Posts by bill 36

Patients to access NHS records via web by 2015

Not another one

I smell yet another expensive disaster.

Apple shoots for Premier League soccer streaming rights

who cares

When nkora.net and sopcast do the job anyway in ever better quality!

A few minutes relay delay does not bother me.

Jedi light-sabre beats Taser in Oregon parking-lot fracas

interfering with a police officer?

Is he an interstellar priest as well then?

FOI request turns up Carrier IQ surprise

There's more than one possibility

Or

unless, of course, Carrier IQ IS the FBI and their cover has just been blown!

Ubuntu savaged by rivals infected with fondleslab fever

UI is not the reason i moved

I just got pissed off trying to fix other broken "features" like wifi and RFkill. The last straw was "upgrading" to 11.04 i think when the keyboard and touchpad failed to work after the download.

Opensuse on the other hand, while its not perfect either, at least gave me a working keyboard and touchpad back.

I still had to download a newer kernel to fix the wifi issues but.......it just works.

UK has no idea if it's selling spyware to evil regimes

Heres a better one

"It is better for men to build bridges than to build walls".

The Fender Telecaster was a much better invention than the AK47

Alex Harvey. R.I.P

UK nuclear: Walking into darkness with eyes screwed shut

Don't you mean

"Britain fuelled by uranium from our good friends in Canada or Australia "

Britain fuelled by Thorium from our good friends in India or Australia?

Proven much safer with a half life counted in hundreds not thousands of years.

They will all get it one day Lewis.

Eurozone crisis: We're all dooomed! Here's why

hold on

A lot of German bashing going on here! Quite rightly the Germans do not want to bail out the basket cases in the Euro zone. Their economy is doing nicely thanks to their fiscal and monetary policies and they expect every other member state to manage themselves as well as they do.

German debt is sitting at around the same level as the UK and nearly 20% less than that of the USA and no sign of QE from the Germans. Quite rightly.

Watching Bloomberg and others,anyone would think that this global recession, its about to happen, was caused by poor economic management in Europe.

It was caused by American and European bankers playing poker with slight of hand dealers, Lets not forget that! And America is heading fast into the abyss after the amount of cash it has just printed.

India uncloaks new thorium nuke plants

The Nay Sayers

Are a bit quiet!

Whats wrong? Too much logic in it?

Boffins prove Queen ballad 'world's most catchy song'

but what about

Puppy Love by Donny Osmond and some of that other shite that the Carpenters churned out.

Real sing along wrist slashing stuff that was!

US and Russia to give uranium to ANYONE

agreed

But you are not going to convince the green brigade that you still need nuclear and not just wind and hamsters.

I'm still banging the drum for this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13040853 but others appear to have quite another agenda: ie the nuclear powers.

I hope the scientists get their way and find the right words to convince the nay sayers.

Ofcom mulls smackdown for rogue religious TV channel

By far

The biggest scam on the planet.

Always has been and always will be

Canonical ARMs Ubuntu for microserver wars

They are making it up

I've been trying for weeks to get a laptop stable on Ubuntu and the last straw was last week when i did an apt-get update on 10.04 and was able to login then lost the touchpad and the keyboard.

Catch 22, with no external mouse or keyboard available.

So i made some bootable discs including one for 11.04 and had the same problem after reinstalling.

It turns out that someone changed the Synaptics package and released it into every version and didn't bother to test it properly.

Check the forums! Add that to endless wireless problems and......toys out the pram.

Now i am running OpenSuse and life is much better!

DARPA drops another HTV-2

There is no evidence

That it reached Mach anything

Music biz now runs on Viagra^®, not cocaine

And Maybe

Its because they are Crap!

I saw a "new" band recently and the lead female singer walked onto stage with an Apple Mac in her hand.

Who wants to pay to watch that?

Acoustic trauma: How wind farms make you sick

a journalist with an agenda?

well, well, well.

Who would have thought that such an animal existed?

And why should he not bring to our attention a theory that wind farms are a health issue? From a crackpot scientist or not. It doesn't matter but it's important to know that someone is watching what the energy companies are doing.

I'm all for renewables and recycling but also realistic enough to know that we cannot do without nuclear and i don't mean the type we have at the moment.

