Posts by Zobbo

Qatar whips covers off giant footballing vagina

Not factual

This article is a load of FUD.

You THINK you're watching your LG smart TV - but IT's WATCHING YOU, baby

I've got an LG fridge

Does this mean LG know I'm a fat b***ard?

Unsung DEAD WHALE EXPLODER hero, who gave the early internet a purpose, passes away

Good times

I remember downloading it off the fortean times website in the lates 90s. Took a long time but was worth it.

Geneticists resolve human dilemma of Adam's boy-toy status

I've watched Fox news

"...humanity reaching the Americas"

Debatable

Dubai splurges on 700hp, 217mph Lamborghini police cruiser

911

Aren't the UK cars tuned though? I thought their old Volvo T5's could do 180mph? That 5 series looks seriously lowered at the back (or maybe just a fat convict in the backseat). Also I remember hearing there was a police Porsche 911 in London a while back, which had been confiscated from a crim.

Boffins build elastic wires with liquid metal

Re: Already solved for headphones

Because it's quite hard to fit a bluetooth transmitter and power source in an earbud. I haven't seen anyone do it yet.

Already solved for headphones

I bust two sets of bluetooth earbuds by killing the cables, but they do get used daily. Shure have solved this problem anyway - you can replace the cables and plug new ones into the earbuds. Maybe other companies have similar solutions too. I'm sure the stretch-armstrongness has other useful applications though.

EINSTEIN'S BRAIN had unusual lobes and cortex

Theory of Relativity

At least he didn't have a large knob on his forehead

What are quantum computers good for?

Lasers?!!!!!!!

I'm in!

Ten gaming headsets

Tritton

The control box is slightly too heavy for my liking, luckily there's a clip to attach it to my bra strap.

I feel dizzy

Mars rover Curiosity snaps explicit selfies from ALL ANGLES

Re: What I want to know is...

Looks like Mr T. A step up from Panto in Scunthorpe I guess..

New Mac mini: Business in the front, party at the back

Re: Why is it so pricey in NZ?

Ah yes, I think you're right there. My bad,,,

Why is it so pricey in NZ?

The basic model costs 949NZD here, yet 600USD to NZD is around 740NZD. I was tempted, but not now. Maybe Reg Hardware can show us some PC alternatives?

Valve's Half-Life

Bf1942

Can we have a review of BF1942 then? Loved that game. Also loved HL and CS and TFC (and I love TF2 but getting a bit old for the pace now). I played BF1942 forever. Also the Bf1942 Pirates Mod is the funniest mod I've ever seen.

P.S. I think you put value instead of valve up there or my eyes are going.

Experts troll 'biggest security mag in the world' with DICKish submission

bogomips

"Unlike other authors, we have decided not to enable time since 1967 [20]."

I was in tears after reading that line. Also "bogomips" and "flip-flop gates" had me going. Great stuff.

Ten... PC games you may have missed

Is Tribes Ascend closer to UT than Tribes? I used to love Tribes2, played it to death. Even briefly played Tribes but it was showing its age by then. And all on a 56k modem without lag. Awesome.

Jagged Alliance looks good, I enjoy the more relaxed pace of turn based games as well, must be old age. Rayman is probably the PC's Mario, I had Rayman 2 bundled with an old Graphics card, nice game and had cool camera/3d stuff even back then.

Sony to bring bog-friendly blowers to Blighty

Speaking of dual cores...

...does it protect against number twos?

Jabra Clipper

I was going to buy one of these, but I read a lot of complaints about the poor build quality so stumped for the Samsung HS3000 instead. Nice piece of kit, good battery life. Buttons are a bit fiddly but other than that it's great. I'm on my second one, only because I dropped the first one while slightly inebriated and it got run over by a bus. Amazingly it still came on...didn't work though. I plug a pair of Shure noise isolating earbuds into them.

Grand Theft Auto V trailer drives onto interweb

I enjoyed GTA 4 on the PC, but yes it was a poor port and didn't use the PC to it's full potential. I didn't notice any bugs though, but the combat interface felt very clunky on the PC. I love the detail in the game though, as with GTA3 and I waited until it was on sale on Steam at $5.

Was that The Faces playing on the trailer? Sounds familiar.

