Posts by James O'Shea

BOFH: Die, Robot

errm...

This is BOFH 10. The last one was BOFH 8. Where's #9? We want #9!

DARPA inks 5-year-mission solar strato-wingship deal

there's a difference?

"Intended originally as a military communications system but which is today the mightiest archive of pornography the world has ever known".

Let's just say that the main thing that most military men want to communicate about involves porn. Especially sailors. (Hi, Lester!) Let's just say that the owner of the largest porn collection I've ever seen (more than 3 TB, and no I'm not joking, he had three 1 TB external hard drives, plus several dozen DVD-Rs) was a sailor. Nuke submariner, to be precise. Perhaps it's the radiation...

Pirate icon, 'cause he didn't even pay for the drives or the DVD-Rs or the bandwidth to download that lot, he figured ways to get 'em all for free. Black Bart Roberts reborn, he is.

The iPad is killing laptop sales

fanboi attack

"The fanbois will attack your down-vote button like locusts descending on a field..."

Interesting. At the time of writing there are but two vote-downs and 5 vote-ups. It would appear that the majority of 'fanbois' simply don't give a damn about the opinions of random commentards...

Adobe exploit bears fingerprints of hack on Google

questions

1 does this affect non-Adobe apps, such as FoxIt or Apple's Preview, which can read PDFs?

2 the current attack appears to be aimed at Windows (as usual). Is there any evidence of anyone doing anything similar to attack other platforms, or can those who don't use Windows simply ignore this whole matter?

Mac Office 2011 allows only 'light edits' in Windows Web apps

actually... yes

It'd be nice to have Project, Visio, and Access on Macs for overall cross-platform compatibility reasons. (Assuming, that is, that Mickeysoft could actually make their apps on Macs read/write files which worked with their apps on Windows, something not guaranteed...)

Or Mickeysoft could try something radical, such as, oh, _reducing the price_ of Office on Macs to make up for the fact that some components are missing. Office Home and Business 2010, which doesn't have Access, costs US$280. Office 2008 Standard, which doesn't have Access, costs $400. Office 2008 Special Media, which doesn't have Access, costs US$500. Pricing for Office 2011 doesn't seem to be yet available. Or maybe I missed it. Correction on this point invited. In any case, the maximum price should be US$280, same as for Office 2010 Home and Business.

And, oh, yeah, I _really_ love this quote:

"Compatibility is Essential

No one likes being caught off guard, especially when the pressure’s on. That’s why it’s vital that shared documents, presentations, and spreadsheets open as they were designed—regardless of the computer or operating system. With Office 2008 for Mac, you can feel confident in your compatibility."

from <http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Office2008/default.mspx>, especially given that Keynote and Pages can open some PPT, PPTX, DOC, and DOCX files that Office 2007 and 2010 won't... Gotta love it. Really.

No

Office on the Mac is the crippleware version. The best thing about Excel on the Mac is that it is far superior to the pile of dingo's kidneys which is Numbers. (How did that get past Apple QA? How?) it's not up to Excel on Windows, and that's just a fact.

Bah, humbug

So now Outlook is no longer dependent on the Giant Humongous Monolithic Database. Hoo-rah. It was a bad idea to have the GHMD in the first place, we should praise them for (finally! after a _decade_!) figuring this out? Claris Emailer didn't use the GHMD... in 1998! It only took Mickeysoft 12 years to wake up!

And I repeat: where's Access? Where's Visio? Where's Project?

I repeat: I _have_ the demo version of Office 2010 and the release version of Office 2007, and have so far found _zero_ difference between them other than the Office Button being replaced by the File Tab and 2010 having a few more 'new and improved' fonts than 2007 did. I went looking on Mickeysoft's site for the Office 2011 beta, couldn't see where to download it so I have no direct knowledge of 2011. I _do_ have 2008, and was less than impressed by it. Especially by the way that some PowerPoint and Word documents made in PPTX, PPT, DOC, and DOCX formats using Office 2008 WILL NOT OPEN in Office 2007. The PPT and DOC files will _all_ open in Office 2003 and 2004, and in all versions of iWork I've tried. If those documents are resaved in Office 2003 or 2004, _now_ they'll open in Office 2007! The PPTX and DOCX files that won't open in 2007 _will_ open in iWork and (if the XML converter is installed) in 2003 and 2004, but of course some 'features' don't translate. And the same files which give trouble in 2007 _also_ give trouble in 2010! I'll bet you that they give trouble in 2011, too! <sarcasm mode on>Now that's cross-platform compatibility! <sarcasm mode off> THE WHOLE FRICKIN' POINT BEHIND GETTING OFFICE ON A MAC IS SO THAT YOU CAN EXCHANGE FILES WITH OFFICE IN WINDOWS WITHOUT PROBLEMS AND THEY CAN'T EVEN MANAGE THAT! Note: I'm NOT saying that _ALL_ PPTX, PPT, DOCX, and DOC files have problems... but some do, and those same files open without problems elsewhere, including with _OLDER VERSIONS OF OFFICE_. The problem is due to something Mickeysoft did _recently_, and whatever it is they did they don't seem to be in any hurry to fix.

