Well...
...wouldn't it be a nice present from Microsoft if they wrote decent software to start with and didn't need to patch it all the time?!?!
Posts by Rod MacLean
195 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jun 2009
Microsoft to send users 4 critical patches on Valentine's Day
Anonymous hackers leak Scotland Yard-FBI conference call
Serial killer PYTHONS stalk Florida's Everglades
North Korea labels phone users war criminals
10 years ago today: Bill Gates kicks arse over security
The TARDIS through the ages
HELL ON EARTH: The Great Dying
Yates of the Yard cleared of misconduct
Chief inspector sacked for 'advertising uniformed self online for sex'
Booze giant's Facebook tie-up sparks ad concerns
Virgin Media puts Dave and Gold on the block
Monday 9th August 2010 16:41 GMT
RE: Money Saving Tip
I *am* a Virgin Media customer and they still send me spam mail. Only about 1/2 the amount I get from Sky though! As for BT and TalkTalk - I'm going to get a sign put on my door asking the postman to route all the junk I get from them directly to a recycling plant! I get about a three trees worth each year from Sky, BT and TalkTalk. You think they would have realised by now that I'm not going to switch!
Primate-phobic Brit attacked by crab-eating Macaques
New attack bypasses virtually all AV protection
Jobsian Vendetta - Flash stabbed by Mac the Knife
Hawking: Aliens are out there, likely to be Bad News
Marmite sends in the lawyers against BNP
Pinhead Mac Trojan sticks it to fanbois
Apple sued over iPhone aqua sensors
Tuesday 20th April 2010 11:34 GMT
RE: Clean water does not cause damage
Yep. My ex-flatmate put his phone through an entire washing machine cycle and it still worked.
One drunken night he dropped it in a puddle and it was forever dead.
I think it might be dependent on what the phone was doing when it got wet. If it's not up to much, you might be OK...
Herd of sheep, off tits on drugs, savagely Tased
Thursday 15th April 2010 10:17 GMT 
Accurate testing
Sheep are unlikely to resist arrest after tasering. Scientists are unlikely to feel malevolent towards a cornered sheep...
Did they try this test: hold the sheep down and repeatedly taser it until it stopped struggling to get away (or "spasming with electro-convulsions" as it's also known).
That's what's going to happen to some real tasered subjects. Problem is, when you stop struggling it means you're dead.
iPhone 4.0 SDK bars un-Jobsian code translation
Murdoch tells old media to 'stand up' to Google, Bing
iPad security broken in less than 24 hours
Tuesday 6th April 2010 18:25 GMT
RE: Undocumented API Outrage
You mean like on Amiga Workbench 2.0 and 3.0 where all kinds of software didn't work because the developers had expioted functionality which wasn't in the API and which was then changed before the next release (where it WAS in the API)...
There's a reason some things are left hidden, you know!
Opera alerts EU to hidden Windows browser-ballot
Mozilla: 'no plans' to bundle Flash with Firefox
Saturday 3rd April 2010 23:26 GMT
@Matthew 4
You've made it obvious that you're a windows fanboi.
I've been using OSX for 7 years and it's crashed three times in total. Twice it was due to Flash.
Now, Windows on the other hand I've been using since 1995 and I have to admit that it crashed more times than that in the first week (in fact, it crashed as soon as I plugged my scanner in while setting it up!)
I've yet to see El Reg post any articles about OSX exploits in the wild. Look for examples of Windows exploits and you'd be here all day!!
Video giant embraces Flash-phobic iPad with HTML 5
Tuesday 30th March 2010 10:45 GMT
RE: Yak yak yak
"Enter HTML5, driven along most notably by the Firefox and Opera pragmatists. And now we are looking down the barrel of another codec war with Apple and Microsoft favouring the potentially pay-to-play but impressively standards sounding H.264, Firefox and Opera favouring the presumably free but proprietary and distinctively sounding Ogg and Google happy to jump into bed with anyone who'll look at them and apparently Adobe has got it all wrong?"
Umm. I decided to do a little experiment, I downloaded a few video files that normally Flash would play for me. They say they are .flv files. When I look inside them, the video codec used is... H.264 (for almost all!)
So Adobe hasn't got it wrong, they (or programmers who use Flash) have picked exactly the same video format as the HTML5 guys. Adobe have however, inserted an unnecessary layer around the video. Why do we need it?
Apple uncloaks deep details of its 11 iPad apps
Lords: Analogue radio must die
Dell bars Win 7 refunds from Linux lovers
Windows Phone 7 Series gets Timotei rinse
Friday 19th March 2010 10:48 GMT
RE: Flash
You've obviously never visited a web page where flash crashes your browser. (or slows it down, or makes annoying noises, etc etc)
If you think there are any Flash games that are going to keep someone entertained for more than 1/2 an hour or which can compete with commercial games then please let us know!
