Posts by Andy Bright

Electro-optic film set to foil DVD shoplifters

I wonder if these people

have ever bought something that needed to be activated before use by the geniuses that man checkouts (that's tills to those that speak English English).

Thanks, but no thanks, it's bad enough trying to get out of the store (shop) without being pestered to sign up for 20 magazine subscriptions and an extended warranty on my new Milkyway (Mars Bar).

Ever tried to return a DVD? And what do you think the reaction will be when you go to a store and say they forgot to activate my DVD? Maybe I'm a pessimist, but it seems to me that putting the activation process in the hands of people that can't count high enough to give proper change is a touch on the risky side.

Dell reinvents the cardboard box

There goes our weekly bonfire night

Shame on Dell for spoiling the only fun we get - making cardboard effigies of our favourite customers and torching them in the car park.

Souvenir coin sparked nano spy alert

It's all true..

I don't think people appreciate the devious nature of the plan.

An innocent comment in the newspaper article gives it away. Apparently someone stated that tagging a defence contractor with a coin is stupid because of the likelihood they'll either spend it or give it away.

Ahah! And there you have it. Simply produce 300 million coins, and have enough pass through the system so that every American is carrying one. The paper has revealed that 30 million tracking coins have already been manufactured, it seems they are well on their way to infiltrate the homes of every upstanding US citizen.

So as soon as the invasion plans are complete, their nano-American-tracking systems will be switched on - easily allowing them to track the movements of every American man, woman and child.

Now consider their insidious efforts to lure our elderly citizens into their country with offers of cut-priced prescription drugs and affordable medical treatment. Could it be that each of those seemingly innocent pills is embedded with RFID? No doubt the old will be the first to be culled. After all how long could you expect the senior population to last in the infamous Maple Syrup Mines of Quebec?

Clearly it is you civic duty to rush out and buy a decent variety of assault rifles, then move north to assist the FDA and their good friends in the pharmaceutical industry patrol the Canadian border.

Downing Street rejects Vista petition

Why?

Why would you even bother with a petition like this? What's the point? It's almost as stupid as actually buying the software and installing it.

There are precisely zero reasons for buying Vista. Nothing works better in Vista than it does under XP. That's nothing, zero, zilch.

Security? Microsoft? You're having a laugh right? You'd buy a Microsoft operating system prior to it's first service pack to improve security?

So what you want is to cripple your computer's performance for the sake of eye candy. Eye candy that can be downloaded and installed for next to nothing already. And it's just as efficient at slowing your computer down and making it more unstable as the real thing.

I don't own a Mac, I don't use Linux - so just to make this clear I am a Windows user. I recently bought my kids a dual core 64-bit system.

It was average, nothing special, fairly cheap actually. I improved it's performance in all their games and applications by over 30% by moving from the supposedly 64-bit OS to regular XP Pro. Not even the 64-bit version (that's mostly because there are almost zero 64-bit games or applications for Windows - there are a couple and a few in development, but we don't own a single one).

World of Warcraft, their almost exclusive use for this computer, performs so much better they asked if I'd bought them a new processor, more ram and a top of the range video card.

But what about the future? Eventually we'll be forced to move to Vista won't we, and where we will be if we follow your advice and stick with XP?

Let's start with the fact you don't pay more than $50 for an OEM operating system (if you buy the PC from a manufacturer that includes the OS). Let's also see what happens if no one buys Vista for $200-$400 a pop. Want to bet the prices might fall just a tad.

No protesting to the government that Vista costs too much is almost as pointless as complaining Sony overpriced the PS3. They did, but that's not why it won't sell - it won't sell because there's absolutely no point in buying one unless you want a blu-ray player. The games are bland and unimaginative, and nothing you haven't seen a dozen times on any other system built in the last decade.

Actually I'm starting to think Microsoft are deliberately taking the piss. If it wasn't bad enough they opened up our computers to performance crippling malware, they thought they'd cut out the middle man and simply kill the performance of the computer just by installing the OS.

Don't buy Vista - it's unqualified shit.

Virgin throttles national cable network

These limits are pathetic

If I was a Virgin customer I'd be looking to see what other services are available.

