* Posts by Pookietoo

759 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Mar 2012

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Microsoft hires Pawn Stars to shaft Google

Pookietoo

Re: pretty useless, especially so if you lose your internet connection

Office 365 anyone?

False widow spiders in guinea pig slaughter horror

Pookietoo

Identifying the false widow

They can be recognised by their shiny bulbous abdomens. The photo accompanying this article looks more like a common house spider to me. Most of the reports of serious reactions to spider bites can probably be attributed to allergic reactions (people can potentially die of wasp/bee sting allergies, but for some reason the press don't seem to get hysterical about those) or bacterial infection which could result from any small puncture wound. I hope this Daily Wail hysteria doesn't lead to lots of innocent deaths.

Weird PHP-poking Linux worm slithers into home routers, Internet of Things

Pookietoo
Facepalm

Re: Most folk are not El Reg readers

The worm propagates by HTTP POSTing to -/cgi-bin/php* - anyone who allows that probably shouldn't be allowed to configure a web server.

Pookietoo
FAIL

Re: Sounds like spreading to me

Is that why "no attacks against these devices have been found in the wild"? I expect you didn't actually bother to read the article - too busy working up a froth.

'You're BEAUTIFUL when you're angry' 'You SEXIST PIG!' Xbox One's fresh brouhaha

Pookietoo
Headmaster

I wouldn't call it incompetance, I might call it incompetence.

HP’s ENORMO-SLAB: The Slate 21 MONSTER tablet

Pookietoo
Facepalm

Re: £329, according to HP's site.

Amazingly that's what The Register says too.

'MacGyver' geezer makes 'SHOTGUN, GRENADE' from airport shop tat

Pookietoo

Re: "...a potentially lethal set of nunchucks..."

But how you gonna cut it free now they've taken your nail clippers?

Pookietoo

Re: battery contains less than a gram of Lithium Iron Disulfide

Energiser Ultimate Lithium cells OTOH contain nearly 7% lithium metal by weight, which is plenty to play with as this video shows.

Haitian snapper humbles photo giants AFP, Getty Images in $1.2m copyright victory

Pookietoo

Re: up the ante in his favor

"The jury ... awarded $1.2m ... the maximum they could award under US law."

RETRO-GASM: The Fuze electronics kit for the Raspberry Pi

Pookietoo
Unhappy

Re: I love the smell of rosin cored solder in the morning.

But solder isn't what it used to be - they've taken the lead out.

Indestructible, badass rootkit BadBIOS: Is this tech world's Loch Ness Monster? VOTE NOW

Pookietoo

Re: a guy who's run Linux on a hard drive motherboard:

He didn't run Linux on the HDD, he used a Linux PC to hack the HDD firmware, creating a persistent back-door by manipulating cache content.

iPad Air peels off in racy pics for wide-eyed geeks, reveals 'worst battery ever

Pookietoo
Facepalm

Re: Fixit were able to take it apart

You'll note that their final picture is of a pile of bits, not a reassembled and working tablet.

Have you reinstalled Windows yet? No, I just want to PRINT THIS DAMN PAGE

Pookietoo

Re: Dear God -- clean your shoes man.

If you look closely you will see that he's wearing tradesman's trousers (padded/reinforced for kneeling) the shoes likewise have a protective toe cap. I've never known anyone who bothered to polish safety shoes - they'll often wear through to the steel.

BETHLEHEM-grade SUPERNOVA possible 'within 50 years'

Pookietoo

Re: everyone will have a microbolometer

Until they become more affordable I think I'll make do with an old digital camera and the IR mod.

Nothing to sniff at: Dell Ultrabooks REEK OF CAT PEE, scream users

Pookietoo

Re: something wrong with the glue

That seems a likely cause of the problem, there have been other smelly products where glue was found to be the culprit.

Dino-boffins discover 100-million-year-old BIRD TRACKS in Australia

Pookietoo
Headmaster

Re: PS, thanks for the Edit option Reg!

But can you change "of cause" to "of course"?

Cinnamon Desktop: Breaks with GNOME, finds beefed-up Nemo

Pookietoo

Re: trying to force that horrible GUI on me

If they were trying to force it on you I don't think they would have made it quite so easy to use Classic Gnome instead.

Insight warns of $20 MILLION kick in the teeth from Microsoft

Pookietoo

Re: Antivirus, CD burning, Zip and disk encryption

Is that the AV that MSFT says is intended to be the worst available? The CD burning software likewise, although MSFT haven't admitted to that one - there is free software that works better, also free unzip software, free whole-disk encryption software. That's before you even consider how quick and easy Linux is these days.

Call yourself a 'hacker', watch your ex-boss seize your PC without warning

Pookietoo

Re: seizure means ALL your assets

No, in this case just his computer, it seems. One would hope that a computer professional would have adequate backups and a disaster recovery plan, that makes this a minor inconvenience. I imagine he might have any evidence gathered as a result of this seizure disallowed on appeal.

It's the '90s all over again: Apple repeats mistakes as low-cost tablets pile up

Pookietoo

Re: Betamax went that route back in the 90s too.

The flaw with Betamax was lack of content, that's not a problem for Apple.

New MacBook Pro: What's actually new, here?

Pookietoo

Re: startup silence

Can you not just replace the audio file with a silent one? Or is it not present as a separate file?

Pookietoo

Re: touch-centric operations on a desktop/laptop is sub-optimal

MSFT doesn't give a damn about desktop ergonomics - they just want their traditional users to get used to Notro, which then encourages them to buy MSFT mobile products.

You like iPads, you like things called 'Air'. You will LOVE this puppy

Pookietoo
FAIL

Re: Take the best tablet and make it better

By fitting a motion sensor that can't quite get directions right?

