Posts by DT 95 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Nov 2008
Do my eyes deceive me; or is El Reg finally admitting that we might have a looming energy crisis? Too busy focusing on the MMGW distraction to miss the major issue of energy crunch?
Hmm, can't think *why* provision for droughts is being ramped up, any suggestions Lewis?
Even with the juice, it's naive to think this tech. solution is a cure all. The main factors affecting starving/thirsty/malnourished countries are still the same things they've always been; money and political will.
A smear campaign? A person can either pay their bills or they can't. Sounds like they've discredited themselves...given they're broke. Geddit, no credit = discredited! LOL
What are you suggesting, that they aren't really bankrupt, that the charges are fugesi? A conspiracy theory in which the establishment has bankrupted them? Pass the tinfoil hat, it'll make a servicable ashtray for whatever it is you're smoking!
Couldn't possibly be simply that these guys are as dodgy as the website is, oh no.
The point isn't about his appearance- it's about his insecure self image, the evident manipulation, and the very public mid-life crysis (and new found fear of being deep-fried and eaten if his singing and dancing isn't up to scratch).
Tthe uproar about Gordon Brown's you tube clip, wasn't about his double chin,or his glass eye, but the creepy false smile and put on mannerisms.
Equally if Prince Charles started wearing deerstalker hats indoors at public functions, or headbands to hold in his ears, a good mocking in the press would most definitely be in order.
@ty Why would anyone buy a mac to run windows on it? Unless you're tacitly saying that OSX has limitations?
@Gilles You're "pretty sure" about the installation process of an application onto an as yet unreleased o/s? Is it that you think "creative sorts" are that thick or that you find windows *that* difficult?
@all
So an early adopter, of the kind who has switched operating systems twice in the last couple of years ->vista->OSX is unlikely to be lured by anther OS? I disagree. They sound exactly the group who'd be likely lured away by the next big thang, be it from M$ or anyone else.
Complaining about the donination of Kang when you clearly love Kodos! Same shit, different suit, must be nice to get paid to troll, I'm surprised you didn't mention the zune!
Perhaps M$ should make a locked down mobile operating system that only allows "approved" programs bought an outlet from which they take a cut...
Current USB2 can hit 30MB/s - about half the average speed for data transfer from a regular HD.
Backing up gigs to a terabyte class external drive (which are often 5200rpm) will be "lightening"? Unless it's raid 0 or an external SSD...it will still be great to see times halved; but removing the usb bottleneck just reveals the HD bottleneck.
So, with all these references to afghanistan...how many tanks have been lost to RPGs there?
er, none. Contrast that to how many troops have died because they didn't have the basics, like body armour? Not better to spend the money where it would protect the most number of soliders, rather than the highest value kit?
Many troops lost to homebrew shaped charges and assorted booby traps,friendly fire and so forth, but the numbers of taliban who will attempt to take on a tank are tiny and diminishing - basic darwinism at play.
Not saying the cloth isn't effective in that one situation, but give it a week and some bright spark at will have invented a two stage RPG. 'tis the way the arms industry works; a self perpetuating cycle of bigger guns, better armour, bigger guns...ed-209 enforcement 'bot in a frock, shark in a waistcoat with frickin lasers
Bloody Eu, what will they be doing next, setting maximum working hours with their "time directives" and being the last legal barrier between us and the likes of Phorm.
I'll do you a deal, I won't recycle comments if you don't recycle articles from other sources and go and do some actual journalism?
Would you test a new bullet proof vest by letting people shoot the test dummy in the head? No?
Why's that?
You only test the vulnerability of the technical parts of the system you've control over. DUH!
Supposing you've been sitting in the office writing your own little stored procedure, app, function or whatever, and I'm supposed to write a unit test plan for it... is it robust code? You're pretty confident it is, but then I appear with a bucket of water and dump it over your pc. Oops. Your code didn't allow for that! Back to the drawing board. You waterproof your pc, it passes test one. Test two arrives; the proverbial man in a duck costume wielding a big mallet.
If they were testing the vulnerability of the users to manipulation, it would be a different test. Bog standard hackers don't generally kidnap an SA and pull out his fingernails until he gives up root access, and that there's no 100% guarentee of anything is a given,
However it is a far better approach than employing hackers-gone-straight full time; tapping into a larger pool of resources and not paying anything for failed attempts.
