* Posts by Cliff

1822 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Apr 2007

iPhone apps top 100,000

Cliff

More free Android apps

So the %age of apps developed for the sheer goodwill and love of it is higher in a community writing for an open source platform than people writing for a closed platform with a much higher fool-and-his-money ratio. I'm betting on Android for the future.

Anyone with Android, btw, try the relatively new, excellent and well-supported yet totally free Handcent SMS client, it's a revelation!

Agincourt: The sensational truth

Cliff

That's exactly how it went

Thanks El Reg for proving that it's always the winners who get to write the official version of history :-)

P2P snafu blows lid on secret Congress probes

Cliff

@Pablo - Inadvertent

How do you share a file inadvertently? Simples! Just think like a user...

"I get my music from limewire. I like to take it with me on my phone. I have an autosync program to make it simple to keep up-to-date. My phone can also act as a storage device, and sometimes I save email attachments to it". Or any of another hundred or so real-world scenarios you see every day from less technical users.

DDoS attacks topple 40 Swedish sites

Cliff

Surely not the first to think...

All your Basefarm are belong to us?

Facebook awarded $711m in 'Spamford' Wallace case

Cliff

Money to members?

If Facebook has been awarded the cash, will it pass it onto the affected members, or keep it? Thought so.

TwitterPeek - the handset that spews Web2.0rhea...

Cliff

Someone, somewhere...

Won't be too long before someone somewhere flashes the OS to make a real handset out of it, in which case it might be a good and affordable linux/android host? I suppose it may not feature a mic or speaker which would spanner the works, but who knows?

Yahoo! nukes GeoCities

Cliff

@Matt 89

Holy crap - you are me!

WTF is this country called America?

Cliff

Quick! Change that song everyone seems to like...

You know, that "The Federation of The United States of America the beautiful" song. For convenience, let's just abbreviate it to "America the beautiful"

Don't be a bunch of dicks, if you guys get it wrong in daily use, don't expect the rest of the world to get it right whilst you're exporting TV shows with it wrongly expressed.

Steve Ballmer's Windows 7 dance party

Cliff

Strange comments

Windows 7 has had heaps of articles in the mainstream press and here at El Reg, and they're almost exclusively positive and happyclappy. This article wasn't claiming to be an in-depth feature examination benchmarking W7 against other OS'es, it was someones underwhelmed impression of what sounds like an underwhelming product launch. The bizarre comments above seem to miss this point somehow?

UK telly in coke blizzard shock

Cliff

Coke-heads - you're fucking boring!

Guys, those of you who believe you become superstars and fascinating raconteurs after snorting cocaine, I've got news for you - you simply become self-obsessed boring wankers. Really, really fucking boring. Delusional and tedious. It makes people think you're a tosser.

Just thought someone should break it to you, y'know...

BBC Trust boots 'Open iPlayer' plans into touch

Cliff

Kangaroo was mugged!

Fact is, Kangaroo was in the interest of the British viewer - all your shows in one place as opposed to striped across 4+ websites. That was killed largely by the whining of a few groups of vested interests who contribute fuck all to the quality programming online model. Eric Schmidt has admitted that User Generated Content (UGC-most of youtube, the bits you stumble across looking for the pirated good stuff) is a total lemon and that nobody wants to sponsor/advertise on UGC. YouTube lost best part of half a BILLION dollars last year, thanks to UGC, and so is courting the decent content providers like Channel 4. Instead of a homegrown tailor-made quality and convenient platform for our shows, we're going to hand the ad-rev to the yanks. Plain stupid.

London techies get kit off for charity

Cliff

Playmobil reconstruction...

Playmobil reconstruction or it never happened!

Snow Leopard data-munching bug predates Snow Leopard

Cliff

That's a doozy!

Wow, there are bugs and there are bugs - tough to see any way to call this one short of enterprise critical! Each OS has its own strengths and weaknesses of course, and their share of bugs, but this seems to be a spectacularly mentally serious one, I'm frankly gobsmacked it wasn't sorted by throwing every dev in the company at it once it was discovered two years ago. This kind of thing could really damage your reputation as a caring cuddly computers for the terrified company.

WD adds e-ink screens to external HDDs

Cliff

More for less?

Unless I'm going stupid, that's $150 for more interfaces than the $170 model?

