Posts by Phil Edwards

Pilot posts detailed MS Flight Sim video of how to land Boeing 737

Re: will pushing the pedals alone cause the aircraft to change heading?

Yes.

Google for 'primary and secondary effects of controls'

Chemical giant foils infected USB stick espionage bid

@AC: "Use a Lightscribe DVD to make it look professional"

You've clearly never looked too closely at the 'print' quality of a Lightscribed disc recently...

Boffins develop method of driving computers insane

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

Maybe I'm just getting jaded and cynical, but how much research funding went into this? It's just a variation of what all the kids used to do to the computers in Dixons in the 80's

10 PRINT "It was me, I did the terrorist bombing"

20 GOTO 10

RUN

Vodafone moves 360 goalposts

WTF?

Am I missing something here? The 3rd paragraph of the T&C's linked to says:

"You can stop using the Service and remove both the Service and any applications downloaded via the Service at any time from your mobile device."

That doesn't sound to me like anyone being 'forced' to install anything.

On the other hand, for handsets supplied by Vodafone, there's no reason why they can't put whatever software they want on them - it's not as if they're insisting that you only use handsets supplied by them on their network.

A SIM-Free device will always work out cheaper over the course of a 24 or 18 month contract than an operator subsidised one.

Nokia knocks back N8

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

"It'll be mid September".

"Errr, no, early October for definite".

"No, can't make that, but we'll definitely have it ready by the end of October".

It's the N900 launch all over again. Even the promised / reneged on dates are exactly the same. My bet is that the N8 will ship from Nokia factories out to the retailers during the week commencing December 6th. There, I've said it. You can all mock me if I'm wrong, but I reserve the right to gloat insufferably if I turn out to be right.

Nokia trumpets socially-savvy smartphones

A bird (or Nokia) in the hand...

@Dan55: This time last year, you could play with the N900 at Nokia World too. That didn't stop them from taking another 3 months to actually start shipping from the factory and when they did arrive, the PR1.0 software was buggy as hell. The current PR1.2 is a big improvement, but Nokia have made it clear that there will be little future support for the N900.

From being the smartphone vendor of choice only a few years ago, Nokia have shot themselves in the foot time and time again - poor quality control, inexplicable design decisions and buggy firmware have accompanied Nokia products from the N95 onwards. Maybe the new guy at the top will be the 'new broom' that's needed, but I fear it will be a case of too little, too late for a large number of previously committed Nokia customers.

Google booted from China's number two carrier

@idasben:

> as a sixth of the global population, they can decide that on their own

But that's the whole point, isn't it? The population of China *can't* decide on their own, since they have no access to a democratic process to allow them to do so.

Telegraph trips over the Large Hardon Collider

Title

Ermmm....so the Torygraph makes a spelling mistake in an article and it's the funniest thing in the whole world?

I feel obliged to remind all the dedicated sub-ed's at El Reg of the article posted by your good selves just under 2 weeks ago, which referred to a 'bugger overflow vulnerability' - and , yes, I *do* have a screen shot to prove it, although regretably no play-mobil reconstruction of same.

Hacking human gullibility with social penetration

Not that hard, surely...?

Multiple secure passwords that are easy to remember, without requiring purchase of (presumably proprietary and therefore of dubious trustworthiness) software:

1. Make up a sentence that you can remember easily. A good example is the one that I just typed...

2. Reduce said sentence to initials, capitalising the first letter of the last word, so we have "muastycrE"

3. For every web site/service that requires a password or other secure logon, e.g www.lloydstsb.com for your online banking, drop the 'www.' part and the TLD part, leaving just "lloydstsb"

4. Pick your favourite character from the top row of your keyboard, I happen to like the "%" sign

5. Stick all 3 elements together to give a password of muastycrElloydstsb% that you only use on the lloydstsb.com web site

6. Rinse and repeat for other sites. For sites or network admins that require you to change passwords monthly (I'm looking at you, $EMPLOYER!!!) just put a number on the end that you increment each month

Secure enough for most purposes, I think. Grenade icon, because any mechanism is only secure until the day it blows up in your face...

Spider from Mars Malaysia dubbed David Bowie

Perhaps...

...public awareness of these creatures plight could be raised by setting up a web site.

I know, I know, I'm getting it now...

O2 coughs to data failure

What's that I can smell...?

I'm intrigued by the phrase "wasn't giving punters a proper IP address"? Was it only giving the first 3 octets? Maybe it was assigning IP addresses in base13 or something.

It's brown, it comes out of cows backwards, and it aint the Isle of Wight ferry!

Malta pair charged over illicit Playmobil trade

May I Be The First

To welcome our mutilated, subminiature plastic overlords...

Discovery en route to ISS

Do keep up!!!

@AC: If you read the text again, it doesn't say that this was the most visually beautiful launch ever, only that one Mr Mike Leinbach thought it to be the most visually beautiful launch that he personally had ever seen.

I'll have Paris, she's not the most visually beautiful I've ever seen, but she'll do for now...

EU says Microsoft violated law with IE on Windows

Get a grip lads!!!

"other browsers are prevented from competing with IE because Windows includes Microsoft's own browser"

This is just plain nuts! If they feel that way then surely:

"other text editors are prevented from competing with Notepad because Windows includes Microsoft's own text editor"

"other graphics programs are prevented from competing with MSPaint because Windows includes Microsoft's own graphics program"

"other pointless computer-based card games are prevented from competing with Solitaire because Windows includes Microsoft's own pointless computer-based card game"

It's almost like there's a whole un-elected, not accountable to anyone bunch of people out there calling themselves politicians and trying to justify their expense accounts. Oh, hang on a minute...

Mines the one *without* a copy of Office 2007 in the pocket.