Posts by Jolyon Ralph
365 posts • joined Thursday 18th October 2007 10:29 GMT
Mmm yes..
From his Daughter's blog (https://sites.google.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/home) describing their trip to North Korea.
" We left our phones and laptops behind in China, since we were warned they'd be confiscated in NK, and probably infected with lord knows what malware."
Mmm yes, leave your laptops in China. Good advice there :)
Dihydrogen Monoxide
Have they checked to see how many of these criminals were exposed to dihydrogen monoxide at some point in their lives? It may also be a factor.
Poor clovis
So, the clovis travelled all the way from Asia to the US only to find someone had already shat in their caves.
At least they didn't have Homeland Security
Not really news
As the majority of meteorites pre-date formation of planets, there are dozens of these"proto-minerals" already known.
My favourite one is the utterly bizzare icosahedrite (www.mindat.org/min-40647.html) - a natural quasicrystal - which was found in terrestrial rock, but analsys suggests the grains were derived from an ancient meteorite that were then redeposited within earth rock.
> but as developers are unable to issue updates and fixes,
> it could gradually become buggy and incompatible with the software.
Ah yes, the inveitable bit rot that introduces new bugs into existing working software. If the app works now on an ipad, and the ipad isn't updated in any other way, it's going to continue to work, isn't it?
Jolyon
Microphone input NOT removed
>Muzos will also be surprised to discover that – apart from the pair of built-in microphones
>– there’s no audio input at all
Not true. All they have done (in common with other manufacturers, my 2 year old Lenovo laptop has exactly the same) is combine the two into a single extended socket much the same as is on the iPhone and other mobile devices.
So you can plug your iphone headphones/mic straight into it and use it. No need for headsets with two plugs on the end. I've found it much more useful when using skype, etc, on my Lenovo that I can plug in my iphone headphones/mic rather than carrying around a headset with two connectors.
Jolyon
Re: Economic harm?
"I can't believe you are stupid enough to think that there's a difference in the technology involved."
Did I mention technology at all? The technology allows me to listen to music that I have legally paid for. The fact that it allows people to listen to music they haven't paid for doesn't stop the technology working well for my purposes. Should I have to subsidise those who pirate music by paying an additional fee on my music player? No, I don't think so.
The problem is DRM can't work with audio because CDs are unencrypted 16-bit uncompressed audio. By creating a system that requires DRM, you're preventing people from using music they have already paid for (ie, format shifting), it's not just the pirates who are getting annoyed.
So, without pissing everybody off, you can't make an audio player that refuses to play pirate files. Simply isn't going to happen. If you want to blame anyone, blame the music industry for really not thinking the whole thing through in the late 70s/early 80s when they dreamt up going to digital.
"Just because an article is written by Orlowski does not mean it is completely irrational and without merit."
As Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. I've not seen any.
Re: Economic harm?
The original article, and my comment, had nothing to do with piracy, and everything to do with format shifting. Despite what record company executives may want to believe, the two are not the same thing.
If hungry musicians who sold me a CD want to eat, they can jolly well record a new album which I will buy, they should not expect me to bail them out because skanky kids are pirating their music. That's not my problem.
Economic harm?
What bullshit. We are meant to feel sorry for companies trying to rip us off by wanting us to buy the same music twice? What is the author thinking????
If I have paid for music on a CD that I can play in a car, on my computer or on a CD player, then there's no moral justification for stopping me listening to that same music on my iphone.
Don't give the music companies a single penny of "compensation" for this. I, for once, am proud that in the UK we're holding out and not paying this fee to the music companies.
Yes, Apple could afford to pay it - but that doesn't make it morally right.
Jolyon
My suggestion
although it wasn't accepted by the client, was a big box at the top which says.
Cookies are essential for modern websites to work. Get over it [ ] I've got over it.
Once ticked, cookies are permanently enabled for the site.
The whole thing is a complete nonsense. The ONLY sensible solution for this is a browser-based one, with browsers keeping track of what sites you have enabled cookies for or not.
Posted in Vote now for the worst movie NEVER made
Wait a moment.
Shouldn't the winner get 10 DVDs of the worst movies ever made, the second place get 20 and so on...
(checks current pole positions)
No, wait, leave it as it is!
