* Posts by Lamont Cranston

1555 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Apr 2010

Apple desperate to prevent nightmare scenario of iPad in Iranian hands

Lamont Cranston
Thumb Down

"and bought the iPad online"

Blimey - I might have accepted a free one as part of an apology, but I don't think I'd have been interested in carrying on with my purchase after that sort of treatment.

Racism? It just works.

HBO 'sorry' for skewering Dubya

Lamont Cranston

Re: horrified!

"representatives for substantial people groups in their nation."

Not so much a substantial volume of the electorate, rather those with substantial amounts of cash.

Foundering Nokia pushes 10,000 bods, 3 veeps overboard

Lamont Cranston

Re: Never heard of vertu before

They look destined to do a Burberry - luxury designs for the rich and famous, leading to cheap knock-offs, popular with chavs. I'm sure I could get the Vertu look by popping to the nearest market stall and purchasing the nastiest looking case for my [insert handset name here].

Strong ARM: The Acorn Archimedes is 25

Lamont Cranston

Is that Meg Ryan in the second picture?

I'll have what she's having.

Lamont Cranston

Re: "Novelly"?

NetWareish?

Digital music sales beat discs for first time in UK

Lamont Cranston

Re: Also e-books

Gift vouchers are very useful. The ability of the Sony Reader to forget that it's been authorised by Adobe to read books, less so.

Lamont Cranston

Re: Music on a stick

Love the downvote on this - you filthy pirate! ;-)

I gave my better half an SD loaded with music, to play in her new Sony Reader, at Christmas, although it was all ripped from CDs I bought for the purpose. Wish I had just nicked it all - she didn't like some of it.

And the worst film NEVER made is...

Lamont Cranston

@ JoeF

As Nicholas Parsons might say, "I'll let you have the benefit of the doubt."

Lamont Cranston

Re: And now something completely different

Great idea, but every other entry would be a Larry Cohen film, so it wouldn't really be fair.

Lamont Cranston
Megaphone

Re: Hedgehog Crisps

They were a brand, not a flavour! I got sick of explaining this at school - I can't believe it's come back to haunt me.

Eating a pack of Sea Salt & Cider Vinegar flavour, made me feel like such a sophisticated 8 year old.

Hands on with the Intel-powered Orange San Diego

Lamont Cranston
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"rather than an obejctive review"

It's not a review.

Facebook needs Opera - to rescue it from dependence on Apple

Lamont Cranston

Re: Positive news

I think you've found the only good thing that might come of this (although I've found very few pages that don't play nice with Opera, of late), but it's far outweighed by the negatives: Facebook will take a wonderful browser, and make it crappy (not to mention that they will make a mockery of Opera's promises to protect their vast data hoard, too).

WTF is... Li-Fi?

Lamont Cranston

Sat under an endlessly flickering light?

Isn't this sort of thing banned by the Geneva Convention?

Diablo III dev rolls 12d6, scores PC sales record

Lamont Cranston

Re: Eh?

@ L.B.

I don't think there not being an off-line, single player mode is really that big of a deal. I'm a grown-up, with a job and family commitments, so my gaming, such as it is, is pretty casual (I completed Portal, last year!), and I've dealt with this by not purchasing a copy of Diablo III.

Instagram-owner Facebook emits in-house camera app

Lamont Cranston

Re: Isn't thiis already on android?

My Nokia (E63, so symbian S60, or something) had its Facebook app updated a while back, and a camera option appeared. Don't think it has a sepia option, though, which just goes to show how uncool my phone and I are.

Max Payne 3

Lamont Cranston

Re: That's not Max Payne!

Exactly. Max's permanent "turtling" facial expression was all part of the first game's charm.

On the plus side, he doesn't look like Mark Wahlberg, either.

LG pitches £7k 55in OLED TV, again

Lamont Cranston

Re: Most of the people buying these never turn them on.

Of course not - that's the butler's job.

Google warns against ISPs hard on web filth

Lamont Cranston

1. Apply to ISP for service

2. ISP agrees to provide service, and asks if you would

a) like them to filter your internet access, explaining that the intent is to prevent children accessing undesirable content

b) like them to provide you with unfiltered internet access

3. If you express a preference for option a), it should then be explained to you that it is not a 100% effective method of protecting your children (should you have any), and so you might wish to take extra steps (as your children are your responsibility, not the ISP's), and it may block access to some content that you might otherwise wish to view; if you express a preference for option b), it should then be explained to you that it, if you will be sharing your connection with minors, you might wish to take steps to filter the internet for them (but that decision will be left up to you, as your children are your responsibility, not the ISP's)

4. You make your choice, and pay your money; world keeps on turning, no one's rights are infringed upon, everyone is happy

This, to me, is how an opt-in system would work, and I have no problem with that. Given that not every adult can be expected to know what a DNS is, or how whitelists work, it seems perfectly reasonable to require ISPs to offer assistance to those who request it.

