Posts by Kevin Johnston

Apple settles ebook price-fixing damages lawsuit with US states

Re: Errr

Oh no, we are there with the 'traffic school' concept and when it was originally launched it was too popular as it was the same cost as the previous fine/points option but this time with no points on the license. It was in fact so popular it only got offered to people who were only just over the speed limit.

Now it is apparently MUCH more expensive than the fine and it is getting close to the bit where it is cheaper to accept the points and the hit on insurance premium rather than to go to 'traffic school'

Amazon Prime Music opens – but where's the streaming music?

Re: "doesn’t include any tracks newer than six months old"

Saw an excellent T-Shirt....I may be old but I got to see all the cool bands

Facebook's new self-destructing pic app SELF-DESTRUCTS

Really?

You have to send a picture back before you can look at the pointless kitten photo someone sent you?

So double up the dross to try to kill the backhaul

The British are coming! The British are coming! And they're buying Surface fondleslabs

Re: The figures look really bad

It's probably a comment on the wonderful use of statistics. The RT and Pro are very different pieces of kit with an over-arching label of Surface and as such there is less justification to roll them in together than models differentiated predominantly by size. Of course...down at the basement level of market share you will use anything you can to make yourself look more significant.

iDevice gizmo-snatcher Oleg... you must be taking the Pliss

That would certainly fit with not being set-up to collect the ransom. Hard to berate him if the fix is as simple as the original break.

Former Azzurri project manager who stole £1.3m ordered to pay back £146k

Re: Seems reasonable

Yep it's the old adage....if you owe the bank a thousand you have a problem but if you owe them a million, THEY have a problem

Open wide, 'Friends': Facebook wants to give you a 'Privacy checkup'

Old sayings

Anyone else heard the phrase

"A stranger is just a Friend you haven't met yet"

NASA preps flying saucer ballocket flight

Hmmm

Watch out El Reg...the headhunters could soon be circling the SPB

Microsoft throws Kinect under a bus, slashes Xbox One to $399

Not smart at all

Oh dear time to try to get over a fairly basic lesson.

Apparently you do not know but the way a DVD player reads a disc is not the same as the way a computer reads the disc. When you load it into a computer it checks specific tracks/sectors to look for various information which it needs to know where everything is and what type of data the disc holds. When you try to play a DVD with a movie it can instead launch a run-time version which is intended to stop you ripping the DVD and bypassing all the unskippable anti-piracy sections. Various music CDs have a similar setup.

The problem is that this runtime system is a Windows only process (actually there may be an Apple version on there but I don't have the kit to check) so if you insert the DVD into a linux PC it will not work.

Hopefully I did not use too many complicated phrases in there.

I have to agree with you about the OS and business software side. There are a number of products I use for work which simply do not have a Linux flavour available and while you can use 'equivalents' in a small environment this is not always an option when you have to work in an Enterprise scale environment. There is also, on the domestic side, the issue with things like DVDs which detect they has been inserted into a computer and then try to launch the Windows run-time app. Yes, you could try ripping to a usable format etc etc but it is at minimum an extra level of complexity which discourages moving away from MS products.

Behold! World's smallest 3D-printer pen Lix artists into shape – literally

OMG

Now I really wish I wasn't so useless at drawing

This is the sort of product which could become a 'game-changer' simply becuase it is only limited by skill and imagination.

Apple patent LOCKS drivers out of their OWN PHONES

Location, location, location

So if I mount it in a cradle which is fitted to the centre console will it work for everyone or no-one?

Back off, Siri! Microsoft debuts Halo beauty Cortana

But surely Cortana is limited?

Maybe I remember it wrong but doesn't Cortana come to a sticky end by thinking herself to death? Is that really a good business plan Microsoft?

No, Minister. You CAN'T de-Kindle your eBooks!

Copyright

You keep using that word....I don't think it means what you think it means

LOHAN preps Vulture 2 for hot vinyl wrap

So, are the SPB including a 24hr guard to stop any sneaky smartphone snaps of the finished product appearing on the intwerwebs?

BT finally admits its Home Hub router scuppers some VPN connections

Re: old news kind of ...

I was thinking that myself.....worked for a couple of companies that had to supply a fix for accessing their VPN using a BT 'box' and that goes back 3-4 years

Middle England's allotments become metric battlefield

Meh...too simple

At least we have stopped using a ten hundred of herring which was 1,200 fish

WHOA: Get a load of Asteroid DX110 JUST MISSING planet EARTH

Re: 2014 DX110

Lots of people knew about it but they were not famous Astronomers so didn't count

(Thank you for every quote Sir Terry Pratchett)

Belgian judge mulled BANNING APPLE (actually, its website) in Euro warranty row

Re: Simple

Oooh no.....got a better idea, $1 per hit until it complies. This gives a direct link between their guilt and the fine.

Just hope that nobody would consider click-storming the site if that was the penalty though

Chicago cabs embroiled in debit-card breach claim mystery as bank tells folks: Pay by cash

Under investigation?

So will that continue until they find a way of saying it is not their fault?

UK.gov back-office battle may see British Justice offshored

Hmmm....outsource the back-office?

That does at least go along with the logic where HMRC went to Lease-back for their buildings to save costs only for the ownership of those very buildings to end up with a nice Bahamian off-shore tax-avoiding company...

No irony there then

Yes: You CAN use your phone as a satnav while driving – appeals court

Lawmakers huh?

A group of people who would never allow common sense, logic, practicality or even need to get in the way of a verbose knee-jerk piece of legislation.

and no....they are not limited to one country, more's the pity.

Cable thieves hang up on BT, cause MAJOR outage

Re: Damn thieves

Hence the old ditty....

Volts jolts but mills kills

Microsoft asks pals to help KILL UK gov's Open Document Format dream

Re: @Nya

If you think that PDFs are bad then you should see how HMRC are making use of them.....There are now a number of forms which 'must be completed electronically using the supplied PDF'. Just a shame that the PDF is stuffed to the gunwhals with executable code which give non-windows machines a migraine. Thos who have a Windows PC are not much better off as if you try to restrict what executables your staff can download then the filtering kicks the form out before it even gets started.

Sony's PlayStation 4 pwns Xbox in the United States

Re: Pfft .....

Perversely, I play the XBox360 games using a mouse and keyboard....just can't get comfortable with the console controller.

Of course this does rather shine a light on the whole argument....what works for one may not be the preferred oiption for someone else. Just a good thing there is some choice around

Virgin Media's flaky broadband network turns Bolton off

Find the fault or restore the service

a perennial problem with support...you know that switching off/back on again makes a problem go away but doesn't really fix it but the guy who knows how it really works is on extended leave because he wasn't allowed to take time off. Come year-end he had to use up his leave so he was out for a few weeks but now he is back he can look to see what the fault really was and everything will be unicorns and rainbows.

Or something like that

Second-hand software broker: OK Microsoft – we made a mistake

Much clearer now

Very much supports the view from the comments on the earlier story that this case was as much about Microsoft getting a precedent set for future cases. The not quoted but clearly relatively small compensation also leans the story that way.

Microsoft claims victory over second-hand software broker

Re: Another "grey imports" fiasco

I would go further and say that as they are not 'New' licences and there is no attempt to market them as such then the trademark aspect should not be relevant here.

Google Glassholes, GET OFF our ROADS, thunder lawmakers in seven US states

Re: HUD? - modern satnavs

There is at least one BMW motorcycle which comes with a SatNav which is integrated with the rest of the electronics and if you get a low fuel alert it pop-up the route to a petrol station......but does that count as a safety feature, a distraction or just useful info?

Man sues NASA: Mystery Mars rock is a UFO – an unidentified 'FUNGUS' object

Re: isn't there a name for this type of legal claim?

I thought Barratry was when those in command of a ship/aircraft/other military unit rebelled against authority.....

To be fair though I read it in a book and not on the Internet so it may not be true.

Prince sues 22 music file-sharers for ONE MEEELLION dollars each

Prince/Squiggle?

I seem to recall that when he stopped being Prince he made all sorts of pretentious statements about being a different person from Prince.....I assume that didn't extend to not taking the royalties then

Virgin Media's 'little(ish)' book of deals contained BIG FIBS, rules ad watchdog

Said it before...

....and I'll say it again. Fines are pointless and saying 'stop using the advert' is always too late in the day.

The only way for the ASA to be anything but nominal is that when an advert breaches the code, the company is banned from advertising for the period the offending advert was in use.

Time travellers outsmart the NSA

Re: No psychics either

Many years ago before even the days of Wildcat BBS, a local paper had picked up where a Psychic group in the South of England had cancelled a two/three months hence meeting because the weather would be too bad to travel. Would love to know if they had been right but never got off my backside to check at the time.

Macbook webcams CAN spy on you - and you simply CAN'T TELL

remote re-programming?

Maybe I read the article incorrectly but I thought it said that the two proof of concepts showed how they could remotely reprogram the firmware to allow the camera to be on while the light was off....

Yep, just went back and re-read it and it clearly says they used two different ways to modify it remotely

Meet NASA's Valkyrie: A silky busty robo superhero that'll save your life

Marvel Sueball?

Only if they also threw one at the Care Bear Stare....seem to recall that they all pushed a 'beam of lovingness' out of their chests....

...or something like that. I was only peripherally watching when the kids were small and I was not in the slightest bit interested in scouring the internet for details and having that show up in my browsing history.

Oz couple get jiggy in pharmacy in 'banned' condom ad

Re: If you want condoms that fit you...

It is a matter of great pride that when my wife was working as a sexual health nurse she managed to get me a mouse mat from Pasanta (?) which had pictures of their condom range with sizes.....went down a storm at work but I had to take it back home or else risk getting it knicked

OMG, Andrex killed the puppey! Not quilty, exclaim bog roll boys

Not as worrying as...

when I was doing an installation job at a hospital. All their toilet paper was 'Professional Toilet Paper'. None of your amateur arse-wiping there then...

