Posts by Dale Richards

Hubble probes deepest universe

This image...

...quite unexpectedly reduced me to tears. Not just from awe at the ever-increasing vastness of our known Universe, or even at the beauty of all those twinkling galaxies. But also from the dawning realisation of the ultimate futility of our space exploration programmes. Even given 30 billion years of further human development, we're unlikely to ever visit the places in this image, we'll never reach the edge of the Universe and we'll never understand what it's all about.

The Universe might as well be infinite, for infinity is both everything and nothing. If we can never see outside the boundaries of the Universe, there's no evidence to suggest the Universe even exists.

I'd be curious to know what amanfromMars has to say about this.

Mozilla lights fire under Thunderbird

Thunderbird...

...may well have stagnated because all business users have Outlook and all home users have Gmail.

For Thunderbird to be a runaway success, it needs full Exchange integration (including calendars, and maybe even the Journal) and full Gmail integration (including the quirky "Labels" filing method). Then just add some funky ways to manage your work/home emails and calendars and you have a winner. Icing on the cake would be things like support for maildir and PST formats.

By concentrating on add-on support, it's like they're saying, "Meh, can't be arsed to add any new features. Do it yourself."

2009's Top Personal Media Players

Reply to post: More storage please

Agreed. Paying through the nose for players that only store 16 GB of music seems like a giant backwards leap to me.

The iPod Classic seems like the best music player at the moment, but it costs a fortune and relies at least partly on the steaming pile that is iTunes.

Cell phones don't fry brains, boffins say

Genius

Mobile phone use is dangerous because some other things turned out to be dangerous. Can't fault that logic.

And don't be trying to scare ignorant people with the word "radiation". All of the lights in your house are kicking out non-ionising electromagnetic radiation, but I'll bet you don't sit in the dark for fear of frying your brain.

Or maybe you do...

Re: Ericsson T28 and T39

Most people find their ear feels hot after they've been on a mobile call for more than a few minutes.

You can get the same effect without a phone by holding your hand to your ear for a few minutes.

Catholics slam PETA nude adopt-a-mutt poster

Re: Gotta be said

Fur burgers? Never mind PETA's eye - I've just gone blind!

Manchester journo gets first ID card - late

Re: Please oh please oh please....

I thought she was brave posing with her card for a picture, but on closer inspection it's just a printout of the standard "Specimen" card. Fail.

Re: No Surprise

I'm not sure what's worse - being a Human Rights Howler or a Privacy Pirate... God help those of us who are both - we'll be shunned by society!

Nissan super-battery to 'double' e-car range

Nissan Leaf

I may be the only one, but I'm actually pretty excited about the Nissan Leaf. It's such a relief to see an electric car that actually looks like a car! I don't know what the dipshits at Renault and Mitsubishi and everyone else are smoking, but Nissan have got it right when it comes to styling an electric car. I even like the interior - the colour scheme might not be to everyone's taste, but the style and layout follows very smoothly from what current Nissan drivers know and love.

I'm not majorly concerned about the range, as I only drive 15 miles a day, but this advance in battery tech can only be a good thing. I know that detractors complain that electric cars make no difference to CO2 emissions, but I'm pretty sure my short, stop-start journeys would be more efficient using stored energy from a high-efficiency coal power plant than from an ICE. And as alternative power sources become more commonplace, this will only improve.

I've never been a fan of electric cars before - probably because every model I've seen to date has been fiendishly ugly and impractical. But the Leaf may well be the one to change my mind, as it seems the only thing going against it is the ridiculous name.

LHC back after temporary unexistence

Horror Documentary

I demand that this be made into a horror film called The Soupening.

Sex with Taoist truck driver leaves woman fully satisfied

Re: The power of placebo

...but can it improve your Taste in Men?

Icon design for dummies fanbois

ouch...

Your inappropriate use of the verb "bing" just made me bing up all over my keyboard.

Microsoft enlists faceless girl band as face of Windows 7

Windows 7 was not my idea

The only "idea" I had for Windows 7 was that they should fix the sodding image viewer. XP's viewer is great - it plays animated GIFs and you can zoom in on a picture and get a nice, interpolated view (handy for enlarging low res pr0n).

Vista broke it badly when they removed those two key features, and despite all of my feedback, they're still missing from Windows 7. :(

And to add insult to injury, XP's "Picture and Fax Viewer" is so deeply embedded in the OS that I can't get it to run under 7. :(

Hackers free Snow Leopard from Jobsian cage

This looks legit...

Why wouldn't you want to install a kernel patch from an anonymous Russian hacker? Seems perfectly cromulent to me...

Apple cult leader emails outside world

Perhaps I'm cynical, but...

...I seriously doubt Jobs actually sent this email. I'm sure the LittleApp guy sent his message, didn't get any response and then made up this story so he could buckle to Apple's legal demands whilst getting free publicity from El Reg for the name change.

