Posts by Samuel Walker

UN, IMF join opposition to ICANN top-level domain plans

I'm fairly sure that

assuming they get .cocacola and .coke, then they won't need to pay any additional fees for coke.cocacola and coke.coke

I expect better reporting from you El Reg.

".cocacola, .coke, .dietcoke, .fanta, coke.cocacola, coke.coke,"

Apple vanishes MySQL from Mac OS X Lion Server

IDS

IDS is still going.

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/informix/developer-edition/

The Developer edition is free with no time limits, but is only meant for development purposes.

Downing Street e-petition site to get new Directgov home

Keep it simple

www.gov.uk

Also accessible by: gov.uk

Simple.

Boffins demand: Cull bogus A-Levels, hire brainier teachers

@jake

Wow, things have changed.

A year and a half ago I took mine.

The standard process is 4 AS Levels (1st Year), then dropping one subject to take 3 A2 Levels (2nd Year).

My college did offer the option to take 5 AS Levels if you had enough GCSE's. And 4 A2 Levels if you got a C or higher in every AS level you wanted to continue. I know of no-one who took 5 A2 Levels.

@Tom 15

General Studies is still very much taken at A-Level. I finished my A Levels a year and a half ago, and General Studies was compulsory for everyeone (as well as in the co-hort after us).

And my Sixth Form college wasn't a bad one either - top 20 (by avg ALevel points) of every college for 11 years running.

Even though most universities don't accept it, colleges still make students take it.

Kindle update to add 'proper' page numbers

Hmmm

The question is, WHICH printed edition.

Hardback?

Mass Market Paperback?

Trade Paperback?

Actually

It doesn't.

The .epub standard itself doesn't force page numbers useage. Although the NCX spec does support manually forcing page numbers, the .epub spec doesn't mention how much of the NCX spec must implemented. I can't speak for other formats.

The Sony Reader itself has no way of calculating where the pages fall in a print edition.

Thus it doesn't.

What it does do is use an arbitrary system - Adobe Digital Editions for instance uses 1000 bytes to a page, when their own propriety format hasn't been used.

While the .epub standards people have tried to clarify the problem. these changes certainly came after the PRS-505 was released.

Source:

http://blog.threepress.org/2009/11/26/adobe-page-map-versus-ncx-pagelist/

Mac App Store: Developer godsend or Evil Empire?

Except

that Apple manually vet every App that gets submitted to the App Store. There is no such checking for the Android market place.

The implication of Apple manually approving all Apps is that they are legal at the very least.

What tripe

"The stuff that's on the shelves in boxes, that's software that has been vetted. Somebody had to pay enough money to get it shipped, and somebody had to approve it to put it on the shelf, and so that's probably reputable and probably quality."

I wonder what Wolfire Studios make of this. - http://blog.wolfire.com/2011/02/Counterfeit-Lugaru-on-Apple-s-App-Store-developing

No court order against PlayStation hackers for now

Woo!

“If having a PayPal account were enough, then there would be personal jurisdiction in this court over everybody, and that just can't be right,” Illston told James G. Gilliland Jr., an attorney representing Sony. “That would mean the entire universe is subject to my jurisdiction, and that's a really hard concept for me to accept.”

*APPLAUSE* Somebody get this judge a pay rise stat!

I actually did a little jig at reading that paragraph

Disappearing filth leads to dropped charges in extreme smut case

*Sigh*

Another person who doesn't know the difference between Copying a file, and Cutting a file.

Microsoft invents touch-sensitive mouse

Magic Mouse Ripoff?

Perhaps, but MS's version looks a lot more ergonomic than Apple's attempt. Perhaps that is why it's more expensive - they actually want it to be comfortable.

Google Cr-48: Inside the Chrome OS 'unstable isotope'

@AC 09:13

That is exactly where technology is taking us. The success of Facebook, Twitter et al proves that most internet people do fall into this category. For better of for worse, companies take us where there is demand, and that is where demand lies - with social networking media sites.

Just because you don't like that direction itself is not reason to deny that that is where we are heading.

@DrXym

Sure, but ChromeOS isn't meant to be your main PC.

How often do you play any Steam game when your out and about, on the train or in starbucks? The percentage of people who do that is tiny.

Missed the point

Someone needs to learn what netbooks are actually for.

Netbooks generally aren't meant to handle "20G of MP3s, 60G of digital photos, 100G of VMware images, and a terabyte or so of video sitting in front of me, not to mention 50,000-odd source files".

