* Posts by robbie

47 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Apr 2008

Firefox users flip out over sneak MS add-on

robbie
Paris Hilton

Steve... how many cock-ups can a guy make?

The main reason most people have installed Firefox is to avoid the gaping security holes in Windows Internet Explorer, particularly in running uninvited code. And the M$tards are basically patching Firefox - without asking - to make it more likely to do the same thing?

I hope the EU Courts will have something to say about that, since once again M$ is abusing its monopoly position against a competing web browser. You'd think they'd have paid out enough already!

ps Should that be cocks-up?

pps Paris 'cos she doesn't care.

Scotland welcomes back wild beaver

robbie
Linux

Backwoods beaver

Although we're keeping them out in the fringes I don't think there's been enough consideration of what migrating urban beaver might precipitate.

Tux, 'cos he's on the march too.

Hackintosher to open US storefront

robbie
Paris Hilton

OSX & the BSD license

Since the BSD license states that "redistribution in binary form" is permitted, does that include the bit at the heart of Mac OSX?

It seems ironic that Apple make loadsa money from free software and then disses its redistribution.

Paris 'cos she's probably much nicer to the Regents of the University of California.

Stolen RAF files are blackmailer's dream

robbie
Stop

@AC 10:41

Come out and display your real virtual self rather than hide behind the arras of your anonymity.

Get real! The trouble with adulterous behaviour is nothing to do with moral integrity and trustworthiness, but rather the possibility of feuding in the ranks and in extremis being blackmailed into spying by foreign johnnies.

If they can break the law, why can't we?

robbie
Linux

Quids pro quo

I am planning to take a much more inclusive view in my own tax affairs: I am several years behind in my tax returns, and have been building a second house 80 yards from my first.

So many changes are now possible to my accounting strategy that I could need several more years to finalise these tax returns; but since I know for a fact I've been spending more money than I've been earning it stands to reason that the taxman owes me money.

By the time I've factored in Communications allowance and some creative "flipping", not to mention all the furniture, fittings and security system (Fido) and my faithful research assistant I anticipate a healthy payout from the rest of you, which I shall invest in RBS shares.

Tux, 'cos it's still a noble ideal.

Plod called in on MPs' expenses leak

robbie
Thumb Down

Ironic, no?

The government who invented the controlled leak are going to prosecute? Better tape up the windows in the glass-house.

Ireland bucks trend with anti-blasphemy law

robbie
Go

Peace, Love and Plaster

I feel your hate, brothers. You must know that Ireland has the highest Virgin Mary consumption in the world? With that strongly inculcated national background of chronic idolatry, blasphemy is a terrible danger, especially from the young, and must be fought from the cradle to the grave.

Benny the Bull, St Peter Gypsum Co., VC, Rome.

Vatican damns Angels and Demons as 'quite harmless'

robbie
Paris Hilton

Ill wind

It should be noted by the critics that Rosslyn Chapel's visitor headcount (and financial health) has been multiplied by ten since the Da Vinci Code went mega.

Although Rosslyn is not a participating Vatican franchise, surely God still blesses Mr. Brown.

Paris 'cos she's simply divine.

Oracle reels in Sun Microsystems with $7.4bn buy

robbie
Thumb Down

Computing Harrods

Overpriced database on overpriced hardware.

Poor old MySQL - I feel a Visual Foxpro coming on.

Boeing: Raygun dreadnoughts will rule the oceans by 2019

robbie
Paris Hilton

Not entirely useless

This will help combat an age-old Naval problem: after many years of obsessive compulsive painting many battleships are top-heavy enough to be in danger of capsizing.

Bring them into line astern and give them a drive-by squirt from a couple of these new laser ships and they'll be all set for a fresh coat.

Paris, purely from a heat POV.

State-owned RBS to axe 9,500 workers

robbie
Paris Hilton

Is there an opportunity here?

Rather than flooding the market with a large number of skilled boffins, administrators and team leaders why not get them onto fixing up the various techno-shambles in government IT?

Being used to the rigours of commercial IT means that these staff can generally deliver on time and budget, unlike most of Whitehall's IT projects. Not only that; they're used to large-scale enterprise networked secure solutions too. In all the post-crisis lambasting of RBS there has been no criticism of their IT or back-office skills.

Terminate current Government IT contracts instead and give the RBS team a chance - it makes more sense than wholesale redundancy.

Paris 'cos that's where I'm heading.

As Sun unravels, it's time for a new suit

robbie
Gates Halo

Simple solution

Perhaps some business angel with a spare $40B might step in here.

Irish boffins tackle cow-fart ecopocalypse with fish oil

robbie
Jobs Horns

One thing is certain...

