Posts by Anonymous IV

Lights, power, action! Smartplugs with a twist

Life's too short

Of even less use than a solution looking for a problem, and failing, is 2000 words about it.

Congratulations to the author...

Superfish 2.0: Dell ships laptops, PCs with huge internet security hole

Connection?

Perhaps someone more intelligent than me could explain the technical connection between a piece of spy software and a dodgy security certificate, apart from both being ungood.

It seems that here the author is comparing aardvarks* and anchovies*.

* apologies if either of these has been chosen for the name of a forthcoming release of Ubuntu...

BOFH: We're miracle workers. But you want us to fix THAT in 10 minutes?

Re: Turkeyshoot Mascara & Monarco Retardo

The Boss didn't realise that these were the names of the next two Ubuntu releases?

How in heaven's name did he get his job?

Exam board in 'send all' fail: Hands up who knows what the BCC button is for?

Re: Does anyone else wince when they see this phrase?

Indeed I did - it wasn't a 'phrase' but a couple of sentences.

The text is seen so often that it could be regarded as 'boiler-plate'...

Think Fortran, assembly language programming is boring and useless? Tell that to the NASA Voyager team

I wasn't aware that FORTRAN was used to 'code' trite sayings.

At least it isn't in my copy of McCracken...

Xiaomi preps Linux laptops for the post Christmas sales rush

At last!

The "Christmas of Linux"...!

El Reg revisits Battle of Agincourt on 600th anniversary

The Agincourt Carol

Amazed that nobody has mentioned this contemporary song.

Many examples on YouTube, such as this one...

Re: "We won the battle, but who won the war (not us)"

Olde literary joke:

"Dear Diary, Today the Hundred Years War started..."

Ruin your co-developers' life with Mimic, the Unicode substitution tool

Already done in posts to local newspaper's website

A troll, apparently with unfettered administrator access to our local newspaper's website comment columns, has regularly posted the following boilerplate for at least a year:

"And when it comes to Gloucester Rugby, what the club really should have done, whilst he graced the Kingsholm turf, was to ensure that Ruƿert Hαrden (our first choice, our most talented and our most complete tight head prop) started as many games for Gloucester as was possible."

Inquiring whether "most complete" means "ungelded" would draw a level of vituperation beyond which I would ever wish to experience...

TalkTalk attack: 'No legal obligation to encrypt customer bank details', says chief

Re: MBA "Qualification"

@Warm Braw:

+1 for quoting from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.

There aren't enough references to Early Music in El Reg...

Chaos at TalkTalk: Data was 'secure', not all encrypted, we took site down, were DDoSed

Re: Expect more....

You didn't work for RBS, did you?

Experts ponder improbable size of Cleopatra's asp

"The biggest asp disaster in the world"

Those with a taste for Victorian music hall or for reviews of Anthony and Cleopatra films or plays will undoubtedly be familiar with the above quotation.

TalkTalk website hit by outage, broadband customers also KO'd

Re: Working here 17:49

Working in Liverpool?

I'm sorry to hear that...

Here are the God-mode holes that gave TrueCrypt audit the slip

Re: There are no flaws in TrueCrypt

You mean you actually believe all that Steve Gibson says?

He's always struck me* as the coder implementation of Steve Ballmer. lashing out in all directions, somewhat randomly.

(They even have the same forename.)

* pun was accidental!

Microsoft starts to fix Start Menu in new Windows 10 preview

Re: Serious Question

> Just curious: are you the type of person who asks, "Why do you need 150 Mbps broadband?"

The best answer I've ever heard (it may well have been invented by me) is that

"You need 'superfast' broadband so you can download all the Windows Updates rapidly."

Ouch! Microsoft sues recycling firm over 70K stolen Office licenses

Re: But why?

> I would also like to know how they got the licence keys because they are generally not visible after installation. I know that Jelly Bean used to be a method but I am unaware if it still works..

There are several products which can extract Office licence keys, among which Belarc Advisor and Produkey. Ask any BOFH or PFY!

