* Posts by Amorous Cowherder

1063 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jul 2012

Don't assume public trusts you, MI5. 'Make a case' for surveillance – Former security chief

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: Trust

Exactly! No one minds surveillance but on legitimate targets and with damned solid suspicions, not the current...."We're so bloody useless, sod it let's hoover up everything in the hopes we'll find some dirt on the bad guys and possibly catch a few others while we're at it with any luck!".

'Tech giants who encrypt comms are unwittingly aiding terrorists', claims ex-Home Sec Blunkett

Amorous Cowherder

Given that he was a racist right-wing wolf in left-wing sheep's clothes, I wouldn't trust him as far as I could spit him. As Mark Thomas said at the time Blunkett was in office, "Anyone like to tell Blunkett his dog's black?".

Firefox decade: Microsoft's IE humbled by a dogged upstart. Native next?

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

“The browser is the main reason you turn on your computer,” he claimed. “Look at the desktop – native is dead. I turn on my machine and I go into my browser. The era of loading native apps on the desktop passed a while ago."

OK for most people but try telling that to creatives in a music studio or photographers working in the field, they cannot rely on some fancy web app to allow them to do their editing. No, native is not dead just yet, just not as relevant for most people now.

Old hat: Fedora 21 beta late than never... and could be best ever

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

...or running the Fedora beta inside a VM and using the host to capture the screens?

Million Mask March: Anonymous' London Guy Fawkes protest a damp squib

Amorous Cowherder

Ha ha, "Hunt the rich!", now remind me how did Westwood make her £90m fortune? Oh yes, flogging overpriced tat to very rich people obsessed by fashion!

Apple's strap-on will set you back just '$5,000' – what a BARGAIN!

Amorous Cowherder
Pint

I would say "Fools and their money...", but each to their own. I've spent tens of thousands on photographic kit for nothing more than just a hobby or "A bit of a laugh to keep me off the streets!" as I often put it, so I've no grounds to mock the trinket buyers. We all get our jollies wherever we feel we need to.

iBail: American Psycho actor Christian Bale rejects Steve Jobs role

Amorous Cowherder
Pint

Re: Jobs is not God, Apple is not heaven.

Yes there are but if you need to pump $50m minimum into a movie you need to guarantee a return or you won't get no funding to start with. That's why Hollywood is stagnating like a fetid pond on a Summer's day, no one will take a risk on a script that might not recoup at least 2x the asking price.

Jobs was an arsehole, no doubt about that but that's why he's perfect cinema material. The saintly uncle like figure to most with the nasty streak who screwed over his best mate, dumped his pregnant girlfriend and denied the existence of his daughter for many years just to make sure his billion dollar fortune was made and secured, only for it all to end with something all his money and fame could never fix for him. It's almost spot-on perfect second rate drivel spewed from the lowest Hollywood screenwriter's copy of Word ( or more likely Pages as they all use Macs! ).

Rich techbro CEOs told to sleep rough before slamming the poor

Amorous Cowherder
Pint

Don't know who said it but there was gent in the Victorian era who said, "The poor will always be with us.".

No matter what you do and most of us try to do something, charity donations, helping out at shelters, etc, no matter how hard you try there will always be the "haves" and the "have nots". The best we can do as those with a little more than the "have nots", is to make sure we help as much as we are able to manage and do our best to ensure the help we do give is as effective as possible.

New GCHQ spymaster: US tech giants are 'command and control networks for terror'

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: Want more surveillance?

"I would happily fire bomb the 'devils psychopaths' until every last one of the was toast at home and abroad."

Well done...you utter nutjob! To quote Bart Simpson, "The ironing is delicious!".

Pro-ISIS script kiddies deface West Yorkshire egg-chasers' site

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Hold on!

"The defacement also featured the auto-played recording of music, and singing and written claims that the "State of Islam" is expanding, the Daily Telegraph adds."

'Ere, I thought ISIS had banned all music and any form of fun in their nasty little "republic"? Which means if you're a supporter shouldn't you have simply left it silent? If not then you're obviously a bunch stupid little fucktards with no idea what you're talking about, you need a bloody good hiding and sent out to help dig old folks gardens as punishment!

