Posts by Britt

The healing hands of customer support get an acronym: Do YOU have 'tallah-toe-big'?

Tech can also smell desperation and urgency, and likes to play trick on those that needs documents printed asap.

Man prosecuted for posting a picture of his hobby on Facebook

As an occasional air-softer, I have played against ex/current military and they enjoy the chance to use their skills (rather successfully)against some of us plebeians. I do be leave I've played against some firearms officers in the past too.

They must all be face palming at this.

I've done my patriotic duty by being the (crappy) hard target for them to practise against.

I'm wondering what storm in a teacup will be brewed up next in somebodies vendetta against fun.

Vivaldi boss: It'd be cool if Google went back to the 'not evil' schtick

This being Vivendi, who Ubisoft calls a bully...

Prime Minister May hints at shaking up Blighty's 'dysfunctional' rural broadband

Rural internet, not fast enough to spy on effectively.

2,000 year old man found dead near 2,000 year old computer

Obligitory

Still waiting for IE to load....

Microsoft's 'Arrow' Android launcher flies into Play store

Existing feature

Well, there is an option to filter apps by usage on the Sony phones. Seems to work well enough, though a large enough update to an app can reset its position.

NEW ERA for HUMANITY? NASA says something 'major' FOUND ON MARS

Funding

I know it's old but here goes.

In a bid to find more funding to ensure future space missions, NASA are to announce the discovery of oil on Mars...

On a similar notes, finding water gives an energy source and Oxygen for future missions, so that's dandy. There may even be other items we can make use of.

Iron Sky's Helium 3 sub plot jig wasn't really that far off the mark.

Nintendo joins Khronos vid API standards body

Valve

Valve just publicly backed Vulcan as its preference over DX12. Some more good news then.

iOS's infected app-list continues to grow, says Lookout

Convenience

From what I gather, many of the devs operate in area with utterly rubbish connection, some reporting 60k/s from Apple servers. With a speed like that from official servers and a 3GB+ file to download that could drop out at any time, I'm beginning to see the temptation in downloading from a more localised mirror.

Reasoning, it's a scary thing. Maybe Apple should consider an official mirror that's easier to access.

It's almost like the music piracy argument all over again.

Hello? HELLO? Major Skype outage hits folk WORLDWIDE

News from the front, I had to email a funny picture instead of bunging it in Skype.. the horror.

iCloud phishing attack hooks 39 iOS apps and WeChat

Re: I need the list of affected apps...

Fair call.

Probably a good chance they have made apps for Android as well.

While not using infected code, their lax take on security is universal.

French say 'non' to Netflix, reveals entertainment report

Re: URL?

News just in, El Reg offends somebody.

I'd offer bonus points for it being the French :D

Intel emits Skylake CPUs for gamers, overclockers (Psst, you'll need new RAM and a new mobo)

Re: Cooling is going to be fun with 95W!

Ahh, I'm not the only one with a 4.5Ghz overclock on the 2500k. Most people seem to bulk away from that. I've managed 5.1Ghz air cooled and stable for over a day, 4.9Ghz and stable.

Wonderful chip.

Makes it hard to justify upgrading.

Tired tablets don't tickle the imagination, so sales fall again

The day the little 8" Asus tablet my misses uses to browse the web and play youtube vids stops browsing the web and playing youtube vids will then will be the day I buy another.

Silly Google's Photos app labelled black people as gorillas

Ducks

The amount of young women making faces that have been misidentified as ducks has not been released.

I'm sure its a fair few.

Innocent Spaniards roasted by experimental napalm mead

Been there, done that. To some peoples horror, trying to water it down with lemonade only increased its capacity to spread liquid fire around the mouth... oh how we chuckled.

IN YOUR FACE, Linux and Apple fans! Oculus is Windows-only for now

EVE Valkyrie

I need to pop around a friends house to have a go on his headset. He won it at the EvE Valkyrie tournament in Iceland a couple of months back.

I know his rig can use it, he has 2x970's in there. I know that because I built the thing.

He was also the only one there to win one that had a machine that could use it.

Also, Oculus is counting on games like EvE Valkyrie being moderately successful to keep the sales up.

Blocking pirate sites doesn't weaken pirates say Euroboffins

Flarblegarble.

One of the reasons TV shows get pirated is because after they are shown on US tv, the plot is smeared across the web for a few weeks before it appears on foreign telly. People don't like spoilers and people don't like to wait.

Also, an example of a film the deserves to be seen in the cinema is John Wick. Yet, months and months later, is yet to leave US shores. But there sure as hell is a DVD rip of it online.

