Posts by Greg J Preece
2043 posts • joined Wednesday 10th June 2009 08:25 GMT
Page:
And I suggest you try it
As you could tell by reading my previous post, I generally use Linux. I do not like running as root.
I did a clean, fresh, completely by-the-book installation of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. All default, before later customisations. It logged me in automatically by default, and I could install apps without password by default.
You can tell me this didn't happen as often as you like, you can call me a "fucking idiot", but it won't change anything.
Bullshit!
The vast majority of installations on a Mac *do not* require a password. Some do, and these tend to be lower-level apps like file system/encryption drivers. Most just require you to drag an icon onto the Applications icon, and the rest is done for you. Very seamless installation, almost as good as DEB packages, but by default no password is required whatsoever.
Better solution
Use a proper browser. Safari is on this machine somewhere, but I treat it like Internet Explorer under Windows - update it for when it's needed, then hide it away somewhere and use something better.
For all Microsoft's faults, at least they do try to help out with this kind of thing. Defender, Malware remover and the like. They can be ridiculously slow to respond to alerts, but at least they respond.
Apple are a marketing company. They are interested only in selling you the latest shiny thing. Something wrong with your old shiny? There's a new one - that'll fix everything, and you'll be better than your friends for having the new one.
In my experience trying to sort issues with iPhones, Time Machine and even monitors, Apple don't give a rat's ass about after-sales. The "Genius bar" is all well and good, but the closest one to here is 40 miles away, and yes they did tell me to go there for help when I rang them up. When Time Machine tried to backup the backup drive it was copying to, Apple told me "it's supposed to do that!" When one of my users took in a Mac desperately in need of a RAM upgrade, they sold him Snow Leopard! I've pretty much quit asking...
Written, surprisingly, on a MacBook...running Linux. ;-)
Missed a bit
...while continuing to deny the problem's existence.
Sony break the network
Microsoft break your console. ;-)
Posted in Sony restores PlayStation Network parts
Playstation Plus
They said a while back that we'll all get a month's free PSN+.
Posted in Sony restores PlayStation Network parts
I can finally buy Dead Nation!
Been wanting to buy it for weeks now.
Glad they took the time to fix it properly though, rather than leaving the system vulnerable and just bunging it back online. That for me is actually far more reassuring, though of course it should never have happened in the first place.
Keeping mine
Sure, PSN is down, and that sucks ass, but the console still works, the online play will come back, and I didn't pay for PSN in the first place. Was thinking of trialling PSN+, and now I get a free trial when it comes back online.
The data loss was what really pissed me off, but how would trading in the hardware that I enjoy using solve anything? And given MS' previous track record, I've seen no evidence that X-box Live is any more secure. That it's not been broken yet doesn't mean it doesn't have holes.
This attitude is granting three things:
1) I don't play all that many online games. I have no desire to play shitty FPS games with a shitty controller, while teenage morons call me a n00b and take every opportunity to show me their testicles.
2) If I do play online games, I'm generally playing them on the PC, which I regard as a platform superior to all others. </fanboy_baiting>
3) I have other consoles, and failing that, other things to do in my life.
Aaaaand...FLAME ON! :-)
Posted in Reg ed rattles the Red-Headed League
My heartfelt sympathy to you
And all people who are still so weak they have to refer to it as "the N word."
And my greatest thanks to Ms Bee. Not for the sense, but for reminding me that it's Friday!
Posted in NASA restores Pluto to league of planets
The argument is done, Pluto is not a planet
Just because the Yanks have to be so obsessive about anything ever said, done or seen by a fellow Yank, doesn't make Pluto a planet. We have 4 terrestrials, 4 gas, and one...ball of half-rock, half-ice, whose "moon" isn't even a moon, as the orbital centre is outside Pluto's mass.
If they'd have discovered Ceres first, they'd be calling that a planet, but it isn't, and neither is Pluto. The IAU recategorised the solar system so that new discoveries made sense - science does that. It's a trans-Neptunian dwarf in the recently* mapped Kuiper-belt. Get over it.
*By astronomy's standards
Linux already lags
The Linux client is already behind the Windows one by a long way, but that's a good thing! The Linux users still get a simple, unbloated client that sits there and does as it's told. The Windows client has become a monster, and the Mac client is no better. I can't think of any features I've ever needed to use that weren't in the Linux version, so I say let it stay that way, and leave the bloat out.
The Underminer
He was only there to provide a villain for the tie-in video game - Rise of the Underminer.
I think it's your office
All the machines in my office have Skype installed and they never go down with malware. Ergo, it's your office.
