Posts by TeeCee

@silverlion

It's a lovely theory, sadly with one rather stonking hole in it.

There are no "local" Quasars.

That being so, it's highly unlikely that Quasars are an ongoing phenomenon and are far more likely something that were more common when the Universe was much younger and denser. Thus the ones we see now are very likely to be a bloody long way away (i.e. they are not actually there any more, but they were when the light we see set off from where they aren't).

I like to go with the simple answer, it's more usually the correct one. Also, it has the comforting feature that it rules out any unexpected Quasar formation in our bit of Universe........

Weasel words.

"The Metropolitan Police saved £2m in accident damages after installing the boxes....."

Entirely possible. The Police drivers are continually evaluated and retrained, so it would make sense to feed any statistics on accidents with common, avoidable causes back through the (re)training programme to improve the process.

Presumably this means that Phase 2 of the EU's policy would be to send drivers off for "political^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdriving reeducation" after an accident? I fail to see the point otherwise......

Obvious really.

"Google did not immediately respond to our request for comment when we contacted the company on Saturday evening Pacific time. And the company has yet to respond to users on its support forums."

They've obviously decided that it's cheaper to give a full refund on every complaint than to run a support service.

Since you paid fuck-all, that's what they're giving back.

Why shut 'em down?

As far as I can see, these bent sites function by proving to stupid greedy people that anything that looks too good to be true almost certainly is.

That's a valuable public service in my book.

If people can make money out of this providing this service they're public spirited entrepreneurs, not crooks.

Well, DUH!

That'll be 'cos world + dog has got one and even the dog doesn't want two.

I never cease to be amazed when some company that's flogging product like it's going out of fashion acts all surprised when the market saturation point is hit and sales go off a cliff, rather than gradually tailing off toward the end of the product lifecycle as per their cosy internal predictions.

Nintendo need to take a leaf out of the MS book and make sure that the next version goes titsup when its warranty period expires to ensure a ready supply of repeat sales.....

@Andrew Ducker

"....having a Hard Drive."

What? A bulky, power hungry, heat generating HDD instead of cheap, fast, small and cool flash cards?

That'd be a really clever move now, wouldn't it? Before anyone trots out any bollocks about capacity, you can swap memory cards (and they're getting more capacious all the time for the lazy)......

This one bit the dust when they shipped the FW update that allowed you to run download content direct from memory cards rather than having to tediously copy to / from internal memory.

@AC 11:18

That'll be 'cos they have the Latin chars on their keyboards and in the base character set for acronymns, anglicisations, holding conversations internationally and such, including (surprise) typing in URLs.

That aside:

The content providers'll be pleased. De facto balkanisation of the internet, just what they wanted for Christmas and I wouldn't mind seeing where the heavy side of the lobby cash for this one came from.

The phishing argument's a valid one though, given two URLs of "line of twelve squares with three dots in it" and "line of twelve squares with three dots in it", which one's the phishing site? Not a problem for an automated antiphishing tool looking at the bytes behind this, but it's a bitch for eyeballs. I suspect most will just avoid URLs with embedded local charset nonprintables. Oh, there's that balkanisation again.

Ohshit!

Looks like the recession is even more serious than the most pessimistic pundits are saying. We must have reached the Shoe Event Horizon if Apple are moving into shoes.

Mine's the one with the bottle of "ACME Wing Growth Vitamins" in the pocket.

Re: Endurance?

"I suggest an electric Bathurst 1000."

Careful, I believe they still tar and feather for heretical ideas like that Down Under. AFAIR the Bathurst is one of the few remaining events where people are driven to question your sexuality if your engine is equipped with fewer than eight cylinders and returning overall MPGs in double figures definately falls foul of Rule One.

I wonder.....

Ok, so they can't remove dead people from the database so we are protected from zombie peadophiles.

But, is it possible to add a dead person to the database? Are zombie peadophiles still a threat if they kept their noses clean* before joining the swelling ranks of the undead?

What about ISA staff who are obviously only dead from the neck upwards? How do they fit into the scheme of things zombie-wise?

*and still attached to their faces, obviously.

Antigravity device?

Maybe not, but it makes a perfectly good crystal ball. Here's what it says about the future.

1) Emdrive is tested under rigorous scientific conditions and found to be a complete load of bollocks.

2) All funding is withdrawn, the inventor's branded a charlatan and his lovingly accrued accreditions are revoked.

3) The nuttier ends of the blogosphere (ugh) explode in an orgy of conspiracy theories as to how this technology is being suppressed by Big Oil / Big Government / The Military / The Illuminati / Alien sponges from the planet Thrarb / Mrs Johnson from No. 24 / whatever.

4) The Mythbusters build one from a set of "build your own antigravity machine" plans bought for $25 off eBay and prove it doesn't work.

5) Repeat 3.

6) etc. ad infinitum

7) Six million years later, a superintelligent radioactive mutant cockroach invents a microwave antigravity machine............

