Posts by Marcus Fil

Cloud computing is FAIL and here’s why

Re: Blame Idiots, not the Cloud

Everyone employs idiots - we all do idiotic things at inappropriate times. The problem with the Cloud model is the "force multiplying" effect it has on idiotic actions. One cock up, a million unwanted pregnancies. If I spill coffee on my laptop its me who is suffering a single local consequence - if Adobe mis-fiddle with their authentication database it is thousands around the world suddenly, instantly, being unproductive. Worse yet, Adobe are charging you, the lucky customer, on monthly basis to be put in 'that' position. Now I know Universal and Busch Gardens charge people to be placed in seeming peril and a good slug of adrenalin it is too. However, there is enough added adrenalin in running a business without the top-up of outsourcing to idiots beyond your immediate control. Me, I trust Adobe, or indeed any other Cloud based service, about as far as I can piss. When the T&Cs say we get a £1 a second for unavailability and get to watch the public execution of the hapless minion responsible I may reconsider.

Big Yellow loses its head... again: Symantec, we need to talk

Re: PGP

Oh how true. Take a product the world used and admired and make it almost impossible to buy and expensive to own. I have this very week told Symantec's third party thugs that I will no longer be paying protection money (i.e. renewing service agreement). I have migrated to more reliable and affordable alternatives. This is what happens when companies have no plan other than to get bigger and bleed existing customers dry.Savvy people find new suppliers. JMVAO

Steve Jobs statue: Ones and ohs and OH NOES – it's POINTING at us

How to say 'Bit of a prick'

..without actually writing it?

Tell us we're all doomed, MPs beg climate scientists

What?

Asking the experts to be more assertive in their arguments because politicians struggle to sell policy decisions on inconclusive or contradictory evidence*; I can't really see anything wrong with that. Just sex up that dossier a bit. No, it will be alright. I'm sure it will end well and not add trillions more debt burden for no assured outcome. Its not like there is an historical precedent to the contrary is there?

*I would say 'shades of grey' here, but the phrase seems to have hijacked by the mummy pr0n brigade.

EYE-GASMIC: Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch with Retina Display

Further and further from the path

No Ethernet. No AR screen option. No upgrade path. No effin idea. No sale.

Looks like my three year old MBP - maxed out spec at purchase and then upgraded to 1 TB SSD after AppleCare lapsed - will be my last. I expect it will be a couple more years before I need to talk to some of my big ticket software vendors re cross-grade licences and return to the dark side. Or is it a bit brighter these days? Apple take note - look what complacency and stupidity can do for you. "Loyalty is something that should be earned, not given."

British spooks seize tech from Snowden journo's boyfriend at airport

Own goals

never help your promotion chances.

So next time you seek parliament's assent for draconian power pt.3, pt.5 ... you might just be invited to have sex and travel PROVIDED us sheeples in the UK voice our disquiet over this latest blatant abuse to our local MPs ASAP. As for you spooks - if you want this information then go get it in a spooky way rather than showing the world that intelligence gathering is increasingly both viciously and publicly inept. Anyone check inside Mr Miranda's watch clasp or behind his teeth for a microSD card btw.?

WAR ON PORN: UK flicks switch on 'I am a pervert' web filters

Prohibition?

To quote George Santayana "Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it"

To quote Adam Hills "Dicks"

Queen's Speech: 'Problem of matching IP addresses' to be probed

RE: I'm No Expert...

How far would the government go with this ..if reality didn't get in the way? How far the government will practicably get with this ..well, is a femtometre a valid unit of measure?

Adobe kills Creative Suite – all future features online only

Clouded judgement

So I run a fully licensed PS CS5 Extended under Snow Leopard Server via Parallels because some extremely expensive add-ons won't run in my fully licensed PC CS6 Extended under Mountain Lion. Sometimes I work in bunkers, sometimes in deserts, sometimes both. I haven't got time to *rse around wondering if and when my s/w wants to call mummy. FFS Adobe grow a brain or pass quietly into history.

Apple iPhone 5 review

Re: why did they move the headphone socket?

Because they are idiots? The only things that interest me about this phone are the better processor and 'a bit more' battery life. FFS I had an Ericsson mobile (Not Sony Eric..) that had a thirty day battery. I don't want slimmer, I want tougher and a screen that doesn't crack when my daughter fumbles it in the park. I want a phone that still sits in my enhanced GPS car cradle. 90%? in the wrong direction!

