* Posts by Pete 40

19 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Oct 2009

White van men swipe British black bees

Pete 40
Joke

I'm sure...

... they just did it for the buzz.

Scroogle busted again after Google tweak

Pete 40
WTF?

Dodgy Scroogle hating going on

There are some unusual comments here - I wonder where they could be coming from. Somewhere with a good panorama over the peaks perhaps? Scroogle has, for a long time, provided a great search alternative for those of us who despise Google's insatiable manic desire for data collection and mining. And a facelift? Oh, do be brief. Use Scroogle SSL in FF's search box and you never even get to see the home page, just the clean and useful results it produces.

Of course it all comes down to personal preference. If you don't care about your privacy, use Google. If you do, use another search engine with a good privacy policy, or use a service like Scroogle.

Phorm's losses top $100m

Pete 40
Happy

Mine's a Newquay Steam Bitter...

I was having such a bad day until I read this. It's not all over yet, but it's good to see Phorm clinging on to the ropes.

Ten free apps to install on every new PC

Pete 40
Happy

Late to the party again but...

... can I just add my voice to the iTunes neigh-sayers - I've lost count of the hours I've lost trying to get this working on people's computers or finding it is the cause of knock-on problems. On several occasions recently I've felt like telling people that I won't even touch their computer if it's got iTunes installed (it will never get anywhere near any of mine) but in the end, like a glutton for punishment, I relent.

So, free apps? Some nice ones listed here, to which I could add tons more but I'll restrict it to some of the wee gems that make up my armoury and that I haven't seen mentioned here.

. Revo Uninstaller

. Eusing Registry Defrag

. SpaceSniffer - Disk space usage analyser

. UltraFileSearch

. Universal Extractor

. Browser Chooser - Intercepts app calls to browser

. Autoruns - startup/service etc. organiser

. Jarte - Light portable word processor

. SIW - System info

. Syncback Free - Backups

. VirtualCloneDrive

C language inventor spurns Google's language exam

Pete 40
Happy

La plume de ma tante

Implicit "a"? That's new one on me. ;-) If you can say "test the ability of coders to..." then you can say "test coders' ability to..." without putting a foot wrong.

Strangely enough, I don't know what a gerund is - I went to school when teaching grammar was out of vogue and I can't remember ever being taught the specifics (which is a good thing given that the exceptions outweigh the rules). English to me is similar to computer language: you immerse yourself in it enough that in the end you get the rhythm and you simply know (with fairly good accuracy) what's right and wrong by feel alone.

Of course if you helped to write the language in question then you're the one who gave the language its rhythm in the first place.

Pete 40
Happy

Syntax...

,,, is very important as well. For example, there's a wee difference between "lead" and "led", "coder's" and "coders'", and "permanent" and "permenant". It's all about being clean and tight, no? ;-) Hope you don't mind the peer review amigo mio. Ciao!

Microsoft slams coffin lid on Vista

Pete 40

Get a life!

Happy? :-)

Pete 40

One man's dig is another man's factual correction

No dig intended, honest squire.

Pete 40

Well...

... you believe incorrectly. To me, a commentard is a person who makes a comment to an article on the Register, like you and I. Or at least it was until I just checked the Urban dictionary. Ok, I'm corrected, he or she is just a commenter then, although it doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Nice spot though - good to see someone's paying attention.

Pete 40

Lordy lordy, it's the fat Vista

I run Vista machines too. I'm not adverse to the operating system (after SP1 anyhow), but it's obviously more resource-hungry than XP, was shipped on many machines that were inadequate for purpose, and initially had its horrendous file copy problems. Those machines that I do run Vista on have UAC switched off and various other tweaks that make the use of the operating system quite manageable. However I shouldn't have needed to do this. User interface-wise, it was a step forward from XP (I do like me gloss it has to be said) but the performance price was simply too high. There are various software packages out there that will give an XP machine a glossy aero interface without the hungriness of Vista.

