Posts by Steve Evans

Giant iPhones invade Florida

Oh dear...

The guy on the right looks like he's just had a warranty voiding 3rd party battery swap performed!

Apple to 'vigorously' fight Nokia patent pout

@Peter 39

I believe the "support" referred to is the fact that pretty much every other mobile manufacturer has licensed these patents, in the same way as it was offered to Apple.

Apple opted to not license.

I would have to say that given all the others have paid, Nokia must have a strong hand.

If Apple has it's way I foresee many lawyers will be kept in many BMWs for many many years.

Accused NASA spy billed US gov for swimming pool upkeep

Ah...

But does he have a duck house?

Yahoo! nukes GeoCities

@Richard North

Ooooh, the source!

Genius!

Reg readers take mobile makers to task

Curious...

It's pretty hard to read your second chart, but from what I can see nobody said the most useful or crucial feature of a mobile phone is the ability to make and receive phone calls!

Pregnant monkeys on crack - boffins investigate

"had no patience or impulse control whatsoever"

Seems to apply just as well to most drivers on the M25 in the morning.

Google Spanner — instamatic redundancy for 10 million servers?

Phew...

At least they are only destroying American and not English.

Steve Ballmer's Windows 7 dance party

Creeeeeek.....

The dusty door opens, and Vista is gently pushed onto the dusty shelf next to ME...

The door is closed then sealed once more...

We shall not speak again of this place.

Rigid sky-train to fly through magnetic rings on sticks

Messy...

Imagine a powercut... Halfway through a journey...

UK.gov prostitution proposals caught with pants down

Eh?

Since when has HM Govt policy ever been stopped by a lack of evidence?

Take ID cards for example. There is no proof it will help the fight against terrorism (or even work at all). In fact given that Spain has had ID cards for years, and still suffered from a terrorist attack kind of sinks this whole argument.

The conservatives have promised (politicians promise, so this is open to a complete U turn if the right hands are crossed with silver).

Yet they still press ahead regardless.

Japanese bloke gets arsey over artificial rectum

Cool!

A bionic arse!

Weapon of mass destruction!

Tories to fight election on Spotify

"reckless spending"

This coming from a man who live 25 mins from Liverpool street by train, in commuter land, but still required a second home in London because he has to be in meetings for 9:30am (sometimes).

I trust all of them about as far as I can throw Mr Pickles.

Home sec puts McKinnon extradition on hold

So...

Does the Home Office have the power to intervene or not?

Cos either they've been lying in the past, or they are lying now!

Boffins 'write directly to memory' of living brains

Ahhhh!

So I really am a secret agent from Mars?

Apple breaks jailbreakers' hearts with iPhone 3GS patch

Shoot self in foot.

When the iPhone first appeared and was locked down tight I thought that's typical Apple. You pay, but never own.

Then the jailbreaks appeared, and continued to work, so I thought maybe Apple had learnt something, and had implemented the lock to control features that keep the networks happy (like Nokia did with things like VOIP via wifi on the N95), but left the backdoor slightly ajar so they don't really alienate techie customers who can easily free things up (on Nokia you change the model code to that of a generic Nokia instead of a carrier supplied one, also useful for getting generic firmware which your network hasn't bothered to authorise/release).

Unfortunately Apple have proved they were just inept, and not actually being rather smart. All your iPhone does not belong to us. It belong to them. Just be grateful they let you use it at all.

Translation outfit seeks Glaswegian speakers

Accents can be evil, completely new words and phrases are worse!

I have a friend who is from somewhere up the East coast of Scotland, and he's been down here near London for 12 years, we can just about understand him these days, but even so he still manages to throw in the odd word to confuse us. Only this weekend it was a word for chewing gum, which we all chuckled about and promptly all forgot.

His family up north take the piss and say he talks like a Londoner... yeah right! Give him a few beers and he's completely incomprehensible to us!

Luckily he's a man of few words (probably given up trying to communicate with us!)

I wonder how the lady in the story would handle a drunk Geordie? Probably like the rest of us, safely, from a distance with a cattle prod!

Man jailed over air traffic control IT kit eBay scam

*cough*

Yes, of course all parts of the British establishment encrypt all sensitive data all the time don't they!

Yeah right.

Although it's a bit unfair that they discounted he could not have wiped the data as he didn't have the skill given the plethora of bootable linux based drive wiping self contained CD images there are available, not to mention the online guides and how-tos explaining how to securely wipe drives.

I hope his lawyer was cheap, because letting the prosecution sneak in a paranoia fuelled "sensitive data was sold on ebay!!" slur without an adequate defence is pretty pathetic.

