* Posts by Andy Enderby

67 publicly visible posts • joined 25 May 2007

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Microsoft seeds HP PCs with Live Search

Andy Enderby

@ Ian

It is a problem. Check out Sootys post. I've seen and dealt with the same a multiplicity of times. Installed crapware simply soaking up all system resources on start up.

Privacy? Forget it. Sell your brain and desires to the highest bidder

Andy Enderby
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marketeers ?

Marketeers.... Shiteweasel shitwits one and all.

I am not a target market

Mounties taser bed-ridden octagenarian

Andy Enderby
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jeez...... tasered for wasting time ?

rather more of a threat.... how about complications to that heart surgery such as ooohhhhh, I'm not a doctor but how about arrhythmia brought about by an enthusiastic tasering. My father in law used to suffer from similar episodes, delerium as a complication of serious lung disease. Whilst he could be violent in such a state, trained staff were always able to deal with him in the end. It took staff, training and time - nobody hurt on either side. Certainly nobody thought to consult the local constabulary and have him zapped, although I'm sure his contiued smoking tempted them.

The RCMP's concerned can consider themselves lucky not to have caused another death.

I Was A Teenage Bot Master

Andy Enderby
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Crime and punishment

Some of the posters here are forgetting that this little weasel was pursuing his hobby not out of "juvenile high spirits", but out of greed, pure and simple. The wee turd was making money out his enterprises, which means that someone somewhere was losing out, whether because they had to pay for someone to purge the malware, someone stole their credentials. The funds gained from the various ad companies were the result of fraud.

There is an argument that all of us internet users have lost out as a result of the skiddies use of bandwidth and the resources soaked up, financial or otherwise protecting ourselves and/or others.

I agree that crime against the person no longer seem to carry sufficiently severe punishment, but fail to see how this excuses SoBe's anti social behaviour.

Lock the bugger up.

F1 chief seeks French ban on orgy video

Andy Enderby

only a certified halfwit.....

Only a certified halfwit would waste his dollar on blocking youtube at this late stage..... Oh wait, isn't that what Max called Jackie Stewart ? No Nazi connotations ? Oh come on ! Even Paris Hilton could point that out.

I've followed motorsport for about 39 of my 43 years, and it is my opinion that Max and Bernie have progressively chiselled away at the credibility of the sport since they deposed the previous incumbent (oddly enough another chappie with fascistic connections if certain sources are to be believed, one Jean Marie Balestre), but I do believe that the guys privacy has been intruded upon. Again though only a certified halfwit would fail to realise the potential for blackmail by those offering such services, or the glee that the tabloid press would take in ensuring the reports of such activities made the front page...

BT's secret Phorm trials open door to corporate eavesdropping

Andy Enderby
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hmmmmm.......

I wonder if they (Phorm) have made any political donations recently......

Net think tank: Phorm is illegal

Andy Enderby

This needs a wider audience

Specifically, it needs posting on the various share price news fora.

BOFH: On the brink

Andy Enderby

@Max Allan

No you didn't have to recompile the kernel...... They called it relinking, oh and you had do it for just about everything. Change IP address, relink, install a maintenance pack - relink, blah...... I still keep my Opens(w)erver 5.0.4 and 5.0.5 media for historical (hysterical) interest. I reckon the funniest thing about it was the lisencing structure. You want to connect to the internet on dial up - mo' money for ppp, yoou want to fire up the second processor - mo money, you want...... gimmme. Kind of like getting mugged, but witout the physical aspect of getting stomped on in the street. In the old days of SCO Unix, if you wanted functional TCP/IP bejesus..... guess what ? another lisence, more money.

On the upside, thanks to lxrun I used to run doom multiplayer with other members of the unix support department.

Mass compromise powers massive drive-by download attack

Andy Enderby

An unfortunate new trend

There seems to be a trend of attacking web communities developing right now. I traced the miscreants responsible for an attack on two communities I deal with as a punter back to sites allied to the RBN (Russian Business Network), and am of the opinion that this is far from unique. After all, the returns are potentially far higher - the perps know the central themes in the community fora and can target scams more accurately. More return, less work.

