Posts by DRendar

Hitchhiker shot while researching 'Kindness of America'

Re: Gun ownership.

Perhaps all the gun toting criminals in Chicago bought their guns in Vermont? Or just stole them.

A criminal is hardly going to use a gun which they bought and registered in their own name are they?

Having different rules on ownership in different states / cities doesn't work unless you have airport-style controls on all the borders - something that would be near impossible to implement.

However if handgun ownership were made illegal (or tightly controlled - e.g. they have to be stored at the gun club and only used there) nationwide then this reduces the available guns for the scum to steal and use illegally.

Gun Ownership is NOT a deterrent, if a burglar is in a neighbourhood where he knows 9/10 of the house owners are armed, he'll just arm himself and go in anyway, and the house owner is that much more likely to be killed.

In a country where there are (virtually) no guns, if a burglar is disturbed he will run. In a country with guns - he'll shoot first to make sure HE doesn't get shot - it's simple.

Take a look at the Firearm Related Death rate and compare the US to England / Wales. There's a reason for the rate being 10 Times higher in the US - and its the availability of weapons.

Having said all that it's pointless arguing the point - Americans are addicted to guns, and there's nothing anyone can do to reverse that - unless someone invents a star trek style stun gun (not a stupid 1-2 shot Tazer), THEN it will be interesting to see what excuse they can come up with to keep them.

AMD and Intel extreme desktop CPU workout

Re: AMD Fanbois go get a life please

Yeah, and look at all these idiots going out and buying Fords and Renaults and Volkswagens - hell these manufacturers can't even keep up with 40 year old Ferrari designs.

What losers they are too eh?

Mine's the one with the keys to the Quantum Computer powered Lamborghini in the pocket.

Amazon's Lovefilm HD shuns Sony fanboys

LoveFilm Instants content

The content is bloody awful.

Sure there are some box sets, which are slightly interesting time-wasters, but the Film content (Surely the main purpose!) is abysmal.

2-3 decent recent films, and the rest are all god-awful b-movies and flops. Seriously.

Try going in there and sorting by film rating - there will be about 3x 4 star films, but the vast majority are 3 and below.

After getting the steaming service I spent 2-3 evenings watching stuff - there's literally nothing left on there i want to watch. If I didn't get the service heavily subsidised through work, I wouldn't pay for it.

iPad factory towns in China to finally get Apple Stores

Re: Lets get the inevitable comment out of the way

Oh, I wasn't trying to compare Chinese workers to prison workers, nor was I knocking the use of prison labour. I actually think that we should be doing it in this country too. They should contribute to society rather than just being a further drain upon it, but that's another conversation...

What I was getting at is that US prison labour, is actually far closer to actual slavery than that which goes on in Foxconn.

I take your point though.

Re: Lets get the inevitable comment out of the way

They aren't.

I'm no Apple fanboi, far from it, but many (not all) of the stories about so-called slave labour in the foxcon plants are incorrect.

If these plants were based in the US or UK, then yes, the level of remuneration would be unbelievably low, but over there it isn't.

And no one is /forcing/ these people to work. Far from it, the queue in the hundreds outside these plants for the opportunity to work there.

Comparatively speaking, prisoners in the US doing 'hard time' making license plates, and working with dangerous chemicals and getting paid just a couple of dollars a day are VASTLY more underpaid.

Google Knowledge Graph straddles semantic web and Star Trek

Re: Give me back my google!

'time', even.

Posting from a smartphone is a pain in the arse on el-Reg :-/

Give me back my google!

The only thing I want them to introduce is a tickbox that excludes shopping and price comparison sites from my search results.

I am sick to the back teeth of searching for technical information, or reviews of products and getting back 3 solid pages of pricerunner, kelkoo, ciao and other fucking useless middleman websites that waste my time.

www.gmbmg.com used to work quite well, but don't think it's been updated in some tune

Ten... freeware gems for new PCs

Re: *twitch* *twitch*

Nope, perfectly acceptable.

"Typo's" as in a contraction of "typographical errors"

The apostrophe in this instance indicates missing letters, not possession.

