Posts by Growler

Putin's internet guru says 'nyet' to Windows, 'da' to desktop Linux

Re: Reasons are probably many

You missed one crucial point:

9) With a state-built and distributed distro Mr P can install all the monitoring he likes. See NORKs

Adobe Flash fix FAIL exposes world's most popular sites

It's in the SDK

I thought so too, at first. Then I got to this bit:

"As long as the SWF file was compiled with a vulnerable Flex SDK, attackers can still use this vulnerability against the latest web browsers and Flash plugin.

So the flaw was in the SDK and there are some sites who did not rebuild their Flash files after the SDK patch was released.

I think the article needs to do more to make this clear.

Carry On Cosmonaut: Willful Child is a poor taste Star Trek parody

Re: I'm old - as I've never heard of him.

One - it's the weekend edition which has lots of stuff El Reg doesn't normally do.

Two - If the publisher paid to have their book puffed up then I think they'll be wanting their money back!

The Maze Runner – a merry teenage dystopian adventure that doesn't make you cringe

Re: The Cube was great little movie better than the sum of its parts

Downvoted for the "a publication said something nice about something I don't like so they must be getting paid for it" schtick.

All the top tech news from Vulture Central this week

Eggscellent

All news should be delivered this way

Doctors face tribunal over claims of plagiarism in iPhone app

These doctors are not being "tried" in a "court", they are appearing before their organisations governing body. This body controls who is licensed to practise medicine.

I believe that doctors are held to a high standard of honesty and integrity and the actions they are accused of bring those qualities into question, even though what they did might not be illegal.

As an aside it was only when I got to the bottom of this article I realised that these were British doctors: a hint nearer the top might have been useful!

Selfie twerks its way into the dictionary

Re: Ons small problem.

What's the word for when you point out someone else's error whilst making a glaring "ons" of your own?

D'OH! Use Tumblr on iPhone or iPad, give your password to the WORLD

Re: Fix already out

I'm curious: are you saying this is a non-story because the problem is fixed or that el reg should have noted that in the article?

If the latter it might have been nice for either Tumblr or Yahoo to inform the people who informed them of the issue that it had been fixed and if the former bad security on this sort of scale should always be reported!

Korean doctors: Smartphones really ARE doing your head in

Numbers

The bit of the article that jumped out at me was this one:

"The government’s Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service reported that the number of Koreans suffering cognitive problems in the 20-40 age group had risen from 1,160 in 2008 to 1,585 last year."

So out of a 2010 population of roughly 14.69 million (in that age range according to WolframAlpha) there were around 1300 or so people suffering cognitive problems (which we are invited to assume are all caused by tech use)? In perhaps the most tech-friendly country in the world? And this is supposed to indicate the graveness of the issue?

From what I've read the issue appears to be really quite tiny!

More facts, please!

Ultra-hackable Google Glass could be a security nightmare

Re: Nothing to see (as usual?)

What if the hacker doesn't care about the data on your Glass? From the article:

"An attacker who has installed spyware on your Glass headset could potentially watch you entering door codes, take pictures of your keys, record your PIN as you enter it into a bank teller machine, and intercept everything you type on computer keyboards, including passwords."

Pocket Wi-Fi hotspots paralyse Chinese metro lines

Re: Correction to your Correction

Erm, don't microwave ovens work by heating up the water in the food? Utilising the "absorbed by water" feature of 2.4GHz mentioned above?

A microwave oven working at any other frequency would be a bit useless, licensed or not.

BAE proposes GPS-less location

Re: That just takes you back to square one

They way I read it this system doesn't just use WiFi routers it uses all signals around it: mobile phone towers, TV/radio masts along with WiFi routers. Johnny Terrorist would need to spoof all of those too.

In any event this would only use known sources so even without the TV/radio and mobile phone sources he would need to clone all the routers along the targets assigned path and place them on his path of doom! (Along with shutting down all the original routers)

The Register is rocking on Windows Phone 7

Re: have you upgraded your favourite son yet (iOS5)?

The one you refer to is "The Register UK Reader" and it is indeed a pile of shite. This one is just "The Register".

Lytro light field camera

Jez San...

Starglider!!