The 2009 Ig Nobel Award for Eco-Nutro-Bio-Physi-Agro-Chemi-omics is a foregone conclusion.

Let them eat Apples

robbie
Paris Hilton

Wish I had a job like yours

I recall the phrase "Land of Beef and Bog" from antediluvian geography lessons. All is light.

Perhaps catalytic clip-on moustaches could offer even greater reductions?

Paris 'cos she's a gas too.

Microsoft readies IE8 for lift off

robbie
Gates Horns

Up yours Jobbo, from Bill

With tongue in cheek I attempted to download IE 8 to my Mac running an old Safari 4 beta and OSX 10.4.something or other. I had to <div> for cover as Safari crashed and burned around me.

Never one to take a hint, I tried again: fried again.

A grim day for browser security at hacker contest

robbie
IT Angle

Opera schloppera

I found a bug in Opera, reported it twice and had no acknowledgement either time. The bug was still there last time I checked. Not a security issue, but why bother having a bug list in the first place?

US woman attacks missus with sperm-filled syringe

robbie
Heart

Unholy Trinity

Thank God for the prescience and vigilance of our Scottish Parliament and that this sort of thing will never happen here: even if it did noone would be able to keep the photographs.

Laughing all the way to the sperm bank (they're still handling the odd depositor unlike two other famous Scottish establishments).

Microsoft's Azure cloud suffers first crash

robbie
Boffin

Time for megacloud

What are the chances of all these clouds being down at the same time? I think parallelism is the way forward here.

One in 20 corporate PCs infested by bots

robbie
Gates Horns

Rubbish

Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't, Oh no it is, oh yes it isn't,

Hack-off contestant dubs Apple Safari 'easy pickins'

robbie
Linux

Apple crumble

Seems odd the iPhone has a non-executable heap where Safari can't, or am I missing something?

Government wastes £4.6m on mobile telly nonsense

robbie
Heart

@AC 19:04

I recall seeing a couple of TV ads over Christmas with this very message, so I'm inclined to think £4.6M might be on the money. IMHO they were rubbish, and more likely to encourage teenage sex than anything else.

Question: "Want some respect"?

Answer: "Earn it".

Lockheed offers ready-to-go supersoldier exoskeleton

robbie
Paris Hilton

Getting a leg up

This would be better targetted at carers, porters, hod-carriers and housebuilders than squaddies who are just going to break it anyhow (speaking as a former Navy man). Older people with a long-term need to lift heavy things or people could perhaps benefit more than the US Army, who are jolly good at heavy weights anyway. This could have been very useful when I had to carry hundreds of sheets of plasterboard and plywood up steps recently, for example.

Not to mention getting home from the pub some nights - "turning rubber back into steel", that's what we need. Paris too.

Irish cops tripped up by Prawo Jazdy dragnet

robbie
Pirate

At least...

The Irish still have some humour in amongst their road traffic policing, and haven't bent over and been rodgered by piratical local councils and police authorities.

US Navy orders new electric hyper-kill railgun

robbie
Stop

East, west: sub's best

A couple of questions:

Against which enemy or enemies does the USA need a 200 mile shelling range? Can't be Russia or China, 'cos they've got the submarines to sink these ships in half an hour. Most of Iran is out of range, unless the septics can build one in the Caspian Sea, so I reckon that leaves North Korea and the UK, 'cos our subs are all laid up in Rosyth dockyard.

Secondly, I'm curious about barrel length. I fancy this will severely limit the possible angle of elevation, unless the ship is to be modeled along the lines of the Pepsi Max at Blackpool.

Police drop investigation into 'rent-a-Lords'

robbie
Jobs Horns

Rank privilege.

There was a time when the monarch would give them the chop, literally. Although the House of Commons no longer is liable to this sort of direct action their Lordships still may be.

There's nothing like an odd execution for maintaining rank in the orders.

Steve 'cos he's for the chop too.

Scotland to battle grey squirrel invaders

robbie
Heart

ODFO?

Thank you Tim, now I understand. One does feel onanistic.

Where's Paris when she's needed?

robbie
Unhappy

ODFO?

Huh? Even searching the Reg's own memory banks doesn't find "ODFO". Let me guess...

Order dead forest organisms; only deep fry otters: over-done food observations. Oh dear, footballing oligarchs?

Oh damn, Fido's out...

You did what? The trials of supporting remote users

robbie
Boffin

And another thing

During the course of a long career some things stick in the mind, and occasionally elsewhere.

"Hello Robbie, my program's not working." ... "The screen's on, but I can't read it." ... "What big box is that?". Someone had liberated the under-desk system unit .

