Posts by NogginTheNog

HTC Salsa Android smartphone

Licensing

I wonder who pays whom (FB or HTC), and how much, for putting the button there?

Winklevoss twins' new Facebook lawsuit rejected by judge

I won't be $65m...

...when the lawyers have had their juicy bite out of it. In fact I wouldn't be all that surprised if it was them pursuading the twins to keep on with all the litigation: "yeah, sure there's a definite case there, definitely grounds for another appeal (ker-chinngg!).."

Japanese erections named 'Bollox', 'Wonder Device'

Yanks?

I was under the impression that "bollocks" (and derivations thereof) was well-understood in British English (meaning = crap!), but that Americans had no comprehension of it?

Stipe croons 'Man on the Moon' to Atlantis crew

Oh THAT crash!

The blonde woman, known for her frocks, amongst other things..?

When?

What taxi crash??

Agreed his modern stuff is terrible though, especially the way he sings nowadays!

Most Adobe Reader installs are out of date

Hardly surprising

Personally I've got bored with updating the crap as it seems to be asking to install a new version ever bloody week! For me Adobe lost my confidence when they started putting in options in the app to enter credentials for buying stuff: ffs, it's a document reader!

I use Foxit at home: a big improvement.

Another one that bugs me is the java updater: it keeps prompting me for UAC access to update, and then bombs out 'cos it doesn't seem to be able to handle running as alternate credentials. FAIL!

HP TouchSmart 610 touchscreen all-in-one PC

Is that necessary?

"USB 3.0 devices are still rare and specialised, HP reckons an owner of a family computer may want to connect two of them. Gosh, I’m seriously behind the envelope compared with those bleeding-edge home users."

Is the sarcasm really necessary? I imagine the chip supports (at least) 2 ports, and the physical connector comes as a dual block, so it's no difference in terms of design and manufacturing to have 2 instead of just one.

Please don't marr an otherwise fair review with a bit of misplaced 'humour'.

Apple ordered to pay $8m over playlist patents

Handwriting?

I don't know about you, but I've found that because something like 99% of my written communication is typed nowadays, if I do have to handwrite any reasonable amount of text my handwriting is an awful scrawl - and my hand aches! :-(

Parmo v poutine: The ultimate post-pub nosh deathmatch

Only north of Hadrian's Wall

(Scotland to you non-natives).

News International grabs SunOnSunday.co.uk domain

I somehow doubt it

...but oh we can live in hope! :-)

Sony to can MiniDisc Walkman

Pros

DAT found a firm hold as a digital mastering/archiving format in many studios (48k better-than-CD quality).

Minidiscs found a niche in broadcast and live theatre, thanks to the digital quality (the compressive loss over CD wasn't all that noticeable) but also because of their instant-start capability - priceless for sound effects and critically timed music and jingles.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Blame the children!

"Seriously, why did you pay money to visit a film that you expected to be totally crap?"

Because I have a son who loves Transformers (along with his friends), and I love him... ;-)

BBC mulls talent Twitter ban to prevent storyline spoilers

Except...

...Jason Manford is stretching the accepted meaning of the words talent and writer.

Apollo 14 'naut attempts to flog Moon camera for $80k

Conspiracy theories

Maybe it's not the camera they want, but the film inside it...??

Magnificent Moon mountain sunrise caught on camera

Ephemeral

Doesn't stuff like this ("being a mere 110 million years old") make you feel ever-so-ever-so small sometimes?! In a good, humbling way, that is...

Digital Rupert’s bumper $545m loss

I thought MySpace always WAS for music?

I first came across MS as pages linking to up and coming bands and musos. Come to think of it, it's STILL the only time I go there, though pretty much all of those bands and musos now have Facebook pages (as well or instead of). Probably not because FB is any better, but simply because they go where the most users/potential followers are.

But yes I agree MySpace pages were never (and still aren't) pretty to look at :-\

German chemical giant depending on biscuit-based security

Speaking of Blackberries

You never really turn these off when you turn them off: the only way to be sure it's genuinely off is to remove the battery.

Simpler solution?

