* Posts by NightFox

666 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Oct 2009

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Cambridge's tiny superconducting magnet breaks strength record

NightFox

Re: Very impressive.

"Not forgetting the potential for ridiculously expensive headphones for DJ's"

Beats by Dr Dre already managed that for everyone without any of this magnetic science mumbo-jumbo

Catch cack-handed baggage handlers in the act with Ericsson's SPY SUITCASE

NightFox

Hmmm...

"The Ericsson security suitcase has what is effectively a mobile phone built into it"

So no problem having it active during a flight then?

You want a medal for writing a script? Sure: here it is!

NightFox
Black Helicopters

"Paliath writes that he was not supposed to undertake this work for security reasons, but that once his superiors appreciated the productivity improvements he had enabled they turned a blind eye."

Nevertheless I'm sure someone somewhere will be keen to measure him up for an orange boiler suit

How to strip pesky copyright watermarks from photos ... says a FACEBOOK photo bod

NightFox

Re: Two Points

I don't have any issues with photographers making money - what I do have an issue with is when they're given exclusive rights to an event, even over non-commercial personal photgraphers - for example, my daughter used to compete in gym competitions and I'd often photograph her performing. But some of the competitions then banned photography "due to child protection laws" but were quite happy to have a professional photographer capturing the event who would happily sell me a picture of my daughter (or anyone else's daughter for that matter) for about £10.

Quick Q: How many FLOPPIES do I need for 16 MILLION image files?

NightFox

I remember re-installing a very old piece of software on a PC 2 or 3 years ago. As I think was common when the software was written, it gave me the option of backing up the HDD to floppy before I continued with the installation. I had to throw caution to the wind when a quick look in my "old stuff" cupboard confirmed I didn't have the 250,000 disks this would have needed. Or a floppy drive, come to that.

Reg hack hacked off by iPhone 5 repair notice

NightFox

The Few

I like the fact that despite Apple coming out with the standard spin of only a very small number of devices being affected, everyone I've read about online says that when they've entered their serial numbers, they're one of these chosen few. Anyone been told they're not within the range?

Even happened to my iPhone 5 after I'd sold it on, luckily Apple carried out an out-of-warranty free phone replacement to the new buyer.

Three's money man reveals UK mobe firms' dark pricing dealings

NightFox

Re: A lot of common sense there

Well maybe it is a concern because despite Three making all this noise about providing consumers with what they want with their 0800 calls and (admittedly great) Feel at Home service, it also seems to have quietly decided that consumers no longer want the "all you can eat" uncapped data plans that previously seemed to be such a big marketing thing for them. So, goodbye unlimited data today, maybe goodbye inclusive tethering tomorrow?

Yes, you can stick with your existing uncapped data plan for now and just stay in your contract for year after year, but the mobile operators are all experts of making customers feel more and more uncomfortable in the legacy contracts they no longer want them to be in as the years go by. Let's see if they're going to want existing contract customers to sign up to new T&Cs when their "free" 4G upgrade becomes available.

And FYI tethering isn't covered under the Feel at Home service - Three's quite clear on that. You may have been able to do it (personally it didn't work for me in Sweden or Denmark), but as it's specifically prohibited that's no guarantee it will work next time.

Panasonic slaps Freetime EPG on 2014 smart tellies

NightFox

Re: Ratios

@Dave 126. Does your remote not have a "ratio" button on it (sometimes an icon of a screen with 4 arrows pointing outwards in it)?

There's also normally a setting for how to display 4:3 content somewhere in the settings menu.

NightFox

Re: Ratios

Indeed - I still despair over the amount of friends' houses I can go to and they'll be watching something on TV, seemingly oblivious to the fact it's stretched and distorted beyond belief because they've got the aspect ratio settings wrong. I mean, 16:9 has only been mainstream for what, 10 years now? Still, I suppose if it doesn't bother them. Though I guess these are the same type of people who horrendously resize clipart and photos without holding the shift button down...

