Posts by Nano nano

C24 prior art

They should have checked with Reg Barclay ...

Consumer durables

"After only a year NASA reported that Spirit's drill's teeth had worn away after grinding through five times as much rock as expected."

... in contrast with much of today's consumer electrical goods which are cost-squeezed such that they fail immediately after their warranty period or rated number of operations expires - any longer and it would be a failure of the design ...

All in the name

Surely it should be "Identification" - my "identity" is my own: I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered!

Oops, got carried away there ...

Hot stuff

Does anyone know whether US office buildings still try to out-macho each other with colder air-conditioning temperatures ?

A tolerable 18C should be reasonable in summer ... or they should look at some passive cooling techniques that let hot air flow up out of a duct in the roof and bring in cooler ground-level air.

Heady days

Yes, I too went up to the cockpit, on a BA flight to Milan in the early 90's - looked very cramped for the crew !

The pilot even tilted the plane so we could all get a good look at the Mont Blanc glacier.

I couldn't help thinking that all schoolchildren should have that kind of experience for their appreciation of geography ... the 'ripples' in the regions on either side of the Alps was a clear indicator of side-effects of mountain-building.

I Pronounce You ...

Mis-spelling "Cerviacal" is no doubt due to what appears to be the common meeja pronunciation "sir-vye-cal", though, since the 'i' in cervix is short, I would tend to say "sir-vick-al" .

Treatment

So if the DRM causes inflammation, you put it on steroids ... that makes sense.

Re: And only part of Finland

Well, at least they have also omitted the bit of Finland that Russia nicked and they're still hanging on to ...

Politician-speak

I thought only politicians used the wordy / redundant cliche "way, shape or form" ... why would anyone else ?

Watershed ...

Perhaps the writer should check the meaning of "succubus" ...?

Not only but also

Google calculator refuses to tell you the result of 9 divided by 11, unless you enclose the sum in brackets, although it works for all other numerators ...

Manifesto

And no doubt Gordo will claim a "mandate" for all this if he calls an election and gets in.

Please can any election polls list manifesto bullet points rather than parties ...

Re-authenticate

Aside from fixing the vuln, just asking users to re-authenticate if adding a filter should block this - the user will then be alerted to something dodgy.

Rather like with online banking when adding a new payee, and getting asked for some password characters.

PS. TYPO (homophone) - "slight of hand"-> "sleight of hand"

Swedish first

There was a guy in Sweden (IIRC) in the late 90's who got fed up with waiting for any kind of data connection to reach his village so he and his Dad fibre-wired the entire village, after getting everyone onboard. Anyone got a link, and an update on this ?!

Alternatives

So use the open source alternative - Pidgin (formerly Gaim) - which runs most IM systems including AOL, MSN and Yahoo (but not Skype yet).

Registered names

For a start, Nominet should automatically protect all ".co.uk" domain names for entities registered at Companies House, and only permit them to be newly registered by the entity concerned.

The ".ltd.uk" option is not good enough because a) they only apply to companies, not LLPs; b) no-one seems to use them.

Human Tisue Act 2004

And yet people who have had tissue samples taken for medical research get protection via the Human Tissue Act, and there is outcry when it was revealed that some Sellafield workers had their organs checked for radiation issues.

Extract from Notes on the Act - see mention of "cells":

"... Part 1 is about consent. It sets out the requirement to obtain appropriate consent to carry out activities regulated under the Act: storage and use of whole bodies, removal, storage and use of human material (organs, tissues and cells) from the bodies of deceased persons, and storage and use of material from living people, for purposes set out in Schedule 1. ..."

And the ADD/ADHD angle is ....?

.. or is that just a convenient shorthand (=lazy medical stereotype) for 24-hour news updates ?

Still, people with autism and schizophrenia get it too ...

TheReg pedants union

Come on guys - you _know_ oxymoron doesn't mean "contradiction" !

But it's a good pun in this context !!

Typo ...

"... has ran out of ..." -> "... has run out of ..."

Could just be the accent ...

Once met a friend of a business client in Italy - he didn't speak English & I didn't (at the time) speak Italian ... but we both spoke French. However, his French accent was distinctly Yorkshire !!

Pizza preferences

I gave up on PH when they said "we don't have any deep-pan bases in" - erm, don't you just roll them out ?! Obviously not. Get 'em from the lorry.

And then comparing the floury pizza base I was given with my recollection of pizzas in Italy.