I encourage everyone to watch this. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13040853

If a Nobel prize winner says it safe, surely it's safe to assume that it is.

As for the waste, stick it on top of an Arianne rocket and fire it straight at the sun.

Good news: A meltdown would kill fewer than we thought

@PyLETS

Look, do yourself a favour and watch this. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13040853

I am not a nuclear propagandist, nor a scientist, nor a politician. I try to follow the facts and the science and try not to swallow alarmist hype.

If a Nobel prize winning scientist tells me that nuclear can be 100% safe, with minimal waste issues, thats good enough for me.

I respectfully suggest that it should be good enough for everyone.

But we all know that overcoming fear is the biggest single factor that prevents many things from happening.

@Matthew 3

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13040853

you are welcome!

@PyLETS

As always, the question is avoided and to paraphrase your answer, you suggest that running the data centres from hydro is a cost effective and reliable way to do it. I agree with you.

You also suggest that moving many of them to areas with geothermal power would also help. Correct.

But you don't answer the fundamental question. Shifting resources around is not going to solve the worlds energy problems and i should point out, not that i need to, that locating data centres next to volcanoes is a recipe for disaster. Investors know that!

elsewhere in El Reg today

I read that the worlds data centres require almost 200 billion kw/h to run.

How can that be done with windmills and cow shit exactly?

If we invested all of the money thats being invested in "alternatives" right now then i'm sure that we could come up with a foolproof way of generating nuclear power thats 100% safe.

The French must having a laugh at our expense and just sitting back rubbing their hands together, waiting for the day that the rest of Europe runs out of leccy.

I did a back of a fag packet calculation recently that suggests that if everyone where i live changed to e-bikes and leccy cars tomorrow, the country would need to build two nuclear power stations just to charge them up overnight.

Ubuntu dressed in cheap elastic support, sent out in public

agreed

But it does not fill one with confidence does it, when they don't appear to be able to get the basics right.

The forums are full of bugs and problems that business users would not want to see.

problems you ask?

Let me first of all say that i am not a business user of Ubuntu and i would really like to be a fan of Ubuntu but below is my experimental experience of Maverick and Natty Narwahl.

I should also say that i have built both releases on the same old Siemens Amilo laptop which runs a Pentium 4 chip clocked at 2.8ghz and not a lot of memory. However, it runs well and boots quickly.

I wanted to build a simple jukebox using the default player Rhythmbox and get the wireless card working so that i could load all my cd's and automatically find the cd titles from CDDB over the wireless lan.

Sounds simple.

My wireless driver is b43legacy from Broadcom and i know that they do not exactly make it easy for users to use their chips under Linux. But in my case it turned out not to be a driver problem but a utility called RFKILL which was not fixed until i think 2.6.38 of the kernel. This kernel, last time i looked is not even the latest kernel that ships with Ubuntu. Why not? No idea!

It took me days and a lot of searching and patch loading and editing to find this out. Now it works great with the new kernel.

Rythmbox, also worked well for a few hours then suddenly stopped finding CD titles from MusicBrainz, a CDDB alternative.

I should also say that i save the cd's as flac files, just in case someone says ahh but!

So what to do,,,download Banshee and try that......great worked well for some time then it too developed a problem where it would not write the titles correctly into the menu frames.

Then another problem surfaced where the cd ripper, i tried several including soundjuicer, would take an age to rip a cd. Up to 40 minutes in some cases. (Trying also a cd that before ripped in about 7 minutes)

So you trawl the forums again looking for explanations and find you are not alone and in Banshees case, discover that many of your problems are allegedly fixed in version 2.1 which was supposed to be released on the 13th July. Where is it?

In summary, Ubuntu has more bugs than a tramps underpants and while it looks good and even feels good i can believe the first commentars suggestion that business should not go near it.

Crypto shocker: 'Perfect cipher' dates back to telegraphs

you should know

that here in Austria, online banking with the RaiffeisenBank is always done with one time pads.

We sign for them every time we need a new pad and any login to the bank can only be done using them once each login.

Plus we need the standard username, password, account details first of course.

Standard practice and works without problems.

Its probably why, most sales or buying/selling transactions are carried out using only IBAN and account numbers. Paypal not required which is goodness in itself.

