Posts by John H Woods

Census threatens spies' cover

Ethnic Origin

Correct Answer: "African (Aren't we all?)"

Dinky Florida machine 'could whup world No 1 computer's ass'

PR Opportunity

Just reconfigure it to be good at the LINPACK tests.

Google brings 2-factor authentication to Gmail

yes ...

... in fact, Lotus Notes has a web-interface that - even though it's not that good - beats the Notes (fat) Client into a cocked hat.

Free Android encryption comes to Egypt

sed

s/totalitarian/all/g

Bank scorched by stupid Facebook policy

CBA ...

... usually means something else on Facebook, if I am not very much mistaken.

Ten... wireless keyboards

I agree...

... those IBM clicky-clicky ones were the dog's. One thing I like to do when i get a keyboard is to swizzle the keys round into the Dvorak layout. It's getting harder with most modern keyboards because the keys from different rows are different sizes, or because some keys have nipple cutouts (GHB on a Thinkpad, frinstance).

CoD: Black Ops 'not fit for purpose', fans claim

@Ramazan

Many people will point out that national law trumps what is written in contracts. Hence Apple UK having to abandon re-stocking fees for mail order goods.

Blimey ...

... if 'not entertaining' can be used as a reason to get a refund on a game, video or audio product I might be able to hear some floodgates opening. Never played Blops on multiplayer, the single player campaign was worth the money. But what about terrible games such as Haze?

I think if you've had the game for 2 months, like Gangsta, you'd be hard pressed to prove it's just been gathering dust. But I've taken games back to GAME a day or after purchase and asked (succesfully) for credit against a different purchase. But then I'm in there every week spending $$$ so they know that if I take something back there's a good reason.

Wind turbine bonanza expected in Hull

Doesn't matter ...

... when the wind blows, charge up your car!

NASA 'naut falls off bike, misses shuttle launch

Unluckiest...

Person... EVER

ASA goes online to swing stick at new media advertisers

Repeat after me ...

... the internet is not like other media. It is simply not amenable to the same levels of control, censorship or regulation. The only thing that needs to be done about this is that people need to realise that it is simply not amenable to the same levels of control, censorship or regulation. It seems that politicians and bureaucrats are significantly behind the curve where this realisation is concerned.

Who are the biggest electric car liars - the BBC, or Tesla Motors?

Wall socket?

I'm undecided about electric vehicles, for a whole variety of reasons, but I think it's unfair to quote charge times for a single "wall" socket. Any house with a remotely modern electrical system can supply a 10kW load (e.g. a cooker or shower) so I'm pretty sure 230V x 45A would be a quite reasonable expectation for a domestic charging point.

Standard 13A UK three-pin sockets would only ever be used for exceptional circumstances - charging up somewhere where there was no vehicle charging point, and in most houses you can plug two 3kW loads onto a modern ring main without it tripping, so with appropriate circuitry you should be able to get at least 25A from two adjacent wall sockets.

Lane Fox promises sub-£100 PCs

Agreed ...

3 told me they "don't support linux". Fortunately you can just plug a 3 dongle into a modern Ubuntu distro, and when the box pops up, select '3'. Then it works. It's one of the advantages of using Linux - last time I tried an O2 dongle on Windows it tried to subvert all my Wifi config by replacing the windows zero-config with a huge bloaty buggy mess.

Top CEOs agree: US is down the crapper

Exactly correct...

... and this is why there are more sports therapists than engineers. You can't outsource sports therapy, so anyone who is any good can always get work where they live. However, someone who is an ace software engineer can easily be out-competed by someone on the other side of the world.*

I don't want to be telling my son that plumbing is a better career option in the UK than software development, but unfortunately it's the truth, and until your toilet can be remotely unblocked from China, it's going to stay that way.

* In my experience, the competition is only on price, because outsourced software is rubbish. Not because of the quality of the people doing the coding, but because of the increased disconnect between the recipients and producers of the system: managing complex and changing requirements was hard enough when teams were small and co-located.

HTC Desire HD

Tasker ...

... can save you battery life.

It's not free but it rocks. For instance - automatically switch wifi off when not in range of home wifi; enter power saving mode if placed face down. go into quiet mode if both at home; on charge and it's between midnight and 6 am.

Also divert calls from mistress' phone straight to voicemail if you're at home :-)

I got a DHD for Xmas and I haven't yet put it down, I absolutely love it. Hopefully a bigger battery will be available someday but I'm quite happy having it on charge whenever I am at home or in the car.

