Posts by KroSha

Google's Facebook: It rocks, but who cares?

+1?

Where's the +1 button?

Sony quietly tests PlayStation Network revamp

Wallet

And the wallet is for those people who do not trust Sony with their credit card details, of which I am now one. PSN prepay cards add cash to the wallet, without needing a credit card.

5.5

Make it blindingly obvious which games, expansions and sets I already own. And provide a quick link on the main page which shows any new DLC for games I already own. You know what I've got, because of the Trophies and my purchase history, so make it easy for me to find that new expansion.

Sony says no to YouView

PS3

ITVplayer and Lovefilm too.

MobileMe web app features shapeshift into Apple's iCloud

Development

iWeb is still a part of iWork, so I'd expect it to be continued along with the rest of the package. You just have to publish to a separate webhost via FTP.

Avast still focused on Windows, despite new Mac security app

Paid for?

There are several very good completely free open source AV apps. The best is probably ClamXAV, which Google ranks 3rd in a search for "free mac antivirus" (Right behind 2 that aren't free :/ ). This is one of the nice things about having a UNIX OS; lots of OSS.

OSX already has a firewall built in. And anyone not running as an Admin is sandboxed into their own home folder.

iPhone 5 gets iPad 2 chip and souped-up snapper

iOS5

"It was claimed that as the device will upgrade to an all-new operating system, iOS 5, the company may cease to guarantee all iOS apps run on older models."

The Apple product page indicates that iOS5 will run on iPhone 3GS & 4. This should help compatibility issues. As long as the OS runs...

Spielberg flung Fox from Transformers 3

Really?

"Transformers3 doesn't deserve the good and strong word of mouth that turned the first two movies into a huge worldwide financial success despite all competitors bashing the movies on forums and paying critics to write bad reviews."

Are we talking about the same movies? The first one was OK, but the second was a completely unwatchable, burn my eyes out and ask for a ticket refund car-crash!

"...worldwide loved lead actress Megan Fox..." Nope. She's alright, if you like that fat-lip look. She certainly can't act worth a damn and was only ever included so teens had someone to jerk off over.

Transformers (the original tv show) had a good storyline. OK, it wasn't great, but it was a kids' cartoon. I enjoyed it when I was a kid. Then some numpty let Bay make a movie, which was tolerable, and then another, which was frankly an embarrassment. Now we hear that the 3rd one is shit as well; colour me unsurprised. There's a reason that the last one got panned.

When will Hollywood learn that bigger 'splosions don't necessarily make a better film? Story and characters are what make a film great. Bayformers have had neither thus far.

A sysadmin's top ten tales of woe

Similar one

The emergency cutoff switch is right next to the exit door. The exit door is access controlled. The new guy did not realise that you have to swipe your card to get out, not just press a button. 500 servers go down in an instant.

Microsoft loses Supreme patent fight over Word

Seriously?

"We will continue to advocate for changes to the law that will prevent abuse of the patent system and protect inventors who hold patents representing true innovation."

Mentally add in the ", as long as we're not suing them" at the end there. The /entire/ US software patent system stifles true innovation.

Yes, to a point

but the UK system needs an overhaul as well.

Mac trojan evades Apple's brand new security fix

@Tucker

The additional protection I like is that the /Library and /Apps folders are protected as well, which they aren't for an Admin user.

Not root, but still elevated.

"You really don't know what you're talking about do you.

Admin on OS X != root"

True, but it is still good practice. If you aren't logged in as admin, then you will always be prompted for a password to make system-level changes, which is a good thing. And the password box will tell you why you are being asked to authenticate.

Never run as admin.

Sophos?

Get ClamXav, better and free too.

http://www.clamxav.com/

Gordon Ramsay menaced by enormous TURKEY

And more...

Thong, just outside Gravesend

Fingle Glen, near Exeter

and, of course,

Wookie Hole, near Wells

Sony: 'PSN attacker exploited known vulnerability'

What's missing?

How about an apology? I don't think I've actually seen the word "sorry".

And the "Welcome Back" program is shite. "Selected entertainment" = some baaad Sony Pictures film that no one wanted to watch when it was out in the cinema. And the PN+ is a con as well, unless you are such a rabid gamer that you'll play *anything* and have no selectivity in choosing your games.

Sony, you want to make amends? Try an actual apology and then let *us* choose our freebies.

PSN gaming network outage sparks DDoS rumours

Still down

I saw the service was down this morning. Still down, but the Twitter feed now states it's "down for maintenance". Unscheduled and long-lasting maintenance, obviously.

iPads mooted for Qantas flight manuals

Good idea

I'm about to buy an iPad, ostensibly to use as a portable e-reader for HP service manuals. This will be a massive step up from the Windoze Mobile PDA that work expect me to use at the moment.

Australia, give up your fixed broadband!

Irony?

See article re: Oz literacy http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/04/australians_cannot_read_or_count/

Australians can’t read or count

's

But it does when it's an abbreviation...

