* Posts by Adus

25 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Feb 2011

Car-crash television: 'Excuse me ma'am, do you speak English?' 'Yes I do,' replies AMD's CEO

Adus

Why should he?

I wouldn't recognize her or most other tech CEOs.

I read their names in articles, very rarely do I know what they look like.

And honestly, why does it matter? It's not like he was rude, he was in Asia and saw an Asian and asked if they spoke English... that doesn't seem particularly offensive and she didn't seem to mind.

Shattered Skype slowly staggers to its feet after 15-HOUR outage outrage

Adus

Re: You don't realise how important Skype is until ....

I believe Skype and Skype for Business are totally separate projects so I doubt it has anything to do with revenue and it's just sheer luck because they are on totally separate infrastructure.

Skype for Business is just a rebranded Lync which is just a rebranded office communicator. Very little has changed during those rebadges other than a few UI tweaks (at least as far as I can tell).

Space Station in CRISIS: Furious Russia threatens to BAN US from ISS

Adus

Space Race?

Who knows, maybe this will make the US Government properly fund NASA again instead of neglecting it as they have in recent times.

We could use another space race.

Reg probe bombshell: How we HACKED mobile voicemail without a PIN

Adus

I'm actually surprised, I wasn't aware that if you are calling from your own phone you don't need to authenticate.

I live in Canada, and if I call my voicemail, even from my own phone, I have to enter my pin. Calling from elsewhere requires my number and pin. I don't see it as an inconvenience, it's the same concept as having a pin on your phone or a password on your laptop.

Someone with physical possession of your phone shouldn't be able to check your voicemails with no auth.

Dell charges £5 to switch on power-saving for new PCs (it takes 5 clicks)

Adus

I work in the games industry, and we used to use Dell Workstations for several years, upgrading every couple of years.

In our last upgrade cycle, our IT Department built the machines from scratch, things have been a lot better since then and the machines end up being cheaper.

Inside Microsoft's Autopilot: Nadella's secret cloud weapon

Adus

Impressive

It all sounds very impressive, and I am sure it is. I love hearing about these kind of systems.

But then I remember that it didn't stop the fairly major problem of Azure's HTTPS certificate expiring in their production environment.

The problem with these huge monolithic management solutions is that you have to be pretty sure it's all working, all of the time, otherwise you end up with a huge problem on your hands.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/22/azure_problem_that_should_never_happen_ever/

Microsoft loses grip on Christmas shoppers... despite XBox boost

Adus

My experience with Windows Phone

I had a Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7 and really liked it. After 2 years it was still working perfectly and did everything I wanted it to. The app ecosystem sucked, but as a "first" attempt at mobile (at least modern smartphones), I was really impressed. I saw great things coming for WP in future..

When Windows Phone 8 came out, I took the upgrade and went with the Nokia Lumia 920.

I was disappointed that WP8 didn't solve many of the problems with 7 and the ecosystem is no better. Even worse, the phone started falling apart after a year, constantly saying I had no sim card, audio dying all the time etc.

In the end, I just switched to an iPhone 5S. The first apple product I've bought since the 3GS.

I really, really wanted to like Windows Phone. The idea of an ecosystem of Windows on my PC, Laptop, Tablet, Phone and Xbox is really appealing to be. But unfortunately WP8 and Windows RT are not improving nearly fast enough given the competition. The ecosystem on both sucks and it's going to be hard to convince developers to target devices with such low marketshare.

Mozilla CTO Eich: If your browser isn't open source (ahem, ahem, IE, Chrome, Safari), DON'T TRUST IT

Adus

The man has a point

He has a point, but as has already been mentioned, Firefox does collect "anonymous" usage data, and the project is so big there is really no way of being highly confident there isn't some backdoor in the millions of lines of code, multiple libraries and versions etc.

I used to really respect Mozilla/Firefox, but my recent experience has been that, like a lot of big projects, it's getting bloated with unnecessary features which ultimately have impacted performance in a big way.

It would be great to have an alternative, but the WebKit/Blink based browsers, and Chrome in particular, clearly have the edge at the moment. They are faster, lighter and given their penetration increasingly better supported by sites.

Ubuntu JuJu voodoo casts Linux on Microsoft's Azure hoodoo

Adus

Not surprised

I'm not surprised. Azure is slowly becoming more competitive. Given Microsoft's quite awesome framework for building .NET services on Azure (And pretty decent APIs for PHP and Java), as well as support for true Windows or Linux VMs, it's understandable why people are taking notice.

