Posts by Dave

Dogs and arson feature in top 10 data recovery disasters

No. 8: Bottle of wine spilled over keyboard.

Man, that must have been tough:

1. Rinse

2. Dry

3. Profit.

Wikipedia self-flagellates over vanishing 'farmsex'

@By The Other Steve

The reason we should care about this is that WikiPedia is what counts as an education for far too many of our children these days, and far too many teachers for that matter.

No problem as long as WikiPedia actually gets close to its goals, but clearly it is nowhere near at the moment.

Designer pitches solar-powered AA battery

"dreamt up a solar battery"

I take it from the complete absence of any performance figures that this is currently nothing more than a plastic mock-up and a patent application?

On the other hand, if performance is reasonable, then it is a good marketing trick, since you would need at least two sets of batteries - one to go in the appliance, and one or more to lie around recharging.

Microsoft issues emergency patch warning for IE

@Edward Miles

If you use the IEtab extension then YOU ARE STILL USING IE !!!!

Microsoft spits out ODF plans for Office 2007 SP2

@Tom: "will people please stop"

What format are you looking for then, if Word, PDF and even ODF don't tickle your fancy?

Back to plain old ASCII ?

Scottish firm pays £120,000 over unlicensed software

Translation

A spokesperson for John R. Weir said: "Shit, I had no idea lawyers were so expensive. I really wish there had been one less computer in the office the day these b@t*ds came round."

G N' R blogger pleads guilty to copyright violation

Details?

A little more detail would be nice here - what exactly was he accused of? Wholesale piracy or just copyright infringement?

Google hints at the End of Net Neutrality

Ethics

At the end of the day, Google is out to make money. so "Google is making exactly the kind of deal with ISPs that it has consistently tried to ban in law and regulation." makes perfect sense: they think that it provides a massive advantage. One that they cannot ignore.

If they tried to say to the regulators that it was too big an advantage for any of their competitors to have, and told their shareholders that they didn't want to take advantage themselves, then they would probably get shafted by both groups.

Ethics say that I should cruise around the motorways at 30mph, so that I produce the least polution possible, but common sense says that getting rear-ended by an artic is going to cancel out those benefits. Does that make me/Google hypocritical ?

2TB Caviar drive too good to be true?

Formatted Capacity

Don't forget that the figure quoted is always the raw capacity as well - typically there will be several percent of the drive space as unallocated blocks, which may later be used to replace 'bad-blocks' but therefore never truly available to the user.

2008's top three netbooks

@Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware

I think you missed the point there, Tony, which was that you only provide reviews of what you have been given. Whereas most people want to compare the _whole_ market. I know that would require greater effort on your part, but imagine a comparison of MP3 players, that didn't include an actual iPod, just because Apple wasn't feeling friendly at the time?

Why port your Firefox add-on to Internet Explorer?

@Jos

No, it's definetely a _hash_ .

IWF pulls Wikipedia from child porn blacklist

IWF fail

So, the IWF have now decided that an image that has been banned from the UK in the past (in its original form as a physical album cover) is now safe for us all to look at. How does it work that out? Has the original banning order been rescinded? Does anyone know the full detail of that banning order - was it an informal thing, or did it emanate from a High Court Judge?

Facebook ignores huge security hole for four months

@Ropata

Care to bet your life on that?

NoScript is more of a pain than a saviour, not least because of the false sense of security that its users have.

Why the IWF was right to ban a Wikipedia page

IANAL

I am not a lawyer, and find it hard to believe the author of this article is either, except in the fact that he seems capable of arguing both sides of a case at once!

I think the first piece that was written about this was about right, in saying that EVERYONE comes out of this badly:

The IWF announced a ban on a page, not an image.

The ISP's implemented the ban poorly - both in the technical measures they used, and by failing to block any of the alternative paths.

Amazon comes out of it badly for continuing to sell the album.

Skorpions come out of it badly for having poor taste.

The Police come out of it badly for not being able to make a reliable decision when called upon.

The law comes out of it badly, overall.

Wikipedia ALWAYS looks stupid - only a lawyer could possibly make an excuse for them.

Reg readers in the dark over extreme porn

Wow!

So, the police themselves "passed it onto a local Police Sergeant." because they believe it is simple enough for all but the lowest ranks to understand, but won't give an actual answer.

We all know from yesterday's activities that the IWF are:

a) Useless

b) Will pass all requests to the Police themselves, (who will say 'Maybe') which the IWF will automatically categorise as a ban.

What a total fail.

Wow!

PS:

How nice to know that anything that is over the line is already illegal to publish, thereby making attempts to discuss by example decidedly difficult already.

Scorpions tale leaves IWF exposed

Censorship is wrong

This article mentions that the 'production' or 'posession' of an image that _IS_ 'over the line' is already illegal. There is therefore no need to block stuff that is borderline.

