* Posts by Jedit

1847 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jul 2010

NEW ITV Player app IS HERE ... for Samsung fandroids only. Ha ha

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Samsung exclusivity for ITV?

Well, that would be a reason to sign up with Samsung, if I ever watched anything on ITV.

Retro-tech fan seeks cash for Commodore 64 clones

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Stop

"Something seems amiss."

Yes, something does seem amiss - namely, that it's a flexible funding campaign. That means Biehl will get every dollar pledged even if he doesn't make his target. You should never, ever trust or pledge to a flexible funding campaign; far too many of them are scams.

It would be good if El Reg could put a note on the article warning people about this.

Ray Harryhausen, king of stop motion, takes final voyage

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Stop

Ray Harryhausen is not dead...

... he's just waiting for the next frame.

Some things live forever. Prosit, Ray.

How did something so small and pink cause so much trouble?

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Holmes

"And a colon map as a backup"

The colon map should have been the default plan. They could have tested it by sticking it up their arses.

Impoverished net user slams 'disgusting' quid-a-day hack

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Angel

"Good effort."

By a bizarre coincidence, that is likely to be our response when your next £1-a-day article describes your latest attempt to use the lavatory.

Weary quid-a-day nosh hack fears colonal mass ejection

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Joke

Mass Eject 3?

All I can say is I hope they change the ending. Lester's currently got three options but they all end the same way.

Fanbois vs fandroids: Punters display 'tribal loyalty'

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Stop

"It's unlikely that dumb-phone holdouts are going to go straight to a top-of-the-range smartphone"

Why? That's exactly what I did when I finally got a smartphone two years ago. My logic was simple: I wanted to buy a phone that could handle anything that might come along during the lifetime of the device.

The surveys showing greater brand loyalty among Apple owners are false, though - in my experience, at least. I see people saying "I think this is where I switch from my iPhone to Phone X" all the time, but I haven't once seen someone say "I'm disappointed in my Galaxy SIII, I'm going to buy an iPhone".

Virgin Media: SO SORRY we fined your dead dad £10 for unpaid bill

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Mushroom

"You are aware that these bills are never seen by a human being"

Unlike Atos reports, which have on several occasions now declared that a dead person is fit for work.

Mind you, given Atos' track record for recommending that the benefits of critically disabled or terminally ill people be stopped, I don't think being compiled by a staff member rules out their never having been seen by a human being.

Crackdown looming on premium-rate phone number internet ads

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This is good news

Now all we need is to institute the death penalty [1] for the scum who cold call from "the technical support service of Windows", and we'll be set.

[1] Some negotiation may be required here.

Gov.uk named THE BEST THING Britain has made all year

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Boffin

"This service doesn’t work with some modern browsers and operating systems"

There was an article on this in the new Private Eye. Apparently the benefits claim form has small print saying you may have problems trying to use the site with the following systems and software:

All Macs

All Linux-based systems

Windows Vista (and therefore presumably Win7)

IE versions above 6

Chrome

Safari

Firefox

In other words, this masterpiece of design is incompatible with literally every computer made in the last six years.

Cutting CO2 too difficult? Try these 4 simple tricks instead

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Paris Hilton

"What a complete non-story, it is not like any of this is "new" information"

This is the internet. Its entire purpose is to distribute pornography, bad opinions and weird tricks discovered by housewives. This article has done the last and several commentards have done the second, so it was worthwhile.

(Paris, because we may as well complete the trifecta.)

Review: Kobo Arc Android tablet

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Facepalm

"Reading" material, huh?

Next time El Reg gets someone to review a tablet or e-reader, it might be a good idea if they were advised to take their porno off the page before taking the photos or screenshots.

Australian Feds charge 17-year-old 'Anon' with four crimes

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Headmaster

"He was Anonymous but not anonymous."

Actually he is still anonymous. As a minor his name is protected.

ANCIENT CURSED RING known to TOLKIEN goes on display

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Trollface

Re: Ancient and cursed ring?

So that was you in the Goatse picture?

