* Posts by Simon Neill

246 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Oct 2007

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BT boss brands Britain illiterate

Simon Neill
FAIL

Hence the problem.

I DON'T understand what you just put. What is "bgt rprt bcast"? is "twt" twit or twat? (or something else entirely?) they are different words.

The basic cause of the issue is that this language evolves LOCALLY, its more like an accent than a language. I once watched a kid go through his entire document and replace all the letters with other characters (added accents, § ô and so on) and he used the same character for 1, L and I.

US energy-weapon project going well

Simon Neill

Have they considered....

Water cooling? making the laser much more suited for attaching to the cranium of water based predators, which is what we all really want.

Want nips like church coat pegs? Click here

Simon Neill

Title is required.

I don't see the point in these.

UK jobs site suffers hack attack

Simon Neill

surely...

a good thing? you want your CV to reach as many people as possible.

Color ebook reader for 200 clams? Yup

Simon Neill

Title

"The whole shebang weighs one pound (0.45kg), and Pandigital claims that battery life is up to six hours when reading."

6 hours? no thanks. Last thing I want is "Elementary dear Watson! it was the- LOW BATTERY!!"

I'm still not sold on the kindle et al, but this really really doesn't appeal to me.

'Draw Mohammed' page removed from Facebook

Simon Neill

This is stupid.

Freedom should mean freedom for EVERYONE. This means you are free to not draw whatever you want to not draw and I should be free to draw whatever I want to draw.

In the same theme, if I want to wave St George's Cross about...I should be allowed to without getting grief. I would never stop someone showing their flag or stop anyone else doing any drawing they wish. Does that make me a better person than most? I'd say so.

BOFH: The poncy director's cut

Simon Neill
FAIL

This is our future...

..over here. 5 year old computers would be an upgrade.

still. theres plenty of loose wire I can use to arrange for a....stimulus package....

IT failure downs Stansted systems

Simon Neill
Joke

is required.

Funny euphemism for porn that.

Mafia Wars dons deprived of pit bulls

Simon Neill
Joke

People Eating Tasty Animals

they all love a good bit of crackling.

Soot, hydrofluorocarbs 'low-hanging fruit' to fight warming

Simon Neill

Water Vapour.

Should be easy enough to capture and condense said into harmless water. Dryers all do it these days. Could even direct it into the screenwash tank and make use of it.

Stick a fork in floppies - they're done

Simon Neill
Thumb Up

Ah yes.

Have 5 of them in a box behind me, 2 of them still work. Good cameras and given that (at the time) flash memory tended to be on the small side, being able to change floppies at will was useful. Decent resolution on them for their age too.

Power monitoring across the desktop estate

Simon Neill
FAIL

or never...

since that would require desktops to be on their own meter.

We had a big problem trying to visualise desktops here. Long term the savings are obvious - no need to replace as often, lower overall power consumption but the fact that a room full of PCs would have come to £12k and the initial setup for virtual was £15k meant it didn't happen.

Heathrow security man cops perv scanner eyeful

Simon Neill
Flame

Hypocrites.

So, its not ok for them to use the machine on each other but sitting there watching a parade of the general public (including children) is ok?

Microsoft wants to put infected PCs in rubber room

Simon Neill

Patches and diseases...

"Why not allow security patches to be installed even on pirated copies of Windows? That would take down a lot of surface area for malware."

They do. Even pirate copies can install critical updates, its the less important bug fixes and usability they miss out on.

As for forgiving people for sneezing on us, yes we do. However people do tend to get rather annoyed when someone phones them 6 months later to tell you to get a HIV test. Perhaps the people being quarantined ARE victims, but the quarantine would then make them take their computer to someone to get fixed surely, thus they stop being a victim.

Researchers rip iPad apart to reveal Apple's profits

Simon Neill
FAIL

Missing costs...

Adding to the lists of costs not mentioned in the article above parts:

1) Aftermarket care - warrenty repairs/replacements aren't free and no matter how good your product there will be some of those

2) Taxes. You say apple take $400 over materials, even if your cost includes EVERYTHING to get all the parts all the way to a finished product in my hand, apple doesn't get to keep it all.

Might as well say my car is a rip off because it cost £12k new but is made up of only £100 of steel, might as well go buy a big lump of steel and make one myself right?

New cig peril: Third-hand smoke coats puffers in poison

Simon Neill
FAIL

I'll be sure to remember this ...

... next time I get the urge to lick a smoker. Or their walls.

Oh wait, I don't do that anyway because they stink and because its a little bit weird.

Multi-million investment hints at UK battery swap shops

Simon Neill

True...but...

Would it not be fairly easy to include a small chip with a charge cycle counter like the macbooks and ipods have with a policy to discard batteries after 300 cycles or whatever the 80% mark is.

I would also expect batteries swapped like that to last longer than ones stored at home since they could be stored in ideal conditions.

It also means you don't have a sudden large expense when you want to replace the battery in your car, or it keeps its value better. or both.

