* Posts by Jolyon Ralph

393 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Oct 2007

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Ex-spook jailed for selling secrets

Jolyon Ralph

The Dutch?

Now, I may not be a super spy myself, but I wouldn't have figured the dutch would have been the obvious buyers for purloined MI6 information.

What is IBM up to in October?

Jolyon Ralph
Thumb Up

October 7th

Are they doing something to celebrate my birthday? That's nice of them.

Apple iMac 21.5in 2010

Jolyon Ralph

Rollover buttons

>I could do with an option for creating rollover buttons in iWeb.

I've never used iWeb, but I think we can be pretty sure that anything that relies on :hover behaviour, such as rollover buttons, isn't likely to be on Apple's target list seeing as they see the future as touchscreen devices, such as the iPad, where :hover doesn't exist as such.

George Lucas names Star Wars Blu-ray release date

Jolyon Ralph

Perhaps...

Perhaps these are off-air broadcasts from an HD movie channel somewhere in the world.

Apple kills browse-and-get-hacked bugs in iOS

Jolyon Ralph
Unhappy

Common Sense

> just to fix a problem I can likely avoid with some common sense (don't open PDFs).

Sadly it's not that easy. Safari on iOS 4.01 and earlier (and probably 4.0.2 as well) opens PDF files automatically without prompting so if they are, for example, embedded in a hidden IFRAME on a web page you're visiting then basically as soon as you visit the website you're buggered.

So you really should upgrade to 4.0.2, unless you want to jailbreak your phone/pad, or you want to stay with OS v3.x, in which case you should jailbreak the phone and install PDF Loading Warner from Cydia, which prevents PDFs being loaded without your approval.

Jolyon Ralph
FAIL

iPad backup

If you have applications that have lots of private data (for example, loading up Goodreader with a ton of PDF files), then it can take hours and hours to do a backup each and every time you sync with iTunes. Seems ITunes doesn't understand the concept of differential backups and tries to transfer everything, every time. You would have thought that when they produced a 64Gb device they might have considered there could be a problem with that.

Simple solution, find some alternative software to sync your music, contacts, etc with your iPad and don't use iTunes.

Oh. wait...

Guess you'll just have to keep skipping the backup.

Police told terror ads too terrifying offensive

Jolyon Ralph
Thumb Up

But do they have an SLR camera?

That's all that was missing from Plod's Entirely Accurate Description of Terrorists.

Indonesia joins BlackBerry wiretapping pile-on

Jolyon Ralph
Joke

For further information...

http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2010/08/02/gulf-states-order-blackberry-users-to-cover-their-phones-in-a-tiny-burqa/

UK ICT classes killing kids' interest in tech

Jolyon Ralph
Happy

As the old saying goes

Those who can't, teach.

and those who can't teach, teach IT

Apple preps iOS fix as Germany warns of iPhone peril

Jolyon Ralph

Choices for Iphone 2G/3G users

You have three choices

a. Upgrade to iOS4 (unless you're on an original iPhone or iPod Touch)

b. Leave the phone insecure

c. Jailbreak it then install the PDF Warner.

Jolyon Ralph
Thumb Up

Alternatively... you might want to jailbreak your phone/pad

and then install the PDF Loading Warner from Cydia, which will warn you whenever mail or safari try to open a PDF so you can cancel it.

Yet again, the jailbreakers are making iOS secure before Apple do :)

UK.gov drops £6m on Google

Jolyon Ralph

Ok, I know i'm begging for thumbs downs here but here goes...

Am I the only one who doesn't see a big problem here?

Is this any different to the endless television adverts they put out? They spend a fortune on TV adverts, £2 million on one advert alone, at least with pay-per-click they are actually spending their money on targetted advertising.

Of course, I'd be curious to know how many of these phrases they are paying for are phrases where their sites are already top of the organic listings.

Jolyon

iPad alert: Are you a selfish elite or an independent geek?

Jolyon Ralph
Happy

Well, I had to ask Steve whether owning an ipad made me an asshole...

"Yes, your an asshole. Not that big a deal.