Door creaks and girl farts: computing in the real world

DEFINE PROGRESS

Yes, I was shouting. According to the dictionary on my SuperDrive equipped MBP (cmd C, cmd V):"advance or development toward a better, more complete, or more modern condition". Optional optical media then for those that have to move data across air gaps, because data sticks can't be trusted and wifi would set off alarms (no, really it would). I am taking to Apple to the small claims court for my son's less than durable MBA (cracked screen, of course). The measure of progress is that it replaced his ownership of an ageing PowerBook with a screen that had taken a direct hit from a 5.56 mm cartridge case fresh out of a brand new M4. Now the Geniuses at the 'Bar' (its a long counter, not an optic in sight, sadly) recommend customers buy nice translucent hard shells to protect the effete 'object d'art' that Apple call laptops. What is the point of making it so thin, light and shiny if I must add weight and bulk to aid its survival outside of its designer shipping box? I want a well engineered laptop that runs MacOS, Linux, Unix and Windows at push. Once upon a time Apple made them - until some lotus-eating aesthete decided he/she knew better.

Schoolteachers can't teach our kids to code, say engineers

Where do I start?

LINE 1: Drop the C.. people in the real world work in IT not ICT - unless you are teaching the kids how to build RF TX/RX and free space laser links you ain't in Comms.

LINE 2: The next t**cher to say a byte is 8 bits ...and leaves it at that... loses the gift of sight courtesy of my multi-tool. Know you history - KNOW YOUR SUBJECT!!

LINE 3: Data ARE not IS ...guard your vitals I still have my multi-tool out!

LINE 4: Oh sod it .. learn Chinese, this country is too far gone.

Binatone HomeSurf 7 Android tablet

All hail

the Chavblet

Latest military-research boon: Game interface to rule them all

I think, in all worrying seriousness,

DARPA has just proposed the evolution of the Dalek. Cue comments about stairs. Will they fund my application for a time travelling Police box?

App Store II: Steve Jobs sucks Mac's soul

Okay then

Who is going to be first to register the "The CrApp Store" for all those apps Apple doesn't like?

Seriously though people - stop and think: imagine a journalist suggesting that the only place to buy your pin-striped suit from now on was Primark. Might you consider that hype? Apple does not own my MBP nor does Primark own my body. I have choices and those choices remain going forward.

F*ck you, thunders disgruntled fanboi Apple user

because..

once you've gone Mac there is no going back

Apple's iPad - 'Will It Blend?'

No it won't

At least not without partial disassembly to remove the bits that don't. This kind of cheating means I won't be rushing out to buy a Blendtec for all my iPad blending needs. How many years of evolution has it taken to get to this?

Johnson refuses to intervene in McKinnon extradition

Maybe, just maybe

some higher authority in the USA has finally decided to acknowledge the elephant in the room and poor Gary is to be the catalyst? It stands to be such an audaciously smart move I am almost loathe to telegraph it. Except Gary, like others before him, is reduced to the role of hapless pawn. But to play such arrogant, paranoid, officious, self-righteous ****s so well is the, admittedly long overdue, play of a true genius. There is a reason that common sense has not intervened, one that the factotums of silence overlooked in their ceaseless quest for control; they are the unwitting agents of their own impending redundancies. The world will be a very different place at the end of this.

Daydreaming? You're actually solving complex problems

or as T.E. Lawrence said...

“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”

Conservative US shock-jock to sue Wacky Jacqui

Not you again Cleese?

It is as if the Monty Python team are writing Jacqui's script. Is she perchance secretly on the Tory payroll - render Labour unelectable for the next 100 years?

El Reg suffers identity crisis

I get so confused

Divamag, El Reg - I get so confused. Maybe we are all just lesbians inside - nice beaches, friendly people, the only true petrified forest in the whole world.

Abby Winters for Prime Minister.

Minister trashes ex-spook chief's liberty warning

George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'

Seen by most people as a vicious indictment of a surveillance obsessed totalitarian state.

Seen by NuLabour as a bloody manual.

P.S. El Reg - please hurry up with that 'V' icon.

Windows 7 borrows from OS X, avoids Vista

@Webster Freaky

Back to the bridge. Billy is expecting you. x

Top Tory resigns on principle over 42 days bill

Unglücklich das Land, das Helden nötig hat!

Overslept did we people? that aroma is roasted Arabica

Possession of extreme porn to become criminal offence

AQ or just loons

I thought we were trying to keep Al Qaeda out of the UK. Sadly, it appears we elected them to parliament. How soon now before the compulsory M&S burka? Or how soon before 'New Labour' realise that legislating against the gravitational pull of the moon does not actually stop the tide coming in? So give the Police buckets and more overtime, better yet declare an 'initiative', appoint a tide csar, set a tide turning performance target and allocate special funding - only to be pulled when a focus group/the Sun newspaper tells you people are more concerned about the stars twinkling. Gordon Brown et al ..get help, get a life, get out, before you make the United Kingdom the laughing stock of the civilised world.