Posts by Edwin
389 posts • joined Thursday 12th April 2007 22:03 GMT
Posted in How to run Mac OS X on a generic PC
ASEM has a point...
They've no doubt invested heavily in their product, and if it wasn't encrypted, it'd be on tpb within seconds since the hardware is probably just a flash drive...
Posted in Sony takes on the Kindle
Could be interesting...
to see who wins.
Mind, for me - I'll have the Sony sans touchscreen but with WiFi so that I can have e.g. RSS updates when abroad and the non-reflective screen.
Or lose the WiFi and the touchscreen and give me a nice discount instead.
In any case, how about selling the bloody thing in more countries?
Popsci
Don't know if it was amended, but popsci now reads 'used' at the end of the 'biggest' sentence...
Power?
Hope they bundle a power brick. I imagine the projector uses quite a lot of power...
Stick with me Sony
Saw my first Kindle on a plane a few weeks back. Nice screen, and the merkin who owned it waffled on about a quarter-of-a-million books.
Shame half the real estate is wasted on a keyboard (eBOOK - geddit?). Taking further cm2s away just reinforces my prejudice. I'll stick with Sony, thanks.
@EdwardP
The rub lies in the assumption of halfway decent defense council.
This is creepy stuff
Frequent traveller to the UK
Why don't you Brits just give it up and join Schengen?
De facto the added border controls only serve to keep twits like Geert Wilders out, but I'm sure you have worse over there as well.
Imagine - being able to fly to and from the UK without queueing for hours at immigration. Mmmmmmmmmmmm
(PS: while you're at it, adopt the euro)
PR disasters...
I think you could argue Panasonic has a distinct interest in ensuring only 'safe' batteries are used in their cameras.
Remember the uproar about exploding Nokias a few years ago, where (as it turned out) all (or nearly all) exploding batteries were third party? People remember 'exploding Nokia', not 'oops - it was a third party battery'.
Not that there isn't a strong profit motive here also, of course.
Posted in Designer pitches flat-pack power plug
Geez...
@Trygve Henriksen: of course there is. Once you have devices on teh circuit, of course, there will be some voltage there also.
The city of Delft in teh Netherlands used to have no neutral - just 2 lives out of phase. Ask them how well that worked (rolls eyes)
I like the idea, but why don't you brits just adopt the plug standard northern europe uses? A double-insulated device like a laptop PC shouldn't need a ground pin, so you could then use the nice, small europlug standard. Which is also less than 1cm. While you're at it, have the Euro too.
That having been said, this is still a brilliant idea!
@Sarah
Hmmmm.... Custom El Reg fresh in my mailbox...
Can I have Big-G's boobies then?
Wait - that didn't come out right.
*claws eyes out of skull at the mental image of Big-G's boobies*
@AC 11:37 GMT
Nonono. You miss the point.
The Iranian government has tampered with elections, whereas the Chinese government hasn't.
See? Makes perfect sense.
Posted in NASA takes stick over feet and inches
Silly brits
I keep seeing these comments about how luvverly blighty is so metric it's practically french.
And somehow, you can't do the conversion on your cars and roads.
Clarkson et al are still quoting miles per hour, causing the poor subtitlers over here ("the continent") to have to reach for their calculators regularly.
Not to mention your persistence in using 'stone' (which even the merkins gave up) as a unit of weight.
Nono, you may only be taught in SI, but the home is still a distinctly imperial place.
Posted in People just not that into Blu-ray
What more to say?
I own a blu-ray player.
It takes the bloody thing ages to load a film
It's region-crippled, which isn't nice when my kids grandparents bring them films from abroad
-> it can't compete with my old Pioneer DVD player.
I own no blu-ray disks.
I rented the latest bond in blu-ray, and although the image quality is veeeeeeery impressive on my HD telly, I won't pay the premium to buy or rent blu-ray disks.
"an homage of sorts"
yes. let's not try to divine *what* sort.
(LuMan - you very nearly owe me a keyboard)
Energy storage?
No, if we're "storing cold", it's an "energy vacuum" or an "unenergy storage" or an "energy "unstorage" or something.
People like this drastically increase Newton's kinetic energy...
Posted in Periodic table adding new element
Emergencium
after the european emergency services number.
Cheeky boffins may opt for:
seewhaticandoium
ohshitium
watchthisium
Posted in Next-gen e-book readers to slim down
feature-bereftness
Not sure about the later sony's, but my PRS-500 only plays MP3s in sequence and the battery dies at a ridiculous pace if you use it for music.
What you're missing though, is that many people want their ebook reader to be mostly screen. Something the Kindle clearly isn't.
The DRM issue is a major pain, but there are now enough players in the market that that should sort itself over the next few years.
