* Posts by John727

10 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Nov 2009

Engineer Doe thought people's private info 'might be useful'

John727
Trollface

MACs

There will be squeals. Squeals of pain. Oh joy, payback. Sadism at it's best.

No wait, it's impossible. Mac malware can never come about since all the creative designers that would have thought this stuff up are all too busy making iLove (to each other, of course ... just to banish any thoughts of paraphelia from your minds ... I know you went there ... you know who you are ... come on, admit it ... yes, you there ... lurking ... at the back ...).

John727

Re: Good point

Absolutely not. As some have already pointed out, my fav colour is purplemonkeybuttsore ... or was that with only one "t"? ...

Android hackers mull rooted mobe app marketplace

John727
Big Brother

Rooting

Screenshots aside, I would have thought that the more salient point, in favour of rooting, is to be able to replace your provider's spyware ridden build with something a little less intrusive. IMO, too much koolaid, regardless of which flavour, is bad for you.

1-in-3,200 chance* that a fiery satellite chunk will hit someone on Friday

John727
Mushroom

They don't care and we don't matter

One in 3200 does seem pretty likely, however, once NASA figured out it wasn't going to hit the US of A, they stopped caring and the UK TV news channels (I'm looking at you BBC and Sky) just regurgitated the press release without further thought.

Galaxy Tab remains illegal in Germany

John727
Boffin

Titties too

My arse has "smooth, simple surfaces". Should I lawyer-up?

New Apple move against Galaxy Tab on Euro front

John727
Thumb Down

Innosheesh

So Toshiba tablets (M200 circa 2004) never auto-rotated to portrait, or landscape depending on how they were held?

I still have mine and it still gives decent service. Ok, so it's a little heavy and gets a little hot and yes it is a quite thick, but it is +7 year old technology and it actually lets me run whatever I want on it (read: do real work) and converts to a real laptop with keyboard at the twist of the screen.

Oh and it has those extra pen buttons off-screen, which you just hover your pen over, to lock caps, control, (or user-defined action), etc. Perhaps Apple will "invent" those too, soon.

Maybe Apple should enforce their patents on thin-ness and cool-ness, which they undoubtedlly have thanks to an idiotic patent office and system.

Google, Facebook cop for preposterous patent potshot

John727
Grenade

A plurality of olfactory processes connected to farts and burps

You cannot make patent offfices liable for damages on "faulty" patents and expect to be able to patent even something such as the humble paperclip for anything less than a king's ransom. Who can afford that? Let me think ...

In any case, the state of play is now such that startups and small entrepeneurs cannot compete with large, established, corporates, since these companies patent every plurality of farts and burps and call their lawyers like they were drawing a six-gun, back in the days of the old West, simply for being "looked-at funny",.

Basically, if you're a startup, the system is broken. If you're a large, established, corporate, it's all fine and dandy and the mindset of the latter (execs, shareholders, markets) are so entrenched in the ethos of the patent system that no one is going to change that anytime soon.

Reducing the term and validity of a patent (in progressive stages) to something like five years (at most), might go a long way to fixing some of the mess.

Microsoft claims 90m sales of Windows 7

John727
Megaphone

The True Face of W7

@ac (So this article is MS "big up their own numbers")

This is exactly what I'm waiting to hear. The real truth behind the state of Windows 7, at this point in time. I figure another six months for the hype to die down.

Having been through the loop with Vista 64, where an early install caused nothing but trouble with a rich variety of applications and hardware mix and *cough* actually using your PC to do more than just game, or tap out a CV (e.g. Video capture/editing, CAD, Software Development, Digital Audio Workstation, Media Centre, etc.), I'm in no hurry to experience that all over again. Especially now, since Vista 64 is actually working 1000% better than on day 1 and I already shelled-out to replaced perfectly good, older, hardware peripherals that were never going to work properly with it anyway.

No, I'll wait for the Service Pack, the updated drivers, the missing feature patches, the compatible hardware, all the pain to pass and above all a tempting offer (price-wise) to move from the desolate wasteland of Vista 64 Ultimate to whatever the equivalent W7 landscape is; and if that never happens, then my next stop is the frozen ice-caps inhabited by the penguin.

Skype first to scrap Windows Mobile

John727
FAIL

Failed Evil Marketing

"the amount we're going to charge for 3G will make Skype too expensive to ever use on a mobile phone."

And how did that work out for them? That's what I thought. No one used 3G until prices started to become a lot more accessible. One wonders whether these brain-dead marketing types still have a job. You can just imagine the guy who said that rubbing his hands and cackling in a Dr. Evil kind of way as he delivered his message.

As for Skype on WM, it worked fine (and still does) for me. The crap user experience had everything to do with available bandwidth/latency and little to do with the UI, although I can certainly give more than a passing nod to the speakerphone issue. One has to agree that there is more to this than meets the eye.

Nevertheless, I too will be looking for an alternative, especially after the abortion that is Skype version 4 for the desktop.

Spanish payment breach prompts huge German card recall

John727
Grenade

Looking under the rug

@Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

"In good old Blighty" it would be swept under the carpet ..."

Did you check under the rug?

I fail to see how this only affects German credit cards used in Spain via the payment clearing house in question. Did the data thieves get selective? Surely it affects all CCs used through this particular, (as yet) unnamed clearing house (and I don't expect it will be named, ever); unless the defrauders decided that the German banking system was the softest target.

It would also be helpful to customers if the banks told us what to look for on our statements, in terms of discrepancies (spurious transactions, or "doctored" amounts?). It seems the word is to give as little word as possible. Keep it quiet, lest the public loses confidence in the banking system ... wait ... stable door anyone?

@Anonymous Coward

As for Spain being the "Wild West", well maybe, but we get to carry (metaphorical) guns and not told how we should live our lives by a nanny state. Actually, we do get told, but no one listens. It's what's so great about Spain :P