Posts by Vortigern

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

"....and Send."

Jesus sends apologetic email to the party - That's the last time he uses iOS maps.

WinPhone community descends into CANNIBALISM and WOE

Re: Angst

oh... I've not tried 10 yet but had good hopes with it being able to do android apps.

I think MS have just bought into the Nokia ethos... even since Simbian days, the next iteration of phone and/or OS took away good or innovative features like WP8 to 8.1 took away the cloud photo integration and unified messaging.

But eg. I remember going N85 to N8 took away funky features like "Say Caller's Name" and a host of other stuff which had seemed to make them stand out from competitors at the time.

They need the old Nokia ethos where they would make something good and people would like it rather than chasing what they think people like or even worse asking them (wasn't it a Nokia guy who said people would always say they want the same just bigger/faster so pointless asking)

Boffins debunk red wine miracle antioxidant myth

Hang on ... so he's saying it does work, but it's something else in wine that works rather than the resveratrol.

So we have to keep drinking wine as they don't know how to extract the bit which is doing the good work?

oh, what a pity!

Epson takes on Google Glass with wired 'augmented reality' glasses

Well at least they have 2 eyes!

Reminds me of an idea I had ..... We need to convince Jeff Wayne to use such things to create a AI, War of the Worlds open-top bus tour of London with the aliens appearing at the appropriate locations.... The band can play along live on the bottom deck :)

Oz bookshop to deliver by drone

Re: Deal of the century

Bacon from the sky!

You could use a kind of drone hot air balloon combo to do this. Burners would cook the bacons and provide lift at the same time with little fans on the back to provide direction and a gentle waft of bacon smell as it passes.

EE still has fastest, fattest 4G pipe in London's M25 ring

Speed is nothing

..without reliability!

You're lucky to get any calls or data half the time when working in the city - it's just too congested.

At least wifi is there for those times you have full mobile signal but nothing going either way.

Microsoft reveals Xbox One, the console that can read your heartbeat

One

I see what they are trying to do with the name but it's going to be just as confusing as calling a train operator "First" ... there already is an xbox one in common parlance.

It also suggests (along with one controller in the pic) that it's meant for loners - but then would you want to invite people to your house if you had that breeze block on show?!

Perhaps the gov't asked them to do it to stop people meeting in houses now the pubs are shut so they can monitor all comms! :p

Honk if the car in front is connected

Although it will have some downsides it's going to be mostly good.

There are always neighsayers of new tech which are often right before it's been developed.

eg. When satnav came out it was worse than what was before (a map) and so quite pointless.

But then introducing detailed traffic info into it and suddenly it's much better.

What interests me most about this is the feature that a car can take information from one car, store it and then pass on to one further up the road.

That's now invented a decentralised communications network - When they add the ability to short text over it it would could help stop any ISP censorship they have planned for the internet as people could hop their data from car to car.

Would it may be easier on motorways if the streetlights communicated with the cars though?

World's oldest digital computer successfully reboots

Re: The good old days...

Does that conform to Moore's law though?

Word wonks insist GIFs are really JIFs

I hear "Jif" said even less often than people pronounce linux properly, like I don't.

But what's the alternative way to say jay-peg?

Volkswagen Beetle car review

ooh, I actually like the looks.

But still... the engine is in the wrong place!

I agree with the poster above though that this seems just like a plain car review and not done from the techie angle I'd expect from el'reg.

President Obama declares VICTORY over JUSTIN BIEBER

Wouldn't it have been dark where he was when he won?

That's not a picture of him winning at all - If that were on the BBC he'd be forced to do an apology!

But then I think if it was here then it would be a little less arrogant sounding and more gracious in victory.

Chinese e-cars to turn London cabs green

Re: The

Well if someone takes them over and starts putting electric motors in then it'd be good.

Might need the mayor to encourage someone to install battery rental scheme with swapping stations about the place ... put them in the road at junctions maybe and then time them with the traffic lights.