Alas, the lost sales argument can boil down to "would they have watched it if it wasn't free"? Most likely it would have remained unwatched. People grab stuff because its there to be grabbed, like free samples of food. No intention of buying it, but hey, free taster. That's humanity for you.

RAF radar station crew begs public for cash to buy gaming LAN kit

LAN Gaming

Highlights the rather annoying lack of LAN gaming native to most recent games and the requirement to phone home to a server just to play locally.

Gimme back my Day of Defeat LAN games!

Red-faced Germans halt NSA cooperation after Euro spying revealed

Re: egadpellagru Industrial espionage

Sadly some people can't process a joke.

What is Apple's idiot tax on Watch these days? 'About $265 or 80%'

Re: Oh God, more oxygen for IHS

iDrive was also the name given to the GT mountain bike crank system for the full sus models.

SECRET PROTOTYPE iPAD 'stolen from RANDY Apple employee'

It would also go some way to preventing these honeytrap situations.

Money-for-mods-gate: Valve gives masterclass in how to lose gamers and alienate people

The End Times

Even Gabe admitted that under such a scheme games like Counter Strike or DOTA would never had taken off. The free factor is what add players and make a mod actually worth something.

Why recruiters are looking beyond IT's traditional talent pool

I'm a builder who now trains and supports software.

I've got various skills and experiences that can make me more effective at my job than pure IT training due to the people we work with.

It's nice to know that those of us with oddball educations have something extra to give.

DRM is NOT THE LAW, I AM THE LAW, says JUDGE DREDD

This is how you get me to buy comics I wouldn't normally read.

That's a big 4Ker of a cosmos: 3D planetarium to open in Bristol

Hmmm

I will pay it a visit. It's close to home, but...

This 'ere "Software Defined Programmable City" sounds a bit naff. They ain't programming 'artcliffe, that I tell ya.

We've barely got running water and electricity, though we do have cable internet.

Apple Watch: Wait a minute! This puny wrist-puter costs 17 GRAND?!

Re: Overpriced?

The technology in a Rolex is stable, it works and does what it is designed to do well. It also has the joy of not becoming outdated in 6 months time.

In 25 years time, with a bit of a refresh, like a new battery or a wind, the Rolex will carry on working as it was designed to do on day 1. You won't need to dig out an old iPhone and find the correct OS version to just boot it up. That is of course if you still have a compatible charging cable.

And the buggiest OS provider award goes to ... APPLE?

Re: Apples compared to Oranges

That's OK then. It's not like swathes of people click on the "Faster browsing!" button every time people hit up Google is it.

Once again, if the foundations are less than desirable, no matter how good or bad the applications running on top are, it's still Swiss cheese.

Re: Apples compared to Oranges

You can choose your browser but you are stuck with the OS.

Foundations built upon sand as the old fable goes.

Superfish: Lenovo ditches adware, but that doesn't fix SSL megavuln – researcher

Re: @Halverflake

Fair Comment. I can see that he played devils advocate but, to me at least, came across as smarmy.

And +1 for you on the everything has NSA in it, hence why I caved and did my tin foil hat moment. It seemed fashionable.

@Halverflake

So, making the laptops vulnerable and undesirable is a valid way to move the negative margins into the positive? That is, of course, until it all goes boom and the backlash hits.

That has to be up their with other historic pathetic excuse making.

And now for the tin foil hat moment:

Is it the Ads that are making them the money that takes the margins into the black, or is it the back pocket NSA (or disliked agency/country of choice) funding to gimp the machines security that lines the pockets.

Still, bad form. I've never trusted pre-installed bloatware (and thusly removed it) and now I'm vindicated more than ever.

Probably a fair number of commenters here feeling the same.

Is it humanly possible to watch Gigli and Battlefield Earth back-to-back?

RoboGeisha

We had this phase of movie nights where we would put the CD case in a bag and one would be pulled out at random to watch... this was constantly sabotaged with such moves as RoboGeisha and other gems like Megashark vs ****

Never mind those touch apps, full Office 2016 is coming this year

Can I have an option to change Excel back to its previous function of multiple sheets opening in a single instance?

Database applications built around an Excel front end have a hella time with opening several copies of Excel simultaneously.

And maybe, juuuust maybe, can we not continue the trend of each new version of office being bloated and vastly slower than the previous version?

And stop the need to run a repair of the software a clockwork like 4 weeks after install due to buggyness?

I should stop now as I could go on with this for hours.

Oh, did they ever fix the fact that Excel 2013 CAN'T open a spreadsheet with 2 passworded pages?