Snapper's decisions: Whatever happened to real photography?

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: Whence the next generation of professional photographers?

So you only needed a professional photographer for glossy magazine articles then? OK. Pro's have no place the modern, online only digital world? Fair enough.

You take a look at [ www.youarenotaphotographer.com ] and tell me you still don't need a professionally skilled photographer for capturing that special moment in your life.

Amorous Cowherder

Re: Enjoyed this

"Taking a photograph, the dynamic has really shifted from doing more than frame/expose with little more thought than that, then do most work post production whilst sitting on a computer playing with settings."

As a serious amateur landscape shooter this attitude infuriates me. I spend the best part of my time planning for location and weather, one shot took me close on 2 years and 3000 miles of driving back and forth to a location that was a 400 mile round trip in a single day each time, before I was happy with a shot. I personally do very little to my images in post other than a tweaking the tones and hues, I know how to use Photoshop and can happily kill an image with way too many effects but I don't want to spend any more time in front of the computer than I have to. I appreciate you're were making a generalisation about a lot of people with cameras but please don't lump us all in with that. Some of the best amateur landscapers in the country spend 75% of their time planning, studying and travelling before a shutter is even pushed, let alone time in front of a computer.

"The good thing is, it allows you to be lazy when taking the shot. The bad thing is, it allows you to be lazy taking the shot. Even now, with the plethora of images thrown at us, a good, well composed image that catches the eye, can tell a story or, and this is the hardest part especially in landscapes, conveys the feeling of being there still stands out from the rest."

Sadly you are very right on this part. While there a lot of us out there spend hours planning and executing a shot, there are a lot of people out there who simply shoot every sunrise, crank up the colour and contrast in post-processing, upload to 500px and then sit back and watch the hits roll in a like a torrent simply because their image has tons of orange/red/pink in it but when studied later on the images often have very little true substance to them.

Dead pilot named in tragic Virgin Galactic spaceship crash

Amorous Cowherder
Pint

Of course it's a tragedy, no getting away with it but he was a test pilot and the prospect of death is something they're all too aware of. Pushing the bleeding edge of technology is not always a pleasant job. I just hope that something truly wonderful will come from this and that guy's life was not lost in vain.

Pay a tax on every gigabyte you download? Haha, that's too funny. But not to Hungarians

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

This would be so funny!

Go on punks make my day!

This would be hiilarious, watch your entire telco industry turn to crap inside less than 6 weeks as everyone just stops all but the odd email and FB/twitter update ( no pictures of course! )

How to get $542m from Google: Dress as a SPACEMAN with dayglo dancers – Magic Leap

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

"Magic Leap is going beyond the current perception of mobile computing, augmented reality, and virtual reality. We are transcending all three, and will revolutionize the way people communicate, purchase, learn, share and play."

With that statement alone I bet the company folds within 18 months!

Google+ goes TITSUP. But WHO knew? How long? Anyone ... Hello ...

Amorous Cowherder

Re: How would you tell Drive wasn't working?

Use it all the time for supplying TIFF files to clients, never had any issues using it from the Windows native client or the web interface.

YARR! Pirates walk the plank: DMCA magnets sink in Google results

Amorous Cowherder
Joke

Kids today don't know what it was like in the scene back in the day! Tch!

Fair enough. That's the way it used to be many, many moons ago when the wide blue yonder of the connected world first opened up to we home users with our 2400 baud modems to BBS's. It could take a week or two to track down a good "source" and then you'd be forced to "bring a bottle" to the party, so to speak, or you wouldn't get in!

WAITER! There's a Flappy Bird in my Lollipop!

Amorous Cowherder

There's one in KitKat too

Bang on the Android revision ID several time very fast in About Device tab of Settings. Then click the spinning K a couple of times. Then keep hitting the KitKat logo a few time and a weird screensaver thing starts up showing cartoons of all the previous Android versions.

French 'terror law' declares WAR on the INTERNET itself, say digi-rights folks

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

"It also gives the government new powers to block websites deemed to “incite” or “glorify” terrorism."

Ah, so if you Frenchies want to know who this Guy Fawkes fella was, you're in for a spell in clinky then!

