Posts by Michael Corkery

I read Toby Roll's post and got really angry

then I read the immediate replies, and just thought - Well said!!!

It's gratifying to see that most posters respect that the rule of law when it comes to roads is there to prevent suffering, mutilation and death.

By the by, fair play to the car club posters who make the point that speeding is OK - as long as it's kept on track days, etc, and not brought onto public roads! It's idiots like Toby Roll however who risk the lives of others, no doubt convinced against all statistical likelihood that they're above-average drivers and thereby exempt from safety laws.

RE: Christos Georgiou

That cartoon makes no sense. An image of the rover with an extra wheel and fly-wing shaped solar panels. Is the joke that it has been 'tricked out', or do technogeeks just find cartoons of robots inherently funny?

good article, short, to the point and good links at the end

Steve Roper is right to a point - ultimately if data on millions of users are streamed together to generate trend data, fine, if my data is used only to improve returns, fine.

I don't see exactly what it is people are afraid of - we're not yet at a point where, say, google searches all the searches for illegal activities and passes this to local police forces or large countries. Is it something like this that users fear? Until I feel there's a real reason to worry, it seems like hype to me.

They *could* do this!!!

Well, a lot of sites could do a lot of things. Yet we all still put our credit card details into online shopping - I'd be a lot more worried about financial penalties of abuses than grey-area what-could-they-be-doing-with-my-data-assuming-they-could-care-less scaremongering.

Actually, if people looked at the numbers of animals destroyed humanely in most western countries

I think they'd all be in favour of neutering. In a mslal country like Ireland, thousands of stray dogs are authenised every year - a number that would drop significantly if pets were fixed. Similarly with cats.

It is unpleasant, but it can avoid worse fates for any offspring

But if apple get on the googolwagon

won't they still be in a position where charging won't work, unless they still try to keep ahead of the free offerings out there?

RE: Mark Fenton's idiocy

Yes, getting manufacturers to become responsible for environmentally sound disposal is stupid. Because all it does is - at a low cost increase to the consumer - avoid all the toxic effects of pcb and other hazardous materials leaching from disposed electrical items into our soil and water table. Oh, and as manufacturer's have to face up to waste costs, makes them more aware of the real cost of the parts they put in. So it cuts down on toxic pollutants, means you don't have to source the environmental option yourself, and at a cheap rate to boot.

Idiot.

Jesse Melton

will probably be dead by his 40s. Killed by a fear of "$3" words...

RE: RE: "post-scarcity"? sorry

Both photovoltaic and wind power statisfy those conditions, to name a few commodity technologies. Also, the raw energy (i.e., energy not embodied as finished products) market you're talking about will probably be one of the last ones to switch, after mass-production of generators for said types of power reaches the triviality stage.

Rubbish. Photovoltaic has more scope for growth, as it's relatively easier to predict, but national grids (such as the Irish one) can end up refusing to take power from wind, as it's tremendously unstable; surged are unpredictable, and when it's needed it can drop off. People don't realise that most grids are under pressure to supply and are at or near capacity more than we'd like - and managing the power on the grid is critical to meeting that supply. Countries would have to spend tens to hundreds of billions on redesigning their grids entirely, and even then the instability of wind makes it a hard option to use.

I agree that renewables should be the solution - the trick is finding a way to make them usable!!!

Silver and gold are /not/ goods that are ``consumed'', since at product EOL they are recycled. However, to prevent ultimate shortage, we need to make molecular (or similar) assemblers a viable technology. Again, it will take some time, albeit not as long as the reformation of the raw energy market.

Rubbish. They are consumed in manufacture, and as it costs too much the majority of chips, cards, motherboards, etc are NOT environmentally recycled. Instead toxic chemicals leach into landfills, while silver and gold price up.

When technology improves, many goods will be available locally at a far lower cost and do not need to be shipped. Also, alternative propulsion methods (such as Ion Drive technology, to name a rather prominent example in the ``deployed world'') will become more viable for aircraft to use. And heck, if we can build space 'vators, why can't we build tunnels linking all continents, as well? It's just a matter of time.

You're living in star trek, buddy. Replicators? Ion Drives? And no, noone is building a space elevator right now. The technology isn't ready, the cost is astronomical (no pun intended), the ROI isn't there at all, and (not to sound liek an american) there's a real target for you - what mass wouldn't spin off into space after a severance due to explosion or whatever would come carshing back down leeward of rotation, devestating anything it hits.

