Posts by 45RPM

Black and blue: The rise of the riotous Richard Pryor

And this is why The Register is still well worth reading. An excellent article - thank you.

The most tragic thing about the Ashley Madison hack? It was really 1% actual women

So nearly all the names in the Ashley Madison data dump belonged to men who were faithful in deed, even if not in thought. It's evidence not that they were having an affair but that they are too tragic to be able to pick up a partner in a bar (or insert name of real meatspace venue here) and so have to resort to doing it online.

Eeenteresting.

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Bacon and egg sushi

Last weeks effort was grim - this week looks very tasty, and I look forward to giving it a bash.

Gay emojis? GAY EMOJIS?! Not here in Russia, comrade

Could this be the classic reaction of a man who's unwilling to admit that he has a predilection for men? The rest of the world suspects that he's a bit closet but, possibly owing to a repressed upbringing, maybe he's unwilling to admit it to himself and embrace his true, rainbow hued, sexuality.

It's nothing to be ashamed of, Comrade. The only thing that anyone should feel ashamed of is not treating every human being with the respect and dignity that they deserve - by denying them the right to express and explore their sexuality in a safe and consenting environment for example.

Windows 10: Buy cheap, buy twice, right? Buy FREE ... buy FOREVER

Bleep and Booster? Now that's a pair of names I never thought I'd hear again. I thought that, along with Bengo, I was the only one to remember them.

'Fix these Windows 10 Horrors': Readers turn their guns on Redmond

Re: Close but no cigar

@dogged - yeah, but he lives in Rugby and chaps from Rugby can clearly afford to buy raddled old rubbish.

A third of workers admit they'd leak sensitive biz data for peanuts

It’s like that old joke with the punch line ‘We’ve established that you’re a prostitute, now we’re just bargaining on price’.

Well my price is £100,000,000,000, to be held in escrow until all criminal and civil proceedings against me are complete. It’s not negotiable.

MORE Windows 10 bugs! Too many Start menu apps BREAK it

I will upgrade to Windows 10, eventually (because I need to test the Windows builds of my software). I’ll wait for the most egregious bugs to be fixed first though. And right now, I’m just enjoying this tasty bag of popcorn - and watching the show.

Arctic ice returns to 1980s levels of cap cover

Re: Forgot to sync my bookmark

@Wombling_Free

Yup. They’re probably just omega-males covering up for the fact that they aren’t very good at computer games.

Re: Forgot to sync my bookmark

@AC

Of course, the flip side to the coin is that you’re missing out on BOFH and Lester Haines' SPB.

Re: Is it even worse than thought?

Correct. Have a gold star. But don't think you'll get any praise for coming here with some actual scientifically based facts in a forum overrun by the Lewis Page fan club. Brickbats are more likely.

One small correction though - even I would prefer a change from "That is, is more sea ice a warning sign" to "That is, could more sea ice be a warning sign?" It seems likely to me that it could be - but without empirical evidence I'd like to leave some small room for doubt.

@herman

Not actually true. We have climate data which covers a period of billions of years. The weather data that we have available to us covers a shorter period (a mere handful of hundreds of years). Climate data can be gleaned from ice-cores (between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of years) and from the fossil record (over a billion years) and rocks (as far back as you like).

We're even building up a fair few hypotheses on the climate of Mars. Clever apes that we are.

Re: Can someone answer a genuine question please

@lorisarvendu

Absolutely correct. My understanding is that, even in the worst case, we won't be magically creating conditions on Earth that haven't existed in the past. The problem is that the conditions we're recreating will not be survivable for many animals, plants and funguses alive now, and the change is happening far faster than it's ever happened previously; this seriously impacts the ability of evolution to cope with the change (that said, getting hit by a planet killer asteroid causes faster changes - and Earth has survived that before). In fact, Mankind (or, at the very least, civilisation) may not be able to cope with the change either - think in terms of global warfare (with nukes, chemical and bio) as we duke it out over the dwindling remaining resources (drinkable water, food and so forth).

Life, of course, will survive. Early earth was a toxic, overheated, hell stew until early life swabbed up the excess CO2 and replaced it with Oxygen. Trouble is, it took billions of years to make the planet habitable for us - and I'm not certain that we can afford to wait that long for the mess that we're making now to be reversed.

Given that the climate boffins base their warnings on (one assumes) a good deal of research and years of study, I think I'll make the intelligent decision to give them more credence than I might give to the head in the sand brigade like Page and Clarkson.

