* Posts by Xander

127 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Jul 2007

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Belgian finds missus was born a MAN after 19 YEARS of marriage

Xander
FAIL

Man assaults transgender woman, World cares not

Seriously el Reg, this is so not on.

This woman was violently assaulted, has had her entire identity rubbished and now an IT site has run the story demonising her for no reason.

Your staff, this reporter and your editor in particular, would do well to educate themselves: http://www.transgenderdor.org/about-2

Google erects Colombian 'g.co' URL shortener for Google+

Xander

Short & Gibberish or Long & Meaningful

Forgive me, but "g.co/sJHrk" is much harder to remember than "theregister" "google" or "ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere"...

MS advises drastic measures to fight hellish Trojan

Xander
Unhappy

Come on

It's really hard for a tech website to maintain it's credibility when it's journo's don't even know what the MBR is.

Hint: It's what'll be used to kick you out the door.

Sega celebrates two decades of Sonic the Hedgehog

Xander
Happy

Cheats

No C and that was to enable debug mode.

up down left right hold down button a press start was level select.

UDLR is still how I remember left/right when my brain fails.

Xander

Sonic 2

19 65 09 17

Double Word Score if anyone can remember the debug mode code though...

Elite UK police agency website downed by Lulzsec

Xander

Um, no

Clearly you don't understand the difference between a DDoS and a genuine hack. Their attacks which have actually retrieved data are impressive, and a good way to shame companies that use cleartext password. A DDoS is not like leaving your house unlocked, it's like coming home to find some asshole as nailed planks across the door.

Game stocks shops with Tesco 3DS consoles

Xander

Re: Expenses

Nil. Read the document. It specifically states no expenses can be claimed with this.

Latvian film fan pops cap in loud popcorn eater

Xander
Thumb Down

That update changes things quite dramatically...

Forgive me, but this feels tasteless in the extreme. A man asks another cinema goer to eat their food more quietly and is shot dead for it and all you can do is make cheap jokes? Just because they're foreign doesn't mean their death is any less serious or tragic...

TiVo calls time on ageing set-tops

Xander

It really depends

How clear was it that they were purchasing the TiVO service as that, a service, and not part of a box. If people purchased their TiVO thinking it would be like a VCR with a hard drive in it then they have a very legitimate complaint.

Imagine the uproar if tomorrow Sony announced all their 9 year old DVD players will no longer work!

Indian village bans single girls from mobile use

Xander
Unhappy

Maybe I'm missing something here...

But wouldn't the panchayats condemning the "honour killings" (read, violent and disgusting murders of their own children) be slightly more useful...

Google could drop Groupon into shopping basket

Xander

Cannibalisation?

This seems more than a little self defeating of Google, I see Groupon adverts all the time on Ad Words :/

Survey scammers take aim at Call of Duty

Xander
Thumb Down

In other news...

Bears shit in the woods and the Pope has been confirmed as Catholic.

These survey scams have been around for at least a year, becoming crazy popular with Facebook in particular. This is not news by any stretch of the imagination.

Green Berets to get Judge Dredd computer smart-rifle

Xander
Boffin

It may be a little more niche

But this is much more like a Space Marine Bolt Gun than Judge Dredds.

A bullet that detonates moments after impact: Bolt gun.

Multiple round types: Bolt gun.

Used for killing aliens and heretics: Bolt gun.

Used by the elite fighting force of an autocratic dictatorship to put down dissenters: Bolt gun

Blighty surrenders to Street View

Xander
Thumb Up

Seconding

Apparently my flat is still in the middle of development works (I've been here a year, and am the second tenant at that) and the shops under me aren't even open.

The fact is, the only people who have a complaint against street-view are the ones who have no idea how it works and are just trotting out any hogwash argument they can think of.

Swedish necrophiliacs in fake Facebook fundraiser

Xander
Pirate

Even if it does...

Don't worry, when you're dead you'll get what's coming to you ;)

Wireless e-car recharge tech within range?

Xander
Go

A use for services?

I can see this being quite popular with service stations. Provide one of these on each parking bay and your customers can park up, stretch their legs, have a meal and then hop in their fully recharged car and drive off.

Brit space agency to probe 'crackpot' antigravity device

Xander
Thumb Down

He's not that smart

You create something that, supposedly, floats, then post a video taken at the one angle that Doesn't show the object being detatched from the ground...

Firefox nabs 30 million users in eight weeks

Xander

Win7 raising IE usage?

