Posts by Dave

Phorm gets £15m lifeline

why don't we...

...organise a whip-round and get enough money to buy a majority shareholding in Phorm, then just dissolve the f***er but keep the rights to te technology to Phorm can't reinvent itself?

Royal Navy warship almost fires on UFOs

obligatory...

"A Royal Navy warship may have come within seconds of opening fire on Unidentified Flying Objects above Merseyside"

ey, ey, ey...cehm down, cehm down

Toshiba Tecra M10 14in notebook

serial port

Don't be so dismissive of the serial port on here. I have one on my laptop and I use it quite frequently - there are still a number of devices which use RS-232 as a standard interface (GPS, radio equipment, etc). My previous laptop was erroneously ordered without serial and I had to muddle along with a USB/serial conversion dongle - not ideal.

Pirate Bay loses trial: defendants face prison time, hefty fines

@ Lee Jackson

Agreed.

As for the previous posters who've made the Google analogy, there is (IMO) the issue of intent. Pirate Bay should be seen as doing what they did predominantly to facilitate illicit activity.

OK....flame on.....

Screeching rails close London Tube station

what?!?!?!

"You have metal rails running on metal tracks"

I think you mean "wheels running on tracks"....maybe your network wouldn't be so shambolic if you had the faintest idea how it worked

BOFH: Aspie no questions

worth the wait....

...but why such long gaps between episodes these days?

C dominated 2008's open-source project nursery

@Michael Fremlins

Well said, that man

SA copper thieves bid for Darwin glory

@AC #1

"Also in Tyne and Wear, someone stole 1/4 mile of railway tracks."

Yeah, but it didn't matter cos the train was up on piles of bricks cos some Geordieshad stolen the wheels

Three in 10 Windows PCs still vulnerable to Conficker exploit

I wonder...

"Conficker, aka Downadup, [...] exploits the MS08-067 vulnerability patched by Microsoft last October"

and

"The worm has been able to build the largest botnet on record largely because sys admins have been slow to cut down the vulnerability responsible for fueling its spread."

And what's the betting that the majority of comments on this will be bashing MS (who fixed this) rather than the sysadmins (who didn't apply the fix)?

London Underground gets emergency phone network

lucky coincidence

As a report by the London Assembly (or GLC, or whatever they're called nowadays) noted when assessing the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings, the fact that London Underground opted for Airwave was coincidental....certainly not part of some grand design to have LU and the police on the same network. This lucky coincidence meant a financial saving as the police didn't have to fund extension of the Airwave network to the Underground to support police communication...but let's not kid ourselves that this is some joined up thinking.

Cash-strapped US businessman jumps from light aircraft

makes me think...

"It subsequently crashed in a swamp near Milton, Florida, where investigators discovered "no signs of ... a smashed windshield"

That must be one robust windshield

Take a hammer to your hard drive, shrieks Which?

missing word

"Having lost faith with data destruction, on the basis of its experience with one wiping tool,"

Important word missing here: "free".

Yeah...if I had data which, if it fell into the wrong hands, could significantly jeopardise my financial wellbeing and possible my personal security, then I don't think I'd be bothered to invest a few quid in a tool to delete the data properly.

Pay nothing, get nothing. Sounds like to data "destruction" software was perfect value for money

HP caught flogging to Iran

maybe....

...they would have remained undetected if their boxes hadn't been so darned big

Agile development - can’t scale, won’t scale?

satch

I would like to express my pleasure at seeing Joe Satriani name-checked within the article.

That is all.

US boffins: Laptops will be as hot as the Sun by 2030

@Nick / Thermodynamics

"Surely the heat output of a processor is a function of the power input? In order to be as hot as the sun, either the battery life will be miniscule, or the power supply will be huge."

I'm guessing the latter option....is this the downside of solar powered appliances?

British boffins perfect process to make any item '100% waterproof'

breathable?

sounds cool for waterproofing gadgets, but I'm not sure about clothing. If it's *so* waterproof does that mean that treated articles won't breath in the same way that Goretex does. Could get a bit sweaty in there....

