* Posts by Alex Wells

29 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Feb 2008

RIM BlackBerry PlayBook 7in tablet

Alex Wells

I don't think it's that bad a feature actually...

@Dave Fox

I'm pretty sure you can restrict access to Airplane Mode via BES.

@nichomach

If the tab was locked to a carrier, it would be remotely administrate-able - your IT admin could remotely wipe it. As it isn't (yet), Blackberry implement a feature where it slaves emails from your wipe-able Blackberry. This is the part I thought should have been obvious to OP.

Alex Wells
Stop

Minimum review score...

I agree completely. I suspect it's something to do with the Bilderburg group.</sarcasm>

The email feature slagged off above: Blackberries are remotely administrate-able, so that emails can be removed should the phone be stolen/lost. Blackberry Tabs won't have this because they're not carrier-locked. I would have thought this was obvious?

Reg ed rattles the Red-Headed League

Alex Wells

Sarah...

I love you. (unless you're gin... actually lets just not even joke eh?)

In all seriousness, it's Friday of the longest week in the universe, can we please discuss where the line ends and we start being offensive? Particularly since my office hasn't (yet) come round to the idea of going to the pub on a Friday. I'm all ears.

New graphics engine imperils users of Firefox and Chrome

Alex Wells

Not at risk

"Neither WebGL nor hardware acceleration will be included in the upcoming release of Opera 11.10 for desktop." - from http://my.opera.com/core/blog/2011/02/28/webgl-and-hardware-acceleration-2 this post.

Toshiba delays Android 3.0 tablet

Alex Wells

Lambda

Hmm I wonder if &#60;a href="www.theregister.com"&#62;this&#60;/a&#62; works

Facebook serves '23% of all US display ads'

Alex Wells

Leading Headlines

I think this article is referring to which sites actually /display/ adverts rather than /serve/ adverts, so rather stands to reason that Facebook will display the most and that there will be lots of websites who show a < 0.5% share.

Also explains why MS has such a high share - i reckon at least 80% of their share is people who hit the MSN homepage cos it's still the default on their IE7 comes-with browser...

Palin webmail hacker conviction upheld

Alex Wells
Unhappy

Absolutely

"federal sentencing guidelines suggest...somewhere between 15 to 21 months"

You what????? Jail time at all is an over-reaction.. arguably I suppose if he'd actually attempted to use the account to do something nefarious, maybe a custodial sentence. But a year+ for this? Just crazy, criminalisation in action.

Public sector earning more than private, but less than last month

Alex Wells

Depressingly Familiar

Didn't this happen in the 80's? Aren't we still trying to recover Public services? Wouldn't we all be happier if Tories (and their associated Newspapers) fucked off?

Alex Wells
Dead Vulture

I bloody hate journos

One quote from the report is all it takes for debasing idiot news articles:

"in general, for full-time employees who are members of employer pension schemes, total reward is greatest in the private sector."

Not slagging off the Reg directly - who unfortunately borrowed this non-story from the massively crap British media.

AOL goes soul-searching with Google in 5-year deal

Alex Wells

When negotiations sound more like begging.

"The deal struck by AOL and Google will see the two firms sharing revenues, but financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed."

I'd suggest the balance of said terms are not heavily in AOL's favour...

Cyber-jihadists deface home of teddy bears' picnic

Alex Wells
Jobs Halo

@Titus

Disagree that the church is always responsible for those claiming to be acting on it's behalf - as much as I disagree with much of religion I can't hold the church responsible for Waco...Likewise 'Islam' (which is many thousands of groups) cannot be held responsible for some hackers who misread DNS records.

On the other hand, I'll be rioting right beside you when the pope comes to visit.

Jobs because the new religions have prettier toys.

Alex Wells
Stop

Woah woah!

Nothing to do with bombs. nothing about extremists. no political discussion.

@Titus, just don't generalise! It's obvious you don't like to be lumped in with our own idiots, so why would anyone who happens to go to a Mosque instead of the pub enjoy being lumped in with theirs? It just rolled off as a bit of a DMail thing to say...

Alex Wells
Troll

Thanks Bunglebear...

I haven't been that angry at the stupidity of my own countrymen for at least 3 days.

Next time there's an EDL/BNP riot that I have to pay taxes to control can I send you the bill you halfwit?

US gov slaps flack for fake iTunes game reviews

Alex Wells

Snitker's an idiot.

Massive diatribe about her companies' ~legitimate business dealings? Smacks of protesting too much, and frankly makes her sound like an incompetent spin doctor and a rubbish PR person.

PR companies surely should stop their employees doing this (whether they had knowledge or not!) because of the inevitable catching and embarrassing of the company and the product they're employed to promote! It just seems unprofessional.

However I believe the world doesn't actually work this way and that they will still get paid lots of money for being utterly fucking useless. Which makes her letter to the Reg (with respect, not a massive publication) even odder.

Oh and Reverb's a shit name for a PR company.

Boffin-botherer's LHC doomsday case thrown out on appeal

Alex Wells
Unhappy

gTranslate...

Whilst being enormously good fun for translating and then laughing at the results (a bit like an idiot savant with one of those dogs that does cartwheels) unfortunately doesn't manage this, I now look like said idiot after someone took the dog away.

Mail on Sunday inadvertently bolsters annual smutfest

Alex Wells
Paris Hilton

Ok a touch obscure...

But was just pointing out that the pedestal from which this article was apparently written has occasionally been descended by the very Reg which we know and love.