I really don't see that happening.

If you have firefox now, no doubt you installed it rather than having it provided for you. This means that when you upgrade your first website will be firefox.com. I know it was for me.

Aerial laser gunboat 'burns hole in fender' of moving car

Xander
Black Helicopters

But consider their enemy...

Don't forget that a lot of America's enemies are idiots. We're talking either

a) People who blow themselves up to get 72 virgins

b) Countries so backward that most have never even heard of an atom bomb

c) Conscripts

If you're driving in a patrol vehicle which suddenly sets itself on fire (or if the guy next to you suddenly dies) then it's going to scare the crap out of you. They won't go "oh it's just that plane. It's got 6 more shots then has to load up with toxic chemicals." They're more likely to go "<higher power> is vengeful", "sniper!" or "I'm not paid enough for this." and promptly run home telling their commander about the incident, who will probably just as uneducated.

Sure, against another western power the ray gun isn't very viable, but against the people this will likely be used on it's going to be a major boon. An AP gun you can put anywhere, easily extract and leaves no trace? Yes please.

Finally - wasn't the original intention to take out ICBM's? I think that kind of hit on the fuel lines of an ICBM would be pretty catastrophic...

Microsoft ropes in Family Guy to pimp Windows 7

Xander

@Buck

Your funeral comment made me laugh. Perhaps this is why you don't get Family Guy humour...

Also - Seth has been known to take quite a number of aggresive shots at FOX before so clearly has no trouble attacking the people who buy his food. Hopefully this will follow into this Windows debacle...

Here's hoping for half an hour of blue screen, furious screaming, resets and system hangs before finally saying "ah screw it" and re-installing XP.

One in three kids believe Google measures truthiness

Xander
Badgers

Cause and Effect

"69 per cent of 12 to 15-year-olds now restrict who can access their profile, up 10 per cent from last year."

I wonder if there's any correlation between that 10% and their parents joining Facebook...

Man remanded for extreme porn offences

Xander
FAIL

@AC 4th September 2009 13:04 GMT

I'm sorry - but that's absolute horsepoo.

Show me one (unbiased) recent statistic that shows women are traffiked into porn.

If you actually left the house once in a while and visited foreign lands, such as Paris, you'd find that beast porn is not just available, but oddly popular. These are professional, taxed and accredited DVDs of which all performers are consensual, not dirty back-alley jobs.

Forget solar panels, it's time for rooftop slime-tanks

Xander
Thumb Down

This isn't Fail And You

Please stop trying so hard. Trying to do a Fail And You style without actually being any good at it just makes you sound like you're having a bad day and are taking it out on a news article.

The concepts put forward are simply a part of scientific discussion and whilst not significant on their own they might lead to new ideas and concepts. Belittling them straight away isn't helpful or productive.

If you don't think they're newsworthy (mainly as they're mostly just academic ideas than something that is practical to implement) then don't cover the story. If you are going to the story at least approach it from a neutral position, not bearing down on it like some retarded republican.

Most gamers fat and miserable, finds study

Xander
Thumb Down

Cart / Horse

Again this tripe is trotted out. Try putting the horse before the cart next time:

"Fat, depressed 35 year olds play more video games" is a much more accurate headline.

MS Zero-day security bug was two years in the making

Xander
Dead Vulture

zer0-day?

When did this place start hiring skiddies?

Twitter breach gives behind-the-scenes Obama peek

Xander

One small issue here

Not to rain on everyones parade but do you really think for a minute Obi or any of the other "celebrities" actually go within 100 miles of Twitter and it's not just some PR shmuck who runs the account?

Conspiracy theories aplenty as Amazon delists gay books

Xander
Flame

Not the Gay Blogosphere!

We're all doomed now, I tells ya. Doomed!

City IT workers brace for anarchist attack

Xander
Unhappy

They must be well paid

It's just soem IT equipment. I wouldn't put myself near an angry mob just to keep a box humming...

Best of luck to those guys that do though.

Mimecast and file server destruction

Xander
Stop

Don't back up locally? Hah!

Show me one system with 100% uptime. Not even the big G can pull that off. Also, show me a company that will continue to offer such a massive service after it's gone bankrupt. Even with advanced warning, to construct and execute a backup system takes well over a week in a small business, probably over a month for a big one.

I think I'll be sticking with my local tape copies, thank you very much.