Oracle defies the economy – and the curse of Sun

Oracle have bumped those margins up - IIRC Sun's markup was 40% in the early noughties.

HP chief bows to Jobsian cult

Confusement

Have you ever tried to buy an HP? They have a billion different model names/umbers and figuring out which one is best suited to you is a nightmare. Check out their website, it's a disaster. I don't know if this is a sale technique kind of like Intel were they try to confuse you into being upsold. Apple doesn't have this problem, they have a small number of models so it's easy to choose.

DIY aerial drone monitors Wi-Fi, GSM networks

whirlybird

Helicopters are harder to fly for starters, maybe there are other technical reasons (less reliable, can't fly as high, not stable enough, noisier? I dunno). Anyway, modern airliners can fly holding patterns, in some scenarios automatically, so I'd assume you could program the model plane to do that as well. You could just program in the flight plan and go to the pub.

LiveJournal groans under 'immense' DDos attack

Not working for me

I haven't been able to get on for about 3 days now, just tried a few mins ago, still no luck.

Rockstar shoots LA Noire onto PC

Goody

Excellent, looking forward to this. But why didn't they port Red Dead Redemption to the PC as well?

Tritton AX Pro 5.1-channel gaming headphones

Tritton

I have the AX 360. The build quality is generally poor, the microphone broke within a few weeks and I ended up using a 15 buck pair which had much better quality input than the 360 ever had. Having said that, the sound quality is good and the 5.1 does actually work. I play BC2 also, but on PC with Auzentech Forte and the AX 360 and the experience is incredible. They also work nicely for DVD's.

The AX Pro look more substantial so I wouldn't be surprised if the build quality was better, the microphone certainly looks much meatier than the weedy bendy one on the 360. BTW you can easily use these on your PC as long as you have an optical (preferable) or RCA output than can send a Dolby or DTS signal.

Legal goons threaten researcher for reporting security bug

Re: To be fair ...

"Acidgen also provided suggestions for fixing the flaw, Dark Reading said. He also told the representatives he planned to disclose vulnerability details publicly once a patch was released."

How is publicly disclosing a vulnerability *after* a patch fixing it has been released extortion?

No, iPhone location tracking isn't harmless and here's why

Yes, there's FUD

Coming from the usual Apple apologists. Imagine the difference in reaction from certain people if it had been a Windows phone.

Microsoft: IE9 not yet 'broadly' available

Not easy to install

I tried installing it at work, even though our PC's are up to date it refused to work. The hoops you have to jump through just to download the browser are ridiculous - downloading FF or Chrome is so much easier.

Drive-by exploit slurps sensitive data from Android phones

yup

My Magic got Froyo over the air. I've never installed anything for it, I just use it like a USB drive to transfer files and all updates magically appear over 3G. Having said that, it was the first update since 1.6 so I think security exploits like this could be a major problem if updates are so slow to appear, so I agree with the rest of the post. Also the carrier is always emphasizing that Google control updates (mine is a google branded phone) so not really the fault of the carrier in this case.

The Social Network scoops four Golden Globes

It's good

The film is good. Not what I was expecting at all. It's about the people involved and their treatment of each other more than anything technical. You could be oblivious to facebook and enjoy it. If it was really about all the webby stuff it would be dull as pants. Yes Justin Timberlake is an odd choice and I'm not sure what the whole Napster guy thing was about, but other than that pretty good. The only thing is it's biased towards Eduardo (who's story i think it is). He is the only non-asshole, coincidentally.

Skype makes wobbly return, offers compo to paying punters

Supernodes are not evil

Supernodes are inherent part of a lot of p2p networks. The advantage is you get better performance bootstrapping from a supernode than making every node a supernode - which would be painful for most users. It's a compromise between practicality and decentralisation. It's common to have supernodes/relay nodes on P2P networks.

McNealy to Ellison: How to duck death by open source

Nice article

I've been quite harsh on McNealy, but that was an interesting read. Obviously he didn't have that much control near the end. I did admire his empathy for his workers - that isn't BS on his part, Sun really did hold off on sacking people for as long as they could. Wall Street hated them for it though and it may have cost them in the end. You feel there is a human, empathetic side to McNealy whereas with Ellison it's all greenbacks and bravado.

