Posts by Allan Rutland

Hadron boffins: Our meddling will not destroy universe

Brillient!

It's a win win situation, at 6.4bn euros or whatever its cost to make a black hole under France, its a real bargin :D

The Google-isation of all the net's access points

Histerical

Page 10, and the MS monkey coders...nice one Google!

Microsoft's Vista push probed by Fair Trade Commission

Re: Flocke Kroes

"That is why Dell Linux machines are a lower spec then Windows machines in the same price bracket."

There is no Windows tax as the Freetards keep putting it on non-Windows machines. The simple fact is that a company has a set price, and need to also balance its sales of something against the hassle of doing it. Shipping Linux on a cheap machine is all well and good, except how many will they sell? if it was to be the same as the equally specced Windows box than yes, it would be cheaper, but it's not the same price as its paying a Windows tax, its the same price as very few (in comparison) people buy them.

Also look at Asus and the eee's (where's the eee lady icon reg?), they sell the Linux machine about the same as the XP box....but they actually throw in more hardware. Why? because once they sell a machine there is no incentive for a user to buy another for many years to come. Thats it, you sold it, the end. This isn't a printer where they can screw you month after month on ink. Selling a dirt cheap machine is utterly useless to them for the margins involved. So they fiddle the specs to keep the base price up a bit. Is this a Windows tax? no it's not.

You want a machine with no tax? Get one with no OS. It's your choice, no one elses. They are available, and just because you prefer to whine and bitch when you can't be bothered actually looking if you problem. Not the worlds. If HP can bang out (no idea how considering the specs) things like the OS less, dual core Opteron boxes with DVD writers, and a so so amount of RAM and HDD for under £100 they are available.

People expect a huge discount for using Linux. The fact of the matter is that Linux isn't free, that is unless you or your companies time is worthless, which for many people, it isn't. Thereby you still need to charge for it. Linux has it's place, and it's coming along nicely. It's not there yet, but it's getting there.

Is Microsoft's Silverlight evil?

Not really a evil...

as mentioned in the story, if there wasn't Silverlight we would have Flash, or urmm Flash. And atleast if MS is pushing an alternative with better video play than Flash, it does give an incentive for Adobe to bother to improve Flash and not just screw around like the did with the CS3 products.

If MS isn't a big enough incentive for Adobe, they disearve to loose the market to MS.

Linux risks netbooks defeat to Microsoft

Very right

Have been selling Eee's ourselves, and ok...nice bits of kit and all that. And for the simple note taking and web use utterly brillient. But Joe public do have a tendancy to cringe away from what they do not know. Everyone slightly techy who plays with one, loves it, yet Joe public it's a big scary new world which most shy away from.

The second problem is one which the Linux community wouldn't want to solve though, and that is one of uniformity. Show Joe public two different netbooks and they get utterly lost as why aren't they both the same OS. For Joe public who gets utterly confused on something as simple as a USB flash drive, all the different distro's is yet another confusing factor. Until (if) the day the different distro's can come together to make one common uniform release (can't see it ever occur) the variety will be one of the factors which limits Joe publics take up.

Ex-Googlers reinvent web search

Wikiwhatsit?

Funniest thing is to search for wikipedia on Cuil...according to it Wiki doesn't even exist :P or is that just wishful thinking.

Europe approves HP purchase of EDS

I wonder...

how big the box EDS will come in? $14bn must buy a seriously big container!

Who will be the next Doctor?

You know...

with how the beeb has been picking actors for this last series *cough* Tate *cough* they're bound to find some muppet. Am expecting Graham Norton, or maybe Julian Clarey to give Capt Jack some company :P

Although, there is that whole annoying woman Tate will die...and that did get me thinking (I do hope not) that the Doc will turn into her! and due to a paradox cause the other one to explode. Hope not though, as am hoping she'll have some form of accident involving industrial machinary and her head in the TARDIS door :P

BBC begins fresh Freeview HD TV trial

But while the beeb time on this...

there are us poor sods stuck up north, who are going to have our terrestrial signal turned off in January but still have no eta of when Freeview will ever become available. I have to admit, winding the feckless lot up when they take camp in there switch over bus trying to convert everyone is utterly histerical, but sadly shows typical governmental planning.