They're more meant for web browsing, occasional document editing, perhaps with the odd song thrown in. In other words, for when your out and about. Certainly not hosting VMWare images, or storing a terabyte of video. The odd movie? Perhaps, but even that is pushing netbooks beyond their market.

It's not designed to be a 'proper computer' at least, not yet - perhaps in 10 years when BlueRays, DVDs, CDs and hard-drives are myths for most people....

It's designed to be for run-of-the-mill office workers who do document editing (on Google Docs) etc. Or perhaps a general consumer who likes to sit in starbucks and needs to check their e-mail, or download something their smartphone can't open.

Sometimes I wonder how some commenters here have managed to loose the distinction between the general public, and technophiles.

Google Books spanked by Amazon Kindle

It's as vendor neutral as it can get

To be fair Google offer either PDF or ePub (with or without Adobe DRM - depending on the publisher).

They also provide instructions on getting your Google eBooks onto your Sony, nook etc.

The only way they could get more vendor neutral is scrapping the DRM - which they do on some books, but that is far more to do with publisher paranoia. It's about as open as it's going to get at the moment.

Xbox modder can't claim fair use, says judge

One acronym

OMGWTFBBQ

----

Seriously though, I was under the impression Fair Use was an exception to the DMCA point blank. To say you can't claim Fair Use, well.....

Are some judges really stupid when it comes to seeing the long term problems with their decisions?!

Google shuts down GOOG-411 voice data honeypot

What a fabulous idea

Use the US to collect data that will be used to power applications that will (in all likelihood) be deployed globally.

I'm sceptical that their collected data can manage to understand a cockney accent.

School caretaker jailed for fitting up colleague

This is a title

"Even after charges were dropped and he returned to working at the school, Thompson said he was ignored by most staff."

This to me, sums up the problem with accusations of this type being printed before they are found guilty. It doesn't matter, to most people, that he was found innocent, and indeed was the victim of a malicious campaign against him, the merest accusation has tarred his life forever.

Apple releases iOS 4.1 into the wild

Re: Somewhat fair (AC @ 09:40)

UMTS video calls happen over the cellular network, not over Wi-fi and the Internet, so that standard is not really relevant to Apples 'video calling' feature.

And your point about them not working on non-Apple hardware is irrelevent - Apple have stated that their standard will be open, so other hardware can work with it eventually.

If you had chosen a standard for bi-directional video streaming over the Internet then you'd have a point, but as it stands your point is void.

Not really fair

"a feature, of course, that's only available to Apple's two FaceTime-enabled handhelds, the iPhone 4 and new iPod touch."

Apple have said that they plan to release the protocols as Open Source IIRC from the iPhone 4 launch.

Then again, I don't blame you for taking an "I'll believe it when i see it approach".

Google Wave washes ashore in soggy cardboard Box

I do wonder

How much of developers / users lack of interest, is due to Google never actually realesing code that worked with the Federation Protocol (and thus enabling dev's / companies to set up their own Acme Wave (as at Google IO)? That would have provided the perfect test environment for their enhancements, and also get companies keener to get on board.

People have no bloody idea about saving energy

I think everyone has missed the point here

The report is saying that:

If you change your washing machine settings (down to 30 from 60), then tumble dry them, you save energy compared to washing at 60 then line drying them.

The reason they used this comparison, is that eco-warriors think that the opposite is true (wash at 60 then line dry saves energy compared to washing at 30 then tumble drying).

Doing both (switching and line) makes no difference about which they think is better generally for the environment.

UK ICT classes killing kids' interest in tech

My Experience

Years 4-7: Used Textease. This was basically MS Office but all "child friendsly" as if we had never used MS Office at home. The only programming was 'Textease Turtle' which was LOGO created entirely through using a GUI to say forwards, backwards.

Year 8: Started using MS Office. Some people couldn't cope with the change. Consisted entirely of Word and Excel IIRC

Year 9-11: Did an 'Applied' GCSE course (The only one offered, which everyone had to do). Simple database, word, excel. created many many templates "memo" "fax header" "meeting minutes" etc. The written part of the exam was covered in the last half term. Consisted of questions such as "You want to connect a computer to a network, what hardware do you need" A: A Network Interface Card.

Many of my year ended up not coping with this course and never took the exam and hence did not get a GCSE in ICT. Why didn't they cope? I suspect they found it far too boring.

