* Posts by Matt_W

21 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jan 2010

Ten... bits of Jubilee tat tech

Matt_W
Joke

Re: Mini Mouse

Isn't that appropriate, given the current owners of the Mini brand? ;-)

Murdoch parliamentary pandemonium: Shock snap

Matt_W
Happy

Love it!

Thank PlayMobil it's Friday.

Oracle kills Sun.com after starvation diet

Matt_W

Sun

I always thought the Sun logo was great - very clever.

No whalesong/boutique nonsense here!

Lane Fox promises sub-£100 PCs

Matt_W

Always thought it was...

Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer, no?

- as in the things that on the screen vs physical things.

Fox News outs Beatles as 'Manchester's favorite mopheads'

Matt_W
Joke

Language?

Were you complimented on how well you spoke American?

Facebook unveils 'next-gen' messaging system

Matt_W
FAIL

Pedantic? Good effort, must try harder.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cum - first reference

PARIS in 89,000 ft climax

Matt_W
Thumb Up

Brilliant!

I love the slight banking as the plane separates - it would have been brilliant to get a camera into the plane also - imagine the footage from that (I've been reading though and know this wasn't possible - pity, it would have been breathtaking!)

As it is though, very, very impressive stuff.

Hiberno-mooner stalks Google Street View

Matt_W

Sweet geebus

The horses and pikey pictures up there really paint a lovely picture or Ireland.

"Streetview - bringing the great unwashed to the world"

Ubuntu 10.10: date with destiny missed

Matt_W

Progress...?

I've been using Ubuntu at home since Dapper, generally have few problems, but for some reason the upgrade option never worked - to go up a version I'd always have to download and burn a CD and install from that.

This time it worked, I was delighted. Then again when I started it up I get a pretty dramatic freeze - so the thing is effectively bricked.

Aside: One thing I would like fixed - (it might be fixed, I just can't use the bl**dy thing!) the problems with playing DVDs - since 10.04 I haven't been able to play DVDs smoothly - I did have to play around with DMA settings to get it to work pre 10, but those changes did nothing.

Google eyes search result preview window

Matt_W

Nothing new really...

The Firefox extension SearchPreview (used to be called "GooglePreview") insert a thumnail onto Google, Bing and Yahoo search pages.

Has been around for ages...

I'm sure there are equivalents for the other Browsers too.

Pope makes central London no-go zone for BT engineers

Matt_W

Everytime I read...

... Two Circles - I think .. "two chances"

BBC dumps Gulf oil spill on Middlesbrough

Matt_W

How would the BBC report on...

A catastrophy that wipes out Wales....

"a devasating earthquake has left the entire country of Wales under the sea"

Yes, but what size was the area affected?

(I'm badly paraphasing a Welsh comidian whose name I can't remember)

Finland mulls legalizing use of unsecured Wi-Fi

Matt_W

And when...

You get done for illegal downloads of music/movies/worse (records of which your ISP has handed over) you can happily blame it on someone else using your bandwidth?

BT ordered to share telegraph poles for fast broadband

Matt_W

Wonder will this happen...

A few years back when the telecoms sector was opened up here in Ireland eircom (or they might have been Telecom Eireann at the time) - the BT "equivalent" (i.e. used to be state owned, controlled all the cables etc) were told to allow competitors access to the ducting etc to run their cabling.

Rumour has it that eircom knew this was about to happen so the engineers were told to go stuff the ducting with cable. (Not connected to anything)

So then they duly opened it up, and sadly, no room to run any of the competitors cabling.

All this is rumours, mind.

Nerd alert: First Lucid Lynx Ubuntu beta fun

Matt_W

Is it a bit sad...

...that I've really been looking forward to this?

Google 'personalizes' one in five searches

Matt_W

Misread that...

as wolf MAN alpha - which I think sounds much snappier!

'I'm an IT worker not an assassin'

Matt_W

Irish Passports

The Irish Passports were also stated by the Dept. of Foreign Affairs as having the incorrect number of digits and were missing the letters in the passort IDs.

Mozilla overlooked malware-laced Firefox add-ons

Matt_W

Would...

...have running FF sandboxed helped?

Most consumers reuse banking passwords on other sites

Matt_W

PIN numbers

I use two different online banking systems - both have a usernumber + PIN + password system - both use random digits from the PIN and one asks for random characters from the password. To me that seems pretty decent. This will allow you list transactions and make existing bill payments/transfers.

(Aside - always wondered why they don't use a random digit from the PIN number idea at ATMs/chip and pin terminals - then even if someone got you entering the PIN it'd be unlikely to be the same random sequence. And yes, for oldies who can only remember the 4 digits you could offer the choice)

If you want to add new accounts/bills to pay money to one requires you to ring a call centre, answer security questions, then take a call back on the number you gave to them at account opening. The other uses a unique chipped card and fob combination.

So the systems as a while seem quite good.

In terms of passwords I think I'm like a few others here - same general password, but variations thereof. Also an easy way to create pretty good passwords, but remember them - take an album say, then the song titles - then mix up vowels and number like letters. Easy enough to remember (song title) and then if you're made change password X days later pick another song title. e.g.

1st1llH@vntF0undWh@t1ml00k1ng4

Full-body scanner blind to bomb parts

Matt_W

X-ray scanners

Isn't all this stuff about the scanners old news?

I went through Heathrow May 2006 and was "randomly selected" for a scan - one of the full body x-ray scans. (Not sure the specifics) I asked the operator could I see the image (I'm not sure if they'd show you know) but he did show me - in pretty good res. nekkidness - blurred my face and gentleman's area, but I could recognise myself. Pretty cringey - felt a sudden need to go on a diet...

Near-ready Firefox 3.6 gets second RC sausage

Matt_W

My 2 cent...

At home I use FF 3.5 on a 7+ year old P4 Dell with 512 memory. I've 13 extensions (not sure if that's a high or low number - a mixture: Adblock+, NoScript, Web Dev, Tree Tab, Greasemonkey...). Never experienced any problems at all (using Ubuntu, that may help!)

In work I'm on XP - a dual core machine with 2 gb - use FF again, same extensions - same sites, give or take, all seems very similar. The extra CPU and memory is probably being used by various development tools that I'd have going.

Also in work I use IE6 (developing for a certain CRM application that insists on using ActiveX controls limits your choices somewhat...) I have an MS Web Development toolbar installed, that's about it. To be fair I don't really have too much trouble with this either, but I wonder is IE6 less featuretastic that IE7 or 8, so better suited to lesser machines/OSs?

Anecdotally, I think I restart IE the most - and the odd time I do need to restart FF (only on the XP machine, I don't think I ever have on Ubuntu) it brings all the tabs back in (not sure if that's FF or the Tree Style Tab plugin) as they were, so no real panic.

So seeing as neither machine is terribly well specced here, but by and large run fine, I think the trick is to keep extensions lean as possible and/or be careful where you point the browser at

Oh, and I use FF (both XP and Ubuntu) for my internet banking.