* Posts by Michael Warburton

23 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Sep 2007

Windows 7 to take Surface mainstream?

Michael Warburton

Widows

"Widows 7 will let you touch and poke your way through"

Only after an appropriate mourning period.

Web 2.0rhea hack mistaken for end of universe

Michael Warburton

Ted Dziuba...

...is a retard.

Take a hammer to your hard drive, shrieks Which?

Michael Warburton

Nothing new

Which? have been advising this since March last year.

http://www.which.co.uk/about-which/press/product-press-releases/which-computing-magazine/2008/03/computer-recycling-advice-rubbish.jsp

Nintendo sells metric %#@&-load of Wiis in November

Michael Warburton
Thumb Up

@David Wiernicki

You raise some good points. The Reg's standards definition unfortunately did not include measures of weight http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/24/vulture_central_standards/

I think we're long overdue a standards update.

Shuttleworth on Ubuntu: It ain't about the money

Michael Warburton

But...

...will it run on my iPhone?

Regarding Firefox I decided to try out the beta of 3.1 earlier. I downloaded the .bz2 archive, extracted it, and clicked on Firefox. Lo and behold it launched.

Terribly complicated for someone like Gordon though admittedly.

Sanyo intros 'iPhone-on-a-stick' home internet terminal

Michael Warburton

Infrared

"It even has an infrared port, so you can zap over snaps taken on your phone."

Bluetooth would be more useful, my phone doesn't have an infrared port.

Ten of the Best... Pocket Camcorders

Michael Warburton

Like the sound of the Tosh

I've looked at the various (and there seems to be a lot) Aiptek ones for a while and had considered getting one of those, but that Tosh one for £60 less looks like a bargain.

Thanks El Reg.

Nintendo to limit DSi games with DVD-style region locks

Michael Warburton

Who cares?

Nintendo consoles seem notoriously easy to hack, there'll be a CycloDS(i) card soon after launch I've no doubt. No need to worry about region locks and carry all your backed up games on a single card.

Apple ships 4GB iPod Nano instead of 16GB version

Michael Warburton

News?

I ordered a pint of Worthington's the other weekend, the barman returned with a pint of Fosters. Thankfully he too realised his mistake and promptly supplied the aforementioned pint of bitter.

I wouldn't have thought this would be something The Reg would like to report on, but now I'm not so sure.

PS4 and Xbox 720 due by 2012, says Crysis firm

Michael Warburton

Next Gen consoles

I hear a certain company is furiously working on the 3DO 2 console... er 6DO? 3DO squared? 360DO?

Apple is Fisher-Price of sound quality, says Neil Young

Michael Warburton

Nothing to do with compression codec

I'm going to quote Michael Wright up there as his comment was the most succinct and I feel is getting lost amongst all the posts moaning about lossless compression codecs...

"Dynamic range compression is real, a pain in the ears, and it happens on CDs, so Apple have got bugger all to do with it."

Go ahead encode with FLAC if you feel like it, but the fact is the vast majority of CD's these days already have shockingly bad dynamic range.

Have a read of George Graham's rant on the subject.

http://georgegraham.com/compress.html

LG plotting autumn offensive against Eee PC?

Michael Warburton

9" Display?

They're coming out with a rival to the Eee and Asus DESKTOP PC's... with a 9" display?

Ubuntu does bird beta

Michael Warburton

Hibernate/suspend

The hibernate/suspend issues are usually graphics driver related, and fixable.

See... http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com/2008/03/ati-nvidia-resume-good-news-bad-news.html

Firefox 3 beta is live

Michael Warburton

Third

Firstly, this is the third beta they've released. The article doesn't make that clear.

Secondly, it does not have "built in virus checking" it makes a call for whatever anti-virus software you have installed to initiate a scan on your downloaded files (other browsers already do this). They know there's problems with this however, hey it's a beta, and there will be the option to disable it.

Thirdly, @Alex Read so you're having a go at them now because they have beta releases? Doesn't all software? By its very nature open source software is developed by the community, it's nothing new that beta releases are available.

I use the latest Firefox 3 nightlies as my daily browser now and have done for some time. There are bugs, there's are things that aren't in there yet, and sometimes it's just plain broken. That's why it's BETA. Expect another beta before we start with the release candidates.

Faster broadband through bonding

Michael Warburton

Draytek 2820

I'm considering buying a Draytek 2820

http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/vigor2820.html

1 x ADSL WAN port, and 1 x Ethernet WAN port for either cable or into another ADSL router.

Anyone had experience with this?

Beeb iPlayer gets Firefox-friendly

Michael Warburton
Unhappy

Still no linux love

"Linux and Mac versions have been promised within two years."

Two fricking years?!

What’s in a name, asks Bodog founder Calvin Ayre

Michael Warburton

Scott Lewis

Calvin hired a PI to investigate this Scott Lewis character, makes interesting reading...

http://www.calvinayrelife.com/patent-troll-scott-w-lewis-under-investigation.html

DHS building handheld lobster spy-beam scanners

Michael Warburton

Riiiight

"this creature is able to "see" through walls of dense water obscured by silt and sand... Lobsters have limited image resolution, but possess high sensitivity and the ability to detect fast movement and the polarisation of light."

So how exactly would being able to detect fast movement through water help to detect "hidden contraband" beneath a steel floor for example? It's not April the 1st again already is it?

Apple Macs

Michael Warburton

Well...

At least they've enabled comments on this article unlike the crappy "Register Top 5 Digital SLR's". Of which only 4 are SLR's, and it also incorrectly states that for the Nikon you have to use their own brand lenses.

Where do they dig up these "experts"

Bike bonk bloke cops three years' probation

Michael Warburton

Misunderstanding

It's all a big misunderstanding, it was a old bike, chain was a little stiff, he thought if he lubricated it a bit...

Hyperic charges after disgruntled Ubuntu upgraders

Michael Warburton

Dell Laptop and 3D/Compiz effects

I'm guessing I maybe had the same problem as the author with my Dell Laptop.

My 7.04 xorg.conf worked fine... but not when I upgraded to 7.10. I could use the "nv" driver but when using the "nvidia" restricted driver (needed for compiz to work), I was just getting a blank screen no matter what I tried in my xorg.conf.

Looking through the startup logs it was detecting two DFP's (the built in laptop screen and DVI connected monitor)... but no matter what I put in the config it was saying the settings for my external monitor weren't valid and instead it "auto-detected" a resolution of 1920x1200... Which is fine for the laptop screen, but too high for my external monitor to display. The only way I managed to fix it was to add...

Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT"

...into my xorg.conf, that tells the Nvidia driver to only look for "CRT" monitors. If I then plugged the external LCD in via the 15pin VGA cable it worked perfectly.

I'm still a linux noob but I tried all sorts and no matter what I did it still reckoned the settings for the external monitor were invalid and auto-detected for the laptop screen.

787 unsafe, claims former Boeing engineer

Michael Warburton

What shape?

The tests also demonstrated that "shards of composite material released in a crash are not a shape that is easily inhaled".

What shapes are these shards then? and which shapes are the easiest to inhale?

BOFH: Building changes

Michael Warburton

Episode 31?

What happened to 30?