6th Form: Everyone at 6th form ahd to take the ECDL course which had questions even more insane that the GCSE questions - such as "If the mouse is not moving what is the problem? a) The mouse, b) The monitor c) The harddrive. The Computing A-Level I did was interesting. Programming in Pascal / Delphi for the first year coursework (a set program specification). And then using Access + VBA for the second year coursework (free-choice). Our teacher told us we had to use Access, although that was not required in the qualification specification. Interestingly many dropped out after the first few months of the first year - because they didn't realise that Computing involved programming. The college also offered a ICT course - which was described to us as computing without the programming. All of the department's budget went on a trip abroad to a theme-park abroad for the BTEC group.

I know for a fact that both the A Level and GCSE spec have changed since I took it, and both teachers agree it is now far worse than when I took it. The A-Level 1st Year coursework is now programmed in a brand new language created for the course, in front of a computer where you have access only to the website where you code it, whilst not being allowed access to any other website.

I'm now doing Computer Science at a top-10 university and can say that it has one of the highest drop-out rates, again because people don't realise what the course is.

Underground tunnel complexes FOUND ON MOON

Lava tunnels

One the moon?

I was under the impression that a (part) molten core was needed for lava.

I didn't think that the moon had ever had a molten core.

I call cover-up!

iPhone 4 vivisected in 'first legal teardown'

Yet another

removable battery...

This is in danger of becoming common in Apple products!

Vodafone sticks universal mail in shredder

Any word on how

this will affect their Blackberry BIS server at mobileemail.vodafone.net - pretty sure that BlackBerry's need the BIS for their e-mail functions to work....

Easy-peasy science GCSEs binned

Re: I did Edexcel Maths....

I'm afraid so.

Pure Maths 1 (Or Core 1) currently consists of

ax^2 + bx + c - the equations for solution + discriminant

basic equational geometry (eqn of a circle / lines)

basic differentiation (no integration)

indicies + surds

and other trivial things (most of which you knew from GCSE maths).

NOTE: This is based on OCR's syllabus. Though the Pure modules are very similar usually.

See (Warning PDF):

http://www.ocr.org.uk/download/kd/ocr_10096_kd_l_gce_spec.pdf

Page 31 is when you get to what each module contains.

That is the CURRENT maths spec, valid until Sept 2012 when it is due to be changed (Incidentally, this is the same spec I took)

I agree it is a sad state of affairs - my first year at Bath University has introduced me to at least 2 new areas of Maths that i'd only heard of in passing before.

I'm sure you'll be overjoyed at this

But the first time I encountered Set Theory was this year... in the first year of my undergrad degree.

That's right. It wasn't even at A-Level. Parts of calculus however, were at A-Level

Microsoft sneaks Firefox add-on into Patch Tuesday update

Not entirely Microsofts fault

After all, what kind of software allows the uninstall button to be disabled in the first place?

If anyone can give me one good reason why extensions that, by definition, are not necessary for the functioning of the program, can have their install button disabled please enlighten me.

Fanbois howl over 'hang a lot' Safari 5

You fail.

Apple haven't stolen it. Readability's licence allows them to do exactly what they have done/ Therefore it is not stealing. They even acknowledge Readability in the browser itself.

OH, and they have altered it (notably with multi-page concatenation) with features Readability does not have.

So no, you can't get Safari Reader from that site.

Go and sort your facts out first.

Wikileaks denies Tor hacker eavesdropping gave site its start

Re: Domain Case Sensitivity

No there isn't unfortunately as the RFC for URL's specifies that all uppercase characters should be treated as lowercase.

Thus it is more a problem of Tor allowing uppercase characters in their node names. Hmm.. perhaps I should raise a bug with that....

Wrong.

"Users have no control over which exit nodes will be used"

That is wrong i'm afraid.

Users of Tor can use the .exit TLD to specify which node should be used

as in

theregister.co.uk.ATorExitNode.exit

Smokescreen brings Flash to the iPhone

It's not up to the people

The content provider (be that ad service, or website maintainer uses it. The consumer has no choice as there is nothing to install.

Google TV: Android and Chrome on your boob tube

And how long

Until they do add the Nexus One bit?

Exam board deletes C and PHP from CompSci A-levels

My (very recent) ALevel / UG courses

Well I finished my ALevels at the end of the last academic year.

AQA Computing was the course (It was revamped for those in the year below though).

