* Posts by M Gale

3500 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Apr 2007

JAILBREAK! US smut spam king Kilbride flees minimum security prison

M Gale

Seems to be an awful lot of sadists around these parts.

Not that I have much sympathy for Kilbride, but I think a few people need to be subject to the punishments they so achingly wish to inflict on others.

Silk Road 2.0 busted! At least two arrests as federal crackdown begins

M Gale

Re: Loser Loser BIG difference between commercial and street drugs.....

So basically, every single bad thing you're throwing at mowie wowie is there because it's illegal, and not because it's mowie wowie.

You know the answer to that problem, but neither you nor the Daily Heil will like it very much.

Also, medicinal weed is best vaped or eaten, not smoked. In fact that's the case for marijuana full stop, but you know, illegal, inflated prices, people do what they can.

M Gale

Re: It's all good

Coke, possibly, over a long period of usage. There's a reason it's also known as "Forced March". Ecstasy (as in MDMA, not the research chemicals you buy outside a nightclub for a quid), no. That has a different side effect of depression caused by you exhausting your serotonin supply in repeated bursts of I LOVE YOU, MAN. Leah Betts is the poster child everyone brings out for MDMA-related deaths, and she didn't die from ecstasy poisoning. She died from water overdose after listening to government FUD about "OMG YOU WILL DEHYDRATE UNLESS YOU DRINK LOOOOOADS." Heroin's major problem is the extreme addiction.

Weed's only a problem if you're schizophrenic. But then, if you have that sort of problem, you should also be avoiding alcohol, and possibly strong coffee.

M Gale

Re: It's all good

And the worst part about the inhumane drugs war is that it has resulted in people lumping pretty much any psychoactive compound under the umbrella demonisation term "DRUGZ". Alcohol is a drug, you know, with far more harm potential than many of the illegal substances out there.

Really, comparing weed to cocaine? Might as well compare an egg whisk to a jackhammer.

Apple wants sales ban on Samsung smartphones nobody is selling

M Gale

Re: Does Apple Make anything useful

as Apple have better resale / trade-in value / last longer

You can shoot a fucking big hole through this argument by visiting just about any second hand shop or mazuma-type website, and looking at the price you'll get and the price you'll pay for an iThing versus any droid thing that isn't cheap shit.

Slurp away, NSA: Mass phone data collection IS legal, rules federal judge

M Gale
Coat

= or ==?

Or is it more of a ===?

But that's just quibbling over syntax. Otherwise, yes.

Ubuntu unleashes dual boot tool for Android mobes'n'slabs

M Gale

Re: AC Why the hell

and it won't spend half it's time reporting back to Google and the cellular provider everything you look at, download or do.

It'll just report it all to Canonical and Amazon. Not sure which is better.

M Gale

Re: Windows 8

If you mean "lets you drop to a Windows command line", you might want to check out Busybox for Android (there's non-root versions too). Lets you open up a terminal window, erm, without rebooting.

Other than that, Windows 8 isn't really like Android at all, except perhaps both being designed around toy fondleslabs and the default UI being a bit shit on anything that's not a fondleslab.

M Gale

Cool idea, not that dual-booting is a new concept.

On a phone?

Just be glad the fruit merchant didn't do it, otherwise they'd have a patent on it by now. Yes I know, the chances of Apple even entertaining a dual-boot iPhone are about the same as the chances of anything coming from Mars.

(Well, excluding our own Martian).

HTC: Shipping Android updates is harder than you think – here's why

M Gale

Re: blame linux?

API, not so much. ABI? Well yeah, there's been some developers who have an insane desire to deliberately break stuff.

It's one thing for one of your kernel updates to mess with Nvidia's kernel driver module. Another thing to go out of your way to break it and make life difficult for everyone involved. But, some people are quite happy with their special little 0.5% and don't want it getting any bigger.

I don't care if they are leet hacksaw kernel devs, I call such people "fucking idiots".

Android, Chromebooks storm channel as Windows PC sales go flat

M Gale

Re: So if we award all desktops to Microsoft then I make it...

In this day and age, if I don't have an internet connection it's because I wanted it that way.

What's wrong with wanting a computer that works without a connection to The NSA^WCloud?

Fanbois, prepare to lose your sh*t as BRUSSELS KILLS IPHONE dock

M Gale

Re: Appropriate use of icon..

