Posts by Eddie Edwards

It's not even the real McCartney

Check out the cover of Abbey Road ...

This imposter has no right to block the release of the real Beatles' music.

That's stupid

Retailers have two options with a lower VAT rate:

1. Pass it on to the customer. Customer sees cheaper prices and buys more. Net gain.

2. Don't pass it on to the customer. Customer sees the same prices and buys the same amount. Retailer makes more per unit. Net gain.

Why would retailers not support a VAT cut?

I'm a small business and I want money for nothing

Where do I apply?

Jeez

Next time any chance of a three-paragraph article containing a LINK to the forums for anyone who wants to know what a dozen idiots think?

Gordon Ross, another disgruntled reader, said "Let's see: A "feature" two-page story on how some new software is slow. You read it, and what do you find: It's just a load of copy 'n' pastes from the Parallels forums. Did this take much effort to write ? You being paid by the word ?"

Not easy to view the source code?

Sounds like your "experts" are as uninformed as 0.2% of your readership.

I just located and viewed it in under 30 seconds simply by Googling for "urchin.js".

Here's the link:

http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js

Simply fire that link up in Chrome and you get the full source code. Here's the first few lines for the doubters:

//-- Google Analytics Urchin Module

//-- Copyright 2007 Google, All Rights Reserved.

//-- Urchin On Demand Settings ONLY

var _uacct=""; // set up the Urchin Account

var _userv=1; // service mode (0=local,1=remote,2=both)

//-- UTM User Settings

var _ufsc=1; // set client info flag (1=on|0=off)

var _udn="auto"; // (auto|none|domain) set the domain name for cookies

var _uhash="on"; // (on|off) unique domain hash for cookies

var _utimeout="1800"; // set the inactive session timeout in seconds

var _ugifpath="/__utm.gif"; // set the web path to the __utm.gif file

var _utsp="|"; // transaction field separator

var _uflash=1; // set flash version detect option (1=on|0=off)

var _utitle=1; // set the document title detect option (1=on|0=off)

var _ulink=0; // enable linker functionality (1=on|0=off)

var _uanchor=0; // enable use of anchors for campaign (1=on|0=off)

var _utcp="/"; // the cookie path for tracking

var _usample=100; // The sampling % of visitors to track (1-100).

//-- UTM Campaign Tracking Settings

var _uctm=1; // set campaign tracking module (1=on|0=off)

var _ucto="15768000"; // set timeout in seconds (6 month default)

var _uccn="utm_campaign"; // name

var _ucmd="utm_medium"; // medium (cpc|cpm|link|email|organic)

var _ucsr="utm_source"; // source

var _uctr="utm_term"; // term/keyword

var _ucct="utm_content"; // content

var _ucid="utm_id"; // id number

var _ucno="utm_nooverride"; // don't override

Some real Heroes fans here then

Silas?

It's SYLAR.

You even see it in writing several times, it being the make of his watch.

*wooosh*

Can anyone tell me?

Can anyone tell me what the intersection of the Venn diagram on Roy's T-shirt said? I missed the whole episode trying to read it.

@ FAIL

Fail may not be a new word, but it's a new noun, as in "Your shipment of fail has been delivered."

Standard Motorola crap

If it was a Jesus Phone it would have been working again by the third day.

So touching

I always find it touching when people outside the industry think that game code is anything other than a huge collection of hacks intended to give interesting visual results.

The idea of using it to simulate actual stuff in actual industry, on the other hand, fills me with dread. No way I'm tendering for that contract. World of pain as expectations crash head-on.

Sony's high road

Sony are of course at liberty to prevent X360 users from streaming their movies. Perhaps they don't trust Microsoft's security? :LOL: Actually it's a bit of a piss-take when WMP will happily talk to your PS3 over DLNA and when Sony basically rely on DevStudio to provide a decent IDE for PS3 software development. Maybe Microsoft should block the SN Studios plugin in a future revision and use that as leverage. But ... no ... actually Microsoft don't tend to get that petty.

On the subject of the high-ground, note that you can upgrade your PS3 with any standard-sized SATA drive with nothing but a screwdriver and without paying Sony a penny. You don't have to pay a fee for the online stuff either. But that's boring and you know all this already.

WTF?

"Clarification of virtual property rights for more adequate theft protection"

Yes, I need clarity. Take chess: If my queen gets taken, should I call the cops? Or D&D: if a chaotic evil character knocks me out and steals my Wand of Healing, should I sue?