US military says it will discipline Ashley Madison users

We should be told...

Were any El Reg email addresses found on the Lists of Shame?!

How many pre-loaded Win 10 PCs did disties have 7 days after release?

Re: Software

"I'm trying to work out how to get rid of things, like the stupid boxes that are on the right of the start menu."

For each tile, right click, choose Uninstall.

Drag the right-hand vertical line as far to the left as it will go.

2015 Fiat 500 fashionista, complete with facelift

Units

> It would have been nice if the speed was in km/h and fuel consumption in litres per 100km, as the normal world is used to.

Can anyone explain why the unit "litres per 100 km" was chosen, rather than the far more logical "kilometres per litre"? There's at least the analogy with "kilometres per hour".

China's best phone yet: Huawei P8 5.2-inch money-saving Android smartie

@ cegueira

So not just a matter of taking it out of the box, then!

DEATH by VEGETABLES: Woman charged with killing boyf using carrots. And peas

I suspect that the lady, in an instant ...

... put an end to all the boyfriend's canoodling!

(Those readers under fifty, look it up!)

Future Range Rovers will report pot-holes directly to councils

Re: What a great idea

> When nobody's around, stick a bag of post-mix concrete in the hole. ...

> Phone the council ...

This would appear to work only for a single pothole, since on attempt #2 some suspicion may be engendered in even the most unintelligent member of the local Highways Department.

My Passport Grip Pack blooms with new colours … and more storage

Fetching Grip Packs - Chris Mellor getting carried away?

"Grip Packs — colourful edge protective bands providing a big jump from 2TB to 3TB max capacity."

Are you seriously saying that these bands provide a disk capacity increase?

Or is this merely coincidental?

Chill, luvvies. The ‘unsustainable’ BBC Telly Tax stays – for now

Re: Am I the only person...

"It's terrible value if you don't use it."

Indeed. So is the cost of schools, since I don't have any children...

Oxford chaps solve problem in 1982 Sinclair Spectrum manual

Dr Johnson

A rare chance to offend several disparate areas of society in one quotation - religious people, women, dog-owners, Mahler aficionados, and Sinclair Spectrum enthusiasts!

Boswell: I told him I had been that morning at a meeting of the people called Quakers, where I had heard a woman preach.

Johnson: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." [my bolding]

Australia mulls dumping the .com from .com.au – so you can bake URLs like chocolate.gate.au

Re: Dot Oz?

Soon be time to look up whether .en, .sc, .wa and .ni are still available for use...

Mortgage data splashed all over the net. Thanks HSBC Finance

@Ben Hodson

Just wondering whether you have been involved with extraordinary rendition, water-boarding, and the like in your career? Your breadth of imagination could have have come in very useful...

Graphic designs: Six speedy 17-inch gaming laptops

Re: My son's Bargain Gaming Laptop ...

I think the "128TB SSD" is what we techies call "a typo".

These are often discerned and silently compensated-for by the intelligent mind.

Radio 4 and Dr K on programming languages: Full of Java Kool-Aid

Re: Functional languages

All this talk of "Haskell" made me wonder what on earth The Sweeney had to do with programming languages.

Then I remembered that the name I was ms-thinking of was "Haskins"...

Eyes on the prize: Ten 23-24-inch monitors for under £150

Re: New Year's resolution

There's the Dell UltraSharp U2412M 24 inch LCD TFT Monitor (16:10, 1920x1200, 300 cd/m2) for a smidgeon less than £200 from Amazon (other fine retailers are undoubtedly available...).

V&A Museum shows Guardian's destroyed MacBook as ART

Re: What makes art?

"Art is anything you can get away with" - Marshall McLuhan.

Dino-boffins discover ancient, TOOTHY-CLAWED, four-eyed MONSTER LOBSTER

An international crack team of palaeontologists

This sounds even more unusual than a monster lobster - and much more difficult to visualise.

SCARESTEROID of the week to miss Earth on Friday

Re: Help us out, El Reg

Just a BOFH, please!

