* Posts by Andy Turner

117 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jun 2007

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NASA: Civilization will end in 2013 (possibly)

Andy Turner

So long as Duke Nukem Forever has been released

I don't mind.

Tories may scrap IR35 tax rules for contractors

Andy Turner

Er. but

"IR35 stopped tax avoidance"

Problem is, it didn't. It introduced a lot of red tape that was avoidable. Hence PCG's comments about the huge shortfall in expected income.

Buffalo Terastation III

Andy Turner

Does anyone sell a NAS that can do this...

RAID mirroring is all well and good, but I'm also concerned about putting all my eggs in one basket WRT the device being stolen or fire damaged. Ideally I'd like to be able to buy two identical single-drive NAS units and set them up so that one is the slave/copy of the other. Whatever I copy to the master gets copied over the network to the other one (ideally using intelligence to wait until I appear to have finished copying to the master before the master starts sending to the slave). OK, so it won't be realtime, but it'll be more than good enough for most scenarios. That way I can put one backup drive in the study and the slave drive somewhere more secure or obscure in the house, in the loft or something.

Does anyone do something like this?

Triangular buttons key to touchscreen typing success - inventor

Andy Turner

Ooops...

"Baker believes that the virtual keyboard’s full potential will only be realised if it’s integrated into every area of the iPhone that uses a keyboard, such as SMS and email, rather than developed as a standalone application. For this to happen, he requires Apple’s aid, something he described as "very difficult to get"

er.. support that isn't required to implement a different keyboard for Windows Mobile. I guess now that he's told everyone his idea, we can expect a flurry of triangular keyboards for WM. Perhaps he should have implemented it there before attempting his patent!

Apple brands UK tabloid 'obscene'

Andy Turner

Of course it's porn

It's just extremely mild porn, or "titilation" as they like to put it. There's no other reason to put some nudity of a young girl in the paper each day. It's not like it's educational or of interest to anyone but teen/adult males.

Microsoft U-turns on overpaid redundo packages

Andy Turner

What about the underpayment overpayment?

Will the people underpaid get the overpayment too?!

Play.com pestered to back up price claims

Andy Turner

Amazon do it all the time

On pretty much every item they list, the price claims a saving against the RRP! What exactly are play.com doing wrong here?

'Kidnapped' child tracked by mobile phone and Street View

Andy Turner

Eh?

"At this point, Athol cop Todd Neale had the bright idea of tracking the pair using the mobile phone - a technique made possible by legislation which since 2005 "

Why is this a "bright idea"? Surely since it's been possible for over 3 years, it should be standard procedure in cases like this!

7-year-old faces M&S Inquisition

Andy Turner

If he was a *proper* superman

He wouldn't have given away his true identity!

Sony e-book reader to debut in UK tomorrow

Andy Turner

@Mike

"Unless it will do PDFs, it's another turkey a la Kindle. My money's on it being a DRM-infected piece of crippleware"

Why don't you read the specs instead of spouting rubbish? There's no DRM requirement and yes it does PDFs as well as Word documents.

Windows Mobile 6 blamed for Xperia X1 woes

Andy Turner

@Ilgaz

"They choose Windows Mobile to please Microsoft". No. They chose WM to break America where WM is far more popular than Symbian.

Teachers give toilet CCTV top marks

Andy Turner

Well of course they don't need them for the teachers

They're not bullying each other and vandalising the school. Of course it's "one rule for them and another for the kids", because the kids are behaving differently. If they want to be treated like adults, act like them too.

English Channel defeats one-armed Frenchman

Andy Turner

Sheesh, give it a rest

Geeks wouldn't know a joke if it slapped them in the face. I've never read such a stream of utter drivel. There's a reason you're not all comedians you know.

MS products just too cool to comprehend, say MS geeks

Andy Turner

I don't think Vista sucks at all

It just doesn't really offer anything compelling to bother changing. If you're buying a new PC or OS then Vista is a fine choice, but if you're already running XP, there's no real need to upgrade.

