* Posts by Greg J Preece

2481 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Yes, Internet Explorer is on the wane in Europe

Greg J Preece

Those ads make me laugh my arse off

Especially "Now I can put two windows side by side!"

What? Windows side by side? Impossible! WITCHCRAFT, I SAY!

At least they're stopping the obnoxious "my idea" nonsense - a stupid idea combined with incredibly smug acting.

Facebook gives you the clap: Official

Greg J Preece

How could you do a story on FB sex

and not get the word "poking" in there?

Germany warns surfers against Firefox

Greg J Preece

FF FTW, again

Not that I want to have a smug moment or anything, but:

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/23/firefox_zero_day_fix/

:-)

Greg J Preece

Head, meet desk

"Don't use IE, use Firefo-, no, wait! Use...er..."

Love all the anti-FF crowd coming out to crow - as they normally do - about Firefox and IE both being software (ie, they have bugs).

Let me explain this for you nice and slowly, IE fans. We use FF not because it has less security holes (though it does seem to) - we use it because when there is a problem, the patch comes out a whoooole lot faster. Well, that and a whole host of other reasons.

No browser is immune to security holes/bugs/flaws. None. The difference is in the patching. IE generally takes about an ice age or two. Firefox....doesn't.

*Doot de dooo doooo dooooo*

You acquired a clue! Achievement Unlocked!

Windows XP Mode skips virtualisation hardware requirements

Greg J Preece

Sweet, does this apply to standard Virtual PC too?

As title, really. Got a Win7 machine that runs on some beefy, but slightly older processors - no hardware virtualisation. I can easily use Virtualbox for XP and do so, but I really want a Win98 image on there for some stuff. Does this mean I can now use VPC?

Nerd alert: First Lucid Lynx Ubuntu beta fun

Greg J Preece

GNOME-look and KDE-look sites

Last time I used GNOME, it was generally a case of heading over to gnome-look.org and having a leaf through. Select the shiny bits you want, download them, and drag and drop them onto the appropriate settings box. Done! Though you should be aware that Firefox has some issues with dark themes - take a look at the gnome-look page for a theme called Divinorum Revisited for a fix.

Me, I'm a KDE user, so I have the rather nifty Get Hot New Stuff system (no seriously, that's what it's called). It launches from inside the various theming panels, and lets me browse theming options and install them with one button click. It's not perfect yet, but it's a very cool feature. I'd love to see how it's improved in Lucid, but alas, Ubuntu give less and less of a crap about KDE users - do we at least get Ubuntu One with this release?

Greg J Preece

That did have me wondering

Ubuntu does have a few real hippies at the higher levels, hence the "free" and "non-free" repositories, and previous distros not coming with support for anything proprietary out of the box - not even via a simple "do you want the stuff we don't like?" button. Yeah, nice one guys, Joe Average will love having to add a repository and install "restricted" packages just to watch DVDs/play his music...

Greg J Preece

Come on guys, you know you want to

"though Canonical says that it will eventually be available also as a plug-in for Banshee, Amarok, and "a few other" Linux music applications."

Songbird Songbird Songbird Songbird Songbiiiiiiiiiiiird!

Come on, please? It's *made* for this kinda thing.

Sony PS3 Slim

Greg J Preece

Redeem the console?

I have an original release PS3 - you know, the one that can actually do shit, before they started ripping everything out - and it kicks ass. Unlike the 360, it doesn't explode at every given opportunity, so my 60GB edition is still working fine. It needs no redeeming. Sure, the online service isn't as good as XBL, but you get what you pay for, and I rarely play online anyway. Other than that it's a totally bitchin' device that was overly slated at launch, mainly for being too expensive.

As for games, most of the big stuff gets released on PS3 *and* 360, so WTF are you on about? The main reason I don't own an Xbox has nothing to do with it being a poorly designed piece of shit - between my PS3 and my PC, I can get all the games I want, so what's the point?