US boffins build, test working 2-qubit quantum processor

Fair enough..

"If many such devices could be successfully hooked together to create a quantum computer, various major consequences could be expected - not least the breaking of encryption regarded today as completely uncrackable."

I don't doubt that, but the real question is - can it play Crysis on full settings?

Michael Jackson planned 'robot duplicate' of himself

@David S

"But who to play the lead role?"

Arnold Schwarzenegger, of course.

*Thick Austrian accent*

"I'm sorry, I cannot pay for this coffee. My wallet is full of PAIN!"

*unleashes lasers*

Bill Gates plants (wetter) smooch on Steve Jobs

Really...

I've never understood why people assume there must be some kind of animosity between Jobs and Gates just because some Mac users like to belittle Windows users, and vice versa.

In truth, Microsoft and Apple are not direct competitors, and they each do well to work together.

Revealed: The amazing premise behind Ridley Scott's Monopoly

@Tom 11

How are you going to pay for that coffee? Your wallet is full of Sticklebricks!

Anna Friel spectator brings up his Breakfast at Tiffany's

Re: Before or after the nude scene?

It was obviously before the nude scene, as evidenced by the quote:

"...everyone eventually returned to their seats..."

'Something may come through' dimensional 'doors' at LHC

@Valerion

"Seems to me that starting off another one of those in Switzerland could be considered A Bad Thing"

I think starting off another Big Bang in Switzerland would a Great Thing. Surely we're about due for a brand new Universe?

Large Hadron Collider scuttled by birdy baguette-bomber

@Ed Blackshaw

My guess is that the bicycle is for navigating the tunnels of the LHC. It would be a bloody long way to walk!

X-rays beat computer as best invention ever

@Paul Charters

I can see what you're saying, and I've considered all of your points carefully. However, in terms of pure advancement of humankind, the greatest of all our inventions would quite obviously have to be Sky+.

Hisense 1080p Media Player

SCART

As a CRT devotee (still haven't seen an LCD or plasma that comes close to my big boxy JVC in terms of picture quality), the lack of RGB SCART is a complete deal breaker for me.

I've been trying to get one of these boxes for a while, but until I can find a decent one with RGB, it'll be a "no deal, Noel".

Microsoft in Bing jingle kiddie vid outrage

@Outcast

I must admit, when Bing first launched, I decided to try it, and instinctively just typed "bing" into Google in order to find it.

Top drug boffin renews criticism of cannabis policy

@Ross 7

I'm sure a lot of people smoke weed with tobacco, but personally I've always chosen to do it "straight" with a pipe. The health risks and addictive properties of tobacco are well known, and that's not a hole I'm willing to dig myself into.

Home Office

'The Home Office said it is "determined to crack down on all illegal substances"'

Cannabis isn't inherently illegal - no substance is. It's only illegal because our gubment overlords have decided it is. If their motive really was to "crack down on all illegal substances", they could simply legalise everything. Job done.

No, I believe Mr Nutt has hit the nail on the head when he states that drugs are classified politically, rather than scientifically.

Google Spanner — instamatic redundancy for 10 million servers?

Re: 1984

"And the answer is that you are being watched all of the time you use anything from Google."

You are also being watched any time you use a service that itself uses Google. A website with embedded Google Maps, for instance, or any site that uses Google ads or Google's analytics. Just about every website you're ever likely to visit, in other words.

Steve Ballmer's Windows 7 dance party

RE: How big is program files, and windows folders?

AC, you may want to Google "Superfetch" (or Bing it, if you hate yourself). You may be surprised to find that Windows 7 (and, indeed, Vista) already does something very similar.

What if you had a launch party and nobody came?

Microsoft's Big Day

Blast it with piss.

Apple preempts Win 7 with fresh iMacs, Macbooks

@Ian Tunnacliffe

"I am happy that a crashing app doesn't bring the O/S tumbling down with it. I am happy that my machine doesn't need to be rebooted on a regular basis to reckover its resources."

To be fair to Windows, these issues haven't been a problem since the bad old days of Windows 9x/Me.

Multitouch Mouse

I'd love a multitouch mouse. Now all we really need is a multitouch network switch, a touch sensitive USB cable and range of office supplies controlled by touch gestures, like a multitouch stapler.

Innovation must never be driven by consumer needs or the development of humankind. Technology for technology's sake is the way to go!

Now if only there was a company who could sell this pointless crap to brainless punters at grossly inflated prices...

Man posed as teen lesbian to snare girl's nude photos

@ElReg!comments!Pierre

On the whole, I have to agree with you. If a 15-year-old girl willingly gives up "noodz" to a stranger over the Internet, then she's at least partly to blame. Fifteen is not too young to know better.

PC tune-up software: does it really work?

Freeing up RAM

"The tune-up applications also made more Ram available on our Vista PC too. System Mechanic 9 led the way, just as it did on our XP laptop, freeing up 70MB of memory"

Free RAM is wasted RAM. Repeat it after me:

"Free RAM is wasted RAM!"

