* Posts by Dale 3

414 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jun 2009

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That steady diet of EastEnders is turning her into a shrew

Dale 3

Control group

So where's the control group of women who didn't watch the soap or the violent show before having their level of aggression measured?

Judge nixes Apple's bid to patent-bash bankrupt Kodak

Dale 3

"previews of a digital image on an LCD screen"

Which part of 19th century photography involved digital images and LCD screens? Just askin'.

Google to app devs: Use our pay system ... OR ELSE

Dale 3

Re: hm.

Perhaps requires an investigation that invokes use of words such as "antitrust", "price-fixing", "cartel" and perhaps even "racketeering" if one tries hard enough.

BBC iPlayer boss: smart TVs not sufficiently simple

Dale 3

IPTV through EPG

Connecting to the IPTV services (especially catch-ups like IPlayer) through the EPG is basically what you want. A consistent user experience with just one place to go to look for programmes. If it is on now, switch the tuner over to that channel and watch it. If it is on later, set up a recording. If it was on earlier, stream it over the network.

No need for a huge SLOW website-like interface for old programmes, which looks different from the grid-like interface you use for future programmes, which is hard for mother-in-law to understand, which means phone calls to me. (Basically I measure simplicity - and therefore suitability for public use - on an inverse scale of number of phone calls.)

Powerful, wallet-sized Raspberry Pi computer sells out in SECONDS

Dale 3
Facepalm

Re: Pre-Order

My mother-in-law bought an object in an M&S sale for the sole reason that it cost 50p. She had absolutely no idea what it was, but "it was cheap!" and she simply can't walk past a "bargain". (It turned out to be a USB hub, so quite a good deal theoretically if not for the fact I already have two.)

iPad 3 launch news pushes Apple shares to $500bn high

Dale 3
Pint

Re: Re: Balls

Well I DID invest, and I am the proud owner of 5 shares. If the rumours turn out to be true, £6.26 of that $7B dividend is mine! (Less 15% dividend tax, of course.) Drinks all round.

Intel 520 240GB SSD

Dale 3

Power consumption

I imagine most people are most interested in SSDs for their speed. The next most interesting number to me is power consumption. It's a shame that it doesn't feature much in these reviews.

My laptop runs continuously, mostly used as a desktop replacement rather than being lugged around. I was keen to replace the HDD with a SSD to increase reliability and lower power consumption, until I discovered that most SSD seem to have about the same power consumption as the equivalent HDD. That was disappointing. Would be nice if power consumption were included in the summary box.

New patent will give iPhone screen interactive 3D

Dale 3

Good

Just remember to hold it right.

Phone maker punts AA-powered blower

Dale 3

Talk time?

I wonder what sort of talktime you get with a single AA battery and a phone wanting to transmit at up to 2W?

Vint Cerf: 'The internet is not a human right'

Dale 3

The only way

"It is however on its way to become one by the nature of being the only way (or the only sensible no/low cost way) to do things."

Even if the internet did become the only way to communicate, that still wouldn't make it a basic human right. The human right would still be to communicate; the internet would still be simply a medium through which we could exercise the right to communicate (albeit a very important medium).

Punctured Google+ leaks bored users

Dale 3

Google+

I can't really be bothered to sign up. I'm probably not the only one.

iPad 3 to debut Q3 2012 as iPad 4

Dale 3

Subscribe

I'm surprised they don't just distrubute these products on a subscription basis. People are paying annually anyway, might as well do it with a standing order.

Corning launches can-stand-the-heat Lotus glass for phones

Dale 3
Boffin

Coefficient, not unit

It's a coefficient, not a unit. You could determine it experimentally by measuring the length (or volume) of a piece of the material at one temperature, and then again at another temperature, and then divide the two measurements. Because you are dividing the same units the resulting ratio has no units. If you then divide it by the temperature difference you get the coefficient, whose unit is "per degree C". Hence "33.9 * 10^-7 / degree C".

Apple flat-screen TV rumor rises yet again

Dale 3

iTV

What a shame ITV is already taken. Lawyers, on your marks...

Just seven solar cars reach Adelaide alive

Dale 3
Headmaster

"under their own steam"

I thought they were supposed to be solar powered?

Sorry :-(

This just in: Brussels shatters CRT cartel

Dale 3

The LCD cartel

Don't you worry about that. The EU is expecting to Fast Track the investigation into alleged LCD cartel activity in 2024. As soon as the laserdisk investigation is finished.

Chocolate weighed in Schwarzeneggers: Official

Dale 3
Pint

Fab article

A tremendous return to form. Too many of the new writers seem to have lost the writing style that makes El Reg such a delight to read. Thank you, Mr Haines.