I'm a Sony user for many years

Had the ps, ps2, have a psp, my phone is sony ericsson (810i, excellent phone), and I still use my old dsc-t3 digital camera for a fun pocket digital.

Now I've established that, I think it's fair to say that Nintendo deserve their success for innovating and giving the world cheap cheerful fun rather than high end processing. I'm about as likely to buy a wii as a ps3.

I do think that in two to three years, things will have shifted, as the wii dates more and more, while the ps3 has room to recover if it gets the killer apps it needs. That said, there's no reason Nintendo can't come out with some new ideas for the wii, or maybe a Xii, a nex-gen better spec version for slightly more in a few years.

Sony have put themselves in a difficult spot by finally being the one to price high - and by screwing europe on release, build, and price. They've miffed me enough that I won't buy until it has at least a few more great games, WITH online gaming.

In their defence though, the poster earlier who pointed to the Wii as a revenue stream while others lose on sales - the wii is exceptional in the console market, and that's exactly why Nintendo deserve credit. However it's hard to replicat enovelty, and it will slide technologically faster. If the ps3 or Xbox360 get wide enough suppor,t the money is in licensing and publishing games, which can return big if played right. They just play to a bigger strategy.

So enjoy the Wii, it may not be a laster, but it's a great kick in the pants for traditional console design! :)

Northern Ireland is a nation?

I don't know if you can call NI a nation. It's not a country, it's part of a country that was lost to imperial occupation of another country. It's not Ulster, as there are counties of Ulster in the ROI, so it can't be called a province. A protectorate, or somesuch?

The real issue is the worryingly prudish/extreme views on sex in the USA

A country which pumps out an entertainment industry on a huge scale, with a large p0rn market in home DVD and cinema, and the extreme sexualisation of women in music videos, etc etc, and then the flipside, a victorian prudishness!

Amusingly, Dove recently ran a global campaign which had naked women in the advertising - but supposedly to show that they were still beautiful, not sexualised or erotic at all. The only country to ban the ads? The USA. Because clearly you can't have nudity without it being about sex! It's a miracle they manage to shower at all.

If it's generally accepted that itr wasn't said in a derogatrory or offensive fashion

then the real fault lies with C4 for broadcasting it. Regardless of the level of punishment meted out, the reason the term is so contentious is that many people have suffered physical and verbal racist abuse, and for them this word will remain offensive or at the very least remind them of suffering bigotry.

C4 shoudl have decided to punish or not based on intent, and also refrained from broadcasting the offending article!

Thank god it's so black and white

We know he played Counter-Strike, and we know he got himself shot, so clearly the two must be directly and incontrovertably linked. Otherwise it would mean the media is making spurious assumptions about the impact of games on their players, and that couldn't happen.

RE: Mockery

Then the UK would have a lot less racism. Punch is notable for having persistently portrayed the Irish and Africans as subhuman butts of jokes during the Famine and during mass slave trading. Effectively it dehumanised those who suffered most (the famine in large part having been caused by british law constantly subdividing tenancies to impoverish catholic land owners and renters, leaving a failing subsistence monoculture vulnerable to disease, and slavery being the far more obvious - how much of bristol's wealth came from the brit slaver ships passing through?).

While some British citizens, even when it went against their governemnt, lobbied to stop slavery, or to send food aid and reform to ireland, these brave groups were long in the minority, while crap like Punch peddled racial stereotypes. Sort of like the Daily Mail then...

that said, Monthy Python and Spitting Image were ace, as they attacked norms and politicians respectively, both valuable contributions to culture! :)

Surely with it's incredible mass

it's a giant ball of nuclear reaction? How electricity - does it's inner movements generate huge volumes of static? Given it's energy output (and I'm not a scientician) is ~humongous, it seems more likelyt that nuclear energy would provide it rather than electrical. That, and again the impact of that much mass on space would mean matter under incredible compression, which is why I'd always assumed nuclear.

Weaponise?

How? And still be able to fly? There's be no explosive or projectile I can think of that a moth could carry. At best poison, or a gaseous release. tricky...

depends which Dell plant you're in really.