Couldn't they just remove the batteries?

Oh sorry, of course not if you've got a Jesus Phone :-(

Man battles police siege with Facebook

Concerned?

The friend warned the hostage taker that he was in real danger of ending up in a body bag. Sounds like a fairly reasonable act for any friend to do. How this obstructed the police's work I'm not entirely sure, though if it ever goes to trial the lawyers will make plenty of coin arguing over it.

Faking reviews? You should fret about more than illegality

Erm, but...

...if you restricted advertising most of the www would disappear.

Whether that would be a good or bad thing I leave it to the up and down voters to decide ;-)

US air passenger cuffed over low-flying pants

No else seems to have picked up on

His name: "DeShon" - what for the love of God were his parents thinking of?!!

Spielberg flung Fox from Transformers 3

I think:

1. You *like* Megan Fox

2. You're still at school :-P

Google bypasses admin controls with latest Chrome IE

No

This is Google finding a sneaky back-door way of getting their browser in to places where they couldn't previously get it. Now are they doing that for the greater good of downtrodden users, or so they can squirm their tentacles into ever more nooks and crannies..?

The fact this circumvents corporate lock-down policies, and indeed standard IT good practices, is something I'm sure they are TOTALLY aware of. And they don't give a fuck.

Adobe patches critical bugs in Flash and Reader

Adobe shite

I now see more frikkin' 'update' pop-ups for Adobe crap when I boot my computer than for Windows!

FAIL.

Microsoft warns on support scams

Had one the other day

The first for some time (had a couple a year or two ago). I let him go through his stuff for a while as I had an idea to try and get some info that I might be able to pass on to the police or something, but bottled it when it got to Teamviewing in to my PC. I shut it down, and he then passed me to his 'manager' who then tried to persuade me to continue. Interestingly when I told him he was a liar and a thief, he calmly explained he wasn't and offered to direct my to their website and show me their credentials and what-not.

So I'm gonna build an XP vm, and next time I'll fire that up and let them go through the motions, website and all, and get as much as I can out of the thieving bastards...

Boffins develop working MALE PILL

Partner maybe the wrong word?

Actually when I wrote the original post I was thinking more of the one night stand type of 'partner', in which situations trust is very much more a leap of faith!

Reg hack cast adrift as Illuminati Online goes off-line

Great minds think alike

I do exactly the same thing :-)

World IPv6 Day fails to kill the internet

Consumer ISPs

How about The Reg doing a ring around of all the UK ISPs asking them for concrete information on their intended (or current?!) IPv6 offerings to customers, and then do a write-up?

I'd move if the service was there (and the price was right of course...).

Pirate-bothering ACS:Law lawyer goes bankrupt

Owns?

Erm, actually he's reported to live in a house that's estimated to be worth in the region of £700k. But whether that's HIS, or the mortgage lender's, well that might make a big difference!

Sony hack reveals password security is even worse than feared

Except that

...with two-factor authentication you're still only half-way there.

Get your network ready for World IPv6 Day

Stuck?

I've a feeling if you called TalkTalk and asked nicely (and mentioned how if you moved to any of the other ISPs they'd give you a new one for free) then they'd probably send you a proper LAN router. After all they give them out to new customers so they have plenty of them around...

Failing that, get on eBay and get something secondhand for £20-30, and then head back to TT's support website where there are instructions on setting up your own router for use with their service.

Job done!

'Dodgy Android apps are breaking our phones' - Motorola

I bet Steve Jobs

Sniggered over his latte when he read that quote!

Ten... DAB kitchen radios

Economies of scale?

Perhaps with analogue radios still selling by the shed-load (pun sort of intended), DAB tech might still be struggling to hit the volumes where the gubbins reach almost disposable prices?

Twitter forced to hand over user details to English council

Why not use my real name?

Erm well maybe that's because the Google monster indexes everything and never forgets, and I do prefer a bit of privacy, just like Giggsy. Hmmm how many others on here post using their real names..?

Let's hope it smokes out the tosser(s)

Whilst I'm not convinced of the individual merit of this case (why is the council doing this and not the individuals?), I support anything that helps to route out spineless twats who use the web to attack others anonymously because they know they're peddling crap or breaking laws.

