* Posts by Lamont Cranston

1555 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Apr 2010

Wikipedia doesn't need your money - so why does it keep pestering you?

Lamont Cranston

Re: Charities waste money

The RSPCA spent money in order to prosecute someone over fox hunting? Regardless of your own views on fox hunting, I'd expect the RSPCA to be against it, and so be more surprised if the RSPCA hadn't done that.

Lamont Cranston

Thanks for reminding me that Toby Young is a twat.

Somedays, I don't think about him at all, so it's good to know that he's just as much of a twerp as he ever was.

Cameron defends U-turn on web filth ban, leaves filtering to parents

Lamont Cranston
Facepalm

"preventing sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood"

When he's finished with that, I've got an empty stable with a door that needs closing - I hear Mr Cameron's quite good with horses.

Vatican shrugs off apocalypse, fiddles with accounts dept

Lamont Cranston

If the "religion causes wars and is evil" debate is going to carry on,

I, for one, will welcome the sweet embrace of death, on Friday. At least it will be quiet.

Windows Vista woes killed MS Pinball

Lamont Cranston

Re: Microsucks Windoze O/Ss suck

Has "Micro$haft" fallen out of fashion?

Football club catches, then punts, Kaspersky name

Lamont Cranston
Happy

@steve876

I know my place.

Lamont Cranston

Re: Why...

To attract the attention of ill-educated bogans who don't realise that you can get free anti-virus software?

Apologies if this is either racist of class-ist. It's probably a bit of both.

Lamont Cranston

Re: I know what I'd do if I was Kaspersky

Then again, you really can't buy this sort of publicity!

Muppets launch app store guide for little fingers

Lamont Cranston

The only advice I would offer to app developers targetting children

would be to leave out all the click through adds. Of course, that's their revenue stream, and they'd all go bust if they couldn't depend upon the parents not putting a PIN on their app store account!

Lamont Cranston
WTF?

Re: Sesame Street != muppets

What? What's Guy Smiley, if not a Muppet?

Anonymous hacks Westboro Baptists over Sandy Hook protests

Lamont Cranston

The only good vigilante is Batman.

Anonymous, are you Batman? No? Shut up, then.

On the other hand, WBC deserve everything they get, so full steam ahead!

Oh, I'm so conflicted...

Quadriplegic woman demos advanced mind-control of robot arm

Lamont Cranston

I can't like this enough.

Nice one, science! Still, it's only a matter of time before she puts the hand to better use, crushing the skulls of those who would oppose her - go girl!

Search engines we have known ... before Google crushed them

Lamont Cranston
Coat

No Yahoo!?

Don't tell me it's still going?

Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei 'likes' Facebook despite ban

Lamont Cranston
Facepalm

An oppressive regime,

engaging in hypocritical behaviour? Whatever next?

Review: Eurocom Monster W110ER gaming netbook

Lamont Cranston

Re: battery life of just one hour 20 minutes,

Yes. Reading this, I could quite see it living under my telly, hooked up via HDMI, and with a Bluetooth keyboad/mouse (family asleep? Full screen gaming ahoy!), so the small screen and weedy battery would never be an issue. But really, what would be the point? More than likely I could put something together to do the same, without spending £1k or more, were I so inclined.

Still, credit where it's due for the accessible innards - that's a nice feature in a laptop/netbook.

Analyst offers cut-price fondleslab recipe

Lamont Cranston

@ Mark

Quite. Netbooks (and low-end laptops) seem to be overpriced, and utterly stagnant, which is a shame, as they're quite popular in my house (no one wants to do anything work-like on a tablet).

Lamont Cranston

Re: sub $100 tablets

I really like the sound of these cheapo tablets, and there's always someone on forums like this extolling the virtues of the one they've acquired. However, whenever I look into buying one, it's invariably an unknown quantity - reliable review sites seem to stick to the established brands.

It's a shame, really, as I'd quite like a cheap one for the kids (so I don't burst into tears when they inevitably smash it!), but the thought of buying one and then finding out that, say, Angry Birds Star Wars* won't run, doesn't exactly fill me with enthusiasm.

*don't judge me, it's as good a benchmark app as any

Samsung mobes pwned by ANY APP, thanks to chip code hole

Lamont Cranston

@ Paul Crawford

Common sense in short supply, as usual. Of course, it doesn't matter, as we're supposed to bin our mobiles every 12 months.

Schmidt 'very proud' of Google's tiny tax bill: 'It's called capitalism'

Lamont Cranston
Facepalm

Re: Good ol' Google

"Google doesn't drive [etc.]" I hope they don't employ anybody. Fuck society, eh?

