Posts by frank ly

Russian satellite beams home 121-megapixel pics of Earth

Re: Cold War

If someone else does something good, it doesn't make me look bad; it makes us all look good and makes me happy that it's been done.

Google warns against ISPs hard on web filth

I agree (upvoted)

No flames from me, I agree with you. I've had a look at porn on the internet and have been appalled by the banality of it all. There is no plot develoment, no character analysis and exposition, not a sign of context within wider societal issues. Everything is ersatz emotions with no recognition of the tragedy of the human condition. It's always a happy ending.

Canary Islands host long-distance quantum teleportation

Not Fair

I've been a bit annoyed by the way that Alice and Bob have been getting lots of interesting work over the years. Now, they've been sent to do interesting work in the Canary Islands !

Met cops' CSI mobe-snoop tech sparks privacy fears

Just wondering ......

If I have encrypted pictures of me taking a dump, stored on my phone, or other device; and I'm forced to hand over the key by law; can the officers concerned claim that I have caused them offence and alarm? Or, is it their own stupid fault for demanding to see personal pictures stored on a private device?

(Mine's the one with the fresh turd in the pocket; do not search me.)

Zuck weds self to lady friend in surprise ceremony

Re: Good luck to him.

By this sneaky method, he made sure he was the best dressed man at the wedding :)

(Mine's the grey morning coat with the top hat.)

BBC deletes Blue Peter from BBC One

@TRT re. - Ignore the Blue Peter angle for a moment....

No I didn't but I may try to find it for the lulz. On a happier note: Try to find 'Materials: How They Work' on BBC iPlayer, presented by Mark Miodownik who is a real materials scientist. It's a 3-part gem of a series; very, very rare.

Re: Janet Ellis?

Don't kids nowadays have LCD video projectors so they can have soothing images projected onto their bedroom ceiling to help them get to sleep? (Drifting clouds, an albatross in flight, etc)

@Asgard - Re: Ignore the Blue Peter angle for a moment....

I know I've become older (and hopefully wiser) but I can't believe that people in TV land (especially presenters) have become so much dumber and more superficial. (Is it me; is it?).

I can remember when Horizon and similar programs were fascinationg to watch and were produced as an educational and informative product. Now, when I watch them, I almost feel embarassed for them as I see how they try to present and explain things in a way that makes me cringe ...(ok, I'll stop typing now, before I unleash a torrent of bile on you all)

Fastest-ever hydrocarb scramjet hits Mach 8, doesn't explode

Thanks for Re: More information:

Thank you for those informative replies. That's one of the reasons I enjoy El Reg :)

(I had thought that the fuel-air mixture in a 'jet' combustion chamber experienced a 'continuous explosion' effect where the flame front travelled at the speed of sound. Apparently not, or maybe the compressor output air speed is pretty high... some combination.....whatever.)

More information please

How does current hydrogen fuel usage compare to hydrocarbons in terms of energy per stored kilogram, or on a stored volume basis?

Re. supersonic combustion: I thought that all 'jet' engines had supersonic airflow in the combustion chamber, which is why the burning fuel doesn't 'explode' out from the front of the engine.

US dope farmer in Walmart rattlesnake chomp shock

@Peter Fox Re: copy editor fail

WalMart is a monolithic behemoth. (I've been looking in one of those dictionary things).

Iranian firms told not to use foreign email providers

Re: So what will they call 'their' Internet

iRan.NET

China begins work on world-beating MEGA power cables

Power Calcs

I make this an average continuous power delivery of 4.2 GW. I assume the 'world beating capacity' of 8 GW is because of a factor of two margin in the design?

How does this compare to other notable power transmission systems?

(Am I the only one who thinks that '37 billion kWh per year' is a clumsy way of expressing energy units?)

'Shame on the register to post wrong informations'

" .. lawmakers find it so unwordly .."

I read that as 'lawnmakers'. After the reference to the MP Black Knight, I started thinking about The Knights Who Say 'Ni !' Saurday evenings eh?

VW STUNS WORLD+DOG WITH REAL HOVER-CAR!

Re: spinny!

If I remember correctly, a Mr Garrison of South Park invented the vehicle you are thinking of. It had some user acceptance issues though.

At last! A use for Blighty's phone-boxes: Free Wi-Fi hotspots

Don't give your mobile phone number to any organisation ....