UK Border Agency suspends 'flawed' asylum DNA testing

He not know how HM govt works...

<quote>he added, concluding, "what I would like to know is which scientists told them to do this!".</quote>

HM Govt doesn't speak to anyone with any expertise in any field they are about to make a huge cash injection into.

They say "We want this", sales person says "yes yes yes, show me the money"... Money is handed over, project runs over budget and time, more money is handed over, project fails. No money is handed back.

Minister involved in handing out the contract quietly leaves post and appears on the board of the company he gave the huge contract too only a few years before.

Nokia N97 Mini out this month

@Georgees

Sure the UI isn't as polished as the iPhone, but it's also nowhere near as expensive! Free on a £35 a month tarrif with 1200 mins and unlimited text/data. Try and get a 32gig iPhone for that!

I've been using symbian phones for years, so for me the UI was a doddle. Everything was where I expected it. It's nice to not have a huge learning curve. Multitasking is something I've had on my phones for over 5 years.

The killer thing for me is that I can install what I like, from wherever I like onto the phone *I* own. Flash works, java apps work. I currently have 3 browsers (nokia's own, opera mini 4.2 and opera mini 5 beta), two instant messenger clients, 3 twitter clients and a wordpress admin app. The wordpress app is actually written in python, so I installed python too. Grand total for all these useful apps £0.

It's nowhere near as bad as the reviews make out. The current V12 firmware has ironed out some quirks and V20 is just round the corner which will bring some polish... I believe V20 is the firmware Nokia intended to release the phone with, but were forced to push it out early by market forces.

Unfortunately everyone will remember the reviews and early firmware (V10) experience, and the N97 will forever be slated. The N95 had a similar birth (I was a first week adopter), but as anyone still using one with the later V31 firmware will tell you, it's a stunning little phone. Yet the only thing anyone remembers about the N95 is "crap battery life", which was a fault with the early firmware and fixed within a couple of months.

@Georgees

I assume you've had extended experience of the N97 then?

Strange, as mine works fine with V12 firmware, and I'm looking forward to what V20 has to offer later this month.

Don't believe everything you read in online reviews, unless you want your nose inserted up the rear passage of Mr jobs by proxy.

Coin-sized nuclear isotope battery minted

Actually...

I know it's probably my fault for distracting everyone with talk of pennies and ice-lollies, but I'm astonished nobody had made any reference to Batman's car...

... "Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed" ...

Sorry...

I apologise... I didn't mean to completely turn this comments page into discussions about pennies, dollars (and their etymology) and ice-lollies (Popsicles).

Although it does give me a sense of perverse pride that I have the disruptive abilities of an EMP at google central.

Well...

The author did say "Penny", and not being an authority on embossed dead US presidents I let him lead me astray!

Okay, you can have the name penny for your one cent, please look after it carefully... We won't be needing it when our glorious leaders (sorry, I mean representatives of the people) finish selling us up the river (The Seine or Rhine probably) and inflict the Euro on us.

Hmmm...

Silly Americans, that's a one cent, not a penny... Does it have the word penny or pence written on it? No... Now go and find your own names for things and stop nicking ours!

You know you can do it... You managed it with popsickle (*sniggers*)

Twitter bans security maven for sharing naughty link

Ummm...

Well I guess after two months they can't be accused of a knee-jerk reaction... Or any kind of effective policing either!

FBI chief barred from online banking by wife

Proof...

People in positions of power don't get there because of what they know, it's who they know.

Honestly, that's the kind of thing even my brother wouldn't fall for, and he's a truck driver!

Nissan demos leaning e-car

Hmmm...

Looks like fun...

But this looks like more

http://www.yikers.com/video_top_gear_reviews_the_carver.html

Ralph Lauren DMCAs thin Photoshop skills

I just tried something...

If you look at this picture laid flat on the table, from about a 5 degree angle, it actually looks right.

So all I can assume is the advertising jerk responsible looked at the preview from this same perspective when he approved it.

Now what could he have been doing with his nose right against the top of his desk? :-/

Hotmail phish exposes most common passwords

Weak

You should see the restrictions Barclays put on their online system before introducing their annoying pin-sentry thing...

Length 6-8 characters

No numerics

No repeated characters

Case ignored.

Personally my big worry is social networking sites. You know the main one I mean, the one that offers to add all your messenger friends by taking your messenger username and password when you sign up... I declined their kind offer, but given the number of people who turn up on my friends suggestions, many of my messenger contacts jump at the chance.

Freeview website titsup ahead of big retune

Explain this...

