Posts by Jason Togneri

@ Mike Bird 1

Erm, measuring fatness by BMI has long been debunked as inaccurate and basically utter bollocks, there being hundreds of factors it doesn't take into account and whatnot.

Try this, for example: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14483512/

El Reg vulture logo in IT Crowd

Found it! In "Calendar Geeks", 13:52, on the shelf by the door just as Moss re-enters after his "holiday" which nobody noticed.

http://www.filecore.net/mince/it_crowd_reg.jpg

@Matt 58

"no need other than to make DX10 cards cheap as chips for your average gamer."

Sounds like a good plan for me, given that I only swapped my P4/2GB/N6600 for a dual-core system last Christmas - and that only due to bad caps on the P4's board. Anything that drives down the price of circa-2007 technology can only be good for me, since I'm living a perpetual 3-4 years behind the technology curve... when C2D came out, I'd only just gotten a P4. When i7 came out, I'd only just gotten C2D. I'm sure that when I get an i9, some equally amazing step forward will already have long since trumped it...

@ Steve Evans

Don't worry about it - I've given these people enough real science, but they don't seem interested in going with anything other than coinage or frozen treats.

Anyway, back to the story: after thinking about it a bit more, I don't think the battery (or at least, a later design of it) would sole consists of S-35, since they say it would last thousands of years. The other option for this battery is that they have a chain of decays, where either the end product is S or the start product is S. Looking at the chart, I don't see any obvious chains that could be used, but it is possible - if there was a long lived mother nuclide, which would give a constant supply of a shorter lived daughter, then you could have a battery lasting a really long time. I can really see this technology going place.

At all the "oh noes what about the terrible nuclear waste problem": you really don't have a clue what you're talking about, do you? There are plenty of articles and studies about it out there; go and find some.

"To know your enemy, you must learn to think like your enemy."

Communication is, indeed, the first line of tech support. Most of the time it's a simple, common problem that is well known. Easy to fix. The problem is, YOU are the tech expert - not the luser at the other end. They won't know the right words, terms, or acronyms. Asking them about IP addresses will be met with blank silences, while their gibbering on about "numbers with dots" might cause a few blank expressions at your end. You have to think like them. You have to think: "If I didn't know anything about IT, and I were six years old, and I were slightly retarded, how would I describe this problem?" Bingo.

There has to be more empathy in both directions. Lusers must try to take the vagueness of their description into account - no more of "There was an error box, yes, but I just clicked OK and don't remember what it said!" from the users; if you want respect, you have to earn it by being helpful and showing at least a little common sense. In the other direction, less of "Does the flargle connect to the splange, or do you get a #1682?" (for this is how it sounds to the luser) from the tech guys, arrogantly asserting their knowledge and expertise over the mere mortals up in the offices. Empathy, people, empathy.

Online behaviour

Yes and no. I'll start off by adding that what the students are doing with confidential data is wrong, and should be punished. However, on the one hand, you have publicly-available material on your employees. On the other hand, they're entitled to their private, free time unrelated to their job - and if they choose to spend this online, in private sites, then why should the employer be allowed to be involved? Of course, the easy solution to this is:

1) use a username that doesn't relate to you, personally, on sites like YouTube. Nobody will know who you are.

2) on sites like Facebook, where most people use their real names, simply don't leave your profile open to viewing by "anybody", and don't add potential employers to your friends list!

One final issue is this one of employers actively checking up. That is wrong, and should be disallowed. What if they check my gardening club, or my basketball team, or my local Linux user group? Are they really allowed to go snooping around in my private life and interviewing my childhood friends? Hell no. They're not allowed to do it in real life and they shouldn't be allowed to do it online. As they say, "even the Queen has to use the toilet" - we're all human, and people do silly things IN THEIR OWN PRIVATE TIME, away from clients and bosses. We can't allow that to be taken away.

@ Brian Miller

"At some point there needs to be some motivation to getting a completely working product out the door. Apple and Microsoft do this"

Cue all the fanatic, foaming-at-the-mouth Microsoft (and, possibly, Apple) hating commentards determined to me a point about Microsoft (and, possibly, Apple) never having released a completely working product, inevitable nods towards Vista, exploding iMacs, etc etc etc.

I, for one,

...welcome our USB 3.0 driven overlords.

As for "slouching towards Bethlehem", there's something in there vaguely reminiscent of the ending of the Pratchett/Gaiman novel, "Good Omens".

Department of Redundant Department

I don't know which is scarier; that health organisations in the US that use encryption will no longer be obliged to notify clients of breaches, or that they named an act the "Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health" Act, including a redundancy, just so its initials spelled "HITECH".

Well...

Judging by the farce when Bush was first elected, I wonder how many people's brains suffer from "hanging chads"?

Exciting stuff indeed

But exciting or otherwise, I have to ask: wouldn't the job title be "exolunologist"?

@ Aino / sounds like 'anal'

I dunno about Sony/SonyEricsson, but in Finland, "Aino" (pronounced "eye-no") is probably one of the oldest female names and is still in common use today, with over 66,000 recorded uses of the name in the last century alone. It certainly doesn't look or sound like "anal" in any language I'm familiar with, although I'll admit, I can't see why they used it here.