Save icon
Isn't it time to ditch the 3.5" disk icon? Not that I can think of a better replacement.. But seriously, it's 2012
Home office biometric systems down today too
Huge biometric system failure in Lunar House. Lots of frustrated people having to rebook appointments.
Posted in So what's the worst movie NEVER made?
The C Programming Language
Original by Kernighan and Richie
Screen adaption by J.J Abrams
Posted in So what's the worst movie NEVER made?
Bad director remakes
I live in fear of the wrong directors being invited to remake classic movies,
can you imagine, for example:
A remake of Psycho directed by Michael Bay
A remake of Free Willy directed by Quentin Tarantio
or worst of all
A remake of Star Wars directed by George Lucas
Posted in So what's the worst movie NEVER made?
The Ucyclopedia list of 100 WOrst movies of all time:
contains such classics as:
"Close Encounters of the Third Reich"
Adolf Hitler returns in a UFO, and he's pissed.
"Titanic vs Godzilla"
At the end of the original Titanic, Bruce Willis (played by Leonardo Di Caprio) destroys the iceberg after drilling into it and planting a nuclear bomb in its core. But the RSS Titanic is far from safe. Blown off course, it heads into Japan, home of the notorious Godzilla
"Andy Warhol Controls the Universe"
Mr. Warhol hits new experimental heights in this film about a filmmaker making a film about a film whose filmmaker filmed it entirely with the lens cap on.
"Paul Allen vs Predator"
Can $21 billion protect you from an invisible alien hunting machine?
and so on...
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Worst_100_Movies_of_All_Time
One problem with polished meteorite *
* Assuming you mean a shiny metallic one, and not one that just looks like a lump of roadstone.
The problem is rust!
Meteorites are not good at being handled, and rust easily. Meteorite slices are best oiled and kept out of humidity to avoid decomposition.
So, neat but utterly impractical.
Jolyon
Obligatory XKCD reference
http://xkcd.com/685/
five-fold symmetry
Yes. the stuff has five-fold symmetry, which is freaky and quite unnaturally weird. Nothing else in the mineral world does.
Icosahedrite
None of the articles seem to have mentioned the name of this mystery mineral - which is actually called icosahedrite - see http://www.mindat.org/min-40647.html
An entirely new crystal system had to be invented for this - called 'Icosahedral'.
Jolyon
What to do with 90,000 tonnes of radioactive water?
Only one simple option. Dump it (carefully) at sea.
90,000 tonnes of radioactive water added to 1,400,000,000,000,000,000 tonnes of normal seawater = problem gone.
Don't forget there are 4.5 billion tonnes of natural uranium dissolved already in the oceans. 90,000 tones of radioactive water (even if with more dangerous isotopes) is next to nothing.
This assumes of course that it can be dispersed and spread relatively evenly, rather than just dumped all in one place. But take a few slightly leaky radioactive barges on a tour around the pacific and it'll be good.
Hokey Religions
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good taser at your side, kid.
Posted in Rainbow Islands
Future Antique Code Show ideas
Here's my suggestions for future articles:
Ant Attack (ZX Spectrum)
North and South (Amiga)
Marble Madness (various)
Balance of Power (Amiga)
Halls of the Things (Spectrum)
WHAT PROBLEM?
TO BE HONEST, I DON'T SEE WHAT THE FUSS IS ALL ABOUT. WHAT'S WRONG WITH SOMETHING BEING LOUDER THAN SOMETHING ELSE?
Posted in Fake doc cuffed in concrete arse shocker
When the police came
she must have been shitting bricks
Start panicking!
I'm more alarmed about the possibility this will trigger the earth's core to stop rotating, and that we'd have to drill down to the core and restart it spinning with nuclear weapons. I saw a documentary about this once...
You would think that a 30mm chain gun would be more effective
and a better deterrent.
Explains the Fermi Paradox!
Finally, we begin to understand why the value of L has to be very low in the Drake Equation, and that explains the fermi paradox.
Spear to Peer?
Type your comment here. If you have one, which I don't
Stripping metadata
Although I wouldn't put it past Facebook to be doing this deliberately, most websites that accept image contributions are going to want to resize and possibly reduce JPEG quality of images to optimize filesize and therefore their bandwidth requirements - simple techniques for doing this (such as using the PHP GD library) don't automatically preserve the metadata from the original image
Crap
Well, I have a site that does 300,000 pages a day, and that certainly doesn't make anywhere near enough money to pay these rates.
