Posts by Adam 38

Hackers break SSL encryption used by millions of sites

I think he means he is unable to use the website without JS enabled, thus leaving him susceptible.

New NASA model: Doubled CO₂ means just 1.64°C warming

I don't give a shit about the environment...

... but whether or not CO2 emissions increase global warming, kill plants, kill animals, melt the poles, the fact of the matter is that CO2 kills humans.

But most worrying of all, I feel that the emphasis on CO2 emissions is ridiculous, when cities are getting polluted by exotic carcinogenic particulates. CO2 is one of the least harmful pollutants, yet for many environmentalists it's the only thing that matters.

Fake student hacker avoids jail over ID theft scam

Disgraceful Court System

4 years to reach a verdict? WTF.

The great Aussie firewall is back - and this time it's personal

No Sympathy For The Most Part

50.12% of Australians chose to vote for the party that openly supports this censorship. I have no sympathy for them whatsoever as they brought it upon themselves. I feel sorry for the rest, though, who never agreed to this.

And don't say you voted for them for their 'big issue' policies. Mainstream political parties are almost exactly the same in practice, they just spin their messages differently to get to their target voters. It's these little issues which you're voting for and the ones that you will actually see in practice.

Give them an inch and they'll take a mile.

RIP freedom in Australia.

Leaked Google docs out top search ad spenders

Deepwater Horizon Ownership

25% Transocean - USA owned

10% Mitsui & Co - Japan owned

65% BP, of which:

26.0% (40% gross) UK

25.35% (39% gross) USA

6.5% (10% gross) Rest of Europe

4.55% (7% gross) Rest of World

2.6% (4% gross) Miscellaneous

TOTAL:

50.35% USA

26.00% UK

10.00% Japan

6.5% Non-UK Europe

4.55% Rest of World

2.6% Miscellaneous

"British Petroleum", yeah right Barack, you liar.

LG to show 31in OLED 3D TV at IFA

Thanks

I doubt there are any UK companies investing in this, as it's a very, very major investment to yield any results. This is cutting edge technology still.

You're right about the flexible screens - I was inferring this with the comment about 'whatever you attach it to'. Although 'flexible screens' are pretty pointless in practice, the advantage comes from the material you attach it to. OLED screen attached to plastic is pretty much invincible. Gone will be the days where you drop your phone and the screen breaks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbTO5VM6s-4

OLED Can't Come Soon Enough

I really can't wait for OLED to come out. I will be the first technology that is fully superior to CRT. FYI, the biggest digital effects company on the UK (they did The Dark Knight, Harry Potter etc) gives their colour grading team 10 year old CRTs, because they are simply better.

OLED has a response time so fast that no eye would be able to distinguish it (100,000 Hz). OLED can show true black, leading to essentially 'infinite' contrast ratio, as CRTs have. OLED takes up NO space whatsoever, it is as thin as the object to which you attatch it. OLED has maximal viewing angle - almost 90 degrees from normal. Now they just need to work on the colour gamut (which is VERY good compared to plasma and LCD but not clearly better).

I believe we are entering the era of 12-bit colour, and displays that are as good as a glossy magazine printer.

Jobs offers relief for iOS 4-running iPhone 3Gs

Perspective?

Other handset makers wouldn't ever release such a shoddy patch, so you'd be able to use your 2 year old phone with 1 year old software. Apple, on the other hand, completely neuter your phone making it useless irrespective of what software it has.

Advice

It's just a little slow. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone 4

-------

Why is this fix taking so long? My 3G has been nearly unusable for nearly 2 months.

Zuckerberg admits working for man claiming Facebook ownership

Ouch

She must have been pissed off when The Simpsons became popular. She was probably here first after all.

End of Microsoft NHS deal means mass deletions

Obvious

Your viewpoint is pretty ignorant. I don't know anyone who would buy a £100+ piece of software for £10 and wonder what the catch was. I'm sure everyone who paid for this deal was aware that it was a special case and should have looked at the T&Cs.

That said, I don't think the public sector should be paying for Microsoft products when there are almost-as-good alternatives available for free.