The whole point of SuperFetch in Vista is to pre-cache programs and data in RAM to improve loading times. If SuperFetch is doing its job properly, nearly all your RAM should be in use. This isn't "bloat" - it's a performance-enhancing feature. If these utilities "free up" your RAM, the RAM will be sitting there going to waste when it could be working to improve the PC's performance.

Altec Lansing Expressionist Plus v. Edifier E3350

Actually...

The driver dimensions are detailed on page 3.

Thats the problem with not reading the whole article and them basing your comments on assumptions.

@AC 9:46

Perhaps reading the article more thoroughly is in order, rather than just skimming it. Driver sizes are definitely mentioned.

That said, there's still no mention of the really important figures such as frequency range and response, THD and sensitivity/SPL output.

WD Caviar Black 2TB

@foo_bar_baz

While you are correct that filesystems have overheads that reduce the amount of actual file data you can store, the figure mentioned in the article does not take this into account.

1863 GiB is equal to 2 TB, which is the full, unformatted capacity of the drive.

@Lennart Sorensen

I find it hard to believe that after decades of confusion between binary and decimal units, and even with the invention of special units to denote the binary type (e.g. the gibibyte/GiB), these mistakes are still appearing in reviews on specialist IT sites, and the confusion goes on.

Lennart is correct, of course. There is no "formatted capacity" here - filesystem overheads have been completely ignored. 2 TB is equal to 2000 GB, which is equal to 1863 GiB. You haven't lost any capactiy in the unit conversion, in exactly the same way that 2 inches isn't any shorter than 5 centimetres.

The real annoyance is that Windows and Mac OS X both insist on measuring in GiB, but use the "GB" suffix like they're just trying to confuse you. Hence the icon.

Ads watchdog underclocks reseller's 9.2GHz AMD CPU claim

eBay...

There are always hundreds of listings for PCs on eBay that advertise clock speeds in this way. I reported it to eBay on a few occasions (pointing out that AMD don't actually make a CPU that runs at 9.2 GHz), but in typical eBay fashion, they did nothing.

It's goos to see someone finally getting a slap for it.

Nationwide Freeview tune-up takes place today

tvretune.co.uk

Am I the only one who, despite being fully aware of how to retune a Freeview box, is hammering www.tvretune.co.uk anyway out of sheer bloody-mindedness?

Eurocrat demands MP3 player volume limit mandate

Sound levels...

"...portable audio devices must not pump out music beyond 100dB"

100 dB what?

100 dB SPL @ 1 m would be loud enough for general consumer listening.

100 dB SPL @ 1 cm probably wouldn't be.

Please finish the sentence, so we can more accurately judge the stupidity level of this law.

Bridge made of recycled plastic supports 70-ton tank

And the award for biggest failure to read the article goes to...

...Jolyon Ralph!

YouTube Lad from Lagos stranded in London

FFS

This is obviously some viral marketing bullshit. Do us a favour, El Reg, stop giving it airtime. You're just making it worse. :(

SA pigeon outpaces broadband

@Fab De Marco

Is Unlimited IT streaming the World Cup over an ADSL line, or have you mistaken one company for an entire country?

Explorers unearth cat-sized rat

Nice rat.

n/t

iPhones get sun, leg power

@Vision Aforethought

"...And that's going to be fantastic for the environment"

Given that plants thrive on carbon dioxide, and burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, can I assume that burning fossil fuels will cause a surge in plant growth, which will in turn regulate the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide?

I mean, plenty of studies have shown that plants grow faster in a CO2-rich environment, capturing the CO2 as they do so. Is it too hard to believe that the planet is effectively regulating itself? Is it not possible that any perceived increases or decreases in atmospheric CO2 or global temperature measured in recent years (and I mean incredibly recent on the grand scale of planetary history) are simply natural fluctuations that have been occurring since the birth of the planet?

By all means use "renewable energy" to save money. But to say you're "saving the planet" is more than a little presumptious.

Microsoft pimps bogus Windows 7 'launch parties'

Win7 Signature Edition

"One limited Signature Edition Windows 7 Ultimate ["Signed by whom?" you ask - but the oracle is silent.]"

Looking at the box shot on the houseparty website, the signature looks identical to the "Steven A Ballmer" signature on my MCP certificate. I'd be somewhat surprised if he signs them by hand, however.

Xbox 360 'least reliable' console

Wii Disc Tray

I'm a little alarmed at how high the percentage is for disc tray failures with the Wii, considering the Wii does not have a disc tray...

Gmail in massive web outage

@Bryce Prewitt

No, you are not the customers. The advertisers are the customers.

You are actually the product.

Smoking iMac caught on camera

@Michael C

I'm afraid Li-poly batteries are also likely to explode/combust if pierced, overheated, overcharged or shorted.