* Posts by Geoff Johnson

235 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Apr 2007

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Intel debuts Atom SoC for set-tops

Geoff Johnson

home server

Lets see what the total system power consumption is. Hopefully I can get something sub 20W and replace my Geode system.

Skype founders sue former Joost boss

Geoff Johnson

Quick and easy sale?

They missed free listing day on eBay last weekend.

Whistleblower releases Skype snooping code

Geoff Johnson

RIAA

Rumour has it that the RIAA persuaded Microsoft to disable a PC's ability to record the audio it was playing. Looks like they need to persuade the rest of the world now.

Microsoft apologizes for digital head transplant

Geoff Johnson

Could be good marketing

How many people have looked at that page who otherwise wouldn't.

Yahoo! News confused on theft of Lego giraffe's todger

Geoff Johnson

Nano lego?

From one of the links... "The tail is made out of 15,000 Lego bricks..."

That's a lot of bricks for 30 cm.

BlackBerry Curve 8520

Geoff Johnson

HTML

Have they got HTML e-mail working yet?

Spotify: iPhone sideloads for £120 a year, unlimited

Geoff Johnson

Understandable to announce this now.

Let the world (+ dog) know they've submitted it to Apple so the world (+ dog) knows if Apple reject it.

NASA orbiter returns first shots of Apollo moon sites

Geoff Johnson
Coat

They proved it wasn't filmed in Nevada

Surely it was in Australia. That's where the tapes showed up.

New Zealand set to join internet blocking club

Geoff Johnson

Welcome to our world.

Where an _already_censored_ image on Wikipedia can can cause half the country to be banned from editing articles.

Where a configuration blunder by an ISP can block the whole internet archive.

Where we live with it all for the sake of the anti-terrorist industry.

NASA data shows 'dramatically' thinned Arctic ice

Geoff Johnson

ICESat should help slow the melt.

Ice melts much faster when it's broken up to expose more of it's surface to the elements. Therefore we can slow the arctic melt by stopping Icebreakers full of scientists from cruising around the place measuring things.

Stallman: open-source .NET 'danger' for Debian

Geoff Johnson

Iceweasel

To use on-line banking I had to install the user agent switcher plugin. The Debian bunch seem to like to put barriers in the way of mass adoption. But on the other hand it's about the most stable platform I've tried.

F1 waves goodbye to KERS

Geoff Johnson

Rules killed it.

The stupid 80 HP power for 6 seconds rule renders KERS pretty much redundant. To encourage innovation, there should be no falsely imposed limits.

BTW. The brake balance problem comes from the way the batteries are charged by using the motor/generator as a brake on the back wheels. Once they're charged you suddenly find you're braking with the front wheels far more then the back.

Shifty study proclaims Brits a nation of freetards

Geoff Johnson

"a study by UK government advisers"

They can safely make up the figures knowing that the Government won't actually bother reading it anyway.

Donatelli can start work at HP

Geoff Johnson

Dissapointed.

From the headline I thought HP were going to start employing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Inside USB 3.0

Geoff Johnson

Mobile phones.

The mobile people just agreed to standardize their USB ports. Now they can all change them for different USB 3.0 ones and protect their car charger markets again.

Wolfram Alpha - a new kind of Fail

Geoff Johnson

Re: google squared

Try putting 0.1 into that.

Chip cooler launches liquid nitro at CPUs

Geoff Johnson

Not as dangerous as it looks.

When I worked at a university it was common practice to dip your bare hand in liquid nitrogen and throw a handfull at a colleague. As long as you don't hold your hand in for more than a few seconds it doesn't even hurt. The person you throw it at gets a bit cold and damp as the nitrogen condenses water from the air.

The liquid boils into a gas as soon as it comes near a warm hand so you're only in contact with the gas. The gas is still pretty cold though (-195 C) so will freeze you if you hold your hand in there long enough.

The main problem I can see with this kit is liquid nitrogen is good for getting things really cold, but it has a low latent heat figure so it doesn't take much energy to boil it away. I can't see this pulling much more heat from your CPU than a good water cooling system would.

Hulu recognizes Blighty existence

Geoff Johnson

At last

A hulu story that looks like it's done some research and realised it's only a local site for americans.

Disney dances the Hulu

Geoff Johnson

WWW

At least You Tube is international. Hulu is just a little local site for Americans.

Google boffins unveil 'What's Up?' CAPTCHA

Geoff Johnson

Where are they getting their source images?

If it's Google image search we can expect random porn to be hitting kids computers any time now.

Brutish SSH attacks continue to bear fruit

Geoff Johnson

Redirect.

One day I'll get around to doing this...

Write a little APP that sits on port 22 and when a connection arrives, make a connection back to the same IP address. Then just pipe the traffic through both ways and hope they try deleting something important before they realise who they're hacking.

Slimline iPhone pictures unearthed

Geoff Johnson

3.5mm socket?

Surely they wouldn't lose that would they?

Lies, damned lies and inflation statistics

Geoff Johnson

YBF index

Something I noticed last night.

In 1990 a video shown on You've Been Framed earned 250 quid, in 2009 it's 250 quid.

0% inflation for nearly 20 years.

Jacqui Smith pulls in another TV psych in violence probe

Geoff Johnson

She'll be talking to...

I notice it doesn't say she'll be Listening to anyone.

Business as usual then.

Gmail offers 'undo' email option

Geoff Johnson

Hopefully they'll do attachment warning next.

Scan the mail for attach, attached, enclosed or other such words and warn you if you didn't add an attachment. That'd save plenty of embarrassment.

Samsung punts popcorn flicks for pounds

Geoff Johnson
Thumb Down

Firefox

Just checked, the DVD is £3.98 at Amazon. Seven quid worth of DRM?