Also we need legislation to protect player avatars from monsters intent on killing them. Maybe get a posse together and hunt them all down to make the world a safe place. I *strongly* suspect that the game creators put these monsters in on purpose. There's an obvious class action suit in the making there.

Damn this hangover

"multiheaded whores"

I thought that said "multithreaded" for a minute.

Mine's the one with a Cell programming manual in the pocket.

Progress - yes I do love it

Vista does not take 15 minutes to boot for me. It boots faster than any previous Microsoft OS other than DOS.

And who waits for their computer to shut down? Click shut down, leave. What's it going to do? Catch on fire while you're gone? Maybe this lawsuit is more about OCD than about boot times per se.

The other thing you can do is leave the thing on all night. It might not be "green" but it costs *far* less than 15 minutes of my time to leave a PC on for 24 hours.

@ CTG

I agree.

Apple's mistake, in fact, *is* to allow the amateurs in.

Compare this with another platform holder. Sony and the PS3.

The publication sequence goes like this:

1. Submit game design

2. Get it approved by Sony

3. *Then* you get the dev hardware + software, for which you pay *through the nose*

4. You must follow TRCs (technical requirements checklist). No pass, no publish.

5. Get through all this and you can publish online and/or on physical medium

Yet the world and its dog doesn't bitch and moan about Sony's practices, because they never said amateurs could publish, so the amateurs don't expect to be able to.

The pros, on the other hand, accept the restrictions and simply work within them.

What a fucking idea! Saves stress on all sides, saves misguided anti-Sony bullshit from non-developers whom it doesn't affect (such as El Reg hacks), etc. etc.

Teddy phone?

I guess this is aimed at those paranoid about kids being snatched rather than those paranoid about kids' brains being boiled by microwave radiation.

Spritualism in computing?

"No matter how smart the software the computer can only do stuff that binary logic can do. This means that artificial intelegence using binary computers is a huge waste of time no matter how big the computer is. AI needs a computer that does not resolve down to a simple Turing machine."

Ah yes, the old "you can't have AI without a soul" argument, favoured by Weisenbaum and others; the last bastion of received religious wisdom in mathematics.

Actually your brain isn't even as powerful as a Turing machine. It only has a finite tape.

@ Chris C

"Do auto makers have to make sure their autos are not used for illegal purposes (speeding, reckless drivers, ignoring stop signs and stop lights, allowing drunk drivers, etc)? Do the alcohol brewers and distributors have to ensure that people don't drink too much and become abusive? Do gun makers have to find a way to make sure their weapons aren't used for illegal purposes? In all of those cases, the answer is a resounding "NO"."

Interestingly, in all of those cases, we have age barriers to use.

And - let's face it - we could probably stop most filesharing if no-one was allowed to use the internet until after they graduated.

This would also protect the kids from groomers and extreme porn.

It was mooted on El Reg a week or two ago and I'm starting to think it's a fine idea.

What an amazing coincidence

"Auntie chairman Sir Michael Lyons and director general Mark Thompson"

By an astounding coincidence, I've actually shagged both their daughters.

Quite right

"Also it makes me shudder when the government uses the word "citizens". Way too 1984."

Quite right. We are not citizens. We are subjects of Her Majesty.

Not really

"to satisfy the needs of freetards everywhere"

Surely that would require them posting the source?

If ...

If that's a godlike perspective, God needs to go to specsavers.

All credit to India

But we've crashed a probe on Mars.

Much more interesting

Is the picture of three large planets orbiting star HR 8799. Seen here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7725584.stm

But they didn't use Hubble so not so newsworthy at Vulture Central.

n00b question

How is that supposed to rise without using bicarb or self-raising flour?

Domainers

Of course they're doing something wrong.

Not every action a capitalist makes is legitimate or right.

We have laws to prevent many of their excesses.

We just need a law to prevent this one.

NetApp gloom? Too bad

Maybe they should sue Sun for making zfs free instead of trying to fight the economic downturn directly.

Oh, wait ...

Oy!

What have you got against the Filth? They rock, Enya boy.

BTW £229 is almost *six* times as much as £40. Math fail.

Oh dear

That was that sound of call centers overloading as a thousand people just realized their number spells "WANKER"

Nice investigation

So you guys have tested 1.3 and found there to be no difference in network traffic usage from 1.2?

