Posts by The First Dave

USB

Dunno about USB being better - I never had SCSI chain ask for an updated driver...

Biggest issue with SCSI was that there were at least three different connectors for every speed, so that a full box of cables required an ISO container for storage.

Mains

Since this device clearly has TWO power input sockets on the back, I would assume that it actually needs two mains sockets.

Power

I agree that pop princesses _shouldn't_ have any power, but they do have some, and I would have thought that they had far more real power than an eejit like Mark Zuckerberg, who clearly hasn't got two brain cells to rub together.

PARIS

Again, well done, but it really wasn't a paper-aeroplane anyway - despite the project logo showing a real one.

Cell / Mobile

But what you all have to remember is that the naming is more significant than at first glance: Americans refer to mobile phones as Cell Phones, so by using the word 'Mobile' in the name of the show, it was a very clear marker that it was _meant_ to be about more than just phones.

He said "it isn't mobile" not "it isn't a Cell-phone", so there is no way this was just a minor bit of semantics.

@PirateSlayer

I trust that was _meant_ to be ironic - a cyclist complaining about inattention to the rules of the road!! (Or are you one of the 15% or so that do?)

Bikes

Which is exactly why all bikes should have to display number plates in the same way as cars, trucks and busses - both front and rear, (and have proper insurance too.)

Physics

Only thing is, friction doesn't work quite like that - an increased area does NOT increase friction per se, weight is the most important factor here - is the new handset heavier or lighter, and if lighter, does that cancel out the decreased coefficient?

@AC

That's easy to explain - El Reg likes getting kit to review, so tries not to upset the manufacturers with low scores, so uses 50% as a baseline - if this were DOA, it would still have got 55%: 50% for existing, and 5% for being useful as a doorstop.

@Zimmer

Lets, face, it if we ignore IE (if only we could) then Firefox is the LAST browser to come out with something like this. Though arguably it all started with Foxpose which was pretty great, which pre-dates the features in Safari and Opera, but was itself a blatant rip off of the Expose feature of Apple's OSX.

@Wiki

Hold on just a moment and it will say something very different indeed...

" covering the most sensitive part of the cellular antenna"

What are they on about? For any antenna shape, size etc. the whole thing is important; there are no sweet spots on the wire itself, so top or bottom doesn't matter, only thing likely to have any effect is the ground plane, which can only be _improved_ with contact.

@Ivan

The first thing I though when I was that remark was that most sensible military craft will be running an awful lot _lower_ than that. Mind you, imagine the fun if you are meandering along in one of these at 100MPH and a flight of fast-jets slip beneath you. Lets see how good the attitude-control works in the jet-wash from a Typhoon or similar!

On the other hand, the entire spec sounds like someone has taken a basic idea, had it thrown back at him as impractical, and he has simply re-submitted it on the basis of doing every single bit of it much better than anyone else does at the moment - lets wait till they build it, and even one item fails to meet the required spec.

@JeffyPooh

Either your antennae knowledge is non-existent, or you are very, very bad at explaining your point, but since you say that the voltage at the ends of an antenna are very high I have to assume the former.

@AC

My current car is a Fiesta, admittedly not the largest car on the market, but bigger than my first car, which was a Mk11 Escort. The Fiesta 'only' has a 1.25 litre engine, but it can top 100MPH, which this one apparently can't, so why the hell does this thing need a 1.4? Does that indicate that this thing weighs three tonnes or something? Given that my 1.25 is about double what I need to cruise at 70MPH, the power is only needed for acceleration, which in this case comes from the battery, which is never supposed to go below 20%, surely a 1L or similar should be enough to keep this charge when on the move?

@Jonte Monkey

I take it you didn't read the piece in ElReg a day or three ago, where it was pointed out that because it is well known that most people don't read the fine print, and have no option to negotiate any way, it really isn't a contract, and anything remotely unfair can be challenged at a later date.

What Google did this time probably wouldn't get them in any trouble, but when they do it for an app that is useful to an individual, even if it does have some malware properties, then removing it without that users permission probably would be illegal.

(Disclaimer: IANA Jury - even lawyers could not give you a definitive answer on this sort of thing.)

@Moderatrix

Ae you _sure_ that is human?

@Phil Royall

Seriously Phil,

what for?

@AC

I am not sure that you are correct with this - Hollywood may produce a lot of entertainment, but so does Bollywood, and China for that matter. As a result, I doubt if the west as a whole is a net exporter, California probably is, but whatever the locals may think, there is more to the world than just the USA.

In any case, trying to base an economy on something intangible is a bad idea, hence the current banking crisis.

@Fraser

A handful of politicians may have lost their jobs, but there has been no change at all within the Civil Service, the Police, or any of the related Quango's.

untitled

A standard typewriter will have neither a CTRL or ESC key, either. Nothing but SHIFT really apart from printable characters and SPACE. No RETURN or ENTER either, though you may be able to tie the carriage return lever in to do that.

@Jerome 0

I really, really, _really_ want to be a multi-millionaire. Can I ask a judge to make it so?

Alternatively, ask yourself what it _actually_ means when a passport indicates your gender - it is not up to the French courts to start saying that particular people can now be referred to as a different gender - that is a decision for the country that they have just entered.

@oddie

These days, Dyson probably sell more machines than anyone else, but we still call them 'Hoovers' - the iPod is clearly the brand leader, but nowhere near to being a monopoly.

Call me weird, but I like things to just work, particularly when they are 'appliances' of one kind or another. As someone pointed out before, there are just as many useless apps available for iPhone as there are for Android, but at least I know that when I find something that looks usefull to me, it isn't going to kill my device, which is a very real possibility on open-access devices. If I want to do serious development of my own, then I will do it on a Linux box, but I can see no great reason for wanting to hack around on a phone.

@XP age

Actually, there are still plenty of NetBooks being sold right now, (well there were before the iPad arrived) which have XP on them by default, and still will for many more weeks.