* Posts by John Square

77 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2009

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Facebook battles attack by child protection chief

John Square

Can we have on here?

The Moderatrix can be a bit... brusque sometimes.

Microsoft ordered to halt Win XP sales in China

John Square
Thumb Up

"Banging rocks together in caves"

The prof has a point.

There's also the fact that the Chinese have a considerably longer-term viewpoint than those of us in the grubby, materialistic, "me me me" west.

They are perfectly content to build dynasties over a thousand years*, whereas we get impatient with 30 second advert breaks in our favourite TV shows.

*wasn't there a german chap who tried this? Us westerners don't have the legs for that kng of timespan.

John Square
Coat

20 years of economic progress and .... Tibet

Not sure Tibet contributes that much to economic progress of the whole state.

I think it's like the Wales of China. It's headed by a bloke called Dai Llama, isn't it?

<ducks>

Olympus PEN E-P1 Micro Four-Thirds camera

John Square

Er... Gents...

Amidst all the photo-nerdery, you've all failed to notice who the review was written by- George Cole, from TV's Minder!

It's lovely to see you (how's Terry by the way?), and all but why are you here doing this?

The old Liquid Gold account finally run dry?

Religious discrimination law may open door for decent deviants

John Square

For Christs' (or gaia's) sake!

I'm bloody fed up with laws... why the hell have we got so many of them? Why do we keep ending up with more and more case law and other tribunal verdicts protecting people who are quite obviously weird?

The Sustainability Manager at the middle of the eco-case is quite clearly a maladjusted nutcase. Grainger should have sacked him on grounds that he'd fundamentally destroyed his own credibility and made himself unemployable. In other words: it's not to do with belief, it's to do with whether you look like a nutter or not.

For the vampire lady: you put stuff on the web, traceable to yourself, that broadcasts your private sex life all over the world, and are surprised when the school (!) you work at has a fit?

I very much doubt that any employee (well, those outside of certain establishments on the the Reeperbahn) would be much in favour with their bosses if they spurted details of their sex life all over a globally accessible media source.

Pron actor chap? And you decide you want to work with kids? Have you not seen the daily Mail lately?

I'm all in favour of people being able to be porn stars or sub-dom vampire fantasists and stuff, but fundamentally they've chosen to live their lives in this way. Bully for them. Now live with the consequences of that choice.

Believe what you like, and do as you will, but accept the responsibility that comes with your choices, and don;t piss and moan when you come a cropper.

El Reg launches 'Comment of the Week'

John Square
Stop

One flaw in the plan...

... You are assuming that once a week someone posts something here that impresses (in a positive way) Ms Bee.

I truly doubt this is the case.

Not that some of the comments aren't good, I just doubt that Sarah's impressed by them.

Gov demand for Governator to terminate PunterNet

John Square

Oh dear...

I can only assume Ms Bee has upset Lester again...

This article surely contains all the things guaranteed to really irk the commentard community:

1. Harriet Harman

2. New Labour

3. Censorship

4. A poor grasp on international laws and customs

5. A chance for the American readers to talk about their bill of rights and the first amendment

6. A prurient sexual angle guaranteed to bring out tasteless comments

What did you do, Sarah? That's the real story here!

Japan gets to grips with train-grope websites

John Square
Pint

There is a part of me...

... that thinks El Reg's editorial team dreams these articles up to give the Moderatrix somewhere to vent.

Either that or as reward for moderating all the Apple vs. Windows vs Linux comment threads.

<- As you'll probably need one by 5:30 today.

Home Office shifts feet as vetting database looms

John Square
FAIL

Been here before....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials

Go on, I dare you- tell me that this isn't the same thing.

Any bets on when spectral evidence is allowed (regression therapy/suppressed memory, perhaps?)

Apple's iPhone loses carriers money, claims researcher

John Square
Paris Hilton

Re:ARPU

"Apple are doing something right - I still can't get a 32GB iPhone 3GS from my local 02 store and I've been calling in every week. They won't "reserve" one for me."

I wonder if merely having the iPhone in the store gets footfall up to the point where the phone shops turnover/signed contact value increases: "Sorry, sir, we've no iPhones in at the moment, but have you tried this LG/SE/Nokia model? It does all the same things that the iPhone does, but it's £20 a month less, has a better camera and the handset is free?"

The iPhone is a very nice bit of kit, but it is pricey (£77.00 per month if you want a 3GS@32gig and you don't want to break out the plastic to pay an upfront cost), and I can't believe that a member of the public couldn't be coralled into buying a much cheaper alternate phone if the salesman has a good crack at them.

