Posts by Neil Hoskins

Serious Question...

Assumption: that viable electric guns are developed that can put stuff into space at escape velocity (ie no need for chemical/fossil-fuel) rockets.

Question: with current/predicted technology, does a fission power station produce enough power to heat up my shower, and have enough left over to get rid of its waste at the aforementioned escape velocity?

If not, we're stuffed.

This is the End

While it was "just a film", putting 'Jedi' on one's census was a good way to register a protest at the government's plans to turn us into a religious state. When people really <i>do</i> take it seriously, though, we secularists have a problem. Any suggestions as to how we can register a protest at the next census?

Absolutely Bonza!...

For so many contributors to forget the point of posting the FoTW (the fact that the flamer had missed the irony) and all start flaming each other! Many for the price of one! Lester, you are a true artist.

Question...

Out of interest, what are they doing over there with "Atonement"? You never get to hear the word, but it's written down. Do they blank it out? Or have they just given it a XXX certificate and forbidden anybody under the age of 90 to see it?

French Microcars

I disagree. I can see it going into production in France, where they have a terrific tradition of small, light, 'sans permis' microcars. But I find the predicted price a little hard to believe: the lack of mass production over the years has ensured that French microcars are anything but cheap for what you get. If they *did* manage to produce one for around the £3000 mark, I'd be over there like a shot with my cheque book at the ready.

How "Green"?

I kinda "got it" when they were flogging Baylis crank products as being a good idea for times and places where there was no mains electricity or batteries for sale. But pushing them as being "green"? This thing seems to have a NiCad battery: you can even see the "do not discard in bin" symbol on the back in your published photo. Please explain in what way that is "green".

A Day of Definitions

What makes a "cult" different from a "religion" different from a "superstition"? If somebody gives all his money to the catholic church and spends his life in their service then he's a monk; if he does the same thing for, say, the moonies, then he's the victim of a cult. If somebody prays constantly he's pious, but if he flicks lightswitches on and off all the time then he's got OCD.

Bizarre.

Definition of a Bike

UK vehicle definitions are unfortunately way out of sych with Europe and are not at all conducive to developing light, safe, efficient vehicles. They are, in short, a complete and utter shambles. I think the problem started when they abandoned the use of the words "motor bicycle" and "motor tricycle" in favour of "motorcycle" and "tricycle", with no definition for a quadricycle. "Motorcycle" now appears to imply two wheels, because I never succeeded in getting my French 350kg (yes really) Ligier quadricycle registered as anything other than "private/light goods", so I pay the same tax as somebody with a Chelsea Tractor.

Definitions and Stuff

Broadly speaking, the Americans define a smartphone as anything with a keyboard while the rest of the world see it as something that can run programmes in something other than Java.

Even using the rest-of-the-world definition, we'll probably still be having these arguments after the SDK comes out, because the SDK is unlikely to give the programmer access to low-level functionality until they figure out how they're going to handle security. So it will still be equivalent to a rest-of-the-world feature phone that can run Java games.

In other words, still not a smartphone.

I agree with Stuart

Paedophilia is not funny and it's not clever.

uPNP?

Please tell me the telly is going to be uPNP/DLNA/WiFi. If so, I'm first in the queue.

@Seth

Windows 2000 is really NT5. XP is just NT5.5. Presumably, then, Vista is NT6.

S60 v2 Only

Worth pointing out, I feel. S60v3 handsets not affected. Nor UIQ afaik. Even with v2 you'd have to be a complete muppet and successfully negotiate several installation screens to get infected.

Apple Unveil Invisible iBook...

http://newsbiscuit.com/article/apple-unveil-invisible-ibook-279

Time for new glasses...

I parsed that THREE TIMES as "...football from the iPhone..."

Rule of Spam #4

"The natural course of a spamming business is to go bankrupt."

"...huge share of the music player market..."?

Out of interest, what is their market share? I suspect that there are now more music-capable phones than there are iPods.

re: author = Nokia hater?

"The question here is what doe Bill Ray have against Nokia."

I think there *is* an element of tabloid mischief here. This is a non-issue that has already been laughed off symbian forums. Having said that, we're all grown-ups and we all know what journalists do; part of their job is to stimulate debate, and he's achieved that in this instance.

Also, to occasionally get a viewpoint that we disagree with, puts into perspective those that have us thinking, "Yeah, dead right".

Didn't...