I recall travelling to our neighbours before EU days

Admittedly, "before EU days" was pretty much the cold war, and there was all kinds of other crap to deal with. You know, like Germany being split across the middle by a bloody big wall and people getting their arses shot off for trying to cross over it.

Also the UK has agreed to some parts of the Schengen agreement. I think the healthcare provisions are one part. So, if you're in an EU country that isn't your home, and you fall sick, you can use that country's health service. Yes, even if you are a Pole living in the UK. I think there is even some provision where if you are ill in your home country, the domestic health service cannot help you, and there is a treatment elsewhere in the EU, you can travel to the other country and have your home nation's health service pay for the treatment.

It helped immensely with a friend trying to get on the Sativex program when he managed to say to the NHS guys in so many words, "marijuana is a treatment that works for my conditions, so how about I go to Amsterdam and you pay for it?"

He's on Sativex now, and yep, it works.

M Gale

Re: Vladimir Plouzhnikov

Actually you can fit between 74 and 80 minutes of CD quality digital audio on a CD. Ahem.

If you moonlight as a DJ, you'll also know that the punters on the dance floor probably don't care about the 20khz ceiling for 44.1khz digital audio, that probably isn't very audible amongst the groundshaking bass being pumped through a bunch of Peaveys or Kenwoods anyway.

Now if you're going to tell me that vinyl is better for cueing up and mixing stuff together, I'll probably agree. There is a reason that time coded vinyl is widely regarded as the best digital DJ UI. However, quality wise, a 128kbit mp4 probably exceeds the quality of a 12" EP or LP, and you can fit a whole ton of those on a CD.

M Gale

Re: Not only but also

So now, every phone will come with two cables, and a charger. Instead of the one cable and charger that they now come with. Way to "reduce unnecessary waste" !!!

Or the vast majority of phones will come with a single port that does everything and fits to most phones, and a couple of awkward bastards will insist on using a seperate port for "enhanced functionality". You know, like data.

DisARMed: Geeksphone's next high-end mobe to pack Intel x86 inside

M Gale

Re: Android.. on x86?

Android is already a virtual machine running on a Linux kernel. That's what the whole "dalvik" thing is. I guess if you compile the Android Linux kernel for x86, Android runs on x86. Same for ARM, MIPS or whatever the CPU-du-jour is. Hell, being a Linux kernel, I'm surprised we haven't seen Android kitchen toasters yet, although Sammy seem to have joined in a little with the hacker spirit and made an Android refrigerator.

M Gale

Re: Not another smart phone?

Bloody good rant. Yep, there does need to be a hard-as-nails phone that isn't teeny. However, I wouldn't be so sure about "don't need data". Even farmers these days can have all kinds of tech helping them look after the place, and some of that tech can beep you (or send a message) when something is up.

A data allowance would be a pretty good way of getting an email or other alert saying "oi, some fucker's pinched the cable to the cow shed again, grab your 12 bore and get up there before they get away."

Mozilla: Native code? No, it's JavaScript, only it's BLAZING FAST

M Gale

Re: Assembler is not "arcane"

Oh I dunno. I'd call Brainfuck and its derivatives pretty arcane (and perhaps archaic), even if they are about the simplest type of "virtual machine" you could dream up. Quite far removed from 10 PRINT "BOLLOCKS "; 20 GOTO 10.

M Gale

a syntactically rich, high-level language like C or Python

Oh come on. High level like C or Python? Just because Assembly language is a mining operation in the Marianas trench, doesn't mean that paddling around in a Python (or Ruby, Perl, VB, even Javascript) playpool is anything like the heliox diving operation that is C.

Microsoft yanks Surface 2 DIM SCREEN of DEATH fix in update snafu

M Gale

Just a quickie

"Empire of Sadness"

Has Linden Labs gotten some massive pretentions lately, or is this some other Registerism (or perhaps, Pottism) that I don't know of yet?

IT bods: Windows XP, we WON'T leave you. Migrate? Chuh! As if...

M Gale

Re: I believe it

Thanks, but I already have an 8 Pro iso from whatever-they're-calling-MSDNAA-this-week. Having passed the degree and therefore no longer being entitled to free downloads from Microsoft, there's no chance I'm paying full price for an 8.1 disk even if one was available. I don't think many other Windows 8 users will be doing that either, unless they have more money than sense.