WikiLeaks memoir races to 537th on bestseller chart

Dale 3

Scan

Actually 644 people have bought it and are in the process of scanning it. I guess that accounts for the low sales; everyone else is waiting for the upload to finish.

Ofcom begins crackdown on auto-renew telco contracts

Dale 3
Boffin

Google Calendar

I use a Google Calendar to set up long range reminders on the dates that the various long term things expire, including contracts, savings account special bonus rates, energy fixes, credit card 0% deals, etc. Set it up to email yourself a reminder a few weeks before so you have time to switch. I would prefer not to have ARCs but if you have any that aren't subject to the OFCOM ruling, this is one way to cope with them.

Zalman ZM-VE200 portable virtual Rom drive

Dale 3

DVD-R

Is there a CD-R or DVD-R capable version of these? The wife's netbook wants to create its restore media on an actual DVD-R and won't simply create an ISO, which would have been the sensible alternative. One of these to create an ISO would be really convenient.

Ofcom pilots paid-for voting and compo rules for broadcasters

Dale 3

My vote counts

Pay real money for a negligible vote in a choice that doesn't matter, for an outcome that makes no difference to anything.

It's entertaining, I suppose.

Australian bank to run trial with human teller in ATM

Dale 3
Boffin

speak to live tellers via touch screens

If you would like to make a deposit, touch my nose. If you would like to check your balance, touch my left ear. If you would like to make a deposit, poke me in the eye...

Intel: Apple has online app sales exactly backwards

Dale 3
WTF?

The traditional model

@Mark 65 hit the nail on the head (so to speak). Retail tradition is having lots of different stores for different things. That's exactly what Intel's AppUp product is, and exactly what Apple's App Store isn't.

Everything the Intel guy said was "wrong" with Apple should in fact be applied to his own product. Maybe he should have another look at Apple's sales statistics before commenting how wrong Apple is. They seem to be doing rather well actually.

Mobee Magic Charger

Dale 3

Charging mouse mat

When I saw the headline I thought I would get an article about someone finally making a mousemat with a built-in charging coil. Nope. Looks like that patent is still waiting to be grabbed.

The possible advantages are smaller or lower capacity batteries making the mouse lighter, and it can be continuously charged. Or, thanks to USB to the mat, it can switch off the mat until the charge drops below 50%, to avoid running the charger constantly.

Heathrow to get new facial recognition scanners

Dale 3
FAIL

Sea borders

Hey, don't say they don't do security theatre at the UK sea borders. Last year while travelling out of Dover on a coach trip, our coach was randomly pulled out for screening, and 5 bags were randomly pulled out of the hold for X-raying.

Fair enough, I suppose, random searches for drugs and so on. But then the 5 owners of the 5 bags were required to get off the bus and also walk through the metal detector. Now what, do you suppose, was that meant to achieve? They didn't search the coach itself, so anyone with contraband on his person is surely just going to leave it behind on the coach.

Many sites cookie-track users regardless of opt-outs

Dale 3
Facepalm

Not surprising

This is not at all surprising. Do we put signs outside our houses saying, "please don't steal my stuff", or do we use locks and keys? If you don't want websites tracking you, you don't do it by asking them not to track you, you do it by preventing them from tracking you.

All aboard the flash array train?

Dale 3
Go

CRT vs LCD

This is reminiscent of a few years ago when CRT monitors were standard and LCDs on their way. I remember looking forward eagerly to the day we all knew was coming, when LCDs would be the norm and nobody bothered with CRT any more. How far away it seemed. I guess it won't too much longer before we are thinking of spinning disks as somewhat quaint, but antiquated.

Google kills sickly health, energy projects

Dale 3

Health records with a social element

Sounds like a great idea. Status updates would be colourful to say the least. Who wouldn't want all their friends commenting on their latest illnesses and afflictions?

Fridge-sized war raygun for US bombers gets $40m

Dale 3
Boffin

Fridge sized

Shirley all they need is to add a fridge-sized fridge to solve the cooling problem?

Mozilla pushes out final Firefox 5 test build

Dale 3

Version number catch-up

I presume they are just trying to get Firefox version numbers to catch-up with IE, to help out consumers who think IE11 is better than FF3 because the number is higher.

Cornish cow plucked from jaws of death by Navy chopper

Dale 3
Go

Typhoon

I think it would have been quite entertaining to witness a Typhoon attempting this job. Surprising for the cow, but entertaining for everyone else.

New Bluetooth profiles for heart rate, body temp kit

Dale 3
Go

Creative profiles?

Ok, so here's the question, what other creative profiles can El Reg readers come up with? This should be fun.

I'll start with Coffee Pot Profile, which sends an alert to your Bluetooth enabled device to tell you how full the coffee pot is. (This crucial function, incidentally, is not without precedent. Webcams rose to their present prominence out of just such a humble beginning.)

