* Posts by W.O.Frobozz

261 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jan 2012

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Ghosts of Christmas Past: Ten tech treats from yesteryear

W.O.Frobozz

Re: Out that whole lot..

Back in the day just about ANYTHING with the Activision name on it was gold. I had stacks of Activision cartridges. We traded and passed them around at school between friends like packs of cigarettes. Oh the hours I wasted on Pitfall...and then when I got bored with it, I wasted even more hours with the game that would result if you flipped the power on Pitfall really fast (random scrambled game, but still fun).

The graphics were horrible but there was something about the 2600 that made it a must-have. Even Atari couldn't compete against it with later consoles. And those ancient Atari joysticks from 1982 had greater longevity than any joystick I owned since. (Although I really wish I had aquired a Wico back in the day...)

W.O.Frobozz

Apple QuickTake? Pshaw.

Real gadgeteers got the Canon Xap (or Zap) Shot "Still Video Camera" back in 1988. The tiny 2" floppy discs held 50 pictures per disc.

I was actually shocked to learn some years later that it wasn't really a digital camera. It was more like a VCR, taking analog images and recording them on that floppy.

Still...great device for it's day. Plugging the thing into a TV set and reviewing your snaps was a real crowd pleaser.

Beastie Boys parody sueball tennis ends after toy firm yanks Girls

W.O.Frobozz

And that irritating commercial extolling consumerism in girls somehow sets it forward?

Hooters, shooters and looters: Eidos’s Tomb Raider

W.O.Frobozz

Tomb Raider and 3D

I think one thing that's important to note is that Tomb Raider was one of the early games that jumped on the Voodoo bandwagon. Not long after the Monster 3D card was out, special patches to Tomb Raider (and other games) appeared to take advantage of Glide rendering. Tomb Raider with the acceleration was what sold me on Monster 3D/Voodoo. The boost in speed and the "smooth" graphics were breathtaking at the time.

Loved the original Tomb Raider. After Toby Card left, the series went downhill fast (Right around Tomb Raider II which had very few "tombs" to raid and too many city environments with vehicles to pilot). After TR II I gave up on the series.

That said, when Crystal brought Toby back for Tomb Raider: Underworld, things got really interesting again. Enjoyed the heck out of that game (the big swinging hammers in Valhalla actually gave me vertigo).

Xbox One site belly-up in global Microsoft cloud catastrophe

W.O.Frobozz

Re: Groan

But but but but...NT is a MICROkernel.

Have they trotted out that old nugget yet?

I still fondly remember the old Unix World article on NT where Davey Cutler proudly announced he was going to "kill UNIX." Didn't work then, not working now. But I hear he's doing GREAT things running the Xbone division!

(Because that's what the X-box developers needed, a bloody drill sergeant.)

iPad Air not very hot: Apple fanbois SHUN London fondleslab launch

W.O.Frobozz

History repeats

Hey I remember another company named after a fruit that kept on releasing marginally different versions of the exact same thing over and over again...

Welcome to your Blackberry years, Apple. It's a pretty long fall from here.

Facebook TEENS EXPOSED to entire WORLD

W.O.Frobozz

I agree. Having two female teens in the house addicted to "selfies," Stupidgram and Friendface and lacking an ounce of common sense on what's appropriate to put online, I would agree. "Savvy" they are not. Utterly unconcerned for consequences even when shown what has happened to others their age on the other hand....

Fanbois shun 'crappy plastic' iPhone 5C

W.O.Frobozz

Re: Trading in a Nexus 5 already?

If the reporting is accurate, we call people like this "hired actors." I

Microsoft mocks Apple and new iPhones in vids it quickly pulls

W.O.Frobozz

Hmm

See Microsoft got it all wrong... What they need is a slick ad campaign involving SUPERHEROS named after their products! It worked for RIM, right?

(I hear the BOLD Team needs a new job these days...)

Windows 8.1: Microsoft's reluctant upgrade has a split-screen personality

W.O.Frobozz

bskyb?

Who thought of that name anyway? Mushmouth from the Cosby Kids?

