* Posts by diodesign

3493 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011

A REGISTERED TRADEMARK Story?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: A REGISTERED TRADEMARK Story?

"A copyright should apply. Not a trademark."

Er. All our in-house stories should have a (R) symbol at the end: That's our style. It's been that way since the start. It harks back to the old traditional printed magazine style of putting a version of the title's logo at the end of articles.

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Australia threatens Adobe, Apple, with geo-blocking ban

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Make VPNs legal?

"there is no law as yet forbidding the use of a VPN in this country"

Indeed: I've clarified the article.

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Raid millions of bank accounts. New easy-to-use tool. Yours for $5,000

diodesign Silver badge

Re: details please

"Please elaborate on 'technology'."

I was sorta hoping anyone really interested would read the chap's blog post we linked to. No matter, I've tweaked the article anyway. It's drilling down into the VBR with a bootkit.

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Sammy had Sweet Fanny Adams to do with Swiss Fanny madam's blast

diodesign Silver badge

Re: Ledswinger

PS...

"Thank you for the patronising advice"

Says the guy calling someone else a "pathetic knob". Give over.

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diodesign Silver badge

Re: Ledswinger

"Would the headlines have been the same if she'd looked like Mo Mowlem?"

Er, yes. You guys are reading into madam way too much.

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diodesign Silver badge

Re: "specially-trained team of sub editors"

"Specially trained to write the headlines, but not read and correct the copy?"

You guys...

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diodesign Silver badge

Re: Ledswinger

FWIW I would never write a misogynistic headline.

"If you really can't see why women might take offence, then I'm not going to explain it to you."

My girlfriend didn't see anything wrong with it when I showed her after work. I recommend reading Caitlin Moran's "How to be a woman". Essential reading for feminists, male and female.

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Posting messsages with hyperlinks

diodesign Silver badge

Re: Posting messsages with hyperlinks

No, that particular story is marked for comment moderation.

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PHWOAR! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, Prime Minister

diodesign Silver badge

Re: DJ Smiley

"I have a work phone on O2"

There's the reason. Business contracts do not enable filtering by default. Personal contracts (eg: mine) do.

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Articles with no comments

diodesign Silver badge

Re: I ain't Spartacus

"I don't think this has been a success"

Depends how you define success.

"So if you're not even checking out your own forums all that regularly, why would you be surprised if your users aren't?"

We do read the forums, but I think the boss would prefer us to be writing articles and headlines during the day than chatting away on the forums :-)

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diodesign Silver badge

Re: Oh look...

Honestly, I shouldn't be commenting this late after a few jars, but there's no conspiracy here. It's an experiment to see what happens if we punt comments directly into the forums. I don't get the logic of complaining that we haven't created a specific forum topic for you: why not create one yourself? It's allowed! That's why the discussion forums are here. For people to lead the debate rather than get bogged down in meta-debate. Anyway. All IMHO.

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Editorial oversight?

diodesign Silver badge

Re: Editorial oversight?

"Then consider the facts"

Thing is, both articles are factually correct (TTBOMK). It's just that there's clearly a difference in opinion on how those facts are summed up into a headline.

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D'OH! Use Tumblr on iPhone or iPad, give your password to the WORLD

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Fix already out

"The updated app was in the app store yesterday"

The Tumblr announcement is terse on details: what you have here is the actual story :-) Also, funny! how! the! update! appeared! over! night! after! we! contacted! Yahoo!

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Unreal: Epic’s would-be Doom... er... Quake killer

diodesign Silver badge

Re: Descent @diodesign

Played it on the PS1 and Acorn Archimedes. It did my head in.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Descent

"I think Frontier: Elite 2 adheres to your definition of fully rendered...1992? And Descent was also fully rendered - 1994."

Ah, Elite 2 and Descent. Always too easy to forget. I've tweaked the article.

And also: here's yet another plea to email corrections@ with stuff we've got wrong. We always get those emails, but we can't read every comment.

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Rap for rap chap in crap rap app flap: Jay-Z blasted by privacy bods

diodesign Silver badge

Re: Tried drinking 10 shots and saying it 10x real fast

That's pretty much how the headline was written, out loud, across the office. (No comment on the amount of alcohol involved.)

