Posts by Duncan Hothersall

Insights

I fear that insights might be an optimistic view of what's likely to be posted.

On the plus side, it does mean Orlowski's articles will have somewhere to post comments. (Apart from his welcoming email address, obv.)

Re: What a waste

I use Google Docs extensively (for appropriate purposes, not heavy lifting) and have never had significant trouble with latency. When I'm on a slow or flaky network it switches to slow/flaky network mode, which is dependent on Gears, and reverts to local saving as appropriate. It has always worked well for me. Just wanted to give you an alternate view.

@Five Hats

My thoughts entirely. If they were thinking sensibly, and they generally do, they may even have made the complaint themselves - a lot more eyeballs on their advert now.

More power to the collective elbows at No2ID. I've signed the pledge. Have you?

All that glisters

I apologise in advance, but my mother was an English teacher. The expression is "all that glisters is not gold", not "all that glitters". It's from the Merchant of Venice, and I'm well aware what sort of a twat I am thankyouverymuch.

So...

MS pulled a feature from one of its websites because its browser had a bug.

Presumably MS are not the only people capable of writing code to exploit this bug, so did they also issue a security advisory for IE last month? If not, this stinks.

Re: Anonymous Coward 10.46

Your comment appears to be a description of challenges faced when migrating from MS Office to another package with a user base and document archive mired in MS formats and functions. I agree that this can be a problem for the reasons you suggest, but it has nothing to do with the situation Ted brought up here, which is companies choosing to use Google Docs rather than "pony up for" MS Office. Google Docs can save all of its documents in ODT/ODS formats, and has a much more limited subset of functionality than OpenOffice or StarOffice, so there is no migration pain in a shift from Google Docs to Oo.o.

As for the issues with formatting changing in Word docs - this also happens between different versions of MS' own software, and yet people apparently cope with that sort of transition - why should they not cope with it in this case? Anyone who expects a word processor file to paginate identically on different machines even if they are running an identical word processor has never worked seriously with Word files.

Re: Dinner date

Honestly, the quality of technical knowledge here is appalling. alt is an attribute, not a tag.

Issues

“In particular, if while using the Web Browser control, you allow the application to open new windows that do not respect the user’s default browser choice, you may see some issues”

This is exactly the problem you get now if you set your default browser to anything other than IE; at least with this new edition you will be able to ensure that IE doesn't just run anyway despite being "disabled".

I swear that several years back

in M&S in Inverness I saw peeled oranges packed in plastic bags on sale.

The question is will he really get the funeral he wanted?

He is on record as having asked for an open coffin in which he is sitting upright, with a mechanised arm moving his hand up and down gripping his artificially engorged deceased todger. I really, really hope he gets this.

@Richard Shearn

Does this question really always bother you? Because I'd have thought it would take no more than a moment for you to note that Apple does not have a monopoly position under which it habitually controls OEMs, ships a browser which is standards compliant instead of being based on an embrace-and-extend strategy aimed at controlling the web space, and has never been convicted of, and massively fined for, anti-competitive practices on a global scale.

Windows and OSX are not equivalent in any meaningful way as far as this issue is concerned, and suggestions that they should be treated as such in the interests of fairness are deeply dubious.

Pathetically biased article

As others have pointed out, the point of IR35 was to ensure those who should be employed on a standard contract got employed on a standard contract. The measures used here to assess the success of IR35 completely ignore that outcome!

There is no proof of any failure of IR35 here; just a failure of Gerry Mclaughlin to see past the chip on his shoulder.

To be succeeded by?

I hope those clicking to "do their bit" are happy with the idea that Gordon be replaced by one of the following:

Wacky Jacqui

Harriet Harperson

Jack 'boot' Straw

'Ickle' David Miliband

Not looking like such a smart idea now, is it...

Excellent

More cheap meat soon.

Re: MySQL

If only MySQL was licensed under the GPL to protect us from the effects of such ownership changes...

Sunday Times style headline from El Reg?

And when I say "Sunday Times style", what I mean is false and misleading to the point of rabid duplicity.

Up to 40,000 URLs on the IWF block list accessed each day DOES NOT mean, or even come close to meaning, 40,000 child porn pages. As we know, from recent articles in this very publication, the IWF blocks a lot more than "child porn" - sometimes they block an entire site, or an entire page, when the only thing that should be listed is a single image. Assuming your average page, with images, CSS, JS and the rest, might deliver 10 files to a web browser, you can cut the figure down to 4,000 a day at a stroke. And that presumes that everything on the watchlist is child pron, which again we know isn't true. So let's halve it again - 2,000 attempts to access something blocked per day.

Seriously, there is enough sub-tabloid reporting on IT issues without EL Reg joining in. Get a fucking grip.

That BBC story

also quotes the head numpty at the Passport Service as saying that chip and pin is "one way to help protect internet shoppers".