Bandwidth throttling is fair, but the limits about to be imposed by Virgin are horrendously low - it seems to me the people that thought this up have no idea about the future uses (or even current uses for that matter) of internet connections.

IPTV, video and voice over IP communications, P2P distributions of legitimate, corporate level software applications - not to mention several movie studios are now looking at releasing new movies to broadband customers at the same time they're being delivered to cinemas. Forget downloading DVD rentals and video on demand, we are talking cinema on demand in HD.

Instead of upgrading their networks to handle their customer base it seems to me they are trying to pass off their inadequate infrastructure as a problem created by people who make full use of their connections. In other words people using what they're paying for. If you're sold a 4MBit connection, you should be able to use that 4MBit connection - otherwise it isn't what you're paying for.

Turning round and saying that's not fair, we need to share those 4MBits with a dozen other customers living in your street - all of whom are paying the same huge subscription fees - is complete and utter bullshit.

What happens when movie downloads and video conferencing become as every day as TV and telephones are now?

What happens when mobile phones are replaced with WIFI phones?

Will they say their mobile phone customers are abusing the network for talking too long? They'll be told if they don't get their business done within 20 minutes they'll be throttled back regardless of the impact to the companies they work for?

Apparently they like the idea of large subscription fees, but don't like the idea of actually buying adequate infrastructure to support the connections they're selling. It's a pitiful way of doing business and they don't deserve the loyalty of customers who expect to get what they pay for, at least most of the time if not all of it.

Currys to cease stocking cassettes

Currys sold tapes?

Thought they only sold washing machines and Amigas, whatever is the world coming to..

..damn new fangled shiny disk thing won't stay put on my gramophone..

(ps I lived in the time of Vinyl and it doesn't sound 'warm', it sounds scratchy and always has - and tapes have had it coming for a long time, name one person that doesn't have a shoe box filled with eaten silly string some cassette player has chewed its way thru - death to tapes hurrah)

Up for the count

Clearly this demonstrates

why voting should be done by txt message from now on.

Army tells soldiers they can blog after all

Am I the only one

that sees that Jesse was perhaps being a touch sarcastic... and aren't we, the English, supposed to be the self-appointed kings of sarcasm?

Anyone remember when the Reg ran a story about how we don't necessarily see how people mean a statement? It was a bit of a joke in itself, but it made a decent point because if someone is joking or having a laugh, or being satirical for that matter as I believe Jesse was, unless you include some kind of indicator in the text it's all but impossible to notice.

They then went on to say they would use different colours to represent different emotions (mercifully they did not suggest the use of 'emoticons'), and to our US readership include the word *JOKE* in flashing red letters to indicate irony (or something like that).

Seems they're not the only ones that need the flashing red letters.

MIT eggheads plan Israeli airstrike on Iran nuke factories

I hope they've planned this out properly..

using the Battleground 2 simulation software.

Actually it seems to me we could have avoided a whole lot of trouble if we'd just given GW a copy when he first got elected.

Maybe all presidents should have their soldiers taken away from them, and replaced with video games - they don't seem to know the difference anyway, and obviously aren't too keen on things like "consequences" or having to plan out what you're going to do after you've finished your game of army men.

YouTube starts paying 'select' uploaders

SueTube are still in business?

With not only the Premier League and NBC hounding them for letting people see highlights of English foottie and Saturday Night Live, they've now got Thailand on their backs for offending their monarch.

While it shouldn't be much of an issue for Google to sort these lawsuits out, what surprises me is that Google aren't afraid of the combined might of RIAA, the MPAA and of course their pet US Congress (which despite the promises is still very much open for business to the highest bidder).

How do you carry your mobile phone?

Two ways

When I'm not carrying my phone on the table at home because I forgot it, I like to balance it on top of my latte while I'm driving, eating a cheeseburger, reading the paper and sending a txt message to my boss to let them know I'll be late for work because some idiot has caused another accident.

US Trade Representative tests his verbal jujitsu out on the WTO

I think - but will obviously be corrected..

That when it comes to things like gambling - you know, stuff that can really do some damage to those with a tendency to get addicted to that sort of thing - then it really should be ok for a country to say "no thanks" when a business makes it a little too easy to access.

