Posts by PowerSurge

Swiss sausage sizzler 4.0 hits 200 bangers per hour

I've looked with amazement but never dared

The Wurst Cafe http://www.wurstcafe.co.uk/

Do you use .home and .mail on your network? ICANN mulls .corp, .mail, .home dot-word domains

wrong way to go

These TLDs add very little. They're mostly redundant categorisations. What they should do is choose common word endings. E.g .ing .all .any .der and so on. Allows a bit of creativity. We.do.paint.ing Uno.fk.all or whatever. Over to you...

New Reg mobile site - feedback here!

Writing too big. Writing on desktop site is perhaps a bit small but not much. That's on nexus 4. You need to get more on each screen. Looks very similar to other reader websites. I don't use those either.

iSPY: Apple Stores switch on iBeacon phone sniff spy system

It doesn't work quite the way some comments imply. The transmitters only transmit identifying packets up to 31 bytes. You have to have an app which looks for and recognises the code and goes to fetch the real message some other way. I.e you'll have to have the relevant store app running before you see anything.

As well as 'helping' you to find what you want in a shop it could be used e.g as a museum guide. The application which I find interesting is following you around your own house turning on/off lights and heating depending on where you are.

I don't think it can be used to force unsolicited messages on you.

I hope I'm right.

Murdoch hate sparks mass bitchin', rapid evacuation from O2, BE

Alternatives

I cancelled the day the take-over was announced. A bit of a shame. I signed up with IdNet who have the most effective and easy to use support I've encountered. The unusual thing about them is they will give you a line using BE Wholesale (O2 Wholesale I think it is now) rather than BT. Apparently the transfer to Sky is for retail customers only. BE are keeping their wholesale business.

The line performance with IdNet has been outstanding. I get max-throughput at all times of day and night. No sign of contention. More expensive though :-( but you do get ipv6 for what it's worth!

Freeview suddenly UNWATCHABLE dross? It may just be a 4G test

Re: Why do it anyway?

Money

Just how good is Nokia's PureView 41Mp camera tech?

Re: Pureview on Microsoft phones.... don't hold your breath it is NOT the same!

According to wikipedia: iOS is derived from OS X, with which it shares the Darwin foundation, and is therefore a Unix operating system. iOS is Apple's mobile version of the OS X operating system used on Apple computers.

OS X has origins in BSD which is unrelated to Linux. Linux is also a unix-like OS but is not the same.

Most desktop unixes use GNU for the base user-space programs (GNU's Not Unix). Apple, I would guess, don't. They instead use NeXTStep (from Job's NeXT company). FYI there is a clone of the NeXTStep user interface called WindowMaker which runs on Linux. It uses a UI paradigm refreshingly different from Windows.

Move over Raspberry Pi, give kids a Radio Ham Pi - minister

Re: Aint guna fly in the inner cities, not cool enough

Is it cynical to wonder if the drive to DAB is also aimed at cutting off the pirates?

I think it is. No one in gov is that switched on!

DAB was actually conceived as a method to circumvent the problem of multipath interferance especially in cars (and not as a means of high quality transmission). Perversely it was adopted by the hi-fi fraternity first and didn't appear in mobile form for many years after.

That goes a long way to explain why it is so inadequate.

War On Standby: Do the figures actually stack up?

FIT

> Feed in tariffs are a stealth tax on everyone else - when someone shows you their

> nice new solar (or other ) renewable installation - remember YOU are paying for it.

Best get one for youself then

Foxconn daddy: 'Don't buy Galaxy S III, wait for iPhone 5'

Re: Wait, what?

That's what Virgin did to BA (airlines). In the EU the whistleblower gets the fine waived. A sort of incentive.

New steganography technique relies on letter shapes

The key feature of steganography is plausible deniability. I played with stegFS whilst linux 2.2 was still current. Sadly no more: http://www.mcdonald.org.uk/StegFS/ but still interesting.

Ten... e-cars and hybrids

yaris

the yaris hybrid has just been announced. like a smaller prius. no mention?

Chromebooks: the flop of 2011?

Didn't even know they were on sale. They won't sell any if they don't tell people about them.

RIM: 'Faulty switch took out faulty-switch-proof network'

"The systems are designed not to fail this way..."

I remember once in a TV discussion of an aircraft crash where an engine had fallen to bits the interviewer asked why there weren't containment rings to catch the bits. The expert replied that they'd be massively heavy and anyway they weren't required because the blades are designed not to fall off. The interviewer was incredulous as this plane might have been saved had such things been used. No, said the expert, you don't understand. The blades are designed not to fall off in the same that way the wings are designed not to fall off.

That's engineering.

No pain, some gain: Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot examined

@The Week of Fail. First Kindle, now this.

I've always been a big booster for Ubuntu and I've used it to convert a lot of people "who won't buy a Mac" away from Windows, but its the end of that. Can someone please suggest a good Linux I can give to stupid people who are stubborn and used to Windows?

I think LinuxMint is the best of the bunch to fit that bill.

Keep it simple

I can't be bothered with Gnome/Kde and other desktop managers that are just offering the windows paradigm. I dislike that paradigm and the bloat and loss of control that goes with it.

I use WindowMaker - based on Steve Jobs NexT interface. It mostly keeps out of your way, doesn't clutter your screen with icons that are hidden underneath your work and doesn't require state-of-the art hardware to run on. And there is no start button or menu bar or similar horrible ideas.

However it's quite unlike windows and will drive you to distraction if that is what you actually like.