Microsoft are also offering aggressive discounts for game developers who are targeting Xbox One and need dedicated servers and the like, presumably in the hope that they'll just use Azure for the other platforms as well (and pay full price).

Even though Amazon is king right now, I think the Microsoft and Google offerings are becoming increasingly competitive. And when you throw in the OpenStack clouds (with the likes of Rackspace backing it), it's going to be an interesting few years.

'Stop-gap' way to get Linux on Windows 8 machines to be issued

Adus

Re: wild speculation...

I could be wrong, I don't think Windows 8 itself requires it, but Microsoft require OEMs who want to sell boxes with Windows 8 preloaded to support it.

I've ran Windows 8 on boxes without UEFI secure boot without a problem.

Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver Universal Remote Control review

Adus

Re: This is why Doctor Who exists...

To be fair though, Deus Ex Machina is a staple of the sci-fi genre, it's not unique to Doctor Who.

Sci-Fi Books, Movies and Games have been using Deus Ex Machina for years to wrap up stories. The problem when you create a deep universe and build up a huge threat, like the Daleks, is that you really don't have many options. If the enemy really is all powerful, how else are you meant to clear them out to end the storyline/series and move on to something new?

I'm sure we have many sci-fi fans on here, and I'm sure that most sci-fi fans expect this kind of thing.

ISP kills off country-ban dodge after just 48 hours

Adus
Thumb Up

Re: Action against GeoIP

I'm a Brit who lives in Canada, I'd happily continue to pay my UK TV License to get access to all the content on the UK iPlayer.

Unfortunately it's not that simple as the BBC doesn't make all the content it broadcasts and doesn't have worldwide rights to it.

SOPA is dead. Are you happy now?

Adus
Go

I sort of agree

I agree that we need to find a better way to engage in discussion, but until that happens the only option left to us is to shout, unless we want that legislation to pass.

I fully support the need for IP protection but as I think everyone agrees, SOPA/PIPA were badly written and would never have worked, it would have been a disaster if they had passed.

Microsoft tempts with WinPho demo on... iPhone

Adus

Why all the hate?

I've had an iPhone, Android and WinPho and I think they are all better at some things and worse at others. I'm currently using a WinPho as my main handset because i really dig the metro UI and I like their Outlook integration functionality for work.

Just you know, buy the phone you like and let others do the same :)

Facebook 'open sources' custom server and data center designs

Adus

Nice

I don't much like Facebook due to their cavalier attitude to privacy, but as a network programmer who works on cloud services frequently, it's infuriating that everyone has different server designs when for the most part they are all doing the same thing, I share their hope that this will help standardise things.

FSF to Google: Free Gmail's JavaScript now!

Adus
WTF?

What business do they have telling people what to do?`

I really don't understand this attitude. As a programmer, I feel that the author of a given piece of code should be able to determine what they want to do with it. What business does anyone else have telling people how to use their own code?

If Google want to release the code, that's great - I'm not against open source. However, no one should try to force others to release their code just because they have some political belief, it's absurd. Google invested considerable time and resources into writing that code, and if they want to keep it to themselves they should be well within their rights to do it.

What have the FSF invested in that code exactly? Nothing. Google is a business, they employ people who want paying and in order to do that they need to make money, if their business model means they can't/don't want to release the code, that's fine.

Apple 'gay-cure' app severely slapped

Adus

You have no free speech on the app store

You don't have free speech protection from Apple, free speech laws concern government.

Apple are perfectly allowed to censor whatever they want and quite rightly so, it's the same right The Reg and every other company uses when they delete offensive or unhelpful comments.

Apple aren't claiming to be free speech advocates, it really surprises me that they let this through, I think that most people would find this offensive and if I were Apple I'd be removing it fairly quickly.

You *do* have the right to be offended by other peoples views, the government *does not* have the right to silence them, but private companies and individuals are quite within their rights to stop you using their services if they are offended.

Gwyneth Paltrow rouses Discovery crew

Adus

To be fair...

The JSF with a vertical take off configuration is comparable to the Harrier and the UK was very involved in the JSF project. Your supersonic flight for passenger airliners point stands though.

NASA hails 'amazing' exoplanetary system

Adus

Joke

That's a joke right? You don't seriously believe we have been visited?

Discovery crawls to launch pad

Adus
Unhappy

Me too

I too will be sad to see the shuttle retire. As a child it grabbed my imagination and fueled an interest in Science, eventually resulting in my decision to do my degree in Physics.

As it turns out, I ended up being a Software Developer, not all dreams come to something, another valuable lesson :D

I find it hard to believe that we will see anything like the shuttle again in our lifetime,