Trusted Websites ? That's an oxymoron isn't it ? In the case above though, I was one of the few that got away without getting compromised.

Northrop: battlefield rayguns to demo this year

Andy Enderby
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Hazmat

There was a pile of speculation years ago in a book by Rupert Keegan (I think) about hydrogen/flourine lasers. As far as I'm aware, hydrogen flouride byproduct is still something you don't want hanging around, and the idea of hauling around large amounts of hyrdrogen and flourine in a bullet magnet that requires line of sight to target is still unlikely to be popular with vehicle crews.

Why I downgraded from Vista to XP

Andy Enderby
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@Well said. Very eloquently spoken. And a F*ck you....

Whilst you are entitled to your view that we have no such right, we do have the right to judge, so you know what you can do.....

I have a family friend that with a duo core Dell lappie, 2Gigs of RAM. As supplied with all the usual Dell management apps it was regularly taking 10 minutes to boot and was effectively unusable. God help you if you have more than one application open at a time. Even after stripping out the dross and disabling the eye candy this powerful box solidly under performs and now requires re-installation. Vista is simply not ready for primetime. I have never seen Vista perform as adequately as a Windows 98 RC1 install unless no apps were installed on the Vista box..... Pointless eyecandy and no content.

Portsmouth student peeled in potato laptop scam

Andy Enderby
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When I rule the world......

Sounds like a good test case for my two suggestions for new laws. Intent to receive stolen goods, and not being in possession of a full deck. Case proved, ship the pillock off to Anthrax Island for 5 years or so.

As suggested elsewhere in this thread, I do feel the copper should have been a tad less sympathetic and more forthright.

CPW builds wall between customers and Phorm

Andy Enderby

@Jared Earle

Now send them another nastygram saying something along the lines of....."An email saying, 'be assured' constitutes no assurance at all. As an IT professional with influence, I will be leaving Virgin/CPW/BT (delete as applicable), and recommending that friends and customers alike do likewise as soon as practicable."

That should get something a little less anodyne from the b*st*rds.

Pitcairn Island relays most spam per person

Andy Enderby

Appropriate action ?

Whilst these open relay servers may not be under direct control of the locals, they are definitely someones responsibilty. So in the meantime cut the *****s off from the internet at large until the miscreant responsible shows their miserable face.

.....Then execute the b*st*rds.

Dear ISP, I am not a target market

Andy Enderby
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What part of this do they not understand...

Did the Phorm CEO head a crapware/scareware/malware punting company ? - yes

Are the servers in China ? - yes

Does Phorms business model smell like yesterdays pile of donkey cr*p ? - yes

All my usage data are belong to Phorm - get stuffed

Does any right thinking person want any part of this pile of dross ? - No way.

Bugger Phorm, the horse they rode in on, and the expensive PR hacks.

Jodrell Bank offloaded on eBay

Andy Enderby
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@Hedley....

....and will the last scientist to leave the country kindly switch off the lights.

No to worry though, because with no industry to speak of, no engineering going on, no research etc... before long the STFC will have become an irrelevance and will in turn lose all its funding.

CBI calls for major overhaul to UK tax

Andy Enderby

Let me guess.....

.....Their enire pitch is to move a greater share of the tax burden from those who do have money to those who don't.

Let me guess your voting tendencies spiteful...... <consults crystal ball>....I'm getting mmmm, rich, thick and full of clots..... oh yes the tories.

Nine Inch Nails cracks net distribution (maybe)

Andy Enderby
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top !

@ thomas k. - He wrote the music for the originla releae of Quake I believe. I've bought NiN products for the last 15 years and enjoyed them. I'm treating the free release as I'm sure it's intended a taster until I can get my arse to a record shop or get my backside in gear and grab it from Reznor himself.

Interesting character, he trained as a classical musician.

Microsoft dropped Vista hardware spec to raise Intel profits

Andy Enderby
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@Allan Rutland

Yes it does, they controlled the spec. Intel didn't write it for them. If MS re-wrote it for a third party, they still re-wrote the spec.