Blizzard comes out clean after WoW pants-down plans

Still Not Compliant

Hah, I was one of those 17! Still though, they are using data for purposes other than which it was originally collected. Having specifically enabled "parental controls" on my account to disable 'Real ID' ingame, when I play the SC2 Beta I am confronted with my name after I log in. Surely this is more of the same; using data for purposes other than which it was originally collected. While it's not a terrible problem because it's still 'private', it means I couldn't record video or make a live broadcast of my game without making myself known.

Blizzard exposes real names on WoW forums

Legal Ramifications

The Register - Do you have any take on the legal implications of these privacy changes? UK, EU, Canada all have pretty strong laws protecting privacy.

Jobs tells iPhone users to get a grip

UK Consumer Rights

Good luck bullshitting your way out of this one, Jobs. No matter how you spin it, it's not gonna qualify as "fit for purpose", and therefore you're gonna have to do a complete product recall. Hahaha!

I feel a bit guilty about owning an iPhone 3G now, seeing as some of the money for it went to such a prick!

Finland mulls legalizing use of unsecured Wi-Fi

Hybrid WiFi

This causes a number of problems for owners of the WiFi access point:

1. Contract with ISP says they can't share connection with 3rd party

2. Illegal activities commited on said WiFi

3. Owner of WiFi ends up paying per-GB for excessive usage.

Personally I have a relatively unlimited internet connection. I think it would be good if people were able to offer an unpassworded DMZ on their internet connection (with minimum QoS priority) for guests to use. This would be especially useful in metro areas.

Jobs drops hint on Google open video codec

Steve...

...if YouTube serves VP8 and Flash, but not H264, people will stop using Apple, not YouTube.

That is all.

Sharp Aquos LC-46LE821E 46in quad-pixel TV

Could be useful

If you look at the eye's receptors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cone-fundamentals-with-srgb-spectrum.png), you can see that a yellow subpixel would be very useful, covering an area where we have a lot of sensitivitiy.

That said, it is ultimately pointless since all of our signals are downgraded to RGB at some point (usually at the CCD in a digital camera).

"Primary Colours"

Btw, there are NO primary colours of light.

Light is electromagnetic radation. Most light sources emit a vast and broad specrtra which goes way below and way above what we can see, thus covering the entire narrow band which we consider to be "visible" light. Colour is the result of these EM waves hitting objects which absorb or distort these waves in a particular way, increasing or decreasing the intensity of certain frequencies of the wave.

The fallacy of "primary colours" comes from the fact that we have 3 types of colour receptors in our eyes. (Very, very lucky people actually have 4, search for "tetrachromacy"). The notion of 3 colours was decided when we started producing screens, to broadly match these colours to the three receptors that we have. As someone has already noted above:

Purple -> Blue

Green -> Green

Yellow -> Red

Nokia: digital SLRs are doomed

@ Blog

640K memory for "anyone". Now 8GB memory should be enough for "anyone". Don't know where you get your 655,360GB number from.

Convenience

The number one reason why I will never have a DSLR for the foreseeable future is that I can't carry it around, especially if I was going clubbing or something. The battle is then between camera phone and digital compact. Now THAT is a battle which I think the camera phone is gonna win. All that's missing is a decent flash and minor lens/sensor upgrades.

I've taken so many snaps of funny things and great memories with my phone which I otherwise would have missed. Simple because of the fact that I always have it with me. More to the point, I'm not gonna attempt to shoot HDRI's or desktop backgrounds without getting something appropriate.

Photos: DSLR

Everything else: decent camera phone

Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx turns back on Yahoo! search switcheroo

Firefox & Google

Mozilla have a deal with google worth like $80m or something to have Google as the default search. I wonder if they said to Canonical that they would have to drop the "Firefox" and go "IceWeasel" if they wanted to switch to Yahoo!

Apple misses self-imposed Windows 7 boot camp deadline

Works Fine

Has been working fine for me since months ago, isn't this just bug fixes? Also VMs are nowhere near the performance of native execution still and never will be, especially if the CPU doesn't have virtualization support.

Inmate gets 18 months for thin client prison hack

Computers?

Why do inmates have access to any computers at all? Shouldn't it just be a telephone, toilet and bed? I thought the point of them going to prison is so that they could reflect on what theyve done.

Johnson refuses to intervene in McKinnon extradition

Coward

We need to wipe Labour off the map at the next election. There's two other realistic parties to choose from!

