Posts by The Indomitable Gall

Blazing laptop of death claims one

Another solution...

...remove the battery.

When I'm at home, I take the battery out an run off the mains. Charging and discharging kills battery life. Attempting to continue charging a full battery (which most laptops do) kills battery life. Charging a battery, and more importantly attempting to continue charging a full battery, generates a lot of heat. Even if this heat reaches the shut-off sensors for the processor, switching off the processor doesn't stop the source of the heat: the battery. In fact, by making more power available to the battery charger, a heat cut-out increases the risk of the battery overheating and setting itself alight.

Probably.

(I am not a chemist or an electrician.)

Sharp intros 5in ARM-based netbook

Stopitstopitstopit

I've already got two netbooks -- stop tempting me!

US music publishers sue online lyrics sites

Re: Why? Madness! WTF? etc

"Have you ever actually known someone that would go out and purposely BUY just the lyrics for a song (be it via sheet music or some other form)?"

I used to have ambitions as a pub singer (when RSI was threatening to make any other job impossible.

I now own quite a few songbooks, and in general the most important bit is the lyrics, because in many cases they're not pronounced clearly on the recordings. You don't have the same problem with tunes.

Plus, the lyrics don't belong to the performer, but to the writer. Sleevenotes usually only contain lyrics where they were written by the band -- the band forego the possibility of extra royalties from the printed material in order to make a more appealling product and increase sales. The increased sales benefit performers more than writers, so most professional writers do not license their lyrics for sleevenotes as they want to sell more songbooks.

Basically, it's someone's work and fair dos -- they want paid.

@Paul 125

" From what I was taught at school, its illegal to photocopy lots of music, but you can copy it by hand free of charge. "

Not quite. What you're talking about is out of copyright stuff like Beethoven, Mozart et al. The tune is in the public domain, but a particular publisher's typesetting is in copyright, so you can copy the tune freely, but not the typesetting. With music that is still in copyright (Beatles, Stones, Rogers & Hammerstein, Jackie Wilson etc), copying the tune is still technically infriging on the writer's copyright.

Huge 'vampyrus' bats being hunted to extinction

Oh my God, they killed Kevin! you b@st@rds

Come on, I can't be the only one who was thinking about the Fruit pastilles adverts....

Sony posts 'Daily Edition' e-book reader teaser

But will it have...?

A wireless eInk Linux box would be something special. All it now needs is a few cunningly concealed pins connected to a USB host chipset and you would have something very special indeed.

Or...

Is SDIO a software or hardware feature? Could reflashing the device with a suitable custom distro give us an SDIO-enhanced pocket computer? And will anyone ever actually bring out an SDIO USB host adapter?

Aussie birds 'desperate to copulate with brainy males'

Duff science.

Right, so knowing the optimum conditions for sexual success, they interfered with the natural conditions. In their artificial environment, only the cleverest could achieve the optimal conditions. This doesn't say anything about the inherent brain-factor in mate choice.

What they need to do is revisit next year and determine if the same birds that managed to repair the bowers to optimal or near-optimal f*nny magnet status do well when some irritating snotty student doesn't go depimping their rides on them.

Channel 4 to go 3D

3D TV is stuffed

Problem is, there's no such thing as "a TV" any more.

Your CRT is interlaced. True interlacing, where a pixel's a pixel's a pixel.

If you try using polarised light or shutter-lenses, you've got to think about Plasmas and LCDs and persistence of colour output and variable refresh-rates and rescaling and and and...

Sadly, colour filter is the only truly "portable" standard.

Apple to offer own-brand HDTV, claims analyst

iPass on this one....

"An iTunes TV Pass offering unlimited pay monthly access to the library’s content archives could also launch within 12 months, Munster said, effectively replacing a consumer’s monthly cable bill."

Unfortunately, as your cable operator is probably also your broadband supplier, this sort of thing would not discourage those very same "fair use limits" that have hobbled internet video distribution up till now.

It also wouldn't encourage said cable broadband providers to introduce differential pricing -- imagine selling someone something that makes your main money-making services obsolete. Not a sound business decision.

What's needed is a complete separation of carrier and content, so the carriers can make the efficiencies that are best for the consumer, rather than for the content provider....

US women protest for the right to bare

Re: What did you expect?

@AC

"Then again, believing that your team is "best" regardless of what evidence lies before you is blind-faith in the same vein as the existence of a god."

Same goes for working-class socialist types who still vote for Labour....

Beer.. cos.. well.. working class and that.

