* Posts by plrndl

487 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Feb 2010

Page:

BOFH: Is WHAT 'running slow'!? GOD

plrndl

"... I'll just pause the install process until you tell me what colour font you'd like on the console session..."

When you set out to kill the person who wrote the above referenced installer, can I come with you? I promise to bring something REALLY nasty with me.

'It's a joke!' ... Bill Gates slams Mark Zuckerberg's web-for-the-poor dream

plrndl

This malaria vaccine is just a vanity project for the Gates ego.

If we make the bold assumptions that the project is totally successsful in eliminating malaria, and also that the law of unintended consequences fails to rear its ugly head, so what? The people who would have died from malaria will instead die from whatever is the next most communicatable disease in their environment.

On the other hand, if we give them the means of doing business with the outside world, they have the chance to prosper and rise above their disease-ridden environment, just as we in the developed world have done. Necessity is the mother of invention, and hunger and imminent death are great motivators.

Dark matter: Good news, everyone! We've found ... NOTHING AT ALL

plrndl

@Dave 52

What do scientists do if dark matter can't be found?

They'll have to come up with another story to "help them secure further Department of Energy funding".

plrndl

Stab in the dark

The reason the detectors can't see the tiny flashes, is that they represent a new phenomenon that I name "dark light".

Please send my nobel prize...

Ohh! The PRECIOUS! Give it to uss. We WANTS it: Shiny iThings coming in 2014

plrndl
Linux

Re: Masturbation sleeves

"Orifice for Macs!

(I think MS may have a similarly named product)"

...but it's a different orifice.

Hate data fees but love your HD slab? Here's a better way to pay for bytes

plrndl
Unhappy

Re: Yes @ LaeMing

"Gigibyte (Megibyte, kilibyte, petibyte, etc) is binary. Short form is GiB (MiB, kiB, PiB, etc).

These things do happen to be (long-ago) formally defined for those who can be bothered to know their trade!"

I challenge you to show us where these are formally defined.

It's NOT an iPad - but that's FINE: I learned to LOVE Microsoft's Surface 2

plrndl
Pint

Re: vexabibulus is a word @ poopypants

Good word!

Coding: 'suitable for exceptionally dull weirdos'

plrndl

1. If coding were a mechanical skill, it would be done by computers, not humans.

2. Since computer use is so pervasive, and getting more so, a basic understanding of coding could be considered as important as the traditional "3Rs". After all you don't just teach writing to writers, or arithmatic to mathematicians.

Apple CEO Tim Cook v Microsoft's Ballmer: Seconds out, round two!

plrndl

Re: 2/3rds running iOS7

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

The purpose of statistics is to quantify differences. Depending on how you collect and analyse your numbers, you can get any result you want. People of integrity use statistics as an aid to discovery of new data: others use statistics to distort the truth, hence the famous quotation above.

Microsoft: Ha ha, my Wall Street friends - THIS time the victory is OURS

plrndl
Linux

Re: why compare apple and ms?

iPads and iPhones are used almost universally by SENIOR people in business (ie those who earn over £250,000 pa) on a BYOD basis because they are tools to do business on the move. Sure they're useless for things like coding and editing, but people who do those jobs don't make that kind on money.

If you want MS Office without the ribbon, try Open Office or Libre Office. On PC, Mac or Linux.

Nice job, technology. Now we have to work FIVE TIMES HARDER

plrndl

Re: Really?

MS have given us one great gift, the excuse that no-one ever questions: "the network is down".

Pimp my office: 10 cubicle comforts

plrndl

What an uninspiring list @JDX

Some of us use our computers to do work!

LIVE CHAT: You, El Reg, experts chat about Win 8.1 and Surface 2

plrndl

Can anyone explain how the new naming convention for MS tablets is less confusing than the old one?

Pop OS X Mavericks on your Mac for FREE while you have LUNCH

plrndl

Re: And now the world waits... @ MyBackDoor

"Microsoft will just have to cave in to the almighty dollar and give it away to keep the dollars coming from other products. "

MS doesn't have any other products that make any money, apart from its enterprise software, which is only used by a relatively small number of very large companies. That's why it's got itself into this ridiculous mess with phones and fondleslabs that nobody wants.

Met Police vid: HIDE your mobes. Pavement BIKER cutpurses on the loose

plrndl
Holmes

Status Symbols

Most smartphone owners regard their phone as a status symbol, and flash it as often as possible to impress those of lower status. Thus they become targets of the criminal sub-set of that fraternity. People who continue to flash status symbols in public will be the targets of criminals until such time as they learn more modest behaviour, and these's nothing that anyone else can do about this.

Lumia 2520: Our Vulture gets his claws on Nokia's first Windows RT slab

plrndl

Not for profit

So it's a grown up business machine that you can't use for business?

Insane.

I see another $900,000,000 write-down coming.