Anyway, I'm off downstairs to fire the sucker up and play God of War 3. Only had chance to play the first area so far, but god DAMN, it's stunning.

Tiger Woods' alleged mistress publishes X-rated texts

Greg J Preece
WTF?

Product endorsements??

"Hi, I'm Tiger Woods' bit on the side. I sell both of us for my own profit because I'm just a whore like that. Buy our products!"

El Reg insults 'millions of Irish Catholics'

Greg J Preece

As an Irish ex-Catholic...

...feck 'em. Thin-skinned whiners.

Sky gets Five HD

Greg J Preece

PS3

Nuff said. Not many channels are in HD but most telly is shite anyway. My LED telly is used for games and movies. Try out the Final Cut transfer of Blade Runner - I bought the briefcase edition from America and it's stunning.

Microsoft cuts out paste

Greg J Preece

MeeGo?

First version's out later this year, I believe. And N900 users get a backported update to it! Woot!

Greg J Preece

Oh the irony

When the iPhone came out, the phrase I heard often was "Christ, even Windows Mobile can do cut and paste!"

Oooh dear...

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 embraces - yes - HTML5

Greg J Preece

That sounds....good?

Am I hearing this? The IE team are concentrating on standards? Open, accepted standards and not ones they made up in the pub? They're building in SVG support???

That platform preview looks....really quite good. Did I just say that?

Did someone fire up the LHC, make one of them interdimensional portal thingummies and not tell anyone?

Toshiba BDX2000

Greg J Preece

Seconded!

Played with quite a few BD players, and to be honest, not one of them matches up to my existing PS3. I've never owned such an excellent device that was slated so much at launch.

'Health and safety killjoys' kill cheese-rolling race

Greg J Preece

So what you're saying...

...is that it's dangerous as all hell - and it is - but that's not a reason for anyone to think that finding somewhere safer would be a good idea?

Mozilla gives passive-aggressive missive to pre-Firefox 3.6 hold-outs

Greg J Preece

Broken?

Not behaving the way you want them translates to "broken"? Sorry, I must have forgotten you were the centre of the world.

Besides, this is Firefox! it'll be about 5 minutes before someone releases the inverse version of this:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1956

Greg J Preece

Just hook into Mozilla's repository

As title. Works for me. :-)

Jesus Phone to exhibit holy gift of bilocation

Greg J Preece

How much are you betting...

...they'll advertise this like it's a new thing.

What astonishes me is that no smartphone manufacturer advertised their products as being better. They allowed Apple to claim innovation that simply wasn't theirs or never existed.

Sony launches 'WiiMote for PS3'

Greg J Preece

Maybe they'll make proper games

As opposed to the 1000000s of mini games and boring uninspired crap that makes up the Wii library.

(Apologies to Code Monkey)

Freesat BBC iPlayer beta gets red button access

Greg J Preece

Been using this for a month or so

And it's pretty good, actually. Saves me loading up the PS3, at any rate, though it's a while since i had to type phone-style.

BT boss urges fines for filesharing customers

Greg J Preece

And there it is...

"The peers behind the amendment have argued that since all major ISPs already block a list of URLs carrying images of child abuse, they have the technical means to comply with injunctions demanding copyright blocking."

The very *definition* of function creep.

Arseholes. Wonder what they'll want to censo^H^H^H^H^H block next.

Tablet maker threatens, then robs Apple

Greg J Preece

Grow a sense of humour

As title. If you really have to take the time out of your day to whinge because someone called you a 'Merkin, rather than the correct term ("Yank"), then you need a stronger backbone.

Tories ask: Why BBC3, BBC4?

Greg J Preece

3 + 4 = 2

I'm with some of the other posters above. Take all the good bits of BBC3 and BBC4, squeeeeze them together, and call it BBC2. Sorted!

Just because something doesn't pull in the viewing figures of Eastenders doesn't mean it's crap. In fact, often it means the exact opposite.

