* Posts by Paul_Murphy

707 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Sep 2009

Online tools to 'end the scandal of empty homes'

Paul_Murphy

Holidays homes

Similar to bee above - there are many properties that have been bought to rent to holiday makers ('cottages 4 you' say they have 10,000 in the UK alone) - this takes them out of the local market, pushes prices up so that local people can't afford them, and has a knock-on effect on the local economy - particularly on schools.

I'm not sure what a solution to this might be - if there is one at all, but having a lot of un-occupied properties around the country, whilst my taxes are being spent to keep people, in a variety of circumstances, in B&B's and hotels cannot be a good thing.

ttfn

New Mac scareware variant installs without password

Paul_Murphy
Coat

ooh - fighting talk

>having a linux-derived OS

I'm sure someone will have something to say about this (when they have calmed down and stopped frothing at the mouth).

he he

ttfn

Paul_Murphy

Wait...

Is this sarcasm? irony?

I think the all caps heading means it's a bot doesn't it?

so hard to tell nowadays.

ttfn

Twitter vs Beeb in superinjunction nark shindy

Paul_Murphy

I thoroughly agree..

>As far as Giggs goes, he is just trying to avoid the consequences of a situation entirely of his own making,

Yep - trying to buy his way out of trouble.

>by using a law which was never intended for the purpose for which it has been used.

Unfortunately that's the law for you, for whatever justifiable reasons it's written it's actual use can be for all sorts of other things, I'm thinking of the terrorism laws that stopped legitimate photographers.

> I do care that the law is so badly written that it can be abused in this way.

As should we all

I would also add that the very thought of trying to stop people communicating must be a waste of time since that's what people do.

Also when you have legitimate news sources being gagged by the courts it is time to start worrying - holding back info in certain circumstances (to avoid panic or national security for instance) I can see some point to, but otherwise its a very dangerous path to be following.

Time to write to my MP again I think.

ttfn

McKinnon's mum applauds Obama extradition stance

Paul_Murphy
Black Helicopters

The US has another approach of course....

They won't tell us,

They'll sneak in using black helicopters,

They'll SEAL the deal and disappear.

Then they can argue about it afterwards.

In some ways it's like gun-boat diplomacy. In other ways it isn't.

ttfn

Asus teases with MacBook Air-esque Eee PC

Paul_Murphy

No

>Or is this a cunning plan to destroy Apple by making it impossible to distinguish

>MacBooks/iPhones/iPads from the competition?

It's to try and change Apples' business model to focus on legal action rather than products.

ttfn

Brit expats aghast as Denmark bans Marmite

Paul_Murphy

At last the defence review makes sense.

High-speed marmite deliveries using tornados and typhoons, sneaking under the radar and precision-dropping the jars onto (the correct) danish tables.

Hmm - if they were using buccaneers I could believe that, but the modern stuff needs to keep too high to do much sneaking.

ttfn

Apple iPhone 5 to sport CRT-style screen

Paul_Murphy

Of course - the bRA-phone

'Just the right curve to match yours!' - available from C to J!

(insert very poor-taste comment about A & B sizes buying the normal flat-screen version.)

Alternatively maybe Apple are planning a head-phone carrying unit that allows the iPhone to drop down in front of the eyes and show a virtual reality display - think like Geordi LaForges glasses, but about the size of a paperback.

ttfn.

Out of this World science fiction exhibition

Paul_Murphy

It's a shame.

That there isn't a huge pile of classic SF books with a 'take one each' sign by the door.

I believe that kids (say 8 to 12) need to read, and they need something to exercise their imaginations, and SF can be very good at that (it can equally be a load of tripe, but that's life).

After finishing CS Lewis I started Tolkein (I had to stop at silmarillion) and thence to Asimov, Smith, Niven, Harrison and so many more.

I guess I wish all kids could have the same upbringing and chance to develop as me, and maybe I'm just being selfish, but nowadays it seems kids are just too close-minded.

ttfn

Office 15 steals OVERLARGE font, design vision from Windows PHO

Paul_Murphy

Office 15?

Not really interested, thanks - Open Office works fine for me, the price is right, as are the licensing terms and installation procedure.

I was rather impressed that Ubuntu installed it by default on a brand new installation of the OS, that it reads office docs with few issues and that I don't need to tap in a license key when installing it.

I just hope that OO doesn't implement a ribbon.

ttfn

Apple to support reps: Don't confirm Mac infections

Paul_Murphy

>but have not got to the next step of trying to solve the problem

The two most likely and 'simple' answers are to run of a bootable CD or DVD (linux is good for this, but I'm not sure about windows and OSX) or clients that connect to server with virtual machines on.

