porcine aviators
Do you honestly expect Jobsworth to admit there's anything wrong with his companies products?
Posts by Colin Miller
613 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Apr 2007
Apple Facetime flings out frightening random calls
'Smear agricultural land with human poo'
Tuesday 30th November 2010 16:58 GMT
grow compost
I heard somewhere that the best way to do this is to treat the sewage as normal (as Nigell11) said.
However, due to human pathogens (and tomato seeds) surviving the process, the sludge is not directly put on food crops.
Instead, it is used to fertilize phosphorus-rich crops. These are then used as compost for the food crops. Most human pathogens can't survive the year-long delay from output-to-input that this causes.
WTF is... up with e-book pricing?
Friday 26th November 2010 10:17 GMT
Book price markup
Given you can buy Penguin Classics for £3 (IIRC), and they are out-of-copyright, then this must be close to the lowest price a physical book can be printed and distributed for, albeit using cheap binding.
Therefore, I don''t see why eBooks should not be £3-£5 less that the dead-tree equivalent, giving the same profit margin to the companies involved.
Axl Rose sues Activision
Boris bikes for all from next week
Wednesday 24th November 2010 23:36 GMT
Max fee on Oyster?
What's the maximum fee you can be charged if you forget to "tap-out" correctly on Oyster?
I noticed the 24hr+ fee for the Boris Bikes is a bit steep, and they might want a valid credit card
so they can chase you if you nick a bike (who'd want to; they're obviously hire bikes).
Apple MacBook Air 11.6in sub-notebook
Plods scrap crap stealth spy blimp
HTC forgets Norwegian alphabet
Google illegally divulges user searches, suit claims
Wednesday 27th October 2010 09:15 GMT
URL changed via onmousedown
Google has been using a onmousedown handler on the <A> tag to change the HREF from a direct link to the via-google one for a few years now.
Try his: press-and-hold on a link, drag your mouse off the link, release the mouse, and then hover over the link again. The URL preview on the status bar should now be the obfuscated one.
However, the search term doesn't appear in cleartext for me.
Google: Street View cars grabbed emails, urls, passwords
Monday 25th October 2010 10:58 GMT
Mentioned several times already
No, it has been mentioned several times, including by this esteemed organ and by the Google spokesdroid in BBC on Sunday.
What Google was trying to do, was to capture all the SSIDs (WiFi base stations' ID number) that the car could detect. This would be mapped to the car's GPS location.
Then a WiFI enabled device that doesn't have an active GPS (GPS eats batteries) can send all the SSIDs it can hear to Google and get a good idea of where it is (to about 10m, which is better than cell-based mapping).
What Google ballsed up on was they recorded *everything* received, instead of discarding all but the SSIDs.
Note that a WiFi's SSID is separate from its ASDL MAC number; Only the manufactures can map between them.
Facebook introduces one-time passwords
Wednesday 13th October 2010 10:09 GMT 
Use WAP to get one-time password?
A better way would be to use WAP or a very basic HTML web-site. You log into this on your mobile with your normal password (preferably using HTTPS), and obtain the one-shot password; the site logs you off immediately after presenting the password.
This way you get the password quickly, but avoid the extravagant data-usage bills most mobile operators charge you.
Where's the side-ways pointing thumb-logo when you need it?
Spam blacklist snafu prompts global gnashing of teeth
Nokia C6 smartphone
Nutter repairmen scale 1,768ft TV mast
Monday 27th September 2010 18:56 GMT
Yup, slight lack of good clipping...
Especially around 5:30. Putting the clip onto a rod with only a slight bevel at the end of it won't do much good if you fall sideways - it looks like the clip would hit the end of the rod and jump off the bevel. I hope his buddy is manipulating a second clip with more care...
Aren't there running safety harnesses? I'm thinking of a T-shaped rail that goes all the way up the mast (bottom of the T is where is bolted to the mast). There's a semi-closed U-shaped clip that runs up this rail, fitting snuggly around it. Inside the clip is a brake pad, attached to an arm that points upwards, and the arm is attached to the safety harness. If you fall, the arm is pulled downwards, and the brake is applied is pushed against the top of the T-rail. You are then left dangling in mid-air, slightly winded, until you can grab the ladder again.
