Posts by I_am_Chris

Ancient cave girl genome could crack Man's genetic puzzle

It's called open science and is happening more and more. In fact NIH require that all data are released immediately.

The disk space requirements are much more that just for ACGTN as each base has quality information detailing how reliably that base was 'read'.

However the 'fastq' format is very space inefficient and is partly to blame for global sequencing data to grow faster than Moore's law.

Bytes or bases?

When you say 500GB, do you mean gigabytes or gigabases?

Sequencing data is usually reported in bases in the scientific community.

New driver-snooping satnav could push down UK insurance premiums

Increasing other people's premiums more like

I can see this as a way for insurance companies to penalise drivers who *don't* use the system.

An NT-powered Windows Phone? Not so fast...

Let me get this right...

MS are saying they will put the same NT kernel that was in XP. Is that right?

Remember Windows XP? It's the OS that was so full of holes that MS spent the best part of 10 years trying to fix it and then replaced it. TEN YEARS!

And now they are wanting to unleash it onto a market where anti-virus is unheard of, unsecured networks are commonplace and scams are a daily problem.

Seriously?!

MS are imploding under their own stupidity... EPIC FAIL

Poll: Linux's big data guzzling worries melt away

I don't get it

What on earth is this article comparing Linux to?

The only other OS specifically mentioned is windows. There's no effing way that that is better than Linux at handling big data.

Fail elReg!

TalkTalk, 3UK scratched off Ofcom's Xmas card list

"If we could just get an ISP that delivers a decent phone line and broadband connection at a reasonable (doesn't have to be the cheapest, somewhere between TalkTalk and Virgin Media would be fine) price, that doesn't tie you in to a contract but instead pledges to keep your custom/loyalty with a decent service and good customer service, I do believe they would clean up"

One word: plusnet

I've been with them for ~2 years with no major problems; broadband + phone. Good value and good customer service.

BT fibre rollout reaches Scotland, Wales

couldn't agree more

My exchange has had FTTC since the summer, but I can't get it :(

Some people on the same *street* are enabled.

New account of Flight 447 disaster published

Not quite.'putain' is much stronger than 'bloody'; it's much nearer to fuck or shit. There's no way you'd see anyone on prime time tv use that word unlike 'bloody' over here.

NASA confirms first Earth candidate in habitable zone

Awesome!

When do we get to move in? What are the neighbours like?

WD My Passport Studio 1TB external hard drive

Wot. No thunderbolt?

Surely they've missed a trick there. What with Airs not having Firewire and the high CPU load of USB, that's a glaring omission. FAIL!

Ubuntu team questions Distrowatch share slide figures

exactly!

It's always the same.

They believe the numbers when it shows them in a good light, but point to flaws when they don't.

Genetically modified mutants 'safe for release' into the wild

"Selective breeding != Genetic Modification"

Sure it does. What on earth do you think controls the trait that you want in your crop? That's right, genetics. So, by selectively breeding for juicier tomatoes you're mutating the genome.

There's no such thing as 'natural' beef, corn, etc!

MS and Samsung tout interactive table

Why such a pants CPU?

You'd think for that amount of money you'd get something like an iCore. The engadget review shows a less than smooth user experience :/

NEWSFLASH: Chips cheaper than disks

That's nothing to do with the SSD; it's only windows being crap!

iOS upgrade swells iPhone battery-suckage grief

Not in the UK

Strangely, here in the UK, the dept store John Lewis automatically gives you 2 years warranty on all electrical goods. Including Macs.

Plus the sale of goods act, puts no time limit on when you can return faulty goods.

There doesn't seem to be an issue here.

Apple's iPad not so shiny once you get it home

Really?!

I'm surprised. We got one as a present last Xmas and we use it everyday.

My, self-affirmed technophobe, wife reads emails and surfs the Internet, and the kids play games.

I wouldn't have got one beforehand, but now I'm considering getting an iPad3 when it come out.

Immigrants face £49k wage minimum to stay

Who on earth are the ConDems trying to persuade to come here? More city and management wankers? Cos that's what they're going to get.

Knowledge based economy, my arse!

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 13.3in Core i5 notebook

Expensive

This is 300 quid more than an Air and people complain about Macs being expensive!

THere's no way this laptop is worth the money.

iPad 2 made from T-Rex fossils costs £5m

2Kg of gold!

Christ! You'd only be able to hold it 5min before your arm gets knackered.

I guess that's what 'staff' are for...

Euro banks unhappy with proposed e-payment rules

Strange II

I'd change banks if IBANs are important to you. I know for a fact that first direct and RBS both print the IBAN number on your statements by default.

Also, last time I made an international payment (a couple of years ago now) it cost £14.

You're definitely with the wrong bank.

Amazon’s shares slashed as profits drop 73%

Estimate!?

"between a loss of $200 million and a profit of $250 million"

Can they really not pin it down to a smaller window than $450m?

Must do better...

Deep inside ARM's new Intel killer

Go ARM

Great to see a UK tech company doing so well. <clap>

The gov must take note and grab the knowledge economy by the horns and invest in STEM industries. From school upwards...

My Council Services

What on earth is a dairy bull anyway?

I get my milk from dairy *cows*. At least I hope I do...

iOS update woes prompt gnashing of teeth for Apple fans

And I think you to get back to bed...

It says it's 1.52 GMT. In the UK we're currently at GMT + 1 which makes it 2.52 or very nearly 3am!

Prang finder site reveals accident blackspots

Mobile

The site is totally unuseable on a mobile. Poor. Must try harder.

iPhone 5 to support 21Mb/s HSPA+ not LTE

Meh

The mobile internet can't even cope with current speeds, so talking about 21Mbps is pointless!

