Posts by Wize
1362 posts • joined Thursday 13th March 2008 12:24 GMT
"Earthbound farmers are known to be at "high risk" of suicide, which might indicate that they're the sort to fancy going to Mars and never coming back to Earth."
Last thing you want on a dangerous mission like that is to have someone suicidal along. They might take out everyone, even by accident, when they decide to shake off their mortal coil.
Re: I can see the future...
I remember one drunken conversation down the pub to do with smells being transmitted down the phone. The majority of smells would be someone farting down the phone. So why not just detect the sound of a fart and slide the lid off a box containing a turd. Would make a cheap solution to the problem.
Re: Too much methane
Bang goes my idea of fitting flare stacks (as per oil rigs) to burn off the excess methane.
Or, with a pilot light, it could make them flame throwers. Might be more effective to use as a perimeter defence than guard dogs.
Ah well, my plans have gone up in smoke. At least I didn't go on dragons den with it.
Re: "tilt rotors that tilt and collapse"
What about maintenance routines?
Helicopters flying to the oilrigs in the North Sea have regular maintenance checks, to the point of having their engine & gearbox disassembled and put back together. And those suckers still occasionally fall out the sky.
I've seen many a car held together with string and gaffer tape. What are these car-planes going to end up like?
Re: I can only WISH we had this show
They mess the shows around too much when they remake them.
UK Version - Boss is an idiot and the team can outsmart him.
US Version - Boss is a genius and the IT people are idiots.
Puts a different spin on the characters and makes them less endearing. Though the change was probably made by someone in a boss type position who is an idiot but wants to make his position appear to have the upper hand rather than his subordinates.
Re: STV Player
There are a lot of programs not shown on Scotland's version of ITV. STV didn't show series 1 of Scot and Baley (UK police drama) and instead put on Underbelly (Oz police drama). The usual claim from them is they wanted to show something more regional, but it looks like they wanted something cheaper.
They have since caught up as the show is popular, but if your favourite show isn't one they want to pay the premium for, it won't be on in Scotland or on the STV player.
And tomorrow, all the footy fans wont be able to see the FA Cup north of the border.
No spectrum to test it?
How about loading a Spectrum emulator on your Android and loading the tape on to it?
Re: Cost of 'spinning up a commercial version'
You don't want an easily hackable version out there, so you have to play about with the design
On top of that you do a lot of testing, set up interconnectivity with the rest of the phone network, marketing your product, etc.
Its not a cheep thing to do.
IP phones are expensive
Think about that expensive bit of gadgetry that is sitting on your desk. No,not the PC, i mean the phone.
A simple analogue phone is cheep and easy to replace should the worst happen (like a stray coffee).
Analogue phones can even be smart and show information such as caller ID (even names against internal extensions).
But other phones cost a packet. Those big networked IP phones can cost over £400 and most of the extra features are never used.
If you set up your office, you get a handful of phone lines, a hand full of numbers, a phone hub with enough ports to cover every desk and enough cheep phones to sit on even the unused desks.
If you set up your system with IP phones, its almost the same, but you leave the empty desks phoneless as you don't want to shell out that much money at the very start of your venture.
Smart desk phones a good investment? Not really in my book.
"MP3s are so low-quality that they are not even worth stealing."
That's like saying .jpg images are too low quality to make out what the image is.
The compression level can be adjusted at the point of creation to make them very close to a lossless format but still have a reasonable amount of compression.
Re: As it's Facebook
Can I haz a firmware update?
Re: No network = No Work
@keithpeter
trouble with using it for a projector or a form printer is the info will have to be updated at some point. A change in a logo or policy means they have to be altered. Sure, you could do it on the machine only, but then you have no backup.
So you do it on another machine, or copy the files off that machine to save to the network. USB is still a vector for infection. The hackers might find another little glitch in USB that hasn't been discovered and affect your machine that way.
No network does not mean safe.
"I didn't think anyone who wanted to be taken seriously ever used hotmail.
I wonder if that also applies to outlook.com."
It is a very useful tool.
I started using hotmail when your only three options for an email address was the free ones (like hotmail, rocketmail etc), your ISP's email account or to register your own domain.
No point having your own domain unless you are using it to host a website too. I have no need of my own website.
ISP's email addresses are non-transferable. Leave that ISP and lose your email address. Even if you use AOL and leave the family home to your own AOL account, you cannot transfer ownership of your email account over to yourself.
I'll stick with my old Hotmail account... as long as it stays free.
Re: Adobe=Malware
It can often be better to remote install software on a PC than allow users to do it. It saves me having to uninstall all those toolbars that come free with other packages when the user complains they are seeing the internet through a letterbox.
Re: Price: Quantity vs Quality
Its rare to get anything with a real serial port these days. Even laptops with port replicators are as incompatible as the USB ones.
