Posts by BongoJoe

Google+ bans real name under ‘Real Names’ policy

Haven't they seen Fawlty Towers?

What, then, about Lords of the Realm?

IBM PC daddy: 'The PC era is over'

That's good to hear

...because nothing would please me more than having all my VBA running in my Office applicatons on the tablet as well as being able to continue to develop my applications which requires ADO access to a massive database.

If I can get this to run happily on a tablet ten I will concur with the man's argument. Of course, when I am bashing code I am using two large monitors for a reason - they are not for show but for practical purposes and I would love to be able to have the same sort of visual space available to me on the same tablet.

Not against a tablet, but I wonder if that man does any real work other than let his documents loose in the cloud, look at a few web pages and does nothing but make a few notes.

If he thinks that the PC is dead then he's wrong. He's just got a souped-up Kindle.

Hackers breach chocolate recipe on Hershey website

Over in Norway...

... for my Norwegian ID number I was given by the authorities the date "32nd Feb 2000" in the late 80s as my date of birth.

I loved that ID card becase every time it went into a machine for chacking it would fail.

Hunt splashes £56.9m broadband cash on Wales

Jobs for the boyos

Let me guess as a resident of the oft-overlooked Llyn Peninsula.

The money will be used to beef up the M4 corridor and going as far as Pembrokeshire where it will all mysteriously dry up.

If there is anything left over for the North then it will be only for those in and around Llandudno Junction's min-Brussels enclave.

We've seen these Welsh superhighways come and go, after digging up the roads, but it never seems to be for the likes of us.

Holmes because, well, it's elementry.

Cybercrooks turn Eve Online into botnet battlefield

All about Eve

"Propaganda and disinformation campaigns are also rife in EVE warfare, "

Which makes Eve the game that it is. It's not a kiddy game and, no, the RMT and bots aren't that much of an issue particularly now that players take the law into their own hands and zap any they come across.

Remastered 4K, 3D Titanic steams towards cinemas

"Painstakingly"

quite

Microsoft BPOS cloud outage burns Exchange converts

The Cloud - why?

Explain to me again why the Cloud is such a good idea for security and stability.

TalkTalk claims wooden spoon for highest level of broadband gripes

Ditto

My now deceased Aunt was horrified to find out that Talk Talk were charging her something like £17 a month for a free service.

Digesting the Budget: First-belch reactions

The very same

This wouldn't be the same American health system which relies on drug users and alchoholics to supply blood which causes no end of health issues, nor would it be the same American health system which has to rely on BRITISH doctors flying over to sports centres and halls in (oddly enough) the black areas to offer them basic medical aid when the same doctors should be really going over to Africa.

We do pay insurance on the NHS. This is the National Insurance. However, it's not the policy holders' fault that the insurance company, i.e. HM Govt., is squandering the funds elsewhere.

The likes of Aneurin Bevan and the good forefathers of Tredegar must be turning in their graves.

If we really wished to get rid of the leeches on the British economy then simply scrap Trident and make a rule on the changing room doors saying "No more than one war at one time, gentlemen."

O2 tries to explain its new prudish nature

What shop?

The nearest O2 shop to me is a few hours away. Not something that I can do in my lunch break, is it?

Bits of the Racing Post site seems to be blocked too. This is interesting because there's nothing on there which contains material which is illegal for underage readers. Yes, it's a gambling site but it only discusses odds and selections and unless it's illegal for toddlers to buy The Post in the newsagent then I can't see the point of this.

Google Apps boss says cloud computing is your destiny

Not all Office Applications are the same

In a past life I have spend countless hours writing Office VBA code for lots of major firms. Throw a stone in the City's square mile and it won't land far from a site using my code which modifies each firm's Office suite.

I would love to know how stuff like this is going to run in The Cloud especially when it is merging with various databases and libraries. The Cloud is going to have to be a very big and fast place to hold all this data.

Apart from the security aspects of The Cloud (none of my clients would want their data outside of their buildings for a start) who exactly backs it up and can restore stuff for us?

As a software developer how can I get my stuff to run in The Cloud and for only a certain number of people too? It's not only running bog-standard PowerPoint presentations; there's a lot more bespoke software out there than these marketing droids clearly can imagine.

Unprecedented domain seizure shutters 84,000 sites

I do, already

"vote with your feet. dont use anything hosted in america. Plenty of other providers out there."

Try and have a properly run horse racing rating site hosted in the Land of the Free. Ha!

No, the UK for me all the way. Whilst the Monarch of the Realm owns a few horses, has a few punts then we're going to be safe for a while from fascist nannyisms.

OFT waves through UK.gov's national addressing database

Bing Maps?

