Posts by strangefish
68 posts • joined Tuesday 26th January 2010 09:54 GMT
now you mention it
it WAS three pages and I couldn't be arsed to read beyond page 1
Posted in Skype launches in-call ads
microsoft driving creativity
I give it about a week before someone much smarter than me comes out with a skype adblocker
NHS Direct
It was obviously critically important to replace this service with a host of different and undoubtedly more expensive other codswallop since it was easy to find and worked really well
Re: What's fascinating about this
much what I was thinking...a third more atomic hydrogen than previously thought? That's a hell of a margin of error then in the original estimates. Dark matter, schmark matter.
Posted in Vimeo takedown leads to court loss
Re: had he not
Agreed the detail is lacking. It would have been interesting to hear how he managed to establish that he was in fact the originator of the work and given that he presumably did, I would have assumed the damages would go against the site that hosted the material for withdrawing it on the instructions of someone who was neither the owner or originator and not the film's producer in this case.
can i have it rigged
to flash up something meaningful like ""you are too close moron" for use on the motorway at night? Although I suppose his front panel would just flash back "traf dlo uoy yaw ym fo tuo teg"
Re: Stylus?
Does anyone really want a stylus apart from a very small minority?
Yes please, I find using a finger is pretty poor for anything except very basic dragging things around on a touch screen and possibly thanks to Swype some limited text entry - certainly if I am doing any drawing, even very basic doodling, it requires a stylus so I don't know where the millions are but they can form a queue behind me.
eh?
why would you want to overtake...so he can shoot you in the back?
Posted in Lovefilm signs BBC streaming deal
don't care
BBC programmes I can watch on the telly or catch up on iplayer. If Lovefilm want to impress me they could get and sort out their long running (over three years I believe) failure to do a new deal with Universal so I can see stuff that isn't on freeview as well as the long list of movies from recent years that continue to be unavailale for rental.
I wonder
Will you get a UV code printed on the back of your expensive cinema ticket too? Or will theatrical release continue to be seperate?
Nell is gorgeous
clearly based on a naked lady and a rather well endowed one at that
Amnesty International has, since it's inception, organised letter writing campaigns from countries outside the one in which the alleged violation is said to have taken place. It is not unusual for letters to come from the other side of the world, in fact that is by design as politicians - in the past at least - have always paid more attention to people outside their own sphere of influence.
well
I would imagine they will continue to position it exactly where it is now...as a successful e-book reader. Speculation is rife but it would seem likely that any tablet based product will be at a price point much higher than an e-book reader but presumably lower than an ipad and if the current ecosystem proves anything, it is that two such very different products can happily coexist - after all Amazon already sells the ipad and that hasn't troubled Kindle sales. The point of the comment was Amazon are the one brand I can think of with a chance at breaking into a market that is currently monopolised by another brand - they have proved they can deliver a good product at a price people are willing to pay and by supporting that product well they have developed a high level of customer trust. And no I don't work for Amazon.
almost nobody...
...it will be interesting to see how big a dent an Amazon branded product can make
nice
but has it got a lamppost lassoing baterang for those tricky tight left turns? :¬)
acting without thinking
congratulations you have either invented a 15 year old or a politician
Posted in Vanquish
sorry
I just couldn't get past the idea that anyone might have to deliberately overheat their ARS. 10 out of 10 for keeping a straight face all the way through your review with that bombshell sitting there waiting to go off..
Posted in Jobs savages 7-inch tablet competition
will it or won't it
I don't know if seven inches is enough or not (snarf) but sanding the fingers down seems a little extreme when people seem to cope quite well with far smaller form factors on other devices. I understand there's one called an "iphone" which is a bit smaller than seven inches diagonal, although maybe people have indeed been digit-whittling for years and I've just not noticed. Has there been a rise in band-aid sales since 2007?
I confidently predict
that if competitors can just deliver their knock-off, unimaginative Paddi-klones at a considerably lower price point then people will take to them just fine.
a few points
The plain clothes cop may not have seen any speeding or wheelies but someone else clearly could have as the guy shows both of those illegal and not very bright activities taking place in his video...again, not very bright. Cops tend to have this amazing new invention called a radio in their cars. The unmarked car was probably just the nearest vehicle that was on his side of the road and could respond - especially likely since plain clothes can't usually be bothered with crappy driving offences. Yes he should have led with his badge not his gun but he does clearly identify himself as police within a very short time of exiting the vehicle and the gun is never pointed at the biker. You can't see it clearly on the video but his badge looks like it's clipped on his belt, somewhat obscured by his nice obvious "I am off duty" grey sweat top and he might actually have been under the impression the guy could see it.
So not much to complain about really as far as the bust is concerned. The part of the story that makes me sad - and that you need to pay attention to - isn't that a cop doing his job with at least some degree of care and attention made a few elementary errors, but rather that all police everywhere are now so damned unpleasant about being recorded just in case they do make simple mistakes and try to use the law wrongly to disrupt the lives of ordinary folk when they think they have been. I think they've become paranoid about "looking foolish" in the belief that it somehow diminishes their authority and that's not good for anyone. Since the cop in the video is in plain clothes, I would even have been prepared to accept it as mitigation for the later siezure of material that perhaps an undercover operation was at risk of compromise if the footage was shown - but that doesn't appear to be what they claimed in court.
Of course, maybe if cops weren't faced with dolts like this particular cheesehead behaving like infants and recording it so they can broadcast it to all their moron internet "friends", believing that because when they got caught a momentary error on the part of the cop could provide the loophole they need to get away with it, then they might be a little less paranoid and everyone else might not be faced with having cameras snatched from them in the street. So members of the public, please save the outrage for instances when cops actually are caught doing something appalling and cops, please stop thinking you're above scrutiny.
no
it is called a reticulated foam
Posted in Keene USB FM Transmitter
all very nice
but not sure of the usefulness. If it performs as you claim, does this not turn anyone using it into a pirate radio station? Not sure what the rules are on range for broadcasting within the already overcrowded fm radio spectrum but if it's strong enough to actually block other transmissions and your neighbours can hear it, my guess is it would be completely illegal. Oh and if it isn't strong enough to do that then good luck finding any quiet frequencies - in London at least I can't even use one of the in-car ipod ones without interference from regular stations.
super
now can they arrange for three sliding blades that will fit in between my knuckles? *snicket
damn you
for beating me to the post! :¬)
Posted in Road test: putting the iPad to work
nice review
although not sure we really needed another one. Still your phrase "not impossible, just a little harder to achieve" said it all really. Call me a bum but I don't want a little harder, I want a little easier. I still reckon it will need a couple of generations to be anything but an "almost" piece of kit for me and at the pace things like low power displays seem to moving now by then there ought to be better alternatives still.
more titling for the titlers
of course the same people who moan about googling are probably quite happy to have someone do their hoovering
the obvious question I suppose...
...is what on Earth makes you think that will be a change?
titleytitleytitleytitle
Sorry but google is now listed as a verb as well...sickening isn't it?
Loving the new space race
Even if (maybe because) it is starting to resemble those old black and white films of people trying to build flying machines with motorised umbrellas (umbrellae?)
Posted in London tenders for speed cameras
I doubt it
young men racing in overpowered cars are unlikely to be concerned and if they are they will simply move somewhere else to engage in their stupidity.
Ignoring the silliness of this marketing...
...why the hell did Apple stop making different colourways for their larger devices? Whether or not the more technically astute might laugh at the notion of colour choice being an important factor, it was a truly revolutionary idea and in fact a major selling point at the time. A sizable chunk of the population - at least if my other half is anything to go by - still miss that choice.
true
I finally came into the twenty-first century recently, gave in and tried the Kindle store out on my lappie. I was shocked by how badly the books suffer from typos, substitutions and other errors through the conversion process. Far from illegible and it wouldn't necessarily keep me from buying some books this way for the convenience but still I'd have to say the system is in need of much work.
final paragraph says it all
no change in legislation is either required or desirable as current legislation appears to cover this very well.
if they wanted
to take advantage of the publicity I would think any name with "jobs" in the title would have been a good first alternate
um
sorry but even if you and your chums were a representative sample...one in eleven is actually a lot of people
So
those silly bible chaps translated the names wrong. It wasn't War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death at all it was actually Gash, Bubbles, Stinky and Oops!
