Posts by Tim #3

Female Chinese astronauts must have no scars, straight teeth

Such window dressing is quite insulting. I wonder how many decades (or more) it will be before there are significant numbers of female politicians in China.

Barclaycard pay-by-bonk fraud risk exposes Amazon's security

Liability

Where does liability rest with these transactions? I understood that several banks/ card issuers used the Verified by Visa registration to move liability from them to the customer, is this in the same boat?

The Register obtains covert snaps of Google's new London offices

Not only that, but did anyone else take quite a while searching the first pictures for the playmobil characters?

Re: Just what sort of party is this room intended for?

more likely the sort of party frequented by moustachioed Germans and their schone co-stars

Sony to ship passive 3D, OLED TVs in 2013

Re: 3D. Give up. Please.

Artistic direction and the narrative are less important to the grumbleflick market, so I guess 3D is here to stay and will drive future technologies anyway...

Faster mobile data: the road to 4G

Interference

Another intersting angle on 4G tech & interference here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17125468

Ford intros tech'd-up B-Max mini-MPV

Security?

It looks like sync's security has already been cracked...

http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/07/28/car.systems.such.as.onstar.sync.more.hacked/

Has anyone found a copy of that presentation anywhere?

Revealed: Inside Apple-bothering Proview's crumbling factory

Re: Re: Re: Lame

c'mon, you meant snuggles really

Texan TSA crew accused of nude scanner ogling scheme

The behaviour reported in this article is entirely inevitable as the scanner staff are human, let alone when you consider how jobs in the CCTV monitoring field have always attracted the perverts. What's more surprising is that afaik these type of images haven't turned up on the web yet, there must be numerous specialist grumpleflick sites that would be interested in buying them.

Boy burned in Nintendo sensor substitution

Re: Candle in the Wii?

In salute to you sir, I have raised a foil balloon picturing Princess Diana above my desk

Mars, Europe losers in Obama's 2013 NASA budget

This rather leaves the door open for China (or even India) to do a sample-return Mars mission & grab the global limelight

Pentax pushes super sturdy snapper

It is kinda tempting, I just wish it had an optical viewfinder.

Also, is there a lens cover built in?

Google Wallet PIN security cracked in seconds

maybe

cos they have spent a fortune buying the rights & the terminals etc & want to get some ROI?

On a separate note, the last time El Geg tested this contactless stuff it didn't actually deduct the payments from your balance- does that excellent feature still remain?

Sky to open net telly channels to all

and don't forget that a load of people streaming Sky will further clog up the overburdened infrastructure and hence impact upon the places that at present are lucky enough to have these proper speeds and low contention

Wheels fall off Aviva Insurance's website for 5 hours

Are you sure about that? I thought Aviva built two new data centres in/near Norwich (one of which is utterly huge) which are run by EDS/HP for them, then moved out of their old twin data centres in Bowthorpe and sold that off to Sentry42 who have now refurbed that site. I would gladly be corrected though.

I gather Rackspace had an outage yesterday too- wonder if there is any connection? Maybe some key hardware component had a failed firmware update or something.

Vauxhall prices up Ampera e-car for Blighty

Cashing in

So it's £35k here before subsidy. The US pre-subsidy price is $40k, or £26k. What do we get for the extra £9k, or are GM just cashing in?

Pure Highway 300Di in-car digital radio kit

£200 for a radio? Kin ell.

Using phone-tracking tech? 'Fess up now, urges expert

Instead of walking in circles, Is there a was to spoof such data?

Volkswagen catches electric Beetle

well at least you get warning lights... VW's LT35 2.8 van has a not-uncommon problem where it will cut out for no reason, then is fine when you switch it off and on again (sounds familiar...), which doesn't sound so bad unless you happen to be driving it when it cuts out. AFAIK VW have washed their hands of this as there's no fault codes that show up.

London 2012 team pulls swamped ticket resale site

I should think the IT suppliers are very happy indeed, what with any blame going to the former government and most stuff only having to work for a fortnight anyway. And lets not forget the huge cheques they will be receiving.

Space soldiers save satellite from FLAMING DEATH

Yes that would be interesting to know. Perhaps the fuel froze, which was in turn caused by a failed or non-existent heating device?

Boffins unimpressed by LOHAN's sizzling thruster

"Lots of weather and lightning research rockets make 100,000 foot on staged solid fuel engines WITHOUT a balloon."

Simples... get one of those, add Playmonaut, and balloon launch it from 100,000 ft. It might take a few extra balloons but hey... the photos from 200,000 ft would be worth it

Latest El Reg project: Rise of the Robot Sheep

One frankly disappointing aspect of the suggestions seems to be the focus on health and safety above all. Daleks et al were not known for being slow underpowered things that have to return to the charging dock frequently, ok so they did take out a few fleshies too but hey. Let’s consider some user requirements that would make the design transferable to a wide number of readers – such as ability to cope with longer grass, slopes, uneven lawns, molehills, fallen leaves, no outdoor electricity supply, and how about a cost ceiling too?

Creepy photo-tagging tech slotted into Google+

Presumably, so long as you draw a face on them.

Yours Sincerely

Tim Longnose

The moment a computer crash nearly caused my car crash

This reminds me of problems with stability control systems & how serious faults within those are yet there is no datalogging built in. It amazes me that the manufacturers got that past the regulators.