Steve

Sent from my Flying iCar"

Forget the Jesus Phone, here's the Rude Phone

Jolyon Ralph
Thumb Up

Don't forget the Jizz mouse

Got one of them when I was in Hong Kong recently.

Proof? Oh ok...

http://www.31cn.net/products/enlist.asp?m=2878

New dinosaur dubbed 'Mojoceratops' - 'over a few beers'

Jolyon Ralph

Scientific naming fun.

It happens in all fields, I imagine.

In the world of minerals, for example, mineral species names traditionally (with few exceptions) end in ITE (eg Fluorite, Calcite, Pyrite, etc.) A few hundred new minerals are found each year and are named after various things, places, important people etc.

At one point not long ago, a new mineral was found and they wanted to name it after John S. White, a former curator at the Smithsonian in the US. So some bright spark decided that they could just call it White.

Apparently the formal process went quite far, only stumbling when they got to the part of the physical description where it stated "Color: White is beige"

It's now called Whiteite

Telco sets honey pot for nuisance marketers

Jolyon Ralph

What I was going to do with my old ISDN phone system

... was program a dungeon game into it.

"You are in a twisty cave of passages. Press 1 to go north, press 2 to go east, press 3 to go west, press # to kill the grue."

The idea was that any sales calls for me could get transferred into the dungeon. If they work their way out, it dials to my extension and I'd talk to them.

Sadly I never got time to get more than the first room done, so it was never used! Don't use phone systems any more (anyone want an old ISDN phone exchange?)

'The internet's completely over', declares petulant Prince

Jolyon Ralph

Just checking....

were you talking about Prince or Roland Rat?

I admit Prince had a few catchy songs, and he has gone a bit loopy (About 8 of 10 on the Adam Ant scale).

Jolyon Ralph

For those who don't know

Prince was a pop singer who was famous at around the same time as Roland Rat.

'Huge airships to carry freight starting 10 years from now'

Jolyon Ralph
Flame

Use Hydrogen in new airships, not helium.

Hydrogen is by far the best gas to use in airships, yes it can catch fire and burn, but it's half the density of helium, and MUCH cheaper.

It's perfectly reasonable for a safe hydrogen airship to be built with modern technology. Yeah it could go bang if someone deliberately shot something into it, but if you're looking for something to transport cargo primarily rather than people then it wouldn't be too hard to design some kind of crew escape module (assuming that these things would need a crew at all).

Apple speaks out on iPhone 4 signal slippage

Jolyon Ralph
Thumb Up

Aha! A cunning solution!

"We found that if we show four bars or more regardless of how low the signal is, suddenly everyone thinks the phone is working properly!"

Beeb reinstates teaboy in Pestogate scandal

Jolyon Ralph

Bush House and the new photo

Yes, BBC have really got a Bush house, it's the home of BBC World Service.

That new bbc panorama photo seems like something they created using the 'autostitch' application on the iphone (which is actually a very clever little toy)

Airline passenger videos Atlanta maggot horror

Jolyon Ralph

Sigh. more needless regulations on the way.

Not content with banning liquids and anything sharp (I REFUSE to use 'sharp' as a noun), no doubt they'll now ban people from taking rotten meat onto airplanes.

It's non-stop fun in Zero Carbon Britain, 2030

Jolyon Ralph
Happy

Livestock at 20% of current levels

Easy. Breed animals that are at least 5 times the size of current ones.

Elephantburger anyone?

Observer columnist in online porn mixup

Jolyon Ralph

xxx prefix

Excellent idea.

In fact, it should be mandatory, change www to xxx on any website to get a NSFW version of the site. I think El Reg could indeed take a lead here (to index your NSFW stories?)

Jolyon

'Industry giant' fragged UK games developer tax break

Jolyon Ralph

my money is on...

no-one. I suspect this is all a figment of someone's overactive imagination (or some magazine's PR department). Probably just one of may schemes scrapped by the tories on the basis that anything the previous govt. agreed to has to be wrong.

Jolyon

Southpaws up in arms over iPhone 4

Jolyon Ralph

Hang on a minute....

So. if i'm left handed I hold the phone in the right hand and type with my left, I assume? (Because I'm right handed and hold the phone in my left hand and type with my right).