Anyhow, isn't anyone who buys an iPhone a sheep anyway? Surely they can't be *that* hard to persuade into a Nokia?

Paris, for the persuasion/coercion factor....

Prince of Darkness scares UK mobe firms

John Square

Aw c'mon....:

Mandy's not hard to deal with: you just need to know how. Most authorities agree that stuffing his mouth with garlic, a staje through the heart followed by separating his head from his body and burying the parts either side of running water will do the trick.

It's time consuming, but the only way to be sure*

*especially as you can't just wait for an election, not now he's a Lord(ie)

When ISPs hijack your rights to NXDOMAIN

John Square
Pint

@ Yes Me

"who knows what use will be made of standard (non-existent domain) response codes in some future technical standard?"

Hmmm. I'll give you the first two, but the third isn't a great reason not to offer a page of possibly relevant ads instead of a browser error.

One of the reasons I like Ted is that he's man enough not to begrudge someone making a buck. The ISPs need income from somewhere, especially if you/me/we are going to continue to get uncapped ADSL at less £ than a point to point. And is this service that will make life a little easier for the person who needs a bit of help with the internet anyway (and that guy is the kind of user who probably subsidises yours and mine heavy internet usage). Having said that, I have a large hangover today, and thus am probably wrong.

"It's one of the many tumors that is slowly killing real liberty: the belief that if you whine about something enough and call it a right, the government will do something, and when they don't, you whine even louder, at which point the general public stops caring about your cause because Global Warming is starring in its very own movie, and dammit, nobody out-whines Al Gore."

Yeah. I like that.

MPs urge more action on green IT

John Square
Thumb Up

@ Steve Evans

I concur: I bought a Revo (the £160 quid OS-Free version) and have it stuck to the back of my telly. It's more than enough computer for casual use (like what MP's would use it for) and it is incredibly energy efficient.

I've got Win7 on it, and it seems to do most things alright: plus spotify has just made my 20 years of record collecting irrelevant.

They keyboard and mouse are a load of bing, though, and have been replaced by a wireless set.

I'm currently contemplating changing the work PC buying policy and insisting on Revo's there, as much of our apps are delivered via a browser or citrix. Roll on huge IT savings.

Japan's central bankers look in brothels for green shoots

John Square
Coat

"Where there’s demand, you get supply.”

"And with that grasp of macroeconomics, the country's bankers have the seeds of recovery in the palm of their hand."

It's going back a few years for me now, but isn't supply and demand firmly in the microeconomics half of economic studies?

Mines the one with the copy of the Sloman in the pocket... careful, it's heavy.

Palm slams Apple, hoodwinks iTunes

John Square
Stop

@Bob18

"YOU have a right to use any music player you like to load YOUR music from YOUR computer onto YOUR mp3 player"

Hooray! YOU'RE right, Bobbo!

However, if YOU choose to use an iPod, YOU have to accept the limits of the design of THEIR system (i.e. iTunes software plus iPod hardware).

Why should Apple make iTunes compatible with everything else out there? Is this some sort of method you've come up with to heavily penalise anyone who comes up with a popular product? As soon as it becomes market leader, you have to give it away for your competitors to use in their systems (systems being your software+their hardware)? Why should you give up (for free!) an asset you spent cash developing to make some other persons life easier?

Your last sentence should read "So Apple does have the right to tell *competitors* what they can or cannot plug into iTunes." It should read that because iTunes is theirs- not Palm's, not MS's and definitely not YOURS.

Apple tablet spooks world of PCs

John Square
Troll

@Tony Paulazzo

"But hey, if the iCrap iPad kicks off a decent windows version (like the iPhone did for mobile touch screens - I love my Samsung Tocco), then I'm all for it."

1) If you are talking about the OS-The Tocco runs Samsung's own OS, with a (poor) version of TouchWiz running over the top.

2) If you are talking about the touchscreen- the Tocco has a resistive single-touch touchscreen, not the iPhone's capacitive multitouch one. Also, the Tocco has some flimsy, cloudy plastic over the top of the screen, not a crystal clear slab of glass.

Hang on, I've just had a horrid thought: Could you seriously be stating that you prefer WinMo to the iPhone's OSX distro? Or have I fallen for a (very obvious) troll?

Ridley Scott signs up to direct Alien prequel

John Square
Thumb Up

Ahh...