Arab States make play for greater government control of the internet

Amorous Cowherder
Unhappy

Sadly a darn sight less even than that if you've had the "misfortune" to have been born with a uterus!

FinFisher spyware used to snoop on Bahraini activists, police told

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Yeah but Bahrain is one of the friendly desert countries, the sort that buy all our lovely weapons and torture devices, not one of those nasty ones that only wants to set themselves up to be invaded by our mates in the "special alliance" over the other side of the Atlantic. So it's alright to turn a blind eye to what the nice security services in Bahrain have asked us to help them with!

Facebook, Apple: LADIES! Why not FREEZE your EGGS? It's on the company!

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: What...the...fuck....

Right!

So you leave the company for whatever reason, what happens to your DNA, so to speak? I take it you have 48 hours to come up with the cash or we dump your eggs in receptionist's fridge for you to come pick up!!

Facebook's Zuckerberg in EBOLA VIRUS FIGHT: Billionaire battles bug

Amorous Cowherder
Thumb Up

If he actually coughs up the money he's doing better than most governments, who "pledge" they will send money to help disasters and often time only send about 1% of the sum pledged.

I believe our government here in jolly old Blighty once pledged something like £90m to help with an earthquake appeal, in the end they managed to send a measly £100k!

U2? 81 million Apple iThing-strokers know a place where the Beats have no shame

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Dear old "Bonehead"

Didn't U2's "Bonehead" once say something fecking moronic like, "The Pope of software meets the Dali Lama of hardware.", when Bill Gates met Steve Jobs?!

Get NAS-ty: Reg puts claws to eight four-bay data dumpsters

Amorous Cowherder
Thumb Up

I still have 2 x ReadyNAS boxes populated with 4x2TB, superb little boxes, been supplying backup and streaming media in our house for close on 5 years now and only blown 1 drive in all that time. Problem is that the number of supported HDs was always limited and to maintain the standby spare HDs I have scratch around for refurbs off eBay, not a pleasant experience!

NSA spying will shatter the internet, Silicon Valley bosses warn

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

What a waste of time.

Everyone throws up their arms in disgust at the NSA spying debacle...for all of 5 seconds.

Give it until January when the latest z-list celeb will come out as a peadophile or top themselves over a bad marriage and the plebs will have forgotten all about the NSA picking up what Granny had to have operated on last week! It'll only be the fighters of liberty and the IT crowd who will care about the surveillence that's still going on. Come this time next year it will be business as usual, the PRISM servers will be back up and running again and it'll take another Snowden style leak in 5 years time for the whole cycle to repeat.

Joe Public doesn't give a flying monkey's left bollock about IT type stuff. So long as Angry Birds runs the mobile and tablet, Minecraft works on the PC for little Johnny, Mum and Dad can still do their online banking and use Facebook, and Chloe can still play Call of Duty on the PS4, the non-techie public really don't care that much about this "security stuff" for very long, they have too many other distractions in life to worry about it.

'Bill Gates swallowing bike on a beach' is ideal password say boffins

Amorous Cowherder

So basically it's a variation of the very old and well tested "loci" memory technique. By making associations to very familar places you can remember very complex pieces of information by "walking a journey" through those places you know, picking up familar objects as you go. Instead with this technique they use famous faces with memorable actions used on everyday, easy to imagine objects.

Apple KILLS SUPER MARIO. And Zelda. And Sonic

Amorous Cowherder

Simple arse-covering by Apple

If emulators are running there is a chance you could be naughty boys and girls and download the copyrighted ROMS you need to play the games. Nintendo for example, are notorously litigious and Apple probably doesn't want Nintendo banging in their door demanding financial recompense because Apple's systems allowed people to rip off Nintendo games when Apple could have easily prevented it.

Gates and Ballmer NOT ON SPEAKING TERMS – report

Amorous Cowherder

Never a truer word...

Steve Ballmer is made out to be a mouthy baffoon in the Pirates of Silicon Valley film, sadly I think the portrayal is very close to the truth.

Behind the Facebook DRAG QUEEN CRACKDOWN: 'Anonymity soon!'