Am just looking forward to the big switch off, they are seriously cutting the get everyone converted locally to the last minute and can't wait to see how bad this all goes when no one has any kind of TV signal unless you bought Sky or FreeSat...if they ever decide to market that a bit anyhow. But then again, both of those suffer the problem for the retired folks and those straped of cash for costing alot more than a basic Freeview box.

As for HD Ready, not overly sure but think all it means it has a v1.2 or v1.3 HDMI port and able to decode HDCP with a screen capable of 720p or above. Don't think any kind of tuner was ever part of the spec. Partly what annoyed alot of folks who got Sky HD early on as there older TFT and Plasma's with DVI ports and not HD Ready we're being scaled down to normal resolutions. Bit of a sickener really.

A typical British cockup waiting to happen all this Digital and HD TV milarky. It's just waiting to go utterly tit's up.

Eco-activist gets tougher with gadget makers

And Greenpeace?

The amount of hot air and bullshit these lot produce surely has to have a higher CO2 level then the others combined. Heck we just need to look at those muppets who got onto that plane at Heathrow, to complain about people doing flights they don't overly need (as lets face it work to them isn't necessary) they flew there from Manchester.

Urmm they got a flight to protest about unnecessary flights, when they could of got something like a train to London, or even better phone up a get a muppet in London to protest for them!

Nvidia blows out Moore’s Law with fresh Tesla

HTC and general?

Was looking into CUDA a few weeks back, and was very impressed at some of the already available applications for the smaller time user also, than just the HTC crowd. The dvd encoding applications etc have an immense speed improvement than anything running on the normal desktop CPU. Ok, this is all still new with little support, but as well as with the HTC crowd, big number crunching such and encoding could become quiet useful.

Thumbs up to nVidia, will be interesting to watch how this all develops in the coming years.

Stunned commuter finds more secret papers on train

But...

if you hand in one of these documents in to the local Police won't you be removed from society for the next month and a bit pending them snuffling through all your stuff for being in possession of all kinds of stuff you shouldn't of!

Apple to charge iPod Touch owners for new OS - again

Well the accounting argument is trash...

as simply, if it was true than 1) every MS service pack would of needed it....and 2) why can Apple give an update free to the iPhone users while they screw the iTouch users.

It's cash making, Apples pay your subscription licensing model works like a charm on the Mac. Don't change the OS much, a few flashy bits here and there, throw in something simple like a jazzed up search utility, and tada new OS and a £100 per year subscription.

When you have a captive market, even more so of drooling fanboi's like they do then it's a fantastic business model. All credit to them on that.

Chinese telco jumps starting gun in 3G race

How much?!

So...its £3.50 subscription with 4.5p per minute on video! *cough rip off Britain*. Guess things are done differently in China...and alot better it seems.

Apple store detains teens for installing iPhone game

re: Chris C

"Sounds like this individual is in serious need of mental health treatment."

He's a mac fanboi...nuff said isn't it.

EU project scans air passengers for terrorist tendencies

Every last twitch?

So like...the loo's are all full and your sitting cross legged desperate to do a runner, or the dodgy inflight meals decided to come back for a return visit...and this thing goes off and you get twenty black clad nutters pointing guns at your head?

...as others have said, this maybe getting tested with a bunch of bored students as test gophers, but come reality, its go so many other possibles it's going to become a joke very quickly.

Medion takes aim at Asus' Eee

Re: Jon Ramster

"Um, you are still paying Microsoft Tax for an OS from 2001. That's not good enough."

Maybe, but that tax is next to nothing since MS is doing XP Home for machines with a screen smaller than 10" for under £7 now with the new revamped licensing scheme for small form factors.

But otherwise, nice looking little machine, and like the others more info on how long it'll run for in normal operation would be handy. They really need a beach babe though like Asus though! Paris as I'm sure she's open to all offer from Medion or anyone else.

Bill Gates unveils interactive wallpaper

Interesting

I'm going to go and ignore the usual "It's MS thereby it's evil" tripe we've all come to expect here. It does seem quiet interesting as a development of interactive whiteboards etc. But for a home or anything like it, no use whatsoever. Can see them being great in public buildings etc for navigation purposes with maps and things like that though...wallpaper though, not a chance. Would just make you dizzy and utterly wind you up when trying to watch something on the ol' telly!

