Posts by Ketlan

Er...

I thought all those answers were correct.

Mostly W7 with patchy XP

Most of the people I know either bought a desktop/laptop with W7 on and intend to keep it or bought a W8 machine and promptly upgraded to W7. I only know one person who is happy with W8.1 but she's pretty weird anyway. On the other hand, at least half a dozen people I know are happy to stay on XP and aren't in any way fazed by Microsoft removing its support. I don't though, know a single person who has actively bought a new version of XP. Is this purely a developing nations phenomenon or are there such people in the UK/US/EU?

WTF

What the fuck is it? It frightens the crap out of me!

Fiction to fact

And we live through the process of science fiction turning into science fact again. Read the 2002 novel Prey by Michael Crichton and swarming nanobots are to be found therein.

Mostly male

Interesting that the responses to previous surveys show a user gender split with males on 93.4% and females on only 6.1%. All the women I know are okay with the odd bit of piracy and one male friend disapproves (but does it anyway). I'd have expected females to have been better represented - but I probably know all the dodgy ones.

Very nice

A bloody good idea - though I'm not too sure about it keeping a record of any music listened to that day. Nevertheless, this will be a godsend to anyone with a parent/partner with Alzheimer's.

Wow

What a shame it took over five months for it to be reported.

Do fuck off, Zuckerberg

"After Facebook reached this milestone of connecting a billion people, we took a step back and said, 'well, what problem can we help solve next?'"

And what 'problem', precisely, has been solved by Facebook connecting a billion people, beyond the presumed shortage of amusing (cough) cat pictures that existed before Facebook arrived on the scene. As far as I can see, Zuckerberg has got richer than Midas and a billion people can now talk crap at each other online rather than face to face or on the phone. Is that it? FFS.

Yes indeedy

“Imagine a random, infinite sequence of numbers containing nothing but +1s and -1s. Erdős was fascinated by the extent to which such sequences contain internal patterns. One way to measure that is to cut the infinite sequence off at a certain point, and then create finite sub-sequences within that part of the sequence, such as considering only every third number or every fourth. Adding up the numbers in a sub-sequence gives a figure called the discrepancy, which acts as a measure of the structure of the sub-sequence and in turn the infinite sequence, as compared with a uniform ideal.”

I'm sure I had some paracetamol around here somewhere...

Hate, hate, hate...

Good. Kill them all, the bastards...

Yawn...

I've seen it. It's crap.

Maybe/maybe not...

“Considering the fact that workers there have to communicate via phone or fax machines to those in the South, the internet linkage will boost efficiency, cut costs, and guarantee security.”

Boost efficiency - check

Cut costs - check

Guarantee security - erm...

KaBOOM...

"The American miltary's mad boffin department DARPA has commissioned IBM to design microchips that can simply "vanish" after being used."

I thought this was called 'built-in obsolescence' and was an integral part of every piece of technology that currently exists.

16GB, really?

"16GB of onboard SSD storage"

Seriously???

So ghastly...

"When we saw the first photos of the original iMac, IT journalists agreed it was the most ghastly computer we’d ever seen. Testing it, we found it to be slow and poorly configured and came with a mouse so badly designed that it made you want to go out and kill someone. A mouse that could drive you to murder? Yes, that’s how absolutely fucking dreadful it was."

Oh God, how much can I possibly agree with this!!!

And can you imagine the horror when I discovered that my youngest daughter's prospective secondary school had dumped everything else in favour of this rubbish? Needless to say, she chose another, far better, school to go to - one with a less fashion-driven IT teacher at the helm.

Cameron is a c**t

'Recent disclosures over domestic surveillance and GCHQ spying on citizens aren't much of an issue to the public, according to Prime Minister David Cameron.'

This is from a guy who doesn't have any idea who the public actually is and doesn't give a shit for their opinions anyway.

Adorable?

I don't find it adorable at all - in fact I find it nauseating. And the fact that Kardashian and West seem to have put their seal of approval on it just makes it worse.

Row, row, row the boat... etc

"Yes it would have been nice to keep the lame aquatic metaphors going, but we couldn't think of one that worked."

What a shame. I was enjoying that. :-)

Pic of the month

Love that first pic! :-)

How about some cheapies?

"Ten lightweight laptops that won’t bust your back"

Here's an idea for an article - 'Ten half-decent laptops that won’t bust your bank'.

Tut-tut

"Grumble viewing drooped by 15 per cent in Britain during the ceremony, only to shoot up in huge spurts for the rest of the day."

Oh dear oh dear oh dear...

Naughty Reg.

Muff-diving for fun and profit!

'27 per cent of people work while eating out'

Really? They can't be doing it right, then.

Best laugh I've had all day...

'Facebook profiles go titsup!'

Ha. Ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha-ha (gasp) ha-ha (chokes)

Sorry.

Oh, dear...

I despair, I really do...

Not convinced...

I'm not entirely convinced that the law is as clever as the author of this article makes out, though the article itself was interesting and well-written. Two examples.

The recent case of a businessman who visited a completely legal 'twink' site - he was under suspicion for five years, his reputation was destroyed and his father died two years into the investigation not knowing whether his son was guilty or not in the eyes of the law. The case was eventually thrown out but a five-year investigation hardly shows the police to be as intelligent or resourceful as this article suggests.

A few years ago, I was heavily involved in anti-fascist activity. Someone managed to infect numerous computers (including that of a leading journalist) in a way that every keypress was saved to a large daily file which they had rigged to be sent to me, presumably to make it look as if I had infected the computers. I saved all the evidence I could (some twenty thousand files in all) and took it to my local nick (city centre). The officers could do nothing with it because they were forbidden to use any external media. My offer to email the lot was also declined, as 'we really don't have the resources to investigate this kind of crime'.

Fine, the police make a lot of effort to track down paedophiles and terrorists - but how about a bit more effort going into protecting the innocent.

Offshore banking...

They're a couple of handy places to store Brin and Page's spare cash, that's all.

Bee-ave... (sorry)

'They used a spiral pattern to confuse the bees and trick them into crash landing.'

As if bees don't have enough problems.

Here we go again...

'The most powerful, classiest BlackBerry ever - and it's aimed at grown ups

Price: From $600 unlocked RRP'

It's aimed at RICH grown-ups. I don't know anyone who would spend that kind of money on a mobile and if I did, I'd have to say they were fucking lunatics.

Fuck games...

The only thing I ever did for entertainment in the office was shag the Saturday girl - and yes, I did get in trouble for it.

Excellent. Well done y'all.

There is no choice...

It's not a difficult decision at all - it HAS to be Ariadne's design! Come on, Reg, you can do it.

Shock, horror, gasp etc

An average mouse - £10-15: a reinvention of the mouse - £265. I wonder which one will end up more popular.

Kids, huh?

It'd be a bugger to do in real life - but it's got my vote!

Did I miss something?

'The 'problem' with TrueCrypt is the same problem we have with any popular security software in the post-September-5 era'

Sorry to change the subject from all this intelligent chit-chat about cryptography but what happened on September 5th? Sainsbury's delivered my shopping nice and early for a change but I'm sure that can't be it.

Propping up the company...

'Fruity firm's chief reminds workers that his 'spirit' is in, er, Apple's foundations'

As long as his body isn't.

Sorry, I should have used the bad taste joke of the week alert there.