* Posts by Black Plague

24 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Sep 2011

Why Apple's adaptive Touch Bar will flop

Black Plague
Trollface

Comparing them to Lenovo? Really?

Lenovo still can't make a laptop touchpad that isn't total sh*t and you were expecting they'd blaze a trail with their adaptive function keys.

Ignoring the fanbois, Apple at least has a long history of putting a lot of thought and care into hardware usability and experience.

Mainframe staffing dilemma bedevils CIO dependents

Black Plague
Trollface

Little surprise that there isn't much of a "skills transfer" from old mainframe admins to new.

z/OS admins are some of the surliest pricks I've ever met. They make Unix greybeards look bubbly and personable by comparison.

Basic minimum income is a BRILLIANT idea. Small problem: it doesn't work as planned

Black Plague

What about inflation?

Would a basic minimum income for everyone cause sellers to jack up the price of basic necessities (food, water, rent, etc.), since they know everyone has *at least* the same income available to them?

'Shadow IT' gradually sapping power and budget from CIOs

Black Plague

"Shadow IT" is a big problem for the biz's information security arm. Everyone wants to do cloud crap, and if it's some startup's free webapp they won't even ask the IT dept to certify or vet it...then they start putting sensitive corporate/customer info up on some wanker's AWS storage. It's a compliance nightmare!

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

Black Plague

Re: Your redesign stinks, sorry, but it does

Yeah, that was a dumb choice.

Chrome and Firefox still allow me to right-click and open links in new tabs, just not IE.

Black Plague

Re: Mobile

Yes, for the love of $DEITY, would you please auto-redirect mobile browsers to the mobile version or else start using responsive layout code (here's a lovely example: http://alistapart.com/d/responsive-web-design/ex/ex-site-FINAL.html)!!!!

It's the second decade of the 21st century already! Most of us are reading El Reg on our phones and none of us want to constantly pinch-and-zoom in or be forced to use Mobile Safari for the reader view feature.

Samsung's flagging phone fortunes hit profits hard

Black Plague
Facepalm

Just a thought...it might help profits if you didn't try to make a device in every single conceivable screen size, in quarter-inch increments.

Would also help to not have three or four of the same damn tablet, with the only difference being a slightly different case design.

Mac security packages range from peachy to rancid – antivirus tests

Black Plague
Trollface

They didn't review...

...MacKeeper, which always shows up in spammy banner ads when I have to use a browser that doesn't have AdBlock installed on it.

Why has sexy Apple gone to bed with big boring IBM?

Black Plague

Re: In a world...

Glad someone else noticed.

I love El Reg, but there seems to be a pretty low proof-reading standard for articles on here.

I usually find at least one obvious misspelling per article...this piece was particularly egregious.

Och aye! It's the Loch Ness Monster – but only Apple fanbois can see it

Black Plague

If you have Apple Maps, go to the north end of the Loch in satellite or hybrid view, where the water turns cloudy blue. It's just south of Lairgmore.

And yeah, it's just a graphical ghost of a boat from merged overlapping sat photos.

Quantum-classical crypto sends secret vote from Switzerland to Singapore

Black Plague
Facepalm

One detail wrong...

Eve, not Alice, is the evil one :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_and_alice

NORKS harbouring 3,000-strong cyber army, claims Seoul

Black Plague

Re: This always makes me wonder...

As all the rest said above, they all know how bad it really is. Enough South Korean books, magazines, radios, and tapes get smuggled in for them to know that the Norks leadership is bullshit.

What keeps those 3,000 from doing anything "counter-revolutionary" with their newfound knowledge and access? Knowing that, if they get the smallest bit out of line with the Kim family, them and all their closest relatives (no shit, guilt-by-association) get an all-expenses-paid permanent holiday to such lovely destinations as Penal Labor Colony No. 14 in scenic Kaechon! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaechon_internment_camp)

At last, a bionic arm that passes the Beer, Egg and Looks Cool tests

Black Plague

Re: But

I'm reminded of the Family Guy Star Wars spoof:

"Practice on a hot dog first..."

In all seriousness, this looks awesome and is great news for amputees. If I ever get my arm blown off, you better believe I'll plop down the cash for a frickin' robot hand!

Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7in Android tablet review

Black Plague

It's much more useful...

...when you root it and install the Google Marketplace.

I did such with my original Kindle Fire and I enjoy it a lot more. You can even go as far as putting custom ROMs on, but the Kindle fork of Android is pretty useful still for just e-reader use and my experience has been that it has the best sleep mode power management of any Android device I've yet seen, on par with Apple devices. If I lay it down and don't use it for a month, it's still got exactly the same battery level when I do pick it up again.

Nobody knows what to call Microsoft's ex-Metro UI

Black Plague
Trollface

First thing that sprung to my mind was "metrosexual"

But I trust gay men to have a much better eye for design than Steve Sinofsky.

Black Plague

Huh?

I thought El Reg had settled on NOTro for the new name!?

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

Black Plague
Trollface

IA64

"Windows RT won't run software built for Intel's IA32 and IA64 family of processors"

IA64? Who's clamoring for Itanium compatibility on Windows RT?

Tablet and laptop sales neck and neck

Black Plague

Re: @Black Plague

lol, about what I expected.

It's a shame really that Android sales haven't picked up. Though I'm part of the problem. Even after eyeballing a Tranformer Prime at the local electronics giant, I still balked at ponying up several hundred for a glorified toy that's just a bigger version of my Android phone. Though I balk at paying even more for an iPad, as well.

Black Plague

When they say "tablet".....

Do they mean iPads?

I'd be really curious to see how that tablet number breaks down between iPads, Android-based tablets, and the odd Windows tablet PC.

Apple threatens to ruin peace worldwide with voice-controlled iMacs

Black Plague
WTF?

Seriously?

A British website, and no one here thought immediately about Mr. Reynholm Sr. from "The IT Crowd"?

Hello. Hello computer. Hello. Hello! Hello computer!!!

Google plants rainbow flag in anti-gay countries

Black Plague
Trollface

And what about Bing?

Is Microsoft going to rush to fill the gap with disgruntled homophobes in need of a search engine?

Bing: Official Search Engine of the Defense of Marriage Act

Ultrabook price vice prised open by flash-disk half-breeds

Black Plague

Can't wait

I've been drooling over the idea of a sleek ultrabook with an ssd/hdd combo drive in it. First I heard of this idea was last year, right before the last Macbook Pro refresf, when the rumor sites were reporting (falsely) the new Macs would have a small flash drive for the OS files and swap along with the larger hard drive.

Seriously, you get the benefits of lots of cheap storage (hdd) with the benefits of super quick boot and virtual memory. All you'd have to do is partition so all the system files and the page/swap file rests on a little 10GB piece of flash, while all your user files, photos, movies, music, etc. can rest on the hard drive.

Don't know why more manufacturers haven't done this already by sticking hdd's and small ssd's in full-size laptops.

MYSTERY programming language found in Duqu

Black Plague
WTF?

Remember the rumors that Stuxnet was written by the US military, CIA, etc.?

Knowing what I know about the history of US Dept of Defense computing, my bet is that it's written in Ada!

Pandemonium as Microsoft AV nukes Chrome browser

Black Plague

Anti-virus programs should classify IE as malware, lol