* Posts by Major N

159 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Nov 2008

Page:

Bright lights, affordable motor: Ford puts LED headlights onto Mondeo

Major N

Re: pushbike headlamps

Isn't it technically illegal for the flashing lights to be mounted on the bike itself, I was under the impression that flashing modes were only for when the lights are mounted on the cyclist themselves...

NASA tests crazytech flying saucer thruster, could reach Mars in days

Major N

m = milli; µ = micro

FTFY

New Star Wars movie plot details leak, violate common sense and laws of physics

Major N

As much as I love Star Wars (The Original Trilogy, of course), I still marvel at their slower-than-light lasers.

Fukushima radioactivity a complete non-issue on West Coast: Also for Fukushima locals, in fact

Major N

Re: No wonder Americans are scared

Since it is now obligitory to link this when referring to Fukushima here..

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Bottom falls out of Nokia's network rump

Major N

Re: Philips

I have a Nokia TV. Branded Granada though IIRC.. I think a lot of their stuff was rebadged by the rent-a-telly crowd back in the day.....

Gadget world's metals irreplaceable, say boffins

Major N

Re: I can hear the piano now.

I remember being in France, with a friend of mine, heading along the high street in this small town , gleefully singing this at the top of our voices. Good times....

This weekend: Watch HOT STARS shower! Moon won't interfere

Major N
Pint

well I'm up in the lake district this weekend so you know it's going to be thrashing it down for me!

I managed to see them from suburban Derbyshire last year

'It's GOOD we stopped selling the iPhone'

Major N

"Vittu" is indeed the Finnish variant of the C-word.

I once saw a car on the M1 with the reg plate "V1TTU"

I wonder if he knew....

Nvidia fixes hole that turns PCs into remote-control toys for hackers

Major N

It would be, except the amount of people who use blank passwords and easily guessable usernames means that being able to guess your way in would be trivial in a lot of cases.... especially since these people are the type not to have adequate firewalling in place.

Star Wars VII: The Disney Movie signs Toy Story III script genius

Major N

Re: @ AC

There's an awful lot of After RotJ books that are officially Canon - well, that is to say, they /were/... they could do a lot worse than make Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy...

Palp[atine, Vader and the Second Death Star may be gone, but by no means were all of the Empire's forces destroyed at Endor. Now, various Admirals etc, each with their own fleet, are warlords, vying to either unite the remnants of the Empire under themselves, or hold onto their own feifdoms. At the same time, you have the Rebel Alliance forming the New Republic, Luke going renegade and back again trying to resurrect the Jedi order... there's plenty that could be done.

I just hope they don't invalidate the twenty-odd years of post- RotJ canon with the kind of twoddle Eps 1-3 inflicted upon the saga....

The hoarder's dilemma, or 'Why can't I throw anything away?'

Major N

I fear we are kindred spirits... I have a huge collection of old consoles, including most of those in your (very impressive) picture and an old SPARC Station 5... has to throw out the old Sun 20" CRT when I last moved (it was enormous and very heavy) so it goes unused, my dreams of having a fanless *Ux firewall/server dashed, when I could never get the Wyse serial terminal to work with it (I still have that, green on black).. and I never did find a connector to convert the Sun 15D3 or whatever it was video port to VGA...

I love the internal design of the SS5, so clean and minimalistic and functional...

Also got about 5 old PC boxes (I left 10 I'd acquired behind as well when I moved), 3 boxes of cables, a 386 compaq laptop (runs and boots still! Has the weird trackball built into the lid)...

WoW cities wiped out by 'exploit'

Major N

Re: @AM

Actually, they _did_ implement such a measure... but only for levelling content. Every 8 hours your character is left unplayed in an inn, you will gain double the XP from killing creatures for the next 5% of your level.

They were originally going to have a 'fatigued' status for your character, so that beyond a certain point, you would only gain 50% XP until you rested, but that caused such a fuss, they gave you 'rested' xp bonus, and then doubled the XP needed to gain each level, thus having the same net effect, but without the QQ.

Of course, the real hardcore spend all of their time at max level, and this does nothign to impact them..

Scottish brainiacs erect wee super-antenna

Major N

Surely that picture is not the antenna itself, but the chip that controls it? As others have said, the antenna would be a wire somewhere else within the device. Antennas themselves are merely dumb signal colectors/senders, the clever part is in the chippery that controls them...

Were Lavasoft's buyers once on its hit list?

Major N
WTF?

Interesting...

I wasn't aware that the business had passed into such shady hands... I shall stop using and reccommending this software now.

Airbus brews Scandium smackdown for carbon Dreamliner

Major N

UMIST

It raised a smile to se my alma mater UMIST mentioned. T'was a sad day when it was merged into University of Manchester...

Interesting to see the research going into these issues; I had no idea rivets accounted for so much of a plane's weight.

French officials: 'Don't worry about fatal nuclear explosion'

Major N

Thats because no-one will dare tread in the middle ground, as it is now DMZ and chock-full of land mines.

Nokia posts massive loss, blames 'ambiguity'

Major N

wow

NSN posted a lower loss than a year ago, with net sales up 20 per cent to €3.642

Wow, a whole three and a half euros! That's almost four euros!