Meanwhile I can generate DOC and PPT and XLS files in iWork and Open Office which will open without any problems in Office 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2010. Tell me again why I should pay Mickeysoft for a _crippled_ version of the Office suite which lacks components which have been in the Windows version for _years_ and which has problem reading my files when I already have something which will read my files and which cost considerably less? Explain it to me. Use words with one or two syllables so that I can understand.

Wake me up when there's evidence of intelligent life roaming the halls of Mickesoftland.

It's not _that_ bad

What kind of trouble are you having with _fonts_, for God's sake? The main problem I had with fonts and Office 2008 was the fact that Mickeysoft insisted on dumping 70 'new', 'improved' (it is to laugh) fonts into my poor abused Fonts folder. Among the machines in use around here are still a few ancient eMacs, with 1.25 and 1.42 GHz G4s and mostly running OS X 10.4.x.. If _they_ can hack Office 2008, surely a G5 can, too. (You _do_ have a G5, right? That's what you mean by 'v5', right?)

Yes, it has problems, but it's nowhere near as bad as you state. It's not even the worst office software Mickeysoft has ever released for Macs; that would be Word 3.0, which was so bad that Big Bill Gates recalled the first 100,000 copies which shipped and sent out replacement copies at Mickeysoft's expense (how often does Mickeysoft not merely admit error, but _pay for you to return the product and then pay again to send you the replacement?_) and lopped off heads in the relevant department.

it's no more bug-ridden than any other Mickeysoft product. (Yes, that's damning with faint praise, but...) And it's a lot better behaved than Office 2007 on my laptop was, until after the first few Mickeysoft updates, anyway. What it is, however, is less compatible than the previous version. It's entirely possible to create a PowerPoint PPT file with PowerPoint 2008 which _will not work_ with PowerPoint 2007... but which will work with PowerPoint 2004. And if you then save it using PowerPoint 2004 and move the result to a WinBox, _that_ file will work with PowerPoint 2007. (Conspiracy theorists should note that Keynote canalso produce PPT files that PowerPoint 2007 won't read but that 2004 (and 2003!) will. Hmm. One wonders why. One really does.) It's also possible to create PPTX files which will cause the Official Mickeysoft PPTX Converter, available for Office 2003 and 2004, to barf... but which will be read without problems by Keynote. Hmmm.

it is to laugh

"To simplify, here's the situation. Office for Mac can fully edit files originating from Office for Windows, and vice versa."

Wanna bet? I've got several PPT files, created by PowerPoint 2008, which _cannot open_ in PowerPoint 2007, but which _can_ open in PowerPoint 2003 and 2004, and in Keynote (all versions that I've tried). If the files in question are resaved in PowerPoint 2003 or 2004 (but, not, interestingly, in Keynote...) they then can open in PowerPoint 2007. I've got the demo Office 2010 on this very laptop. Let's see... nope. Said PPTs won't open in PowerPoint 2010 either.

I also have some DOC and DOCX files, created with Word 2008, that have problems displaying properly in Word 2007 but which Word 2004 and 2003 can display properly (with assistance from the DOCX can-opener in the case of the DOCX files, of course).

"Office Web Apps are fully usable by anyone with a supported Windows or Mac web browser. The Web Apps offer the same reduced feature set to both Mac and Windows users (and probably Linux users if you spoof the user agent)"

I want to see Office Web Apps running in Opera on Ubuntu. That'd be just too, too, too funny.

Office, smoffice

I haven't paid for a new version of MS Office for Mac since Office 98. And, as I'm now the one who approves business app spending around here, I can safely say that I'm not going to be getting Office 2011 from the office, unless Mickeysoft sends me a free license. 90% of my word-processing/spreadsheet/presentation-software needs are met by iWork and the other 10% is covered by Office 2008 and by OpenOffice. Mickeysoft _still_ hasn't added Access, Project, or Visio to Office for Mac, which might have inspired me to have the company take out its credit card.

I'll be giving this one a miss, same as I'm giving Office 2010 on Windows a miss. (I downloaded the demo. There's no difference between Office 2007 and Office 2010, except that the Office Button has been replaced by the File Tab and Mickeysoft shipped a few more fonts. Once the demo period is over it shall be removed from the test machine.)

