Posts by Abacus

Australian Taxation Office named as party preventing IT contractors being paid

Re: We OBVIOUSLY are missing big chunks of the story. . .

Like I said to the other poster, get yourself another tax agent. Somebody who knows what they are doing, which you quite obviously don't.

Re: We OBVIOUSLY are missing big chunks of the story. . .

@ Truckle The Uncivil

"The Australian Tax Authorities charge interest on money they think you owe them. When it turns out they were wrong you still have to pay the interest even if it is more than the original (negated) sum."

No, they don't. Being an Australian tax agent with 30 years in the industry, I can assure you, and any other commentards reading this, that you are talking out of your arse. The overcharged interest is reversed, in full. If it isn't, get yourself another tax agent.

What is this bullsh*t, Google? Nexus phones starved of security fixes after just three years

Re: What is it with these "because of this I use a feature phone" people?

That's what I'm doing. I recently bought a couple of Telstra branded ZTE phones for the missus and I running 6.01. They're fast enough, work well enough, and cheap enough to toss after a year or so. Who cares if they don't receive any updates in that time? I don't.

What should password managers not do? Leak your passwords? What a great idea, LastPass

Fuck LogMeIn.

That is all.

ZTE laying off 3,000

Re: perhaps that explains

I'm currently using a Telstra branded ZTE Blade A475, bought about 6 months ago. Mid range specs, good screen, 4GX, does the job, all for A$150.00. Optus sell the same phone for A$99.00. So, they are still around.

The only glitch I have had with the phone was a battery overheat warning a few months ago. A quick reboot and I was good to go. For the price, I have no complaints.

Meg Whitman: HPE software's new owner? Kill a product? Never!

Re: Megtard strikes again

Re "Most Underachieving CEO", I would have thought Marissa Mayer had that sewn up?

WebOS, how I morn for thee...

*mourn...

Russian hackers got Trump elected? Yeah, let's take a close look at that, says Obama

Given that less than 60% of Americans could even be arsed to vote, the result of the election was more a game of chance than anything else. It was a matter of who could be bothered to vote where, and the effect of any external influence would be pretty much impossible to determine.

The only people who could be legitimately aggrieved by the election result are the people who actually voted, and did not vote for Trump. This is somewhere less than 30% of the entire US electorate.

As for the other 70%, they either got the result the wanted (ie: they voted for Trump) or they demonstrably didn't give a shit about the result, because,they didn't vote at all. Either way, they don't have any basis for complaint.

Is iOS 9.3 Apple's worst ever update? First it bricks iThings, now Safari is busted

Updated to 10.9.3 and haven't noticed any issues. Word through some of the forums is that the issues are only occurring on a very small number of phones that are running specific purchased apps that aren't playing nice.

It's not the end of the world.

Microsoft: We think your Office files should see other people

Re: Try doing that on Linux Mint!!

@J J Carter

Your comment makes no sense. There must be an interpretive gap between what you think you wrote and what you posted.

Also, why single out Mint?

LastPass in 2FA lock down after 'fessing up to phishing attack

KeePass Cross Platform Synching

My wife, my two teenagers, and myself are all LastPass Premium subscribers. This has worked very well until now as we move between our communal collection of Windows, OSX, IOS and Android devices.

Both myself and one teenager are computer literate and wouldn't have issues with the KeePass-Dropbox shuffle.

The other two household members aren't so hot. If they have to come to grips with KeePass AND Dropbox I can see them quickly giving up on the whole thing and going back to the bad old days of recording passwords in notebooks/address books/on the backs of envelopes.

Are their any decent self-synching options out there?

F**k LogMeIn

How long have LogMeIn owned LastPass?

After LMI's terrible screw-up of the LastPass interface I was going to ask how long would it be before LMI totally forked-up LastPass beyond all recognition.

That question is now redundant. It's Symantec /Norton (or Symantec/Xtree for those of my vintage) all over again.

So, LastPass is now, effectively, history.

What password manager to use now?

No votes

British drones target ISIS for the first time

Re: That headline, apologies to BOC

My True Confession is that these Screaming Diz Busters cut short the Career of Evil of a few ISIL Cagey Cretins and send them on Hot Rails to Hell.

