* Posts by diodesign

3493 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Sep 2011

Vendors must break code of silence on software's biggest FAILS

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: I give up

Failure is often too long for a headline. We like punchy, fun, attention-grabbing words - and we appear to have grabbed your attention ;-)

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How to spot a terrible tech boss within SECONDS

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Sarcastic or not...

I'll add a link. Oops.

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The GPL self-destruct mechanism that is killing Linux

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: clueless

Essentially this: somewhere along the line, the Unix world went from elegance to, in some ways, "an embarrassing mess" (eg: autoconf, you either love it or hate it). Are licences, such as the GPL, encouraging the confusion or not? Liam discusses.

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FOlA judges: Secret 28 who made the BBC Green will not be named

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Information Tribunal

"Why ask the ICO about the tribunal panel make up when they have no input or influence?"

We asked the ICO because presumably, as an overseer of the implementation of FOI law, it could offer some insight on the process up to and including an information tribunal - and it did.

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Swedish boffins: An Ice Age is coming, only CO2 can save us

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Windows 8, Surface slabs ALREADY need critical security patch

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Is it me but...

Less the Daily Mail, more like The New York Post or The Sun. The Mail Online and its print cousin rarely use screaming caps.

We use them to make particular stories stand out. Eg: prototype keyboard app for iPhones? No need. New operating system insecurities? Sure, why not.

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Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 handset review

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Rating?

See the article on Reg Hardware for the score..

http://www.reghardware.com/2012/11/08/review_nokia_lumia_920_windows_phone_8/

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: 8 Page Review

Eight pages because it's mostly photographs and there's lots to say about it.

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Maude reckons UK.gov web makeover will save £1.8bn annually

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Why not link to the HTML version?

Thanks, the PDF is particularly horrible. Sadly the whole thing is written for civil servants.

(Speaking personally)

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Two Texan teams tool up, ride out to enormo cluster shootout

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: "They’re just like Fight Club, but with much more math."

Obviously, I enjoy reading them too but I'm also a little bit jealous. Not sure what we'd do with a Vulture Central cluster, though.

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Naughty-step Apple buries court-ordered apology with JavaScript

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: anyone notice the name of the DIV class

Ha! Did not know that was there. But the div surrounds the copyright boilerplate for the page, not the actual Samsung beg.

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Apple's poisonous Touch silently kills the GNOMEs of Linux Forest

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Old Handle is right; you're referring to the pull quote? They tend to work best in print, but if you're undecided on whether to read the whole article, the pull quote is there to highlight something intesting to convince you to stay on the page.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Leakage

I'd say it's rather comical taking criticism from a guy on the web calling himself "Anal Leakage" ;-)

Seriously though, obviously not every headline has Apple in it - but it's now such a huge monster in the tech world that it can be hard to avoid.

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Windows Phone 8: Everything you need to know at a glance

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: A Positive Review?

"Might not get a taste of that if you had a bad review."

After all we've said about Windows 8? ;-)

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Debenhams cafes ban outré terms like 'espresso' and 'cappuccino'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

QED

IT people like coffee.

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Uh-oh! Kim Dotcom is back with a brand new Megaupload site

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: That'll work.

What was in our brains did not translate perfectly into the written word. The sentence has been tided up.

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James Bond doesn't do CGI: Inside 007's amazing real-world action

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Not just an action movie

"very english sense of humour"

Such as Pierce quickly adjusting his tie the second after his underwater boat surfaces during a chase along the Thames. Class.

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Microsoft's 'official' Windows 8 Survival Guide leaks

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Piss off

Hi Steve!

Flame of the week.

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The Big Debate: OK gloomsters, how can the music biz be FIXED?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: NomNomNom

You know what else Gary Glitter used? Telephones.

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Microsoft: Welcome back to PCs, ARM. Sorry about the 1990s

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: IA64

Balls. Meant X86-64.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: RISC OS, which bore little resemblance

"Absolute rubbish"

I knew this would rile ROS fans, but y'know that's how Bill called it. ADFS::HardDisc4.$ compares to C:\ how? ;-)

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Windows 8: An awful lot of change for a single release

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Digital Research?