Microsoft launches its own 'so.cl' network

Lamont Cranston

B@stardising punctu@tion?

I'm afraid the paradigm shifted, when you weren't looking.

NHS car-crash spatters CSC accounts with red ink

Lamont Cranston

Oh, come on!

How on earth do you expect to bleed a company dry, before retiring on a fat severance package, with that attitude?

Colour Kindle incoming says mole

Lamont Cranston

Comic,

sorry, Graphic Novels, and kids' books, I guess. I like the idea, but I think that the current crop of e-readers are too small for reading such things, anyway.

British 4G mobile data rollout 'will mean NO TELLY for 2m homes'

Lamont Cranston

Re: All the extra channels are crap

I'm tempted to agree with this, but then I'd not have 5USA, and so be unable to fall back on guaranteed repeats of CSI, when there's nothing else on.

Maybe we could replace BBC1 and ITV with endless CSI and films where stuff blows up? That'd keep me happy.

Ten... freeware gems for new PCs

Lamont Cranston
Windows

My picks:

- Spybot S&D and COMODO, I have been virus and malware free for years, which is nice.

- SumatraPDF is nice - a lot nicer than Acrobat, anyway.

Must say, though, that I'm slightly surprised that one of the suggestions for a new Windows PC wasn't some variant of Linux!

Computer nostalgia is 10 PRINT 'BOLLOCKS'

Lamont Cranston

Re: The cure to nostalgia!

This, hard. I have many a happy memory of gaming on my +3 (loading off an external tape-deck, as nothing came on disk), but running an emulator on my PC and getting my hands on as many of my old games as possible, was a depressing experience.

Likewise, everytime I bought a "retro" games collection for the Playstation, part of me died.

I'm not saying that there were no great games available for the old micros, but if I could go back in time and show 8 year old me something like Kongregate, well... let's just say it'd create a terrible paradox when the 8 year old jumped into the time machine, and stranded mid-30's me in the past.

Apologies in advance if the universe starts to unravel.

Biennial boner blights Beemer biker

Lamont Cranston

Cheers!

As a southerner, I guess I'd better stick to a lager top, rather than any real beer.

Lamont Cranston
Coat

Re: Muphry strikes again

@ Dave Harris

Maybe he's from Yorkshire, and speaks T'Queen's English?

On reflection, this looks stupid when written down, yet seemed quite witty in my head.

Indiana cops arrest violent 6-year-old

Lamont Cranston
FAIL

Re: It never ceases to amaze me

"Lefties"? I'm on the left of the political spectrum, but I don't expect school to be the primary source of discipline for my children. What are you on about?

*a lack of sufficient income prohibits me from becoming a true Champagne Socialist.

Courier mishap sends woman's corpse to shopping club

Lamont Cranston

"BJ's"

Hee hee, "BJ's". Look, it says "BJ's". BJ's!

OK, I'm done.

CSC axes another 640 UK IT workers

Lamont Cranston

Re: What's wrong with buying British?

You'll never get a senior management role in the public sector, with that attitude.

Ditching your staff, then having them rehired (on worse conditions) by an inefficient private sector organisation, with one eye on its bottom line, and no eyes on your needs, is the way to go. OK, so services get worse, but at least you'll have a nice fat kickback to enjoy, and your PA can keep you insulated from the goings on in the real world.

Bitter? Moi?

'Attitudes to robot sex will change'

Lamont Cranston
Terminator

If this is going to eliminate the trafficking of child sex-workers,

won't this require sex-droids that mimic human children? And if so, won't that fall foul of the law?

Or is it all an elaborate honeytrap?

Nvidia: phone GPUs to outplay current consoles by 2014

Lamont Cranston

I could imagine

phone (in the Xperia Play mould) that could be plugged into a docking station to connect to a TV and proper controllers, to become a games console, in much the same way as the Atrix can become a laptop.

