* Posts by frank ly

6077 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Apple seeks patent for mood-sensing technology

frank ly

The inevitable

"Apple's unobtrusive mood-detection plans rely on sniffing “recently consumed content” such as “a digital media item, ...."

Hello, you seem to be feeling horny. Can I help you with that?

Windows 8.1 becomes world's fourth-most-popular desktop OS

frank ly

Re: XP is dead, it's pining for the fjords.

"I work on a help desk ..."

Have you tried turning it off and then on again?

EVE Online erects mashed-up memorial to biggest space fight in history

frank ly
Happy

Re: Titanic tussle burns though $330,000 and thousands of player-hours

How did you decide on your name?

Robowagons roll! US Army tests all-drone supply unit

frank ly

Re: Slight flaw in the plan

"... stops one of these nicking the food ..."

A BigDog jumps out of each vehicle and they proceed to savage the attackers; slowly but surely.

Devs: We'll bury Candy Crush King under HEAPS of candy apps

frank ly
Coat

Candyman .... Candyman ...................Candyman!

*screams, gets coat, runs

NASA probe orbiting Moon sights ANOTHER SPACECRAFT

frank ly
Headmaster

"... a spacecraft flying over the Moon ..."

I'm sure it's not actually flying.

Microsoft builds admin tool to spare Office 365 sellers' blushes

frank ly

A Simple solution?

"There is nothing worse than customers calling to say our service is down and the reseller responding, is it?"

If they're pushing it so much, maybe they should have to use it as part of their office job. so they'll know when it's down.

Eurocops want to build remote car-stopper, shared sensor network

frank ly

Re: Integration

You've obviously never driven on UK motorways in the rush hour. It's nose to tail at 85mph in the outside lane and not much slower in the middle lane. Amazingly, it all works fine until the police interfere by driving around in marked cars or putting their flashing blue lights on.

El Reg BuzzFelch: 10 Electrical Connectors You CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT!

frank ly
Coat

Leads to ....

FuzzBelch

Google Glassholes, GET OFF our ROADS, thunder lawmakers in seven US states

frank ly

Of course

A highly trained specialist uses complicated equipment, thousands of feet up in the air, while being under continous monitoring by ground systems and personnel. So, that will work ok when used by drivers of cars on public roads ........hmmmmm.

The iPad age is over: The time of the iPad Mini and phablet is upon us

frank ly

Re: Cheaper and more expensive?

It's a rapidly changing environment with a fluid market situation and evolving demographic. The unrivaled experience and awareness of Deloitte enables them to bridge any reality gap to deliver insightful predictions.

Cloud, schmoud, says Cisco: The IoT needs 'FOG COMPUTING'

frank ly

Re: Fog Computing, grr!

I hope there would be redundant copying (RAID 0+X?) otherwise the unavailability of just one storage provider would mean that you couldn't read/write your multi-fragmented files.

Hello Moto: Lenovo grabs Motorola biz for $3bn. But Google's KEEPING the patents

frank ly
Happy

" ...adding a new Android adherent."

You make it sound like a religion.

Judge: Google owes patent troll a 1.36% cut of AdWords' BEELLIONS

frank ly

@bazza Re: I shouldn't laugh, but...

I buy things and stuff. I've never seen the things I buy advertised on Google. (Having said that, I use AdBlock and don't pay attention to webverts.) Are you saying that the majority of people won't buy anything they need/want unless it's advertised on Google?

New Doctor Who's new costume newly REVEALED by Beeb

frank ly

The Daleks said ....

... Exfoliate! Exfoliate!

Here they come: Dot-word warehouse Donuts to launch new top-level domains this week

frank ly

I can imagine ....

"... with "premium" names commanding higher rates."

Like photoshop.graphics, canon.camera and of course, StephenFry.guru

WORLDWIDE SELFIE: Cosmonauts finally get ISS cameras working

frank ly

Pictures, ...

... or it didn't happen.

Android VPN redirect vuln now spotted lurking in Kitkat 4.4

frank ly

Another day, another vulnerability

Is it impossible to write software that isn't full of security holes? I am getting that impression. In the ten years that I had XP installed on my laptop, it was a regular series of 'important security updates', until it ran like a three-legged dog in treacle. Can anybody ever get it right?

