Posts by strangefish

SHIVER ME TIMBERS, it’s Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag

probable pointless pedantry

sharks don't have any bones, only cartilage.

Bitcopocalypse! Top cryptocurrency can be hijacked, warn boffins

It seems to me that any threat to bitcoin will more likely come in the form of an attempt to make and then manipulate a market by conventional means, similar to the way the silver price has been heavily controlled ever since the Hunt brothers' misadventure showed how easy it was. The limited size (by design) of the overall bitcoin pool makes it look vulnerable to me at least in its early years... while the price remains relatively low a bad actor could easily buy into a very large segment of the available supply and end up with de facto control. That said I own a few, they've seen a notional 1500% rise against the pound since I bought them and if it were easier to spend them I would be doing so right now. There are a lot of smart people working hard to find the problems and fix them so I still have high hopes for either BTC or its successor.

Apple's iTunes Radio to launch next month with abundant ads

"Apple does have one major advantage over Pandora, however. Its iTunes Store gives iTunes Radio listeners the option of buying copies of songs or albums so that they can listen to them whenever they want. In fact, music sales are thought to be the biggest revenue opportunity for Apple's streaming service "

I forget where we left the story...does the 'music industry' now believe free music generates sales or not?

Adobe demands 7,000 years a day from humankind

now you mention it

it WAS three pages and I couldn't be arsed to read beyond page 1

Skype launches in-call ads

microsoft driving creativity

I give it about a week before someone much smarter than me comes out with a skype adblocker

Department of Health tests online NHS 111 helpline

NHS Direct

It was obviously critically important to replace this service with a host of different and undoubtedly more expensive other codswallop since it was easy to find and worked really well

Universe has more hydrogen than we thought

Re: What's fascinating about this

much what I was thinking...a third more atomic hydrogen than previously thought? That's a hell of a margin of error then in the original estimates. Dark matter, schmark matter.

Vimeo takedown leads to court loss

Re: had he not

Agreed the detail is lacking. It would have been interesting to hear how he managed to establish that he was in fact the originator of the work and given that he presumably did, I would have assumed the damages would go against the site that hosted the material for withdrawing it on the instructions of someone who was neither the owner or originator and not the film's producer in this case.

Audi shows off OLED-illuminated concept R8

can i have it rigged

to flash up something meaningful like ""you are too close moron" for use on the motorway at night? Although I suppose his front panel would just flash back "traf dlo uoy yaw ym fo tuo teg"

Samsung stretches 5in Galaxy Note phonetab to 10in

Re: Stylus?

Does anyone really want a stylus apart from a very small minority?

Yes please, I find using a finger is pretty poor for anything except very basic dragging things around on a touch screen and possibly thanks to Swype some limited text entry - certainly if I am doing any drawing, even very basic doodling, it requires a stylus so I don't know where the millions are but they can form a queue behind me.

Scalextric restarts space race with Star Wars craft

eh?

why would you want to overtake...so he can shoot you in the back?

Lovefilm signs BBC streaming deal

don't care

BBC programmes I can watch on the telly or catch up on iplayer. If Lovefilm want to impress me they could get and sort out their long running (over three years I believe) failure to do a new deal with Universal so I can see stuff that isn't on freeview as well as the long list of movies from recent years that continue to be unavailale for rental.

UltraViolet: Hollywood's giant digital gamble is here

I wonder

Will you get a UV code printed on the back of your expensive cinema ticket too? Or will theatrical release continue to be seperate?

We talk to Moon designer about ULTIMATE sci-fi ship

Nell is gorgeous

clearly based on a naked lady and a rather well endowed one at that

Georgia Parole Board blocks Amnesty email campaign

Amnesty International has, since it's inception, organised letter writing campaigns from countries outside the one in which the alleged violation is said to have taken place. It is not unusual for letters to come from the other side of the world, in fact that is by design as politicians - in the past at least - have always paid more attention to people outside their own sphere of influence.

People don't want tablets, they want iPads

well

I would imagine they will continue to position it exactly where it is now...as a successful e-book reader. Speculation is rife but it would seem likely that any tablet based product will be at a price point much higher than an e-book reader but presumably lower than an ipad and if the current ecosystem proves anything, it is that two such very different products can happily coexist - after all Amazon already sells the ipad and that hasn't troubled Kindle sales. The point of the comment was Amazon are the one brand I can think of with a chance at breaking into a market that is currently monopolised by another brand - they have proved they can deliver a good product at a price people are willing to pay and by supporting that product well they have developed a high level of customer trust. And no I don't work for Amazon.

almost nobody...

