* Posts by Andyf

41 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2011

Level 5 driverless cars by 2021 can be done, say Brit industry folk

Andyf

Insurance and liability

So, assuming that Hammond's fantasy becomes reality and we have level 5 automated cars on the roads in 2020ish.......

L5 car driving solo gets involved in an RTC, either causes one, subject to, what ever, with a human controlled vehicle (car, bike, cycle, pedestrian). Who do you swap details with? Do you just get the reg number and report it? I can imagine an insurer receiving a claim, checking the car's data (assuming that the owner hasn't altered it to show that the car couldn't possibly be at fault) and deciding not to pay out because of some tiny detail on the data.

Give a whole new meaning to 'computer says no'

Moon trumps Mars in new US space policy

Andyf

If only....

I can't be the only one that read the phrase “Policy for Future American Leadership in Space” and hoped it meant they were planning to launch The Orange One into orbit, or beyond?

Hubble spies most distant comet zipping through Solar System

Andyf

That's no comet......

That's not a halo, that's a slow down burn to allow it to enter a near Earth orbit...

Trident test-shot startles West Coast Americans

Andyf

Now, that's what I call a firework!

Andyf

Re: Gee Whiz

From the article, this was a Trident ICBM launch, not a cruise missile.

If the US had been raining down ICBM's in the "thousands on the Middle east, Libya and Afghanistan", I think the flash would have been a bit brighter than the one of the video.

Devious Davros, tricksy Missy and Dalek Clara delight in The Witch's Familiar

Andyf

Has it crossed anyone else's mind that The Doctor and The Master/Missy may alternate reality/timeline versions of each other, The Master/Missy being what would happen to The Doctor if he didn't have his companions?

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Andyf

Product Developer invites applications for hands on support role.

Power Bar: EE was warned of safety risk BEFORE user was burned in explosion

Andyf

"The firm's spokesbeings said:

“We strongly refute any suggestion that safety concerns were ignored or dismissed without careful consideration."

So the decision to ignore or dismiss the safety concerns was made after careful consideration.

That makes it all alright then.

Muppets.

Videogame publishers to fans: Oi, stop resurrecting our dead titles online

Andyf

If a service required to play a wholly purchased game is taken offline by the vendor, rendering the product unusable, shouldn't purchasers still using the product have a right to a refund from the vendor, or as someone else suggested, the freedom to source that service elsewhere?

Careful - your helmet might get squashed by a Volvo

Andyf

Idiots be idiots, regardless of what they're riding or driving, doesn't matter if it's the moron riding without lights, or the moron texting while driving.

Hollywood star Robin Williams dies of 'suspected suicide' at 63

Andyf

I watched Mork and Mindy avidly as a kid, then lost track of Williams for a while. Caught one of his recorded live shows a few years later as an adult, and spent an hour or so crying and pissing myself laughing, and remains one of a very few comics who have that effect on me.

Comedy Genius, great actor (One hour photo ::shudders::), and from all accounts, a great human being.

RIP.

Yes. Facebook will KNOW you've been browsing for smut

Andyf

Facebook adverts - I just spend a couple of minutes each time I go on marking every advert as pornography. I know it's hardly 'Stickin it to da man' and doesn't stop them, but hopefully goes some way to messing with their statistics.

We'll probe Pluto's moon cracks for mystery ocean – NASA

Andyf

Shouldn't "... microbial life, since liquid water is a necessary ingredient" be "... microbial life since liquid water is a necessary ingredient to life as we know it"?

.We shouldn't presume that all life requires the same elements as our own.

Ukrainian teen created in lab passes Turing Test – famous nutty prof

Andyf

//grumpy old fart mode

I'd suggest that telling the difference between 'Eugene' and a real 13 year old would be pretty straight forward. Most real 13 year olds struggle to get their faces out of facebook or twitter long enough to utter more than a grunt.

/off

Kiwi jetpack gets all-clear for manned tests

Andyf

I absolutely want one of these. Especially if they can add winglets to the sides so that it can transition to level flight. Well, levelish if I'm at the controls.

Would make my commute to work infinately more pleasurable, at the risk of a few broken windows on take off and landing.

Volvo V60 Plug-in Hybrid: Eco, economy and diesel power

Andyf

Re: 12 seconds!!!!

Fair comment, Kubla, it's a question of each to their own. If I did lots of motorway driving or roads such as you describe, I'd have a different view on this.

Andyf

Re: 12 seconds!!!!

