Posts by David Webb

Iranian nuke plants rocked in midnight 'heavy metal blast'

Fast forward a few months and Iran declares "Ha, we now have a nuke, MWAHAHAHA" to much "tut tut tut"ing from the countries which have nukes but don't want anyone they don't like having one, cause, it's not as if it was an evil country that dropped not one, but two nukes on thousands of innocent civilians during WW2, oh no, they did it for the right reasons, the Japanese were the enemy.... err... yeah, anyhow...

Fast forward a few months (I got sidetracked!) and Iran's nuclear weapons are now controlled by a computer that has a virus that plays "It's the end of the world" and launches the Iranian nuclear weapons at, err, France. Do we really think it's ethical that we should bar Iran from buying anti-virus software when they will be relying on computers (that are most likely already infected with some virus or another) to launch their WMD?

Maybe Iran should switch to Linux, can they actually download that or would an Iranian need to smuggle a USB stick into Iran up his rear?

Seize your moment, Microsoft: iPad is RUBBISH for enterprise

It's the Surface isn't it, gives the best of both worlds without the worst of either, tablet form factor for when you want to play Angry Birds (or Diablo III, or Crysis....) and laptop form factor for when you want to get real work done. How many developers will be developing for Windows? That's how many will be developing for the Windows Surface full fat edition (it runs Windows).

Ex-Nokia staffers team up to revive MeeGo

Re: But will it...

It should go, bog standard Meego runs on the N900 with a bit of effort (though some basic functionality doesn't work and some stuff never will due to proprietary drivers).

'Amazon plans iPhone-killing Android mobe' – report

It would have to be either super cheap, or so much better than the iPhone, S3 and HTC efforts for anyone to even consider it.

It can be both, Amazon doesn't need to make an insane profit margin on their devices, they are a portal to Amazons primary service (selling stuff) so they could produce a high quality device at cost, or even at a loss and recoup the money through selling e-books or apps or anything else through their onine store.

Once a company gets their claws into you, it's hard to leave, you tend to upgrade to the same supplier (Apple, Android etc.) because all your stuff won't work if you jump ship, so a customer now will most likely be a customer in 10 years time because they will have spent hundreds (or thousands) on content which they lose should they change OS.

China reveals new strategy of stockpiling rare earths

Re: So what if they are stockpiling?

Imagine this, you have two countries, China and Australia. Both can mine up rare minerals in great quantities. Australia finds it can't compete with China because China is whacking out the minerals are lower prices so their mines are not really as profitable as they would like, so Australia shuts the mines down and China becomes the only supplier.

A few years later and China wants to make more money from the rare minerals so they start to strangle supply to force up the prices. The owners of the Australian mines look at the prices and think "strewth, I'm going to get some of that, no worries" and open the mines again. China then flood the market making the Australian venture not worthwhile so it has to close... again. Then China can start strangling supply....

The only way to remove the stranglehold on rare minerals that China has would be to open up the Australian mines to run at a loss, break even or very small profits, or to open the Australian mines and pay the Australians more than the market value to keep the mines open, how many companies do you know who will pay more to obtain exactly the same item when that in turn pushes up the costs to consumers (or lowers their own profit margins)?

Door creaks and girl farts: computing in the real world

Dunno about that, my PC has a nice blu-ray drive which would need a pretty big USB pen drive to catch up to it in size, but on the other hand, a PC is for entertainment purposes whilst a Mac is for office work... wait, that advert......

Did your iPhone 'just stop working' - or did you drop it in your BEER?

Re: Unbelievable

A simple enough solution, once an award is granted the patent itself is listed on a website where anyone can have a look, if they can see that the patent is invalid due to prior art they can give the details of the prior art, the USPO looks at the details and if they say "oh, right, there is prior art" they revoke the patent.

They could also introduce a rolling fine system (to make lots of money for the government) which is a double of fee which starts at $1, for each patent that gets revoked in this manner the fine doubles, $1, $2, $4, $8, $16 etc. which resets every 5 years back to zero, the low initial entry point wouldn't put off people who have genuine claims to patents putting in an application that is later revoked, big companies that file thousands of patents every year would start to make sure there is no prior art when the fines get out of hand, and it doesn't take long for that to happen....

