Posts by Ralph B

Hack forces Flash onto iPad

Roger

Roger that ... and don't call me Shirley.

Flush

> a hack that allows Flash to run on iPads, albeit with limitations.

Limitations, eh? So, it runs as badly on iPad as it does on Windows then, eh?

BBC chief acknowledges DAB flop & internet radio

RealPlayer's Corpse Still Relatively Warm, Actually

> Real Player streams were ended ten months ago

Dunno about Radio 1 - not a listener to beat music, m'lud - but Radio 4's RealPlayer stream certainly struggled on until sometime last month. Or maybe the month before.

Definitely dead now though.

Facebook bars crawls from all but select few

Populating Google Me?

Wouldn't it be ironic if Facebook's irresponsible approach to user privacy allowed Google to auto-populate their rumoured rival service with user accounts?

Expect an email from Google soon, starting: "If you, like many others, are unhappy with Facebook, then we're please to tell you that we've already prepared you an account at Google Me, with the same login details, same friends and groups lists ..."

Dutch send submarine to fight Somali pirates

My Prediction

The pirates will hijack this submarine.

Beeb sends teaboy outside with iPhone

A follow-up question ...

Does El Reg now have to pay either Getty or the Beeb for reproducing those pics?

Yahoo!'s 'interwebs MySQL' crunches four years of Twitter

Decisions Decisions

Just tried it ...

SELECT comment

FROM 4yearsofTwitter

WHERE valuable = 'yes'

comment

-----------

(0 row(s) affected)

DROP 4yearsofTwitter

Google's Android market needs Jobsian strongman

Great Idea

... and the porn section could be called the Android Whorehouse.

Amazon slashes Kindle price to $189

Price Cut? What Price Cut?

The Kindle DX still seems to be ~$500. Which is a pity, as I'd pay $189 for one of those. Probably.

IT chiefs in cloaks and sashes gets Queen's mark of approval

Sounds like something out of a Terry Pratchett book ...

I hope and expect the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists to tell Black Rod exactly where to stick it - employing appropriate open standard - and have a nice sounding electronic doorbell fitted to the Houses of Parliament.

Software freetards demand axing of ACTA

Re: BSD is not GNU

> Stallman has nothing to do with Berkeley UNIX (BSD).

You mean apart from the GNU compiler collection being used to build it?

Clang/LLVM was only able to compile a working FreeBSD kernel since Feb 2009.

Don't dis da Stallman

Without him there'd be no GNU tools, without which there'd be no Linux or Android OS. Even FreeBSD owes GNU some debt, and therefore Mac OS and iOS too.

And you don't have to call someone a "freetard" just because they fight against Big Business's attempts to stifle the principle of fair use.

Russian video chat site mulls todger filter

Good News and Bad News

Bad news for people who have a nose shaped like a penis.

Good news for pervs who have a penis shaped like a nose.

iPad beats BlackBerry for browsing

News at 11

Big screen better for browsing than small screen?

Who'd've thunk it?

Samsung NB30 touchscreen durable netbook

WiFi Chicken & Egg

> Installing drivers for the errant Wi-Fi card is a five minute job.

Assuming you have an alternative method for internet access available.

I was installing Ubuntu on an old laptop which had PCMCIA slot that let you have EITHER WLAN or ethernet available. When the WLAN card was used, Ubuntu complained that it couldn't use it but I couldn't fetch the driver to fix it. When the ethernet card was used, Ubuntu could use it, but wouldn't let me fix the WLAN driver because, since the card wasn't there, Ubuntu didn't think it needed fixing. It took a few hours to escape this Catch-22 scenario.

A Samsung NB30 user who ONLY had WLAN access at home would have a real problem getting a running Linux system.

This sort of nonsense really needs sorting out.

Web2.0rhea eclipses search in UK

It's Probably Worse Than That

I expect that half the search engine accesses were people looking for the social networking sites.

Advertisers set iPad pester-standards

A non-iPad user asks ...

Do you need to jailbreak the iPad in order to edit /etc/hosts?