I'd love to share in the optimism - I really would. But I think that a little caution might be more prudent - especially since it's my children and grandchildren who'll really be suffering if the big brains turn out to be right.

Lewis's attitude to the environment is like that of a teenage motorist. The car in front is slowing to turn - but does the teenager take his foot off the gas? No! He does not. He ploughs on regardless, secure in the knowledge that the car in front will have moved out of the way by the time he reaches it. And it has. He's passed! And now he's slamming straight into the back of the bus that he hadn't noticed- because he'd fixated on one piece of evidence only.

Microsoft sets end date on Windows 10 support. Hey, wait, WHAT?

Re: re remote terminate

Agreed that they can - but will they? I suspect, if they did, it would be by mistake rather than through malice - but that wouldn't be a great deal of comfort for any poor soul who finds that their PC has been borked.

…presumably, Windows 10 will be smart enough not to install any updates that will break the hardware - regardless of their mandatoriness. I will be putting Windows 10 on my Phenom powered PC (already long in the tooth, but plenty fast enough for what I need it for) - but I’d hate to think that it’ll find itself remotely terminated by an update too far one day.

Tablets, smartwatches just not doing it for Apple right now

Outside the editorial hyperbole, isn’t 3.9M rather a lot?

To put that Apple Watch figure in perspective, the iPhone sold 1.39M in its first half year - and that was for an established product category for which the advantages were already clear (everyone wants a phone, email and the internet, right?)

The sales for an entirely new ‘early adopter’ category should be weaker, and smart watches are still a category for which the advantages are unclear to most people, so 3.9M Apple Watches sold seems like an absolute bucketload to me.

I still don’t want one though.

Source: http://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-iphone-sales-since-3rd-quarter-2007/

2015 Fiat 500 fashionista, complete with facelift

Re: Stealth Mode

Agreed - anything which breaks up the outline of the vehicle, be it a traditional camo pattern or a funky dazzle look, has to be a bad idea. Unfortunately, the law is unlikely to recognise the defence of "(s)he was driving a damn stupid car, which was very hard for me to see."

Perhaps I'm old and cantankerous, but I cannot see the point of these infantile and toy-like (in presentation, rather than size) cars. If you want a toy, fine. Buy a toy. But remember that a car is a ton+ of rapid injury or death in the wrong hands, and the wrong hands are definitely those of someone who buys a bijou playroom for use on the Queens highway.

Apple proffers FREE iCLOUD SUBS to tackle Greek debt crisis

Re: @45RPM

@AC There's no doubt that the Greek government got Greece into this through a combination of greed and incompetence. But that applies to nearly every national disaster, and it is the mark of greatness to show compassion, forgiveness and generosity in order to help rebuild suffering nations and give succour to their people.

Greece fucked up. No doubt. But their crime was minuscule compared with, for example, the crimes of Germany or Japan in the last century. We showed compassion to them - and think of what further disasters might have befallen the world if we hadn't.

@velv. I know. The irony hadn't escaped me. It seems that the religionists are happy to talk the talk, but not walk the walk. In most cases, anyway. There are exceptions, I'm sure.

But there is poetry and beauty to be found in the religious texts, of any stripe. Rather like a tosheroon in a sewer.

@psychonaut - I'm claiming nothing other than that a) it's a great sentiment and b) the exact words are from the bible*. The sentiment clearly pre-dates the bible (as do most of the stories contained therein, in fairness).

* well one of the editions anyway. The King Arthur's New English Fairytale Edition perhaps?

@Glenn 6

The trouble with this shocking lack of generosity that the world, and particularly the nationalist right wing world, is showing towards nations which find themselves in a spot of barney should be obvious. Apparently it isn’t though, so I’ll spell it out. As you sow, so shall you reap. And if we aren’t prepared to show compassion and kindness to those in need then we really can’t expect compassion and kindness when we find ourselves to be in trouble - as we most surely will be one day.

It works on a smaller scale too. If one isn’t prepared to be generous to ones neighbour, whether ones neighbour is a newly arrived immigrant or the old buffer next door, then one really can’t expect help in ones own hour of need.

Religion may have given the world a lot of wars and silly superstitions, but ‘Do unto others as you would have others do unto you’ would seem to be the only ‘right’ way to live.

As for Apple extending iCloud subs for free, well. That’s just good business. Move along, nothing to see.

Horrifying MOCK BACON ABOMINATION grown in BUBBLING VATS as ALGAE

Would it count towards my five a day? Because, if it would, put me down for a synthibacon and bacon sandwich.

