Posts by DuncanL

Google's special Android for India revealed

For a (primarily) UK focussed tech site, seems a bit odd to list price conversions in USD and AUD only?

These Rapoo webcams won't blow your mind, but they also won't break the bank

Re: I want manual DOF control

Can probably get a good setup for only about £1000.

Only?.....

Photographer seeks $12m in copyright damages over claims Capcom ripped off her snaps in Resident Evil 4 art

Re: Some of those...

Given that it seems from the evidence they're likely to win; they've gone for a massive claim and hoping that Capcom will just payout at a lower level to avoid the cost of lawsuit.

Today I shall explain how dual monitors work using the medium of interpretive dance

Re: "they exclaimed, 'How did you do that?!'"

And that was in the days of tube displays - so his desk must have been huge!

Starlink's latent China crisis could spark a whole new world of warcraft

Re: Its very easy to detect ground based broadcasts

Have you got a license for that half bee?

Facebook’s new world domination ploy is a two-megabyte Instagram app tested in India and Brazil

Re: Exactly...

That's the point of the "offloading to the cloud" part - the app says, "get me a tiny version of this picture" and FBs server farms do the work to send a picture the device *can* cope with.

Apple now Arm'd to the teeth: MacBook Air and Pro, Mac mini to be powered by custom M1 chips rather than Intel

Re: Same boat

$1000 dollars is cheap?... Blimey, I'm in the wrong job.

We know there are a lot of, er, distractions right now but NASA's got some sweet video of its asteroid rubble raiser

Re: Why no colour video?

The actual reason? It's not worth the trade-offs in scientific data to spend the extra effort on colour. And most of space is very dull anyway!

https://www.straightdope.com/21344181/why-are-images-from-space-probes-always-in-black-and-white

Airbus drone broke up in-flight because it couldn’t handle Australian weather

"post‑crash management procedures"

aka "picking up the bits"....

Beware the fresh Windows XP install: Failure awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth

Re: Meester Fawlty!

I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it...

A real loch mess: Navy larks sunk by a truculent torpedo

Re: Of course it was going to hit the boat!

That's not something to be proud of. Rememberr that when he has a fractured eye-socket from falling off (as I did the one time I thought "I don#t need a helmet for this quick trip....") - or considerably worse.

Customer: We fancy changing a 25-year-old installation. C'mon, it's just one extra valve... Only wafer thin...

Re: The dirtiest four-letter word...

The problem is that for his one specific use case - it probably is "just" a little change and "only" needs five minutes... Then there's the umpteen other things he's broken because he didn't check or care beyond that one case.

By gum(stick): Samsung speeds up 970 EVO Plus drive

I have no idea what the heck you're doing with that sort of data - but I think you must accept that you're so far outside the envelope of "normal use" that you're on another planet. These drives aren't for you!

What's big, blue, and short on Intel? The supercomputer world's podium: USA tops Top500 with IBM Power9

Re: With shades of Banks' space ships

Not really - if so they would be called things like

Faster Then Your Mother

Look At The Bandwidth On That

or

Not Compensating For Penis Envy At All

RIP Peter Firmin: Clangers creator dies aged 89

Re: Soup Dragon

It's the Clangers planet's equivalent of lava - the Soup Dragon has evolved to mine it and bring it up to the sub-surface caves.

NASA will send tiny helicopter to Mars

Re: And of course the sky crane they used for landing

That wasn't flying - it was falling... with style!

There is no perceived IT generation gap: Young people really are thick

Crunchy on the outside, smooth on the inside - armadillos!

Modern life is rubbish – so why not take a trip down memory lane with Windows File Manager?

Re: Can we have pinball back next?

https://www.pcgamer.com/heres-how-to-bring-space-cadet-3d-pinball-back-to-windows/

NASA fungus problem puts theory of 'Martian mushrooms' on toast

Re: Badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger.....(alltogether now...)

Snake! It's a snake!

Intellisense was off and developer learned you can't code in Canadian

Dropping the Z

I foresee a lot of confused kids when going to the "oo"...

How do you win at HCI? It's SimpliVity ... or maybe not, right Dell?

How do you win at HCI?

You just win at HCI.

And HTJI...

Why did I buy a gadget I know I'll never use?

The main question...

Crispy or crunchy sprouts?

And "Hello!" to Stephen Fry and Jason Isaacs...

Cassini probe's death dive to send data at just 27 kilobits per second

Re: Time is an illusion

The problem there is that you've invented a binary time system - it's either beer o'clock or it's not... Great for beer, not so good for planning beer related meet ups?

