Love the story...

Really.

Although "The silence of the servers" is your masterpiece.

Just my two cents...

SSD is just not mature yet. It will eventually become and then I'll get some, but before that time, we are talking the Golden optical disc from Philips in the eighties... They ended up making cd's of which one cannot say they are dead (unless they are (r)w(r)itable) promising but yet not mature enough.

Interesting article though. Always wanted to learn a bit more about SSD's.

Could someone tell this noob what an 80 GB SSD disk should do as holder of let's say my win XP? In terms of lifetime and tools to tell me that the time has come to replace it.

Thank you,

PS: Paris for she knows as much about SSD's as I do.

MS... learn

Can't MS come up with something new? Apple launches the iPod, MS years later comes up with Zune. Adobe has Flash. Years later, MS comes up with silverlight. The whole world had Java, but years later MS came up with J++

I am not a microsoft basher, but if they keep doing this, then they're a dead company. Lucky for them that Windows 7 did well, but let's hope Windows 8 will not become a new Vista or ME. As far as I can see, MS is way behind on good ideas. And the only strong point they still have is their windows desktop platform.

Sad to see the emperor crawling in the dust...

This is going to be good...

I do expect a January episode of this series that will make the PFY wish it was still 2009.

Great episode and thank you for all the laughter, Simon.

Just...

wonderful!

Thank you, Simon

@ /spin

"i would hope that they have started looking for work to get out of that morale-raping environment ASAP, rather than rely on a strike changing the minds of managers who only see them as numbers on a spreadsheet."

Unite's point is just that the times now are quite hard to find another job.

Nice to see those images again....

I used to have an XT with windows 1.0 and GEM installed. We were thrilled when windows could use more than the usual DOS 640KB memory boundary.

Oh well... happy today with win XP pro and for real work I'm happy with CENTOS linux. :-)

That dog...

"Although there's much hilarity to be had watching stunned people as your dog craps out little cars/golfers/Disney characters or pisses a blue line down a wall..."

ROFLMAO!

Only now?

Those scarewares have been around for ages. Via the messenger service and on lots of sites as well.

Back in the days it was even funny to see on my win2000 pro box how I got such pop-ups in winXP layout.

If they act now, I guess they will start to tackle spam somewhere around 2050.

Paris, because she would even embrace protective measures sooner.

I can understand... or not...

First:

I love open source and all it brought.

Second:

I can understand that a company that invested strongly in patents will not give that away for free. They have to make a profit, don't they. Although I hate PDF. I am a dumb guy that would like to have some HTML standard that can do everything PDF does rather than having PDF. But ok...

Third:

Guild wars: Java enabled people fighting the other sorts of people. My god... Why am I happy with Perl? Java stinks as much as .net does. They are both competitors in a world that needs one or two programming langs. I want to grab back my initial C and C++ books. Perl or PHP rules the world, dummies.

Paris Hilton because she even knows how to behave cross-platform.

yes, electric...

... but do they fly?

Mine's the one with the wings attached.

Nah...

I admire the BOFH stories, but this one was not as good as it should be.

I mean... the axe. Come on Simon, you have written far more subtle revenge techniques.

BUT...! I lolled at the manager's Bonsai though.

Still: "Silence of the servers" remains my fav one and it should be the way to go...

Signed: a big fan of yours.

@ Bez

Love your first commemnt in this section. Great writing.

Next step

Maybe they can force computer makers to stop selling machines and only lease them on a monthly basis. Maybe jpg files should also stop working if you don't pay your subscription for them, etc...

Some thoughts...

* More and more ISP's can't live up on the performance of their broadband connections anymore, having failed to invest in their networks as opposed to their growing and more bandwith demanding userbase. They really must love the idea of an internet-centric OS. As will the users once they see the performance of this baby. Plenty of people already complain about Vista performance. Now go and play your high-end games on a cloud OS. Maybe a simplified version of Pacman would still do, but that's only for two days when the ISP puts you on smallband for using up your monthly bandwith limit.

* Some people said this before: company leaders will love the idea of throwing out their firewall since the OS is outside of the company LAN anyway and their data and actions are "safely" with MS. Oh dear... they are now already refusing to roll out Vista...

* MS is clearly losing the pedals. post-Vista-launch panic strikes... They clearly need to rethink some things or I wouldn't give a penny for their shares at all from now. Com'on Beast of Redmond, think, think! Perhaps a linux-based OS with nice windows-like "hey we know this interface" thingie and direct-X included for games... now there we would have a killer windows 9.

Paris, because she' a killer app too. aaawrrr ;-)

This is ridiculous

Ok, he's a hacker. We've had our fair share of (black hat) hackers, virus writers and spammers already. Some of them should burn in hell.

