* Posts by Lamont Cranston

1555 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Apr 2010

Go back to the future with Red Dwarf

Lamont Cranston
Unhappy

This, a thousand times over.

Why can't they just let it die?

iOS upgrade swells iPhone battery-suckage grief

Lamont Cranston

"If every single person posting to this forum started calling Apple..."

If only their phones worked.

Divorcing couple ordered to share Facebook and dating site logins

Lamont Cranston

Probably

conducts his business over BBM.

Court forces bisexual budgie smuggling blogger to go down

Lamont Cranston

Infringing on their trademark, wasn't he?

Probably would have gone the same way if he'd set up a site of guys being sucked off by Hoovers.

Don't let Halloween malware haunt your PC

Lamont Cranston

Reading this whilst trying

to clean some unknown nastie off the in-laws PC. Happy halloween, indeed.

China punts free condoms at iPhone owners

Lamont Cranston

"three packs of ten every two months"

Why are they giving out 2 years supply, every couple of months?

Saddam 'double' kidnapped by smut flick gang

Lamont Cranston
Joke

I agree.

There's no money to be made in the porn business.

Bug in Flash Player allowed Mac webcam spying

Lamont Cranston

Flash invariably fails to detect my webcam, even if I want it to.

So I guess I'm safe from this.

Vegas man begs web for $1m to fix gigantic scrotum

Lamont Cranston

I'm surprised that Golden Palace aren't offering up the cash

in return for tatooing their brand on the offending organ. Or did they go bust?

Are IP addresses personal data?

Lamont Cranston

Fair comments,

but it's much easier to opt out of having a Nectar card (you can still shop at Sainsburys) than it is to opt out of having an IP address (you can't use the internet). Given that being without a permanent address can effectively drop you out of society, is not hard to imagine that being without an IP address could eventually leave you in a similar position.

Nipples and teen lesbians sexy even when ironic, ASA rules

Lamont Cranston

"the ad appeared to link teenage girls with sexually provocative behaviour"

Just imagine that. Won't somebody think of the childr... on second thoughts, that likely to get people in trouble.

Iranian TV claims royals ordered Ofcom to ban it

Lamont Cranston

True,

but wasn't one purpose of the World Service to enhance the reputation of the UK abroad? Acting in the interests of the country, rather than a specific government, but still...

Belkin Conserve

Lamont Cranston
Meh

I have a six-way strip

with a switch for each socket, which cost considerably less than £30. OK, the stick on remote is more snazzy, but mine is more flexible.

Nice idea, though.

Facebook accused of violating US wiretap law

Lamont Cranston

"unjust enrichment"

Enrichment of what? Facebook, its affiliates, or the users' web browsing experience?

Valve chief says Apple will own your living room

Lamont Cranston
Joke

What sort of monster are you?

When I was little, it was all about Sonic beating up Mario.

When I was a teenager, it was all about how Macs were shit because they only had one button on the mouse.

It's good to see that nothing has really changed as I've got older.

iPlayer founder launches next big TV thing-Zeebox

Lamont Cranston

Is this the fella

who was behind the iPlayer badgering me to spill my viewing habits onto facebook? Certainly sounds like it, and I didn't like it.

I'd like the epg to tell me what is on, and when, not what it thinks I ought to be watching, but then I'm probably part of some luddite minority.

Survey: Most TV viewers surf while they watch

Lamont Cranston
Unhappy

This would explain all those programmes

which seem to consist of nothing other than an endless cycle of "Coming up..." and brief recaps.

Future Firefox to slurp updates silently

Lamont Cranston

Happy enough for auto-updates to be an option,

but I don't want to have to install them. I like to control what goes on my PC.

Faster startup sounds nice, though.

The life and times of Steven Paul Jobs, Part One

Lamont Cranston
Pint

This article

was an excellent read. Thank you.

Lamont Cranston

"This is not the way to do things in business as I see it."

Making oodles of money, is not the way to do business?

