Posts by frank ly
2124 posts • joined Wednesday 10th June 2009 09:17 GMT
Page:
Be Reasonable Mark
His slide rule can only give three significant figures.
Free Ad-Free Gmail
"With the free version – for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and families – you'll see ads on Gmail, but nowhere else."
Yes, so I noticed; even AdBlockPlus in Firefox can't block the ads in Gmail. However, there is a Plugin/Extension for the Chrome browser (called AdBlock) that actually does block ads in Gmail. I was amazed.
I suspect that Google know about this but reason that only techie types will install it and that we're a lost cause for adverts anyway; being a cynical and suspicious lot.
Clarification please..
"...when you make a .jpg file of random data, for example ..."
Don't you mean a .brain file ? (Hence, we see faces, etc, in clouds and glowing embers)
@Horridbloke re. you're new..
Not only is he new, somebody forgot to take the plastic sheet off his face; so he's suffering from oxygen starvation.
Posted in Revolutionary radio comes in cubes
Arthur C.Clarke Was Right
"Alcatel-Lucent has developed a magical radio that can do 2G, 3G and 4G ...."
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke.
Am I The First To Remember........
... mal/mis/non-feasance in public office?
http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2011/01/18/malfeasance_in_public_office/
We did this three weeks ago.
Yes but....
can they be trained easily?
Important stuff...
Never mind all that research stuff; where can I buy a tree octopus hat?
My First Thought As Well.......
......but I'm wondering what the TCO is over a two year period for various patterns of 'ownership' and usage; compared across different countries. Has anyone done the research?
Posted in Mozilla plans four Firefoxes in 2011
If You Like It.......
All the world's a forum and all the players merely commentards.
Posted in Motorola Super Bowl ad rips Apple drones
It's amazing
It manages to combine portentous and pretentious, all in one short advert.
Nice to see them at work/play
When its little friend came over to join in the fun, I was hoping that they'd both start playing catch with the grenade.
Posted in Pentax 645D medium format digital camera
Digital Lenses?
A request for information:
I can understand why a lens has to be matched to a camera, in purely physical terms involving the location of the focal plane, the amount of light gathered and delivered and the target area of the sensor - all basic optics/physics/electronics considerations.
What I don't understand is why a special 'digital' lens is needed for high performance digital cameras. Is it because the older lenses, which might be a good optical 'fit', were not of that high a quality and their imperfections are shown up by the resolution and dynamic range of high performance digital sensors?
I'm not looking for an essay, just a link to a suitable technical article would be nice, if anyone could assist here.
Posted in NASA hails 'amazing' exoplanetary system
re. Anticipation And Intent
Every sensible young protoplanet instinctively knows that it must form quickly in order to grab available material before it gets swept up by other, faster forming planets. If a protoplanet did not behave like that, it would not form and so would not exist.
This is called 'survival of the fattest' and is the reason why most of the observed extrasolar planets are big and chunky things.
Yahoo Mail does IMAP?
I didn't know that Yahoo Mail could be accesses using IMAP. With my ordinary Yahoo webmail, I only see a POP3 option. Is this some premium paid version they are talking about or have I missed something?
A website by any other name....
Shouldn't it be called 'crime.uk'?
Posted in Your call is not important to us
Then again......
....., it's amazing how far AI has developed in recent years.
Get it right
That's 'dole queue'
Posted in Ace Reg reporter in career suicide shock
No need to buy (or take) a copy
The Torygraph is available online - yes, really!
Good luck Chris :)
More than one way to skin a password
One method I've seen suggested is to have a set of memorised 'incorrect' answers to the standard challenge questions.
e.g. Mother's maiden name: Supernova
Another way is to modify your 'correct' answers by preceding them with a keyword that is unique to the site you're using.
e.g. Mother's maiden name: FaceSmith (or YahooSmith, HotSmith, etc.)
If you want to get more sneaky, choose a keyword that is not easily guessable. You can figure something out.
Unpaid overtime I assume
"... spans business units and subsidiaries and that sees people working up to 20 hour days, seven days a week."
They'll be doing lots of good quality work and making some really good decisions then.
Posted in Cable vendor slapped for unproven claims
re. 20 amp electricity cables
Would these be single core, as used for installed domestic power distribution, or are they thick, flexible cables; perhaps with a multi-strand core to give flexibility (and improved audio performance)?
Posted in Cable vendor slapped for unproven claims
Thank you.....
.... for that link. It'll take me a while to try all the techniques but I'm sure that I'll find one which is of great benefit to my listening pleasure.
Re. Monthly Contract
As I understand it, the rolling monthly contract is automatically renewed by them taking the money from your bank account (or credit card) and you have the right to stop the contract by giving 30 days notice. Similarly, they have the right to stop or change the contract by giving you 30 days notice.
Do you wish you'd gone with an 18 month lock-in now?
I'm with Tesco on a £10 monthly rolling SIM only contract, 500 any network minutes and 500 Megabytes; check it out.
Safety Considerations
"... by placing a suitable capacitor across the two hot lines at your incoming service panel."
I would suggest using two capacitors, in series, with six inches of physical separation between them, each being rated at 500V. The connection between them should be made with a low current fuse.
Belt, braces condom, rabbit's foot, etc...... nothing could go wrong :)
Diagram please?
Layers...outside ring...... This is crying out for a diagram.
BS and weasel words
"... Due to our statutory duty of taxpayer confidentiality we can’t comment on this individual case,.."
BS! They do not need to reveal her name or address or any identifiable information about the unfortunate woman involved. They need to analyse their own bungling incompetence and comment on it, without using weasel phrases. Better still, have an external agency go in there and examine what goes on and how this could happen and then make a public report on their findings.
You're not dumb, it's an ergonomic mess.