Intel: future iPhone to be Atom powered

Or more likely...

Apple would simply change architecture and screw previous users. After all they have a good marketting reason for it and have done it plenty of times in the past. Highly likely they would do it again.

Giant Eee PC menaces London

Uh wha?

"He was clearly a few keys short of a full deck"

He needed to be, wanting £350 for an eee is pushing it a bit far.

Local mag claims Aussie Eee PC buyers will pay extra for Linux

Interesting...

That the UK models are both the same price though...for the 12GB XP or the 20GB Linux ones (at distribution anyhow, haven't bothered looking at what the online bucket shops are doing with them though).

This does seem to put the XP machine at a slightly better option for the fact you do get a license for XP with it as opposed to having to buy one on the Linux shipped machine (should you want to).

The pre-shipped XP machines are well in the market of the general users now also...who wouldn't normally go near Linux with a barge pole as they don't like change. And the price is at a point which would appeal to them.

Gordon Brown claims a Brit invented the iPod

Didn't we also invent...

or was it just this government who invented the white elephant.

Don't like your phone's look? Then build your own

You know...

It brings a whole new meaning to bricking your phone. Maybe it's something Apple should try.

El Reg celebrates 10th birthday

Have a good one...

or is that you've already had one.

Congratulations on the next ten, and that whopping big paycheck when you all sellout to Murdoch and co.

HP sells cloud vision amidst economic downpour

One slight snag HP isn't expecting over here...

and that'll be the wonders of BT. Online backup etc works nicely for a few small files, but give try uploading 500GB - 1TB and the whole thing pretty much falls apart. And then there's the possibility some enterprising company may start trawling through your files for an MP3 with no DRM after they've signed some stupid deal with the evil music company types. Ok a bit of paranoia, but it might happen.

Have to admit though, on paper nice idea. It's still a long way off from becoming practical as yet.

Blu-ray Xbox 360 to be sold at a loss?

Might work...

I'm unsure about those prices mentioned in the article, seem a bit high really for the kinds of buying power we're talking about here. MS paying £10 for a DVD-ROM? come off it, that's more expensive than a single machine at a time OEM buys them for.

As for reason, the biggest draw the PS3 has been getting is the movie playback. It's seen as the cheapest way to get a player...which it is. Thereby profiting nicely from that side of things. Throwing in a cheaper player option, with more games, will pretty much swing that buying option back in MS's favour. After all, making a loss on the console isn't really an issue (look at the immense amount Sony lose on the PS3). The bigger concern is games sales, and that is all about market. Selling at a loss is pretty irrelavant on this kind of scale, and when its not a huge hit it's pretty easy for them to go for.

Using the Blu-Ray drive for games is out. It's changing the hardware to a degree which would effect play between various machines. Just need to look at the utter foul up Sony made of this when they removed the hardware backwards compatibility on the PS3 to find a load of junk from EA ceased working as they were offloading old PS2 code to it.

Personally though I don't see the point of Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD while it lasted). DVD is pretty much the last of the physical media formats as lets face it, come the next generation of machines we're just going to download everything. Steam and other services show it works well, and it's bound to happen to the consoles next time around. And the only reason to fall for the HD movie fluff is if you like buying the same old stuff again and paying too much to the movie industry, which can frankly sod off in my book.

Intel VP threatens to turn all Xeon users into 'monkey kings'

Am waiting for part two...

where he shows up on stage in the monkey costume!

Apple ignores Jesus Phone life raft

Maybe...

"Redding even believes that Steve Jobs will one day embrace the tool - in spite of his current stance on background apps. "We think the carriers will ask to," Redding said."

Unfortunatly for them, whats more likely is Apple will do their own version, make it look shiny and use some proprietry fluff, and basically end up forcing the carriers to use their version.

Apple fans roast Apple fans

Not the firstime...

As others have said, seems to be pretty common with Apples style over substance way of working.

I had to support a customer who used Macs (before they saw the light) who bought one of the "wonderful" G4's at release. Was utterly fantastic as the "superdrive" ended up being not so super as the OS didn't support it. And didn't for over a month after release when Apple finally decided to release some drivers for it.

