Posts by Dick Kennedy

I'd be interested to know what retrocomputing channels you've found.

Apple has been working on hearing aid technology for years, and licences its technology for free to hearing aid manufacturers. Some of that technology makes its way into its own products. I have 80% hearing loss in one ear. I'm using AirPods Pro, tuned using the Mimi app and find that using just one AirPod in that bad ear makes a huge difference. The one downside of using earpod-style devices vs pukka hearing aids is battery life.

Re: Well if the US ships want the Chinese to keep out of the way

Same old Apple bashing. Take a few disgruntled devs (and when weren't devs disgruntled?), and handful of non-functional apps (mainly because the devs are crap/lazy) and some unsubstantiated rumours, mix together and blow out of all proportion.

This is a major OS update. When did you know of a major OS update that didn't have snags - including Windows and Linux? For god's sake, half of the Linux world is still blathering on about systemd.

Alas, this is all too typical for The Reg. I know Apple ignores you, but do try to get over it. If you do that, then maybe one day you can grow up into real journalists.

Re: Well if the US ships want the Chinese to keep out of the way

There's a missing 'not' in that final par - a rather significant omission.

Do you want to have another go at that last sentence - you know, so it makes sense?

Re: Well if the US ships want the Chinese to keep out of the way

Nothing new here. I used TSO a couple of years ago. Emails from the domains they hosted regularly got blacklisted. Customer support was a joke. Servers were slow. I moved to a new hosting firm before the year's subscription ran out.

But I also agree that Spamhaus are a bunch of knobheads.

So, you criticise the EU for taking a certain position, then criticise them again when they respond to criticism and do something you thought they should do. But I guess that acknowledging that fact would mean passing up an opportunity to be snarky. And, let's face it, the Register is nothing without snark.

This is the problem with self-appointed guardians of the interwebs. I used to have endless problems with Spamhaus. My email was provided by a major ISP. Some other user who, presumably, was in the same IP pool as me may have done something unwise from time to time, which ended up with everyone who got dished out that IP being blocked by Spamhaus. About once a week I'd have to apply to Spamhaus to get it unblocked, which could take 48 hours. It became untenable. But my frequent queries to Spamhaus - about why & how they were blocking were treated either with arrogance or were completely ignored. I had to change my email setup because it was affecting my business. The terms 'self-important' and 'pompous' were coined for this bunch...

Re: Well if the US ships want the Chinese to keep out of the way

Really? This really happened? Because these are two of the oldest urban myth/FOAF stories in tech mythology...

Re: Well if the US ships want the Chinese to keep out of the way

Doesn't seem that revolutionary a step. We already have armed drones. This one's just a bit faster.

You realise Godfather II was brilliant, right? It was Godfather III that sucked the big one. If you're going to try to be clever with movie references, at least get them right.

Holy crap, that was boring...

The aliens have switched it back on!

Great - now we can have fileless malware running or more platforms. After all, PowerShell is the choice of hackers everywhere...

So is this how the Reg does things now? Next: why Windows 10 is crap (on a 486).

Well, the Reg has been wrong pretty much every time it writes about Apple - starting here: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/23/iphone_will_fail/

If you want a balanced, insightful and unbiased view about Apple you have to look - well, pretty much anywhere else.

The polls in France have been very accurate, in both rounds of the presidential election and the first round of the general election.

Sounds like the US grand jury finally got its act together. I suspect the US Justice Dept has asked Sweden to stand down, thereby removing its prior claim over Assange. With that complexion, he's not going to look good in orange.

This isn't a flash-in-the-pan project like so many others on Kickstarter. This project has a long history, including sales of bare-board versions. So it's actually a proven design with an existing user base (albeit small) that is now getting a fancy case.

You need to fix either the headline or the story - they don't agree about the prison sentence.

Hey, do you know what's "pathetically petty"? You guys banging on about how Apple doesn't like you, year after year. But at least you don't let it bias your coverage. Oh wait, you do. Weren't you guys journalists once?

Is this story out of date? My sites all already show the plugin at version 2.3.7, and they haven't been updated recently...

Oh, and what about the press releases boasting that Company X (which you've never heard of) has made it into the Gartner Magic Quadrant - as if anyone gives a flying toss about the Magic Quadrant - or Gartner, for that matter. Or Company Y achieving ISO 27001, to which the only possible alternative response to 'Who gives a slippery shit?' is, 'Seriously? You didn't already have that?'. And don't get me started on the, 'Malcolm Insignificant, Chief Bloviating Officer of Irrelevant Software is in London next week and this is a great opportunity for a one-to-one where you can ask him how great it must be to be him', to which I always reply, "Really? In London? That's great. I'll be in Paris.'

Sorry about the cat.

Not original...

Minolta had this idea back in the 1980s. It launched a compact disc camera (remember those?). It came with a screw-on telescopic arm. In those pre-digital, pre-screen days, to help you compose the shot, there was a small mirror mounted on the front of the camera. This was tinted slightly pink because that makes ladies feel better about how they look (allegedly).

MSX Computing and What MSX? did not publish in alternate months. What MSX? was bi-monthly but MSX Computing was a monthly. I only know because I worked on the damn thing.

Quaderno - good for two weeks

I was at the Quaderno launch in Italy and got given one of the machines. Loved it and used it extensively until, inevitably (given that it was Italian), it broke. That was a fun two weeks. I didn't know a single journo from that launch whose Quaderno didn't break. In some cases, they found the machines broken by the time they got back from Italy. The screen had a very thin glass covering that would crack if there was a light breeze, or an 'R' in the month. Otherwise a fine attempt.

She should change her password - to one she can't remember. Then we'd all be spared her drivel.

VAT BS

This excuse about VAT driving the cost of ebooks up is nonsense. Yes, VAT must be charged. But the ex-VAT cost of the ebook should be much lower to start with. There's no printing, no raw materials, no distribution costs (shipping and storage), no pulping of unsold copies, etc etc. The production cost of ebooks is a tiny fraction of that of print books. This is about publishers gouging the public.

Important but annoying

Wikileaks is an important medium for information that would otherwise be suppressed. It's just a shame that, while providing a valuable service, Assange devotes so much time to behaving like a dickhead. Mostly, I find his attitude merely immature. The approach of 'information must be free at all costs' is the kind of naive tosh you'd expect of an undergraduate. I'm looking forward to the day that Assange grows up - then he'll do something really useful.

Parachutes - a bad idea

Iglethal has it right. Also, ballistic chutes encourage people to take the easy way out when it would actually be <i>safer</i> to fly on. Poor weather is a good example.

Is the Rans S9 actually approved for aerobatics? Looks like the wing folder under negative-g, so the pilot may have been overdoing it.

What the scanners are really looking for

Maybe the scanners can't detect combustibles, but they're finding something far more sinister. Check this out:

http://www.weeklyworldinquisitor.com/scanners-reveal-probes.html