@Eddie
A tardis irl would have an evanescent effect projected slightly beyond the boundary of the door. It just so happens that this effect is perfectly tailored to allow a 12cm disk to fit nicely through the door of a 3.5" drive.
I can do science!
Posts by Matt
18 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Aug 2008
Boffins build basis for 9TB DVDs
Chip cooler launches liquid nitro at CPUs
US Forces 'black' budget = 2nd biggest military on Earth
US air traffic faces 'serious harm' from cyber attackers
Brits build e-car friendly solar parking bay
Knee X-ray biometrics plan to fight spoofing
Lead roof thief eyeballed targets on Google Earth
RIAA won't sue, but will throttle
Monday 22nd December 2008 12:11 GMT 
An easy solution...
Lets just ignore everything we know about the RIAA and pretend for a minute that they do have the best interest of their artists in mind and that piracy actually loses them money...
It seems to me that the running costs for the RIAA must be many times what they recover/protect with their handful of semi-successful lawsuits (does anyone know whether this is correct?).
If so, I don't even need to continue because even she can see where this is going.
Firefox millions - only 12 per cent Google free
Germans seduce Jacqui over remote hacking of disks
Texan boffins working on electric cyber-heart
Monday 13th October 2008 19:53 GMT
@ David Bell
Perhaps the unit could be fitted with a small speaker in order to produce artifical heart sounds, similar to electric cars being fitted with speaker to play fake engine sounds.
Seriously though, this is good work, but with heart disease being one of the biggest causes of death, the population is going to explode. I wonder how much one of these will extend the average lifespan.
Also, I don't think the circulatory system will have any problems dealing with this as the overall pressure will be lower. I do wonder whether the constant flow will have any weird effects on the body though, perhaps just because some systems work best with a pulsed blood supply. I'm no biology expert though so I have no idea whether any such systems exist, was just a curious thought :)
The unit could react to demand by monitoring the difference in oxygen levels leaving and entering the unit. I'm not up to date with my medical technology so I don't know whether something like that is possible on this scale. Anyone else know anything about this? I'm quite interested in learning more.
Internet security suites fail to block exploits
Monday 13th October 2008 19:53 GMT
@admin
While market share is a big factor, vulnerabilities and demographic also play a big part.
Windows will always have more vulnerabilities as it caters to the average user who knows nothing about computers and needs every basic application installed out of the box. More programs and features = more vulnerabilities. More vulnerabilities = more exploitation attempts.
Also you have to consider the fact that Windows targets the average user who knows nothing about computers and makes uneducated decisions security wise (well, technically speaking, don't even consider the security aspect). On the other hand, anything UNIX based is almost garenteed to be run/administrated by an expert who will have more knowledge of security. Add to that the fact that alot of UNIX systems are servers, meaning that any malicous code will probably have to make its way onto the computer without the user visting any dodgy websites. Additionally servers will typically have much better security. Of course if you can manage to get into a server then it can be a goldmine, but there are a hell of a lot of windows servers out there.
If you wanted to get rich quick or cause as much destruction as possible, would you rob fort knox, or the man who keeps 10000x as much gold in a tent?
Monday 13th October 2008 16:12 GMT 
Well of course Norton blocked the most exploits...
It blocks everything from turning the computer on to moving the mouse.
I'm interested to see exactly which exploits were tested, from the article I get the feeling that they were IE/ Windows vulnerabilities, or at least vulnerabilities in common software . If that's the case then there is (depending on the exact circumstances) not much security suites can do.
Also, most suites come with heuristics disabled by default, whereas I believe Norton comes with it enabled (correct me if I'm wrong), causing massive slowdown (not that anyone who uses Norton does anything more than web browsing).
Virgin Media calls foul on web speed testers
Monday 13th October 2008 19:53 GMT
Virgin suck?
Well I can't be bothered to read all the comments so forgive me if someone else has already said this...
Even if the speed tests aren't reporting your true speed, they are most likely reporting the speed you can expect from the average webserver. I know the method used in these tests is flawed and doesn't produce entirely accurate results, but I find them to be a very good indication of the actual speed being provided.
Virgin should be more concerned about their networks not being able to handle the load of all the traffic with the ridiculous speeds they are offering. Besides, even if speed tests are reporting low speeds, your speed gets quatered after downloading what is now considered to be a fairly small amount of data (especially in shared houses where lots of people each use the connection equally). Downloading at full speed on a 20Mb gets you capped in about 15 minutes, which in my opinion is insane. Hence my boycott of Virgin =)
Vista scrabbles for X Factor
Monday 13th October 2008 10:52 GMT 
@unbelievers
Without wanting to 'feed the trolls'...
I used to feel the same way as you all do. Vista is slow, bloated and generally crap. After using it for a while and finding a few tweaks, I have to say that I was completely wrong. Whether or not its just the fancy interface playing tricks on me I don't know, but Vista feels so much faster than XP. I also can't notice any performance loss in games. I have had absolutely no driver issues with Vista (more than can be said about my changeover from 98SE to XP), although I know there are still quite a few issues out there. The main problem I have is that VB6 has to disable Aero to run, and VB.NET 2005 has a compatibility warning (although I haven't had any problems running it yet).
Anyways, I don't want to get into the whole Vista debate because I know I don't stand a chance. All I'm going to say is don't knock it too much until you give it a (fair) chance. Ok, if you're a linux freak then you're obviously not going to get what you want with Vista, its just not designed for the same thing. Its like comparing buying a finely tuned race car to a feature laden people carrier. You may not want the optional cup holders in the wing mirrors and ass warmers, but Microsoft targets the average person. As techies, if we don't like the cup holders, we know what we're doing and with the aid of Google, we can crudely hack it off with an axe. Ok, back to leaving which I meant to do 3 sentences ago.
On a side note... MS Server 2008 is also very good.... and Vista > OSX
:)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