Someone wake me up when Mickeysoft does some actual innovation.

'Larry and Sergey's HTML5 balls drained my resources'

pegging the meter?

On my Mac (Core 2 Duo) running Safari, I get about 17%, max, drops to under 1%. Maybe 18% with Firefox. On my Windows laptop (Pentium M) I get 44%, max, drops to under 3%.

44% is a significant chunk of CPU, but it's with a Pentium M. 17%, not so significant.

A point of comparison: speedtest.net maxes out at 54% on the laptop, 20.7% on the Mac. It's not as though Google is the biggest hog out there.

General Motors bitchslaps Tesla with Range Anxiety™

all you need

is a DeLorean, a flux capacitor, and a lightening bolt. <http://www.automotoportal.com/media/images/vijesti/080601001.2.jpg>

Wikileaks founder blasts reopening of rape probe

Maybe so

but he should have have made sure that he was all squared away inside Sweden _before_ poking the tiger. Now he's got _problems_ and they're going to use any means, fair or unfair, to give him more for the rest of his life... which might not be that long, depending on how pissed they really are. And they're plenty pissed. They're gonna look up everything he's done or might have done or might have been rumored to have been near for the last 20 years and use it; stuff that would have been ignored as too petty for use in normal times will be dug out and polished up a bit and used. The way I read it, he did _something_ with those two women which made them willing to nail him to the wall. Whether it was really rape doesn't matter; what matters is that they're willing to _say_ it was... and he has to defend himself. And no-one would have paid the least attention to the two women if they hadn't been dug up. And I'm sure that there's a lot more coming.

He poked the tiger in the ass _before_ locking the cage door, and now he's got an angry tiger chasing him and nowhere to hide. That was _stupid_. The reaction of those in power to his little revelations was absolutely predictable. I certainly saw trouble coming; I didn't know the exact way, but as soon as I saw his blather about how he expected the Pentagon to _help_ him sort the crap I _knew_ he was in for the high jump. And, frankly, I suspect that we ain't seen _nothing_ yet. They've got a nice barrel of shit prepped for him and they're gonna use it all... and the Swedes aren't gonna want to have him anywhere near them, to ensure that none of the shit splashes on _them_. The Powers that Be are gonna make an Awful Example out of him, and out of anyone who blabbed to him, to show what happens when you poke the tiger without taking proper precautions _before_ the fact.

And all for 'exposing' stuff that anyone who has been paying attention (me, for instance) had a pretty good idea was happening anyway. So now we have names, dates and places. BFD. Interested persons might want to look up, for example, what Gen Vandergrift, USMC, later Commandant of the Marine Corps, told his troops prior to the landings on Tarawa. Or what Dudley Morton did on his second to last combat patrol. (USS WAHOO failed to return from his _last_ combat patrol...) This stuff happens _all the time_. It _always_ happens. It will _continue_ to happen. 'Exposing' it will achieve _nothing_... other than pissing off the Powers That Be.

Silly boy.

If he's innocent

he has nothing to fear from The Truth, now does he? Or is he saying that the Swedes may be influenced by, ahem, outside parties? And, frankly, if it's so easy for 'outside parties' to influence Swedish justice in the first place, why does he want to try to hide out there, presumably from the above-mentioned 'outside parties' whom he has just gone to vast lengths to _Really Piss Off_? What, exactly, did he expect when he poked the tiger in the ass with a sharp stick _before_ making sure that the cage door was locked? Silly boy.

CTOs warned to prepare for Windows 7 budget squeeze

ugly by choice

1 you're using the wrong icon. That's the iSteve from Apple, not Monkey-boy Ballmer.

2 it is a very, very, VERY bad idea to do an upgrade install on Windows. Doing that will work, sometimes. However, more often it will _seem_ to work, only to barf all over the place a few days later and cleaning up the mess will take longer than it would have to just do a proper install in the first place. Windows is _not_ Mac OS X or even Linux. Doing an in place upgrade with OS X works almost all the time. Doing an in place upgrade with Windows is begging for trouble.