LSL10?
'nuff said
Posted in Darth Vader tops movie misquote poll
illiterati?
of course, the snow white quote quoted here as a misquotation is correct in my translation of the fairy tale.
If we're starting to see film as definitive over original print, I can't help but worry...
but was it
...bitten off in a Buick?
Hurrah for the Dutchies
It seems the incompetent zealot that dumped the dutchies on the list has had their wrist slapped, and I no longer live in a tax haven.
Mark Haanen's hit the nail on the head, and I understand Obama's ire: all of these companies would have to pay tax on these cash transfers if they were all based in the US. Of course, I don't know why he thinks they would shift their operation to the US if the Dutchies changed their tax law...
Nice
but it's soooooooo expensive.
bung in a simple MP3 player and an easy way to sync it with my various computers, and I'm sold.
Oh - and lose the embarrassing typo on the Leyio site's opening flash animation....
Posted in Acer DX900 dual-SIM Windows smartphone
Almost, but not quite...
Hitting the 'call' button defaults to using Sim1
*SO* close to implementing LCR (Least-cost routing)
It's the ONLY thing that would make this phone an absolute killer in the enterprise space. Having the phone automatically pick your German SIM when you're in Germany and your British SIM when you're in the UK and the German SIM when calling Germans from China and and and....
Oh well, maybe next time.
Blatant public relations stunts
...after all, Craigslist seems to be putting in some effort to 'keep it clean'
What would these twits do if craigslist packed up and went to south america, offering exactly the same content with less policing and with a higher margin. Invade?
Posted in Former Qwest CEO headed to prison
@Henry Wertz
'scuse me?
Trumped up?
Joseph Nacchio is one of the biggest crooks in years. Just ask anyone dealing with KPN/Qwest in Europe a few years ago: it looked like such a nice joint venture until Nacchio bailed out and left KPN holding the bag and thousands of customers scrambling to preserve their WAN links.
Biggest headache I've had in years, but at least the boss sprung for backup links from DIFFERENT providers after that ;)
Send him to Leavenworth, please!
Where's me tinfoil hat?
Aliens have three fingers
Three-fingered salutes reboot machines
Coincidence?
I think not
Push vs. Pull
I find it quite hard to form an opinion on these sorts of cases.
On the one hand, the woman should indeed not have published anything she didn't want someone else to read, but I think she has a point about the newspaper publication.
Two points here:
- Copyright: whether or not she published it on MySpace, she wrote it and the newspaper should at the very least have asked for permission before publication.
- Push vs. pull: her mySpace target audience chooses to read her rantings voluntarily - "pulling" the content. By publishing the post, the newspaper "forces" its target audience to read the rantings - "pushing" the content.
I think a distinction should be made between this sort of "passive" vs. "active" publication, and until the law recognises that, these sorts of cases are going to continue to eat up too much bench time...
Stop being cynical!
It's Europarliament election time soon, innit?
Sheesh
Whether or not you like Vista is beside the point.
I rather suspect that it's illegal to legislate that a given supplier's product cannot be used (unless it's non-'merkin, in which case the UN might find it illegal, but 'merkins don't care).
@sarah fans
can we have a paypal whip-round and buy the nice lady a pint?
Stupid users vs. clever hackers
@Eddie:
the kiddies (who frequently also maintain mummy's PC for her) will no doubt find it an inconvenience to open the case and leave the switch open.
I once had a BIOS that "included" virus protection, e.g. it threw a warning on the screen if something tried to write to the BIOS or to the boot sector. Problem was that this completely hosed any Windows instance that was running. Maybe that should be brought back.
Alternatively, how about a momentary write-enable pushbutton on the mobo that enables writes for e.g. 1 hour?
@merkuh
I don't care whether they want to rely on vigilantism to patrol their borders or not.
But they should definitely not whine and bitch when the whole system massively backfires or serves to hide a multi-billion dollar drug importing biz.
Remember: there are no SLAs or quality metrics with Aussie pub-goers
Posted in Obama CIO a confessed petty thief
@Throatwobbler
Of course, it's also possible that the FBI background check *DID* pick this up, but those in question sensibly decided it wasn't relevant.
Adtards?
@people like pjnola:
While there's a balance between money-grubbing and altruism, ask yourself whether our beloved ElReg hacks are volunteers or if it's possible that the ads you clearly loathe so much are paying for your ability to read this comment.
sigh
@Mike Flugennock
I was thinking of their sprog:
- Moon Unit
- Dweezil
- Ahmet Emuukha Rodan
- Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen
I mean... honestly...
@Sarah
to say nothing of Frank Zappa et al...
@Andrew
Although Danny may also have married a Swede, in point of fact the poster was not Danny.