On the other hand that only applies if you have the same rule for domestic businesses - and this I think is where the US is having a few problems. That is they only seem to think that gambling online using a foreign bookie is dangerous. No doubt their own chaps give the money back if they think someone just spent the mortgage payment on a horse race.

We should be fair though, most countries are a little bit naughty when it comes to making stuff up to help politicos look good back home - but when you're called on it perhaps you should have a better answer than "when we said we'd sign up for fair trade practices with our international partners, we meant everything except online gambling."

It's sort of like signing up for the Geneva Conventions, then saying later that you didn't mean the bit about torture. Now who was called on that recently, it's right on the tip of my tongue?

Was Gerry Adams in the IRA? Don't ask Wikipedia

As long as it doesn't take itself too seriously who cares?

As a general resource it seems ok. Obviously you wouldn't use it for anything serious in nature.

No it seems to me we start having problems when people use it as the be-all and end-all of knowledge.

Learning that a level 350 enchanter in the World of Warcraft can enhance these kinds of objects in a particular way is not the same thing as producing a school assignment.

Discovering the history behind Babel Fish is not the same thing as going to a UN summit representing the UK armed only with knowledge from Wikipedia. It would be funny, but not something most people would do.

So as long as you make sure that people doing serious work understand it's probably not a great idea to use Wikipedia as their only research tool I think we'll be ok.

Space shuttle crashes in Alabama

As Ali G informed Buzz Lightyear (Aldrin)

What we really want to know is when will we put a man on the Sun?

Danes 'prove' sudden iBook death syndrome

How much do

iBricks sell for these days?

Cigarette fire takes out Internet2

Superb - the disenfranchised are rising up against the elitists..

Okay he was a bit of a careless tit, but if society was taking care of those considerably less fortunate than the few using these ultra-high bandwidth connections - then it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Just a thought, and probably out of order given his honourary paedaphile status for being a smoker.

(The truly wonderful thing about this is it should come out on a day the office smokers managed to set fire to, and burn down, the office cigarette post..)

Google says iApologise for iGoogle cockup (again)

Seems there's a big glaring hole in their apology..

So some people lost a bit of data - big deal, nice of them to say they're sorry.

But where's the apology to the penguins, that's what I want to know.

Gutsy eBayer touts 'Royal Marine surrender kit'

Don't really see what the fuss is

Is it stupid? Yes. Is it offensive to the vast majority of Marines who put their lives at risk daily in Afghanistan and various other interesting locations around the world? Yes.

But is it a pretty good piss take of some people that still insist on how the experience was so horrible and mentally torturous, they absolutely had to keep the gift baskets sent by their captors. And then felt an overwhelming urge to make some serious dough from the whole deal? Definitely.

Did they have to surrender? Yes, they had no choice. Was the experience as bad as they claim? Hard to say, because normally people don't accept gifts from their torturers, mental or otherwise, and they certainly don't feel like airing their "feelings" publicly to make some extra cash. But on the other hand if the pay is as bad as I think it is, I sort of understand why they did it.

The thing is they have pretty much permanently tarnished the reputation of the British armed forces as a whole, in just about every corner of the world - so provided this guy is serving too, it seems perfectly reasonable for him to take the piss a bit.

US flies visa control kite over Pakistani Brit 'terror suspects'

All Immigration Officers are Rude

Actually they're not, however many, as the person above indicates, are.

His experience is fairly common, and actually it was fairly common prior to the passage of the so-called Patriot Act. They were just as rude, but didn't take your fingerprints.

The problem here is that ANY immigration officer can arbitrarily chuck out you of the country. The person above was actually quite lucky he didn't find himself on a plane home - or more accurately he was lucky he didn't find himself in departures for 3 days waiting for a seat on a plane home.

Yes they do have that power, and yes they do use it without any thought of consequence, without any consideration to the thousands of pounds you might have spent on your holiday - they're assholes.

My first experience of US Customs and Immigration was almost identical to that of the guy above, the only difference was the location.