3 even if doing an in place install would work reliably, which is not so, doing such an upgrade in any orginisation larger than a mom&pop shop is a massive waste of time. It would be far faster to identify the hardware that will be upgraded, identify the software which will be installed (including OS) and then to generate an image for each type of hardware and for each department required. Setting up each image takes time, but once the images are set they can be dumped over the network to the proper machines overnight. All drivers, applications, etc will be installed properly and will be ready to go by the time the first users show up in the morning. No muss, no fuss, no pain at all. (User data is, of course, stored on a network share and is properly backed up. Anything not in that share will be history, 'cause the first thing the imaging process does is to wipe the user hard drives clean...) There is simply no way that I'd have my boyz'n'grrlz wonder the building doing in place upgrades, not even to Macs, where at least it'll work. (_My_ Mac on _my_ desktop, both at the office and at home, gets an in place upgrade, as do some of the Chosen Few; everyone else gets an image dropped from on high, just like the WinBoxen. It's just faster and easier that way.) Nah, we image 'em. We've been imaging them for _years_. The only WinBoxen which get updated by hand are the machines we use to build new images on... and they get the nuke and pave treatment: reformat the drive, and do a clean install of the relevant software from drivers on up.

Apple patches 13 bugs in OS X

argument without merit

1 I don't run around blindly downloading stuff

2 I don't just install stuff blindly

3 I have a proper backup system in place (Time Machine every hour, Carbon Copy Cloner every night) which means that if I _did_ download something silly the worst that would happen is that I'd lose whatever hadn't been backed up by TM and/or whatever CCC hadn't got. Note that the CCC backup is an updatable clone of the system, so that I can immediately boot from it and be where things were as of when CCC ran last night (early this morning, rather, as it's set to run at 01:00 every morning) and that I'd then need merely dig out the TM backups for anything changed/added since then.

However, I have backups set up not to avoid problems with malware, as the last, the very last, significant malware for Macs was the autostart worm from back in 1998, and even that one was easily dealt with _without_ using AV software (hint: it created several invisible files. Make 'em visible, kill them. Reboot. Problem over. Detailed instructions at <http://www.macintouch.com/hkvirus.html#desc>, though it should be noted that, as usual, the boyz at MacInTouch got far too overwrought and really need to take a chill pill.)

There has been no significant malware since then. I repeat: NO SIGNIFICANT MALWARE SINCE THEN. The best there has been are a few Trojans and the odd pitiful attempt at spyware, all totaling under two dozen attempts. That's less than 24 attempts at malware that somehow managed to attract even minimal attention in _12 years_. (There may well have been other attempts which failed so utterly that no-one noticed they were there...)

Over on the Linux side, there haven't been even that level of malware. No-one running Macs or Linux boxes takes significant precautions against malware because THERE IS NO MALWARE TO DEFEND AGAINST. There hasn't been a significant attack since 1998. (Of course, one reason why is that Apple patches potential problems every now and again. Perhaps not as quickly as some would like, but given that the last serious attack was in 1998...)

I've got ClamXah stored in a ZIP archive somewhere on the server; if there's ever a real threat, I can unZIP it and install it in a few moments. But I'm not holding my breath waiting.

If this be smug, by all means make the best of it.

Just don't yap utter bullshit about vulnerabilities which would evaporate if only you avoided downloading strange software or if you merely had an adequate backup. Come ON, man, you've been working on a 'doctoral thesis' for _FIVE YEARS_ and haven't backed up once in all that time? What the _HELL_ are you thinking? What are you gonna do _when_ that hard drive croaks? Remember always, there are two, and only two, kinds of hard drives: the ones which have failed, and the ones which haven't failed... yet. I keep _multiple_ copies of important documents. At least one copy would be on an optical disc, and so totally immune to malware problems.

Again, if this be smug...

Against what

Against the Ghosts of Windows Past, apparently.

Ball player gets Beaver ban after drunken naked tasering

rug damage

I can think of several ways that a drunk Merkin Feetball linesape could damage a rug, mostly in the categories 'disgusting', 'extremely disgusting', and 'incredibly disgusting'. Offensive linesapes are generally of a somewhat less refined nature than most of the others on the gridiron.

Cleveland residents get RFID-equipped recycling

Don't get me started about Chicago

You obviously haven't seen the Chicago River on March 17h of any given year. Or on Election Night, after the trucks carrying ballot boxes go over the bridges. (It seems that the only parts of Cook County which reliably vote Republican are on the wrong side of the river, and strange accidents have been known to occur with ballot boxes. This is commonly referred to as 'getting out the river vote'. Apparently Cook County has increased diversity in the Electoral Office, and has hired Piscine Americans to help count the ballots.)

Bad idea

They might dump it into the lake. It's polluted enough as it is.

not so, alastair

It's a way to ensure that the twits in City Government who voted this stupidity in get voted out next election.

This year is an election year.

Around here they're still _requesting_ that you use recyclable bins. I wasn't here at the time, but I understand that a few years back the County tried to _mandate_ that everyone use recyclable bins, and there was <ahem> considerable voter resistance </ahem> leading to the premature (in their view, anyway) end of the political careers of several of those responsible for the initiative.