.. because they will sell it on and you'll get bloody spam texts. If you reply with 'Stop', they don't stop or they pass your number along to another f***ing text spammer. The mobile operators don't care because all those people texting 'Stop' makes a tidy income for them with no extra effort.

Re: what kind of person stops to use a Spectrum access point

That's the most mysteronous comment I've ever seen.

Microsoft digs Doppler to effect gesture detection

This has possibilities

Will it Hibernate if you wave 'bye' to it, or Shut Down if you flick 'V's at it?

Boffins baking big-data single chip architecture

– half an atomic layer of titanium – (?)

Can anyone explain what this means? (I thought atomic layers would only exist in integer number thickness.)

US gov boffins achieve speeds faster than light

It stops us from roaming the streets and accosting innocent passers-by with our opinions on various subjects.

It's a public service by El Reg.

Evil plot to control souls via Wi-Fi thwarted

Re: Damn, they're on to us!

If we want to take over the soles, it'll be lots of footwork, not legwork.

Pirate island attracts more than 100 startup tenants

Re: Waterworld

" ...up to 12 nautical miles (nm) from its baselines."

Is a 'baseline' the same as what most people think of as a 'coastline'; or do the lawyers have an obscure multi-page definition of the word 'baseline' somewhere?

Suppressed data on mutant H5N1 human-killer virus PUBLISHED

Re: Transmissible?

I forgot 'inter--'. (Though intermissible has not been seen, it is thought that the LHC might detect it when they turn the dial up to full power)

Re: Transmissible?

Let's see: admit/permit/submit//transmit, admission/permission/submission/transmission, admissible/permissible/submissible/transmissible.

What is the problem?

Britain prepares for government by iPad

@Jedit - Re: "Why can't they buy their own?"

But, haven't they heard of the BYOD party? (It's making sweeping gains in local government and should win seats in Parliament).

SnapGuide

Is it moderated/censored?

I just had a look on the website to see if there are any guides to help me improve my sex life (don't ask). I tried various search terms but had no results. On a separate search, using the term 'bathroom', I was amused to find guides for 'How To Buy An iPad'.

It may be that iOS users have wonderful lives, in which case I'm not part of the target demographic.

Facebook button triggers tidal wave of human organs

Breaking News ....

Following a deal between Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Lansley, the NHS will be sending out a fleet of refrigerated vans to perform doing door-to-door early collections starting next week. A Facebook message will tell you when to stay at home and wait.

How politicians could end droughts forever But they don't want to

I take your point, but ...

In extracting them and then using them, coal, oil and gas (etc) are destroyed. Water usage does not destroy water. It returns it to the giant worldwide reservoir, otherwise known as the world.

GCSE, A-level science exams ARE dumbed down - watchdog

When I were a lad .....

When I studied biology and chemistry, we had to dissect a frog then put it back together and reanimate it, using adrenaline and peptides that we'd synthesised the previous day.

Students nowadays have no idea how lucky they are.

Microsoft storage boffins serve up smoking 2012 NFS server

Phase 2

MSNFS

iTunes fanbois outraged by Apple's sex-life quiz probe

er ....

You're not supposed to give the 'correct' answers. These are just reminders for what are effectively a set of passwords.

What was my first car?: Rolls Royce Silver Turd

Where was I first kissed?: On my arse

....

etc

Half of UK smart TV owners don't know what the 'smart' bit is for

Re: Buy what you're told to

My mother has a son like you. He gave up in the end.

No sex please, we're Telstra

Just saying ...

"This decision is not about censorship, but choice and respecting gender equality."

It has been the decision of Telstra to remove a certain class of content. This reduces choice and is censorship.

Respecting gender equality would mean making a positive effort to promote 'adult' content that is specifically targeted at women.

Perhaps realistically, "we don't want to upset customers because that would affect our profits". There's nothing wrong with that so why not say it?

'Geek' image scares women away from tech industry

Re: Eh?

These events are targeted at school/college aged females, hence the word 'girls'.

Mobile phones still safe... probably

Re: You do know

I bought a cheap packet of crisps last week and I only read the ingredients (in tiny, tiny, font size) after I'd eaten them. Sodium chloride and acetic acid had been added to them as some kind of flavouring agent !! We need to get back to using natural, healthy products and ban these chemicals.

Tech City hailed as saviour of THE ENTIRE PLANET

Who is the other man?......