Re: *twitch* *twitch*

LOL

So I correct someone on their intentional misuse of grammar, ('Could of' / 'Should of' etc) and omit the obviously simple typo's.

You pick up on said minor typo's and accuse me of being a pedantic dickweed.

*I* love how by doing this, you actually prove the opposite, and prove yourself a hypocrite! That's a two-for-one - Well done sir!

Re: Interesting list

*twitch* *twitch*

What an unusual mix of correct apostrophe usage, fairly good spelling, but terrible grammar! Red Biro at the ready...

"Intersting list, _A_ few I wouldn't _HAVE_ picked"

"One ommision I feel you should _HAVE_ had in there was InfraRecorder http://infrarecorder.org/"

"Also I'd say I do prefer applications I can just run _OFF_ a memory stick, why install anything onto windows with that option _?_"

"I'm sure others will add _THEIR_ gems"

Crooks sell skint fanbois potatoes instead of iPhones

Re: Victims? Really?

Naa, he was probably just told they were entry level MacBooks.

"Only £1400? And you don't want my left testicle and firstborn son too? FUCKING BARGAIN!"

Ubuntu will hit the big time on Amazon: Here's how

Re: Author can't understand anything but money

You mean 'losing', not 'loosing'.

WD bigshots spin superfast disk roadmap

Re: Twice as nice

Um.

Yeah, that's called RAID 0, and has been around for a bloody donkey's year.

The problem is that by using 2 drives, you are effectively doubling your chances of suffering a HDD failure, because if you lose one drive, you lose all data on the array.

I suppose what you're proposing is a self-contained RAID0 array in a 3.5" / 2.5" package, which is interesting, but would cost much more than double the cost of the original drive with worse than half the reliability, plus you'd be relying upon 1.8" or micro-drives for your storage, which aren't particularly fast or capacious in the first place.

If speed was that important to you, then you'd be using flash, or if you need speed and capacity, you'd use your own RAID array of either HDD's or flash drives.

So, nice idea, but it fails the reality check.

Dash

Ten... Bedroom Gadget Treats

Re: @DRendar (was: Gawd/ess. The mind boggles.)

I don't think Melatonin is available in the UK - Not legally anyway - Might be wrong, but I've never seen it in Boots / Superdrug / Holland and Barratts.

"Failing that, might I suggest a career change? Making artisan pasta, bread, cheese or salumi probably pays better than you are drawing now ... and on your own schedule."

Unfortunately my 7 Month old daughter doesn't operate on my schedule :-)

"The tooling to gear up for home production isn't all that expensive, either. I was pulling down ~US$1000/week making all four when I was working on my PhD at MIT ... over a quarter century ago. Out of a two bedroom apartment."

I'll stick with being a network engineer for a huge multinational ta very much - I'm pretty happy with my payslips ;-)

Re: Gawd/ess. The mind boggles.

You are obviously one of those lucky bastards who is actually able to get to sleep when they want to.

Personally I have immense sleep problems... I suffer from Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, which means when most peoples bodies start producing melatonin, and their body temperatures start to drop at about 10-11pm, mine doesn't do that until about 3am. Which considering I have to be up at 6 is fucking torture.

Things like daylight alarms help a great deal... I can't speak for some of the other gadgets listed here, but just because YOU have no problem going to sleep, and waking up when you need to, doesn't mean everyone is in the same boat.

ANU puts quantum random numbers online

Re: DOES ANBODY UNDERSTAND THIS

WTF is a valedictorian, and why would being one make you any more or less able to understand brand new, practically fringe science concepts?

I actually found it relatively easy to understand what they've done, actually... I don't understand how they did it, or why it is so significant (not being a crypto nerd), but the idea of measuring the minute fluctuations in the strength of a split laser beam, which was passed through a near perfect vacuum and using those measurements to generate random numbers seems pretty straight forward to me...

Dark matter hits you once a minute

Nearly...

It's Windows, Icons, Menus & Pointers

Half of Apple fanbois would bank with the iPad titan

Re: O.... k....

" I mean, Apple makes mobile phones?! C'mon,whentheywerebusyselling Apple ii and the first Macintoshes, who'd of thought they'd make mp3 players and phones..?"