Unfortunately several of those elected to replace the twits had their hands out, and so have landed in Club Fed for a few years. The replacements for the replacements may yet try again.

There aren't that many places in the United States more corrupt than Corruption County, Florida; Cleveland is one.

Ah, yes

Cleveland, Ohio. The Mistake By The Lake. The Place Where The River Burned... Twice. (And, no, I'm not making this up. The river actually caught fire. Multiple times. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River>)

Memo to anyone around here who might have similar ideas... I'd identify the RFID signal and either pry the transponder loose from the bin or make my own transponder and in either case attach it to a fence post outside. Instant 100% coverage.

If I can't be arsed to do the above, then on recyclables day the bin goes out, full, empty, whatever.

Nah. Playing with the RFID tags is more fun and I'd only have to do it once.

McAfee re-issues fake visa waiver virus warning

It's worse than that

I went to have a look at the allegedly real ESTA site. It took about 30 seconds to load... and promptly displayed a message stating that my 'session' had timed out. (Safari 5, OS X) The page loaded somewhat faster in FireFox 3.6 on OS X, but was just as prompt in telling me that my session had timed out. Opera 10.6 on OS X was faster still... and even faster to time out. I was now starting to wonder exactly what kind of idiocy was on that page. MSIE 5.2.3 on OS X was up next, that being the last (the very, very, VERY last) version of MSIE for Mac... (and El Reg looks really funky in it, too) and, lo! the ESTA site takes a _very_ long time to load, and then times out _immediately_. Hmm. Next up, Firefox 3.6 on Win7... slower to load than on Mac, just as quick to time out. Even MSIE 8 on Windows exhibits the same behaviour... It wasn't a seven-year-old who built that site, it was a four-year-old. And he used a box a box of crayons tied to the tail of a blind squirrel.

IT? icon 'cause no-one remotely connected with the IT business went near that site while it was being built. At least I hope no-one got paid for perpetuating that, that, that... thing.

not the address

I've seen _much_ longer URIs. It's the JavaScript on the site. Someone did something incredibly silly with it.

Beatles on iTunes? 'Don't hold your breath' says Yoko

Yoko can bite me

The last (the very last) music CD I ever bought was the Beatles' compilation album 1, which I got shortly after it first became available. (Yes, it's been that long since I paid for a CD. If the record industry wakes up and makes CD prices something closer to being reasonable perhaps I'll reconsider. Yoko had best not hold her breath waiting, though.) The first thing I did once I got the disc home was to put it on my system. iTunes was not then available and it's been so long that I can't remember what app I did use. I actually parked the full-size AIFFs on a hard drive. When i got better software I re-ripped the album using those AIFFs; I've actually 'played' the disc exactly twice, once being when I copied over the AIFFs in the first place, once when I did a disc-to-disc copy to a CD-R so that I had a disc I could play without risking damage to the original. (Always have a backup, and if the music companies don't like it, they know the address, come and do something...) Around the same time I started moving my old vinyl LPs to digital format, starting with my Beatles LPs. So I've had digital versions, including my very own hand-built CD compilation albums, of every Beatles song I care about for approaching a decade now. Same for the Stones, Led Zep, Queen, et bloody cetera. I don't need to hold my breath waiting for iTunes to carry the Beatles, I already have every song of theirs I care about in the 80+ GB of MP3s and M4As on my main home machine's hard drive.

Satnav leaves family stranded in Outback for three days

That's extreme

I'd have gone and got them... but I've had had 'em pay for the costs of going to get them.

UK.gov sticks to IE 6 cos it's more 'cost effective', innit

'unable to move from Office'

I hate Mickeysoft as much as the next man, but that's just crap. So long as Word exports to .DOC ('Word 97-2003 format') or .RTF or even to .TXT you can get the data out of it and virtually anything out there will read it. There are simply too damn many copies of too damn many different word processing and layout apps (Word from early versions of Office, Open Office, Symphony, Pages, Quark XPress, Adobe InDesign, et bloody cetera) which read .DOC to let even Mickeysoft kill it without feeling considerable pain at the checkout-counter. Same for .RTF. (Though Mickeysoft is trying hard to hide it.) In a similar fashion, so long as Excel can export to XLS or CSV I can always get data out and move it to something else. And CSV is _never_ going away. Mickeysoft might manage to restrict PowerPoint, but it's not as though anyone really cares about last month's sales presentation, so who bloody cares? Access, well, if you're heavy into Access you're locked in tight... and some of your stuff will break on impact with any new version, so you're used to rebuilding your stuff or to just keeping ancient unsupported systems running for years anyway. (I know for absolutely _certain_ that some chunks of Access-generated code made with Access 97 will _not_ work with Access 2003, much less with 2007. Guess how. And, no, the boy who wrote the thing back in 1999 ain't around the company no more, having caught a slight case of dead two years ago, and no-one else has a clue what the hell he did, so the whole thing is being re-written... but not using anything from Mickeysoft.) MSIE is actually _banned_ for official purposes around here; individuals can use it, if they provide their own support and their own security, with the clear notice that if IT (that is, me'n'myboyz'n'grrlz) finds any problems traceable to MSIE security problems said problems can be a termination offence....