Android holds steady as iOS and Windows Phone slip in Kantar reports

frank ly

Just wondering

What are the projections for when just about everybody in the world will have a featurephone or a smartphone?

Google patents ROBO-TAXIS to ferry punters into advertiser's shops, restaurants, etc for free

frank ly

And if you don't sign a purchase agreement

.. you pay your own fare back.

WhisperSystems creates 'suicide pill' for phones

frank ly

Re: Automatic Google account backups make this useless

You're right in that 'full system security' is required, and that is impossible since other people control and have access to the other parts of the 'system'.

Google bus protests are Kristallnacht against the rich – tech VC legend

frank ly

Re: Blame @ Charles Manning

"Free education (that results in useful output), ..."

So, no encouragement of artistic 'tendencies', no debating classes or teaching of methods of logical thought and argument. Certainly no history lessons or any depth in geography, beyond that needed to shuffle along to the multinational owned factory in the morning.

"Trying to achieve fairness is ill founded. How do you even measure fairness anyway?"

If you keep them ignorant, they won't have a chance of even thinking about it.

MEPs: Specialised services? Oui. 2-speed internet? Nein

frank ly

Re: PS

So, what is Catalan for yes/no and what is Greek for yes/no? Would use of those words have been immediately obvious to the majority of readers?

Facebook debunks Princeton's STUDY OF DOOM in epic comeback

frank ly

Re: Domed

I've had a look at some pictures on Google Images. Princeton is spired and arched and turreted and towered; no dome in site.

The internet is 'a gift from God' says Pope Francis

frank ly

@AC 06:29 Re: Makes you wonder!

You missed the joke and you missed the point. Double fail.

frank ly

This could be interesting

"Whenever communication is primarily aimed at promoting consumption or manipulating others, ..."

Is he talking about advertising? Will advertising industry executives be excommunicated?

King Kong's dangling cluster cut loose

frank ly

I'm wondering .....

.... how much it would cost to run, maintain and service it.

Judge shoots down Oracle's Solaris support 'trafficking' claim

frank ly

Re: Oh the irony

That's 'hypocrisy' actually. If Red Hat sued them and won, that would be ironic.

When ZOMBIES go shopping: 40m Target customer breach? That's NOTHING!

frank ly

Have I got this right?

Why do Target (and others, I assume) have to store the card details on their system at all. I thought that the CC transaction was authorised by the CC issuer company, via the POS link, and then given a unique ID that pointed to a record in the CC company servers. After that, the retailer has no need to keep a record of the customer CC number, just the authority ID in case of future queries/refunds/etc.

Cryptocurrencies now being pooped out by cartoon cat

frank ly
Thumb Up

Re: Crazy frog

+1 for Sili-coin. It should become a generic term for crypto-currencies.

Our robot overlords won't be evil cyborgs: Prepare for whisker-equipped ROBO-KITTIES

frank ly
Facepalm

I for one ...

... welcome our whiskery nocturnal-hunting robotic overlords.

Virgin Media's 'little(ish)' book of deals contained BIG FIBS, rules ad watchdog

frank ly

Re: Virgin should offer deals without phone

I asked them about that; they said 'no'. That was just over a year ago.

WHEW! OpenBSD won't CloseBSD (for now) after $100,000 cash windfall

frank ly

Other possibilities for support

Would it be possible (or desirable) for someone like Google/Amazon to donate some of their massive cloudy server resources for OpenBSD to use? They probably need live/real servers for performance testing but they might be able to do lots of other things in the 'cloud'.

Reading this headline? You and 9.47 million others

frank ly
Happy

I've got a botnet that could boost those figures

Contact me for pricing details.

Sweet work, fellas: Boffins build high-density battery powered by sugar

frank ly

Full story?

"The only waste products are hydrogen and water, ...."

The hydrogen could be fed into a hydrogen fuel cell I suppose. What happens to all the carbon in the maltodextrin? The linked reference mentions the 'complete oxidation of maltodextrin', hence some carbon dioxide would be formed.