YouView to adopt Freeview channel list rules

Lamont Cranston

Quite.

The only channel number I know is 71 (Cbeebies) - anything I want to watch is plucked off the EPG, so I don't care what number it is (and this is after trimming all the crap, so the chance of the numbers being sequential is pretty remote).

Beer bottle shagging beetles with HUGE MEMBERS win prize

Lamont Cranston
Pint

Run them over whilst occupied?

Win, all round.

Pandemonium as Microsoft AV nukes Chrome browser

Lamont Cranston
Mushroom

Waiter,

there's a storm in my teacup.

Samsung shows second second-gen 7in Galaxy Tab

Lamont Cranston

Wasn't this proven in the courts?

Provided that consumers do not believe that their £5 Rolek is an actual Rolex, there's no infringement.

I would imagine that the word SAMSUNG being emblazoned across the product, would probably dissuade all but the most well bunged members of the German judiciary, from believing this to be an iPad.

Anonymous hacktivists turn rapper on YouTube, iTunes

Lamont Cranston
FAIL

"Once this hits the charts, radio stations will by law have to play it"

Really? Nevermind, though - if everyone who wants a copy, gets it off a torrent, it won't be troubling the charts, will it?

F1 2011

Lamont Cranston
WTF?

Wheel attached to an ironing board?

Elsewhere on the site, there's a wheel-based arcade unit attached to a washing machine - is 2011 the year of driving-sim/household-chore convergence?

OnLive pushes game stream service to UK punters

Lamont Cranston

Because they can see the way things are going,

and have decided to make some money out of it while they still can?

They've probably got a few more years ahead of them, yet, before on-line completely destroys the high street.

Yahoo! apologizes for blocking Wall Street protest emails

Lamont Cranston
Facepalm

"they began tweeting about being hungry"

Words fail me.

Assange™ pens world's first unauthorised autobiography

Lamont Cranston
Happy

I'd think very highly of Canongate

if they sold enough copies to recoup the advance, then dumped the released the manuscript on the internet, if only because it would deprive Jules of any income, giving him a small taste of Manning's situation.

Facebook 'personal' news feed gets algorithm rejig

Lamont Cranston
FAIL

Accessed fb through my phone this morning,

to be greeted by the new layout. The option to view either Top Stories or Latest News has been removed, so that I get Top Stories first, followed by Recent Stories, whether I want Top Stories or not (I don't, and never have).

Checking it again, now, and I have Recent Stories, followed by Earlier Today, which seems to be an exercise in inserting sub-headings where none are required.

Amazon staff toiled in 100°F+ warehouse

Lamont Cranston
Thumb Down

If it were unusually hot, and affecting the health of your workforce,

the humane thing to do might be to shut down the warehouse until it's cooled down a bit. Would Amazon insist their workers keep going if the warehouse had flooded, or would they wait until the water had drained away?

Then again, given the statement that the workers were suffering from "non-work related medical conditions triggered by the heat," Amazon appear to believe that their workforce brought their troubles on themselves, suggesting that they don't really understand the concept of being "humane".

Capital gets trendy address: .London on its way

Lamont Cranston

.herebedragons

for the dark lands of northern England?

Schoolkids learn coding at GCSE level in curriculum trial

Lamont Cranston
Thumb Up

The only thing missing from this story

is the part where you brought a Barbie doll to life.

I really do hope that an aptitude with computers is not something that would go overlooked, in this day and age.

Lamont Cranston

Did my A-levels in 95/96(ish),

only took A/s Computers, so learnt about database design and spreadsheets (boooooring) whilst the A-level students got to learn PASCAL, or somesuch.

Bad decision on my part, but I was 16 at the time (and had just given up trying to teach myself AMOS). Whoever decided to drop "proper" IT from the curriculum, deserves a good shoeing.

Still not looking forward to doing battle with my own kids for control of our home network, though!

Irishman's coke-packed abdomen poses for police

Lamont Cranston
Unhappy

This is much less glamorous

than the 1980s led me to believe.