In saying that, most legacy hardware needs legacy software, and that doesn't like newer operating systems.
@jake Re: @Rattus Rattus (was: Numpties.)
Remember that the experts are not just trying to read the disk using the read/write head. They open them up and use something more sensitive. Long term bit patterns will leach their magnetic polarisation into the non formatted area around the track and leave a signature. Also, if the head alignment has slowly drifted, there might be a readable parallel track.
Even broken sections of the platter may be recoverable.
Safe way for military - large magnetic field to wipe, then reduce to ash/molten blob.
Safe way for home use - Large nail through case. Unless you've been a naughty boy and taken home military secrets.
Posted in Ten ancestors of the netbook
Re: Libretto
I like my Libretto. Its not had many air miles of late, but always handy when you want something with full USB or you want VGA out. Its keyboard isn't the best one in the world but a whole lot better than typing on a touchscreen. And it boots fast as a DVD player, bypassing Windows.
Re: Guesswork
Nokia did make a few mistakes (ditching one OS before they had the new range ready, poor build quality, etc) derailing their lead in the smartphone market.
It could take a similar mistake and any of the big ones might crumble (though Apple did survive their grip of death problem by denying it, which could have killed their phone range dead).
All it takes is some brand, with an existing large user base, to step into the phone market and it will all change.
@Tony,
I know about that site.
But not all companies have entries in there. Some change their number when it hits that list. And some have been known to filter out UK source calls to force them down the 0870 route.
That is why I am suggesting they be made to give out the alternatives themselves.
Re: Numpties.
The proper way of making your hard drive unreadable is with a large hammer, not by overwriting.
Does depend on how valuable the data is to the person trying to recover it. Even a wiped hard drive can be readable.
Re: Excuse me
@Andrew Moore
There are many images out there that, when fed into Google Image Search and the likes, will give hundreds of entries. Seeing the large quantity of results, will be an excuse to say they couldn't find that drop of water in the ocean.
Can we get the people who run the 0800/0845/0870/etc numbers to give a geographic number?
Since, these days, most of us have a mobile phone and not many use land lines, it can be annoying to use these numbers as they do not get included as your phone's minutes.
I was annoyed, sitting on hold with BT on my mobile, trying to get them to fix the phone line to my house.
Re: I'm confused...
But you are allowed to give them away for nothing. So transferring ownership is possible. How can they tell if money changed hands?
Does the change of ownership have a pop up with "How much did you pay for these glasses" box?
Re: Copyleft... bullshit
"Take away copyright and everything becomes public domain, ergo no requirement for GPL or any other type of licence for creative works."
So you want to work for free then? What is the point of writing any code if someone bigger is going to come along, take your code and sell it?
My internet speed varies from time to time. Sometimes I can watch streaming TV, other times I can't.
The download option is very helpful. I've used it on my PC so I can watch without pausing every few minutes.
Trouble being, I can only watch that download on my PC due to its DRM locking. Would be nice if they even allowed me to watch it on another device such as an Android tablet or a games console, so I can watch from the comfort of my sofa.
Again, the pirates have the advantage. They have a download that works everywhere.
Re: Ouch
Interesting point Phil.
They are fined for distress to the customer, however there is no compensation reaching said customer.
Re: No such thing as free
I moved house several years ago to one with cables for Sky already wired. I had it many years ago and knew how to set it up (even what the hidden menus are for). Yet for Sky to give me the box, they had to come round and 'fit' it for a fee.
When the engineer arrived, I had all the cables hanging out the front of the TV stand ready to plug in to their appropriate holes. All he had to do was plug them in (like a child fitting different shaped blocks into different shaped holes) and call Sky to tell them the number on my viewing card.
I did try to argue with them before they organised the man to come round, but they weren't having it. I had to pay the set up fee.
"Is there going to be a football game this evening? If so, your Audi will direct you to a bypass, thus avoiding the stadium on your way home from work."
Who uses Satnav on the way to and from work? After a few months at your job, you'd probably know the way by now and turn it off.
Re: Actually
"And yes there is a laptop with a computer program that can be plugged into any of the 17 interfaces and check the system. The computer program is bespoke, so windows, android or iOS cannot talk to it...."
On this sentence alone, I declare it "Bullshit"
Re: 15KWh?
Thinking of the mess these things would make if there was an accident (if, say, used in a vehicle).
Those who watched Robot Wars may be familiar with a competitor called Hypno Disk. They used a flywheel which rendered many a solid construction to a pile of twisted metal.
This is an industrial sized version. Mounting one in a car or bus would be asking for trouble.
Re: I can, therefore I should
Nothing stopping them nailing a video camera to a long stick and viewing that way through a window.
I think it would be cool to have one. Could inspect my roof/guttering as well as shooting some nice flypast views (away from houses).
Though, because there will always be one pervert out there, its going to restrict the rest of us normal people.
Re: He's just upset that ...
"His cars can't go into your back garden."
Both Google and Bing have a photo of my garden already.
Re: Celebrity self interest
"Though to be fair, it's only a short journey from loading a camera onto a drone and flying it over his heavily guarded and impenetrable walls, to loading a gun onto the same ..."
How much weight can these drones take? Remote controlled bank robbery anyone?
One thing that has confused me about rights grabbing company statments.
What if you submit something that you do not own the rights to?
Diblert cartoon on the subject:
http://dilbert.com/2013-04-02/
Re: The difference between Facebook and e.g. Vodafone 360
I remember the horror that was Vodafone 360. I had a temporary phone while mine was being repaired and it was fully integrated with 360.
With every other social network site, it doesn't matter what platform you uses, anyone can get on. With 360, only Vodafone users could get on.
Maybe it was an idea by Vodafone to try and get people over to their network, but it was a badly thought out one. I don't really care what phone network my friends are on. And none of them are going to change network providers just to see me on one social network, when everyone can see everyone else on the several existing ones, just like I'm not going to run out and buy a Blackberry or iPhone because some of the communication methods only work with their own brand of phone.
This one might have the edge, but there are many of us who leave 3g turned off and prefer to use free WiFi where possible and only turn it on to check facebook down the pub and back off again. Though that does make me sound like my elderly parents when I bought them their first mobile and they would turn the handset off between calls.
Re: " it has been 13 years"
I've got a few NT4 boxes within spitting distance. Hardware replacement is more of a problem on them than software. Some of the interface cards are just not available on new hardware. And even when they are, you can't just port the software over (even via VM) as the drivers won't speak to the old software.
We could just upgrade the lot to something new, but the customer doesn't like spending money. We'll see how that goes when the plant is down for a few weeks because our only source of hardware is ebay.
I used to like free WiFi
It was a simple "connect and go" affair. Sometimes you needed the code written on a board in the pub in big letters. But all nice and simple.
These days, they want all your info (name, address, email address, mobile number)
The free WiFi sign isn't as appealing as it used to be.
Re: Insufficient data in the question...
Though the chance of pulling a green marble on the second draw should be lower. You have already pulled out a blue one, so your luck favours blue.
Well, that is how many play roulette.
Re: Twat?
@Dave126
It certainly put me off wanting to read any of his articles and makes me less inclined to visit this site. I shall have to ponder some other IT news websites.
Are we really talking about putting the network gubbins in a bulb...
...instead of having an networked light switch?
Up go the costs of a disposable item like a bulb.
You'll have to leave all your switches on to control them via the network.
And not forgetting all that radio interference kicked out by your power wiring as its not designed to handle data transmission.
Controlling your electrics via a computer is not new. The likes of X10 has been around for quite some time.
Re: Twat?
What else can you say about a man, who on the rare occasion he enables feedback for his articles he sets every comment to manual moderation, instead of posting them immediately as per most other articles, so he can reject anything he doesn't like.
My comment was about people getting so upset that they post an article about it on their website and that the article itself was one of the rare occasions that feedback was enabled. Don't know which one of the two it was rejected for.
But what if...
...the lorry overtakes another lorry (without this system). Suddenly the cars are going to find themselves without a lead vehicle, or at least one in the wrong lane with the possibility of something getting in the way. Driver has to be awake and ready to take over, not snoozing/watching a film.
And if the car is so smart, it can go fix itself, rather than wait for me to patch it with gaffer tape.
Its all down to personal preference. I prefer the voice on. That way I don't have to look at the screen constantly. I can follow the road, watching out for traffic/pedestrians till a voice warns me that my turn off is approaching.
This has a 'Made in USA' label too
http://gag.bz/images/2013/January/2/50e3e37080eaf.jpg
And probably will contain as many 'made in USA' components.
Re: Sheeple are sheeple.
'People who call others "sheeple" immediately lose whatever point they are trying to make.'
And they always make me think of http://xkcd.com/1013/
Posted in Review: HTC One
They almost had me sold.
I was thinking between the S4 and this phone and the specs look good.
Till we got to the lack of microSD and non removable battery.
Think it will be S4 come renewal time.
Posted in LOHAN slips into tight rubber outfit
A low friction connector?
Spring loaded pins pressing against metal pads, as per a walkie talkie charger. The connection is made while the payload is still locked in place by whatever you are holding it with during the accent.
Re: This just in
"Just because you CAN connect it to the internet, doesn't mean you HAVE to."
But sometimes you have to.
Customer wants to gather statistical data from the plant (eg production uptime, production rate per hour, etc) and wants that emailed round a department via email.
Someone needs a PC that is connected to both the control system and the internet.
Yes, you can firewall the hell out of it, but there is always a way.
Even separating two systems with an air gap and transferring data via USB isn't foolproof.