Why does no-one in the UK use thinly sliced ham like in Italy instead of that chopped up spam ?

Sorry, no Linux angle there ...

Why :-

In order to test the Dell Ubuntu delivery & support. Obviously lacking !

Yep - mine back too

Thanks (eventually) Orange !

Principle of least surprise

Windows apps: F5 - refresh display

Lotus Notes: F5 - password lock app

You've heard it before ...

Rollout of Chip&PIN was a missed chance to introduce card-based cash. Been available in mainland Europe for years.

More secure for punters, cheaper for small retailers, and would lessen quantity of banknotes being carted around to refill ATMs

Easier

Generating considerable volumes of HCN or (smelly but poisonous) H2S in a confined space are much simpler than mucking around with castor beans - but as long as it distracts them from doing really harmful stuff, best to let the factoids remain ...

Not everyone ...

Bet this policy wouldn't have pleased Bill Clinton if it had been in place on his visit - didn't his minders famously 'collect' a pub beer glass he drank from to prevent anyone getting his fingerprints or DNA ?

Also bet Stella Rimington's colleagues wouldn't feature on the DB either, neither would Philip Green (et al) or any HRH .

Cost benefit

Until the cost of a train fare comes down below (the cost of a new car plus tax and insurance) / 365, I think many of us will be unable to afford the green option.

I worked in Belgium a few years ago and their trains were on-time, predictable (like E4+1) and inexpensive. Sadly, from the green viewpoint, I had to fly home each weekend, since Eurostar still hasn't made it past London .... although this has been promised since 1994.

Plus ca change

Presumably they will soon be announcing an iPod Nano with hard drive, and a Shuffle with display ....

Best Welsh joke I know ....

... is watching John Redwood as Welsh Sec. during the Welsh anthem ... a cringe worthy of The Office.

Different this time

What was different this time was that I could continue to access email right until the account was "deleted".

Usually the account would go inaccessible, which would then require a 'retrieval' operation via the FreeserveXXXWanadooXXXOrange website.

Have now fired off a "Data Protection Act" email requesting my message folder contents be sent to me. After all, doesn't the Govt require ISPs to hold data for some period before deletion ?

Monster - too little, too late

Monster should have acted immediately this became known, and quarantined all their systems. They should then have modified their login mechanisms to thwart an automated attack (type .gif image text) and required bona fide users to change their passwords.

Users with compromised logins should have been notified and required to AV scan their systems.

Typo

"Luckily, we're here to separate fact from fiction. Episode 5 of Semi-Cohernet Computing" -> "Coherent"

Not alone

Freeserve (now Orange) has just deleted my freeserve.co.uk email account after 10 years - must be a phase they're all going through.

Deja vu

Yes, this was mentioned on The Real Hustle last year.

Better to find a road junction near 'Home' and program that in instead, on the assumption that the final 500 yards should be straightforward ...

Stats

@Lucy:

I suggest you read Ben Goldacre's articles on www.badscience.net (if you don't already) for examination of statistical claims (among other things).

Uncertainty

"If it hasn't made you dizzy, you obviously haven't understood it" - Niels Bohr

Oh hang on, that's quantum physics.

Open

Presumably the open source Gaim/Pidgin Yahoo! IM! client is not affected ...

Be consistent

Fake certificates ? - what about those Spams from US "Colleges" that offer you fake degree or PhD certificates for payment of a wad of cash "to get the job you deserve" ?? A bit of attention here wouldn't go amiss.

The name McKeith springs to mind ...

Blast from the past

Driven, no doubt, by Tesla Girls ...

"Testing out theories,

Electric chairs and dynamos

Dressed to kill they're killing me ..."

Differentiation

Eggplants are aubergines that produce small whitish egg-shaped fruits.

Aubergines are egglants that produce large aubergine-coloured fruits.

Hope that's clear now.

Subvert

Nice malware vehicle.

No relation to the evil Hood of Thunderbirds fame I suppose ...

Semantics

It can't really "reveal" something that's already known, can it ?

Not all roses

As I recall, OS/2 had a single system event queue, which gave rise to a few problems ...

Wind up

Winding up orders are useless except as a last resort for getting paid - a friend tried this to get payment of £20k from a company; they just phoenixed the company and he was left with a load of legal bills. They even had the cheek to rename the company to an anagram of his own name.

Wrong game

Hang on - if Microsoft's playing Russian Roulette, wouldn't it kill itself without harming anyone else ?

Just asking ...