"Then someone would be able to determine the geographic co-ordinates of your street address! They could do this on their local machine, in addition to being able to do this on Google Maps, Bing Maps, etc etc etc etc etc!"

Well, one can't do anything with Bing Maps.

If one puts in my address into Google from any machine anywhere in the world the flag shows above where I live.

Shove it into Bing and the map shows my address as always being about 30 miles West of where the browser's machine is.

Not too clever really, is Bing.

DEC: The best of systems, the worst of systems

The Falcon

I remember many a happy moment programming the Falcon board for mobile computing back in the early 80s.

Bank scorched by stupid Facebook policy

This reminds me...

..of the time when I worked for STC in North London.

A part of my employment contract was that I wouldn't own nor read a certain book which, shall we say, dished the dirt on IT&T and any infringement of this would constitute a sacking offence.

I think my book order went into WH Smiths the next day...

iPhone owners get walked through confessional

Jeezus

Does not the Cult of the Turtle Neck count as the occult?

(flames because they think I may be going there...)

AOL buys Huffington Post

Ratbag

I never heard of this organ so I followed the link to have a look.

I eventually found the text somewhere between the adverts. Two things spring to mind here; the writing is terrible and, secondly, if they are going to massacre the English language will they please stop using it and return it?

The last time I read such drivel was when the paperboy used to deliver the neighouring lass' Jackie by mistake.

The more I read of this newspaper the more I wonder about the media within the US.

ROBOT COP scatters LIVE GRENADES in San Francisco STREET

I remember

my father, a rather-successful* WW2 bomb disposal chap, telling me that one of the advantages of being in bomb disposal was that one didn't have an officer breathing down your neck as one worked...

(* you can perhaps guess why)

Photo loss blogger to Flickr: You're f*cking kidding

Backups

What happens if El Reg accidently deletes my account. Will all my wonderful messages be lost?

And who at the back said "Hopefully" there?

Google to Microsoft: You're stealing our search results!

eh?

Do any of these people actually speak a known language?

Finnish regulator calls for iPhone refunds

But shirely

up in the San Berdino mountains around, for example, Lake Arrowhead and (not that one) Twin Peaks it gets right cold in winter. I know, I've been there many a time.

Not all of California is a dust bowl desert, you know.

(Pengiun because of the topic)

Facebook offers 500 million users SSL crypto

clearly this was designed by someone

I've just been tagged as a branch on a Christmas Tree and before that as a rock on a stony beach. I have no idea why other than, I expect, friends can make me see a picture immediately.

When it comes to identifying me from these pictures I expect that it's going to be rather hard.

Utah to honour Browning M1911 semi-automatic

Shirley not...

...the Nine Eleven Browning?

Such arbiters of good taste.

Passenger cleared after TSA checkpoint stare-down

I always wondered

...what the point of that was.

"See also sending the tanks to Heathrow."

I can't really imagine a Challenger crashing through Terminal Two's Duty Free in chase of a suspected terrorist without causing a few quids worth of damage.

As for those very large shell things; lobbing them around an airport with big shiny planes, smooth runways seems a trifle daft to me.

Then again, I have had the priviledge of running a country so I simply have to rely on common sense.

Gov will spend £400k to destroy ID card data

The title is required, and must contain your National Insurance number

Some of that £400,000 will be fines for putting out too many wheely bins the night before collection.

2011 Games Preview

You are in a...

...maze of twisty passages

Er, no

"Anyone that calls themselves a gamer in 2011 and does not own a PS3 is lame."

I have the full function of all my legs, thank you, and not only that I think it's going to be hard to play EVE on a PS3.

Sony sues PlayStation 3 'hackers'

Typical Sony

This is the company who once threated to sue me for taking an American purchased laptop overseas...

Facebook riddled by 'my first ever status message' scam app

Yes

And it's the same people time and time again.

EU law not tough enough for online piracy, says Brussels

As far as I can see, said the blind man

If you pick up a newspaper which contained an extract of a copyrighted material which they had no right to publish you wouldn't want to be prosecuted for reading, i.e. downloading, the item. The publisher, ie the uploader, is the one who gets done and not the readers.

A similar situation happens in pubs when the landlord is showing a dodgy TV channel with the footie on it. The punters in the pub can't be done for watching, again downloading, the game but the publican is doing some form of broadcasting (broad brush strokes here).

The same applies with downloading; that per-se isn't illegal as far as I am aware but when onetorrents and sends up even a micro-smidgen of a file then that is publishing.

Note that I am not going into the moral argument as to whether it's right or wrong but trying to respond to your comment on the legal perspective. Assuming that I have got it right, of course.

Man charged in bizarre EXPLODING VIBRATOR plot

Shirley

Writing "Happy Xmas, Bitch" would mean that the recipient would be less likely to use the thing than if it were wrapped up as an anonymous romatic present?