While it doesn't prove anything it does suggests that the sum of money being offered isn't sufficient compensation for the effort required. In the same way as if a safe manufacturer offered a unclaimed 100k prize for cracking their safe, I'd feel confident leaving a lesser sum in it. Conversely, even if it was cracked, and they were forced back to the drawing board, I'd appreciate both their honesty and their pro-active goals of improvement.
It's patently nonsense to say that nothing can be learned, or that there's no value to it. At the very least you've increased their brand awareness.
Why the quotation marks around "up to"? If you were quoting directly you'd say "up to 20Mbit/s"
The "up to" part isn't in doubt by anyone, is it? Everyone whose ever had broadband knows what "up to" means. Heck, anyone who's a basic graps of English should know.
It's just lazy journalism; BBC feeds are the worst for it. I had a look just then and found
Al-Qaeda 'kills British hostage', last week it was "man dies in balloon crash"
Where's the contention? Heck, either they did or they didn't. BBC can't be too confident in their own journalism if they're putting quotation marks around the entire crux of the story. What, is Al-Q going to sue for defamation or something? It's the written word equivalent of insituation by putting on a whiney voice and parroting what's been said; instead of questioning it directly in a sceptical adult fashion.
Include "glittery features" -> be accused of including superfluous bloat unsuitable for a notebook & of selling people stuff they don't need.
Don't include "glittery features"..... get accused of trying to upsell
Include a media player -> get slapped with a lawsuit and slated for anti-competative monopolistic behaviour
Don't include a media player.... and the author claims a PC should "rightly" have a media player bundled with the O/S? Wonder what the folks at RealNetworks would have to say about that?
Bottom line is, some will complain about windows 7 either way; even if they contradict their own previous views ;( vis-a-vis attitude to aforementioned competition lawsuit).
Cue the first non-MS employee to rejurgitate a comment about "source code similiarities"...
Can’t have it both ways….if DRM is being claimed to lead honest people into piracy; it can’t simultaneously be claimed that piracy doesn’t cost sales.
DRM is a convenient psychological justification for not making a purchase, but if you’re really standing on “principals” (LOL); why not have nothing to do with the product, full stop, legitimate or otherwise? It’s the classic transference of responsibility. “They made me do it”. No, you chose to, because your principals don’t extend to a total boycott of DRM product, but a rather convenient middle situation where you get the product in a form you would purchase, but at zero cost.
So what if it’s screwing EA instead of the taxpayer? EA pays employees who pay tax, has shareholders who pay tax, and itself pays corporation tax, not forgetting the VAT on every sale. So this notion that the act of ripping off a corporation is somehow contained within a moral bubble where only “fat cats” suffer the consequences; it’s demonstrable drivel. The self-deluding excuses are those which any amoral double-thinking self-serving politician would be proud of. Having your house and not paying for it, having your cake and eating it.
@a/c you missed out the other vital steps
6) Migrate all your old data.
7) Take a course on learning how to use linux
8) Spend a month attempting to find/learn programs which did the same as your previous windows programs.
9) Spend another week learning/re-configuring your machine to dual boot as you realise that half your business/engineering/accounting software and none of your games will run on linux
10) Another half day to give up, uninstall linux and reinstall all the apps you were used to.
11) five seconds to click on the link provided
Or you could just skip to stage 11.
Linux might be fine for surfing tinternet, hosting websites and doing all manner of techy things that get you guys wet, but frankly it's niche. Computers are for running software and last time I checked gloating isn't a "killer app" , but an effective way of putting people off your little club.
It's called the "internet".
...and it contains all sorts of useful information about local taxi firms, news, weather and, wow, even restauarants in YOUR area.
It strikes me as completely contradictory to show off about how good a browsing experience your phone has...at the same time as pushing services which abstract freely available data from the internet at a price. Can't be that easy to use if people will pay for this sort of "added value", and I use the term very loosely.
Seems like a positive step if yahoo are going to do this server side and make their websites easier to use, rather than producing some memory grabbing app, but at least their previous offerings were free!
The transfer to digital was a missed opportunity. All digiboxes should have a CAM slot in them, many do. Beeb broadcasts should be subscription based and encrypted, like an extra Sky package.
That would give everyone the freedom of being able to watch TV without having to buy a license. As for it being difficult to implement iplayer control? Hell no, you already have a license number and they've got your address, a simple process of device registration just like with itunes.
As for paying for what you watch? I wait with baited breath, for an influx of pirate bay freetards with their nonsensical ethos of "free" digital content for all, despite the fact everyone else pays for it. It's equally greedy to want something for nothing.