Official: PS3 has more fanboys than the Xbox 360 does

Was bound to happen

I predicted back in 2006 that the PS3 would win in the end. The biggest reason for this is that it's not a games console, it's an entertainment centre. The sheer scope of capabilities means that you really don't need anything else. It does BD, DVD, music, On Demand TV, Lovefilm, oh and games too. I've paired mine with a ReadyNAS to stream from and there really isn't anything it can't handle.

Granted it's more expensive, but it isn't a toy and has enough capabilities to more than earn it's spot in the living room. Xbox tend to live in bedrooms.

The high quality of exclusive games such as Demons' Souls and Little Big Planet is a good selling point as well.

Microsoft: IE9 not yet 'broadly' available

FF non-auto-update

If you are running FF3 and check for new versions, it only checks for a FF3 upgrade. You have to go to Mozilla and download FF4 manually. Once installed, it'll auto-update as normal.

Pre-release Windows 8 code hits PC makers

Seriously?

Time Machine, Archive & Install and an App Store (TM)?

Does not one of their devs have an original idea?

iPad 2 3G price-plans compared

Unlimited?

"unlimited Wi-Fi - subject to 10GB Fair Use Policy"

This really pisses me off! Why can't they be honest and just say that it's 10GB Wi-Fi? That's perfectly acceptable and also fairly generous. F***ing small print lawyers!

Lady Gaga puts the squeeze on breast milk ice cream

Not quite so simple

I'm ignoring the the Help & Save-me claptrap. The guy who makes the stuff knows about food hygiene; he wouldn't last long in a dairy-based business if he didn't. He's gone through screening and had it pasteurised etc.

The "passing off" case isn't quite as simple as the Reg article makes out. If you look here ( http://bit.ly/iap92p ), you see that he has unfortunately decided to dress his servers in Lady GaGa "inspired" kit.

Possibly he might have got away with the GaGa thing if he hadn't decided to milk it quite so much?

Making sport of browser security, hackers topple IE, Safari

OSX Privilege

“We have the same privileges as the user who visited the webpage.”

And that's the rub.

If the victim is logged in as an Admin then they get access to most of the Mac, except the System folder, hence why this is a bad idea. If they are logged in as a "normal" User, they can only play in their own Home folder. Limited Users have even less access and Guests have almost none. Very unlikely that they'd be logged in as root.

I still say that OSX should require that every Mac has a minimum of 1 Admin and 1 other type of user and that it makes a point of instructing people to only use the Admin account when necessary.

Microsoft to Apple: 'Oh, yeah? Well, your font is too small'

Re: el tit

Funny cos it's true!

Whitehall to puff punters: 'Hide your fags'

Ain't all bad

As others have commented, smoking makes the Govt far more than it spends on fixing the mess. Also taking in to account that far less of the more intelligent members of society smoke than don't, maybe it's a socio-evolutionary mechanism to reduce the number of useless work-shy layabouts? All we need now is a full legalisation of all drugs!

Steve Jobs bends iPad price reality

At this time, it's slightly too much

iPad2 16GB WiFi only = $499 (This is of course without local US Sales Tax)

At today's rate $499 = £307.77

Add UK VAT @ 20% gives £369.32

This is £60 less than the RRP, assuming they stick at £429. I'm pretty sure it doesn't cost that much to ship and import it in to the UK.

Ten... fantasy swords you wish you owned

Don't!

What's the chances that it would be done properly? Or are they more likely to give it to Uwe Boll or M. Night Shyamalan?

Alternatives

For an axe, Snaga the Sender, as wielded by Druss the Legend.

And of course, Stormbringer.

Both by Raven Armoury, for the cost of whichever arm you don't want to hold it in.

Apple: If you're under 17, you can't use Opera

Differing bundles

iTunes is not bundled with the OS. If you buy a new Mac, it comes with the latest OS. It also comes with the latest iLife and a trial of iWork.

If you want to buy just the OS, if upgrading an older Mac, iTunes doesn't come with it.

But it's a free download anyway.

Safari and IE are slightly different beasts. Try uninstalling IE completely off a Windows system and see how well it works. Safari is easy to remove.

Not so

You can install Opera in your own home folder without an admin password. You only need an admin account to install it for all users in the main Applications folder.

Phantom Menace to be released in 3D next Feb

Dear Mr Lucas,

Please stop trashing the best film saga of my childhood. I loved Ep IV & V. VI was good too.

I went to the anniversary showing at Elstree Studios, when the theatrical versions were shown on the big screen for the last time. Then you released them on VHS and I bought them.

Then you made those god-awful prequels. OK, I admit Ep III wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be, but even so...

Then you messed with the proper series and made them "better". These were released on DVD, along with the proper versions, but I held off, waiting until a nice box set came out, as I was sure it would and then I would never have to buy them again.

Now there's Blu-Ray, and I want to see the original versions again, in High-Def. I know you could do it. I'm sure that ILM has the capability and I'm also sure that there is a demand for it.

