul Omar

Nice! How many 'oh-my-god-how-could-he-have-said-that'-replies did you expect? I especially liked the Vista promotion :)

BBC spreads free Wi-Fi Cloud over iPlayer delay

Java

Why not 'simply' creating the player in java? Then this entire discussion about platforms would be unnecessary.

Yahoo!'s insanity over Zimbra and Google's plan to rule open source code

Where! are! the! exclamation! marks!?

Tsk tsk ..

I always smile when i see a Yahoo! title formatted this way. Don't mind the folks saying it's annoying. Just don't allow those comments :) Oi censorship :)

So the revised title will be ... *drumroll* Yahoo!'s insanity! over! Zimbra! and! Google!'s plan! to! rule! open! source! code!

although i'm not sure if it's Google!'s or Google's!

US Navy to remodel Hitler's San Diego bunker

Re: Nazi?

Actually much longer than 50 years, but Hitler made it more well-known to the Western world. It's actually an ancient symbol of luck. And if you think of it like that, Hitler purposely turned it from a "left-facing" swastika to a right-facing/turning (i'm not sure how to call it) one. It could then be interpreted as turning your luck.

I once was at a Buddhist meeting where the swastika (left-facing) was openly displayed. I was quite new there and of course immediately thought about the infamous Nazi symbol. It (the swastika) was one of the first subjects addressed by the speaker, who explained a bit of history about it to us. Quite interesting. Even the right-facing version is still used, and most of the times totally unrelated to the Nazis.

New cracks in Google mail

Re: - the simple answer is DONT USE IE!!

Of course, that's the standard answer. And one i usually give as well. But there are some sites that are not accessible with anything other than IE. I hear you say "Don't use these sites." or "Mail the webmaster to 'fix' it", and while there are certain sites that you can avoid, and certain webmasters that actually listen to you, there still remain sites that stay accessible only with IE. An example i use is my own banking site which is accessible though, but i can't make any transactions when using Firefox.

Google says go-go-Gadget Ads

Re: Wait and see

Thanks for that! I guess i'll have to put some time into it before i can effectively use it, but it looks very nice.

People are biggest threat to IT security

can i be the first to say

duh

Lawyerless eBayer sues Autodesk over garage-sale miracle

Re: Typical American

I agree with your point about installing software on multiple systems. I think the following scenario: if i install the software on a machine and then this machine breaks down/gets stolen/disappears/sold/whatever, i wouldn't be allowed to install it again on another system? If i follow the contract literally, this would be correct, no?

Golf and Intel Inside China threaten life as we know it

does it feel good

to complain so much? when i read the title, i thought it would be an interesting piece. i like to play golf. im a sysadmin so i like IT related stuff too, but this is neither. i'm sorry to say Register, but this is material better placed at a personal blog.

2P Slim-Mouse

They do have a point though

A wireless mouse will require batteries. If you're on the road, there's nothing more troublesome than having a nice wireless mouse that you can't use because you ran out of batteries.

I checked out their website and i'm not so sure that the 'wire monster' (aka: a conventional mouse) is a reason why i would want to buy their slim-mouse though. I found that if you roll up the cable nicely enough, you won't find the monster :) So it's basically for people who don't like to wind up the cord? Well then, those people will be in for a surprise to learn that they still have to do that. Albeit a bit more delicately than with a conventional mouse.

Apple's Safari 3: a crashing experience for non-US users

It's a beta!

I completely agree with Kenny Millar. If you don't want things to crash, then wait for a stable version. I didn't download it, but i'm sure there's a disclaimer somewhere that states exactly this. Just because you don't have any (of these) problems with the latest Firefox beta doesn't mean .. etc etc.

Don't let Windows Indexing Service know too much

Re: People actually use Windows Explorer?

I do. And i can imagine an environment where people aren't allowed to install 3rd party software to keep the whole system stable. Even though the application might work better and is proven stable, there's no guarantee that it doesn't interfere with other applications/resources/services/younameit.

Looking from a supporter's perspective, what would you rather support: an application that is part of the OS, and as such is tested thoroughly in combination with the OS, or a 3rd party application? I think that if you answer the latter, you haven't dealt with my users and their wishes :)

VeriSign will ship two-factor authentication for debit cards

Those cards have a clock module

I can just imagine customers not being able to withdraw money or do transfers, because their card is out of sync.