* Posts by BorkedAgain

686 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Mar 2010

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Diary of a Not-spot: One man's heroic struggle for broadband

BorkedAgain
Unhappy

Ooh, don't get me started on VM...

When I moved into my (ground-floor) flat I tried to convince virgin to connect me. Their cable runs right outside my front-room window, there's a manhole right there, and there's even the little conduit running from the manhole to my wall. Even so, they told me it'd be too expensive to connect me. Every other house in the street has their cable connected, but no. Apparently if they connected me thay'd have to connect all the other flats in the building, 'cos otherwise people would feel left out and sulk or something...

So I'm connected over good ol' ADSL, like the last five years never happened. Okay, nothing like the hardships this guy's gone (going?) through but still a little vexing...

Brits now spend more on debit cards than rustle or jingle money

BorkedAgain
Troll

Well...

There can be some good reasons for using a credit card:

http://www.fool.co.uk/credit-cards/information/why-use-a-credit-card.aspx

...but they're an expensive form of credit on the whole. Pay off the entire balance monthly (which should allow you to save on fees) and you get the protection without the charges.*

Pay the minimum repayment every month and you're heading into a maelstrom of debt.

* Depends on the details of the card in question; contracts vary.

Unreleased Lady Gaga songs nabbed in audacious hack

BorkedAgain
Thumb Up

Unreleased LaGaGa sounds good to me.

Shame they couldn't have hidden the master copies as well...

iOS upgrade cocks up iPad USB connections

BorkedAgain
Jobs Horns

Wrong type of USB.

You're assuming that the "U" stands for "Universal".

Mr Jobs has simply re-defined it to mean "Unsupported Serial Bus".

There we are. All cleared up?

Reminds me aof a joke we used to tell about MS developers. Plus ca change:

"How many Apple designers does it take to change a light bulb?

- None, Steve Jobs simply declares Darkness to be the new standard."

US politician: 'homosexual agenda' behind TSA groin grope

BorkedAgain

Gay icons, sure...

...but I'm pretty sure only one or two of the Village People was actually gay.

Mind you, it'd be kind of fun to have them pat you down. Something to mention at the next soiree. "A funny thing happened to me on that flight back from San Francisco..."

Chinese telecoms giant furiously scrubs links to Phorm

BorkedAgain
Thumb Down

Good grief.

Hadn't heard about Phorm for a while; allowed myself to assume they'd simply gone the way of all things. Shame they're still around and peddling their vileness...

How I saved the Macintosh

BorkedAgain

Oscar Mike Golf...

I remember cow gum!

My Dad had a printing business in the late seventies / early eighties (offset lithography; big in its day) and I remember many happy afternoons after school, making my own stinky, sticky bouncy-balls with dried-up cow gum.

Ah, the days when "cut" and "paste" meant something...

Apple patents glasses-free, multi-viewer 3D

BorkedAgain

Well, yes...

...Not least because they were displays you could see and use...

Blu-ray barely better than DVD

BorkedAgain

Meh...

What Toastan Buttar said. If it's a good film then who the hell cares whether you can count the leaves of the tree in the background? If you're pausing the movie to see whether you can read the newspaper that Extra In Hat is reading in the background then the film can't be worth watching in the first place...

Ten... budget Android smartphones

BorkedAgain

One question re: SanFran

That looks seriously nice; considering getting it as a christmas present for someone near-and-dear who's currently getting vocally tired of her increasingly long-in-the-tooth Bilberry.

One thing: I have an HTC Desire (utterly delighted with it, by the way) and, although I generally get along with the touchscreen, I do occasionally find myself using the trackpad for "precision" selection and navigation. Not often, but enough to notice if the trackpad wasn't there.

I notice the San Francisco has neither trackpad nor trackball. Does this not get in the way of useful navigation?

iOS 4.2 multi-tasking comes to the iPad

BorkedAgain
Jobs Horns

You forgot...

...and it's your fault for holding it wrong or something.

Shell's London office UNDER WATER and besieged by GIANT EELS

BorkedAgain

Eels up inside yer

Finding an entrance where they can...

Top Ten Arcade Classics

BorkedAgain
Coat

Ah... Happy memories of mis-spent youth...

...watching kids with some co-ordination play these behemoths. My own 10p would generally give me about 15 seconds of frustrated button-hammering and ultimate fail. Except Dig Dug, for which I had an uncanny affinity...

Never noticed before but isn't Ryu (is that his name? Tom-Cruise-looking bloke in white PJs in Street Fighter...) wearing red stilettos? All this time and I had no idea the game was about catty TVs...

Royal Wedding: Prince Charles is a ZX81, Wills is an iPad

BorkedAgain
Coffee/keyboard

*Prostrates self*

...I am not worthy...

Google accused of hard-coding own links in search

BorkedAgain

Yeah, I spotted that after I posted...

Delighted (and relieved) to say I didn't click through to any of the links...

