Posts by Sheep!

Game of Moans: Sky coughs to BORKED set top box BALLS-UP

Funnily enough the latest update seems to have fixed a problem that's beset my Sky box for the last couple of years (notably since it ran out of warranty) in that if I'm recording 2 programs and watch a third, any pausing, fast forwarding or even trying to back out to the menu causes the whole box to hang. It did recently lose all the future series records but a reboot solved that and I've had no problems with it since and now seem able to record 2 programs while watching a third with no problem again.

Hang on a second – Time Lords have added one to 2015

"before shitting code into production"

That made me chuckle.

Elite:Dangerous goes TITSUP

"If you don't like it, don't read it."

Can we expect that to be replacing the "Biting the hand that feeds IT" splash any time soon? Also, how can we know we don't like/agree with an article until we've read it, or are you suggesting to your readership that if they find one article they disagree with they should just stop reading the Reg altogether? Dangerous statement to make that.

No cellphones in cells, you slag! UK.gov moots prison mobe zap law

Re: Er, prison... @Khaptain

I don't think the idea of punishment is to give you the option of the one you find more preferable.

Scrooges rejoice! Beancounters find formula for perfect Xmas party

It's all a bit crackers...

This is your cracker, whatever comes out (whomever gets the big end) is yours, and this is your cracker, same rules apply. One cracker per person is all that's needed. How is this difficult? Do people REALLY get competitive over xmas crackers and want to keep everything they "win"? Just how sad an xmas are you going to have? I'm 44 now and I have never once been in an environment where the pulling of crackers was competitive, quite sure I wouldn't want to be around people for whom it was either - "No you can't have a Christmas hat because I won them both", how sad.

Android gives Google a search monopoly? Not so fast, says judge

"argue that most consumers don't know how to change the default settings on their phones, or can't be bothered, which unfairly tips the balance in Google's favor"

So the argument is essentially that it's the public's fault for being lazy and stupid but Google must be sued? If you gave people the choice when Android first booted up I would think most people would choose to use Google anyway, the ones who don't want to use Google are usually tech-savvy enough to change their search settings anyway (hence they know they want to use a different search engine). This is a nonsense case.

Post Office: Here's £100m, Computacenter. Now get us up to date, for pity's sake

ATOS? Really? The company that single-handedly tried to destroy the lives of those people claiming sickness benefit will now be involved in the business that deals with paying them? What a kick in the nuts for sick people that is.

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Solar sandwich cooks at 40 per cent efficiency

Re: Photovoltaics is a one time, one way molecular erosion PARLOR TRICK !

"Faux Science Slayer" - so you are a fake at slaying science? NOW your post makes sense!

GCHQ boffins quantum-busted its own crypto primitive

"The quantum algorithm they describe would work by creating a quantum fingerprint of the lattice Soliloquy creates; “discreteise and bound” the control space needed; and run a quantum Fourier transform over that control space, iteratively to get lots of samples approximating the lattice."

You lost me at "The.."

Legendary Brit physicist Stephen Hawking gets full Intel comms refresh

Re: Intel inside?

"What operating system are you using?"

"Windows Vista"

"We're all going to die!"

Ten excellent FREE PC apps to brighten your Windows

Excellent round up and now I will have to check PeaZip out having sworn by 7-Zip for many a year!

What's MISSING on Amazon Fire Phone... and why it WON'T set the world alight

Re: Amazon should lower the price

Agreed, this is the approach everyone (including El Reg for a while) thought that MS was going to take with the Surface. They didn't, they priced it to compete with the iPad and then had to take a write-down of $1 billion on it. I've got a Kindle Fire (mother bought one thinking it was a Kindle e-reader, so I got her a paperwhite and took the Fire on) and rooted it and it's an "ok" tablet, seriously lacking in features (no GPS, no bluetooth, no expansion, crap on-board storage but with an ok screen and reasonable speed as long as you don't have an app or 2 running in the background) but the Amazon app store is pretty awful, I crowbarred the Play store on there but it's very hit-and miss as to what apps think they're compatible, side-loading is also seems quite hit-and-miss. Unfortunately this review seems to confirm that that the Fire-phone is much like the Fire tablet - overpriced and not containing enough value even to those who've invested heavily in Amazon wares.

Suffering satellites! Goonhilly's ARTHUR REBORN for SPAAAACE

Interestingly if you'd arrived 30 years earlier they would probably still have been listening to Steve Wright but on Radio 1.

Bittorrent wants to sink Dropbox with Sync 2.0

I took the plunge and purchased Office 365. Now I pay £7.99 a month for 1Tb (soon to be unlimited by all accounts) of cloud storage and at that price it feels like I'm getting Office 365 thrown in for free. Where is the incentive to use Dropbox, Google, Sync or any of the others who don't appear to be able to provide a cloud storage offering anywhere near that good and get the Offfice suite thrown in for good measure?