Or that Word falls over to OLE errors when importing text that has a character from Word 2003?

..........

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

Oh why did I not have that add on in my life before. Thank you.

Reg, add a theme switch.

Gah

Me no likey.

Moving my mouse from browser tabs inflicts upon me a horrendous barrage of pop up menus.

You've reduced the site design to something lesser than the Facebook clickbait spam pages.

I don't want to be mean to the guys who've "worked hard" on this design, but fire them, now.

EU law bods: New eCall crash system WON'T TRACK YOU. Really

Hit a harsh speed bump and get an ambulance chasing you!

Kaspersky: That 2 years we took to warn you about Regin ? We had good reason

Issue is, if they announce to the world what they have, by it's nature they've told those they're investigating to change their game.

SpaceX breaks ground on first commercial spaceport in Texas

OK, So it's in Texas...

So when do we get our space cowboys and wild west style frontier bases on Mars?

Jesus phone RAISED from DEAD. Watch iPhone 6 get BURNED, DROWNED, SMASHED

Re: Personally

I broke 3... in a week. Roofing will destroy most things.

iPhone 6: The final straw for Android makers eaten alive by the data parasite?

Re: Premium Android

Even if Sony went 1 high end phone a year I would be happy.

They do seem to have a strong high end line up with the current Z2 (which I have and also adore) but the Z3 seem to have nailed it and the Z3 mini is the perfect form factor tied with features that could steal a few unhappy (with the new sizes) iPhone users.

I would love a more stock Android experience across the range though. One of the reason I have the Z2 over the S5 is due to being less bloatware. (As well as being a sexy beast...)

Apple's SNEAKY plan: COPY ANDROID. Hello iPhone 6, Watch

All this talk

All this talk of battery life, I just sit here with 70% left on my Z2 since taking of charge yesterday morning. Considering I give it fairly high use with web browsing and music it's doing pretty damned well.

Just in the habit of charging it every other day now, still with around 30% left. Don't even run Stamina Mode. Steam is all all the time too. Can't miss a sale.....!

TV techies proudly display their MIGHTY BENDERS in Berlin

Re: Am I missing the point here?

Not that far really, I have a 50" and It's mainly for films and streamed (via steam) gaming.

I'm approx 3.5/4meters from the screen and it is all viewable. Comes into it own in that I can see what's on screen while eating at the dinner table.

Virgin Media hit by MORE YouTube buffering glitches

Soundcloud

I've had a few streaming issues the last few nights at home, related?

Apple, FBI: YES we're, er, looking into the NAKED CELEBRITY PICS. Aren't you?

Nuggets

There is a screenshot doing the rounds of someone explaining that what was released and how it was gathered.

No tech details but there is a small group of people who hack and share amongst themselves, only way to get into the group is to buy in with fresh photos.

Seems one member decided he was bored and could make a few quid of the pictures.

Authenticity of claims not confirmed, but they do fit with the range of ages to the pictures and how so many were gathered.

The Register to boldly go where no Vulture has gone before: The Weekend

Rack of the week

I fully recommend a Rack Of The Week.

We can start on the first Sunday with a nice gander at a Dell Blade server. The Cooler the better.

There is a subset amongst IT types that love to share their "set-ups" and hovels. Some being cool, others for the horridness of them.

LulzSec supergrass Sabu led attacks against Turkey – report

Re: Release

I can understand the kneejerk reaction from the white knights thumbing me down but this is effectively a highly complex honey-trap for those arrested.

I don't support hackers doing illegal acts but to be arrested for the crimes of acting as a government proxy should at least have some court time to bring the FBI in to line.

But hey, some people see "hacker" and have a prolapse. If you want them arrested and jailed, do it for the crimes they committed by their own violation.

Release

Anyone that has been arrested for hacking while being directed by the FBI should be released. Or they should at least bring a case against the FBI

Online tat bazaar eBay coughs to YET ANOTHER outage

Others Too

Not just Ebay, EVE Online has been down too. Many comments point to a 3rd party issue around the London area.

Future Apple gumble could lock fanbois out of their own devices

So, location based behaviour? Am I imagining my Xperia Z2 detecting my location and setting various apps appropriately? I get to work and it turns the wifi on and sets itself to silent. I leave to go home and it sets itself to ring normally, turns wifi off to save battery and tells me my journey time based on my location. The security is an extension to this, not an entirely new feature..

Apple SOLDERS memory into new 'budget' iMac

Repairs

Well, pray you don't get a dodgy ram stick.