I can't imagine wanting one, but I suppose it would be one less thing to get nicked, if someone broke in to your house whilst you're away.

ISPs should get 'up to' full fee for 'up to' broadband

Lamont Cranston

Superficially appealing,

but wouldn't the "sliding scale" model of charging mean that there was no financial incentive to supply connections to hard to reach areas, thus widening the digital divide?

Facebook: 'Outrageous, wanton, reckless, callous, disgraceful, wilful'

Lamont Cranston
Joke

You should watch The X-Files,

and get yourself up to speed on how the US government has been covering up alien invasion attempts, too. Busy bees, the CIA.

Google shows off Project Glass augmented reality specs

Lamont Cranston

Re: Yeah, ooh aah, that's how it starts...

I wouldn't recommend that anyone watch The Entire History of You, on the grounds that it was cack-handed tosh.

Aliens Blu-ray disc set

Lamont Cranston

So, this is a lot like the DVD I already own,

but HD shows up the flaws in the filmstock, makes the visual effects look a bit ropey? Blu-ray players sound like a great investment.

No-strings nookie radar tugged offline in stalking backlash

Lamont Cranston
Facepalm

I uploaded my details to facebook,

told it I was young, free, single, and looking for a relationship, then made it all public. Now, people have read my profile and assume that I am young, free, single, and looking for a relationship. It's not fair!

Pastebin.com hiring staff to get rid of activists' dumps

Lamont Cranston

Who else

read all the quotes in a wheezy, James Earl Jones voice?

With this ring, I thee frag

Lamont Cranston
Joke

Not even married,

and she's already nagging him, and has even progressed to assault with a deadly weapon?

I'm sure they'll be very happy together. Her and his life insurance, that is.

UK government says no to turbo e-bike

Lamont Cranston

Class it as a motorbike,

or one of those 3-wheel scooters that you can ride on a car license, then subject it to £0 road tax (it doesn't emit anything, other than that sense of smugness that all cyclists give off*), and a requirement for insurance.

Result? Govt. boosts its green credentials. No one's going to buy one at that price but, on the off chance someone does, there'll be some comeback on the insurance if they manage to knock someone over.

Alternatively: Government gets over its silly objection to the import of a pushbike. No one's going to buy one at that price.

*myself, included

Florida man 'fesses to naked Scarlett Johansson outrage

Lamont Cranston

"he's remorseful for any of the harm caused to the stars"

He kept their names in the paper - will they be paying him for this service?

End in sight for IT jobs outsourcing massacre

Lamont Cranston
Joke

There's far too much common-sense thinking, in this forum.

You people will get nowhere in either politics or business, with this approach.

iPhone 5 gets a 5in screen

Lamont Cranston

Re: Peripheral?? Definitely!

Bluetooth earpiece, linked to a tablet in your hand/man-bag, running Siri-style voice recognition for calls and text (and possibly more). Would work brilliantly, but you'd feel like a right berk when using it.

Lamont Cranston

Trust me baby,

this is five inches...

Alt: Never mind the quality, feel the width...

Toshiba outs monster 13in tablet spec

Lamont Cranston

Couldn't they have given it a wipe

for the photos?

Commodore outs Linux-running Amiga Mini desktop

Lamont Cranston

Re: Hmm

Rounded corners, man - Apple can't lose! While they're at it, they can sue the makers of my dining table.

Chrome beats IE market share for one day

Lamont Cranston

What's a discussion on browsers,

without someone pointing out that Opera is the only good browser, and all others eventually copy its features?

Nothing, that's what. So, here, you can thank me later:

Opera is the only good browser, and all others eventually copy its features.

Ten... stars of the Geneva Motor Show

Lamont Cranston

Car design is long dead,

and this appears to have been largely an exercise in kicking its corpse. Humbug.

Lamont Cranston

Ugly?

Why, yes - it's been designed to match its occupants.

Pope Benedict in .XXX pro-Islam cybersquat drama

Lamont Cranston

Well, there was I,

searching for some quality, hardcore smut, but to no avail. And then it occured to me - what's the one name you associate with quality grumble? Hefner? Flint? Ben Dover? Don't be silly, it's the Pope! Tap-tap-tap on the keyboard, checking out the XXX domain (glad they put that up, or I'd never have known where to find my jazz)... Moments later, I'd been converted to Islam.

What a day.

Met plod will use 1980s software to police Olympics

Lamont Cranston

"rampack wobble"

It fell down the stairs, honest.