Personally, I have already departed Office, part way; I use Pages for my word processing, exporting to .DOC or .RTF or .PDF if necessary. I still use Excel, because it's the best spreadsheet out there, but if a better one shows up I'll dump it and move. I'd have to export all my old macros, but that won't take long. (A 'better spreadsheet' had damn well better support macros with at least the Excel feature set or I'll not be moving. That's why I didn't move to Excel 2007 or 2008 and probably won't move to Excel 2010 or 2011, Mickeysoft screwed with the macros.) As it is the box i use for serious work at the office is on a network which has no Internet connection and which has serious access restrictions, making it fairly secure, so I'll still have it available even if Mickeysoft kills support for Win 7 tomorrow... which they're not going to do. I usually use a Mac on the Internet precisely because it's harder for a Mac to be affected by malware, and that Mac is on a separate net, and the only point of connection is _my_ thumb drive, which is scanned for malware on a regular basis. Yes, it's still possible for something to get past, but I can live with the possibility. (No, Tuxers, I'm really not interested in Open Office. I've tried it. It's too clunky. Free is nice, usability and capability are better, and Excel is both more usable and more capable than Open Office's spreadsheet, while Pages is superior to its word processor... at least in _my_ opinion, and as I'm the one who has to use them, _my_ opinion is what matters. Perhaps in the future this may change, but right now there's no contest.)

Serpent imprisons rattled Yorkshire family

not a problem

This is a solution to the Daily Mail Johnny Foreigner Living In Your Garden Shed problem. The adder will subtract him. And, with only a little luck, it'll subtract any reporters the Mail sends around to cover the story as well.

Duff French missiles for Royal Navy finally fixed

Obelix

Will they at least have a few canisters for Harpoon or SLAM or _something_, _anything_, on the fantail or _somewhere_ to give them over-the-horizon anti-surface capability?

Didn't think so.

Facebook's critics 'unrealistic', says US privacy law expert

forced opt-in?

There are quite a few sites which which demand 'registration'. My usual response to such a demand is to sign in using '[e-mail]' or '[e-mail]'. If those are rejected or if they say that they need a valid email address, I go elsewhere. Should sites start to demand that I 'opt-in' in order to see their content, they'd better be very, very, VERY sure that I _NEED_ to see their content for a real reason. If I merely _want_ to see their content or if I'm just curious about something, I'll be going elsewhere. I _used_ to frequently visit a certain news site, which started to require 'opt-in' nonsense. (That would be the New York Times; they want 'registration' to see some, but not all, articles. After I encountered the 'read the first few paragraphs, find out the rest is behind a paywall' problem once too often, I bailed, haven't been back there in years. Every now and again I get email from them about the wonders of their site; I add the new address to my spam filter. I understand that they have removed most requirements for paying from their site, but they still want you to 'register'. They can still bite me.

_I_ chose what I view. _Me_. That's one reason why I use AdBlock. It's one reason why I simply don't go near certain sites. I don't have a page at FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, or similar sites because of their policies. I don't visit certain commercial sites because of their policies. I have not noticed that my life is diminished.

Inevitable Mac OS X 10.6.4 update problems surface

oh dearie me

I have just finished rebooting after updating the last of the Macs around here. No problems with any of them. It's amazing, all these people who always have problems with Apple updates while I have never had even one problem _ever_ in my history of updating Macs... and I've been using Macs since May of 1984. Whatever have I been doing wrong?

Linux IRC server leaves backdoor open

Fun times

Hmm. Seems as though Trojans can be used against anyone. Interesting.

Hacker charged with threatening US VP using neighbour's PC

nope.

'But no charges on the indecent images?'

No need. They have him cold on Irritating A Politician, a much more serious offense. This way they don't have to give him protection against the other inmates in Federal stir, who usually don't like those kind of people.

