Re: USB as better? No!

>> The sooner we can switch everything to standard wireless, the better.

What, so we can all die off due to nerve attenuation syndrome?

Re: VGA

Agreed.

Re: And what phone do you own, whinge-o-matic?

I thought about writing a manifesto about taxing the immoral rich but I foolishly sent it to the New Statesman, leaving me no option other than to say something about computers in the hardware section of The Register. Sorry to disappoint.

Dr. Duncan's Video Symptom Show

I can still sing the jingle. It was the kind of thing Kenny Everett might have produced.

Re: Yup - Me too!

Happy birthday, GOM. Automatic tills are just badly designed. It wouldn't take very much effort to design a simpler version that customers would feel comfortable with, but hey, why bother?

Re: Rent the floor...

Yup, already thought of but dismissed. The reason it's cheap is because it needs a refurb. In its current state, it would only interest the owners of the London Dungeon.

Re: £50k

Our current recession - the best the world has ever known - was built upon this excellent concept, so don't knock it.

Re: £50k

I was thinking of doing something conventional such as returning the money plus interest. Do you think I should suck cocks instead?

Re: How much do you need?

Actually, £50K would do the trick: redecoration, rewiring, furniture, rent, allowing me a few quid on top so that my children don't have to assemble dinner from our neighbours' dustbins.

Re: Kickstarter

Yes, there's Kickstarter. But Kickstarter won't raise the money in a few days and it tends to be oriented toward products that investors can download or be sent in the post, not property ventures. Unless I post them some of the bricks...

Re: It's still findable

Yes, that is the same PCBW but four years and a redesign after I moved on to the dizzy heights of ICL Today, DEC Today, Lotus magazine, Graduate Computerworld, customer mags for Unisys and HP, and a pre-newsstand Macworld... all produced above an antiques shop in Beckenham. But that's another story.

Re: Not what Moores Law says

This is true but how do you feel about Geoff Hurst's second goal?

Guy Kewney

Believe me, I have GK anecdotes to share but if you don't mind I'm going to keep them to myself for another year or two.

Re: Tablets

>> trying to read proper books (with words) is shite on tablets

I disagree. Books are very readable on tablets but you have to adjust the brightness, colours etc otherwise they'll burn the retinas from your eyeballs. FWIW, the Kindle app on iOS and Android is pretty good.

Re: What sort of cretin buys a Amazon Swindle anyway?

>> Adobe Digital Editions is an enormous pile of shit by the way

No arguments from me there.

Re: What sort of cretin buys a Amazon Swindle anyway?

>> How do they discover this?

When they want to lend a book to someone with a non-Amazon e-reader, or their Kindle breaks and they decide to replace it with a Kobo.

Re: I'm really happy with my Kindle

I was with mine too until it stopped working properly 13 months after I bought it. Amazon offered to replace it for a 'discount'' price that was actually higher than buying a brand new model.

Re: Once again, people miss the point ...

These are indeed facts. They're just not the facts that I was writing about. Next week, I will write about some other facts.

Re: It's not even locked in really

By 'lock-in', I meant that your Amazon content is locked in, not that it locks non-Amazon content out. You can't move or lend your Amazon ebooks to non-Amazon e-readers. It's possible that Kobo suffers from the same problem but I wouldn't know because I have yet to find anyone representing Kobo in the UK who understands how its DRM works.

Re: The eBook Problem

A number of independent publishers and indie authors have been doing this for selected titles for a couple of years but only if you buy direct from them. I share your frustration: I have a perfectly good set of Lukyanenko's 'Night Watch' paperbacks and fancied reading them again recently but forgot how difficult it can be to turn pages with one hand while standing in a packed train. Also, the third book in the series is called 'The Twilight Watch' with a suitably mysterious cover pic and people thought I was reading a 'Twilight' book about doe-eyed sparkly teen shit-for-brains vampires.

Re: What sort of cretin buys a Amazon Swindle anyway?

Well, this was my point. Ordinary people do not sit around considering the pros and cons of ePub vs Mobi file formats. What they do is buy the slimmest, lightest, most convenient and least hideous e-reader on the market, which is an Amazon Kindle... THEN they discover they've bought into proprietary DRM-saturated Hell.

Re: Re "famous Neil Gaiman"

Point taken but I really did think that El Reg readers would know who he is. In future, I will do as newspapers do and write an accreditation before the name - such as "Harry Potter star Richard Griffiths" or "Transformers The Movie voice actor Orson Wells".

Re: Not the ending I'd expected

>> I thought the copro-culprit would turn out to be a typesetter made redundant by DTP

My anecdote dates from the late 80s when typesetting was a closed shop ruled by NGA union overlords. Correct a typo? £100 – cash only. Want to output a bromide? It needs an NGA sticker on the back.