Microsoft to unveil new Surface slabs at September 23 event

W.O.Frobozz

Standard Operating Procedure

This is what Microsoft does...they keep a lemon of a product alive, despite terrible sales and performance, until all the competition has died of natural causes. Windows CE is the biggest example of that.

Microsoft's $7.1bn Nokia gobble: Why you should expect the unexpected

W.O.Frobozz

Huh...

...now, look for someone to gobble RIMBerry whole as a defensive measure.

Microsoft fights Google for kids' attention with ad-free Bing for Schools

W.O.Frobozz

Bing bong!

Bing is bung. I bet "Bing for Schools" will be as successful as their "Games For Windows" initiative.

Think your smutty Snapchats can't be saved by dorks? Think again

W.O.Frobozz

Re: Diddums

No, but some of us have daughters infected with the idiotic "selfies" disease. And maybe we give a shit enough to prevent them from doing something they will regret for a very long time.

W.O.Frobozz

Re: Whatever.

BUT ZUCKERBERG switched everything to HTTPS he was gonna PROTECT us...

W.O.Frobozz

"Ruin a lot of girls lives..." Maybe "girls" should have a little more sense than to put up naked pictures of themselves on an immortal medium like the Internet? Seriously...no sympathy. The mass narcissistic psychosis infecting females called "selfies" is a recipe for disaster.

Facebook: 'Don't worry, your posts are SECURE with us'

W.O.Frobozz

Suck it, Zuck

Given that the NSA has all the root keys anyway this switch to https by default is pointless. Or not really because going https makes it easier for Friendface to drill through firewalls and dodge corporate IT rules.

Microsoft Surface sales numbers revealed as SHOCKINGLY HIDEOUS

W.O.Frobozz

You can tell that Microsoft has been forced to scale down their usual astroturfing given all the "Anonymous Cowards" posting blinkered pro-Microsoft nonsense. Guess the cheques were a lot smaller this month, they can't even be bothered to register "Steve Barkto" and pretend they're something other than a ham-fisted PR agency.

Personally I can't wait to see Microfail's Q1 results next year after the Xbone leaves a nice smokey crater in Xmas sales.

W.O.Frobozz

Munchkin, munchkin, how to spot a munchkin. A bark-bark-Barkto we shall go!

Sony sucker-punches Xbox on price, specs, DRM-free gaming

W.O.Frobozz

Sucker Punch?

Seriously, Sony would have had to have made an actual concerted effort to screw up given Microsoft's XBone fiasco. Even the most die-hard X-box fanatics are facing the long dark tea-time of the soul over Ballmersoft's latest titsup. Time to cut Ballmer (and Dave Cutler, the moron who took over the X-Box division) loose. Alliard had the mojo...Cutler the Drill Sargeant never did, and never will. Maybe they can promote Roz "failing upwards" Ho to the X-box divison as well, and complete the circle. She did such a great job with the WinPhone after all.

(And it will be a cold day in Hades before I let a Microsoft telescreen into my house. You can bet the NSA already has "people" on the XBone's Kinect 2.0).

Microsoft announces $499 price tag, new games for Xbox One

W.O.Frobozz

Heh.

I have two friends who are Xbox 360 fanboys to the extreme. The XBone has done the unthinkable...alienated and angered them both and the silly thing isn't even out on the streets yet. The one guy, someone who hates Sony up and down, told me that he'd consider looking at the PS4.

At this point Sony would have to make a real effort to screw up. But given Sony...

Spotify and Pandora to FACE THE MUSIC as iRadio inks Sony deal

W.O.Frobozz

iWhat?

Sorry, can't hear a thing over my lovely Slacker Radio, which plays nicely across pretty much any device I have (even my old Logitech Squeezebox).

And being a subscriber I can hit the "skip" button as many damn times as I want. And the "Download Station" feature is killer given my data plan.

Kettle 'which looks like HITLER' brews up sturm in a teacup

W.O.Frobozz

Oh, THAT Hitler....

Now if it looked like Eddie Hitler I would have definitely bought one (and used it to smash my pal Ritchie over the head with).

Did Kim Dotcom invent 2-factor authentication? Er, not exactly...