Northerners give up ID cards for Lent figures suggest

Greg J Preece

Gah, no!

"Perhaps an Eastenders story line could boost interest."

No! Don't give them ideas!

Apple yanks Wi-Fi detectors from iTunes

Greg J Preece

@Frank

"...they want their tedious FPS back."

Hey, it was just the first game I spotted in the repository. I've since installed a bunch of emulators, and I'm looking at porting some of my favourite games into the DOSbox instance I installed on it.

Man, this thing KICKS ASS.

Greg J Preece
Thumb Up

N900 FTW!

Got mine today and it's AWESOME. Installed root access, gave the phone user a password, then installed htop, vim and SSH, connected to my home server, fired up a VNC session, connected to it (just because I could), had a browse around, then shut all that down, and fired up some Doom. Cost of apps: $0.00. Availability of apps: open, always, forever.

The iPhone can kiss my hairy white arse.

Ubisoft undone by anti-DRM DDoS storm

Greg J Preece

Buy a legit copy, then crack it

That's what I do every time some arsehole comes up with ludicrous DRM like this. I bought the game - so bugger off!

Though I do remember proudly patting my - at the time spanking new - AMD64 box when it turned out that Stardock only worked in 32 bit environments. Bwhahaha.

Google says desktop PC is three years from 'irrelevance'

Greg J Preece

If nothing else, screen res

Lets see the Google coding staff do all their stuff on a 3.5" screen. I've got twin 22" widescreens at work, and three 19" TFTs at home. Still not enough, as far as I'm concerned.

And then there's the question of input. I always buy phones with a keyboard, but I've yet to find one that makes it relatively easy to get at things like {braces}.

I *love* my smartphones, but God almighty, doing everything on them? No.

MS confirms 'F1 to pwn' IE bug

Greg J Preece
Joke

Previous experience?

At times in the past it's taken a fair bit of negative publicity to get Microsoft off their arses and fixes developed. Maybe they've just decided to skip the slow stages of the development cycle. ;-)

Brass necked suspect swallows USB evidence

Greg J Preece
Coat

Still not extreme enough

As Ms Ripley tells us, the only way to be sure is to take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.

OK, OK, mine's the leather one.

Asus assures no more delays for keyboard-computer

Greg J Preece

Why aren't they calling it

The Eeeboard?

Old PS3s locked out of PlayStation Network

Greg J Preece

In that case...

...what was RRoD all about? A billion dollars worth of dead Xboxen tells me to keep my PS3. :-p

Greg J Preece

Thank God for that!

I was getting an error on my PS3 last night and all the Google results coming back suggested my PS3 was buggered. Glad to know it's not.

That said, having the PSN network die and take Burnout Paradise with it mere hours after I set up my new LED telly... Grrrrr!

T-Mobile announces pay monthly package revamp

Greg J Preece

Cheers Lancs

Much obliged. Hopefully SSH will work on a standard connection without me having to pay the extra tenner for "mobile broadband plus." Feckers.

Now if I can just avoid the shitty way they treat their upgrading customers...

Greg J Preece

Cheers!

Ta for that! Had an O2 user confirm to me today that his contract phone can use SSH. Our Orange business phones can, but that's a business account, so it may be different.

3 reckon they can, and so do I, but I've not been able to confirm it.

Vodafone gave me a really weird answer. They said that they do block ports, but they couldn't tell me which ones, as they've no idea - apparently it changes "on a whim." Nice to know they can sell me a data tariff without knowing what it does...

I'll go into T-Mobile next time I get chance and see what they can tell me.

Greg J Preece

1GB?

I was under the impression it was 3GB. That's what they told me when I signed my contract.

Honestly, there needs to be some kind of regulatory involvement on this. Staff who do not have the answer (or have conflicting answers) to even the most basic of technical questions should not be allowed to sell Internet access!

Greg J Preece

Uh-oh

The reason I use T-Mobile's network is the existence of Web and Walk Plus, which guarantees that I can use SSH, etc from my phone. Now that they've only got one level of net access, who's betting that it's the usual shite you get from mobile networks, with everything blocked except what good boys and girls use?