Now consider what I went through when I came back with a Visa that allowed me to live and work in the US. When they HAD to let me in because I had paperwork telling them so, they took it very personally. Believe me when I say they made we jump through every available hoop, and consequently miss my connecting flight - 3 hours later. I should say I'm never rude, I don't get flippant with them (mostly because Americans don't really understand it if you are), and I answered every question and always did everything I was told.

So I'm convinced they just don't like people from the UK.

However I can say this. In between those two arrivals I happened to take a trip to LA. The immigration officer that time was all sweetness and light, it was almost as if she didn't know I was English.

British Immigration Officers seem to be a completely different kettle of fish. Not only are they not rude to everyone that wants to come to our shores, but they are also fairly accommodating if you do fuck up. My wife accidentally stayed for 6 months once (it said she could on the passport stamp - so we weren't breaking any laws as such), and ok they gave us a hard time when we came back from France during that time, but in the end all they did was extend the time she was allowed to stay by another 3 months. They understood she wasn't cheating any system, but wanted to see if England was somewhere we would be happy settling down - before we went through the paperwork nightmare that every country makes you go through if you want to emigrate.

Try that in the US and see what happens. Actually don't because they'll stick you in departures for 3 days, waiting for a seat on a plane - and won't let you back in for 10 years.

The surveillance arms race

The reason no one does anything is..

Even in countries where you can do something about it, those with the necessary clout (mainly politicians) are too afraid to do so.

Why? Because their opponents (despite privately agreeing that such powers go way too far) will use any sort of protest against privacy invasion as a "not tough on terror" mantra in the next election.

The other problem is both left and right wing politicians have helped pass this lunacy into law.

The main reason the FBI and CIA gave for not catching the 9/11 terrorists was that they had too little man power to sift through all the data, and weren't able to correlate reports that probably had all the information they needed to stop it from happening.

So our answer to this is to exponentially increase the amount of data by vacuuming up every thing said on any form of communication.

And do they filter out the tat by targeting known havens for terrorists, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc? No. Instead we target our own citizens.

Why? Because most politicians couldn't care less about terrorism.

Some of them assist the passage of bills like the Patriot Act because they see financial gold mines for themselves and their crony run corporations that win very tasty government contracts.

Other reasons are very complicated, and mostly have to do with paranoia and bigotry.

Mostly though it comes back to money, and if by allowing too much power to fall into the hands of assholes they can earn large amounts of it, what do they care if those powers are abused?

'It'll be ugly when half the software industry goes away' - pundit

The only thing that concerns me about on-demand software

Besides the suspicion this is another one of Larry Elison's attempts to convince us to go back to mainframes and dumb terminals (after all as a famous IBM spokesman once said in the 80s - no one wants their own computer).. no the thing that concerns me is how speedily this software will perform.

Will it download a portion to your desktop and run locally, or will it run on their servers? Will it have to compete with net radio and all that other bandwidth clogging crapware that invades corporate networks, or will your internet connection have no bearing on performance?

See to me there was a reason we went away from centralised computing, and it had nothing to do with being convenient for corporate software houses.

It was that chestnut about competing for CPU time on mainframes, it was about having more control over your software, it was about flexibility to run things as you wanted them run.

A lot of that has been taken away already, but the idea that we all fall into neat little boxes has me a touch dubious.

Obviously I can see the benefit to companies like IBM, Oracle and even Microsoft. What I don't see is the benefit to me.

Office 2000 (in fact Office 95 really) works today pretty much the same way as any version except Office 2007 (which is pants - what sadistic muppet "designed" that interface? The exact same program as all the others, except you think it's different because you can't figure out where anything is..).

But the thing is once I've bought it, I get to keep it - I don't really have to continue to pay money to use it. So on-demand services may appear financially beneficial in the short term, but the reality is they suck big time in the long term - unless you really do need your menus slightly re-arranged every 3 months.

If I'm wrong I'll be more than happy to sign up - if it costs 2p a month to run Word or Oracle online, great. But somehow I doubt it.

Orange doles out an IOU to Christian pareidolians

What? eh?

Your Constipation gives your lips freedom of space? Make sense boy.. don't mumble..