1 2 4 8 16 32 54 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192 16384 32768 65536 131072. In just 18 patents the fine hits over $100k, 21 patents and it hits $1m, 28 patents and it's over $100m, I think that kind of a fine would make any company double check that their patents were valid before making them (31 patents = $1 billion).

Re: poor reporting

You didn't read the last line?

"The patent 'Water detection arrangement' was filed on 15 January, 2010 and awarded on 3 July, 2012. "

Japan Anonymous aims to fight download law by picking up litter

It's Japan, their anti-cyber-warfare units are cyborgs and if they don't get you, GUNDAM will! Fear the Japanese government, and tentacles, most certainly tentacles in Japan :D

Gotta love it though, over here we have riots, in Japan they have a bit of a clean up here and there.

HTC bags UK win in patent war with Apple

Re: Open Letter

You're right, we are very pedantic which is why...

As sincerely as an Englishman can be

The UK

*SLAP* The UK isn't England </pedantic>

Apple said it had no additional comment other than its stock reply that "competitors should create their own technology, not steal ours"."

I'm sorry Apple, but judge just ruled that 75% of your patents in this case are invalid and the only one you could have wasn't infringed, which tends to suggest that you're not exactly creating your own technology.

Samsung fails to stall Galaxy Nexus sales ban

Press start > start typing Viagra > get results from email, documents, payment receipts... am I missing something or is that basically what the patent does?

YouView launches with pricey premium DVR

Re: Still only the two tuners, then

I just upgraded the firmware on my HDR T2 to CFW which adds nice stuff like Sky Player, hopefully the smart bods who write the firmware will be able to add Youview functionality to the T2.

Apple faces Italian shutdown over warranty skulduggery

Re: It's not the Italian law only - it's an EU directive

It's a "face" thing for the lovely Japanese companies. Over in Japan the warranty by law is 1 year, but if a company offers (as standard) a longer warranty it's considered to be because the products they are selling are of higher quality and less likely to break down (and therefore need a warranty claim).

In the UK the warranty is "up to" 6 years, if you buy something that you expect to last 10+ years (a fridge, a sofa) then the sale of goods act gives you 6 years warranty (no matter what the company says) but if you buy something cheap and tacky (like an iDevice) you'll probably only get 1 year warranty as you'd expect it to fall apart in time for the next minor iteration of the device.

Web stat WTF: iOS beats Android 3 to 1, iOS and Android tied

Stastically speaking, 94% of all statistics are incorrect with 4% being made up on the spot, although 48% of that is made up by marketing droids and PR people, the other 52% being made up by people other than the people who made up for 48%. However, using a unique weighting system we actually see that 154% of statistics are incorrect with 205% of them being made up by frogs who have nothing to do in their spare time.

Naked Scarlett Johansson pic snatch 'is worth 6 years' porridge'

An IT site, which means we should all know how to hack into Maggie Thatchers personal email account and download picks of her "snatch", if that kinda thing turns you on..... Besides, the internet is out there, I'm sure if you look you could find a pic of Scarlett Johansson in an orgy with Mario and Luigi with Princess Mushroom or whatever her name is, cheering on naked whilst riding a camel and Laura Croft flying from the roof onto Batman who is only wearing a cape, and not much else.....

Apple patent may foretell an end to iPhone autocorrect Tourette's

But DYAC's business model is based on the auto-correct features of iOS, if Apple fix it, the site won't be able to generate as many funny sex based things.

Obama is best Pres 'to beat alien invasion'

Of course, only 36 per cent of them actually believe in the "existence of UFOs"

But the other 74% believe in God so maybe there is something in the water out there?

BT to fibre up another 98 exchanges, puffs 'FTTP on demand' offer

Re: Exchanges

That tells you when your exchange is getting switched on, so it's about as useful as a condom machine in a convent. There is currently no way of knowing when you're getting a new cabinet that supports FTTC so even though where-and-when says "yeah, Accepting Orders" it means sod all.

Here is where you look, if it has a date, that's possibly the maybe date, no date = no chance, even with where-and-when saying "Accepting Orders".

So what does that mean for us in Cornwall who are stuck in FTTP areas with no chance of FTTC? My town is FTTx ready, cabinets around my estate have been upgraded and people are enjoying up to 80Mb but my estate is listed for FTTP and no idea of when it's being switched on, do we have to wait until after the trials to start getting fibre?

