* Posts by Martin 15

28 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Aug 2009

Hypnotic wind map captures Earth's heavenly currents

Martin 15

Land stops wind?

I know I had read about it, but visually seeing the effect of a landmass is surprising (to me anyway).

Quadrillion-dollar finance house spams Reg reader with bankers' private data

Martin 15

Even the crappest of pr0n sites are reputedly equipped with a simple email address verification system such as "please follow the link in the email we have just sent you"

El Reg Contraption Confessional No.1: The Dragon 32 micro

Martin 15

Sadly my Dragon died, but for some strange reason I still have the Premier Microsystems floppy drive/assembler/debugger cartridge. Much educational time spent hacking tape games to get them running off floppy.

Britain’s forgotten first home computer pioneer: John Miller-Kirkpatrick

Martin 15

Still on the shelf behind me.

Still got a Scrumpi on the nostalgia shelf behind me in the shack - next to the Sinclair Scientific calculator.

Contact bounce on the switches was a nightmare - but at least it wasn't too bad learning the SC/MP instruction set by heart. I recall nearly passing out when told the price of a 2708 eprom for the thing though.

Guess which major US telco ISN'T cracking down on premium SMS spam?

Martin 15

"Not really the same thing." but it is similar.

Don't forget those "services" where you do get charged for receiving SMS texts in the UK. daily weather forecasts, horoscopes, ringtones and the like.

RETRO-GASM: The Fuze electronics kit for the Raspberry Pi

Martin 15
Pint

Scrumpi

Raising a glass at the mention of Scrumpi - a scarily expensive beast at the time for what it did. Got one on the shelf behind me.

Torrent site isoHunt to close

Martin 15

Re: Serves him/them right!

@Ian Yates although if you read elsewhere you find

"Court documents acknowledged that it is unlikely that Mr Fung's company could pay $110m, and that the MPAA would probably receive between $2m and $4m."

Google chap reverse engineers Sinclair Scientific Calculator

Martin 15

One in front of me now.

There's one on the shelf in front of me now. Complete with it's cloth "bag". I can't pluck up the courage to put some batteries in and see if my soldering has survived the test of time.

REVEALED: Simple 'open sesame' to unlock your HOME by radiowave

Martin 15

keysafe combinations

The combination on those keysafes is not that impressive - both the cheapie and expensive ones use the same system. Pick 1 to 9 numbers as the combination. However, the order is irrelevant 1234=2341=4231 etc reduces the possibilities quite a bit, They are tough buggers when properly fitted to a wall though.

Edward Snowden skips into Russia as Putin grants him asylum

Martin 15
Coat

I thought he could travel - a bit.

From the letter from Washington to Moscow ( http://cryptome.org/2013/07/usdoj-rumoj-snowden.pdf ) it mentions in passing:-

"We understand from press reports and prior conversations between our governments that Mr. Snowden believes that he is unable to travel out of Russia and must therefore take steps to legalize his status. That is not accurate; he is able to travel. Despite the revocation of his passport on June 22, 2013, Mr. Snowden remains a U.S. citizen. He is eligible for a limited validity passport good for direct return to the United States. The United States is willing to immediately issue such a passport to Mr. Snowden."

No, I don't think I would pick that option either.

Royston cops' ANPR 'ring of steel' BREAKS LAW, snarls watchdog

Martin 15

Re: @ jonathanb - Its not just in Royston

>> Monitoring traffic flow needs the recognition and storage of number plate data, does it? I don't really think

>> so; a road sensor would already do the trick.

Trafficmaster can put up cameras, but can't dig up the road for sensors. And they do use ANPR to calculate flow speeds - but just don't keep the data (reportedly)

O3b's satellites on launch pad, ready to bring cats+porn to billions

Martin 15

Re: Requires a motorized antenna

It's not as though there with be 1000's of ground terminals, How many ISP's or Mobile networks are we talking about that are going to need steerable dishes?