Fujitsu CTO: We'll be 3D-printing tech execs in 15 years

Ejector seats. Problem solved.

Well you have a few problems to solve with that, not least landing and overhead cables/tunnels, but it's probably better than fiery death at the bottom of a cliff.

The Nokia ENIGMA THING and its SECRET, TERRIBLE purpose

"breathe new life into its moribund Symbian OS...."

And for their next trick they will release a new Betamax video recorder and HD DVD player...

Virgin Media struck dumb by NATIONWIDE packet loss balls-up

"I can get to Bing" - well I'd definitely demand compo for that!

Cheap blow-up baby incubator bags James Dyson award

Re: Good and bad

Actually if you follow the Gates foundation research, one of the things to come out of their vaccination programs is the discovery that when infant mortality rates are slashed through better healthcare population rates actually FALL as people have less children (because they're not constantly losing the ones they've already had and trying to play the numbers game in the hoppe at least a couple of them survive) so this invention may actually help to reduce the population as well as saving lives. Of course, you would have to have bothered to find out the actual situation instead of just making fatuous statements that have no basis in fact to have known this.....

Re: TAX DODGER!....excuse me...TAX EXILE!

Yeah sod him and his funding inventions that help young inventors to provide solutions that could save thousands of lives, what an utter bastard.

PRE-SPLINTERED Symantec's Q2 revenue slips, net profit rises

Symantec is the most dreadful software company in existence, they've dragged Peter Norton's name through the mud by attaching it to all their awful software and have ruined many a good machine with their "utilities" (read: scareware, bloatware and antivirus that's worse than a virus). The idea that they are making a profit at all is offensive to anyone who's ever had to battle to remove the rubbish from a computer.

Microsoft's TV product placement horror: CNN mistakes Surface tabs for iPAD stands

I can't wait to hear Doctor Who cry:

"To the Cloud!"

Whomp, there it is: Seagate demos Kinetic disk drive

"various respectable businesses like AOL...."

That's the first time I've seen those words strung together in a sentence...

Windows 8 or nowt: Consumer Win 7 fans are out of luck

MS used to be able to rely on inertia to keep the public buying its OS (everyone knows Windows and as the next iteration is broadly similar it's fairly easy to get to grips with so why bother trying to learn a new OS), but now they've had a chance to get used to using Android (or even iOS) there will be a growing number of consumers that are likely to say to hell with it and try out the free Linux alternative, or even finally make the switch to Mac given the huge difference with 8.x. I suspect Windows will be the OS of choice for most businesses for the forseeable future but MS are in danger of losing the consumer desktop market completely unless they get it right with 10.

You! AT&T! The only thing 'unlimited' about you is your CHEEK, growl feds

Re: The problem I saw...

We had a similar experience, BT rang my girlfirend and offered her an "unlimited" account for £7.50 a month rising to £15 a month after 3 months, she passed the phone to me, I made the sales guy repeat to me that it was an unlimited account and so she agreed and signed up. Unfortunately, my girlfriend was one of those people who never looked at her bank statements so for nearly 10 months didn't realise BT were taking between £100-£150 a MONTH for our internet usage (she definitely looks at her statements regularly now!). Yes it's dumbassery for not checking your statement, but I made the guy confirm it was an unlimited account and then we were put on a 10Gb account and charged per Mb over the top, and once we realised what was happening BT switched her to a different account but refused any idea of refunding her any of the over £1k they had overcharged her through the year. Safe to say we will never go with BT again.

Amazon sells Fire Phone in UK ... on CONTRACT

El Reg does seem to be about a month late to the party with this "news"....

Big Content outs piracy hotbeds: São Paulo, Beijing ... TORONTO?

"The Motion Picture Ass. of America"

Bravo!

Speaking in Tech: Too fat for MARS!

Publicly admitting you don't like Doctor Who is the equivilent of publicly admitting your opinion should not be listened to about anything, ever.

Google tosses cash wad into $500m Magic Leap tin – report

I don't know what "cinematic reality" is but for some reason I want it already.

Xiaomi boss snaps back at Jony Ive's iPhone rival 'theft' swipe

“I think it’s really straightforward: it really is theft, and it’s lazy and I don’t think it’s OK at all,” - or in other words pretty much everything Apple has ever made.

Three UK fined £250,000 for customer complaints cockup

I made a complaint against Three that was reported in El Reg, I've had cause to make a couple of complaints about them actually as has my girlfriend however they have all been to do with the sales department rather than the operation of their network once on it. There seems to be a total disconnect between their pre-sales team and their post-sales support, the former has been dreadful and guilty of outright lying while I've never had a problem with their service or support once contracts have been agreed and are in use. I'm on my third or fourth contract renewal with them now and wouldn't change to another operator as Three have far and away been the best in terms of contracts and coverage in my area, but it can be a complete nightmare trying to go from one contract to another.

Le whoops! Microsoft France boss blows lid off 'Windows 9' event

If it's not "Windows 7 with touch overlay" they can piss off.