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Apple MacBook Air 13-inch 2013: Windows struggles in Boot Camp

diodesign Silver badge
Alert

Re: Nightfox

Perhaps part one of this two-part review series is more up your street?

Apple Macbook Air 13-inch 2013 review.

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"No comment" on Alex Salmond Seaside Shenanigans Ravings?

diodesign Silver badge

Re: "No comment" on Alex Salmond Seaside Shenanigans Ravings?

"Let El Reg continue to proudly offer ubiquitous comments"

It's just an experiment, don't panic.

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diodesign Silver badge

Re: "No comment" on Alex Salmond Seaside Shenanigans Ravings?

"The comment options are not available for Lewis Page's piece about Scottish Salmond's daft tidal power plans"

Well, of course you can comment: over here in the forums. You may have noticed that the comments section and the forums are more or less (certainly in the backend) the same thing.

"instead we're directed toward the forums"

And here you are, able to discuss away :-)

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Universal Credit? Universal DISCREDIT, more like, say insiders

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Whoopsie.

"it's still there"

Not any more.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge
diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Whoopsie.

"One of the few things this gang of public school bullies has yet to cut is the national minimum wage"

That's been fixed in the article. Again, please please please email corrections@thereg with stuff you spot wrong in a story. We can't read every comment.

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Brits: Give us £1m and we'll build a crack ALIEN-HUNTING TEAM

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Boffins

"most of the readers here could be described as boffins in their own field"

Well, you need to be a practising scientist with a degree that specifically involves high-level mathematics. Then we can talk. We quite like proper boffins.

"scientists are bespectacled weirdos"

Well, your words, not mine. Not far off one top Guardian hack's description of us as "a bunch of aggro loner twats".

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Not all data encryption is created equal

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: SHA1 and MD5 are not encryption methods

Yes, honest, we do know SHA-1 and MD5 are one-way. I've fixed the article.

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AXE-WAVING BIKER GANG SMASHES into swanky Apple UK store

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Correction

Can I just point out that people who ride scooters are not "Bikers"

That's the gag.

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NASA probe will ease through Saturn's ring to grab Earth snapshot

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Which Month

Yes, it's 19 July.

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Whoever recently showed us the secret documents: Do get in touch

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Somewhere in the depths of Prism

The key is on the page for all to see; it's not perfect but the number of people hitting that will be far higher than the .txt file. We may embed the key in all future pages to widen the net.

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Windows NT grandaddy OpenVMS taken out back, single gunshot heard

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: But OpenVMS as an OS lives on...

Various OpenVMS fans have been in touch to argue that their favourite OS isn't dead. Yet, Liam didn't write that, simply that support is coming to an end as HP sunsets the thing.

The roadmap says it all, really. If you're not on Itantium v8.4, support will have ended by 2016. If you are, you've got until 2020 and HP isn't interested in the latest Itantiums anyway. Would you stick around, or migrate?

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Waving an Eye-of-Sauron pulsating mock cock? Stop immediately

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Mordor

NEEEERRRDDD! ;-)

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Who should play the next Doctor? Nominations needed!

diodesign Silver badge

Who should play the next Doctor? Nominations needed!

This Friday we'll hold a public poll on who ought to play the next Doctor Who. We've had a ton of suggestions already (John Hurt, Bill Nighy, Sean Pertwee, Philip Glenister, Paterson Joseph etc etc) - but you've all probably got loads more.

So fire away with your nominations, please, and we'll prep a poll for the end of the week.

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Optus releases pre-paid 4G handset, new wireless plans

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: i'm not the most mathematical but

Yes, hopefully this will be the final stab at getting the table correct... It should be OK now.

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Intel: Haswell is biggest 'generational leap' we have EVER DONE

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: 2-in-1 WTF?

"So you've mentioned "2-in-1" no fewer than 10 times in the article, without actually telling us what that means"

PCs that can convert into tablets, and vice versa. I've made it clear in the piece now.

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Auto argument losers

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: "This is not a British site"

"this publication is primarily British"

Just a few points that may be of use: we've got 3 offices (San Fran, London and Sydney) with staff in each, as well as some useful guys out and about in New York and Hong Kong. In terms of US, UK and AU spelling styles, it depends on whose watch the article is published: the spelling is adjusted to the main audience of the moment.