...the one that crashed into the side of Ireland come into the equation somewhere?

re: "It can't be that bad"

Yes it can. The water tastes like bleach and is full of mud and worms, too; you'll need a Brita filter or similar. I actually loved living there when I did, but never could quite figure out why some aspects of the infrastructure were so poor in a new town.

Saving Money

"...But it could well reduce fuel bills and make money for shippers - and thus for the technology's creators..."

But in a capitalist society, isn't that the whole point? Everything in the end boils down to pounds, shillings, and pence. And nobody does anything out of the goodness of their hearts unless it also makes them money. Trying to drive these pathetic "initiatives" using good intentions alone (or at best, the marketing departments) is doomed to failure. Only when the bean counters become involved will something happen. I find it incredible that so many people are naive enough to think otherwise.

Turbo?

Just checked 3's coverage map (I'm a T-mobile customer). What, exactly is "turbo". Do they mean HSDPA? If so, why don't they say so?

ITYM...

..."anti-materiel". Not the same thing at all.

"Too Cynical"?...

... or "less gullible"?

@Clive etc

Damn and blast, you got there before me. For me it brought to mind Alexei Sayle talking about that famous publication, "What's On in Stoke Newington". Apparently it's just a large piece of paper with "fuck all" written across it.

@Bucky

"It's in their financial interest after all - they have to refund customers who lose cash when the account's been compromised."

So why don't they set SPF records, which would enable mail admins to block the vast majority of the phishing attempts with a simple lookup? It's very easy: even I can do it. I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist, but there's a hidden agenda here somewhere. Nobody can be that incompetent accidentally.

Gummy Finger

More good stuff, including how to make a gummy finger, at

http://www.badscience.net/2007/11/make-your-own-id/

No sound?

"...Sadly, the Light Sword doesn’t make a “Vvvvwwwwwvvvv” sound when its waved around..."

Pathetic. The N95 "community" is currently up to version three, with a volume control and a choice of red or green. Our training is complete. Mention iPhones at your peril ;-)

"stay" ahead?

Um... are they ahead? Did I miss something? Did they suddenly overtake Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung, HTC, LG, etc, etc?

I was starting to hope that the Reg was a fanboy-free-zone. Obviously not.

Blood sugar levels?

I only watched half way, but if I saw somebody acting like that I'd assume he was a diabetic going hypo. My instinct would be to try to help him rather than attack him. This is a sad reflection of modern city society: we'll ignore people when they need help but attack them if they become an inconvenience.

Ahhh... but....

Can it be turned into a light sabre?

http://www.symbian-guru.com/welcome/2007/11/lightsaber-app-.html

@Michael Parker...

"...geeks queue up for hours..."

The geek defamation society will be in touch.

Lolcats view of the iPhone

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/06/29/web-apps/

GPS

I favour the GPS theory, too. These, together with the bright orange paint, have led to people slowing down in the proximity of the cameras but reverting to speeding elsewhere. As somebody who keeps to speed limits all the time, I've certainly noticed an increase in aggressive tailgating during the same period. Of course, the $64,000 question is what have the accident figures done in that period...

Not the N95...

... actually only the N81 and N95-8GB, of which there are about three in the country. They seem to have decided it was better to release the service without the handset client, rather than the other way around.

Voting

I think a couple of people have missed the point about voting. The Republic of Ireland is a foreign country, like France or Germany. However, have a look at your electoral registration form next time you complete it and you'll see that you get to vote in UK elections if you're a citizen of the Republic of Ireland. If you're French or German you don't. Why not?

As for me and hordes of UK citizens going over to Ireland and voting in *their* elections: yeah, right...

How important is this?

I'm actually starting to think that this bluray/HD battle is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Comparisons with the VHS/Betamax thing are really not valid because now we have many other methods of recording, storing, and delivering. OK, no chance of fibre-to-the-door anytime soon, so I suppose we'll be buying hi-def pre-recorded films on them for a while. But other applications? Writeable disks? Absolutely no way, with flash memory getting so cheap and reliable. RW disks were always a complete shambles, and not compatible between different readers. CDR and DVDR are just as bad: they take ages to write with a low success rate. Quite a few people have DVD-RAM recorders for their TV now, but the hard-disk recorders are now cheaper and far more clever.

I have to take a 300MB database file home this evening, and I've just given up after five attempts to burn it to a CDR and have bluetoothed it to the flash card in my phone.

What Mr Woodvine said.

This effectively brings free or cheap push email to the masses, because the standard series 60 mail client supports IMAP IDLE. When all the PHBs see mere proles getting push email, they'll throw away their crackberries and we can all have our server resources back.