Quite simply, you're not getting any more of my cash until you a) Give us a proper choice and let us choose which versions are worth having or b) make something new that I actually want to see.

Yours in disappointment,

A 30-something Star Wars fan.

iPad 2 spawns updated iOS and apps

3G sales?

"Personal Hotspot (iPhone 4 only), which, as its name implies, allows you to share your iPhone's 3G connection with other iOS devices over Wi-Fi. Oddly, no mention was made of this feature ever being available for WiFi-plus-3G iPads or iPad 2s."

Cue dismal sales of the 3G iPad2 as everyone who already has an iPhone4 doesn't bother paying for 3G data twice.

OK, I see why they did it, but a lot of the iPad2 customers will already have at least 1 iOS device already, and the iPhone has to have a data connection. So why buy another one for the iPad2?

Library e-books to become too tatty to lend

Profif?

That'd be what it sounds like when they're nostrils deep in the trough

Byting their cake?

Isn't one of the supposed upsides for ebooks their longevity? That bit where they don't ever need to be replaced, and one of the many reasons that publishers think that they are entitled to charge well over the odds for the latest novel which will be on the shelves of Oxfam in less than a year?

Apple vanishes Java from Mac OS X Lion

Server vs Client

The Server is in OSX anyway. The CLI of the Client includes almost all the tools that you need for running a server. The major limitation is that Client has a maximum of 10 AFP connections at one time. There is also no DNS service. But pretty much anything else is catered for.

The obvious advantage of buying the Server edition is the friendly GUI tools that come with it. If you're happy using the CLI, then you can make Client do almost anything you want anyway.

Project Canvas becomes YouView

Points of Failure?

You are aware it's a BBC project? They haven't exactly covered themselves in glory, you know. The more points of interoperability there are, the more potential points of failure.

iPlayer is great and I use it all the time. But it's also really simple, which is why it works well. I'm not seeing the same qualities here....

Pirate Bay beset by tainted ads

Ads?

NoScript FTW!

Bacon thief leaves rasher on door knob

Angle?

Apart from the love of pork products all geeks have, obviously.

Outlooked Office for Mac 2011 unveiled

So long Entourage. We won't miss you.

>>Plus, the app will be able to import .PST (personal storage table) files from Outlook for Windows - a feature that the MacBU described as "a top customer request."

Which users have been crying for ever since the death of Outlook on OS9 and was one of Entourage's biggest failings.

Having said that, there's precious little you can't do with Mail / iCal / Address Book.

Microsoft tests show no Win 7 battery flaw

The problem is user education

I regularly see people who complain that their battery is fritzed. The vast majority have never ever run a calibration process, or even run the battery all the way down. And most run their laptops on their desk, permanently plugged in to the mains. So they have no concept of how long a charge actually lasts, and they are frying the battery as well.

Paris knows how long her batteries last.....

Amazon offers publishers pre-iSlate Kindle bribes

Still too much

Ebooks should be massively cheaper than dead-tree editions. The same as music, there is such as huge reduction in costs, that they should be available for less than a fiver.

Bad glass delayed Apple tablet?

Not a bad thing

As others have mentioned, there is actually some QA going on. Plus releasing it in the New Year gives them a whole 10 or 11 months to fix drivers, update & patch the OS etc before they can turn up the marketing for Xmas 2010. The iPod took a few years to gain momentum, the iPhone less so. The iSlate could get to the top in less than a year.

Amazon Kindle International Edition

Still issues

1. There are still too many formats. We need cross-industry support for a single, open standard. No vendor lockins, no DRM. At the very least PDF.

2. Better pricing. If Amazon can sell MP3s for 80p, then I want similar pricing per MB for books. 12GBP for an ebook is, quite frankly, a bloody rip-off. If they can sell an entire album for a fiver, with the artist and music label still getting a cut, then that's what I am willing to pay for a book.

3. Better choice. At the moment, there is no driver for ditching paper for digital. The range of ebooks, although growing, isn't good enough to get regular readers to switch. I spend 100's of pounds a year on books. OK, some are collectors or first editions that are trophies, but most are just day to day reads for the Tube or an evening when there's nothing decent on TV. But if I can't get Robert Jordan's "The Gathering Storm" (just released), then am I going to wait, or buy the Hardback for 12GBP? We need publishers to commit to providing e-copies of books, just as movie studios have started to provide digital copies on DVD or from Lovefilm / Netflix.

Doctor Who fans name best episode ever

The Best Doctor

Good to see Tom Baker take 5 of those 10 spots. Definitely the best Doctor.

Mozilla catches half of Firefox users running insecure Flash

NoScript

The only truly safe plugin for Firefox.

Apple releases Java patches (finally)

Alternatives

No Script protects against this, allowing only scripts & Java from specified domains to be run. It's been protecting me since this situation was outed and as a side-benefit I've had a nicer net experience, as a majority of ads get blocked as well. http://noscript.net