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: in the category of "what can go wrong" this week....

Their Android app already asks for every permission under the Android sun, so if anyone is stupid enough to put that crap app on their device they've already given old Zuck a shed-load more info that is sane!

Revealed: Malware that forces weak ATMs to spit out 'ALL THE CASH'

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: "32-bit Windows-powered ATM"

Just to cap it off...

"...and ensuring cash machines have up-to-date antivirus protection..."

What an age we live we live in!

Britain’s snooping powers are 'too weak', says NCA chief

Amorous Cowherder
Joke

Well I bloody well hope they use them on November 5th this year when you lot all start celebrating and glorifying a terrorist's activities with your fireworks and your bonfires!

Official: Turing's Bombe better than a Concorde plane

Amorous Cowherder
Happy

I can't think of Alan Turing without thinking of the radio series Hut 33!

"Yes hello this is Bletchly Park I.T. No Alan, I'm I.T. No, Ian Turnbull! What's the problem Alan? Oh I see. Have you tried turning it off and on again Alan? Yes, the off switch. Is it working now? OK, bye Alan!"

Chap runs Windows 95 on Android Wear

Amorous Cowherder

OK, kudos to him he's young and wants to do something cool with technology and fair play him, if he was my kid I'd be proud of him. However running Win95 inside DosBox is hardly groundbreaking, there's plenty of guides out there that will walk you through doing it.

Windows 10's 'built-in keylogger'? Ha ha, says Microsoft – no, it just monitors your typing

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Calm The F**k Down!

Why is anyone surprised by this? It's an alpha/beta what do you expect? I'm not a massive fan of MS but if it's beta and the EULA ( which we always read don't we! ) states "We will spy on you while you play with this pre-release so we know if it's working or not.", where's the problem?

If I get a beta of any software I expect somewhere to have to "pay" somehow for getting early access, this is simply the payment for playing with a pre-release, you have to tell them if it's any good, either directly or indirectly by them spying on you.

What's all this crap about "Hacker's Dream"? FFS! They don't need this piss-poor key-logger from MS, they have enough of their own and probably more sophisticated key-logging tools, all they need is a pillock willing and ready to run email attachments or click on links from porn sites that promise to "Clean Your Infected Machine"!

Yahoo servers? SHELLSHOCKED? by Bash?

Amorous Cowherder
Pint

No! We! Are! Not! Trying! To! Milk! This! For! Publicity! Purposes! Cos! Google! And! Even! Bing! Are! Beating! Us! In! The! Search! Game! And! All! We! Have! Left! Worth! Anything! Is! Flickr!

You don't have to be mad to work at Apple but....

Amorous Cowherder

Re: so

"unhappiness=success"

Well it's worked out pretty well for most rock stars over the last 50 odd years!

Amorous Cowherder

Re: TO THE MAX!

Stress can be a great motivator, it can get you really enthused and give you get-up-an-go. However, too much for too long, just like anything in life, and your brain quickly melts and next thing you're on gardening leave ( if you above middle management ) or out on your ear as a burned out basket case.

So long Lotus 1-2-3: IBM ceases support after over 30 years of code

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

I had a fully boxed version of DOS v2.1 complete with copy protected floppies, manuals and silly little stickers! Threw it in the recycling about 2 years ago, along with a boxed copy of dBase IV ( yep the one in the big beige box with the 2 or 3 ring bound manuals) and finally a copy of DataEase 4 for DOS.

First IT "job" I had as spotty little 14 year old was helping my Dad install Concurrent DOS 386 with DataEase running on top of it! DataEase and my Dad, it's their fault I ended up as a DBA by trade!

Windows 10: One for the suits, right Microsoft? Or so one THOUGHT

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: testing procedure.

"I felt much shame as a techie when i had to google how to turn off my god damn (win8) computer.."

After 25 years in IT, coding and admin on Windows and Unix, even mainframe systems and yet...my 9 year old daughter had to show me how to shut down my new Win8 install! Oh that's shame and humiliation you never full recover from!

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: The numbering makes sense now...

Old urban myth and FUD, please do some reading.

