Posts by Sebastian A

Hello! Still here! Surface 2! Way better than iPad! says slightly desperate Microsoft

Smells like shill in here...

From both sides. Anyone else picking up that distinctive odour of money and bullshit?

I remember when...

I miss the days when advertising focused on telling consumers about the product. Now it's all about being deliberately misleading or rubbishing the competition.

Macy's: Now with Apple's Minority Report ads system that TRACKS your iPHONE

Re: Discounts

No? OK we'll ask again later.

Oh sorry that's YouTube. My bad.

BAFFLING power cockup halts NASA's nuclear Mars tank Curiosity

Re: Call AAA...

They'll need to quickly set up the AAM then, so they can call it for a tow. The Automobile Association of *America* might consider this outside their callout zone.

Microsoft: Play hookey on Xbox One day - chug a dose of ZOMBIE FLU

So Microsoft's marketing team

still don't believe that women play games?

edit: Nevermind. Looks like that's the default form and it gives options to change various things such as the affliction being suffered and the sex of the patient.

But yes, it feels very forced and certainly makes me think no better of the X-Bone or MS in general.

MY EYES! Earth engulfed by BRIGHTEST EVER killer gamma-ray burst

Daaaang

"We normally detect GRBs at great distance, meaning they usually appear quite faint," study co-author Paul O'Brien, an astronomer at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "In this case, the burst happened only a quarter of the way across the universe — meaning it was very bright."

Thanks Universe, for reminding me how insignificant we are at regular intervals.

First 3D map of Great Barrier Reef created – still can't find Nemo

I admit it...

I saw "Hook Reef" and "Line Reef" and went looking for "Sinker Reef".

Who wants 10TB of FREE cloud storage? Hands down if China is a deal breaker?

I'd give it a shot.

A secondary cloud backup facility wouldn't be a bad thing to have, especially since I'm encrypting everything client-side anyway.

Antidote for poisonous Aussie Red-Back Spider venom DOESN'T WORK

Sweet

Down to only 9,274 types of critters that'll kill ya. Straya mate! Bewdy!

Host Minecraft on Shard Gaming? Grab your data RIGHT NOW before it goes completely titsup

@busby

Or if the FBI decides it doesn't like what someone else looks like they might have been considering thinking about doing on a box at a hosting provider located in a building not too far over from the one you use, and they raid it and impound *everything*.

SECRET draft copyright treaty LEAKED: Meet the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Beep beep

The profits-before-people train is coming through. Get off the tracks or you'll become collateral damage.

When did governments stop representing us and start representing corporations *to* us? I don't recall a specific turning point but it certainly seems to be the default these days.

Feedly gets Greedly: Users suddenly HAVE TO create a Google+ account

Just wait

Soon you'll need to sign in to G+ just to do a google search. It's only a matter of time.

'It's a joke!' ... Bill Gates slams Mark Zuckerberg's web-for-the-poor dream

I wish

every rich person eventually matured into a person like Gates. He's come right over time. Respect.

Google's new Glass: Now with audio connection INSIDE the SKULL

If people who look that good

look that dorky wearing it, imagine the dorkpocalypse that'd happen if average plebs like us wore it.

Gasp! Twitter displays pictures in main feed as IPO looms

Re: request to el reg

As The Reg said, "the site just became a lot noisier." They weren't talking about twitter though.

Practise what you preach Reg. Hold yourself to a higher standard than other UK journalism organisations.

Mozilla goes where Google fears to tread with geolocation service

Think they're making it hard to opt out?

OF COURSE they are. The more people opt out the less value the data has. They don't want to give you the choice but they have to, but they can damn well make it a pain in the arse to do.

Google burns promise of 'no big banner ads'. Don't Be Evil next?

Alternatives

I've been using duckduckgo, ixquick and startpage depending on what the first one I think of is. Haven't voluntarily given google any more ammo to use against me in a while. I'm surprised they haven't requested that my house be TP'ed by the streetview drivers yet.

Mozilla CTO blasts WC3 plans to bless anti-piracy DRM tech in HTML5

No surprises here

Bought and paid for, millions spent by the parties that stand to gain the most. Parties that stand to lose (consumers) have no say. Welcome to the modern world of UltraCapitalism, where nothing is illegal and anything can be done, *if* you have the required funds.

Windows 8.1: A bit square, sure, but WAIT! It has a Start button

"Mail is usable now, the Weather app is still great, Internet Explorer mostly works fine for browsing"

"Usable" mail! IE "Mostly works fine"! And a weather app! Wow, high praise indeed! Have I used up all my exclamation marks yet!!! I'm trying!!!!!

All cool kids' phones run ALTERNATIVE alternative custom Android ROM

Speaks volumes...

Cyanogen doesn't (and isn't expected to) ever support my particular HTC, so another option is welcome to me. But I went to http://omnirom.org/devices/ and am presented with:

Devices

Not Found

Apologies, but no results were found for the requested archive. Perhaps searching will help find a related post.

