Posts by Eenymeeny

Microsoft splashes coat of paint on Windows 8 comms apps

Re: "bring the Windows Store messaging apps up to the standard of Outlook"

Possibly because you don't own Outlook and Taskline (http://www.taskline.com/).

Experts finger disk-wiping badness used in S Korea megahack

Ace

OK that was easily the best punning subline ever on Reg. Insightful political comment, too!

Incoming comet will probably miss Mars, says NASA

The wisdom of anagrams

On a slightly more trivial note, "Siding Spring" turns out to be an anagram of "Grinding Piss" (courtesy of the Internet Anagram Server).

I guess this *would* work rather nicely as the last words transmitted back to Earth by Curiosity as the comet barrels into it from the heavens in a freak bullseye event at 35 km/s.

Ah, lunchbreaks...

Pirate Bay to world: We're not really off to NORKS

Re: "file-sharing site"

Not just the file-sharing. Pretty much anything like actual work, in fact.

"it appears The Reg was right to be sceptical of its claims."

Even better would have been a short article, thus:

"We were going to help TPB with their latest publicity stunt.

But we decided we have better things to do."

Pirate Bay 'seeks asylum' in, er, 'North Korea'

Re: Elaborate prank

ROFL.

Falkvinge:

"The problem with verifying the story or its debunking was the technical level of expertise required to understand the reports."

Er, no. Five seconds reflection would have led to the conclusion that it was the usual kind of loonytune TPB publicity-seeking press releases.

Like taking CIAPC to court, for example.

Jury's still out on that one. In fact, the jury's still waiting to even convene ;-)

Review: Livin' in the cloud with Google's new Chromebook Pixel

" and in standby mode you lift the lid and it's ready to go. "

I have a Compaq nx6325 - a 7-year-old, 3 kg dinosaur of a laptop. Runs Win 7 with a 64 GB SSD from Crucial.

And guess what? You lift the lid in standby mode and it's *also* ready to go.

I think it might be the SSD, you know...

German boffins turn ALCOHOL into hydrogen at low temp

I'd just like to say: hydrogen is not a fuel but an energy carrier, since it does not exist as a free liquid or gas.

Thanks!

Google takes Chromebook upmarket with touchy-feely Pixel

Re: Oh FFS - It's like Google have chosen to forget the past.

The sales figures for the DELL XPS 12 would seem to at least slightly counter your argument there...

"Support for viewing and editing Word and Excel documents via Quickoffice has also been added, so that the device can slot easily into the enterprise market."

ROFL. LMAO and so forth.

Pirate Bay reports pirating anti-piracy group to police

"CIAPC has not yet been contacted by Pirate Bay but we do hope that the site's operators come out publicly with their real identities and get in touch with us," she said. ®

Rather sounds like they did it deliberately.

Clever.

Review: HP Spectre XT TouchSmart

Re: no competition breeds lukewarm products

I have a nx6325 Compaq.

Seven years old, proper screen (i.e. 1400 x 1050).

Recently upgraded it to SSD (Crucial) and Windows 7. Now runs considerably faster than under Win XP.

Boots in 12 seconds. Returns from sleep in 2 seconds.

I am having a hard time finding anything that is actually better than this at a decent price.

Display is crucial, since I do so much editing work. Here, I have real problems – even 1600 x 900 is fewer pixels than I now have.

I can't remember what I paid seven years ago but I'm pretty sure it was considerably less than 1200 GBP at 2006 prices...

Pope resigns months after launching social networking effort

"Oh but installing refrigeration and letting people live their lives just doesn't have the same impact as "we need to reduce the population somehow!" does it?"

Let's put it more simply, then: the world is too full of humans who consume megatons of resources that either cannot be replaced fast enough or cannot be replaced at all.

I agree with you: overcrowding, like CO2, is a big fat juicy red herring.

But humans like pretending that reducing their numbers and/or not producing a colourless, odorless gas is somehow going to stop resource consumption.

As you say, they also like pretending that darkies need to stop having babies.

In terms of population and/or overcrowding, however, the real "criminals" are countries whose citizens consume at a fantastic rate AND who maintain high birth rates to make more of these citizens as fast as possible.

USA and UK, we're looking at you.

Curiosity photographs mysterious metal object on Martian rock

Context

I was going to post something about it being a buried metal foot of a Martian robot or something...

