* Posts by Sorry that handle is already taken.

3186 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009

Cops think Mt Gox meltdown was an 'INSIDE JOB' – report

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@AC

Virtual/digital/crypto/whatever currencies aren't "no different", because they're not backed by governments or central banks with an interest in them remaining stable.

Fill 'er up: 'Leccy car firm Tesla brings back PUMP SERVICE

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FAIL

Re: Cartropolis

I wonder if female car enthusiasts have to state their penis size too?

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Re: Too bad...

Do go on. Don't be shy AC.

Dotcom 'saved' Xmas for Xbox – but no one can save Sony's titsup PlayStation Network

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Re: AlbertH

But can you identify something Microsoft released that works properly?

Its mice are great.

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AlbertH

I was all set to "upvote" that, until I got to your final comment. I imagined your spittle-flecked screen and chuckled inwardly as I hit the down arrow.

1,000mph ROCKET CAR project dogged by beancounters

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Fundraising

I have a feeling that every Reg reader who wants to might already have done so, but it might have been worth mentioning that they also take donations from the public on their website. They'll even stick your name (in 8pt type...) on the substantial vertical tail if you do!

Christmas Eve email asked Oz telcos for metadata retention costs by Jan 9th

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Re: Meta data and its lies

Are they weasel words, or just ignorance on the part of whoever drafted it?

Tesla parades sleek model body and fab batt at Roadster fans

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"Thinks"?

Tesla thinks all these changes will lead to a 400-mile range for the car, compared to the original model's 245 miles.

I suspect they've done some testing.

Soon everyone will be doing it with a strap-on: The Reg's 20 festive wearables

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Re: Number 2

You beat me to it. Looks very balloon knotty indeed.

Friday: SpaceX will attempt to land rocket on floating, robotic 'spaceport drone ship'

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Re: KABOOM time?

A rocket tends not to carry much more fuel than it needs to.

Sony Pictures email hack: The bitter 'piracy war' between Google and Hollywood laid bare

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I can't help but think that if Google gave you the raw, unmanipulated output of a search's results, it would be next to useless to you.

Tesla confirms Australian launch date

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When will those pesky unions learn?

Wait a minute. If you expect Australians, who have be able to afford to live in Australia, to work for similar wages to those that these companies pay in Southeast and Central Asia, thus remaining price competitive, then you've suffered a quite a few too many blows to the head.

And what the hell brought on this rant of yours anyway?

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The Australia Tax

Or, more correctly, the absence thereof.

Tesla's Australian launch pricing is, to within a couple of thousand dollars, the US market price with currency exchange and GST added. Well done Tesla (although no less than we should expect).

Uber? Worth $40 BEEELLION? Hey, actually, hold on ...

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Re: Robot cabs? 5 minutes

Automatic weaving loom factories were burnt down by the people whose jobs were replaced in the early days too.

This sounds like the local feral operators taking out competition in the form of other small operators. I wonder whether they'd survive taking on Google...

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Re: Driverless internet gypsy cab? What could go wrong?

So no comparison of relative safety statistics could ever convince you?

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Re: Maintenance

My petrol powered car goes for about 200 hours between services and about 10 hours between refuelling stops, so it's not like each vehicle needs one dedicated support person. When you're supporting a fleet of identical vehicles, even major services can be performed reasonably quickly.

Transition to electric vehicles and the service interval becomes much longer. Recharging might become an issue if it's required more than once a day, which (based on current EV range) it probably will be if the vehicles are in service 24 hours.

I can only speculate about what the cleaning requirements would be, but there are ways to encourage people to treat the vehicles with respect...

Telstra's NBN boondoggle nearly set in stone: reports

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Re: Is this now more expensive than the FTTP alternative?

the reality of Labor's plan was 50% connected at 12Mbps and almost no one on 1Gbps. Too many people have been distracted by the shiny fibre and failed to actually read what Labor were promising.

Apologies if I've misunderstood you, but Labor's plan promised everyone the choice of any speed they wanted.

Man asks internet for $1k for pebbles. INTERNET SAYS YES

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Re: got some whisky stones for christmas lat year

I once got an IOU for whisky stones for christmas. It sits there unredeemed.

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CADmonkey

You have to be drinking pretty quickly for an icecube to make a difference to your alcohol absorption!

I need a password to BRAKE? What? No! STOP! Aaaargh!

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Re: windscreen wipers?

Love the engine sound - sounds like a supercharger hard at work :).

No superchargers here, just a naturally aspirated V8. The whining noise is the meshing of the straight cut gears in the transaxle. Strong, but also noisy.

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Re: windscreen wipers?

Conversely, you could ask "why bother disconnecting them?" The engineers have a (probably very long) list of more important things to worry about.

And when they're ready, self-driving cars will still carry passengers who will probably want to be able to see out of them.

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Re: windscreen wipers?

Probably rain sensing.

THIS is how to drive a Volvo.

Toyota to launch hydrogen (ie, NATURAL GAS) powered fuel cell hybrid

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Re: re:Electrolysis of brine produces as much chlorine as hydrogen

My mistake. I realised that and deleted the post before checking whether you'd responded. Whoops.

Samsung Galaxy Note 4: Spawn of Galaxy Alpha and a Note 3 unveiled

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Facepalm

Why bother reviewing phones.

They're only going to be better than last year's model.

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Headmaster

A quantum leap...

...is a very small thing indeed.

Sorry, that one's always bugged me.