If it's a public service, would you rip the piss out of the NHS, or the dole system? If it's a business you'd expect to pay for it. Criticise them for their content, fair enough, but you've an apprentice level of accumen if you think that allowing your product to be consumed for free is any way to run a business.
It's not the job of the license payer to subsidise programs for torrent kiddies who are cheap or broke, or high on some deluded quasi-communistic trip re: shit they think they can get away with stealing - yet they display rather less social responsibility to legitimate consumers.
"Stuart Blackman is a science writer and co-editor of the Climate Resistance blog."
So, not a denier, just "challenging the consensus".
Kinda like an Inteligent Design fan saying "I'm not a creationist, I'm just challenging the consensus of evolution".(!!!) Attempts to pre-empt such an analogy in your article, does nothing to reduce its pertinance.
Besides; MMGW is small potatoes compared to the real issue; an energy gap between supply and demand as carbon fuel is depleted. I'll happily ignore MMGW, take it right out the equation, deny it completely, and can still built a highly cogent argument in favour of a number of policies on a long term, economic, social and indeed moral basis. If the greens are wrong, and lets hope they are; most "green" policies still provide better long term benefits; less dependence on fossil fuels, preserved biodiversity, sustainable food production, fewer wars over resources, and ultimately a better standard of living. Dependancy on foriegn oil and gas from volatile countries? Industrially pooping where we eat? Emptying the larder? It doesn’t take a scientist or an environmentalist to realise these are bad ideas, does it? Abandoning concensus is a patently stupid idea, getting major players on board at an early stage is key to approaching a major transitional event like peak oil. Failing to plan is planning to fail. Not wanting everyone to "revert to the stone age" is the whole point of getting behind alterative, efficient tech and making best use of current resource.
Even if the scientific consensus on GW was the exact opposite of present; why wouldn't we hedge our bets, given reduced carbon dependency and sets us in good stead for the transition? That finite resources are being depleted isn't an "if" argument like MMGW, it's undebatable. It's a "when" event and the global implications are clear. MMGW or not, the policy of “carry on regardless” will in the long run, mess us up in numerous other ways.
Personal consumption isn't an inalienable right which overrides all other concerns, and the liberty of businesses to turn profit doesn't override the wider societal interest. Heck, there's even folk who disingenuously deny and resist change as a terrible inconvienience, whilst secretly betting on dying before any of these problems materialise!
@Mat Child
I don't hear you arguing against the mobile phone ruling itself? Is that too going too far? You didn't say, but you did give a classic absurdist "slippery slide" argument, which can be applied to everything with equally silly implications. By the same "logic", a "Quiet please" sign in a library is a precursor to a totalitarian state.
All the examples you gave are already covered under the law "driving without due care and attention" which is applied, in the most part, with discretion. There's a safe way to have a conversation in a car (a passenger usually provides a 2nd pair of eyes). There's no safe way to use a mobile.
Yes, people acting immaturely require a nanny. Only children are forgiven for not understanding, or being answerable for, the consequences of their actions.
Advocating full personal responsibility, necessitates treating people as adults; with sentences to match to seriousness of the consequences. Death by dangerous driving entailing the same punishment as manslaughter by any other deadly implement.
As for cops doing it too; that's just the "two wrongs" reasonings. They shouldn't be doing it either.
The French government will allow it, they're far more libertarian than the UK at present, so Labour will have to lump it. Even if it's officially banned and only offered in France, setting up a foreign billing account and importing a LNB transceiver (or whatever it's called) would be trivial.
Murdock is going to have kittens! The tabloids may well go nuts over the "security risk" imposed by the French, but as Brussels won't buy the argument, it's demonstrable hot air. Heck, his papers can't demand the UK "go Chinese" and start shooting down satellites as they're needed to bring us The Simpsons, and Fox "News"!
With this and TOR networks, the government's plan of internet monitoring is only going to catch stupid, bumbling, comedy terrorists, the "Bean-Ladins" who poses more of a danger to themselves, oh and members of the general public who have broken local council bylaws or joined a club on Jackie "McCarthy" Smith's blacklist.
@Goat Jam
I've not tried product X, but watch as I attempt to preemptively dismiss any compliments it gets as "fanboi-ism".