Yes! Windows Phone lives: Microsoft to pump the device Kool-Aid

Re: I knew someone out there

You could be right. I've been dumb before, and doubtless will be again. But, in this case, I just needed to Google "malware on Google play store". I found lots of news stories and research papers. True enough, Google has been cleaning up - but the play store doesn't appear to be the safe place that it should be. And yes, malware occasionally sneaks into the iOS and Windows stores - but it's removed faster because Apple and Microsoft seem to take curation more seriously.

I'd offer you a sip of some tasty Android koolaid but I think you've drunk the bar dry!

Re: May I remind you

…The antivirus business for Windows is a multi-billion dollar scam, and has been for a long time now. At the very least, WSE and it’s successors are very nearly at (if not actually at) the top of the anti-virus / anti-malware pile making third party options expensive and pointless. Add to this the fact that Windows phone won’t (as far as I’m aware) run desktop Windows apps (at least, not without jailbreaking) so users will need to get software from a properly curated store and I think that most people will be reasonably safe on Windows phone.

I was very sad to see Microsoft abandon Windows phone, and for several reasons. Firstly because the hardware looks and feels really nice. Even the cheap Windows phones contrive to feel a lot more expensive than they actually are. I think this is because they are honest about their use of materials - so the textured plastic is celebrated as textured plastic (and feels high quality because of it) rather than having to pretend it’s something that it isn’t (like metal or, ugh, leather). With Microsoft leaving this particular hardware business, and assuming that Windows 10 for phone thrives, I can see a future full of cheap and tacky feeling phones - rather as exists in the Android world today (with the notable exception of HTC).

Secondly, because if Windows for phone withers on the vine then choice in platform will be greatly reduced. In the phone OS market of today you can choose between relatively high platform security (lack of malware, not having your data scrobbled for advertising purposes), excellent value for money (low cost) or a huge software library. Pick the two that mean the most to you - because you can’t have all three in one device. Android has cost and app selection sewn up, iOS has security and app selection - and Windows has security and cost. If the platform takes off, you can be sure that Windows will pull off the holy grail of having all three.

Finally, and selfishly, I’m working on a app for Windows phone. I’d hate to see the platform die before I finish it!

Seagate bleeding sales as PC downturn starts to hit hard

I used to prefer Rodime and Connor in my builds, and now I prefer Western Digital. With my track record on Winchester purchases, I’d say that Seagate with weather the storm - and WD will be going bust!

Norks execute underperforming terrapin farm manager

Re: Putting aside the absurdity of the punishment...

@Lester

Any chance on doing a pet based posh-pub nosh special?

Terrapins (from NK)

Dog (from China)

Rabbit (Europe, Natch)

Guinea Pig (Ecuador)

Households all over the country are doting on their next meal - instead of eating it! It’s down to you, Lester, to show us the error of our ways…

Boffin: Will I soon be able to CLONE a WOOLLY MAMMOTH? YES. Should I? Hell NO

Anyone for lunch?

Look at the evidence. Take a trip into the country. Cows are everywhere. Sheep are everywhere. Pigs are everywhere and horses are everywhere. No-one has ever said ‘as rare as rabbit’ or ‘as scarce as salmon’. And why not? The reason is clear - it’s because we farm, and eat all of these animals. On the other hand, Pandas aren’t exactly common, we’re running short of elephant and rhinos are thin on the ground.

The solution is obvious. Let’s farm pandas. Let’s farm endangered animals - and, to make it sustainable, lets eat them too - and turn their hide into coats and shoes. Hey presto! No more endangered species. Imagine it - a night out on the sauce and you need a really big breakfast? Hippo bacon, with ostrich eggs and side of giraffe sausages. No more hangover.

Of course, the other option is to become vegan - and watch all the cows, sheep, horses, pigs chicken and so forth join their megafauna brethren on the critically endangered list. I realise that the burgeoning population of the world means that there might not be enough space for my excellent, and environmentally friendly plan - perhaps someone else could solve this problem though. I’ve had enough of thinking for one day.

And yes, Mammoth Steak does sound like an excellent idea too.

Raspberry Pi guys want you to go topless in the heat

@John

That's just pedantry. Technically, a case can't provide any electronics. It's just a box. I know SATA would be provided via USB and therefore be rather slow. But I don't mind - I just want the flexibility to add more storage neatly. When I want plenty of computing power I don't use my Pi. When I use my Pi I don't worry too much about performance - but it'd be nice if it could all be a little neater.

