Zen and Adverts
If an ad is shown and nobody buys anything, does it still make money?
Posts by Ed_UK
183 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jun 2012
AdBlock Plus BLOCKED from Google Play
New evidence: Comets seeded life on Earth
Belgian boffins find colossal meteorite
Colombian boffins reconstruct flight path of Russian meteor
Ad-titan Google blocks Adblock Plus in Android security tweak
Thursday 21st February 2013 11:17 GMT
Re: The thinking behind its Android security update
Nice rant, I thought. Summed up in this bit:
Oh4FS: "(...) shoving 10,000 adds a day in peoples faces for shit they generally don't want or need, simply wastes their time, and it's an annoyance."
It's all very well to say "This site is free to you because it is paid for by advertising" BUT when I have no intention of buying any products or services, then it's just a waste of my time. When I need to buy something, I seek it out and then maybe hand over the dosh. Waving stuff in my face while I'm busy watching Greatest Kitten Fails just gets my back up and I won't buy it.
Reg readers scuffle over the ultimate cuppa
Monday 18th February 2013 13:45 GMT
Re: "You sick, sick man," responded one shaken reader.
Roby: "My logic was that I like coffee and I like tea, so together it must be awesome. Actually it's a case of two rights making a wrong"
Aksherly, it's a good example of a Fallacy of Composition:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/composition.html
Curiosity raises mighty robotic fist, punches hole in Mars
Now UK must look out for crappy SPACE weather - engineers
Twitter breach leaks emails, passwords of 250,000 users
Monday 4th February 2013 10:42 GMT 
Bad Reg, Bad!
If you're a techie outfit, you need to be able to spell and use techie words properly.
"next time you try to login" < should be "LOG IN" not "LOGIN"
"the next time you login" < should be "LOG IN" not "LOGIN"
You can _have_ a login, because it's a noun. "Log in" is the verb.
You wouldn't say "I loginned" (would you?). Or "I am logining."
Bring out your dead: Reg readers reveal filthy, filthy PCs...
Monday 4th February 2013 09:50 GMT
Re: Blow
"They work as generators when set in rotation by airstream"
Nah, I don't believe this. Switched-reluctance fan motors do not make good generators. What's more, I've just tried it.
Equipment: Papst 12V ex-PC fan (tested and working), DMM, Industrial compressed airline
Method: Connect fan to DMM. Blast with compressed air at close range.
Result: Even when the fan made a noise like a dental drill, the meter showed no more than 0.3VDC.
Conclusion, Based on a sample of one unit, switched-reluctance fans do not make useful (or dangerous) generators. An AC induction motor may indeed high voltage when spun up, but I've never encountered one in a PC. YMMV.
Customer service rep fired for writing game that mocks callers
Don't like your cell network? Legal unlocking ends TONIGHT in US
Pope: Catholics, go forth and multiply... your Twitter followers
Hydrogen on demand from silicon nanospheres - just add water
Thursday 24th January 2013 10:13 GMT 
If you want powdered silicon...
just go to to your local silicon wafer fabrication plant and bring your dustpan and brush. There must be dust generated when all those silicon wafers get sliced up into individual chips (cleavage). Stop sniggering at the back!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer_(electronics)
Paris, obviously.
Facebook to debut auto-play video ads in 2013
Wednesday 19th December 2012 09:55 GMT
Re: Animated and video ads?
Just wondering, in the specific demographic of El Reg readers, is there ANYONE who has EVER paid for some product or service based on seeing some pop-up or video ad on a web-site?
I keep thinking of one of the characters on the Onion's "Sony's Useless Pice of Shit" parody, who can't resist buying anything he sees advertised.
Frenchmen's sperm plunges by a third in quality and quantity since '89
Copying Wikipedia's lies is not just for hacks, right Lord Leveson?
Thursday 6th December 2012 10:19 GMT
Re: Catholics for dummies?
"And yet (assuming you have some level of scientific education) you have no problem believing in wave-particle duality (when in fact it's likely photons are neither), schrodinger's cat, heisenburg's uncertainty principle or the notion of chaos, dark matter, string theory and the list goes on."