Serious question: which mobile networks allow you to use SSH/FTP from a phone? I've already asked the networks, and got various degrees of "uuhhhhh...dunno."

Skype first to scrap Windows Mobile

Greg J Preece

Good thing I kept the old installer

I noticed this at the weekend. Dunno what they're talking about with the interface. Amongst the sludge of WM5, Skype and Opera Mobile are welcome slices of excellence. The Skype client is great! OK, I understand not developing any future versions, but why remove the existing one?

Bulgarian airbag absorbs semi-automatic rifle round

Greg J Preece

@Ugotta

http://xkcd.com/397/

Nuff said.

BT could face criminal case over Phorm trials

Greg J Preece

They're obviously guilty

"After the trials, BT and Phorm sought advice from the Home Office over whether their planned national deployment would be legal under RIPA. Officials gave the opinion - since disputed - that it would be if customers gave consent."

By deduction then, the trials were illegal, as customers did not give consent. And BT didn't ask for advice before the trials, either.

2 + 2 = guilty, surely? No number of brown paper envelopes stuffed with cash could help them wriggle out of that one.

Virgin offers cut-price data roaming in Europe

Greg J Preece
FAIL

Better...

...but still shit. £1 per MB? Phht. In England you can have 1GB of data over a 30 day period for as little as a fiver. Is continental data really that much of a delicacy that it costs 200 times as much?

iPad pitch to the Wall Street Journal laid bare

Greg J Preece

Not sure about this

I mean, yeah, getting rid of Flash would be nice (though I'm one of those that wants to see OGG be improved and used as the video standard in HTML 5). So in that case I agree with Mr Jobs. HTML 5 looks like a very good thing, even if it will take aaaaages before most sites convert to it.

On the other hand, walking into somewhere and asking them to change their product - at no small expense - so that it works properly on your new product, is a bit cheeky. Well, no. A bit cheeky is making a pass at the receptionist on the way into the meeting. What Mr Steve is asking for is downright brazen. If he tried that where I work, he'd be told "piss off, we'll upgrade to HTML 5 when we're ready, not when it suits you and your marketing company."

CrackBerry mimics Jesus Phone with WebKit browser

Greg J Preece

Still miffed about Iris

That was shaping up to be a great little browser for WM until RIM bought it.

Mumble grumble...

BBC clambers onto iPhone bandwagon

Greg J Preece

You act like they weren't already on it

"BBC clambers onto iPhone bandwagon"

Hah! The BBC has been an advertising arm of Apple for quite some time now. Can't think of another company that gets all its product announcements - never mind releases - featured on headline TV news. I remember watching their gushing fanboi report on the iPhone launch. And try spotting a laptop/phone/other piece of kit used on the Beeb that doesn't have an Apple logo on the back.

Just clambered on? Get real - the BBC *built* the bandwagon.

OpenOffice 3.2 - now with less Microsoft envy

Greg J Preece

It's because...

...and you'll be astonished by this - OTHER people might have gone for Office 2007 instead. I know you'll find it hard to believe, but sometimes we receive documents from outside the company! Wowzers. What an age we live in, eh?

Computer Engineer Barbie coming soon to a toy store near you

Greg J Preece

I have one

But that's mainly because - for only one month longer - I still use one of these:

http://www.digitaltechnews.com/news/images/t_mobile_ameo.jpg

Try holding that sucker up to your ear to take a phone call. Oh, and I also use it for driving, natch.

Windows 7 'genuine' nagware winging its way to OS

Greg J Preece

It's not mandatory

You don't *have* to install it, but they make you go to an effort not to. If you've got automatic updates, it's installed with them. If you go to the Windows Update site, it's selected by default.

Chip and PIN security busted

Greg J Preece

Agreed!

If it were about security, the PIN would be more than 4 bloody digits!