Google ordered to pay out for automated defamation
How do you copy 60m files?
Friday 24th September 2010 21:23 GMT
Explorer? You've got to be kidding (or trolling)
> ctrl + c then ctrl + v?
In Explorer?
If you try it, with 60 Million files (probably around 6TB of data), explorer will sit there for ages "Preparing to copy" as it calculates the total data size and how long it will take.
You wander away for lunch (its going to take several hours to do the copy), come back to see an error "Could not copy 'report.doc' ", helpfully NOT printing the source or destination directory. The copy has stopped, and can not be continued.
Which report.doc file is it talking about? There are a few thousand files of the same name in assorted directories.
If you figure that out, there is no way to restart the operation with out overwriting any existing files - there is no "Skip all" option on the overwrite confirm dialog box.
With most of the the other copy tools, they will keep going with the remaining files when an error occurs. You can the review the log and copy the last files by hand. Some tools can check when copying that the destination is the same as the source and not copy - so you can just return the copy command again for the uncopyed files.
Parents back legal ban of violent vidgames sales to kids
Microsoft wins court order crushing mighty spam botnet
Thursday 9th September 2010 16:12 GMT
Sender Policy Framework
There's already Sender Policy Framework [1]. This allows a domain, say example.com, to list all the addresses of machines that are allowed to send email from @example.com
The receiving machine can then check if the example.com has SPF records in its DNS, and then reject the email if there is an SPF record and the email isn't from a listed machine.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework
UK hacker fined for personnel database mischief
Underweight passport pic left traveller stuck in Amsterdam
Tuesday 31st August 2010 11:11 GMT
check file-copy of photograph?
I assume one of the things that happens when you get an emergency passport is that the photograph is sent to the embassy/consulate (originally the file-copy the passport office hold, now it will be a scan of it). The consulate staff then check this photograph against the applicant. Ooops. The applicant's face is fuller than the legitimate passport holder. Must be an imposter trying to get a British passport.
* Application rejected. *
Apple to reveal musical something on September 1
BT Tower to open for first time in 29 years
Monday 16th August 2010 11:57 GMT 
missing buildings...
Why remove it from OS maps? If a prominent building is not shown on an OS map, but is clearly there, then it must have some role that is important to the State, so this just grabs attention.
I remember reading somewhere about a farm that didn't officially exist - one of the barns was a lift to an underground bunker.
Credit card trafficker cuffed after nine-month manhunt
Thursday 12th August 2010 09:34 GMT
Jurisdiction?
While I don't doubt that he should stand trial, there is nothing in your article to indicate on what basis the US is claiming jurisdiction over his alleged crimes.
In the FBI's press-release, they stated that his servers were hosted outside the US. He should be tried in either the country where the servers are, or in the country that he controlled them from.
US starts charging for online visa-waiver
Bound robbery victim IMs for help with toes
Friday 6th August 2010 15:55 GMT
RTFA
Quoth SlackerUK
...misses the laptop that must have been pretty obvious by her feet...
End quote
Quoth the article
Hilton added that his quick-thinking girlfriend held onto her computer because although the intruder was "was interested in her laptop ... she said there was a way to trace it so he shouldn’t take that".
End quote
Err. He was interested in the lappy, but was persuaded to think better of it.
Broadband advertising speed gap widens
Tuesday 27th July 2010 12:00 GMT
educate customers?
ISP's advertisements should make it clear that real-world speeds are dependant on the quality of your phone line, which is outside of their control, and, if you are using Wi-Fi, your house's construction.
However, they should have enough back-haul to keep up with the speeds they are providing.
Home Office mobe theft fight doubles in importance
Friday 23rd July 2010 15:44 GMT 
how many are sold to recyclers?
Quoth the article
.. that 100,000 phones were being stolen and sold to the recyclers every year, ... with an average value of £50 per handset.
Quote Endth
Is that 100,000 stolen phones per year being sold to the recyclers, or 100,000 phones stolen each year SOME of which are being sold to the recyclers?
Cops taser Somerset chap's nether regions
The Register comment guidelines 2010
Monday 19th July 2010 15:02 GMT
Upvoting self?
Quoth blackworx - Oh, and a request. Can we have some sort of system whereby commentards who upvote their own posts are highlighted so the rest of us can all point and laugh?