UK ISPs agree to menace their filesharing users

Andy Turner

Is it illegal to..

Download a copy of an album that I already own? When I moved into a flat I had to leave a load of my CDs at my parents house. Quite often when I get the urge to listen to an album I have to download it instead because it's a bit far to nip back home for it! Is that illegal?

Banking Trojan hides in fake Alonso F1 crash story

Andy Turner

I've had loads of these lately

Fake news stories which are clearly spam. The spammers shoot themselves in the foot sometimes simply by overdoing it. One story on its own might seem feasible, but when you get a batch like the following, it all looks rather silly.

Nicole Kidman loses baby in miscarriage

JFK closed after bomb threat

Madonna admits to adultery

Britney in coma, feared dead

Amy Winehouse hospitalised for drug overdose

OK, so the last one is a lot more feasible...

Scientists ponder future Moon mission activities

Andy Turner

@Mike Peachey

"I know that many people just can't get a grip on this because they're too concerned with the here and now, but let me ask you this.. if the purpose of our species existing isn't to expand, grow and propagate.. what IS our purpose?"

There isn't one. Why does there have to be one?

Jeremy Clarkson tilts at windmills

Andy Turner

Trying to fool the system by speeding then slowing down..

..it's unlikely to really work once these things are everywhere because you'll never know which gantry is paired with which and they don't even really need to be paired, you could have three cameras A, B and C and it could work out your average speed between A and B, and also B and C, but also A and C.

Microsoft fights gaming Trojan menace

Andy Turner
Thumb Up

Avoid the big box AV

IME, the Nortons of this world are the big memory/CPU hogs, but I too give the thumbs up to Nod32. IT's quiet and with a small footprint.

Zuckerberg's Google boycott reaches 32 days (and counting)

Andy Turner

I don't know why he bothers

If I were Zuckerberg I'd just flog Facebook to the nearest idiot multinational desperate to be cool and then retire a multi millionaire and live the high life for the rest of my days. Why does he even want to consider getting into these wrangles?

Boffins prove the existence of jet-setters

Andy Turner

@Jaowom

You're a stalker! Someone phone the cops

Heathrow T5 security tackles Transformers t-shirt threat

Andy Turner

Serves him right

He's 30 years old and wearing a Transformers tshirt FFS?

GROW UP!

Microsoft urges developers to tag sites for IE8

Andy Turner

@Naich, @Joseph Haig, and probably others..

Clearly you guys don't understand the problem. IE8 *is* standards compliant and enforces the standards as people have been bleating about. Unfortunately this means that sites that *aren't* properly compliant won't work, since they only ever worked because previous versions of IE jumped through hoops to render their stuff despite the problems with the site. If the sites can't fix their code then they're encouraged to add this tag so that IE8 will still use the old rendering engine which doesn't strictly enforce standards and does the same pre-IE8 behaviour of dealing with their bad code.

Microsoft are absolutely on the ball with this one, and they're doing totally the right thing. If you think they aren't then you probably don't understand the problem.

Stone catches fallen Rock

Andy Turner

I also heard that...

...Paper Group was due to complete a takeover of Stone Group, but only after the latter had finished a takeover of the Scissors Group.

'Experimental' Linux distro Exherbo eyes serious developers

Andy Turner

Yet another distro

These Linux guys are their own worst enemies when it comes to promoting a simple choice for the common market. No wonder people choose Windows instead.

Mobiles help UK malls track shoppers' every move

Andy Turner

Seems like an old-tech way of doing this

When RFID is everywhere, this kind of thing will be much easier to do.

Wii controller lawsuit costs Nintendo $21m

Andy Turner

Patent Squatters

They should get thrown out of court unless they can prove that they actually developed and retailed a competing product. The lawsuit should represent losses that they can prove (or even explain) that they have incurred. Otherwise it's just too easy to patent squat, and simply register patents for whatever captures the imagination and in the vaguest terms possible, for a product that you've no chance or intention of ever building.

