Posts by Len Goddard

Appletops may get juice pump

Flying

Ahhh, but would you have to put the coolant system into a plastic bag to get on an airplane? Can't be too careful about those terrorists and their binary explosives.

Microsoft search bribery machine in Black Friday breakdown

Improvement

Hmmm. I notice that the search engine was described as third rate when the linked post was made, but is now described as second rate. Has it really improved that much?

Group Test: Blu-ray Disc players

What about region locking?

I have a large collection of DVDs in various regional formats. No way am I even going to consider buying a BR player unless it can play them all, and even then I probably wouldn't buy one if the BR disks were region locked.

As for onboard decoders, they can be very useful. I have a competent 5.1 surround system but it doesn't accept HDMI input and I have no intention of upgrading it in the immediate future. A player which will allow me to extract 5.1 sound in digital or analog form would be essential.

Microsoft insists Hotmail redesign hasn't left users out in the cold

Sounds familiar

So, comments about an unwanted revamp to familiar software are treated with contempt by the site owner. Fixed format Register, anyone?

Hammer Films has risen from the grave

DVD

It is available. There is a standalone disk and I think it is also part of the 3-disk boxed set.

Did the width move for you, darling?

Re: Re: Disappointed

John, that sounds much more positive than anything that has been said before. TBH I can live with the front page if I have to - I find it far "busier" and less visually attractive than the old layout but as I generally only want to see the headlines it is workable, although I'd still much rather have all the featured stories together at the top than have two of them breaking the screen flow in the middle. However, the individual story layout is not good for me. I'm currently using ctrl+ to increase the font size to something I can read without too much discomfort, but that means far more vertical scrolling and completely screws up the front page - I can only see a small proportion of the stories at any one time.

Disappointed

I'm disappointed but not surprised by the "like it or lump it" response.

I won't scream that I'll never look at the Reg again, but I do know that I've been looking at it less simply because it is now so much more difficult to read. I used to read it between other activities but with the new layout it is far more difficult to visually re-acquire a point in the middle of an article when you glance away from it.

Fixed width was a bad idea, but badly implemented fixed width is a bit of a disaster. Is there no way you can have a preferences button to drop back to something like the older design?

OMFG, what have you done?

I've tried, I really have

I have commented on my dislike of the new look previously, but I have really tried to get along with the new layout. However, it is genuinely giving me eyestrain. On a 1600x1200 monitor the text is simply too small to read from my normal working distance. Reg hardware text is a lot better - different font/size/spacing and channel register is a pleasure because it still flows to the width I want. Overall, though, my reading of register artticles has dropped from most to occasional.

The best workaround I've found so far is to put opera into user mode, which chucks out all the fancy formatting and makes the articles quite readable. Unfortunately it totally screws up the front page and makes things hard to find.

Please please remember that there are people out here who are not using small laptops. Also, you are a digital medium, it is really not necessary for you to look anything like a newspaper (especially a tabloid). Your new front page layout is far too busy, things are splashed all over the place (the headline stories in the middle of the page disrupt the appearance) and when a sidebar is nearly 50% of the width it ceases to be a sidebar. I'm currently using a separate window for the reg and sizing it down so I only see the text (completely defeating any purpose the sidebar thing might have had) simply to reduce the clutter

WIdescreen

Cretin may have been harsh, I was in a hurry. As it happens I'm viewing this on a 4x3 monitor and I still have grey bands because I don't want to reduce the window width to accommodate just this site. There is rarely a good reason to force fixed width text on a webpage but unfortunately it is becoming more and more prevalent - like the use of flash for static content/menus.

font changes

I've just opened a page onto the Channel Register, which is still using the old format, and realised that it is not just the width that makes the new pages so unattractive. The font sizes have changed and the line spacing has been reduced.

For me at least this makes the pages significantly more difficult to read.

No, not an improvement by any stretcg

Nope. Doesn't work for me. I find it harder to read, the whole look is "in your face" busy and I'm with the guy complaining about the grey down each side. What's the use of widescreen monitors if some cretin insists on presenting fixed-format text?

I'm sure you could improve on your original layout, but this is not the way to go.

BRING BACK OUR REG!!

HMV keeps Warhammer-ers from goblins

Not just HMV

Basically, the headstart program seems to have been a complete fiasco.

Most people who bought the pre-order pack from the EA store did not get the access keys to the game until late monday at the soonest (servers were open in the morning) apparently because they had run out of keys and had to generate some more. This problem was apparent over the weekend but no-one from EA is available then so nothing was communicated until monday morning.

Also, the digital download process (10Gb) didn't work at all. If you couldn't get the Open Beta client you were out of luck.

There are people who have still not received their access keys. There is a LOT of dissatisfaction being expressed on the EA "community" forums.

CookieMonster nabs user creds from secure sites

Cahoot (part of abbey)

Flooded me with cookies but none were marked as secure.

Deleting the cookies logged me out.

Ubuntu zoo preps for new arrival

Not necessarily alphabetical

After all, we have already had two 'H' releases (Hardy Heron and Hoary Hedgehog) and a 'W' (Warty Warthog). Equally, Alliterative Animal and Candid Cat are notable by their absence.

IBM's Ubuntu deal favors the server

Notes on Ubuntu

I've been using notes on Ubuntu for over a year without any significant problems. There were some hoops to jump through for notes 7 (particularly if you didn't use gnome) but notes 8 works at least as well as it does on windoze.

Veteran climate scientist says 'lock up the oil men'

Missing the point

Surely the issue here is not that he is calling for oil execs to be locked up for believing that there is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming, but rather for knowing that there is a link and spreading disinformation to prevent action against global warming which might impact the oil company bottom line.

The former stance may be stupid but it is not criminal. The latter is definitely a crime against humanity (and is akin to the tobacco industry case).