A year or so earlier, when the NUJ called for strikes at News International with respect to the way in which "new technology" was being introduced to news rooms and presses, NGA members simply walked through the picket lines. So when desktop publishing came in and the NGA asked the NUJ to back industrial action to save their jobs, the journalists told them to get stuffed.

Re: It's a vocation

>> JOIN US!

You don't live under the stairs, do you?

Re: And there we have it

>> I did like reading your articles, now I'm faced with the fact that I was enjoying articles written by a complete and utter tit.

So you've been regularly laughing at the misfortunes of other people in my weekly column, but now that it's your turn in the spotlight, everything has changed?

Re: Surprisingly, This Is Serious:

The booklet that came with my car doesn't explain how to take the engine apart, nor does it include the Highway Code or provide instructions on how to drive.

Re: The one that annoys me...

>> Telling average people to buy the most expensive computer they can afford is terrible, horrible advice.

I disagree. A no-brand notebook weighing 4 tonnes and containing 256K RAM and a 32GB hard disk is not a good buy. You have to suggest a basic minimum spec, *then* tell them to buy the one they can afford. And those Mac Minis are very poor value for money.

Re: Hang on a minute!

Oho, you are wrong about this. Open an iPad box and there are instructions - in large, friendly type - telling you what to do.

Re: its your choice

Best comment of the lot. Joking aside, this is what it's all about. Thank you, Mr Coward.

Re: offensive

Please provide a list of words you don't like.

Re: Silly article with unnecessary swearing

Arse biscuits.

Re: Payback...

10 hours over 10 years is a pretty good ratio. I've had occasions when it's been 10 hours over 10 hours.

Re: Wow. Talk about short temper!

Absolutely agree. I am a really nasty person. Upvoted.

Re: Apparently, we are special

>> I've often wondered what life is like for someone "useless" who doesn't get asked to do random jobs.

Quite. My father used to be a clinical psychologist. No-one used to ask him at parties whether or not they might be mad.

Re: Send them my way.

Give me your number and I'll make sure all the unpaid work goes your way.

Re: Who said iPads are used for IT?

In fact, I'd suggest that the VAT element is the clincher: ebooks do not qualify for VAT exemption like printed matter. By switching to iPads - or indeed any tablet or computer edition - the cost of school books will rise 20% immediately.

Re: Word? LibreOffice? LaTeX? Pfft

Ah, WordStar... all that fiddly blocking of text with Control-Ks...

Re: Makes LibreOffice and the like a very creditable alternative !

>> I hate context sensitive info. Its like hidding a steering wheel on a staight road

Well, I regard content sensitivity as showing you the steering wheel but hiding the spark plugs. Dontcha love analogies?

Re: Lame

>> I read a bit and sorry bud but loser sprang to mind.

Strange, I don't feel the slightest bit insulted. I wonder why that could be.

Re: Bah!

>> "Did Mrs D contact anyone at Microsoft to report her problem as a bug so someone could actually get a start on fixing it?"

You're joking, right? Every time a piece of software crashes, you get the option to report it. Has anyone anywhere at any time received an acknowledgement or update on these reports we diligently complete and submit? Of course not. They go straight in the "Whinging Customer" tray next to the shredder.

Re: What is this article supposed to be?

>> And if you hate word so much don't buy or use it...simple.

So your suggestion is that after I buy a copy of MS Word, use it and subsequently not like it, I should not buy it? Can anyone else here spot the flaw in this chronological sequence of events?

>> Will you be getting a Leap Motion controller, Mr Dabs?

That's double B to you, Dave. Not sure about the Leap - it looks too imprecise for working with windowed software interfaces. Successfully tapping on a close button or choosing a tool from a toolbar could take all day. Mind you, that's what I used to think about trackpads until I became skilled with them.

Re: Oops!

>> I wouldn't be surprised if the porn industry haven't been pouring large amounts of dosh into the R&D

Congratulations, Andrew, for being the first to identify this week's 'story behind the story'. The potential for innovative porn products is *exactly* what I wanted to write about. However, putting the words 'Disney' and 'pornography' in the same sentence (as I have just done here, I suppose) tends to get our lawyers nervous and Disney's lawyers reaching for the yacht brochures. On that note, you should have seen what I wrote about Will.I.Am before it got cut.

Re: An utter waste

Why was it a "huge" waste of time? Did you read it really slowly?

Re: unbuckle belt and lower trousers at urinal?

>> need to stop going to gay bars

Start a nuclear war?

Re: Pants: too much information

>> If it slips from your grasp and twangs back in mid-pee, the result is both painful and messy.

Some people would pay big money to have this done to them.

Not yet but I have realistic expectations.

Re: The best kind of keyboard

I don't have a thing about keyboards. I'm just short of ideas.

Re: Editor gone down the pub already?

Be reasonable. I only filed my copy about 30 seconds before it was supposed to go live. My fault, not the editor's.