Microsoft WINDOWS 10: Seven ATE Nine. Or Eight did really

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Jeez, you'd think they've just dropped the bomb!

I do love the Reg commentards! "No way MS is coming near me!" Well what runs the tills in supermarkets? What runs most ATMs? What runs the controllers on quite a few SAN systems from well known manufacturers? Sure they're Not life critical I agree and I'm not a massive MS fan, and yes Windows is not bad but not great, but I do love seeing the fox in the "El Reg" coop, always guaranteed to shake things up for a laugh!

Anti-Facebook Ello: Here's why we're still in beta. SPAMGASM!

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

FriendFace! FriendFace! FriendFace!

Did no one learn from Google+?

1. Once people have entrenched themselves in a set up with all their mates, the whole party has to move else no one will.

Or...

2. Wait for the next "generation" to decide against established social network and pick a new one.

Or...

3. You couldn't careless about any of this social networking bollocks and simply want a bloody good laugh at all the muppets and their so called online "friends"!

Apple finally patches Bash Shellshock vuln that WAS NOT A WORRY, OK?

Amorous Cowherder

Re: Is this really relevant for OS X?

Ah so just 'cos very few people will use it, we don't need to worry too much about it? OK.

Hmmm, I do anticipate a lot of tears before bedtime if we all followed that sort of thinking.

What's a Chromebook good for? How about running PHOTOSHOP?

Amorous Cowherder

Nice idea and quite interesting...

...certainly a nice little toy as a proof of concept but with today's technology and speeds, not feasible for most serious uses. Average RAW is around 30MB, average PSD after edits for me is minimum of 750MB.

Sadly for this to be really usable we're going to need extremely fast links to maintain extremely high quality of the screen display. As camera tech improves will see RAW and PSD files increase in size over the next X number of years and so the link speeds required to make this useful will need to really get into gear.

I use Adobe CC with no issues and I'm happy with the price and service but this is a new ballgame, the on-demand app type tech is very much just a nice POC at the moment. Interesting stuff.

TEEN RAMPAGE: Kids in iPhone 6 'Will it bend' YouTube 'prank'

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

FFS, what a pair planks!

Is this moronic activity any better than walking into a jewellers and using a hammer to smash to the cases and walk out? Hope the Police catch the pair of tossers and get 'em out on community service doing something useful with themselves.

I hold no truck with Apple products but this just mindless damage to someone else's stuff, no artistic or newsworthy merit at all.

George Clooney, WikiLeaks' lawyer wife hand out burner phones to wedding guests

Amorous Cowherder

Security? Codswallop!

"because the couple are said to have sold the rights to the wedding photographs to a magazine"

That's all this stuff ever is! Granted in this case there was some charity donation thing too but most of the time it's all about recouping the cost of your $750,000 wedding event through sales of the images. Celeb weddings aren't weddings like we plebs have, they're more like the political weddings of the middle ages royalty, all about prestige.

WHY did Sunday Mirror stoop to slurping selfies for smut sting?

Amorous Cowherder
Facepalm

Re: the Mirror couldn't even take its own selfie

Most papers are lazy these days, that's the reason they've sacked their qualified staff photographers and simply rely on ciziten supplied photos from mobiles. When they need a shot, they buy a stock shot from a knock-down cheap library or more likely they steal off someone's website or FB profile. The amount a story will generate in paper sales compared to a couple of grand to pay off the poor sod who's had their online identity wrecked is nothing to the gutter press scum.

When Spitting Image showed the press journos as pigs in dirty macs, they really nailed it.

Ordnance Survey intern plonks houses, trees, rivers and roads on GB Minecraft map

Amorous Cowherder

The only area that does benefit from a play guide is complex redstone devices, some of the Heath-Robinson type contraptions you can build using that stuff are quite stunning.

As to the rest of the game, one of it's joys is learning how the environment functions. Some fun to be had in building your own "nasties" safari park complete with rides through the areas to stare at the attractions!

BLAM, BLAM, BLAM... nooooo! Hacker crew Lizard Squad spits DDoS venom at Call of Duty

Amorous Cowherder

They're kids, who said they'd thought of any consequences?! Ha! "Youth is wasted on the young." and all that!