... let's play "Speculate"!

The special order (ref: Nordrick Framelhammer 22:38) shows the company already knew about the Aliens. However, they'd presumably never gotten hold of one, but there was some form of contact pre-the first film. So, if you want them, you can have humans. You could even have a little conspiracy going on, with the company's raison d'etre being to get hold of the Alien before anyone else, and all the deep space mining just being a cover.

As for the folks on the ship, why can't they be mid 21st century humans on one of the first deep space journeys? Some sort of Columbus-style journey out to a promised new land? Maybe they pick something up off an asteroid, or on some little planetoid (a little like O'Bannon's early draft of the Alien script back when it was called Star Beast, and Ripley was a man)?

Either way, set it on board a big new shiny ship with some nice new technology for them to iron the wrinkles out of (who is to say that they even know an Alien is on board with them- maybe it's all just caused by a few missed bugs?) Maybe the alien wants to get somewhere bigger and better stocked with food?

You don't have to have all the people survive either, do you?

CentOS back from brink of death

John Square
Stop

Gah...

There's two (at least) opposing views here, and both are sort of right.

On the one hand, you've got the folks who say "Linux will never get to the level of ubiquity that Windows and OSX has because each additional distro confuses things, and ultimately puts people off. Get behind one distro, and the world will come to you"

On the other, you've got people who say "The strength of Linux is the variety: I can put exactly what I want on each machine and get the best from each bit of hardware, why change that to go for a single distro that makes things work less well?"

The problem with that second viewpoint is that until there is some consolidation within Linux and it's thousands of distributions- corporates, schools and universities (etc) won't migrate away from Windows until they can be sure that the migration costs (for example) won't be wasted by them opting for the "wrong" distro. Or the choice of OS wrecks some other strategic goal. Or the Chief exec finds his own copy of Word at home doesn;t like ODF. Or whatever.

Simple reason for all this is: Senior people lose their jobs when they guess the wrong way on the big decisions. Or to put it another way: if you were tasked with saying exactly when to switch away from Windows, *and* which of an infinite number of distros will "win"( and that's the corporate mentality: that there must always be a winner and that there can only be one right answer), would you be brave? Or would you allow the ship to carry on sailing on it's Redmond-bound course, pocketing your exec salary every month?

Without Linux (whether you think of it as a kernel or an OS, or whatever) getting a foothold in the schools, universities and offices of the world, it's not going to break onto the home desktop and it's userbase will be small. No more money will drop into the distro food chain (support companies, devco's etc.) and linux will stay niche.

This set of circumstances is a shortcoming in the mindset of the institutions and not the fault of the product or the community, but it's there and pretending it's not is a daft thing to do. At least, it is if you want ubiquity. If you don't, then carry on as you were (presumably compiling gentoo from the command line).

Toshiba TG01 smartphone

John Square

Gah...

... I quite liked the look of this phone- until I saw it in the flesh. It's absolutely huge.

I mean, think how large it could reasonably be, and then add on a bit more, and you'll still be a bit too small.

It's really surprising that Tosh took trhe risk on making it that big- corporate culture tends to weed out a phone the size of a phonebook (particularly after 20 years of miniaturisation in the phone market).

And as for WinMo- yes, it is a dogs dinner, but the basic (without touchscreen) version is pretty usable- better than Symbian, anyhow, and worth a shake for good email interaction and exchange calendar support. I'll never buy another WinMo touchscreen phone again.

I wonder why no android?

Apple tablet unveiling brought forward

John Square
Go

Good for movies... and more.

I just posted in the other Apple tablet thread, but having given this more thought, I really can see this being a good move for Cupertino.

The iPhone/Pod Touch screen is too small for sofa-based browsing, but a laptop is too big, frankly (or at least it is for me). If you can link the iPad (or whatever it's called) into your network, and use it to VNC into bigger, meatier computers, or use it to control things that happen on your TV, I'll buy one.

If it also brings about an iPod for Books, I'll also be at the head of the queue.

As for the Apple TV, do we think that this could be a useful co-conspirator in bringing a better iTunes to your telly/media centre experience about?

Finally, you may even see Time Capsule stop being a rather expensive n Wireless AP and NAS, and start being a home server, which would fill a real need I have at that price point.