My dream case would be something like the Amiga 600's, but with an internal hard drive and an optical drive instead of the floppy.

@Nigel11

When I said 'Room for a couple of expansion cards' I meant Raspberry Pi expansion cards - not PCI. Simple things like the RTC board and so forth. I wasn't very clear there, was I?

As to SATA, there is already at least one case which offers this (Plusberry Pi), but it isn't easily available.

There was also a board available in a very limited way which made the original Pi ITX compatible - with back panel and SATA.

Using the Pi board as the core has the great advantage of allowing me to fiddle around with RISCOS whilst enjoying minimal power consumption.

So those are my reasons. My objection to the 'official' case is that it does nothing that the other third party cases do already - so I can't really see the point. There's a lot of demand (just search the forums) for cases which will take a spinner internally. This isn't it.

@Bronek

'zackly. I want a relatively cheap, low power consumption, device for running RISCOS on.

I can still see a use case for something like this running Linux though. Power consumption of an ARM based NAS is significantly lower than that of an Intel based system.

Yawn. Yet another case which only pays lip service to expansion. So far the only really useful cases are the (marginally expandable) MediaPi and (difficult to get hold of) PlusBerry. What I want in a Raspberry Pi case is:

Ease of purchasing

A case which puts all the ports on the back of the unit

Built in power

Built in SATA and space for at least one hard disk. A second SATA and space for an optical drive would be nice.

Room for a couple of expansion cards

And yes, I'd be prepared to pay thirty or forty quid for it. Frankly, I'd settle for an easily available board to make it ITX compatible.

If I get hit by a bus, Linux will go on just fine says Linus Torvalds

What about other forms of death? Would Linux survive if Linus were to eat a poisoned Apple or fall out of a Windows? I think we should be told…

Paper driving licence death day: DVLA website is still TITSUP

Re: Good planning

@Mad Mike

It would be wonderful if Big Bangs could be avoided entirely, but with the best will in the world (and even with careful planning) sometimes they are unavoidable. That doesn’t seem to be the case in this particular instance of course - but who knows? I don’t have all the information.

Planning is all very well, but sometimes you need ahellavalottaluck too. Several years back, I managed a migration so large that, beforehand, my boss told me ‘if you muck this up, you’ll be front-page news. If it all goes well, no one will know about it’. Big motivational speaker that man. I succeeded (so you didn’t hear about it), but skirted close to the shoals of fuck-up on a few occasions that weekend (unforeseen circumstances and whatnot). I therefore have some insight to what these guys are going through - and I have a good deal of sympathy for them. Even if I don’t understand why they needed to do it at all.

Cynical Apple says it'll gouge less cash from iTunes strummers' sales

Re: Cynicism

@DougS - I know the masthead. I've been coming here long enough. But, rather like incessant swearing, continual cynicism a) loses its impact (meaning that you've nowhere to go when cynicism is actually deserved) and b) gets very very boring.

I want The Register to be great. Not boring.

Re: Cynicism

The watch doesn't float my boat, any more than Nike trainers or a Gucci handbag. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it crap though - especially since some of its users are buying my software. I'm sure it's very useful for someone - so that it isn't my cup of tea or yours isn't very important in the grand scheme of things.

What a twatty headline

Why does everything that Apple does have to be cynical or bad in some way? Jesus, if El Reg wants to be taken seriously it should really try being objective- and doing a little more research.

Personally, and I have a vested interest here, I hope that this is so - it would be fantastic news for me. As an app writer, I get a nice income from Apple (and, honestly, even at a 30/70 split it works out very nicely for me - because I don't have to worry about setting up my own ecommerce system, security and so forth - I just need to do what I'm good at. Writing software and banking cheques) - but if I could have 75, 80 or even 85% that would be incredible.

The problem, when trying to make an income in this game, isn't Apple or Microsoft or even Google. It's all the freetard lusers who think that software should be free and that developers don't deserve reward for their efforts.

Intel imagines chips in nappies to create the Internet of sh*t things

We always used reusable nappies with our tots. It wasn’t particularly onerous, and the smell of a used disposable is far worse than the smell of a washable waiting to be washed - so our bathroom was always a good deal more pleasant that the bathrooms of our disposable toting pals. With a paper liner, the turds can be hoofed straight into the crapper, and a washable wrap prevents any leaks. A absolute doddle. The big con is that disposables are somehow more convenient - which they aren’t.