And then I realised.

THOSE ARE PICTURES FROM ANOTHER FUCKING PLANET.

Sorry, still too impressed by the fact those rocks are not, actually, somewhere in Arizona but are sitting minding their own business on Mars.

Just too fucking impressive.

LibreOffice 4.0 ships with new features, better looks

Absolutely agree with your Outlook comment.

As to the other points, it's about 100% compatibility.

I'd also suggest that PowerPoint is probably out in front as the most used app.

And having less than 100% compatibility when you are sitting in front of 20 strangers and your boss just emailed you his latest update to a 50-slide presentation 5 minutes before the meeting is *not* going to cut it.

Plus, service providers like myself (I'm a translator) also need 100% compatibility and I have to send back what I get. I get Word, I send back Word. I do not send back a 100-page technical manual in Word after checking it (i.e. and saving it) in LibreOffice. The risks are simply too great.

But, as you say, Outlook is the killer app. Well, that and PowerPoint.

British games company says it owns the idea of space marines

40K Shades of Warhammer

Somewhere, in a parallel universe nearer than you may think...

The telephone rings.

GW. Ms. Hogarth?

H: Yes, speaking.

GW: We heard you wrote an ebook set in the WH40K universe...

H ...ah, yeah ... look, fan fiction...

GW: ... is what we are after! I mean, look at the success of Nine-and-a-Half Shades of Electric Pink*! You take the trouble to write stuff about our stuff, were not going to stamp on you with a space marine's iron-clad boot! No way! What, are we Pear Inc.* or something? Instead, we were going to ask you to come along to our office, talk over publishing your ebook as an add-on for new subscribers, add some art, maybe you'd like to chat with our staff writers. Other companies might waffle on about vague stuff like honesty, courage, humility. That's bollocks, we say!

H: Ah, right...

GW: Yeah! We know that talent means profit and that's good for all of us, right? See you Monday in Nottingham?

H: Well, I mean, that *is* a surprise. I'm impressed ... See you at 9 a.m. sharp!

* It is a parallel universe, after all.

BSkyB to flick switch on network-level smut-'n'-violence filters

Deep packet inspection probes?!

Oh come on, there must be a joke in there somewhere...

Microsoft Office 2013 vs. Office 365: Is either right for you?

"Office 365 targets the clerical worker or professional for whom the MS Office suite is one of the fundamental tools of his trade."

Absolutely. I use the free suites privately but I need to use MS Office because I am forced to by my customers. Or rather, the customers of my agencies.

Am I going to try and convince them to change their document formats? Sorry, I have better things to do. And, to make the point, NOT losing time on stupid formatting errors enables me to earn money to donate to the cause of my choice. Such as, e.g. LibreOffice, Wikipedia, and so forth.

Sounds like Office 365 is a good choice. I keep up-to-date and I can even install temporary copies on the move. Good. Just a tool, after all.

Microsoft teases possible Jan. 29 launch for Office 2013

Re: Marketing without foundation

"I read a study once that even reasonably knowledgeable users, use only about 7% of Excels capabilites."

I wondered about that. And thought ... nah, probably thought up by OpenOffice, ahem, sorry, LibreOffice fanbois.

The I moved to Germany and discovered that all functions are renamed in different language versions of Excel.

No, seriously.

You think ACCRINTM is a bit long in English? Try it in German: AUFGELZINSF. Still not long enough? Try it in Finnish: KERTYNYT.KORKO.LOPUSSA, Although Russian is probably the most impressively opaque: НАКОПДОХОДПОГАШ.

So, then I realised the 7% was probably an exaggeration. And then I looked at LibreOffice (Calc) and realised it did that too. For some languages (DE, FR) but not others (e.g. RU). FFS I thought.

(I might just top 20%. I have actually written Excel macros (in EN) to allow me to actually use two currencies in one workbook with the right "," and "." placements. FFS. But I was inclined to give up when I realised that Excel workbook linking does not allow you to link files on worksheets unless *all of those files are open*. FFS again. MySQL, Apache, PHP and a Graphing module (perhaps based on Drupal) are faster, cheaper and much, much more powerful. And I'm rewriting my invoicing stuff in 2013 on that system. I hope to heaven I never have to buy another Office product.)