...it will be interesting to see how big a dent an Amazon branded product can make

World's first turbine powered Batmobile hits roads

nice

but has it got a lamppost lassoing baterang for those tricky tight left turns? :¬)

Moderatrix kisses the Reg goodbye

mmm

nice fingernails

Brainscan breakthrough: Working robot limbs come closer

acting without thinking

congratulations you have either invented a 15 year old or a politician

Vanquish

sorry

I just couldn't get past the idea that anyone might have to deliberately overheat their ARS. 10 out of 10 for keeping a straight face all the way through your review with that bombshell sitting there waiting to go off..

Jobs savages 7-inch tablet competition

will it or won't it

I don't know if seven inches is enough or not (snarf) but sanding the fingers down seems a little extreme when people seem to cope quite well with far smaller form factors on other devices. I understand there's one called an "iphone" which is a bit smaller than seven inches diagonal, although maybe people have indeed been digit-whittling for years and I've just not noticed. Has there been a rise in band-aid sales since 2007?

Apple's iPad is the hotcake of the 21st century

I confidently predict

that if competitors can just deliver their knock-off, unimaginative Paddi-klones at a considerably lower price point then people will take to them just fine.

Man vindicated for videotaping his own traffic stop

a few points

The plain clothes cop may not have seen any speeding or wheelies but someone else clearly could have as the guy shows both of those illegal and not very bright activities taking place in his video...again, not very bright. Cops tend to have this amazing new invention called a radio in their cars. The unmarked car was probably just the nearest vehicle that was on his side of the road and could respond - especially likely since plain clothes can't usually be bothered with crappy driving offences. Yes he should have led with his badge not his gun but he does clearly identify himself as police within a very short time of exiting the vehicle and the gun is never pointed at the biker. You can't see it clearly on the video but his badge looks like it's clipped on his belt, somewhat obscured by his nice obvious "I am off duty" grey sweat top and he might actually have been under the impression the guy could see it.

So not much to complain about really as far as the bust is concerned. The part of the story that makes me sad - and that you need to pay attention to - isn't that a cop doing his job with at least some degree of care and attention made a few elementary errors, but rather that all police everywhere are now so damned unpleasant about being recorded just in case they do make simple mistakes and try to use the law wrongly to disrupt the lives of ordinary folk when they think they have been. I think they've become paranoid about "looking foolish" in the belief that it somehow diminishes their authority and that's not good for anyone. Since the cop in the video is in plain clothes, I would even have been prepared to accept it as mitigation for the later siezure of material that perhaps an undercover operation was at risk of compromise if the footage was shown - but that doesn't appear to be what they claimed in court.

Of course, maybe if cops weren't faced with dolts like this particular cheesehead behaving like infants and recording it so they can broadcast it to all their moron internet "friends", believing that because when they got caught a momentary error on the part of the cop could provide the loophole they need to get away with it, then they might be a little less paranoid and everyone else might not be faced with having cameras snatched from them in the street. So members of the public, please save the outrage for instances when cops actually are caught doing something appalling and cops, please stop thinking you're above scrutiny.

Fraunhofer boffins develop 'Titanium foam' endoskeletal implants

no

it is called a reticulated foam

super

now can they arrange for three sliding blades that will fit in between my knuckles? *snicket

damn you

for beating me to the post! :¬)

Keene USB FM Transmitter

all very nice

but not sure of the usefulness. If it performs as you claim, does this not turn anyone using it into a pirate radio station? Not sure what the rules are on range for broadcasting within the already overcrowded fm radio spectrum but if it's strong enough to actually block other transmissions and your neighbours can hear it, my guess is it would be completely illegal. Oh and if it isn't strong enough to do that then good luck finding any quiet frequencies - in London at least I can't even use one of the in-car ipod ones without interference from regular stations.

Road test: putting the iPad to work

nice review

although not sure we really needed another one. Still your phrase "not impossible, just a little harder to achieve" said it all really. Call me a bum but I don't want a little harder, I want a little easier. I still reckon it will need a couple of generations to be anything but an "almost" piece of kit for me and at the pace things like low power displays seem to moving now by then there ought to be better alternatives still.

Netizens now Facebook more than they Google

more titling for the titlers

of course the same people who moan about googling are probably quite happy to have someone do their hoovering

titleytitleytitleytitle

Sorry but google is now listed as a verb as well...sickening isn't it?