And as for you Mr Christian, you couldn't be more wrong.. Atheists are coming to get you.. you see that black helicopter.. that would be them now.

China's largest ecommerce site set to float

None of these banks

Have any relation to those during WWII that enabled Nazis to stash the money and possessions of millions of Jews murdered in concentration camps.

Their involvement with China and a company that assists the Chinese government in imprisoning free speech activists is purely for the benefit of their investors.

I'm sure they will agree when I say that supporting companies like Yahoo China allows western corporations to influence the actions of the Chinese government, turning them into a more tolerant regime by showing them the economic benefits of a free society - and helping to lock up anyone that says differently.

Home Office promises proactive powers for info commissioner

It depends on the people running it

And whether they posses backbones.

Sometimes, and I'll happily admit - not often, people working for these quangos do take their jobs seriously.

They do want to make sure that the oversight they've been tasked with is carried out.

Obviously you hit on one of the reasons things don't happen as they should - adequate resources.

The other main problem is that of authority. If the quango has no authority, it can't do much of anything except complain - much like the various organizations that complain about proposed European legislation violating privacy rights. They do what they can by bringing things to the attention of the public, but without any authority or laws to back them up nothing ever happens.

The chances are that no real powers of investigation and no power to dish out sanctions to those that violate the law will be given by a government so intent on turning Britain into a police state.

You have to wonder at what these people are thinking when they run for office. What is it that parents do to them as children that turns them into selfish, greedy, paranoid bastards - with great public speaking skills?

"I know, although my job is to represent those that voted for me, what I'll do instead is assume every one of them is a terrorist - and if I make a few quid from businesses that profit from the bills I pass into law, everybody wins - well everyone except the people that voted for me."

Open Wi-Fi proves no defence in child porn case

Sort of no

An open wifi network is not excuse enough to explain why you're computer is infested with child porn.

If someone else did it through your network, your computer wouldn't be the one with the dodgy pictures, theirs would.

Mostly they wouldn't store it on your computer to incriminate you, because you would more than likely notice, and you would more than likely cut off their access. I suppose it is possible, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's not a particularly good way of convincing a jury there's reasonable doubt to your guilt.

Now if you're claiming they used your wifi connection to download porn, and your computer as a spambot to distribute it, then you would presumably have some sort of evidence to back that up.

Like buying an antivirus program, scanning your computer and printing out the logs.

No? Well you're stuffed then.

And of course, as someone else has already pointed out - it's a bit of stretch to say you conveniently had a writable CD in your burner and they conveniently decided to make a copy for you, without your knowledge - then after thinking about it, snuck in your house and hid it.

Sounds like the jury and the cops did their job and a twisted bit of work is safely locked up - where he'll enjoy a new kind of pornography with himself playing the starring role.

Ofcom and DTI slam Murdoch TV strategy

I don't think people understand

Having just one or two companies owning all media is much better for the public.

This way the government only has to inform a small number of outlets what the news should be. You wouldn't want the public confused by unapproved news from rogue "independents".

Imagine if a dozen or more private entities owned TV, radio and newspapers. What a mess. There just wouldn't be enough time in the day for government oversight to inform them all what the news is.

No - it really is much better that all media is owned by one or two corporations, and naturally those should be corporations with the closest ties with government.

You know it makes sense - or we'll schedule you for thought re-processing.

Man snaps up Sea Harrier on eBay

I have to agree

I believe he was saying that after if we can't get our scheduled deliveries of a plane that is actually being manufactured on time, what hope is there that another new plane will be in service within 5 years.

Part of the reason for the delays to the RAF came about after our Government (having first decided Typhoons wouldn't have to face down enemy fighters, and therefore didn't need those expensive cannon upgrades) inexplicably sold our allocation from the various manufacturing runs of Typhoons overseas.

The bummer about this is that with each subsequent manufacturing run, additional features from a very decent original spec were being implemented as the technology became available and affordable to do so.

F22 vs Typhoon - stupid really, and in terms of fluffy dice, Kev and Debs sun visors, and various other vitally important specs, they appear to be very similar. The Americans stuck on some fancy bits and pieces, but all the really good stuff is available as options on both planes. However in the most important test of all, the European model is far superior.

Typhoon is of course a far superior name. In a real fight, a real Typhoon would beat the pants off a real Raptor. And quite frankly, nothing else matters.

As for the weird decision by the RAF deciding we didn't need more than a few missiles, who can say what they were really thinking. Certainly not that our boys in blueish gray would blow up the enemy from a kagillion miles away with missiles, leaving no one alive to get close enough to dogfight? The point of having bullets is they last longer than a couple of missiles. So ok, if you've only got 2 because some twat decided to fill you up with bombs instead, you're probably dead anyway - but if somehow you do manage to get close enough to kick off handbags, having bullets is way better than trying to spear the other guy with the pointy bit at the front of your plane.

What I really don't understand is why they're bothering with another plane, especially considering it sucks.

JSF is just a bad game altogether. Eurofighter 2000, F-22 ADF and Total Airwar were far superior games, and thus justified being reproduced in real life. JSF sucks the big one, and therefore has no business being made at all.

Fungus fingered in US honeybee wipeout

The Good News

Don't worry, the scientists will take care of it, they always do.

No, they won't be able to figure out how to pollinate plants without bees, they've tried and failed, but we'll all get some really cool gadgets with batteries that last 7 years.

So you see, problem sorted.

(Yes old-style cell phones with aerials - that's antennas to the uneducated - can kill bees. So can some walkie talkies. Curiously many insects won't come anywhere near a cell phone, and I've seen demonstrated the death pulse emitted by such if one lands on your hand held and you turn it on).

Pentagon 'hacker' questions US cost claims

Actually there's a bigger question to answer here

Is storing the personal data of extra terrestrials indefinitely on government computers even legal in the US?

Did he find UFO data?

No, obviously he was looking on the wrong computers. Military computers hold the telepathic mind weapon data, clearly for data regarding UFOs he needed to be on the NSA and FBI's network.

As for NASA - that was complete waste of time. Everyone knows NASA need every square inch of hard disk space it owns just to store all those really cool Hubble photos. They always delete the ones with aliens obscuring the pretty nebulae and star clusters - I thought everyone knew that.

And rumours that Bush suggested replacing Hubble with a Kodak Easyshare digital camera are completely without merit.

I don't think the hardware cost is relevant

I think they're going to say the cost of wiping the workstation, re-installing the OS and software, and the retrieval of data (if it can be retrieved) amounts to $5000 per machine.

Is that fair or correct? I couldn't say, probably not. But the guy that mentioned the cost government pays for computers is bang on.

And that extends to any work done by contractors, who will charge $100s per hour, with minimum costs per machine just to restore a ghost image. Funny how we complain about government wasting tax dollars, and yet we're quite willing to acknowledge and forgive the role played by everyone that does business with them.

Lost data? There shouldn't be any. Any work related data should be stored on servers and servers should be backed up.

If it wasn't they have significantly larger problems than hackers poking around looking for hidden proof of UFOs.

And speaking of that, how is it their systems are so vulnerable to destruction in the first place?

This case has always been about making this guy a scapegoat for the lack of security and complete mismanagement of government IT. That's not pointing the finger at techs and admins working for government, its pointing the finger at those that say, naw, we need to fill the wallets of cronies; all that security, standardisation, upgrading and maintenance is just wasting the tax dollars of the working American.

Google glitch loses user data

The NSA are not going to be happy..

but at least this should distract Google from more penguin murder while they figure out what they did with the backup tapes.

No I won't give that up.. I want it written on my gravestone..

"If Google kills penguins, is it doing evil?"

Sheer genius. The title alone should grant Ashley Vance journalistic godhood.

Japanese actress caught in sheep 'poodle' scam

Surely

this is just simply a case of a vegetarian dog that was de-baahked. Doesn't explain why my giant collie only say Mooo though.

Police charge stripogram cop impersonator

Yep

and besides only female strippers are allowed to wear cop uniforms.. male strippers are supposed to wear tuxedos.. I thought everyone knew that.

Should be sentenced to an extra 10 years just for breaking stripper etiquette.

Arrest Richard Gere, orders Indian court

No kissing cheeks..