Comments like that taint the authority of that whole page of tedious, recycled "history of business o/s" pseudo-analysis. And on that basis, I dismiss your dismissal. Given your icon choice and last statment, I call "fanboi" and thus, by your own logic, render your post null and void.
@Paul C. Hartley
You'd rather have a BK because Micky D's is rubbish... lol @ junk food snobbery; I'm lovin' it! That's like the Trainspotting scene with Begbie; pint in one hand, fag in the other saying "there's no way I'd fill my veins with that sh*te"
@Nic Brough
Since when are peppers vegetables?
@All
So what is the non-emergency police number? Does anyone know it?
More people in Scotland speak Polish, Urdu, Italian, or indeed highschool level French or German...why aren't they being served?
Anyone seen the hilarious "Scots" version of wikipedia? Sparse beyond belief; rife with inconsistant, nay invented, spelling*; whilst the language is ideal for Burn's poetry and Oor Wullie, it doesn't work when describing technical concepts; many of which appear to be beyond the ken of the scribes involved.
*deliberately bastardised to make it "diferynt"
This bull sold to the populus by the Scottish government; an idea of some homogenius shortbread tin history where everyone wore kilts and spoke Gaelic; its akin to suggesting that every Englishman's ancestor spoke Cornish or morris danced. Still, that's politics for you, placating a vocal minority and tapping into easy veins of ill informed nationalism for votes.
Feel sorry for customers; other than the chump who goes to the trouble of building a RAID5 setup before flash bricking every drive simultaneously.
Still, a return to base fix isn't the end of the world, preferable to trying franticly to recover data from something ridden with the clicks of death, corrupted, or barely spinning up.
Damage to their rep?
It's not as if no other major H/W player hast had their own problems with exploding batteries, cases which tarnish or suchlike; and I can think of several large corporations would tell customers that firmware flashing is done at one's own risk... and to go fish (if their lawyers thought they could get away with it). Ideal it ain't, but compared to other companies?
Those whose drivers don't work with machines on a 64 bit O/S with > 2Gb of RAM, or memory stick manufacturers whose return policy appears to exclude any fault caused by software or indeed hardware, (leaving what, emotionally damaged products?) They also offer a 30 day satisfaction guarantee, provided you don't actually open the packaging! Mobile phone manufacturers who warn you that they'll have to flash the firmware on your 'phone if you send it in for repair; then refuse to repair the fecking thing because you'd already flashed it - using their firmware! Headphone manufacturers who generously expect you to pay for overseas insured return postage, only recognising items purchased for "official outlets" and as for obtaining an RMA for anything purchased through ebay or Amazon...
Can't think of any alterior motive of Vision Express reccomending that everyone gets their eyes checked asap.
20/20 vision is pretty average, just over halfway down the chart.
Having 20/10 vision is the schizle. HD -24/7.
Still, can't fault their cynical marketing, doing shit like giving laser surgery prices "per eye".
Which one eyed individual is going to risk their remaining good eye for the convienience of being monacle free?
@Colin Mountford
I don't get the el Reg attitutude of "Uh, progress sucks, because it doesn't look like they've fixed everything in one go.
You're right about the depth of the 'phone limiting the pixel size, but that's only because of the constaints of current lens. However, wouldn't a curved surface have a greater area, facilitating larger pixels (especially if it didn't require mounted at a point focus, a larger CCD) thereby addressing the noise issue?
Anyway, who said this technology was exclusively for camera 'phones or a miraculous cure all? Yes, it's only a concept at the moment , yes it might only be a stepwise improvement. It doesn't mean they shouldn't have bothered because you couldn't think of a useful application for it.
Reduce the number and required precision of lenses in larger cameras could make them cheaper, smaller and with less distortion. What's not to like about that?
...was an often heard argument during discusions of Securom cursed products. I guess Apple is lucky that all those people bitching about the unfair lock-down haven't all got a way of obtaining an identical, cracked version for free. (cough torrents)
I wonder if anyone who would normally take a stand against unfair UAE on moral grounds, has buckled and actually purchase one of these things for just this reason? It would make an interesting VIM diagram, I-phone owners in one circle, Securom rantaholics in the other. Given such a diagram looks like a pair of buttocks, the unfortunate present at the intersection would clearly be an arsehole. That isn't the sound of gas escaping but in fact is the noise a warranty makes as it evapourates.