The BOFH is BACK: And it's cloudy with a 90% chance of beatings

Martin 15

Déjà vu

Oklahoma woman cuffed with loaded .22 in pork holster

Martin 15
Alert

Re: A revolver?

A fairly tiny looking thing. But some sharp edges!

http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot26.htm

Russian boffins race to meteorite crash lake as shard prices go sky-high

Martin 15
Alien

Re: Hmm

Well there is a TV serious about finding and selling chunks of other-worldly bodies.

http://www.meteoritemen.com/

Ever had to register to buy online - and been PELTED with SPAM?

Martin 15

Disposable

Trashmail.net and it's firefox plugin does it for me.

Google updates Street View with 250,000 miles of footage

Martin 15

Re: dates on updates

When I just checked, yes it stall has my old car on the drive, but the bottom of the frame has a 2012 Google copyright notice along with "Image date: 2008"

SpaceX Falcon 9 flameout leaves commercial satellite in wrong orbit

Martin 15
Mushroom

Satellite Tracking??

Not tracking satellites by the look of it, just using them to track??

quote "The ORBCOMM network uses low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites to provide cost-effective tracking, monitoring and messaging capabilities to and from anywhere in the world. Similar to two-way paging or e-mail, the system is capable of sending and receiving two-way alphanumeric packets of data." unquote.

now probably "very low-Earth-orbit" rather than just "low-Earth-orbit"

Electric car crash leads to battery blaze

Martin 15

What?

So, the Volt in America, the Ampera in the UK, so is it to be the Watt in the rest of Europe?

HP to bring 6,000 more TouchPads to UK - for staff only

Martin 15
Unhappy

Missed out again

And there we were, told pensioners would get the same deals as staff, twaddle.

TalkTalk drags arse in Ofcom ISP survey

Martin 15
Unhappy

switching providers? I wish

someone says "Separately, the regulator has been considering forcing ISPs to make it easier for unhappy customers to switch providers. A review about this is expected from Ofcom later this year"

When are they going to do this for the poor buggers in Hull?

Pirate-bothering ACS:Law lawyer goes bankrupt

Martin 15
Thumb Up

Cumuppance

How does it go....

Pay me £500 for the trouble you caused me or I'll take you to court.

Pothole-spotter app aims to stop arse ache

Martin 15
Badgers

One way loggin

As little as I like my local council, I have to say that these statistics are a bit iffy.

There seems to be plenty very quick to log potholes, but very few logging repairs.

A local road was really very bad and hit the press but has been reasonably repaired, but still appears on that web site as bad.

YouGov tests the waters on internet snooping

Martin 15
Happy

@paulf

"got as far as "who's your employer?" and aborted. "

"retired" usually results in a much shorter survey for the same number of points

Newzbin comes back to life

Martin 15
Thumb Up

Welcome back

And an interesting comment for the moaners

"When we get a credits system running we will be respecting the credits you have left over from Newzbin."

Bumbling NJ firemen, cops blown up in 'huge fireball'

Martin 15
Grenade

You've done it now

So will we all be locked up now for reading how to make a bunker buster?

No Freeview HD kit in time for launch, warns telly exec

Martin 15

Two standards change.

There are two standards that change.

(1) The video coding MPEG4 AVC and that only comes down to software at the receiver.

(2) The transmission standard DVB-T2. This is the real bugger that really needs new hardware.

AFAIK every other HD country stuck with DVB-T1 for the transmission and went to various different video compression standards. The DVB-T2 standard has only just been ratified and there are certainly no PC tuners available yet and I doubt any TV boxes.

As it seems to be a purely UK decision to use DVB-T2, I can't see chip fabs falling over themselves to produce hardware.

Trade body loses laptop full of driving conviction data

Martin 15
FAIL

Why they have it?

Possibly because repairers offer courtesy cars and need drivers details inc convictions??

Although why give these details to a trade body???