Scalextric restarts space race with Star Wars craft

I agree, they do look ridiculously large!

They're fine if you want to reenact a chase but for racing? No.

The speeder bikes look much more fun, and my son's birthday is coming up fairly soon....

Punters even more dissatisfied by Virgin Media's package

I'm sorry but...WTF?

I'm on Virgins 30MB cable and I can stream Youtube, iPlayer and anything I choose!

Whilst I accept that there may be people who have issues with their connection your statement that "you cannot strem youtube or iplayer videos over Virgins internet" is complete rubbish!

Three questions that could put out Amazon's Fire

You don't browse "on the cloud", you browse the internet.

Amazon's servers "in the cloud" go fetch the page you want, e.g. www.fluffybunnies.com, make notes about it so Amazon can sell you more fluffy bunny related items, then compress it and squirt it down to your device.

If you don't mind that, fine. If you do, either don't buy a Kindle Fire or make damn sure you turn it off before you hit that Go button.

Sony tempts Potter fans with free 3D BDs

Tell me...

...how are things over in the Sony marketing department these days?

This is standard Reg reporting style, nothing new here and certainly not "a new low".

And as for the "Sony hate":

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/09/17/review_sony_bdp_s380_blu_ray_player/

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/07/16/review_sony_bravia_kdl_cx523_lcd_tv/

Fairly reasonable, I thought.

Ten... Androids to outshine the iPhone 4S

Comparing Apples with...

The cheapest 4S is £499 according to the Apple website. I think most of these will come in comfortably under or around that that!

The headline price in the Apple keynote is for contract-subsidised phones.

Samsung reveals release for 5in tablet

But you also can't write on an iPhone using a finger putting more than 3 or 4 letters per screen. The Note can be used with fingers or a stylus for handwriting.

As I understand it capacitive sensors have way less precision than the old resistive ones which is why there aren't that many devices that use a stylus as this drawback would become obvious. Samsung may well have improved the "resolution" of the sensor so that it works. Or not.

Microsoft: Mango arrives in two weeks

Shurely shome mistake?

"Individual malware vendors"? That's a harsh thing to say about LG, Samsung and HTC! :)

NHS diabetic gizmo will text for help if wearer is in danger

@Stupidscript

2 things:

1 - I've just re-read the article and I can't find any mention of a specific pump. Did I miss something?

2 - All insulin pumps that I am aware of (including the Omnipod you mention) don't read blood glucose levels: the patient has to manually check their blood using a finger pricker or similar then adjust the pump accordingly. The device highlighted in the article is a blood glucose reader, not a pump.

To address your points:

(1) The GOVERNMENT is giving a grant to an academic institution who will, if successful, develop this as a PRIVATE company. Is that capitalist enough? Private company gets free money from government!

(2) I'm completely happy for MY money to be spent on something which will help thousands of my fellow diabetics and, thanks to the GOVERNMENT, we won't have to pay extra for.

@Matt_V...

I used to get told similar to that until I moved to an area where they are a bit more enlightened.

Ask your GP how much extra it will cost the practise to deal with the complications that may arise from your inability to keep fine control of your diabetes!

How does your gizmo know when to beep?

Surely it would have to know your exact blood sugar level: I think that might be the complex part!

Once that problem is cracked I imagine that adding a display and wireless communication are trivially easy.

I wish the university team every success with this.

Microsoft Phone man offers guarantee-free glitch pledge

I agree, how silly...

...why couldn't they choose a gem of a name like, for example, Cupcake or Donut ?

Sure Signal not so sure

UMA?

Doesn't UMA also offer this facility without the requirement for a £50 femtocell? I'm trying this out for work and it's so easy to use I'm astonished at the lack of decent email-capable handsets (except Blackberrys; and don't get me started about the cost of BES provision!) and that only Orange seem to provide it.

Why hasn't it proven more popular?

Freebie BlackBerry bonanza kicks off

Something to see here

That Reg story states that the 2006 free version of BES Express only supports one user; you have to buy a license for 2-14 users then it's the full-fat BES or nothing.

This new version does not seem to have a limit on the number of devices, just the policies that can be applied.

Please correct me if I'm wrong!