Dan Brown is most unwanted author says Oxfam

Re: Revolving door?

You know, Anonymous John (if that is your real name), it's actually cheaper (free) to get the book from your local library than from Oxfam.

Furthermore, as he's not their best-selling author, clearly they have more copies coming in than going out, so unless Dan Brown's books are so far removed from literature and so close to pond-scum that they have evolved the ability to reproduce asexually, Oxfam is getting many virgin copies.

Maybe by Guy Fawkes Night they'll have enough copies for a bonfire. All we need is an effigy of Tom Hanks to stick on top....

Apple applies for in-call music swapsies iPhone patent

There may be something new here...

If I'm not mistaken, they're talking about using a shared connection available to multiple applications. That's new... ish.

Is it non-obvious? I don't think so. At the moment we're happy with multiple concurrent connections for a reason: allowing external apps to use a connection initiated by a different app is a security risk and messes up the whole idea of trusted connections and certificates.

The only reason Apple think that they can get away with this is because of the closed app-store environment -- technically every app should be trusted. However, if they fail to stop jailbroken phones from using this technology, they've just opened one hell of an acute attack vector....

Music downloads greener than buying CDs

Re: If I get this right

@Tony Paulazzo

"you're saying that pirates are saving the planet? Wonder if that would work in a court of law?"

Let's moot it:

Prosecution: So, you say that you downloaded these 5 gazillion tracks in order to save the planet.

Defendant: That's right.

Prosecution: I would now like to point the court's attention to the exhibit 6D, an extract from the defendant's "blog". It says, and I quote "These big labels don't know what's good for them. I use downloads to discover new music. Since I started downloading, I've bought more CDs than ever before." I put it to you that you download merely for your own avarice, and that you will simply tack on any excuse that you believe justifies your selfish actions.

Orbital skydives to follow inflatable heatshield success?

What's the HP angle?

That's "Harry Potter" not "Hewlett Packaging^H^H^H^Hrd".

You know, broomsticks, quidditch, cloaks...?

HP strikes back on charges for 'free' Windows 7 upgrade

Daylight robbery.

Ok, a postage and handling charge is one thing, but this is a fair bit north of a reasonable charge. It certainly shouldn't cost 10 times as much to send out 10 copies as to send out one.

And Microsoft shouldn't be shrugging their shoulders on this one: they should have done this by electronic distribution. Their choice, their fault.

Online minor marketing law marked web's 'worst'

Re: It's broad if they suggest "Marketing".

@ Cardare Anbraxas:

" You gather information that could be used for marketing immediately such as IP addresses, browser, any loaded frameworks, engines or plugins, version of OS, screen resolution and many many more. "

So tell me, Cardare (if that is your real name), is my browser version medical information in your world, or is it just considered "personal"?

ProStor makes new money from old data

Further info needed.

So why should the enterprise go for ProStor rather than simply buying an external SATA dock and a stock of SATA drives?

What's the deal-breaking tech they're bringing to the table?

Japan torture flick sickens UK film censor

Publicity and downloading

Yes, so people will download it.

But the guys who wrote the thing won't profit from it.

The thing with films is that they're commercial ventures -- they get made only as long as the money's in it.

BlackBerry Curve 8520

Hooray!

No more crappy underresponsive trackball. But given that all the basic functions of a Blackberry expect click-click-up-down, why not just have cursor keys...?

Zombie plague analysed by Canadian maths prof

Lighten up!

To the (surprisingly few) who've made disparaging comments about this paper: lighten up!

They're having a laugh while exploring the extreme limits of current epidemiology models. They could have made their own doomsday scenario, but this is far more engaging.

And for those who've made disparaging comments about *that* name: quite right. If he wanted to write papers about zombies, he should have called himself Rooobert Smiiiiiiiith.

Apple won't take tablet to September iPod event, says mole

mmm... tablet....

http://scruss.com/tablet.html

Researchers forge secure kernel from maths proofs

Bartenders (re: 'c' code ?)

@ vincent himpe

What's your point? The bartender's problem is a matter of "blinding with science". It's works by assuming false premises, and expressing them in such a matter-of-fact way that the listener takes them as given.

In fact, I've been asked variations on the bartender's problem without actually knowing the answer themselves. When I explain how it works, I sometimes find they're so trapped in the illusion that they refuse to accept the answer. (Are you one of these...?)

The thing with computers is that yes, they are reliant on valid input, and false premises programmed in can be a stopping point, but if they have all the appropriate information, their lack of a brain means there's no psychological tricks you can employ to convince them not to explore the full search space.