Only nukes can stop planetsmash asteroids, say US boffins

Simon Neill
Joke

What about the LHC?

surely we can either use it to create a black hole to suck said asteroid in or just plain point it up and see what happens?

NASA pegs Noughties as hottest decade on record

Simon Neill

Thoughts...

1) @Superstitious git "f you follow the logic of your comment... the CO2 stops heat from candle getting through...How does the SUN's heat get here in the first place??"

well, simple. CO2 blocks rays with a heat strength of less than 7 arbitrary units. Rays from the sun come in a 10 arbitrary units, bounce off the earth where 5 units are converted to other energy. The rays then attempt to leave at strength 5. These are blocked by CO2 and so remain, causing heating.

Ever parked a car in hot sun? noticed its hotter inside than outside? same thing. Or how about gone inside a greenhouse? both the same thing, hence why its referred to as a "greenhouse effect" clever eh?

2) I don't believe we have ANY idea what will happen to the climate in the future. We can't predict conditions in the next 24 hours accurately, you expect me to believe predictions for 10 years? I keep seeing reports of "cow farts are causing global warming" "nuclear blasts stop global warming" "soot stops global warming" "burning coal causes global warming". Until I see someone say "the combined effects of cows, co2 and wasted heat are (not) countered by the effects of soot, nuclear blasts etc" I'm not going to be convinced either way.

ntl:Telewest forgets who its customers are

Simon Neill
FAIL

"Its not our fault....

...we bought our servers from a guy on the street who looked like jesus for 2 pies from gregs. Its his fault for supplying inferior kit"

Endeavour stays toasty in Florida chill

Simon Neill

Cold? COLD!?

its meant to operate in the cold of space, surely a little chilly winter weather is nothing by comparison!

Samsung shows off e-book readers you can doodle on

Simon Neill

One more feature...

be able to open a book from any source, amazon, B&N, waterstones, PDF whatever.

The best (of the worst) patent claims of 2009

Simon Neill

Fig. 4: Microsoft wants fat gamers shamed

Sorry MS, Nintendo already have that one. Its called "wii fit".

this just about sums it up.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/stolen-pixels/5717-Stolen-Pixels-61-Unfit

Wireless e-car recharge tech within range?

Simon Neill

@mischarge

One assumes they will spring for the massive cost of a small LED on the dash that will light up when the charger is connected.

NASA plans robot rocket aeroplane to fly above Mars

Simon Neill
Coat

Lets hope...

they get plane sailing.

Atlantis astronaut flying high over baby's birth

Simon Neill

NASA protocol

I imagine the protocol is to say nothing. Aborting the mission will cost millions, a mistake could cost lives.

Universities saving skint students still waiting for loans

Simon Neill

@math

"She said the SLC was still receiving 14,000 applications a week, and was clearing them at the rate of 2,000 a day."

7 * 2000 = 14000 wheres the problem?

its 5 * 2000 = 10,000 or at most 6 * 10,000. Betting they don't work sundays.

Manchester Uni looks into mobile health nannying

Simon Neill

Sounds familiar...

Costs a lot of money every month, nags you about your health, does nothing but talk at you....we finally made an electronic replacement for wives!

Amazon uncorks Kindle for PC

Simon Neill

Hrm...

@Spanners

Worked first time in FF for me, must be you.

there is one stupid bit though, after installing and tying it to my amazon account I clicked "shop for books" and it took me to the US site not the UK site. Hrm. Also, no free books unlike the actual kindle.

Windows 7 - the Reg reader verdict

Simon Neill
Happy

Went quite well actually...

40 minutes between vista 32 and win7 64. New version is definately faster booting, uses less ram and finally I can make full use of that 4th dimm.

Not so sure I like this wierdness with the window grouping and reducing it to icons.

But overall, least painful and quickest windows install I've seen in a while. Detected my second screen and set it up automatically and everything.

Bridgeworks sidesteps latency with pipelining and AI

Simon Neill

Sounds like...

...the exact same logic that spawned bit torrent.

Microsoft yawns at Google's chillerless data center antidote

Simon Neill

@AC

"What are we saying here? 30 seconds of dedicated server time per query? Obviously not!"

why not? sure it doesn't take 30 seconds to execute a search, but how do you think google get their indexes? they don't just appear on the server fully formed. Then, there is the assumption of an even distribution of searches. Surely the big peak is 9am-9pm US time, roughly. Or perhaps its Japan or Korea, but I certainly doubt its an even distribution.

Toyota Prius fourth-generation e-car

Simon Neill

@"Why don't they make a diesel hybrid?"

well, the article comments on americans not liking diesel, so thats probably one reason.

I also suspect that the whole "instant start" that is VITAL for hybrids doesn't work too well when the engine needs 15 seconds of prewarming before the fuel will ignite.

Ads watchdog underclocks reseller's 9.2GHz AMD CPU claim

Simon Neill

Quad core is a scam

for the average user anyway. Personally I'd much prefer a 4GHz dual core to a 3GHz quad core. I don't want to do 4 things at a medium speed, I want to do one thing fast and not freeze the computer while I do it. Hence, all I need is a dual core.