Internet Explorer 11 BREAKS Google, Outlook Web Access

plrndl
Linux

@07:47 GMT Anonymous Coward

MS change their file formats regularly to force business users to upgrade to the latest version of office (so they can read new versions of old formats). Extensibility and other capabilities of the format has nothing to do with it.

".doc" is not a format, it's a name. The format has changed frequently.

Here comes Windows 8.1! Microsoft grits teeth, pushes upgrade to world

plrndl

Re: Still not enough

What MS cannot grasp, is that to the user, the interface IS the product. Users don't give a damn about what's going on inside the box.

The problem with W8 in any version is that it's NOT WINDOWS. Call it somerthing else and give Windows users the option to downgrade to W7.

Expensive blingo-rama iPhone 5S OUTSELLS cheapo-plastic 5C

plrndl

Status Symbol? @ elaar

I agree. In my local pub, in a wealthy part of north London, most of the staff have iPhones.

Most of the customers are on Android.

Feline OVERLORDS ditch camera-toting human servants, film selfie vids

plrndl

Re: Urban dictionary has it about right @ Ben Rosenthal

...and the mice.

"Dolphins are the second most intelligent creatures on Earth, above humans and below mice" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_races_and_species_in_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Mice)

Windows XP folks: At least GOOGLE still loves you ... UNTIL 2015

plrndl
Linux

@dogged

Linux kernel development is primarily concerned with developing features and adding ever more driver support. There will always be new releases.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3: Once, twice, three times - a Very Large Phone™

plrndl

Re: Note3 & SIM region lock... @ Al Taylor et al

Conspiracy theorists should note that Samsung sells its phones as a brand, not a product. This means that the Galaxy XTZ you buy in London may be a different device to the Galaxy XYZ you buy in New York or Singapore, and may have a different processor, different 4G bands etc.

This may protect Samsung's margins in different territories. It also protects the naive consumer from dodgy grey imports.

plrndl
Happy

Freedom of Choice

Why do so many people here seem to think that the way they use a smart phone is the only correct way, and everyone who does something different to them is wrong?

Grow up.

Post-PC world? POST-MAC WORLD more like

plrndl
Mushroom

Re: Peak Register @SuccessCase

God invented the tablet. "And He gave unto Moses, when He had made an end of speaking with him upon mount Sinai, the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God" (Exodus 31:18) It's just taken us mortals a little time to copy the idea.

Scottish leader splurged £20k appealing disclosure of EU membership legal bungle

plrndl
Meh

Re: The no campaign is grasping at straws here

It's not for the UK to decide if an independent Scotland can remain in the EU, it's an EU decision. I personally think that the chance of Scotland being permitted to join the EU without embracing the Euro is negligible. Furthermore if they end up as oil-rich as the SNP claim, the EU will want a large slice of that to bail out Ireland, Portugal, Greece etc.

Microsoft store staff to hold all night vigil for Surface 2

plrndl
Linux

I wonder how much they're paying people to turn up and pretend to be customers.

NSA justifies hacking world's digital communications

plrndl

Paraphrase: "We will re-fight the last war until it kills us".

Universal's High Fidelity Pure Audio trickles onto Blighty’s Blu-Ray hi-fis

plrndl

Hi, Fidelity

The Velvet Underground and Nirvana are of course renowned for the unsurpassed fidelity of their original recordings

Ubuntu 13.10: Meet the Linux distro with a bizarre Britney Spears fixation

plrndl
Linux

Re: Reversing Moore's Law

"box might just say

Tell me what you want to do?"

If that's what you want, get an iPhone.

The principal point of open source software is that it's free as in freedom. Canonical can do whatever they want with it, and so can you and I. If you don't like it, use something else, or roll your own. If Ubuntu was doing the same as Red Hat, SuZE or any other distro there would be no point to its existance.

Personally I currently prefer Mint/Cinnamon/Docky, but I keep a close eye on what Canonical are doing, because if they get it right with their PC/phone/tablet integration, they will have a dream system, unlike MS, who have got it just about as wrong as possible.

Congrats on MP3ing your music... but WHY bother? Time for my ripping yarn

plrndl
Linux

Vortexbox

There's an excellent solution to this problem in the Vortexbox appliance. Download the free-as-in-beer ISO (based on Fedora Linux), and install it on an old PC or VM on your network. Once installed you can manage it from a browser. It rips CDs to FLAC, tags them, downloads the artwork, and makes copies to MP3 or AAC for the portable. You can do the ripping while watching TV etc. It's DNLA compliant. It plays nicely with Mac & PC. It just works.

Oracle sued over $33,000 bill for SaaS: STRIPPERS as a SERVICE

plrndl
Holmes

Boat Race?

So that's why Larry ditched his keynote!

'Bogus IT guys' slurp £1.3m from Barclays: Cybercops cuff 8 blokes

plrndl

@ adam payne

If you still think that banks are run by people who know anything about risk management, you obviously haven't been following the news for the last five years.