But we're fine with falsely accusing your wife of adultery, burning her alive and hooking up with someone else.

Tolerant societies like this deserve nothing but our deepest respect.

And yes, adnim is bang on saying we are hammered when we don't respect the cultural behaviour of other societies, but are never given the same courtesy in return.

Often we don't deserve much courtesy, and we did fuck over most of what we called the 3rd world (developing nations). But while people like Richard Gere may live in their own artificial Hollywood worlds, at least they do try to make up for the wrongs visited on poorer nations.

They try to highlight genocide, disease, hunger and poverty. They try to make a difference. A lot of what they do might be bollox, but at least they try to do the right thing.

He was there to help their fight against Aids, and his reward for not understanding their culture was to be sentenced to 3 months in jail. I know there's more than a few people in India with a significantly more tolerant outlook on life, so perhaps they could help right this stupidity.

How did we all end up with Windows?

Good Marketing and Stupidity.

The stupidity was not that of users.

It was the stupidity of those many corporations that had significantly better computers than IBM compatibles (which was the 'default' name for PC back in the day), and significantly better operating systems than the various incarnations of MS-DOS.

So at a time when many of these corporations held huge market shares outside of the mainframe world, for some reason they just rolled over and played dead when Microsoft and IBM said they had the only computer and operating system you should take seriously.

Why should users shoulder the blame when almost no one they trusted argued that perhaps these other computers and operating systems weren't just "game computers" or "home computers", they were in fact more capable of running word processors, spreadsheets and databases than anything running MS-DOS or one of its many variants.

They were more reliable - which doesn't mean they didn't have viruses, didn't crash and didn't lose all your data - they just did it a lot less.

Computers capable of 3D rendering, fully capable of auto configuring hardware, had standardised video and sound chipsets, multi processors - capable of video editing, pre-emptive multitasking, and many of the things Windows only truly introduced in the last 5 years were available on computers in the 80s.. and cost no more than two colour, no sound, PCs.

I'll bet Microsoft were in fits of laughter and disbelief when the only answer they had for that "Yes but you can't take a computer like that seriously, it's only for games and hobbies" was swallowed whole by more or less everyone.

Then they had Intel - a company that managed to convince even people who should have known better, that megahertz was everything. Yes, yes I know they have multiple processors that share the load, operate more efficiently, produce the same result with half the required processing cycles of ours. But our processors are capable of running at 30% more processing cycles than theirs, so ours must be better.. Apparently we had a huge problem with math.

If it takes twice as long to produce the same result on the equivalent processor, why does giving the lesser processor 30% extra make it better? Wouldn't it need to be 100% faster to produce the same thing in the same time? Possibly, but only if you don't take into account that these other computers then shared the load between multiples of their more efficient technology.

Thus one computer could edit live video in real time, the other could update a database entry quite quickly.

The truly odd thing was that only a tiny fraction of the population wondered just how fast such a computer would be if you tied all it's resources to more mundane tasks.

But like I said, the problem was not the users - the problem was the corporations behind these computers decided to take all the bullshit lying down while they tried to figure out how to buy a corporate jet or whether their logo was big enough on the side of one of their buildings.

You want to know what the really crazy thing is? Why I said Good Marketing and Stupidity?

The same people that told us fancy graphics and all those processors where just for games and hobbies have managed to turn not only games and hobbies into the reason we buy computers - but that this is now more important than more mundane things, like reliability, security, efficiency.

If it wasn't so sad, if it wasn't the reason technical innovation was effectively held back 10-20 years, you'd have to say it was brilliant.

Man learns bombs not best way to raise tech stocks

Don't see a problem here

It all seems very reasonable.

So ok, Steve Jobs and a few others may have alternative methods of making a few quid from the stock market, but surely they should admire the "out of the box" thinking behind this guy's financial strategy.

If its ok to decide when you wanted your stocks to be bought a few years after you bought them, why can't a guy threaten investment firms with Hell, damnation and a broken pipe bomb when asking for a 3 day rally for a few stocks?

Sounds like he's got the way tech firms operate down to a T.