I'm sure other answers will be suggested (and developed in the future) but for now using a client that can't get infected is, in my view, only possible using a fixed, non-editable image.

ttfn

Paul_Murphy

hmm..

And your ideas on Apple customer support? Aren't they there to support their customers? Being told that customer support aren't to help, and aren't to confirm or deny the existance of malware is far from helping their customers.

Apple - the ostrich in the room...

ttfn

Boffin quests for, finds 'earphone Holy Grail'

Paul_Murphy

umm

Bluetooth? noise-cancelling?

What are they like on the underground?

ttfn

Teenage duo sentenced over credit card Ghostmarket

Paul_Murphy

yep..

Capitalisation is correct as well, and since he doesn't finish every sentence with a ';' they haven't been stuck using Java/ECMA-script for the last couple of decades.

ttfn

Paul_Murphy
Joke

Roper

I see what you did there.

ttfn

CATS to be saved by BLASPHEMERS after the RAPTURE

Paul_Murphy
Joke

Noooooooo......

>God will take the pets and leave the Christians.

Please take them - they cause nothing but trouble here.

ttfn

Canadian kid uses supercomputing to cure cystic fibrosis

Paul_Murphy

Well done that man.

Keep it up - people you have never met will be very grateful.

ttfn

Rackspace backtracks over toff-proof sign-up process

Paul_Murphy
Joke

he he. - try this for a name

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/exploits_of_a_mom.png

ttfn

US Supremes deal death blow to class action lawsuits

Paul_Murphy

You would assume so.

But Antoinette is really a program designed to infiltrate forums and blogs to put across their paymasters views.

(apologies to Antoinette)

ttfn

Airborne killer robot destroys Libyan anti-aircraft missile

Paul_Murphy

Hmm

Are we sure that the 'civilians' playing football weren't the crew?

Since no facts say they weren't it's another viewpoint to consider.

wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SA-8_Gecko) says that the system is designed for attacking jets and helicopters - maybe a predator is a little too small for it to be bothered with?

In any case I wonder how long it will be before our new aircraft carriers are converted to carry drones rather than jets, and for them to be controlled locally rather than from thousands of miles away.

Makes you think.

ttfn

Vintage flying car offered at auction

Paul_Murphy
Joke

At last...

A flying car.

I'll want to give it a go toot sweet.

ttfn

Sony unwraps Android 3.0 tablet pair

Paul_Murphy

The s2 looks good.

Different virtual keyboards - even zoomable or scrollable for Chinese etc.- when (if) required.

Possibly run two browsers or browser windows, or other apps which keep to their own window.

I'm not sure about the styling - rounded is good, but that looks rather too rounded and I don't think it would be easy to hold.

My other issue isn't with the tech but the company - Sony, like Apple, are rather too prone to be control-freaks and if their kit is going to be anything like the PS3 then I don't want their servers to decide that I can't join the internet today for some reason.

ttfn

Portal 2

Paul_Murphy

There is no cake.

Sorry - but unless some appears in the co-op / multiplayer there is certainly none in the SP.

There is a surprise though - but I'm not telling you what the surprise is. :-)

Anyway the cake was a lie.

ttfn

Blighty's Skylon spaceplane faces key tech test in June

Paul_Murphy

Look to your handle Daedalus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Daedalus and it's close relative Orion which showed that there IS a way to get lots of stuff to orbit - very efficiently in fact. You launch it with atomic bombs, and it's more efficient the more you launch, with talk of ships up to 8,000,000 tons.

Or of course what you really need is a space elevator:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator which is being developed by these guys: http://spaceelevatorconference.org/default.aspx amongst others.

ttfn

UK is fifth free-est nation on the internet

Paul_Murphy

The good news

Is that, if you block all the adverts, the internet doesn't force content upon you - after all unless you happen to have 'aspergers hands' (tm) all that 'monkey-nun porn' and the like will stay hidden from you - but available to anyone who wants it.

ttfn

Pope says gravity proves technology can't supplant God

Paul_Murphy

Fact vs faith

No, you're probably not the only one - my argument would be why is it assumed that religion has a place in society to begin with.

Since religion had been around for quite some time I say it's time that science is allowed to have a similar time to prove itself - shall we say 3000 years?

I must admit that the science-version of the inquisition would be pretty boring'

'believe in gravity...'

'NO'

'look - I'll drop this apple'

'Oh - yeah I guess gravity must exist, fair enough.'

'Next!'

Why religion is still being followed at all after the middle ages is a mystery to me.

ttfn

Paul_Murphy

Yes - but's it's not about what you think is it?

It's to do with how much longer a parasitic church can extract a free lifestyle from the gullible and ill-educated/ desperate people that believe what the pope says.