Hand grenade - just because.

Motorola uncloaks 10.1-inch Xoom fondleslab

A4 Documents

If this can display an A4 document whch can be read with ease without scrolling around the page then I am interested.

Having all my technical books in PDF format and easier to hold and read than a 1600+ page book is my first requirement.

This is looking interesting even if it's not this particular model.

US woman @theashes gives in to Twitter, flies to Sydney

But...

...you ought to know.

Scotland are one of the Minor Counties.

Doctor Who to marry Doctor Who's daughter

but, hang on

"If you have sex with a clone... #

...is that technically masturbation?"

What if it wasn't consensual? Could one be done for raping oneself?

Gov gone wild: Mad new pub glasses, bread freedom introduced

You a landlord or something?

I am not paying that sort of price increase for my pint/euro-litre...

Just over two quid a pint does not make almost six quid a litre...

Apple patents glasses-free, multi-viewer 3D

Flat out

I can't see how this would work for people lying down on their side or at an angle. Either the signal to the second eye would have to come on a different line or the viewer would get a confused image until they stit upright.

Or I may have no idea whatsoever.

Airport face-scan gate unilaterally imprisons traveller

OOps

I would like to know how they would get there if they close down the airport.

Google alerts users to Facebook contacts 'trap'

Let's make it...

...five miles out to sea.

Perhaps then neither will return.

MS freebie anti-virus scanner auto-downloads provoke more anger

But...

when Windows XP suggests a list of free anti-virus products (when clicks through from the warning notice that there's no protection) there's a list of 19 free products given.

Microsoft's Security Essentials is 10th in a list of 19. That makes it in the bottom half.

Fail, because this is what Panda and Trend have done.

Ofcom to TalkTalk, Tiscali: Stop over-billing

Hope they get done

My aunt was charged many years for her supposedly free broadband.

I can't despise this company enough.

Somali rebels threaten mobile banking group

Well...

"I don't have a god, anyway. But thanks!"

I could lend you one of mine; I have a few going spare hearabouts.

List-makers battle to keep football fixture lists protection

|Quite

Is the football league over there claiming copyright on the season fixture list or something equally retarded?

------------------------

I really couldn't have put it better myself.

Legendary steampunk computer 'should be built' - programmer

Shirely

we'd have Imperial measurements and not French ones?

MoD labels Facebook Places a 'targeting pack' for terrorists

Gobsmacked

I normally have my security set so that I have control over what I publish over FB. I certainly wouldn't wish to be tracked and my location published so I never installed nor use whatever tracking applications there are.

So, I looked on my Privacy settings and I am astounded that others can tell dog/world where I am.

I don't mind this feature but surely the default setting for these privacy side-stepping applications or do-dahs should be screwed down to almost off?

Nutter repairmen scale 1,768ft TV mast

Equally

I remember some poor sod of a window cleaner in Belgium who went past my outside window at what could only be described as at terminal velocity...

Texan cooks up deep-fried Guinness

To be honest

since they've stopped making good Guinness in bottles about twenty years ago the whole lot has gone down in a blaze of 80s Yuppie marketing and it's not the same stuff as it used to be.

But give the Americans their due; frying their beer can only improve it - I would hate to think what this process would do my pint of Glaslyn Ale.

And I won't be surrendering mine for research purposes neither.

Microsoft ends Office lovers' employee discount program

The mustard won't be cut

Whist a good idea - as a throw away comment, but most people/companies I know have modified their office so that the thing is full of VBA. If I open Word here, for example, I get a dialog box asking me template I want loading. And then when I choose, for example, the letter template it gives me another dialog box which I fill in and then the stuff is put onto the letter in the right places.

I can't imagine writing another letter without VBA, or the equivilent, nor can i imagine writing another invoice. And if I didn't have VBA then all of my spreadsheets which I use day in, day out wouldn't do what they do.

And, sadly, the last time that I looked Open Office doesn't even provide anytthing like this. In fact, the Open Office spreadsheet barely even copes with loading XML.

Yes, use Open Office; but only if one doesn't wish to get any work done.

US starts charging for online visa-waiver

Me too

I've got no end of unlimited and indefinite visas for the US. Sadly, all expired.

Solar plasma aurora storm to hit Earth tomorrow today!

Saved!

Living in North Wales we have no need of the Magnetosphere as we're protected by things such as the sun catching fire by banks of rain clouds.

So, whilst the rest of the Northern Hemisphere is being overrun by large shuffling plants we're all safe and sound in our wellingtons and sou'westers.

Is anyone out there? Perhaps we're the only ones left alive...

Kaspersky blocks BBC News over false phishing fears

Nos da

I agree. Most of the links in the Welsh language section end up on 404 pages.