Posts by Ben Mathews

The Register goes Live on 22 Nov 2011

Great article

We recruited recently, and wading though the CVs was soul destroying. Who the hell thinks a 14 page CV is a good idea?

Guinness to hit three quid a pint

Hmm...

Good idea chap, I think I'll follow your lead.

El Reg to launch space paper plane

Name

Would surely have to be 'Vulture'?

Mysterious organic blobs found in Alaskan waters

Eeek

I for one welcome our thick, black, gooey biological material overlords.

Apple ends Palm Pre's iTunes charade

iTunes?

It's crap. Use Media Monkey which can sync to any USB device...

Ironic the hard line apply had on hacking their devices considering Steve Job's days making 'blue box' phreaking tools...

Satanic blob beast menaces North Carolina

Wow

That;s some crazy shit... urm... almost literally.

My main question though is what kinda robocams do they send down sewers that give that good picture quality? Please tell me they look like red dwarf scutters...

Apple patents karaoke lessons

Prior art...

Don't Rock Back/Guitar Hero do this already?

Millions opted into UK mobile phone directory

In fairness....

Their security is extremely good. the lack of an accessible search results page on their site makes it very tricky to get any information out of it.

Search provider that can't provide search results? Epic Fail!

Microsoft uncloaks invisible XBox controller

Urm....

So how much of that vid is actually what it can do, and how much is it the 'family' syncing their movements to what's on the screen for promo purposes?

I'm guessing 100% of the latter and none of the former but if I'm wrong, I'll be buying one!

Apple seeks specialist for iPhone ARM upgrade

I don't get it...

Why offer lost of hamstrung models when you could offer one 'does everything' model at the same cost?!?

Twitter breaks Jam Festival record

4 grand?

I'm thinking that if all the people who spent time organising the events had have donated a tenner to charity instead they'd have raised more money...

I'm all in favour of charitable work but fair to see why people are getting so defensive when it's clear that the time an effort but in haven't justified the end result.

In fact, I think this is call for a challenge... can the reg whip up more money than twestival.fm managed? I'll pledge £20 to get the ball rolling!

Apple fights iPhone unlocking (again)

The bit I don't get is...

Why Apple and their zealot supporters can get so up in arms about MS shipping an OS with IE as the default browser but think it's OK to lock people down to only one supplier for software.

At least MS give you the choice to use a different browser from any source you like and don't force you to use only MS approved browsers... even if you can't uninstall the bag of shite you never have to look at it.

Apple should be forced to provide a pre-jailbroken version of every update provided but should be absolved of supporting it. Seems fair to me.

Half Life 2 used for firefight fire drill

Fire!

Should have used farcry 2 for the funky fire propagation!

Bluetooth message saves scousers' livers

What they don't tell you....

The app was most likely largely used as a way of keeping score in very manly displays of 'who's had more lager'.

Rather than detering people from drinking it probably encouraged it.

Immortal Dr Who jellyfish poised to rule Earth

At least they're small.

The big ones really freak me out

http://st.blog.cz/m/mibeky.blog.cz/obrazky/16138555.jpg

Gimme some (more) money, demand Spinal Tap

Title

BBC iPlayer volume goes up to 11... made me giggle when I saw that.

Ares I manned rocket section explodes in testing

Is it just me or...

Did anyone else read 'arses' at first glance?

O2 and Be customers suffer network congestion

No probs for me

Over in East London. So far at least. Hope it stays that way!

Doner kebabs: Death wrapped in pitta bread

Healthy Option

I always have a shish anyway :p

Google and the Great Wikipedia Feedback Loop

I've found...

Wikipedia is generally a pretty accurate source of information provided you're not looking at anything 'pop culture' (celebrities and the like).

The most important thing if you make sure you verify any information with another source. It's a great starting point for research into something you know little about.

Sounds like the old school encyclopedia is somewhat bitter.

User-generated reviews - blessing or bull?

I agree with Sentient

Both are useful.

User reviews are good provided you read enough to get a reasonably balanced view.

Expert reviews give a lot more detail and are more likely to cover specific areas of interest (e.g. If I buy a camera to do macro shots, I don't care if it's quality in panoramas is crap).

Robot 'Spider-man' casts net to nab burglars

Damn title required....

That looks about as effective as trying to catch a tiger with a sheet of kleenex.

OGC cracks one off on with new logo

Love it!

Between this and the Lisa Simpson blow job London Olympics logo, the govenment branding people are really excelling themselves.

UFO wind turbine prang site: Exclusive photos

Reporting at it's finest.

It's this kind of detective work, wich simply can't be found on other sites, that brings me back to el reg day after day.

The truth is out there...

HDTV 'pointless' without perfect peepers

Hmmm...

So, the optitian, who makes money from eye tests and prescription lenses things moer people should get.... eye tests and perscription lenses...

Shock.

419ers take Canadian for $150,000

No sympathy.

Even if unfamiliar with the scam, you'd think you'd check some credentials before handing any money over...

Idiot

Violet Mir:ror DIY RFID kit

Useless

But I kinda want one.

What I'd use it for I have no idea!

London Underground gets emergency phone network

Oh noes...