Voyager probe reaches edge of Solar System's 'bubble'

Well, Lester & co were never absolutely sure of PARIS's flight path after release from the balloon...

2011's Best... Cars

Other than the McLaren ( which will probably be stored away) which of these cars is most likely to still be on the road in 10, 20 or 30 years time & hence can really claim the sustainability crown?

Infographic: The road to desktop virtualisation

error

There's an error - it says "Yes it's cheaper" . It isn't.

NASA wants space washing machine for ISS, Mars bases

Presumably the ISS will need a permanent female presence to operate this too.

The End of Free: Web 2.0 will squeeze punters rotten

Just curious... what country is this?

Also, what's the local beer like?

BUSTED! Secret app on millions of phones logs key taps

As well as the class action approaches to resolving this, it would be good if someone could create an app that would send a load of nonsense data back to this rootkit’s servers. A bit of misinformation can come in handy sometimes in focussing minds.

My home is bugged ... with temp sensors to save me cash

LED bulbs

Interesting stuff indeed. Has anyone tried any of the normal (bayonet) fitting 240v LED light bulbs that are appearing? I saw a 5w one in use last week & it was equivalent to a 40w incandescent bulb imho, I'd be interested to hear how good the brighter ones are in particular.

Google flings Bing into search engine bin

Anyoen else using duckduckgo ? It's growing on me, particularly as it seems to return less shopping type stuff than google. Never could see the point of Bing.

Toyota, Intel connect to connect cars to web

Give it a couple of years & they’ll have got into can bus hacks and will be getting it to shout back at you.

Beats me why manufacturers think we all want this sort of stuff in our cars. I’d like to buy one that’s more sustainable instead. I don’t demolish my house every 10 years and have a new one built, likewise I’d like my car to be something that I can similarly live with for a long time and upgrade and personalise too.

We need to talk about desktop virt

Sh*te

The performance and reliability of our virtual desktops has singlehandedly destroyed all confidence our users have in the IT dept. and the good relationships with them.

The costs of engineer support and dual licencing (we’ve had to go for local copies too) must have wiped out the efficiencies too.

Other than that, I guess it's ok.

Lost cities found beneath sands of Sahara by satellites

But surely you can see how it is all designed for ceremonial use

Alien city lights could be detected across interstellar space

Also assuming

That they are even alien species. A distant colony of badgers for instance...

Now where's my Sunday Sport?

Farewell then, Sony Ericsson

My fault...

They announced this the day after I bought a sony Ericsson phone (Elm) off of ebay , cheap natch but not bad at all. Presumably this was somehow the straw that broke the camel's back.

Meanwhile, Is it really possible that they provided it with an application called “tracker” so you can log your times and routes for outdoors sports activities, as well as compare to previous times, include lap functions etc, then they made it impossible to lock the keypad while this app is running? I hope I'm missing something obvious....

Boss leaves robot in charge of office

Maybe if all bosses have one of these each then they may even start to talk to each other at last...

Jaguar recalls over 17,600 X-types in the UK

Another car electronics problem. Having looked recently, it is so hard to find a decent yet simple car nowdays; indeed I gave up. I wonder which manufacturer will be the first to realise that there is a market for good quality cars that are not equipped with a pile of such features.

Union enraged by secret driverless Tube plan

He's not just overpaid, but subsidised publically too...

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/859870-bob-crow-gets-taxpayers-help-with-rent-despite-earning-145k-a-year

BTW , how many days paid annual leave do tube drivers get now, has it reached 50 yet?

Reg hack desperately seeks deeply frustrated pensioner

Has the Zodiac made a reappearance maybe?

Motorola sharpens smartphones with revamped Razr

where did you get the $300 figure from? Would be a reasonable price though.

Anyone spot any big differences between this & a Defy? Though I'm really after a non-smartphone that is rugged & has a good quality camera, lack of signal at home makes much else pointless.

Why so shy on pay-by-wave, Nokia?

Is there any improvement on the NFC process since this reg article http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/01/quick_tap/ , which, as I remember it, showed the whole set-up part to be very clunky indeed but did have the bonus feature of not deducting purchases from your balance? On the basis of that maybe Nokia have got the right idea at present.

And they're off! Day one at the solar races

"... convoy of five vehicles, the solar car, its two support vhicles, and two trucks filled with people and stuff.... driving so close together"

A touch of slipstreaming is going on perhaps?

German hackers snare wiretap Trojan, accuse gov of writing it...

On the subject of security, where's the El Reg coverage of the malicious software that is infecting the US drones, as reported in today's Times?

Baltimore 'toilet bomber' acquitted

Presumably Mr Davis is flushed with his success.

LOHAN to suck mighty thruster as it goes off, in a shed

Some kind of temperature sensor attached to the motor would be handy, as in view of the vacuum around it it will take a while to get down to -60.

LOHAN eyes hardcore partner's impressive girth

I thought titles were passe

Assuming a successful launch occurs at say 90000 feet, can any mathematicians out there advise how much extra altitude is the 9 seconds burn time likely to achieve? Presumably it is weight and drag-dependant, but some upper & lower estimates would be interesting.

McAfee: Cyber thugs will turn your car into Christine

Hmm

Tis important that they highlight these risks to ensure manufacturers start taking responsibiity for security. The potential rewards will be an enormous incentive for people to work out how to hack these systems.

By the way, presumably examples of such attacks actually happening in real life will always be hard to find- when a car is stolen, who knows how it was stolen?