Far better just to log it - if you stray too close to the line either in production or viewing then you can expect a visit from the law and a close investigation.

By blocking anything that comes close, you just drive it all underground - this is just a repeat of the whole mp3 fiasco - the studios are finally learning that they cannot defeat file sharing by criminalising it, and the same is true here.

Entire class fails IT exam by submitting in Word format

Well Done.

All I can say is: if I applied for a job, and they asked for my CV in a specific format, then that is what I would give them. If I gave them something different, then I would expect it not to be read.

Reminder: this was an IT exam. If it was history or something like that, I would say that the format did not matter, but in this case it was surely part of the requirements.

A better example would be when I sat Technical Drawing a long time ago: if I had submitted a micro-fiche of my work I would have expected to fail, however good the draftsmanship: that may be a valid archival format, but the layout and labelling all fall within the confines of the actual exam.

The teacher should certainly be sacked - AFTER he has tutored all of the children for free.

Archos 7 internet-enabled PMP

Resolution

For that kind of money I would expect a much higher screen resolution.

Fiat shows solar-panel wrapped 'Panda of the future'

@Clive Mitchell

Yes, it probably will leave green skid marks, if you shove it by hand. (It's not going to do it under power !)

If you look closely at the second photo you can see that the green colour is just a poor spray coating over normal black tyres, and is coming off already.

Samsung SyncMaster 2263DX 22in monitor

Title: £300 ?!

For that price, I could buy two decent, full size screens, and have ultimate flexibility. This sounds pretty crap to me.

Pair arrested over leaked BNP list

@Danny

WW11 is actually a large part of the problem: 'National Socialism' must be bad 'cause that's what Hitler believed in. Communism must be bad, 'cause that's what Stalin and Lenin preached. We all know that Capitalism has just collapsed, so surely it must be time to go back to Monarchal rule?

Or do you think that maybe we should try to understand the detailed advantages and failings of each system? And to you think we should be allowed to talk about them all in public?

US space outfit promises The Right Stuff experience

Outer Space?

Can we please all stop calling these things space craft?

'Weightless' for three minutes kind of gives it away: a vomet comet can manage thirty seconds as it is, and is then able to repeat it again a minute or two later - it doesn't have to land and refuel.

Sure, the pilot of this thing has to wear a space suit, but so did the U2 pilots.

Inverness to host UK's most eco-friendly datacentre

WTF?

"an iconic landmark building... that will act as a beacon for others"

So they fully expect it to burn down then?

Fraunhofer boffins: Laser printers safe after all

@Jerome

Who said that the poll was closed?

IT exec accused of $10m backup tape theft

Location

Simple answer - he accidentally used one of the originals as the target for one of the copies. It's not missing, just overwritten, and sent off with the other copies.

Never attribute to malice that which can be better explained by stupidity.

Code generator card fights fraud

Card

So, if you lose your card, then you also lose the second authentication factor, guaranteed? At least with the external reader that my bank gave me, the two are rarely in the same place - I only do Internet Banking from home, so that's where the reader stays, while the card is usually in my pocket.

Sony Vaio Z11 13in laptop

Keyboard

How much does that keyboard remind you of the ZX Spectrum? Slap a few weird symbols on them and three different shift modes and you would be right there.

As for the size - the larger the keyboard is, the easier it is to type on, so the fact that the MacBook Air is larger is surely a positive? Particularly since it does so while remaining lighter than this, and cheaper as well?

UK.gov says extreme porn isn't illegal if you delete it...

Extract

So, an extract may be illegal, where a full film isn't. So if you lose the first reel of a film you can be in trouble, as it is no longer the entire film?

Don't say that is a ridiculous suggestion, it is nowhere near as ridiculous as this law.

Thin end of yet another NuLabour wedge.

Brits decline to 'think outside the box'

"All of it"

Am I missing some hidden meaning, or strange usage of "All of it" ??

That sounds like perfectly cromulent English to me.

Essex copper deluged after forwarding web hoax email

"Burundanga does exist"

Prove it. Show me where I can buy a plant, or some of the extract.

Aussie government muffs plans for internet filtering

@Trix

And GW Bush, Tony Blair, Adolf Hitler...

RISC daddy conjures Moore's Lawless parallel universe

@Ged Perryman

Like so many, you seem to misunderstand the purpose of Moore's Law. It is not intended to be a predictive device: rather it is intended to keep the development teams synchronised.

Think of it like this: you have one team in Intel that is working on obscure chemistry, one on process engineering, one on circuit design, etc.. Each of these is basically working 'Just In Time'

The chemists need to produce something that the engineers can use, when it becomes the right time. The engineers need to be able to produce a new process when the circuit design is ready. Moore's Law allows them all to predict where they will be in one, three, five years time and allow all the pieces to fit together.