Or it might be that almost all my machines have Linux installed. ;-)
Posted in Sony’s sorry saga snowballs
Wow
You're actually going to criticise Japanese corporations for the earthquake?
Don't worry mate
I'm 25 and I have a complete edition of Elite for the C64, as well as a C128-D on which to play it.
Admittedly, I'm a sad bastard, ;-)
I love this!
Don't teach it as primary learning - the majority of plebs will still need those Excel skills - but keep it around the labs, and let people know it's there. The nerdy kids will attend to the rest.
We had Win98 machines at school, and it was still the old BBCs I loved to code on. If this had been sat in the corner of the lab, I'd have certainly had a play.
Posted in Woz snubs Paul Allen, praises pea soup
Alright then, forget Samsung
What about their "patent pool" with others to go after WebM?
Posted in Arcam FMJ BDP100 Blu-ray Disc player
A thousand quid??
There seems to be a lot missing for that amount of money. The reviewer seemed to be apologising for a lot of missing functionality, when I would certainly expect a player costing this much to be missing nothing.
OK, the ultimate output quality might not be as perfect, but you can get 4 or 5 PS3s for the price of this thing, and look at how much they do (state of PSN jokes aside).
Posted in Is iPhone data collection legal?
Oh man...
I'd love to uae that in court.
'No, your honour, that law doesn't count, you see, because it was written more than 5 years ago.'
A well researched and written law should be able to defend the rights of the public on an extended timescale, especially with regard to future developments.
OpenSUSE
I am also considering OpenSUSE. I ran it for a very short period on one of my machines, as it got working official ATI support before Ubuntu, but I'm just so used to my Debian/Aptitude environments that I'm more productive on Kubuntu, so when that got support I installed Maverick.
Might be time to give SUSE another try. I'll be keeping Ubuntu Server on my development rig though. No matter how they try to cock up their desktop spins, their server release has never let me down.
Kubuntu's no better
Some nice tweaks in the UI, but it's the random X lockups that are bothering me. Tap the power button to shut down, instant lockup. Leave the machine in standby for 10 minutes, lockup. What the hell, guys.
And Plymouth is STILL broken, a year after release. It kinda-sorta works on shutdown now, but startup is just as broken as it ever was.
Might try a fresh install. But if it's still this bad, I might try Mint.
Barnes & Noble
Another company about to switch to Linux-only systems, I reckon. ;-)
Posted in Acer Iconia Tab W500
I like it!
That's more my idea of a portable machine - one that can actually DO stuff rather than just show stuff.
Now for the predictable cry....get Linux on it!
Sphere?
I was wondering where you were going with that. The film you're thinking of is Contact. Sphere happens underwater, with lots of the scarybadthings happening.
Anti-science?
Much as I dislike the Republican party, I feel I may have to pull you up on that one, by proxy. Enter Mr deGrasse Tyson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Q8UvJ1wvk
CCTV will have been on
I mean, why would you ever turn it off?
I'd have one as a boot drive
But I'd still have a fast mechanical (I currently use 15k rpm SCSIs) for my code projects to be stored on. Load NetBeans from the SSD, but compile to the mechanical. Compiling something the size of our system on an SSD every day would reduce it's life, without question.
Hi David!
*Wave*
Still sensitive about that one, eh?
Opera blah blah
How about Opera ones. Instead of angel/devil, you could have one covered in speed bubbles, and one gagged...
Web 2.0 / marketing fluff
Perhaps blue sky with a flying whale. Or if you like Guide references...a falling whale...
Posted in Sony ships 50m PS3s
Over here!
I've got one, my boss has, at least three of my colleagues have, my brother is thinking of one and so is my girlfriend. The original 60GB PS3 is a great piece of kit. Backwards compatible to TWO generations, Blu-Ray playback, network playback from my server upstairs - the list goes on. It still amazes me that it was slagged off for being expensive @ £425 RRP, when the iPhone and iPad sell for over £600 a piece.
Posted in Sony ships 50m PS3s
Wrong on so many levels
"Plus, Mario Kart + Wii Wheel > any other driving game. Ever. I just wish they'd release Pro Evo and have you strap a Wiimote to each foot. That would be awesomes."
Not played a lot of racing games, huh? I loved Mario Kart back in the day, but compared to F1 Championship Edition, GT5, and just about any game from the Burnout series...welll...no. And do you really think no-one's invented a wheel peripheral before? I can think of three different models for the PS2 alone off the top of my head.