@ M. B. / unplugged monitor

Don't you see, that's why they need to "empower their people with the IT tools they need". The unempowered never learn to RTFM, try turning it off and on again, or see if it's plugged in.

@ AC / NT kernel

"We made just some basic adjustments on the 25 year old windows NT kernel"

Um, no. NT3 -> NT4 -> NT5 -> NT6. It's a 25-year-old kernel *line*, but they've actually altered the kernel substantially during that time.

Back more on topic-ish: XP is good for legacy hardware (and come on, C2D is four years old now itself). But it's a legacy OS, and was originally coded/launched almost a decade ago! You people are stuck in the early 2000s where Windows 98 and the P3 were legacy, 2000 was recent, and XP and the P4 are new. C2D and 64-bit were amazing futuristic things just being launched. That's all many years in the past! Get your head out of the little pink cloud you're in and look around you. C2D is four years old, Vista is three years old. Times move, and you have to move with them!

Umm

Didn't we already see this back in 2001, with the News of the World's "name and shame" campaign? In which, among others, a paedeatrician's house was attacked because she was known as a "paed, uh, something"? People with identical names to known paedophiles were attacked, in cases of mistaken identity? It's a well-known fact that "common" sense isn't very common these days, sadly. Problems with this app?

1) people identified as paedophiles may, in fact, be mis-identified

2) the information may be totally incorrect altogether

3) the paedophile may have moved away since the last update

4) it's possible that any real paedophile may have travelled some distance from his or her house before looking for targets

I could go on, but that makes me think about the state of humanity today, which in turn just makes me want to cry. Time for a beer.

@ Andrew Moore / balloons

I was about to suggest balloons too. What I'm picturing is a sloping launch ramp so that the PARIS is always in a pointing-downwards position. The only thing stopping it from sliding off and launching is the balloon. When the balloon bursts, the plane slides free, problem solved. The only possible danger is entanglement on balloon fragments, but I'm picturing the balloon restrained from underneath the lip of the bottom of the ramp, so it will fall underneath while the PARIS slides past. Plausible?

Cyberdyne

Brilliant. Shouldn't this be filed under Rise Of The Machines?

Oh...

So they're bringing F@H to the masses? Been there, done (and still doing) that. Old news, really, although nice to see it's getting some more publicity.

A reduction in spam

Well, the legitimate net users in West Africa will certainly have a reduction in spam for the next week!

Bitchy

"Reports that Coca-Cola are developing a £5000 premium can to provide a suitable mixer for the American market are unconfirmed."

Nasty! Don't feed the trolls! >:-D

- a whisky enthusiast ex-pat Scot

Idiots

"I was actually surprised that the other people would keep their email and work data on an internet-facing host."

Yes, and idiots putting vital systems on internet-facing hosts (or networks) are the reason that the Merkins are so concerned about their power network being hacked. Honestly, if it's not for public use, don't put it on (or immediately behind) a public network!

Additional comments

Further to my previous comments, I would note another reviewer's comment about kayaking and using a camera mount. I have done this many times (one picture per minute for a whole-day trip... is a lot of pictures, thank goodness for 16GB SDHC) and I use this wonderful mount, which was something like £40 from an Amazon Marketplace seller:

Cullmann 1003 suction monopod: http://www.digitalstreet.nl/images/Cullmann_CN1003.jpg

It's great for mounting at the very front (pointing backwards) or very back (pointing forwards) of a kayak, and we've also mounted it at the front of a kayak for use in a swimming pool, and recorded video of us practicing various eskimo roll and rescue techniques. The transition from above-water to underwater goes smoothly on the video, and it's clear and easy to see things throughout. I would, however, agree that it's an annoyance that it doesn't have positive buoyancy - make sure it's always tied to something solid! Program mode is excellent and very flexible.

Geography

For us:

USA = Politically, the middle segment of North America, between Mexico and Canada.

For them:

UK = United Kingdom. Comprised of Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

GB = Great Britain. An island, comprised of Scotland, England and Wales

Ireland = An island, comprised of the Republic of Ireland, an independent country (known locally as Eire) and Northern Ireland, a province of the UK.

England = One part of the UK, to the south of Scotland and to the east of Wales. While it is true that all of the English are also British, t is incorrect to refer to the British as 'English', as only those from England are 'English'. Similarly, Scots and Welsh are British, but they are not English.

Scotland = A semi-autonomous nation to the north of England, part of the UK, with its own parliament, police forces, educational infrastructure, native language (not used much anymore though), historical background and culture, etc. Scottish language, history and culture branches off from the Vikings and Celts, while English language, history and culture comes predominantly from the French and Romans.

Wales = A pseudo-autonomous nation to the west of England, sharing many things but having a strong regional identity and its own official, if unpronounceable, language.

The Isle of Man, Gibraltar, Jersey, Gurnsey = unmaintained Crown dependencies.