Bing not free
Sadly Bing has a limit of 500,000 free maps PER YEAR which is even worse than Google.
This is a fucking nasty move by Google. I note there is no exceptions for not-for-profit sites or other information sites that can't afford to pay the rates Google want us to pay.
Posted in Go Daddy flogs 50 MILLION domains
Why not list them all?
>The entire universe of internet domains amounted to 215 names at the end of the second quarter
Second quarter of 1984 maybe!
Posted in WTF is... HbbTV?
f*ck off, and NO
>That has caused friction among UK content providers, some of whom feel they,
>not a consortium, should be free to define the UI that fronts their IPTV services.
Fuc* off, and NO. Consortiums usually produce shit results, but it will be consistent.
I do NOT want the retards who build menus on DVDs to build IPTV menus, thankyouverymuch.
The Colorado one
is now proudly on display at the Colorado School of mines museum, where I saw it last week!
Premium Register Edition
I really think that a Premium Edition of The Register should be created, and all of Andrew's articles should only be available for those who pay for them.
I totally agree that premium content should be paid for!
.co.uk cookies
Not sure if it's still the case, but there was a nasty situation a while back where advertisers were writing cookies to the .co.uk domain which were then cross-readable by any UK website.
Of course, that also meant they could be deleted by any UK website, so some of my sites might run a bit of javascript that might remove cookies that are aimed at the .co.uk domain level.
this is an appropriate title
I believe you meant 'stupidly'.
What I really want to see
is a file copy queue. So if I drag 10 files from disk A to disk B, they start copying. But now, if I drag another 10 files, it starts a second queue of 10 files copying at the same time.
Now, there are time I may be copying 100 large files from disk A to B and then want to copy a small file from A to B at the same time, and want that concurrently, but the majority of time it would be far more sensible (and less thrashing) to append the second block of ten files to the original queue.
I would try Google Plus
but it's unavailable if your email account is hosted through Google for Domains. In fact, I originally set up an account, then Google made everyone merge their Google accounts, and my Google Plus got lost in the process.
Epic fail Google. Please sort this out. THe only people who can't use Google Plus are those who use Google to host mail for their domans. Stupid. So very stupid.
Wonderful!
I can just imagine all those useful apps that us developers can make for WebOS running on a printer.
Not.
Early Hacks
When I was in my very early teens, I realised I could add a joystick port to my ZX Spectrum by simply soldering some wires and a 9-pin D socket to the base of the Spectrum motherboard, where the keyboard connector was mounted. It was trivial to make a joystick that was compatible with the 'Interface 2' standard. Although less successful was the hole I made in the front of the spectrum case, which was carved very badly using a dinner knife heated up over my mum's cooker. Ruined the knife, and the hole was ghastly.
A few years later on, still a teenager and proud owner of an Amiga 500, I was, out of pure curiosity of course trying to reverse engineer the image format of the image frames in the game 'Hollywood Strip Poker' After failing at that, it suddenly dawned at me that if you renamed the files such that inga01 became inga08, inga02 became inga07 etc... then if you played the game really well, naked Inga would start to put her clothes back on.
re: iFor one
i for one zero zero one zero one one
Except iPhone 3G users are screwed
I haven't checked to see if the bug affects the 3G, but for those like me who are perfectly happy using an older iPhone (it worked well when I got it, it still works well now) and don't see any obvious need to spend money on a newer more shiny model, I guess we're screwed as there are no more OS updates.
Shame really.
ranging between £58 and an average of £500 per year?
What on earth does that mean?
I always thought an average was somewhere within the middle of a range.
Posted in WorldTradeCenter.com on the block
No big problem
There are other "world trade centers" around the world that would make perfectly good use of the name. What's the problem?
Whatever happened to
the official The Register bribery and corruption list (price for writing a good review, deleting an unfavoruable article, etc)...
iPad drop tests
I have had occasion several times over the last year to perform ad-hoc drop tests on my iPad, and despite it flying out of my hands and landing in the most awkward ways several times, it has yet to suffer any permanent damage (although my nerves have suffered more than once). It does have a cheap third-party leather case, which helps of course. I'm not sure putting an HD into a tablet is a wise move though.