I wonder how long it will be before people and countries refuse to acknowledge the vatican as a sovereign state (or whatever the right wording is) and demand that it behaves itself (you know - like a bank or something) - for starters in handing over their child-abusing leaders and members for fair trial, rather than spending efforts in hiding them.

Alternatively if they started living as they should (not surrounded by gold and riches), sold all their non-religious items (and by that I mean everything aside from a few churches, relics and a change of clothes) and give their money to the needy.

The church (and I suspect I am not just talking about the catholic church) should be ashamed of themselves.

ttfn

Paul_Murphy
Joke

Not quite there..

>Those who embrace god never need to fix their computer because it never goes wrong!

I would imagine* that it's more likely that the computer is working the way that God wants it to, it's all part of his plan and it is not likely that a humble being such as a user would understand why anyway.

:-)

*cos lord knows I don't intend to actually think about it.

ttfn

So, what's the best sci-fi film never made?

Paul_Murphy

I sent mine in am email

But I forgot Nightfall - though it's not really long enough I guess.

For me it's 'Ringworld' and the other Known Space books.

Iain M Banks

Snow Crash.

I don't know if mentioning 'Bill the Galactic hero' would be a good idea though, or 'Phules Company', or 'Johnny and the Bomb' come to that.

ttfn

World pays tribute to Yuri Gagarin

Paul_Murphy

Even the female ones?

Hmm spaceticles...

ttfn

Paul_Murphy

I agree.

Hands up those nations (or planets) with civilian supersonic transport.

What? but I'm sure we had some - oh well....

For petes sake WE don't even have an aircraft carrier anymore, or VSTOL aircraft, even our supersonic fighters are running out of parts.

Education is being treated as a joke, the very thought of putting effort into learning is laughed at by most kids.

Ask a kid what books they read and I wonder what reaction you'll get.

I hate to think what sort of world we'll be retiring in.

Not quite 'Idiocracy' yet.

ttfn

Five cuffed over $37m heist of Google flash chips

Paul_Murphy

'Excessive taking'?

So presumably all other instances of taking are seen as entirely reasonable then, or is there a sliding scale from 'practically asking to be stolen' to 'outrageous crime against humanity' levels of theft?

Strange Americans - I'm sure there must be some logic in there somewhere, but I can't see it.

ttfn

Wii 2 announcement in June

Paul_Murphy

I would prefer it..

If they didn't hype up the next Wii.

I would prefer that all companies and media outlets only reported on facts and not rumours - talked about products that had been released and are now available.

A never-ending pile of rumours and conjecture helps no-one aside from the marketing types that live off this waste of time.

<grumble grumble stuck in cold server room waiting for files to copy....>

ttfn

Android book-scan app tames untidy tomes

Paul_Murphy

Not being an expert..

But I would suspect that ISBN numbers are given out sequentially - there may be some sort of grouping, but nothing to indicate how it relates to other books in the same genre.

You would need to implement a database system to tie a specific book to other books in a particular collection.

Some info on ISBN is here: http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/us/isbnqa.asp

ttfn

Wind power: Even worse than you thought

Paul_Murphy

Yeah

100 years from now and everyone* who was alive at the time of the earthquake/tsunami will be dead.

Everyday life includes risk - if the media frenzy over the Fukushima nuclear power plant were to be extended to other aspects of life then you could wave goodbye to: cars, buses, trains, planes, bicycles, not to mention all coal, oil, gas and hydro power.

(you can see http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.html for the power side of things - I'm not even bothering to dig up figures for the transport side)

As a thought experiment try imagining a world where there is only one source of power (be it wind or oil etc) and see what happens - running out of fuel or covering the land with overkill kit is the most likely outcomes unless you are looking at nuclear.

ttfn

*this is meant as an ironic statement - not an absolute truth

Swedish newlyweds enjoy lively honeymoon

Paul_Murphy

Does this count as a title?

Well - it will be something to tell the kiddies.

'In my day we had proper honeymoons. let me tell you - not like you youngsters with your day trips into the sun, or bandersnatch hunting, no OURS were a lot more exciting..'

and so on.

:-)

ttfn

Floating Image

Paul_Murphy

Works fine on my Hero.

I'm on 2.1 update 1 (when is update 2 coming out?) so you may want to check that.

Looks very nice I must say.

ttfn

It's the oldest working Seagate drive in the UK

Paul_Murphy

SCSI? Ha!

In the loft I should have my Atari with it's ACSI (like SCSI but Ataris version) interface.

The problem was that the OS needed around 15 drive letters to address all the space - it had to handle them as floppies if I recall correctly.

Even if I can find it I doubt it would still work though - it needed to boot off a floppy to see the harddrive :-(

ttfn

Microsoft wraps Windows 8 in Ribbon UI?