Commonwealth = What's left of the British Empire. A free association of 53 nations from around the world that were once colonies of Great Britain, including Canada and Australia.

The real burning question is...

... since when did "a" and "p" become legitimate contractions of "am" and "pm"?

I suppose it's a Twitter thing, they need to squeeze as much as possible into the equivalent of a single SMS. Silly though, why not just use 24-hour clock and you could use an established convention (instead of inventing a stupid-looking bastardisation of one) and still use exactly as many - or, indeed, fewer - characters. Such as 0012 (four characters) instead of 0:12a (five characters) or 2345 (four characters) instead of 11:45p (six characters). And don't give me that crap about "not everybody is familiar with 24-hour time", that might have worked in the '80s but it just isn't true anymore.

Immunity!

Like any dangerous substance, the best way to let your body build up an immunity is to expose yourself to it in small quantities, on a regular basis...

@ Sooty

"It's the same as a computer, you don't need to know about the internals of it to type a letter in word, but if you want to program one, it becomes more important."

Err... not in most cases. If you're programming kernel-level code, maybe, but in most situations people who write various types of software (including operating systems) haven't the foggiest about what's actually inside the magic box they're using, and how it works.

What's wrong?

I don't see the usual reams of "But why not switch to Linux/Unix/BSD/Mac, it doesn't need as much blah blah and it's fast and light and blah blah" fanboi dribbling. Are you all ill?

As for SSDs, make them last longer and cost less and I might consider it. For now, I'll struggle with the bottleneck - for me, it really doesn't affect performance enough to be particularly bothersome.

I thought El Reg was for people who knew something about IT

@ Lionel Baden: good solution, let's wait until somebody steals our bank details or make us part of a DDoSing botnet and *then* we'll start cleaning it up. Never heard the phrase "prevention is better than cure"?

@ John Smith: you probably just fell for an old trick where your browser reflects your system environment variables back at you, and nobody else would see those details. That trick's been around since Windows 95 and has great shock value, but little else.

@ NoScript haters: yes, it's not perfect, but neither is configuring a firewall to allow apps in/out every time I have a new app. Shall we just bother with firewalls either, because they're inconvenient? Oh god, heaven forbid we have a little bit of good old fashioned effort combined with a little bit of good old fashioned common sense, that would surely be too much. Let's just stick with one-click-idiot-level-simple and nice shiny websites that look pretty and deliver malware, than have to make even the slightest, most basic bit of effort. I, too, hated NoScript when I first used it. I've reinstalled it since and taken a little bit of time to figure out how it all works, and now I love it. Grow up and stop viewing the internet in terms of black and white.

Three words...

TRUECRYPT

TRUECRYPT

TRUECRYPT

Sheesh. I can't believe that these people *still* don't know the basics of securing sensitive data. I'm just glad I don't have any insurance, pension, bank accounts, or presence with the government. Hmm, where's my tinfoil hat?

Here's my favourite Windows bug...

PCWorld.com notes that "SP2 repairs nearly 700 nagging Vista bugs and security updates.". It's a shame we don't have curious but interestesting things like this:

"Computer Randomly Plays Classical Music"

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B261186&x=16&y=15

@ Darren Coleman

No, he didn't get the doodle for free. He got it - and some extra USB cables - in place of a power brick. Not sure if it's a fair exchange; I'm sure I'd rather have power for my shiny new tech toy. The doodle *and* the PSU, now, that might have been worthwhile.

@ Sarah Bee

Altogether now, everybody: awwwwwwwwwwwwww!

@ Ash

While correct, you information is common knowledge and has no apparent direct connection to the article. What was the point of the information? Or were you simply alluding to the fact that you could get an immediate diagnosis based on how active/noisy a patient was being?

Awwwww

And here was me hoping to replay the classic BBC/Archimedes adventure game! It was ace, and Repton 3 was undeniably the best.

For those not in the know: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNRlnNIOXwk

and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repton_(computer_game)

and ooh, a PC version (by the original publisher, no less)! http://www.superiorinteractive.com/repton/

Have you tried...

...turning her off and on again?

Alternatives

Well, I'm not sure about VR, but I certainly agree with the doomed scenario. With computers becoming smaller form factor and yet increasingly more powerful, coupled with flashROM-based mini operating systems (such as Asus' ExpressGate) which can boot in a matter of seconds, I can see convergence continuing. Instant-on access to your hardware, pop in a disk (or load an image from HDD/flash storage) and play, or do a full boot to $OS_of_your_choice for other computing tasks. Yes, I can easily see a computer becoming an all-in-one device to replace consoles, but as for VR? Not for a while, I'm guessing.

@ Errr

"They had a terabyte drive during the Clinton years? ... I assume this (amazingly advanced for it's time) removable drive ..."

First comment was predictably brain-dead. The staff there were busy DIGITISING Clinton-era data, so presumably they bought their own hard drives to put all these terabytes of freshly-digitised information onto - and since the information wasn't already digitised, we can presume it wasn't resident on any hard drive during the Clinton era. Sheesh. Try actually reading the article.