Quote Endth.
Can the forums be modified so that either the up/down vote buttons are hidden for your own vote,
or the script behind them catches it, and displays something like
"Voting on your own comment? Not likely you little <insert put down of choice> "
SCO rises from the dead (again)
Dutch send submarine to fight Somali pirates
Wednesday 30th June 2010 16:58 GMT
An apt class name
Walruses are fierce when provoked. They're pretty nippy under water[1], they can sustain 4 mph for long times, and have a top speed of 21 mph. However they're not that fast on land. A bit like diesel-electric submarines, really.
[1] http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/walrus/adapaqwal.html
Fans fall in to await iPhone 4 arrival
Killer piranha stalk Folkestone pond
Links to blog in email made sender liable, says US court
Approaching space object 'artificial, not asteroid' says NASA
3-million-km-long comet plunges into Sun
Fake joke worm wriggles through Facebook
Carmakers boost e-car noise standards for vision-impaired
Thursday 20th May 2010 11:17 GMT
Transponder
Another way to do this would to fit all leccy cars with a near-field transmitter that broadcasts its speed, track and GPS position. Blind folks would carry a receiver; it would alert them if there is a car almost in their path. GPS errors are the same over a few miles radius (its how D-GPS works), so aren't a problem.
Car platoons would need the information, so its a good first step in that direction.
Blighty to get mobe-download barcode rail tickets
Tuesday 18th May 2010 14:35 GMT 
Eurostart paper tickets
EuroStar send tickets to you by email, you the print the ticket out. It's one side of an A4 printout, with a 2D barcode in the bottom-left. The ticket barriers have a standard red-led scanning barcode reader, you place the barcode over this, and the barrier opens.
Using a video camera to read a barcode from a phone's screen isn't that big a leap. With a little smarts, the camera could detect that there's a bit of paper in front of it, not a screen, and turn on some white LEDs to read the barcode printed on it, for those without a smartphone.
Reg reader applauds World's Crappiest phish
Garage worker prangs £200k Ferrari
Friday 14th May 2010 09:19 GMT
not the most expensive car accident....
Almost as bad as the person who did £300k of damage to a £500k Pagani Zonda S, that he borrowed for a test drive. However, these pale into insignificance compared to some of these
http://www.wreckedexotics.com/articles/002.shtml
Top accident - a Ferrari 250 GTO worth the best part of $30M which was badly damaged after it rear-ended another car at a classic car track day.
German net crippled by top level glitch
Spammers ordered to pay tiny ISP whopping $2.6m
DVLA off-road system seriously off-message
Monday 3rd May 2010 17:56 GMT
VC/5 transfer after death
When someone dies, you are meant to fill out the V5/C to transfer the car to you. giving a copy of the death certificate. Then apply for a Tax disc/SORN. If the death occurs at the the time the tax disc is due, then I'm not sure what the correct procedure is, but you can now fill out the form online, and pretend that the deceased filled it out.
For Americans,
In the UK, all vehicles used on the public roads are required to have an annual tax disc. I think they are called "registration plate tags" in the US. If you are keeping the car off-road (on private land), then you need to fill out a Statuary Off-Road Notification form (it's free) when the tax disc expires, or you sell the disc back to the DVLA. The DVLA is the Driver and Vehicle Licensing agency which is the Quango that deals with vehicles and drivers.
Data Locker 1TB AES-encrypted external hard drive
Sky punts 'truly unlimited' 20Mb/s broadband
Mandybill: All the Commons drama
MPs criticise 'impossible' e-Borders schedule
Wednesday 7th April 2010 12:09 GMT 
Ireland?
Unless they can get Dublin to join in, then it is easy (if costly) to circumvent by taking the ferry to Northern Ireland, and then crossing the land border to Ireland.
So either
1) You need to notify the Border Agency when you are travelling between NI and GB, which is easy to police, but would anger the Unionists,
2) You need to notify the Border Agency when you cross the between NI and Ireland. This is almost impossible to police. Infact, on the smaller roads, the only way to tell that you've crossed is that the road signs are a different style and are in km not miles.
I seem to remember that the government were proposing option 1 in this, or a similar bill.
Non-EU visitors crossing the border are meant to notify the Police/Garda each time they cross , but I doubt that many people do.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
