* Posts by Criminny Rickets

193 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2009

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HUD's up! Ubuntu creates menu-free GUI

Criminny Rickets
Facepalm

Microsoft

Did Ubuntu get Microsoft's permission to use the look and feel of Windows 3.0 and DOS?

Doctor Who girl Amy Pond axed in 'heartbreaking' exit

Criminny Rickets

Glad they're getting rid of Amy, but not Rory too. NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Judge dismisses charges against accused Twitter stalker

Criminny Rickets
FAIL

Wrong Charges

The judge was right to dismiss the charges as the guy was not stalking. Now if the guy had gone to A.Z.'s residence or work and had left messages there, or even taken and posted pictures from there, then yes, that would be stalking. Also, the person (according to the article) never made any actual death threats. He "predicted" A.Z. would die a violent death, but does not seem to have actually threatened it himself. The problem in this case is that the guy was charged with the wrong crime. Instead of being charged with stalking, he should have been charged with harassment.

Fans lose grace with Star Wars MMO

Criminny Rickets
WTF?

Who's the Pirate and Thief

They are charging people for the game, then are charging them to play said game, and you are calling the other people pirates and thieves???

European court advisor slams software copyrights

Criminny Rickets
Coat

Err

While I do agree with the statement, I normally have a hard time believing anything coming from a Bot. Mines the coat that looks like Eliza.

Stonehenge finds hint at rituals far more ancient than the stones

Criminny Rickets
Coat

Centurian

Surely they must have noticed the 1000 year old Centurion that is guarding it?

Another new Russian nuclear powerplant comes online

Criminny Rickets
Devil

Not that clean

I just want to know what they are doing with the spent fuel rods? They have to go somewhere and they will be radioactive.

Dutch ISP calls the cops after Spamhaus blacklists it

Criminny Rickets
Boffin

From the story, A2B and it's customers were blacklisted over A2B's refusal to put a total block on German ISP Cyberbunker, which got it feed from A2B and in turn fed The Pirate Bay. Instead, A2B blocked the specific IP address that was responsible for the reported Spam. This was not good enough for Spamhaus as they wanted TPB shuttered. As soon as A2B completely blocked Cyberbunker, Spamhaus removed A2B from its blacklist.

Old Napster guy’s fan letter to Spotify upstart

Criminny Rickets
Devil

IT Business Optional

Actually, yes, some of us do read El Reg for fun. I used to be in the IT industry, but have not for a few years now. That does not mean I can't still keep up on the biz or keep enjoying El Reg just because I am not in the IT industry. To paraphrase Charlton Heston, you'll make me stop reading El Reg when you pry it out of my cold dead hands!

Crooks rent out TDSS/TDL-4 botnet to the clueless

Criminny Rickets
Devil

RIAA

It's not just pressure from the governments. They shut down payment service to Allofmp3.com as well as other legal music sites (legal in their own country) on pressure from the RIAA.

PETA to launch .xxx smut site 'to help animals'

Criminny Rickets

Stop the Kitty Porn

Oh no, don't tell me that Peta is now getting into publishing these horrendous pictures. Won't somebody please think of the kitty.

For more information on this problem, please see http://www.ida.liu.se/~davby/mirrors/kp/

IBM PC daddy: 'The PC era is over'

Criminny Rickets
Trollface

Er

Didn't they use the same type of logic when they dumped OS2?

Office 365: Can Microsoft replace Microsoft?

Criminny Rickets
FAIL

Ribbon blows

I didn't downvote you because you were praising Microsoft, I downvoted you because you said the ribbon is good and highly intuitive, which I disagree with on both counts. I am a casual Office user, in that I do not use it day to day. When I do use it, I should not have to spend 5 minutes (sometimes more) just to find in the ribbon the function I need. It is not always in the place you would expect to find it. In Office 2003, it was 2 or 3 clicks or 30 seconds at most and boom, you have it. I've owned Office 2007 for a couple of years now, and I STILL have to use Google to figure out how to do something in it that was very easy to figure out in Office 2003.

Got a website? Pay attention, Cookie Law will come

Criminny Rickets
Big Brother

Permission

Would a small disclaimer at the top of the home page work?