And I'm include in this those who named Giggs: what the fuck gives THEM the right to discuss someone else's private life with the rest of the world?

CEOP announces 'record results' in child protection battle

I should maybe point out

...that on topics involving children on El Reg the most rabid comments tend to come from those who clearly have none, and so no REAL experience, of their own.

Apple to support reps: Don't confirm Mac infections

UAC

UAC is pretty cool: it takes the idea of least privilege, so that by default on servers *even* admin accounts that *do* have rights have to go through a confirmation stage when they're making system-wide changes just to make sure the change is intentional. Yes this can be something of a pain in the arse, and is often disabled, but you can't argue with the intent.

Welshman attempts to board train with pony

Not just based on size?

I've a feeling it may also be based on the likelihood of the animal leaving something foul smelling in the carriage, which the guard would probably have to clean up!

US Navy produces smart, cheap 6kg fire+forget missile

"make a (very large) hole in the victim's body."

Wasn't the hole in the boat comment primarily because it was just a test firing? In those cases I imagine an explosive warhead is a no-no (heavier, more expensive, more dangerous to handle, and will probably destroy your target, when you'd really prefer to be able to examine it afterwards!).

Crucial M4 256GB Sata 3 SSD

How to tell?

To identify if your drives are SATA or IDE open up the box and look at the cables connecting your drive to the motherboard. SATA ones are a LOT slimmer, and the connectors a similar size to USB, whereas IDE connectors are about 6cm wide.

As to the speeds, the SATA types are backwards compatible, so if you plug in an SSD you'll still see a performance improvement, just you won't be getting the full benefit of what the drive can do.

If you're asking this question though I'd also ask what OS are you using? To see the full benefit of an SSD you really need to be using an OS less that 3 years old or so.

I put a C300 in my old desktop a year or so ago, which runs on a low-power AMD Athlon 64 laptop CPU @ 2GHz. The box runs fine, and I only remember it's a weedy chip when I rip the occasional DVD...

Sergey Brin: Only 20% of Googlers still on Windows

I never realised that!

Cheers, that makes the phrase even clearer now.

Eating your own dog food

It's a phrase I've seen Microsoft use before, regarding running their own products in house. It makes a lot of sense...

Plague of US preachers falsely claim to be Navy SEALs

"I also cook"

Sorry but whenever I hear of "Seal Team Six" I think of Steven Siegal Under Siege...

Google misses Russian trick with Opera snubs

Not when you're so big*

You create something non-standard/non-compliant, and it's everyone else's problem to deal with it.

* Also see Microsoft, re. Internet Explorer.

Ten... fantasy gadgets you wish you owned

Ditto

The SEP field is still Douglas's best idea (on a LONG list of brilliant ideas), one which I still refer to regularly :-)

Beer, to the memory of Mr. Adams.

WikiLeaks: East Timor knocked back high-tech Chinese spy base

How dare they!

Does anyone have a list of how many bases the US has around the world? I imagine more than a few of those came in to being by questionable means...

Microsoft poised to make biggest ever buy – Skype

Also the guards on the trains (in the nw)

...have little HP PDAs running Window Mobile attached to mobile ticket printing gizmos.

Nude gardener's arse hauled into court

That might be WHY they complained?

Not quite as appealing a sight perhaps?

Pakistani IT admin leaks bin Laden raid on Twitter

Yes, but...

I'm fairly confident that none of the Nazis arrested after the war ever wore suicide vests, or vowed death to all western devils and stuff?

Farewell, Novell

Apology!

Sorry, maybe I should've added at the end: I'm also sad to see the end of the company that once ruled the PC LAN; I only ever used NW3.x a few times but was impressed by what I saw at the time, and of course know of it's legend well.

And I'm definitely NOT pro-MS! Certainly not the mid-90s one at any rate - a monopoly helps no-one... I was just stating an opinion on where things may have gone right, and wrong... :-(

Beer, to the memory of another great name now just part of the history of the IT industry.