The Phorm files

Andy Enderby
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errr a question for the phorm interview

Just what the f**k makes them think we want any part of their cr*pware ? Enhanced user experience ! My Boney Arse !

Nokia unwraps bendy nanotech phone

Andy Enderby

hmmm.....

concept only, in other words, it only exists on someones PC someehere. If it does have a physical existance it will indeed be like those none-functional concept cars that the motor manufacturers are so enamoured of and haul at great expense around car shows. If the project runs true to form expect to see a product roughly resembling, but essentially nothing like the concept in question in any way..... just like the car industry ....in about 10 years time (just like the car industry). File under marketting fluff.

Restored Vulcan hits financial turbulence

Andy Enderby
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@Andrew

The Vulcan is still at Coventry in the museum. I saw it a couple of weeks ago. If you turn up on the right days, when a qualified guide is present they actually open up their Argosy and the Vulcan to viewing by the public. Getting into the Vulcan means clambering up the old crew ladder through the hatch just in front of the nose gear.

There are indeed five seats, the pilots get ejection seats, the three poor buggers in the back go down with the plane if it all goes titsup. The three lucky chappies in the back would be a Navigator, Radio Operator and Flight Engineer if I remember (for Mr Legett). Should you check out Google Earth by the way, the Vulcan is immediately recognisable.

Armed police swoop on MP3-packing mechanic

Andy Enderby
Dead Vulture

@Iain

Mildly opressed..... What do you mean, like Menezes or the other unfortunates mentioned in this thread?

It's human nature to make mistakes, and in incidents where firearms are suspected to be involved enforcement officials are likely to be understandably twitchy, but come on........ No crime, held in cells, dna taken. Not good enough. If they had held him while they verified that in fact no offence had taken place then released him without the dna probe....fair enough. This ?

How many liberties do you want to give up in the name of security ? In what way do any of these new measures materially affect our security in a positive way ? They don't, and with ID cards there is a very real risk that over confidence in them will actually compromise security. In the case of what seems to be about to become a global UK dna database, as the database grows exponentially, the response to searches is likely to decline somewhat..... as the demand for such searches climbs - more so. How long do you fancy spending in a cell while the poor bloody cops confirm that yes, the ID card you were carrying is one of a bunch that got cloned after some muppet left a CD in a pub or some such.

Bollocks

Thievin' teen bot herder admits to infecting military computers

Andy Enderby

just deserts

<snip> "It's immoral, but the money makes it right,"

"I just hope this stuff lasts a while so I don't have to get a job right away,"

</snip>

Bet they didn't think they'd have those words read back to them.....

What used to stun me was the lasck of competence in corporate and governmental sysadmins in these stories, having seen the muppets they hire, and the restrictions the folks that do know what they are doing have to work under - ie stupidly long hours due to under manning, the inability to spec anything other than MS O/S's for political reasons.....etc It's only a wonder that it wasn't much worse.

US man threatens TV repairman with shotgun

Andy Enderby

ahh the good old days.....

Received repeated calls from a disgruntled guy that bought his Apricot PC from PC World. The PC was repeatedly crashing, as was the business he was trying to run from said PC. Needless to say, no back ups..... As per company policy I redirected him to PC Worlds support operation and thought no more of it for an hour or two.

Engineer at desk next door then starts getting calls from same customer and starts looking alarmed, she has apparently been informed by him that he is heading to the ferry port armed with a shotgun. This duly reported to a manager who calms her frayed nerves and tells her, "no, this kind of thing happens all the time".....

We then get a call from the guys partner who asks if he has called us...... strange.... Then informs that said chap has vanished, along with the PC in question, his work van and his shotgun, crucially though, not his meds. He was under doctors orders it transpiresm as both his marriage and business were failing possibly as a result of his mental health.

Thankfully the ferry port in Ireland that he was attempting to journey forth from was alerted and the bloke was wrestled to the ground by the local coppers.