So an article published after 5pm BST - when Brits clock off for a swift pint before home and the West Coast is slurping its freshly squeezed OJ - will use US spelling because the SF office is running the show. That team hands over the guys Down Under at the end of their working day, and they hand over to the UK team when their working day ends.

The alternative is to force everyone into either UK, US or AU mode, which will alienate far more people than the current system, which tries to please most of the people most of the time rather than some of the people all of the time.

And breathe.

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We gave SQL Server 2012 one year to prove itself: What happened?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"not a word about the core DBMS functionality"

Quite possibly because none of that has changed (or changed significantly enough to warrant comment)? It's a mature product, after all.

This isn't a review of the whole thing: just what's new and how that's worked out for these guys.

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Forget tax bills, here's how Google is really taking us all for a ride

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"Why this should translate at all into per-packet pricing for consumers is anybody's guess"

Andrew's point is that you pay via the ISP: so if you want to read newspapers and books and aren't interested in Netflix and Vimeo, you don't buy a web video bundle from your ISP, you pick an alternative that may well include a Times/Telegraph/Nook/whatever subscription. And the money goes to those services; it's not entirely pocketed by the broadband biz.

It's a more fine-grained system than simply signing up for a 2, 4, 16, 24 or 50Mbps-speed line, and it means cash goes direct to the content makers bypassing the free services that Andrew is railing against.

Just a thought for debate.

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BBC suspends CTO after £100m is wasted on doomed IT system

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Digital Media Initiative cancelled ..

No doubt we'll revisit this - from what I've heard they went through quite a lot of tech before it went out of control.

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BT Tower is just a relic? Wrong: It relays 18,000hrs of telly daily

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: £50

I don't have to hand how Joe calculated that figure, but according to the National Archives, 1965's 4 shillings = 2005's £2.57. So Joe's £3.28 isn't far off the mark.

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New 4TB drive spaffs half a telly season into your eyes AT ONCE

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Citation needed

Ignore that - it was the price of the 1TB model :-(

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Price

That price is for the 1TB drive :-( So ignore it.

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Syrian net access falls down some stairs, doing OK now

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Yes, people were tweeting phone numbers and username+passwords for those inside Syria to dialup and reach the outside world.

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Spotify spews 'unencrypted' FREE MP3s all over creation

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Am I missing something?

"Since when did HTML5 allow any kind of DRM?"

Well, if Microsoft, Google and Netflix get their way...

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Don't use Google+? Tough, Google Glass will inject it INTO YOUR EYES

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Like it much ?

"without resorting to Daily Mail mode"

Och! Come on, now. Is there any need for that? It's not Daily Mail mode. I demand an apology and a correction.

It's Register mode.

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Barnes & Noble bungs Raspberry Pi-priced Nook on shelves

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: WARNING !

Re: ac172 - no, it's just that B&N are really that rubbish. I failed twice to order one; they ran out of stock almost immediately.

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PLAGUE of SEX CRAZED MONSTER GRASSHOPPERS to hit East Coast

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: NOT grasshoppers!

"aside from relative size they don't look much alike"

So, you're telling me there's a chance?

(Sadly, cicadas don't make quite so good a headline.)

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Micron brandishes sharp new flash blade, lunges at Fusion-io

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: 2.5" sequential read

According to the product brief (PDF), the SSD really has a 1.8GB/s sequential read speed, according to Micron.

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Plusnet's 'Everyone's a winner' claim is a plus-sized whopper

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: [sic]

I've added a footnote for the confused.

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One of the world's oldest experiments crawls towards a fall

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: A long time but...

I've added a bootnote about the Rothamsted experiments.

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Science of the lambs: Boffins grow GLOW-IN-THE-DARK sheep

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: +1

"The thought of the El Reg hacks sitting in the pub/office thinking up lines like this makes my day."

:-) It's sorta like the way the New York Post is portrayed in this vid.

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Black-eyed Pies reel from BeagleBoard's $45 Linux micro blow

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Headline misses

So sorry not every headline, produced under incredible pressure, is comedy gold :-(

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US Air Force beats off competition in NSA hacking fight

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Civil Air Patrol Cadets

Yes, oops. The image seems to have confused a few people, so I've whipped it out for now.

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