* Posts by Candy

147 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jul 2008

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EU antitrust chief growls at Google, hopes to avoid sanctions

Candy
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QOTW

"You can ... think, well, this European authority, the commission, has received a gift from the American authorities, given that now every result they will get will be much better than the conclusions of the FTC."

There it is. Right there.

Peugeot 508 RXH estate car review

Candy

Here's a question...

Can it tow? And if so, how much?

The iPHONE 5 UNDERMINES western DEMOCRACY: 5 reasons why

Candy
Happy

Hilarious but...

...wasn't this supposed to go out as a Bong article?

RIM retracts denial on consumer devices: Pulls out, spins in circle

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Last paragraph...

Genius.

American pies are cooling on the windowsill ahead of Pi Day

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Coat

Appropriate Music

Surely the music from the Pimania game should be put forwards as the official theme? Remember that? From the other side of the cassette the game loaded from.

They don't write 'em like that any more...

Untangling the question of antimatter mass

Candy
Mushroom

Never mind the physics...

They're building an antimatter beam.

Let's address the most important question first: Will we need to upgrade the mounting points on our sharks?

The Sons of Khan and the Pascal Spring

Candy
Coat

The Great Prophet

Well, she would say that, wouldn't she?

Dragonriders of Pern author Anne McCaffrey dies

Candy

A real loss.

My first reaction to the news was: Oh, no more stories for young girls with the ponies replaced by fluffy dragons. But a quick look at the bookshelf was a pleasant reminder of what an entertaining and varied author she really was. Starting off with Restoree as a first novel was impressive all on its own. But then the Ship Who... and Crystal series really brought it home to me. While I may not be much of a Pern fan, she certainly knew how to tell a good tale. Get Off The Unicorn remains one of my favourite collections of short stories, serves as the source for several longer works and has one of the best tales about naming a book to boot...

BOFH: We don't need no stinkin' upgrade

Candy
Happy

He's back

And he's on form. Absolutely the best BofH instalment in, er, ages. Ages and ages...

WorldTradeCenter.com on the block

Candy

If there was only one WTC...

...this might be interesting or exploitative. And I'm sure in any US-centric view-of-the-world context, it's both.

But there are many World Trade Centres across the globe and I'm sure one of them will be only to happy to pick up the .com name for a suitably large sum. My money would be on Dubai...

That the seller chooses to donate an undisclosed portion of the proceeds to charity? Who cares...

LG debuts eye-tracking no-specs 3D screen

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Facepalm

There's no reason why the technology can't be adapted to large TVs

...unless you don't want to watch alone. A monitor can quite reasonably expect a sum total of one concurrent user.

A large panel TV using this optimisation for multiple viewers? Hmmm...

Nokia 'thinnest smartphone ever' slips out

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WTF?

Thinnest? Really?!

At a reported 10mm, it's a definite also-ran. Both the Samsung Infuse 4G, Optimus Black, Samsung Galaxy S II and even the iPhone 4 are around 9mm. And NEC's Medias should weigh in at around 7.5mm.

Strange claim to make then. So, what did I miss?

Danish embassy issues MARMITE WAFFLE

Candy
Happy

Cold, dead hands, eh?

The eugenics advocate in me wants to be thankful that this aberrant portion of the gene pool is autonomously volunteering to be removed.

Windows on the Desktop? There's a group policy for that

Candy

An invaluable tool

Once you are managing more than a couple of thousand Windows desktops, Group Policy is one of the key tools to keep them, well, manageable. Beyond about ten thousand, it's indispensible even if you end up needing third party tools to administer it effectively.

All as long as AD replication is in a good state, of course.

Yes, it can be unpopular with users but that is largely due to combinations of ill-conceived policies and poorly advertised/managed changes. GPOs just make it easy to implement these and (mostly) just as easy to roll back.

Reg ed rattles the Red-Headed League

Candy

Red haired racism?

Since when has Ginger-baiting been on a par with racism?

Is it now race, caste creed and hair colour which must be held apart from all comment?

Formerly ginger, now grey. A silver surfer, part of the grey vote, etc, etc. Not offended by that, either. I'm also quite short. Should I be deeply offended by any reference to that, too?

Although for those who are ginger and needy, it must be nice to have something to blame their social inadequacy on...

Here's the crack about Infosmack

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How unique?

Very unique.