Big TV flips ad blockers the bird

Not a freetard - just not given the option to pay

I'm not giving up my ad-blocking software or my script and flash disablers. If that means there are things I can't see, so be it. If companies that rely on advertising go to the wall because of it, so be it.

I'm quite happy to pay a reasonable amount for an ad-free service. I've done it in the past for sites that offer a "premium" service (ie add free and extra features). Unfortunately most content suppliers nowadays are so wedded to the advertising model (probably because so many people demand free content) that I no longer have the option to pay for a clean feed.

Mozilla pilots second release candidate for Firefox 3.0

Irritating

I've seen no significant problems. Except for the extremely irritating switch of button layout on dialogs which has put the cancel button on the left!!

Cornish lingo gets standard written form

Not a language either

Three hundred hobbyists without anything better to do don't form a linguistic group. This is a complete waste of time and money. I really hope they don't start inflicting this rubbish on schoolchildren.

Billg bigs up SharePoint and Touch Wall

The difficult decision

Do you rudely stand with your back to the audience or do you pretend to be a weather forcaster and wave your hands at the screen without looking at it - and make a right pillock of yourself when you touch the wrong piece of the screen?

Men could have kids with chimpanzees - gov must act

Already here?

Sounds to me as though the humanzee is already among us, and has risen to high rank in the Church of Scotland.

US law makers seek ban on in-flight calls

No smoking -> no phoning

They used to put the smokers at the back of the plane and have a no-smoking light. Why not recycle the no-smoking signs into no-phoning signs and put all the chatterboxes at the back so the rest of us can sleep in peace.

Steve Jobs rescues freetards from BBC iPlayer wilderness (for now)

Dump it

With any luck the BBC will abandon the whole idea until they can do it properly, by which time maybe BT will have got their finger out and given us enough bandwidth to cope with all the extra traffic this generates.

Pitcairn Island relays most spam per person

Meaningless

In the same order, population (2007) is:

64

1492

1449

13677

48700

32671

66163

2913

71822

100018

So a couple of zombie machines in each domain, divided by the population, basically explains this table (except for the Faroes, which apparently only had one zombie).

Blue-laser alternative to Blu-ray, HD DVD launched

Missing the point

It could have a place. If it genuinely offers better than DVD quality (all you need for a mobile device) in such a small package then it has some advantages for travellers etc. Personally if I could flash my entire DVD collection over onto this at little cost I would be overjoyed at the space saving.

Having said that, I don't expect it to take off. The drive to HD has too much marketing momentum behind it and the physical capacity, although irrelevant for pre-recorded films, makes this of little use as a computer peripheral. Plus I suspect they will have a lot of difficulty getting major content providers onboard.

Calls to ban hoodie-busting sonic weapon

Public nuisance

A public space is just that - space for all the public.

People rightly complain about noise pollution when someone plays a ghetto blaster in a public place. This is the same thing even if only a small proportion of the public can hear it. Also, babies and toddlers hear the din even if their parents dont and so could be in considerable distress for reasons not obvious to doting relatives.

Nvidia G92-based GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB

Confused

The verdict says :

"Nvidia's new GeForce 8800 GTS delivers a very small level of extra performance over and above the 8800 GT yet it COSTS SIGNIFICANTLY MORE. On the plus side the double-slot cooler is very efficient and quiet."

The Summary says:

"The new GeForce 8800 GTS uses the G92 chip TO CUT COSTS and... er... that’s about the lot really..."

(my CAPS).

Come on guys, you can't have it both ways

EVE Online update kills Windows PCs

Wingefest

The problem was active for 2 hours (before the dangerous download was disabled) and affects pre-Vista OS's where the game is installed on the C: drive.

The complaints thread is 18 pages long and growing almost as fast as you can read it. For an amazing number of people this appears to be the worst thing that has ever happened to them in their whole lives. I hope they remain that lucky. A surprising number seem unable to cope with the simple recovery instructions and demand 1-to-1 support from CCP developers to walk them through the issues. A frightening number seem to have done a destructive reinstall of their entire system.

It was a dumb bug - attempting to delete a file called boot.ini in the game directory with a bad wildcard search. It should have been picked up in any sensible test. Having said that, no self-respecting OS would allow a vital system file to be deleted in this manner by an application patcher.

Sun warns of voracious, collapsing data centers

District heating

Hmmm. 50Mwatt data centres. You could provide district heating to a fair sized town from the waste heat.

Information Commissioner calls for more money and more powers

"primary purpose of the cards was still not clear"

Surely the primary purpose is to prevent the government from having to make another embarrasing u-turn

LEDs replace hands in bonkers Japanese watches

Digital watchies

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."

We don't seem to have made much progress since the late lamented Douglas Adams penned those immortal lines

Judge rules Gore's film an inconvenient catalogue of errors

Why equal time?

Dan said:

"Would it not have been helpful to include a requirement to spend equal time on the counter-argument? There is, after all, still hot debate on whether climate change is man-made or not. (All right, not among the mass public, but there appears to be some within the scientific community)."

Well, if you weighted the time according to the weight of scientific evidence (rather than commercially/politically inspired FUD), you might get 5 mins counterargument.

Only Sky can save digital TV

Let the BBC have it

I'd be quite happy to hand DTT to the BBC. 90% of what is worth watching comes out of their stable anyway.

New euro coin stuffs Turkey

UK front and centre

Great stuff. Put the UK in the centre of the coin when we have not (and hopefully never will) accept the stupid thing

UK front and centre

Great stuff. Put the UK in the centre of the coin when we have not (and hopefully never will) accept the stupid thing

Newest Ubuntu dubbed 'Hardy Heron'

su vs. sudo

If you really want to have a root console, just type

sudo -i

You will retain root access until you exit.

Simpler than changing distros.