Paris cos she'd have got it.... ;)

Alex Wells
Coat

"schoolboy titters and school-marmish disapproval"

At the bottom of the article:

Related stories

NSFW Erotica 09: Bit limp, but crowds still up for it (23 November 2009)

NSFW A sex show of truly Olympian proportions? (25 November 2008)

Wonderful.

Oh Ian, whomever should own the paper rarely has an affect on content, look at Rupert Mur.. oh wait..

Skeletal scanner would ID terrorists from 50 meters

Alex Wells
FAIL

Don't worry about it

From the tone of your post it's probably better if you just let this one pass you by. seeing as both the comment and the immediate reply went straight over your head, I would just suggest that the post has value to other people whose aforementioned heads are less pointy.

hold on, "Well unless your on about female orgasm research"? any chance you're available to come to parties as entertainment?

Cops cuff man who exposed holes in 'perfect' voting machines

Alex Wells
Troll

Umm...

"finally got round to reading the story."

Really? so why did you ignore it all and make up such a silly opinion?

Alex Wells
Alert

Apparently not!

Don't quite know how you got a downvote for completely justifiable cynicism.. can anyone name an election without controversy surrounding counting mechanisms? and if you cite UK elections, we frequently have problems even though we stick to the paper and pencil routine.

Every single solution has the same problem: restrictions and mechanisms only control honest voters.

Google spanked for bidding on its own ad auctions

Alex Wells

Question

Genuine one for any ad-types out there:

As one post above suggests, if Google were to display a separate section above any other ads on a page as a Google Products section, clearly defining those that they provide and third-party ads, would this be against the law?

The only reason I can see not to do the above would be that it slightly smacks of elitism. Other than that surely they can do what they want on their own websites - even if they display a similar product's advert in a separate location?

US gov proves ISPs lie about bandwidth

Alex Wells
FAIL

I could provide you that speed...

Using a length of copper and two cups. I jest, but doesn't your post show how low expectations are in America?

"To their credit" - they mucked something up, couldn't provide you with a frankly piss-poor speed and you like the fact that they gave it to you free for six months??? a 1.5Mb package cost you maybe 10 dollars a month so your happy cos they let you off 60 dollars?

I now pledge not to moan about BT.

People have no bloody idea about saving energy

Alex Wells

As requested, please clarify the line-drying statement

As at the moment it looks like bollocks.

Interesting about the standby statement and the glass one, have to admit to being in the BLOODY IGNORANT category there.

Reckon the irony of this whole piece is that the sum effort required to produce the article, publish via various internet channels, and then read said piece (over a rather nice coffee) is greater than the amount of energy that will be saved via re-educating people about an already flogged dead-horse of a subject.

Didn't the NKs produce Fusion recently? can I just get some shares in that and live guilt-free?

Moon actually dryer than dem dry bones, say boffins

Alex Wells

Research

As this is a serious technical article, you could have at least looked this up...

Chemical formula for cheese:

(Na,Ca) (Mg,Li,Al,Fe2+,Fe3+)3 (Al,Mg,Cr)6 B3 Si6 (OH,O,F)4

A lack of Hydrogen would surely produce an inferior cheese, not even worth one American health service to get there.

... any chance of a new unit of measurement for that?

Facebook tops half-billion users, wants your innermost thoughts

Alex Wells
Thumb Up

Anti-FB brigade

So what you're all really saying is that you hate some people, and that some people really annoy you, and that Facebook has brought that to your attention... thanks for that.

Facebook allows people to communicate, in fact in some cases it's replaced me using a mobile phone (for instance to arrange weekend away etc) how can that be a bad thing?

You can turn alerts and annoying emails off, you can set privacy pretty well as long as you pay attention, and there's half a billion people there who might not be as irritating as the people you describe.

Cheer up!

(fact that it knows what i did when i was seven and never told anybody is a bit scary though)

Hacker swipes details of 4m Pirate Bay users

Alex Wells
FAIL

'It's like quite a few more than 10,000 spoons'

This byline, is either a very sly alan-partridge style attempt to be ironic in the face of missing irony, whilst having a (slightly worn out) pop at an already rubbish popstar, which could if I was talking to you, be taken in the right way and possibly be on the mark and extraordinarily funny. Or it's rubbish.

However online. it's possibly the most stupid byline i've ever seen. I expect more.

RAC prof: Road charges can end the ripoff of motorists

Alex Wells

Couldn't agree more

This makes perfect sense - fuel tax is the only way, surely the problem is that it's so damn unpopular, not only are you creating a very visible negative image to your voters, you are pissing off oil companies who do quite a lot business within your country?

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but the surely this, which I agree is fair, would be so unpopular as to be un-votable?

Copyright wally of the week

Alex Wells

Well, pretty clear actually...

The Reg have been pretty clear (see multiple 'freetard' articles) that they strongly disagree with piracy, even where idiot Music corps are involved - writing about defunct distribution mechanisms and knee-jerk litigation/kicking-the-door-down of companies' own customers is not the same as giving carte-blanche to 'pirates'.

The discussion could go on and on regarding the above - but please remember that legality is not an issue with piracy - copyright infringement is a civil offense, one which this chap has every right to complain about on a website to which he is a contributor.

By the way Capslock writing went out with the 90's, you should be able to provide emphasis within your comment without resorting to bad grammer... paragraphs may help.

Sky Broadband puts the fault into default Wi-Fi security

Alex Wells

A Consultant Post Beckons...

Ok, 40k and ludicrous benefits if you please - if you used the MAC address from the PREVIOUS router you were configuring, in order to generate the secure key for the current router, surely you would have avoided any such problems?