Sysadmins: Your best tale of woe wins a PRIZE

Re: Mouse problem

Mice can squeeze though gaps as small as 5mm so looking for a mouse sized hole means you're looking for a tiny little hole.

Brits spent £334 each year on games

Re: Well...

I'm not saying games on the Wii are sucky, far from it, there have been some amazing games out in the past year (the JRPG whose name I forget being one of them), it's the lack of games as a whole, dev's are moving on from the Wii and possibly working on the Wii U or the PS3/360.

The Wii thing could be answered by the fact it's a device that's at the end of it's life so very, very few AAA games are out for it compared to PS3/360, only game on the Wii I've got in the past year is Rune Factory Oceans, nothing else appealed to me other than that JRPG which I never really got into playing.

Finnish PM rules out Nokia rescue package

Probably because the only long term they have now is "get as much out of MS as possible" and for that they need Elop. It's so bad even the Finn's themselves are avoiding buying Nokia, that's a bit like the French being told to buy something American instead of French.

The nail in the coffin is WP8, Nokia has to convince the world to keep buying the Lumias even though it's an EOL product with no future app support (yeah, who's going to develop for WP7.5 when WP8 comes out?), they lost a lot of loyal fans because of that decision... I'm one of them (from the 6210, even the N900 and, yeah, a Lumia).

Pegatron named as Microsoft Surface fondleslab foundry

The price is too high, you can't compete with the iPad if your pricing is roughly the same even for a product that offers a lot more, people will just go with what they know. A good price point would be $100 under the iPad and price parity too, if it's $500 then bring it out in the UK for £320 not £500.

Microsoft's uncloaks Phone 8 developer preview

Re: Win 8 Phone Preview.

Wow, both your auto-correct features are a bit screwed, the word you're looking for is fcuk.. wait...

Re: The race is on!

Actually, sod Nokia, I'm stopping supporting *them*. I have a Lumia 800 which was only released in November '11, then there is the Lumia 900 which is newer, if you're on contract you have at least a year to go before you can upgrade. It's a kick in the teeth that the 8/900's wont be getting WP8 but will get a theme to make it look like WP8 so sod Nokia, they have lost my custom forever due to their insistence on bringing out devices then drop support after only a few months.

Oh well, maybe I can get a few quid for it on Ebay.

William Shatner confirms Devon town actually prostitute free

Try this, get married and on your way home from work pop into a shoe store and buy your wife a pair of expensive designer high heels. Bet you £25 you'll be getting some that night....

I lived in Devon (Plymouth) and was born in Wales (but now live in Cornwall as I said before). I'm beginning to see a pattern forming.......

I live in Cornwall and it's true, we have no prostitutes, mainly because sheep don't charge.

Assange takes refuge in Ecuadorian embassy

@ ElReg!comments!Pierre

Nothing to do with a condom breaking.

There are four charges: that on 14 August 2010 he committed "unlawful coercion" when he held complainant 1 down with his body weight in a sexual manner; that he "sexually molested" complainant 1 when he had condom-less sex with her after she insisted that he use one; that he had condom-less sex with complainant 2 on the morning of 17 August while she was asleep; and that he "deliberately molested" complainant 1 on 18 August 2010 by pressing his erect penis against her body

Now, 1 condom-less sex when consent is only given when a condom is used, therefore there was no consent from the female = rape. 1 condom-less sex with a woman who was asleep, that means there was no implied consent (she was asleep so couldn't consent) as well as the lack of condom. It's rape, plain and simple, no means no. If you're having sex with a woman and half way through she says "STOP" and you don't, that too is rape.

If of course you believe it isn't rape, head out into town tonight, find a woman who is so drunk that she falls into a drunken slumber and then have sex with her, see if you can avoid a charge of rape (hint, you will be charged with rape and go to prison so actually, don't do it).

Yes, Paul. And when the great train robbers headed off to Spain to avoid prosecution it was a clear indicator of their innocence in the matter.

Re: extradition of an Australian citizen from th UK

Neither Sweden nor the UK could extradite him to the US, he'd be possibly looking at a death sentence and the ECHR will not allow a member nation to extradite to a country where they have the death penalty and it's a possibility, with that in mind the US could say "ok, we won't kill him, promise!" and still the ECHR would say "yeah, but a 1,110,065 year sentence... bit extreme?"