"Hello Robbie, my program's not working." ... "Yes, I've put the floppy disk in" ... "I've tried several copies" ... "The last one was a bit tight". Six floppies in one disk drive.

"Hello Robbie, my printer's not working." ... "It was OK just a minute ago" ... "BANG" ... 3 inch paper clip embedded in ceiling tile just missing left eyeball. Don't mess with daisywheel printers.

US Navy spends $12m on electric hypercannon

robbie
Pirate

Sub Optimal

Fantastic weapon system it might be, but it's not torpedo-proof.

Immortal Dr Who jellyfish poised to rule Earth

robbie
Paris Hilton

Fruit jellies?

Has anyone checked the confectionery angle? I'd eat the feckers if they were wine gums.

Paris 'cos she's a bit gooey too.

Extreme pron vigilantes are after you

robbie
Thumb Up

Is this a Scottish Tourist Board campaign?

Yet another reason to live North of the border, along with the weather and Wee Eck. I'm off to sharpen my caber.

UFO wind turbine prang site: Exclusive photos

robbie
Paris Hilton

Shurely shome mishtake

This whole farrago would be more plausible were not the photographs so blatantly airbrushed. Even our most purulent tabloids would not have dared to published this specious blather.

I remain, Sirs,

Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells.

Paris, 'cos you nicked her Lego set.

Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

robbie
Boffin

Do the sums

I'm on a reasonably typical contracted 8Mbps at 1:50 contention unlimited download. 1 day has 86400 seconds, and one byte has 8 bits (without overhead). My actual speed seems about 2.5Mbps (crap line / noise perhaps?), which when divided by 50 and then 8 comes to 6250 bytes / second, or 22.5MB per hour. At a genuine 8Mbps I'd get 72MB per hour, and 1GB should take about 14 hours. Going at it 24/7 over a 31 day month I'd get 53.7GB.

Normally I might do better than that, but that's all I pay for and all I am entitled to. That also is the maximum entitlement of my other 49 contenders, be they BitTorrenters or not, and they can expect no more. Judging from the comments above few are paying for their own downloads, or capable of doing the arithmetic.

It's worth pointing out that a substantial part of my monthly traffic is software patches. I have various machines using one internet connection and I estimate that 3-4GB per month is now due to software patches. Not quite in the gamers' league though; and all by HTTP to boot.

Royal Navy completes Windows for Submarines™ rollout

robbie
Paris Hilton

Software for the masses

Here in the Sovietski Soyuz ve use your open sourceski softvare for ze veapons. Ve can see vot ve're doing and ze guys vot write ze vindows wiruses all vork for us anyvay. Ve vouldn't use zat stuff if ve vas you. Bottoms up boobies!

Ve've got girls like Paris too; have a quick Pinsk at Ludmila Komsomolskaya Leningradskaya Petrovsky Kalanchevskaya here - by the time you say zdrastvuitye she's half way to Norwich already.

Exam board to hear appeal over format cockup

robbie
Linux

Aaaaaaaaaargh

Even Linux lovers can do .doc files. Were there many Java 3D submissions this year? And no .txt content? PDF is a proprietary format - the reader's free but Acrobat certainly isn't. And spare a thought for those poor Mediator 7 users. It's a miracle only one school failed on this.

@AC 13:45 - Looks like you didn't check the guidance either - more than pdf is acceptable.

Some of this row is about standards and consistency, and that list of file formats is anything but. The old Department of Education (or whichever of many several forgettable acronyms they'd like to use) offer techie help on their web site @ http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/help/technical/download01.shtml for people having trouble with .doc files, including a link to M$. Pity no-one found it.

These poor kids had no chance, with clots at the school and the Edexcel universal fail translation service waiting in the wings.

Entire class fails IT exam by submitting in Word format

robbie
IT Angle

We're obviously not paying enough taxes...

...to be stuck with a) this outfit and b) the government agency that should monitor them.

I don't blame the teacher: that's one hell of a list of acceptable formats - did they get their software on a CD with the Sunday Mail? Why PowerPoint & Excel but not Word? Ah, that must be what the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack does then?! Oops, no it isn't - I must get the kids to write their essays in 3D Java next time.

Thank goodness the DfES, or is it DUIS or DCSF (and I wonder how much we've spent on name changes since the days of the good old Department of Education?) can supply us with information on how to read some common document formats: see http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/help/technical/download01.shtml for some useful details, including a link to several MS Word viewers. A pity neither they nor Edexcel thought to look at it. What formats do they write to each other in I wonder? Do they have anyone with computing experience from the last twenty years working there?