Look, if you've got the hardware, as you obviously do, then Vista's fine, but it was so obviously inadequate for the majority of machines already out there (and many that were sold with it at the time) that it created headaches galore. Who knows whether the Vista design decisions were motivated by the need to stimulate the purchase of new hardware or not, but I'm not surprised that so many people have so many bad things to say about it and are all fired up. They deserve a moan.

Pete 40

Ha!

Far better to hoist yourself on your own petard than have someone else do it for you. In answer to your question: yes, but not much. Not nearly enough. I'd be interested to hear your opinion though.

Pete 40

Do you know...

The comment above is why I despair of the way people interact these days. Rather than just calling the author out for presenting a misleading headline (which would be justified), the commentard here calls him "dense" and then finishes up with "Time for some of you here to get a life." Why be so aggressive and dismissive? Are we now insecure in ourselves to such an extent that we have to talk and act like this? Anyone know?

Pete 40
Happy

Re: Just XP with eyecandy

No, Monsieur Arctic Fox, I'm not a Mac user, by what I imagine is your definition of the term anyway. I'm mostly a Windowsboi, having also used Macs and dabbled in Linux/Unix (and even cute wee QNX) during my time as many of us have. Ok, I'm intrigued, here's your chance to pitch for 7. How does it float your boat where XP doesn't?

Pete 40

Vista - ain't nothing but a hound dog

It surprised me, and yet didn't, that Microsoft didn't offer a free upgrade from Vista to 7. Vista was so much of a turkey, particularly in its earliest incarnations, that Microsoft could have done with clawing back some of the goodwill it lost by offering such an upgrade and, as a bonus, getting as many people off Vista as possible. However, in practical terms, they have an operating system monopoly in this market, and so obviously decided that demand and supply meant that they could get away with making it a paid upgrade. I suppose that a free upgrade would also have been seen as some form of admission that they got it spectacularly wrong with Vista.

What surprises me, and doesn't surprise me, even more though is the evangelical way in which some people have been praising 7. Look at XP, look at 7, and look at all the years in-between and in essence the product has not gone very far for the ordinary user. 7 is simply, and ignoring some of the under-the-hood improvements, XP with eye candy. The evangelists are seemingly very easily pleased.

Facebook rejects CEOP 'panic button' demands (again)

Pete 40

Swimming against the tide as usual...

... but I have to say that I like Ben Tasker's idea. Have the button as an option, default "off" but included as part of an overall awareness programme, including highlighting its availability to anyone under a specified age creating an account. Misuse, mostly for the sake of amusement, could be a problem though so I would like to see a well thought-out, "common-sense"-managed approach taken by the CEOP as regards any "alarms" sent its way. Knowing human nature though, especially nowadays where over-reaction, continuous red-alert status and "zero tolerance" seem to be the menu du jour and, as a result, society is increasingly unable to distinguish between true threats and false alarms (and all the grey areas in-between), such a system may well not work in real life.

Austrian takes pickaxe to Street View spymobile

Pete 40
Happy

South-West?

South-East, shurely?

Pete 40
Headmaster

Spelling skills are lacking

Unless there's a new country called "Austrailia". Of course, maybe there are a lot of trains there.

IE bug leaks private details from 50m PDF files

Pete 40
Happy

I beg to differ

Contrary to a couple of comments above, I figured out straight away what the Reg article was talking about, and I don't consider myself the smartest kid in class. Perhaps the art of reading is on the wane? ;-) As for metadata, it can be a boon and equally an annoying security problem, the latter especially as it is mostly "invisible". The vast majority of programs that deal with file formats incorporating metadata don't make it easy (for the casual user at least) to view, edit and strip out metadata. We are still a long way off from possessing a proper security-related computer culture. If only this "exposé" would make a blind bit of difference. Sadly it won't.

Aussie Sex Party in evangelist head-to-head

Pete 40
Thumb Down

@Ed Blackshaw

Methinks you should research the history of Islam a wee bit - you'll find it is much younger than you thought, and certainly younger than Christianity. The guy you were criticizing uninformed? Better search out your petard, quick...