Also "I got the Windows 8.1 ISO from MVLS" - so a download then, which requires a Microsoft account that's been authorised to use the MVLS. I'm sure all those people buying new PCs out there have access to Microsoft's volume licensing service. Not.

Now, log into the store from 8, wait for the umpteen-gig 8.1 upgrade download to finish and start installing stuff. After two or three reboots (some things don't change), it'll get to the same "setting up your machine" screens that millions of people who don't have the extra-special don't-piss-our-business-customers-off editions of Windows get to see.

Show me the local account option there. You know, in spite of it being an upgrade to a (virtual) machine which was primarily run on a local account.

M Gale

Re: Whither Windows?

...and doesn't work very well.

Though given the "more secure" comment, you probably haven't tried anyway.

M Gale

Re: I believe it

re: Microsoft account. Not needed in 8.0, not needed in 8.1.

I see someone who has never installed 8,1. Firstly, it's a Store download. Secondly, it asks you for your Microsoft account details or to create a new Microsoft account. No "local" option there unless it's buried even further than 8. You have to wait until after everything's installed and then, if you're the sort of user who even understamds how to do it, you can go into the control panel and set up a new local user.

This in spite of it being an "upgrade" from 8.0, which already had accounts on it. I mean really, what the fuck?

M Gale

Re: Keep one asset with XP...

Has anyone ever tried XP compatability mode?

Yes.

It isn't.

M Gale

Re: I believe it

"you don't have to have an ms account"

True of 8.0 after a fashion. You are pushed into making a Store account in the same way you are pushed into installing unwanted toolbars with your CNET download. Be very careful about when and where you click "next".

8.1 though, good luck trying to install without a Microsoft account. For a start, it's only available in the Store. For a second, signing into a Microsoft account is an essential part of the finish-the-installation process. You have to wait until after you've given Microsoft a bunch of bullshit details before being able to create a "local" account.

Sure, anybody who's spent three or four years studying for a degree could probably hack their way around it. Most people though, probably don't even know there is a "local account" option.

Google search biz offer BINNED by EU competition chief

M Gale

They should do this MS Browser Screen style.

Put an option in the user account settings saying "would you like us to point you at other search engines while you search?"

Then we can click the button marked "No thankyou. If I wanted another search engine I'd already be there."

Except Microsoft actually have an abusive monopoly that's only in a slight, remote danger of being corroded 30 years later thanks to throwaway toyslabs with nowhere near the utility of a PC, and Google don't. And Microsoft are one of the Fairsearch group. Go fucking figure.

NO XMAS PRESENTS FOR Google Now and Siri: Chirpy scamps get a C+

M Gale

Re: Now try these same tests outside of the US

Actually, Google's speech recognition does seem leaps and bounds ahead of Siri, when it comes to understanding anything not spoken in posh American. Copes with a thick Lanky Twang surprisingly well. Siri, not so much.

"Goggle, whur's t'chippeh? I wants a babbi's 'ed fer tea. That last black pud was 'arder than an 'alf knacker an' left me feelin' all sorts o' wrong."

Okay, so maybe it couldn't cope with that too well, but it's pretty good nonetheless.

Cheap 3D printer works with steel

M Gale

Re: M Wail M Blowhard Now this is more like it.

Did I say that this machine will be awesome for making your own AK47? What, I didn't?

Did I just say "The headless chickens going on about guns can fuck off and go wibble at something else. You can make a gun out of a pipe and a few other bits and pieces, so let's shut down B&Q for selling deadly weapons without a license, eh?"

Why yes, yes I think I did.

Did I also say "A zip gun made out of materials of known strength and composition (like a nice thick steel pipe) is probably a hell of a lot safer than anything bought after falling off the back of a lorry."

Crikey. Two for two. Hey, you trust that dodgy gun you bought from a guy in a pub if you like. It's probably only moderately less likely to blow your hand off than a Liberator.

And if a .22 long round is so shit, you go ahead, place one in a pipe stuck against your temple and whack the end nice and hard. Who knows, maybe you might do the world a favour?

M Gale

Re: M Blowhard Now this is more like it.

"Blowhard", coming from Matt Bryant? Sorry, but you have zero right to call anybody that and be taken seriously.

If you're making copies of tin toys, maybe, but anything where you need strength in the steel - such as a gun barrel or engine gear - your cutlery set is not going to do the job.

