Posts by Gannettt

Amazon Shocker: Firm recalls Fire and Fire Kids power adapters

The jokes write themselves!

Zynga CEO resigns – again – after terrible results

Companies like Zynga are parasites, the game is secondary to the money-making. I used to love Draw Something until one day the Zynga logo appeared all over it. If it weren't for the drones doing the bread-and-butter stuff there, I would say "rot in Hell, Zynga!"

Competition? No way! AT&T says it will sue to keep Google Fiber out of Louisville, Kentucky

Bad losers. I love the way they cite FCC rules, rules that they or their trade association, lobbied hard for.

I don't have any figures, but anecdotally wherever Google Fiber comes to town, a huge swathe of subscribers promptly jump ship to them.

Nvidia GPUs give smut viewed incognito a second coming

But I thought incognito mode/private browsing was so you could order your wife presents online without her knowing about it?

See this article from August 2008!

Longing to bin Photoshop? Rock-solid GIMP a major leap forward

I used to be a huge fan of the GIMP, but gave up at 2.6 when I moved to a Mac: the OSX port was horrible, the drawing cursor would trail the mouse pointer by a second or two. The last version I really enjoyed using was 2.4.7 in 2007, after that, it just got a bit bloaty for me, although singe window mode sounds like a great step forward.

I may just give it another go.

SanDisk offers super-slim terabyte SSD to tablet-pushers and other bulge-watchers

Re: YAWN

Just read the article and comments. You're right.

Re: YAWN

TOTALLY! I know things change, and just because I don't find it interesting doesn't mean it's bad, but this move to more enterprise-centric stories of late is pretty stealthy, and I would imagine I'm not the only reader with a more general interest in IT who spends less and less time on the site these days.

Come on El Reg - come clean and admit that there has been a change in editorial direction.

Microsoft in 2016: Is there any point asking SatNad what's coming?

Noble intentions, abysmal execution - sounds like Office 365 to me. We rolled it out at work recently, and what a dog's breakfast it is. People were really excited about the idea of being able to do work from anywhere, but utterly baffled by the clunky authentication process ("remember my credentials", there's a laugh!) and trying to figure out which SharePoint/OneCloud/OneCloud for Business they had stored that Word document in. In my opinion, they have lost.

Microsoft steps up Windows 10 nagging

"Windows 8? I think you'll find that Windows 7 was the last version before windows 10...Windows 8 has never existed, I've never heard of Windows 8, have you? No, definitely Windows 7 then Windows 10" spoken in a hypnotic monotone while swinging a pocket watch.

British woman loses £1.6 million to romance scam love rats

Reg of Old

Ah, I knew I'd find something of interest this lunchtime! I wonder whether El Reg has a new editor, as the stories have recently skewed more towards enterprise IT, storage etc, and these lighter stories are getting fewer. I know things change, and I'm not necessarily complaining (just because i don't find it interesting, doesn't mean it's bad) I just miss the old Reg a tiny bit, that's all. Just sayin'.

Trouble brewing as iThing coffee machine seems to be hackable

@internetofshit - they should know about this!

Activision to buy Candy Crush developer King

"With over 299 billion unique monthly users, we anticipate quarterly revenues to be up 144% year on year, with an overall turnover of $2.7 trillion in Q4, which equates to an average monetization strategy reflecting maximum growth in the short, medium and long terms. Oh, and the game is pretty good as well, I am told" - A. Greedy-Bastard, CEO, MegaGameCorp LLC

Think Fortran, assembly language programming is boring and useless? Tell that to the NASA Voyager team

Re: Some mis-info here:

Stuffed to the gunwales.

I feel better now!

Seagate’s suffering from mighty profit droop syndrome

It isn't nice being out in the cold. Perhaps they could keep warm by running one of their own drives!

Microsoft scares the bejesus out of Skype users with x12 price hike

They'd have to pay e $20 a year to use it. It has got awful since MS bought it. the last straw were the banner ads in the Android version. I now use FaceTime and Google Hangouts, as that is what all my contacts use.

NASA's Cassini probe skims icy moon Enceladus

All that ice, and not a gin and tonic in sight!

Aussies' distinctive Strine down to drunk forefathers

Years ago on Radio 4, I remember hearing actor Timothy West doing a master class. One tip worked like magic: if you want to do a convincing Australian accent, hold your tongue up so the sides touch your upper back teeth, and speak normally. It takes some practice, but sounds pretty convincing.

Work from home when the next big Windows 10 installation arrives

Re: Even happier I chose a PS4

It's at times like this when I wish El Reg would have a 'collapse all replies' function in their comments. XBOX vs PS4 willy-waving? my lunch-hour isn't long enough!

