Posts by Horridbloke
198 posts • joined Monday 23rd April 2007 16:13 GMT
Re: Very easily
For what it's worth my card doesn't have a blatant hole, it's a barely-visible nick. Besides, the vendor doesn't handle the card for Chip & Pin payments.
Very easily
I nobbled the contactless elements in my credit cards using a craft knife a few months back. Chip and PIN payments were not affected. The NFC-capable phone came in handy to confirm an element was present and to confirm afterwards that it was dead.
Proper computing
Based on my playing with them I'd say the Pi is broadly comparable to a mid-to-late nineties workstation. That makes this perspex box-of-stuff surprisingly similar to the lab-full of Sun sparcs we used for distributed computing experiments back in college.
Nice work.
ITV?
Are they still going?
Re: Oh puhleeze.
"you need to be very, very good to be able to rely on a single bullet alone"
This design is an early version. Who's to say future designs won't incorporate a magazine?
(Okay, having the gun survive multiple shots will be a challenge.)
Going on recent form...
... the new console will be called the "XBox London Underground" at launch. Untold millions of dollars will be spent building brand awareness and generally pumelling the name into the heads of teenagers everywhere.
Shortly before actual shipping the name will change to "XBox splendid" and Microsoft will claim "London Underground" was only ever a development codename.
Re: Crikey...
This is great, it reminds me of when I was 12.
I quite like the idea...
... that somewhere in Wisconsin or Arkansas or wherever a server is holding a painstakingly indexed collection of twenty-odd recordings of me saying "Merry Hill Shopping Centre" from last weekend.
(In the end I gave up and kept driving to West Quay in Southampton.)
Re if "Home" picks up
"Home" won't pick up. It's a fundamentally bad idea.
Re: What?Why
Can we redefine a kilowatt as 1024 watts? You know, just to be awkward?
Your science is rubbish
" around 3,000 pounds – on earth, that is"
The pound is a unit of mass, not weight.
(I assume the article wasn't making some bizarre monetary valuation.)
Posted in Fukushima switchboard defeated by rat
Black Sheep is not a Peter Jackson film
That is all.
Still very robotic
It doesn't seem a million miles away from the old Ananova virtual newscaster lady from about ten years ago with a little dash of the nVidia bimbo-with-slider-adjustable-face thrown in. Still very stilted, but a big improvement on any performance in Hollyoaks.
It isn't even unlimited...
I'm using one of Virgin's 30-day rolling contract deals. The "unlimited" internet deal is, if I remember correctly, currently subject to a 3GB / month "fair use" policy, with vague threats about something perhaps happening should you go over that limit.
The only time I've breached one Gigabyte on my phone was the month I drove eight hundred miles with Google Navigator displaying the aerial photography overlay - being a pillock in other words. The infrastructure isn't there for everyone to stagger around perpetually streaming high definition video, and probably never will be. Accept it and cheer up.
You may take my beer...
... when you prise it from my cold dead hands.
(Definitely a frowny-face.)
Quality entertainment
That's the next Jackass film sorted then.
Range Rovers
The average middle-class driver of one of these things would be horrified if they realised they were embracing hiphop culture.
The device isn't a "pair"...
... I suppose it's a monocle.
Re: One could really start a business of...
I'm pretty sure Tesco here in the UK were selling a branded / supported / disguised variant of Openoffice for £10 several years back.
Re: Getting away from your core competency
Sounds a lot like WHSmith in the UK - rubbish at everything.
Computer misselling
I'd like to take a pop at high street computer retailers. For years innocent members of the public have been punted PCs and related tech by the same shops that sell TVs, videos, stereos and toasters. This has been the wrong model, as demonstrated by the large number of confused and disappointed PC owners who resort to bothering people like us to keep their contraptions running.
The ownership and costs model for a typical PC is probably closer to that of a car than a telly : the owner suffers massive depreciation, unexpected running costs that nobody told you about and either have to be an expert or know an expert or pay an expert to massage it back to functionality when things inevitably go awry. Computer ownership has been a miserable experience for millions. (There are of course exceptions: simpler devices and machines bearing a certain fruity logo seem to fare better and no, I don't own a fruity machine.)
The PC retailers don't cater for these events and shouldn't be considered "channel" - they are mere spivs.
False alert...
... this time, but stay indoors and report unusual behaviour.
@AC 15:45
Wrong: in this case the dodgy payments were processed through that business. That was how they happened to get caught (Note that the bored minimum-wager behind the counter is NOT the merchant).
While we're at it, what is actually "conspiracy theoryesque" or otherwise inaccurate about the idea that disabling the NFC element disables NFC payment?
Re: merchant account
Ever heard of dodgy shop employees? A petrol station in my town was fingered for a number of fraudulent credit card payments a while back. Now I don't know the technical details and obviously those particular guys got caught in the end, but who says they always get caught?
Re: Perhaps they are asking the wrong question
"card is not your property, it remains property of the bank.."
I'm not going to tell them.
If at some point in the future a compelling reason arises not to emasculate the card then I'll stop doing it. Until then I will take some responsibility for my financial security.
Re: "How do you propose..."
I imagine somebody somewhere is working on it.