Apple's Tim Cook gets one million reasons to stay on as CEO

@JDX

A friend of mine lost his job from a successful and profitable company which was closed by it's new merkin owners. When asked why close down a company that was making money he responded - it's not how much money you make that matters. It's how much more money you make.

Ultra-cheap HP TouchPads to hit UK at 6pm

I succumbed

It's very nice device. My lad says it's nicer than ipad. I was lucky, first come first served. only had 2.

Peugeot iOn e-car

Still too costly

I sat in an iMiEV in the showroom as was quite taken by it. However the price is ridiculous. These things need to be on sale for half what they want for this.

Floating Image

It should work on anything

Doesn't work on my Hero. Says it's not compatible. Developer says it should and doesn't know whats wrong. Says he'll investigate.

This compatibility error seems to be a new 'feature' of the Market. Complaints on google.

Launcher Pro

Permissions?

Why does this launcher (and others) need to 'directly call phone numbers'? What are they up to?

Ofcom demands ISPs close 'upto' gap

What about a proper SLA

We don't have an electricity network that supplies 'up to 240V' and drops to 5V during peak times. There's no reason our data connections should behave badly either. The only way to ensure we get a proper service is to insist on some sort or service level agreement.

I like the idea of a Guaranteed Minimum Throughput (GMT) which means not just the rather meaningless adsl sync rate but the end-to-end data rate including contention and effects of peak loading.

I would reserve the term 'broadband' to describe a service where the GMT was 2Mb/s or greater at all times. Compensation to be paid should the supply ever drop below this.

Ofcom would need to put in place a standard independent way to measure the service level.

I doubt, right now, very many connections could be described as 'broadband' by this measure but without such enforceable standards we will continue to suffer amateurish standards of supply and be ripped off by our woefully dishonest network providers.

Electric cars not as 'green' as advertised

Green in not the only reason

Electric trains are much nicer to travel on than diesel. They're quieter, accelerate better. They're also cheaper to maintain. Same is true of cars. The infernal combustion engine is noisy, smelly and requires high maintenance.

It's a shame batteries aren't up to snuff yet. However, got to start somewhere.

Also central electricity generation is greener and more efficient than lots of internal combustion engines and and has potential to improve. There's two new nuclear technologies on the way: TWR and thorium neither of which suffer so much from the bugbears of uranium fission.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUeBSoEnRk&feature=player_embedded

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/01/china_thorium_bet/

Crocodile keyboard becomes top Android app

Not that easy

I'm not sure how you buy this app for 41p because androidpit want to charge a min of 5 pounds. I can't find any info on androidpit about what they do with the other 4.59.

I paid 2 quid for this app from the market but was unable to give it any meaningful test in the 15mins trial period allowed. So I've lost my money.

This keyboard adds nothing. It's no more accurate than the standard one, for me anyway, and it lacks many handy features of the standard too. Also on my Hero it's very slow changing key sets and backspacing.

It's all a bit of a dismal experience. Not recommended.

Ten... fitness gadgets

Does it really?

...the GymGoal app - it runs on Android and iOS...

Does it really run on Android? Give us a clue where

Bletchley Park to rebuild pioneering EDSAC computer

I remember EDSAC

Dad used to take me to see it when I was a lad. It had a floor-ceiling central column of valves, like a 7 sided octagon with the 8th side open. You could walk in and have access to all the valves, for easy changing. No doubt ventilation was an important function of the column too.

My main interest was the big tape drives. I guess it was two inch tape on reels much like multitrack audio tape. The reels were side-by-side on decks which sloped back at 30 deg and had glass covers over them. They jerked backwards and forwards in a curious unpredictable way. Learning that these were about to be scrapped I fancied one would fit nicely in our sitting room. Dad didn't buy into that.

My understanding, which may have been wishful thinking, was that it was the first 'electronic' computer. Earlier ones used relays and the like.

The alternatives to password protection

Token Grid

A cheap simple second factor for authentication: http://tinyurl.com/3a7gbrp FYI

iPAD, KINDLE, all tablets and slablets MADE OBSOLETE

Yet another

promise of a new display technology to replace everything we've seen before. I don't suppose we'll hear about this ever again either.

D-Link DHP-306AV powerline Ethernet adaptor

I don't believe it

Leave the DHP-306AV plugged in but not connected to a local device and after a minute or so, it drops down to less than 0.01W, popping back up to 0.02W every five seconds or so to keep the powerline link alive.

I don't believe these numbers. 10mW?? An ethernet port takes more than that. How are you measuring this? I would expect figures around 4W and even that would be good.

Can you give us proper numbers please. It's important; power consumption is the big downside of powerline networking.

Apple sues three more over power adapter 'knock-offs'

@Ivan Headache

> On the down side, our mains plug is an absolute sod to fit into a laptop bag

http://www.slimplug.com/

I got one from Maplin. Don't know if they still sell them.

Security gaffe exposes addresses of elite iPaders

Spelling

Shouln't it be "iPadders" - "iPaders" rhymes with "Darth Vaders" surely?

Associated Newspapers, GMG to pool newsrooms

First Offerings

No change at The Guardian then:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/01/labour-gordon-brown-hard-man

Flood, fire at BT Paddington node causes widespread problems

Paying

SagePay not working this morning. Their website says problems due to external provider. putting 2 and 2 together...

Google polishes Chrome into netbook OS

What would you use?

According to FT the kernel will be Linux. The way it's written hints it won't use GNU but why wouldn't they. They have said they will release source so likely to be free software.