Mole says Apple A5 chip runs too hot for iPhone

ditto

except that i have a contract that runs for another year and certainly will NOT be buying another iphone even if it has a Cray supercomputer inside it.

Once bitten and all that!!

Oracle wants seal busted on HP's Itanium suit

who' s fooling who

Last Saturday evening you stayed out all night long

Stayed with your best friend, doing nothing wrong

But you aint fooling me, cos any fool can see

You couldn't have stayed with your best friend

Cos she spent the night with me

Tell me who who who.....................:>)

Bobby Blue Bland

Benefits of boozing outweigh harms, says survey

"rose tinted beer goggles"

Well fuck me! Who would have thought that booze can do that?

Which planet are they living on? Its a "phenomenon" thats been known about since the start of time and everyone who has indulged a little bit too much is well aware of the consequences and vows never to do it again.....until the next time.

Are they getting paid for this research?

600 tonne asteroid in low pass above Falkland Islands - TONIGHT

just another reason

Why we shouldn't be too worried about global warming.

One of these babies is going to hit us sooner or later as history tells us.

Venice not in major peril after all - new research

and you should read this

http://green-agenda.com/science.html

This is the problem, is it not, with all religions, the green one included.

C02 is now THE devil of us all and its being thrown around and preached about until we believe and the converted sound like Presbyterian bible thumpers.

There is no denying that more C02 in the atmosphere leads to the Earth retaining more heat but are we really responsible when the oceans contain more than 50 times atmospheric C02?

I understand the science but what i question are the hypothesis because thats exactly what they are.

where do you buy these?

Crystal balls?

I'd love one! All these doom and gloom predictions from people who should know better.

As far as i can see from various reports, average temperatures have risen by about 0.8 of 1 degree in the last 150 years and average summer temperatures in the Arctic have remained almost level.

I agree the weather is changing and perhaps getting warmer but i'm not buying this CO2 bit.

It appears that the Earth goes through various warm and cold cycles over thousands of years so why does 150 years of data get everyone in a panic?

BBC Freesat tech switch zaps HD channels from 'old' boxes

does it matter?

There must be many people who own "HD ready" sets that will never notice the difference anyway.

Mine is full HD with HDMI connection, 5ms refresh, and the quality difference is noticeable but barely worth the effort. ITV HD "appears" to be better. Scaling?

Channel 4 HD i love because its on a transponder that sprays all over Europe and does not become marginal or non existent when my dish gets wet.

Playing Blu Ray dvd on the other hand is superb!

Reg hack applauds asinine augmentation

Beverley

after them 3 hill-billies called Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld :>)

Watchdog sniffs Rihanna's 'gently thrusting buttocks'

I did watch it

Courtesy of El Reg so i do have an opinion and here it is again just in case your Martian mentality didn't understand the logic.

Both of them can't sing so they have to flog their mutton using sex as the hook. Biggest selling ploy on the planet.

As to whether it was likely to offend anyone, i bet the kids loved it!

Did anyone bother to ask them?

They have to do something

Otherwise nobody would watch, because they can't sing; either of them.

But then thats modern pop music.

As for the Xfactor, occasionally it throws up a talent but they should call it "the best of Karaoke"

Glad i missed it.

Ubuntu seeks Android-packin' Windows deserters

They have lots to do

Take a look at the forums. Wireless networking especially on laptops is shot full of problems and it seems that the engineers don't want to know. Not our problem,,,must be the driver or the bios or some such excuse.

Rfkill will ignore the rfkill switch on some laptops, permanently "hard disabling" wlan0

While Ndiswrapper needs a top hat and a magic wand to get working in some cases.

In my case, i know that the hardware is all working because it works as it should in XP pro.

But in Ubuntu Maverick,,,,been at it for weeks.

You are correct in saying that if the initial experience is not good they are likely to say that Ubuntu is crap and if the first experience is a laptop that needs wifi working..............

Fukushima fearmongers are stealing our Jetsons future

just buy a hamster

If all 7 billion people had one...........

Probably save one nuclear power station/year.

This would scale linearly!

Digital player maker 'incited consumers to break the law', says ASA

Jb7

Been using one for three years now. Elegant and is not beaten at this price point. It is not perfect and really should support flac.