Re: oh sweet

When catching fanbois, it's not the hook that's important, it's the bait....

@John Robson

I think you'll find that TomTom, Garmin, Navteq, Navigon and so on will have a somewhat different opinion here. That'll be their highly profitable market in the process of upping and disappearing before their very eyes. If Google start bundling the "killer app" of navigation and get away with it, Apple, Palm, MS (although more likely their OEMs), Nokia et. al. won't be far behind. They're not going to just sit there and watch Android pwn *their* target market.

Remember, when MS started bundling IE, nobody gave a shit 'cos it was crap and the first thing that world+dog did was install Netscape off the nearest PC rag cover CD. Then MS released a version that worked adequately at the time just as Netscape made the simultaneous ballsups of shipping the Communicator bundle 'o shite and, er, charging for it.

@A J Stiles

A 15 quid Chinese aerial booster from a few years back that's known to perform waaaay outside spec?

It probably didn't have a wheelie bin symbol, crossed out or otherwise.

You're the sort of person who used to delight in lecturing those of us using "red triangle" modems, aren't you?

"...future social-network-type....."

If anyone ever "pings" me for using more 'leccy than them, I shall respond: "Yes, I've upped my consumption. Up yours".

Electricity 2.0? Bah.

Elastic Compute Cloud.

Presumably so called because every time someone drives past in a Ferrari, the elastic snaps and its knickers fall down.

What the CENSORED?

What I want to know is, given the extraordinarily high fuck count in that list of terms, what's out there to be censored that's more potty-mouthed than the page presented to the viewer by the censorware?

Just out of interest, is there a Reg comments section that contains more usage of the word fuck (i.e. a higher fuck to other word ratio) than that little lot? Can we link it so that Turkish readers can not see an example of what they are not seeing?

Implements the TRIM command?

I read that and wondered if, since TRIM is a standard command, implementing it in XP and Vista using their "SDD Optimiser" fix could benefit non-Itel devices too. "How uncharacteristically generous" thought I.

So I pulled the Intel white paper. Ho hum. It doesn't implement TRIM in XP or Vista per se. It's a seperate utility that allows you to update block usage on SSDs (and they have to be Intel ones), using the TRIM command, to match the O/S opinion of use either manually or on a scheduled basis. Normal levels of generosity are resumed.

The answer's in there.

So. Why are we bothering with all this crap? What's the reason for Kyoto, Copenhagen and all the associated bollocks?

Surely if things get too hot / cold / wet / dry / radioactive / sunny / dark / smelly / acidic / glaciated / whatever we can just club together and purchase the correct one of IBM's "extensive range of climate solutions" to alleviate the problem?

I'm off to IBM's website now to download a warm summer's evening so I can sit outside the pub and smoke in peace tonight. BTW: Anyone in North London might want to go away for the weekend as there's a retailer that I have issues with in the area and I'm thinking that an F4 Tornado followed by an Ice Storm would get the message across nicely.

Definately the 777.

Firstly a nuclear weapon that fails to work is actually somewhat safer than one that works as expected.

Secondly only one of these is likely to have you sat inside it several thousand feet up in the air when the advantages of physical prototyping decide to make themselves known.

I had the rather dubious pleasure of flying on one of the first 777s very shortly after it entered service with Emirates*. While the staying in the air side of things worked as expected**, absolutely bugger all else did. For teething troubles this thing was the equivalent of a T-Rex with advanced gum disease.

*Not their fault and they were very apologetic. This black mark does not affect my overall opinion that they are the best airline out there.

**Presumably. I didn't get into the cockpit, but if the avionics were anywhere near as fubar as the rest of it the pilots would have been sitting in the dark and looking out of the windows a lot.

".... and also paid for a scientist's wedding."

Apparently he was planning to serve cloned Mammoth meat at the reception, but it turned out that it was off. In a statement he said that the steaks were too high.

Comparing oranges with apples.

Probably a bad analogy in this case, given that the word "apple" is trademarked up, down and sideways when used in connection with computers. Particularly so since the owners of said word are well known for sueing the living shit out of anyone overstepping the mark at the drop of a hat.

Personally I'd have gone with something entirely unrelated to any sort of fruit like chalk and cheese, to be on the safe side.

How it will really work.

1) This simple and easy to use method of helpfully organising web page read flow takes off and loads of devices start to support it.

2) Greedy bastard web admins cover their screens with virtual arrows pointing at the ads to generate more views / clicks / anglo-saxon words from adblock+ users.

3) World + dog curses and switches off "page flow assist" (or whatever) in their browsers.

4) The technology dies.

5) Someone invents a new way of handling web pages on small screens which is simple for web admins to implement.

6) GOTO 1

Re: Re: the use of "evanescent" sound waves?!?

I was going to be that idiot!

I bought "Fallen" some time ago and I was pleasantly surprised. A bit of a throwback to the days before digital downloads and the fixation on the "song". So instead of the more usual fare served these days (the hit "song" and a dozen or so crap filler tracks) I got a CD full of good stuff.