Can't stand the Wii Wheel if I'm honest. Tried playing Mario Kart with it and had a GameCube controller in almost immediately. And as soon as I plugged it in, I started winning every race. ;-)
Whut, no gigabit?
Can we please stop tacking piss-cheap 10/100Mbps ports onto kit that should really be using an almost equally piss-cheap gigabit port by now? Never mind that these specs are for an IPTV box! It's not like gigabit Ethernet just rocked up or anything. 802.3ab was ratified in 1999 for Christ's sake.
Posted in White iPhone 4 'in production'
As I understand it...
...Apple have already changed how the i4 is made. They just haven't told anybody or admitted it in case all the mugs who bought the originals get pissed off. :-)
Never allow users to choose their own patterns
Working for a company called Westhaven? Every pattern will be a "W". Guaranteed.
I'd rather have a Fujikoma
All the firepower, none of the annoying voice. Though you do need pink squishies to pilot them.
Love these things
Every time I look at one I can't help thinking of Ghost in the Shell. Makes me smile every time.
Posted in Wii price cut coming
GameCube controllers are your friend
"-the gimmicky controllers. If I could just use a PS3/Xbox controller, I'd probably getting those last few Mario Kart wins. Plugging a "classic controller" into a Wiimote doesn't count."
Just pick up a GameCube controller or 4 for £2 a piece and use those. They're ten times better in a lot of games than the motion controller. If you have to bring out an accessory to nail onto the bottom of your controller to make it actually work properly, you're taking the piss.
My Wii generally gets love for light gun games. I love light gunners, and naturally the Wii has a few. Ghost Squad, the incredibly OTT House of the Dead: Overkill, etc. Aside from that....Nights into Dreams II? And do any of these light gun games support the Motion+? Of course not, because Wii games don't get patched.
If you even attempt a comparison with my PS3, the Wii really is a piece of shit, and the Move I got last weekend makes their motion control look like it was made by disabled chimps.
Not the best analogy
"As for market share, FIAT Uno probably has a larger market share than a Ferrari."
How about if both were free, as browsers generally are?
The truth is wrong!
They didn't skew the numbers enough in our favour, therefore the numbers are wrong.
God, you people are boring. Go away.
In the very first post!
Looks like the Opera Rapid Response Squad were on the ball today.
Is "Opera is better" the Reg equivalent of yelling "FIRST!" on a Cheezburger blog?
Posted in Wii price cut coming
Don't tell me they're going to make something new!
The Wii was a repackaged GameCube and half the shit on it was repackaged content, with the rest being shovelware. A few good (and in some cases really good) games occasionally appeared, but much like the DS, looking at the range in the local games store is just depressing.The number of games I have for my Nintendo consoles pales into insignificance besides my other, better machines.
I wonder what gimmic-sorry, innovation they have for us this time...
Posted in H2O water-powered shower radio
Perfection would be...
DLNA/Mediatomb/Samba compatibility. Just aim it at my music collection and let rip.
Though DAB would be good too. The only radio station I would really care about is Planet Rock anyway.
Posted in Red Dwarf to blast off on new adventure
Back to Earth was SHITE
I loved Red Dwarf up to series 7. 8 was too forced, and suffered from actually having a budget, though it still had its funny moments.
Back to Earth? Dreadful 4th-wall crap.
KDE also
"The "drag to top of screen to maximize" is also a feature of Windows 7."
You'll also find this in modern versions of KDE, along with the half-screen snap-to-sides behaviour. Personally I use them all the time, especially on multi monitor systems. Grab window on one screen, start dragging, and it comes out of fullscreen to follow you. Drop it on the other monitor and it restores itself. Neat and efficient.
Posted in iPads mooted for Qantas flight manuals
@peter 45
"So why do I get told that it is because electronics can interfere with landing systems?"
They tell you to turn off your mobile phone on petrol station forecourts in case it causes an explosion. You don't seriously believe them, do you?
Scratch and sniff
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/30/
Posted in iPads mooted for Qantas flight manuals
You don't know much about piloting
"do you really think pilots refer to the manual during an emergency situation?"
Go watch a few episodes of Mayday. The manual is their first stop when something goes wrong (and they're not plummeting from the sky).
Posted in iPads mooted for Qantas flight manuals
Exactly!
Exactly why this is a bad idea. The manuals are supposed to be your backup in case you have a problem with the hideously complex machine you're flying - don't make them battery powered, for God's sake!
MY COCK IS BIGGER!
24 port unmanaged 100Mbps Dynamode swtich. How do you like me now, bitches?
Aw diddums
Still pissed off that El Reg didn't go batshit about a minor radiation leak during a country-destroying disaster?