How can enough people that need instructions on how to retune their freeview box manage to operate a webbrowser?! Press "menu", select something like "setup", oh look, there's tuning.

I just wish there was a way of making that bl**dy info box go away once and for all. I get sick of seeing it every time I switch to ITV/C4/Five.

It's not like I even need telling. I have to retune frequently anyway to get channels back, or find alternative copies of them I can hop between when the wind is blowing in the wrong direction.

Blind one-legged man wins arse-kicking contest

Tut tut...

You've been very very lax recently, and even a story like this, one a Friday, which is literally screaming for the treatment, fails to get Playmobil'ed

Bank sues Google for identity of Gmail user

OMG...

So someone who can't type an email address accurately is sending commercially sensitive data over an unencrypted communication medium...

Why on earth was there even a flat-file containing all this information laying about for this employee to accidentally send?!

I agree with A/C 02:45, Google should quarantine the email whilst waiting for confirmation, but I don't blame them for being careful, I'm sure there are 101 laws in the US about interfering with with the postal service which some lawyer or other would love to try to apply to email systems.

Met steps up stop and search with mobile phone scanner

Errrr

Okay, so currently the phones are stolen and then shipped out to somewhere like Africa, or they have their IMEI number changed so they can still log onto UK networks.

So now with the new scanner, they well have to add "Scratch the barcode" label off. Sure it looks suspicious, but we still have innocent until proven guilty in this country... Or are they going to sneak that one out through the backdoor and give it a quick bullet between the ears at the same time?

I'm sure it won't be long before the naughty people can start producing convincing looking replacement labels.

Twitter-based mafia game irritates world+dog

On FB too...

Friendface has been taken over by gangsters and oddly enough farms recently.

I guess they need a source for the horses heads.

Disconnection phone scam targets UK consumers

Saw this...

Saw this on the TV news this morning, I thought it was quite cunning.

What I did think was pretty strange was the BBC insisting on showing a map of the UK and highlighting counties where it had been reported.

Ummm... Does anyone want to point out that telephone cons aren't exactly geographic! Come to think of it, the same goes for the Police, why are West Midlands investigating and not national?

Quick guys, West Midlands Police are investigating, we're moving to Scotland, stop dialling 0121 use 0131...

US software firm sentenced for 'trading with the enemy'

Ahhh...

Glad you made the comparison to the mp3 fines...

$14,500 must be such a huge sum to a company involved with oil exploration.

CSI boffins: You can't ID crims from bitemarks on victims

Puts fingers in ears...

CSI can't be wrong, I can't hear you lalalalalalalaaaaa

IBM tries to patent teleconference sound effects

Thank god...

There are some ideas that deserve to be patented and then licensed at such horrendous rates that nobody will ever implement them...

This is one such idea.

I never thought I'd say this, but US patent system, please do us proud and grant this one (well you grant pretty much anything else!).

Peugeot looks to 1940s for quirky e-car design

WTF?

What kind of drugs are they feeding those designers?

I've seen firemen cutting corpses out of wreckage that look better than that!

T-Mobile's G2 denied the update Touch

Updates...

Orange have always been terrible for updates too.

My original N95 would still be on V11 and crashing if I hadn't hacked the phone to be a generic Euro model. It is perfectly stable on V30 now. Even better, voip works over wifi now too.

Sometimes the problem isn't the carriers though. For some reason even unbranded uk n97s are currently stuck on v11 when world+dog has had v12 for a month. It's not even a feature adding update, it fixes well publicised bugs!

I can feel another hack to generic euro model coming up!

US Spec Ops operates psywar websites targeted at UK

Cheeky buggers...

"Looking for operatives fluent in "English (British dialect)"

That's just called English, it's you that speak a dialect thank you!

They can even correctly pronounce the last letter of the alphabet in that large country just north of you.

To be honest we've been under the influence of American paranoia for years. We didn't need half the security and paranoia we have now when the IRA were blowing up bits of British territory for decades, and they had sources for real explosives like C4! The moment the yanks get a taste of it, the world goes mad!

Mr Jones was ahead of his time... They don't like it up 'em.

s'laters, I'm off for a 20floz britney in the rubber down the frog.

Australia mulls botnet takedown scheme

I'm amazed it's not already done...

Given how much ISPs over sell their bandwidth, I'm amazed they don't have anything which detects excessive SMTP traffic.

I know some ISPs have actually blocked outbound SMTP to anything except their provided mail servers, which is a good start.

Asus' Eee keyboard out next month - official

@Grease Monkey

Outside of point of sale consoles and hospitals where the ease of cleaning comes in, what's the point of *any* touch screen!