Baldness fix from foreskin follicles

Pookietoo

Re: What a friggin' waste

It's possible that knowledge gained from this sort of procedure could help in other areas, such as reconstruction following burns or cancer.

Pookietoo

Re: they were already gone

You have to tell the surgeon before the procedure if you want to keep any bits.

FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS: Microsoft faces prising XP from Big Biz

Pookietoo

Re: ReactOS

That's been in Alpha forever (OK maybe not as long as Hurd).

Pookietoo

Re: Haswell motherboards no longer support XP

But Linux runs fine, and VirtualBox ...

(or Windows 7 with its XP mode)

Pookietoo

Re: Surprised Vista usage not increasing

Many machines sold as "Vista ready" (or whatever it was called) weren't really up to running it well - I doubt they're better now.

Pookietoo
Linux

Re: some form of addict

Plenty of IT pros have a lot invested in MSFT sales/support. But even governments are supposedly waking up to the poor value offered by the usual solutions providers, and the problems of proprietary data lock-in, so some of them are understandably anxious about their gravy train.

Pookietoo
Linux

Re: move to Linux instead

I suspect it's easier to make Linux look and behave like XP than it is to train non-technical XP users to use W8, and cheaper too. If most of their software runs under Wine or RDP to a server it almost seems silly not to take that route.

Pookietoo
Linux

Re: it takes a second to switch between multiple keyboard layouts

On Linux - I either click the icon on the task bar, or just hit both Shift keys to toggle.

Pookietoo
Linux

Re: Um, sources or I call BS.

It's possible, when you consider how much more software there is in the average Linux distro than is included with Windows - I doubt that notepad and minesweeper present too much of security risk.

US parents proclaim 811 'Messiahs'

Pookietoo
Childcatcher

Re: don't even seem to consider what it's going to be like

Narcissists lack empathy.

Valve uncloaks prototype Steam Machine console specs

Pookietoo

Re: a few gaming-spec pcs

They're just testing a range of specs so they can find an optimal cost/performance ratio - I expect they'll design something interesting once they've decided what to put in the box.

Unknown Aussie and Dutch family car spring solar surprise

Pookietoo
Unhappy

The Cambridge team has withdrawn from the competition

They're not happy with stability problems that have emerged in testing since since the crash.

http://www.cuer.co.uk/blog/wsc/2013/10/05/we-have-withdrawn/

Screen grab by Google, Amazon could delay Retina iPad mini – report

Pookietoo
Facepalm

Re: Why the hell shouldn't a tablet ...

Because a mobile device is pretty useless if you need to keep plugging it in?

Steve Jobs AIRBRUSHED from history by APPLE months before his death

Pookietoo

Re: It looks like ....

... a repository for a dozen evil souls?

Ubuntu 13.10: Meet the Linux distro with a bizarre Britney Spears fixation

Pookietoo
Linux

Re: "no !! ffs no !"

You can still use Ubuntu without using Unity, you know? I'm not even talking about Kubuntu/Xubuntu, just the regular distribution with gnome-session-fallback. Or you can stick a nice old-fashioned menu back on top of the Unity desktop with ClassicMenu Indicator.

Boris Johnson's ex-right-hand man's right hand lands johnson in web slip

Pookietoo
Black Helicopters

Re: Is his face in any of the pictures?

Not the ones I saw, but they were poor quality so someone could have easily stuck his face on.

LOHAN twangs BRASTRAP to unfetter mighty orbs

Pookietoo

So does this get fired anyway at some point?

Or is the explosive device still live when it falls to earth after a non-abortive ascent?

Apple Maps directs drivers INTO path of ONCOMING PLANES

Pookietoo

Re: There is an unmanned barricade which is up.

The barricade was down when I looked just now.

iOS 7 SPANKS Samsung's Android in user-experience rating

Pookietoo

Re: One day I'll just gouge/glue that bastard right out of the interface

We had rabbits, rabbits have chisel-like teeth and like to test them on just about anything. Strangely they seem to have a particular fondness for little rubber buttons ...

Pookietoo

Re "it is clearly the most widely used version of Android"

But surely the survey is supposed to be looking for the nicest, not the commonest?

F-16 fighter converted to drone

Pookietoo

Re: I just waited - until he got tired

Drones get tired?

Pookietoo

Re: before they could become good high-performance... bombers

Funny, I thought the cruise missile was a high performance bomber drone quite a few years back.

Pookietoo

Re: Would that work?

No it wouldn't work, even if it didn't weigh so much - the problem is acceleration, buoyancy won't fix that. Variable anti-grav would work a treat ...

Valve shows Linux love with SteamOS for gamers

Pookietoo
Stop

Re: it's still hidden under a myriad of terminal commands

The hardware detection in most modern distributions of Linux works so well you don't usually have to worry about using command line tools or editing files to get everything working properly, drivers for most hardware are included and work fine. Wireless networking has sometimes been tricky in the past but lately it seems to just work. Software installation and update is slickly handled by package management systems with graphical front ends.

Pookietoo
Stop

Re: Pull the other one

You're talking about PC peripherals, the device support he's talking about is all the routers, set-top-boxes and other embedded devices that run some version of Linux as an OS, workstations like SPARC, Alpha, PPC, supercomputers. A few of those were supported by NT4, and MSFT still does some embedded stuff (don't mention Surface RT) but it doesn't really compare.

Microsoft: Surface is DEAD. Long live the Surface 2!

Pookietoo
Stop

Re: why haven't Apple been fined the same amount

Maybe because they haven't been found guilty of using their market position to exert unfair influence when competing against other suppliers.

Pookietoo
FAIL

Re: But because it's MS it has to be destroyed and burned

No, because it's a poorly conceived product, with laughable marketing and ridiculous high-end aspirations, it has to be trashed.

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