* Posts by RollinPowell

29 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Aug 2010

AT&T's megablunder payout revealed

RollinPowell
Happy

Take that, deathstar!

I'm thrilled that the merger didn't go through. I prefer GSM phones and am a T-mobile prepay customer - T-mobile's plan is ~$25 cheaper than AT&T's and I get 5GB of data instead of 2GB with AT&T *and* free tethering. I'm in NYC so coverage isn't an issue for me and I get great data speeds.

I worked for AT&T for 2 years as one of the poor bastards behind the counter at a wireless retail store and the more you know about AT&T, the more you hate them. The T-mobile merger would have been just like the whole AT&T Wireless merged to Cingular merged back to AT&T fiasco - higher prices as soon as you lost your grandfathered-in plan and worse service. (to be fair that did happen during the analog-digital transition but I still blame AT&T)

It feels weird to say this, but here's to you FCC - you finally got something right!!

'Indestructible' Moto Defy telly ad banned

RollinPowell

good

I have a Defy and I've dropped it twice - once while standing (~4 feet to wood floor) and once from a couch (< 3 feet to tile) and the display broke from the second fall. While I understand phones, gravity, and tile don't play nicely - the phone didn't even land glass side down and the screen cracked from less than 3 feet. It's a pretty durable phone but not nearly as durable as Motorola advertises.

The other advertising claim they should investigate that you can actually hear people during phone calls. In 6 months I've had to warranty the phone twice because the earpiece quit working.

Mozilla delivers Binged-up Firefox browser

RollinPowell
Pint

who hasn't thought, "I wish firefox was more like IE?"

great - next they can work on porting my favorite feature of IE9 - when you type IP:port in the Internet Exploder 9 URL field it gives you a Bing search result of IP:port unless you put http:// infront of it.

I'm sad now and need a beer...

Anonymous smites Orlando after charity arrests

RollinPowell

"permits" are a legal trick

They make sure the permits are not issued for Lake Eola park which is where most of the homeless are. Downtown Orlando is very small and there aren't really any other parks in the area. They could apply for permits every day from now til the world ends and they'll never get one.

That's a favorite dirty political trick - to do <whatever> you need a permit, but then they don't give out any permits. It's a great way to make something illegal without actually passing a law that would otherwise be poorly received by the voting public.

It's very similar to the tax stamps of the 1920's. Make a tax stamp required but never give out any stamps and effectively outlaw something that would otherwise not be possible to do because the public would never support it otherwise.

RollinPowell

took long enough

I'm from Orlando and they've been arresting the food not bombs people feeding homeless people for a couple years now. It's funny because Lake Eola park (and the "lake" itself) is a festering cesspool that a couple high end condo developers are (futility) trying to make nice.

Regardless of your opinion of Anonymous, I think this a good cause to support especially because the food not bombs people have been being arrested for years for feeding homeless people. Orlando has a lot of homeless people and virtually NO social services to help them and the only reason they outlawed feeding the homeless people are the rich condo developers leaning on the corrupt local politicians.

I am so glad I left Orlando - don't let Disney mislead you, it's a bad place.

Drunken bust-up woman sprays cops with breast milk

RollinPowell
Thumb Up

win!

whoever writes the tag lines for these stories deserves a pay raise.

substantial rack of charges.... <insert juvenile giggling here>

Amazon cloud sinks, smothers Web 2.0 darlings

RollinPowell
Joke

live by the cloud, die by the cloud

The cloud is great until it turns to blue sky.

That's why I use the rock (er... is there a better antonym of cloud?)

Fukushima fearmongers are stealing our Jetsons future

RollinPowell
Unhappy

People die sometimes to maintain my living standards?!!!

I thought power was made only from happy thoughts and rainbows! Who could have possible imagined that generating enough power for a large population could be dangerous and there would be risks?

We obviously must stop using any type of power generation with any amount of risk. That leaves.... oh wait, nothing.

Jon Bon Jovi accuses Steve Jobs of murdering music biz

RollinPowell

silly meatspace albums

How do "kids today" clean stems and seeds from Arkansas Super Skunk without double album jackets?

Simple answer: iPad! Steve has already foreseen this problem and invented a solution :P

Google Chrome extension bars domains from search results

RollinPowell

+1 for blocking Experts Exchange

Even though I have to admit their SEO work is impressive, I loathe Experts Exchange always having the top spot when I'm running Google marathons trying to figure out just what exactly is wrong with that one domain controller that never behaves as it should.....

Firefox port coming soon?

Motorola Defy Android smartphone

RollinPowell

Great hardware but...

I have the US version and it is fantastic hardware kneecapped by poor software development and corporate stupidity (similar tactics to a company that sounds like "sorny"). I can't say enough about how good the hardware has been, I love it but Motorola always puts out updates on the tuesday after never, regardless of what they say. At least their motoblur is pretty unobtrusive compared to some other OEM android crapware I've seen.

sigh....

Otellini yawns at Windows on ARM

RollinPowell

Success

Intel got the 3rd part right - they just recently ground AMD's CEO into dust and cast him into the four winds!

Stealing credit card details via NFC is easy/pointless

RollinPowell

skimming danger

the real danger would be someone setting up a skimmer near a NFC payment contact point and collecting all the transactions. But people do that now with ATM's and magstripes so it's not really a new threat - it's just much easier to build a discreet skimmer for NFC than magstripes.

