Posts by Terence McCarthy

Microsoft investors push for Bill Gates defenestration: report

Microsoft v Reality? - Computing: - Miss match

"Microsoft may have made many a mis-step but the company's audacious early goal of putting a PC into every home came to fruition, bringing with it incalculable change, most of it for the good."

"Microsoft may have made many a mis-step" Yes, that's certainly right.

"the company's audacious early goal of putting a PC into every home came to fruition"

Home computing would have come in without that man anyway, I had years of enjoyment and use of "home" computers before IBM PC and the severely crippled M$ software came limping along (remember 640K memory? More than enough apparently!)

I also used acoustic couplers and normal 'phone lines on main frames between universities to communicate before Gates even knew that a PC could talk to another PC.

His attitude towards software -and making money- crippled computer adoption and innovation for decades.

Ask where the smart money is now. Linux anyone? Without that, no internet (check the servers, Google Facebook, etc.,) Linux (Android)? Really smart 'phones without the (again) crippling handicap of another "control freak and computing Messiah" ( the "I" in the name tells you all you need to know about him).

How many other examples does one need to realise that Gates was a one shot wonder, whose one shot made enough money to buy in everything M$ wasn't smart enough to have developed itself. The "Internet" anyone?

Where are the M$ "innovations" of the last twenty years? Sorry, is there an example of one they didn't buy in?

"most of it for the good."

I would like to see you prove that contention!

Sweet dreams...

Feeling poor? WHO took all your money? NOT capitalist bastards?

Feeling Rather Sick...

Your point (last paragraphs) about those who know a subject well to speak up against those who don't but pontificate about it, is well judged. For years my late wife and I would comment incredulously about stories in the press, or other media, that were twisted or downright wrong in our respective areas of speciality.

Our conclusion was that if so many "facts" that we knew to be wrong were being published we could not trust the "facts" in other subject areas.

I was surprised, though, that as many as 25% of MPs knew the odds on getting two consectutive heads in a coin toss. Although perhaps this figure is also wrong......

'There's too much climate change denial on the BBC'

Remind Me Again, Anonymous Coward

Where, when did I mention or quote Nigel Lawson?

"the usual journalistic scum style reporting"- Gets A Response To This Idiot

"Stupidity knows no bounds when it comes to journalism."

Or, indeed, to those who respond to reports with little or nothing to help them understand them.

As to your quoted comment, you are right, and you are clearly, by your own definition, a journalist- especially to the point of not checking your grammar or spelling when sending posts to a public forum.

However, a career at the Gruniad for you (with it's unique style and left-wing "pie n the sky" utopianism) is a distinct possibility. Good luck with that.

Apology: - I apologise, sincerely, to the journalists of El Reg to whom no similar criticism could possibly apply.

(Cheques to the usual account, please!)

Bad science followed by bad journalism

"Besides ... if the CO2 gets too deep, the problem will be solved ... I'm tall enough to survive it ..."

But, apparently, not the increased risk of cancer!

Win, lose or draw, we eventually lose...

BBC "Science"?

"Purity of belief makes it easy for denialists to attract the attention of news organisations, but hard for them to balance their ideas against those of the majority. This can lead to undue publicity for views supported by no factual information at all."

Indeed, that is why the "majority" (climate alarmists, to a man or woman or whatever they claim to be) receive "undue publicity".

Nothing more to be said really....

Scientist who named the black hole dies aged 96

@StopthePropaganda @StopthePropaganda By maajka

Instead of the half a million or so Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen trying to stop the war the Japanese started.

Oh, right....

Galaxy's smallest known black hole discovered

"Half a sun..." By Anonymous Coward

"(Half a Sun is approximately 1.9891 x 10^15 kg, or about 49.9 per cent of the total mass of our solar system.)"

Our solar system is approximately 2 x 10^30 kg, so the Sun is approximately half of that.

To transpose the previous argument, I weigh 12 stone, my daughter 8. On the argument presented I weigh 4 stone?

British youths think Churchill went to moon

No Comfort For Astronomers Either

"Reassuringly, though, the survey did indicate that children are eager to replace their mental ragbag of Wikipedia-grade unfacts with greater knowledge of astronomy. "

Judging by the terrifying results of this and other surveys of the results of our politically driven (and therefore appalling) educational system, these abandoned and benighted children probably think astronomy is about reading one's horoscope in their household's Daily Redtop.

Data pimping: surveillance expert raises illegal wiretap worries

Semi-Literate Control (Remember "1984")

Another BT man commented anonymously on our last Phorm story, to say the firm is telling worried staff via its intranet: "--Others like you feel different.

"We will monitor this carefully and see what the experience in practice will be and evaluate seriously."

If the "BT Man" cannot even express him/herself in standard English (Different/differently), or even in English

"We will monitor this carefully and see what the experience in practice will be and evaluate seriously."

what hope is there for the average Labour government educated semi-literate semi-numerate computer illiterate?

New taskforce to discuss why more people aren't turning to digital

DAB=

Degenerate Audio Billhooks

Galileo slammed by UK politicians

Realistic assessment of its costs and benefits?

The Commission is poised to spend billions of taxpayers' money on a system without any realistic assessment of its costs and benefits."

The woman must be mad- doesn't she know what her own party has been doing for the last ten years?

Ballmer nails Founder to Windows mast

‘Ballmer nails Founder to Windows mast’

This amounts to an offence under the Trades Description Act- I wanted to read about Gates being attached by a nail-gun to a flag-pole on the twee place in Redmond.

What I got was an obscure reference to a dancing monkey and some apparent company in a country near to Tartary.

I shall only read the Inq if such disappointment recurs!

Reaper aerial killbot harvests its first fleshies

ROTM By TLA

A club is a machine, so is a sword or a knife. Like these the Predator these are tasked and controlled by human beings.

OK, perhaps not quite like us, but human all the same.

Saki

Balls: Schools should police the net

Schools should police the net’

Arrghhh....

Should have read:

"The last five words of your title are redundant"!

‘Balls: Schools should police the net’

The last five letters of your title are redundant.

Bell Canada in Sex Pistols billboard ad gaffe

Bell Canada in Sex Pistols billboard ad gaffe

Bergen-Belsen had no gas chambers, and was not, officially, a concentration camp.

Many died there but these deaths were not due to gassing.

http://www.auschwitz.dk/Bergenbelsen.htm refers to this.

Diebold rebrands evoting business, revises forecasts

English- Please? (Re:Comments on ‘Diebold rebrands evoting business, revises forecasts’)

"While we plan to fully support"

WTF? What on earth does "to fully" mean? What/who/where or when is "support" that they should "fully" it?

"Fully" is not a verb. I appreciate the the Reg is trying to be all things to all things but can we stay away from the apparently totally brain-dead USA view of the language as being something that semi-literate would be writers/reporters etc., can use to obfuscate their own lack of understanding and knowledge by taking any word and putting "to" in front of it?

"The Reg" should know better.