Something like "This website may or may not use cookies to either enhance your enjoyment of this site or track the usage of pages on this site. If you do not agree to our use of cookies, please click on your HOME button, otherwise, continued usage of this site implies your consent to the usage of cookies from this site."

Mozilla pushes out final Firefox 5 test build

Criminny Rickets
Boffin

FF4 Problems

I was having problems loading the Doctor Who website at the BBC, which then became the whole BBC website. The text was showing fine, but some graphics and flash were not showing even with NoScript and Adblock disabled. It worked fine in IE9, so I installed Portable FF3.7 which worked as well. So I uninstalled FF4 and re-installed it again. Voila, it's now working. I installed Adblock and NoScript, and it's still working. Not sure if there was a problem with FF4 itself, or a plug in or Extension causing the problem, but doing the re-install fixed it. If you are going to re-install, remember to export your bookmarks first. :)

Cloud: Do Reg readers care?

Criminny Rickets
Facepalm

Vested Interest

Just because Microsoft has a vested interest doesn't mean they should not be allowed to commission a survey. As long as it is done with a reputable third party and the results are reported accurately, it should not matter. I have seen surveys and polls commissioned by companies with a vested interest, and they accurately reported the results, even when they were not very favourable to the company commissioning the survey.

Survey scammers target Doctor Who fans

Criminny Rickets
Facepalm

Doctor Who?

Without posting any spoilers, I'm just waiting for the day Matt Smith decides to leave the show and ends up regenerating. How will tptb explain it, since we have already seen the Matt Smith doctor from 200 years in the future? Does it state in his contract that he has to keep playing the Doctor for at least 200 years?

Steven Moffat fumes over Doctor Who plot leak

Criminny Rickets
Grenade

Who?

Tom Baker used to be my favourite as well. That has since changed. I would now actually prefer to see David Tennant back as the Doc, though I doubt that would ever happen.

Wikileaks: Canadian piracy arrests were favor to movie biz man

Criminny Rickets
Thumb Down

Figures

What really galls me is that I had to read this story about my own country on a UK news site. I have yet to find this reported on a Canadian news site.

Windows 7 takes PC upgrade for a cycle

Criminny Rickets
Boffin

It Depends

Running Windows 7 (pre SP1), everything worked great on my system. I had even added a new video card and extra memory with no adverse affects. Right after installing SP1, my system kept crashing with video and memory problems. Long story short, I had to upgrade the power supply for Windows 7 SP1 to work properly. Since upgrading the power supply, I have not had any more crashes.

Steven Moffat promises 'darker' Doctor Who

Criminny Rickets
Black Helicopters

Companions

Personally, I wish they would get rid of Karen Gillan. Amy Pond is just too darn whiny and annoying. Keep River Song and Rory, but get rid of Amy Pond. River Song would make a great companion for him. She's smart, as her own agenda, isn't whiny at all, makes the Doctor think and yet is also there to help him when he needs it. Rory has his moments, but for the most part has proven to be an able companion as well.

Microsoft wraps Windows 8 in Ribbon UI?

Criminny Rickets

No Squared

Even for those that don't use computers professionally, the ribbon is a disaster.

Paramount buries Dune remake

Criminny Rickets
Boffin

King Kong

Will he also be using an actress that looks remarkably like Fay Wray?

Library e-books to become too tatty to lend

Criminny Rickets

Baen Website

I tried to read the page at the link you posted, but the top portion of the page was totally unreadable to me as it was overlaid by the menu. I tried it with both Firefox 3.6.14 as well as IE 8. I did send an emai lto Baen about the issue.

Reg readers offered discount tickets to internet future

Criminny Rickets
FAIL

Confusion

The problem with having multiple tld's is going to be confusion from the layman Internet user. For most people, to get Google, they would type google.com, microsoft would be microsoft.com or El Reg, theregister.com. For El Reg, the .com address actually routes back to their .co.uk address for this very reason. Google and Microsoft also both have .co.uk addresses for country specific content. Does this mean that the people getting the .nxt, .idiot etc addresses will also have to get a .com? Sort of defeats the purpose.

Then there are instances of companies with similar names using different tld's. For example, javatime.com and javatime.ca are two that have nothing whatsoever to do with each other, but I wonder how many times people have gone to javatime.com when they really wanted to go to javatime.ca? With the new tld's, this will only get worse.

WikiLeaks accused of tapping P2P for secret docs

Criminny Rickets
Joke

Goose...Gander

Hmm, according to ISP logs, on or about December 2008, a computer in the US connected to a computer in Sweden.

You know what this means of course??? Why President Obama himself sent all those files to Wikileaks!!!

Makes just as much sense as the Tiversa explanation.

Florida cops tase naked jogger

Criminny Rickets
WTF?

Not just you

It stuck out to me that the cop also kept telling him to "Stay Down" while the guy was still running. Usually you say that to someone that is already on the ground. Makes you wonder what the cop was referring to when he kept saying "stay down".

Adobe urges 'caution' for 64-bit Flash player beta

Criminny Rickets
Boffin

Firefox

I notice they talk about using Square with IE 9 Beta, but make no mention of using it with Firefox. I downloaded the latest Firefox 64 bit Minefield Beta, installed the 64 bit Java and the 64 bit Flash (Square) and it has been working like a charm. No crashes yet, and other than some Firefox add-ons that are not compatible, no other major issues.

Microsoft delivers Google Chrome IE9 beta

Criminny Rickets
Thumb Down

What research?

- "Fewer than one third have opened Favourites, fewer than a quarter have pressed the home button," says product manager Ian Moulster. -

I don't know about Ian Moulster, but those are actually the two things I use most in a browser.

Microsoft wins court order crushing mighty spam botnet

Criminny Rickets
Pint

M 276 W 0

It doesn't matter if you love or hate Microsoft, in this instance I well done. I raise my pint to you.

Firefox 4 second beta hits minor delay

Criminny Rickets
Thumb Up

Not bad actually

I've been checking it out for about a week now. I went to the FTP site and downloaded it. When I first installed it, I was all prepared to give the new Firefox a thumbs down for being too much like Office 2007. Luckily, I noticed the orange Firefox icon in the upper right hand corner with the down arrow. Click on the icon, go to customize and click on Menu bar, and BAM, you have the menu bar back. To disable it again, click on view, go to Toolbars, and click on Menu bar again. Quite easy, and much better than what Office has done. So far in testing, I have not run into a problem.

Written using Firefox beta 2.

Gay teen mag closure sparks privacy fears

Criminny Rickets

re: Not to sound negative, but

-- Wouldn't the regular delivery of a "gay teens" magazine give hints to the parents of a home-dwelling teenager that he/she might be gay?

---

Not necessarily. Normally the magazine would come wrapped in plain white paper so you could not tell what the magazine was.

Reverse engineer extracts Skype crypto secret recipe

Criminny Rickets
Happy

Re: @Criminnny Rickets

John Smith 19 wrote: You appear to know nothing of modern views on how to develop secure cryptography. On the assumption you're not a troll let me explain.

---

You are correct, I am not a troll. I do thank you and the others that have responded for the information and replies to my comment. You make some very good points that I had not considered.

I had actually forgotten about the "Charliecard" fiasco.

---

John Smith 19 wrote: Now you were saying about why SbyO is a good idea..

---

I stand corrected. :)

Criminny Rickets
FAIL

Secrets

I got a chuckle out of this one. According to the article, Sean O'Neil "criticised Skype for practising "security by obscurity" in keeping its algorithm secret for so long."

Let's see, keep the algorithm secret therefore preventing people from breaking it (thus ensuring your system is more secure) or open it to the public and and make it a lot easier for people to crack it and spam your system?

Um, what am I missing here?

Terence Conran slams 'appalling' Olympic mascots

Criminny Rickets
WTF?

Reboot

They remind me of some of the binome characters off of Reboot, a Canadian animated series.

Check http://reboot.wikia.com/wiki/Binome for comparison.

Viagra spam shop live on Twitter for a month

Criminny Rickets
WTF?

Er what???

Why does Sophos want them shut down? Let's see, they have set up a legitimate Twitter page. They are not even hiding the fact, thus are NOT breaking the TOS. Individual people get to choose whether to follow them or not, hence there is no spamming involved. Am I missing something here? I would rather them do that and let people actually interested in it choose to receive their Viagra emails, licensed or not, then to have them filling my email box with spam to get the word out to the ones that would be interested.

Oracle charges $90 for Sun's free ODF plug-in

Criminny Rickets
Alert

Weird

Why would I want to pay $90.00 for a plug in to read ODF files. If for some very strange reason someone sent me a file in ODF rather than a Microsoft Word doc file, I would just tell them I can't read that format and to resend it in Word format, which Openoffice is also able to save in. No plug in needed. Then, if enough people do this, OpenOffice's share will go down as more and more people will switch back to Microsoft office just to stay compatible with the rest of the business world.

New Reg comments system ready to launch

Criminny Rickets
Pint

Shucks

Too bad this was an April Fools article. Some of those ideas would actually be good to see implemented, and I'm not talking about the subscription system.

>> You can also choose to 'hide' other comments according to a checklist of your dislikes << Sometimes it would be nice to ignore comments from certain posters. As an alternative, have it so anyone that gets minus 10 votes is automatically hidden.

By the way, has anyone seen ManfromMars lately?

>> Instaspeak: Skip the story - simply click on any headline to comment. << I know some people on here would probably love to see this feature implemented.

>> Opinion templates: Based on our successful 'standard comments' trial of 2008 - one click to post 'you owe me a new keyboard', 'all hail the Divine Moderatrix' or 'That's it, I'm moving to Australia because I think I will be happier there given the unimpeachable civil liberties credentials of the current regime'. << This would be good to see implemented.

>> Full Comment Scan: Choose to view all deleted, withdrawn and unpublished comments - the unvarnished, unmoderated truth! << For gelastic self interest, this would be entertaining to see.

Philip K. Dick's kid howls over Googlephone handle

Criminny Rickets
Grenade

Not just the Nexus

It seems to me that it is not just the fact that they are calling their phone Nexus One that is upsetting her, but that the phone runs on Android. Nexus + Android ==Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep".

Note - The story is much better than the movie Bladerunner. Uh oh, methinks I hear a replicant at my do...

PayPal mistakes own email for phishing attack

Criminny Rickets
WTF?

Right Hand vs Left Hand

I received an email from Paypal about a month ago with a special offer of a bonus from them for updating my account. The email contained a link to follow to update my account. Highlighting the link, it looked like a legitimate Paypal site, except it was to http rather than https. As I had already fulfilled the pre-requisite prior to receiving the email, I called their support number. They didn't know anything about the offer and thought it might be a phishing attack, so had me forward the email to their investigation department.

I just received an email from them a few days ago letting me know I had received my bonus. I logged into my Paypal account, and sure enough, it was there.

GPLv2 - copyright code or contract?

Criminny Rickets
Stop

@AC 11:28 GMT

There is no ambiguity. Any part of a program, whether it is executable, headers, or even descriptor text is part of the code for that program. If you use any of it, even just the headers, you are using part of its code.

On the other hand, if you write a plugin for a GPL2 app, using all your own information, including headers etc., then it is yours to do with as you wish.

Microsoft wrote an application called Windows. Other people have written apps that work with Windows, but they do not have to pay Microsoft to do so. However, if one of those people used any of Microsofts work in their apps, then yes, Microsoft would and has sued them.

The point hasn't gone over my head at all. I know how to read plain English and what is written in the article of GPL2 is very easy to read and understand.

Criminny Rickets
WTF?

Plain Thinking

Did going to Law School force these two to not be able to read plain English? Their questions are right there in black and white.

If any part of something you write includes any code from a GPLV2 program, then your work is automatically a GPLV2 program and must be distributed as such. For the lawyers benefit, as they are unable to read a dictionary, distribute means to sell, give away, rent or lease, while following the terns of GPLV2.

If what you write does NOT contain any code from a program covered inder GPLV2, then you are free to license and distribute however you wish.

Rocket science it is not.

Gay man offered lesbian neighbours slug pellet curry

Criminny Rickets
Thumb Down

Journalistic Integrity

As their sexual orientattion had nothing to do with the story, the Reg, failed in their journalistic integrity in even mentioning it.

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