* Posts by M Howling

7 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Aug 2007

Vista SP1 customers get free support

M Howling
Flame

MS have always offered Free Service Pack install support.

This article is incorrect! Microsoft have always offered Free Support for the Installation of a Service Pack. Regardless of whether the original OS install was OEM or not.

To repeat the offer is for Installation and Compatibility support only, and is not new they've always done it.

Flame because I'm bound to get flamed for this.

Microsoft's sex-obsessed RoboSanta spouts filth at children

M Howling

Foolish comments...

Anyone else getting sick of people posting the "Filthy Santa" conversations?

The original article was about the fact that the bot would mention oral sex after a entering something that was relatively mundane. Far to many of the comments are of things were the bot has been intentionally fooled into sounding dirty.

Obviously the programmer messed up the response routines for filthy language and was deeming "Eat It" as a swear phrase. It should have been programmed to respond with something along the lines of "I'm to stuffed to eat at the moment." or "I've had to many minced pies".

Any body with any experience of writting Inference Engines (which is essentially what a bot is) knows that people are going to try and make it say something filthy. Unfortunately certain phrases can be deemed dirty, depending on the view point of the reader. This doesn't detract from the point that the Bot should not have mentioned Oral Sex.

Best Buy kicks out misbehaving Geek Squaders

M Howling

And the moral of the story is...

Either encrypt sensitive data (be it porn or otherwise), or delete it before the PC goes in for repair.

What does Microsoft's European defeat mean?

M Howling

Freebieless - OS

I agree with the point of the EU ruling, but it's application is pointless. Why would someone pay more for a less? for example ebuyer (in the uk) are selling Vista Business Update for £152.74 and Vista Business N Update for £151.54. it's only 1.20 difference but why would I pay more??? Microsoft should be made to have an OS only version (no IE, MediaPlayer, Windows Calendar, Windows Mail, Windows Contact, etc.) at a significatly lower price. Although they should allow you to add these functions on via download (and to be fair, they should be allowed to charge for these downloads). Additionally if the only difference between retail and OEM (other than the packaging costs) is support contracts then release a retail version minus the support contract! I've only ever called Microsoft once and that was because an OEM version of XP Home wouldn't activate.

Google Adwords dive-bombed by American Airlines

M Howling

RE: Airline Names?

Where does Virgin Airways fly out of?

The Virgin Islands of course

Spammers debut FDF spam

M Howling

Am I complete git?

I've always thought that if you are stupid enough to fall for these sort of schemes then you've only got yourself to blame. And for that matter you shouldn't be using a computer if you don't understand the risks.

So yes I probably am a complete git.

Silent bandwidth battles at BT

M Howling

Replacing ISDN with DSL

Recently we have transferred our systems from ISDN to DSL and can confirm that DSL is just not as reliable as ISDN. Yes we had problems with ISDN lines before but the DSL just seems to have more. And although theoretically quicker in practice we've not really noticed much difference. Mind you we're mostly transferring text files.