Your average user probably doesn't even need that, at least not til office 15 when word will take up an entire 3GHz core to run the paperclip in full 3d.

Two convicted for refusal to decrypt data

Simon Neill
FAIL

Its so wrong...

Hand over the encryption key to your data or we give you 2 years in prison!

hrm, lets see... 2 years in prison or decrypt my child porn and spend a lifetime on the sex offenders register etc...let me think......

Riot police raid birthday barbecue for 'all-night' Facebook tag

Simon Neill

Should be ashamed...

They really should. It never occured to them to say....reach for the phone?

Chickens could 'power hydrogen cars'

Simon Neill

Ouch

"This compares poorly with the Honda FCX Clarity, which can go for 270 miles on a far smaller tank, albeit one containing H2 compressed at 5000psi"

Woe betide anyone rear ending the thing. 5,000psi hydrogen explosion.

Masked passwords must go

Simon Neill
FAIL

yes!

unmask passwords! that way when I use the screen tracking software here I can see their logins for the game sites and steal all their game money! This idea has no drawbacks whatsoever!

Dinosaurs actually slimmer than we thought, say boffins

Simon Neill

I can see it now...

"Oh no! I'm being chased by a dinosaur!"

"Don't worry, they overestimated the weight by about 50%!"

"Oh good, so its only a 16ton dinosaur chasing us not 32? This changes everything!"

Hydrogen-powered two-seater car unveiled

Simon Neill

Expensive...

£200 * 12 months * 20 years = £48,000. Even with fuel included that seems a little high for such a small car.

Ice air con system aims for cool on the cheap

Simon Neill

I must be missing something.

I can understand the concept of using cheap energy at night and storing it as ice to save money during the day. (Electricity is cheaper at night). How does using this big block make the process more energy efficient though? Surely the same energy is needed to provide the cold?

DHS to field Star Trek 'Tricorder' medscanner

Simon Neill
Thumb Up

Excellent!

put it together with the HUD, sonic shooter locator thingy and mount it on a gun and we can get baddies with health bars! yay!

Sony eyes smile, smirk-controlled music phone

Simon Neill

Right...

"For example, if the camera thinks that you’re happy then it’ll rifle through your music library to select similarly upbeat songs."

So what, if you look depressed it will play more depressing songs and make SURE you want to slit your wrists?

Boffins build basis for 9TB DVDs

Simon Neill

"The best bit: all this extra data comes at no cost to the disc's size, said Gu."

What about the owner's wallet? I can't imagine a disc that is using gold to store data is going to be cheap. Then the idea of HEATING to read the data can't be good for the electricity bill....

Google: Let us keep search data or die

Simon Neill

Uh.....

Surely the ammount of searches over an issue relates to public awareness of an issue not actual incidence of an issue. E.g. swine flu, I bet half the country has tapped "swine flu" into google. It has no relation to the number of us that actually have it.

NEC ready to sample 'world's first' USB 3.0 controller chip

Simon Neill

@Voltage

Port power control block is also marked as being external to the chip, so I'd guess at the chip controls the power without routing the power THROUGH the chip.

'Air fuelled' battery tech invented in Scotland

Simon Neill

not so useful for....

space based objects either, which is a shame.

Police force eBay scammer to cough up ill-gotten gains

Simon Neill

Uh...

Why is this money not going entirely back to the people ripped off? either the end customer, paypal or credit card company, whoever ended up footing the bill.

D-Link exposes WiFi routers with new 'security feature'

Simon Neill

@Chris C & two hashes

I see what you are saying, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it just gives you MORE data to use to crack the password, so that rather than getting an approximate password you get the actual password.

e.g. all possible words that make md5 hash of 1a2b3c4d is a 300 item list. All possible words that make an SHA1 hash of xyzxyzxyz is a 5 item list. Only one item appears on both lists, the actual password. Given that most people use the same password for everything you now have access to all their accounts not just the ones covered with md5. My brain hurts now.

Study finds IT heads not interested in power saving

Simon Neill

@running defrags etc

we run defrags/full scan from the end of the day at 1700 til about 22-2300 one day a week. PCs shut down at 2330 those nights and 1730 remaining nights. User files are on the server, so the defrag is quick. They aren't booted back up til sometime the next day, saving at least 8 hours/ppc/pn. Still a significant saving. As for WSUS updates, we schedule those for the lunch break when everyone is off the computer anyway.

Computers are kept tidy without the need to run all night. Also, a good defrag app (like diskeeper) can be scheduled to run all day during idle moments and surely leaving realtime protection on negates any real need to perform full scans daily.

As for $37,000/yr on $600,000 of kit....does it matter what the kit cost in the first place? a $37,000 saving is enough to pay a wage or two. Might be the difference between a pay slip and a pink slip for someone at the end of the month in these uncertain times.

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