Still, that's a mean, lousy trick for someone to pull. I'm sure I'm not the only FOOL who defaults to .com when entering new URLs. What a rotter. Shame that scroogle.org couldn't have shelled out the few dollars for a proper URL, too... (I kid)

Oh, and that's a very sweet anonymous hat you're wearing there while throwing the old insults around. Suits you. Nice shade of yellow. :)

BorkedAgain
WTF?

How odd.

Just entered "scroogle.com" into by address bar (figured I'd give it a go) and ended up looking at a BING results page, with the results of a search for boobdex. Much porn. Sweet.

So. Looks like shenanigans to me. Amusing shenanigans (if you have my sense of humour and are lucky enough to work from home, rendering NSFW reasonably safe) but slightly intriguing.

Hitachi quietly slips in new, big hardness

BorkedAgain
Happy

Scary.

I remember taking the piss out of a friend when he took delivery of his new Gateway desktop with its 1GB hard drive. Ridiculous to have so much storage on a home machine; he'd never fill it...

Now 1GB is considered unworkably restrictive in a mobile handset, which will routinely arrive with four times that storage on a card smaller than my fingernail. Seems the future arrived when I wasn't paying attention, and it's even less realistic than I expected...

Eric Schmidt whips out mystery Android

BorkedAgain
Black Helicopters

Remind me.

Why is NFC a good thing again?

BorkedAgain
Thumb Up

All these moments will be lost in time...

...like tears in rain.

Facebook unveils 'next-gen' messaging system

BorkedAgain
Badgers

It's like wave, but...

...with a built-in set of ready-connected people, none of whom will need to wait months for an invitation to join in. So it might actually work this time.

If it actually IS wave (as in an implementation of the protocol underlying Google Wave) then there may be a chance that this would be the event that allowed the Wave protocol to reach critical mass and actually take off. Phoenix-style, in this case. Wouldn't that be nice?

Not sure I'd sign up for FaceWave though. They can Zuck my Berg...

BorkedAgain
Badgers

Deadzone Crosstalk

Reckon he meant "media"? Or are they consolidating communication from the other side?

Spooky...

The forgotten, fat generation of Mac Portables

BorkedAgain

Nice...

I loved the fact that you could swap the trackball to the other side... Sweet!

US smartphones – Once you’ve had Android there’s no going back

BorkedAgain
Troll

Should rise to it, but...

I've just about had it up to here with this assertion.

Android != Poor Man's iPhone

I could equally well say iPhone = idiot's Android

Okay, I'm using an HTC Desire for the comparison, and HTC's Sense UI is particularly sweet; I know that it's been far more intuitive AND reliable AND given me a much better call quality than all of my colleagues who decided to go with the fashionable iPhone option.

If you've got people choosing the better option measured in several dimensions (including price) then it's a little disingenuous to focus on price as the only explanation. Why would one do that? Possibly because it's a remarkably effective way to catch peoples' subconscious snobbery...

(gah. Anyone got a pringles lid for this half-tin of troll food?)

Software engineer blogs own Starbucks wiretap

BorkedAgain

BASIC?

Can you give me that in Java syntax please? It's been a while since I spoke BASIC...

ViewSonic tablet defies death by Steve Jobs

BorkedAgain

Price?

Any ideas of a likely price point? This looks like something we could USE... :)

Android phone sales up 1,309%

BorkedAgain
Happy

Extremely intuitive...

I also have a non-reading four-year-old who has figured his way through the UI and is capable of unlocking my phone, firing up Angry Birds and amusing himself on the rare occasions when he finds my Desire unoccupied. This is inexpressibly cool to observe. Of course, being a Geek Dad, I can't wait to get him started on App Inventor. Okay, we'll have to start with "See Spot run" but still... :)

Is the iPhone as easy? Maybe. I haven't played (let alone worked) with one yet, so it's hard to be sure. I know all my colleagues who "upgraded" to iPhone4 have had a lot more trouble with their handsets than I did with mine, but that's just anecdotal evidence from a biased source so I'd ignore it if I were you...

Google sues US gov for picking Microsoft

BorkedAgain

Not just governmental departments...

...although they are probably the main culprits.

Nice to see a blow struck for level playing fields and all that, but I'm not sure how Google hope to come out of this a winner... "No, see, we'll sue them, and then they'll *know* we seriously wanted the business, and they'll be all like 'sorry dudes' and we'll be 'it's cool, we aint mad atcha' and then we'll hug..."

First official HTML5 tests topped by...Microsoft

BorkedAgain

Speaking as a sorta-web-dev...

Mine too...

PARIS in 89,000 ft climax

BorkedAgain
Pint

No, but really.

Excellent job, guys. Any project that gives you a shot like that last one has GOT to be deemed a success. Genius.

(and the struts didn't splode, and the plane didn't plummet, and the ETs didn't abduct the Playmonaut... All those disastrous scenarios failed to occur. Roll on Mk II)

LOST Vulture One PARIS spaceplane FOUND!!!

BorkedAgain
Thumb Up

Well done!