The screen is so large it is effectively a mini-tablet, and as a handheld computing device, I think HTC have set the bar. Any larger, and you'd probably not want to hold it up to your head, unless you are Dara O'Briain. But for chunky fingered lardies like me, who could use the exercise of carrying an extra few grams, it cannot be beaten.

If you want a lot of standby time, just do what I did - spend a fiver on a tiny cheap Samsung and carry that around as well. But

Beastly Android will batter Apple's iOS beauty

Please can we distinguish ...

... between percentages and percentage points?

RIM: 35.0% -> 19.2% (loss of 15.8 percentage points or 45.1%)

iOS: 20.9% -> 26.9% (gain of 6 percentage points [not 7] or 28.7%)

Android: 27.5% -> 40.8% (gain of 13.3 percentage points or 48.4%)

Other: 16.6% -> 13.1% (loss of 3.5 percentage points or 21.1%)

Same for VAT please: it is a 2.5 percentage POINT increase - it has gone up by 14.3% and represents a 2.1% increase in the price of goods with standard rate VAT.

I'm pretty sure I'll have fallen foul of Muphry's law here somewhere, but I still think we should encourage the term percentage POINT

[A-Za-z0-9]+

I've bought loads of apps from the Android market. Some of these are "unnecessary" - for instance the free version of Maverick (off-road GPS) is quite good enough, but at the same time it is so good I couldn't resist the opportunity to bung the developer the tiny amount of loose change the pro version cost. Is this a sustainable model? I think only time will tell.

Capita buys chunk of troubled NHS software firm iSoft

Google IBS

Hint: the first result is not iSoft Business Systems. Surely it's worth a quick check before naming your business?

Article deleted

LOL

So did I!

Beeb ordered to release TV licensing contract sweeteners

How detector vans might work:

Well I can think of some fairly simple electronics that would do the trick. But maybe it's just electronics to make beep-beep noises, after all.

Apple chap knocks up ancient Lego computer

And within a few hundred years...

... the parasitic meme of religion took hold of our gullible race and cost us at least a millennium of scientific and mathematical progress (and probably philosophical, ethical and social progress too).

Blighty's kids nosedive down global reading, maths rankings

Yes ...

... the OECD report notes, according to the report in the Telegraph:

"Countries where schools had more bureaucratic freedom performed better and the study showed a strong link between good discipline and high scores "

Of course, the government response to our recent poor performance in this test means that they will feel they need to exert even more control.

White House forbids feds from reading WikiLeaked cables

Just the excuse I needed ...

... to cancel my paypal acct.

Mass mind control artist condemns El Reg to obscurity

Errm...?

"I suspect the causes are typical geeky ignorance of real politics along with unhealthy doses of mind-deadening socialism spoon-fed over a lifetime. "

Wow - you're objecting to ad hominem attacks (on RL and his followers) with this?

Don't be so modest, Cake.

See title

Unreleased Lady Gaga songs nabbed in audacious hack

Be nice to Ke$ha you lot ...

... come on - how many hot blonde pop starlets are on record as saying they like fat blokes with beards?

Google in 'better' copyright protection vow

Use scroogle...

... plain interface, no frills, no incremental search - and encrypted too.

https://ssl.scroogle.org/

Google ends 'do be evil, if you want a top ranking' policy

Well ...

... try googling nominative determinism. Best ever example is

Br J Urol. 1977 Apr;49(2):173-6.

The urethral syndrome: experience with the Richardson urethroplasty.

Splatt AJ, Weedon D.

US politician: 'homosexual agenda' behind TSA groin grope

"puts the willies up the TSA"

I see what you did there!

Frenchies, Germans wave fat pipes at embarrassed Brits

A solid 2-4 Meg pipe...

... /is/ big enough for the vast majority of people. But what about the vast majority of _households - which hold more than one person? I'd like to be able to watch HD TV regardless of what my kids are doing.

NASA to make MAJOR ALIENS REVELATION this week

Yep, that's because ...

... it's a thinly disguised retelling of our local bard's "The Tempest".

John H Woods

Stratford-upon-Avon

Canada steps closer to legalising sex work

Since you ask?

It would be "nice" to live in a world where no person felt compelled to prostitute themselves - and maybe no-one felt they needed mood-altering substances.