MS to WinXP diehards: Just under 3 more years' support

Major N
Headmaster

Yes but...

...does that include support for the virtual XP they've been shipping with 7?

Also 1000 Days is less than 3 years.

I'm David Beckham, and Harper Seven was my idea!

NASA kills comms with deceased Mars rover

Major N

of course

if it wasnt for the bleeding heart scaremonger greens, we could have fitted them with small nuclear generators and then they wouldn't have needed solar power. Even on explosion i doubt it would have been much worse than Fukushima (itself a miracle triumph considering what battered the reactors there)

Slovakian cannibal's dinner calls in cops

Major N

Anyone else.

..think maybe he'd watched a little too much The IT Crowd?

Oz boffins in quantum computing breakthrough

Major N

A_A

I also assumed Not Safe For Most People

Red Dwarf to blast off on new adventure

Major N
Linux

Two Hours W.O.O.

I think they've been talking to the king fo the potato people....

It's the oldest working Seagate drive in the UK

Major N

You spin me right round round

I have a late 80s drive opened up, polished, and hanging on my wall as 'an art'

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

Major N
Coat

It's fantastic

Took my squidface Shammy to level 85 within 10 days, which was perhaps a little disappointing, but it's not about getting to 85 it's all about the dungeons. The Normal mode dungeons are sufficiently challenging that they're no faceroll, but with an intelligent group doing them at level is eminently possible. the Heroics are HARD. As they should be. Dioubtless after we'vew all got tier 13 we'll be facerolling them come the death of the Exp-pac, but not they are challenging. We spent many an hour wiping on them alrewady, with many more to come.

The new zones are reallyn nice. I agree about Deepholm, it is a little dark and samey, but Vashj'ir is lovely, with some awesome quests (who DOESN'T want to mind control a shark and swim around eating Naga, humming the Jaws theme all the while?). Twilight Highlands is Very Cthulu in places, which is cool.

Not sure about still wearing full T10 at lvl 85; I had one piece left. Admittedly, I wasn't wearing 25man heroic versions...

If you don't want to be queueing forever for dungeons, roll a tank. Then don't suck at tanking.

Mine's the one with the ilvl333 rare mace in the pocket.

Man caught w*nking over Alan Sugar's autobiography

Major N
Coat

..comeback...

Is that the format rag mags come in now... hardback... paperback... comeback....

Mine's the one in my lap with the dodgy stains.

Firefox extension detects FireSheep snoop software

Major N
Badgers

Surely..

Since the discussion is Firesheep, BlackSheep and the Sheep-like public, surely Ovine would have been a better choice than Bovine?

Crowds greet A380 at Manchester Airport

Major N
Pint

well

I work on the flight path for Manchester, and grew up on it too, so I spent ten minutes in the sun waiting for it to pass over. It's big. Very big. There was a surprising number of people in the Tesco car park nearby stood watching too. If I'd have had my way, I'd have been in the pub beer garden at the landing end of the runway.

How extreme is your pr0n? Depends on your lawyer

Major N

So long as..

As long as that punch was not belo0w the belt, as that would now classify as Extreme Pr0n.

I was considering uising the Jole Alert image, but this set of law and case law is far too disturbing to be funny.

eBay car vendor flashes wedding tackle

Major N

well..

I couldn't help but snigger at the magnifying glass 'Enlarge' link

LiMo rumoured set for recall to Linux mothership

Major N
FAIL

well..

I actually have one of aforementioned Samsung/LiMo/360 phones. It's an interesting set up, but I am constantly disappointed that it is not Andriod, since Voda seem to favour the walled garden approach, and no-one is porting those Andriod apps I keep seeing to it (I don't see how it could be difficult, but there isn't enough market share to make it worthwhile I imagine). Even the touted 'tight integration' with FailBook et al isn't really that good. It's a shame the community which was trying to port Android to it never managed it, cause the H1 is a lovely piece of hardware let down by its OS. Which, as an interesting aside, doesn't do proper Multitasking, and doesn't even save the state of the browser unless it is interrupted by an incoming call/message. Sound familiar?

Apple opens doors to vanity publishers

Major N

yup

I red it as in "Cubit" as well, and got strange images of personal topiaries being shaved into the words of books. Could make Turning the Page interesting...

Windows 3.0 turns 20

Major N

Win Versions

Jlocke is correct, although, pedant alert, Windows 7 is based upon a modified Vista kernel, which is version 6.1 (to Vista's 6.0). Windows 95 was version 4.0 of the non-NT 'kernel', 98 was 4.5, ME was 4.9. After the debacle of ME, and presumably to save the effort of maintaining a second OS (especially one which was 32bit extensions to a 16-bit shell, running on an 8-bit OS, as the 9x/ME kernel was, iirc), they canned the 4.x kernel and released XP Home/Pro, based on the same kernel (NT 5.0).

Micros~1... can't believe I have never seen this one before, must have fallen asleep in Flame class

Texas Instruments to patch smart meter crypto blunder

Major N
Coat

@Neal 5

Is your choice of '34' truly random or pseudo-random?

