Posts by ElReg!comments!Pierre

Srlsly. In what world are we living?

And spare me the "think of the children" bull. The problem is twofold in my opinion.

1) WTF are 12-yo doing unsupervised on the web with apparently no clue whatsoever? Surely they don't have their own connection, nor can they afford computers or smartphones by their own means whithout the parents knowing?

2) WTF can lead 40-yo men to such behavior? I mean they clearly weren't pathological "paedos", one even went on to post the images on the web. Are we really leaving in such a ridiculously prude society dominated by image that the only way for a (presumably/preferably overweight and social misfit) man to get his rocks off is to trick sub-teens into sending him webcam-standard "nude" (read "bare chest", probably) pics? (this is a rhetorical question.)

Also, how come that you get 20 years behind the bars plus a big red stamp on the rest of your life for getting tittie pics from a teen, when you get away with a mere slap on the wrist and a job for the feds for stealing a few thousand identities and emptying families' bank accounts? Would this guy have even been prosecuted if he had obtained a credit card number and expiry date instead of bare chest pics?

Will the girl be considered as a victim by her parents, and pampered even more, or will she get the spanking she (and her parents) rightly desserve? In the latter case, where can I get the vid? (erm, sorry).

Lastly, amongst the crowd of horrified parents who will no doubt ask for the guy's nuts, how many will actually learn the lesson and monitor their sprog's online activities? Or at least try and educate them? I'm guessing not too many.

This is pathetic from start to finish. The offenders are pathetic, the "victim" girls are pathetic, their parents are even below pathetic, and the way it's being handled is pathetic. Don't even get me started on the right-wing nutters who will take this as a reason to ban cameras on beaches or around schools, and to jail any male who happens to lay their eyes on their precious offspring in the street.

@ LaeMi Qian

"Being pedantic, but you can't "put BSD on [a] Linux" any more than you can put a BMW engine in a Honda engine."

Well, as you probably knows, Debian is not a kernel, it's a (mighty) front-end with a very wide ecosystem. It can run on top of a linux kernel, on to of a *BSD kernel, on top of a microkernel system (hurd), no prob (as long as you can compile some C). I know that, you most probably know that., I'm just trying to prevent lay persons viewing this comment section from getting wrong ideas.

@ CoonDoggy

"- you can take a slice of the database and fit it on a laptop, and an app stack can frequently fit there too if you only need to serve one user. It's work, but you can do it."

yes you can. Yes it's a lot of work. Yes it's pointless., and no it won't fit the "put it on a CD for demo purpose' requirement. So what's you point?

Hell-llooo-ooow! It's a friggin' tablet!

Why would you want a 60 GB hard drive -let alone 120) on one of these? All it needs is enough Flash memory to hold the OS (ooops, Windows, sorry) and a SD slot for the movies, data and stuff. USB as a backup if you want to hook it up to a beefy external drive once a year. This is supposed to be mobile device, i.e. "on the go" use. This 60GB hard drive is resistant to shocks, right? It wont shatter if I drop the damn thing. Or will it?

Better focus on the core features for a tablet, such as, let's see, a friggin' portrait mode, maybe? Or good battery life? Or ruggedness? (no HDD, protected screen). Or the ability to add any communication protocol I darnfeel I need? (Right, not anything can be soldered on the MoBo. Dunno,protected dongle ports maybe?)

Also, just to be an annoying twat, I'll point out that Windows 7 will be the first serious attempt at touchscreen support from MS. What could possibly be wrong... lemme check Microsoft track records for first implementation of anything... oh right, I'm gonna wait for version 3, ta very much.

The only good thing about this thing against other, more tablet-focused products (like the TouchBook) is a known and trusted manufacturer. To this regard, I have a humble request: would it be possible to get a review of the TouchBook (http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/home/index.htm) to know what it's really worth? It sports several very good features in my opinion, such as keeping the price low by limited storage and communication protocols, but with a SD slot and internal USB ports for maximal modularity (think dongles). Portrait mode, too. And a switch between netbook and tablet modes when pluging or unpluging the keyboard (really touchscreen-oriented, no "we just softized the keyboard" nonsense as exposed here). The fact that the external keyboard doubles the battery life instead of sucking power is nice too. Not tho mention that in some cases I'd be very glad to have a clamshell design to protect the screen, instead of having a separated external keyboard with sharp angles randomly pressed against the touchscreen in my backpack. Appart from any technical consideration, the promo videos by "Gregoire, Fonderr of Ahlouayz Innovating" are pure comedy gold IMHO. Although I'm not sure was the initial purpose. ;-) Crazy French.

"But they do fight amongst themselves over which distro is better"

Debian. And don't give me that Cruduntu thing.

I need popcorn!

Now that ought to be an interesting fight, with lots of bitchslapping, hair pulling, biting and pinching. Go Google go!. Er, I mean, Go MS go! Oh whatever, it'll be fun anyway.

<Sits back and watches>

PS MS lost all right to bitch about this kind of things, especially after the "unremovable one-click-malware-install Firefox plugin incident a while back:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/01/ms_firefox_extension_row/

@ Estariel

"This UK girl has never seen it spelt any other way, when used in this sense."

But again, how old is "this UK girl"?

And, perhaps more importantly, what is her phone number?

OK, don't push, I'm gone already.