Finnish police raids target virtual thieves

SimPig

Can we at least hope that simulated police are investigating this "crime"?

Ballmer, black turtlenecks, and Microsoft's next big idea

BSOD

> the next, really big idea in computing, put it into practice and have everybody follow it.

Hmm. Maybe MS could produce Futurama-style suicide booths.

(@TheReg: That article could do with some proof-reading.)

Sam Mendes to helm new Jesus Phone ads

Don't Worry

Calm down ... like tethering before it, video chat on the iPhone probably won't get activated by the networks for the foreseeable future.

Halting McKinnon extradition not in our power, says Clegg

Pursuasive US

So, how do the US make Brit politicos so pliant? Have they really got compromising photos of all of them? Or has it been outsourced to to the webcam manufacturers (still turned on when it should be off) or to Google (for the search histories)?

Swindon prepares for pill-popping, ghost-fleeing tournament

Marcus Brigstocke was right

"If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."

Or, indeed, out in the open in Swindon.

iPads may be outselling Macs two to one

News at 11

Cheaper thing outsells more expensive thing.

Who'd've thunk it.

Make Isle of Man drugs paradise, says Jagger

I can see it now ...

... Jeremy Clarkson with The Biggest Spliff ... In The World.

At least it would stop him worrying about footpaths.

Robothopter in biomimetic butterfly boffinry breakthrough

At the risk of sounding like a slashdotter ...

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these ... gently carrying you across the Atlantic!

(Hmm, is this tech good against volcanic dust?)

Robot cars can now do a Rockford into a parking space

@Kingprawn

And the drone replied:

01010111011001010010000001100001011100100110010100

10000001100001011011000110110000100000011100100110

11110110001001101111011101000111001100100000001011

01001000000110011001110101011011000110011001101001

01101100011011000110100101101110011001110010000001

11010001101000011001010010000001101001011011100110

01010111011001101001011101000110000101100010011011

00011001010010000001100110011101010111010001110101

01110010011001010010000001110011011001010111010000

10000001101111011101010111010000100000011010010110

11100010000001100101011101100110010101110010011110

01001000000111000101110101011000010110111001110100

01110101011011010010000001110011011101000110000101

11010001100101001000000110111101100110001000000110

01010111011001100101011100100111100100100000011000

01011101000110111101101101001000000110100101101110

00100000011101000110100001100101001000000101010101

10111001101001011101100110010101110010011100110110

010100101110

Identity & Passport Service in suicide bid?

It'll all end in tears ...

It would be regrettable if a disgruntled soon-to-be-redundant employee at the Identity and Passport Service were to start selling off batches of soon-to-be-abandoned-but-still-accepted identity cards to the criminal, terrorist and foreign covert operations communities (spot the difference if you can).

Regrettable but, I suspect, inevitable.

Twitter bomb joker found guilty

Slow Learner ... ?

And on May 8th he's at it again with "Lord Mawhinney you fucking cheating jizzpot, you can bend over, part your cheeks, and shove your 25 points into your br ..."

Does he really not yet realise that all these terribly amusing, off-the-cuff remarks are in the public record for all to see for ever more?

I was feeling kinda sorry for him before, getting legally battered for the off-colour airport comment, but if he's still at it, I'm wondering if he shouldn't be pleading diminished responsibility.

Otherwise, just STFU already wlll you?

Oz filmmaker to flog virgins for TV doco

Relocated to where, eactly?

> Sisely has relocated the project to the States

To Virginia perhaps?

Apple building its own Flash, says rogue Tweeter

iFlash

I'm sure Steve could live with an iAd-serving wrapper for running Flash apps. He might even make a version for non-Apple platforms.

Of course, following the iTunes model, the Windows version would have to be much slower - maybe almost as slow as Adobe's version, but less crash-prone.

Tories buy YouTube home page

Now factor in yoot apathy

> Cellan-Jones claims the Tory ad will reach ten times as many prospective voters as the

> LibDem's full-page Times ad, but cost less.

Except that the prospective voters reached via the Times ad will have actually bothered to register to vote, and those reached via YouTube won't have.