How much energy would be expended in the extraction, isolation and delivery of the maltodextrin feedstock and the preparation of the catalysts? What would be the financial and energy costs of maintaining the battery? etc ....

Botnet PC armies gulp down 16 MILLION logins from around the web: Find out if you're a victim

frank ly

Just wondering

"Should a user's address be found in the collection, they'll be told to scan their systems for malware, ...."

Will you get a follow up e-mail from a German government approved anti-malware vendor? My question is cynical because I'm a UK citizen and know how slimy my government is. Is the German government clean and wholesome?

CERN boffins fire ANTI-HYDROGEN BEAM

frank ly

Re: Antimatter information that is newsworthy:

That was amazing. Can you write more 'articles' like that please?

LogMeIn: We're stopping our free offering from now

frank ly

Re: Hahaha suckers

You could have said it better.

Pregnant? Celebrate your proudest moment ... by 3D-printing a copy of the foetus

frank ly

If they moved .....

...using 3D/4D ultrasound images and "the latest computer graphics and 3D printing technology".

I'm just glad the model isn't 4D.

EFF claims Vietnam targeted its staff with spear phishing attack

frank ly

Protection using VMs?

Am I right in thinking that using a Virtual Machine will give you full protection from any e-mail or website sourced malware? I'm assuming you don't do anything silly like exporting downloads and attachments to another computer or the host computer area. If all you do is read the e-mail or print it out, you should be fine.

At the end of the day, you just delete the VM then clone a fresh one from the 'pristine' one that is never actually used. (I've been playing with Virtual Box and am having ideas.)

'We don't use UPS. If we did we'd have huge UPSs and tiny computers'

frank ly

Re: What do UPSes have to do with this?

The UPS discussion was in relation to possible power cuts. It's in the article.

ESA rejoices as comet-chasing Rosetta probe wakes from 3-year nap

frank ly
Pint

Wonderful result

"The package hasn't had a full systems check since June 2011, and there'll be software updates to get into place if Rosetta is to complete her mission."

It's bad enough getting desktop OS updates on well established 'tried and tested' earthly sytems. Working on Rosetta would terrify me. A pint, for each of the entire massive team

Kim Dotcom shrugs off US extradition attempt with Spotify competitor

frank ly
Gimp

Wow

"... which sounds like the sort of plastic pop Justin Bieber would make if he'd spent his teenage years being passed around the dark rooms of Berlin fetish clubs."

That sounds like it came from the heart.

Apple hires medical techies, raises spectre of iStuff slurping data direct from your bloodstream

frank ly
Coat

An iThing a day keeps the doctor away

iCoat: As fast as I can.

Eight EXCELLENT languages for the fondleslab-friendly Intranet of Thingies

frank ly

" ... Z80 machine coding by hand, ..."

Oh yes!! I used to do that. Ahhhh, happy days.

Ancient carving of 'first human-built holy place' = Primitive Vulture Central

frank ly

Actually ..

" ...capped their work with a trio of Louis Vuitton shoulder bags ..."

Those _locks_ indicate that encryption is in use and you need a key to decode the symbols. Sadly, the Certificate Authority is probably no longer in existence. Dan Brown might be able to help .... maybe.

Survey: Yoof too COOL for Ferraris, want state-sponsored hybrids

frank ly

Just ....

"More than half of them want some sort of technical entertainment on board and the same number would like to be able to hook their smartphone up and use it from the dashboard."

... don't let them on the public roads.

Rosetta comet chaser due to wake up for final rendezvous on Monday

frank ly

Re: Cometary Catbird Seat?

" ... on the cusp ..." and " ... in the cometary catbird seat .."

We need more metaphors.

Apple badmouthing of court's monitor proves it NEEDS him - judge

frank ly

"... he is associated with Samsung's legal representation in the US. Fact!"

Did they both go to the same law school or something like that? Details!

Cybercrooks slide fingers into TELLIES+FRIDGES, spam splurge ensues

frank ly

My Talky Toaster ....

... told me it has a Nigerian cousin that needs some help getting money out of Nigeria. Should I believe it?