Why are we allowing such stupid statements to be made unchallenged anyway? Isn't it the job of a journalist, in that situation, to say "excuse me, mate - how would chip and pin make any fucking difference to shopping over the internet, you lying twat?" Or words to that effect?

Argh, it drives me mad that government is STILL being run by management consultants and ad men.

Actually IE6 = 11.9% ...

... which is pretty scary.

@ BLoad

I don't mean to mock the afflicted, but for fuck's sake - Timney IS her husband you cock.

So proud

that the guy flicking the Vs at Google is on the oh-so-glamorous Lothian Road in my own fair city.

If the first method requires line of sight...

...then I posit there is a simpler way to capture what is being typed. Watch them type it.

AC at 03:34 is Wolfram

It's the repeated use of "emergent" that gives him away.

@ Giles Jones

Yes, buying a botnet of machines that were ALREADY compromised and then NOT doing anything damaging to them is the equivalent of setting off a bomb.

Why am I arguing with you? You're incapable of rational thought.

*shoots self after viewing violent films and/or video games*

@ George

"How did Coleman become a Senator if this is how he works?"

I think you've answered your own question there.

@ Andy

"homosexuality isn't very clever, from a Darwinian perspective"

You're not very clever, from any perspective, if you think that statement made any sense. What the fuck is a "Darwinian perspective"? Do you mean simply to point out that a male/male coupling won't produce offspring? Bravo, Einstein.

"it's really quite rare for animals to be exclusively homosexual – usually it just seems to be a case of mistaken identity due to raging hormones"

Show your working, please. Or to put it another way, what a steaming pile of made up bollocks.

@ WonkoTheSane

Except that Billg, the patriarch, didn't express any "Apple envy"; the article quotes Melinda Gates as saying "Every now and then I look at my friends and say, 'Ooh, I wouldn’t mind having that iPhone.'" There's your envious matriarch.

Be honest Lester

You love it really, dontcha.

Did they really

"Apple also took the opportunity today to remind world+dog that the newest browsers, including Google’s Chrome, are based on the firm’s own open source WebKit technology."

I hope they concurrently reminded world+dog that "the firm’s own open source WebKit technology" was based on a fork from KHTML and KJS from the KDE project which they kept proprietary for a year, after which they engaged on a completely unreasonable mass-patch basis with KDE before finally open sourcing the whole thing in a shower of PR bollocks which made it sound like they were doing the world a favour.

Something tells me they didn't though.

AARGH

This really pisses me off, because actually his article does NOT say that social networking does any of this. What it says is not networking physically does all of this.

Someone who has an active social and family life and also uses social networks online is NOT affected by any of the ominous threats set out here.

Once again, a load of old bollocks is being spouted in order to sell scientific research as news, and while I expect the mainstream media to just regurgitate, I would have hoped El Reg would point out the obvious flaw.

Where's that bloody gravestone icon? Ah there's the little fucker.

Idiot benefits from idiocy of other idiots

Nobody comes out of this looking good.

If there is any truth in the sex pest allegations then the idiots who pursued a vendetta against the guy are almost certainly to blame for those charges not being laid, since as others have said they would have rendered most of the evidence inadmissible.

Clearly the guy himself is a twat.

And finally, this is dangerously one-sided reporting from El Reg.

You really do get an *awfully* good view from up on this high horse.

Confused

I genuinely don't understand what MS has done here. I thought the point of IE8 was it was shifting to standards-based renderings of HTML and CSS. I browse many of these sites on a daily basis (the BBC for example) using Ff, and see no problems.

Is it the case that all of these sites have workarounds that are triggered by the user agent being IE, or is it that IE8 isn't implementing web standards?

I don't get it.

Zeroing in on financial services eh?

Smart move. Very solid business sector that.

It's all very well

having clear, rational laws and a well-funded, well-run system to enforce them, alongside warm weather, a relaxed, sociable way of life and bountiful natural resources, but they haven't got, ... erm, ... oh bollocks.

@ kain preacher

I beg your fucking pardon? What sort of an ignorant twat equates "gay/lesbian" with "pedo"?

Stick your prejudices up your arse, closet case.

@ Jerome

It might just be that the HD capability is for outputting to an external display attached to that HDMI port...

Oh, and why would you want GPS inside a netbook? Surely you're better off with an external (BT) GPS receiver so you can put it in the best position for picking up the satellite. No point in balancing your computer on the dashboard.

@ Francis Fish

I think Rowling's problem was that this wasn't fan-generated content. It was her content, copied not by a fan but by a profiteering publishing company.

The fact that she is happy that the amended book is being published speaks volumes. The previous version clearly just copied her work, which is indefensible.

It would be even more tragic

if the ambulance couldn't find your street because you'd correctly used the possessive apostrophe.

Won't somebody think of the children?!

Trade union?

Surely the trade union of these workers will robustly defend them against such 19th century employment practices.

What's that you say? No trade union? Eroded labour laws? Oh dear. How did we end up back here...