Of course, as everyone will know what kind of pix he used to try to frame the neighbors, he'll have a really fun time in the General Population. And, no, I'm not referring to a cellmate named Bubba and yearning for Tru Luv. More like Bubba and lots of friends with shivs and no luv at all. He'll have to confess to the porno pix so as to get special security, and the judge will then be able to slap some additional time on him, without the prosecution having to prove a damn thing. And the confession will have to include details on where he got the pix so that the Feds can charge the source, using his testimony as evidence. And then he's gonna get tossed into solitary confinement at his own request and the Feds are gonna misplace the key for a few decades. He isn't gonna get a Bernie Madoff-level 150 year term, but I'd not be surprised if he gets 30-50 years. And there ain't no parole in the Federal system; you get out early only if the prosecution petitions the judge to let you out 'cause you've been a good boy, and somehow I don't see this happening in this case.

He really shouldn't have used Biden as part of his campaign. Very bad move.

Google geek slammed over XP exploit

not a major flaw

That particular 'feature' is one of the first things I disable when setting up a WinBox.

But he's still a twat for posting the code after waiting only 5 days.

1,000+ webpages poisoned in latest mass malware hack

this is getting tedious

Why is it that so many alleged professionals have so much trouble blocking such a simple attack? This is getting beyond a joke now. What's _wrong_ with them? Why, at this late date, does this still happen? Why?

Fanbois howl over 'hang a lot' Safari 5

they prefer to tinker

'You do realise that some of us are tired of dealing with PC problems at work and have had enough of taking PCs apart and fixing them that when they get home they want a computer that they don't need to take apart and an OS that they don't need to spend time going over fixing by hand?'

I first got a Mac precisely because I spent the day playing with job control scripts and the like on VAX/VMS and assorted IBM mainframe systems and really, really, _REALLY_ didn't want to wrestle with a computer at home, too. The problem with most of the Tuxers is that they _prefer_ to spend their time messing about with the system, instead of, well, doing actual work. Now, I have a number of older systems sitting at home which I like to tinker with just to pass the time (a 486, a Pentium, a Pentium III, a beige G3 Mac, an eMac, some others) but I don't use them for real work. Real work is done on a current WinBox or a current Mac, usually either a core-i5 based Winbox, or the Toshiba laptop I'm typing on now, or a year-old iMac, due to be replaced in about six months. Windows 7 on the Winboxes, OS X 10.6 on the Mac. When I feel like playing around I might boot Ubuntu or Fedora, but not for actual work.

That sound you hear is Tuxer heads exploding.

yep

'Nothing more to see here, I'd suggest.'

Quite right.

However, watch the anti-Apple brigade continue to whinge and moan. This incident will be trotted out for _months_ to come whenever there's the slightest hiccup on anything with an Apple logo on it. And, of course, those of us who actually use Macs on a regular basis and who don't encounter these problems (I've updated over 150 machines to Safari 5 since it came out, and seen at least as many others which were updated by someone else, and none of them have had _any_ problems...) will simply ignore the twats. It's one thing if there is an actual, verifiable, real, problem. It's another thing entirely when it's a storm in a teacup magnified out of all recognition.

But, hey, the Apple-bashers can carry on. They do amuse.

Interesting

I installed Safari 5 immediately on it becoming available. I did it on several Macs and on multiple Windows machines, too. No problems on any of those machines. Hmmm.

Microsoft closes door on 64-bit development for Office 2011

You know it's bad when

Apple's Keynote renders PowerPoint 2007 files better than PowerPoint 2008 does. It's possible to generate a PPT or a PPTX file in PowerPoint 2008 which will not open in PowerPoint 2007... but will open in Keynote. And in PowerPoint 2003 and 2004, if you have the Mickeysoft translator for PPTX files installed. If you open the PPT that won't open in PP2007 up in Keynote or PP2003 or 2004 instead and then save it, _now_ it will open in PP2007.

And, just so you know, the word processor which can handle the most file formats on a Mac is Word 2004 if you have the Mickeysoft translator for DOCX installed. It will handle everything Word 2007 will, and several that it won't.

Perhaps you see why I keep a copy of Office 2004 on one Mac around here and a copy of Office 2003 on a WinBox... and why I have no current plans to move to 2010 and 2011.

BP grabs 'oil spill' keywords on Google

It all depends

Some of us remember that one of BP's distant ancestors was Anglo-Iranian Oil. You know, the boyz who got the CIA to install the Shah. Another ancestor pulled some right cock-ups in Burma. In both cases, when things got warm the names got changed.

i see a name change in BP's future.

greenie? nah.

Odds are pretty good that they know I'm in Florida and only Yahoo is stupid enough to think that anyone in Florida (except a certain Republican politician who is _not_ going to be re-elected) would believe one word out of BP's oral orifice. At least one local newspaper columnist has referred to BP as 'petro-terrorists'. Today I passed a BP service station which advertised fuel at 5 cents a gallon less than the Texaco station across the street from it; there was a line to use the Texaco station's pumps, and no-one, but no-one, was fueling up at BP. Gotta love it, I'm sure that Texaco and Mobil and Shell and Exxon already do.

