Posts by Greg J Preece

Bovine Excrement

"Microsoft said the update would scan for over “70 known and potentially dangerous activation exploits” in its latest operating system."

Dangerous?

“I’d like to stress that the Update is voluntary, which means that you can choose not to install it when you see it appear on Windows Update.”

...automatically selected, in the "Critical Updates" section, which your system is configured to install from without asking first...

Woah, that's fast

Just tried it out on Kubuntu and they weren't kidding about load times. The whole thing feels a lot nippier. Nice one!

Shouldn't be funny

"The Rongelap islanders in particular suffered a nasty surprise as they had not been told about the test, which was supposed to be secret."

I should not be laughing at this, but the notion of a "secret" nuclear mushroom cloud amuses me.

Going back to Adaptec

I mentioned them above and completely forgot to explain why. I once bought a SCSI controller off a certain online tat market, and bugger me, it was buggered. I phoned Adaptec for advice and they said to send it to them. I had no warranty card, no receipt, not even a box, but they cared not a jot. They give a 5 year warranty on all their cards, the card in question had only been on the market for 2 years, so send it on back. I got a brand new card in return, in the box, with a whole bunch of accessories I never paid for thrown in for free as a "sorry it broke."

If only more companies had that kinda sense.

Spider sense....tingling...

Something tells me this had little to do with the flag...

Offline?

Why is it necessary to take the store offline for an entire day to add new products? That doesn't sound like a very well-built store!

Unless, of course, this is all to generate extra publicity/hushed awe amongst the cultists. But only a cynic would think like that. ;-)

It's because the games are shit

End of. OK, OK, PC gaming is dying a death thanks to the rise of stupidly powerful console, along with the rise of stupid DRM that continually punishes PC gamers for not being console gamers.

But seriously, how crap are the games these days? Aside from the next Call of Duty or God of War game, what is there to look forward to? What game took your breath away last year and threatened to take your social life with it?

Games just don't draw me in any more. They're high on production values and graphics, and low on innovation. (And before you say it, the Wii turned out to be exactly the useless fad I thought it would be. 101 mindless party games for 6 year olds? No thanks.) I've started playing a lot more "retro" games, because they're simply more entertaining. The occasional game breaks through with great appeal, but on the whole they're bland, generic, and not worth 40 quid a pop.

I know my expectations of games are high - I lived my teenage years straight through the Golden Age of Gaming, and it was *awesome* - but 90% of the crap put out for the modern market simply isn't worth bothering with.

Much like Hollywood, in that respect...

Nice idea, but a waistcoat?

I carry a million gadgets every day, and I have to stuff what pockets I have full. I'd love something like this, but it's just so....ugly. Give it some sleeves, add a bit of length, make it a looser fit, make it out of leather....

So yeah, just take a proper jacket and sew some more pockets in it. Damn, I should try that. I could make money...

That's better

While I have taken advantage of free P&P on DVDs as a buyer, it did seem a bit unfair to the seller. A postage cap seems more appropriate and better for one-off sales/attic sellers.

Odd quote, but in fairness...

"Macmillan pushed for an increase in e-book titles from $9.99 to $14.99"

That is f**king ridiculous. Arbitrary 50% price increase on a medium that costs approximately $0.000001 per reproduction, and was already extortionately priced to begin with.

Version 7?

Why version 7? This is continually annoying me.

Every time I see a group of people declaring that they're finally moving from IE6, they move to IE7. Why not 8? If you're going to move, you might as well move to the latest version, right?

Hold up

"It's fate remains unknown to this day."

Eh? I thought they found Beagle 2. Or at least, what they reckon is Beagle 2:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/20/beagle_spotted/

Wala?

Someone doesn't know their French.

So there's a battery alerter in Windows that drains the battery? Hmmm, what does that remind me of... Oh yeah! The "feature" in Windows Mobile that turns on the screen when your battery is dying, then keeps the screen on to make sure it dies as quickly as possible.

Ahahahahaha

*That's* the iPad? That thing?

I don't even need to mock it! Sure, every chump in range is going to want one, and the Mac-adoring BBC are already masturbating wildly over it, so expect to see every newsreader with one as soon as they come out, but that doesn't stop it being a piece of crap.

And to all those who believe that anything hugely popular has to be good, I give you: The X-Factor, Big Brother, TV soaps, the Daily Mail, and the Audi TT.

That's nice...

...perhaps now they'll get back to administering the list, seen as it's two weeks since they falsely marked one of my sites as malware-ridden, prompting endless pop-ups and confirmation screens in Firefox, and preventing me from using that browser to access my account. Grrr.

2014

I have little faith in Cameron, and I'm planning to emigrate anyway - my passport runs out in 2014, I believe. 4 years left...

A different kind of missile, surely?

I'm thinking there would be a difference between the ICBMs designed to level Russia and the kind of space-destined missiles designed to neutralise a flying cathedral. So perhaps Mr Obama McJesus' statement could be changed to say "no nukes aimed at this particular ball of rock."

How long until....

...Windows 7 Mobile Edition? Hell, WM is on v7, and so's the desktop version - it could happen.

Might work better, too. Trying to sell my old WM phone today, and will it talk to my Win7 desktop so I can back it up? Not a chance.

Thank God my next device comes with Linux.

Well, you do surprise me...

BT, an ISP that has time and time again shown themselves to be not just arrogant and greedy, but plain old-fashioned eeeevil, is touting a high-speed line where people using the advertised speed for any length of time are punished?

Shocking. No really, I never saw that one coming.

If it's all the same, I'll stay over here on Titan, where they don't illegally dive my data, or throttle my connection, or restrict arbitrary protocol use, or charge me through the nose for the privilege.

Hmmm

Half decent range...

Decent enough speed...

Charges up pretty quickly...

Actually looks like a car and not an inflatable kid's toy...

Compared to some electric cars, that thing's not bad.

I like it!

Though the keyboard looks a bit weird, other than that, that looks pretty damned cool!

Well they're partly right

"The suit alleged that WGA was falsely advertised as a security update."

As far as I'm concerned, that's true. Every time I go to Windows Update on an XP machine that little fecker appears in the "Critical Updates" list, otherwise reserved for security updates, service packs and anti-virus/anti-malware kit. And of course, there's no link in any version of WU I've seen to "not show this update again."

20GB limit

Bit cheeky to call it "Infinity" and then limit it to 20GB...

Admittedly for a fiver more you get "unlimited" (which won't be) and a much nicer upload speed.

But they won't be rolling out near me for a few years yet. Which is good really, because after Phorm I don't want to be tempted back to these bastards.

We downloaded the server, oh yes

That gave us the wave protocol and absolutely nothing else. Not having Google's own front-end (which it pushes as being Google Wave, even though it's not) is what you'd expect, to be fair, but from the polish of their preview to the command line hackery of the server was a jolt. It's actually not a bad protocol, and we will integrate it with our products at some point.

Looks

I think it looks quite smart, myself. It's not overly flashy - it's just neat. Each to their own. :-)

About time

Why does it always take a monumental embarassing failure to get governments to do things like this?