There had to be at least one thing that slipped through the net. Yes, he did come from DEC. I should have clocked that. It's fixed.

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US climate-change skeptics losing support

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

"the moderators here are loserz"

Says the chap putting a Z at the end of words, hm? :-)

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Linux on ARM breakthrough to take away Torvalds' arse pain

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: x86 isn't that much better

"Yes it ran, but that' s not the point...."

Ah, this is where your argument falls down. The ARM world is so fragmented that SoC designers will stick their hardware registers and other chipset features, let alone the RAM and ROM start addresses, wherever they like (more or less). So a kernel built for one board won't boot at all on another.

However, x86 land is so backwards compatible that your basic chipset will always appear where you expect it. Yes, there are differences - such as SMP - but that's purely because new features have turned up over time. It's no where near as wild as the ARM arena.

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Skydiver Baumgartner's 120,000ft spacesuit leap delayed by bad wind

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: 24-day delay?

Completely asleep at the wheel :(

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: 24-day delay?

God only knows how I missed that. It has been fixed.

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Boffins: Our memory film is like your girlfriend - transparent and cheap

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Lets have more gratuitous sexism.

"I like my men like I like my coffee -- thick and rich"

I'm sure we'll work some sort of anti-boyfriend headline soon enough.

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Thank Freeview for UK 4G by mid-2013 - NOT the iPhone 5 nor EE

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Strawman much?

Good points - it mostly stems from rivals reporting that "Ofcom and the iPhone 5 solved the UK's 4G competition crisis" (that's one actual headline from this morning).

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NIST crowns next-gen hash algorithm Keccak as official SHA-3

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Ummm

Thanks for the kick up the arse - that was our fault for trying to oversimplify a complex subject to keep things light and non-boring. I've tweaked the article.

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Is Oracle squeezing the MySQL lemon too hard?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Brain dead journalism

"Regardless of the hair-splitting"

Are you serious? The dates are the central plank of your outburst, and it splintered at the first sign of fact.

Disagree with Matt's opinion - for that is what it is, 'Open and Shut' is his regular comment piece - all you want, but you gotta be kidding me on the rest.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Brain dead journalism

"How does this kind of thing get past an editor (always assuming they have one) at The Register?"

We do, see the "contact us" page.

"The whole crux of the piece is a survey done in 2009, BEFORE Oracle had even acquired Sun"

Sun nabbed MySQL in Jan 08. Oracle wanted to buy Sun in Apr 09. Deal closed Aug 09. Survey done in Dec 09.

So your point is false. Checkmate.

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'Replace crypto-couple Alice and Bob with Sita and Rama'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

No, something perfectly light for a wet Monday morning. I am immediately envious of you if your brain is already engaged and firing all pistons before 10am.

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Keep your Playboy mansion, Supermicro is my nerd vice palace

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

No, it's a rare moment in which a Reg writer expresses a positive opinion.

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What happened to Odds & Sods?

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: epic fail...

Odds and Sods, that Register staple, is now just simply Bootnotes: http://www.theregister.co.uk/bootnotes/ It lives on in the section page title, but do feel free to email the bosses if you're upset by the change.

We'll still be covering odds-n-sods-grade news.

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Apple MacBook Air 13in review

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: So like the new iPhone

"Don't blame me for El Reg mods laziness."

With that attitude, I can't imagine why you were at the back of the queue :P

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Guardian's Robin Hood plan: Steal from everyone to give to us

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Bootnote

"So what's the numbers for El Reg?"

Our latest audit: http://www.abc.org.uk/Certificates/17591287.pdf We're due another in November.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: JustaKOS

Comment of the week.

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McFlurry McMisdemeanour costs Welsh lass McJob

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: That's it, I'm done...

Lester has been writing for The Reg for years, if not longer than a decade. I'm not sure you can tame his amusing tabloid style.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: That's it, I'm done...