NASA Juno probe HOWLS past Earth - and goes into HIBERNATION

Safe mode aye?

Reboot it and press F8, then pick "Start Windows Normally", that usually works for me. Can someone zip out to the console real quick? We have no ILO to it.

That 'DIAMOND SUPER EARTH' may actually be WORTHLESS ball of gas

Re: Pah.

Quit promoting your cheap Diamondillium, Wernstrom!

(As an aside, I think we need a Farnsworth icon. Would also be good for "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" moments.)

Study accuses media companies of cooking the books on piracy losses

"A study by the London School of Economics and Political Science has found that media companies are overstating their losses to piracy, that policies to cut off internet users for copyright infringement don't work, and finds that those industry sectors that have embraced digital sharing are growing as a result."

The study was also able to establish that the sky is blue, water is wet, and Miley Cyrus is batshit crazy.

NSA's Project Marina stores EVERYONE'S metadata for A YEAR

Shock horror

"Shady government agency answerable to nobody steps over bounds that it itself is supposed to enforce.". I've run out of surprised faces for this kind of stuff. It's just so predictable that I'm amazed anybody in the US government high up enough to know about it ever thought the NSA would control itself. I can only assume that everyone knew damn well that the NSA would run amok with power and they were merely hoping that the good it does exceeds the evil. How's that working out?

Cognitive Networks to bring creepy awareness to LG's smart TVs

We've got to face the facts that people who are aware of the insidious nature of this tech-creep are vastly outnumbered by the idiots are out there in TV land with one hand gripping a beer and the other down their pants. Those people will be the ones buying this junk and letting it dominate their lives. The minority who don't want this will simply be ignored and will grumble about their lack of privacy in dark corners of the interwebs.

Give it 5 years and your TV will automatically offer you pay-per-view porn when it senses someone in the room jerking it to True Blood or Game of Thrones or whatever softcore is playing at the time. Heck, it'd probably chuck up an advert for tissues or lotion over whatever you're watching right at the point of no return to make sure it's seared into your brain.

Fandroids blow $200,000 on secret PANIC BUTTON for their smartmobes

How

do you remove it?

EFF, Lessig battling copyright takedowns

Any publicity is good publicity?

They've certainly liberated me from my desire to ever buy anything from their label.

Google proposes eye-tracking ad-tracking

Just another reason

why I keep as much of my personal life out of Google's way as I can. I may be old fasioned but some of this stuff is just getting WAAAAAAY too creepy for me.

Microsoft SkyDrive, Outlook stricken by cloud outage

I'm sorry

I don't have anyone available to pay your bill at the moment...

Shadowrun Returns and Killzone: Mercenary ... old titles, new takes

Re: Typo watch

God that rankled. I immediately looked for the "send corrections" link but it's gone AWOL!

Larry Ellison: Google is ABSOLUTELY EVIL, but NSA is ESSENTIAL

You can vote the president away, and even senators and other reps. But they're not the people doing this kind of surveillance. They use it when they get in power, but throwing the democrats out and putting the republicans in will do exactly one tenth of sweet f-all to this kind of crap in the background. Both sides will happily use whatever the others have left in place. It's the same nasty motel, just with an "under new management" sign in the window to think that maybe, maybe it's better than it was last time you stayed there.

Hell, even if one side or the other commits to dismantle the NSA if you vote for them, there's nothing keeping them to that. They can simply break their promise and you still have to put up with them for another 4 years. Isn't that right Mr President? Nudge nudge wink wink Guantanamo...

New NSA tool exposed: XKeyscore sees 'nearly EVERYTHING you do online'

"Every search by an NSA analyst is fully auditable, to ensure that they are proper and within the law."

Auditable, sure. Actually audited? Doubt it.

Taiwanese boffins monitor mastication with Bluetooth tooth

Future versions could pick up swearing and apply a gentle reminder current straight into your face to discourage such behaviour. "Blue" tooth indeed. One step closer to the swearing fines from Demolition Man, except you can't get away from the monitoring without applying some pliers.

Malware-flingers do it back-to-front : scaM snaps, spans Macs

Re: I thought it was pretty obvious...

You mean the "on" button? :p

I told you I'd be back: Arnie set for another career revival

Re: Getting on a bit

Instead of "I'll be back.: it'll be "Ow, my back."

Big browser builders scramble to fix cross-platform zero-day flaw

Re: The best protection is...

It may cost nothing but that's only because it's not transferrable. Supplies are dwindling daily it seems, so if supply and demand were able to work its magic it would be worth a fortune.

US Army demos first robot Black Hawk helicopter

So by my calculations

An average brontosaurus was 461 feet long/tall?

ESO's nine-gigapixel galactic image has 84 MILLION stars

So....

Does anyone still think we're alone? How egocentric would that be.

Romanians plead guilty to credit card hack on US Subway shops

Dolan pls...

Needs a dolan icon. :(

Net access restrictions lifted for ‘Megaupload four’

Sneak preview of a Dotcom recording session

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60og9gwKh1o