Posts by John H Woods
952 posts • joined Wednesday 14th November 2007 11:44 GMT
Re: Midnight
Actually it's not that clear. Midnight could be - and often is - considered the end of the day: i.e. 0:00 and midnight are the same time-of-day, but 24 hours apart.
When do you think midnight on New Year's Eve is?
Where it's important for legal reasons (insurance etc.) you will usually find times such as 11:59, 23:59, 12:01 and 0:01 are used to avoid any ambiguity. Although I would personally consider 00:00 or 24:00 to be unambiguous for any given date, I'm pretty sure it would be hard to make that argument for 'midnight'.
Re: me too
The girl next door to me reflects EM in about the 400-700nm range, and it certainly has physiological effects.
Re: Hoorah!
"Personally, I think that parents describing their spoiled brats bullying, destrictive, selfish behaviour to other parents as, "Oh, he's on the spectrum," and not being a proper parent,"
heyrick: "Once upon a time, saying "Oh, he's on the spectrum" meant something completely different."
Not necessarily completely different :-)
@Erwin Hofmann
>> Quoting Steve Jobs (1994): "Good artists copy great artists steal" ...
Attributed to Stravinsky. Or Picasso. Or TS Eliot. Probably predates any of them.
However - certainly not original by Steve Jobs.
Apple maps and general vicinities ...
Apologies if you've heard it ...
an iPhone 5 user walks into a bar ... or a hotel, or maybe a church.
Re: The Logic Of Advertising
Can't believe how many comments I had to read before someone pointed that out. I was going to post the same if I got to the end of the comments without it being raised, and I'd almost given up hope.
@Tim Almond
"At what point are journalists and analysts going to face the fact that 99% of fondleslabs are being used by people playing Angry Birds ..."
Actually, that makes me wonder. Maybe it's because the work of journalists and analysts CAN be done on fondleslabs that they struggle to imagine the kind of work that can't be. Their offices probably ARE the "beanbag clad open plan 'thinking spaces'" that Tim 11 so amusingly brings to mind.
Well...
... the USA could clearly use a patent system more like ours. So it's totally going to happen that way round.
I can't resist pointing out ...
... what happens when there are too many different domains and subdomains. A particularly egregious case is that some noob registered National Schools Film Week at nsfw.org whereas nsfw.com is a well known porn site.
You can argue (and I would) that the person responsible for this error should be given a stiff talking to. But the more different options there are, the worse the situation becomes. The problem is, we need Nominet and their ilk to be motivated to rationalise and improve for the sake of the internet users, but they seem to have all become vehicles for enriching their staff.
Re: And landlines !
Record the 'di dah dee' number disconnected tone on your voicemail. This causes a lot of diallers to hang up. Your friends and family will get used to waiting through the beeps and you can just pick it up later.
I have a phone with a VIP feature, where someone can enter a code and it cuts out of the voicemail back to the phone. The normal ring is set to zero volume, and the VIP ring is as normal. The message says that if you are a friend, colleague or relative, you can enter the VIP code. If you don't know it, you can hold on and this message will tell you. However, using the code if you are not a colleague, friend or relative is an offence under the Computer Misuse Act ...
Most uninvited callers hang up at that point.
Then it tells the caller what the code is. I noticed that some callers or machines are resolutely determined to hold on till the call is answered or a voicemail beep is heard. So I play them several more minutes of music, and then sorry, sorry voicemail is full, and the line is dropped.
Sender and Receiver...?
Whatever you call the protagonists, characterising one as a 'sender' and one as a 'receiver' is not, AFAICS, useful for 99% of crytographic communication, which consists of the establishment of a secure bidirectional channel. Alice might contact Bob, but that implies to me that she is the initiator of a secure duplex conversation, not a sender of a message that the receiver might not acknowledge, or that he might acknowledge in the clear.
Re: That's it, I'm done...
"That's it, I'm done..."
Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Clarification
"A cryptographic hash algorithm converts data into a shortened "message digest" from which it is, ideally, impossible to recover the original information. "
Any decent cryptographic function can be described by the last part of this sentence, whereas cryptographic has algorithms are a special class of these. Can I suggest
"A cryptographic hash algorithm converts data into a shortened "message digest" such that it is not only extremely unlikely that different data will have identical digests, but that it would be computationally infeasible to create data that would yield some given digest.
Hasn't been on the force long...
... or he'd remember this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7489457.stm
Re: Won't last 100's of millions of years
"Glass crystallizes. It's called "devitrification" It's commonly seen in obsidian which is volcanic glass. Or to put it another way, it just wants to be a crystal again. Glass is a metastable state."
*jaw drops*
Did you really think that was something these researchers didn't know?
need to avoid daft statements
find | grep. Works on Windows 7 as well - you just need to install the GNU UnxUtils. This is the sort of thing that all UNIXes have done really well since pretty much forever.
The problem is ALWAYS the PEOPLE.
If $85k is what they are offering as 'aggressive recruitment' it's surprising the people they had before were capable of creating any good software ... oh, wait ...
Posted in Toshiba AT300 10in Android tablet review
Re: er,
The LCD screen is slightly inferior to the latest IPS panels in terms of brightness, viewing angles and richness of colour. However, the display is certainly not what you could call poor, and it compares favourably with the Nexus 7.
Re: Move House
Sorry Tim, but that's absolute bull. Although I don't want to live in a major conurbation I, like a lot of people in my village, could not afford to even if I wanted to. Sure the Cotswolds etc are full of people who work in London, etc, but there's a lot more 'country' than you seem to realize.
Re: Indeed a title
@SirDigalot
Can I recommend you try a bit harder to see a launch, you won't regret it. In 2010 I took the kids out of school in the UK (ignoring the idiotic tutting of a few of the teachers, although to be fair most were supportive) to travel to Florida to see STS-130 launch the Cupola - I think the last piece of the ISS.
