Please bring the launch date for MarsOne forward.
I don't think I can wait until 2023 anymore . . .
Mine's the space suit.
Posts by andreas koch
842 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jun 2008
Apple patents the super-soaraway selfie system of the future
Watch the MIT MER-BOT – half droid, half soft 'fish' – swim by itself
Well done on the privacy lawsuit. Now NSA will keep your phone records INDEFINITELY
Why does there have to be an app for that?
Thursday 13th February 2014 13:13 GMT
@ normanpritchard59 -
Not quite hitting my original question. No doubt that you might need an app for some of the things you mention, but surely not for watching a youtube video on how to tie a tie or get scores or similar.
It's this "tie the victim customer to a device/OS/infrastructure" that makes it annoying. 180° from the original OSI idea . . .
Treasure hunters dig up LOST RELIC of dead Steve Jobs
Thursday 13th February 2014 13:03 GMT
@ returnmyjedi - Re: How Pathetic...
About this mouse . . . Do you know exactly what it looks like? If so, could you assist me in making a "commemorative model" of it, so that more idiots fanbois sophisticated people can enjoy it's looks?
If you don't know what it looks like, would you want to buy the guaranteed original one? For 20 quid extra I'll wrap it up in a piece of the guaranteed original Turin shroud for you.
Just give me a call under 0203 555 419 419
Mars rover Curiosity snaps 'pale blue dot' image of Earth, Moon
It's big, it's expensive and it's an audiophile's dream: The Sonos Sub
Japanese quantum boffins 'may have the key to TELEPORTATION'
UNBREAKABLE bendy phone screens built, thanks to SHELLFISH
UK internet filtering shouldn't rely on knee tappers, says Tory MP
Thursday 30th January 2014 04:30 GMT
@ asdf - Re: Sorry... am I reading that right?
Her sorry. Reading fail. Tories probably picked a woman to reduce the danger of their porn avenger showing up on the telly being busted with a lady of the night.
Dear asdf, CP (not child porn, Claire Perry) does her own busting, mostly through apparent ignorance. Like when she told Jimmy Wales that he doesn't know about the web, unlike her . . . or her filtering suggestions: Just block the naughty pictures.
I could, and can, be wrong, but she seems to think that there's routers that can detect if a model is 18 or under-age, or which part of her (or his) body is uncovered to an inappropriate extend or who is actually looking at this picture. She might actually think that the filename "my_little_pony.jpg" can't be anything but the picture of a little pony and that all porn is called "sexpic_45123.png" or similar. I would bet she read this and thought that it could be used for smut-filtering as well.
I think she needs an injection of Common-sense-icine. Unless, of course, she gets the idea of having a moderated, buffered BlightyNet®: cut all connections to these bad foreign internet places and have 23500 moderators* looking at all submitted user content before it is released to the public. That'd work.
Or, alternatively, have Ceefax back instead.
*preferably nuns.
Facebook app now reads your smartphone's text messages? THE TRUTH
Got a TorMail account to avoid Uncle Sam's web snoops? About that...
UK IT supplier placed on ASA naughty step over 'misleading' HDD ad
Thursday 23rd January 2014 04:27 GMT
Misinterprtation of SMART data
Not necessarily in defence of Aria, who handled the situation badly, but there's also the possibility of misinterpretation of SMART data. All it takes is a bit of dodgy reporting of the firmware like here. And no penpusher or advertising knight will understand that a program that states something isn't necessarily gospel.
The drive in the lappy I'm using to type this (Seagate Momentus XT 500) reports over 110 million read errors and status OK. It did that from the day I updated it's firmware and never failed. Before the update the count was 0, which indicates that Seagate's SMART reporting is, at least sometimes, pants.
Maybe this applies here, too?
Also, Who guarantees that a clean pull is not a refurb? It could well be that a company pops returned drives into budget PCs and it was pulled from those?
There's more to it than black or white.
Display tech based on EYEBALLS could reduce teens' mobe-fiddling
Hadron Collider urinal cake tale wins El Reg's LHC book giveaway
Jokes of no more than 2 lines
Rarin' to buy an Ubuntu phone? Maybe not until 2015, Canonical man says
Thursday 16th January 2014 16:05 GMT
@ theodore - Re: as long as the gui isn't burnt orange
No. Nopedinopenono.
Totally get rid of that attitude right now please. The GUI isn't orange if you don't want it to be. This is an open source OS: CHANGE IT. This is not a "can't-let-you-do-that- OS"
I find it really confusing that people dismiss certain OSs/ distributions on the grounds of a changeable attribute. KDE is too metallic. Mint is soo XP. Ubuntu is much too orange.