Time for one of my pills I think.

NightFox

re Dear Panasonic..

If that's all consumers are after then their needs are going to be met by the likes of Technika and Bush long before Panasonic. But if their needs go beyond the numbers and the actual quality matters, then it could be a long wait...

Amazon wants me to WEAR NAPPIES?! But I'm a 40-something MAN

NightFox

Re: Perhaps...

That's the problem with Amazon recommendations and advertising - if I only bought stuff for myself I guess their only failing would be for things I'd just bought, e.g. why keep pushing TV adverts at me when I've just bought a brand new TV from you?

However, the reality is that my Amazon purchase history is a mish-mash of personal purchases, things I've brought for work, things my kids or relatives have asked me to buy for them, presents I've bought for people ranging from babies to 80+ year olds. No wonder Amazon's targeted ads seem to be aimed at the wrong target!

Google gives Maps a lick of paint, smears it over screens worldwide

NightFox

Re: As usual

It's probably a sign of getting older, but so many of these sites/apps/services/whatever like Google Maps I used to be able to use without a problem. But every time they get updated, I seem to find them less and less intuitive to use. Ease of use seems to take a back seat to swept-up minimalist design.

Steelie Neelie 'shocked' that EU tourists turn mobes off when abroad

NightFox

Re: Three PAYG

Yep, this is one area in which Three really puts the others to shame (it's on contract too, not just PAYG) - OK, it's currently limited to those countries where Three already has a presence or a sister/partner company, but the recent addition of the USA to their list makes this outstanding. I also get a bit nervous that I have to enable data roaming in these countries, worrying that it'll connect me to a network other than 3, So far though, I've used their "free" roaming on a good dozen occasions and never been charged, apart from the time I forgot to turn data roaming off again before I travelled to France.

You’re NOT fired: The story of Amstrad’s amazing CPC 464

NightFox

Re: Mail Order

@ Sir Wiggum - yes, I know my VIC 20 and Commodore 64 were both mail ordered by my father - both were very early models (I even remember the serial numbers, VIC 20 #1274 and C64 #1918 - geeky or what?) so I don't think they were widely available in WHS or Boots etc at that stage

NightFox

The thing I love best about these articles in these days of online Amazon and Dabs orders is remembering that there once was a time when you ordered your new computer by cutting a section out of a page of a magazine (following the dotted lines), filling in your details (hopefully in handwriting that the supplier could read), popping it into an envelope with a cheque and then patiently and optimistically "allowing 28 days for delivery".

How times change.

iTunes radio tunes in to Australia for first launch beyond USA

NightFox

But surely the recommendations should be made based on style of music rather than the artist's lifestyle/back story? I'm not saying it necessarily does that well, but this article seems to damn it based on the fact that it makes recommendations that aren't hip or cool enough.

If your telco or mobe provider hikes 'fixed' contract fees you can now ESCAPE - Ofcom

NightFox

I don't know if just T-Mobile do this, but I've noticed when I look at my bills my monthly charge is actually higher than what I'm paying - but then there's a "discount" that brings it down to my actual monthly rate. I guess this means that the actual contract was for the full amount which lets them just reduce/chop the discount without technically changing the base price they're charging me.

Candy Crush dev stuffs EU 'candy' trademark down gob

NightFox

Re: Excuse me

But you don't trademark a word in isolation, you trademark the use of a word in a specific context.

e.g. Everest can still call the things they install "Windows", but if they started to branch out into IT software they'd not been able to call their new OS the same thing. I could start making cakes and call them Everest cakes, it wouldn't be an issue (though arguably if I called them Everest Double Glazing Windows cakes it would as it could be construed that the name indicated an association).

Royal Mail actually own a trademark on the colour red. That doesn't mean no one can use it, it just means any companies involved in the same business as RM can't use it as a predominant part of their branding.

Of course it all gets a bit silly when merchandising comes in and you extend the original game/app context of the trademark to things like bath robes.