To say nothing of the recycled toilet paper you can buy....no no no no no....brainfloss please

Spinning rust and tape are DEAD. The future's flash, cache and cloud

Sensible?...Logical?

Very much horses for courses, if you are only likely to want resilience then it's fine. If you want to be sure that you can go back a couple of days to back out a modification(deliberate or otherwise) then it's fine. If the Regulatory body which oversees your business sector says they want you to provide an accurate audit trail of selected data items from cradle to grave (or up to 7 years anyway) then no, just no.

People are forever predicting the death of tape but they always neglect to explain what will replace it for very long-term storage.

A whopping one in four Apple fanbois uses OBSOLETE TECH

I am helping skew the results

While I do use a couple of websites, I am reasonable sure from also using them with a real screen (attached to a proper PC) that these are ad-free websites I use to check on train times and suchlike.

I do wonder how many assumptions were made regarding similarity of use between people who have updgraded to iOS7 and those happy with the old one as it is not broken. My assumption would be that people who have upgraded the OS are more likely to be heavy web users and will have much higher Advert hits than those that just want a phone. Maybe the number of iOS7 users should be halved? Who knows? To claim they can be more accurate about actual device numbers would need them to track activity per phone, are they willing to hitch themselves to that bandwagon?

Microsoft 'cautiously optimistic' about Christmas sales

Re: A casual Observation

I stil remember the day when discs dropped below the £1 per MB barrier.....a 120MB drive for £105 including VAT

LOHAN embraces handsome young autopilot

Thank heavens for boffins

You read story after story of some Big Bad Corp or Corp v Corp sueball tournament and then suddenly as a bolt from the blue there is this bunch of enthusiasts and real world companies willing to put reputations (and money) on the line for pure escapist fanatasy projects.

Gawd bless 'em one and all

Judge upholds UK ban on HTC phones, but HTC One gets a pass – for now

Seem to recall

that the HTC One was using a microphone designed and patented by Nokia which is world leading for removing background noise and which HTC got hold of because the company making them for Nokia sold them without permission. It still had the Nokia part number on it when installed into the HTC One...

Happy Thanksgiving, Apple. Now how about THREE more patent legal battles for dessert?

Re: any patent using words with more than 3 syllables

Well that's the word 'automatic' banned then

Telcos can be forced to turn copyright cop, block websites – EU law man

Please Sir

Since you can find all the links on Google can we block them too.....

Sauce for the goose etc etc

Haitian snapper humbles photo giants AFP, Getty Images in $1.2m copyright victory

behind the times there..

It already is illegal under the terms of the Theft Act. They are using the images with the intent of obtaining financial advantage by implying that they are the owner or have permission from the owner to do this. The act makes it clear that it does not matter if the real owner does not lose possession of the article and was designed around the idea that you might borrow something and offer it for sale then run off with the money after handing the item back.

The problem with dealing with the BBC is that all their money comes from the license fee so the only people who feel the pain are the general public.

We're making too much say CryptoLocker scum in ransom price cut

Re: how to profit on bitcoin

I have visions of those nice record labels or movie studios using this as a way of being given permission to scan all the files on your hard drive to track down those naughty freeloading pirates while making money out of it.

Meet the BlackBerry wizardry that created its 'better Android than Android'

Re: Not surprising

To be fair to the guys, saying that another OS/Kernel/whatever already does it does them down. Writing the code to get in working in your specific situation is a different order from asking if it can be done

Those Xbox One first-day glitches: GREEN screens of DEATH, disc crunching

Day One updates

I know there is a lot of this kit built in advance for a launch day which may not have the latest version of the software but why do all the games have Day One updates which are of a size similar to the main game itself?

Actually, why is there so much work on the console software being pushed out so close to launch? Surely the bad press you will get from umpty-Gigs of 'patches' on Day One would lead you to stop releasing updates to the console build group x days before launch and then putting it all out in one hit a few weeks after Launch Day 'in response to user coments'.

Dell orbits Linux a third time with revamped Sputnik notebooks

Really?

Touchscreen for a Linux laptop? So were these planned as Windows 8 but there was no demand or are Dell once again trying to prove no interest in Linux laptops as a follow-up to their last games where you could have a Linux laptop if you accepted a slightly lower spec at a slightly higher price.

LOHAN sees bright red over Vulture 2 paintjob

Re: Aerodynamics?

Actually, many years ago in Omni magazine(?) there was a very interesting article about this very topic. When doing test flights on some new business aircraft they discovered that the performance was fractionally better when they still had the tufts fitted to show airflow over the wings. They played around and eventually used a corrugated film just like the stuff used for those cards you could tilt to see two different images (yes I know it probably has some precise technical name but I decided I don't care). Having the ridges running parallel with the leading edge of the wing gave a much cleaner boundary layer and so smoother airflow compared with a polished surface.