Posts by sjsmoto

Why I just bought a MacBook Air instead of the new Pro

I was considering upgrading my Macbook Pro, and waited for the announcement. But it's unlikely now due to the steep price just to get to where I am today. I'll probably just get a new Mini and remote into it from my Toshiba. :)

Siri, clone yourself and dive into this Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone

I actually find Siri useful for adding things to reminders or grocery lists. I don't have to pick up the phone, I just tell it what to add to what list, when something comes to mind. Since there's less tapping involved in getting to a list and getting things entered, it's a positive in this regard.

Florida man ran $1.35m hack-and-spam racket with 50m-plus addresses

Someone needs to knock on his jail cell every 15 minutes asking if he'd like to buy Viagra or cigarettes. 24 hours a day. 365 days a year. For 25 years.

Smoking hole found on Mars where Schiaparelli lander, er, 'landed'

For the IT angle, perhaps they'll name this new crater Foo.

WD gives My Passport spinning rust drives a lick of paint

What, no "Hey Rusty!" voice command system and 3-D goggles? How disappointing for the kids.

One-way Martian ticket: Pick passengers for Musk's first Mars pioneer squad

I think sending people to live on Mars is a totally stupid idea. The moon is only about 3 days away - 3 DAYS! Set up a permanent base there, then have commercial flights. (Next thing you know, you'll have a Starbucks.)

But I know, Mars is sexier. Instead of having to wear a space suit all of the time you're walking about on gray powder, you can be excited walking around in a space suit on red powder.

Yahoo! Mail! down?! Great! timing! as! more! US! senators! dogpile! hacked! web! giant!

Definitely pot/kettle here, seeing how the personal information for all US gov't federal employees was hacked recently.

Alleged buggy software wrongly flunks wannabe lawyers from bar exam. What happened next won't shock you

I hope the all of the newly minted lawyers get exactly what their future clients would get - one coupon good for $10 off any ILG test.

Google plots cop detection for auto autos

red and blue lights

Good luck making it down a street with blinking Christmas lights.

Stop lights, sunsets, junctions are tough work for Google's robo-cars

I might trust a self-driving car after Google's board of directors have been using them exclusively for their transportation for a year.

Microsoft buys Genee's lamp, tips it into Office 365, smashes lamp

Re: Hmmm

Right! At what point is the computer going to do the work instead of us having to remember which bloody "intelligent assistant" to use.

Bill Gates cooks up poultry recipe for Africans' paltry existence

What an idiot.

Would we want to regenerate brains of patients who are clinically dead?

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

Great.

Google kneecaps payday loan ads

"The internet should not be a place that profits from your weaknesses," said Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of the Center for Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law school.

The .XXX domain laughs at you.

Game over for Xbox 360

I have a 360. I don't use it much anymore, so it's probably my last game console. If I may rant: I enjoy video games but I want them to have a "stupid easy" mode. Sometimes I'm just not into mashing buttons until my thumbs fall off. I also want to be able to stop and save the game at any point - not just at preset save points. I understand this is a game issue rather than a console issue, but it should be standard by now. Otherwise it's been fun, and the 360 ran fine.

Bay Area man forced out of his $400 box home

But it's funny how cities will throw some regulations out the window, like they do with taxi laws for Uber.

What to call a £200m 15,000-tonne polar vessel – how about Boaty McBoatface?

I'd be disappointed if a British polar vessel wasn't named RSS Bangers and Mash.

ADpocalypse NOW: Three raises the stakes

Ads are annoying, and I'd love to see a change (like plain-text ads only), but I'd call them voluntary in many cases - you voluntarily visit a page or use a game knowing there will be ads (like on The Reg). What I'd prefer to be gotten rid of first is spam email. No one asks for it or wants it, and it eats time getting rid of it.

Brit censors endure 10-hour Paint Drying movie epic

Bah, it's nothing like the book.

Adblock Plus blocked from attending ad industry talkfest

I use ScriptSafe, which kills most things, then the rest goes through AdBlock.

I never click on ads, you never know which one has crap behind it.

Periodic table enjoys elemental engorgement

Moeron, Larryium, Curlygen, and Shempton.

FAA introduces unworkable drone registration rules in time for Christmas

Bet you read this with FAA's voice of faux authority in your head.

"Based on SCIIII-en-TIFIC CAAAL-cu-LAAAA-tions"

Free HTTPS certs for all – Let's Encrypt opens doors to world+dog

But what about that https patent troll?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/01/cryptopeak_sues_/

Prison telco recorded inmates' lawyer-client calls, hack reveals

They should at least be forced to change their name to Insecurus.

At Microsoft 'unlimited cloud storage' really means one terabyte

Eventually they'll say 640K is enough for anyone.

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

What happened after WebMD was hacked with new entry "How to cure Asshat".

(I live in the US, no free drives for me.)