It's not just the US.... People do get wound up by tech. For myself, my own hot button - it's my car a lovely wee sportscar - or it was.... A dealership supposed to be replacing a reversing lamp bulb last week actually stuck it on a bollard, in my presence. Cause - testosterone poisoning in the pillock detailed to get the car into the service bay. Angry.....? I reckon everyone within a hundred yards could work that one out.

Lightsaber voted top movie weapon

Andy Enderby
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@David Evans....

Oh yes Fido, better known as the rat-thing.... A nuclear powered armoured rottweiler cyborg with hard wired sub sonic speed limitation in urban areas...... just the job for keeping unauthorised types out of the server room or creating mayhem in the pub. The Kouriers skateboards hard their attractions too.

Andy Enderby

Outside of movies.....

Anyone familiar with Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson ?

What if they aren't friendly ?

"oh, they'll see reason"..... Reason v1.1 beta gatling railgun......

Click here to turn your HP laptop into a brick

Andy Enderby

dell crapware.....

I've installed 20 or so dell lappies for a charity in the last few months, and been requested to examine a family friends laptop. In every case as installed by Dell the lappies have been on the verge of useless as supplied, despite a far from modest hardware spec. Each of these unfortunate lappies has fired off so many mnagement apps at boot that there is barely sufficient system resource to fire off notepad. My personal favourite the Vista laptop supplied to the family friend, despite my advice to avoid Vista..... as supplied took 10 minutes to boot. That's ten minutes, as supplied by Dell, no additional software, no apps running other than VIsta + Dell crapware..... God help you if you fire up an IE window..... get a calendar and come back in a week I suspect.

I fail to see how this adds value.

On the upside.... actually no, there isn't one. They are in the business of shipping PC hardware with Windows and in my honest opinion should simply stop polishing the turd..... Stop adding more "value added" crap until the damn thing simply sits there useless. Stop spending money on brain damaged "dumbware", simply include a media kit/ recovery pack leave well alone, and avoid all of the complications.

Microsoft spits out final XP service pack, beta version

Andy Enderby

@Steve Hewitt

errrr......

DX10 - Unless you're in a game dev house, what the hell is this bloat required for in an enterprise environment ? Or are the techies all playing Crysis when they should be on the blower.....

DRM - Media player apps in the workplace ? Truly marvellous time-sinks, the users will end up spending their time loading their CD/DVD collections onto iPods/youtube/who cares......

The problems with both of the above are more truly anchored with home users and the appropriate home versions of Vista, where the lack of performance is going cause a deal more anger when wee Johnny/Jane can't play Super Turbo Turkey Thwacker DX10 edition (insert real game here......) with all the detail turned on. Especially when Johnny/Jane could do so with the DX9 version that looked no different, but they had been running it on considerably more modest hardware.

DRM - Home users and media...... Show stopper if only because this what the home user typically uses a lot. Yes users shouldn't be raiding the web for free content, but haven't the ISP's and everyone else been implying for years that the internet is all about just that - free content. Basic file copy/move operations should not be bollixed by DRM which it currently is. If content is stolen/misappropriated what the **** is wrong with it being checked at the time it is played, and simply not played.... ie it simply occupies space on the hard disk. MS should not be attempting to take corporate responsibility for other vendors failure to implement DRM into apps or hardware.

SuperFetch sounds like a great idea but the truth is everything in RAM has to get there through the same bus as everything else, and as the computer is used superfetch is going to run its arse off trying to pre-empt the user. It's a recipe for the whole PC to become I/O bound for no good reason. It sounds like the kind of thing that happens when you mistune kernel parameters in *nix in search of ever greater interactive performance only to see that performance disappear. It should be switched off as default. Given PC architecture, superfetch seems to be a brain damaged decision in the majority of cases.

Performance.... In the majority of cases is going ot be better with XP, especially for gaming.

Appraisals are dishonest, waste of time

Andy Enderby

objective appraisals ?