They've confirmed 450 job cuts in the Limerick plant, but the Irish economy is on the downturn. Growth is slowing, personal debt is extreme and most significantly wage inflation is pushing investment away. The lasty 8 months have seen multiple closures and cancellations of investments, and the Fianna Fail government have failed to bring in the same quality of jobs as the outgoing ones. Hopefully most of them will find something (Limerick has become a little bit of a tech campus), but I could see quite a few people losing out big on this one. To be fair, Dell will probably offer the standard redundancy, hopefully a bit more, and that could buy them some time.

I guess these things are inevitable periodically - let's just hope that there's no larger downturn coming.

It does sound ;like a good read, but that gets lost in the hyperbole used...

Until I saw the disclaimmer, I though the reviewer had cracked

Cool factor.

Let's face it, with the iPod Apple showed you don't have to be first to market or have the best product or functionality - just have something with the cool factor. The wheel on iPods is more than a gimmick, it's actually consistently fun to use, and differntiatred them as market leaders quite quickly.

Ignoring a patent minefield - since US patents are decided by morons in favour of big business anyway ;) - Microsoft have one other barrier to overcome. No matter how well they implement the different uses here, it will initially launch as a pricey gimmick as it'll only be high end hospitality. It will have to both really take off, AND drop in price before they stand a chance of hoem users picking up, or else it'll do a PS3.

One last point, is anyoen else wondering about the "barcode"? Let's say my table detects a credit card sized shape and searches for an RFID chip. Is this secure, or will MS try to push a new secured standard for both cards and for portable devices?

All in all, it's risky, but it's got a wow factor that will draw non techy types away from noticing what a POP (pile of poo) their flagship desktop OS is, which has to be good for their shares.

Definately not Darwin material

This man died from a mental illness that was unavoidable given his fear of incarceration. It was not stupidity in any way, just a sad waste of a life due to a mental illness still not fully understood. Have some humanity with your socially dysfunctional cynicism once in a while.

TYPO: Sannon --> Shannon

Graham Dawson - how are they insular exactly? And how do you know so much about regional groupings of dolphins?

We are talking about 'Halo', right?

As in the FPS with gopod multiplayer, and three good levels of single player followed by 7 or so formulaic potato stamped flood fightiong crap? The sequels have added nothing so far. Never has a mediocre FPS gained so much hype.

Chris Pasiuk

If you're an American (by which I mean USA), and you can't remember Obama's name, I seriously don't think we can take you word on politics.

"pondscum"

Can you not see that refuting global warming is becoming more and more a case of pissing against the wind? One recent example:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6679321.stm

never mind video

I don't see how the audio is done - maybe a mini USB connected speaker and mic wired along the top. But I can't see it taking off given the device size and weight compared to modern phones - unless it can get in on the VOIP game?

Comments

comments comments comments comments comments chameleon

they come and gooooo

they come and gooooo o o oooo

Points:

* to the poster who claims the V sign should not be offensive to Brits:

In both the UK and the Republic of Ireland, a V made with palm facing the recipient is seen as a peace sign, as well as a victory sign in the UK. Knuckles facing the user (hand turned the other way) doing it is the sign for piss off!

* to the poster suggesting damaging the camera:

Aside form the fact that this is still criminal damage, it'll only encourage a move to the japanese system, where the camera is activated by certain sound or motions, it records high framerate video for a few seconds, and transmits back over the network, so the camera is just a ocnduit, and the data is safely backed up back at the SAN in police HQ.

* Mosty importantly anyone who's posted that it was his right to speed/it's darwinian/etc

Unbelievable. Speed limits are a rule, not a target. People who drive like this guy (topping a hundred with one hand off the bars???) are not SAFE drivers, they just think they are, and ultimately if he tops himself and noone else, I don't care, good for society. But if this f***ing tool tops or even injures other innocent road users... Can you not see at all why the police were absolutely right to protect the populace by chasing this ignorant fool down?

Once a month?!?!?!?!?

He might have seen evoltuion just looking between his toes. Dirty beggar

Andy Bright is right

I'll buy one when the price drops a little next year, no sooner, and that's contingent on killer apps. They've lost enough on production costs that they've saved by not maintaining exclusivity on the biggest titles - and that will punish them more than they know. Halo, an ejoyable but overrated FPS still manages to generate BIG xbox sales because exclusivity adds to the hype and sates the fanboys. GTA used to do the exact same thing for Sony, but no more.