Guess even over this length of time they still haven't learned that releasing the hardware before the software is written is not such a good idea...even if they do control both. Then again, whats it matter if the fanboys will keep on seeing them as never doing wrong

Why I downgraded from Vista to XP

Old Windows on new...

Yeah, under the MS license, both Vista Business and Ultimate allow you to run XP. Exactly the same as how XP Pro allowed people to use 2000. Both Home editions don't though....Unsure why Dale had such an issue with it and had to buy a license, since he already owned one.

HP, Toshiba and a few others even throw in a XP restore CD as standard on all machines with Vista Business or Ultimate. No idea why Sony doesn't, but well...thats Sony.

Alien icon...simply because Sony is run by all those odd lil aliens who ignore the world and go around blu-raying everying :P

Microsoft dropped Vista hardware spec to raise Intel profits

But doesn't it actually show MS wasn't responsible?

Well, atleast for the 915 anyhow. As they said in the quote that the graphics chipset was compatible in beta. How was MS to know that Intel wouldn't release any drivers upon release. It's all cloak and daggers though, but think Intel has as much if not more to answer for in this.

Vote now for your fave sci-fi movie quote

what about...

"Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast" Ace Rimmer

Public don't want internet filters, MS tells MPs

Right

Well, MS should know as they've been using such filters for a while. The 360 has an age system for it to stop lil kiddies playing things they shouldn't....Vista has also. Does anyone use the filters? nope. Mostly it's down to the whine factor.

I've seen little kids under 12 scream and yell at momsy to buy them GTA even though its clearly marked as an 18. And who's fault is it that lil Jimmy is sitting there humping some prostitute before shooting or running her over, so he can get his money back after the deed. Of cause its not momsys fault for buying the lil brat the game, its those evil games makers and system producers.

The problem starts, and ends with parents. It's about time they except it.

Thumbs up for nice one MS!

AI prof: The robot terrorists are coming! Aiee!

He best be careful...

or our soon to be robot overlord masters will notice he's trying to warn folk and send a deadly dyson of doom after him.

HP's Linux sub-notebook spied on web

Nice but not cheap...

Definatly not in the same price band as the eee. With the specs to run a full version of Vista on it, this thing is definatly not in the same (or close) pricing as the eee. The Linux version will be cheaper yes, and with the SSD as an option, it seems pretty much that it will be very lucky if its the friendly side of £400. Damn nice though :)

Piscine killer menaces UK rivers

And to see...

Here's another reason for ID cards. These nasty illegal immigrant fishes in our rivers, am sure the gov's ID card scam will solve it :P

Opera screeches at Mozilla over security disclosure

Am I the only one...

who noticed those evil other browsers suffered from something the wonderfully secure and shiny IE didn't... :P

Exploding Flash catalogue rocks Dutch e-commerce site

A good example...

of why Flash is the complete and utter pain in the rear end.

AMD Phenom 9500 processor

Poor AMD....

I had been using them for ten years now, the K6's, Athlons, all great. Up until recently they produced brilliant chips at a brilliant price. Then came the Core 2 and it was an utter empire strikes back moment, and since then AMD haven't had an answer. I may of been said to of been a bit of an AMD fan through the last ten years, but even I moved to the Core 2 and it's been incredible (unlike how utterly dreadful the P4's were). AMD really need to so something as currently they just can't answer the Core 2's. Intel seems to have the performance edge well in the bag currently, and with plenty of room to take the CPU's also. Poor AMD :(

US HD DVD sales hit new low

What about porn?

The thing is, certain groups...well porn and the BBC still won't touch Blu-ray. Ok the beeb made that choice, but porn got stuck on HD when Blu-ray went all "ohh we dont want porn". Thats going to keep HD going atleast on one small demographic anyhow.

Frankly though, both formats are an utter waste of time. I have my DVD's and I aint't going to fork over any more cash to those money grabbing studios for the same movie again. DVD's are good enough with a 1080p upscaller, which makes the whole use of either format, utterly worthless.

Join the army, get your ID pinched - MoD laptop goes AWOL

And to think...

according to government figures (ok these are bound to be rounded down a bit) they "misplace" over 665 laptops per year. Then again theres never any data on them at all *cough*.