As for checking, there are occasions when the nappy might be soiled - but there’s no associated smell to warn the parent that mayhem has occured. This is more of a problem with reusables because they aren’t full of distressingly bad smelling chemicals. The child might not be bothered by the load - and hence no audible warning either. In this case, if there is cause to suspect I always used the mark 1 dipstick (otherwise known as an index finger). After all, if it comes out clean then theres no cause for concern - and if it comes out wet or brown then you were going to have to change the nappy (and hence wash your hands) anyway.

Hardcore creationist finds 60-million-year-old fossils in backyard ... 'No, it hasn’t changed my mind about the Bible'

Re: Evidence.

…or incompetent. In mans terms, wouldn't that be akin to making a 40 year old car - an Allegro, or an Avenger say, and trying to sell it as brand new?

If there is a God, and if He enjoys fuckin' with people's minds that much, I'll take me chances with the other fella. Sure, it'd mean putting up with the oddly placed red hot poker - but at least he's sincere. At least you could trust him.

That EVIL TEXT that will CRASH your iPhone: We pop the hood

I'm getting an overpowering sense of déjà vu here. Didn't this, or something very similar, happen last year too?

Carry On Computing: Ten stylish laptop bags for him

My last bag was Ally Capellino. It looked great - but it was flimsy as hell and wore out within a couple of years. It's been replaced by a bag from a brand so forgettable that I've forgotten what it is. Point is, the replacement is far cheaper - and seems to be wearing far better.

You pays yer money - but doesn't necessarily gets yer quality.

UK data watchdog: Massive fines won't keep data safe

Nothing will keep data safe

If the government passes laws to mandate the inclusion of back-doors in all encryption systems then nothing will keep data safe - and having a watchdog will be pointless and a waste of money. It's like installing a state of the art security system and then leaving the key under the flowerpot.

Jeb Bush: Repeal Obamacare and replace it with APPLE WATCHES

Yup. Dribbling imbecility, and a lack of interest in anyone but the rich, clearly runs in the family.

Amstrad founder Lord Sugar quits 'anti-enterprise' Labour party

I hope he doesn't join the Liberal party. They've had a bad enough week as it is, and the shock might finish them off.

Relax, it's just Ubuntu 15.04. AARGH! IT'S FULL OF SYSTEMD!!!

Works more slowly, in my experience, than 1410 in VMWare - although I'm heartened to see that performance on real hardware is comparable. I'll give it a bash on my PC - just as soon as I find a spare moment.

Apple Watch fanbois suffer PAINFUL RASH after sweaty wristjob action

Re: Huh?

@AC

making fun of Samsung for the size of the Notes?

Yup. I remember. That was me. But large phones just aren't my cup of tea. As far as I'm concerned, if the device has to resort to an ugly hack to make it usable (temporarily shrinking the size of the screen, moving the screen down and so forth) then it's a bad design.

For my money, a phone has to be usable one handed. If I'm standing on a bus (for example) I'm going to need my other hand to be free so that I can hang onto the strap. Similarly, I might be coming home from a shopping trip, trying to find my car. I don't want to have to put my shopping down, or fall over, in order to use my phone.

For the record, I did buy an iPhone 6. The normal sized version. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst phone I have ever used. Whenever I pick up my old iPhone 4, the old iPhone feels well designed, the perfect size, and comfortable to use (if rather slow).

I hope that Apple comes to its senses and releases a phone with a sensible screen size (4 inches or smaller) in the next refresh - but I suspect, given the roaring trade that they're doing with their silly flappy paddle hand phablets, that they won't.

The Apple Watch: Throbbing strap-on with a knurled knob

Re: Ahem

@DocJames Sorry sir. I didn't proofread. How many lashes for that error?

@Bleu Digital means that a device performs its calculations using two discrete states - on or off, 1 or 0 - binary. In the case of a digital watch, the timekeeping is done using a microchip with a quartz oscillator - and, helpfully, the display is set of seven segments, displaying the actual numbers (or digits - satisfying the other, looser, definition of digital).

I suppose that, technically, many 'analogue' watches are digital (in that they use a microchip with a quartz oscillator to perform the actual timekeeping). But they fail to satisfy the other definition of digital in that the time is displayed using sweeping hands, and the numbers that the hands point to are almost vestigial. In fact, many don't have numbers at all - or have pared down the numbers to 12, 3, 6 and 9.

A purely mechanical watch fails to satisfy either definition of digital.