Sugar content now to be measured in Cadbury Creme Eggs

Re: Creggs

Alcoholic Creme Egg Smoothy ... now there's an idea.

...now where's that big bottle of Irish Knights gone? (ASDA fake baileys FTW!)

Workers can't escape Windows 8 Metro - Microsoft COO

Re: Full Screen

Scarier than vista?.... ah, that's better - For a while I thought MS were going to ruin their pattern of One-Good then One-Bad OS but it's shaping up quite nicely now!

Dizzy: the Ultimate Cartoon Adventure

ah I loved dizzy!

Wasn't one of them on the speccy called Kwik Snax? I remember the badly digitised speech and the Dizzy band playing on startup, but was an entirely different game on the C64?

Cops get 3D laser scanners for motorway crash sites

ah yes.. this is another thing I invented whilst stuck in jam (like I mention below).

... this one I actually scribbled down!

http://up2.it/katym609/inventions/08-01-2008+22/comments

...although you can't read it well, if at all!

The idea is it's a roll-up screen that has a wheel on the bottom that drives itself along the groove in the armco to put itself up and is stored in the bumper or rear pillar of a traffic police car.

yay!

It's about time ... I'm sure we've all invented this when we've been stuck in a jam.

Mix it with high-res photography and then play it back in virtual reality then not only does it save time on the motorway but the investigators get a view from a lot closer to the time it happened and not hours later when it might be raining.

My other idea would be to get a lane-wide bit of sticky-tape and then use it to pick up all the small bits of debris for later inspection which can be placed back in the right place when unrolled but then I guess if the laser is good enough this isn't needed.

The BBC Micro turns 30

Related stories: The IBM PC is 30 (12 August 2011)

Interesting (to me anyway) that the PC is a few months OLDER than the BBC Micro!

I was one of the Vic20 "odd folk"

Square pushes pay-by-facial recognition

By the time you've loaded the app and the GPS has got where you are it'll be quicker just to swipe your NFC card/phone.

Might work well in the pub though as you're there for a longer time

Ford spins pop-out anti-prang door shield

Sensors

Why not just put in a proximity sensor which stops the door opening too far

... or if it's too much hassle to stop the door get it to spray water in the crotch of your stupid passenger who thinks it's fine to bash the door as "it's only a scratch"

Gov retreats on vetting database but ain't climbing down

Very very very

So the very very very very very stupid scheme is now only very very very very stupid.

But just like your articles on climate change, no-one will really pick up on this until maybe there is some sort of scandal.

I wouldn't expect a reply on their methodology of creating the number - they know it's plucked from thin air, and know we know that - but their core vote doesn't know or care - they just see the "reduced by 2 million" and so think that it's only 2 million that have to register and so that probably won't include them so all is hunky dory.

Mitsubishi builds monster OLED telly

PAYG TV

be good if you don't want to get your TV on credit... just buy a new piece every month until you have one of a decent size.

As the definition of decent size grows though, you'll never end till it fills your wall.

UK.gov decides best form of cyber defence is attack

Sounds Very Very Scary

Are they really using the word 'cyber' in their name of the office? ...really? have they any clue?

Computer-related injuries in US 'increase sevenfold'

hospitals

"computer equipment falling on top of the patient" ... not only do you have to worry about mrsa and c-diff, you have to worry about falling machines too. No wonder so many people die in hospitals than anywhere else.

Toddler snaps up mechanical digger online

Yeah, right

I used to get this excuse every day when I had an ebay shop.

"Sorry my kid must have bid on it and I've not replied to any of your emails for 3 weeks as I had a family funeral"

Rarely did it get any more inventive than that and made me quite disappointed with the state of the nation.

Kent council plans giant 'Hollywood' erection

bargain

12grand is nout - schemes like this will normally cost 12million once the consultancy is done and backhanders, tax and tax management and reviews and tax accountancy and health and saftey and tax on the health and saftey and managers to manage the tax on the health and safety and tax on the managers.... paid, don't they?