Peer calls for UK cyber-crime portal

And yet

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/26/uk_police_suspend_crime_reporting_website/

So if we can't be bothered to report any crime at all, what makes them think we'll report internet fraud online?

A modern-day Gerstner is needed to cure all of Microsoft’s ills

If nothing else

at least they don't murder penguins.. so there must be some hope for them, Google on the other hand..

Sony spies Eye toy for PS3

and yet

still no Guitar Hero..

Another 419 scam ring nicked

You Got Snail Mail SPAM

I received my first 419 letter in the post, someone actually paid for a 1st class stamp - which is odd seeing as the lawyer that sent it was a close friend of the recently deceased South African diamond mine owner, and didn't have the necessary paperwork to travel to the US..

Unfortunately I'm not in a position to send the necessary funds to release the $3.6 million held in trust - perhaps someone from El Reg would like to take him up on his most generous offer?

Anyway in the meantime I'll just frame the letter for prosperity..

I've got some sawdust: can I call it chocolate?

Errr Cadbury anyone?

I'm the first to admit I may have my facts completely bolloxed, but I'm pretty certain that the reason continental European chocolate manufacturers want British chocolate reclassified to something bizarre is the fact we almost exclusively use the vegetable oil cheapo stuff instead of cocoa butter - and probably all those other crap ingredients too.

That's why British chocolate tastes like Cadbury and Galaxy and that other crap (the real stuff) tastes so bad.

Yes I would imagine Thorntons and other toff choco makers use nothing but the correct ingredients, but in general we don't, and guess what? Nearly everyone that's not a chocolate connoisseur thinks our stuff tastes better.

We may love our e-numbers, but no one knows how to make crisps, sweets and pastries like the British.

(erm I'm not entirely sure that's something to be proud of though).

Confused? Good.

Dark mutterings on killer Wi-Fi in schools help no one

Surely the solution is simple?

Just add tin foil hats to the list of school uniform requirements and we're sorted.

The food idea seems to me to be the most logical thing I've heard for a long time, but it's far too sensible and should be ignored.

No, just keep feeding them hardcore, mind altering drugs until we can work out why so many of them appear to be having problems concentrating... DOH!

AMD tries to woo back channel

The Channel is ours

and we're not giving to AMD - or Gibraltar to Spain or The Falklands to Argentina, even if our pilots do torment penguins.. and then do it again to see if it's true that they do torment penguins.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1002958.stm

Daily Telegraph rattles legal sabre at Google

Don't Forget

They also kill penguins.. so I've got no sympathy for them.. penguin murdering billionaires should not be allowed to give news search results - it's as simple as that.

They're bastards and they've got more money than me, AND I believe everything I read on the internet... and the internet says they kill penguins and other cute animals.

If Google kills penguins, is it doing evil?

Easy Solution

Simply use the power gained by burning all the dead penguins. I'm fairly sure the emissions of penguin carcasses are far lower than coal - problem solved.

Cigarette break saves US woman's life

And remember

Smoking leads to Heroine Addiction, Paedophilia and Suicide Bombing.. as this site's very own t-shirt dept will testify..

Now if only I was allowed to wear mine at work.. do you think it'll make a difference if I chuck in the cigarettes and start smoking a pipe instead?

Apple's second-generation iPod Nano

Pricing

Personally I think the Nano represents great value for money - however for the price of the 8gig version you can get a full blown 30gig video iPod - so I'm not sure I see the point, also it only seems to be available in black.

The other thing is the 1gig version, which I find most appealing due to my simplistic needs, has not been replaced as yet.

I'm struggling to see the point of the change though. It's still an iPod Nano, only it's shapped a bit differently. Is the screen less susceptible to scratches? Does the battery last a bit longer? I suppose new technology could benefit both those issues.

What would be cool is if the Nano incorporated the video feature of the larger iPods, but as it only has a 1.5 inch screen I can see why this hasn't been done.

The point of making it available in different colours? I'm not sure, because it still seems a bit flimsy to give to kids, the only "demographic" that would truly care what colour an mp3 player is. Whether the fact you can get it in blue, pink or green would convince those 3 people that don't like them enough to jump on the bandwagon seems somewhat unlikely.