Microsoft no longer a top Linux kernel contributor

plrndl

re Canonical @ b0hem1us

Canonical's considerable contributions to the Linux ecosystem have been in areas other than the kernel.

Should Nominet ban .uk domains that use paedo and crim-friendly words?

plrndl

I would hope that it's obvious to anyone with half a brain, that if you ban one code word, users will simply replace it with another.

Microsoft says axed certificates were FAILING its software biz

plrndl

Re: Are these certifications actually valuable?

The intention was that these top guns should be valuable to M$, hence the expensive "solutions". The scheme was dropped because it wasn't creating a worthwhile number of sales engineers for Microsoft.

BAN THIS SICK FILCH: Which? demands end to £1.50-per-min 'help' lines

plrndl

Re: Rare though it be...

What's the point of that (03 numbers)?

Companies should be compelled to list the real (ie standard land-line) number as an alternative to their virtual (ie premium) numbers, for customer contact. Premium numbers alone should be permitted ONLY on something that is clearly a sales line.

Smart companies should put their customer contact numbers on free call numbers, and charge the cost to their marketing department's budget. That gives them a strong imperative to handle customer queries properly (generating the highly sought-after word-of-mouth promotion), rather than trying to fob them off (or piss them off).

Amazon to offer FREE smartphone?

plrndl

Re: Seems pretty hard to make back the price of a $100 phone

If the punters do their family food shopping on it, from Amazon's grocery service, they could make the cost back in weeks.

Regarding profit, when you're in business, your profit margin is your competitor's collateral. When you have almost no margin, others cannot afford to compete with you. With tiny margins on colossal turnover, the tiniest future increase in margin will reap huge profits.

Simples.

OK, forget the 3D telly fiasco: 4K is gonna blow you away - say tech giants

plrndl

Re: All that resolution....

Maybe not, but what a monitor!

Reports: NSA has compromised most internet encryption

plrndl

Re: Really? @ Don Jefe

The agencies need ethnically diverse employees to increase their chances of penetrating terrorist groups.

The terrorists have a vested interest in getting people inside these agencies.

Six degrees of separation?

iPad 5, Retina iPad mini with 'A7X' chip home for the holidays – report

plrndl
Linux

Yawn.

The Solar System's second-largest volcano found hiding on Earth

plrndl
Joke

But iz it bigga dan da Staines Massive?

Microsoft's $7.1bn Nokia gobble: Why you should expect the unexpected

plrndl

MS's most successful venture in the phone business has been bullying smaller companies into licensing its patents. What's the betting that in a few years they will drop the hardware AND the software and become a full-time patent troll?

Tory think tank: Hey, civil servants! Work with startups to save £70bn

plrndl
Unhappy

Deja Vu all over again

So we must spend say £50 billion on technology which will be obsolete before we can agree on what the software should do.

Again.

Microsoft's Nokia plan: WHACK APPLE AND GOOGLE

plrndl
Holmes

Re: No Android Lumia 1030 then..?

"Nokia is free to create another phone division under a different name (Microsoft licenced the Nokia name for 10 years)."

If Nokia has been paid €5 billion to lose Elop and fund the creation of their new Android division, this may turn out to be a good deal for everyone except MS, who will sink slowly with Elop at the helm.

Brit music body BPI lobbies hard for 'UK file-sharers database'

plrndl

The BPI is attempting to resuscitate the corpse of a business model that has been rendered redundant by modern technology. They refuse to recognise that the genie has left the bottle and cannot be made to return.

The government should tell them to stop whingeing and find a business model that is relevant to the 21st century. This would be in the best interests of all stake holders.

Behind the candelabra: Power cut sends Britain’s boxes back to the '70s

plrndl

Re: Most UIs are crap

I find the quickest way to set these things up is to google the model number and get the pdf of the manual.

Hey, Bill Gates! We've found 14 IT HOTSHOTS to be the next Steve Ballmer

plrndl
Linux

Re: An obvious choice

Now that Elop's nearly finished destroying Nokia, surely he's the ideal person to complete Balmer's job of destroying MS?

Thought the PC market couldn't get any worse? HAH! Think again

plrndl

Re: @JDX

"Doing any form of serious writing, drawing, CAD, 3D graphics, music composition and recording, coding, video editing and so on needs a full blown machine."

Agreed. I do most of these things, and need a proper computer with BIG monitors for this. But most people only use a home computer for email, surfing and social networks, all of which is now moving to phone/tablet devices.

As for printing a letter, I don't remember the last time I used snail mail, and have no idea what a stamp costs these days.

Ubuntu Edge Linux mobe: 'Made you look,' crows Shuttleworth

plrndl
Joke

Re: Operation Extinguish @ Dylan Fahey

In the old days we used to get an error message: "keyboard error or keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue".

Page: