* Posts by EddieD

1117 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009

OFFICIAL: Smart meters won't be compulsory

EddieD

According to Scottish Power http://www.scottishpower.co.uk/support-centre/energy-efficiency/smart-metering.aspx they are due to start rolling out new meters this year - which is a problem, as they replaced my meter last year, as part of standard service - it had been in use for more than 15 years.

It doesn't appear to be a smart meter - well, certainly no smarter than the one that I used to have, and they still want to call round to read it...

Given the mess that the installer made (I was picking tiny fragments of copper swarf from the carpet for weeks) I hope that they don't want to come back...I hope that this gives me the right to say stuff it...

Airbrushed Rachel Weisz gets watchdog hot under the collar

EddieD

Recent viral video...

http://vimeo.com/34813864

Hilarious, well made, and accurate.

Bill Gates' ass slams into iPhone

EddieD

Meh...

Gorilla.bas was better.

Sky to open net telly channels to all

EddieD

I do - or at least did - watch live telly - the Formula 1 coverage.

EddieD

For me, a Sky package is not an option - I don't have a telly :)

All I watch, I stream via iPlayer/4OD/Tvcatchup - and FWIW, I do have a tv license...

I think that certainly for the first few races, they'll offer them at a loss-leading price - to tempt the terrestrial viewers.

How much would I pay - which was your question, after all - I'd go a fiver a race - maybe a tenner if it's a particularly good one, or, the start of the season - any more than that, I'm willing to wait and watch the catch ups - I became a fan in the very early 70s, when coverage was scant, at best. Towards the end of last year, I started connecting only about 3 mins before the start of the race, and ignored all the build up, it's the race that's important, all the other flim flam I can get from the net.

All the best,

EddieD

I'd better buy my long spoon now...

'Cos if they stream Sky F1 as pay to view, I'm there...

Facebook to shove Timeline in EVERYONE'S face soon

EddieD

Lots of workarounds...

I had a quick looksee, and the chaps at Facebook purity have various answers (I'm using a user agent spoofer to pretend firefox is IE7) to remove the timeline view.

I'm going to tolerate it just long enough to delete all the old crap lying around my account (17 albums of rather mediocre snaps...)

And is it just me, or does "frictionless sharing" sound like something dodgy you'd do with a tube of KY?

Telly makers failing to turn punters on to smart TV

EddieD

One statistic missing...

Those without TVs (like me) who use purely IP offerings - and whether that is going to increase or decrease

Plus is king now: Google shutters more products

EddieD

Getting silly...

How long till google, like apple before them, try to copyright the English lexicon by placing a + trailing after each word?

Bloody Diots.

HP, RIM, ARM among thousands in ICANN dot-brand ban

EddieD

Let the horse trading begin...again...

It has happened before - our senior sysadmin has pointed out that we were never meant to be .uk, but .gb - which would exclude the Northern Irish part, so we got .uk from the Ukraine - hence the less logical .ua that they have.

When are we going to see .co.usa instead of .com, one wonders.

Europe exposes its stiff data protection law this week

EddieD

Doubt it will work

Cue wailing a gnashing of teeth from Facebook, Google, Bing, Banks, credit agencies etc.

This is going to be met with such a barrage of lobbying that whatever comes out of it will be, from the public point of view, diluted to uselessness. Not only that, it will probably be delayed long enough that Ms Redding is no longer around, and by then they may have lobbied someone more malleable into the rôle.

As for Justice Minister Mr Kenneth Clarke, this guy is currently trying to weasel the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights, which for all it's high-handedness, does represent an independent voice of justice for the citizens of Europe, so I really don't think that he's the right person to comment on anything that is designed to give rights to the common person.

Alcohol DOUBLES LIFESPAN, helps resist stress

EddieD
Thumb Up

I love you, you're my besht mate...

Please, please, please, keep these stories coming...seeing the horror stories on the BBC fair turns my evening drinkie into vinegar - but tonight, I can savour my tankard of scrumpy, and raise a toast - long live research worms!

Have a good night

Government launches hydrogen motoring task force

EddieD

Kryten says..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPi8EhT_fYA

A bit old, but kinda sums up my feelings.

With the sound up NSFW. Really. With no sound, pointless...

Apple offers cash for old kit

EddieD

Bloody hell..

First we overcharge for MOR tech, then we underreward for recycling....

7quid for an original iPhone in perfect order? Sod that. Put it in its original box, put it in the back of a cupboard, wait till your grandkids are skint and auction it...

Oddly, there was a good article on Radio4 about the future value of old mobies, and which to collect (not many, yet) a few days ago.

Wikipedia to shut down Wednesday in SOPA protest

EddieD

Wikipedia...