Maybe if they had a 'controller application' that ran on an Android phone, it could use Bluetooth to control the headphones. The possibilities are endless.
I want to know how they deliver 7.1 surround sound with only two audio sources. :)
Posted in Google opens API for url shrinker
Worth a try I suppose
I just typed 'goo.gl' into goo.gl. It didn't break it but it certainly didn't shorten it.
Posted in When one oligopoly screws another
@Neal 5 re. Finally......
"... buy direct from the US and get it shipped over for the postage,.."
Nice, but remember to declare it to HM Customs and pay the import duty. If you don't, and they intercept it, then you have to go to them to collect it and pay the import duty. For small packages of low priced consumer goods, most people get away with it because HM Customs have more important things to do with their time (or they're lazy/understaffed/whatever).
Mais non
Ce n'est pas une phrase de jour, c'est une cliche.
Posted in HTC Desire HD
@Silver re. Unpolished
My experience of HTC (on a Wildfire, now updated to 2.2) is that you only get full Gmail integration with the main Google account which you first register on Android, and this is with the separate Gmail application. Then, you get push e-mail and your calendar synched all very nicely. The HTC e-mail app is for any e-mail service and does not treat a Gmail account any differently from any other IMAP/POP account. This is all explained in the User Manual.
What pissed me off is that the 2.2 update removed the facility to have a local calendar (stored on the phone, with a different colour code to the Google calendar) and also replaced the small and neat HTC pdf reader with an Adobe reader, which is slow and clunky in comparison. It also wiped my APN settings so that I was scrambling around for a while trying to find out why I couldn't get mobile data, until i figured it out.
I had forgotten that the phone is not really owned by me, it is owned by HTC and they will do what they damn well like with it. No more updates for me !
Clouding the issue
Many people are uneasy about this, on the basis of their data being stored on Google's servers, thus being at the mercy of Google and their ISP/internet connection. Would it be possible/desirable/likely that Google could sell (to an organisation) a private 'cloudy server'? Then, you could 'log on' to your corporate cloud service via the corporate LAN (high speed usually guaranteed) or using VPN over the internet.
If a Chrome OS netbook can be made cheaply and designed to have few maintenance requirements, then a corporate entity should be willing to pay for a Google sourced cloudy server on their premises and under their control.
re. embroidered denim jacket
The serious and really cool bikers do their own embroidery. If you'd worn that Ralph Lauren item, everybody would have known it was shop-bought; you made the right decision.
re. Maybe I've been gulled
gull: verb - shit on from a great height.
Example A: If you use that stuff, you'll be gullable
Example B: That kid was gulled, real bad.
I was the same as well.....
....with Tesco £10 a month rolling contract. However,the unlimited texts is actually (if I remember) 3,000 texts a month (whatever; a number of texts that I can't even imagine, let alone send). The 'unlimited' data is 500MB 'fair use' policy. This is about 16MB a day, which should be fine for picking up e-mail, checking the weather, reading a few news feeds and the El Reg site :)
If you go over the data limit, they will spank you hard, so get a network traffic counter. I recommend Net Counter by Cyril Jaquier for the Android. It's free and it measures Wi-Fi and Mobile data in separate, adjustable format counters. You can also check your minutes, texts and data totals on your Tesco mobile account web page.
Posted in iPad-smuggling women pinched in China
re. fanboi
I'm not a biologist, but I'm sure the term would be 'fangurl'.
Language Problems
No problem. By the time they get this all sorted out, we'll all be speaking Esperanto (or Klingon, or Elvish, maybe).
It could have been worse....
At least he didn't call him the Vulture Secretary.
Copyright
They could make it 4'30", etc. The artistically critical aspect is the length of the silence. Some people have experimented with adding small amounts of varying level white noise but this is generally regarded as ruining the purity of the work.
Posted in Robotic High Noon in Colorado
Cement?
By 'cemented', do they mean 'glued'? To this UK dweller, cement is the stuff that you mix with sand to make concrete/mortar.
The best joke so far........
http://xkcd.com/829
Posted in Olympians threaten ICANN with lawsuit
Prior Use
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotswold_Olimpick_Games
Glossary/Dictionary Please
"..quarko-gluotic.."
I understannd 'quarko', but what is 'gluotic', exactly. Derived from 'gluon', yes..... but why not 'gluonic'?
Is this difference related to the difference between 'biotic' and 'bionic'?
P.S. If Z bosons are 100 times mire massive that protons; where do they come from and where do they go to? (Since I assume they don't hang around for long; otherwise we'd keep bumping into them, in a manner of speaking.)
@Titus re. Treason
Titus, thank you for confirming that you really don't know what the crime of 'treason' is. We all suspected this and wondered, but now we can stop thinking about it.
re. Milky Way
This 'cube' business is a misunderstanding of some kind. Most people know that a Milky Way is a rectangular block with ripples on its upper surface. Those astronomers need to get out more and go to the shops.
Effects of Liquorice
The only effects 'down there', that I've noticed from eating liquorice, is that it makes my urine bright yellow. This could be useful for writing my name in the snow when winter comes.
re. Pentane
"..Those holes are filled with air or a gas such as pentane."
Really? Pentane is flammable, a member of the methane, ethane, propane, butane....family of organic compounds. It has a boiling point of about 30 deg.C and so is used as a foaming agent.
The foam you describe was probably 'blown' (made into a foam) by mixing liquid pentane with it's base constituent and then heating it, so the pentane bubbled up and evaporated. I would think that the pentane was driven off by heating to be replaced by air diffusing in.
If the pentane has formed the voids of a closed cell foam, then it should burn quite nicely if you crush it and put a match to it. Can anyone comment on this subject?
Posted in German zoo separates gay vulture couple
followed by....
Geist. (Just getting into the spirit of things.)