Directgov farms out web content across Europe

Abroad...

"But the downside for some is that potentially sensitive government data ends up cached abroad. "

How many EU countries have weaker data protection than ours? (genuine question)

Jetpod 'flying taxi' inventor dies in prototype crash

RIP.

Condolences to family and loved ones.

He had the guts to put himself in the way of danger rather than a test pilot -- that makes him one of the good guys in my book.

Dell boxes VGA cable to within an inch of its life

Re: Meh

"Who uses VGA cables anyway"

Well at least analogue video has graceful degradation (hence colour changes when he wiggles the cable). Your HDMI cable either works or doesn't. That's digital for you.

Lad passes gruelling 'getting on bus' test

This is a train-based syllabus ill-advisedly applied to buses.

Where I come from, you need to start the process of getting off a bus before it comes to a halt. If you were to wait for the bus to stop and *then* get out of your seat, the driver would pull off again before you reached the exit. It's only trains that stop long enough at every stop for you to do that.

EPIC FAIL!!!!!11!!!!!1!!!

Cops taser naked doorbell-ringing giant

Tazers

Tazers save lives because they're used where the alternative would be lethal firearms. Like when you're chasing a flasher. With no weapon. And clearly nowhere to conceal one.

God bless the tazer.

When is an operating system not an operating system?

You want a lean OS, but a standard OS...?

OK, so you want a lean OS for efficiency in operation in a VM, and you want a standardised, non-customised OS for efficiency of support.

To me, that sounds like what you want is a microkernel OS. Microkernels are by nature lean and are dynamically self-optimising, giving you the best of both worlds.

The world and his dog has been crying out for a decent microkernel OS, but no-one has ever been willing to put the time in, instead developing more and more convoluted ways to patch, modify and blu-tack external code onto the major monolithic kernels.

If virtualisation finally provides the impetus for a truly world-class microkernel architecture, then virtualisation is indeed the way of the future.

Report: US planetsmash-asteroid scan running years late

1km in size...?

Oh tut-tut, El Reg, arbiter of all-things accurate, talks about space rocks "bigger than 1km in size." A three-dimensional object measured as a single dimensional scalar? I assume this is "longer than 1km".

I shall be cancelling my subscription etc (cont. p97)

How to hack a Sony Reader

Oooh... neat...

But it's still the best part of £200 and there's no expansion ports. Boo. :-(

Perseid meteor shower set to dazzle disappoint

Pointless in Scotland

Just before dawn?!? Do you know what time that is up here?!? Are they mad?!?

Boffins test cancer-stinging 'nano-bee' swarms in mice

No reports of zombie mice?!?!?

All lab rodents have been bred from albinos. What is the most remarkable feature of white/albino mice? Red eyes. What is the most unique feature of zombies? Red eyes.

So these scientists *can't know* that their lab rats aren't already zombies.

Run! Run for your lives!

Vulture 1: Calling all electronics wizards

So does that mean...

...you won't be using a ZX81 as the flight computer?

That just isn't cricket, old bean!

British boffin named first ever 'doctor of texting'

@Michael Miller

There are people who would say the same thing about a PhD in datamining, slightly brighter blue LED etc etc etc.

Just because it doesn't interest *you* doesn't mean it's not useful....

Increase in comms snooping? You ain't seen nothing yet

Re: LoL

@Mark,

Ah, but we're the *good guys* we have to break the rules in order to catch the guys who break the rules. How do I know we're the good guys? Well it's obvious, innit? Ahmadinejad uses a red laser pointer, while Whitehall uses green -- don't the bad guys always have red laser beams?

El Reg space paper plane christened Vulture 1

Re: Diminutive Crew?

@Vulch

"If I was a PlayMobil figure in El Reg's office I'd be getting worried and looking for escape routes about now..."

Why? Doesn't every PlayMobil figure look forward to its One Flight In Paris?

Apple denies censoring App Store swear words

Precedent...?

I'm quite sure we had dictionaries in my primary school that contained the words "shit" and "fuck". In fact, I distinctly remember looking them up and sniggering. "Bollocks", too.

There has never been age restrictions on buying dictionaries -- why change the status quo?

First success for vulture breeding programme

@Steve 70

It's a cycle of evil. You car drivers with your nasty petrol fumes run down bunnies and when the bunnies die the carrion birds come in and you kill them too.

You should be riding around on an organically farmed bicycle with jojoba wheels.

Bunny killer!

Google turns up nose at ebook monopoly claims

WTO -- can we have a w00t!?