EU dangles $6bn threat over Google in endless search abuse probe

"Microsoft was investigated [for] 16 years..."

So shouldn't you be better at it by now?

4K-ing excellent TV is on its way ... in its own sweet time, natch

4K porn in 3D will be a market driver no doubt.....

CNN 'tech analyst' on NAKED CELEBS: WHO IS this mystery '4chan' PERSON?

CNN is nothing more than airport lounge music.

Women-only town seeks men

I'd go but given there are only 600 of them it wouldn't be fair leaving none for the other men.

Microsoft takes on Chromebook with low-cost Windows laptops

"Windows 8.1 with Bing" - if anything is going to ensure punters avoid it like the plague that's it.

'iPhone 6' survives FRENZIED STABBING. Truly, it is the JESUS Phone

This is a reasonable test, anyone vaguely human will end up trying to stab their iPhone after about half an hour of owning it.

You 'posted' a 'letter' with Outlook... No, NO, that's the MONITOR

This is a conversation I had with a user 2 days ago:

Me: "Do you mind if I connect to your computer to help you resolve this?"

User: "No please do"

Me: I'm having trouble connecting to you, can I confirm your computer ID please? Ok thank you. Still can't connect and can't ping you either."

*several seconds pass while I think about it*

Me: "Your computer is switched on isn't it?"

User: "No, would you like me to switch it on?"

Me: "Launch the flying attack monkeys!"

Apple fanbois to talk at the iWatch, INSPECTOR GADGET style – report

Excellent, a new way to spot and avoid Fanbois :)

BOOM BOOM: Dixons fires the human cannon

Given that DSG owns Dixons, Curry's and PC World and now there is no competition any more from Comet, I think their demise will be a long time coming.

ROBO-SNOWDEN: Iraq, the internet – two places the US govt invaded that weren't a threat

Re: Stay tuned...

"I give up... this site used to be for technically minded people. Now it's no better than the DailyMail, with readers of the same mentality."

Given that the comments thus far down the list seem to broadly reflect the exact opposite of what your saying that would appear to be just nonsense. Not to mention there have ben plenty of peop;le who've been saying that stuff on here for years, to a mixed reaction. Since the Snowden revalations made it public and pretty irrefutable, the reaction in El Reg's comments have been broadly positive and accepting of the reality of the situation. Is it possible that you've had your "inside knowledge" thunder stolen and you're hurting about it?

Huawei: We'll sell a dual-boot Android, Windows 8 smartphone because, well, isn't it obvious?

WinDroid

Why don't MS just virtualise Android within Windows for a true WinDroid experience so you can call Android up without having to completely reboot the system, share files seemlessly between the two and then the whole idea of migrating from Android to Windows becomes a much more realistic one. Who the hell is going to want to completey reboot their phone every time they want to switch between systems? Rather than taking Android on, they can simply incorporate it into their ecosystem and then the user can have the best of both worlds and those who have invested heavily in Android and apps can move to the Windows system without fear of losing that investment.

Dell charges £16 TO INSTALL FIREFOX on PCs – Mozilla is miffed

It may come as some surprise but Dell are a business that is trying to make money and like any other business they charge to install software. It doesn't matter that the software itself is free, if you're not technically competent to install something as simple as FireFox and you don't have any friends to do it then I would suggest paying a reputable company to install it properly for you is the only sensible option.

Steve Ballmer: Thanks to me, Microsoft screwed up a decade in phones

Steve Ballmer's greatest regret may be the phone biz, but Microsoft's greatest regret is Steve Ballmer!

Jobless mum claims Spanish councillor told her to 'go on the game'

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But... you work in IT... Why aren't we RICH?

I had never heard of it until the Facebook announcement so i took to Facebook to ask if any of my friends used it and a suprising amount did, most of them seemed to like it, but no one could tell me why they used it instead of Skype and they were all surprised to learn that the app slurped their phone book.

Apple slams shut TEN code execution holes in QuickTime on Windows

Who the hell still uses QP? I though that died out years ago?

The UNTOLD SUCCESS of Microsoft: Yes, it's Windows 7

The majority of those licences are because manufacturers are forcing Win 8.x on punters buying new machines. I've had several people buy new laptops recently that don't have touchscreens and have asked me to remove it and put Win 7 on instead (which is a pain in the arse as several of them don't have Win 7 drivers for the wireless). Give people an option (as HP are now doing) and most would choose Win 7 on their laptop and certainly on their main pc, and yes I've been running Win 8.x for 18 months on my touchscreen notebook so I am fully conversant with the system and how abysmal it is. I'v tried to love Win 8.x, some of it even makes a lot of sense on a touchscreen device but it really is the bastard hybrid son of a real OS and a tablet OS and it fulfills neither function to proper satisfaction.

Plan 9 moves out from Lucent licence space

Shouldn't this be in software rather than science?