UK smut filter may have sent game patch to sin-bin

NightFox

I used to work for an Investment Bank (not as a banker I hasten to add) who introduced email filtering. One of the words that would cause an email to get blocked was "rape" - it took several days and the bank potentially lost a considerable amount before the rape seed oil analysts and traders realised what was happening.

Mystery 'doughnut' materializes in front of Mars rover: 'OH MY GOD! It wasn't there before!'

NightFox

Re: Like, oh my god!

"… and we were like, dude, where’s my donut and they were like no way and were were like yes way and they were like noooo way!!! and we were like yessss way!!! and they were like aaawesome!!! …"

Ooo, ooo, I know this one...

...BUT STILL THEY COME

Use strong passwords and install antivirus, mmkay? UK.gov pushes awareness campaign

NightFox

Re: Rolling of eyes

But this isn't really aimed at the typical Reg reader is it? This might be "noddy" stuff, but if all my friends and relatives actually understood and followed it I'd have a lot less of my life wasted cleaning up their infected laptops and explaining why they keep getting all these rude emails and need to cancel their credit card

Virgin Media spanked by ad watchdog over 'in your neighbourhood' fibs

NightFox
FAIL

Its' not just at house or street level that Virgin have a track record of mis-advertising availability to. A year or so again Virgin undertook a big campaign in my small town telling us that Virgin fibre had arrived, including mail flyers, posters and full page adverts in the local paper. Unfortunately, they were actually laying fibre to another town with the same name about 150 miles away

Apple loses sauce, BlackBerry squashed and Microsoft, er, WinsPhones (Nokia's)

NightFox

Re: Backpackers @gautam

This causes quite a bit of confusion - If you buy an iPhone from Apple, it is truly SIM-unlocked, you can swap SIMs as much as you like and it will never lock you to a network. However, buy an iPhone from the likes of O2/Orange or somewhere like Carphone Warehouse and it will arrive in an unlocked state, but as soon as you insert a SIM (which you need to do to set up and activate the phone) it will lock to that network.

In other words, all iPhones come unlocked, but if it was sold to work on a specific network (even PAYG), it will lock as soon as the SIM is inserted.

BT tweaks WORDING of sex-ed web block after complaints

NightFox

Re: Right get this

No need to declare anything, 3 attempts to access any of BT's blocked sites and their system automatically marks your account as a sexual deviant

Excise Xmas prezzie indecision MISERY with El Reg’s gift guide²

NightFox

Great suggestions - or at least they would be if I could convince my 83 year old father to sign up for broadband rather than just using my old 64k virgin.net dial-up account on the 2 or 3 occasions a year when he steps out onto the information highway. "I've lived for 83 years without the Internet, what use would I possibly have of it now? And you've still not sent me a CD of those pictures from the summer. And did you manage to find out why my Flight Simulator scenery wasn't working properly?"

Ten top tech toys to interface with a techie’s Christmas stocking

NightFox

Re: Sphero

And £80? You'll be lucky - maybe for the original Sphero, but a Sphero 2's going to set you back £100 unless the Reg reveals where it pulled £80 from (I hope it didn't just look at the US price and convert $ to £, we all know it never works like that)

iSPY: Apple Stores switch on iBeacon phone sniff spy system

NightFox

"Apple claimed iBeacon offers "a whole new level of micro-location awareness, such as trail markers in a park, exhibits in a museum, or product displays in stores".

What that really means is that whenever you visit somewhere armed with iBeacon transmitters, your iPhone will bombard you with unwanted messages."

A few years ago we were constantly told that if we left Bluetooth turned on on our phones we would get constantly hit with similar advertising messages - never happened to me, not even once. Maybe it's just me and it's because it's Monday morning, but lately I'm beginning to find El Reg's unimaginative cynicism just a bit tedious and predictable. Off to get some caffeine...