Unfortunately, I have to wonder what Secret Treaties are being made by these Subhuman monsters so that they can extend their game of Dominance and Submission.

Bendy, but hangs loose too: Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 10-inch Android tab

This tablet makes it very hard to justify buying a Nexus 9, or am I missing something?

Bona-fide science: Which forms of unusual sex are mainstream?

Re: What a crock!

...(BTW you may not know it wasn't until 1992 that the World Health Organization removed its categorisation of homosexuality as a mental illness)...

Which was probably the right thing to do. There is no single cause of homosexuality.

Rather, there are three, which may or may not be mutually exclusive:

(a) Mental illness,

(b) A genetic defect, and

(c) Sexual perversion, akin to bestiality.

Whatever the categorisation, it takes a certain sick mind to want to shove your manhood into another bloke's colon. On a hypothetical "perversion" scale I expect it ranks somewhere alongside necrophilia.

Lenovo still ‘not satisfied’ despite MEGA PROFIT rise

Elitebooks

Bad keyboard, flexy chassis? What Elitebook would that be?

I've had every generation of Elitebook, across all sizes from 11.5" (2170p) to 15.6" (8460p) and while I"ll agree with any and all criticism of the screens, I have always found the keyboards and rigidity to be faultless.

Russians hear Tim Cook is gay, pull dead Steve Jobs' enormous erection

Re: This post has been deleted by a moderator

@HMB,dan1980

Bollocks.

Re: Something lost in the translation?

Normalising homosexuality = normalising sodomy.

Its the same thing. The Russians are 100% correct on this one.

Re: This post has been deleted by a moderator

It is the way of the modern pro-perversion world to protect the rights of deviant minorities to promote their points of view, whilst oppressing the rights of the moral majority to express their points of view.

In Australia things have been taken a step further, in that you cannot deny acsexual deviant employment, regardless of your personal objections to their lifestyle.

LG taps TSMC to bake its first-ever mobile chip

But it's all on the "new"

Brit/Aussie "nyoow" versus American "Noow".

Martha Lane Fox: Yeuch! The Internet is made by men?!?

Quotable Quotes by MLF

I'll start with "It's not easy being inside me any more"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2664227/Life-inside-crippled-body-web-millionaire-Martha-Lane-Fox.html

HGST polishes Ultrastar SSD whoppers, stuffs with denser Intel flash

Re: is it really enterprise grade

I believe the HGST drives are 15mm thick, not 5mm.

If they were 5mm thick they would physically fit the average laptop or notebook just fine.

That's not to say they would actually be usable. There aren't too many laptops or notebooks out there with SAS backplanes.

Price cuts, new features coming for Office 365 small biz customers

Softmaker anybody?

Softmaker Office fits the bill for me. Got me off the MS treadmill, excellent compatability, nicer than the open source alternatives and upgrade from FreeOffice is cheap as chips.

Chipper chipmaker Micron shows off boosted bottom line – gee, thanks, Elpida

"More Better?"

Yuck.

Beijing to Washington: Ratted-out routers not welcome here

Re: bully boy, more like pushover...

@Fazal Majid.

Well said. Very well said indeed.

PC makers! You, between Microsoft and the tablet market! Get DOWN!

Re: Ultrabooks are the future of business computing

I disagree with everything you say - see my post above "Good for travel"

When I am on-site with my ultrabook I never use the integrated keyboard. I always have an external wireless full-size keyboard and mouse in my luggage.

The only time I ever use the integrated keyboard is when I am in transit - and as I explain above, in that situation the tablet is usually a better bet.

Re: Good for travel

@LDS

Thanks for that. I do believe I will be the owner if a Surface Pro 3 later this year.

Good for travel

My daily workhorse is a HP 2170p, an 11.6 inch ultrabook. Its docked when I'm at home or in the office.

Even at that small size the keyboard makes use on economy air transport awkward.

I don't drive, so elsewhere I'm using buses and trains. Unless I'm lucky viz a viz seating the same limitations apply.

I usually just resort to my Cyanogenmodded Nook tablet and do what I can with that.

I was pretty sure that my next machine would be a HP 810 convertable, but the screen size, weight and cost advantages of the Surface Pro are swaying me.

I must check out the docking options. If there is something workable MS may have won me over.