Hmmm... not around here

I just checked. The lead items on Google are news sources: The Associated Press, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. Following that is a Wiki article. The only thing that even mentions 'BP' on the first page is an ABC news story about how BP released video under pressure, not at all the kind of sunny spin you mention. Bing has similar results. Yahoo, now, Yahoo has the stuff you mention. But not Google or Bing. Or at least, not around here.

Apple adds 'make the web go away' button to Safari 5

ads again

1 not an idealist. Merely a cynic.

2 don't wear Nikes. They cost too bloody much.

The rest of your screed was even less accurate than the first paragraph.

ads

If you put in ads which don't blink, strobe, and generally scream at you, if you don't have pop-up (or, worse, pop-under) ads, if you don't flat out lie in the ad, if you don't produce ads which insult the intelligence of the would-be consumers, then perhaps ad-blockers wouldn't be so popular. As marketting morons mostly try to attract attention by whatever means possible, I go way out of my way to avoid seeing _any_ ads. When I watch tv, which is not often as I don't have the time, I use my DVR to store shows for when I have the time to watch them, not the time that the TV execs want to show them. And then I use that same DVR to fast-forwards past the ads... unless, of course, as I go past an ad it looks interesting. In which case I have a look at _that_ ad. Ads in print publications are ignored, unless I'm specifically looking for something... and then I'll look at the ads for exactly long enough to see if it's about what I'm looking for. And, finally, if in the past I've bought something from a certain company (HP, Sony, Asus, Dell, Lexmark, I'm thinking of _you_) and it's been a problem and then customer non-support have been twats about fixing the problem, then _nothing_ that any ad says will _ever_ convince me to buy anything from you again. (#1 on the FAQ on the Lexmark site for the old Lexmark Z23 printer: "Why is my printer so slow?" Glacial, I would say. #3 on that same FAQ: "Why did the Z23 ship with only the color (Merkin site, Merkin spelling) cartridge?" Yes, they really shipped with just the colour cart so that you had to either go and buy a black cart or live with muddy brown text output while at the same time sucking down the already inadequate ink in the colour cart. No, I've not bought anything from Lexmark since, and never will again.)

Now, if the ads are interesting and actually relevant to what I'm reading, and don't get in the way, well, that's different. It's also damn rare. If you fix your business model and reign in the mad marketters then attitudes towards ads may change. Until then... bite me.

but blocking it might be a Bad Idea(tm)

Blocking it could tend to irritate those who use it. True, it'd be a small percentage of a small percentage, but still...

And inserting ads would be counter-productive. If, for example, El Reg were to do that, I would make careful note of the ads inserted and make sure to _not_ purchase anything so advertised. And, if the ads were particularly noxious, I might go so far as to contact those being advertised and let them know that they won't be getting any business from me, and why.

But that's just me. For some reason there are those who say that I have a bad attitude. Can't imagine why this could be.

And, in any case, I usually run with AdBlocker active, anyway, so odds are that most ads wouldn't show up, anyway, and those which did would, as above, be carefully noted and reported back to the AdBlocker people so that they could make sure to block them. There's a nice new version of SafariAdBlocker out this morning, just for Safari 5, too. And it kills some ads which had leaked through with the old version. Ah, bliss.

easily done

'..Safari will just pretend to be Chrome, or Firefox...' Or Opera. Or MSIE. Very easily done.

Now you're being silly

Should I wish to, I can make Safari show as MSIE 6, 7, or 8, as Firefox 3.6 or 3.5, (Mac or Windows) or as Opera 10.5 (Mac or Windows) with a mere click of the mouse. I use that feature fairly often when some site or another has a quote problem unquote, said problem vanishing softly silently into the aether as soon as I change the user-agent about 99.99% of the time, indicating that the 'problem' was merely because someone didn't like Safari.

I find it quite amusing to set Firefox on Windows to report to be Safari on OS X and visit certain sites just to view the resulting freaking out.

But, hey, do carry on with your irrational hatred. It's so amusing.

Mass hack plants malware on thousands of webpages

Series of 10,000

An SQL injection attack, aimed at Microsoft IIS systems, launched from a Chinese IP. Why, oh, why, am I not surprised?

Apple debuts Safari 5 for Mac and Windows

hmm..

It didn't crash on uk.yahoo here. Perhaps you really do need to update your version of Flash Player. Or something.

On the other hand, you're not missing much. 'X Factor Guest judge revealed'... bah. humbug. Feed the lot of them to starving piranhas.

wrong target

I suspect that it was aimed at the laddie to which you were replying.