Sub plot subplot thickens: Madsen claims hatch fumble killed Swede journo Kim Wall

What? Right out? Dorking?

1Password won't axe private vaults. It'll choke 'em to death instead

KeePass

Get KeePass (http://keepass.info/) instead - available for just about every platform you want and has no cloudy gubbins.

Just back up your vault to whatever offline\online service you trust. (There's even plugins to do the backups for you - if you want to trust those). The point being you have a choice and control over where the data goes.

Samsung stalls Bixby launch because it am English not so good

Re: Hilp!

Officer Crabtree, your French is improving...

Windows is now built on Git, but Microsoft has found some bottlenecks

Re: GVFS sounds super dumb

@JLV - You've evidently never been forced to work with Rational Synergy...

CERN ready to test an even bigger gun

Re: Lineac 3?

"Lineac 1, Lineac 2, Lineac 4..."

"3, sir!"

"3."

Would you believe it? The Museum of Failure contains quite a few pieces of technology

Re: Betamax vs Betacam

lpcollier - Thanks for concisely summarising what went through my head as I read the ACs post!

How's that for a remote login? NASA puts New Horizons probe to sleep 3.5 billion miles away

Re: The download rate is basically set by the power supply

Wikipedia is your friend...

"Plutonium 238 must be specifically synthesized and is not abundant as a nuclear waste product."

Why do GUIs jump around like a demented terrier while starting up? Am I on my own?

Re: even worse...

Gosh darn mummy funster?....

Samsung's Bixby totally isn't a Siri ripoff because look – it'll go in phones, TVs, fridges, air con...

Re: Bixby?

BIXBY SMASH!

SpaceX yoinks $96m GPS launch deal from under ULA's nose

Strangley specific cost

Given the enormous sum involved - $96,500,490 - where does the last $490 dollars come from? Why on earth didn't it just get rounded to a flat 96.5 million? Did some schmoozing lunch get added to the final bill?

Time crystals really do exist, say physicists^*

Re: Each one will earn you 5 seconds in the dome...

Start the fans, please!

FBI drops bombshell, and investigation: Clinton still in the clear

Are all those typos in the original? That's a pretty poor official communication if so.

ROBO-PLOD! 'Droid snatches scumbag's shotgun in standoff

I don't want to know what you're doing with his coming....

Google, er, Alphabet takes on 10,000 more staff, banks more and more billions from ads

Missed a trick

Given Google's love of special numbers, they should have stopped employing when they reached 65,536...

IPv6 now faster than IPv4 when visiting 20% of top websites – and just as fast for the rest

Re: 20% is not noticable

20% of anything generally is a rounding error for me. 20% faster, 20% cheaper, 20% more efficient.

Can I have 20% of your pay cheque please?...

BT internet outage was our fault, says Equinix

Re: So much for fixed...

And still semi-broken today - most sites seem to work but the odd one or two still fail (request timed out in tracert)

So much for fixed...

Still knackered here and relying on a VPN to work round it.

Web meltdown: BT feels heat from angry punters

VPN is a workaround till they fix it....

Plusnet is knackered - which is a pain since I work from home. However, the work VPN will connect and I can get to everything via that.

New Mars rover is GO for 2020 says NASA

Re: "that microphone won't be the first to go to Mars"

The microphones that have gone before didn't make it or were never turned on...

http://www.astronomy.com/magazine/ask-astro/2016/06/sounds-from-mars

LISA Pathfinder free fall test beats expectations

Re: La Grange

Well, I hear it's fine if you got the time

EU referendum frenzy bazookas online voter registration. It's another #GovtDigiShambles

Re: determine why its voter registration site crashed

We'd just like to check what currency you'd like your cheque in?...

ISS pump-up space podule fully engorged

Re: Brightness

Looking at the relative size of the white blob that is BEAM to the rest of the ISS and its shiny solar panels; theoretically, yes - in reality, no!

Google to kill passwords on Android, replace 'em with 'trust scores'

Re: The end of passwords?

@tony72

Don't go bringing sense and reason to internet comment forums, you loon!

When Steve Jobs was away, Apple's designers snuck out a penis-shaped remote control

See a doctor...

...if yours is shaped like that!

Google gives away its internal $200 patch analysis tool for free

It's a poorly structured article - the headline goes for the big splashy number, but the article then mentions the current $200 price before later mentioning that the price before Google bought the product was $1200.

So confusing, but technically correct.

Who'd be mad enough to start a 'large-scale fire' in a spaceship?

Re: marsh melons

Tell me, Spock. What do we do after we toast the marsh — er, melons?

We consume them.

I *know* we consume them. I mean after that...