One of the profs here came up with the comment "wikipedia is not as inaccurate as the people who say it is inaccurate are".

Kudos to Jimmy and his team, it may be a portion of self interest, but it is going to alert a large number of folk who wouldn't hear of it - I don't think I've heard anything about SOPA in the British media, except on the Today program, which isn't exactly the massest of media - if nothing else, it will inspire comment.

Child labour, lost wages uncloaked by Apple factories audit

EddieD

Apple this and that...

I've no love for the folk at Cupertino, but to single them out is a little disingenuous - as in this article http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-child-labor-2012-1 - you have to read till the bottom of the article to find this small, parenthetic comment:-

(Not that Apple is the only company choosing to avoid American labor rules and costs, of course — almost all manufacturing companies that want to survive, let alone thrive, have to reduce production costs and standards by making their products elsewhere.)

Indeed, it is to the credit of Apple that they are publishing this list, perhaps it is a sign that they will be a little more careful in future as to their partners.

For years our jeans and trainers and all the other goodies we take for granted have been made in countries where dubious working conditions are the norm - we've known about this for decades, but little is done. Hopefully, as the GDP of these countries increases, workers rights will increase as did workers rights in the UK during the industrial revolution - where conditions were as bad as the ones mentioned.

Cutting off your nose to spite your face and boycotting these products is probably futile at an individual level, but lobbying your representatives may help - exposure by responsible journalism, probably more so.

Raspberry Pi Linux micro machine enters mass production

EddieD

When I was a lad, I used tobacco tins (which I was given by teachers at school - honest...) to build guitar effects in...I think this would fit...

http://www.shivaheadshop.co.uk/shop/tobacco_tins___pouches/2oz_airtight_tobacco_tins/index.html

Something for all tastes there

Apple said to threaten legal action over Steve Jobs doll

EddieD

Even more irrelevant...

I don't think that the descendants of Peter the Apostle, currently domiciled in the Vatican, have done that badly by exploiting the image of the Nazarene. No-one is quite sure as to the current value of the Roman Catholic church, but it's in the billions (pending lawsuits notwithstanding).

Add in the value of all the competing franchises, and that's not a small amount of wonga.

2011's Best... compact cameras

EddieD

Arghhh...

I posted about how great I think modern dSLRs are recently, and technically, that goes for all these cameras. My wee Nikon S502 iirc (which I got for a cycling holiday and then gave to my mum) gave cracking results.

Thing is though, I cannot get used to using the back screen as a viewfinder, I find it evil...(sorry).

I think - probably wrongly - that I get more stability when I hold the camera up as I can use my elbows as support, and it just feels more "right" to look though an eye-level viewfinder, so I'd plump for the Fujifilm...till I looked at the price.

I think the idea of the EVIL cameras is wonderful, but I'll stick to my dSLR, and my tired (but still working very well) Minolta Z3

Benchmarks are $%#&@!!

EddieD

There's only one benchmark worth using...

Ask yourself - is it fast enough?

If yes - great, take the rest of the day off.

If no - buy a bigger machine.

Doctor Who girl Amy Pond axed in 'heartbreaking' exit

EddieD

Aha...

Not quite true - at the end of the series "The Green Death" Jo Grant went off with the hippy Prof to get married, the Doctor presenting her with the blue crystal from Metebelis 3 which they subsequently returned 'cos the Amazonians thought it was an ill omen, giving it back to the 3rd doctor just in time for it to finalise the matrix for the giant spiders leading to the regeneration to the 4th doctor...okay okay okay I'll get my coat

(I seem to remember Sarah Jane staying with the Sailor guy at when she left the 4th doctor, so they did have romantic attachments is all I'm getting at...)

2011's Best... DSLRs

EddieD

Probably the kiss of death for them,

But I'm going to get a K5 (I used to have a Minolta...and look what happened to them..) - I currently have a K-x, which has been superb, and was bought based on the review in this very organ, but given that I walk up mountains in mid-winter, I think a weather sealed camera might be an idea.

The ability to use all my old KA mount lenses was the clincher -good glass is good glass, and my 20-30 year old lenses work wonders on the new cameras, and the old 50mm f1.4 is absolutely peerless for night work.

As for the reviews - it's hard now to find distinctions between the big 2, and it comes down to what you prefer, and what one user finds ergonomic, the next user thinks is the biggest pile of cack ever.

I think it would be hard to be disappointed with modern dSLRs.

Winamp mends trio of old-school security holes

EddieD

Ok, let's see...

Choose install components, choose languages, choose skin, choose associations...

And then, when I click finish, a User Account Control window appears....

Then, sending in user information...

Leave things as they were guys...nothing else...

EddieD

Is the installer still stuck in 1999?

If I'm upgrading, I expect the installer to look at my current preferences, and use them, something that winamp seems extremely reluctant to do - it appears to be waiting for me to get careless, so that it can usurp all my audio associations - which last time took me a while to sort out...

Is Bill Gates mulling a return to Microsoft throne?

EddieD
Joke

"Microsoft told us that they do not comment on rumour and speculation"

At least they tell you something...unlike other computer companies...

Domesday Book put on touchscreen at Bletchley Park

EddieD

We use this as a cautionary tale

Whenever the gnarly subject of data archiving comes up...and the beauty of open standards - ink on vellum - sorted. Proprietary disk format with proprietary data format and proprietary disk reader - not sorted.

Voyager probe reaches edge of Solar System's 'bubble'

EddieD
Mushroom

Time for a rant...

Won't be much of one, I promise...

What tech from 34 years ago still has the power to make us go "Wow!" like the stories of the Voyager probes do? How awesome does it seem that the probes that were constructed on a (relative) shoestring, boosted millions of miles across space /continue/ to massively outlive the projected lifespans and send more data than we could have ever possibly imagined?

Yet the stupid twunts in power cut the budgets.

At a time when we are seriously starved of feelgood stories, when the world spends more on killing each other in a week than they do on space in a year (15B$ on nasa, 1+T$ on military), when we need something to prove that cutting edge research not only gives results, but gives results that make folk sit up and look at the universe.

Sometimes I wonder if it's worth digging our way out of a hole.

Feel better for that. Cheers.

El Reg's life of Steve Jobs - now available on Kindle

EddieD

Less than an eggnog latte..

And considerably less appetising...

UK.gov to require you to opt out of data-sharing plan with drug firms

EddieD

England only, AFAIK...

According to a David Willetts on the Today program on Radio 4 yesterday morning, it's already happened in Scotland (about 2:18, but life is too short to fight with the damn awful seek in the BBC's iPlayer). I certainly wasn't asked about this, and will ask my GP when I next see him...

NASA probe now closer than ANY OTHER spacecraft to Pluto

EddieD
Joke

Hmm, non-PC

Shouldn't it be Planet of Restricted Growth?

No Samsung ban for Apple in US

EddieD

Interesting analysis here...

http://www.sluice.com.pk/?p=482

Nokia is past its best-by date, warns analyst

EddieD

Standard and Poor

The guys who judged the US sub-prime lending as AAA, and then watched the world go to hell in a handbag as debt defaults spiralled.

The guys who failed to notice the credit crunch on the horizon - which even someone as bewildered as Vince Cable saw months earlier...

Does anyone take anything they now say seriously?

And if so, why?

Ravens' secret sign code probed

EddieD
Joke

You have to wonder...

If behavioural psychologists who study corvids ask "bred any good rooks lately?" when they meet at conferences.

(With apologies to Rory Bremner from whom I nicked it...)

Zuckerberg submits privacy mea culpa after FTC ruling

EddieD

If you believe that Facebook has changed

Can I interest you in some Enron shares?

Monetisation of user data is the way Facebook makes profits - restrictions on the use of this data would restrict their income, hence they will skirt laws as far as they can, and then, as with other companies, if they get found out, all that happens is that their bean counters do is re-calculate the net profit that they made, after the trifling fines are deducted (looking to a profit of 1 billion this year - fines are how much?)

The main problem is not that the fines are too small - which is true - but that the vast user base (present commentator included) don't throw their toys out of the pram, but continue, in increasing numbers, to use the service, regardless of what we hear about privacy violations.

Einstein allegedly made the trite aphorism "only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, but I'm not sure about the first one" - and one of the annoying thing about trite aphorisms is that they are generally accurate.

iPhone 4/4S 'self combusts' in airliner inferno

EddieD

Needs some brown sugar, raisins and cream.

Well, that's how I serve baked apples, anyway.

Or possibly a layer of crumble.

Li-ion batteries can go foom for a variety of reasons - I wonder if he was charging it from the sockets some flights have for laptops, and it overcharged - or any one of a number of other possibilities.

Anyways, bring them on - as Alan Denman says above, the more these sort of things happen, the less chance of having to put up with loud-mouthed reps trying to be heard over the obligatory baby cries.

Genetically modified mutants 'safe for release' into the wild

EddieD

Hang on

Didn't they say similar things about rabbits, cane toads and many other wonderfully successful introductions of alien species?

Personally I don't give a damn whether they release them or not, but scientists have cried wolf a few times too often about such things.

Swearing fine quashed as teens have heard it all before

EddieD

There was a similar case about a decade ago in Glasgow

A cop brought "verbal abuse" charges against a footy fan at a Derby who used the "F" word - the judge just asked the cop if ever he'd used such expressions himself, yes, ah, case dismissed.

I try to not swear, mainly because there are other many other words which tend to be more effective, but I would recommend that folk look out the marvellous "Usage of the Word Fuck" - variously ascribed to Monty Python, George Carlin, Dennis Leary - but apparently the most familiar audio file was actually recorded by the Disney voice over guy Jack Wagner.

'Occupy Flash' web hippies aim to rid world of Adobe plugin

EddieD

Love it.

I'll do it in a, well, flash. Sorry about that. I resisted installing Flash on my computers for ages, but soon I had to give in. I'd love to switch to HTML5, I keep all my browsers up to date, ready for it.

Minor problem though - I'd lose most of the content that I view on the web e.g. the BBC, for the present time.

Soon though, I will relish the thought of no more Flash apps - the sooner the better.

Are you listening BBC, TVcatchup, 4OD...

(If any of those do work with HTML5, please correct me, and point me to other content sites that will work with HTML5)

Microsoft and Samsung uncloak slimmer Surface

EddieD

Just released?

I'm pretty sure that the archeologists who were shown on the BBC program Egypt's lost cities were using one of the mark 2s - they certainly had a big square display object hanging on a wall that responded to touch, pinch zoom etc - and that was filmed over 12 months ago.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011pwms

Britain's Harrier jump-jets reprieved to fly and fight again

EddieD

Damn...

I hoped I could pick one up second hand on the cheap...

I do approve of this, it may not be the fastest or most powerful machine, but it fills many different niches pretty well - pretty much (in my, very amateur, opinion) a swiss army knife among military jets.

And besides, it's nearly unique - something British that's pretty darn good - better than the competition.

The new touchy-feely Doctor Who trend: Worrying

EddieD

Simples...

The current Dr Whos are written for the touchy-feely US market.

Enough said.

Go back to the future with Red Dwarf

EddieD

Argh...

I'm sorry, but tv series have a natural span, and unless I'm very wrong, and I hope I am, Red Dwarf has gone past it's sell by date.

I hope I'll be wrong, I'd love a new series to work, but I'm not really looking forward to this one

Eurozone crisis: We're all dooomed! Here's why

EddieD

Last person out, please turn out the lights....

I'm just peeved that I lived a quiet life of simple virtue, never got into debt, and now have no chance to get all those wonderful consumer durables, and then default on the repayments.

Any chance we'll start a new credit bubble so I can play this time?

Silly question of course, it's not if, but when....

George Santayana would love it.

(PS Great article, but I still think that some way will be found to sort things, but it will be one that accidentally cedes even greater powers to the Financial Sector... OTOH, if the corporations take over, we may get Rollerball...it's not all bad)

Pollution from car exhausts 'helps city dwellers fight stress'

EddieD

Umm...

Bollocks.

I'm minded of the sequence in Catch 22 when Milo Minderbinder tries to get Yossarian to eat chocolate covered cotton arguing that even though it's disgusting, it's his patriotic duty to eat it.

As wikipedia says "inhaling even relatively small amounts of the gas can lead to hypoxic injury, neurological damage, and even death." Okay, it's wikipedia, but it does seem to tie up with what I learned during my career as a biologist.

It isn't a narcotic, it's a vapourised lobotomy.

Chell clips Cant to top Play School presenter slot

EddieD

Not only..

..but also...

Check out tvcream.co.uk for more frightening reminders of 70s media...

And no Toni Arthur? Outrage man, outrage...

BeWeather

EddieD

BBC weather

Is very much a curate's egg - possibly because they tend to aggregate large areas and take little account of local oddities. Wunderground tends to be more accurate - certainly for Edinburgh.

Scottish FOI watchdog reports 20% boost in appeals

EddieD

What's the puzzle?

Edinburgh Trams and Statutory notice debacles alone would generate that increase in FOI requests IMO. Add in increasing concerns with PPP/PFI deals, and just general public awareness of SICO the rise isn't so big...

The Beeb is broken

EddieD

But no news is not good news, so luckily

news.bbc.co.uk (or www.bbc.co.uk/news) seemed to be more resilient. Phew.

Is your old hardware made of gold, or just DIRT?

EddieD

This may be apocryphal

But I heard that someone once bought a defunct Cray-1 for the 'binary sum of $10101.01' and managed to salvage enough gold from the contacts to make a profit.

It /is/ just about possible, but not probably for the likes of thee and me...

It's time to end the Windows Wait

EddieD

This article is so pointless, even by tabloid standards.

The OS is irrelevant. Our magnetic media iMacs and Macbooks are no better than our similarly equipped PCs, and our SSD PCs are no worse than our SSD equipped Macs.

Are you perchance regretting the money you spent on your toy?