Posts by Marcus Aurelius

How do you like them Apples? Farewell sensible sized phones, forever

Dom Joly - the thinking mans futurist

Hello? HELLO!!

F-35s grounded by spares shortage

Shermans are underestimated

The previous post greatly underestimates the Sherman. It was a good medium tank for its time and about the maximum size you could conveniently get a tank across the Atlantic, fit in landing craft and drive over most roads and bridges of Western Europe.

It was easily a match for the Panzer IV which was its real main opposition, and fairly close to the Panther. Tigers, especially the Tiger II, were an extreme rarity on the Western Front. Reliability, Servicing and repair of any German tank was much harder than the Sherman.

Even the reputation of the Sherman for burning up is an over exaggeration, especially once wet ammunition storage was implemented.

Some Shermans (upgraded) were happily kicking T-55s in the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict.

Elon Musk's SpaceX: Now we help do SURVEILLANCE for the SPOOKS

Re: Hmmm. . .

If we have enough material to make a Dyson sphere, perhaps we'll need a space version of a Dyson vacuum cleaner.

One wonders if a vacuum cleaner can work in space....

Tesco tries to talk Tesco Mobile up from 'Value' to 'Finest' ahead of sale

Bad value for money

I fail to see how getting £175mil as a one off is good value for a company generating £100 million per year.

Motorola's 5-incher finds the G-spot: Moto G 4G budget Android smartie

Moto G 4Gs at a discount

1. Go to Tescos (or other places presumably)

2. Buy the Tesco PAYG version which is often sold at a £30+ discount to the unlocked version

3. Unlock it by contacting your friendly unlocker on eBay for £1.50 or so

4. Profit!

I have 5 of them as they're great value for money. Through Clubcard vouchers and the above, I've paid less than £100 for all of them.

ICANN urges US, Canada: Help us stop the 'predatory' monster we created ... dot-sucks!

ICANN't help laughing

So ICANN thought they were onto a winner by extorting $185,000 from everyone applying for a TLD, and are upset by the fact that someone has outsmarted them.

Quite honestly $2500 is probably small change to most companies that wish to pre-register. I quite honestly believe that no real company should be able to own its own .sucks domain.

.

Steely wonder? It's blind to 4G and needs armour: Samsung Galaxy S6

It's lovely but

I think I'll stick to my Moto G 4G at 1/6 of the price. Since I've got 5 phones to buy that saves me £2.5k minimum.

(Cunning stunt: save £25 by buying locked to Tescos and paying £2 or so to unlock)

Cross-dressing blokes storm NSA HQ: One shot dead, one hurt

Re: JustWiz If only the NSA protected MY information with such zeal.

That's because of the work by the spooks, the armed services, and those a lot more informed than you.

Ah, they have Top Men working ceaselessly

TOP. MEN.

Quantum computers have failed. So now for the science

Re: another name

Aether Pendragon?

TOTAL DARKNESS lasted 550 MILLION years until the first STARS LIT UP

Lighting Up time

I always light up after a Big Bang myself. Maybe the Universe also smokes after sex.

Watt the CHIP!? ARM pops out THE most powerful 64-bit Cortex for mobes'n'slabs

Re: Change of venue

No but you could hire somewhere like Kings College Cambridge for your announcement and have a suitably awe-inspiring venue for your product release.

Kings even have a web page for it... http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/conference-dining/

SpaceX makes nice with U.S. Air Force, gets shot at black ops launches

Re: Huh?

What this means is that when you have your own personal extinct volcano as your lair, there is the genuine possibility of having your spacecraft return to you with their captured contents....

Chunky Swedish ice maiden: Volvo XC60 D4 Manual EE Lux Nav

Re: Foriegn ownership of Swedish companies

Its a Saab, Saab situation

Last Pirate in Brussels: Put ME in charge of yer IP treasure chest. Yarr!

IP

The main thing that really annoys the anti-copyright crowd is not that copyright exists. I can live with and respect the right that an artist/producer has the right to have the obtain money in exchange for his work and copies of it. I also have no problem in protecting user produced digital content.

What really annoys is the duration of copyright, partly thanks to what seems to have been a copyright arms race between Europe and the US. If I invent a magic potion that cures all known ailments, I am able to obtain a patent on it for 20 years and after that anyone can copy it. Copyright duration should be roughly similar.