Well done indeed. A fantastic, triumphant end to an epic effort.

More than ever, I wish I had your job. And I actually like my own job... :D

(Wanders off humming "I like PARIS in the fall...")

Intel lobs pork buns at world gone Google

BorkedAgain
Troll

Think of it like banking.

You pay your bank to look after your money for you because they're better at doing so securely at a reasonable price point than you can be yourself. If you don't like their charges or service, you're always able to withdraw your money (it's yours, after all) and deposit it elsewhere.

Same goes if you substitute "Cloud Service Provider" for "Bank" and "Data" for "Money", broadly speaking. It's an analogy, so it's not perfect, but the parallels are good and help explain the concepts well. And, just like getting access to your money from the bank is taken for granted, having access to your data from your service provider is obviously a requirement.

Of course, I'm assuming that you DO operate a bank account. Most people recognise their value, at least.

BA slams stupid security checks

BorkedAgain

I don't know...

I rather like BA. Certainly not the worst of a bad bunch. Always happy to slip you another tiny bottle of free vino, too... ;)

Facebook comes down hard on Faceporn

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Paris Hilton

Dereliction of duty

"Vulture Towers is ashamed to admit it was unaware of Faceporn until earlier today."

I thought that was your job, guys? Keeping on top of this sort of thing so your loyal readers didn't have to. Honestly. Now I'm going to have to spend more of my own time browsing porn sites online so that I know my awareness is up-to-scratch...

I hope you're happy now.

Pff.

Vulture 1 spaceplane launch countdown on hold

BorkedAgain
Paris Hilton

Another day's wait!

How frustrating for everyone. I hope PARIS shows you a good time when she's finally ready to go up... and down... :)

Apple threatens Java with death on the Mac

BorkedAgain
FAIL

Oh, the irony.

Anyone remember THIS piece of nostalgia?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhsWzJo2sN4

BorkedAgain
Coffee/keyboard

@Trevor

U owe me 1 keyboard, you magnificently funny bastard... :D

Cameron cocks up UK's defences - and betrays Afghan troops

BorkedAgain
Go

For the record...

...I wasn't naysaying. I enjoyed the article, and the following debate has been priceless...

BorkedAgain
Troll

Mr Nose...

...should try actually BEING a consultant before he starts making judgements about who works hard for a living. Assuming he'd cut it, of course.

Could be a significant assumption, mind.

BorkedAgain
IT Angle

An interesting analysis.

Slightly unexpected in a predominantly IT/tech forum, but interesting nevertheless. Nice to know I probably wasn't the only person shouting at my radio the other day.

Oh, and did you hear about the Lords (and ladies) "suspended" for embezzling thousands of our pounds? That was the other thing that had my neighbours suspecting they lived next to a madman recently... :D

Benoit Mandelbrot, father of fractals, dies at 85

BorkedAgain
Coat

Get out.

You're bard.

iPhone, BlackBerry, Droid: purveyors of pestilence

BorkedAgain

Are you insane?

15-20 minutes in an autoclave would be a minimum...

OOo's put the willies up Microsoft

BorkedAgain
Happy

Scripsit

...on the TRS-80.

NOW who's old?

(And Visicalc for the spreadsheeting goodness...)

Google robo cars drive selves on public streets

BorkedAgain

The way most people drive...

...Probably the same as happens now.

Mozilla puts Firefox 4 Android beta on crash diet

BorkedAgain

Is it just me?

...or is there something a little sad (as in unhappy) that we now discuss telephone uptime?

Twitter airport bomb joker loses second job

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Big Brother

Excellent idea!

You first...

Google Instant – more searches, less thought

BorkedAgain
Happy

@Ace

First proper grin of the day. Nice one, Ace!

IE9 strips to win Chrome fans

BorkedAgain

Was it just me?

...or did that whole article sound like a list of features being simply copied off Chrome, but with MS spinning them as if they were their own ideas? Don't get me wrong; I'm all for IE becoming a decent browser; all my clients who use it to access their web apps will have an easier time of it, but while a significant chunk of business and the public sector are STILL stuck on IE6 (Aaargh!) I'm not sure what difference this is going to make.

Nice to see the slow, fat kid at least trying to keep up though. Bless.

Playboy centrefold freaks out at 10,000 feet

BorkedAgain
Joke

You may want to check the position of James' tongue.

I thought it might have been in his cheek there...

By the way, "not very many clothes horse" made me giggle.

Salvador Dalí style floppy iPad on the way, seemingly

BorkedAgain

Massive dev overheads

Billions of years of Darwinian R&D, essentially.

(Or, if you prefer, an omniscient, infinitely-capable sky-fairy "inventor")

Koran-burning 'pastor' loses website

BorkedAgain

I utterly heart Charlie Brooker.

Even his articles read with that sarcastic sneer he does so well. Genius.

I wonder how much fuss would have been made about a day-centre for religious inclusion opening in Manhattan were it not for the silliness...

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