I might just go an register a patent for a "thing" that "does stuff".

PS3 update fails to fix Grand Theft Auto IV woes

Andy Turner

Er.. no, that's not what I'd expect

"So you’d expect the latest firmware update for the console to fix the problem, right?"

I don't think I'd expect a firmware update for the hardware to fix a specific problem in a single software title, no. A software update patch perhaps, but not a console firmware update.

Andy Turner

@Batcat

"...when games consoles just worked?"

Rose-tinted memories there miy friend!

Visual Studio update dents Silverlight development

Andy Turner

Beta has problems shock

Sheesh

Microsoft slams OEMs over XP SP3 install cock-up

Andy Turner

Er.. loads of updates do that..

"Yesterday we reported one theory from Reg reader Gary who pointed out that Microsoft appears to have left key updates out of the automatic version of SP3 (316MB), given that it’s missing 238MB compared to the manual .ISO version of the service pack (554MB)."

When you download a service back from Windows Update, it only downloads that which is relevant to the machine it's being applied to. When you download an ISO which is burned to a CD and subsequently used to update all manner of different PCs, then it of course has to contain the superset of all possible updates required. Of course, for any given PC, a similar amount of the total update is applied as would be downloaded from Windows Update.

Extreme porn bill gets final reading

Andy Turner

I had an extreme porn bill

I had to remortgage the house to pay it off.

Dope-crazed Canadians sledgehammer iPhone

Andy Turner

Sheesh, you'd think when you're *that* ginger

you'd avoid growing it all over your face, FFS.

Top cop brands CCTV a 'fiasco'

Andy Turner

Hmmm.. AIUI..

..you only need the warning signs for commercial premises - for home use you do not. However, perhaps that's WRT being allowed to have them in the first place, not whether the images are admissible as evidence. Simply put up some signs after the event though, who's to know?

Amy Winehouse pitches for Bond theme

Andy Turner

Amy Winehouse is a manky tattooed crackhead waste of space

But her singing voice is awesome and totally suited to a Bond tune. Partly because she rips off Shirley Bassey TBH. Have a listen to "Love is a losing game" from Back to Black. It's already a Bond tune, almost.

MS patch system poses 'significant risk', say researchers

Andy Turner

It's no wonder that

Vista is supposedly slower/bloated. It must have so much code in it to validate parameters and data over and over again as its manipulated in memory in case it gets injected with malware crafted data. Long gone are the days where you could make assumptions about the calling patterns of your methods because your methods are private and supposedly will only get called from known internal sources. Without all this checking required because of the bloody malware crims, Vista could probably run considerably faster.

Sony to bring GTA IV PS3 bundle to Blighty

Andy Turner

@Ben

"But more worrying is that when these new games stick 5Gb files onto your internal hard drive every time, it makes Sony's decision to drop the 60Gb model in favour of a 40Gb even more inexplicable than before"

The PS3 is designed such that the HDD is easily upgradable. The menus include options to backup and restore the entire thing to a USB drive and the HDD itself is behind a little plastic panel on the side and requires a single screw to remove it. My '40gb' PS3 has a 250gb hard drive in it. It really was trivial to do.

Andy Turner

I doubt it'll be £400

I doubt it'll be £400, unless there's more in the box than has been mentioned. It would be considerably cheaper to just buy the console and game seperately. A similar boxed bundle for Gran Turismo 5 is £290 on Amazon.

"£400 on the PS3+GTA4....Or £200 on the XBOX360+GTA4"

Heh, you could buy two 360's instead of the one PS3! Which is just as well, so you can continue playing when the first one goes RRoD...

Andy Turner

@Marc

"...and the developers say they like the 360 version better as it will have downloadable episodes".

As I understand it, the PS3 will also have downloadable episodes, but fewer because some will be financed directly by Microsoft ($50 mil apparently!!), and therefore constrained to be exclusive to the 360. I suspect the 360's exclusive stuff will arrive first too.