The thing about being an industrial cleaner, as I was in the early nineties is that people assume you're an illiterate idiot. During the course of my duties I noted with great glee a memo carelessy left in one piece in a bin I was sent to empty. Sent from above and informing managers that if they gave positive appraisals then less money would be available for there own pay rise.

After a string of largely spurious appraisals, miserly rises in the face of rises in production, quality and safety metrics leading to miserly rises for workers, but disproportionate rises for management (hey ! I thought the company and us oiks were under performing according to you lot....which means you were too.) morale, quality and safety sunk to the lowest levels imaginable. Products that had never previously had a problem were failing the most basic QC........ Who'd have guessed.

God alone knows what would have happened if I'd actually opened my mouth, but the truth is, that when these events happen, it's transparent to anyone in a workplace with an ounce of sense (not one worker getting a decent rise, all managers turning up in new cars etc....). When the inevitable happens, of course the last people to take responsibility are the management who effectively gunned down morale. Workforce surpass every imaginable target, then get kicked in the pants......why disrupt the workplace with the stress of appraisals if you can't be arsed to be honest.

What I'm getting to is that in the UK appraisals are usually used as a stick to wallop employees and reward frequently incompetent management. As pointed out above perhaps decent workers need to appraise employers a little more aggresively and walk if they can't/wont deliver.

Gibson plugs in self-tuning roboguitar

Andy Enderby
Happy

digital guitars ?

digital guitars eh ? Anyone remember the Roland Synth Guitar (the G707) of the early/mid eighties (looked like the bastard love child of an armalite rifle and an electric guitar), so beloved of the truly awful Sigue Sigue Sputnik. One of its quirks was that it depended on strings being at pitch in order to trigger the synth, silence being the result in the demo I saw when the guitar strings drifted out of tune. Useful for muppets like Sige Sigue Sputnik.....

MS Explorer foundering after UFO strike

Andy Enderby
Coat

errr....

that cabin boy Roger needs to move fast...

UN mandates stability control in trucks - cars to follow

Andy Enderby
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stability control....

Is a standard fitment on my 4 year old rear wheel drive sports car - I grant it may be known to the public at large by another name - ie my feet and my hands and my co-ordination of same.

Given the percentage of the year that Northern European roads are less than optimally grippy, it astounds me that there remains no obligation to demonstrate even basic understanding of what needs to be done if a drivers vehicle loses grip for any reason.

I've driven karts in the rain on slicks (fun if you are not trying to acheive anything), motorcycles with snow on the roads (damn good fun), motorcycles on diesel (always garanteed to raise your pulse rate) courtesy of leaky Birmingham City Council vehicles, and our wee sportscar in all sorts of filthy conditions. The only time I've been worried ? Looking in the rear view mirror and observing a front wheel drive saloon (allegedly safer) spinning gracefully toward my rear bumper the driver having lost it on the same icy junction I took at appropriate speed and had no trouble with.

The only times I have ever been involved in an accident ? Near fatal encounter with a blind taxi driver turning right despite my being so close I could almost whisper in his ear that looking right might be a good idea, and two close encounters with uber saloon/hatchback drivers who trusted their respective traction/stability aids would allow them to do the impossible, one of whom struck the bus I was a passenger on - his alcohol content would have allowed him ot burn with a steady blue flame, and another bright spark who drove their hot hatchback directly into the rear of my wifes VW Beetle having failed to recognise that looking forward is more important than doing her make up (literally). Not one of these classically recognised accidents (2xnot looking where they were going, 1xdrunk darwin candidate) would have been prevented by ESC, ABS or traction control.

How about a compulsory half hour of basic skid pad training for all ? Or reduced insurance for those of us that can demonstrate the required level of CLUE....?

Remembering the Commodore PET 2001

Andy Enderby
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memories

I remember passing my O' Level Computer Science on the back of programming projects completed on one of these Commodore PET's. I was one of the second intake inour school to study computing of any description, and one of the first three students offered the O' Level qualification when our tutor was supposed ot take his. Bless the guy, whilst we three all passed ours, juggling his job and family had an impact on our dear old tutor, as he failed his on the first time of asking, whilst managing ot get enough knowledge into us to pass. These days he wouldn't have been permitted to attempt such a stunt unless he had passed the exam first....