Yes you can build nas filers and use squeezbox etc but this " one trick pony" does it's trick very well.

Well worth a look.

Praying for meltdown: The media and the nukes

well said sir!

But Gullibility is a human failing and don't the marketeers, news editors, mullahs, priests, vicars, politicians just know it. Once we accept something as fact, very little can shift our mind set.

Thats true on both sides of this argument.

What surprises me most is that people get so vociferous about their own position when the facts are staring them in the face.

As for BBC News etc, ever since the invention of 24 hour news channels we have been subjected to the same bullshit every time a big story kicks off. They have to sell themselves and try to keep viewers interested 24x7. Thats where it all went wrong.

So, thanks to El Reg for reporting the facts and thanks to the gullible for a good laugh!

PARIS pops up in Ripley's Believe It or Not!

i've got an idea for you

Why not build a rocket next time, with a little wind turbine attached to the back of it and an eco warriors leg tied to it.

Then we could work out if its possible to recharge an iphone by the time it hits the stratosphere and lands back on earth.

i still think

The cocktail should have been called Knickerdropper Glory. Best laugh in years!

Windows 7 customers hit by service pack 1 install 'fatal error' flaws

Reinstall?

Best way to avoid it is to install Ubuntu!

Half a million Germans rally in support of 'Baron von Googleberg'

is this not proof

That politicians are all liars anyway?

Just as an aside, in Germany, having a title and using it is almost mandatory for climbing the greasy pole.

Eurofighter Typhoon: It's EVEN WORSE than we thought

The empire is over

"RAF pilots won't be ready to do bombing missions until 2016"

Why do we need to bomb anyone anyway?

Boffins demand: Cull bogus A-Levels, hire brainier teachers

Just to explain

A German Gymnasium is not the same as an English one :>) It doesn't mean that the Germans do back flips in the history class.

In my experience as a native English speaker and living in a German speaking country, the standard of education amongst young people here, is way higher than the UK. In fact i am quite shocked at what some young Brits don't know.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Germany leads the field in engineering and while Britain still has its boffins they are becoming scarce.

US woman @theashes gives in to Twitter, flies to Sydney

eh no

English Empire , i chose my words carefully!

Disconsolate Spanish smokers driven out into blizzard

sipping orange juice

You are exactly the kind of customer that pubs don't want!

Don't go to a fucking pub then. They are full of beer swilling nicotine addicts and real community melting pots. Or at least they used to be until all you lot stuck your noses in the air and hijacked the politicians.

Whats next for you dickheads? Complete isolation for anyone with a cold?

who was talking about drink driving?

I was talking about, violent assaults, accidents, murders, over indulgence, liver failure, premature ageing, etc etc and no stats are ever going to show the real damage of alcohol because it is not easily measured.

come and live in Austria

You can still enjoy a coffee and fag here, at any time of the day or night. Except in restaurants and public places and bars who choose not to allow it. And thats how it ought to be. And i'm a smoker.

Whats wrong with everybody? What happened to common sense? This blanket ban of smoking is complete madness.

Alcohol kills many more people than smoking ever did and non drinkers naively turn a blind eye because they think it has no direct effect on them.

What if alcohol were to be subjected to the same draconian laws and prohibition were introduced? Where would that take us?

Utter nonsense.

Assange: Text messages show rape allegations were 'set up'

just watch the george galloway vid on youtube

What short memories many people have.

The previous criminals in the white house, it's fitting that the name rhymes with toilet, tried to stitch one of our own MP's because he dared to expose the truth about Iraq.

Galloway went marching up the white house steps, cuban cigar in his hand, with two pump action shotguns, fully primed, and gave them both barrels. And he didn't miss. He gave them the cold hard facts about their own regime in their own backyard. That takes a lot of balls.

Now Assange is no Galloway but the parallels are obvious.

So for all you who are in denial, sit back and look at the evidence, it is obvious whats going on and it is time to end it.

Brussels quizzes UK on school kiddyprinting

its because

They forget that they have to pay for everything in the trolley with the folding stuff that grows on trees!

But to be fair, many are distracted at the checkouts by the magazines offering to shed 56lbs of ugly fat in 2 seconds and the chocolate bars, quite a dilemma!