Far Cry 4 review: It's a far cry from Far Cry 3

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Re: Not quite sure...

I found FC2 to be annoyingly repetitive. There were only a handful of mission types, and then the constantly respawning checkpoints with the lazy reasoning that "we haven't told our guys that you're working for us so they'll still shoot at you, and feel free to shoot back(?!), in fact we don't even care if you kill them all, repeatedly". The weapon durability mechanic was a bit silly too, some of the guns would visibly rust as you were firing them. I think one of them was so fragile that you could carry more ammunition than it could fire before breaking.

I enjoy open world games, but I also like a fast travel system that works (i.e. not FC2's buses). Once I've cleared an area, I don't want to have to fight through it again to get to the next mission.

I thought that FC3 was better in those respects and despite some criticisms, and some of the other weirdness that occurs, I think it's a better game. Blood Dragon trumped both of them though.

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Re: Not quite sure...

Was I the only person who wanted bad things to happen to the whiny PC and his whiny friends?

The crafting didn't seem like much thought had gone into it either. If I want to be able to carry $2k I need to stab a pig, but if I want to be able to carry $6k I need to stab a shark. It is a mystery.

I'M SO SORRY, sobs Rosetta Brit boffin in 'sexist' sexy shirt storm

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Re: @Mike Bell

If we must argue semantics, is it difficult to accept that feminism is a subset of egalitarianism?

They both strive for equality. Feminism focuses on equality between men and women, while egalitarianism also encompasses equality of politics, race, class, economics, justice and religion, to name just a few.

Advocating for sexual or gender equality is almost necessarily a feminist position because that's where the imbalance generally lies. The day that feminism (or any form of sexual/gender advocacy) is no longer necessary will be a very good day.

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Re: I would suggest...

Never apologise for being yourself.

That's a very absolute statement.

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@Mike Bell

Feminism isn't about equality?

Perhaps you should take that up with Cambridge, Collins, Merriam-Webster and Oxford, hmm?

If only 0.006% care about BLOOD-SOAKED METAL ... why are we spending all this cash?

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Re: Revealed preferences

Part of the problem with the argument (popular in the USA) "if you think the government should have more money you're perfectly free to donate it" is that it's a unilateral and largely meaningless gesture.

I would not personally donate money to a government, because that is almost meaningless on its own. What meaningful work is the government going to do with another thousand dollars? I would however vote for a tax increase within my marginal bracket, because the result of that would be tangible and significant, and everyone can be satisfied that everyone else is contributing equally.

Having a Web Summit? Get some decent Wi-Fi!

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Re: What? Techies that don't have their own mobile data plan?

Accidental Socratic Irony?

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Headmaster

"the première European tech conference of the year"

November's a bit late for trying to be the first one of the year.

Taylor Swift dumps Spotify: It’s not me, it’s you

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I wonder if that pricing disparity will encourage artists to write music that people want to listen to more than a handful of times.

The Great Smartphone Massacre: Android bloodbath gathers pace

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Re: Dear Sony.

This is odd. Kogan AU has 32GB Nexus 5s in stock but Kogan UK doesn't. I wonder if it lets you buy from a different region?

Russians hear Tim Cook is gay, pull dead Steve Jobs' enormous erection

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Facepalm

Re: Someday

You're right. One day there might be no more homophobes.

Until then.

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Windows XP market share fell off a cliff in October

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Facepalm

Re: Graph? what graph?

Now I can see a cliff!

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Re: Graph? what graph?

I can see a graph, but what I can't see is a cliff.

Snapper's decisions: Whatever happened to real photography?

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As photons don’t scale, smaller photosites just get noisier, which is why cameras in iPhones croak in the dark.

Mobile phone cameras croak because their sensors are small, not because their photosites are small. The total amount of noise in an image is much more a function of sensor size (by orders of magnitude) than of photosite size.

Medium format pixel counts continue to rise to pointless numbers, with the unsurprising result that noise becomes a problem. Don’t worry, you can get noise reduction software that reduces the noise, and the resolution, again.

And it's no more true for medium format than it is for the tiny sensors in mobile phones. In fact, smaller pixels give you increased spatial resolution that you can then either keep (when lighting is good) or trade off against reduced noise in a way that is better than simply averaging the pixel values (as larger pixels are effectively doing).

Hey, YouTube lovers! How about you pay us, we start paying for STUFF? - Google

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Re:

I was going to suggest that a footballer does a whole lot more work to earn that year's salary than writing one inexplicably popular K-pop track, but I agree.

Silicon Valley scrooges paid staff $1.21 an hour in a 122-hour week

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Re: How dare he/she...

The "even" says to me "we'd do it to everyone and enjoy it, if only it weren't for these pesky laws".

Am I reading too much into it?

Sporty in all but name: Peugeot 308 e-THP 110

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Re: Car reviews

Did you miss the Caterham review from a couple of days ago?

Caterham Seven 160 review: The Raspberry Pi of motoring

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Blimey

Being from down under, I had no idea that people modify their plates just to move a space. Our rego plates are still handed out sequentially but can easily be changed, and you can request any character combination in the standard format for a fee. If you pay enough, you can have any combination of letters and numbers that you like, up to the character limit (seven in most places, nine in some) and within the bounds of taste.

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What would the bored traffic cop's objection be with the number plate?

OnePlus One cut-price Android phone on sale to all... for 1 HOUR

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Headmaster

What I really want...

...is for people to say invitation when they mean invitation.