SpaceX in ROCKET HOVERSHIP PRANG: 'Close – but no cigar,' says Musk

Why land on a barge?

If you can have a controlled descent, surely a controlled descent to land would be a much easier prospect - you don't have a small target and you can have your landing zone in the middle of a desert so you can pick up the pieces even if you're a mile or two off.

French Google fund to pay for 1 million print run of Charlie Hebdo next week

@AC: The trolling

Strong with AC is.

Elite: Dangerous 'billionaire' gamers are being 'antisocial', moan players

Aarrr!

Isn't Elite meant to be the game where you indulge in smuggling, piracy and other illegal space acts to get loot?

It's not meant to be fair - its a dog eat dog universe.

UKIP website TAKES A KIP, but for why?

Re: @Splodge

Most of their readers are about 120 proof anyway....

Blind justice: Google lawsuit silences elected state prosecutor

Re: i forget...

There are occasions when Google has been wrong and a little over enthusiastic in their desire to get data on everything (and everyone). I'm not sure that they have crossed the boundaries into being evil

In this case Hood was not so much doing a service to Mississipians but copy/paste lawsuiting for the MPAA which is not a popular organisation at the best of times.

Space Commanders lock missiles on Elite's Frontier Devs

'84 version

Once you got the hang of it, docking manually was less risky than using the docking computer, which had a nasty habit of wrecking you every so often.

Google Tax part 94: EU's H-dot wavers over copyright levy

Re: But it looks like H-dot is sticking to his guns

Translated: "It's failed in Spain and Germany, so we're going to screw things up the same way across all of Europe".

Hold the front page: Spain's anti-Google lobbyists lobby for Google News return

I sincerely believe

Google should start charging companies who want to appear on Google news; but only where laws like this are in effect.

Deprivation Britain: 1930s all over again? Codswallop!

Re: Relative poverty of thought

Tims article has generally been analytical rather than pushing forward UKIP policies. I don't agree with the conclusions that Tim has reached, but nevertheless the content is thought-provoking rather than just click bait, as you put it

Re: The reality

In actual fact if the council are unable to offer you a smaller home, then you are allowed to use that as a legitimate reason not to pay the bedroom tax.

Incidentally, you can rent out your spare room and earn up to about £5k a year tax free. Obviously some of this will be subject to benefits clawback, but the net effect will be positive.

As for moving home, there are discretionary grants available to assist in this sort of activity.

Re: Re:TheOtherHobbes

This raises the question of whether a charity is an activity to gather money to fully pay professionals to do the job, or whether the professionals being paid to do the work by the charity should also work for a charitable wage?

I do think the salary level of Save the Children is taking the p**s though.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – Thin plot, great CGI effects

I liked the Wing Commander cut scenes more, personally

Car-crash IT: HUGE write-off for Universal Credit - PAC

Dead, decomposed, blind....

Stop talking about David Blunkett in this way

Govt spaffs £170k to develop the INTERNET OF SHEEP

Sheepish grin

I was wondering why my area seemed to have gained some llamas. I thought it was something to do with fetching a better price for wool/meat products...

MP caught playing Candy Crush at committee meeting: I'll ‘try’ not to do it again

Obvious really

Counter-Strike!

Actually this and similar games would at least allow them to "Fully Engage" in the planning...

Fully Engaged

...on improving his high score, no doubt.

Sinclair is back with the Spectrum Vega ... just as rubbish as the ZX

Re: calendar check....

..held on by BluTac

Legendary Brit physicist Stephen Hawking gets full Intel comms refresh

The main question is

...what will Stephen Hawking be the projenitor of? The Borg, Daleks, or Cybermen?

BOFH: Everyone deserves a little DOWNTIME

When will we hear....

...the pitter patter of tiny little BOFHs?

Trousers down for six of the best affordable Androids

In the canal

I'm surprised you didn't strip down your Note and bury the components in rice as soon as you could.

Most phones recover from a dunking if treated in a similar manner.

Re: 4G? I've heard of it...

Giffgaff (and presumably O2 also) is in the process of rolling out 4G right now.

