Posts by Mark Allen

OpenID? MS Passport?

Didn't Microsoft try to do the "One ID to rule them all" with their MS Passport idea?

To me, OpenID is just as stupid as that. So, I can loose just ONE username and password pair to loose all my data now? Yeah... I trust that scrubby little forum to protect my OpenID.

Or why make the hacker's \ PI \ FBI job easier by giving them a "one stop shop" for all of my online identities and tastes. I quite LIKE the idea of having different identities everywhere. :)

Google - you are a search engine. Stick with what you know. :) Maybe get the search to work BETTER? This would be good. For example - being able to search for information on a product one owns without being bombarded with those useless pages trying to sell me another one. (Or a list of sites who can....). "No Sales Search" would be very useful.

@Will councillors pay?

Back in the 1990's, Oxford City Council kicked a lot of the private cars out of the town centre. I can't remember the details, but it included banning some companies from having their car parking spaces.

Obviously there was one exception to this rule... the council kept their own car parks for their own staff to commute in as before...

(I have to stop typing now... otherwise I'll be off on a major rant about the city I now live in... Brighton's "traffic management"... total garbage... the only thing is clear is they are intentionally jamming up this town to make an excuse to bring in a congestion charge at the earliest excuse....)

Oh - and then there is that speed camera I pass everyday... put in between two junctions... meaning drivers go past it at 40mph, looking in their mirrors for a flash, and run into the car in front which has stopped to turn right!! There is no question about it - this camera is causing accidents.

EBay Adverts

@"I use Firefox with the fantastic AdBlock Plus extension."

Errr... that ain't the point. They still know what you are up to, and they are still passing your details around people. Like you, I block the adverts from appearing - but I still don't want these odd companies building profiles on me. :)

@Steve Pettifer... what's that saying? "Great Minds Think Alike, and Fools Rarely Differ". Like you, I also emailed this one in to the news desk on Tuesday and had a natter with John. And had exactly the same point as you - the sneaky hidden way this was presented. I remember ticking boxes when FIRST signing up to EBay to say "No, I don't want your marketing rubbish or anyone elses". So why they changing this without asking me?

(ROFL @ Steve... you ARE a clone of me... you are even using Opera. Comedy is that my Opera is doing so well at blocking ads, that I cannot read articles like this with the word "advertising" in the URL!! hehe)

Wing tip wheels

"Didn't the harrier have the wing tip wheels because if it came down too fast the wings'd fall off?"

No - it has wing tips wheels because of the undercarriage. Just like the U2, it has bicycle style undercarriage. So if there wasn't the wing tip wheels, it could fall over once it had come to a stop.

Okay - not exactly "fall over"... but it would be a bit wobbly otherwise... Bit like a push-bike with stabilisers. :)

(Unlike the U2 - the harrier takes the wing tip wheels with it wherever it goes. The U2 leaves it's behind on the runway at takeoff. And when landing, ground crew have to reattach the wheels to the wing tips before they get scrapped along the runway too much...)

@AC: £25bn well spent - Top Gear

The Eurofighter has already been on Top Gear. Last season.

I am confused about the "convert a fighter to the ground attack role". Isn't this what happened in Germany with the F-104G Starfighter? Otherwise known as the Flying Coffin due to it not being up for the job. Hope this "cut 'n' shut" is better engineered.

Confirmation Emails?

Were confirmation emails sent from the transaction? Or did this person just login to his paypal account and spot the cash missing?

Smog?

Isn't the burning of wood just going to bring back smog? Particles thrown back up into the air? This is why burning wood is banned in citys - open fires need to use smokeless coal.

I know when my neighbour breaks those rules, there is a clear messy plume of smoke from the chimney and you can taste the rubbish in the air.

So I hope they are planning to add some good air-scrubbers to this power station. :)

OR... is this a cunning way to using Global Cooling to fight Global Warming? Stick lots of rubbish up in the atmosphere to block out the sun.... Errr.... yeah... clever planning.... (Sorry - wrong word - none of this is "planned"... it's all knee-jerk reactions....)

Have you look at a builder's hands?

I think this is a great idea. If a "palm reader" is going to fail anywhere, it will be trying to read the hand of a builder. Day to day, different tasks, and a different mess on the hands... paint, plaster, cement, cuts, bruises, oil.... their hands will not be the same from one day to the next.

Even facial recognition will be a joke... clearly the people planning this have not stood out in the cold on a building site all day... Lots of changes to facial colours and texture...