How about we wait until a few people have made things and tested them before saying what this kit will or won't do? Personally I don't think the inert environment this apparently needs would be that expensive to maintain. Nitrogen is cheap and plentiful, bottles of CO2 can be refilled/exchanged at anywhere that does Soda Stream, for a couple of quid, and it doesn't have to be a hermetically sealed box. Besides, it seems that the thing uses standard MIG welding wire. So strong enough.

A gun made out of commercial piping and bits from B&Q is not going to be as safe or as useful as a proper commercial weapon.

A zip gun made out of materials of known strength and composition (like a nice thick steel pipe) is probably a hell of a lot safer than anything bought after falling off the back of a lorry. You know, the sort of illegal firearms that the sky-falling-on-head crowd don't think about, because they don't seem to be thinking in any capacity whatsoever.

M Gale

Now this is more like it.

It's not so much the immediate price tag, it's the ability to refill the thing by chucking a 99p cutlery set or a pile of empty drinks cans at it.

The headless chickens going on about guns can fuck off and go wibble at something else. You can make a gun out of a pipe and a few other bits and pieces, so let's shut down B&Q for selling deadly weapons without a license, eh?

To fel with you! There's an NSA spook in my World of Warcraft

M Gale

Re: Xbox Live.

From what I'm aware, compulsory kinect is one of many things that Microsoft have backpedalled from on the XB One.

That'll be in the XB One Two instead then, I guess. And every sequel until people stop complaining about it.

M Gale

"Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments"

Something in that sentence made me think of aManFromMars.

Though I'm sure the Martian (MartAIn?) has something semi-coherent to say about the whole affair.

DARPA seeks game players to join bug-hunt

M Gale

And the latest news upodate...

StormBound Update: September 16, 2013

Tutorial bug fix, Better level selection

Oh how deliciously recursive.

Chinese gamer plays on while BMW burns to the ground

M Gale

One wonders if the story would have garnered as much interest if the BMW owner had simply been engrossed in a book when his car caught fire.

Come now, you know the answer to that one. Books don't require batteries, so therefore don't run on Devil Juice. Computer games on the other hand, are powered by lost souls and Satan. How else do you think they get the little people on the screen? Poor buggers, condemned to an eternity of war so that you can play CoD.

Repent!

El Reg's contraptions confessional no.2: Tablet PC, CRT screen and more

M Gale

Typing this in front of an AOC 5glr monitor. 19" CRT, runs at 1600x1200 nicely and you can push it to 2048x1536 if you don't mind interlaced flicker-o-vision. It's TCO '99 compliant, to give you an idea of vintage.

I have a G3 Power Mac sat on the floor with a bust PSU. Useless but at least it looks pretty. Right next to it is an Amstrad PPC640, which while in perfect working order, is only marginally more useful. Got two of those. One was bought from a Flea market, the other rescued out of a skip. Hefty buggers. Not so much "laptop" as "luggable", and two 720KB floppy drives on each one. Hard drive? Only if you've got an external to plug into the parallel port.

One working Megadrive and Mega CD (second edition), waiting for me to be bored enough to pull them out again. I always liked the original ones more, though.

Oh and a "domestic electrical test meter" that someone gave me, that seems to have come from the early days of the Roman empire. Just modern enough for modern UK plugs, but really not much more modern. I have no idea who it's made by. Neither the device nore the manual give any clue to that, just that it's called "The Mighty Meter", has a removable socket tester, and a socket built into its case for testing appliances, amongst other functions.

FTC torches Android flashlight app for spying on users

M Gale

Post Install Permission Denial

Cyanogenmod has it, Google. Why don't you?

Three offers free US roaming, confirms stealth 4G rollout

M Gale

5GB for £26/month

How fucking generous. And you can now exceed that even faster with new Superfast Broadband from EE?

Glad I'm on Three. One Plan for the win. What limit?

Asus Transformer Book T100: Xbox One? PS4? Nah, get a cute convertible for Christmas

M Gale

Re: License Violation

2013 and still pretending MS Ofiice is the big bruiser you have to pay before doing anything.

Yes actually, if you use it, then it is. If you're running a whole business on Student edition, you'll find that out next time Microsoft's lawyers start trawling for cash again. A bit like various small computer builders who were getting nastygrams for daring to replace a broken motherboard without charging the customer for a new OEM Windows install.