Bah.
/rant
Boffins: Antarctic glacier in irreversible decline, will raise sea levels by 1cm
Wednesday 15th January 2014 12:43 GMT
A paper in "Nature Climate Change".
Completely disregarding the validity or lack thereof of the paper, what does one expect in a publication named "Nature Climate Change"?
If you want the other view, subscribe to "Constant Climate Quarterly".
It's like looking for a positive article about Windows 8 in "macUser", a favourable report about Ford's new Focus in "Vauxhall Astra Fan Magazine" or recipes for beef and bacon casserole in "The Vegan Weekly".
Plastic iPhone 5Cs? Nah, we'll flog India our OLD iPhone 4 models - report
Woman whipped gun from vagina in SPACE ALIEN spat, reports Officer Zook
Sceptic-bait E-Cat COLD FUSION generator goes on sale for $US1.5m
JESUS battery HEALS itself - might make electric cars more practical
Stephen Hawking: 'Boring' Higgs Boson discovery cost me $100
Wednesday 13th November 2013 18:10 GMT
@ skelband - Re: Hawink trolling again.
I interpret that the other way around:
"How did we appear in this universe, in this form and in the way that we are?"
"The universe is as it is, therefore we're here to perceive it as it is. If it would be different, we would also be different, but still perceive this different universe as it is."
More Philosophy than Physics.
Or just waffle.
Also consider the 5th commandment of the Discordian Pentabarf.
Oooh! My NAUGHTY SKIRT keeps riding up! Hello, INTERNET EXPLORER
Tesla shares dip as Elon Musk admits electrocar firm ran out of juice
Why did Nokia bosses wait so long to pop THAT Lumia tab?
Badges for Commentards
Does Apple make you puke? Take this iOS 7.0.3 update with your tablets
Saturday 26th October 2013 11:20 GMT
@ eSeM - Re: Another bug fix ....
>
That isn't very good
. . . <
?
You're kidding, right?
I'm, have it known, not an Apple fan. Not at all. But that doesn't stop me from applauding a company for listening to customer complaints and doing something about it.
How can that be wrong?
They were a lot faster than Microsoft, who took quite a while to give people their start button back when the complaints about Modern/ Metro/ THD* started rolling in.
And Canonical doesn't listen to their customers at all, as it seems. Lucky for me, as I happen to like Unity, but a bother to a lot of other users who left and got all Minty and such. But then, they don't ask for your money, so let's cut some slack there and just get something else if you don't like it.
So, dissing Apple for fixes and changes that users want? No, no and no. You should praise them for it!
And that's from an almost fanatic non-fanboi.
Apple CEO Tim Cook v Microsoft's Ballmer: Seconds out, round two!
Saturday 26th October 2013 10:52 GMT
@ AC 1159h GMT - Re: I still have a hickups every time
The tl/dr:
It will mess with MS? No.
The long one:
It will mess with MS? In which way? People downloading OSX for their homebuild Gaming rig? Companies not upgrading from Win XP to Win 8, but installing OSX on their office Dells? Production computers, still using NT4 now, will be running their proprietary controller software on Apple's OS?
Well, I'd say no.
The reason OSX is so nice and stable is that it has not to deal with anything other than approved Apple hardware. It's more like a Games console software, like Nintendo 64. You would not expect an N64 to run Mario Kart if you replaced the inbuilt OS with, let's say, a Playstation1 software, would you? Do you think that your Panasonic DVD player would work if you put an LG Software on it?
No.
Apple's software is tailored to exactly work with Apple hardware. That made it "Just works". If you look at it like this, it's a medium miracle that non-tied software like Windows or Linux distros work at all. The multitude of different hardware configurations that these OSs have to cope with exceeds anything that OSX would ever have to or can. OSX is an integral part of the Apple computer that you buy, it's got no value whatsoever on it's own. A bit like an upgrade for a Virginmedia cable router. It would not make your ADSL box suddenly understand DOCSIS, it would almost always not work, and if you could install it at all, it would brick anything but the right machine.
The next time your Freeview receiver get an OTA update, you should cheer and exclaim that, as it was free, this will be the end of SKY TV!
Yay!
Yay?
Meh.
Friday 25th October 2013 05:21 GMT 
I still have a hickups every time
I read: free Mavericks upgrade.
I haven't paid for an upgrade in decades*; and ,I think, neither should anyone else if it's tied to the hardware.
Apple stuff runs on Apple stuff which needs Apple stuff to run. They actually expect their users to pay for the packed software each iteration again. And they get away with it.
Wow.
*Not tied to anything. Linux.