Microsoft promises 'lessons learned' on IE 8 download day

Xander
Flame

There's a lot of lies in this article...

"functionally inferior Internet Explorer 6"

Bollocks. At least IE 6 worked. There's nothing "functionally superior" about a browser that cripples the machine it is being run on. The entire of Stafford University suffered with a state of only being able to run IE7 exclusively - any other applications became unusably slow.

"benefits of faster speed, improved usability"

Speed - please see above. A browser that clunks along and takes over 1 second to open a new tab is not faster. The improved usability is a sick joke, and you know it. What's the first thing someone says upon starting IE7 for the first time? "What's this? How do you use this?" Every. Freaking. Time.

"with a constantly updated list of malware sites to protect the user."

We all know Microsoft does not know/understand how to make a file grow by addition. When a patch for a patch comes out, you're looking at two full downloads rather than one large followed by one small. How long before this list is over 100MB? AVG itself spouts that 1 in 1000 sites are malicous, that's going to be one very big list in a very short time. Even if MS gets its head around file appending, can you imagine the download after a format? Anyone on a capped internet is going to run out of space quick sharp.

"relatively simply task of inserting a tag in their code in order to render pages in IE 8's default standards mode"

This smacks of complete ignorance. Many of the blue chips need to go through many, many steps to make even the smallest changes to their websites. Even intranet pages need to be checked, tested fully, signed off, seconded, rechecked and confirmed before you can correct even a spelling mistake. And what if we do give into MS and add <ie8 />? How long before <ie8.5 />, <ie9 />, <ieInfinitum />? How about they build a standards compatible and make OLD sites append a <ieisshitandthissitewasmadetoworkarounditsousetheoldversion /> tag?

"IE 8 is more secure than Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera"

I think you know as well as I do this is the biggest lie in the article.

Nokia transforms text messages into art

Xander
Happy

Art today

Captcha image tomorrow

Developers more 'satisfied' with PHP than other codes

Xander
Thumb Up

Carry on

Nothing new here, really. PHP is a great language.

I like how "all those code samples to copy/paste" is considered a bad thing. Because saving time on a project by reusing code someone has already made is such a terrible thing and should never be done!

There's a huge amount of support out there, there's a excellent single resource for the entire language, it supports OOD and OOP, it's free, it works on all the platforms and the practitioners are never pretentious or full of their own hype. I realise all the other languages have these points too - but it's just that PHP does them all a little better rather than one thing brilliantly (which is exactly what the survey shows!)

PHP is in a very similar state to VB6. Sure it's not the latest thing but a lot of people have used it and there's a lot of support for it. Half the problem I have with .NET is there's so little support out there compared to VB6. The same is true with PHP over other languages.

As an aside: Javascript isn't run on the server, comparing it with PHP, Ruby and other server side languages is incorrect, surely?

Government wastes £4.6m on mobile telly nonsense

Xander
Unhappy

@ 15 Facebook Fans

Oddly enough, he does.

I had to dig a little to find the page that was just for "Pro-Hitler" (the top group result was for discussion, not necessarily promotion) and it's here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Heil-Hitler/54972320687?sid=8f96c1125c736a300a456b01518217b5&ref=s

With 26 supporters.

£4.6 million = Less popular than Hitler.

Also: el Reg needs to add a "Despair" icon

Etailer flogs signed Jade Goody biog for £1,000

Xander
Happy

I lol'd

“Some people are just sick. How can you take something so tragic and make money from it? They are just heartless, callous and greedy. They are making thousands from Jade’s illness and will probably make even more from her death.”

Quoted in a red top (The Sun, not you guys)?

I lol'd. Hard.

Cambridge security boffins slam banking card readers

Xander
Thumb Up

About time

Seriously - have you used these things?

It's a fast way to brute force the PIN (instant yes/no + no call back to home) and then you find that Barclays, RBS, Natwest and probably all the other card readers are 100% identical (you can use a Barclays card reader to authenticate an RBS card)

Google's email service goes down

Xander
Thumb Down

FAIL?

Either that's a witty acronym or you are a world class moron.

War, Web 2.0 and the Fail Loop

Xander
Thumb Down

I'm sorry... what?

I think even the most brain-dead neo-luddite can tell there are some very different requirements between civillian and military communication...

We want to know what our friends are up to, who's thinking and saying what, who's dating who and who just broke up. We want information with only minimal direction.

Soldiers need to know where friends and foes are. They need to know what they're doing right now and what to do next. They need direction with only essential information.