W.O.Frobozz

Oh come on...

Can we stop calling him "Kim Dotcom" and go back to his former name of KIMBLE? El Reg, you used to absolutely skewer this fat charlatan back in the day. "Innovator..." my arse. He "innovated" his crack team of skript kiddies after 9/11 called "YIHAT" who then proceeded to do...nothing, but pretended they were hax0ring Islamic banks. He "innovatively" defrauded stupid venture capitalists and went on the run, before being arrested and proclaiming himself "King Kimble of the Kimpire" (and then threatening suicide).

Too bad Kimble's unintentionally hilarious homepage at kimble.org no longer exists...those awful animations of him as a "secret agent" making Bill Gates piss himself were comedy gold.

Go to attrition.org's charlatan page for a better dossier on this so-called "innovator." Brilliant scammer? Maybe. "Innovator?" Heh.

Facebook teens' kimonos - basically never closed

W.O.Frobozz

So?

Stupid teenagers without a clue about "privacy" and "data mining" are Zuckerberg's bread and butter. That's exactly why they regularly monkey with the privacy settings "accidentally" turning them off so often...it's not like the distracted hordes of clueless teen privacy nudists will even notice.

HTC woes prompts 'leave now' tweet from former staffer

W.O.Frobozz

I love/hate HTC sometimes

I've owned two HTC phones and been burned twice by HTC by them deciding to utterly orphan the devices with no further updates...the last time was the promised upgrade to ICS on the Desire HD that they decided to not do without so much as a "sorry." And then Cyanogen decided to not do CM9 "officially" for the DHD.

But I like the hardware. I like SenseUI.

Fortunately, at least for my Desire HD, there are some 3rd Party roms that keep me up-to-date...Jellytime was decent but lacking in any kind of quality control so I dumped it for the Blackout rom and haven't looked back...Blackout DHD is the ROM that HTC should have given us in the first place....ICS with Sense.

Opera rewrite comes to Android

W.O.Frobozz

Re: Noticed that the version on my Desire HD had updated itself ...

Why hello fellow Desire HD owner. I concur...Opera's latest just doesn't run well, at least not on the Desire HD. Can't tell about my TF700 as it's listed as "not compatible" in Play.

However, the real shocker for me was discovering that Firefox on Android is probably the fastest mobile browser I've used. The desktop version still stinks, what with random hangs, memory hogging and going into can-only-be-killed-with-task-manager land, but the mobile version is quite good, especially on the ancient Desire HD.

Only problem is extensions are touch and go. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But it's fast.

Microsoft reveals Xbox One, the console that can read your heartbeat

W.O.Frobozz

Re: Thats all we need

A-freakin-men. Hey remember when gaming was about, I dunno, playing games? Seems like every half-wit with a console thinks they should post endless streams of stupid videos of them "gaming" on YouTube. Or worse, trying to hamfistedly make a "gaming show" (just take a look at Justin.TV or ustream and see how many of these cretins exist).

The IT Crowd returns to Channel 4 for a final episode

W.O.Frobozz

Cuke?

It's like heaven in a can!

BlackBerry CEO: Tablets will be dead in 5 years

W.O.Frobozz

That just about wraps it up for the Praybook then

Got one for my wife a couple years back while she had a blackberry. Sad to see that two years later the coaster really hasn't changed much. She only uses it to take pictures now.

Not surprised Thor has shrugged over this. The Praybook is a relic from the two buffoons who drove the company into the ground, a sound reminder that they were dabbling in nonsense when they should have been focusing on the future of Blackberry handsets.

No future for tablets, Thor? My Transformer Infinity disagrees. But then again I can at least run Netflix on mine.

Microsoft leads charge against Google's Android in EU antitrust complaint

W.O.Frobozz

Microsoft and Nokia?

You mean "Just Microsoft." Because any of the "hangers on" are just Microsoft's usual trojan horses acting on their behalf. This kind of crap might have dazzled US courts but hopefully in the EU they will see through Microsoft's sock puppets.

In the end it's proof positive that Microsoft has utterly failed to convince people to use Chandler Bing and their failed mobile operating system. If you can't compete, litigate.