Considering that mp3s didn't exist then, let alone portable players and mobile phones, I'd have a wild stab at 'none'.

That aside - It's "who'd HAVE thought"!!

For example, who'd have thought that Compaq (also a personal computer manufacturer) would develop the world's first hard disk based portable digital music player? (3 years before Apple released the IPod by the way)

Future car tech

Re: Ah yes. The malawian lorry driver.

"Front wheel drive.

Horrible idea

Howabout front to steer and rear to drive. Much better balanced and much nicer to drive.

Yes I currently have a car driven by the correct wheels."

If your only purpose of the car is racing, then yes, rear wheel drive is best, but for general driving, especially in poor weather conditions, FWD is far superior. The ability to do powerslides is hardly required in day to day driving, and I'd much prefer a car that I can actually USE in the snow thank you very much.

Last time we had heavy snow, most of the cars that I saw that had got stuck were Beemers / Mercs, and ALL if the traffic jams were caused by them.

If you do drive a RWD and there's more than a few MM if snow on the ground, unless you have snow tyres / snow chains or a ¼tonne of bricks in the boot, please - stay the fuck off the roads.

Apple to Google Maps: ‘Get lost’

Re: Shot across the bow

"Then they would loose alot of customers!!"

How exactly does one 'loose' a customer? I don't know about you but no one I know has a screw-top head!

Microsoft demos 3D desktop with transparent OLED

Re: AAARRRGGHHH...apostrophe alert

Hmmm... arguable really.

If the apostrophe is there to denote that the word "demonstrations" has been abbreviated, then it is actually quite correct.

If however it is mistakenly there to denote a multiple of the word 'demo' then it is incorrect.

So really - it's OK either way.

Sony Xperia converts flash motors into fancy remotes

Re: Security?

You are partially correct, there is no security built into the protocol, in the same way that security isn't built into HTTP. (You have to bolt-on SSL / TLS to make it secure) . Unlike HTTP though, VNC doesn't send passwords in the clear.

Security / Encryption is also easily bolted onto VNC too. UltraVNC (My Personal favourite) uses an encryption plugin system, and Real VNC includes AES encryption as part of their paid-for package, so I'd expect that this system would have that, seeing as its developed by the same people.

Ten... sub-£100 mono laser printers

Re: I miss my panasonic kx-p4400

Erm... Did you even read the article?

At least ½ of the printers reviewed were upright, with fold-down feed/output trays.

Personally I hate these, as you get dust buildup, and you have to take the paper out in order to close them, but each to their own.

Boy died after satnav fault delays ambulance

Re: ITS NOT A NON STORY...

" BUT IT IS ABOUT making sure it does not happen again"

How exactly?

I ask this during the lunch break of my very real and valid job, having spent 15 years gaining experience, training and working my way up the ladder to the point where I now earn a nice tidy salary thankyou very much, before I go home this evening to the house that I own with my wife, who I've been with for 13 years, and my 5 month old Daughter.

This is a non story because the entirety of it is that the ambulance took 10 minutes longer than someone who knew the area would have taken to get there. And it very clearly states in the story that paramedics were already on the scene, and that the slightly later arrival of the ambulance made NO DIFFERENCE to whether the kid would have died or not.

I can also guarantee with 100% certainty that the ambulance will have carried paper maps as well as a satnav, and also that if they had had no satnav it would have taken almost as long to get there because they would have had to thumb through the a-z to find the place.

And then when the kid died anyway, that same mother (and you) would have been saying that it is a travesty that they had no satnav on board.

I feel for the mother, I really do, but this is Daily Mail territory, and most people who frequent ElReg have more intelligence than Daily Fail readers and actually QUESTION the bullshit they try to feed us.

Don't misinterpret people questioning the the interpretation of the facts with people who don't care.

Man surfs slopes at night in LED suit

Very Very Cool

But makes we went to get back up the mountain :'(

Only just got back and me wants ti ga shreddin' some more.

'Linux for cloud' floats anti-Amazon cloud taster

So many errors...

(thereby hovering in even more.) - "Hoovering" perhaps?