So as this is clearly against the Berne Convention, can we assume that the EU (in the event of the settlement being cleared) will be raising this as a trade dispute? Can we have a referendum on what remedies we take?

I put my vote down for removing trademark protection on all US goods. Let's make "Coke", "MacDonalds" and "Domino's Pizza" into generic terms. And while we're at it, let's re-establish a geographical origin mark on "Budweiser" and ban Arheuser-Busch's banal brew from Europe.

MIPS open sources living room Android port

I'm confused... "open sourced"?

Hang on, they took an open-source OS and ported it. This means that the port was always open source. All they have done is make the source available independent of any (binary) software product -- the GPL would have been satisfied by simply providing the source to any purchaser of a MIPS Android product. However, as one of the purchasers would have made it publically anyway, that's a purely academic distinction.

So the story isn't "MIPS open sources living room Android port" but simply "MIPS living room Android port now available".

Powered robot suits make debut on Tokyo streets

@Charles9

But it wasn't the Japanese that got there first -- this very organ was reporting US Army cybersuits not so long ago...

What's Welsh for Orange?

If I was Welsh....

If I was Welsh I'd be raging, and I'd be considering a boycott of all Samsung products.

Why? Because damned if I'd let some trumped up electronics firm sell *my* language as a marketing ploy to some poxy little telecomms company.

If it's a service to the people, it shouldn't come with strings attached. Particularly given the spotty coverage Orange has in certain parts of rural Wales. To be fair, they're not any worse than the other mobile providers, but it's a bit off to be freezing out people just to try to upsell a few contracts with handsets.

Ah well, at least they didn't have the bare-faced cheek to try to sell them 3G handsets....

The Internet's most evil company?

To all the naysayers...

Where will we get our news from when the presses stop rolling and all the journos are made redundant? The people? On the internet, no-one can tell the difference between grass and astroturf. Remember that you get what you pay for, and if someone is willing to pay for the news, they'll pay.

Many journos may be lazy or corrupt, but they're held in check by the fact that they're paid for by the public. Once the only source of income comes in a brown paper envelope, whose news will it be...?

Gmail shoves 'on behalf of' feature to one side

I'm with Carl W on this one

Google are removing a valuable audit trail not because they want to, but because Microsoft have (once again) buggered up the user experience.

Why did MS bugger up the user experience?

I seem to remember that it was to stop scammers and spammers spoofing other people's addresses. And now they're just encouraging people to hide the originating address. Spoof, in other words.

>sigh<

Company wins US patent for podcasting

Overbroadness aplenty

"a method for providing episodic media, the method comprising: providing a user with access to a channel dedicated to episodic media, wherein the episodic media provided over the channel is pre-defined into one or more episodes by a remote publisher of the episodic media"

Hang on... "whereing the episodic media provided over the channel is pre-defined into one or more episodes"... "one or more episodes"... so they're claiming something can be "episodic" if it consists of only one, single "episode"...?

So is Psycho episodic? The Bridges of Madison County? Debbie Does Dallas?

Overbroadness abounds...

Philips Cinema 21:9 56in LCD TV

Re:On geometric progressions

Your calculations assume that all pixels are created equal.

A hint: pixels have aspect ratios too.

CIOs get £170k but helpdesk staffers settle for £6/hr

"the" southwest...?

" In the South-West you can expect to do even worse as an IT director "

The southwest of what? England? Scotland? Wales? The UK? It pays to be clear when you're talking stats.

Canadian uni catches the rebranding sniffles

I'm with the students.

If anyone is tempted to think all that "academic standards" and "professionality" stuff is a bit pretentious, I would ask them to scan their own degree certificate, and replace their university's logo with that laser-light-show-W one.

Then imagine how you would be showing the end result to a prospective employer. The might as well rebrand the whole place as Former Polytechnic of Toytown....

Fujifilm confirms 'world's first' 3D stills and films compact

Bet it'll be heavily compressed

I hold out very little hope that this will allow the recording of video at a low enough compression ratio to allow decent post-processing. Why bother offering the latest whizz-bang technology then crippling it to the level of an upmarket webcam?

ISP redesign unites the web in nausea

BBC...?

That looks like a BBC.. BE!

Now all it needs is classic space trading sim Elite and they've got a new customer!

Open source and the cloud: An unbalanced marriage

Total sales value? Irrelevant.

The total sales figure in dollars is a useless red herring. If "cloud computing" is indeed cheaper than "computer computing" then a low sales figure doesn't say anything about market share....