Apple handed victory in Samsung text-selection patent case

W.O.Frobozz

Bite me, Apple.

IGNORING the fact that their idiotic "text selection" nonsense is even up for debate...WHY is it the only response to Samsung is BANNING their product? How come they can't just say "hay, you have to change this?"

Oh that's right...it's Apple we're talking about here. They invented everything, including the patent office. Steve Jobs is so genius that even Einstein used to dream about him.

Right.

Microsoft Xbox gaffe reveals cloudy arrogance

W.O.Frobozz

Mark My Words...

...at some point the only option for survival we will have is the Galactica gambit: to completely un-network and disconnect our computers.

So say we all.

Steve Jobs to supervise iPhone 6 FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

W.O.Frobozz

Re: Wow so he knew about all the chip roadmaps.....

Hey what, didn't you get that memo? It's officially "gush about Steve Jobs" season again, since everyone from Nolan Bushnell to the janitor at Steve Jobs' middle school is putting out dripping love letters about how genius the young Jobs was.

Facebook prepares to dominate Android

W.O.Frobozz

Yeah

Why does this make me think of John Romero? "Mark Zuckerberg wants to make you his bitch..."

Suck it down...this thursday!

WTF is... the Quantified Self?

W.O.Frobozz

So..

...that's how Davros got his start.

Patent shark‘s copyright claim could bite all Unix

W.O.Frobozz

Lame

Not funny Darl, try harder next time.

Microsoft says WinPhone outselling iPhone, BlackBerry

W.O.Frobozz

as leonard nimoy would say...

"The following story is true. And by true, I mean false."

Researcher sets up illegal 420,000 node botnet for IPv4 internet map

W.O.Frobozz

Once again...

...this just proves that someday, our only defense will be "The Galactica Maneuver", which is to say the only way we can keep ourselves safe from this kind of invasion is to not network anything.

Hell maybe Sir Arthur will be proven right in his godawful 3001 novel...way may need a munitions dump on the moon for "the world's worst computer viruses."

Twitter patents sending messages, promises not to sue everyone

W.O.Frobozz

Re: Prior art

You mean CBBS, courtesy of Ward & Randy.

Multimillionaire Brit games dev wants your cash for Shroud of the Avatar

W.O.Frobozz

Re: A lesson to EA

Case in point: Ultima IX was not released too early. It was a product of Duke Nukem-itis, a result of the dev team being shuffled off and rotated far too often while new greenhorn developers were brought in, ad nauseum. And all the while Lord British was too busy with Ultima Online to give a crap about the languishing mess Ultima IX had become. "Development hell" would be an understatement. Can't even blame EA for Ultima IX's state, the blame lies on His Highness' shoulders completely.

A real pity too...if you read the original Bob White script from '94, you can see they originally had some great ideas, far better than the shit they gave us.

W.O.Frobozz

Re: Bon chance Lord British

Some of us would say that Ultima Online was a complete regression. As far as I'm concerned, Ultima Online killed Ultima (especially if you know the history of the development of Ultima IX).

If Garriott is going to see a single penny from me again, he would be wise to ignore everything they crapped out for U:A, and take a good hard look at what made Ultima VII and The Serpent Isle so god damn good. Ultima VIII, AKA "Super Avatar Brothers" isn't worthy of a mention.

I like Lord British but right now my money is on Brian Fargo and Wasteland 2.

W.O.Frobozz

New Ultima?

Well, I would only support this if Richard Garriott runs this better than he ran the development of Ultima IX (which became the abomination known as Ultima: Ascention). Having a rotating team of developers joining and then being shuffled off on a regular basis while Garriott wasted all his time on Ultima Online produced one of THE WORST video games I have ever played (and yes, I have played Daggerfall), an utter disgrace to the name "Ultima" and the long suffering fans who waited so long for this abortion of a game to come out.

Are you reading this Lord British? I'd love another Ultima but you have a hell of a lot to make up for. I hope your new game completely ignores the shitfest that was Ultima: Descention.

Let me be the first to say: SYSTEM SHOCK 3. Can we get a kickstarter going for that before EA decides to resurrect and utterly ruin it?

Microsoft backs law banning Google Apps from schools

W.O.Frobozz

Re: The bill sounds good

And who said Microsoft retired their munchkin brigade...

W.O.Frobozz

Gutless, cowardly and low

Typical for Microsoft.

Gnome cofounder: Desktop Linux is a CHERNOBYL of FAIL

W.O.Frobozz

Re: So commercial interfaces don't change, eh?

Ahh but this ignores one major thing: It was Miguel's GNOME project that decided to COMPLETELY ignore 30+ years of unwritten UNIX GUI setups.

You see, in most cases, UNIX GUI stuff had always had "File..." blah blah blah. No it wasn't a written standard and yes, there were rival toolkits like Athena that looked different. And then came Motif, which was the closes thing to a "style guide" UNIX had. By and large the Motif way of doing it had been around FOR EVER. YES it was like Microsoft, but in actuality it was Microsoft conforming to the CUA interface standard...and Motif conformed to it as well. In UNIX-land it was, by and large, a "OK, Cancel" world.

But that wasn't GOOD enough for Miguel and his group. They created a dripping love letter to Jef Raskin in the form of the "GNOME HIG" which basically specified the exact opposite of everything that was "almost standard" on UNIX everywhere. "OK, Cancel" was flipped around to be exactly Mac-like. "Preferences" items were moved under "File" and so on. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was confined to GNOME, but the GTK+ people decided to make the GNOME HIG their default as well. So then you had the REALLY FUN experience of KDE/Qt apps giving you "OK, Cancel" and GNOME/Gtk crap doing the exact opposite.

And so there you have the reason why the usual Linux desktops are a FUCKING MESS: Miguel and the GNOME project.

W.O.Frobozz

Kindly piss off, Miguel

The "linux desktop" is a mess precisely because of YOU, MIGUEL. I still remember the fucking mess that you and RedHat made with your godawful Gnome desktop back in the early days. In your desperate effort to "catch up" to KDE the 0.33 version of GNOME jumped magically overnight to "1.0"...and we all should remember what an unstable bloated mess that was.

But typical of your A.D.D. nature, you couldn't even stick with one thing. You jumped from GNOME to Evolution, and then dumping that to run off to play copycat with Microsoft's Java ripoff. Have you actually seen ANYTHING through to the end? Don't expect the Mac world to embrace you with open arms.

It's funny that for an asshat who made the most noise about Qt's license he spends most of his time openly admiring the worst offender when it comes to licensing and "intellectual property": Microsoft.

And the FSF doesn't get off unscathed either. Prior to Miguel's KDE ripoff, the FSF had declared WindowMaker + GNUstep to be their "official desktop." Imagine if all the effort that went into Gnome had instead gone into GNUstep. We could have anticipated the future and had easy cross-compatibility with Mac OS X (nee NeXTStep) and really given Microsoft a run for their money. Stallmen might call Miguel a "traitor" but he needs to remember stabbing GNUstep in the back.

Review: Toshiba Satellite U920T Ultrabook

W.O.Frobozz

Windows 8 - It should go away.

It's a real pity this industry continues to reward Microsoft by default. Any other company producing garbage like Windows 8 would be out of business.

Thank god the company I work for has absolutely no plan to migrate anyone to Windows 8.

Bill Gates: 'Microsoft didn't MISS cell phone' bandwagon

W.O.Frobozz

Re: Willy Gates Melinda

Well what WAS Microsoft doing in all that time? Oh that's right...they had the Dragon Lady (Roz Ho) utterly destroy Danger, which helped their braintrust run over to Google to create Android. And then Roz Ho fumbled whatever the hell Project Pink was supposed to be, leading to a Kin-tastic Krash-and-burn in the market.

And yet she still hasn't been fired. I wish I could fail upwards like that. And we wonder why Microsoft has lost it's edge? The rot goes deeper than Ballmer.

Oracle wants another go at Google over Android Java copyrights

W.O.Frobozz

Re: Fscking ridiculous

I personally prefer the Hairy Plopper series myself.

[gets coat]

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