Posts by Geoff Mackenzie

Er ...

... anything you're "trying to ban" starts out legal.

collective ecosystem knowledge

Shudder.

Great!

So all I need to do is look out for people wearing those. I foresee a large rise in my mugging profits.

@Not Fred31

While they're at it, they could look up 'content' as well.

@AC 16:04

Of course it does. It's not like they're saying 'that's illegal, so carry on slowly' - it's about quality of service. I honestly don't mind my P2P traffic being shaped a bit - even if it took 2 weeks to download Debian it's just a case of kick it off then forget about it until it completes, so who cares?

Shaping traffic between gamers would be a bit evil though; it's that sort of time-critical traffic that I don't mind my torrents being throttled for.

Why are comments on these pages ...

... always littered with ^HHHHHH?

^H -> Control+H -> Backspace. ^W would be more efficient (and I've seen it here a few times) (delete previous word).

^D

@Eh, no

Man and other modern apes are descended from a common ancestor who was an ape.

Man is an ape, as well as being descended from other apes.

@Spanners

Write awesome software that everyone uses. I know, it's so easy when you know the secret :)

It's not a slate

it's a tablet. Trying to forcibly introduce a new term because your last attempt at a particular technology flopped so badly is a bit lame.

Having said that, clearly a good match: HP hardware and MS software.

Reattach the keyboard and forget about the touch screen, install Linux and you have a nice little netbook.

@pezzonovante

Obvious troll is obvious.

And they want them *returned*?

Good one, Kingston. Sell me something with which to store private data, then ask me to post it back a little later because my data might otherwise be compromised.

Refunds, replacements and no returns in this case I think.

pleased at ...

... the idea of every car, train, home boiler etc puffing out clouds of delicious carcinogenic smoke

Er, they already do.

"even in default configurations"

I like how in MS-world default configurations are presumed to be insecure.

Lol

@using a PDF to warn people off Adobe...

Er, way too late

Don't they realise that I'm a Discordian Pope?

I'll pay £300 quite happily

with Ubuntu's Netbook Remix. Actually any Linux distro is fine, I can always drop UNR on it myself.

Overpriced and the wrong OS. Shame really, it looks cute.

Winning the trust of open sourcers

Speaking for myself, I'll trust MS when they GPL Windows.

I won't necessarily use it, but I'll believe they're sincere about open source.

@M 6

MSIE is a bunded, non-removable feature of an OS you pay for. A proportion of what you paid for the bundle is the price of the browser.

By the way, this whole issue really does bring out the zombie arguments on all sides, doesn't it?

Dunno why I even care. You won't see a trace of IE on this box, and all I had to do was stop buying the whole bundle.

Ah, I saw those

I suspected Google might crush them. Fair enough.

Deficiency in the software

Lol. Good one.

We don't really understand those dependencies

I know this has already been said, but wow, that's incredible.

Also, MinWin is a misnomer. Most of my machines run less Windows than that.

They didn't do a great job

I may never quite trust a Red Hat distribution again.

I like NASA's nod to Oasis

Definitively likely?

@Paul 4

Ridicule is a reasonable response to idiotic beliefs.

@Nigel Wright

Me too - my EEE 901 (Ubuntu) and my girlfriend's EEE 700 (Xandros) are just as awesome as they day they were bought :-)

Winnuke again!

Awesome.

@Fred Slack 1

How ungrateful! Microsoft gave you the email worm, the unremovable Media Player, the closed open document format and the privacy-invading anti-piracy tool! And never forget: they invented the slightly-different-web, including slightly different HTML, slightly different JavaScript, slightly different Java and slightly different Flash!

Not to mention their ingenious invention of a (patented) way to kludge normal length file names into their pathologically bad file system.

@MarkOne

I tried it on my workstation. The box starts Firefox 3.5 in less than 2 seconds from cold and runs it fairly fast. Opera took over 10s to start on this machine and was (or at least felt) far slower. It's odd, because Opera definitely used to perform better on a Windows box I used to have, and Firefox starts surprisingly slowly on my work Windows XP machine, but there you have it.

Also, with few exceptions, if I can't have the source, I don't want the software.

Firefox is fast for me

I don't get it - I see a lot of people talking about Firefox bloat and slowness, but I'm not experiencing any of that. I have the latest FF on Ubuntu on a reasonably powerful but aging box; < 2 sec to start from cold and very nippy thereafter.

I have noticed it's a little slower on Windows and Haiku but you can't have everything - I imagine that's more to do with compatibility layers than the browser itself.

I'm going to set up my own drugs advisory body

With blackjack. And hookers.

Bit of an alarmist headline

All my boxen are fine.

Postgres

That is all.

Re: This Is A Title

Well done. Ever consider the possibility that you are the troll?

Re: See - instead of punishing anyone, how about scanning and fixing as a public service? Also, it's telling that you state that you've never had a virus on your XP partition - saying you've never had a worm or virus on your Linux partition wouldn't surprise anyone, would it?

@Tristan Young

I'll second that phpBB recommendation. A great little forum system.

@Hermes Conran

I can tell from some of the pixels ...

What I take from this is:

When MS discontinue a work-in-progress feature, they leave whatever partially assembled cruft they have so far in the release.

I don't really get ...

... what they think they're adding?

Chicken!

Help, advice appreciated.

MS Linux? Why not?

I've been thinking for a while that MS could do worse than buy Canonical and release a Microsoft branded Linux. I'd give it a try. The company has some real programming talent and resources to throw at a Linux distribution, and Ubuntu is already great.

It wouldn't have to replace Windows entirely, just complement it (great for small machines, servers, netbooks etc. - all sectors MS are likely to struggle in with their shitty old codebase).

You never know, maybe one day.

@KenBW2

Odd, in every other comment thread you'd probably be right (including my own Penguin-adorned posts), but:

"If you want to download it today, don't even try the HTTP download right now (5 pm EST), it's *really* slow. The torrent is coming fast and nice though."

just sounds like practical advice (my god, a Reg comment making a *useful* contribution!?) and the rest just sounds like some feedback on the release.

I suppose it's hard not to sound like a fanboy when giving feedback on an Ubuntu release though. They're all so mind blowingly AWESOME :)

Windows 95

didn't have pre-emptive multitasking if I remember correctly. I could be wrong, but I always thought that was the underlying cause of the comical instability of 95, 98 and ME.