Lamont Cranston

@ Cynical Observer

As a salaried employee (of the state), I am allowed to claim expenses. However, when I spend that money (e.g. on petrol, car maintenance, train tickets), I am paying tax (VAT, fuel duty). At the end of the year, HMRC look at how much I've claimed, then reduce my personal allowance, ensuring that I pay tax on my expenses again. I'm certainly not making a profit out of this.

Lamont Cranston

I like this arguement.

Complaint: "Duck Duck Go is shit. I used it to search for something, and it didn't find it."

Response: "No, Duck Duck Go is fine. You should have gone to the relevant website and found it for yourself. Why would you need a search engine?"

Bravo!

I'm still using Google, simply because Google is the best there is at what it does (even if what it does ain't very nice).

Lamont Cranston
Unhappy

Re: It is *all* the politicians' fault.

Well said, Ken. Sadly, who are the politicians more likely to listen to - the wealthy, with their party donations and media influence, or the voting public?

Max Headroom style fake celebrity avatar plan seeks Kickfunding

Lamont Cranston
Facepalm

Max Headroom was just Matt Frewer in latex?

Oh, man, I feel such a fool...

Ten badass brainy computers from science fiction

Lamont Cranston

WOPR was hardly a badass, though!

With regards to Deep Thought, I don't know where that picture came from, as there's never been a film adaptation of that.

Japan Airlines to serve KFC on Christmas flights

Lamont Cranston

Re: It just looks so pathetic

5 servings of KFC? No thanks. 1 is already 1 too many.

Nintendo Wii U Review

Lamont Cranston

Does this have any "media centre" functionality?

Given that it's not going for the same market as the PS3/Xbox360, it'd be quite nice to be able to use it to stream media off the network, or play DVDs. I've recently persuaded an old Wii to do this, and I cannot for the life of me see why Nintendo didn't enable this "out of the box" - didn't Sony do quite well out trumpeting the PS2/3's DVD/Blu-ray playback abilities?

Belgian finds missus was born a MAN after 19 YEARS of marriage

Lamont Cranston
IT Angle

Re: Why we're uppity.

Indeed. Stories of domestic violence don't really belong in the "And finally..." section of The Reg that is Bootnotes. There's nothing funny about this story (and there's no IT angle!).

Lamont Cranston

@ Robert Grant: Here:

"I pushed her against the wall and said: Now I know the truth. Are you a man? She then announced that she was born as a boy and that she had been operated on. She was now a woman, and so she did not need to tell me about her past as a man. My world collapsed. That evening came to blows. The police came."

Granted, "came to blows" doesn't specify who was beating up who, but "I pushed her against the wall" suggests that the husband started it.

Lamont Cranston

Re: Keeping Secrets

Quite. Still, smacking your wife about is a line that should never be crossed, so any sympathy he might have garnered for being "deceived" for 19 years, goes right out the window.

Lamont Cranston
Thumb Up

Re: @Michelle Knight @11:45Z

I would like to second this. Bravo.

Lamont Cranston

Thanks, Mako.

What was once a whimsical recounting of one man's sexual misadventures, will now be forever heard as the disturbing story of a would-be-rapist, stalking around bars in search of his next victim. Thanks a lot.

YouView: 'Public service catch-up telly should belong to us alone'

Lamont Cranston
Thumb Down

YouView probably would have worked really well

as branding, with a defined set of standards, as FreeView does. Bringing it to market years after world+dog has numerous ways of accessing catch-up TV, then demanding to be the exclusive carrier of the service is not just a slap in the face for the viewing public (already got an STB, net-connected Blu-ray, and SmartTV? Tough, now you need a new box), but also an admission of their utter failure to do anything remotely useful in anything resembling a timely fashion. Wankers.

Girlfriend 'tried to MURDER ME with her AMPLE BREASTS'

Lamont Cranston

I prefer to relax and enjoy someone else's.

(sorry)

Lamont Cranston

Totally flat?

Like Christopher Lloyd at the end of Roger Rabbit? You sicko.

Lamont Cranston
Happy

Everyone needs

a hobby.

Iran's Photoshop FAIL: 'New drone' actually Japanese university bird

Lamont Cranston

Re: Those pesky Japanese STEALING from Iran AGAIN!

I'm just glad THAT Charles 9 is here, as SOMEONE needs to take this STORY seriously (and WANTONLY abuse the SHIFT-key).

Sony surges past 70 million PlayStation 3 sales

Lamont Cranston

Re: Shame...

