Posts by Bruce
34 posts • joined Thursday 18th October 2007 10:59 GMT
Alternatively...
Why not just accept the call and then either (a) put the phone in your pocket or (b) pretend that you not the John Smith that they are after. Either way the people paying for the service will soon get pissed off and stop paying.
Posted in Violet Mir:ror DIY RFID kit
Could be useful for children using Makaton
It would be quite interesting to embed these stamps in the makaton symbols used by autistic children and have the compter start an appropriate activity for them. With a bespoke application, the level of interaction required in the task could be increased steadily to require the child to interact more and more each time. Thumbs up from me.
Posted in Freesat signs up LG
@Ac Freesat recorders
The Topfield TF7710 records freesat perfectly well if you can't wait for a Humax
@the critics...
Read the article again - more carefully this time. His complaint is with New Scientist and their reasoning. The message might be right, but the logic is wrong. And it is wrong because the authors clearly don't understand the discipline known as 'economics'.
His follow-up point is that if those authors *did* understand economics then they would propose alternative, and more effective, ways of tackling the problem of the earth having finite resources.
My own point of view is that *anything* we propose or do is pointless until we have population growth under control. Once the world decides what an acceptable population count for humans is then we can sensibly focus on allocating resources amongst them (us).
Cleverer methods?
Blanket jamming would work (but I wouldn't want to be the person that has to go through every nook and cranny of the prison making sure that there are no unjammed "livespots")
"Cleverer solutions" would probably be fairly quickly met with hacked, "cleverer" handsets that lock on to the second strongest source, thereby bypassing the local "goes nowehere" base station.
Paris, 'cos she has experience of mobiles and prison
Posted in Nokia 6650 clamshell phone
Nice phone
I've just swapped to one of these from an N95. I got fed up with the bulk of the N95 and wanted something more pocket friendly, which the 6650 is.
Comparing the two: obviously the camera is nowhere near as good but then the N95 camera was pretty rubbish (good pixel count, horrible delay between pressing the button and the picture being taken) as well.
HSDPA, which is what I use it for most, works perfectly.
GPS is a revelation compared with the N95. I quite often get a fix indoors which the N95 never managed.
The FM radio actually works.
Battery life is much better. Uses the same charger so I now have a spare.
Comes with a useful set of apps that run using the cover display so will work while the phone is closed. The music player was mentioned in the review, but there is also a stopwatch (which multiple split times) and a count down timer which is really useful.
Cons: headphones are really uncomfortable - they don't fit my ears and keep dropping out. Speakerphone mode is pathetic - the single biggest weakness for me.
Watch out for the usual T-Mobile left-hand right-hand non-aquaintance: they have an offer of Combi 30 contract, free 6650, free web'n'walk and free bluetooth headset at the moment. They were fine about letting me switch to this contract and about letting me pick the phone up from a shop (rather than have it posted which would have been inconvenient). But the shop said the bluetooth headset was for new customers only and I would have to contact T-Mobile. T-Mobile say that it is for all customers and I have to go back to the shop. <rhetorical> Just how hard is it to run a simple business? <rhetorical/>
Happy with the phone though.
Wow, that's so practical
I can't imagine why no researcher has done this before because winking at your iPod is soooo much quicker and easier than pressing the buttons with your finger.
/The boffin as I want apply for a grant to reesearch and develop a buttock-clench operated controller.
@Chris Collins
But if you had run after it then you could appear in two places at once -- a bit like those old school photographs where you could be at one end and then run down to the other and appear twice.
@Peter Fairbrother
You forget that many people are checked more than once as they don't seem to be transferable. For example, teachers doing supply teaching will be checked once per agency that they register with.
Posted in Set-top box modders sent to prison
10 months for 'just' £27k?
Yes, calm down, I *know* that the £27k refers to the donations they received, not the unspecified loss that Virgin suffered, however this seems to be the "true worth" of Virgin's crap. If I were them I'd want to appeal the sentence.
More Dublin Zoo prank calls
Google "Little Becky Dublin Zoo" to hear another prank call on the zoo.
Paris because I once phoned HP asking for a P.A. Risk and they put me through to DEC.
His best riposte would have been to...
...say they could keep the phone and the scanner as they weren't worth anything.
@James
The reason they look at only a few key markers is because these are the areas shown to differ from one person to another. Remember that 96% of the hunman genome is shared with chimpanzees so that's 96% which can be ignored immediately.
Perversions
If you ask a prostitute to dress up as a News of the World journalist, do they call you a disgusting pervert?
/coat - mine's the one with the yellow star
Posted in Naomi Campbell banned from BA flights
@Peter
and adding to the known facts: the original article said whe was flying to attend a memorial service.
Three hours waiting in the airport with nothing to do except reflect on memories of a recently deceased friend is going to leave most people in a rather more emotional state than usual
Just close the call centre and be done with it
Why piss about fooling no one? Just close the support centre and be done with it.
Paris, 'cos I bet she's never called a geek in her moment of need.
They've identified the fault (2)...
As the bored operative who, having got fed up with pressing "Ok" on the print dialog box for the millionth time that morning decided to change the no of copies from 1 to 3000 "for a laugh"
Heart 'cos I can sympathise with that kind of job
Phew, that's handy...
> Most of the world's soot was created by Europe and North America until the 1950s, but since then the two regions have been overtaken in their contribution by nations in the tropics and the Far East.
When CO2 was the main culprit there was a danger that Western nations would have to make a sacrifice for the greater good. Thanks to this wonderful and timely piece of research, we can now justify having done nothing substantial to reduce CO2 emissions thus far and demand that Third World countries make the necessary sacrifices instead.
Hooray!
How do MS know that they comply with their doc?
Given that, from previous articles, we know that MS are expecting adopters of the standard to re-create obscure Word6 re-pagination bugs and the like, how do we know that MS have even documented the bugs correctly? How ironic if they were found not to be compliant with their own standard.
@anon coward "nurr"
That's exactly my point - this case does *not* set a precedent because there have been previous breaches of restraining orders etc committed by email, website, dating site etc. The *only* distinguishing feature of this case is that Facebook was used. So I repeat my question: will we see the same story with Google replaced for Facebook, then Yahoo, then MSN ad nauseam?
Smiley face because I'm pleased to see that you agree with "mouth breathers"
5 nines availalbility??
"As an example, in low-end storage systems (defined as having embedded storage heads with shelf enclosures) the annualized failure rate (AFR) is about 4.6 per cent. The AFR for the disks only is 0.9 per cent, or only 20 per cent of overall AFR."
I bet the manufacturers still claim five nines availability though.
The IT angle...
Perhaps they worship the 3D teapot so beloved of early graphics rendering demos?
The sad face 'cos if Islam is as good as they claim then they wouldn't need to worry about apostasy.
Why is the Reg reporting this?
Are we going to get a stream of similar articles, one for each and every social networking site that gets used in the course of a crime? It's a bit like What Car? reporting a bank robbery just because the getaway vehicle was the latest Ford Mondeo.
The dead vulture because it's clearly been run over by the latest Ford Mondeo
I bet the MS re-write of his code had added bugs though
(Mandatory comment)
Posted in Ofcom to clamp down on 'unfair' charges
One down, five thousand, three hundred and ninety-seven to go...
What about all the other scamming charges from BT? E.g. £70 to "connect" a phone line unless you take out a 12 month contract with BT and then it's magically zero.
The alien 'cos we're more likely to be visited by one before Ofcom does anything serious.
Really "Confidential"?
HMG typically uses "Restricted", "Confidential", "Secret" and "Top Secret" as its labelling scheme. Stuff properly marked Confidential shouldn't be taken out of a Government office, regardless of whether encrypted or not and regardless of whether on paper, cd or a laptop. So someone is for the chop if this is true. More likely a prank though.
Surely you're supposed to keep the password under the keyboard?
Did they check?
Which fight scene?
In *The Fellowship of the Ring* there aren't too many big battles.
These came in the latter two books The Two Towers and The Return of the King.
Perhaps this is a scam - one person is heroically depicted vanquishing the Balrog in Moria while everyone else is shown brawling in the tavern at Bree?
Elven cloak please...
Sun nails four buyers...
As opposed to "Sun screws four buyers..."
2012 is shaping up to be a vintage year
In 2012 we can expect: a partially implemented ID card system that doesn't work; transport and other chaos because of the Olympics not being ready on time; and televison stopping working as the digital switchover falls on its arse.
Smiley face icon -- musn't grumble, eh?
Posted in Woman finds boyfriend dead in catflap
Can we have a Darwin logo for these types of stories?
Go for it!
Posted in Leopard data loss glitch uncovered
@Danny
Are you claiming that Windows is any better? I don't own a Mac. I do use XP. I've had to resort to using XCOPY from the command line for any serious copying because Windows Explorer is so unreliable.
OS religious wars aside: if I were grading "Programming 101" assignments, anyone who deleted the source without first attempting to verify the copy would lose half the available marks automatically.
Historically, I seem to recall that OSes used to copy then verify but some marketing twat realised that this took twice as long so they cut the verify bit and claimed their system was faster. Combine that with clueless morons doing the purchasing and thereafter everyone else had no choice but to follow suit and we have the crap that we have today.
Posted in No-humping 20mph limit for London
Why not 30?
Continuous monitoring of the speed limit is a good idea - especially if it means no more humps.
But why not try out continuous enforcement of the 30mph limit first? We all know that drivers involved in accidents lie pathologically about the speed they were doing and that the death and injury figures for accidents invoving vehicles "travelling at 30mph" are grossly over-inflated as a result.
Enforce the 30 limit vigorously and you'll see a big drop in injuries and deaths.