Of course, you also can't rule out Sony agreeing a similar deal and there ending up being PS3-only episodes too. With a HDD guaranteed to be in *every* unit (unlike the 360), and a *free* online system, the PS3 platform suits download content much better since a much higher percentage of users will be set up for it.

Web infection attacks more than 100,000 pages

Andy Turner

Is it worth,,,

,, me putting "nihaorr1.com" as a bogus entry in my hosts file, or am I misunderstanding how this works?

Sony delays PS3 virtual world Home - again

Andy Turner

Why do we need Home?

Can't we all just meet up with our avatars in Liberty City?

Ballmer bitch slaps Vista

Andy Turner

Of course it takes more resources

These things always do. It's not just Windows, it's not just PC stuff, but most software that's gone through a number of revisions over the years require more power than earlier versions which leads to bigger hardware requirements.

Just how many of you are going to be buying GTA4 for the PS2 then?

Price cut fails to push Xbox 360 past PS3 in UK

Andy Turner

MarmiteToast is right

"Having played the Wii I'll admit that it is amazing, innovative and creative... for about 2 weeks. After that it's an awfully poor games console that's more of a gimmick"

He's right. The games that sell the Wii consoles are easy to pick up but as a result, they have no depth and soon lose their appeal. Sure the family all played Wii Sports on Christmas day, but how often does the unit get touched these days? The controllers, whilst innovative, introduce a level of randomness and luck that doesn't reward continuous play/practice. Remember how lame it was when a beginner could mash the buttons in Tekken and beat someone who'd played it for months? That's the Wii games all over. Wii Pro Evo looks interesting though, and has the level of practice=reward that Wii games need to introduce.

I think a stat of the number of games sold per console would be interesting. I suspect it would be quite high for the 360 (maybe average 8-10 and increasing), followed by PS3 (ave 4-5 or so and increasing), followed by the Wii (1-2 and static).

Microsoft teases mobile developers with 'big' Silverlight deals

Andy Turner

Regardless of how good your point might appear to be...

.. it never quite seems as compelling when they add one of those it's-so-old Paris because comments at the end. Sheesh guys, that's joke's been done. Many times, for long enough. It's never funny.

Women love chocolate more than password security

Andy Turner

Perhaps the real issue here is..

.. just how many women are prepared to eat something which has been handed out to them by a total stranger in the street.

Area 51 drug test victim crashes flying car

Andy Turner

Clearly

Stephen has a Bee in his bonnet today.

Sony, MS want control of PS3, Xbox iPlayer, Beeb boss claims

Andy Turner

@Giles

Sorry mate, but you did that "M$" thing, which means your comments instantly have no credibility whatsoever. However, to reply, there's nothing to suggest that Sony have asked BBC to do the work, quite the opposite in fact, it's that Sony want to encapsulate it themselves that BBC don't like.

Andy Turner

I'm behind Sony/MS on this one

“If you want to get [iPlayer] on the PlayStation or Xbox, they want control of the look, the feel and the experience. They want it done within their shop, and their shop only,” Huggers claimed"

Seems fair enough to me.

SanDisk warns that unsecured flash drives are coming to get you

Andy Turner

Like Martin says...

"When asked to pick the three most likely actions they would take if they found a memory stick in public, 55 per cent said they would view the data"

A study was done about this a while back (I perhaps read it on The Register in the first place), where someone deliberately infected a bunch of USB pens with specially crafted malware which simply phoned home when executed. He then threw them over the fence and into the car park of various large companies. Most of them ended up being executed as a result of employees plugging them in. Almost all of them plugged them straight into their work PC too.

Personally I use TrueCrypt on my pen so if I lose it, it just appears to be broken. It's a *little* bit more hassle to use, requiring the TC software to be on each machine that needs it, but it's definitely worth it if you value the security of your data.

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