Whois database targeted for destruction

Andy Enderby
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@ Make it cost for the scammers

Not very hypothetical situation...

I have maintained the website of a charitable organisation for about 18 months and during this time we have been spammed out of site by the usual Lads, bogus banks and penis pill purveyors. One of the guilty parties appears to be a compromised machine belonging to a .mil domain....

Thanks to whois I can at least take steps to contact a human being..... without whois, who knows..... Given the dearth of budget for things like backup media around here, would I be willing to consider it if there was a cost attached.

Doing away with whois does away with accountability for the usual suspects, and sensible means of contact for compromised innocent (if occasionally careless) parties.

As a person who supports the privacy I appreciate the concerns, but am very much aware that this proposal threatens to chuck out the baby with the bath water, making life much more difficult than it needs to be by removing another level of accountability and yet more contact data.

Ever emailed an abuse@ address for a decent sized org ? Ever received a reply ? In 11 years, I believe I have received precisely two, one from a UK university who were glad to know they had a compromised server, one from an ISP, a customer of whom was using their service to be an anti social script kiddie. The ISP in question shut them down because of the history of complaints. Often though abuse@ appears to simply drop into /dev/null. Polite, honest phone calls tend to yield more immediate results.

The usual suspects don't need their life made any easier, and we don't need ours made any harder.

El Reg deploys (extra) comment icons

Andy Enderby
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how about .....

...... a monkeyboy icon ? A certain denizen in the belly of the Beast of Redmond prancing around like a demented primate, or at least wearing a jesters costume ?

UK ID card service mounts birth, marriage, death landgrab

Andy Enderby
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Title

>>At the moment I am on the IPS list of people with a pasport, the DVLA driving licence database, local police register of gun owners, NHS database (twice with two diferent numbers because they issued me a new one when I lived in london, HMR&C list of people paying tax, National insurance contributors, TV licencing (even though I no longer have a TV but because I used to have one).<<

Yes, but if any one of these systems is subverted there is a limit on the immediate usefulness of the information that can be gained in the majority of cases.

Given the goverments and its employees record of general slackness, if this new model is subverted then some jolly type can become effectively legally you, in every way imaginable (apart from being you that is).

Further, I find the whole pretence an egregious abomination. The whole project will be outsourced opening further opportunities for the biggest database in Britain to be abused and sold on. Anyone willing to bet that the likes of Crapita will end up with the contract ? That they will directly, or dodgy employees will sell the data to anyone willing to pay ?

Get on to www.theyworkforyou.com and give your MP both barrels. Brush aside the crap about "nothing to hide", that the majority of these <sarcasm/> fine examples of democratic accountability </sarcasm> will trot out and give 'em a roasting - before your goverment starts selling your data to the penis pill purveyors/

Andy Enderby
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@ Vladimir Plouzhnikov

>>"Seeing as the ID card seems to be inevitible..."

No they are not - if we all vote for Tories.

<<

You have to f*cking joking.....

Only Sky can save digital TV

Andy Enderby
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....well it is comment after all....

....But is demonstrably wrong on so many levels. Clearly in the pay of the digger, and clearly talking out of his arse.

As for digital terrestrial broadcasts..... I realise that those living south of Watford a likely to consider Birmingham to be the end of the universe, however I feel that before analogue is finally shuffled off, it might be nice if we could please extend a signal of viewable quality over the city...... Come to think of it, the same could be said of the whole damn country.

Novell punts world's most expensive Linux distro

Andy Enderby

now fixed

Decimal point is now in the correct position.

Microsoft-loving (former) security czar calls for closed internet

Andy Enderby

errrr.....

Isn't there a small cottage industry flogging stolen ID's ?

And exactly what is going to validate that the ID is being used by the person to whom it was issued (if it's even genuine).

Are we going to have to submit DNA before updating a blog ?

