Posts by melt

Baffling barcode-on-steroids stickers plaster the Earth

Re: "A QR code can easily contain a link to a scam or a blob of malicious binary information"

itself itself itself itself

Re: "A QR code can easily contain a link to a scam or a blob of malicious binary information"

I think that was meant to be read with slightly different emphasis:

"A QR code can easily contain a link to a scam, or a blob of malicious binary information".

OK, any form of URL can link to malicious content, but I think the point is that the QR code itself has enough space in it to contain a useful buffer overflow targeted at the QR software itself.

Not many people would type in a printed URL like "http://www.theregister.co.uk\n\n000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000xdeadbeef", but a QR code neatly gives you the ability to blob that right up.

Fridayage: http://wtfqrcodes.com/

Arcam rDock

Blimey that's expensive.

Mind you, the Apple docks themselves aren't particularly cheap...

UPDATE: GAGA team hunts down grass-smoking ROBOT

Re: SONAR

If the positions of the beacons are known, you'd only need two - the robot is "never" going to be the other side of the fence?

Re: A laser eye???

Or a compass and inclinometer on the pole, with a bit of trig...

Re: Why the Eff?

What happens when a wheel slips on wet grass or mud?

Re: IR retroreflectors?

IR beacons won't work so well on a lovely sunny day.

lasers

Two lasers mounted on a simple servo platform, one each in the bottom two corners of the garden.

A sensor on the bot.

First laser starts a sweep, bot reports when it sees a laser flash. This gives you tangent from one laser scanner.

Second laser does the same. This lets you triangulate the bot's position.

Run a grid of wire under the lawn.

Have a low-powered transmitter on the bot.

You can then sense where the bot is by seeing which horizontal and which vertical wires have the strongest signal on them.

You could reverse it and have slightly different frequencies transmitted down each horizontal and vertical wire... might get a bit noisy though!

LOHAN to straddle meaty titanium rod

Looks spot-on to me. Perhaps provide a hole in the back plate for the motor to thrust through so the truss isn't affected by the takeoff?

Facebook denies poaching your text messages on Android

Re: Re: reticulating splines

Strange, the app never did that on mine until the most recent update.

Ten... sub-£100 mono laser printers

Re: Aesthetics not part of the review?

It's a printer. Shove it in the attic or pantry and you'll only see it to retrieve prints.

Re: Well, we'll see...

I've got a HL-2250DN, it's been really solid so far. The web interface lets you chuff about with a lot of settings too - on mine you can tell it to ignore the built-in "toner low" counter.

We're! not! a! social! network! yells! Yahoo!

So they're not a search engine and they're not a social network. Tell you what Yahoo!, call us back when you've decided what you *are*.

FTC urged to probe Google's Safari-tracking gaffe

Re: Excuse me?

...you'll have fun trying to replace Safari with IE9 on a Mac too.

Europeans turn backs on Ultrabooks

Re: Re: extra 10%

Bingo.

extra 10%

I guess it's because at the price the PC Ultrabooks are going for, I might as well spend the extra 10% and get the Mac. The PCs just aren't cheap enough.

New driver-snooping satnav could push down UK insurance premiums

Colin - it was a joke.

You need a satnav on a track? Who are you, James May?

Comet sheds 450 jobs in biz survival struggle

I had pretty much the same experience.

The point of the high street is that it satisfies an instant need. If I was willing to wait a few weeks for a delivery I would've ordered something from the internet!

AON: Give us cash, we'll emit 10TB holographic cube

oi!

° not ⁰!

Samsung Series 7 Chonos 15.6in Core i7 notebook

It shouldn't be up to the user to care about where the internals are hinged; it's a sign of poor design that it's more difficult to press down in some areas.

HUD's up! Ubuntu creates menu-free GUI

I found out what's going on:

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/post/1300656

:)

It's because this attitude is pervasive throughout the OS. It's not just the WM baby they threw out with the bathwater, it's now the menu system they're tinkering with.

Every time they touch something, they throw out n*10 years of work and bugfixes and smoothed rough edges.

The last improvement I found was that init scripts have been moved to Upstart, a dependency-based bootup system. It's done nothing for usability, it's now not immediately obvious what will start up on a system and it's different to everything else for zero gain (I mean, who /cares/ about bootup times any more?).

Maybe i'm getting old, but I find myself agreeing with jwz a lot of the time.

"But that's what happens when there is no incentive for people to do the parts of programming that aren't fun. Fixing bugs isn't fun; going through the bug list isn't fun; but rewriting everything from scratch is fun (because "this time it will be done right", ha ha) and so that's what happens, over and over again. "

http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

What "how to make a link" code?

The comment box says "plain text only", we've all been posting plain-text links for years...

Microsoft Win Server to get pushed off OpenStack Linux cloud?

The only people who have something together and vaguely ready for production are VMware, XEN, and MS.

Everything else that sits on top is a jumbled mass of buzzwords and loose ends.

Steerable bullet aims for mass army deployment

(o/t)

Aaaa! How did you do that link?

Russia and NASA plan to COLONISE the Moon

the moon is *not* infinite!

Kodak's moment: Camera biz files for bankruptcy

The glaringly obvious point you've missed is that it shouldn't be /law/.

Australia, US agree to space junk talks

Yes.

"ALMOST 30 years after fining NASA for littering the local area with debris from abandoned space station Skylab, the Shire of Esperance has received a $US400 cheque.

American radio station Highway Radio paid the fine on NASA’s behalf, raising the funds on variety breakfast program Barker and Barley in the Morning. "

http://www.esperanceexpress.com.au/news/local/news/general/littering-fine-paid/1488319.aspx?storypage=1

Bookies set odds on Apple NYC launch

If so, it'll be the ePad

Like the eMac. Remember them?

Microsoft revives flight sim by giving it away free

Neeeeeeeeeyowwww....

Try xplane.

http://www.x-plane.com/desktop

Moog goes boom with itty-bitty bass synth

Moog Instrumentation

I know the place - it's Moog Instrumentation. Founded by two cousins of Robert Moog, the synth guy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moog_Inc :)

Windows Defender Offline: For PCs too hosed to go online

You write like Cory Doctorow.

Punters even more dissatisfied by Virgin Media's package

Fix. The bloomin'. Superhub.

Orange revisits San Francisco with another budget blower

Still not bad for what it is

...has it got a resistive or capacitive screen?

Google dumps + from Boolean search tool

You are not Google's customer.

El Reg in email address blunder

ouch.

Retailer intros cut-price 10in Android tablet

Hmm...

Does it have the Android Marketplace?

Apple iPhone 4S

> You wouldn't accept that level of inaccuracy on the touch interface;

> imagine clearly pressing the icon for Weather and getting Angry

> Birds instead because the interface made a 'mistake'. People would

> be up in arms!

Sounds like my Nexus' back/menu/home keys...

I couldn't see anything in the site FAQ that said The Register needs to have an editorial preference towards one type of smartphone?

And they're off! Day one at the solar races

That '.....feeeeeeeeeEEEeeeeeeeeeeeee.....' sound wasn't an electric car overhead.

Appro notches up another Los Alamos super deal

Ah, spaghetti. How times haven't changed :)

Obama+world pays tribute to Steve Jobs

*golf clap*

did you think that one up all by yourself?

Hunt for long-lost Apollo 10 moon lander adrift in space

Security by obscurity is false protection :)

Google plan to kill Javascript with Dart, fight off Apple

There are not "at least 20 different frameworks for Javascript". There is One, and it is called "jquery".