Perhaps you need to disconnect from the feedback loop yourself, eh?

Pro-Heathrow demo challenges Carbon Cult killjoys

Xander
Thumb Down

Snobbery?

I think this is just short-sightedness.

Okay: Let's ignore the CO output of a cheap flight.

1) Planes don't just magic out of nowhere. From design to development to production they take an enormous amount of energy and resource. And ignoring the carbon, that fuel isn't cheap and quantities are running low.

2) See 1: Replace plane with airport

3) Sipson - once a nice village a mile from the airport, now to be wiped off the map.

4) When did we get asked if we wanted it? Something as major as this should have required at least a local vote.

5) In answer to your question: Probably the airlines.

6) A cheap flight to Barbados to get ratted all weekend is not horizon broadening. Those flights still cost >£500 each way.

Laptop facial recognition defeated by Photoshop

Xander

I'm surprised

That this is pitched as a security feature. The finger-print readers have always carried the "Rapid Logon" message rather than "Secure" for more or less the same reasons - they've very easy to circumvent.

Pope's star watcher to visit Nasa and talk aliens

Xander
Thumb Up

Fantastic

They cite lack of proof for not believing in aliens?

I did chuckle.

Scareware scammers Rickroll Digg

Xander
Thumb Down

facepalm.jpg

1) It's called "duping" or "tricking". Rickrolling is a very specific term for a very general activity.

2) This just reinforces to problems with Web 2.0, as the economist put it "Eat Shit, Millions of flies can't be wrong". Once someone's learnt how to control (or create) the crowd, the whole idea of crowd intelligence collapses.

Brits find accommodation a little uncomfortable

Xander

Bone Idleness?

Why does everyone assume this is the case? Here's a thought; you go to spell a word you've not spelt in a while and you just need that little confirmation. Do you write indubidably and just go for it or take 3 seconds to check and find out it's actually indubitably?

I'd be interested to see the figures for "number of spelling errors in letters" over the last 20 years. I really wood.

Spotify: We kick the tyres

Xander

Business Model is banned?

What an odd behaviour... Every business needs a model. Now "Cloud" or "Twitter" - those are bannable words, easily.

Squatting spammers take over Facebook protest site

Xander
Thumb Down

How the hell

is this news?

Every group with >500 members is spam-flooded. I imagine the creator changed the description himself as an ironic protest or the password to their accout was compromised.

Large Hadron Timewaster

Xander
Dead Vulture

Oh dear...

Why such a negative article in a website dedicated to science and technology? This feels like it's been lifted out an ignoramous paper like the Sun or Daily Sport...

The LHC will bring us that much closer to understanding the 80-90% of the universe we appear to be missing. I think that's worth more than the NPfIT, don't you?

Also - I would like the editorial team to seriously consider this reporters position and his suitability for the job as it appears to me to be terrible.

Child porn in the age of teenage 'sexting'

Xander

@John

Yeah. Sadly that post hadn't been moderated when I submitted mine. Principle still stands though.

Does raise the question of the teacher though. He knew there was child porn on the phone, so he roots through it like a pig for truffles. I wonder if he went on to "confiscate" the phone... ahem.

Xander

Assuming makes an ass of u and me...

Just something I've noticed here, both the author and the comments have jumped to a conclusion that everyone consented. If these were all consenting teens, how come the authorities found out? Who blew the whistle?

Or - perhaps - there's something amiss here. Perhaps the girls are being vindictive, as a previous comment states the laws could be used to make someone a sex offender by sending them an image of yourself, all you need is the phone number. Or the boys could be pressuring/bullying the girls into taking the pictures.

*If* both parties consented, both should recieve a slap on the wrist and sent on their way. But if something darker is going on here, then certainly one of them deserves to be brought to justice.

Take a hammer to your hard drive, shrieks Which?

Xander
Paris Hilton

What?

Surely it would have been far more intelligent for them to compare 5-10 different wiping products because, you know, isn't that what they usually do?

Paris - because she's only tested 2 products, apparently...

Google picks up third spot in spam-friendly shame list

Xander
Flame

TISP

was a joke. They do not provide internet access. neither do Microsoft for that matter. Stop calling them ISPs you utter fucknut.

Where's my dead vulture?

Late bets on new Who hit Paddy Power's pocket

Xander
IT Angle

Er

So a bookies lost some money... Anyone should care because?

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