Why let it gather dust when you can just hand it down? My in-laws bought a Wii - once they'd got bored with Bowling, they gave it to us for the kids to use. Free console (result) and small children really aren't that bothered about cutting edge technology (so long as I tune out their pleas for me to buy them and X-box with Kinect!).

Nintendo Wii: shit for grown-ups (Wii-motes? Ugh!), but great for kids, so it's no wonder it sold so well.

Boss wrong to demote man over anti-gay-marriage Facebook post

Lamont Cranston

Re: Interesting this one...

Plenty of (straight) non-believers get married in church. I don't believe in god, but I find that to be grotesquely disrespectful, but the ministers involved seem to be satisfied by the couples involved simply attending a couple of sunday services.

Unlike the dingbat in the story, I wouldn't draw the conclusion that gay = non-believer, so it really shouldn't be that hard to understand why a same-sex couple might want their union blessed in their place of worship.

Deloitte in the saddle at Comet, seeking stability - and a buyer

Lamont Cranston

@Ed 11

From the correct angle, all administrators look alike. Any angle, in fact.

Disney plans three Lucasfilm flicks EVERY YEAR

Lamont Cranston

Re: "Textbooks that feature Yoda..."

Such things already exist, and have done for some time! My son's teacher liked to incorporate Star Wars into his lessons, when practical, but was asked by the Head to stop, as the school decided that it was inappropriate to promote "War" to 6-year olds.

Amazon Kindle Paperwhite review

Lamont Cranston
Unhappy

Re: Shameless Amazon advert?

I wondered what the privatisation of libraries would look like. £49 per year for membership, and e-books only? Yeah, that sounds great...

How can UK TV product placement do better, asks report

Lamont Cranston

Re: cartoons as toy adverts etc

Quite. I suppose it depends on your definition of "modern" if the author wishes to consider this a new phenomenon (or maybe they just grew up without a TV - oh, the horror, the horror!).

Lawyer sues Microsoft rather than slot an SD card into his Surface

Lamont Cranston
Thumb Up

Re: He may be stupid, doesn't mean he doesn't have a point.

Very well put, sir.

Lamont Cranston

Re: My god

Any decent pub will top the beer off for you, on request. I doubt Microsoft are going to be popping round to pour him a few more GB.

Word wonks insist GIFs are really JIFs

Lamont Cranston

Timely.

I hear geocities is the webhost of choice, too.

English Defence League website 'defaced, pwned' by hacktivists

Lamont Cranston

Re: So what are the lefties among you going to do when the diversity takes over Britain?

Hahahahaha! Good one.

Is this a masterful troll, or just too much fail for the internet to handle?

Lamont Cranston
Facepalm

Re: Get what they deserve.

Glad to see someone has downvoted you, here. People like you, who would seek to protect a frightened child from a racist mob, make me sick.

Star Wars VII: The Disney Movie signs Toy Story III script genius

Lamont Cranston
Happy

Don't enjoy watching Ewoks beating on Stormtroopers?

Congratulations, you are now too old to enjoy RotJ, and can move on to something more age appropriate. Deal with it, internet.

The prequels turned out shit because Lucas was trying to flog a kids film to adults (kids don't want to watch senate debates, adults don't want to watch Jar Jar, no one, adult or child, wanted to hear about midichlorians). I'd expect Disney to be smarter than that (I don't hear anyone complaining about watching the latest Pixar/Marvel film with their kids), so my hopes are cautiously high.

Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7in Android tablet review

Lamont Cranston

Wanting to read a book, one handed,

makes someone a wanker? What if they just want to enjoy a cup of tea and/or biscuit, with their read?

An e-reader shouldn't be less convenient than an actual book, should it?

Bond's Walther PPK goes digital: A civilized gun updated

Lamont Cranston
Pint

@jack

I'd give it up, if I were you: the US and the UK really are separated by a lot more than just our common language (and a lot of fish).

Here in the UK, the only people supposed to have guns are the police, the armed services, and gamekeepers (maybe sports shooters, also). Anyone else who has a gun has probably got it because they want to (or are about to) go and shoot something or someone up (gang violence, "going postal", etc.).

Over in the USA, you have plenty of people who are not in the law, armed service, or gamekeeping professions, who also own guns. Therefore, extrapolating from experience, you must all be a load of trigger happy loonies, just itching for some meth addict to break down your door and "make your day". What's the alternative - do you all *really* enjoy shooting at paper targets?

Enjoy your hobby - I added the beer icon to show no hard feelings, but beer's another thing that we probably won't agree on!

P.S. guns as tools? Unless the job at hand is killing/wounding, you've probably picked the wrong tool for the job.