Posts by dogged

App.net 'not just a way for nerds to talk to each other', boss tells nerds

Re: In before

"We've established what you are, now we're merely haggling over the price" - Churchill

In before

400 nerds claim they wouldn't use any form of social networking even if paid in naked women and gold google/apple products (delete depending on which "team" the fools have decided to cheer for) "because privacy".

Note the google products bit. That's important.

I actually think this is quite a good idea and may go check it out. Thanks for the heads-up.

Amazon wants me to WEAR NAPPIES?! But I'm a 40-something MAN

Re: Cloth nappies FTW

> As long as you're not on a water meter

Yeah, there's the issue.

If you don't want the reduced price nappies, can I have them?

Renewable expenses with babies are a killer.

Brawling neighbours challenge 'quiet' cul-de-sac myth

Re: Lazy Picture Sourcing

To be fair, it's much nicer to look at than Chippenham. Nothing about that picture indicates "banal", "soul destroying" or "not as bad as Trowbridge".

Re: Argh

It's certainly not in Chippenham.

Web inventor Berners-Lee: I so did NOT see this cat vid thing coming

Re: @ lesession (was: Whatever.)

Undoubtedly worthy but not single-person-attributable and did not facilitate cat pictures.

Re: surprised by the popularity of kittens

Well, he's a bloke. Had a woman invented the web, it would have been optimized for cat pictures.

NSA's TURBINE robot can pump 'malware into MILLIONS of PCs'

Re: Interesting choice of words

Ours do. The USA does it more along the lines of "let's think of a cool name".

Operation Redeeming Freedom, anyone?

Backdoor snoops can access files on your Samsung phone via the cell network – claim

Re: Am I being cynical...

> Yes they are: "THE SOLUTION, Kocialkowski says, is to replace the device's stock Android firmware with a purely free-software OS, such as Replicant."

Caps yours and no, they're not.

"He cautioned, however, that if the modem can potentially take full control of the device's main application processor, further remote exploits may still be possible, including ones that even an OS replacement like Replicant can't block."

That's a responsible warning, not a sales drive. Not that a sales drive for free software is exactly common except among evangelists on the Reg's comment boards anyway.

UK's CASH POINTS to MISS Windows XP withdrawal date

Re: That's what you get for going with Microsoft

The really stupid part is that those skills are equally valid on Windows Embedded, the unit price for the OS is lower, the maintenance overhead is lower and the support term is longer by at least two years.

But no... a chance to save a quick buck on the original hardware trumps all.

Re: "realised the capital cost of paying for the existing ATMs"

I came here grinning evilly and planning a series of targetted sploits against XP boxes that could get me free money and ended up upvoting your post instead.

I shall now either mend my ways or wait until the good sense drains away, the project mangler is on my back again and the evil seeps back in.

Women! You too can be 'cool' and 'fun' if you work in tech!

Re: Now THERE'S a campaign worth discussing! @dogged

> Really? No discrimination there? 100% sure about that?

Positive. MY other half and I both work around the bloody nursery. Except she's a doctor in a hospital and required to do shifts so all those weekends/nights/on-calls are the times when I do all the childcare. All of it.

Also, fuck you.

Re: Agreed

> If there's one thing that REALLY sets my teeth on edge it's grown women calling themselves "girls"!

It's worse when they call themselves "Jilly" but these two conditions often occur at the same time.

Re: Now THERE'S a campaign worth discussing!

You answered your own question there.

The majority of low paid jobs are part time. Women are often attracted to part time work, often simply because childcare is so fuckin' expensive.

It's not discrimination, it's economics.

Re: Utter Crap!!!

> There is also a lot of work being done to try to get male primary teachers.

Oh, I was under the impression that the Daily Mail had appointed the Paedofinder General to murder any man caught within 10 feet of a child which is not his own.

Satisfy my scroll: El Reg gets claws on Windows 8.1 spring update

Re: As if this will make people happy!

> If the Windows key isn't passed through RDP, that must be a pain.