Jaguar-Land Rover to develop F1-style energy recovery tech

Geoff Johnson

But will it have stupid rules?

The F1 rules seem to have been designed to prevent innovation in the KERS system. It's limited to 82BHP and is only allowed to be used for for 6.8 seconds per lap. So, apart from tweaking the size and weight, there's no technical innovation allowed.

Maybe Bernie doesn't have shared in the right companies to make it worth his while.

</RANT>

Discovery en route to ISS

Geoff Johnson

Night Launch.

I thought they'd stopped doing night launches because they can't see if bits fall off and cause heat shield damage.

Brit nuke subs exposed on Google Earth

Geoff Johnson

Soory, I just have to get this ot of my system.

GOOGLE: ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.

Raygun jumbo: 'Long duration' ground blasts begin

Geoff Johnson

Retroreflectors!

Or did they ban blinding pilots with lasers?

Hulu yanks vids from TV.com

Geoff Johnson

www.hulu.com

Should really be USAWW.hulu.com.

It's the biggest international advert for the pirate bay I've ever seen.

Virgin Media trials longer bandwidth throttling

Geoff Johnson

improve the service we deliver to all our customers

Except those who get throttled.

Apple iPhoto gets in your face

Geoff Johnson

Rubber Doorstop.

I have several of those and are they useful?

Well that depends too.

Firefox 3.1 release date hampered by cheeky monkey

Geoff Johnson
Thumb Down

My beta version seems fine

Unless I try to copy and paste, then it's a pile of ****!

I'm on the 3.0.6 beta that installed this morning. I'll wait until Monday for a new beta or leave the beta programme if there isn't one.

**** Insert favourite derogatory term here, just don't try to cut and paste one in.

EU funds Antipodes-in-90-mins rocketliner concept

Geoff Johnson

Great

Now you'll spend more time queueing at the airport than flying.

Disabling Windows Autorun - there's a right way and a wrong way

Geoff Johnson

That's a tad cryptic.

To disable auto run you have to ENABLE the disable auto run option.

Maybe I need more caffeine, but I think that could be made simpler.

Brit porn filter censors 13 years of net history

Geoff Johnson

OpenDNS

"Trouble with OpenDNS is that they never return a NXDOMAIN result "

Not a problem to most people. I'm usually picky but I'm prepared to be served a page full of adverts when I mistype a URL in return for a decent DNS service.

Geoff Johnson

Riots

The last one I can remember here was pro-censorship. Something about some cartoons in a Danish paper.

Geoff Johnson

Be Unlimited

It's working now (11:30 ish) through Be Unlimited. My earlier post was based on testing at 7:30. Looks like they're acting faster this time than they did over Wikipedia. Still seems to be blocked on Demon though.

Geoff Johnson
Black Helicopters

Be Unlimited

Be Unlimited* are blocking the archive of my website but I can get pages from the archive of www.bbc.co.uk.

I agree that we need a definitive list of what ISPs use this list.

* Unlimited is just the name, nothing to do with their service.

Google spins out Chrome 2.0 pre-beta alpha

Geoff Johnson

Needs Ad Blocking

I can't imaging ever using a browser without it these days and I can't see Google enabling it in Chrome.

iPlayer finally makes friendly with Mac and Linux

Geoff Johnson

@Nick L

It gives you DRM. Surely you want your videos to be unplayable don't you?

Google OS gOS - if at first you don't succeed...

Geoff Johnson

Are you looking at this the right way?

Is this just a fast to boot system that allows you to check your gMail without spending hours booting XP or days booting Vista* but then allowing you to click through into a full OS if you want to.

Maybe I exaggerated the XP one.

Auntie Beeb's amazing, evolving, ID card stories

Geoff Johnson

My favorites...

A few weeks back the BBC reported two explosions being heard in a Spanish (I think it was Spain) town.

Later that day the story changed to a military jet had caused confusion by making sonic booms too near the town and said that "The Media" had initially reported it as explosions.

They also got rid of the scrabble picture with the word "bum" on it.

Secret Windows 7 screens leaked?

Geoff Johnson

Windows 7 has symlinks!

Sorry, I had to say that.

It's traditional for a rumour to start about now that the new version of windows will support symbolic links.

Miracle airship tech sustained by DARPA pork trickle

Geoff Johnson

Been done.

The Pinky-Ponk (as mentioned before on the Register) appears to have a rigid shell. It also carries quite a few passengers considering its size. It gets around the buoyancy problem while unloading passengers by lowering a small spherical anchor to the ground.

Quite frankly I'm amazed DARPA have taken longer to perfect this technology than Iggle Piggle.

The Pinky-Ponk even has a nice balcony for Iggle Piggle and Upsy Daisy to go for a bonk (see episode "Tombliboo Ooo Drinks Everybody Else's Pinky Ponk Juice")

AMD employee charged with stealing Intel secrets

Geoff Johnson

We know what to do.

Fine AMD 50 million and chuck them out of the championship.

UK.gov told not to subsidise superfast broadband

Geoff Johnson

Like it matters.

Remember the report on Cannabis - paid for by the government and completely ignored.

Why should anyone believe the government will pay any attention to this report?

Net-talking toaster to burn news onto bread

Geoff Johnson

Marmite.

When hot, Marmite gets quite thin and runny. Surely you could ink jet that onto toast in any image you like.

Maybe lacking in contrast against well done toast though.

Digital divide looms again over superfast broadband for all

Geoff Johnson

Re: 1Gbit for what?

1Gb to look good in the adverts. Then all the 1Gb links go to a 1000:1 concentrator and get fed down a 56k modem.

That appears to be how it works now, why should this change it.

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