Your milage may vary. Let's just say that when I had hair it was long and dyed black. Trivia point: The reason that Goths are not usually seen on motorcycles, even though leather is de rigeur, is that those indian silk scarves worn hanging from the belt collection get caught in the chain..........

Re: Re: Workarounds

So there's more than one person here who can think outside the .box?

Bound to end in tears.

At the rate they're discovering exo-solar planets at the moment, we're going to need to get the Greeks and Romans to invent some more low-order deities. Lots of 'em and quickly too.

They could run out of material pretty fast and I pity the poor colonists in a few thousand years' time, who draw their first breaths on their new homeworld named after the god of recently discarded pyramid teabags....

Commitment.

"...The Secretary of State remains one hundred percent committed to the aircraft carriers."

Forgive me for sounding cynical, but that sounds exactly like a well known announcement from the world of football. I.e. when a manager is given the "100% backing of the board" somewhere around two weeks before the inevitable sacking, which turns up after such as surely as night follows day.

Shortly after hell freezes over.

"....it might make hold-outs like Apple take note......"

Yup, I'm thinking something called "micro-usb" only with a magnetic connection and a completely different pinout myself. Probably designed to catch fire if you plug in a standard charger too.

The chargers'll probably be white....

Someone's got to say it.

If the American police start fining everyone who doesn't speak English properly over there, their legal system will collapse under the strain.

There's a certain Google spokesdroid well documented elsewehere here who's in serious shit under the yank "three strikes" policy on minor offences for a start......

Re: smoke and mirrors.

OK, now name a modern OS aimed at the end-user which does not come with at least one browser bundled as standard, or are you a "one law for us, one for them" type?

Oh and you shouldn't need a browser to get updates at all. In fact you don't in the MS world since Vista, it just took them a while to catch up with the right way of doing things. Personally I'd be deeply unhappy with any OS where the update process was handled by something that the distributors did not have control over. That astonishingly dumb suggestion's got "pwn me please" written all over it.

Re: Big Deal?

"....google have a tobogan in the cantine of their Zurich R&D centre......"

Yes, but they've blurred it out now.

As per spec?

I guess that they built the thing to the exact specifications dictated by Apple for iStuff and forgot to remove the "burst into flames" functionality like most OEMs do.

Saints preserve us!

"....we’re sure buyers could tinker with the car’s digital audio......"

Ohshit I do hope not. I've just had a vision of the future in which cars sail around in electrical serenity. Silent save for the sound of "Crazy Frog", that POS with the talentless helium-voiced dickhead or whatever other crap ringtone's doing the rounds at the time playing incessently through their personalised "acoustic safety modules".

External PSU?

So, simply using an external power supply removes enough heat from the box itself to ensure the cool and safe running of complex componentry?

Someone ought to tell MS's Xbox 360 unit that one. The fixed smile and pained look they'd get as a response would be rather funny.

Maybe not.

"....lack of effective behaviour-based malware detection was the one big minus in comparison with AVG."

Oh yeah? My mother was having a few issues recently, so when this shipped I asked her to pull AVG and try the MS product. After install it cleared its throat, removed something unpleasant that AVG was happily cohabiting with (can't remember exactly what off the top of my head, but it was a genuine nasty) and all is now sweetness and light.

The word "effective" is heavily misused in that minus point IMHO. AVG couldn't detect malware if it was four foot across, painted dayglo pink and had "I am a piece of malware" picked out on it in flashing LEDs.

There's a clue in the name.

Well, what do you expect from a Data service called Danger?

I guess they need to rebrand it "goshweareshitatthis" for the hard of thinking.

Really?

'"Someone being beaten up should be a crime," commented Szrodecki.'

It's currently legal to beat the crap out of fat bastards? Who knew?

@raving angry loony

The shark will only have been jumped good 'n proper when the usable lifespan of a car/fridge/television/toaster/hot-water-bottle is dictated by when Apple update the iPod dock, rendering the one in that car/(etc) obsolete....

This level of mind-numbing stupidity coming soon to a world near you.

Oopsie!

"...it subsequently emerged that.........poses no threat to Firefox users....."

Less fox and more "WWWOOOOOLLLLLLLLLFFFFFFFFF!!!!!!!!!!" then.

What makes me laugh here is that the IE version needs patching for security and the FF version, er, doesn't. Looks like even MS take more care when writing for FF, even if they think they don't. I'd love to have seen the expressions on their faces when they got around to testing for the vuln in the FF offering and found it wasn't there.

@Dick Emery

No Keanu Reeves I'm afraid, but after a quick squirrel around I've found a spare piece of 2x4 in the garage. I think it's pine.

Will that do as a substitute?

@Tim Cockburn

Nah, everyone knows that as these conditionalities commence to excurse the eventuation of strench is unavoidablized.