Coz I'm thinking Apple have done this and have found that there is a difference.

In the absence of any investigation more thorough than printing the developer's "new features" list, I'm siding with Apple.

Hmm

So I'm cutting my manoeuvre a bit fine but I'm gonna make it and then ...

BANG!

Computer says no, and slams the brakes on, ramming me *into* the car behind.

Nice one.

Haxploitation

Love it. Worth reading the article just for that coinage.

Does this mean ...

Does this mean that 1 in 6 people who are arrested have done nothing wrong?

That's pretty shocking in itself, isn't it?

Good one!

"The true lemmings are the ones who continue to believe in global warming and climate change despite the mountain of evidence saying otherwise"

Hahahah.

What kind of animal is it that has no affinity for science but likes to be "controversial" and deny things that the scientific community accepts as fact? People like global warming deniers and creationists, who reject the most solidly researched evidence if it doesn't fit into their world view, but accept the most flimsy circumstantial evidence if it does? Is there a name for them?

I'm surprised you people have time to post on The Register. Surely you should be digging a bunker ready for when the LHC is turned on?

The magic of steam

"The national railway museum is less than 300m from the station as the train rolls. How the hell does it take almost quarter of an hour to get from one to the other?"

That's the magic of steam!

This is like IPv4

We're simply running out of acronyms. We need an IPv6 acronym space perhaps enforcing an ETLA rule.

The WWF has no right to software trademarks (or wrestling trademarks ...) Microsoft can call their code WWF if they like.

As for Palladium, wasn't that just a codename? I don't recall the officials of Cairo or Chicago ever having a problem with Microsoft's codenames.

But the meat of the article - the programming language 'M' - well, Microsoft are just being a little unimaginative there, aren't they? If they want single-letter abbreviations they have the whole Unicode space to choose from. I suggest codepoint 0x2639.

The mode sucks in Chrome

Really you *want* it to save your passwords, but in some encrypted password thingy.

And it's *not* just useful for porn. I use it for a perfectly legitimate purpose which unfortunately this comment box is too small to contain a description of.

WIN

Whether or not Obama lives up to the hopes people have, it's still a win for the hope itself.

This is BS though

When they add up music and video sales, they don't include sales of CD players, iPods, DVD players and so on. When they add up video game sales, they do include sales of consoles. So it's a case of comparing apples and oranges.

@ Bastard Sheep

How about the "Great Internet Barrier Reef"?

Rookie question

I'm a programmer and what goes on in the data centre is a mystery to me, so this question might be very very stupid.

If you have multiple backups of the same data, and you "de-dupe" it, doesn't that mean you now only have one backup of that piece of data, so only one point of failure?

How does that help? Surely if you're running full backups you want discrete copies rather than de-duped copies, which are more-or-less equivalent to an incremental backup?

And, conversely, if you want de-duped backup data you just run an incremental backup in the first place, without paying anyone a dime for de-dupe techonology.

What am I missing here? De-dupe sounds like a stupid idea for backup data.

Paris, because I wanted an icon with a question mark on it, and I can see the IT angle.

No-one else noticed this?

It wasn't a DDOS. It was a DOS sourced from a single location. That's just a DOS.

And the zero-day virus was no less silly than when Goldblum did it in Independence Day. Unless of course Russian subs run Windows.

And a signal at 500nm? That's not a radio frequency. It's the colour green.

The only good side to this episode was the killing off of the ultra-annoying Adam Carter.

Smiley, because he's turning in his grave.

ObAnthrax

So it's good that this guy is still Among The Living but I really hope that he hasn't been Spreading The Disease. I bet he's feeling the Persistence of Time in hospital though. The stuff the doctors are telling him must seem like the Sound of White Noise.

/me: That's all the Anthrax albums I've got, sorry.

Peachy

Just LOL

@ Philip IV the Fair

My knowledge of the history of the Knights Templar has, admittedly, been pieced together from Dan Brown novels, but has anyone else noticed the profound similarity between Philip the Fair's destruction of the Knights Templar on Friday 13th 1307, and Emperor Palpatine's destruction of the Jedi Knights in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith?

I think we should be told.

SIMD in Mono?

Ahhhh. The penny drops.

It's not just Microsoft who "embrace and extend".

It's actually just an irresistable thing for *developers* to do.

This explains why I can't compile most FOSS C/C++ code on any other compiler than gcc.