(It's not unlikely that I'm going stupid, but eh?)

Conficker smites Oxford Brookes network

Cliff

Some sympathy

University networks must be some of the toughest to lockdown - you have multiple forces pulling in all directions unlike a business environment where proper decrees can be made.

You have -

Smartarse students wanting to screw with everyrhing and be more 1337 than anyone else or wanting to limewire/torrent their music and vids, but leaving vulnerabilities along the way

People connecting their own hardware riddled with diseases to the networks

No budget to speak of

Academic staff throwing hissy fits if they can't get their file easily and may have to *shock* type a password, or being deliberately pompous and obtuse about using a keyfob/smartcard (professional career academics can be bloody nightmares pandered to in their ivory towers - anyone working with them will have experienced having to metaphorically bend over and take it thanks to some snotty prof throwing a strop)

Some network members being ancient and pretty much unsupportable, but kept alive as some lab somewhere *must have* a commodore pet to drive some laser or other...and with a lack of homogenity(?) comes support and protection nightmares. There will be copies of Win98 connecting periodically, you just know it.

Cheap staff may not be, erm, industry-grade let's say. There are many great technicians working in Unis, but they may not be as fresh as some guy who has to stay current for weekly contracts, for instance, as they have to clean printers as well as install expert systems as well as DBA the admissions system written by some bloke a decade ago - on Ingres.

I would hate to try to support that network, even without the politics of upsetting the primadonna academics.

MMS (finally) comes to AppleT&T

Cliff

MMS isnt even that useful!

The problem is that to send enough data to be useful, you need/are charged for multiple messages, and as the phones can all connect to t'web anyway, why not just email? Don't get me wrong, it's great that the world's most overrated phone users in one of the world's most technically capable countries are able to join in with their lesser-handsetted friends, but seriously, how many MMS messgaes do you send? Compared to how many SMS messages? I thought so.

Londoners' votes put at risk by Boris' bigwig

Cliff

Voting machines elect their own...

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/voting_machines_elect_one_of

One brilliant bit of satire from The Onion News Network

Does the Linux desktop need to be popular?

Cliff

Home PC Desktop is a closed shop

There's simply no opportunity to break into the desktop as that market is totally stitched up by MSand Apple. There are, however, frontiers where those 2 companies son't own the whole market - netbooks, phones, etc., where Linux can make bigger, faster inroads if the bulk of the effort goes into them. Open Office is a strong player on netbooks, it's enough to keep the people who buy netbooks from worrying about changing OS to get Word and Excel, and that means people can acclimatise to Linux in a frontier they don't associate with their 'PC'

World's first motion-controlled headphones outed

Cliff

Laser?

The left bud contains a small yet powerful laser, the right bud some sort of sensor. This will work for the cretins who pay money for these and have nothing obstructing the beam.

Ten sizzling gizmos survive economic nightmare

Cliff

Oh dear, Reg...

http://www.pongresearch.com/Startpage-Technology-How_It_Works/327/Default.aspx - seriously?

better still, it's a case for the back of the phone, so it can't even shield the face of the phone, the bit that goes against your head! That, plus the likely signal attenuation through the rear of the case, means that as the phone tries harder to keep a signal, you get an even higher radiation dose through the face of the phone than without the case.

CSI boffins: You can't ID crims from bitemarks on victims

Cliff

No worries

I've watched CSI on TV - you just need to go into the glass, chrome and moody lighting lab, scan the teeth and bite, and wave your hands around in front of a 3D computer monitor a bit until the computer flashes up 'Match Found' with the driving license photo of the 'perp' in a funky typeface.

Apple sends iPhones into 'Coma Mode'

Cliff

There's more to software

Than just making it look pretty, apparently. Even when you control the device, contracts, and sideloading applications, it's not so straightforward.

For those who care, Android seems to be a pretty solid competitor, wodges of apps and more on the way, and a different devil behind it all.

Crackdown on dodgy mobile deals

Cliff

Unlimited deals...

...for very small values of unlimited...darn you O2, I fell for your lies - how the **** is 200 Megs unlimited when T-Mo give 3 Gigs with no overage charges?

France passes three-strikes bill

Cliff

This is France...

Why aren't they burning MP3's in the streets?!