How often does any driver have to accelerate from a standing start to 60mph on any normal british road? Not very often. In my experience, most times when joining a road with a 60mph speed limit, you're doing so from a filter junction and already travelling between 30-40mph anyway.

This is where the extra torque of the hybrid system would come in handy, in a 4th/5th gear roll-on.

The caveat to my comments is that most of my driving is round town commuting with just me in the car, which would apply to a significant proportion of other drivers. I'm not saying that a 'performance' hybrid doesn't have it's place for some people, I'm just saying that it's overkill for most commuting journeys.

Andyf

Really liking the sound of this type of car, just hating the price. If they produced a smaller version (astra/focus/c'eed, f.ex) for 14-18K, without some of the bells and whistles, and shifted the balance from performance to economy somewhat, they'd probably sell far more of them.

Apart from top trumps geeks and petrol heads, the 0-60 time is pretty much irrelevant, providing that it's not glacially slow. For 95% of drivers, around 12 seconds would be perfectly adequate.

How our shaken Reg Playmonaut survived a 113,000ft stratodangle

Andyf
Coat

Re: No video of the release?

I'd be interested to know how your bike copes at 60k altitude too :)

EU wants the Swiss and pals to cough up IT giants' hidden bank info

Andyf

Pots and Kettles

I don't condone corporate 'tax planning' that avoids payment of due tax, but I can't take MP's seriously on this at all. Every time I hear a UK politician bleating on about the evils of corporate 'aggressive tax planning', I think of a couple of things.

Firstly, that they were perfectly happy to fleece the taxpayer for as much as they could through expenses before a spotlight was shone into some of the very dodgy practices that some of them were engaged in, home flipping, etc. They really do not have any moral high ground on this.

Secondly, where is the public transparency they demand of big business when it comes to MP's own tax affairs? When you have the likes of Cameron and Osbourne, millionaires in their own right, and all other MP's for that matter, publishing full and details accounts of their own tax dealings for public scrutiny, then I might, just might, give their 'indignation' a bit more credence.

MP's need to remember that they are public servants, paid from the public purse, and that accountability is a very double edged sword.

MISSING LINK between HUMANS and MONKEYS FOUND

Andyf
Pint

Re: Missing Link between humans and monkeys found

It's called alcohol, judging from the subhuman behavior seen in most town centres in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings. Gets progressively louder and more agressive, only understandable by the similarly pissed up, and mostly done to impress females?

I appreciate that it's an insulting comparison, and I'd like to apologise in advance to any monkeys reading this.

Beer, for obvious reasons.

Forget wireless power for phones - Korea's doing it for buses

Andyf

If the wiring is placed close enough to the road surface and generates a bit of heat as part of the charging process, it could also help prevent the snow flake gridlock we always seem to see in the UK.

I appreciate that heat in electricity implies losses, but it's just a thought :)

Kiwi Coroner says Coca-Cola helped kill woman

Andyf
WTF?

So, she "hardly ate, usually skipping breakfast, eating only small lunches and seldom partaking in an evening meal. She would often vomit upon waking in the morning. She was also a 30-a-day smoker.", but they're blaming 10l of Coke a day for her death? Is the Coroner on a backhander from the family for whatever undeserved payout they think they're going to get?

It was probably only the sugar content in the coke that was keeping her going at all with that diet.

Michelin critics to football blogger: Salaud! Unhand that URL

Andyf
Happy

"a shed load of Delhi sandwiches"

That's taking outsourcing to a whole new level.....

City sugar daddies mulling £10bn bid for EE, say sources

Andyf

Re: Lucky customers

"Makes you wonder whether any takeover should be subject to a public interest test, where the acquirer has to prove that the change will provide incremental benefits to the customers, instead of just being an opportunity to pillage and make the filthy rich of the private equity sector still richer."

I really like this idea :) Have an upvote

Integrator 2e2 axes 319 UK staff, halts pay cheques - insiders

Andyf
Unhappy

Re: who will give them credit @Andyf

"Except that leaves the staff open to legal action by the administrators..."

That's IF the administrators can pick individuals out of a mob of angry staffers...

I take your point though, company assets and all that. Boils my blood that people can be treated like this, though. Next report will probably be that any staff who haven't turned up for work following not getting paid will be fired for breach of contract and not get redundency pay, or somethign similar.

Andyf

Re: who will give them credit

More to the point, who's going to turn up to work for a company that refuses to pay for work already done?