Boycott Firefox, gay devs urge as Mozilla appoints JavaScript daddy as CEO

Re: Shakes Head

@bolccg

Since when did the wish of two blokes to "marry" (cough, cough) become a basic civil right?

The browser's resized future in a fragmented www world

Re: Er what?

Agree 100%

I never use The Reg app these days, largely for the reason you so eloquently stated.

m.theregister.co.uk is bookmarked in the browser(s) of every mobile device I use.

Windows Phone beats BLACKBERRY in mobe OS popularity stakes

Re: I own a lumia 920

I kind of rotate between IOS, Android, and WP on a two monthly or quarterly basis, whenever I get bored. Of the 3, I prefer WP for pretty much everything, except one thing...

The stock music player stinks, and all Marketplace music apps are even worse.

The basic problem is that every time you go into a WP music app, it wants to reindex the music library. I have 8000 tunes on a 64GB sd card, and its a real hassle.

Hoping this is fixed in 8.1. I'll have way less incentive to go back to the GS3 or the iPhone.

Woman whipped gun from vagina in SPACE ALIEN spat, reports Officer Zook

I don't understand the snarky comments about Mrs McCarthy's appearance. She looks mighty fine to me. Mighty fine indeed.

There would be no complaints from me if she sat on my face and told me she loved me.

JESUS battery HEALS itself - might make electric cars more practical

Re: Other uses

Some of the are....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp6EPccFIJQ

Re: Off-topic: Electric cars?!?

Upvoted. Thanks for highlighting a frequently overlooked point.

iPHONE 5c FACTORY SHUTDOWN: Foxconn 'halts' mobe rebrand op

Agree. Love or hate iThings, they're a premium brand and the 5C in no way screams "Premium" at you.

Yet another business advisor told Labor NBN was a dud: reports

Good to see that

the previous government disregarded this shite.

That being said, if the report had been available before the election both the Liberals and their NewsCorp master would have been loudly proclaiming this report as "proof" the NBN was a dud.

Malcolm Turnbull's website makes funny Facebook fan numbers

The Liberals Just Don't Get It

Fibre to the node just won't work in Australia. Many people will not pay for the the connection to their premises, particularly those renting their home. After spending $x Billion on the rollout, spending the extra $y Billion to ensure connectivity is surely worth it.

MS Word deserves DEATH says Brit SciFi author Charles Stross

WordPerfect Reveal Codes

Oh, re my enthusiastic endorsement of WordPerfect, I should have mentioned that the wonderful "reveal codes" feature is still there. Having formatting issues? A simple Alt-F3 and all is explained clearly, easily, and unambiguously. A pleasant, relaxing dream in contrast to the Word nightmare.

There's a lot of life left in WordPerfect

I was dragged kicking and screaming to Word (From WordPerfect X12) six years ago.

As a forensic accountant I prepare lengthy reports laden with tables. numbered paragraphs and sub-paragraphs all the way down to sub-sub-sub paragraphs and beyond, diagrams, and references.

I had been using WordPerfect since 1989 (version 4.2, IIRC), and had stayed up with the latest updates al the way. Finally, the pressure from law firms to "conform, dammit", and issues with engaging adaptable secretarial staff created enough pressure for me to switch.

Despite a bunch of training and a lengthy spell on Word, my original opinion of that product has not changed. It is, for want of a better term, pure shite.

These days my practice has changes somewhat, and exchanging electronic documents with the outside world is less important than it used to be.

I don't need to share doc/docx documents so much, and last week, after a Word report went spectacularly tits-up, I downloaded the current version of WordPerfect (X14) directly from Corel.

Within 10 or 15 minutes I had my old rhythm back, the old keyboard shortcuts came straight back to me, my blood pressure went down about 25 points and I produced more that afternoon than I had in the previous 2 days. The "lineal" nature of WordPerfect means you can just format as you go without having to think, pause, apply styles, insert breaks, and all that other Word nonsense. In particular, perfectly formatted tables are a dream. The in-built WP tables have all the spreadsheet functions I need for 95% of the work I do, whereas Word forces a very awkward insertion of an Excel table for such basic functions as automatic column addition, and so forth..

WordPerfect is as close to perfect as a word processor can be. Word, by comparison, is a mere toy - and an unintuitive frustrating toy at that.