Just WTF are these people doing with their time (and my money)? "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" indeedy.

BitTorrent net meltdown delayed

robbie
Paris Hilton

Irrelevant technicalities

It doesn't really matter whether it's water, cack, loo roll or whatever, you can only get so much in a tube at once.

At a guess most of us have signed up to 50:1 contention at a nominal 8Mb/s, so the most we can expect to download in a month is 86400 * 31 * 8000000 / 50 / 8 bytes, a mere 53.568GB, irrespective of protocol, and without time off to view the downloads.

If you've paid for more, you have a case for moaning; if not, please bear in mind you'll get even less in February.

Paris 'cos she'd be a jolly good overhead.

Microsoft warns customers against bogus 'Blue Edition' Office

robbie
Gates Horns

Get your copy here

Micro$oft VizTa for sale, suitable for renovation, with substantial Yawho? Toolbar. Please send a blank CD and $40 to St3vieB@redmond.museum

Bittorrent declares war on VoIP, gamers

robbie
Thumb Down

My bits are freezing

No matter how big your bedroom is, it's probably full of crap. Like the Internet's plumbing.

BBC iPlayer seems to be for people who can't work a TV recorder; the whole raison d'etre (look it up) of BitTorrent is to download stuff faster than anyone else (so what's happening - doh?); and oh gee I'm getting bored and lonely in my bedroom with my CD / DVD / XBox / PS[123] / MP3 / BlueRay mega-collection so rather than talk to someone real why don't I meet up with other sadsacks in virtual gameworld by using all my Dad's bandwidth on some unnecessary P2P packet explosion software? My porn movie was really jumpy last night because of all you barstewards.

Bah.

Kentucky judge OKs 141-site net casino land grab

robbie
Paris Hilton

www.kentucky-losers.com

Perhaps the way forward here is to modify the gambling algorithms. If the online betting sites never paid out under any circumstances the judge would be surely be contentified. Like buying bank shares for instance.

Paris 'cos she's could lick any fried chicken.

Microsoft's Fast charged with 'accounting fraud'

robbie
Gates Horns

FAST?

Should report it to the Federation Against Software Theft.

I'm very sorry, says gay health warning clergyman

robbie
Gates Halo

vocational qualifications

It's undoubtedly necessary to be at least self-delusional to promote religion, since anyone who doesn't think so is kidding themselves.

Is this man any more badly affected than his peers for having strayed a bit off-campus? Who knows, he might be a little black kettle himself?

Bill, 'cos he's just beatific.

Mosley asks Europe to change UK privacy laws

robbie
Unhappy

Max Headlice

Just how exactly is an orgy a private activity? A poor guy in MI5 loses his job 'cos his wife's doing a bit of moonlighting on Mosley, and this self-pitying perv's still not got the decency to resign. Even the Hamiltons would have left by now.

It's the News of the Screws for goodness sake: of course they're going to publish, and why not? Personally I can't believe they lost the case: were the Profumo / Lambton / Parkinson / Mellor / Ashdown affairs only reportable because they were all politicians? What about all the clergymen, milkmen, housewives and other latex-wearing sheep-shagging wife-swapping hyphen-bearers the rag has unfrocked for our national education? Why should Mr Mosley be any different, except he's a barrister who's read the ECHR as well as a public figure?

God bless the Sun, for today anyway, and keep our courtrooms free of litigious sinners who protest too much after getting caught with their pants down.

Tw*tdangler defends Benito Mussolini stunt

robbie
Paris Hilton

Bounders

I was the right way up, and you're the tw*tdanglers.

Yours sincerely folks, David Blaine

Paris 'cos she's a triumph of form over function like me.

Royal Society says goodbye to creationism row vicar

robbie

Who are the bigots here?

This poor man has been persecuted for merely mentioning what now appears to be a taboo word while being a church member.

Personally I believe that Bertrand Russell debunked religion in a short sentence, but that doesn't mean that discussing Creationism in a school should be be a stoning offence. Discussion is not the same as teaching

Some of the comments above belong in Malleus Malleficorum rather than a blog.

Portsmouth punts naval boy-on-boy to innocent kiddies

robbie
Alert

@Tony

"Sorry son, that was a roll of the ship."

"It felt more like a roll of linoleum."

Carphone Warehouse stares down BPI and UK.gov on three strikes

robbie
Linux

Entrapment? Encryption?

It strikes me that spoofing torrent connections could well be a form of entrapment, which is not usually an allowed form of evidence gathering; at least not by our boys in blue.

Also, I'm surprised that there aren't ways of filesharing which would avoid all outside attentions.