Bracken assembles old GDS crew for Co-op

Sorry, the name Bracken is so distracting - makes me think of my days as unemployed scum watching Doctors every lunchtime, and the wish-washy hippie doctor had a daughter called Bracken. just think of that episode where the daughter has gone missing, and the mum is wandering around shouting "Bracken!" :)

Connected kettles boil over, spill Wi-Fi passwords over London

Check out @internetofshit on Twitter, loads of examples of bullshit internet of things devices, like central heating that won't turn off while firmware is being updated, internet connected trousers, and loads more

New Nexus 5X, 6P smarties: Google draws a line in the sand

Four pages?

Come on, El Reg, don't fall into that trap of other, lesser news sites, breaking a normal-length article into several pages to increase click-through.

Where will storage go over the next 15 years? We rub our crystal ball

I think you're mixing up two phrases: To rub the magic lamp" and "look into a crystal ball". Sorry, had to get it out of my system!

Typewriters suck. Yet we're infinitely richer for those irritating machines

Typewriters! I went to a school for the blind and partially-sighted, and we learned to touch type on ancient manual typewriters from the age of 9. The idea was that blind people could write something that sighted people could read.

Our first typing teacher was a dear old lady, who looked like she'd stepped out of a 1950s office, complete with Dame Edna-style 'winged' glasses. She would walk around, making sure we weren't looking at our keys and keeping our wrists up. Imagine a dozen 10-year olds bashing away at typewriters in a small classroom, the noise was horrendous.

We had a mixture of manual portables (I remember we had some Silver Reed 420s) and those tall Olympia typewriters with teh cream and green keys (like the one in the picture). The older machines always made a lovely clear, dark impression, the portables were pretty poor. One lad actually suffered the indignity of swiping the carriage return lever and the carriage sailing off onto the floor next to his desk!

The teacher cared for those machine like they were her children. The smell of typewriter cleaning fluid was intoxicating.

We learned to use Tipp-Ex, the liquid (also intoxicating) and the little slips of paper. Someone mentioned carbon copies. I well remember having to do two carbons, one on white and one on yellow flimsy. If you made a mistake, you not only had to correct the top copy, but the other copies as well.

Towards the end of my school days, in the mid-80s, the old teacher retired, and a younger lady took over. Almost overnight, out went the historic machines, replaced by daisy wheel electronics. We were blown away by the correction key, kerning, automatic bold, centering, etc (centering was an art on manuals: tab to the centre of the carriage and backspace once for every two letters in the heading)

I recently came across a manual and tried to use it. Threading the paper in just came back like riding a bike, but the force needed to bash the keys was something else, how the hell did we type 60 wpm back in the day!

Susan Sheridan, voice of Hitchhiker's Trillian, dies aged 68

Very sad. Susan Sheridan is something of a radio drama veteran, with so much more than just HHGG on her CV. She tended to be called on to play little boys in many radio plays and programmes for BBC Schools back in the day, and when I heard her in a play called "This Problem Of Yours" where she actually plays a woman, she sounded rather sexy!

Hey, Apple! 1999 just called and it wants its voicemail avatar back

Wildfire?

Not too popular here in California at the moment!

Google bows to inevitable, stops forcing Google+ logins on YouTubers

Re: As with all social networks,

Have to disagree slightly - I seem to remember reading that teens are abandoning Facebook in droves, and a large proportion of active users of FB are women over 35 (I wish I could remember the source). I have amle friends who post stuff about retro games or tech stories, not a sausage; female friends post yet another minion meme or kid pic, likes and comments galore!

Re: As with all social networks,

Actually, I have to agree. I'm in now way an active user of G+, but when I do check it out, it is very low-key and uncluttered. I subscribe to the Raspberry Pi account, and all the posts are interesting. No JPEGs with schmaltzy quotes, bloody minion memes or pictures of kids from friends of friends cluttering the timeline.

Saying all that, though, I think it's definitely doomed.

Microsoft emits Office 2016 for Apple Macs (you'll need Office 365)

I have an Office 365 account through work and downloaded Office 2016 for Mac. Apart from the 'colorful' user interface, there's really nothing much different to 2011, at least for the basic stuff I use it for. But then hasn't that been the case for all Office releases since about 1996: add a few bells and whistles to a perfectly solid office suite every few years and charge accordingly?

Facebook pumps up ENTIRELY SELFLESS, altruistic Internet.org

Why do I find myself reading the quotes in this piece and thinking of that sort of gentle, droning, monotone voice only brainwashed cult members use?

Kobo Glo HD vs Amazon Kindle Paperwhite: Which one's best?