(if that sounds like to much hassle) - TOO much!

(told The Reg: "We heard from several people the are interested in using OpenStack, but don't have the sysadmins do build the KVM or networking) - WTF? Plus no closing quotes.

(and if you are developer working on an application) - "if you are A developer"?

(and to that they'd need the hardware) - to DO that they'd need the hardware

(Once your finished, your compute resources return to the pool ) - Once YOU'RE finished!

(Rackspace, Bryce's employer, was a instrumental in creating OpenStack) - a instrumental?

(How Citrix charges isn't clear and it still seems to relying on the Cloud.com start-up it bought last year) - it still seems to BE relying on the Cloud.com start-up...

(With the "deploy" portion of the development cycle) - Should be apostrophes, not quotes as you are stating a name, not quoting.

Did you even bother proofreading? Is level of illiteracy acceptable to the Reg?

Apple demands US ban on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus

"If the case had any genuine merit surely they'd of filed it ages ago, in many country to stop the phone being released in the first place."

No.. They'd HAVE filed it ages ago.

iPads seized from shelves by Chinese officials

"so BMW loose no sales"

Wow, their sales aren't loose eh? I guess they won't have to tighten them then!!

Kia Rio 1.1 CRDi EcoDynamics

Yanks just don't get humor at all.

<sarcasm> Why is the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car? Is the photo reversed? It will never sell in the states like that </sarcasm>

That isn't sarcasm.

Sarcasm would be "Oh that car is going to sell REALLY well in the US..."

What you said was satire, which you get points for, but misrepresenting it as sarcasm puts you right back to square one. Sorry!

Toshiba 14in USB LCD Mobile Monitor

Include a D-PORT ( and therefore capability to connect via D-PORT, DVI or HDMI) and up the resolution to something usable - like 1680x1050 (or higher) and you are onto a winner.

When you're sat in a datacentre with 6 putty sessions, 2 asdm windows, 2 checkpoint dashboards plus browsers etc - you'd kill for more screen space. Having something like this tucked in your laptop bag would be a winner, but USB only?

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

BT reveals ultra-fast cable blowing plan for homes, biz

Hmmmm

Your appalling spelling aside, you just gave me an idea of how to get both my parents' ADSL speeds up from <1Mb...

Tractor + aluminum wired telegraph pole = new copper lines.

Only Joking. I think.

Korean boffins make e-books more like real ones

Er, anyone who reads reference material or instruction manuals, or magazines perhaps.

Not so much when reading novels and jazz mags.

Nvidia hit by GPU slump, too

"Oh... new generation of Intel graphics is out, I have to get a new CPU!"

And a new Motherboard, and new Memory, and new cooler.... Intel is far from upgrade friendly.

And you'll still end up with a system that you'll have to lower the detail settings, AA etc to the lowest setting to get a decent framerate.

Alternatively:

"Oooooh the AMD 5870 is below £150!" Buy - 5 mins screwdriver work, and a driver download and you're done.

If *anything* it is CPUs that have got to the point now where it is largely pointless to upgrade.... Take a Mid-High end GFX card in 1 box with a Dual Core 2Ghz CPU and another with a 6 Core 4GHz monster and you'll see VERY little improvement.

Put in a better GFX card and the difference is HUGE.

Discrete GFX will be around for a good long while yet.

Apple looking to support new technology, says blog

"Am I the only one that fails to see any news in this article? If you are going to mention fansites at least provide some links to back up your "journalism"!"

You Sir are either a humorless moron, or a clueless Yank.

It's called taking the piss. Now begone with your inane prattle.

US trade body rejects S3 'Apple nicked our IP' claim

Nokia and Apple settle THEIR case in a licensing deal this year.

.

there = place: "over there"

their = belong: "it is their car"

they're = they are: "They're playing golf"

It's not fucking hard.

'Hands free' pissing contest games installed in boozer

Ghostbusters Game

DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS!!!

Nokia exec confirms 2012 Windows 8 tablet release

Argh!

"Firm wants to be the BMW of smartphones"

So owners will walk around town, making turns without indicating, almost bumping into you and breathing down your neck in corridors?