Free mobile broadband from Vodafone

Google

Perhaps they search in the little google box that's part of the 'vodafone live' page when trying to get to proper google or their other services?

BBC goes live... over Wi-Fi

Not on N85

Says unsupported on N85 too.... why couldn't they just put it in the iplayer application, surely that can't be hard!

Doesn't seem to be somewhere I can enter my TV licence number with pride either to prove I'm not some sort of scrounger or foreigner.

Big demand for pay by phone tech, claims Nokia

Gaffer tape

Armed with my oyster card and some gaffer tape I shall shortly be able to pay for travel with my SonyEricsson - beat that nokia.

eBay breaks bread with luxury goods firms

ID

If the luxury good manufacturers were so concerned then they'd do something like rfid tag all their items and then offer some kind of authentication device/service.

But they don't care... each copy sold is something with their brand on that they don't even have to pay for and every time they complain about ebay it's directing traffic to ebay to buy the cheap copies to get their brand out even more = more sales of non-copies too.

Government orders data retention by ISPs

no isp

The solution to this and the problems with iplayer is to do away with ISPs.

We're all sitting out as nodes connected to the net with 1 crappy link - that goes against the design of the internet. We should be part of it and that means being able to take any route to the destination, be that down the adsl line or over wireless to other local routers.. and then either down their connection or hop to another wireless... like explained in this spoof http://www.londonlx.com/thechip.html

Apart from that it's just another law they're putting in without looking into the ramifications of the implementation.... need to get this government out before they scorch the earth!

Extreme porn bill gets final reading

DANGER: Boob

How on earth can a picture be dangerous? .. life isn't a horror movie where you watch something and end up dead in 7 days.

Sounds like they've got it from AOL with there child "safety" adverts, as if a kid sees a nipple it will spear out of the screen and through their chest

UK elections vulnerable to fraud - e-voting no solution

Private voting

The main problem with postal votes is that it's not private!

There was always a discrepancy with people saying they are hardened labour supporters but voting tory when they got to the booth.

If they are voting at home there's a chance their partners/other family might see it or ask to see it - yes, you can say "no, it's private" but then that might start an argument, so they vote labour and tick the rest of the families forms while their at it to make sure they don't put the "wrong" answer.

ken's team are playing dirty - look at the thing today about saying boris would ban the koran so I wouldn't be suprised if they are going round to peoples houses and "supervising" the completion of forms or other such thing!

http://www.londonlx.com

eBay Australia faces competition probe

evil

whilst I would love to boycott ebay for both buying and selling, I can't... and neither can anyone else.

I used to be a powerseller but my business collapsed when paypal decided to close my account, followed by ebay suspending me because of this.

Took me over 2 weeks to get any sort of response to find out why - and then each email took 3 days to reply to and kept getting in a standard response loop.... they don't care and don't need to care (apart from when I got the Financial Ombudsman on to them!)

Everytime they put up charges or impose conditions people say they will boycott - but it's those people that lose out - ebay/paypal aren't going to notice 1 jot!

I expect these paypal only measures will go the same way - some people will moan, but it'll go ahead anyway.

Teacher's head explodes due to Wi-Fi, mobe radiation

New Features

I reckon it's all down to that chip that's recently been uncovered:

http://www.londonlx.com/thechip.html

Maybe that's why they hadn't released information about it before if it caused people's heads to explode

How the BBC plans to save your ISP

Nearest to the user

If they are trying to get it nearer to the user then surely the place to look is at the router.

If me and my neighbour are both watching the same program, the same bits are carried twice down the same length of copper and just encrypted differently as they travel through the air.

They're both in range of each other so why can't something be added to them so they each get every other bit from the network and every other bit from each other on a seperate channel - halving (or multiples of) the bandwidth needed from the server.

Stick a few gigs cache in there and anyone in the range can download the video at full speed from the wireless without having to go the main server.. and then anyone in range of any of those that have got it from the cache can get it too!

Maybe there's a reason why.