Except. of course, to take goods from the office to the resale value of the wages owed.....

Boffins spot planet that could support life... just 12 light years away

Andyf
Headmaster

Planet size....

"The potentially life-supporting world has a mass around five times the size of Earth, making it the smallest planet found in the habitable zone of any Sun-like star. "

/pedant mode

Erm..... Aren't we on an earth like planet in the habitable zone of a sun like star, which makes this one the smallest planet?

/off

Nasa guides Mars Rover with Kinect

Andyf

"7 minutes of terror" is hardly accurate, but it's a nicely put together filler, rather than a 'game' in it's own right.

British Waterways charity mapping data handed to Google for free

Andyf

Re: I wonder...

The permit is a free download from British waterways, but it's never checked.

I'll rephrase - in 30 or so years of using the canals on a fairly regular basis in one form or another, I've never been asked to produce my 'permit' by anyone. All it states is that you follow some common sense rules and show a bit of consideration to others.

PC-makers hope for Windows 8 hero to sweep up sales

Andyf
FAIL

"Mines the one with Win XP on it, because Win7 offers nothing to me that's worth paying for that I don't have with XP."

Win 8, damn it, Win 8. I've clearly had some of what Neil Marshall has been smoking....

Andyf
Linux

"But sales people are optimists. "Yes, we're very excited about Windows 8 - there's a lot of anticipation," says Neil Marshall, MD of Acer UK"

There's optimism, and then there's deluded. I'm sure Neil Marshall is a nice enough bloke, but if he thinks that home users, let alone corporates, are going to spring for Windows 8 just for the possibility of using touch screen, then I'll have some of what he's smoking.

Mines the one with Win XP on it, because Win7 offers nothing to me that's worth paying for that I don't have with XP.

Facebook IPO plunge sparks tidal wave of lawsuits

Andyf

Re: Rules of investing

Re-read my post please, specifically the 2nd paragraph - "so unless there's some malpractice uncovered in the way the IPO was handled" etc... and actually take the time to understand it.

I'm not 'profraud', as someone else commented, far from it. If there has been some shifty business in the way the stock has been valued and investors have been misled, then I think they have reason to complain. If not, then they need to be pointing fingers at the nearest mirror.

Andyf
Mushroom

Rules of investing

1) Shares can go down as well as up.

2) Don't invest what you can't afford to lose.

3) If it looks too good to be true, it is.

4) Do your own research, don't rely on those employed by the company

There have been articles for some time questioning the FB IPO valuation, so unless there's some malpractice uncovered in the way the IPO was handled, the investors have no one to blame but themselves if they have lost money.

Wireless remote control inventor zaps out at 96

Andyf
Pint

@shades

You, Sir, owe me a keyboard.

Have a beer, and an upvote.

Home Office 'technologically clueless' on web super-snoop law

Andyf

"Government department is technologically clueless" shocker.

Hasn't that been the case since someone discovered fire?

OAP sues Apple for $1m after walking into store's glass door

Andyf
WTF?

Did she take a running jump at it?! I can't see anyway that walking at a normal speed into a glass door, presumably made from toughened security glass, would cause that kind of bullseye affect.

Yet another case of the blame culture, in this case blaming a company with $97Bn in the bank, probably hoping that they'll pay up to make the problem go away.

Game Group shares slide under a penny

Andyf

"I have almost £100 on my Game card. Should I go blow the lot on something before they go titsup?"

Yes, without any hesitation at all. I was given a £15 game voucher for Christmas, and was waiting for ME3 before spending it. When the news broke about Game not getting ME3, I went down and got MS points instead. Better than not getting anything at all.

A shame to see another high street retailer go, but in my town there' s Game and a Gamestation within 50 yards of each other. Over saturation, and online competition will be the end of many a business.

Facebook blamed for getting Thai teens up the duff

Andyf

Sex ed question

"What should you do if you have a sexual urge?” The answer, apparently, was “call friends to go play football”.

Doesn't seem curb the urges of many of our current crop of Premiership players.

Zimbabwean claims prostitute turned into donkey

Andyf
Joke

Ahem....

heaw heaw heaw he ought not to have done that.....

/gets coat.

Moderatrix kisses the Reg goodbye

Andyf
Go

Long live the Moderatrix, the Moderatrix is gone!

I can't say that a moderators posts have made me laugh out loud the way yours sometimes have, http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2011/06/22/stolen_guitar/ @16:03 being a prime example.

Good luck, you'll be missed.

Go icon, because you are