Re: Nook?

I thought Nook had gone by the wayside, but could be wrong.

Oh, the old Kindle 3! I had one for over 4 years, till I dropped a cup on it and it left a grey mark on the screen that wouldn't go away. So sad, but replaced it with a Kindle Voyage, very happy!

Reformatting: true! I was so tired of formatting errors and typos I found myself getting at the HTML inside te books and using the excellent ebook editor in Calibre to tidy them up. What a slog, but well worth it.

Uber to drivers: You make a ton of dosh for us – but that doesn't make you employees

Re: Not that this will make using Uber safer

"And why is it that all these fantastic new 'horizontal' business ideas (AirBnB being another) make the owners jaw-droppingly rich, while the workers get worked over?"

That's the Sharing Economy™ in a nutshell!

Why the BBC is stuffing free Micro:bit computers into schoolkids' satchels

Re: Year 7 = 11 years old

"sorry Jhaaydyn varible is not the same as variable", "yes Kyhilie you do need a semi colon on the end of every line", "freddie why are assigning every thing to the one variable?" , "Wendy you missed this whole subroutine here",

I can see an updated version of the classic Joyce Grenfel routine here!

Climate change alarmism is a religious belief – it's official

Great news for Republicans

If climate change is a religion, that means it cannot be taught in US public schools, and so a while generation can now be ignorant of the consequences, they hope!

Super Cali goes ballistic – Uber says it's bogus (even though its contract is something quite atrocious)

Re: The repurcussions could be major

Upvote for the umlaut!

One word...

Good!

Apple brews new News news to peruse - screws news dudes

Re: iMovie, Keynote and GarageBand are optional installs

My wife call it simply "Crapps".

Lonely Pirate cheers on Big Copyright-bashing EU commissars

Why have I got this image in my head of a boardroom somewhere in Corporate america, with a load of fat-cats in suits laughing as they toss a copy of the letter of objection into the wastepaper basket? Thier well-paid lawyers will appeal and keep this one rumbling on until everyone has forgotten about what it was all about, then carry on as normal.

It's a shame that content has to go through these greedy shysters before it gets to your telly.

I'm sure, when they first heard about the Pirate Party's sould representative, many people thought they would be fighting for the pirates, when really, I think they seem to be a restraining influence, advocating sensible and fair copyright laws which would lead to less pirating.

Windows 10 upgrade ADWARE forces its way on to Windows 7 and 8.1

I'm a Windows 7 user, I'm curious to see what Win 10 is like, but reluctant to blow away my Win 7 install. Might just wait a few months and then give it a go.

KFC's new secret ingredient is a bluetooth keyboard on your tray

Re: English?

And on a German keyboard the Y and Z keys are swapped over (Z being much more common in German writing than Y). More one-way transatlantic traffic!

Tossed all your snaps into the new Google Photos? You read the terms, right? ... RIGHT?

Translation

"Bend over, this won't hurt a bit!"

Charter Comms to wed Time Warner Cable in monster merger

If this means that our local Charter-owned broadband comapny stops spamming us with mailshots literally every day, then I'm all for it!

Seriously, though, who the hell benefits from all this activity? it certainly isn't the customers. I don't know how anyone could have written that quote with a straight face, i bet they had a great laugh making that one up!

Lightbulbs of the future will come with wireless extenders and speakers

Well, I suppose stereos have lights on them, so why not?

Seriously,t hough, talk about a solution to a problem that doesn't exist!

HAHAHA! Go on, HOST YOUR NEWS on FACEBOOK, FOOLS!

Re: Why...

Tweets and Facebook comments give the Beb an idea of who's listening and watching their output. It also ticks the box labelled 'interacting with the audience' - nobody could accuse them of just ignoring them if they keep soliciting communication. And social media is trendy (or was a few years ago) and this makes the Beeb look modern, go-ahead, fab, groovy etc. Cynical? Not me!

Why do I feel grubby after reading this? Talk about filthy lucre!

18-wheeler robot juggernaut hits Nevada's highways. Cower, fleshies!

Re: On a serious note

The road haulage industry, in common with most large, powerful corporate interests, would love to remove the expensive, inefficient, profit-preventing fleshies from their employ.

UK exam board wants kids to be able to Google answers

I see you have a picture of 'Professor' Jimmy Edwards at the top. I think it should have been Will Hay, much funner!

Fed-up Colorado man takes 9mm PISTOL to vexing Dell PC

has anyone said "Only in America!" yet?

Comcast, Time Warner Cable in crunch talks with FCC, DoJ over $42bn mega-merger

The complete wording on the door should read:

"Driver carries no cash - we don't pay him enough"