And a fine addition to the Reg line up. :)

Ofcom okays Derren Brown psychic-baiting

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FAIL

Commentard Fail

Medium != Seer. Though I'll grant that both are frauds, they're differently dishonest.

Gentlemen, the coat rack is over yonder...

Investors fight to buy secret special-offer Facebook equity

Candy

Microsoft not doing too badly from this either...

Remeber when MS sank $240m into Facebook. This latest investment by Sachs more than triples the value of that initial stake. Seems like there's no shortage of buyers, either.

Google unloads Nexus S Gingerbread phone

Candy
FAIL

Available unlocked...

According to your table, the iPhone isn't. Perhaps the article was written from a market where it really isn't. Right?

Samsung, Dixons herald huge tablet sales

Candy

Unprecedented?

Do they know the difference between "unprecedented" and "unanticipated"? Or perhaps just "misjudged"?

Easynet blames network collapse on dodgy router update

Candy

Oopsie.

Mea culpa...

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FAIL

SLA broken?

Um, not unless there were additional outages or the 99.9% uptime mentioned was inaccurate. Three 9s buys you up to 8hrs 45 minutes (and change) of outage per annum

VW to eliminate worst road hazard: drivers

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Not owning a car? Already a result!

Leaving aside the autonomous vehicle aspect, I already don't own a car. There is a local car sharing scheme with hundreds of vehicles all over the city.

I pay a small monthly fee and then pay per hour and mile used whenever I book a car. Bookings are done by web and can be as little as five minutes in advance. For town dwellers doing few miles, this scheme makes a lot of sense.

Even if, as a family, you need a car of your own, this provides a cheap way of having a second car on hand without parking hassle and all the associated costs of owning another vehicle.

Firefox comes over all cloudy

Candy
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DIY option also available

Assuming you don't want someone else having even your encrypted browser settings...

If you know your way round a webserver, you can set up your own repository The instructions are at the link below and the process was pretty painless.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Weave/API

Seagate to announce SSD-threatening hybrid drive

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I'd buy that.

Actually, I'd buy several...

Blue Coat virtualizes WAN appliance

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Gates Halo

The wonder is why Microsoft hasn't jumped into this market yet

MS provides a partial solution for these issues with their BranchCache functionality. But, in fairness, it doesn't cover that many types of traffic and requires Windows7 clients and 2008R2 server.

Show me the money!

Candy

MIA

There's an important question missing from your list: How can success be MEASURED?

If you can't do this, you can never say whether the spend was a success. And you can't meaningfully glean lessons for the future.

HP to appeal over potentially massive BSkyB ruling

Candy

adherence to the highest ethical standards

Unless we rather unkindly drag up the spying on directors, illegal wiretaps, etc, etc

Slovak biker spat linked to rare destructive worm

Candy

Sometimes disguised as an IQ test...

I wonder, does it make any decisions based on the reults?

French culture minister flames Google over book scan plan

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Francoslap

I think I have a new favourite word...

Oxford American Dictionary dubs 'unfriend' Word of the Year

Candy
WTF?

Teabagger...

Teabagger: An player of FPS games who indulges in the post-frag practice of teabagging his victim. Generally regarded as immature or antisocial behaviour.

Glenn Beck loses and wins domain name case

Candy

Legal documents can be entertaining...

Funniest thing I have read in ages was the sur-reply from the respondents lawyer.

http://gb1990.net/legal/round2/3-OurReply/D2009-1182%20surreply%20final%20-%20XMT.pdf

Stick with it until page 3 (no peeking ahead, now) and then just read it through for some gems. Laugh out loud funny, more so because this was part of an official filing.

Great British beer moves county

Candy
WTF?

Half pint?!

"Newcy Brown or brown ale, as it is known, is traditionally drunk from a half-pint glass."

Not where I come from. You don't get a glass at all. You sup direct from the bottle...

EMC outs Atmos compute cloud

Candy

Atmos from EMC?

I thought it was part of the Oric line?

http://www.48katmos.freeuk.com/whatisan.htm

NASA enlists schoolkids in Moonbase piss-recycler push

Candy
Coat

Spending a penny?

Now, that's what I call splashing out...

No mention of what they are to do with their enormous deposits, though?

Guardian hitches ride in Mercedes Bunz

Candy

Languange is a virus...

I wish my German was that good.

Hell, some days, I wish my English was that good...

Why teachers fear Callum, Chelsea, Connor and Crystal

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Let's save some time and money...