I'll get my coat... rather, I'll use a true RNG to decide which one to take from the rack....

Microsoft IIS vuln leaves users open to remote attack

Major N

well...

Criterium is a perfectly acceptable word; Criteria is plural; Criterium is singular. One Criterium, two Criteria.

Like Data is the plural of Datum.

Seriously.

Monty launches frantic 'save MySQL' web campaign

Major N

But...

Since MySQL is Open Source, it should make no real difference. Especially since it has already been forked. The only possible danger is people not wanting to shift away at the moment, and the fork getting far enough removed from MySQL-ORA that it is no longer trivial to shift to MySQL-Fork (can't remember that project's name). Its when that happens that Oracle can start to shaft the MySQL users.

Homemade airship prang closes highway in Oklahoma

Major N

Hmm...

Rogue Dirigible sounds like a prog band...

Sh*t the bed, it's Comment of the Week

Major N

1

Oh, The Intergalactic Laxative will get you from here to Mars...

Lily Allen exits Twitter, bins BlackBerry

Major N

And so...

Who cares?

I've never used either, should that get such publicity? Maybe it should, cause my dad once met Tony Iommi. Only slightly more tenuous than here claim to 'fame'....

Wisconsin Tourism Federation wisely rebrands

Major N
Grenade

heh

I remember going past a large DIY superstore on tyhe train, where one of the illuminated letters had burnt out, and the building was proudly proclaiming itself thusly:

B&Q WAR HOUSE

The lucozade story rocks.

First prison sentence for extreme porn

Major N
Coat

@regadpellagru

I was in France last year, and had horse meat. Got it from a Hyper-U (think Tesco Extra) , so I'd assume it is rather common.

It's similar to beef, got a coarser texture and a stronger flavour. It's quite nice really, but no replacement for a good hunk o' cow.

I'll get my goat.

EU bodies to discuss IP barriers to innovation

Major N
FAIL

Damn

I was hoping form the title that someone in the EU had finally realised that IP and Copyrright laws are horrifically abused to stifle competition under a flood of legal threats and overbroad laws and patents. unfortunately, since they are calling their IP laws 'incomplete', I fear it will lead only to further stifling of innovation and more money and bigger monopolies for Big Business. Even if there is a voice of reason out there in such a hearing, I doubt he/she could be heard over the deafening tidal wave of monopolistic industry lobbyists.

Muse eye Bond theme

Major N

That...

...Would be awesome. I didn't like the last theme, made a good go at it, but it was like a colourblind person doing painting by colours; It was all there, just not quite in the right places...

Lad passes gruelling 'getting on bus' test

Major N

@Dave 142

Dave 142... in Manchester, by any chance??

Michael Jackson manifests in California tree stump

Major N
Coat

Well...

I don’t see it. But Michel, if you’re in there, take a bough.

Personally, I think they’re barking. Up the wrong tree. Bunch of saps. I’ll leaf it out now.

El Reg commentards offered extra iconography

Major N
Big Brother

<TITLE>

I believe this is Big Brother, from the film version of 1984. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Also, am I the only person to think the Trolling Alert icon is redundant, since Trolls are highly unlikely to use the icon?

Bing boxes off mucky vids

Major N
Thumb Up

Interestingly...

if you try to ping bada.bing.com you get a resolve. You don't get one from chandler.bing.com. Both autoforward to www.bing.com if you HTTP to them....

I believe this may answer your question.

Weary locals scratch Butt Hole Road

Major N

They changed the name?

Cheeky!

Arses!

I heard about this place several years ago courtesy of BBC Radio 4's Now Show (Genius, btw). Always suspected it was to do with a barrel, but at least we've got to the bottom of that naming mystery now.

I am a little unsure as to why Archer Way still. Was the castle Archer Castle, or is it about the distance an arrow could be fired from it or what?

Who wants a giant poster of the history of Unix?

Major N

_title_

Ah, Slackware. I remember thee. A friend of mine installed it on a PC of mine, and said 'there you go, have fun'. Broke it in less than an hour. Got him to fix it, watched what he did, and then broke it again. This time I knew how to fix it. I much preferred Slack to the others, since it _didn't_ have all of the fancy stuff like APT, and you had to get everyhting manually. you always knew what was installed on it, since you put it there. PITA to resolve some dependancies, mind you, and I ended up with Deb on my prod server due to the security updates. Come Slack x64, think I'll move back...

Anyway, to get back on topic, why do I want one of those? I know I shouldn't, can't afford one (damn, they're expensive. And why are they weatherproof? Who is pinning them outside? May as well get a massive banner proclaiming 'I AM A MASSIVE GEEK' and hang it above your front door. Probably cheaper too...), and have nowhere to put it, but damn, i want one!

Pirate Win 7 ruse used to build botnet

Major N

considering...

MS are giving it away, what possible reason would anyone have for using the non-official sources in the first place? I played with the beta a little bit and found it to be rather good. I got the RC and am awaiting an evening free to install and play. I'll end up sticking with XP however, since it works for everything I need, is stable, and won't cost me anything to keep.

Page: