Posts by SuperTim

Met cops get new pocket-sized fingerprint scanners

Re: Hold on . . .

I think you underestimate the MET. They will arrest you and you will then be pissed off. I don't trust these guys any further than I can throw them, but they will use the refusal as an excuse to arrest you and thereby force you to hand over your details. You can bother with the whole wrongful arrest later, but not before you have accidentally fallen down the stairs a few times and had your house turned over looking for evidence that you are a terrorist*

No, I don't like the MET and am glad I don't live in London.

*The main reason you refused to cooperate in first place, obviously...

WTF is... Li-Fi?

Re: Security

They used to be able to determine a hard drive's communication based on the HDD light's flicker, from any distance as long as you can see it!

Sony blames record $5.7bn loss on everything but Sony

Re: "poor consumer appetite for shiny gear"

DrXym, Sony requested from the courts that all IP addresses from ANYONE who VIEWED the website hosting the crack was made available. This means that by merely viewing a website, sony were able to get the details of who you were from your PSN account. This was the final nail in an already nail filled coffin for me.

You really ought to get your facts right,.

Re: why the hate?

Notwithstanding the fact that they wanted the IP addresses of anyone who looked at Geohotz's PS3 Jailbreak (looked at, not downloaded or installed). I do not appreciate them subpoenaing my details because of some perceived crime (especially when it would have only restored functionality they removed).

If you are happy having rootkits installed, and having your PS3 functionality decided for you AFTER shelling out over £250 for it, then carry on loving Sony (assuming you dont work for them).

Re: "poor consumer appetite for shiny gear"

I see where you are coming from, though interestingly, Apple have never subpoena'd their customers' IP addresses when they have jail-broken their devices*.

Apple are no saints but Sony really set a new standard in pissing off a fan-base. I will never again spend any money on Sony products.

*Devices for which the offer of PSN connected online gaming and otherOS option were sold, only to be unilaterally removed by Sony.

"poor consumer appetite for shiny gear"

Based on piss poor customer treatment no doubt!

Red faces abound as boffins build gamma ray lens

Re: I just got an image

Because that number is so much bigger than infinity!

Stray SMS leads to aborted landing

Reality check for commercial pilots everywhere!

"don’t result in an ascent much sharper than that experienced during takeoff."

Takeoff: that would be the part of the flight that my wife starts crying and thinking she is going to die. Landing is a slightly better affair, if only for the fact it means the terrifying journey is nearly over.

Thinking it is no big deal to suddenly start ascending just when people think they are going to be landing is probably quite startling, even for experienced fliers.

Metallic Glass iPhone 5 to battle pottery Samsung Galaxy S3

Re: Glass-that-acts-like-metal?

Yes. And the screen cannot be made out of it because it isn't transparent. I tell you, some journo's seem to just guess at what they are reporting.

ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. - Humans begin artificial CO2 emissions

Universal Mass Illiteracy

Haven't the series of recent incompetent governments been advocating this policy, with their poor handling of various testing organisations and dilution of the teaching populace via removal of any kind of sanctions for "disruptive behaviour" in both classroom and home?

I know they may not be doing it deliberately but God knows it is happening and many teenagers now sound uncannily like their caveman predecessors with their series of grunts!

Google ads 'misleading and deceptive'

Great new.

Now if they could also hold those advertising companies responsible for the virus laden banner ads that appear, that would also be nice.

Amazon boss finds Apollo 11 engines on seabed

Re: Out of interest

I saw that immediately and wondered how they knew. There were at least 8 moon-bound apollo missions that could reasonable be expected to have that trajectory, so who is to say they are from 11? Hell, there were hundreds of missions nasa flew from canaveral that could have ended up there.

Xbox 360 video cable boasts NOISE VIRUS protection

mylar?

how will that stop "virus noises" even if such a thing were likely to plague you? Mylar doesn't stop electromagnetic interference, it is just a good strong insulator. Seems they had a spare space on the back of the packet and made any old bollocks up!

Flintstones was (sort of) true: Mammals did well alongside dinosaurs

Re: "Everyone knows that The Flintstones was wrong"

Looking at the first link:

"According to evolutionists, the dinosaurs “ruled the Earth” for 140 million years, dying out about 65 million years ago. However, scientists do not dig up anything labeled with those ages. They only uncover dead dinosaurs (i.e., their bones), and their bones do not have labels attached telling how old they are."

I love how they skirt the fact that the fossils are NOT MADE OUT OF BONE, but as much rock as their surroundings, taking millions of years to get this way! But why let facts spoil a good story?

Gotta love the religious blinkers they wear.

Ethics profs fret over cyborg brains, mind-controlled missiles

Re: What an idiot.

Me? or have you been taken in by my tongue-in-cheek prediction of how rubbish BBC effects can be turned into maniacal zombie dustbin murderbots by crazed volcano dwelling fiends?

And for the record, Apple have already patented it, so it will only work in a walled garden anyway!

Re: Re: Precedents already set.

I think you will find that fiction can never quite imagine just how horribly the human race can act. If there is a possible use for a technology, someone will find a way to make it work for their own ends. Had we not had non-proliferation of nuclear weaponry, I believe Oppenheimer would have been correct when he proposed that he had become "the destroyer of worlds". I see your interpretation as hopelessly optimistic, in the most rose-tinted of ways.

Precedents already set.

History (albeit fictional) is littered with evidence on why we cannot allow free reign on brain/machine interfaces. If we were to give unlimited access to this technology, mad professors, evil genii and all manner of ne'er-do-wells will be producing the likes of Daleks, Kane-from-robocop2 and other killbots, set to wreak withering destruction on unsuspecting fleshy meatbags.

Remember that the robotic 3 laws are only in fiction, we need some kind of real world law to apply to this type of development, as I do not want to end up on the end of a missile fired by a grunt with a mind probe just because I cut him up at the lights one day.

Microsoft's free flight sim hits the clouds

So this is just like a demo then?

That's not particularly newsworthy.

Apple lands slide-to-unlock patent blow on Motorola

Re: Hey Super Tim

I would, but i have no intention of seeking protection from other uses while I create and sell the product I have patented, as I have no intention of making it.

You know, what the patent system was invented for!

If I chose to patent it, then I would be no better than the myriad companies now just patenting anyoldshite (C) and then waiting to find somebody to sue!

simple

have four buttons in a row, each which must be punched sequentially. You MAY drag a finger over them to unlock, but you can also hit one at a time, something which CANNOT be done using apple's method, therefore different.

I'll give you that one Motorola!

Satnav blunders blamed for £200m damages

map costs

Will they make it compulsory to provide the latest maps for free? I very much doubt it. Outdated maps are usually so because of the high price of upgrading.

My sat nav is about 5 years old. It seems to think the M6 stops at Junction 15 and makes me go through Stoke*

* for our american friends reading this, Stoke on trent is where Robbie Williams (the so-called pop star) is from. It is the arse-end of nowhere**

** Apologies to readers from stoke, but it's true.

ENORMOUS BACKSIDE FILMED FROM SPACE in moon flypast

T'other side

It was the Tycho Magnetic Anomoly, which was on near side near clavius (as I recall, very sadly)

Brit pair deported from US for 'destroy America' tweet

*facepalm

I weep for the stupidity of the Yoof of today, and the utter idiocy of the US border agents.

Samsung eyes enormofridges for see-through screens

portrait orientation...

would work with fairly normal size fridge doors.

Ten exabytes wedged into a rather large box by Cleversafe

maths

Am i missing something?

each data centre has

21 * 189 * 45 * 3 = 535 815 terabytes. Mutiplying by 35 = 18 753 525 terabytes. That is 20 exabytes.

the other displayed metric is only 1 exabyte, so where to the 10 exabyte headine come from?

Telly makers aim to put OLED in your lounge in 2012

I didn't pay

$800 dollars for the one I am driving!. Tellies have to get cheaper!

Outside-the-box thinking literally can't be done inside a box, say profs

Sticky things

Presumably must be thrown at walls and the results observed.

Profs call for harsh taxes on sweet carbonated beverages

I can almost hear the...

collective "big gulp" from consumers....

See what I did there?

I know, I am getting it now.

Sony PSN class-action lawsuit ban prompts... lawsuit

No...

They bought the PS3 because it said on the box "play online". That forms a part of the terms of sale, and therefore revoking that ability alters the good's fitness for purpose.

Sony again eh?

Gotta love how royally they have screwed the pooch with their apparent lack of care for their customers.

Microsoft gives up on proprietary 2D barcode, accepts NFC

Also, QR only requires a camera to be able to distinguish contrast. MS requires colour recognition and in street-lit conditions, may not perform accurately, as the colour data is completely lost.

Also, anyone can make a QR code and it will work without the bothersome MS register being needed.

World's biggest music streaming service launches - for tech idiots

Tech savviness.

Wouldn't a tech-savvy music afficianado have better places to go to get music? Surely they would forgo a paid service to instead stream their own music to their own devices etc. Seems to me the spotify et al is for the money rich, time/inclination poor user who has an awareness of the way the internet works.

Personally, I don't have any use for a paid cloud based music system. I have a server, and it fulfils my needs. It costs a lot less to run than even the most basic online system and i have tremendous flexibility with it. Next step for me is to automate my home (which will cost money).

No, I get the feeling that these services are not aimed at tech savvy, merely at tech aware.

People like my father-in-law would find even the most basic systems a bit of a stretch, as he still doesn't quite understand copy/cut/paste and has lost countless digital photos, while having multiple copies of others. If he can't buy an app on his ipod, he doesn't want to know.

REVEALED: People write things on Twitter, Media

Thanks

I think I already know that sometimes twitter and the daily mail write about summat or other. I just didn't know it was worthy of investigation.

Cnet slammed for wrapping Nmap downloads with cruddy toolbar

Shitty toolbars

They have been on every free install i have ever downloaded.

More BT heads roll amid biz transformation

Reinterviewed for their positions.

Gotta love how they work. Having been through that a couple of times in the past few years, there is nothing like that phrase to make you lose all respect for management.

Facebook disses Effin Irishwoman

I dont get it.

It is on facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Effin/150845254978025

Anonymous launches OpRobinHood against banks

I agree we need a change.

I just don't want anonymous to decimate my bank account in the name of doing me a favour. If it brings down the banks, they won't give me what pittance I had back.

So, while I respect your opinion, please stop talking, you are embarrassing yourself.

Taxpayers.

These are the people who bail out the banks who lose money to fraud (or bad investments, or insider trading, or rogue agents).

Well done anonymous. the 99% will be paying for this.

MPs: This plan for proper navy carriers and jets is crazy!

Effin' useless.

Our MOD procurement is the joke of the world. Even when we build the bleedin' things, we can't spec 'em up properly. Eurofighters with Guns that don't work cos we can't afford to maintain them, but they still need to be there because the plane won't fly properly without them. Ships built to immediately be mothballed, Chinooks purchased without the expensive avionics software just sat about making the hangar look all full and stuff. Landrovers being used as armour personal carriers/squaddie cookers.

I am aghast as to how our once mighty military nation has fallen by the wayside. We deserve to be invaded, but the lax border agencies are making sure that happens without a shot being fired!

Politicians call for Modern Warfare 3 censure

adult games and cartoons

Parents simply pass them on to their kids. "it's a game, innit?" or "it's only a cartoon".

You don't need a licence to have children, but you should have to pass some sort of "I'm not a compete moron who only has kids for the benefit money it gives me" test.

My nephew plays these games and he has been since he was 8. It annoys the tits off me.

Sony develops 'new kind of television'

TV tied to playstation 3...

So it can be remotely crippled when Sony choose to remove some of its functionality unilaterally?

I'll pass thanks "sir" Howard.

Why your tech CV sucks

Recruiters!

Wanting you to do their job for them. I have never got a job via a recruiter. They aren't interested in you getting the job, just SOMEONE getting the job. This guy, while having some good points, misses the fact that Word is the de facto standard word processor in business and that you CAN TURN OFF SPELL CHECKING on your CV. Also, what does he want? An RTF? A PDF? He neglects to mention it. Still, he does spout a bit of common sense. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people who don't check simple mistakes and bang on about their GCSEs like they were actually tricky exams that left them capable of doing things other than playing video games and drinking cheap cider.

Secret US 'Jedi' ghost-copters kept out of bin Laden raid

because GPS doesn't tell you that someone has erected a building that is taller than the height you are flying. Radar tells you what is actually there, not what is on a computer based map.

Is the electromagnetic constant a constant?

The bible.

It's rather thin on the ground, physics-wise. It has a bit of chemistry (phase-change of water when in contact with Jesus' feet, Spontaneous change of Oxidane to Merlot in Caanan-based weddings) and some biology (Asexual reproduction based on Rib metamorphosis, and the best one, taking two of each animal onto an ark, without having any way to reliably sex some of these animals).

I find that the whole concept of religion incredibly stupid. Some people wrote some stories, those stories were accepted or rejected in 300AD and only the accepted ones are the absolute truth?

No, I will stick to Science and not claim that religion can play a part.

Iceberg DEATHMATCH: Berlin vs Manhattan

How many times?

Icebergs are measured in Belgiums. A smaller iceberg must therefore be measure in MilliBegiums or MicroBelgiums. I suggest this Icesheet could be a two-Brusseller!

Swiss boffins produce working cloth made of GOLD

Strong as silk?

I call shenanigans on that.

Anonymous confusion in clash with Mexican drug cartel

Trolls and hackers....

Not as brave as they make out are they!

Airbus brews Scandium smackdown for carbon Dreamliner

What the passengers want.

Is door to door service. Nobody wants to change planes 4 times to get where they are going.

UK CB radio crowd celebrates three decades of legality

Great days.

I always had a rubbish midland set, badly swr'd in and only able to get a few miles at best, though i did once get a seat cover from 25 miles away, and successfully eyeballed her home 20. Ahem

Jaguar recalls over 17,600 X-types in the UK

In another anouncement,

BMW have said that all of their models from 1970 to present were affected by a glitch in which the indicators would not work when responding to inputs from the driver. it is thought that nobody has ever noticed this glitch.