Posts by John H Woods
952 posts • joined Wednesday 14th November 2007 11:44 GMT
La Modx DOES want to give you a hug...
... look out for a surprisingly attractive braniac with arms outstretched ... and a bunch of packages strapped to her belt.
XKCD - the Tautology Club
"The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club". Still can't write it without laughing, how sad am I?
I'm sure I've got a spare sister-in-law...
... if you've got that much spare spondulix and a sad lonely life.
Re: Hear, Hear!
GazElm writes:
I agree with everything you just said.
I nominate Nigel 11 for the post of chief science advisor.
Seconded.
Posted in Acer H5360 3D projector
I wonder when ...
... opticians will start to offer a 3D extra pair? It should be easy if we can come up with a standard for left / right polarisation. Surely this would be the ideal way for us speccy types to watch 3D? I'd much rather wear my own glasses to the iMax than wear their bulky, scratched and smudgy ones over the top of my designer^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hspecsaver specs.
Posted in Senators to NASA: Get your ass to Mars
Manned mission
Yes, manned missions are inherently risky. But these guys and girls are The Right Stuff - do you think they wouldn't choose to go anyway?
I bet every astronaut who ever died in an accident would have known the risks and TAKEN THEM ANYWAY. All this 'oh we can't put a single life at risk' is just bollocks ... half these people cut their teeth flying experimental aircraft. Nobody moaned about it then. And - in the vanishingly unlikely event that NASA staff don't have balls, then even here at the reg, I'm sure we could assemble an army of volunteers just from amongst us commentards.
We HAVE to go to back to the Moon, and to Mars, and beyond. It is our destiny. Anyone who thinks it isn't has no perspective on human history, no vision and no passion.
</rant>
oh do FOAD you bastard
... does that feel any better?
Posted in McKinnon gets a date for 'final' appeal
Nice ....
"when you least expect it" ... <shudder>. Maybe one day you will post a completely inoffensive comment and La Mod will arbitrarily and cruelly reject it. But I've a feeling she's got something much worse in store ... I wouldn't be in your e-shoes or anything.
Best weapon ever...
... the Ratchet & Clank Discoball
Posted in Sun-gazing sat heads for the heavens
What are you talking about?
Me and my family saw the launch (on the 2nd attempt) from the Saturn V museum on the Kennedy Space Center. There were plenty of people there (albeit somewhat less than for the aborted launch the day before) and it was damn cold. It was, however, sunny - and not very cloudy. We could see the concentric sound waves shimmering in the clear blue sky before the rocket hit the cloud level.
Posted in Adobe heats up iPad Flash bash
... mymaths
Like many schools, my kids' school uses the 'mymaths' website to set homework. Guess what, it uses Flash. What is the problem, anyway? Even my eee pc can make a half decent job of it. Ok, maybe it's not so good for fsfmv, but really ...
I agree flash is poor, and very often unnecessary - I personally browse the web with FlashBlock stopping nearly everything. But I LIKE the fact that it is MY decision whether or not to display Flash. On a phone, there is a good reason to avoid Flash by default. But on something like the iPad, it seems an ommision almost worthy of a mis-selling complaint ... you simply will not be able to use this product as a replacement web-machine, despite the marketting.
"Unofficially referred to as the Daguerreotype"
I take it that the oval metal plaque, screwed onto the case, which reads "Daguerreotype" is also unofficial?
Posted in Endeavour good to go on 7 Feb
Plane booked ...
... fingers crossed for an on-schedule launch
Posted in Tesco store bans shopping in pyjamas
Proper Footwear
At our local cornershop, all the dogs have to sit outside whilst we all trudge in from the stables in our wellies. The shopkeeper reckons his floor would be cleaner if we sent the dogs in to buy stuff.
Posted in Aussie man convicted for Simpsons smut
Unintentional hitting nail on the head
"Would you be happy if someone took one of your family snaps of some innocent situation and modified it so that it looked like your children were engaged in sexual activity. If not why not? No children were hurt in the making of the "artwork" so no harm done?!"
No I would be seriously pissed off. But - apparently unlike you - I don't consider 'pissing me off' to be a criminal offence. That is the dividing line here: some people think that anything considered to give cause for concern should be criminalized. Build a legal system like that, and watch all our hard-won rights and liberties vanish in the mist.
Posted in Spanish town to reward good drivers
ANPR application
Instead of signs saying 'please drive carefully' and 'thank-you' we just need ANPRs at each end. Any motorist who drives through at a reasonable speed gets entered into the DVLA lottery with a chance of winning free road-tax for a year. Easy.
Furthermore...
... get a launch one, and when it eventually breaks down, SONY will provide you a replacement for 140 GBP. No receipt, no warranty, no matter. I have one complaint about my PS3 - no DVORAK keyboard setting (despite having all kinds of esoteric language options).
Not a huge deal, because when I complained about it on teh interwebtubes some electronics genius from the far east sent me instructions on how to make an in-line keyboard translator using a micro controller. And when I told him it was too hard for me, he made me one and sent it! Now that's more useful to me than Geohot's work :-)
Posted in Teen attacks father in Fifa 2009 fight
I'd be interested to know...
... exactly why the tone of voice used by the father matters. Stabbing someone in the neck ... especially when you actually have to go and get the knife to do it ... is not something that can be provoked in any sensible person by the use of someone else's 'tone of voice'.
Reg Campaign Required...
.... PLEASE ... someone tell the security types that routine password expiry not only provides almost zero protection but actually causes one of the most serious problems: weak passwords.
parallax
You're absolutely right. Check out Johnny Lee's demonstration (on Gootube) of 3D from 2D using a Wii remote for tracking head-position. Almost magically effective, whether you have one eye or two - trouble is it can only work for one person at once.
Re: avatar in 2D
"But I can't help feeling that Avatar would have looked as good flat as in 3-d, and without the silly glasses, too."
If you'd shut one eye, you would have been able to test it. IMHO still impressive (I was in an iMAX) but not quite as fantastic.
A German friend...
... (who else) ... bought me a top-trumps set for comparing the options. I couldn't find a current link but there's a pic in the G-cache of Ananova's 'quirkies' news section. But yes, there's more than 3 cards in the pack!
VALRHONA
... even better than Montezuma. IMHO
Strange Proof
"Proof the British public are technophobes? Look at the queues at filling stations - the pay-at-pump queue is nearly always empty while the pay-at-kiosk queues are through the door."
Sorry, didn't realise the petrol pump could dispense chewing gum ... :-)
FAIL
Not a nation, I grant you, but also not a 'region' - it is a country.
Posted in LG publishes bendy 19in e-newspaper
Silk
Someone should be working on e-ink on e-silk ... now THAT would fold, or even screw up into a ball, without getting creased.
stroyMONTAGEservices...
... seriously?
Erm ... playing it once with smart people ruins it for you
Jean Claude van Damme, I knew, but not Audrey Hepburn; Solvay (of the eponymous process) and the guy who invented Bakelite; Rubens, Magritte (and didn't Van Gogh came from somewhere that is _now_ Belgium?); Eddy Merckx has won the Tour de France what, half a dozen times? You don't need to be a cycling buff to have heard the name, any more than you are if you know the name Chris Hoy.
Imagine my shame when someone said 'Albert Claude' - the guy I should have remembered from my genetics degree as the one who first isolated a cancer cell. Ok Tin Tin doesn't count, but his author, Herge, surely does.
We all know at least 5 famous Belgians, we just don't know they were Belgian.
IAMNYL
I googled it, but i just found your post again :-) CTE? (Care to explain)
significant?
I presume you don't think quality control can be done by sampling? And that all opinion polls are worthless ... oh, ah ... hang on, you might be on to something
Posted in 3D TV gets cold shower from Avatar man
Glasses not always required.
I've seen a 3D display which didn't require any glasses ... it certainly caught my attention. That is surely the way to go. However, I am confused about why the recording standard should be hard - surely it's just a left eye and a right eye video? Standing by to be corrected ....
Posted in Naked scans: Net cries nude-o-geddon
Nudity is not automatically a privacy violation
Who needs to see fuzzy solarised images when full colour, full screen full motion video of much more attractive people is readily available?
Excluding kids under 18 is ridiculous ... it just means that terrorists will use minors to get stuff onto planes. Either everyone gets scanned ... or has a chance of getting scanned ... or the system is worthless.
All they need to do is make sure there is no image capture and vet the machine operators. Maybe they should all be registered nurses, for instance.
Vanilla Windows...
... would be nice. But any cheap machine with a Win preinstall normally has all kinds of crapware on it. I object to that stuff even more. It is easy to wipe windows and do a clean Linux install. It is much harder to fix a factory-bought Windows installation so it has no vendor-crap in it.
Posted in No more dirty phone calls
Number of germs always makes me laugh ...
of course a toilet has far fewer germs on it than a dish-towel, or most food prep surfaces. But then, 90% (by number) of the cells in the blob referred to as a human body are germs. But the washability looks great. Kudos to the commenter who suggested it as a dishwasher diagnosis tool!
Posted in Sony BDP-S760 Blu-ray disc player
newer ps3s are quiet...
... i have 3 in the house. you almost can't hear the newest one, it makes less noise than the Sky HD box
Re: UKranian
... yes it's clear you need that, mainly from the perfect spelling and grammar of your comments
Firefox with Autopager...
...is what you need
Posted in Sony BDP-S760 Blu-ray disc player
I'll stick to my PS3 thanks...
... it's hard to believe that SONY can produce something like the PS3 which plays nearly eveything, (and, for a small premium, is an excellent freeview box) and then expect people to buy something like this. It's probably aimed at the 'golden eared' hifi buff.
However, I have to say I gave up on 'top-end' HiFi a long time ago, what with people trying to convince me that some CD recorders produced 'more faithful' digital-to-digital copies than others, that some digitial cables have 'a better tone' than others and that supertweeters, which produce frequencies in superaural range (where virtually no-one over 20 can hear them) make a difference to ones listening experience.
+1
This comment needs (even) more attention than it will get as a reg comment. If I were the Joel Tennenbaum I'd want Graham Wilson as my lawyer.
More nudity thoughts:
2 extra plus points: 1) it would cut down on CO2 emissions because most people would only fly when they had to; 2) religious nutters tend to have a problem with nudity anyway.
Also, how about comedy punishment to prevent martyrdom having any glamour? For instance, having to spend the rest of your life running on a treadmill to power an atheist website. Or wearing very very hot underpants for several hours a day.
...vpn cracking
... nope, can't imagine that they will go in for wholescale vpn cracking. They will focus on the 'low hanging fruit' until we are all on vpn, then they will be stuffed.
Squeezing it out of whom?
Us! of course. When are we going to be honest and admit that all these taxes on businesses are simply indirect taxes on consumers. What service do we get for this tax? Easy ... more efficient use of the spectrum. How does that benefit us? Errr....
How did we get to a stage where thousands of government departments can just make policy decisions that effectively increase the taxation burden on the public, with no public consultation, no significant benefits for the public, and no effective means for us to vote on whether we want it or not?
Modern government, in Britain at any rate, is a cancer. It just grows and grows with no benefit to the host. How are we going to get it back down to size? I don't mind paying huge amounts in tax, if we get Scandinavian public services. I don't mind getting crappy USA style public services if we pay USA size tax. But here in the UK we pay nearly-Scandinavian taxes and get nearly-American Services. Where does the rest go? it appears that it is sucked out of the economy by worthless parasites
Posted in Ferry giant refuses ID card
Be fair ....
... familiarity with travel authorisation documents is hardly a major part of the job of border control staff.
Posted in Can anyone explain the chunnel fiasco?
You won't catch me down there...
... ever. Glad my LPG car is prohibited. Thank goodness the shorted electrical systems didn't catch fire. I think a public enquiry is required, and humiliation of those responsible for this fiasco.
Posted in The Avatar storage effect
Dr
Film well worth seeing. Thin plot, shallow characterization, typical hollywood good vs evil. But visually and aurally, it will blow you away - pretty much like the original Star Wars, this is a bit of a game-changer.