Flash is also crap for video. Some of us use a video format for those files instead!
Facebook warns over password reset scam
Net downloads cause 'millions of lost jobs'
Thursday 18th March 2010 14:32 GMT 
X Factor
"In the unlikely event of anyone in the music business reading this - make it better and I'll buy like I used to... just stop churning out shit."
That means Simon Cowell and his ilk...!
Cowell wonders why people buy the X Factor single straight after the show has been on air for 10 weeks but have forgotten all about the artists 2 months later when the album has been released.
It's because it's crap and the public only bought the single because of the ten week long advert on prime-time TV! Once the public have heard the single, they don't need to hear the album - it's more of the same! (People still share them on torrent sites though - no idea why!)
Thursday 18th March 2010 14:28 GMT
RE: Let me get this right
I'll clear the matter up for you:
1, If I listen to music on the radio and like it then I'll buy it.
2, The music on the radio is almost 100% saccharin coated pap
3, I need to look somewhere else for music, so I download it.
4, If I like something I've downloaded, I'll buy it. If not, I'll delete it.
Without the internet, I would buy about 1 album per year. At the moment, the floor in my flat is groaning underneath the huge piles of CDs.
"I'm beginning to see the problem with you freetards - almost all anonymous to a man."
I chose not to go anonymous. I see you didn't. That's the problem with you paytards - amost all anonymous to a man ;)
El Reg insults 'millions of Irish Catholics'
Apple details iPad's 'breakthrough' mobile contract
Virgin signals start of telegraph pole broadband test
Top exorcist says Satan at work in Vatican
Max Clifford takes £1m to drop hack probe
FA launches security probe after England team bugged
Tories ask: Why BBC3, BBC4?
Tuesday 9th March 2010 16:11 GMT
@Nigel Callaghan
"Does anyone have any statistics on how many times each episode of Dr Who has actually been transmitted?"
No, I can tell you this though. In December there were more ads featuring David Tennant as Dr Who (and which were NOT for Dr Who) that these adverts had more airtime than Dr Who actually had...
Tuesday 9th March 2010 16:11 GMT
Umm
I can't see why anyone would want to ditch 3 and keep 4.
I watch 4 from time to time, I watch 3 almost every night (Family Guy is on just when my flatmate goes to bed).
There's also Charlie Brooker's show (which raises a few laughs) and don't forget that good shows like "The Inbetweeners" started on BBC3 and have now migrated to BBC1/2.
Personally, if it was up to me, I have more reason to stop BBC1 and BBC2. Most of the output is complete crap. Weekday TV has "The One Show" and "Eastenders", both of which I could easily live without). Weekend TV seems to consist of celebrities learning to dance/skate and a crowd booing if anyone says they're anything less than perfect. I can do without that too, tyvm.
I wouldn't want to lose QI XL though!
Employers call for end to Mickey Mouse degrees
Tuesday 9th March 2010 13:01 GMT 
Degrees
I remember a joke that was doing the rounds when I was a student:
Q: What do arts students say after they graduate?
A: Do you want fries with that?
These day you can get degrees in things like "BA in nose picking" and "BSc in scratching own arse", so I'm not really surprised that they're considered "mickey mouse". It's because they're completely pointless and valueless!
Exiled iPhone Wi-Fi apps move to Cydia
Monday 8th March 2010 15:24 GMT 
FUD
"referring to the fact that when version 3.0 of the iPhone OS came out all the Wi-Fi-scanning applications stopped working. Those applications then had to be changed, and resubmitted to the iTunes store where Apple happily approved them despite the fact that they clearly made use of private APIs - they couldn't exist any other way."
Except that they can (and do) exist without relying on a 3rd party API - there are still apps on the store that do Wi-Fi scaning!
So this is just FUD!
DARPA wants military iPhone and Android apps
Tuesday 2nd March 2010 10:32 GMT
RE: And what about gloves?
If you need to operate a touchscreen with gloves then simply glue a slice of carrot to the end of the fingertip of your gloves. You could alternatively use a frankfurter sausage as a stylus.
^^You will of course need to moisten the carrot periodically (preferably while not in use)
Gmail Labs' experiments: What's in, what's out?
Thursday 25th February 2010 16:25 GMT
RE: @aaron emm
Don't know why anyone's marked Steven Raith's post down. He wasn't wrong, you know. They were experimental features.
... and aaron emm was completely wrong about incorporating stuff into gmail. We all know (by now) that only one thing was added, it's now been sorted and you can easily opt out. Besides which, anyone with a mail client could read/post with POP3/SMTP anyway and not even have to log in to the Google web site.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