Re: Perhaps they are asking the wrong question
"paper", not "people" - I apologise for my substandard post and hope it has not impacted your enjoyment of the internet.
Re: Perhaps they are asking the wrong question
Totally agree. On a related matter I was pretty annoyed to get a replacement credit card with contactless element the other month. I think it uses NFC technology - my smartphone certainly recognised something was there.
Anyway, the accompanying sheet of people cheefully informed me the limit for unauthenticated contactless payment was £20 - somewhat in excess of the "cup of coffee" purchase scenario these things are supposed to be for. I didn't like this, so using the old card (which upon closer examination turned out also to have the contactless element), the smartphone and a hole punch I located the NFC element and was then able to neuter the new card by cutting in the right place with a craft knife. The card still works fine in Chip-&-PIN readers, so I will be snipping future cards in the same manner.
Location-based advertising?
In a CAR? Seriously? That would be one of the worst ideas ever wouldn't it?
Not just for movies...
A computer desktop (Ubuntu Zealous Zebra or whatever they decide to call it) at that resolution and size is going to be awesome. Spreadsheet fanatics will fall over themselves to early-adopt.
Re: Interesting...
Go for it - nothing says "cool" quite like a contrived hydrogen explosion in your kitchen.
Re: setting a worrying precedent?
I didn't get the reference, so I googled "swimming pool coronation street" and now I am offended.
@AC
How DID they squeeze a giraffe into an Apollo craft?
Let's concentrate on what's important
Is the report well-formatted?
Posted in Google denies smacking Botswanan ass
Trying to be a bit clever...
... The official explanation is that the donkey was lying in the road and got up to move out of the way when the googledrone approached. A quick google image search leads me to believe people drive on the left in Botswana, lending credence to this explanation - can anyone confirm / refute?
Same old problem
"Technology's gone robot-happy. Any job has to have a robot, or the engineer in charge feels cheated. You want a doorstop; buy a robot with a thick foot." - one of Asimov's robot stories.
The tech industry has been criticised for decades for its emphasis on punting tech over solving problems. Unfortunately they're still at it.
@fch
"... at least the release of anguish and emotion prevents the buildup of resentment and desire for revenge."
From personal experience I can assure you it doesn't.
Re: I doubt I'll be first to mention this, but...
My favourite is another of Ray Bradbury's, the circa-1950 short story "The Murderer". It's set in a near future where everyone is constantly in touch and constantly bothering each other with the minutiae of their lives. The story itself is an interview with a man in custody who's finally flipped and smashed up the talking technology so he can have some piece and quiet. Replace "wristwatch radio" with "phone" and it's a remarkably prescient piece of work.
@Will Godfrey
"What's more to the point, is what on earth can anyone actually do with that amount of money?"
Blow it all on beer, SSDs and Intel Extreme Edition processors.
Seriously, with that money I would track down everyone who has ever wronged me, buy the houses next to theirs, and fill them with tramps.
Open standards...
This toilet should do HTML 5.
Re: Ping Time
"...intergalactic faux pas..."? No, merely an interstellar faux pas.
It's never urgent...
... until it is.
Is something still going on?
According to my stock monitor Facebook is sitting at about $27. That's a impressive, if somewhat depressing, rebound from the low of around $18 several months ago. How come it hasn't dropped under $5 by now? I suspect continuing shenanigans.
(All prices are per share, not total capitalisation.)
Re: 3G
Yep, the insane UK 3g auctions cost the operators several hundred pounds for every single man, woman and child in the UK and that cost was before they'd installed any new infrastructure or posted off a single subsidised handset.
I make this Netherlands auction about 225 euros per head of population - a relative bargain.
@Trever Marron
Unfortunately not, sharks cannot look up.
Re: If it looks like a computer....
"So your average retired grandmother..."
Your average retired grandmother can't work out a smart TV either. Actually the same goes for plenty of younger people. I've helped out a couple of non-geeks get their giant tellies web-enabled over the last year. One was a thirty-something nurse, the other was a fifty-something martial arts instructor who'd been duped into buying an unnecessary £70 wifi dongle and didn't believe me when I said he didn't need it because his router was sitting proudly at the back of his telly stand. In both cases they were massively disappointed by the rubbish network functionality on offer and the bad ergonomics (an issue that has haunted consumer kit for decades) and I don't believe they bother with those smart features.
Smart TV features will remain "geek" features until the ergonomics get sorted out. The manufacturers don't seem to be up to it, therefore the Linux media box path has a realistic prospect of success.
My personal best
I had started a new job the month before. The Christmas party was on, however the taxi was an hour late picking me up. I'd made a start during that hour and so was already below peak performance when the taxi dropped me and another newcomer at the do. We circulated a bit, drank at the bar, chatted with people a bit, bumped into people and apologised, drank some more, sat down and enjoyed the meal., drank, applauded the annual awards, whinged about that idiot in marketing..
... anyway, at some point the other guy worked out why neither of us had recognised anybody else there: we had been dropped off at the wrong party. The nice lady at reception made a couple of phone calls and discretely directed us to the right party five minutes walk away, by which time our actual colleagues had finished their meal and were starting to go home.
It was a good evening.
