* Posts by kevin biswas

159 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2008

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Capita, Serco, Sopra Steria to write cheat-sheets for UK.gov in case they collapse

kevin biswas

Re: These jokers make the best case for nationalisation.

Good enough.

kevin biswas

These jokers make the best case for nationalisation.

Sorry to sound like some kind of communist here but if I were Jeremy Corbyn one of the first things I would do on getting to power would be to declare all these joker organisations publicly owned and then try to run them properly.

Microsoft man: Internet Explorer had to go because it's garbage

kevin biswas

Re: Here we go again

Well, it could be said this will exchange the *certainty* it will stay rubbish for the *strong likelihood* it will stay rubbish.....

FORGOTTEN Bing responds to search index ECJ ruling: Hello? Remember us?

kevin biswas

Bing ?

Aren't they the ones who re-branded as hotbot a couple of years ago ? Or was it hotmail who re-branded as MSN somthing mumble ? geocities ?

'Our entire corporation cannot send or receive emails from Outlook'

kevin biswas
FAIL

Single point of failure fails

And the excrement hits the extractor. Who'da thunk it, eh. ?

It's true, the START MENU is coming BACK to Windows 8, hiss sources

kevin biswas

Too late

In the end they got Vista more-or-less working properly too but by that time it was too late. The public had heard the horror stories and word was out that Vista was a lemon. Same will happen with 8.

OCZ goes titsup, flogs own corpse to Toshiba

kevin biswas

Shame, they were a good company.

Back in the day when it was a wow item I had a 32gb pendrive fail, they replaced it VERY quickly sans any quibble.

Apple beckons fanbois back into its golden era... of, er, 2010

kevin biswas

Re: ^This.

A pentium 4 is likely 10-12 years old now. The apple devices in question nare only 3 years old. Which is pretty much brand new by my reckoning.

Microsoft lobs second Windows 8.1 preview at enterprise IT admins

kevin biswas

Microsoft lobs second Windows 8.1 preview at enterprise IT admins,

IT admin slightly change angle of foot to neatly deflect lobbed item into the waste basket.

STEVE BALLMER KILLS WINDOWS

kevin biswas

Skype, the failed VoIP web telco

Huh ? Skype when why what how failed ?

Texas teen jailed for four months over sarcastic Facebook comment

kevin biswas

Another for the WTF file

Lets hope he makes himself a millionaire by taking them to court after it is all over.

Google whips the sheet off new Gmail interface

kevin biswas

Re: I wonder when we will all be forced to suffer the New Compose clusterfuck ?

No, I forwarded it to myself in gmail and it was borked. But it looked fine in the sent items.Screwey.

kevin biswas

Re: I wonder when we will all be forced to suffer the New Compose clusterfuck ?

Well, YMMV but when I tried it it left yellow spell-check highlighting in a sent mail and TOTALLY borked the formatting on a mail that was composed bit by bit on a couple of different computers (This borking was not visible in the sent items, only the recipients reply). Both these embarrassingly crapped up emails were to important clients where making a good impression was important. I have never has any similar problems with the classic compose. So I really hope it is fixed before we are forced to use it.

kevin biswas

I wonder when we will all be forced to suffer the New Compose clusterfuck ?

When I last tried it it was still very, very broken.

Windows 8.1 Start button SPOTTED in the wild

kevin biswas

Re: Out of the box

Yeah. Fuillscreen apps are utterly retarded on desktop computers.

kevin biswas
FAIL

Too little, too late.

The fact that SP2 ironed out most of the worst bugs of Vista was not enough to save it from oblivion, and I doubt these little changes will not be enough to save Windows 8 from the dustbin of history either. Word is out amoungst the public that 8 is a lemon, and that won't be changed easily. Which is almost a shame because if it wasn't for Microsoft's stubbon pig headededness over such trivial issues it could easily have been a sucess. Although it is not as fast and stable as 7 is is *nowhere near* as buggy and unfinished as Vista SP0 was. Personally I quite like the ribbonised explorer. I find the (mostly minor) performance and application compatibility issues more annoying than the lack of a start menu. The absolute BEST thing about 7 is the combo search/run box and it is a shame that the win 8 equivalent is nowhere near as tidy.

Internet Explorer makes modest gains against Google Chrome

kevin biswas

Opera's share seems have gone negative...

And what happened to poor old Firefox ? My best guess is that everyone got sick of a new version breaking all their plugins every 3 weeks.

Microsoft reports on how often it helps police with their enquiries

kevin biswas
Big Brother

Re: I am surprised by how LOW the rate of co-operation is.