We don't live in such a world. We live in one where prostitution, drugs and gambling are a reality and where attempts to obliterate them via legislation have actually increased the harm that arises from them.

You want common sense? Me too. But to me common sense is realising that certain ways of dealing with things are counterproductive (as decades of experience should tell us) and that we should be seeking other ways of dealing with them.

Of course there is a role for using the law to *control* these things. But if they are simply outlawed, criminals prosper and the vulnerable - and often the rest of society - suffer as a result.

Apple says no to Android-oriented iPad mag

@Ralph 5

Sorry, but I really think you are missing the point. Imagine going to Tesco and being told "We're not carry Private Eye this week because they keep criticising us" - or "We're not selling the Daily Redtop today because they decided to run a full page advert for Lidl"

But why am I arguing with you? If you already read Neil Mitchell's post and you still stand by yours, there's little point in me or anyone trying to change your mind.

Sharp Aquos LC-32LE210E 32in LCD TV

Errm...?

I agree with you about the wallmounting idiocy - never understood why people sometimes mount them so high up. But I'm reminded of what my mother said about our TV 'rather dominating' the living room. My answer is that the Big White Rectangle rather dominates the average cinema too!

Maybe you would feel happier if we called it the 'TV room' - that's what it's for!

Ofcom slaps down ham botherer

Seconded...

Have you noticed how Survivors, The Walking Dead, 28 Days Later etc could all do with some radio hams? Survivors was particularly funny with people getting lost - I know GPS drifts but I'm sure it would be usable for a few years.

Official: Playboy back cat stashed on hard drive

A new specialism ...

for Art Historians seems possible. How about being an 'I Don't Know Much About Art But I Know What I Like Historian"

The alternatives to password protection

Blue Proximity

Presence of a paired bluetooth device could be used as a second factor. I use (the excellent) Blue Proximity on my personal (Ubuntu) laptop, with the sensitivity turned right down - if my phone is not next to my laptop, it locks - when I put it back, it unlocks.

I'm sure it would be easy to use this as a second factor by setting it up to accept a short password when the paired device is present. A longer password should be available for device-free log-in in case you lose your phone on a screen-break.

China-inspired charity aims to sex-down society

Can I please just say ...

... that I am not the John Woods in the article?

Putting the internet into neutral, or neutering the net?

Why?

Why do the ISPs seem to have such clout? There are big organisations who should be supporting net neutrality (I'm thinking of all those providing video). And a huge groundswell of consumers who - even if they don't know it - want net neutrality. But the ISPs seem to hold some kind of sway over the legislators that is out of all proportion to their financial clout and their popular support. Is it just that governments need them to be on side so they can spy on us?

'Spacetime cloak' could act as 'Star Trek transporter'

That would be cunningly...

... but cunninger could be a noun derived from a verb (like employer vs. employ) and therefore 'a cunninger' might be one who is practised in cunning.

Lincs authority lets schools decide on Pagan lessons

Hear,

Hear!

US Marine hover-jeep to get robotic hands-off controls

It's because ...

... people who would be any use as politicians are doing something else, and pretty much anyone who actually wants to be a politician should be prevented from being one.

World's largest pilot union shuns full-body scanners

WTF?

It's easy to increase the power output of a 500cc Fiat - just press the throttle. It's easy to overdrive a laser pointer to paper-burning intensity - just burn out the regulator. It's easy for an X-ray machine to give overdoses - just increase the exposure length.

Your premise is incorrect, but your argument is also a non-sequitur, so even if it weren't your conclusion would still be unfounded.

Police get ready for body parts audit

what else ...

... do they have up their sleeves?

StumbleUpon adds apps to its recommendation list

StumbleUpon is great but ...

... it only becomes great after you have used it a lot. Whenever I recommend it to people I always try to prepare for their initial disappointment - after you have established a network of people whose likes and dislikes coincide with yours it is absolutely ace.

Nominet forgets what the first .uk domain name was

not lost ...

... they're on a train somewhere

HTC forgets Norwegian alphabet

and ...

... eth and yogh! And ash, (æ) which is still to be found reasonably often.

Seagate squirts out rectal cleaning spray

scuzzy

That is all.

First tube station to get Wi-Fi next week

Always use VPN ...

... when you are not on your home network.

How to stop Apple and Google's great web lockdown

We knew it was you, Mr Pott ...

... and bloody good it was too.