A whopping one in four Apple fanbois uses OBSOLETE TECH

NightFox

Re: Or to put it another way

Helped of course by Apple's storage hostage-taking tactics - the installer for iOS7 was helpfully automatically downloaded to most iOS6 devices taking up anywhere up to 1GB of storage. Of course it was still up to the user whether they chose to install the update (and thus the installer was deleted and you got your 1GB back), but with no way to otherwise delete the installer the price of staying with iOS6 was you lost 1GB of storage from your device.

Accused Glasshole driver says specs weren't even turned on for traffic stop

NightFox

Re: "nothing illegal to be wearing Google Glass"... yet.

..."the law under which Abadie was cited forbids in-vehicle televisions and video screens mounted "at a point forward of the back of the driver's seat." It makes specific exceptions for information displays, GPS systems, mapping displays, and devices solely designed to assist in driving – such as rear-facing closed circuit camera displays – as long as these are installed in the vehicle.

Beyond that, however, the law forbids "any other similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast or video signal that produces entertainment or business applications."

So under the letter of the law, it's as just as equally illegal to use a GPS system running on a smartphone on two counts: 1, the smartphone isn't designed solely to assist in driving and 2, it's also capable of displaying a TV signal etc. But I'm sure doing so isn't practically deemed illegal, so why this?

PS-PHWOARRR: We review Sony’s next-gen PlayStation 4

NightFox

I can understand skipping every other generation for something like iPhone annual updates, but do you really mean you're going to wait about 15 years between upgrades rather than just a mere 7 or 8 years?

You DON'T need a new MacBook! Reg man fiddles with Fusion, pimps out vintage Pro

NightFox

Re: How much faster?

Yes, was wondering exactly the same; unless you already have a spare SSD sitting around, is it not easier to just install a Momentus and let the drive deal with the jigging around of files rather than the OS? Running one of these in my MacBook Pro and one as a boot/primary drive on my Mac Pro and they seem to offer a very good bang/buck compromise.

What a plot of nonsense: Ten Master master plan FAILS

NightFox

"it’s hard not to conclude that the face fungus-sporting, suit-wearing and unhinged renegade Time Lord in Patrick Troughton’s swansong, The War Games isn’t actually the Master"

Sorry, I'm still trying to pick my way through this. Surely there's one too many (or few) negatives in there?

Ten top stories from New Who

NightFox

Couldn't agree with you more about your first paragraph. It had the potential to be one of THE classic TV moments of all time but the modern precedence of ratings over actual entertainment stole that from us.

LinkedIn: Obviously biz people DON'T use MS Exchange servers. REALLY?

NightFox
Facepalm

CLICKBAIT ALERT

"LINKEDIN SNUBS MICROSOFT"?

or just "LinkedIn launches app that doesn't integrate with Exchange just yet but will at some point soon"

C'mon... please.

Pop OS X Mavericks on your Mac for FREE while you have LUNCH

NightFox

Re: And now the world waits...

Mountain Lion: 10.8

Mavericks: 10.9

Surely even by Apple's own naming convention, this is just a .1 update, not a "new OS"?

Meet the 'KARDASHIAN Phone' – what Apple bods nicknamed the iPhone 5s

NightFox

Re: Should I truly care???

Was that rant directed at anyone specific, or is it just the online equivalent of the tramp who stands outside our local Tesco's hurling abuse at anyone within shouting distance?

Volvo: Need a new car battery? Replace the doors and roof

NightFox

Re: Bang the car, short the battery

At least this doesn't sound as dangerous as a proposal I once saw to transport us around using a system relying on highly volatile fuel, explosions, HT voltages and water.

Apple's first iPhone now COSTS MORE than golden mobe 5S

NightFox

How much for my Nokia 3310?

TWELFTH-CENTURY TARDIS turns up in Ethiopia

NightFox
Angel

Re: Geography Lesson

@Gav

I don't mean to gloat, but...