I hope they don't roll it out for general use. The tube is bad enough without bankers barking into their phone or some chav scum shouting abuse at their friend.

Bees on cocaine: The facts

Wonder how this research project started...

Student 1: Gee, wouldn't it be great if we could get loads of free cocaine!

Student 2: Yeah, but it'll never happen.

Student 1: No, wait, I have a cunning plan for our final year research paper...

Nintendo whacked with $5m Wii strap lawsuit

This is insane!

Do these people not have the opposable thumbs required to grip the controller?

Story withdrawn

Why oh why oh why do we need a title?

The one that has been most irritating me recently is 'lulz' meaning lols meaning laughs. Usage: "I did it for the lulz."

LOL was useful shorthand, the written version of a common verbal signal.

LOLs is annoying because it doesn't work - you can't laugh out louds at somethings.

LULZ is even worse! It just makes no sense.

SkyFire beta goes public

Ooo....

Works perfectly on my N95. Pages load fast, plays youtube with no problem.

I'm actually pretty impressed.

BBC iPlayer works although the parental guidance pop up on some stuff renders behind things meaning you can't OK it and the video lags noticably.

Amazon intros early VAT cut

Also...

www.overclockers.co.uk have been at 15% since the announcement.

Leicester nursery loses memory stick with children's details

As bad as any data loss is...

At least it sounds like they had the policies, resources and training in place to minimise the risk which is more than can be said in the case of some of the other data losses reported in recent history.

Of course, one can never eliminate the human element. Bring on our robot overlords.

HTC Touch HD Windows Mobile smartphone

A first!

The first phone I've seen thats made me think about trading in my N95. Looks lovely.

Ofcom slaps down Phones4U

I found them fairly good...

Last time I got a phone they tried to offer one of these cashback services...

I said, "why not give me £50 now then?"

To my surprise I walked out with a shiny new N95 and £50 in cash.

They musta been on the happy pills that morning I guess.

Windows 7: One compatibility label, no confusion

Hmmm....

@ AC 08:43GMT

I think the issue arose from the fact that the original stickers were 'Vista Capable' and 'Vista Ready' or similar but what they meant by 'capable' was "Will just about function on Vista to get online". Someone who interpreted 'Vista Capable' as meaning "Will run Vista" did a perfectly good job of reading the lettering on the sticker.

Even an MS VP got caught by this: http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/12/microsoft-vp-i-personally-got-burnt-by-vista-capable-stickers/

@The BigYin

Try Mythbuntu. Works well for me.

Bespoke top level domains 'to cost $200,000'

.doc?...

I want .exe

Bebo users release interstellar spamgasm at Gliese 581

Oh great

Upon receipt of said message, the Gliesian fleet will mobilise to eradicate this quite obviously incoherant and pointless life form.

It's as if a million voices cried out and were suddenly in need of silencing...

Blizzard awarded $6m in WoW bot case

Southpark

Glad no-one told the southpark kids about this, would have been a much less entertaining episode :)

Nokia creates Indoor Positioning

@ Roger de Laborde

Until, presumably it directs them into a stream.

Or a motorway....

Dell: We went green too early

CIO is....

Chief Information Officer

Think along the lines of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Finantial Officer (CFO)

Mobes & pheasants litter London's black cabs

Artifitial limbs?

That guy must have been legless.

Mines the one with one arm sewn up.

Chrome-fed Googasm bares tech pundit futility

rofl

Arrington even defends himself (badly) when challenged in the TechCrunch comments...

The previous persons comments are in speech marks.

--------------------------

Michael Arrington - September 1st, 2008 at 4:50 pm PDT

“The browser is not the OS nor is it an OS replacement.”

sure it is.

“The browser is a installed application replacement. You still need an OS to actually power the machine”

correct. and linux works just fine.

“if you think web apps are going to replace a desktop OS anytime soon you are clueless. ”

Have you looked at what MySpace did with gears? Look, then comment.

----------------------------------

Urm, so he thinks that installing Linux and Chrome means that he has a PC with Chrome as the operating system? What an idiot.

The Google-isation of all the net's access points

From the looks of things...

You can detach tabs from the main browser window and either move them to another instance of the browser or leave them totally seperate. I like. I want. now.

For those expressing privacy concerns, if it does send data back to the google borg ship, being open source there will be a custom version that doesn't out in a matter of days is my guess.

UK etailer punts bovine coitus thumb drive

Darwin

Should have sent anyone falling for that a self sterilisation kit just to be sure.

Council clamps down on 'man on the street'

Shocking, truly shocking...

That The Register would besmirch the wonders of Marmite.

gOS - a Google good OS for your Mum

iBar

That sounds like a law suite waiting to happen :)

Ryanair cancels aggregator-booked tickets in escalating scraping war

Microsoft

I think Tom was alluding to "Ryanair is continuing to work with our software providers, Navitaire and Microsoft to proactively eliminate screen-scraping of Ryanair’s website".

I think it's safe to assume they don't consider MS a software provider because some of their customers use IE.

Brown's website is Web2.0tastic

@ Adam Wynne

No, there was never any user acceptance. They just switched over from the legacy app without consultation with users.