Amazon Echo: We put Jeff Bezos' always-on microphone-speaker in a Reg family home

Some improvements that would nudge it into my purchase vision:

Ability to have it contact 911. If something happens and you can't reach the phone, just being able to say "911" to have it get help would be great.

Ability to have it listen while you're away for "odd" sounds. Like if you're at work and it hears the door opening and you know no one's at home, it would let you know there's something you might want to check at home.

In a related feature, have the ability to turn on the mic and listen when you're not at home.

US Navy grabs old-fashioned sextants amid hacker attack fears

Having read Ernest Shackleton's lifeboat journey from Elephant Island to a 720-nautical-mile-distant South Georgia, I'm mightily impressed with what the "old ways" of navigation can do for you.

Adblock farms out acceptable ad policy to independent reviewer

I use AdBlock in Chrome, plus ScriptSafe. With ScriptSafe you can whitelist domains and/or subdomains, so it cuts out whatever AdBlock might let through that you don't want.

Angry devs hit out at JetBrains over shift to subscription pricing

Why does it always have to be a total change up? Can't software companies market a canned, independent product with updates for a year, AND offer ongoing buffet subscriptions for people who want those? Then after a couple of years check the stats to see where the money comes from?

United Nations pledges to get everyone online… by 2030

You have reached the United Nations. Your internet service is important to us. To reach a help desk representative, press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, 3 for French... (two hours later...) or 7299 for Esperanto.

Get whimsical and win a Western Digital Black 6TB hard drive

Heh. "Darwin" is trending.

I've flung better things than this.

Russian billionaire: GET me the ALIENS ON THE PHONE. Do it NOW

We'll respond to the million-year-old greeting from the Qqq's and by the time it gets back to them they'll say "Stupid! We are the Zzz's, how dare you compare us to cavemen!"

Microsoft to Windows 10 consumers: You'll get updates LIKE IT or NOT

I'm sure this makes sense in Microsoftland where everyone has fiber optic to their homes. Sorry, but I only have DSL and I like to coordinate when something is hogging bandwidth so everything doesn't slow to a crawl.

New Horizons mission to Pluto prepares for terrifying silence on Tuesday AM

Will a mere "congrats" do? I mean, it's like a quarterback throwing a ball for a receiver to catch 9 years later, and still waiting a few more hours to hear back "I've got it!" Incredible.

KFC takes legal axe to eight-legged mutant chicken claims

So: Mutant chicken bad, reanimating dead Colonel Sanders good.

Sprint and Verizon to pay $158 MILLION over bogus 'cramming' fees

Great, can't wait for my refund check for $1 after the lawyers get their full share.

Best Buy bites down hard on Apple Pay fruity bonking deal

I have no interest in electronic pay gizmos. But I would show an interest if, on checkout, one would let me know there was a two-for-one on an item I'm buying so go get another one, or presto here's a coupon for this other thing so it's now 10% cheaper.

$17,000 Apple Watch: Pointless bling, right? HA! You're WRONG

This all reminds me of the $1,000 "I Am Rich" iPhone app.

http://most-expensive.com/iphone-app

Can't pay $349 for an Apple Watch? Get a Chinese knockoff for less than $50

I bet if you ask it about the June 4 Massacre it'll have no answer.

Microsoft wants LAMP for wireless mobe charger

Do I smell bbq?

So the Kinect spots a phone on a table and begins to send light rays in its direction. You pick up the phone and the Kinect follows it. You turn around and the Kinect detects sub-par reception. It then increases transmission so the waves can make it through the obstruction - which happens to be your head.

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

Except for the large and often unnecessary image at the top of articles, I have no complaints for your free site that I get tons out of for free.

'We're having panic attacks' ... Sony staff and families now threatened in emails

Re: having panic attacks

Sony is a member of RIAA [1] and makes up 22% of their board of directors [2]. I can't imagine them NOT having a say in that behavior.

[1] http://www.riaa.com/aboutus.php?content_selector=aboutus_members&f=s

[2] http://www.riaa.com/aboutus.php?content_selector=who_we_are_board

Oh, and please search for the word Sony on this page:

https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later

having panic attacks

Boo hoo. I'm sure the grandmas and preteens sued for thousands of dollars by RIAA were also having panic attacks but the likes of Sony didn't care, so I'm not about to care what happens to them.

How HAPPY am I on a scale of 1 to 10? Where do I click PISSED OFF?

Surveys. I hate ones that force you to choose between two options, neither of which I want. "But what if you *had* to choose one?" is usually the asker's response, to which I say "ok, both then."

Apple patents NEVERSMASH iPHONE for fumbling fondlers

Ah - a moggy motor!

Jony Ive: Apple isn't here to make money. And students shouldn't use computers so much

> Ive also said that bad design was "offensive",

Would he call a Macbook with logic board failures a bad design?

Inflatables in SPAAACE! ISS 'nauts to enjoy bouncy castle spaceship

What a totally odd, Sci-Fi looking web site they have. They might as well have put an ad in a comic book, next to the one for x-ray glasses.