If the state holding onto means of personal identification is an infringement of a person's rights, why does this not also include things such as a council tax role, school register, in fact anywhere you're supposed to identify yourself to an authority? Is knowing the state has your DNA really more detriminent to a person's "privacy" than knowing that unauthorisated photos are visible to people you don't like on facebook?
Perhaps we should also have a device that wipes policemen's memory; anytime they arrest anyone innocent, the entire event is erased; so that that future encounters aren't prejudiced.
Walking, talking, face recognising, CCTV on legs which an attentive beat cop is. Bog standard, but effectively does the same jobs as yer high tech "enemy of the state" gadgets which get everyone twitchy. Is annoymity in public a human right too?
Excuse me if I don't celebrate when a wife "harasser" admonished by wife (a tale oft' heard in the backstory of, well, Toben and countless others) has his particulars removed from the system.
erm, just wondering who the enemy is this time?
Can't be the terr-rrists; they haven't got a navy. Which 2nd rate country is it exactly which has a navy but no nukes, which poses this threat to us, this time? Besides, what the f*ck is it they're going to do with us, once they've invaded? Give us identity cards, watch us with cameras and bring out a host of new authoritarian new laws? Vive la difference.
Which foriegn leadership can't we trust not to invade Blighty; I mean, we're an obvious target with our abundant fertile land, wide open spaces and plethora of natural resources! (cough)
Why is it not considered a patriotic duty to strive to save lives by preventing our own less than trustable leadership from spending our money on fancy killing-toys, before sending our lads out to kill and be killed on some bullshit premise?
example in point;
@Muscleguy
"holes"? Did you read the article? It's a conventional physical switch miniturised; so how is terminology related to transistors relevant? Maybe some physics genius can enlighten us as to which quantum effect could possibly flick a sub 10nm graphene swtich, but given the incorrect use of terms; I call BS on that particular concern too.
"'ll wait a while before I jump in on that technology thanks."
Because in your expert opinion it's flawed by being vulnerable to static... as opposed to er, what uninsulated storage are you currently using?!!
Correction: 45mn --> 10mn has 20.25x denser component packing. If layered; which the single bit data density would apparently better facilitate; 90x based on volume. Half it to take into account it's a single bit module; that's 45x the data in the same volume. The paper states 5-10nm, if the lower size can be eventually fabricated & layered; that’s potentialy 40x data density based on area, 360x based on volume (ignoring other factors).
Crux point still stands; what's the fecking problem some people have with tech advancements? Did I miss something? Nobody is naïve enough to think this is a dead cert, but frankly some of the detractors in this case are pretty groundless. This doesn’t need terawatts of power, or cooling to 20K to work. What's with the chumps who feel the need to point out that additional R&D is required to put this into production (no sh!t, really?) , or complain that it isn't available now.
Mine's the one with the terrabyte pen drive in the pocket.
So Eddie,
4 times smaller in one dimension, 16x more elements in the same area ~ 6yrs of Moore's law.
Only the most whiney el Reg poster could see downside of such advancements. What are you complaining about, 16x denser packing isn't acceptable to you?
I tell you what Ed, why don't you come up with something better? If you think things like this are BS; I suggest you don't buy those which reach market, and stick to your own graphene solution.
So what's more likely;
A company with a multi-million dollar research budget hasn't spotted the "obvious flaw" that someone with the "brain of a six year old" could spot?
or that they haven't announced the solution to the press?
or that the chip simply isn't designed for that purpose you're judging it on?
That, and other presumptions of individual cores not increasing in performance, and software not being optimised in the meantime; makes me wonder, given most people realise multi cores aren't an end-all solution, what is your point caller?
Over the years I've heard sp@stic@ted complaints about the most uncontraversial of developments; from new graphics cards, to new CPUs; some of them along the lines of "Great, something else I'll <have> to go and buy now". Only on this site would punters actually complain about increased bandwidth.
What, did you think there wouldn't be a catch?!!
So you get your connection throttled quicker, you get what you wanted to download quicker! Besides how much were you intending on downloading? 50Mbit that's what, 20Gb an hour at full capacity; even if you didn't have a job, even with HD content, you'd be downloading content quicker than you could consume it.
If there's spare capacity on the line at certain times which they want to make available to priority customers; why on earth shouldn't they do it? The utopian ideas of unmettered, ultra high bandwidth is utterly niave.
I'm curious, which provider isn't univerally acknowledged to be a bit rubbish? Oh please do tell, so that we all might benefit!
It's the £2 holiday complaint all over again; only idiots expect a free breakfast.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
