Posts by Rhod

Radio 4 bumped off Freeview by Gaelic TV

Why drop Radio 4???

and not Radio 3, 1 Extra, 6 or one of the other radio stations that gets far smaller listening figures than Radio 4?

What's the hidden agenda against Radio 4 north of the border?

Who's nicked Vaz's fondleslab?

The iPad's been removed from Vaz

...would that mean that the iPad's had a Vazectomy?

Google gets ready to crush quote-comparison websites

Irelephant to Blighty

"The service - which is restricted to the US - "

Yawn.

Second US 'secret space warplane' now in orbit

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

"Like the shuttle it has delta-shaped wings which would seem to offer the same "cross-range" capability that the US military insisted upon for the bigger spaceplane: a capability intended for top-secret intelligence missions which would be extremely difficult for other nations to monitor – though in the event the Shuttle never actually flew such missions."

And, of course, we know that they never actually flew such top-secret intelligence missions, because there's no mention of them in WikiLeaks, right?

Paris, because how else would the US spy on cheese-eating surrender monkeys?

From messiah to pariah: The death of open source on mobile

This is the real story of Nokia/Microsoft

This is the real story of Nokia getting into bed with Microsoft. Maemo/Meego is no longer a O/S with a huge future; it's been sidelined and OpenSource on mobile has effectively been sidelined with it.

Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty

The optimum situation for traffic flow...

...is almost universally when there is a power cut. I've observed this phenomenon in several parts of the country including several of the most congested towns in the country.

All that is needed in most cases, even at rush hour, is flashing amber lights that indicate "proceed with caution".

Airport face-scanning robots switched off

Rehash...

...of http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/01/ukba_facial_recognition_criticised/

Wake me up when the news is new...

Google does fractals in HTML5

Firefox fail, Minefield magnificent...

I tried it in Firefox 3.6.13 and found it to be practically unusable. Occasionally reporting 2million flops/second max.

I tried it in Firefox 4.0b11pre (aka Minefield, about 12 days out of date, update downloading as I type) and found it to be awesomely fast. It regularly reported over 100million flops/second, with a max of 368million that I observed.

It's a lovely advert for how much faster Firefox 4 is going to be.

...even better

Just updated to the 4.0b12pre 2011-02-07 version of Minefield and it's even quicker - now regularly reporting over 1000m flops/sec. Wow.

Bot attacks Linux and Mac but can't lock down its booty

Thanks for the e-mail Dan...

You provide me with a suitable salary, or point me at some reasonable form of research grant funding ending in a Ph.D. and I'll happily follow through and "do the above".

Surely that's what Dan Turner should be funding or what Billy Rios should be aiming for as the result of his research. But no, actually it would do the likes of Symantec and McAfee the world of harm to actually take out the botnets as, your article proves, they are perfectly capable of doing. Clean up all the botnets, securing machines behind them and they could effectively reduce spam to close to nothing (compared to current levels). But that wouldn't be in their interests as it'd reduce the sales of their software or in Billy Rios case cut off the source of his funding.

It's a case of don't kill the Goose that's laying the Golden Egg, isn't it?

the botnet is itself vulnerable?

So therefore why does it still exist? If the article is to be believed it should be relatively easy to install software remotely onto these machines. So why is the software being installed remotely not anti-virus and anti-spyware which should solve the problem for good, or at least a removal tool which patches the vulnerability and removes the virus/spyware once done?

No, let's just study it and watch it continue to proliferate around the internet. That'll be far more rewarding.

BOFH: Who's been naughty and who's been nice?

Idiocy!

Genious! [sic] certainly doesn't describe this post.

It's not 'guilded the lily' but 'gilded the lily' as in adding gold gilt to something that was already beautiful. You're misusing the phrase, as it's used to describe an unnecessary or superfluous addition to something that is already complete.

The coward is right that 'peizo' should be 'piezo' but additionally piezo is a prefix meaning pressure which shouldn't be used on its own. So Simon should have written piezofanfare or piezo-fanfare.

Google ends 'do be evil, if you want a top ranking' policy

...and you did exactly what he wanted:

- you mentioned his website, which is similar to DdeeccoorrMmyyEeyyeess.com

and you mentioned the two keywords he wanted you to mention in conjunction with his website (spacing and dyslexia deliberate) -

D e s i n g e r E y e g a l s s e s

and

D e s i n g e r E y e w a e r

Not all search engines are Google, so you're still supporting him as described in the article even if Google isn't ranking him as highly any more, which remains to be seen. I'll bet he or his ilk find a new way to game the system very very soon.

Why give the moron the oxygen of publicity?

Russia wins World Cup bid in parrot-sickening travesty

Sepp, Sepp, what have you done?

No Royal Wedding invitation for you!

Cisco converts Welsh rugby stadium to HD

Epic Fail

I was at the stadium for the Wales vs Australia game on Saturday. The screens are an annoyance.

1) The score, the time left and the actual time are displayed in such small fonts many fans were struggling to read them, even ones with tested 20/20 vision.

2) When you actually want to see what's on the screen when the video ref is ruling try/no try, the replays are not shown in the stadium. Presumably this is to avoid a lynching when the video ref (occasionally) gets it badly wrong. Additionally the actual ref doesn't get to see it.

3) I do not want to be bombarded with adverts the whole time I'm in the stadium.

4) Loads of people spent more time watching the action via the screens rather than actually looking at the live action in front of them. What's the point of going if you're going to do this? It's the most expensive set of tv seats anywhere...

Telegraph trips over the Large Hardon Collider

The Indy did it first in 2008

21st September 2008

Check out the picture caption:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/big-bang-collider-hit-by-further-delay-937001.html

Zero* welcome for 200 Welsh TV shows - in Wales

Statistical significance?

I'd question the significance of Barb's figures both in general and specifically in this case. An awful lot of the Welsh speaking community reside in the more rural North, Mid and West Wales. Barb, when they do get information from these areas get it primarily from English speaking homes as they are an English speaking organization. This inevitably biases the data against Welsh speakers. Given that they only poll around 5100 homes for the whole of the UK it is easy for them to miss a significant tranch of viewers.

Paris, because she's BARBie.