* Posts by Tom_

576 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2009

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Dark Souls

Tom_

Sounds interesting

I'm buying it, based on this review. It had better be good. :)

iPhone 4S pay-monthly tariffs compared

Tom_

Thanks

That's a helpful article. It tempts me to switch from O2 to 3 because they're doing £109 cash back through Quidco. I'd save myself £5 per month off my current contract and it'd only cost £20 up front.

I seem to remember 3 had poor coverage, though. Is that still true?

What's not in the iPhone 4S ... and why

Tom_

roaming

I find this a bit confusing because my 3GS from the UK worked fine in the US when I visited last year.

Meter Readings

Tom_

Does it read the meter for you?

Can you point the phone's camera at the meter and have the app take the reading automatically?

US survey: 1 in 5 telecommuters work an hour or less a day

Tom_

So what?

This just shows that some people can get their work done in an hour per day if they're not worn out by having to commute or distracted by useless meetings, bored colleagues or visits from the boss.

Google reveals 'leap smear' NTP technique

Tom_

150 million km

If the Earth covered 150 million km in it's attempt to orbit the sun, we'd be burnt to a crisp.

Twitter reaches 100 million active users

Tom_

Boris

"35 of them are global heads of state, including Julia Gillard in Australia, the Mayor of London and the posse of US presidential hopefuls."

Since when are a mayor and a bunch of hopefuls heads of state?

The Reg dips toe into social media ocean

Tom_
Thumb Up

Ravelry

Where do knitting and social networking meet? On Ravelry.

Amazon's cloudy vid-tablet breaks cover: Not an iClone

Tom_

The point of a Kindle

When you buy a Kindle, it's made pretty obvious that it's designed as a device for buying and reading books from Amazon, but that you can send your own documents to it if you like.

Maybe its success is because of that, rather than despite it.

It'd be like buying a Mag Lite and then complaining that it's locked down to using D cells to make the bulb emit light.

Amazon refuses Touchpad refunds after price slash frenzy

Tom_

two weeks

They were obviously just making sure people's 7 days had run out, so they couldn't return them for a no questions asked refund, as is their right under the distance selling regulations in the UK.

Prototype iPhone 5 lost in bar, right on schedule

Tom_

One wonders why Apple ever has to spend any money on marketing

...when sites like The Register constantly report the minutest details and weakest rumours. :)

New UK 'leccy meters remotely run via Voda 2G

Tom_

today it is just about getting the remotely readable meters into homes

...so people can start working out how to turn off each others' electricity supplies whenever they feel like it.

Game denies Steam threat claims

Tom_

Game's Up

Game is just a dinosaur that doesn't realise it's extinct yet.

Snap said to show iPhone 5s being stacked by bunnies

Tom_

bezel

I ahd an original iPhone and have now got a 3GS. The first thing that struck me when I got the 3GS was the bezel was thicker than on the original unit.

So a thinner bezel may just mean the same sized screen, but a slightly narrower handset overall.

Who really cares, though?

Chic USB drive leads double life as personal vibrator

Tom_

100 feet?

That's an unusually high up shower.

Ray of hope for smartphone projectors

Tom_

photograph

The photo suggests they're planning stereoscopic projection.*

*OK, not really.

DOH! Housing contractor loses unencrypted stick down the pub

Tom_

how do they know...

Can they be sure it went from pub floor to police without anyone taking a copy first?

E-petitions site: Death wish FAIL

Tom_

What a waste of time

On the one day per month, your issue can be debated by the three MPs who can be arsed to turn up for it.

Murdoch's PIE BOY jailed for six weeks

Tom_

Not bad

If he gets the same treatment as our fraudulent MPs he'll be out in quarter of that.

Gamer claims complete console collection

Tom_

Philips CDi

Can't see one of those in there.

Bloke pissing in reservoir prompts 8m gallon flush

Tom_

birds and fish

And little tiny mammals.

Rare video: Moon flashing in front of giant's face

Tom_

why

Why the comedy pauses? Were four of those 104 frames duplicated in their video editing software?

Does a flash motor make a man more desirable?

Tom_

Just cars?

Does this work if I have a really good graphics card?

Dam Busters dog dubbed 'Digger'

Tom_

I heard a rumour

That Digger will be played by a mole.

Samsung UE40D6530 LED 3D TV

Tom_

Seven series

If you do a bit of googling, you can get the UE40D7000 for just under the price that the Reg lists for this TV. That way you get freesat built in as well and (I think) it comes with a pair of specs.

Sony presents PSP2 performance prior to E3

Tom_

ryvita

Vita was the name of the dev kits.

WW2 naval dazzle-camo 'could beat Taliban RPGs'

Tom_
Happy

Sounds perfectly reasonable

So long as you drive your tank at the implausible speeds that you have pointed out and your enemy aims for the rear 90cm of your tank and not somewhere in the middle.

Britain mounted secret 2010 cyberwarfare attack on al-Q

Tom_

sounds like balls

So the secret cyber warfare attack was just putting a corrupt version of a pdf onto file sharing networks.

As others have said, rather than an obviously corrupt document, it would have been a lot more use to subtly alter it, rendering it safer without making it obvious.

Amazon splatters ads to cut Kindle price

Tom_

Web 2.0

Sounds more like web 1.0 if it just delivers adverts.