Honestly, since the iPhone everyone seems to have gone touch screen insane! Sure on a small device with no other pointing device input I can see it has a use, but on a PC with a mouse? I'll pick the mouse every time! Far more accurate, plus of course you're not sticking a huge great digit over exactly what you need to see to press!

"Oh but I can do multitouch image resize, look how cool I am!", okay, fine... Now crop it to exactly 200x200 pixels... I'll race you... I'm just going to make a cup of tea, don't wait for me, I'll catch up...

Until someone invents a transparent finger, to me touch screen will just be a way of selling more finger print removing window cleaner!

I was interested in the idea of the eeeKeyboard when I first heard about it, but now it's just going to price itself out of a useful bracket because it has a pointlessly small touch screen stuck on the side of it... Ditch the damn screen and I might come back.

@Matt 89 - My R52 thinkpad doesn't have one, and it still managed to get a designed for XP sticker... Curious... So no I don't use it, Ctrl-Esc is a perfectly usable alternative. Although it's slightly annoying when I want to do Windows-L to lock the desktop.

@Michael C - That's a VGA port. It has 15 pins in 3 rows. Serial has 9 pins in 2 rows. It also has HDMI... Is that enough external monitor support for you? As for folding... Hmmmm... Well I have a hacksaw?

Apple gobbles world's flash memory

@Henry Wertz 1

"or likely more since they are probably getting the flash below spot."

I should hope so... If they're pulling in that kind of volume and not getting a serious discount they shout shoot their procurements team!

Church altar smites devout Catholic

Illogical religion...

It does always amaze/amuse/worry me...

People are involved in huge vehicle accidents, their entire family is wiped out, but they survive... Then they say something crazy like "God must have been saving me for a higher purpose"...

Errr, excuse me, he's just wiped out your spouse, child and parents.... So he's either trying to really ruin your life and plunge you into the pits of depression, or he was seriously trying to kill you and just didn't take the airbag into account!

I still remember when I heard Tony Blair prayed for guidance before deciding to be G Dubya's poodle and invade Iraq... Religion, the only time you can listen to voices in your head, not get given a nice white huggy jacket and still be left in control of a country!

Apple welcomes music streaming to US App Store

64kbs Nothing heinous, to be sure, but noticeable

And that's compared to 128kbs?

Good grief man, clean your ears out, or go listen to some old vinyl of something. I won't inflict anything lower than 192kbs on my ears, and I prefer far higher.

As for streaming audio over your carriers data connection, well I hope US "Unlimited" data is more unlimited than the UK version!

Shouty shouty as you're obviously deaf!

Twits twitter while driving

Blunt object...

The problem is the UK law says it's illegal to use a phone whilst driving, and driving is defined as operating a motor vehicle... So far so good, but operating a motor vehicle also includes when you are sitting stationary.

I never text whilst I'm moving, but I will freely admit to sending texts when I'm stationary in traffic... They're usually something like "Stuck on the f****** again M25 again, I'll be a bit late". I'll also check my texts when sitting at red lights. I'm stationary, the hand brake is on. Sometimes on the M25 the engine is OFF! Where is the danger in that?

It's certainly safer than some of the cars I see driving on the road with kids playing up in the back and the parent who should be driving are spending more time looking over their shoulder than at the road ahead!

Orange data users turning red as data dries up

Perfect...

Perfect example of why you shouldn't go with one of these wonderful discount packages of mobile, broadband et al from one company. If they have a big problem with their network you're going to be screwed.

I might have an Orange mobile, and my broadband might be from the masters of cr*p, Tiscali, but hedging my bets across them and I've not been without my TCP/IP packet fix for years.

A phone in every car gains hard-won GSMA support

Hmmmm...

I assume this is an automatic system, as a manually triggered one would have little advantage over the mobile phone that everyone already owns.

So where does this system set its threshold? I've had some serious accidents (serious as in lots of mangled metal), but when I've rung the cops all they wanted to know was that everyone was okay and that details were exchanged. They didn't even bother putting in an appearance.

So I can see the police being alerted to many many accidents they wouldn't normally bother with, and probably lots and lots of charges of undue care and attention being thrown at everyone for being silly enough to bump into each other. No such thing as an accident any more.

Actually, I can see every Sainsbury's and Tesco car park packed with automatically summoned emergency vehicles!

The more suspicious of you will already be thinking about this factory fitted GPS GSM system which is but a small data packet away from being a 24/7 vehicle tracker.

Ohio armed robber asked victim for a date

Stupid...

This is really not very bright... Even less so when the victims were described as a "couple"...

He really does have his animal magnetism overrated!