Google unloads Nexus S Gingerbread phone

Where's me bliddy 2.2

Still on 1.6 HTC Magic...dum dee dum...

Researcher outs Android exploit code

Good point

Actually this bloke makes a good point. With desktop Windows, you have free* patch maintenance and you know you'll have it for years after you purchase the product.

With Android it's a guessing game. I'm still on 1.6, the only way I can upgrade is to do it manually with an unofficial ROM. Vodafone tell me Google control the updates and I occasionally hear rumours that 2.2 is on the way, but then nothing happens. This is the problem with Google branded phones, maybe the situation is better for Android phones that use the manufacturers ROM.

Basically, Google need to clearer about the update process, how long a certain phone will be supported for etc. The updated OS is a strong selling point, but if those updates don't appear then people are going to be put off. It's just too amateur at the moment.

*As in you don't usually need to pay anything on top of the initial price.

Ex-Sun boss gives Ellison open source wedgie

Snoracle

"[But] I was a good capitalist, he's a great capitalist."

McNealy is half right. So 50% better than usual.

Android Market shows hand at 100k Apps

Apps are filtered by OS version

How many apps will someone like me, stuck on Android 1.6 see, though? Yes, I saw an opportunity to whinge about being stuck on Android 1.6 and I took it.

Seriously though, I can't see PDF viewer or Angry Birds and god knows what else. So, do the lucky Froyo users see those 100k apps? What about the proles like me? Do Iphone3 users see iPhone4 apps?

UK promises 'transformative' cyber security programme

Alternative

So our computers will be safe, but the terrorists will just drive a bloody big boat into the Thames since our Navy has been reduced to three men in a tub.

Little Chef in 'I ♥ Charlie' t-shirt outrage

Holiday gear

I can't wait to see someone trying to go through customs in that.

Code for open-source Facebook littered with landmines

Terrible idea

When I read up on this I thought it was a stupid idea - everyone has to run their own web server. Ridiculous. Most facebook users are the least technical users on the net. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

MS probes mystery IE bug

Chrome

Is he as forward about publicising Chrome vulnerabilities? I can't help being suspicious when Google are disclosing bugs in products they're competing directly with. And yes I'm typing this in Chrome 6...

Google ditches JavaOne over Oracle's Android suit

Google are Freetards

Google ripped of desktop Java and put it on mobiles, knowing fine well this was a violation of Sun's policy. Thus ripping off Sun and preventing them claiming the only money the poor buggers made - on J2ME licenses.

But everyone's too busy blindly putting the boot into Oracle. If anyone kills Java it'll be Google - by fragmenting it to death. And Oracle will take all the blame because they had the nerve to enforce standards on their own IP.

Aussie broadband is slower than a slow thing in a slow town

Slow Oz

Too right, I wondered why my Steam downloads were crawling at 3k t'other day, then I realised they were going thru Telstra servers in Oz - switched to New York and it ramped up to 700k. I'm in Auckland - I ask ye....

Chaos surrounds New Zealand iPhone 4 day

Expected 5 years after the rest of the world, as usual

Well their texts never turn up in time, it follows that the phones are the same. Where's Android 2.2 for my magic, ey? Late as well...

'Steve Jobs' switches to Android

Re: i vs A

"fragmented choice".

I will translate for non-Apple people: "choice".

Can Oracle Swing it on SWT in Java?

Gaze into the Oracle

Good news. There was a lot of hulabaloo about Oracle killing Netbeans and client Java blah blah, as if Sun hadn't done half the job by pure incompetence. Great engineers at Sun, terrible management. SWT used to kick Swing performance wise, but once the software-emulation purists had been kicked in to touch things got better. I think Swing is a good long-term bet. I also prefer NetBeans to Eclipse, it's slower but much slicker and nicer to use. But I'm no pro, so they might have altogether different opinions.

Android app brings in $13K a month

Nice idea

I think it's a good idea, quite clever. Especially for people who travel a lot of places they're not familiar with (probably salesmen etc.). Good luck to him.

Engineers sweat Oracle's Sun-Java integration promise

Re:

"It's a key rule of engineering that you can't optimize for more than one variable at a time. To put it in everyday terms, if you already have a Ferrari and a pickup truck, you'd be very unwise to try to create a compromise between them."

Those Ferarris have a lot of alloy and composite materials in them...