The guy is a possible rapist, he allegedly raped workers for the wikileaks site, if there is a case to answer for he should answer it, hiding behind "oh, it's politically motivated" is a crock and shows massive disrespect to the females who claim rape, instead of hiding behind diplomatic skirts shouldn't he really be heading out to Sweden to clear his name?

If it was a violent rape rather than "he didn't wear a condom therefore consent is automatically denied" would anyone be supporting his stance or would it be a case of "get this twat our of this country, RIGHT NOW!"?

What a muppet, nothing shouts guilt more than running away. It's not political, it's sexual assault, shame all the left wing liberal luvvies who were cause celebre are now shown to be just as much of a muppet as he is.

Surface: Because Microsoft does so well making hardware?

Re: how have they screwed up?

They did announce a ship date, it ships when Windows 8 is released with the Pro version being released 3 months later, be pretty stupid of them to release it *not* when Windows 8 isn't out yet. As it is it gives the OEM's some food for thought "shit, that looks frikken amazing, we better bring our A game" and shows what you can do with Windows 8 and a bloody good design. MS are showing a way that isn't Apple, they are not copying Apple, and in doing so they are saying to the OEMs "Don't copy Apple, do something good instead".

Re: iPad?

I think MS are going after everything with the surface. Gamers (with Pro) get a Core i5 and *should* be able to play PC games like Diablo with a keyboard/mouse as well as more casual games, true, it won't be able to compete with high end PC's but if it'll play the latest games with reasonable quality it'll be on to a winner. Business users who use PC's will go for this and also may go for Windows 8 on their desktops as well as Windows Phone, build everything around the Surface and let everything work around the Surface.

People who want a tablet will have a choice, go for a tablet which is limited in what it can do (iPad/Android/Win8RT) or go for a tablet which runs a full OS and can do anything (Pro).

The big question is how they get it out there, the XBox was easy, pay lots of money to get developers over to the XBox with exclusives and timed exclusives, bring out killer games like Halo, with the Pro line the killer apps are for business, Office, Photoshop, not cut down versions either (how much would a professional designer pay for the Pro with Photoshop and Stylus for drawing stuff for instance?).

Business, as I said, will love this machine. You're at work, working on a presentation on your PC made with MS Office, you have to take the presentation to the other side of town, you flip the docs onto the Surface and continue to work on the train/bus, get where you want to be, plug it in via HDMI and display the presentation. Or you can make your presentation, email it across town and know that the person on the other side can open it on their desktop using Windows.

But MS won't sit on it, they will have tight integration with XBox Live and maybe bring out some exclusive "Made For Surface" games designed with the screen size in mind.

I think Surface is going to be a major win for MS, I also think that MS will share the design with other companies letting them use the magnetic keyboard thing even if it's competition with themselves, MS wants to dominate on the OS space without much thought to the hardware side, as long as they are selling things with Windows 8 on it, they won't care who is selling it, and by bringing out what is undoubtedly a fantastic design, they have set the bar way above anything currently on offer.

So you wanna be a Wall Street techie? Or anyway, get paid a lot

Re: The point of the questions...

But it doesn't stipulate housing, it says windows which could include car windows, as well as the windows on top of skyscrapers including that big pointy round thing, you wouldn't charge someone £5 to wash the windows on that building, but you wouldn't charge someone £5 to wash your car windows too. The answer is very deep and complicated "depends on the window".

Re: Impossible to answer interview questions

It's a Fermi thingy (I know, I just read about it) so you have to make an estimate based on estimates which are correct, 5 million people in a city, 1 in 20 homes have a piano, 1/3rd of those get a piano tuned regularly etc then you can work out the correct estimate. There is no correct answer, just a correct estimate based off other estimates which in the end give a wrong answer.

Apple extends Liquidmetal sole rights until 2014

Re: Colour me confused!

From what I can tell, VaporMg is magnesium so they do something with that to make the moulds, it's also pretty common so shouldn't be much of an issue getting more of the stuff. Maybe they used the term liquid metal to piss off Apple with a "yeah, you wanna come sue us too?" glint in their eye.

Nokia after the purge: It's so unfair

Win Pho

Well, we'll find out on the 20th (I think that's the date) if Nokia is going to die or not. If WinPho 8 isn't an upgrade path for people using 2nd gen WinPho 7.5 handsets (Lumia 800/900) then Nokia will have lost possible future sales of 8/900 users who are left with a dead-end platform from Nokia.... again, and who will jump ship to players who continue to support their (not very old) phones with the latest OS.