Motorola Razr Android smartphone

Negative

Milestone did not have MotoBlur, and was their flagship phone. They still screwed us over on updates. I don't believe that that Motoblur is an acceptable excuse anyway... HTC have sense for example and they don't have such issues.

I really do hope that Google DO give Moto a big kick in the nuts for dragging their feet, because some of the more rtecent Moto Hardware has been very interesting, however for the moment, until some proof of this is seen, I won't throw Moto a single penny more of my money - frankly, they are lying cheating weasels.

What a beautiful handset

Just a shame it was made by Motorola and will be abandoned as soon as their next shiny shiny comes out.

Burned Milestone user here. I only hope the bigG kicks them into shape.

Electric car crash leads to battery blaze

s/average/old/g

There, fixed it for ya.

"Funny how (in comparison) no-one seems concerned driving around with ~100 litres of petrol under their back seats?"

Holy crap, what do you drive? A Bus?

Most cars have a 40-60 Litre tank.

NASA: 2012 solar flares could DEVASTATE CITIES!

Yankdar alert!!

" The mere thought of this is amusing, but the authors sincerity makes this one for The Onion. This shit is not in any way true. Devastate cities? Get F*cking real dude."

WARNING! WARNING! CLUELESS YANK DETECTED!

It's called Satire, 'Dude'. He wasn't actually being sincere at all... see no one else in 50+ comments has taken it seriously.

We commentards welcome people of all nationalities to this very British site with very British humor (the clue is in the .co.uk domain name) but it's probably best to have some idea of what you're wobbling on about before spouting bollocks like this.

A thick skin is also useful!

Nokia's future phone sees red when you do

Cue Legal action from Apple...

who must have patented "Human interacting with electronic device by means of physical contact"

Why your tech CV sucks

Don't you mean Dumbstruck? ;-)

I'm pretty sure it means 'stupid' or 'dull', not silly.

Which as a very silly person I see as being a positive thing!!

Results in on why life, the universe and everything exists

The theory of relativity DOES NOT say that travelling FASTER than light is impossible.

It states that the energy required to accelerate TO the speed of light increases to infinity.

Or in layman's terms - It's impossible to travel AT the speed of light, but there's nothing to say you can't travel faster.

Of course how you actually get to be faster before travelling AT the speed of light is the tricky bit, and the reason why SciFi references making a JUMP to FTL - i.e. jumping over the light barrier.

Renault Fluence ZE

"Hydrogen-based cars were sensible, but still have problems of their own."

Yes, Like the fact that Commercial Hydrogen production uses natural Gas (*GASP!* a fossil fuel!)

They don't use electrolysis to crack it out of water, as this is highly inefficient.

Even if they DID use electricity to crack H from O, where would this electricity come from? That's right, Fossil Fuel Power stations, and it would use a SHIT load more electricity that just charging a battery directly..

That is not to say that I don't agree with you. I think Electric-only cars at the moment are not much cop as all-purpose vehicles due to the low range and long charging times.

Hydro may well be the future if they can fix the inefficiency issues of electrolysis... You may end up seeing Wind Turbines and Solar Panels on the roofs of Petrol stations that are there for the purpose of generating Hydrogen from tap water, or something else entirely may pop up on the horizon.

Personally I think Serial Hybrids (Or E-REVs as the marketing droids refer to them as) like the Chevvy/Vauxhaul/Opel Volt/Ampera and the Fisker Karma are the way forward (For Now). But that's just me.

Ideally they should just fix public transport so that it is useful for more than just Londoners who don't know they're born.

iPhones get multi-sim capabilities

Err Work phone and personal phone?

Many companies, Mine included demand that you go through your mobile bill and mark off any personal calls so that they can demand reimbursement.

This despite the fact that it maybe takes 30-60 minutes to go through a bill, costing them £10-£20 in wages to reclaim maybe £2-£3 of calls... Ho Hum.

Most people just keep their personal phone as well.

Just because YOU don't have a need for 2 phones, doesn't mean there isn't one.

Adventures in Tech: Dive on in, the IPv6 is lovely

If IT was easy

We'd be out of a job ;-)