But it is passed through RDP so it isn't a pain. This is just more complaining for the sake of complaining.

Re: As if this will make people happy!

> can you explain then why with the Ribbon in Office MS have been actively discouraging the use of keyboard shortcuts?

Can you explain why pointing out that laziness is not actually a great reason to raise a lynch mob over an operating system means that h4rmony should now defend an entirely unrelated product which was not under discussion?

Didn't think so.

Re: As if this will make people happy!

Something's wrong. None of these neophobes has called you a shill yet.

To be fair...

I do have one complaint. The touchpad on my Samsung 5 series laptop interprets any number of accidental finger motions or deliberate mouse moves in any direction as "swipe in from the right".

That's infuriating.

The rest, I can live with.

Re: As if this will make people happy!

> If so, why not learn to use Linux instead an save the license fee?

That's your choice but by any non-brain-damaged standard, learning to use win8 from XP or 7 is several orders of magnitude less taxing than learning to use any linux from XP or win7, once the user discovers the "Desktop" tile.

Shift up, Ballmer: Microsoft expands board, makes room for activist investor

Wow. A 2% stake. He's going to get loads of influence.

It's 2014 and Microsoft Windows PCs can still be owned by a JPEG

Re: Striving to persevere to endure the never-ending ...

> Citation needed. It would be curious to know how the placebo effect applies to source code

It applies to the user, who believes him/herself protected and superior when s/he is neither.

Re: Striving to persevere to endure the never-ending ...

> You don't have to do it all by yourself, you can share the effort with the rest of the community.

If you trust each and every member of that community with your bank details, yeah.

Face it, the "added security" of open source code is largely a placebo. It makes smug people feel a bit more smug. I personally code for several F/OSS projects. By your implication I am therefore wholly trustworthy. Shyeahright.

In practical terms, F/OSS is no more secure than any other code except in tiny projects.

Microsoft's battery-boosting Surface slab cover to ship soon

Do you do a lot of typing on your tumble dryer?

SACRILEGE! Hitchhiker's Guide game's back ... and it TWEETS at you

Re: A nice cuppa

Have you noticed that McDonalds are using the slogan "Share and Enjoy!" for some sort of bucket of stuff which is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike edible food?

Tim Cook and Israeli PM commune with the GHOST of Steve Jobs

Well, if Israel doesn't like it, maybe it should stop invading its neighbours.

Sysadmins and devs: Do these job descriptions make any sense?

The Reg is pretty much last with news, as a rule. Even Anandtech is often faster and they take a fortnight to strip any and all tech that comes their way before they write anything about it.

Windows 8.1 Update 1 spewed online a MONTH early – by Microsoft

Re: So what's in it?

Haven't there been tons of stories about this anyway?

Minimize buttons on metro apps, some new stuff in the main title bars, just pointy-clicky stuff for when you need to be all pointy and clicky.

> Why do I get a rather condescending vibe from this Guy?

Because you're a touchy prick?

X-rated Android antics: Motorola's Moto X puts boot in chunky brother

Re: Why do Brits accept Rip-Off Pricing? No Batteries or SD Memory?

Your tinfoil is unravelling. I think it may be causing unnecessary bolding.

Dell charges £16 TO INSTALL FIREFOX on PCs – Mozilla is miffed

Re: Ask not how much Dell charge to install Firefox

Have you ever looked at Scott Guthrie's blog?

Nice clear screenshots of all the stuff he does with Azure. All in Chrome.

Now, you can assume that MS fire people and penalize companies if you like. That's your right. You can stick your head up your own arse and use your balls for a bow tie if makes you happy.

But you're still wrong and not funny.

Review of UK data protection: Should fines go OVER HALF A MIL?

Re: No no no...

Yeah, so forget about fines where the body in question has no turnover.

A better way would be permanent disbarring from employment by the public sector in any capacity (including nationalized banks).

Psssst. Don't tell the Bride, but BBC Three is about to be jilted

Comment thread as informative tool

I'm amazed, actually.

I'd never have dreamed that people would consider Russell Howard worth watching.

Kill off CBeebies?

A year ago I might have upvoted you.

Not any more. CBeebies is that last hope of the end-of-tether dad attempting to cope after work with a supercharged 11 month old baby who wants to get in the oven while you're trying to cook his dinner because the mrs is on nightshift.

Now granted, the mere fact of knowing that Sir Derek Jacobi is singing the Iggle Piggle song is enough to make my soul scream but not so loudly that I won't take the welcome distraction it offers my horrible spawn.

Hot, fit, SWEATY users stroke Backbeats model, beg: DON'T CALL US

Re: Yawn.

Nothing like some heavy metal to motivate me into shifting some seriously heavy metal.

But... you work in IT... Why aren't we RICH?

Typing a Spong! message will be called "Spinging".

To be fair, they make zero money from their products. They make billions by selling you.

Got it. You me and Dabbsy can do "Spong!"

Basically, it autotunes your text messages so you can annoy people by having singing messages arrive in their inbox and shitting on their data allowance.

Da yoof will love it.

I'll do the app, you do the website, Dabbs can do publicity. I hear he's met some journalists.

sell it quick to HP before you get found out.

Fixed that for you.

Insecure hipsters with BEARD ENVY spur facial hair transplant craze

Upvoted for "basement cum shrine" which is presumably an extremely elaborate sock.

Re: I ain't a hipster then

You can have your beard removed permanently?

I like that idea. It would save me shaving time and razor money and remove the necessity to wave sharp bits of metal around at not-awake-yet o'clock in the morning.

Please tell me more.

Boeing going ... GONE: Black phone will SELF-DESTRUCT in 30 secs

> The Army doesn't like radio gear it can't fix

In general, true.

The rule is actually that if we can break it, we have to be able to fix it. Royal Signals actually have three guys in Leeds who have the full time job of breaking all radios and radio prototypes submitted to them by any means.

To my knowledge, this has consisted of such delights as running it over with a tank, setting fire to it, leaving it overnight in strong acid, leaving it overnight in strong alkali, chucking it off tall buildings and on at least one occasion, strapping grenades to it and running like fuck.

The radio those guys can't break may be invented one day but today is not that day.

Re: What would you do with a Boeing Black on your lab bench?

> Long before you can exchange any keys you'll have the USB stack talking to it

Not necessarily. NFC would work here.

Microsoft Research co-develops cloud data scrambler

Re: Half measures.

> Nepal might work.

I was considering this statement and realized that actually, Iceland would work much better. And they can have carbon-neutral data centres.

It's basically outsourcing your backup. Not in itself a terrible idea.

Battling with Blizzard's new WoW expansion and Diablo revamp

Re: They exist because ....

@ Neil B

>And by the way, please spare us your pseudo-philosophical claptrap.

There's nothing pseudo or philosophical about saying that if people are prepared to pay not to play your game, that is one shitty game. It might be an amazing profit-generator but it's still a shitty game.

So please spare us your fanboy apologism.

Re: They exist because ....

> ..... some people just want to pose. They like to sit outside the AH all day in their pretty raid armour and never actually do anything. Posers will always pay to look good.

I don't buy it. I find it more likely that people do this because they want to actually get to the fun bit they keep hearing about. Which they never will. MMOs based on DIKU are an exercise in Zeno's Paradox of the Tortoise. You will never reach the fun. You can never reach the fun. You will just run out of barriers.

Then they give you new barriers.

>As for bypassing the first 90 levels, no need to. The game has changed the amount of work required so you can blast through from 1-85 without any real struggle (some of the rebuilt quests are more entertaining these days).

I don't buy that either. If it were true there would be no powerlevelling.

Github brews text editor for developers

Because that would require Chrome which is the new IE6 with its disregard for standards and it's "Chrome Apps" for ActiveX.

Hey, IT department! Sick of vendor shaftings? Why not DO IT, yourself

once they are finished they zip back up the mouthpiece of their latex suit and climb back into the gimp box with (insert service provider's name here) on it.

You misspelled "Oracle's".