Vodafone jacks up UK prices

@Charlie Clark

"You are perfectly within your rights to refuse to accept the increase in charges or terminate the contract early."

Be that as it may, how many people entered into a contract in order to get a shiny new handset either free or at a knock-down price?. Terminate your contract early and you have to return the handset surely....something which I expect makes the "just tell them to stuff it" option less palatable to a lot of people.

DSGi profit plummets 30%

comment

When a spokeman for DSG was asked for a comment on this news, his response was "...errr....hang on, I'll have to ask a manager".

ISS toilet fails to suck

got to say it...

There's a comment just waiting to be made about "captain's log", but I won't sink to that level. That would just be taking the p****...besides, am I the right man for the job...

etc., etc. etc.

Israeli jailers listen to guard dogs with interpreter ware

pseudocode

Are they using an eight bit bitmask to store the characteristics of barks under different circumstances? I hope so, then the code which handles it might say:

if (bark.worseThan(byte)

{

alert();

}

else

{

ignore();

}

[ hmmmm.... El Reg comments system doesn;t seem to like formatting code-like comments ]

DWP still sending out passwords and discs together

@"No worries" By Christoph

"They have a new security scheme in place - the password will still be bundled, but will be securely protected with industry standard ROT13 encryption."

And then what's the betting that when they subsequently decide to beef up their security even more, some clown adopts the practice of double ROT13 encryption for extra security.

US lag sues over prison crash diet

am I the only one...

...to mis-read that district as "Fattyville"?

Ofcom wins pirate radio components case

ID

"Broadcast Warehouse supplies radio equipment to many of the new community radio stations and are on Ofcom's published list of suppliers, but in future they're going to have to be a lot more careful about identifying their customers. Perhaps some sort of ID card?"

Will a Lithuanian one do?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/28/id_card_downing_street/

Transgender man prepares to give birth

@ g e

"why would a vegetarian want a simulated meat sausage?"

A interesting philosophical question...but how do you know that the transgender subject of the article is a vegetarian?

Notts police seize mobile phone stun gun

from the Department Of The Bleeding Obvious

Detective Sergeant Dave Bola, of Notts Police, told the BBC: "It's a shock that we found it."

Yeah - I think that's kind of the idea of the device

Channel 4 music video provider goes titsup

announcement

There is a problem. In the meantime, here isn't some music

Sky broadband customers blindsided by SMTP switch-off

@ Ivan Headache

Welcome to my world...been trying to sort out my parents' email, as they're with Sky and having similar problems.

Have spent ages on the phone to tech support at Sky (two of the preceding words are laden with sarcasm - can you guess which 2?) trying to sort this one out.

The bottom line I'm getting from them is "There's a web interface you can use for your Sky email. We provide POP/SMTP but we don't actually support email.. if SMTP/POP work for you then that's nice, but if not then don't come crying to us"

I am willing to publish a correction to the previous sentence if I was provided with some more information from the Sky engineer who I have been promised numerous times will call me to discuss this. The engineer's name is Chris Bell. Chris, if you're reading this, then at least have the courtesy to call me and tell me that you don't give a s**t rather than just ignoring me.

Sky TV? No complaints. Sky broadband? I'd rather stick pins in my eyes.

HMRC still waiting for EDS cash

obvious to say it, but...

...maybe EDS sent the cheque but it lying lost somewhere, next to a couple of CDs

2nd coathook from the left, thanks...and pass me my brolly while you're at it.

Village shaken by GPS-driven tank invasion

the guily party

So, if they've identified Private Contractor as being responsible for this, then I guess his chances of ever getting promoted to Corporal are scuppered

Dixons grinches Christmas

The Tech Guys

"DSG's support service - the TechGuys - had a better year"

I bet they havemif they've found enough mugs to pony up £29.95 to get an 8 quit network card fitted in their machine.

England flops shafted by enormous todger

Obvious to say it....

...but I suppose that would be classified as a c**k up then