I dislike much or perhaps even most of what government and police do and stand for. But hate it or loathe it, it is an undisputable fact that if you defy them they will go out of their way to ***k you up, and they have the full resources of the state behind them to do that with. That is a realpolitik fact which people and organizations have no choice but to deal with. Given that context, it seems to me reassuring that the VAST MAJORITY of requests for users data etc are rejected. Does anyone really expect microsoft to give the man the finger like the pirate party, lulz sec or anonymous might do ? So clearly they have to strike a balance. And the fact that the balance is vastly in favour of their users is , to my mind, a good thing. I am certain that in china the scales would be tipped far over the other way.

kevin biswas
Go

I am surprised by how LOW the rate of co-operation is.

So 87% to 99% of data requests from law enforcement agencies are DENIED. I cant decide if it reassuring to know they try so hard to protect their users, or alarming that they give so little help to the plods. Or is it conceivable that they might actually be getting the balance right ? nah, thought not.........

HP: PC industry has forgotten how to innovate

kevin biswas
Thumb Up

Re: The netbook wasn't all that new an idea.

True. But the innovation was to make it half the cost of a full-size notebook instead of triple the cost. I bought the first 7" eeeeepc the moment it became available as I had been lusting for a libretto for years beforehand but couldn't afford one.

'Unfair' tariff tweaks yield networks £90m

kevin biswas
Mushroom

Putting the CON back into CONtract

What sort of contract is it where one party can change the terms at will and the other has to suck it up ?

Ethiopia to send Skype users to the slammer

kevin biswas
FAIL

More sense in Bangladesh

Bangladesh also has a fairly strongly enforced VOIP ban to protect the govt telco but the ban applies only to people providing unlicensed commercial call termination facilities and similar. There is no restriction on use of normal end-user products like skype.

BT missing from Pirate Bay High Court slap-down

kevin biswas

weeping lawyers

Won't someone think of the poor musicians ! wont someone think of the poor sound engineers ! All conveniently forgetting to mention that the artists only get a pittance and the suits and their lawyers get to keep the lions share,

Microsoft unveils Windows 8 'release preview' for June

kevin biswas
FAIL

It's so clearly a turd

that they couldnt even be bothered to TRY polishing it :-(

'Don't break the internet': How an idiot's slogan stole your privacy...

kevin biswas
Black Helicopters

Same sides of the same coin

It is easier for me to imagine a world where copyright is harshly enforced by content cartels bristling with lawyers etc but your privacy is non existent and everything you do is snooped on by advertisers, governemnt censors and software spooks. The content cartels are doing their best to cozy up with government anyway so they can push their agenda with the powers of the state (AND at taxpayers expense).Seems to me the 2 issues are the same side of the same coin, and it is heads down in the mud getting the boot on the tail.

Cash-strapped graduates sell their own faces

kevin biswas
Megaphone

Hmm

But if I have advertising plastered all over my tee shirt far from being paid I still have to pay for the tee shirt. No fair.

Windows 8: Sugar coating on Microsoft's hard-to-swallow tablet

kevin biswas

Re: "even a full reset might not lose much data"

Yeah. System Restore and System Recovery and that thing with the Recovery Partition all sound much the same, dont they.

kevin biswas

Re: When will Intel announce

Meh. Someone will come up with a 10 meg bit of freeware which sorts it out if MS insist on not giving a 'classic' UI option.

kevin biswas
Windows

Re: Everyother one

Nah, that doesnt quite work as ME was *not* NT based. ME was a kind of Win 98 third edition, the last dying gasp of the DOS based Old Technology. XP was an enhancement (if you will) from win 2000 and the older NT-based systems.

As I see it, In the Old Technology lineup

3.11: Fair for its time. I suppose.

95: Remarkably good considering how revolutionaty and bleeding edge it was.

98 1st edition: Bloody Awful. Second worst windows ever.

98: 2nd edition: Fair, tending towards pretty good but not *quite* getting there.

ME: Fair, tending towards poor.

No DOS based OS was ever that good (Including DOS itself) so i can't quite call even 98SE good. And yup, I never actually *hated* ME like I hated 981E and Vista SP0.

So in the New Technology Lineup

NT3: Never even seen it.

NT4: Never actually used it in earnest.

Win 2K Very Good (I dont recall the granular differences between the SP versions).

XP SP0 Good

XP SP1 Good

XP SP2 Good

XP SP3 Very Good

Vista SP0 Appaling beyong measure.

Vista SP1 Poor

Vista SP2 Fair (barely)

Windows 7 SP1 Excellent

Windows 7 SP2 Excellent

Windows 8 Consumer Preview (on a tablet) Good

Windows 8 Consumer Preview (on a desktop) LOL, wut ?