They'll wait until there's enough of a pool of license violators out there to bother with, then batch-threaten them for maximum return per hour of lawyer fees. If you think that won't happen, please feel free to carry on using MS Office: Grab 'Em While They Are Young Edition.

'Copyrighted' Java APIs deserve same protection as HARRY POTTER, Oracle tells court

M Gale

Still waiting...

...for a certain alleged Java developer (who totally isn't a Microsoft troll) to be hopping on here and telling us how it's all the Gnuliban's fault.

Digital GIANTS in BLOODY battle to put your EYEBALLS in a JAR

M Gale

Re: @ Pete 2 Wither telly?

If you can call taking advantage of an enforced license on a TV like it's some kind of Weapon of Mass Dissemination that needs to be regulated, then yes, the BBC is free.

Back in the real world, the BBC sits on top of a forcibly-extracted pile of cash that most broadcasters would sacrifice their first-born children to get.

Beijing leans on Microsoft to maintain Windows XP support

M Gale

Re: Unusual Case.

Linux is older than XP and no one would call it prehistoric.

That's because unless you're running Kernel v2.2 or something, it isn't.

Apple patents facial recognition tech for mobile log-in

M Gale

Right, time to sue the Android phone manufacturers.

After all, Google must have got a time machine, travelled into the future and stolen Apple's idea, in order to go back again and put Face Unlock into 4.x as a default feature.

Drone expert: Amazon's hypetastic delivery scheme a pie in the sky

M Gale

Re: Not DRONES just Radio Controlled Pests...

(please don't mention an on board engine driving a generator)

Why not? You can get surprising amounts of power out of a model engine with a purpose-built generator where the prop would be. Enough to run four brushless motors.

Direct drive is also very possible, otherwise helicopters wouldn't work. It's called "variable pitch", and it's been around for a long, long while. Some model helis have completely reversible pitch so you can fly 'em upside down. Look for "3D aerobatic" 'copters. You'll see what I mean. To say that you couldn't have an IC engine (or four of them) in a quadcopter is to ignore tried and trusted (and ancient) technology.

The drone doesn't have to just lob your parcel from 50 feet up. People who want the service (and I'm thinking business to business here), can pay rent on a landing pad that can sit on the roof of the office or wherever has sufficient access for drones and the humans collecting the packages. That or, as other people have suggested, use a drone to send the package to a point, and then use a van for the last mile.

There's problems to overcome, sure. However saying that a cheap, reusable, low-maintenance delivery method is impossible using lightweight cargo drones is shortsighted at best.

M Gale

Re: Bears with Arms

I'm sure all of those pilots taking off from metropolitan airports every day live in fear of some fuckwit taking pot shots at the evil flying metal demons.

Or not.

M Gale

Re: How long?

Which is the first thing that will happen to UPS as soon as someone uses it to deliver a parcel load of semtex with a timed detonation mechanism, of course.

Or of course, that could be complete crap.

M Gale

Re: Can't see these

I would say in sparsely populated areas, they'd be more viable than sending a 20 or 40 foot wagon with a single 5kg parcel in it. More viable than the old Transit Van method as well, I would say.

M Gale

Re: Not DRONES just Radio Controlled Pests...

Can you imagine the combined noise of all those 2 stroke engines buzzing overhead morning, noon and night?

For a start, there's no need for them to be two-stroke. Or methanol-fuelled. You can get some surprisingly quiet model aircraft engines in two or four-stroke with more than enough poke to drive a generator to generate electricity for the main brushless motors.

Quieter than the whacking great four-stroke diesels and reverse bleepers that announce Morning deliveries any other day, anyway. Or the screaming thousands-of-horsepower things that fly overhead every day around here, usually emblazoned with livery such as "Easyjet" or "Ryanair".

Or the copper chopper, which usually picks 4AM as its time to do nightly patrols.

You might need more ammo for that air rifle.

Saturn's moon Titan had swamps, say astroboffins

M Gale

Re: Polypropylene?

After enduring more than ten years of a rubbish tip nearby and precious little to stop airborne rubbish from blowing over, I can tell you that Tesco and Sainsburys bags get everywhere.

So finding them on Saturn's moons is probably not infeasible.

UK.gov's web filtering mission creep: Now it plans to block 'extremist' websites

M Gale

Re: "extremist"

Can Lancashire join you? The people in power think London is a separate country.

In my experience, the people in Lancashire think that London is a separate country, and extends North as far as Birmingham.