* Posts by Tom Smith 1

15 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Aug 2009

Prisoners chucked off Facebook

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
Headmaster

Works both ways

If a prisoner can post how (s)he is doing on facebook, what's to stop everyone else from posting what a lovely time they're having whilst not being in prison?

A couple of weeks of everyone pointing out how nice it is not to have bars on their windows, and that they can just pop down the pub when they feel like it (and if they want to use the phone they don't have to smuggle it into the house up their bum), and surely the most hardened of crims will start to feel a bit down about this facebook thing.

H.264 video codec stays royalty-free for HTML5 testers

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
IT Angle

Plugin

But is there a plugin for Firefox that allows H.264 use?

Apple iPad vs netbooks: fight not over yet

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
Flame

missing the point

The main advantage $generic netbook$ has over the iTab?

Price.

$500 will become £500 once it gets over here, which is enough to buy a couple of netbooks, or one really spiffy one.

Airships can defeat roadside bombers, says ex-US officer

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
Flame

Sitting Duck?

Obviously it will depend on how big this hypothetical airship is, and how high above the ground it will be stationed at, but if it's sat in one position, won't it make a pretty easy target for any bampot with an AK?

Wrists playing up? You're shagging too much

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
WTF?

errr

Then why are my finger joints ins such bad shape then?

French top MOT failure league

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
FAIL

Incomplete data

I'm pretty sure there's data missing from the spread sheet.

Eg Peugeot 205: in

1995 - 2770 passes and 2774 fails

1996 1105 and 1020

1997 4 and 1

so over two years over 2000 cars were scrapped? I'm pretty sure there's more than 5 205's still going in Bristol, let alone the UK...

Microsoft Office 2007 migration aches foreshadow 2010

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
Troll

2 Weeks

We moved from 2k3 to 2k7 about two years ago now (to 50 odd employees).

For the first two weeks I got nothing but bitching and moaning from my users about the new interface.

Then they shut up, learnt how to use it and now everyone is quite happy with it, and I've not had a complaint since.

As far as I know, there's no plans to upgrade to 2010 anytime soon (we're still using XP due to some old bits of software), but 2007 made my life a bit easier (the customised setup builder is very useful), so all in all I'm a happy geek.

Gizmodo says sorry for malware suckerpunch

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
Happy

AdBlock

mmm, adblock, not only do you make the web easier on the eye, you also save me from malware :)

Fast USB 2.0 Flash Drives

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
Megaphone

Generic sticks?

Another vote for testing a generic flash drive against the expensive ones, it's always nice to see the comparison.

(Although I've not seen any USB sticks being given out as freebies for a while now)

Lloyds TSB's online banking system shows no love for Firefox

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
Go

Ok here

FF3.5.4 on XP, works fine.

(and as it happens I've never had any problems with Lloyds, but then I've never had much money for them to loose)

The Twitter storm that saved freedom of speech

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
Headmaster

The Judge

So who was the judge who granted this injunction? Or is that information not in the public domain either?

PC tune-up software: does it really work?

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
Heart

Theme Service

"Using the Minimal Services option didn’t make for a fair test either, because it changed the Windows display scheme to mimic a butt-ugly Windows 95 layout."

ie it turned off the theme's service, this is the first thing I do on a new PC, perhaps that's why I never ran into any performance problems using Vista, with theme's turned off you're not wasting cycles drawing eye candy.

Appearance is subjective, but performance can be objectively measured.

(ps, can anyone tell me why Win2003 has the wireless config service enabled by default?)

Cruises on ex-Soviet space warships offered

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
Grenade

m1v1=m2v2

@ Lionel Baden: It's a conservation of momentum thing. m1v1=m2v2 where m1 is the mass of the projectile, and v1 it's velocity, and m2 and v2 are the mass of the capsule and it's final velocity respectively.

Guestimate numbers (ie tottaly made up and not really anything to do with reality)

m1 = 10g == 0.01kg

m2 = 10 tons == 1000kg

v1 = 500 m/s

v2 = (m1v1)/m2 = 0.005m/s in the opposite direction to the shell . So not very fast really and presumably well within the thruster's capabilities, although on one website I read

"firing caused considerable shaking of the station itself, therefore in-orbit tests of the weapon during manned operations were ruled out." (http://www.russianspaceweb.com/almaz_ops2.html)

Critical bug infests newer versions of Microsoft Windows

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
Stop

SMB Documentation

@ Ken Hagan

SMB is documented, and M$ gave the Samba project all the documentation they needed way back in December 2007. I've no idea if that extends to SMB2.0 mind.

(see http://www.samba.org/samba/PFIF/)

Given how important file (and printer) sharing is to most windows running shops, turning SMB off isn't really an option. Good thing we've not upgraded to Vista yet :)

Sony posts 'Daily Edition' e-book reader teaser

Tom Smith 1 Silver badge
Welcome

Laserdisk

@Till Dipper - LaserDisk is the name you're looking for I believe?

@el Reg: Any news on UK pricing for the other sony readers? Especially the small cheaper one?