I'm not bothered about better graphics *that* much, and I'm certainly not bothered about blu-ray (I genuinely think the importance of HD is being being exaggerated in ttechy/gadget community, and happily by retailers).

I am bothered by the fatc that Sony stuck to the same tired roll-out system. Asia gets a cheap console, Sony make a loss, America gets a not-as-cheap console,. Sony looks at tehir loss again, and then AFTER everyone else, europe (a big affluent market) gets a release way after everyone else with a price double the original. Why am I paying more to get the dregs?

Disclaimer: I own a lot of Sony kit - had a ps, have a ps2 and a psp, and both my phone and camera are sony, so I can honestly say I've had good experience with all their kit so far. Which makes it all the worse that they've manaaged to alienate the market so much that they've broken my brand loyalty. They need a decent library, 2 or more killer apps, and a price drop before I'd take the ps3 plunge

Apple make one really really good piece of kit: Macs

everything else is just overpriced average kit with a shiny coat and a clever GUI. People will pay over the odds to get fleeced and get a shiny coated bland gadget.

I fully expect the same again

Andy S. - you said it all

that's exactly it. Pre-sales hyperbole, on a product that's counterintuitive and will still face mainstream consumer resistance. until the method of viewing it and the cost make it worthwhile, it's a toy for gadget fans

book deals made yet?

Anyone think this kid is more likely hunting a media-based fortune as well?

Mac and Linux fan boys out of the woodwork again

The point here is clear - a new OS is overpriced by comparison to the US. Nothing new, but that doesn't mean people don't have a right to feel aggrieved.

Now Mac fanboys going on about Intel chips meaning you can game there too miss the point of cheap PC kit, or the hassle of drivers. I'm not going to pay 3-4 times as much to get a similar rig for XP.

Unix, Linux, etceterux, miss a similar point - avoiding emulation, or replacing Adobe Creative Suite 3 with GIMP...

Can you all just wait till a RELAVANT article before you throw down dozens of irrelevant comments? Thankyou.

In the meantime, what's relevant is that once again, Europe is seen as a wealthy market to exploit, and tightening laws and customs are making US imports harder...

No apologies

John,

No sign of any apology here. They're bullsh***ing us on the tickbox excuse, and they're bullsh***ing us on the apology too.

This clearly should be acted on, but as previous posters have pointed out, the ICO are unlikely to act meaningfully.

Does anyone know if, as a resident of ROI, do I hav e grounds to compain about them under Irish law instead?

Christine hit the nail on the head there

It's not just an argument over Google using it's pervasive brand value to take what it wants - there is also an element of the public to the web.

Once upon a time, the web left the military and went to universities around the world. Then it went public, and got famous. Now it's 70% public, 30% in the boardromm - and that's where this whole argument comes from. While I disagree with a lot of Google's policies on working within repressive countries, at least they still see the web as a public entity, whereas most companies are trying to move it from soemthign that carries corporate value within, to an inherently corporate entity.

It has nothing to do with multiculturalism

...unless you're implying a racist element to the boy's treatment?

It's ignorance, plain and simple. Anyonw who plays FPshooters thinks how cool it would be to map a real world environment that they and other players know. To assume that leads to murderous thoughts is like assuming that someone who eats a doughnut wants to eat all the sugar in the world.

mmm

all the sugar in the world

Looks OK, but not a matching finsh...

Also, they haven't really given us much info on what uses there'll be for it. Eye-toy games, or video avatar for online gaming? Nothing that shouts "killer-app" yet, unless it has some clever hooked-up use for future ps3 games...

Loneliness index - bad reporting

Regards the earlier lonliness index, as you call it, this is very poor reporting. The countries that top the poll are all countries where people are most likely to travel, and would be most likely to search the keywords 'lonely' and 'planet'.

A child could figure this out.

Couple that with the blindingly obvious fact that people are unlikely to search for 'loneliness', bar maybe hermits, who might not want to try an overcrowded web then. Really, this is immature reporting. Whoops, sorry thought el Reg was a serious news site there for a second...

Man this Warwick guy is some loser...

worse, he gives the Humanist association a bad name by calling his 'movement' (bowel movement more like) the Transhumanists.

The one good thing he gives us though, is that it's clear he'll be one of those 1960's style futurists in a few decades - someone people can quote on just how wrong people can get predictions...