Posts by Jenkins

Fukushima on Thursday: Prospects starting to look good

Casualty

From the article:

"There remain no indications that anyone has yet suffered any radiation health effects, and the prospect is growing that this will remain the case".

From:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031710-e.html

- 2 workers of cooperative firm were injured at the occurrence of the earthquake, and were transported to the hospital.

- 1 TEPCO employee who was not able to stand by his own with his hand holding left chest was transported to the hospital by an ambulance.

- 1 subcontract worker at important earthquake-proof building was unconscious and transported to the hospital by an ambulance.

- The radiation exposure of 1 TEPCO employee, who was working inside the reactor building, exceeded 100mSv and was transported to the hospital.

- 2 TEPCO employees felt bad during their operation in the central control rooms of Unit 1 and 2 while wearing full masks, and were transferred to Fukushima Daini Power Station for consultation with a medical advisor.

- 4 workers were injured and transported to the hospital after explosive sound and white smoke were confirmed around the Unit 1.

- 11 workers were injured and transported to Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station after explosive sound and white smoke were confirmed around the Unit 3.One of the injured workers got medical treatment on March 16th, but the worker reported a flank pain. We required to the offsite center that the worker should be transported to the hospital. After that, the helicopter of JSDF arrived and transported the worker to the FUKUSHIMA Medical University Hospital at 10:56AM

- Presence of 2 TEPCO employees at the site is not confirmed.

National Rail tweaks departure board API, 'orders' coder to kill site

traintimes.org.uk

...isn't an app, so will presumably still be allowed to persist?

I hope so, as it's far superior to the National Rail website journey planner.

"This is an accessible version of the National Rail Enquiries train timetable site, giving access to the information on that site no matter what browser you are using, with no requirement for cookies or JavaScript. It works by screenscraping the information on the official site, and takes the opportunity to remove the "Please Wait" pages, move things around, and improve things a bit. Many thanks to National Rail Enquiries for allowing this site to persist."

WarMouse pushes gamers' buttons with OOMouse

I approve of this product and/or service

What? It's good!

How can 52 simultaneous on-mouse commands possibly not be good.

Only thing is the colour scheme...does look a bit naff.

Lose the branding, and make it black or wenge with silver or chrome detail and I'll buy it tomorrow...

Facebook turns users into web translation engine

"Google's engine uses machines for translations, not social networkers."

Machine translation ...but also mouseover option to "Contribute a better translation"...presumably this user generated data is also utilized therein...

Boozy chess grandmaster passes out mid-game

いい人

I approve of this product and/or service.

Trading in The Pirate Bay bidder stopped over deal funding

openbittorrent tracker for the win.

Also, some other recent PRQ related developments seem intriguing; though there has been so much noise/bleating generated by the ubiquitious freetard commentariat on sites like Torrentfreak/pirate blogs and so on, that it is rather taxing to attempt to sort the wheat from the chaff, as it were.

Still, as events unfold I imagine a clearer pirate related narrative will present itself. Somehow I doubt it will involve mass freetard→paytard conversion...

Pilots boycott gov ID cards

@eurobloke

>>my provincial licence cost me £42, and I don't have a car

Provincial license? I know the provinces can be somewhat xenophobic at times but I didn't think things had got that bad.

>>Not surprisingly, fake ID is practicality unheard of in many European countries, due to a standard card.

Any evidence of this? I can't help but think of that documentary shown a little while ago, where a young girl managed to obtain counterfeit passports for many, if not all, EU states...

Amazon pulls Japanese rape simulator from shelves

moe doesn't exist in 3d, anyway.

... so, any 2d content, should be exempt from negative sanctions.

OMFG, what have you done?

width, indeed.

The redesign seems fine except for, as others have mentioned, the fixed bloody width.

I don't dislike the colour grey, particularly, but nor do I enjoy having almost half of my (1680) screen constantly showing it to me. Having to look at this greyness is going to make me feel depressed eventually!

ISPs demand record biz pays up if cut-off P2P users sue

@Mac

I agree with most of what you are saying but I think it's a mistake or at least misleading to say;

"..[Radiohead] made more from their little pay what you want experiment than they have done from record sales with parlaphone from their entire careers"

I have only seen one statement regarding this issue, in the Wired interview with Thom Yorke*, and he states the following;

"In terms of digital income, we've made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that's nuts. It's partly due to the fact that EMI wasn't giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff."

Digital income. Not "Record sales".