‘Digital by default’ agricultural payments halted: Farmers start smirking

It seems that the so-called "Agile" methodology was first introduced as long ago as 2001.

The BBC's Digital Media Initiative, scrapped at a cost of nearly £100m, also used Agile.

This seems to be another "solves all possible problems" mechanism which would appear to work well on paper but whose implementation can be quite disastrous.

> "they've [sic]", "They're [sic]", "them [sic]", "them [sic]"

I assume that the attemptedly-pedantic author of the article thinks that the singular form should be used when referring to the Rural Payments Agency, not the plural. I would say that the point is moot. It is quite possible to refer to an organisation as an "it" or a "them".

Fanbois: We paid $2000 for full satisfaction but now we have SPREADING STAINS

In other news...

"A tablet device that can withstand being doused in chlorine has been developed to help doctors caring for patients with Ebola." (BBC website)

Oxford boffins publish fine-scale regional genetic map of UK

The Australian Murdoch Childrens Research Institute

No doubt this is an absolutely fine organisation, but my blood ran slightly cold when I read the name.

Internet Explorer LIVES ON, cackle sneaky Microsoft engineers

Re: Windows, your reign is over ....

Assuming that the original post is not a wind-up, one might observe that "even more tedious than a Zealot is a Convert".

Let's hope that the justifiably-Anonymous Coward hasn't also given up alcohol and/or smoking, or suddenly got religion, for he would then be even more insufferable...

Re: "even the name has been picked to suggest simplicity, speed and hardiness."

If Microsoft renamed IE as "Arthritic Sloth" then they would run the risk of people thinking that it was a new, non-alliterative, version of Ubuntu...

Re: Less is more, not

> Her company website said: "To log in use Internet Explorer 9 or less"

I hope you pointed out to their web[master|mistress] that the word should have been "fewer"?

</dubious-pedantry>

MOOCROSOFT tosses seven proper tech courses online at edX

Linux

I'm doing the free "Introduction to Linux" course with edX. No, I don't need any certificate.

It's interesting just how different are the three distributions about which they provide information.

<irony> Lucky all Windows versions are virtually identical! </irony>

Oi. APPLE fanboi! You with the $10k and pocket on fire! Fancy a WATCH?

Re: Why is iWatch battery so bad?

> I understand what you are saying, but there is 1 major problem: nothing on the iWatch is V1. Its all mature technology, its just a different package.

So the comment I heard on t' radio, that "the iWatch is the first piece of new technology that Apple has produced since the iPad" is untrue?

Re: Solid golf neklace

> El Reg - I want a Pedantic Spelling Nazi Icon.

Surely you mean Linguistic Purist icon?

Windows XP's market share grows AGAIN!

> Microsoft should learn from Samsung and Apple and just rename W10 to Windows XP 2 plus.:)

Or name Windows 10 as "Funky Gibbon" (Ubuntu-type animal alliteration and curved corners avoided to bypass litigation).

Your hard drives were riddled with NSA spyware for years

Re: Grzegorz Brzeczyszczykiewicz

So, basically, this is "Don't tell him, Pike" but in a Polish sketch?

Torvalds turns to Sir Mix-A-Lot for Linux versioning debate

What happened to the animals?

Why doesn't he call the new version Capricious Crocodile or something similar?

But probably Ubuntu has the copyright on fatuous names...

Hackers break the bank to the tune of $300 MEEELLION

Re: "fleeced $7.3 million through ATM withdrawals"

Perhaps the criminals were sufficiently sophisticated to use more than one ATM?

ATTENTION SETI scientists! It's TOO LATE: ALIENS will ATTACK in 2049

Principle

Whatever happened to "security by obscurity"?

Official: Single people need to LOWER their EXPECTATIONS

Re: Married people need to lower their expectations too

She probably wasn't expecting that, if she was your ex-wife!

Windows 7 MARKED for DEATH by Microsoft as of NOW

Re: What's with the numbering, guys?

What will happen about Windows 13, eh?