Amazon: IVONA bevy of 'all natural' blabber babes to beat Siri

"It even has two Welsh-speaking voices - available in either gender."

Either sex, you mean.

Victims of 'revenge pr0n' sue GoDaddy, smut site

Re: Why did they pose naked in the first place?

I haven't been to the site, so I can't judge on the quality of pics (in technical terms, as in what they were shot with), but any girl who has engaged in a webcam conversation with her SO in any state of dress whatsoever - from fully-clothed to stark naked with a cucumber up her backside - risks that SO simply taking a screen grab (pun intended) and doing whatever he (presumably) likes with it.

Plus, as another poster mentioned, there are simply gadzillions of photo-taking devices out there. You visit some people's houses, their fridge probably snaps you.

I wish the women luck - there does need to be more than a modicum of sense exercised over personal image usage right now. At least, until our brains catch up with all this IT and we're all cool with it and nothing surprises us or bothers us any more.

Dotcom says German authors' society canned Mega launch vid

Thumbs up for the anagram title

"GEMA met MEGA" was A GEM.

Anonymous vows to wipe web clean of child abuse scum

It's funny...

... how Anonymous styles itself as so anti-authoritarian and yet it's so similar to the governments of the world.

No, I don't condone paedopihilia.

BUT.

I also don't think kiddy porn is the greatest threat to our civilisation right here, right now.

In fact, just focusing on Internet and the provision of information itself, jingoistic hot-button campaigns like Anonymous is running are more of a hindrance than a benefit.

Just like the Russian Government, Chinese Goverment, US Government, British Government and so forth and etcetera, Anonymous is pandering to the mistaken belief of the unthinking masses that the world's problems are best addressed by cracking down on pornography.

Chinese giant figures to muscle into UK mobe market

With a pun like that...

... who needs to read the article?

Fukushima on Thursday: Prospects starting to look good

Prize for best summary of news today goes to this article

Well-written and a good summary of the available information.

To those generall shouting "Chernobyl" at any opportunity they get I suggest the following:

- Go and get a fully 100% eco/green/renewable electricity contract for your domestic power (good luck on that in the UK especially)

- Then go and do the same for every single item of technology (esp.) that you chose to purchase, i.e. ensure that all your tech goods and purchases are entirely nuclear-free

- Then please present your lifetime membership of the Green Party or equivalent body (e.g. Greenpeace)

Then stop posting here, since I highly doubt that The Register runs all its servers on wind power.

Get some perspective: nuclear power is here to stay because YOU are using it because there is simply no feasible alternative for our huge, power-hungry populations.

Lobby the Govt. for change but your wasting your breath on a tech forum.

Anonymous turns attack drones against fax machines

Amateurs!

Everyone knows that the proper way to demonstrate against big business, big finance or, indeed, the big society is to go and trash a few buildings and knock some royal's hat off.

The Anonymous crowd should be kicking in the doors of Visa's offices at Sheldon Square, not pussyfooting around with fax machines.

Much better chance of getting them behind bars, that way, too :=)

Amazon blames hardware – not hackers – for European outage

Unclear on the concept

"A statement from Anonymous..."

Um, no.

Dutch police arrest 16-year-old WikiLeaks avenger

WTF?

"I mean, they're screwing around with a credit card company., it's kind of hard not to like that."

Kinda hard to read any intelligence into that comment.

Drain ... money

"Personally I would worry that you might be considered to be supporting a terrorist organisation and get into very deep trouble."

More like just throwing good money after bad. What's the next batch of data apparently? Bank secrets .. oh no, sorry, UFO reports apparently. For FSM's sake...

Me, I donate my hard-earned cash to causes that actually say what they are going to do next. And actually help real people achieve real worth with their real lives. Like Medicins sans frontieres, for example.

You know, grown-up organisations run by normal people.

WikiLeaks supporters milk Twitter API in DDoS attacks

Installing, installing...

"Volunteers install the program..."

And open a nice backdoor to the Internet, by all accounts.

No honour among thieves, apparently.

Caravan-swiping suspect spotted on Street View

CCTV 2.0

CCTV 1.0: Fuzzy image of someone actually stealing your caravan from your drive

CCTV 2.0: Amazingly clear image of someone "who we think will be able to give us information that would help the police enquiry"