Apple voids warranties over cigarette smoke, users say

@ deadlockvictim

"However, Apple could have been more explicit in their AppleCare policy. Before they go kicking AppleCare warranty holders in the balls, they need to add a clause to the policy stating smoking in front of the computer may destroy it and any smoke-related damage will consequently not be covered......."

Do they need to add a clause which says "don't shit on your computer"? What about "don't throw your computer in a river"? What about "don't put an axe through it"? "Don't stick pens in the DVD drive"?

People need some common sense. I would have thought it was obvious that this highly delicate circuitry will eventually get screwed up from all the abuse it gets.

Health Hazard

If you have ever tried to repair a smoker's computer you will know that it is most definately a health hazard. I have, and when I turned it on (after it being moved around to get to my place I assume) the fans kicked out LOADS of the tar/dust crap and the room smelled WORSE that if someone had smoked a cigarette in it. As for the machine, there was no fix for it short of replacing the motherboard due to the tar inside.

If I were Apple I would refuse to repair it a) because it IS a health risk turning on one of these things inside a building and b) because the smoker could have and probably did contribute to the machine's demise. With the proportion of people that smoke and how a story like this has only just come out, you can assume that the specific computer being referred to must have been REALLY bad for them to refuse it.

People seem to forget that computers are very delicate and sensitive machines and a poor environment (especially dust) can totally screw them up before the end of their normal working life.

Intel P55-based motherboards

Good Roundup

Nice roundup, covers a lot of interesting points without being too long-winded. Would be good, however if you could compare the manual overclocking performance and the power drain of each of the boards.

Apple confirms Windows 7 support for Mac OS X boot camp

Works Already

Installed Windows 7 RTM (from MSDNAA) on my Macbook Pro about 2 months ago. All the boot camp drivers work flawlessly already (e.g. multitouch drivers).

Man gets 3 years in clink for eBaying Adobe prods

/facepalm

The first rule of pirate software is, you do not sell pirate software.

Web firms seek Royal Mail rivals with GSOH for delivery fling

Capitalist Natural Selection

This is essentially a legal cartel/collusion/blackmail against a company which is fighting for it's life. The CWT is kicking Royal Mail while it's already down on the ground and if they're not careful they won't have any jobs to go back to.

At the end of the day, people should just adapt to the changing market and go and get a job doing something useful. If someone invented an AI machine which could generate software automatically, I'd be pissed off but I'd have to go and learn a new profession.

The CWU members seem to think they have an innate right to continue doing the same job forever, regardless of whether that job is generating any income for the company.

AT&T lets 3G VoIP onto iPhone

Solution on O2 UK

You can just jailbreak your iPhone and use 3GUnrestrictor app. Totally legal in itself, though using the VoIP may be against the terms and conditions of your specific mobile data contract. No that they'll ever find out though, as Skype is transmitted over SSL.

Dumping exclusivity could double iPhone sales

iPhone Carriers

Here's a full official list: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1937

Instead of checking each of Apple's foreign websites individually. Also tells you where you can get em unlocked. :)

USB 3.0 webcam streams 1080p video

Nice camera...

...but the stand looks crap.

Stephen Hawking both British and not dead

Only

In America

Brazilian TV ad: Save water, piss in the shower

Hygiene

1. I would rather not receive a "rebound" of other people's piss up my ass when I take a dump, therefore I have to flush the toilet twice anyway, why couldn't they have flushed it when they took a piss?

2. Flushing the toilet does not wake most people up. Even if it does, they would get used to it after a short while.

3. Piss stinks if you leave it there, especially if you piss into the piss an hour later.

4. It's not that much water, how about people stop wasting tons and tons of water sprinkling their lawns.

HTML5's Flash and Silverlight 'killer' potential chopped

The Point... You Missed It

Software patents on codec algorithms etc... honestly, it's just retarded. We need some big players to take their hands out of their pockets and lobby for patent law change in the US.

BT names more exchanges for early fibre upgrades

Idiots

1. Upgrading exchanges that already have good speeds

2. Not upgrading central network architecture (what good is fast internet when you just get capped?)

3. Doing FTTC instead of FTTH/FTTB

Waste of money if you ask me.

P.S. Rural people, stop bitching. You can't expect private businesses to be upgrading places where they will get no return on investment.

Salty Saturn moon plumes suggest stuff of life

The Answer

The explanation is quite obvious - there must be some giant whales underneath the ice there. No need for this science nonsense!