It was the last scheduled night-time Shuttle launch (although I think some later launches may have slipped to night-time, not sure) and it was ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR -- from SIX MILES AWAY! My kids, then 15,14 and 12 still have shiny eyes whenever they tell anyone about it, and we are talking about teenagers whose first priority is to look cool.
A couple of days later we say the SDO launched in the daytime atop an Atlas V. I will never forget seeing the sonic boom ripple through a clear blue sky like ripples on a pond - amazing.
Re: @Herby
@ian22
I don't think apologist means what you think it means.
Posted in Apple iOS 6 review
Re: Mutual Benefit
+1 for Tasker. It's not expensive and it can do all sorts of clever things, e.g. direct phone calls from certain people direct to voicemail when you are in a given location; prevent the screen locking when headphones are plugged in but lock asap when they are removed, only poll for wifi when you are specific locations etc.
Re: Have I goit the right website?
"Interpratation of a bunch of old texts, that were probably stories and allegorys for real life situations that don't always even reflect the modern world, are the problem."
Ah, just when I couldn't see the IT Angle, a reference to requirements documentation.
Democracy...
... is a useful tool against totalitarianism. For almost everything else, especially informed decision making, it is useless. Would you rather your doctor, your surgeon and your consultant discussed your medical care, or do you just want a straw poll of the waiting room?
What is this ...
... "Metro UI" that is mentioned in the advertisement?
Re: Stupidity
You need to readjust your didactic methods. I find the following works well.
Take "student" outside at night. Take out small keychain flashlight, explaining it is about 1W. Shine it down the road at a distant streetlight. Explain that it the streetlight is 1000W or so and ask them if they see the spot from your little light on the lamppost. Whilst they are looking carefully, suddenly whip the flashlight round and shine it straight in their eye.
Would be interesting to determine...
... if the practice of fixing a hawk silhouette sticker to the window has any effect on collision rate.
Posted in Manchester is 'PIRATE CAPITAL of the UK'
Re: Back in my day...
"Rizzle Kicks? <- Sounds like a brand of throat lozenges..."
You clearly aren't "Down with the Trumpets" as the kids like to say. Although, neither am I - my daughter thinks I'm "more in the proximity of the harpsichord"
Can I just say that I'm currently obsessed with Caro Emerald? Thanks.
Posted in Smack your phones up, says Microsoft
Phone going off at inopportune moment ...
... reminds me of that UL where a FOAF, paranoid that his phone would go off during an opera, actually removed the battery and put it in his other pocket. Where it shorted with some loose change and he had to disturb a quiet part of the performance by running out of the opera house with his trouser pocket smouldering.
Welcome home guys ...
... and well done.
Re: 'commentards'...
"Not sure if condescending or praising..."
You might be new here, it's just a traditional part of El Reg's rich heritage.
Wifi polling?
What manner of people are these, that can spare enough juice to pointlessly poll for wifi whilst they are out and about? In the UK at least, it seems a majority of 'open' networks are not open at all, but merely direct you to a site where you can pay for access.
I used to run Tasker on my phone, and one of it's tasks was to turn Wifi off whenever the GPS told it I had left home. A recent '3' upgrade has given me a reliable uncapped mobile data connection that is 50-75% of the bandwidth of my landline ADSL, and now I never turn wifi on at all.
CRIME
I'll tell you what's a crime - that acronym!
It might work in NL,
but I bet that in Britain it would just increase the amount of crap that is dumped in the countryside.
At the moment we have rules that prevent you borrowing a friend's trailer or van to take your washing machine, old mattresses, etc to the tip. As a result people dump it in the countryside - either directly, or by kidding themselves that the man-in-a-van who charges them a tenner will actually dispose of it properly. Builders who are supposed to be deterred by these rules could just buy a cheap knackered estate car for the very purpose of taking stuff to the dump.
Needless to say, it costs the council a hell of a lot more to collect this crap from woodlands, fields and verges, and in the meantime it spoils the environment for all of us. Any pilot scheme had better monitor the change in fly-tipping behaviour before any decision is made about introducing this sort of system.
And another thing ...
... I am totally fed up with the people who keep intruding on my time to tell me that the only bread worth having is machine sliced, processed crap from a polythene bag. I can't stand The Hovis Witnesses.
Re: Congratulations
+1 for nice wholesome baps. Which should also come in twos, the picture appears to be of an (albeit excellent) child's portion.
PS3 browser ...
... is an absolutely shocking pile. Perhaps there should be some scoring that reflects on a company's commitment to keeping things like this up to date - it's too easy to sell something as having an internet browser when, within a few months or years at most "once contained it's own internet browser" is a more accurate claim.
Re: little help
"Non productive bankers" ? My dear chap, I think you mean "Wealth Creators"
Operation required...
... to surgically replace my fingertips with non-greasy capacitative prosthetics. I can't be the only person who has to swipe and wipe?
Non-surgical alternative suggestions welcomed
Wind Turbines...
.... not a big fan.
Re: Yawn.
98% of the population. FFS it is MOBILE TECHNOLOGY. They should be forced to say what % of geographical area it covers, or what % of the road network. The number of people who can use it whilst in their house or their office is surely completely irrelevant.
Let's do better
I'm sure a few of us old-timer Reg readers can come up with something actually based on the Enigma machine itself - shall we see if we can give it a try? The obvious template would be something like Mastermind (the board game, not the quiz show) where you try to refine your guess of the settings of the code wheels by receiving incomplete feedback about how close you were with the previous guess.
Re: typical for android
"... people who need the help and attention that Scope can give them"
Would you care to say what this means? Second thoughts, don't bother.