It seems to me that it's actually easier to keep the lower left-hand side of the phone clear if you hold it in your right hand (ie if you're a lefty freak) than for normal people who hold it in the left hand and control it with their right hand.

I suspect there's a lot of deliberate whining going on rather than any serious problem. But then I don't have an iphone 4 yet.

The World's best World Cup Calendar (maybe)

Jolyon Ralph
Thumb Up

Alan Partridge USA '94

Here's how it should be done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gHorOt6KKw

Supercomputer oil slick sims predict greasy Atlantic

Jolyon Ralph
Joke

Moaning fishermen

I don't see what the problem is.

I thought oily fish were meant to be good for you.

Final Fantasy XIII ate my Playstation

Jolyon Ralph
Grenade

Destroying hardware with software?

Does anyone else remember the "drive music" 'demo' for the Amiga computer? it made the stepper motor in the 3.5" drive do weird things to make strange tones sort of approximating music.

It was allegedly responsible for many destroyed disk drives, although this may well be mostly rumor as I never actually met anyone who had their computer stuffed via this disk. But then we were all too scared to let it play for more than a second or two.

Jolyon

Pacific islands growing not shrinking, says old study

Jolyon Ralph
FAIL

Confusion of height and width.

I know these are complex subjects and the author may not grasp it, but I'll try and explain.

height is up and down.

width is left and right.

When sealevel rises the important factor is height. Anything that isn't high enough goes underwater. A side effect of this is the island width appears to shrink horizontally, because more of the island is going under water.

RIght. Simple so far.

So... The island grows because of sediment and coral growth. Great! Wonderful. That extends the island width, but not the height. Because sediments and corals both accumulate underwater. Eventually stretching the island out a little bit horizontally, but not in one bit adding to the height. In fact, where does that sediment come from? From the high bits of the islands eroding, so they're getting just that little bit shorter.

Consequently, it makes absolutely fuck all difference how WIDE the island is to prevent sea-level from inundating it.

Next-gen iPhone pegged with 320ppi display

Jolyon Ralph

iPhone 3GTi

That's what it'll be called. For certain.

Bing on iPhone rumor returns to boil

Jolyon Ralph
Happy

have been told, hope this is true

that the number 1 search term on 'Bing is "google"

Bangladesh cuts off Facebook

Jolyon Ralph
Thumb Up

Everyone draw Mark Zuckerberg Day

We need that next.

HTML5 'unhinged from reality,' say Javascripters

Jolyon Ralph
Boffin

Ajax, Flash, Vim, etc.

After all these cleaning-compound names being used for web technologies (ok, Vim is a cheat, but I edit HTML in VIM so that counts for me) perhaps we should continue with something similar to replace the HTML5 name. I propose "Toilet Duck"

Atlantis bows out with Kennedy touchdown

Jolyon Ralph

I hope

that one of the museums manages to get the whole deal - fuel tank and solid-rocket boosters (suitably cleaned out, of course!), and display it as it was ready for launch, rather than just sat on the ground. It takes off as a rocket and lands as an aircraft, I'd rather it was displayed as the former, to be honest. Of course, that would need a much bigger house :)

TwitPic-nicking Mail nicked

Jolyon Ralph
FAIL

Strange.

I assumed if anyone were, they'd be the copyright nazis. quite literally...

Computing smart-scope gunsight for US snipers

Jolyon Ralph
Grenade

Israeli solution

The israeli solution to defeat enemy snipers in the Lebanon wasn't to rely on one-shot-one-kill, but to use six-barrel gatling guns on top of armoured personnel carriers, normally designed to shoot down enemy aircraft, and blast the crap out of not only the sniper but anyone and anything that happened to be in the general vicinity.

Best Buy tech finds 'child abuse' wallpaper on broken PC

Jolyon Ralph

Sounds highly suspicious

I doubt the tech planted them - this is more likely scenario:

Tech looks for home-made pr0n on customer PC (which they invariably do)

Tech finds disturbing pics.

Tech needs excuse for how he found said disturbing pics

Tech sets one as wallpaper.

Tech says "oh my eyes!" and reports to manager.

Shock! Facebook cycle-slut smutvid is adware front

Jolyon Ralph
Grenade

So let me get this right...