So we will have a nice big "experiment" which should fail in a nice dramatic fashion. I can see a carpenter turning up to work, finding the palm reader refusing to let him in. And that carpenter apply a gentle "adjusting tap" from his hammer to the reader.... :-)

Yep - this is going to go down great with all those builders stuck in a queue trying to clock in... I can't see them being happy to wait as the equipment keeps playing up... yet another thing to blame for construction delays... :-)

So all good - this will end up as great negative publicity for ID Cards and readers. :-)

Dust?

Have MSI never looked inside the average PC? How is the dust build up on those blades and shaft going to effect it?

Looks nice though :)

Awful Quality

The lack of quality control in Symantec products now is horrific. Their products get more bloated, and more buggy, and a bigger security risk as the years go on. It's almost better getting a PC infected that using the bloated Symantec products.

My clients are often amazed as to how much faster their PCs run once I remove all of the Symantec Mess that system builders insist on infecting PCs with. Usually replace it with AVG or something similar...

Dumping Shuttles in Space

There is already another thread here on El'Reg discussing this daft idea... and it just can't work. A Shuttle is not like a car when it runs out of fuel. It's not a simple case of just sitting there with an empty fuel tank.

Ditto it can't be used to fly to Mars as some daft ideas try to suggest... :)

@AC - does the UK have any space program at all?

We do build satellites. Got some big experts in it at Surrey University. Such good experts that I was reading about the NASA engineers coming over here to be trained in how to do it. (May even of been an El'Reg article?)

We build the technology and use our brains on the tech. It's our scientists that are "in space". But this does not get any of the sexy coverage that a human in space does.

This is good...

Don't you see? This is good. If he tries to compete with Google, they will demote his site in their search results, giving them less traffic. So wikipedia will just disappear even quicker. And wiki-search will only really be used by whakipedians.

I was a little worried by this sentence: "We really have no ability to understand and influence that process."

Why does he want to influence the search results?

DRM dieing....

So, if DRM is finally dieing, does this mean Microsoft will release a patch to give us the Vista Operating System back? Or will it be forever looking for non-existent out of date DRM?

Clever Marketing

Was Intel ever aiming to do any real work for OLPC? Or was it a sneaky way to find out what AMD were up to on the project. And to cause enough confusion for a few months that it could finally knock the project into the sidelines so it can sell it's over overpriced kit?

OLPC - lets try and help the poor.

Intel - there must be a profit we can make from it... just got to kill the opposition first.

Capitalism can be nasty at times....

So - what about Office 2007?

If this patch to stop "bad" file types from being opened is being applied to Office 2003. Does that imply that Office 2007 already refuses to work with these files?

Or have we got more ConsistentConfusion™ from M$?

What I would like to know is... anyone got a copy of OpenOffice and Office 2003? What's the betting that the file types blocked include those saved by OpenOffice?

Also - why a messy registry hack to turn this off? Why can't they just bury this in the Options? The average dumb user doesn't know what the "Options" are for anyway... so wouldn't mess with it. (Just like in Outlook Express and it's handling of attachments. The "idiot switch" is on by default to stop dumb users opening any old attachment... but it does mean that more "intelligent" users can at least turn the filter off.... (though why any "intelligent" user is using OE... that's another matter!!))

@Tawakalna

Windows Explorer is not the same as Internet Explorer. I can't believe that people are still confusing these two terms. Shows how daft the M$ naming scheme was.

The "Windows Explorer" is your shell and file manager within Windows. If it is deleted, it does make life a little tricky getting anything done in XP. Though one could revert to the old Win 3.x progman.exe (found in Windows System32 folder...)

Brainless Drivers

There are just a lot of brainless, selfish drivers on the road. The best ones are when I look into my rearview mirror to see someone on a phone and smoking a cigarrette at the same time.... I often wonder how that person has managed to get round the roundabout - which hand did they change gear with?!?! The one with the phone in, or the one with the cigarrette in?!? (I assume the steering wheel is being guided by the knees....)

Personally, I am self employed, and rely on incomming phone calls for work. But no potential client is important enough for me to crash. I'd rather pull over and be five minutes late that try and take a complex call on the move. (And I am talking about Handsfree kit here...)

PC World

@ Andrew Brooks

"Celeron processor, 512mb ram, 40gb drive... Translates to

This laptop with 17" screen, and Vista home premium laptop only £399...

People are (hopefully) wising up to it now.."

You were lucky!! I have seen the same laptop sold to a customer with 256MB RAM and Vista!!! You can probally imagine what that was like in use!!

Most of that overstock of laptops are underpowered for XP, and then they try and jam Vista on it. Hopeless.

As to "Office and Norton 360 for £100"... that probally translates to "Office for students" illegally sold to a non-student. And Norton 360 just kills your PC as it is so bloated and the cover it gives is patchy at best.

Of course - that aformentioned 256MB Celery also had Norton on it... probally eating all the 256MB just to run the silly interface.