I really don't care myself. I've found most downloads occur fast enough on 3G and if I need high speed download I can normally find a wireless link....

Re: Not mentioned: Moto G v2 also has Dual SIM

Moto G has both SIMs active at the same time. i.e. you are connected to receive calls from both lines. Whilst in a call the other SIM is inactive.

You choose which SIM to use for data

You can change your configuration anytime.

Re: The LTE version isn't a Mk II

Even better, you can buy a 4G LTE locked to Tesco Mobile for £20 less than the unlocked version and then pay £1.50 to £3.00 to some eBay guy to unlock it for you.

If you have Tesco Clubcard vouchers, you can get these for a substantial discount as your vouchers are doubled against electronic items. I paid £75 for my last Moto G 4G as a result....

Stephen King, William Gibson and The Quantum Moment

The Standard Model but with added Cthulhu

I thought "added Cthulhu" was called "Quantum Mechanics"

VINYL is BACK and you can thank Sonos for that

0755

is that a train time or a set of file access rights?

Bendy, but hangs loose too: Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 10-inch Android tab

Re: Silky Smooth

The question is whether this is misogynistic or a beautiful turn of phrase.

Only Skittles have the answer...

This 125mph train is fitted with LASERS. Sadly no sharks, though

What this article doesn't explain...

...is where all those missing clips go to?

Is this metal thieving on a very small scale?

Maybe they go to the a dimension similar to the one Douglas Adams posited missing biros went.

Eye laser surgery campaigner burned by Facebook takedown

Re: Eye laser surgery is not for everyone.

I used to use some eye drops for a period of about 12 months afterwards after which it was no longer needed (the eye drops are similar to/the same as contact lens solution anyway, so its not much of a hardship). Because my correction was about the maximum of which they were capable of at the time (-9.75, -10.50) I expected some issues, but the advantages of not having to wear two substantial lumps of glass on my nose are substantial, and the cost of the operation has repaid itself many times over in the saved cost of glasses/contact lenses.

Eye surgery does not work out for everyone, but personally I think the small chance of something going wrong is worth taking for the benefit of 15-20 years without need for glasses.

Virgin 'spaceship' pilot 'unlocked tailbooms' going through sound barrier

Re: When can we see the apologies?

I think my hindsight was working quite well:

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/2346016

Tom Bower is a Florian Mueller like character, available for a paid doom and gloom opinion anytime, rather than a decent investigative journo.

Re: "Wealthy customers have signed up in large numbers to see a black sky "

"Climb a remote mountain or sail offshore - at night"

If you're thinking of something less risky, you seem to have forgotten the recent deaths in the Himalayas and the numerous deaths that occur when boats lose their battle to stay intact against a pissed off ocean.

When can we see the apologies?

*cough* Tom Bower *cough*Geoff Daly*cough*Carolynne Campbell from some organisation we'd never heard of till now.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11203634/Branson-spaceship-explosion-The-missed-warnings.html

Obviously there may be another issue which needs looking at, but everyone seems to be pointing their fingers in the wrong direction.

Japan tells operators: Put a SIM lock in a new mobe? You'd better unlock it for free

Re: Yah!

PAYG providers give you locked phones at a significant discount to unlocked versions (often £20-40). Thanks to the wonders of eBay, mobile phone shops and those nice chappies on a market stall, you can get an unlocked phone to use on Giffgaff or a similar MVNO quite easily for anything from £1-10 depending on who you ask.

Dead pilot named in tragic Virgin Galactic spaceship crash

Re: Vultures circling

Branson is a long way from perfect and has a wheeler-dealer past, but Bower is a miserable curmudgeon who tries to write the most critical biographies possible.

Not untested

AFAIK its been ground tested and this was apparently its first air test.

At some point you have to make a transition from earth to flight and this was it.

Vultures circling

..and not the El Reg sort.

I see Tom Bower has suddenly become an expert on rocket propulsion.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11203634/Branson-spaceship-explosion-The-missed-warnings.html

The fact is testing aircraft is dangerous, and this especially applies with respect to space going craft.

Trolls pop malformed heads above bridge to sling abuse at Tim Cook

I refer you all

To the comment I made earlier:

http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/2343589

_{Except instead of being silenced they immediately turned into trolls}