Celeb pics row shows ACPO in frame for shake-up

the obvious question I suppose...

...is what on Earth makes you think that will be a change?

Danish rocketeers poised to reach for the skies

Loving the new space race

Even if (maybe because) it is starting to resemble those old black and white films of people trying to build flying machines with motorised umbrellas (umbrellae?)

London tenders for speed cameras

I doubt it

young men racing in overpowered cars are unlikely to be concerned and if they are they will simply move somewhere else to engage in their stupidity.

Microsoft digs Macs in back-to-school ads

Ignoring the silliness of this marketing...

...why the hell did Apple stop making different colourways for their larger devices? Whether or not the more technically astute might laugh at the notion of colour choice being an important factor, it was a truly revolutionary idea and in fact a major selling point at the time. A sizable chunk of the population - at least if my other half is anything to go by - still miss that choice.

Amazon opens UK Kindle store doors to teeming hordes

true

I finally came into the twenty-first century recently, gave in and tried the Kindle store out on my lappie. I was shocked by how badly the books suffer from typos, substitutions and other errors through the conversion process. Far from illegible and it wouldn't necessarily keep me from buying some books this way for the convenience but still I'd have to say the system is in need of much work.

UK.gov pledges licence fee 'rethink' over heavy catch-up use

final paragraph says it all

no change in legislation is either required or desirable as current legislation appears to cover this very well.

What's the difference between an iPod and an iPood?

if they wanted

to take advantage of the publicity I would think any name with "jobs" in the title would have been a good first alternate

Apple antenna guru 'warned Steve Jobs' over Judas Phone

um

sorry but even if you and your chums were a representative sample...one in eleven is actually a lot of people

Gulf spill to annihilate all earthlings, says seer

So

those silly bible chaps translated the names wrong. It wasn't War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death at all it was actually Gash, Bubbles, Stinky and Oops!

Robotic cargo spacecraft misses rendezvous with ISS

Really?

Oxygen and water are non-critical supplies?

Wonder if it's the old feet/metres mix up.

Android phones invade the world

hmm...well

...apparently there's about 40 million iphones in the world so I make that 250 days to match that plus whatever it then takes to match the level they are still selling at ...say 6 million a quarter?...call it an extra 60 days?

Apple flogs 3m iPads in 3 months

I congratulate them on their sales

but if I hear the phrase "magical device" one more time I may gag. Please somebody sue them under the trade descriptions act...the case has been opened now and after close examination there were found to be absolutely no demons, elves, fairies, brownies or any other kind of magical creature powering it. Unless they have somehow managed to incorporate recycled Unicorn Spam into the plastic? It's not magic or magical, it's just another device and not a particularly advanced one either so fuck off now for fuck's sake.

I need a "scream" icon.

Supercomputer oil slick sims predict greasy Atlantic

well

if you compare their animation with animations of the observed slick to date they don't really tie together at all well although it's true the observed slick can't take into account the lighter, better mixed fractions which would probably behave more like the simulation. It still seems unnecessarily apocalyptic though.

Arctic microbes 'could survive on Mars'

excellent photo caption

Title says it all. I'm probably a bit simple. Still chortling to myself :¬)

Romanian boffin touts 1PB holographic disk tech

"productise?"

Really?

Apple iPad

re missing option

I would have liked a "meh" thumb. I am sure it's very nice and if somebody gave me one I wouldn't throw it away but I'm just not that bothered...maybe it's just not magical enough :¬D

Mobile Broadband Best Buys

Redesign the dongles PLEASE

I'd like to know if there is a practical reason why every one of these things sticks straight out from the USB like it's been at the viagra? Seriously, a sideways facing USB connector would leave a much smaller opportunity for stuffing the thing up with a careless swipe, is there an issue with signal interference or something?

Alleged Jobsian email promises iPad printing

It's the Field Of Dreams principle

If you queue the print job, printing will come.

Twitter bomb joker found guilty

Untitled

Wrong wrong wrong. Saying a thing...or thinking a thing... isn't the same as doing a thing. By all means _investigate_ if it is suspected to be a genuine and credible threat and then if that investigation finds proof bring a prosecution. In their own words and in the minds of every normal person it clearly wasn't a credible threat in this case. I find it extraordinary that they continued such an obviously spiteful prosecution and even more incredible that having done so it wasn't simply dismissed once it got to court. Ludicrous.