However, from the coverage I had, I understood he was curious. He did not use his power to cause damage and I never read that he sold security information to "bad guys". Readers are free to prove me wrong.

So the UK is playing a political game here. Knowing that he could get up to 70 years of prison in the US, knowing what his crimes were, it would be just horrible just to deliver him to the US, a country known for wanting to "set examples". Can't he be judged in the UK? Why does the UK wants to be the puppy of a US president that claims he would never extradite US soldiers even if proven they committed war crimes?

But then again, I might be misinformed on what exactly he did to the US defense systems. As far as I know, he's a bloke with a little less developped sense of what you can and cannot do, but he did not harm the US. Well except for some BOFH's that had to go out and actually patch and secure their systems becauses of a bloke that was looking for information about UFO's on Defense and Nasa systems and probably a sick sense of "I do it because I can do it" kind of childless pride.

And don't get me wrong... I hate hackers etc... but I think that guys that make botnets to infect millions of computers so they can rob the bank accounts of your average "Joe" or "Darren" should face far more severe punishments than this guy.

All I say here, is of course under the assumption that I am well informed about what he did and why he did it. If he's not the child-minded but gifted hacker that I think he is, I would erase my post. But well... We've seen such "I can do it because I can hackers" before and as long as they do not severely damage things, I think punishment is good, but long-life sentence in prison is a bit too hard.

PS: not a native English speaker here, so forgive me if some of my texts are not up to decent English standards ;-)

And when...

... will spam/trojans/virusses be considered as equal to murder? Time to show maffia hackers that we cannot allow the internet to be killed like this anymore.

I meant that.

Mine's the one with the kevlar coating, the gas mask, the fake cyanide tooth and the AK-47 as a means of discussing things.

So true

All I have read here is so true...

Paris, because she can make things work for me.

no...

... reference to Doctor Who or Torchwood?

Paris, since even she would have done that.

LOL

@ the RPITA engineers description

Thanks!

1. Thanks, RTD for bringing back the good doctor. I hope Torchwood will still continue now.

2. If Steven Moffat only brings 10% of the pure genius of an episode like Blink to the complete series, then I am so gonna love that fifth season.

3. fifth season is only due spring 2010? :-( :-( :-(

Thank you, Chris

Thanks, gonna remember that one...

expression?

I am not a native English speaker, so allow me to ask whether:

"when encountering a goldmine one must prepare oneself for the shaft"

is an existing expression or did Simon make up this beauty?

PH, for feeling stupid now...

Happy Birthday!!!

El Reg is and will remain my fav tech site!

Get a PC!

All of that stuff can be done on a pc. A games console that wants to connect to the internet, play HD video's, can have blue-ray, eventually lets you watch movies on demand... that's about what a pc can do.

A games console had a nice niche of being cheap to let the kids play games while you use the real computer... now they are turning consoles into PC's (but without flexibility) and the things get more expensive.

Oh well... played with game consoles in the past with friends. But I would never consider buying one until I have kiddies. And if I have kiddies I will re-install my XT computer with MS-DOS and GW-BASIC so they can learn. And if they learn, they can play C&C 3 Tiberium wars for a while as a reward.

Yes, I am mean.

Paris, because she does not know what I am talking about and I would like to keep that naive thing in bed too.

First boss ever to live long and prosper?

Is it just me or has the current boss been passivily agreeing with and knowing of the evil plans of the BOFH and the PFY? This is not a normal BOFH-boss relation anymore. Something is rotten in the state of that company...

Paris, since she has as much a clue about anything on earth than I have about where this boss is going to end and why/how his end will be.

ROFL

eh... ROFL...

@ all

LEAVE PARIS ALO-HO-HONE!

ok...

Fighting MS with Lotus Notes???

PS: Paris since she has brighter ideas than that.

What?

Paying for something that nags at you? I already have a girlfriend.

Excellent

Loved the style of the story!

Great work, Simon.

not ruined

She already has her own little imperium, so she'll be fine. No need to start singing agian, Paris, no need at all.

re: paris hilton

"Maybe we'd do better with Paris Hilton in goal?"

Indeed, they'll try to hit her.

Sick Line

ehrm... English is not my native language. Could someone tell me what a sick line is?

amanfrommars posts

Can El Reg at least put them in another colour, so it's easier to skip them?

Hilarious

"Seven interviews later and I've spotted the slight flaw in our plan in that the first questions we should have asked of our new director were "Are you a violent maniac after you've had a few pints?" and "Did you know that punching someone in the face for using the words 'total cost of ownership' is not technically an approved interview technique – funny though it may be?""

Hilarious!!!

sub title

> "Mail protocol wasn't dead, only sleeping"

You mean it was not pining for the fjords?

So what they mean is ... ?

... that even malware writers cannot get their software to run properly on a Vista box?