"The standard of writing here is driving me to distraction..... why /must/ you keep writing in the style of crappy tabloid news papers."

Um, we are a red-top tabloid news outlet.

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Last remaining reason to order an iPhone 5 disappears

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Is this a reaction?

"There have been a number of stories in the past that feel the need to explain small details that surely everyone here knew."

There lies the agonising balance between explaining too much and alienating very techy readers and filling an article with jargon and driving everyone else away. It's really, really difficult to do.

Obviously with a story about, say, an IE exploit, you know programmers will read it so you can get down to the nitty-gritty. Really depends on the story. And there shouldn't be anything wrong with expanding the readerbase. How else will we pay the bills?

Also, I'd be surprised if we're publishing less. There's something like 40-45 articles a day most of the year. Forgive us if you can't love every piece.

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Re: Is this a reaction?

"the number of stories where the comments are of far more value than the piece itself is growing worryingly high"

I think there's some sort of skew involved here. Here are my own quick thoughts on it.

An article that everyone agrees with sadly generates little comment and people move on. It may be hard to add more value. No one remembers the comments on those.

Articles that spark debate and polarise readers generate a lot of comments, as expected, and if you disagree with the writer then you're bound to find someone in the forum who agrees with your PoV - so suddenly comments "with more value" appear on your personal radar.

Finally, all our writers are working as fast as possible to file their thoughts and findings in a timely manner before a story dies out. They may accidentally miss something or for whatever reason neglect to make a particular point. Hours after someone made the decision to hit 'publish', a thought may occur to someone reading the article and they post a comment. Value is added in the aftermath.

Generally speaking, referring to nothing in particular, terms and conditions apply, your mileage may vary, etc.

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Neil Gaiman’s saucy pop wife agrees to pay her musicians in money

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Irk

"Yet again a writer can't bother giving a lick of any credit to a woman"

Actually, it's because Neil Gaiman is much more well known to readers than Amanda. Pure and simple. Neil is more of an attention grabber than Amanda. There's nothing sexist about that.

Perhaps a few more stunts like this, she'll have a headline to herself.

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Google Go language gets used: For file-scrambling trojan, though

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Who edited this?

Gah. That is annoying. It's been fixed.

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Apple begs ex-Google bods to fix crap maps app

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Open Street Map

"They are not credited in the provided link"

They are, but possibly not visible in your browser unless you resize the page - or look at the source. There's an attribution to OSM.

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Apple demands $707m more from Samsung

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: FOSSPaitents? seriously???

"how does this guy have any credibility left"

How does that detract from what Florian has said in this particular instance? Yes, he is/was paid to write things. We do know this.

Whenever we quote the guy, all I seem to see in response is "I HATE FLORIAN RAGE RAGE RAGE", and (personally speaking) that makes me less inclined to pay attention to the comments, because such outbursts seem far more biased than the very pundit being attacked.

Ironic, isn't it?

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'Apple's iOS 6 maps app is SHOCKING, rushed and half-baked'

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Keybaud

'Quotw' is our weekly Quote Of The Week.

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iPhone queue ‘superficial and pretentious’ says queuing fangirl

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Here's An Idea

Re: OsricTheGreat

Says the guy with only 3 posts to date, hm? :-)

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Latest iPhone hacked to blab all your secrets

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: nigel 15

Yers, very good. But before you reach for your pedantry badge, consider that the latest developer preview - the gold master - is what will effectively ship to fanbois anyway. Huzzah!

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diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: AC trash talk

If you're referring to the deleted comment, it was removed for the anonymous abuse. Let's stick to technical discussions.

One thing we forgot to add is that the S III is set to get Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which has had a lot of NFC fixes and is not the 4.0.4 compromised by the team . Anyway, both hacks are significant in terms of security and skill, and a second story is in the works.

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Inside the guts of a fiendish Internet Explorer 0-day attack

diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

Re: Drumming For Sappeur

Mr Memory Safe: Surely you're not talking about the MMU in the processor?