Official: Sony and Ericsson are divorced

kevin biswas

Re: :-(

Yeah, I dont really like the smartphone form factor. Too big, power hungry and fragile to be a good phone or mucic player. Too small and fiddly to be a good computer. Generally second rate as a camera. Smartphones are the jack of all trades but master of none.

EFF helps MegaUpload users claw legit stuff back from Feds

kevin biswas
Holmes

Yeah, I kind of agree.

But then again I wonder how many Gmail users keep an offline copy of their emails ? And if the answer is 'not many', then what is the difference between trusting megaupload with your photos and trusting google with your emails ?

Microsoft blames poor Windows sales on PC slump

kevin biswas

Why is android an utter fail ?

I dont get it.

Wi-Fi Protected Setup easily unlocked by security flaw

kevin biswas

Always hated it anyway

I hate WPS for another reason. Half my users think their operating system is Microsoft 2007. To give them a fine distinction between a 'WPS pin' and a 'WPA password' to deal with (and a whole different lot of associated dialogue boxes to navigate) is just asking for trouble. Aren't they confused enough (and aren't I busy enough) already ?

Ex-Microsofties' IE6 kill squad hits UK

kevin biswas
Paris Hilton

Two-thirds of business PCs still run Windows XP.

Microsoft's chief operating officer Kevin Turner called Windows XP and IE6 "dead".

Hmmm. I am getting a mixed picture here.

Microsoft kills Windows Vista SP1 support

kevin biswas

What, just like they gave everyone who bought Win98 free u/g to win98SE ??

Oh yeah, they didn't do that either.

MS to WinXP diehards: Just under 3 more years' support

kevin biswas

Whilst I appreciate your point

I picked up a core2 duo desktop pc and a bit of extra ram from 'bay for my mum to run windows 7 on for about £60. That is hardly a deal breaker, is it ? But if I did not have a spare 7 licence from work to use then the cost of a retail Win 7 probably *would* have been a deal breaker.

Is Facebook worth more than Google?

kevin biswas
Trollface

I will believe it when.......

I suddenly have to start paying $5/user/month if my office has over 10 users like I do for google apps nowadays.

Booze for wrinklies: Good or bad?

kevin biswas
Happy

My mate

Is an ancient, wierd and wonderful hippy artist chap who reckons a bottle of wine over an evening counts as a night off the serious boozing. His bus-pass means he can discreetly sell dope to selected clients with zero transport costs and he has no aversion to the occasional nasal application of white powders when the opportunity presents. He is a damn sight more cheerful than most other 65 year olds I meet.

Hunting of incredibly rare two-horned 'unicorns' forbidden

kevin biswas
Joke

If humans stop hunting unicorns...

how can we harvest their blood to make printer ink ???

Your census data will be kept secret - except from MI5, police, courts etc

kevin biswas
Thumb Up

HM Govt in 'bunch of lying bastards' shock.

Whod'a thunk it, eh ?

Critics slam feds for 'unprecedented' domain seizure

kevin biswas
FAIL

The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it......

Might need a wikiDNS or somthing soon

AOL buys Huffington Post

kevin biswas
Pint

AOL still exist ?

I thought they folded long ago.

Grand jury meets to decide fate of WikiLeaks founder

kevin biswas
WTF?

This makes no sense.

*Outside* the rule of law perhaps this kind of situation would usually be handled by an extraordinary rendition or an unfortunate 'accident' of some kind, but because Assange is a high profile white guy that option may be closed.

But *under* the rule of law this grand jury and whatnot is just silly because it kind of implies that any government has jurestiction anywhere in the world for any supposed crime comitted anywhere in the world. That would set a precident which should worry the hell out of Bush, Cheyney, Union Carbide, Halliburton, Blackwater, BAE Systems and a hundred thousand other individuals and corporations all over the world. Maybe they think they can strongarm the Swedes and the Brits to play along this once but it seems equally likely this grand jury are just huffing and puffing and making a lot of noise and hot air for their own satisfaction.

MS freebie anti-virus scanner auto-downloads provoke more anger

kevin biswas
Go

Which AV do you recommend, then

? I do agree that AVG is crap nowadays.

UK.gov plans net censor service

kevin biswas
Big Brother

Easy.

Everything except .gov sites are banned. Any questions or problems ? Didnt think so. Next !!!!!

Microsoft sings Happy Birthday to Windows 7

kevin biswas
Welcome

I do not think I will ever need Chinese in my lifetime...

Dunno. They are a pretty ambitious bunch.

UK gov could not procure its way out of a paper bag

kevin biswas
Thumb Up

Followed by...

...Papal catholicism at 10.

US consumers don't want web-enabled toasters

kevin biswas
Thumb Up

Why have a web enabled toaster..

When you can buy toast online from Boyds Toast !!! http://boydstoast.com/

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