Software that doesn't need patching ? Standards determined by M$ ? errr...... no M$ software ever needs patching ? Security ????????

At a conference paid for by M$

Can anyone smell a large and rancid barrel of pork up for grabs ?

Dell trips up over laptop components

Andy Enderby

@said.....

.....exactly which position in the Dell marketting machine do you hold Said ?

BOFH: You think you know a guy...

Andy Enderby

Old kit

First personal computing I came into contact with..... hmmm, Commodore PET 8k with tape drive. Owned by the school, during that O'Level Computer Science class I reckon I did more work on that thing than anyone else, to the point of being locked into a store room with the thing to complete the programming project work. Second intake at our school to study computing..... Outside of the school premises..... DEC PDP-8 (programming classes), Research Machines Z80 based micro (ditto), work experience on the mighty Univac 1110 - now that was a real computer. You think modern UPS can be bulky, the UPS for the 1110 was the size of a decently large office, with loads of lead acid batterys and exposed busbars. Great fun.

Microsoft: New Live Search 'as good as Google'

Andy Enderby

More relevant results ?

I'd settle for results that had >>any<< relevance if I were them. Live search is so bad it's comical.

What's 77.1 x 850? Don't ask Excel 2007

Andy Enderby

Do they need a fresh batch of Code Monkeys at Redmond ?

Hold on, so it doesn't use the FPU, but is doing calculations in FP any way ? Surely this should be worth a couple of words in the user docs..... Oh wait, they don't supply any.

Sounds a bit crappy to me. Almost as funny as the problem with Word 2007 recently documented at the Reg which resulted in spell checker lapsing in to French and staying there..... or the long goodbye in Vista..... or the recent grief with Microsoft Update.....

@Dam thankfully there doesn't seem to be a substantial user base yet, correct, but there will be, sure as death and taxes.

Is it just me or does Redmond QC seem to have left town lately ?

US teacher fired for non-literal bible reading

Andy Enderby

Religion =

= a nice way for politicians, aristocrats and the rich to justify their position over the rest of us, and with which to attempt to control our thoughts and behaviour, whilst they themselves essentially do exactly as they please.

Sod the lot of 'em and their sky pixie.

Wait, hang on, anyone here want to set up a cult, I'm sure we could set up some sort of franchise, very profitable too.

EC competition commissioner slams US dissing

Andy Enderby

I wish....

... someone would stifle their ability to distribute half baked ruins like Vista.

SCO files for US bankruptcy protection

Andy Enderby

Title

My first unix support opportunity was working with SCO for Mitsubishi/Apricot, a time I richly enjoyed. The O/S's on offer were solid, stable, but in terms of support for other than enterprise hardware were starting to look staid and a little old fashioned even by '97 when compared to Sun Solaris, BSD or Linux. By '99 the signs were that new product releases contained less and less genuinely new content compared with previous increments, even for what was a conservative development house. Apricot closed in '99, I Had huge motorcycle accident but contiued watching with interest and growing dismay as software development programs gave way to the suits horse trading and eventually patent trolling. As early as 2002 it seemed they lacked any kind of interest in a sustainable business selling software.

Respected, profitable unix vendor to patent troll, to knocking at the doors of bankruptcy in 8 years, 7 of which could probably be considered as death throes.... The irony is, that during my time at Apricot they were actively contributing to Linux, and enabling SCO users to run Linux executables with lxrun.

Shame

Microsoft dispels rumors of stealth Windows updates

Andy Enderby

@ Ken Hagan

>>so all those who turned it off are now permanently cut off from WU, but they will never actually discover this because the older version of the software just isn't compatible with even the most basic "you are out of date" notification.<<

You're not the only calling BS here Ken. If the above case were true then anything sat on a shelf in your local PC vendor would be cut off from WU. That's not the case however.

MS == BS on this one.

Why oh why do rock stars die young?

Andy Enderby

has anyone else.....

....noticed the differential in life expectancy between european and stateside celebs. Perhaps the originators are angling for funding for more detailed research that shows the link between superior strength european booze and substances ?

I'll get my coat.

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