I have heard many teachers talk about the time that could be saved allocating children into Sets (or Streams) directly based on name and then correcting after 6 weeks. As well as many comments like "That's definitely a Set 4 name."

Anecdotal* studies indicated that such an approach would be at least as accurate as the usual method for new joiners. Adding in family history and staffroom gossip, the whole process becomes an uncannily good predictor. Not defensible, maybe, but accurate nonetheless...

*An anecdotal study is one with a disproportionately high alcohol-to-facts ratio.

EU Oracle/Sun investigation could cause rift with US

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Good old EC...

Thank goodness that the EC's regulators aren't doing the roll-over-and-play-dead act that the US ones are. Something tells me that, given the current state of US politics and economy, the US regulators are putting an emphasis on expediency instead of diligence.

I'm sure the Americans will be deeply unhappy that we are scrutinising their "domestic" takeovers again but these companies are major players in our markets.

Boffins develop 'Hidden gateway to Hogwarts girls' loos'

Candy
Happy

Quick to react...

The attentive-to-detail boffins have already updated their EDF-ETBBMnMCFPHP in the referenced article.

El Reg space paper plane christened Vulture 1

Candy
Go

Payload management

If payload is an issue, why not attach the release mechanism to a second balloon. They can rendezvous at altitude and the one can release 'tother. Especially easy if can be released at the same time.

If temperature and air pressure are a problem, additional balloons carying a compressor and a heater can also be launched.

How hard can it be? C'mon, people. These are simple problems with simple solutions.

Actually, this relatively trivial exercise could serve as a useful testbed for assembling the RSS Feed platform (Register Space Station Failproof Exoatmospheric Engineering Domicile) which will in turn host assembly of the HILTON (High Insertion, Landing in TONbridge) mission planned for Vulture 14.

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Coat

Balloon sourcing

Have we identified a preferred county-of-origin for the projects' air bags?

Microsoft assaults our senses with 'viral' Bing video

Candy

The Bingle

"Except, it's so bad you can't bare watching it."

I watched it. I am bare.

Bing slips into bed with Twitter

Candy

So I understand what MS is doing here...

But I don't quite see how it qualifies as an act of desperation.

Enlighten me...

Please don't eat your horse, EU asks owners

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This is usefule (if misrepresented) legislation.

Quote from Anon above: "I'd assume France (and some other nations) have horse farms where animals are reared for eating as opposed to a horse reared for riding."

This is entirely correct. I live in the Dordogne and there are several such farms within a mile or so of here. We also own several horses ourselves which are for riding.

We already have to track what medications are given to each one as they become unsuitable for human consumption after certain treatments. Microchipping horses is a requirement under many circumstances here so, as long as the vet is on the up-and-up, the records are accurate.

There are some very potent remedies given to horses and they can linger in the beast. I approve of this system. In the UK, there is little chipping and so it makes sense to declare animals to be "food" or "not food" from the get-go. This dumbing down of the EU system is because of the poor regime existing in places like the UK where existing regulation and tracking is poor.

Additionally, if chipping was mandatory in the UK, there might be a lot less horse theft going on. And there is a lot.

Related information:

Certain horses with pale coats are automatically declared unsuitable for eating as it can be difficult to see if they have developed melanoma.

From our horse farmer neighbours, it appears that much (most?) of the horse meat they produce is, in fact, sold to Italy. The italians prefer the taste of youger horses (about 3yo). Much french horse meat is imported from Eastern Europe and is from older, working animals. The French taste is for this mature, lean meat.

Eurofighter Tranche 3: Oh please, God, no

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How very nice.

I realise that this article is tagged as "Comment". No really, I do. But it's not comment, really, is it?

Where's the analysis? The balanced arguments? This sort of unchecked, soapbox ranting seems to be becoming more and more prevalent on El Reg and it does not reflect well. If correspondents want to shamelessly promote their views (rather than reporting/commenting on the news) we might all be better served if they just wrote a letter to The Times.

Unless... Could it be... Was this a wrongly attributed Otto Z. Stern missive?

EZY Technologies MyXerver MX3600

Candy

By no means unique...

Nor even a novel idea although it's nice to see this functionality in a smaller package. This sort of thing has been part of the core functionality in SME-tergetted NAS boxes from the likes of QNAP and Drobo for a very long time.

How to be an instant Web me-2.0 developer

Candy
Happy

Informative, insightful, inedible...

Yet another laugh-out-loud funny précis of the way it is. :) Great way to start the week.

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