Celebrating the 55th anniversary of the hard disk

Lamont Cranston

"dinosaurs were our ancestors"

Really? Are you one of the lizard people, that David Icke warned us about?

Sorry, this really has no bearing on the main point of the article, which was excellent.

RIM profits nearly sliced in half

Lamont Cranston

Apple

seem to do a good job of getting iPhone owners to

a) hang on to their iPhones and spend at the appstore

and

b) upgrade from one iPhone to the next.

They might gradually kill their own iPod market but, between the iPhone and the iPad, they appear to have their target market all sewn up.

The RAZR was a great bit of design, that still looked current (futuristic, even) when it became obsolete. iPhones now look generic, but that doesn't seem to matter.

How gizmo maker's hack outflanked copyright trolls

Lamont Cranston

Because

you can?

Facebook music dashboard: Revenue at last?

Lamont Cranston

Facebook with subscription income wouldn’t be thinking of selling your data?

Is capitalsim new to you? Most companies are in the business of making "as much money as possible", not "just enough to get by on". I'd imagine that it's quite possible to run a TV company on either subscriptions or adverts, but that doesn't stop Sky from having both.

Feds probe naked Scarlett Johansson outrage

Lamont Cranston
Angel

My phone appears to be of no interest to hackers, tabloid or otherwise,

so, if Ms. Johansson would like to store her nudie pics on there, I'd be more than willing to provide such a service.

Did Bahraini activists closet anti-gay bus baron?

Lamont Cranston

Quite.

If you choose to use Google as your Search Engine, then the results you get are those returned by Google's search/index process, not The Universal Truth About The Internet.

You don't like, you choose a different search provider. Were the UK govt. to run a search engine, that would have to be impartial, but Google are a private company, and I don't think that there's any legislation that binds them into returning any sort of approved results.

Still, look at all this free publicity for Brian Souter (who, by virtue of pursuing this, seems determined to let everyone know what a homophobe he is).

Microsoft demos creepy car stalking system

Lamont Cranston

As a parent, I'll come clean and admit

that I do appreciate the proliferation of porn on the internet.

Other than that, I'm not sure what you're on about.

Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-ray disc set

Lamont Cranston

"actually see the model being brought to its knees by a judicious prod of a stick"

Take that, suspension of disbelief!

I suppose I should be pleased that they've not redone all the effects as CGI.

Anti-gay bus baron rages at being stuffed in Google closet

Lamont Cranston

Don't Google adjust their result based on what people click through to?

Thus meaning that his problem is that people searching on his name, aren't looking for his personal site?

Galaxy Tab remains illegal in Germany

Lamont Cranston
Thumb Down

All the TVs in the John Lewis, next door,

are black rectangles, with smooth, simple surfaces. All the netbooks and laptops are clamshells, with smooth, simple surfaces on one face and QWERTY keyboards on the other.

Germany, save us from this madness!

UK, US ink boffinry pact on laser fusion 'star power'

Lamont Cranston
Go

"in essence, creating a miniature star on Earth"

If the project isn't being run by a with wearing robot arms, grafted on to his spine, then I'm going to be very disappointed.

Al Gore wants to borrow your Facebook and Twitter accounts

Lamont Cranston
FAIL

As much as this is a stupid idea,

it'll probably work. Afterall, no sane person buys watches/pharmaceuticals/money locked in Nigerian trust funds from unsolicited emails, but the continued presence in my Spam folder suggests that someone is responding positively to them.

Amazon solves wait-at-home-for-deliveries problem

Lamont Cranston

Inconvenient opening hours,

large queues, and inadequate parking, at sorting offices, or an extra charge (and wait) to have Royal Mail leave something at your local Post Office (if it still exists).

I think Amazon might be on to something.

Lamont Cranston

It's not better than Argos,

but many people find Argos to be more convenient than Amazon (as you can get your hands on the product on the same/next day).

Lamont Cranston

re: Because People Are At HOME

Amazon's target market appears to be people at home, too.