Paul_Murphy

You're missing the point

It's not what a new OS will do for you - it's the money it will bring in to Microsoft.

Each generation of OS is designed to die and use of it discouraged - the only exception on the Microsoft side was XP, when the tablet format came out and it became obvious that they couldn't run Vista, Microsoft generously/ worriedly extended it's lifespan.

ttfn

Paul_Murphy

I agree.

Can you imagine the telephone conversation:

'Just click the the third icon down - it looks like a crow*.. just hover the mouse over it.. yes that's the one'

And if the ribbon is context sensitive they will keep changing around as well, and I bet there won't be an option to turn off the icons and just have text buttons.

Could _this_ be the end of windows?

ttfn

*I don't care what the icons actually look like - and I don't intend to have to learn them either.

HMS Ark Royal goes under the hammer

Paul_Murphy

If you think the Tornado is lovely.

Research the Buccaneer or, if you want to really depress yourself, the TSR2.

Or the SR 53/177, or Black Arrow.

How Uk.gov (any of them) can claim to have our collective best interests at heart really defeats me.

Fire-quenching electric forcefield backpack invented

Paul_Murphy

I would like to see a video of this.

Is it a cone-shaped projection from the wand? a spherical area? a beam? - in fact can you change the shape of the 'forcefield' at all? that could make a cool 'fire door' possible, only this one would move the curtain of fire to let people through.

Most of all - how come, after centuries of familiarity with fire, we are hearing about this now? As Chemist says above there are much older references to this sort of work, but has no-one been bothered by this before now.

Maybe it's because it's only fairly recently that electricity is available to use fairly readily.

Where does the fire go? is some alternate reality or dimension wondering where all these fires are coming from?

Why not have a playmobil rendition - it's time to un-dust those figures people!

ttfn

Judge to music industry: 'Worth trillions? Forget it'

Paul_Murphy

I agree with him.

Case in point - having finished the game 'Portal' an excellent song came up.

Having listened to and enjoyed the song I found out it was made by a man called Jonathon Coulton.

I found his website - listened to a few more songs and decided to buy, and download, his back-catalogue, I have been to two of his gigs in the UK and and waiting for more of his work to appear.

This is the future of the music 'industry' I think - people experiment with people they have never heard of before, and base their actions on what they find.

The worst thing about being an artist is obscurity, and the internet is a great tool to deal with that.

ttfn

RUSTOCK TAKEDOWN: How the world's worst botnet was KO'd

Paul_Murphy

No, you're not the only one.

I too see the 'bother' part first before working out the rest of the word isn't right.

ttfn

Paul_Murphy

Good questions.

As also the question:

How does the money get back to the bot-herders?

In order for it to be worth their while there must be a mechanism to get money back to the people running the operation - the 'companies' are presumably paying the bot-herders to get people to buy stuff from them,

Surely that money must be traceable.

ttfn

Fukushima's toxic legacy: Ignorance and fear

Paul_Murphy

Minor vs Major

Major incident:

Deaths: 9,408

Missing: 14,700

Homeless: 500,000

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12825342)

Minor Incident:

Deaths: 1

Missing: 2

Homeless: N/A

(that we know about anyway)

No matter what the _potential_ might have been the actual effects of the natural disasters, the earthquake and resulting Tsunami, on the nuclear power plant have been minor - very minor.

Rant/ troll all you like, but the facts speak for themselves - nuclear power is safe, even in situations that are way beyond what were anticipated when the system was designed, let alone built.

This is a non-story, the story is that people seem to be expecting things to be worse than they are, even those people that should know better.

It would be nice if everyone had a good standard of education, realised that newspapers and news organisations are desperate for attention and had a healthy level of skepticism.

ttfn

South West Trains puts squeeze on commuters

Paul_Murphy

Is it just me.

Or does the term 'passenger loading' cause a mental imagine of cattle being loaded onto a wagon to spring to mind?

Excuse me I'm off to practice my 'moo'.

ttfn

Paul_Murphy

Not when you need to drive though London and back.

I live in Watford and work in South London - the thought of having to drive through that twice a day is bad enough, but I would end up paying more, taking more time each day and end up a nervous wreck by the end of the week.

ttfn

Samsung intros 'skinnier than iPad 2' tablets

Paul_Murphy
Joke

Its not levitating..

That's the cooling fans doing that.

ttfn

Government to scrap COI, axe up to 1,000 communication jobs

Paul_Murphy

So.

Thats fewer people paying taxes, buying rail fares etc. and more claiming dole, mortgage insurance etc.

This country will be paying the price of the bankers greed for decades - and it's going to wreck a lot of lives.

The banks should have been allowed to fail.

ttfn