Techno-Fear

What is it with the Luddite, techno-fear society we are walking into? Now we are dumbing down the kids at school, and not teaching them real physics/maths, there is more and more of this rubbish being spouted.

Too much TV is just made up as "scary things happening"...

I have got fed up with the number of times I have had to explain how that TV programme was rubbish... but it is hard to persuade the average "man in the street" that the BBC would lie to them for ratings.

The BBC should be forced to run a new, corrected, Panorama programme. (And how many schools had to rip out their WiFi networks after the bogus "advice" of this programme?)

RoTM

You have missed the real story here... this is just another step along the Rise of The Machines!! This kit will be linked to the SatNav ready to take over... and drive unwary owners over random cliffs. :D Or straight to jail for non-payment of random road taxes.

Drivers aids.... bah!! I agree with the above comments about electronics dont help. Best safety add-on for a car would be a large spike coming out of the steering wheel... make the driver think a bit.

(BTW - why does my spell checker want to change "SatNav" to "Satan"? Is it trying to agree with my post? heheh)

@Hong Kong hotel

Try looking for WiFi from any tall building and you will get the same result. I was with a client today on Brighton seafront. 8th floor of a 17 floor block. We were at the back (North) side of the block looking over Brighton... and had the choice of 29 networks!! Six of these were open. Some from cafes, but other will be home users.

So how can we tell the "Free WiFi" from the home user stuff?

The seafront also has a free network supplied by the businesses on the seafront. So how do I know I am not breaking the law there?

Comedy is that most laptops are setup to connect to the nearest WiFi network by default. I was with another client earlier in the day. Popped my laptop on the desk, and it booted up, and jumped straight onto the neighbour's network. Doesn't that mean Microsoft are "Aiding and abetting" by setting OS defaults like that?

When I pointed out what had happened... that client said "Oh - is that why we see those lads sitting on the wall with their laptops?". LoL!!! Turns out this is a favourite haunt for the guys from the local takeaway.

We all know that the law is an ass.... meanwhile we are stuck with a stupid law until there is a successful defence by an IT person with actual technical knowledge.

FM? Why not DAB?

Why are they still sticking FM Radios into these devices? Hardluck if live in Whitehaven or one of the other areas of the UK where Analogue is being turned off and replaced with Digital.

When they finally get round to sensibly supplying these things with DAB radio, I may even think of buying one. :)

UK Law says must be sober

Not an expert on this, but I am pretty sure that in the UK you must be sober to get a tattoo. Tattooist would have to turn you away if you are drunk... and this is a good reason why.

Why no checking by DoubleClick?

How on earth can DoubleClick claim this is an "an industry-wide challenge"? Most responsible companies would not be upset at making sure their product is fit for market. In fact, there are laws about this.

So why does DoubleClick think it is okay to just display any old rubbish their clients give them without checking it? They can't just "pass the buck" as surely they are the ones ultimately supplying the service?

Should just go back to non-flash adverts....

(Anyway... just like most people here... I ain't seen a DoubleClick advert in decades... been blocked at the router ever since I worked out how the DNS tables worked....)

Spellcheckers..

"the boby-trapped sites"

I can't believe an El'Reg reporter wouldn't have the correct spelling of booby in his dictionary!! Very disappointed LOL

Dodgy Webpage Coding

It is rare nowadays to find a website that completly refuses to render in Opera... but that link is one. Site dies with an XML error...

"XML parsing failed: syntax error (Line: 18, Character: 55)"

Works in IE though. Are there really web designers around who only develope on IE and can't be bothered to test on other platforms? I thought that ended long ago.

And is this a "social networking site"? Or a "Flogg Kylie's back catalogue" site?

Where is my email? Is this everyone?

Is this actually everyone hosted on Fasthosts? Or just a limited number?

I have had no email from Fasthosts, and there is nothing on the RSS feeds or control panel. So is this really company wide?

(Probally the same Chinese hacker I have been watching who slams the same brute force password list against my FTP server every weekend.... would of thought he would of got bored by now!!)

Vista Problems

Why do people blame Microsoft for printer drivers not working? I hate to defend M$, but this is not only their fault. It is the fault of the printer manufacturers.

The printer companies don't want you using that old printer... they want you to get fed up and go out to buy a new one.

What I _do_ swear at are the number of Microsoft products that have problems on their own OS!! Or trying to get it to sit happy in small networks with XP or Win 9x PCs. Usually involves setting up a split network and extra printers...

As to Linux and pre-win98 hardware.... my router is Linux running on a 486 with 16MB RAM.... mmmm... 72-pin EDO goodness... and an AMD 586 (100Mhz beast!!)