Really?
Oxygen and water are non-critical supplies?
Wonder if it's the old feet/metres mix up.
Posted in Android phones invade the world
hmm...well
...apparently there's about 40 million iphones in the world so I make that 250 days to match that plus whatever it then takes to match the level they are still selling at ...say 6 million a quarter?...call it an extra 60 days?
Posted in Apple flogs 3m iPads in 3 months
I congratulate them on their sales
but if I hear the phrase "magical device" one more time I may gag. Please somebody sue them under the trade descriptions act...the case has been opened now and after close examination there were found to be absolutely no demons, elves, fairies, brownies or any other kind of magical creature powering it. Unless they have somehow managed to incorporate recycled Unicorn Spam into the plastic? It's not magic or magical, it's just another device and not a particularly advanced one either so fuck off now for fuck's sake.
I need a "scream" icon.
well
if you compare their animation with animations of the observed slick to date they don't really tie together at all well although it's true the observed slick can't take into account the lighter, better mixed fractions which would probably behave more like the simulation. It still seems unnecessarily apocalyptic though.
Posted in Arctic microbes 'could survive on Mars'
excellent photo caption
Title says it all. I'm probably a bit simple. Still chortling to myself :¬)
"productise?"
Really?
Posted in Apple iPad
re missing option
I would have liked a "meh" thumb. I am sure it's very nice and if somebody gave me one I wouldn't throw it away but I'm just not that bothered...maybe it's just not magical enough :¬D
Posted in Mobile Broadband Best Buys
Redesign the dongles PLEASE
I'd like to know if there is a practical reason why every one of these things sticks straight out from the USB like it's been at the viagra? Seriously, a sideways facing USB connector would leave a much smaller opportunity for stuffing the thing up with a careless swipe, is there an issue with signal interference or something?
It's the Field Of Dreams principle
If you queue the print job, printing will come.
Posted in Twitter bomb joker found guilty
Untitled
Wrong wrong wrong. Saying a thing...or thinking a thing... isn't the same as doing a thing. By all means _investigate_ if it is suspected to be a genuine and credible threat and then if that investigation finds proof bring a prosecution. In their own words and in the minds of every normal person it clearly wasn't a credible threat in this case. I find it extraordinary that they continued such an obviously spiteful prosecution and even more incredible that having done so it wasn't simply dismissed once it got to court. Ludicrous.
oh really?
How many four digit numbers can you remember? Almost nobody would have trouble remembering one four digit number if that were the only number you were ever being asked to remember but that isn't the case is it? Once you have two or three credit cards and a couple of debit cards, then add in numerous much longer passwords for various online services plus back-up ID questions and answers and it pretty quickly becomes a phone-book full of supposedly secure things to remember - and don't forget that then you are also expected to change those things on a regular basis to "ensure security". All of which is why so many people don't do the things they should. They don't memorise everything, they write it down, or let the browser remember, or just use the same password all the time, or their birthday, or their name, or any of the many other apparently daft security nullifying tactics that enable theft and fraud to be accomplished much more easily through social engineering than hacking. PIN based security, at least in its current form, is nothing but a tactic to put the blame in a weak system back on people instead of businesses so they can keep their insurance premiums down which is why it is so extremely disappointing to see a supposedly consumer rights based organisation taking this tack.
sigh
Tattooing passwords on your forehead where everyone else can see them is a security risk say high level boffins in yet another pointless statement of the bleedin' obvious. The thing is chaps in your whizzo world of wonderment where everyone and everything is made super secure by remembering endless strings of otherwise unmemorable letters and digits - deliberately obscure so they bear no relation to anything else and cannot be guessed - people like me who seem to have been suffering from Alzheimer's since they were old enough to need a memory for things end up forced to write the bloody things down. Sorry for being human and all that
pft
It seems to me that since they had already published the name of their "source," any attempts to then hide behind laws put in place to protect journalistic integrity are on very shaky ground. I think the warrant will stand.