Languages: Pascal, Delphi, Visual Basic

Now at Uni of Bath doing Computer Science

Year 1: (My current Year): Python (3/4 of a semester), Java (Rest of the year), quick into to Lisp

Year 2: (Going by Unit Descriptions) will involve these in varying degrees:

Java, Haskell, Prolog, Lisp, answer set programming, C or C++., and quite a few others

I can't say for Year 3 or further as the unit descriptions haven't been published yet.

Jimbo Wales exiles 'porn' from Wikiland

The most worrying thing

Is not Wales' actions...

But rather this particualr quote from the Boards response

"traditional role as a thought leader"

A thought leader?

Seriously?

How long before disagreeing with the thought leader is a thought crime?

[Some might say it already is...]

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Wiki.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 embraces - yes - HTML5

Ogg is dead

"Support for the audio and video tags is also promised, though it is not in the current preview. Microsoft showed H.264 720p video running directly in the browser."

Ogg is dead. At least in the browser market now.

For flamers: I am not making a judgement about either H.264 or ogg here.

iPad pitch to the Wall Street Journal laid bare

CD's?

Seriously?

AFAIK the drives in Mac's still play / record CD's to this day. iTunes can certainly import CD's.

Unless the Mac drives are DVD only. In which case that's even more sucky for a so called 'SuperDrive' that can't even do HD yet.

Sure, there may not be a dedicated CD drive, but I thought that was only because their DVD drives could handle them perfectly fine.

Perhaps Steve would care to explain exactly how Apple has ditched CD's?

Microsoft finally debuts Euro-choose-a-browser screen

I wonder

how many will not realise that there are more choices hidden behind a scroll bar? I'd have enlarged the box so that they could all be listed without scrolling.

Windows 7 'genuine' nagware winging its way to OS

Wait, what?

“I’d like to stress that the Update is voluntary, which means that you can choose not to install it when you see it appear on Windows Update.”

I thought you could do that with all updates anyway - disable automatic updates then you will always have the choice to install any update or not.

.... or is there a super-secret level that forces install no matter what?

Apple video shows Flashed iPad

Shame it's gone

I would have liked to do a false advertising complaint. Oh well.

Steve Ballmer defaces fanboi MacBook

Surely

If Jobs had been asked to sign a laptop running mac os?

Simple...

He'd have signed it first, then written a court filing above it. After all Hackintoshes are against the Mac philosophy.

Dell crowned Bad Santa computer maker by angry customers

I wonder

How much of this can be blamed on Apple mass-buying parts for their Tablet that will be confirmed soon?

[/cynicism]

On a more serious note, Ian @21:10 has got it spot on I reckon.

Home Secretary unmoved by last-ditch McKinnon protests

It's a shame

That the fairness of the treaty had to be questioned with such a clear-cut case.

He admits he did it

Everyone knows he did it.

Everyone knows the US has the evidence.

Unfortunately #1 and #2 implies #3. If only the case in question did not have #1 (and thus #2), then it couldn't have #3 and thus the claims that the treaty is unfair would be given a fairer hearing.

How predictable that the first major 'abuse' of this treaty occurred when the fundamental criticism of the treaty is rendered mute by the defences own actions.

Top cop's 'stop stopping snappers' memo: Too little too late?

I'm just amazed

That the Daily Fail printed something useful and correct for a change - specifically your rights during a s44 stop.

Could it perhaps be improving? Or is this just a one-off occurrence?

Mystery co. sues Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle...

re: iTunes

iTunes could conceivably fall under it via the iTunes store specifically DRM encoded tracks - the file is unplayable until data has been sent from the server containing the key.

Do they even still do DRMed tracks? Or did they finally go fully DRM-free?

Oh and i'm not making any claims about the stupidity of this patent - i'm jsut saying how it might conceivably apply to the iTunes store.

MS store staff in spontaneous electric boogie

*Blink*

*Blink* *Blink again*

Either that was an ImprovEverywhere stunt or Microsoft are desperate for publicity.

Win 7 users shout: Where's my bloody ballot screen?

@AC 14:57

A browser choice does not have to mean an operating system choice.

Bureaucrat behind bars for creating 1,400 fake kids

Pfft this is nothing

In September 2001, the Democratic Republic of the Congo discovered that it had 21,652 civil servants on its payroll who do not exist.

Source: Todays QI Fact of the day on qi.com