SEX CRAZED FISH keeping hapless Southamptonites awake
Friday 25th October 2013 05:34 GMT
@ Sir Runcible Spoon - Re: Sir
Dear Sir,
I propose to introduce these fish to the Thames, at the level of the Houses of Parliament.
It seems to me that the noise of these fish does not make any less sense than the noise generated by the occupants of said Houses of Parliament, albeit at a much lower cost. Thus considerable savings could be achieved.
Your sincerely
Andreas Koch (not even Esquire, sadly.)
Carl Icahn broadcasts his $150bn Apple shakedown effort to world+dog
Not so Saucy after all: Ubuntu reveals Mirless Salamander... and what, no Britney?
It's the '90s all over again: Apple repeats mistakes as low-cost tablets pile up
Wednesday 23rd October 2013 06:44 GMT
@ Wibble - Re: iPads are expensive?
But who needs a "retina" screen to launch malformed birds at equally malformed pigs?
Oh, yes, there are some people who use tablets to create something, but most tablets are for cheap, nasty entertainment.
Of 7-year-olds. In the back of the car. A cheapo tablet is fine for that.
Hybrid Windows laptop-slash-tablet fails to halt toilet-bound PC market
Monday 21st October 2013 18:26 GMT 
I've got it.
IBM's Tom Watson was right. There's a need for 5* computers worldwide. The rest are very happy having CCDs (Content Consumption Devices).
Half the "users" have a computer because . . . , well, because. Others are gamers. And then there's some that actually have an advantage using one instead of the way it was done before.
But some of the uses are only there because the computer is there. Like my kid's old school, which switched to iPads to register the kids. Lots of times the teachers had to make notes on paper to hack it in later because something didn't work. The old book would have done just as well.
*OKOKOK, it's more than 5, but he was part right; it's not the gazillion computing devices we have in use now.
Apple accused over 'secure' iMessage encryption
Monday 21st October 2013 15:21 GMT
Re: Whatever . . .
All the downvoters use iMessage now because they found out during the London Riots that BBMessenger wasn't all that secure and that JD Sports suddenly wanted those Nikes back.
Won't be different with Apple. Be careful!
Monday 21st October 2013 12:53 GMT
Whatever . . .
it's iMessage. Where's the need for HQ encryption? To make sure that Tracy doesn't find out that Sharon has told Lauren that she's given Trevor Clamydia and that she should go and pick up another dose of Doxycycline for herself and her other boyfriends [imagine randomly intersecting Venn diagramm here]?
Her older sister will spread the news to her mates in year 8 in school anyway . . .
MPs to grill Facebook: You're going to let our teens do WHAT?
Monday 21st October 2013 15:11 GMT
@ Jerky Jerk face -
DVLA bound by policies, why shouldn't Facebook be?
Because the RSPCA isn't either. They can request your data on a whim and do whatever they like with it, because they're not a government agent. Even though they call their people 'Officers' and just assume executive rights.
Proper evil lot.
Monday 21st October 2013 13:29 GMT 
A modest proposal
I propose that Children under the age of 25 are kept in a eunuch-supervised-CCTV-clad Faraday's cage in the dark, wearing sheet-metal burqas, welding gloves, non-removable earplugs and feed-through gags.
This might ensure their purity.
Hitting on Facebook for this policy is like pissing in an ocean of piss. There's 1000's of other sites with no policies at all.
Meet the 'KARDASHIAN Phone' – what Apple bods nicknamed the iPhone 5s
Monday 21st October 2013 13:13 GMT
@ ERradicate all BB entrants - Re: I don't care about .....
I agree.
I'm pretty confident that Ms. Kardashian's "Social Media Update Team", whose members type her Facebook, Twitter and whateverelsewebsite posts, has more staff than a medium sized hospital.
edit: The initialism was initially unintentional.
Apple handed Samsung-busting nuke after Steve Jobs patent U-turn
Volvo: Need a new car battery? Replace the doors and roof
Monday 21st October 2013 11:55 GMT
Impatience, much?
A lot of people here seem to think that it won't work. And it probably won't; not in the way it's being looked into right now.
But then, what ever is? This is an engineering concept, somebodies idea that must have appeared sound enough to qualify a bit of testing. If it would be completely ridiculous, either economically or technically, it wouldn't even have made an article. Furthermore, most concepts don't see the showroom in the way they were first trialled and presented: BMW's GINA will never be for sale, and we will surely be spared the view of a Ford SYNus on the road.
Concepts are there to try out ideas, and to sift the grain from the chaff. What will be kept from this intriguing approach is to be seen.
No good going "Are we there yet?" already.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