Amazon Kindles cash from Wikileaks

RollinPowell
FAIL

not smart

Uhhhhh, does Amazon like DDOS attacks or something?

Mass mind control artist condemns El Reg to obscurity

RollinPowell

thanks

unique geniuses? awwww..... thanks el reg!

Unfeasibly vast amphibian found croaked on video card

RollinPowell
Joke

Good VGA card

Too bad the VGA card died, it had over 4 teraHOPS of power.

DDoS attack, sex warrant won't stop Assange's leaky discharge

RollinPowell

No more Palin!

Greatest idea for an app ever: Palin Control! It's like Parental Control but it filters out anything Palin instead of violence or tits! If someone develops it I'll buy one for my computer, my phone, and my TV. Can someone develop this with the quickness please? Every time I see her or hear her I can feel my brain start to atrophy..... Please random internet developers, you're my only hope.

Apple yanks Snow Leopard Server 10.6.5 update

RollinPowell

I love OS X Server updates, they're so much fun!

I thoroughly enjoyed OS X server turning off the management console because it thought there was two servers with the same serial number because there are two network interfaces after the .3 update. It was also very pleasant to have abundant share permissions issues after the .4 update. Too bad I waited and didn't get to indulge in Apple's latest update goodness with .5 <sigh>

Lion Server should just have a big middle finger on the box when it comes out, so businesses will know exactly how much ongoing development Apple is going to do. None <middle finger>

Apple....seriously, you have only a couple different hardware platforms to test on how is this so hard? Everyone must be working on Lion Server for the iPad, instead of (Snow) Leopard Server.

Reg reader stitches PARIS right up

RollinPowell
Jobs Horns

Next project

PARIS was awesome and for the next project you should do SJRIS (Steve Jobs Released Into Space). Preferably with no suit or way back down.

Steve Jobs chucks Apple server biz from pram

RollinPowell

app store or GTFO!

Steve doesn't care about anything that doesn't have an app store. Their suggestion is rackmount minis? Are you kidding me? I like my 2008 xserve a lot and even the G5 still holds it's own (as long as you don't mind the server room being a gazillion degrees and 100dB). Not having LOM on the Mac pro sucks but so did the xserve implementation (any one who dealt with the serialnumberd problems when using two NIC's knows what I'm talking about).

It is a moot point anyway as the Apple zombies will mindlessly consume whatever Steve tells them to. What's that Steve? Fill these racks with iPads instead of Xserves? Yes master....

Adobe Flash foils MacBook Air battery life

RollinPowell
Jobs Horns

Steve's fault!

this is all steve's fault for sure.

Netbooks: notebook evolved - or stunted throwback?

RollinPowell

an ipad is not a computer

I am an avid netbook user and use it everyday while doing the sysadmin thing. It's light, runs XP well, and can run 6.5 hours without a charge. AND it has USB ports. AND it runs Flash. The ipad is not a computer and most of the users who have got them say, "I'm going to use it for movies and work!" and I've never seen a single one of those dummies use it for anything even mildly productive - EVEN in an all Mac office. Most of them don't even use them anymore, let alone carry them around.

Which brings me to my point: A netbook is a tiny computer (albeit with slow components and not enough vertical resolution) and an iPad is an expensive toy for buying things from the Apple store. People seem to be getting the two confused. Other tablets maybe able to create something that IS a usable computer, but the iPad is nothing more than a very large iPod Touch and should be treated as such - not as competition to real computers.

Sophos debuts freebie antivirus scanner for Macs

RollinPowell
Unhappy

super awesome mega secure OS X doesn't need antivirus!

Here come the fanbois whining about how they're only complacent about security because they don't need it because Mac OS X is the most amazingly ultra super secure software ever created. Talking about security with the Apple zombie hordes is always an exercise in futility. With Apple starting to get enough market share to become a target for malware writers, the fanbois blissful ignorance of all things security will be coming to end soon.

I don't need A/V protection on a Mac! There's only been few malware programs ever written for the Mac, therefore there will never be any!

Brilliant thinking fanbois

Apple to lead fanbois 'Back to the Mac'

RollinPowell

el reg should steal matt89's pun instead of the lamer they have now

I'm gonna stick with real computers not these silly fingerpainting computers

'We Want Two' Navy carrier plan pondered by Cabinet

RollinPowell

2 carriers? how quaint!

Don't worry you can always count on Team America instead of those carriers. We have like a gazillion carriers.

cue Team America soundtrack....

Bacon thief leaves rasher on door knob

RollinPowell

British Bacon Burglaries Bonanza

I had never heard a slice of bacon called a rasher before! Thanks to El Reg I am now slightly less dumb and my vocabulary is slightly less lacking. Hooray for bacon!

Stripped-down IE9 interface leaks in Russia

RollinPowell

IE makes me sad

Usually nobody loves early leaks like me but this one makes me sad. I would have been happier not seeing IE9 until absolutely necessary (like when downloading firefox on a new computer). After all this IE talk I need a drink....

Server-based botnet floods net with brutish SSH attacks

RollinPowell

Silly H4x0rz

Oops, now I feel bad about attacking one of the servers that was trying to ssh into one of my servers. At least whoever owns the server isn't using a default password on their admin console anymore :) but unfortunately for them they just don't know what I changed it to! bwhahahah