Posts by AndrewH

Facebook: Yeah, we'll ban chainsaw beheading vids - when journos call us

"Why do people watch things like this? Seriously some sick people out there."

Probably the majority watch it out of morbid curiosity, and then wish they hadn't.

When your squash partner 'endorses' your coding skills on LinkedIn...

It's even worse than that...

I've been endorsed for skills I don't even claim to have by (presumably) well-meaning colleagues (i.e. who know what I actually do)

At least there's an option not to accept these endorsements.

The Register iPhone and Android apps: Maintenance update

iPad too?

An iPad app would be nice. Preferably one that actually displays the expected article rather than another chosen at (apparently) random.

'Extreme' solar storm speeding straight towards Earth

Chernobyl... Fukushima... and now this...

When will they learn that nuclear poses too much of a hazard?! The sooner we can replace the sun with a renewable energy source, the better.

Colour Kindle incoming says mole

Colour!

"Of course, it'll hard for e-ink to match the colour reproduction of LCD or OLED panels"

Why should it? If it can do a reasonable job of matching the colour reproduction of your average book or comic, that should be more than enough.

Although initially skeptical of the whole "ebook reader" thing, having used a Kindle for a few months now (Kindle 4, then Kindle Touch), I'm definitely a convert. It's not a tablet PC, but I don't need it to be - it does an excellent job of allowing me to read the books I want to read without weighting any more than the lightest of paperbacks.

I'd definitely get a colour e-ink reader as long as weight and battery life were broadly comparable with what I've got now.

Wang charged in inappropriate electricity socket use

Re: So how much electicity was stolen?

Hmm... given that Bernie Madoff got 150 years for scamming US$18 billion (give or take), our Taiwanese thief should be looking at 250 nanoseconds of in the clink, assuming some reasonable level of proportionality.

He'll be out in no time!

Hasselblad H4D-200MS medium format multishot camera

Hmm..

Sub-pixel shift for increased resolution... hardly new. Here's a patent application from 2002 : http://www.google.com/patents/about/10_317_219_Machine_vision_system.html?id=swKIAAAAEBAJ

(with which I had some involvement, I should probably add)

Apple's iPad not so shiny once you get it home

Strange

I got my wife an iPad2 on the day of release, and she's used it extensively every day since. As a ready recipe reference in the kitchen (no keyboard to collect dirt), ebook reader, web browser, email reader, and much more. As a result, she has barely touched her laptop, with even less need to since the release of iOS 5

Not only that, but during the time when she's not using it, the kids love the chance to avail of some of the games and drawing apps.

I only wish that more of these selfish, unimaginative people who aren't using them would list them for sale and drive the second-hand prices down so that I could get one for myself :-/

'Great Reversal' as world's forests stage a comeback

@Inachu

You're a little off with your understanding there - *we* (the Irish) didn't cut down all our trees thousands of years ago - the British cut down the majority of our trees in the 18th century in order to build ships.

As for regrowing them... in 1900, forest cover was 1% of land area. It's now almost 11%, and still rising.

Gadget makes bombs, mines go off 'on average' 20m away

Stats fail

"And "an average of 20m" means, of course, that half of the devices detonated closer than that."

Um... no it doesn't. If they'd said that the median distance was 20m, that'd be a different story.

Stephen Fry security whoopsie leads to prank fart book order

@David W.

"In other news, who the hell is this Fry guy? I'm asking for real, not in the arrogant, "I'm too civilized to partake of his rubbish" way..."

You realise you have access to the internet, right? It would have taken fewer keystrokes to access wikipedia and type in "Stephen Fry", you know.

iPhone glitch gets US fanbois up on wrong side of bed

Strange...

My (jailbroken) iPhone 3G running iOS 4.0 didn't exhibit this problem - my recurring alarm has kept recurring at the correct time, with no intervention on my part.

School worker jailed for abuse images

Re: Well duuh..

"No level of check will discover these people before they've committed an offence will it?"

Arguably, they'd not only have to have committed the offence, they'd also have to have been caught.

'Howling lesbian gangs' greet jailed Lindsay Lohan

@deadlockvictim

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

Japanese phone boasts killer slacker-sensing app

Perhaps...

they could consider offering it in an electro-shock collar format to increase corporate and industrial uptake..

Peppa Pig told to belt up

You know what...

There's a lot of "Parents should...." from a variety of posters on here, some of whom may even have kids. The reality of the situation is that if you believe that, as a parent, you'll have more influence on your kids than their peers and TV, then your views are outdated and wrong. This isn't me saying this, by the way - there's been plenty of research that's lead to this conclusion - hence, among other things, the tip that as far as a child is concerned, they'll be better off in a dysfunctional family living in a good community than in a good family that lives in a bad community.

Secretive Brit millionaire buys Segway Inc

..and the clampers

I nearly got clamped by a Segway riding parking attendant in Dublin's docklands a few months back.

Slovakian police chief quits over Dublin explosives run

Apparently..

the Telex to Servisair was more along the lines of "Can we have our explosives back?" than any kind of warning.

As for disproportionate response... the guy was detained during a search of the flat, and then released without charge. One way to read that is that he was arrested and so on, but much more likely he was asked to "sit over here in this police car while we check out your luggage" before being told he was free to go.

Cell phones don't fry brains, boffins say

Out of interest...

Since most men keep their mobile phone in their trouser pocket, and that's where it'll spend most of its time, have any studies been done on the incidence of testicular cancer over the last 20 years or so?

I think I'll keep my tinfoil underpants on for the time being, just in case..

Google maximizes minimalist homepage madness

@MonkeyBot

"Talking is kind of cumbersome.

Is there any way this could just be plugged in to my brain?"

You need the other Firefox for that - can you think in Russian?

LHC rushed back into service at 50% max power

@Filippo

Disaster Flick?!?

Isn't it how Half Life starts? (give or take)

US thesp to attempt audacious tw*tdangle

Download, eh?

"For every completed download of Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft’s Browser for the Better campaign (running today through Aug. 8, 2009) will donate the financial equivalent of eight meals to Feeding America’s network of 206 local food banks, which supplies food to more than 25 million Americans each year."

Well... as long as I'm not expected to install it too, how much can it hurt?

Toyota in 'real time brainwave driver control' success

Movie tie-in?

Now that Clint Eastwood is that bit older, there's certainly scope for a "Firefox" remake, in which he steals a thought controlled wheelchair from the Japanese..

A slower-paced, more thoughtful film than the original, and one which is certain to appeal to a more mature audience.