Movie-goer punts 3D-to-2D cinema specs

Dale 3

Should've gone to a well known high street opticians

You can already get polarising lenses in prescription glasses. Eventually I expect they will start offering prescription glasses with polarizing lenses which match the polarisation used in cinemas, which is a logical progression from where we are at the moment.

Entire London 2012 Olympics' cultural events database held on Excel

Dale 3

Competitive salary

Lemme guess, 10000 people apply for the job, half of them receive "competitive salary" paycheques in advance but no-one actually knows who got the job, then a month before the event 4999 people receive demands to pay back the salary because - it turns out - it wasn't them.

I do like the competitive spirit though, it is in keeping with the games.

El Reg pays by phone – mmmm, free cookies!

Dale 3

Oyster

Crikey, all that to pay for a cookie? Even if it is a one-off, how much market penetration are you going to get by making people jump through all those fiery hoops?

On the other hand, here's what it takes to top up an oyster card:

Tap card on the reader

Say how much you want to top up

Pay with cash/card + PIN

Tap card on the reader again

Basically, for any process you are trying to get people to use, if the number of steps reaches double digits your process is going to fail.

£1.1bn Royal Navy warship finally armed, sort of

Dale 3

Perhaps they should have fitted big loudspeakers

Then if all else fails they could at least hurl foul language at the enemy.

BMW tests laser-guided car junction buddy

Dale 3
Flame

linked to the indicator stalk

There is no point linking anything to the indicator stalk in a BMW.

Facebook pulls plugs on Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile

Dale 3

Photos

You'd think they could tell from his photos, presumably.

Google Oz slips A$600 million through tax loophole

Dale 3

Simple fix

There is no simple fix that will just "sort everything out". If there were, it would already be in place. This tax fiddle is performed by shifting numbers around and reclassifying them in ways that avoid the provisions of the letter of the tax law. If you change to a tax on income, those highly-paid, highly-intelligent accountants employed by Google and other big companies will simply shift the numbers around and reclassify them in a different way, so that they no longer look like income. Whichever bottom line you decide to target in your simple tax solution, there will be clever and probably-legal scheme to migrate the numbers away from it.

Apple confirms white iPhone 4 on sale tomorrow

Dale 3
Unhappy

Which queue?

Now I'm in a pickle. Do I join the white iPhone queue or the royal wedding queue?

Death threats against 'worst song ever' YouTube teen

Dale 3
Thumb Up

Setting two records

This is literally the first time I have had to stop listening to a song after 20 seconds because I couldn't bear it and then also stop listening to the parody of the same song after 20 seconds because I was laughing so loudly it was disturbing other people around me.

UN promises self-driving intelligent cars

Dale 3

self-driving?

Hang on, in the absence of a link to the actual ITU statement, there is nothing in what was quoted from the ITU statement about self-driving cars. It just said they could navigate, much like the wife navigating when I'm in the driving seat, and foresee collisions, which is probably just a bit of obstacle detection. There's nothing to suggest "avoiding collisions" is anything more than automatic emergency braking. Is the lack of standards really the only barrier to self-driving cars arriving this year? I don't think so.

Microsoft promises not-quite-as-much Street View

Dale 3

What would it cost

Dunno about gonads, but this would require money that our Government and Civil Servants don't have. We should perhaps not be encouraging them to buy stuff at the moment.

Dale 3
Coat

Request removal of their houses or cars

Wonder whether I can request removal of my rubbish too. Local council only does it every other week.

Oh, I see. Sorry.

Network Rail blames Atos for downtime

Dale 3

Commercially sensitive?

Who do Network Rail compete with?

Dig deep! Radio asks taxpayers for blank cheque

Dale 3

Flash

Maybe they can update DAB to use a Flash-style codec. That way I can be prompted to update my radio every time I switch it on.

Extended Lord of the Rings Blu-rays to hit Blighty

Dale 3

How many endings will this one have?

At least two more, to justify the price.

Hadron Collider 'could act as telephone for talking to the past'

Dale 3
WTF?

Explosion

If they don't detect any Higgs singlets, does that suggest that at some point in the near future the LHC is going to blow up and destroy the universe before it gets a chance to send any singlets back in time?

Lords vote for electronic devices in their chambers

Dale 3
Coat

I for one...

... welcome our new 21st century OverLords.

Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty

Dale 3

Button operated ped crossings

I find it really frustrating when pedestrians get to a crossing, press the button and immediately walk across before the signal has changed, which means by the time I reach it I have to stop at the red signal and wait for nobody because the pedestrian is long gone. If you're going to walk across the red signal anyway, leave the button alone!

Maybe it would help if the button only registered when pressed a second time after a few seconds of waiting.

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