Ear prints
are as unique as finger prints.
Posts by Simon Dummett
17 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Dec 2007
ID card scheme for foreigns extended
Apple seeks patent on reality
Unused phone lines to be taxed for rural broadband
Monday 14th December 2009 10:54 GMT 
Rural broadband does not need improvement*
* for some values of "rural"
My in-laws live in rural Lincolnshire, in a small village with its own exchange. Their up-to-8Mb package is pretty much up-to-7.5+Mb during the day.
I live in an area of a large West Yorkshire city whose exchange is physically further away than the area covered by the exchange above - when the village became part of the conurbation, lines were put in to an existing exchange rather than building a new one.
All the providers in the unbundled exchange will offer is 0.5Mb at best - understandably I'm loathe to change from my current provider as my up-to-16Mb connection is a constant 2.3Mb, but if the best anyone says they will offer is 0.5, that's the most they'd have to try to provide.
Cable's out as well, as they won't dig up the Wimpy-laid brickwork street, and refuse to run the cable to the house through the back garden (no euphemism intended).
So taxing this city-dweller 6 quid a year to improve the lot of ruralites is not going to go down well.
And on top of that, what Value is Added by taking an extra 50p a month? How can VAT possibly be chargeable on it?
Ofcom's 116 discussions confirm El Reg advice
Duff DAB, megamogs and ass-assassins: Your thoughts
Euro project to arrest us for what they think we will do
Friday 25th September 2009 23:11 GMT 
Not Minority Report, Asimov's "All The Troubles Of The World"
For the benefit of those who choose not to visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Troubles_of_the_World I provide this excerpt:
"Multivac, the world's largest supercomputer, is given the responsibility of analyzing daily, in essence, the entire sum of data present upon the planet Earth... It receives annually a precise set of data on every citizen of the world, extrapolating the future actions of humanity based upon the personality, history, and desires of every human being...
Recently, however, in addition to its existing duties, it has been given the responsibility of producing a daily list of crimes predicted to be carried out by the population at large, ranging from murder to spousal abuse...
The story begins with several of the administrators of the government being warned by Multivac of an upcoming murder attempt. Joseph Manners, the man accused of the crime, is quickly placed under house arrest, despite his protests that he is ignorant of any planned crime and the unwillingness of the law enforcement officers to inform him of what crime he is going to commit. In spite of the arrest, Multivac reports that the odds of the crime being consummated increase as a result of the governments actions, continuing to rise with every further movement."
Please, read the story, or at least the rest of the potted version at the URL above. The ending might be just what we need...
Florida cops taser satnav lake plunge woman
'Big Brother' - the price of self-driving cars
Tuesday 31st March 2009 20:33 GMT
@Dazed and Confused
"You are driving down the motorway, and the car dies. You move over the hard shoulder and park."
Assuming that the car hasn't died due to a catastrophic systems failure within the auto-driving gizmos, resulting in nothing auto-driving the car whilst you're halfway through your beer and pasty with a laptop on your, er, lap, trying to work out which cup holder to stick the bottle in whilst you try steering with your knees*, or that you *have* had a catastrophic systems failure but are able to fight against the now no longer powered power steering pump and brake servo, both of which have a failover mode of locking out meat control when previously under AutonomousAuto(TM) control.
What wonders await us.
* I know this is a typical situation currently for [insert automotive company name favoured by hated drivers], they'll be used to it, but it's not so good for the rest of us.
El Reg pays tribute to father of Playmobil
Friday 13th February 2009 12:39 GMT 
Entendres?
"He was later found to have a brace of songbirds stuffed in his lunchbox, although there is no suggestion that Carli [sic] Bruni had a hand in it."
Carla Bruni had a hand in placing the brace within his lunchbox (a la M Sarkozy)?
Or
Carla Bruni had one of her hands in his lunchbox (also, no doubt, a la Sarkozy)?
YouTube goes spandex with MGM movie deal
Top-end Fords will be watching your rear
Friday 11th April 2008 19:25 GMT
if...
"If you wanted to make cars really safe you'd sit the driver in a glass box sticking out of the front of the car"
... and mount a large spike on the end of the steering column pointing at the driver.
Tell us, oh Oval of Blueness, what happens when the blind spot system goes wrong?
"Ah, no orange light, it's OK to pull ou..."
IBM unveils nano-projector based VirtuaHuman with 1TB of memory
Get your German interior minister's fingerprint here
BT business customer contracts to change Thursday
Panasonic preps Wiimote-proof TV
Monday 18th February 2008 13:14 GMT
re Las/zer
"why isn't laser spelt lazer in the US, just to be consistent?"
Because then it would be an acronym for Light wave Amplification by Ztimulated Emission of Radiation. Which would be just silly.
Actually, it's so silly it still justifies the question...
... mine's the monochromatic one...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