That is also why Intel has been able to stay ahead of its competitors, even though almost everyone else has some advantage, at one time or another.

Ballmer's bid to swerve 'Vista Capable' row comes unstuck

@Gareth Jones

I take it that you work for M$ then, Gareth?

@Trent: 512MB barely counts as XP-capable. Surely that counts for something as well?

Jerry Yang - Slugworth to Google's Willy Wonka

@Adam

Adam; you are missing the point: sure there are lots of PHP installations that work, but Google are not satisfied with stuff that works okay.

Think of it like personal transport: PHP is a Dacia Sandero Estate. C++ is more like a 1960's Thunderbird. Guess which one is more economical, which one gets you round a test-track fastest, and which one I would pick if given a free choice?

Honda whips out fuel-cell sci-fi style sportster

Intentions

YEah, it is INTENDED to be built from recycled material, it is INTENDED to be cheap as chips, it is INTENDED to go like shit off a shovel, all they have to do is build it.

(A bit like all they need to do to win F1 is build a fast car - like they have been trying to do for a while now...)

NASA celebrates return of the Zeppelin

@Paul

I don't think that Brian Miller put his point across very well, but the point remains: put your hydrogen inside a certified, non-flammable skin and you will be an awful lot safer than the Hindenburg was.

As with all gases, an explosion will only occur if it is well mixed with an oxidiser, or oxygen itself - you don't see much fuss about the tanks full of liquid hydrogen that are common to most space-rockets, do you?

VAT fraudster must repay £26m

@Jamie

Have you not been reading the news lately?

Take a personal picture of your significant other having some fun and you are in the jail and on the Sex Offenders Register.

Take a photo somewhere near to a child and much the same happens.

Anyway, good luck to the Treasury, this was out and out fraud and deserves to be punished hard.

<- Bill, 'cos he deserves a bit of punishment too, and not the sexy kind either.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 planned for 2009

@Neil Greatorex and @Jim

I think you misunderstand.

Microsoft will listen to the feedback. They have a whole department that does that. Nothing but that. That department never passes on the feedback. Other departments never act on that feedback.

But they do listen.

HP breaks Japanese excessive packaging record

How much cardboard?

Doesn't look like much to me - only one box inside, unlike the usual bulk-pack style we are used to.

In any case, I am more concerned by the use of oil-based plastics to fill up the empty space, instead of paper or corrugated cardboard. Much better for the environment to be using and storing wood-based products than to leave them outside to rot.

Does it feel good when I twist your circuits?

<untitled>

"an optical image"

as opposed to what? A tactile image?

Lewis Hamilton mulls riding Virgin

Go

Go, Go Lewis. As far as possible.

Sub-orbital my arse - if I get half a chance I'll make sure that it gets filled up with some 'premium' rocket fuel that day.

<- Icon for what I wish to see near that jumped-up prat: surely the least-deserving winner ever.

Scots vote out ID cards

Public Record

It may not count for much, but at least it is on record. Surely Westminster cannot discount the clear wishes of the Scottish People? (Again: surely the last two hundred times is enough?)

Filesharing ambulance chasers get into the gay smut racket

@Frederick Karno

I think that you will find that the UK does not have a law that mentions 'entrapment' - that is pretty much a US thing.

The madness of 'king cores

Comments

Does no-one who read this article know what a core is? Did no-one get the fact that the author was saying that massively-multi-core systems _are_ much better for a server environment than for the desktop?

Go on: someone explain to me how, on a dual-core machine, all of your background threads are going to max out your second core when your first one is trying to keep up with you typing into Word?

Lame Mac Trojan limps into view

@Jodo Kast

As you can see from earlier comments, none of the El Reg readers need a dictionary to understand this bit of rural idiom.

BNP leaked list claims first victims

<untitled>

I always find it interesting the way that extremists to right are vilified as unacceptable, but persons and groups to the left are perfectly acceptable in this country. The reverse appears to be the case in the US of course, but I have never understood why.

As for the SNP, I don't think that they have much in common with the BNP, but if they do, what does that mean? The SNP are 'allowed' to be the most powerful party in Scotland, but no-one is going to be allowed to be a member?

NASA's curious climate capers

Correction Section

@Evan Jones

Then how about correcting your expansion of FTE? It stands for Full-Time _Equivalent_ not employee.

Nuke boffins plan Penguin petaflop cluster

@Paul

But will it run Tetris?

Wacky Jacqui's £12bn gIMP could be unleashed by 2012

(untitled)

"The final system will be fully compatible with human rights legislation, he said."

Translation: "We are going to need to slightly alter some existing legislation. Nothing major, just remove a few 'nevers', the odd 'not' and the like."

Why does my grammar checker not like the phrase: 'Fuel-Air Explosive' ? I think it is great fun. Much better than some damp gunpowder...