All conjecture, but there are gaps in the Apple "Digital Lifestyle" portfolio, and at least three rather dead-end looking products kicking about (Time Capsule, the iTunes-streaming Airport base station and Apple TV). As there's been not a great deal of movement in the Home Server market for the last three years, it may be that Apple have set their sights on expanding out of the phone/MP3 and computing space in peoples houses onto joining their existing products together better with a simple slate device and some additional functionality to some of their more -ahem- "placeholder" products.

Palm restores Pré iTunes synchronisation

John Square

@Robert E A Harvey, Sean T, New Handle

Well said- anti trust isnt there to protect people who can't get it right, and Palm fall into that category at the moment.

I'm not an iPhone owner (I seem to prefer lower tech in the phone market) but the traditional phone vendors rode their own gravy train to the end of the line. Apple came along and invented a more complete package, doing touch screen, application sales and a slew of other things in a better way than the intra-vendor wars had seen done before. They haven't quite got the enterprise bit sorted yet, but I'm seeing more companies chance their arms on an iPhone as a corporate handset, and I have a feeling that the iPhone may yet be one of a very few Apple enterprise success stories. Mayby just a x.1 os revison away, perhaps?

Good work, jobsian minions, you did well there.

Apple iTablet a (virtual) certainty

John Square
Go

Not sure...

... about what form his tablet will take, but there is definitely a gap in the Apple ecosystem for it. I can see this midsize (between iPhone/iPod and Laptop) device being an excellent way of expanding the range of the App store- it seems daft to only have the app store for software gadgets and micro apps? Why not have it furnishing all Apple software?

Aside from that- this tablet would be a good way of growing Apple's presence in peoples homes. The iPhone cannibalised the iPod market, being as it is an iPod with additional functionality grafted on to it. Launch a sensibly priced 8" computing platform for people like GrantB's kids, or the home theatre mob, or the sofa surfers to use, and I can see vast swathes of people changing their next desktop purchase from a new wintel box to an iMac or Macbook, especially if the iPad gains enhanced functionality as a result.

Perhaps the Remote app for the iPod and iPhone is just the first stage of this? Perhaps there's a new version of the rather limited Time Capsule coming out soon that adds home server functionality, and this iPad is a front end/client for that? Perhaps even a V3 of the Apple TV that adds PVR functionality?

It's all idle speculation, of course, but having just build a Win7 media centre, I can tell you: there's money to be made by someone who can think a little differently in that sector- and having your own hardware line would be a good way to start that market growing- the current iteration of hardware for HTPC's and home servers is utter rubbish.

Canon Selphy CP780

John Square
Go

D-Sub printing...

... is excellent- I have an olympus printer at home that does a great job of converting my digital snaps into dead-tree formats, and I very nearly bought the selphy reviewed for my dad's 63rd birthday at the weekend.

But, by Christ, the price! There's a triple pack of the prints and cartridges for £35 which helps the running cost down, but there's a high entry cost with the printer itself. Hardware companies having their cake and eating it, I think.

And yes, my olympus foxed me with the cartridge for the paper too (but it came with a 100 print starter pack, and all for £100)

Acer Tempo M900

John Square
Coffee/keyboard

I agree with Rik

"a rather fine leather belt clip"

But I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume sarcasm.

Kent Police clamp down on tall photographers

John Square

I'm 6'7" tall...

...and from now on, I'm avoiding Kent.

If 5'11" is enough to be threatening, I'd expect them just to shoot me on sight, as being more than 2m high must constitute an act of war.

TechCrunch dubs Linux a 'big ol’ bag of drivers'

John Square
Thumb Up

Ted...

You did a good job here. Well done.

A practical guide to disaster recovery planning

John Square
FAIL

@ Dave Cameon

Hmmm: you got me worried there, big Dave.

"We had bouts of flu and other things which got in the way of perfection, but none so time wasting and cash sucking as IT, computers and periferals [sic]."

Is your "business" a farm? Actually, agribusiness in East Anglia is pretty modern, so I'm assuming a Welsh hill sheep farm, or sommat. I would have imagined as an MD you'd be pretty au fait with the concept of a tool and how the efficacy of a tool relates to it its suitability for the task in hand, and the ability of its user to wield it properly.

You're blaming tools for an awful lot here, and you know what kind of worker does that?

For the low, low price of £1,000 per day, I'll come and give you a bit of advice on how to tame your IT and bring a bit of business benefit to accompany your IT costs. I mean, you'd be surprised how much easier it is to run a business with the machines doing the godawful grunt work.

(I'm perfectly aware that this is most likely a troll, but for £1,000 a day, I'm prepared to take the chance that DC is a genuine...)

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