The one with the 'I want to run away, but I have to stay' body language.

LinkedIn edges closer to China with new Hong Kong gaff

SpammedIn

I joined LinkedIn a few months ago. It sold itself as an upmarket kind of place for professional people so I thought I'd give it a go. I didn't register myself with any special interests, just gave the minimum needed.

Almost immediately, my e-mail inbox was hit by spam from people who wanted me to read about their research and attend their conferences; and one man who wanted me tell me about his sponsored charity walk. I've told the spam filter to mark all LinkedIn mail as spam.

Billionaire astro mining venture long on hype and timescale

Is it really true?

"Platinum .....one asteroid could generate more of the stuff than has ever been mined in Earth's history. This is true, ..."

Maybe, if there was an asteroid out there, in easy reach, that had a very high concentration of platinum in it. If asteroids are remnants of the proto-planetary cloud that formed the earth (among others), why should they have a significantly greater concentration of platinum than the earth's crust?

Even if they did have, how does the mass of an 'average' asteroid compare with the mass of all platinum bearing ores mined throughout earth's history? How do we find these 'lucky' asteroids?

On a separate note: to return large ingots of purified metals down the earth's gravity well, you could use them as counterweights in a pulley based space-elevator arrangement, with buckets at regular intervals it coud form a cheap launch and return system.

Number-munching clouds are godsend for cybercrooks - experts

Criminals are using the internet ?!

Pass a law against it, now!

Google motors into cloud storage with Drive

Re: Offline requirements - just tried it

It only offers offline viewing (not editing) and only for those documents you recently edited and only documents and spreadsheets (not presentations, etc).

It only works with one account, the account you first activate it with. After that it won't play. The offline documents seem to be stored deep in some obscure chrome data files.

Google are hoping we'll store all our data in their cloudiness so they will probably never offer folder syncing to user chosen folders on a local drive (as could be expected).

Rolling in it

As an existing Hotmail user (only for 'junk' subscriptions) I got a free upgrade to 25GB of Skydrive storage on BOTH of my separate Hotmail accounts. I'll now stroll over to Google and see what's happening to my two Google accounts.

Maybe my free Dropbox account and my free Sugarsync account will be upgraded as a response to all this too. I've no idea what I'll do with all this cloudy goodness.

Martha Lane Fox hits caps lock, yells at small biz websites

Re: Go on...

At least there will be no shortage of tea and sandwiches while she's in charge.

Nokia's older mobes infringe IPCom patent – court

WTF! ^2

" So far, 61 IPCom patents have been found invalid as granted or conceded as invalid by IPCom .."

IPCom are supposed to understand patents, they 'deal' in them. In every case like this, for every patent found to be invalid, another patent (chosen by the defendant) should be struck out from the 'pool' and the plaintiff charged full court costs for that percentage of patents struck out from the action.

Home Office 'technologically clueless' on web super-snoop law

Re: But will the MPs listen to the arguments?

I suspect that the Home Secretary was getting technical 'advice' from potential contracting companies. It's the only explanation I can think of.

Biologists create synthetic DNA capable of EVOLUTION

I tried reading about it, via the link

"A sequence-specific DIG-labeled probe targeting the extension product is annealed to the extended primers and detection proceeds as in ELISA, using an anti-DIG HRP-conjugated antibody."

Now I know how 'ordinary' people feel when I try explaining how computers work.

Analyst: 'revolutionary, compelling' iPhone 5 out in October

Re: Analyst

'analyst': Assumes derivation from the word 'analyse'.

The correct spelling in many cases is in fact, 'analist'.

Stray SMS leads to aborted landing

" ... provided new learnings ..."

What happened to that good old fashioned word, 'lessons'.

ISPs torch UK.gov's smut-blocking master plan

@John Lilburne Re: Opt-in?

That's quite a gallery of knob-heads. Then again, it is Wikipedia.

Yes, but

" ... the system already used by most major UK mobile phone companies, where access to adult content is blocked until an age verification check is conducted ..."

This is because a child can walk into a shop and buy a phone (or just a SIM card) on PAYG, using cash. Only an adult can purchase a domestic internet connection and it should be regarded as that adult's responsibility to control access by any children in the home.

Trojan sneaks into hotel, slurps guests' credit card data

Re: " ... some badly needed consulting."

I think you mean " .. some badly needed clobbering."