There has to be some counter-penalty for false accusations too here, otherwise the collection agency would be stupid not to email and write to everyone in the country ready to pounce at the €300,000 windfall for anyone caught. Because those pesky kids cost Vanessa Paradis and Johnny Halliday €300,000 each, y'know...

TomTom goes Jock to abuse English 'bas'

Cliff

Bas Komen

http://www.linkedin.com/in/baskomen

Could it be him?

Brown apologises for 'appalling' treatment of Turing

Cliff

I for one am pleased

There's no need to get narky about the being proud to say sorry or make questioning digs at politicians individual motivations or sincerity. We asked our chief elected representative to make the apology on behalf of us as a nation, thank heavens we have moved on and the time is now appropriate and possible to do this. It's perfectly reasonable to be proud to be invited to do this and to celebrate the importance of this gesture with some sense of settling past wrongs to peace. Hey, I'm proud that we did this, and I'm sorry as a British citizen and human being that we made that wrong choice all those years ago.

Disney sued over Pixar lamp 'copy'

Cliff

Just settle

C'mon Disney, don't be dicks about this one, you know you'd go straight for the jugular the other way around. (I swear that mouse has no soul)

Faux Facebook 'friend' takes US woman for $4,000

Cliff

If only this was news...

Sadly it happens a lot - if you visit the excellent www.scamwarners.com you will find heaps of other cases and some great advice too. It is a victim-friendly site, so you can give the link to relatives and friends who are more vulnerable/less tech-savvy to keep them informed. It is a sister site of the more vigilante 419Eater.com, which may entertain Reg readers more, and is certainly worth a visit

Judge acquits mother in MySpace suicide case

Cliff

Thank goodness for the right decision

But the nutty mother is not going to get away with this, even if it just ends up her being hounded by the US equivalent of the red tops, surely?

US Dems fill inboxes with 419 scams

Cliff

Their response?

They've added a CAPTCHA displaying a true ignorance of the problem at hand, FFS

UK banks 'not doing enough' on internet fraud

Cliff

Coutts Media Banking

Admittedly, business banking where you're throwing hundreds of thousands around the whole time isn't the same client base as some granny at home, but I have to say they're bloody good. 2 lots of random character picks from a pin and a password with forced monthly changes, challenge/response for authorising transfers with the calculator thingy, configurable. Last log-on, proper auditing, least permissions granted to suit the needs of the account holder, etc. You can even have a paper/fax system of signal card unique random numbers to strike off in sequence to authorise a phone or paper/fax transaction, should it be useful to you.

Seriously, if you're looking for a good service for business banking, Coutts are very good and not *that* expensive. Makes my lloydstsb look wimpy by comparison, security-wise.

Walfamstow Cockney cash machine daffy ducked

Cliff

@Nigel 3

Brilliant - icing on the cake ;-)

There’s no escaping the cloud

Cliff

Data Protection Registers

I know in one company I worked at we had to co-opt somehow one floor of one office in New York to be a temporary extension of the UK for some or other project initialisation. Sounds dodgy to me, yet storage of Personally Identifiable Information outside the EU can prompt all sorts of problems for the lawyers. I wouldn't want to be a test case, I'd take the wait-and-watch approach for others to set precedent whilst waiting for my current tin architecture to die by attrition, just for a few more years...

US 'grooming robot' to reduce navy bottom-fouling

Cliff

I had a Viz moment...

Bottom Inspectors, anyone?

Smoking iMac caught on camera

Cliff

Desktop machine?

WTF have Li Ion batteries being dropped on concrete got to do with a desktop catching fire?

Street View in a jam over Swiss roll-out

Cliff

Swiss Roll, Jam

Good redtop headline, Reg :-)

Some sub-ed somewhere is pleased with himself today :-)

Microsoft goes Darwinian with evolutionary tree patent

Cliff

Great works

Even assuming you've got 27^65535 (26 characters plus spaces - let's abuse punctuation for the sake of ease) texts published, that's a very big hosting bill, but a great idea - send us a link to the pages which are great original novellas, but do be careful to not get sued for passing off previously-copyrighted works as your own! ;-)

Channel 4 to go 3D

Cliff

Coloured lenses

Coloured lenses is just about the only way this can be done without replacing every TV.

The Beeb did a 3D week many many (like 20?) years ago with the different neutral density filter glasses, which work on the theory that the slightly darker eye serves a subtly delayed signal to the brain, and only worked with (if I recall correctly) left to right moving action (but was otherwise normal viewing). They even shot a Dr Who episode to take advantage of it.