The OLPC XO laptop

Classmate

It's a great idealist project, but going out on ideals which ok, look great in fantasy land and on paper maybe one thing. But coming out this abstract and unuseful is going to do nothing but kill the project. Think Intel had the best idea about walking away from it and doing the Classmate. Least that uses proper software....any chance of a review of one of those anytime soon Brian?

Dell tells customer 'Mac is good option'

Seems a bit iffy!

A rather suspect email really. Only mentioning the XPS's and saying he should go search Google. Maybe it's just me but no one in a company would ever direct a customer to just go away and look on Google. I would of normally expected a couple of options for there machines, and links to there own site.

If a member of staff did something like what was in this email, every company I know would have him given at best a very big warning, or shown the door. No company directs customers elsewhere.

Mac lambs line up for slaughter

Exactly...

"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it

By Sampler"

My personal fave is (trying to remember back now) was is System 6.9 or 6.11? that Apple themselves had a copying "issue" where they shipped all the lovely users with nVirb.

Fine, they had a rewrite (or just a nip out and aquire bsd and slap on a glossy front end) and X is different to some degree. Yet it has always been the case that no matter what you are using, give the malware writers enough incentive and they will find a way. The number of Mac users who have the "I don't need to run updates" is going to come back and kick them...and rightfully so for being so utter arrogant.

Just a huge shame we are yet to find a way to make that organic mess typing on the keyboard more secure, as that is on everything, the biggest security hole. Here's hoping our alien overlords of lizard people will fix that (yes I know its bad, but needed a alien angle).

It was the MacBook Air sub-notebook

Is it just me...

or this thing looks like it has no ports at all? No USB seem to be visible, no firewire, no nothing by the looks. And from what it seems, the usual Apple lets seal the battery into it means when the batteries gone, this things binned. That you can bearly get away with on MP3 players, but at the price this thing is, its a bit silly to expect it to be disposable. Slick fashion item, yet utterly useless otherwise.

Junkie sues pusher over heart attack

Why is it...

that all I can think of in this is those injury lawyer lot touting for new business. Heck, the ambulance chasers already have offices in hospitals now (have in our local one anyhow), so whats next, down every back ally we'll find discout lawyers "pfft, wanna sue him".

Knock, knock: Cisco is banging at your door

Urmm...

Slight problem with the home networking milarky if they are just going to rebrand the Linksys stuff, is that a lot of the Linksys stuff is utter tat. If they end up just sticking a badge on that, all they are going to be doing is devaluing the logo, not improving it.

Apple gets fans juices flowing with iMac-like laptop dock

Urmm...

So....this is basically an iMac without the Mac part, and just a enlarged monitor with a connector an port...all well and good. And they are going to close, and insert a full scale Macbook into it, with very little ventilation? As in...the things which tend to get rather warm and have rather "fun and innovative" flamability?

So, due to what these things tend to run like, am sure what Apples patented here is the spinkler system along the top of the panel which its surely going to need :P

The art of software murder

Word 2007...

as was said, isn't all evil. I have to admit, when I first played with it bloody 'ell, whats this mess. But after getting used to it, it's oddly growing on me. The interface etc. Fine the whole docx thing is a pain, but easily turned off. And for the times I have goofed up and moved files as it, MS have posted addons for Word 2002 and 2003 which allows you to read and write to them. Is docx an evil format...no idea as no one uses it. But

As for Acrobat (and I won't call it Adobe Reader as it's still bloody Acrobat! just like a Marathons a Marathon and not a damn Snickers!) very much as you said. Drives me up the wall everytime I see it now. Oddly enough burried in the depths of the Adobe website they do still allow you to download versions 4 and 5 for "older systems". Pfft, dunno on that, but those two atleast worked and worked without all the guff.

Game throws out bullish forecast

Thing is though...

That with all the console types pushing now towards download games sold directly off themselves, the whole high street games market will be dead within 5-6 years at this rate. MS has pretty much said the next Xbox is going download, probably even download only from all the "trials" they keep pushing onto the 360 what with full game downloads now etc. PC games are getting fairly popular also from this method what with Steam doing so well.

With so much more profit for the companies in the download model than the boxed game model, the sad thing is companies like Game unless they can do something to move themselves along with where the markets heading is looking like dead men walking sadly. I do wonder if companies like Nintendo, MS and Sony will open up the download system on the consoles for third party companies like Game...then again not a chance in 'ell of that is the :P