We're being told to avoid clicking on a link to see a video, and for more information, please see this link and view a video about it. Hmmm...

Apple building its own Flash, says rogue Tweeter

Jolyon Ralph
Jobs Horns

Time repeating itself.

Are we really going to have to go through the same old shit we went through last decade with Microsoft, but this time with Apple?

Bollocks.

Apple demands public apology for iPhone parody

Jolyon Ralph
Thumb Down

Sorry, Videos are not currently available in your country.

Getting a "Sorry, videos are not currently available in your country" message on the 2nd video box.

Is this true? I was just going to phone Blockbuster and check.

Applesoft, Ogg, and the future of web video

Jolyon Ralph
Linux

Ubuntu absolutely right

Can you imagine how stupid they would look if their music store downloaded everything as OGG format that's completely incompatible with your ipod/MP3 player?

OGG audio lost (sorry guys), MP3 won, I can't see the outcome being any better in the Theora vs H.264 battle. MP3 won primarily because of hardware support, Theora will lose for exactly the same reason, there's NO hardware support for Theora at all, H.264 is everywhere.

The battle was lost when the HTML5 standard was drafted without specifying the formats that <VIDEO> would need to support (not that Apple and Microsoft would necessarily have implemented it).

In order for Open Source not to look stupid, and not to cause itself even more harm it needs to choose it's battles more carefully. The video format war is lost, it's going to be H.264, and unless Firefox finds some way to support it (be it with a plug-in or whatever), then it risks losing market share. The real battles ahead are against software patents in general - this is something that can (and must) be won to avoid problems such as this in the future.

Jolyon

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 shuns open video

Jolyon Ralph
Joke

Ogg Format

I think the Ogg format might have slightly more credibility if it hadn't been named after a fucking caveman.

At least H.264 sounds technical.

Steve Jobs issues open letter on Flash

Jolyon Ralph
Jobs Halo

Flash can't swim.

Flash can't swim, it attracts enemy radar, it attracts sharks, it nudges people when they're trying to browse. Imagine... the fear... when you go to sleep with flash installed on your iPad and think "Oh God, when I wake up, will everyone be dead?" You can't run an operating system like that.

Global warming dirt-carbon peril models are wrong, say boffins

Jolyon Ralph
Megaphone

So where's the big conspiracy then?

Here you go. US Government funded research and the results for this one particular experiment show results that show one particular aspect of climate change isn't as bad as was feared.

Is it covered up? Are the scientists being condemned by global warming jihadists? No. It's science. They did research and published the results. I'm sure they're not in fear of their jobs for publishing this and I'm sure there wasn't political pressure to make their results fit in better with the big picture.

Perhaps you shouldn't just assume there's a huge conspiracy of climate change people wanting to hide the evidence that it's all a load of crap. Maybe, just maybe, the 90+% of scientists who think we should be worried about it are actually right.

Jolyon (waiting for those thumbs-downs from the clarksontards)

Steve Jobs snuffs App-Store-for-Mac rumor

Jolyon Ralph
Jobs Horns

Steve was wrong

"There's a rumor saying there will be a Mac App Store and no software without authorization from Apple will run on Mac OS X. Is that true?"

The correct response would have been "YES". Because there was a rumour.

Jolyon

Hawking: Aliens are out there, likely to be Bad News

Jolyon Ralph
Terminator

Won't be a problem if Hawking is the one doing the talking.

As long as Hawking himself is the one broadcasting out to the aliens they'll assume we're a planet of bad-ass robots and leave us well alone.

Official: Apple iPhone is a chick magnet

Jolyon Ralph
Grenade

@Graham Jordan

It depends where she pulled it out of.

Facebook starts random application shutdown

Jolyon Ralph
Joke

uck it

I was wondering why my application FPad hadn't been approved yet.

Volcanic ash grounds dozens of UK flights

Jolyon Ralph
Unhappy

Fuck Iceland

Trying to rearrange my flight to Hong Kong (which, if i'm not mistaken, is in the opposite direction). First they take all our savings and lose them, then they pollute our air with their volcanic ash. Fuck Iceland.

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