This wouldn't be Nokia's fault, it'll be at the door of Microsoft which will of course harm the Windows Phone brand itself. If however it is possible to upgrade from 7.5 to 8.0 then people will stick with the Windows Phone system and when their contract runs out be more likely to purchase another Nokia.

Menaced cartoonist raises $60,000 for copywrong

Dear sir, you failed to mention that a link in your article is pointed towards a website that heavily features videos containing lesbians. I regret to inform you that I was unable to finish reading your article (however wonderful or spectacular your article may or may not have been) due to the fact of lesbians.

If in future you would care to mention, in bold, capitals, italics, marquee, comic sans and rainbow colour fonts (ahh, Netscape HTML editor...) that the following link contains lesbians, I will be sure to read the entire article before becoming distracted.

Hitchhiker shot while researching 'Kindness of America'

Glasgow

Just does to show, Glasgow isn't a place to be messed with no matter which country it's in.

Microsoft 'mulled Nokia buyout, ran away screaming'

Re: My 2p worth

@ Paul Shirley - Yes, Samsung isn't American but as you pointed out, Google is (Google do the OS), so it has that all important American bit stuck to it.

Yes, they went with Microsoft probably because Microsoft gave them a boat load of cash to go with them instead of Google, if there is a limit on how long Nokia have to stick with MS and not bring out an Android mobile then maybe we'll one day see Android based Nokia's also.

My 2p worth

Nokia is Nokia's own worst enemy. They held an amazing OS in their hands (Maemo) and decided to drop it and go to Meego, alienating people who had Maemo devices. After dropping Maemo they decided to drop Meego and go to Windows Phone 7.5, alienating people who invested in Meego (all 5 of them). You can't build a marketplace if you constantly switch around your underlying OS.

Now with Windows Phone, Nokia can't screw about with the OS, they just make the hardware and leave everything else to Microsoft, although they do add their own stuff to the marketplace.

I'm a huge fan of Windows Phone, I love the way it works, the way it looks, the way it presents information (but not the way it sucks your data allowance), it's a hell of a lot more better looking than IOS, not as tweakable as Androids UI which can display more information, but if people use WP then they will figure out that its bloody good. With Nokia using this and bringing out phones they can do what they do best, make phones, cheap mobile phones with WP, expensive phones with WP, compete in all markets.

The best bit, Nokia never really broke in to the US market, the yanks preferring to use their own companies, like Motorola over vastly superior Nokia phones, along came Apple and look, a US phone they can buy! With MS, Nokia has a US partner so should be able to get traction in the US market, something they previously couldn't do (not even with a placement in Star Trek).

The Lumia range is nice, gorgeous screen etc. so it can compete with the iPhones and Androids in it's price range and with MS as a promoter for the platform it can only be good news for Nokia.

Techies beg world to join the 1% on IPv6 launch day

Re: Actually AVM...

My Technicolor TG528n (cheap router supplied by Plusnet, but bloody good for the home) supports IPV6 with the latest firmware, out of the box, plug it in and if your ISP supports IPV6 it'll give you IPV6 (I'm on the PN IPV6 trial so do).

Lard-busting specs trick snack-happy Japanese

It's not only a lack of obesity in Japan, in one area the principle is to eat until you are 80% full and that area has the highest life expectancy in the world where the average life expectancy is well into the 80's for men.

Steve Jobs speaks from beyond grave: 'iPads are toys'

Re: LMAO!

With that comment alone I believe I would like to marry Anna.

Japan to get Android phone with built-in radiation dosimeter

This is a terrible review and not up to The Registers usual standards! What is the battery half life for instance?

For those unable to comprehend, the above is a joke. Phone runs ICS, a 4 megapixel camera (0.3 front), 3.7 inch screen (854 x 480 resolution) and wakes you up in the morning saying...

"Wake up onii-chan! Radiation levels are high!"

Dual-dock prototype iPad eyed on eBay

SkankPhone? On an iPad, why would there be a phone component in the first place and why call it Skank? Maybe they feel chavs will buy (more) iPads if they made it a bit skanky?

Hands on with Nokia's 808 41Mp camphone

Re: blimey...

Weird that....

Linky yep, seems that Win 8 is coming to current gen phones :)