Security researcher warns over Dropbox authentication security flaw

Tom_

Old PCs

Another reason to destroy old hard drives?

If you bin a PC and someone gets this file off the old hard drive, they'll have permanenet access to your dropbox account without you knowing, right?

Bargain.

Antarctic meteorite yields exotic new mineral

Tom_
Happy

but...

If it's 50x450nm, how do they know there aren't bits of it lying around all over the place? Who'd notice?

Halifax cuts investment accounts off from the web until April 2012

Tom_
FAIL

Leaving Halifax

I don't have much luck with banks. I left Lloyds and moved to Halifax about six months before they joined into the same thing.

This change to the online banking means I will now be leaving Halifax too. Not only are they saying you won't be able to manage investments online, they're also removing access to all your old credit card statements.

I honestly don't understand how they can be so shit.

I wonder if Google Bank will be any better when it rolls out next year.

Samsung rolls out 22in see-through screens

Tom_

HUD

Looks good for HUDs in car windscreens.

James Cameron to amp up Avatar frame rate

Tom_
Thumb Up

Fantastic News

That's really good news. With large cinema screens, the distance objects move between frames can be very large. This is why the whole thing looks like jerky shit whenever anyone pans a camera from one side to another.

Not just 3D, but normal films will benefit massively from an increased framerate. It's just a shame they don't go up to 120Hz or so while they're at it.

HMS Ark Royal goes under the hammer

Tom_

Could use it as...

Space elevator anchor point.

MySQL.com hacked via... SQL injection vuln

Tom_

doh

"the director of product management at WordPress used a four digit number as his password"

Might be time for him to change his PIN and/or any door codes he uses. :)

BlackBerry bans drink-drive apps

Tom_

not hard to subvert

Just flood them with false reports of checkpoints and the apps will become useless.

Or add false reports of checkpoints in strategic locations and you'll reduce drink driving on those routes without even having to bother paying for the checkpoints to actually exist.

Or add false reports of checkpoints on some routes and put real checkpoints on the obvious alternate routes, so you can catch loads of drunk drivers that think they're going the 'clever' way.

Channel VAT loophole shrunk, not shut

Tom_

flowers

If the rule's there to protect flower sellers, make it only apply to flowers.

BT vs Sky vs Virgin

Tom_

Good article

The article is great, but the selection of services that it describes puts me right off paying for TV.

It's really complicated.

90% of the offered channels are unwanted.

It sounds like you get stuck with a service, even if it's crap.

I think I'll stick to Freeview and my crappy DVR.

Neighbourhood watchers in Reading get speedguns

Tom_
Happy

Sounds fun

Can I get hold of a speed radar gun thingy and then drive towards my neighbours car at about 40mph, leaning out of the driver's side window, pointing the radar/gun thingy at his numberplate?

Or is that just too silly? :)

New 'supercritical' generators to boost nuclear output by 50%

Tom_

hmmm

20MW from the back of a transit van wouldn't be bad.

Do they mean you'd have to keep the van parked next to a nuclear power station, though?

Crime UK site gets 400m hits, drives down property values

Tom_

Such an annoying site

I'm house hunting at the moment and I can't help checking places out on this map. It has put me off streets and/or areas, even though I know that the data may be questionable. It's hard not to let it influence your vision of a neighbourhood if you don't already know a place well. I guess that's just how humans work. We can't know everything from first hand experience, so we readily accept second hand information and build it into our world view. The fact of the matter is that the cost of being careful feels low compared the the potential cost of being wrong.

In this case, the cost of turning away from considering properties in a certain street is lower than the cost of moving into a street that does turn out to be dangerous. That's because the cost of not looking at the street is probably only financial (maybe missing a bargain), but will never be known anyway, whereas the cost of living in a street where you get mugged or burgled could be very high because once you live there, quality of life comes into play.

As a buyer, I use this site to rule out looking at certain properties, based on what the site suggests the street would be like to live in.

If I was selling a house on a nice street, that showed as iffy on the website, I think I'd be justifiably miffed.

Cobalt-barrel machine guns could fire full auto Hollywood style

Tom_

what's the mandrel made out of?

Magnetic fields.

Gmail users howl in anguish at 'disappeared' accounts

Tom_
Pint

What's the best way to back up a GMail account?

I have about 2GB of data in my GMail account and stories like this make me very nervous.

Can anyone suggest a good, practical way of backing that data up, please?

Park the Mario Kart, and throw your keys in the bowl

Tom_

dot dot dot

CRINGE.

Microsoft lands big handbag on Google's copy kisser

Tom_

Bing

I've never used Bing, but now Google have pointed out that it includes their search results as well I reckon I might switch over to it. :)

Sony PS3 rootkit rumours rubbished

Tom_

what?

If the same company creates the hardware and the OS, how is additional functionality the same thing as a rootkit?

New auto-crowd tech writes better articles than pro writers TRUE

Tom_

Aniket

Google image search for 'aniket' seems to return mostly blokes.

FACT.

Photo loss blogger to Flickr: You're f*cking kidding

Tom_

The irony

For once, switching to facebook might be a good option. You can't delete data from there even if you try.

Digital TV team sets 3D standard

Tom_

2D compatible

I think they are inferring that it's made 2D by just showing all the frames intended for the left eye (or all the frames intended for the right eye) and binning the rest.

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