Can't let that go un-corrected. You list a number of scientific models for explaining how stuff works. These models may be tested or completely disproved by suitable experiment and observation. There are many experiments yet to be devised. Catholicism (or Christianity in general) is just one of the many takes on a bronze-age myth. It explains nothing about the real world, it cannot be proved or disproved and puts itself above criticism. Your analogy fails.
To quote xkcd: "Science. It works, bitches."
Japanese ultrasonic speakers fire out digital info rays
Anti-Israel hackers leak nuclear watchdog email addresses
Sandy Island does exist - on a 1908 chart
Apple rejects NAKED HIPPIE ebook, despite apple coverup
Yahoo! will! ignore! 'Do! Not! Track!' from! IE10!
Tuesday 30th October 2012 09:06 GMT
Re: In related news,
"what does Yahoo! actually do now?"
Purveyors of dropbox email addresses to fraudsters all over the world. How could those fine Nigerian bankers get your reply without Yahoo email?
Yahoo don't give a stuff about abuse of their services if the spam didn't originate via their servers. Not their problem. No, Sir.
Astroboffins map GIANT MASS of dark matter
Fujitsu beams URLs to mobes through your TV
'Hypersensitive' Wi-Fi hater loses case against fiendish DEVICES
Wednesday 17th October 2012 09:18 GMT
Re: Think of the Children!
"Actually it wasn't the Local oscillator it was 15,625khz from the EHT oscillator they looked for. "
15625kHz is the line rate (625*25) and I think you're right that the same oscillator was also used to drive the EHT, probably to save components. However, I recall watching Blue Peter around mid-1970s when they showed a "TV detector van" in action. As a special challenge, they even went after a TV known to be tuned to BBC2, which was "particularly" hard to detect. My understanding was that they looked for LO leakage, radiating from the coax, as others have mentioned. Memory could be wonky after 35 years.
My evil thought was to make a TV Detector Van detector (by detecting _their_ LO). Or, just power up a FOAD transmitter in LO band to splatter them. Might do odd things to neighbourhood tellies, though.
Oregon farmer devoured by own hogs
Brave copper single-handedly chases 'suspicious' Moon
Mega spam-spewing Grum botnet finally KO'd
Friday 20th July 2012 09:53 GMT
Re: Live and let spam is NOT a solution (Yahoo rant)
"I really would like to see Yahoo survive."
I don't like Yahoo because of their attitude to spammers. Their fine AUP and their (lack of) action do not correlate.
Back when they had a working abuse@ address, reporting a spammer who was offering an @yahoo.com dropbox always got a rubber-stamp reply of "The spam didn't come from our system therefore not our problem."
Then, I had to point out that if they had bothered to read the reported spam, they would see that the spammer was using an @yahoo.com account FOR REPLIES. It was always hard to get any kind of response from a human.
Then, Yahoo abolished the abuse@ account, and make us fill out a web-form. Spam reports disappeared into a black hole.
Now, if you try to follow their links to "Report abuse/spam" there is just the advice to "Click the Spam Button."
Well, I've been using Thunderbird for my email for many years and I have yet to find this Spam button.
Yahoo do not want to be contacted. They have shut all the doors and windows to ensure that they do not hear about the Nigerian banker who wants to share his millions with me, just for replying to barrister_loadsadosh@yahoo.com. Stuff 'em.
Half the team at the heart of the RBS disaster WERE in India
Friday 29th June 2012 15:36 GMT
Waiting for the spam..http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/meh_32.png
Dear <username>,
I was a loyal RBS IT employee for 27 years, until they decided to offshore my job to India, making me redundant. <Link to genuine El Reg coverage>
Now, I face personal bankruptcy and my children will have to leave college. My house will be re-possessed and my wife is leaving me for an RBS manager.
Fortunately, before I left the office here in Lagos, I was able to use my IT skills to transfer over $132million to a secret account. This account does not even appear on official audits because I have made it 'invisible.'
Are you a trustworthy person who can help me get some revenge on the stupid managers at RBS? Please send me your personal details and I will give you 50%.
Yada yada.
p.s. Sorry - forgot the typos and Caps-lock.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