Solar Freeloader Pico solar-charged back-up power supply

Broken Idea

Can someone remind me what happens to the lifespan of a lithium-ion battery if you leave it out in hot sunshine for a few hours? Specially if you apply a black material of some sort to the upper surface?

Microsoft kills off newsgroups

Deja Vu and Beyond

So, Microsoft have finally cottoned on to the fact that Google profit on all ad-clicks made during newsgroup archive accesses. Seems they think competing with Google Groups is a lost cause, so they're putting all their tech discussions in googlebot-blocking forums instead.

With Microsoft served adverts. (And later, maybe, subscription-only access?)

Good luck to them. And the users of Microsoft tools.

Best Buy opens first UK store tomorrow

Newegg

Can we have Newegg as well (or instead)?

McAfee offers cash for clunkers

Risk Benefit Analysis Needed

Are the risks of getting a computer virus really worse than the risks of running McAfee software?

Can somebody clever do the maths?

Nokia launches ash cloud tracker

Public Information Message

Google's translation service informs me that Eyjafjallajökull (or rather "Eyja fjalla jökull") means "Island mountain glacier".

There. That's not so difficult to say, is it?

Reverse-engineering artist busts face detection tech

Adam Ant or Itt Addams?

She could've tried the Adams Family Cousin Itt look.

Adobe gives up on the iPhone

FOAD Flash

Great news for iPhone. Terrible news for Android.

eBay shill bid scammer convicted

One Down, One Million To Go

And then there are the long-term eBay feedback-fraud accounts. Take a look at http://myworld.ebay.com/pmolis - an account operating since 2004, exchanging puffy feedbacks comments on multiple fake-looking sales with a coterie of co-conspirators.

What's that about? I dunno, but the fact that it can go on for 6 years with eBay stomping on it doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence of doing business there.

China routing snafu briefly mangles interweb

Easy Target

> Most likely it’s because of configuration issue, i.e. fat fingers.

Yeah, that's right. Blame Budai.

Stoutists.

Apple rumored to put beefy iPad on diet

Spread Bet

Yeah, I predict a smaller iPad. Or a bigger one. Or - and I'm going out on a limb here - one the same size as it currently is.

Let's have some real reporting please Reg.

Gmail tucks up in bed with OAuth for third party app coders

H.G.Wells more worrying than J.Archer

Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML

Getting drunk the night before has no effect on exam results

Don't Drink Dirty Water

Another interpretation is that non-alcoholic beer damages your exam results as much as real beer does.

So, if you don't care about your exam results, drink alcoholic beer. Don't waste your money on gnat's piss.

However, if you do care, then stay in, do some extra study, and get an early night.

Bill Gates goes (mini) nuclear

Ctrl-Alt-Del

Nuclear reactors from the man who brought us the Blue Screen of Death.

What could possibly go wrong?

EU approves on-board GSM for cruisers

Here's a business model ...

1. Buy yourself a motor boat and a pico-cell

2. Spend your days cruising up and down the Thames in London

3. Profit!

Hmm. The Somali pirates could probably adopt this model too. They could leave their guns at home, and just potter alongside the cruise liners and tankers, leaching GSM connections, instead of attacking them.

PayPal enables cash-by-slap

It'll go something like this ...

"Gissa quid."

"OK." <Bump> "There. I've bumped you a quid."

"Yeah, but I only received 50p."

"Ah, OK, PayPal charges. I'll bump you another quid." <Bump>

"Yeah, got it ... but, wait a minute, my account's been frozen."

"Shit. So has mine."

Microsoft cuts out paste

Let's just hope ...

For Microsoft's sake, let's just hope that Apple haven't patented NOT having copy&paste.

Spooks scramble to replace failed secret messaging system

I'll do it for half the price

ROT13 in Twitter.

WD targets Win XP users to ease 4KB drive upgrades

Should we trust them?

I mean, they're selling us a 4KB drive upgrade, but will it actually 4000B rather than 4096B?

YouTube: Auto-captions for everyone

The Final Solution?

So, does this mean that we'll finally find out what Hitler is really saying in his bunker?