HA!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24467337

;-)

NightFox

Re: Geography Lesson

I contacted Mr Abdul to pass on my bank details and he informs me that he moved from Ethiopia to Nigeria several years ago.

NightFox

Dear Honorable Freind

GREETINGS!

Allow my to introduce myself, I am Wami Abdul, the only son of great Mr ABDUL, esteemed program manager of ETV. I have sad news my friend, my father Mr ABDUL is now deceased and I am now I contact with his collegues from ETV who are to eliminate the purchases of my father to store new series of Ethiopia’s got Talent. I pleed very much with them to save OLD EPISODES OF DC WHO but they say tape is expensive and I must pay €50,000 US Dollar to have them. I contact BBC for assist and they will pay owner ONE MILLION POUND DOLLARS but I am poor man with little money to raise to buy these precious tapes having only 10,000. I contact you my friend with proposition that for just your investment of 40,000 I will offer to return NIN HUNDRED THOUSAND EURO from BBC. This is approved and guaranteed under Mr Lord Reith, the head of BBC himself.

We must contact soon to ensure safety of time space adventures

Wami ABDUL

EU digital tsar 'Steelie' Neelie Kroes: Telcos must adapt to losing roaming cash

NightFox

Re: It's already too watered down

Indeed, Three now offer use of their networks in all countries where they exist - for example I can use my phone in Sweden or Hong Kong and basically it's as if I was still in the UK with my calls (to UK numbers) and data usage just coming off my monthly allowance, or charged at normal home rates. Why the Oranges, T-Mobiles and Telfonicas can't also do this I don't know, though I suggest it's more a matter of "won't" rather than "can't".

Hollywood: How do we secure high-def 4K content? Easy. Just BRAND the pirates

NightFox

Re: What a bunch of charmers they are to be sure.

Not sure I even get how this is meant to work - so, they can work out that a pirate copy of Star Wars XII that's the most downloaded film on PirateBay originated from a Sony 4K BD player sold in Singapore... then what? Is there going to be a global Big Brother database somewhere that records who owns every single 4K device?

Fondling slabs during takeoff WON'T end in a fireball of death - report

NightFox

Re: Fondling slabs during takeoff WON'T end in a fireball of death...

I was once sat in the front row of a domestic flight in Italy, with the air hostess sat directly opposite and facing e as we came in to land. Next to me was sat a sweating, overweight passenger whose BO and waistline overflow I'd had the pleasure of sharing for the previous hour. He'd obviously not bothered turning his iPhone off during the flight and with perfect timing, the second the wheels touched down, his phone starting ringing with the (very loud) klaxon ringtone.

The look of sheer terror on the air hostess's face (and presumably other passengers in earshot) was only eclipsed by the look of rage that replaced it about 10 seconds later when she realised where the sound was coming from and although I don't speak Italian, I got the gist that she wasn't thanking him for flying Alitalia.

Sadly, I discovered that my own instant mental association on hearing a klaxon is with an iPhone ringtone, rather than an imminent call to "brace brace brace". Sign of the times, I guess.

Angry Brazilian whacks NASA to put a stop to ... er, the NSA

NightFox

What is it with NASA and bad IT security? I remember getting my Commodore 64 modem in 1985/6 second hand, along with a copy of The Hackers Handbook and a printed list of phone numbers, IDs and passwords which was widely circulating at the time. Of all the companies and organisations on there, the only one anyone was really interested in was NASA because, well because it was NASA. So while everyone else was playing Jet Set Willy you were hacking NASA.

MIght need to find that list though and just check it wasn't actually the NSA...

Massively leaked iFail 5S POUNDS pundits, EXCITES chavs

NightFox

Yet strangely, all the iPhone 5S/C hype that I've been bombarded with over the last few weeks/months didn't come from Apple - it came from The Register.

Put down the (cod)piece and step away: Artist cuffed after sculpture cockup

NightFox

Re: In fairness...

Do 73 year-olds have teenage angst?

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