I just tested my phone on a HSPA connection with full signal and got a stupendous 353kbps download...

Amazon intros $199 movie Kindle

With your use of 'profanity' makes me assume you're a left-pondian. Over on this side of the pond 'fuck-off' usually means excessively large, often in a scary sense.

.Scot campaign seeks UK Gov backing

What a pointless exercise!

Why are so many people keen to carve off their own part of the web?! It's a global phenomenon - it doesn't matter where a website URL is 'from'. As long as the site is relevant it could be on the moon for all I care!

FFS people need to get a grip and spend their time and effort on worthwhile things like the deficit. Not waste even more public money on vanity projects - yes the SNP, I'm looking at you. The sooner we get this indepence referendum out of the way the better and you can spend your time looking after the scots properly, for a change...

Apple makes a hash of password security (again)

not with an Air you can't

The new Airs will only work with Lion.

I really like my new Air, but Lion is turning out to be quite shoddy :(

Celebrating the 55th anniversary of the hard disk

Applause

Happy birthday!

Apple preps MacBook Pro refresh

A 15" air is pointless. The whole point is that it's easily portable, 15" is just too big. The 13" is perfect IYAM, but then I just got one :)

ASA probes Microsoft cloud reliability claims

Sadly...

Our work is moving onto 365 shortly. Fingers crossed...

Got a non-iPad tablet? Weirdo

not very

...if I'm anything to go by.

I have an HTC phone, an iPad, a Linux desktop and a mac laptop. No Windows, though, I'm not *that* weird.

London bus timings mobile beta site spotted

Dundee

Has had this for the 5 years. It works very well with almost no phantoms.

It's great as I can turn up just before the bus with no hanging around. It's even been incorporated in Google maps!

'Apple is not going to change,' new boss says

6 months

"He needs at least 6 months before we throw him to the Lions & then you can take a pound of flesh."

He *has* been in charge for 6 months; while Steve's been on sick leave. So far, I think he's done fine overseeing the launch of the iPad 2 and refreshing the MacBooks.

Now we need to see what his 'vision' is like...

Firefox 6 silently released ahead of official unwrap date

Word

Then went from v6 to v95 (or was it 97).

Anyways when a product becomes popular version numbers become purely marketing tools.

Icebergs measured in Manhattans: Official

because

The measurements were made via satellite, so mass/volume is difficult to measure.

Nissan car secretly shares driver data with websites

Why?

WHy do you need rss feeds in your car in the first place? Call me old fashioned but shouldn't drivers be concentrating on the road?

Also, just don't subscribe to any feeds if you value your privacy. Simples.

NHS Direct

Indeed...

If it was so obvious why do I keep seeing lobster-red people sunbathing/topless come a sunny spell??

People need protecting from themselves and NHSdirect is a good first step.

Microsoft waves CentOS club at Red Hat

What a joke!

Typical MS, they choose to chummy up to the OS that is struggling the most at the moment. They very nearly fell completely apart last year (or was the year before?) and their handling of the centOS 6 release has been a shambles: they don't think they'll get centOS 6 final until the end of the year.

Bye, bye centOS I fear. Just look at what MS did to Novell...

Janet 3G to go live in June

Could be useful...

But 3G is really a last resort if you want to download pdfs of journal articles etc.

We use a VPN over wi-fi here and that works really well and doesn't require a SIM to work with my phone, iPad or laptop.

And as this is an extension of the eduroam network, it's only of use when you're not at an eduroam site - practically all Universities and research institutes are.

Red Hat rolls up RHEL 6.1 beta

And where the hell is CentOS 6!?

Red Hat are already at 6.1 and CentOS has yet to release 6. What the hell are they doing?!

Firefox 4 debuts: The last kitchen sink release

Quarterly releases

Are a good thing! I've always used late beta versions of firefox since it was called phoenix. They are always pretty stable. The only downside is that extensions often don't keep up. Hopefully, quicker releases will make developers keep their extensions in sync sooner rather than wait for release candidates.

I've been using firefox4 since well before Christmas and it's been great. Today is a bit of yawn moment for me :)

Red Hat: 'Yes, we undercut Oracle with hidden Linux patches'

A pragmatic solution

...if you ask me.

They could easily have decided that this OSS business is not for them anymore and closed source a lot of their value-added software. Good on them for sticking with GPL and sticking two fingers up at Oracle.

Lloyds, First Direct websites hit by payday outages

Text messages

I got my first direct text this morning as normal. Why do you need to in online to check when the automated texts give all the info you need?

ECJ asked to rule on re-sale of software licences

of course not!

You don't licence your car from Ford or BMW, do you? you buy it.

Why do people so often over stretch the car analogy when talking about software?

Openistas question UK.gov's £300k crime-mapping website

works for me

I tried it last night after the news and it was fine.

Actually, a well made and useful site. Of course it'll suffer on the first day with that amount of publicity.

Get a grip and wait a few days for the hubbub to die down.

Gov will spend £400k to destroy ID card data

RTFM!

Has no-one actually looked what is involved in the destruction of the data???

It's linked to from the main article (for the hard of thinking: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/08/government_will_shred_id_card_data/). Although, it still seems that £400K is a bit steep there's clearly a lot more involved than just putting a sledgehammer to some racks...

Personally, I'd be happy for the government to spend twice that amount to get rid of the NIR. A bloody good riddance!

Dirty PCs: How much filth can you take?

Modern PC

If it was a modern PC it probably would have caught fire.