"These record companies behave much like loan sharks for artists"

This I do agree with. Steve Albini's old essay "The Problem with Music is relevant here; http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

*http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_yorke?currentPage=all

IPFI chief says it's time to hose down the networks

The Problem with Music

A thoughtful article, although as John Kennedy claims to be speaking/working on behalf of "The Artists", I would have loved to hear his point of view on the idea, apparently held by many in the industry, that the artists have been ripped off by the record labels in the first place, as described in Steve Albini's famous essay

"The Problem with Music"

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

As for previous commenters here, I agree with many of them. I would eschew my own self imposed moratorium on digital downloads if I could legally purchase MP3s at around ten pence a track, or perhaps a little more...

CDs are overpriced, but at least they don't disappear if my computer fails. My CD collection is still growing at the moment, but at a slower rate than in the past, IMO if the record industry wants consumers and recording artists to take them seriously with their future activities, they must start taking us seriously, and stop ripping us both off...

Otherwise...

Music Industry = Fail.

Excuse me sir: there's a rootkit in your master boot record

"Mebroot cannot be removed while a computer is running"

...is what it says in the BBC article on this issue.

Unless they know something we don't, I guess they're doing their usual dumbing down of technology, but assuming that readers are too ignorant to know the difference between a computer and an OS is a bit much, surely...and even if many readers +are+ lacking that knowledge, surely the Beeb's there to inform, not confuse?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7183008.stm

NB the rest of the article's not too bad, it's just that one line that annoyed me.

I sent an email to them, perhaps others did too...We'll see if they change it...

NASA preps robots for future fake moon landings

hollow moon theory, anyone?

lolz @ Peter Howardson, Dave Barnhart and similar. Can we have an exposé about the hollow moon theory*, just for them? ...

*condensed hollow moon theory - we didn't go there; some of us came from there, black people and cows (might not have been cows, I can't remember...) are the natives of Earth...would you believe there are denizens of a certain pub slightly north of Watford who actually believe this?

Keep up the good work El Reg!

Texas porn actress stole classmate's name

mine would be...

Toast Coniston....Or with the maiden name; Toast Nethercott.

Olympic promotional footage provokes epileptic fits

re: the brown note

funny. Thanks, Mr anonymous, for reminding me of this,

Incidentally, who are the Olympic games for? evidently not the british people...

and also incidentally;;

the reference to "lisa from the simpsons performing a sex act" is viewable on the BBC site... (user comments from yesterday)

Epson adds to Stylus series

cheaply made, cheaply sold.

meh. Printers are such a skank. I've got a perfectly fine Brother that has a similar internal counter problem (reset waste ink tank). Wasted days trying to reset it.

I'm thinking of getting a new lexmark mfc for £30. Another piece of crap with built in obsolescence I know, but 30 smackers? Not too long ago I would have probably paid this for the scanning and copy functions alone. Throw in the (admittedly half empty) "starter" cartridges and you have a cheap product, for a cheap price.

Now, will it last over a year is the question.... and also will it like the cheap refilled or unbranded cartridges I will probably end up putting in it. I think I know the answers.

Armed cops in Lara Croft bust action

in fear

well about a month ago I was sleeping on a mate's couch when I heard banging at the door. It got louder and louder and louder. I checked my watch - the time was 06.20. They finally got some kind of battering ram out and started to break down the door. At this point my mate's housemate came down and opened the door. At least 15 police officers stormed into the house.

Long story short, they were after a gun. After herding us into the front room, they turned over every room in the house. When they had just about finished, the one in charge spotted my mate's BB gun on the front room sideboard, next to a large bottle of plastic BBs. You should have seen his eyes light up! Had it away in no time. His inferior officers were told to remove the BBs and gun. Cue a 15 minute discussion over which type of box to put it in as they could not decide if it was evidence or confiscated property.

At the same time, their superior officer was giving us a lecture about how someone had reported a firearm, we must have been playing with the gun outside, and how it was a crime to have a BB gun if someone sees it "in fear". Insinuating we were in line to be accused of an offence, he tried to persuade us to sign the gun over to him, we refused as it belonged to my mate (who was at work) and also as I knew it could not have been used as it had been broken for months. So, they just took it, and left a note for my mate.

We found out later that his landlord had arranged for the gasman to call. This gasman must have been blind as he saw a plastic gun with BBs, and reported it to the police as a dangerous firearm. The police refused to return the gun, claiming the law was on their side and was in the process of being changed anyway. Hopefully that's my first and last dawn raid experience, but I dunno, there seem to be so many more crimes these days!