Stats (@ Steven Jones and co)

About the 9 for blokes against 6.3 for the broads: there is absolutely no problem with that. Actually it could even be an average of 0.01 or lower for women and 5000 for men, it would still be possible. It only takes 5000 women who spend their whole life in bed (or on the copier) while the others enter convent. Or there could be more women than men around. Or there could be more gay men than gay women. Or gay men could tend to swing more.

@ Steven Jack

"but you get what you pay for"

one more for the "drooling morons" file. Seriously, people, stop using this expression. Depending on how you take it it is either *always* wrong or *always* true, so what's the point? It's just useless chatter. Well, it is useful as a "I've nothing nothing interesting to say" statement, so the other people can just say Hmm hmm and go talk to someone with a brain.

I won't answer the rest of the post obviously.

Well wymin _are_ a problem in the workplace

Take a team of efficient (if somewhat smelly) geeks in mission control. Throw a short-skirted cleavage-flashing blond chick in there. Watch productivity plummet.

Surely this can only be the girl's fault?

Imitation?

"We asked Microsoft to comment on this story, but at time of writing it hadn't got back to us."

That's more than imitation, it's mimetism!

@AC about multihead and printers

"1) [Linux doesn't do multihead]"

It does. I am fairly confident you could dual-display on an HDTV and the screen of you new Casio watch, should the need arise. Of course your graphics hardware needs to be able to do it, but apparently that's the case.

"2) Lack of decent printer support (i.e. no Lexmark drivers). Yes, I know this is not the "fault" of Linux, but no Linux drivers means no Linux drivers." and "UKP200" (for a printer)

You've been looking in the wrong places. Unless you have a strange one-of-a-king printer, you should be able to find drivers. I print on a lexmark from my Linux boxen on a daily basis. Though the printer is a piece of crap tbh. And 200 quids for a printer? I assume it's one of these printer/fax/scanner/coffee machine combos. And by "lack of drivers" you then probably mean "lack of shiny 'solution center' graphical interface with big shiny colourful buttons to disguise the fact that it's actually only a very crappy image editing software"? In that case you'd be right. And it's a darn good thing, too.

Linux might not be perfect, but you might want to actually try it before dissing it. Though it's not The Ultimate Saviour of The World, I generally find it pretty good, even for desktop use. Better than Windows in any case. Of course it still won't run Crysis with details on high -though rumor has it that a Google employee managed to get 20 FPS in full-res, however they had to allocate a full datacentre to the job.

And also "I would rather switch to a Linux distro...but there just isn't one out there that suits my needs" is a bit bold. If anything, there are far too many of the things laying around, you'd be very unlucky if there wasn't one for you. But then you could roll your own (easier than you might think).

It's not a problem

Apparently _not_ all iPhones owner are affected, so it's OK. And Windows is the most secure OS ever made, as _not_ all Windows computers are pwned in their first week of use. And _not_ all the people who get shot in the head die, so getting shot in the head is good for health.

Geez. Amazing how far in denial-land part of the iCrowd can be. S'pose it's due to the price tag. A mix between "it has to seem perfect so that I don't look like a fool" and "you get what you pay for ". The latter being the most idiotic piece of BS ever worded by Man. It instantly gets you a nice cosy room under "drooling cretinous ape" in my books.

She knows she gets what she pays for.

@Matt 20

"Are you saying it will run on garlic and arrogance?"

As opposed to what, Jello and weapon-grade blandness?

Mwahahaha

Not so easy to out-Google Google, is it? Though given the horrendous pile of dogshow that MSOffice code is*, it is surprising that they even managed to finally make an online version. Even late and incomplete as it is. They might have succeeded by rewriting the stuff from the ground up, but that's not the MS way is it? (last attempt at rewriting stuff was the aborted Longhorn, which eponymous keratinized integuments are still hurting MS collective backside 4 years later, I reckon).

Shorthorned BG for obvious keratinized integument reasons.

* MSOffice? There is no such thing. At least not in the "integrated suite" meaning that people tend to see in it. There are individual apps held together -barely- with a couple rolls of duct tape. That's probably why the available features differ from app to app in these online versions.

What about the *real* party?

I heard there is a real good party at the same time. Loads of pizza and Red Bull available. There will even be decoration and all (a penguin sticker on the basement's door I believe). But then again the transcript might not have been as funny: "Mhhh. MhMh. Hmmmm. HMhhhmmmHHHHm. Ntntnt. Hm" and so on. And as far as music goes, the Imperial March on loop can be a bit tiresome after the first 2 hours. Especially with the basement's reverberation.

@Michelle Knight:

"when it comes to having a REALLY good time, the only electronics involved are some batteries and a fast, off-centre weighted motor"

Nothing like a Wild Tail for some serious pussy fun:

http://www.cattoys.com/wildtail.html

@ Michael Fremlins

"Everyone who has commented about the root account being hacked, or the root password being guessed, should go back to UNIX school and learn a few things. For ports > 1024 any user can open a listening socket. Unless you do something to stop it. If you didn't know that you shouldn't be offering any opinions or advice or comments about how things are hacked, because you really don't know anything."

How do you suggest the bad guys *installed* a bloody new webserver on the boxen without root privilege, Smarty McSmartypants?

Sick'em

Sickem good