Perhaps the moderatrix can confirm the above post came from a user who is not, in fact, even British or living in the UK.
You'll have to take my word for being married to a Swede.
Oh yes, I'd like the five quid back in EUR please :-P
@steogede
According to Solwise, it comes with a UK plug and you can buy a europlug.
However, no US or Asian plugs are on offer. That's a shame, since it then requires a plug adapter to work in e.g. China or the USA. Note that it will, in fact take 100-240V in.
A full set of interchangeable tips would make up for a lot though.
I'm based in the Netherlands, and so UK is abroad for me. I know El Reg is a UK-based site, and Solwise is UK-based. But shipping rapidly becomes very expensive when you cross borders, to say nothing of e.g. RMAs (ouch ouch ouch)
My assumption was indeed that Solwise has these manufactured OEM and that they're not an original design - the question is has anyone else done so - that drastically increases my chances of finding the same features locally.
Interesting alternative use
I frequently visit other offices where there may be a free desk, but not necessarily a free cat5 cable or WLAN available.
It looks to me like you could plug this 'between' an existing PC and its cat5 cable using the second RJ45 connector, and then use the WLAN yourself.
Shame about the plug, since I usually only travel with one adapter. The Dlink travel router can run off USB...
I don't usually fancy ordering hardware from abroad though.
Does anyone know who manufacturs this thing?
Posted in Inside the world's greatest TV remote
@vince
There used to be an application for the HP48S/G series of calculators that did that.
It worked, but drained batteries at a pretty alarming rate.
Apologies for the pointless trivia.
Posted in US cops called to McDonalds menu cock-up
The BK story was better
http://www.snopes.com/crime/cops/burger.asp
@Duh (2)
I doubt they were underage: isn't it 18 in the US? I'm assuming they were uni students btw.
I'm assuming btw that if these ladies put their pics in their facebook accounts, then they were sharing them with SOMEONE.
I never digitally share ANYTHING that I don't want to hit the wild. Seen too many cases of accidental forwarding.
Of course, that doesn't justify his hacking facebook accounts (no matter how easy).
Not AT&Ts fault
It's the cruise operator's fault.
The only shortcoming on AT&T's side was its attempt to warn him by SMS via a card that didn't support SMS (silly sods).
I would say the cruise company should credit AT&T
Then AT&T can credit their customer
Posted in Kensington Universal Notebook Dock
Not nearly the first
I seem to remember Targus had one of these a few years ago, though perhaps not as cheap.
whine whine whine
"I bought a PC, wanted a non-standard option and paid for it."
FFS - If you don't want Vista, and don't want to pay to have XP instead, buy a PC elsewhere
(for the record: I have two Vista installs and neither has caused me headache other than with my ancient SCSI card and a proprietary bit of software)
Wow - sensibility!
Great news! Although I know plenty of parents who would either:
* prefer to point the finger elsewhere (not that this would stop them doing so)
* happily teach their kids how to use torrents for massive copyright infringement
(disclaimer: I am a parent, and my kids are learning that they have to pay for their music/software/films, despite the fact that many of their friends do not seem to need to do so)
On the porn filter twit: if she pays for it, then that's fine.
Otherwise, no.
Is it just me
or is the adolescent bodily-function humour in these stories getting a touch old?
Posted in Large Hadron Timewaster
missing something here...
LHC... isn't that at CERN?
And didn't they invent the web?
As a BYPRODUCT of their core research?
But you're probably right. Money down the drain.
Idiot.
Posted in The Boss bitchslaps Ticketmaster
Ho hum
"Oh it's so unfair ticketmaster is charging us so much"
So? Don't buy from them. You can actually live without seeing the Boss in concert, if the price pisses you off so much.
I also remember Mojo concerts bemoaning that the artists are now demanding two or three times the fees they demanded in the past.
So:
Artists are greedy bastards,
Agents are greedy bastards
Concert organisers are greedy bastards
Ticket agencies are greedy bastards
what else is new?
I stopped going to large concerts when the price of a ticket hit ~$50. The only concerts I see now are when I get tickets or at smaller venues with less exorbitant pricing.
Could we have a rolling eyes icon please?
Posted in Google's AOL stake walks the plank
meeeeeeeeeeeeeeemories!
@Russ: actually, yes - I work from home 90% of the time, so many nines and good support are worth a premium. So I pay more for my 8Mbit line than most people for their 20Mbit line. But its been down only about 2 hours in 5 years, so I won't complain.
As for the back of AOL: will noone lament the passing of the AOLamer? And what about the classic numerical compuserve email addresses? It'll be the end of an era, to be sure...
Mine's the one with the 1200 baud VT102 dialup account details in the pocket