Prismatic screens have very few and very distinct layers, and a smallish 'sweet spot' - that said I saw them in action just playing adverts in a Bangkok shopping centre 4-5 years ago, each set had a gathering of men (the women seemed unimpressed?! Why? It's a miracle!) just staring at those adverts. I'm gobsmacked we haven't seen them playing ads in UK shopping centres.

The LCD shuttering method is horrible, and requires the glasses to be synchronised to the vertical interval on the TV scan. If it's off-perfect, it's instant headache, and the glasses are not freebieable.

The best available that I've seen is the polarising lenses, which requires special projection, but has natural colours. It's excellent, but won't work at home on a regular set.

As for the Queen's Coronation, I've seen it. It was shot 3D, but there was a slight skew on one of the 35mm cameras used, so before the processing power caught up, the prints were unusable for 3D (but you'll recognise most of the shots from 2D playbacks anyway). Whereas the vogue for 3D now is for things to pop out of the screen, the coronation was shot so it appears as if you're watching through a window. The lovely guys from Axis at Concrete (Dean St) did the corrections on it, I believe. If you want to shoot for 3D, talk to those guys, very very helpful.

Internet junkie detox center claims US first

Cliff

Actually, exactly which higher power is important

Narconon, for instance, has now widely been demonstrated to be a recruiting front for Scientology. Anyone know which deity these guys are turning to? Any 'addict' is a vulnerable person if you think about it, they've already proved they have a $15,000 problem.

Cliff

A Higher Power

You pray to the IBM Roadrunner? Or Turing?

YouTube injects cash into US F1 team

Cliff

What's another few million?

What's the harm of spanking another few hundred million dollars when you're already losing half-a-billion bucks a year? Fucked for a penny, fucked for a pound, as they say. Or maybe something about being as well hanged for a horse as a sheep.

Amazon limits PS3 Slim sales

Cliff

Aside from size and power, why?

Both boxes are fugly enough to want to hide, so why is there expected to be a rush?

Scientists ponder rules and ethics of robo helpers

Cliff

One pilot and a dog...

I was discussing autopilot / autolanding technology with a flying instructor once - he said the future would be one pilot and a dog in the cockpit

The dog there to stop the pilot from touching the controls

The pilot there to feed the dog

What should mySociety do next?

Cliff

mySociety works

I have no immediate ideas, but faxyourmp and theyworkforyou actually got me seeing parliament as something relateable as opposed to distant and irrelevant.

How about working on aggregations with FOI info?

Man blames cat for child porn downloads

Cliff

lolcats might be a good angle here

We all know no cat proud enough to prefix his or herself with 'lol' can spell, so maybe the cat was trying to type something innocent into a search engine, but misspelt the search term and ended up at a very un-lol site?

First success for vulture breeding programme

Cliff

Hooray!

This can only be good news, biodiversity is essential to all our survivals and makes the world a better and more beautiful (including vultures) place all round :-)

Is Google spending $106.5m to open source a codec?

Cliff

ON2 VP6

Wortel, ON2 created VP6, one of the most widely deployed codecs (thanks to Flash) used by lots and lots of streaming sites as it gives a great compression ratio with great quality. If it is open sourced, it'll be a good thing, as my VP6 encoding license cost me $99 *and was worth it*!

For those who don't get why codec choice is so important, the last few percent in filesize reduction for a specified quality can make a huge difference when streaming videos which by nature are huge files often with many, many streams making massive bandwidth bills.

Internet Archive orders Google to delay culture grab

Cliff

I'm with Kahle

Brewster Kahle (founder, Archive.org) is an interesting guy, I saw him talk at an NTK (I miss you NTK!) do years ago, and the man is a true altruist. I totally support the Archive.org effort and I do hope this makes a difference.

Meter insecurity raises specter of free parking hacks

Cliff

Meters on ebay

Meters are not classified military equipment or anything, if you want to put a meter system in your car park, you need to buy a meter. Is it really so different from a magstriper or a cash register for that matter? Not being useful to consumers doesn't mean not having a use and market at all!

Exposed activist accuses Tiscali of putting life in peril

Cliff

On an unrelated note

Anyone else think CISAS is pronounced "kiss-ass"?