Chinese game addict MURDERS girlfriend after she leaves him

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Stop

"He couldn't have been that distracted if he caught wind"

Unless he "caught wind" when she told him she was leaving him for someone else.

Furious Stephen Fry blasts 'evil' Reg and 'TW*T' Orlowski

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Headmaster

"you can still be a twat !!"

Interestingly, "twat" is Neil Gaiman's past tense for "tweet". Example: "Stephen Fry twat six times today".

The gaming habits of Reg readers revealed

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Joke

"does my 2 yo really need to see my one shot sniper kill?"

He does if you ever expect him to get good at the game!

Me, I'm sensing a man desperately trying to delay the inevitable day whe he gets pwned by his preschooler...

Osborne slashes growth forecast by half in bleak economy statement

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Stop

"while even more would argue..."

No, I don't think they would. Cameron and Osborne are still in Downing Street, so the government clearly hasn't gone anywhere near far enough.

'Wireless charging' in Galaxy S4 will betray Samsung's best pal

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Devil

"Give me convenience or give me death!"

Shouldn't that be "give me convenience *and* give me death"?

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Headmaster

"Errr, remind me, which was the best out of those?"

In terms of quality, Betamax. VHS survived because it was a bit cheaper.

Carrie Fisher dusts off THAT bikini for Star Wars VII

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Trollface

"I never understood what was so special..."

Indeed. But enough about Serenity - what did you think of Star Wars?

Twenty classic arcade games

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Re: I spent ages playing Tempest...

For reference, the "claw" in Tempest is called a C-Shooter.

Dave Theurer's finest hour, that game, and it didn't get any worse when Jeff Minter remade it as Tempest 2000.

Tesco: Every little (effort to kill Amazon, Spotify) helps

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Devil

"I can see it now films brought to you by Tesco"

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

Unwearable tech: Five ways IT garb's gone HORRIBLY WRONG

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Alert

"A Fully Integrated RF-Powered Contact Lens With a Single Element Display'"

Is there something wrong with me that my first reaction to seeing that was to try and figure out what the humourous acronym was?

BBC: Monster cargo ship delivers '863 million tins of baked beans'

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Headmaster

"is the Triple E the class, or the name?"

It's the class, obviously. You see it, and you go "Eee, that's a big ship!"

Apple design bloke Ive finally honoured properly - with Blue Peter badge

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Headmaster

where's your, "double-sided sticky tape, for speed"?

Apple patented it so they could use it in Apple Maps.

Satanic Renault takes hapless French bloke on 200km/h joyride

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Megaphone

A Renault, you say?

"Papa?"

"NIICOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

Public told to go to hell, name Pluto's two new moons

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Headmaster

"Acheron and Styx"

If you're going to name them for a pair of rivers, Phlegethon and Styx would be more appropriate. The water nymph Styx (for whom the river is named) was in love with the fire spirit Phlegethon, but died at his touch.

Huge rock-hard marble erection shocks Japanese kiddies

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Angel

"I've seen bigger pricks down at the local bank."

Not unusual, really. The average man has 5.5-7 inches, whereas the average bank manager is closer to six foot.

Boffins find 17,425,170-digit prime number

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"I would go with 117"

One shiny upvote for AC 6/2/13 13:14, as promised. It's higher than you'd think, isn't it?

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Boffin

Here's a fun question for you

Excluding 1, what is the smallest integer that is not the sum of two primes, the product of two primes or a power of a prime? First person to get it wins a shiny upvote.

The Register Android App

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Re: 17.07MB ?

It's 9MB on my Play Store.

Ten 3D printers for this year's modellers

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"I liked your quote so much, I have copied and reprinted it"

But not in 3D, so I guess you do need a 3D printer!

BT to end traffic throttling - claims capacity is FAT

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Joke

"I give it a year."

I don't think many people will be streaming that film in HD.

We're not making this up: Apple trademarks the SHOP

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Stop

"I really don't want to live on this planet any more."

That's a foolish attitude to have, Fab. You should not want Apple to live on this planet any more.

Customer service rep fired for writing game that mocks callers

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Unhappy

"I know a guy from the New York Army National Guard ..."

Frank, the difference between the guy from the Guard with his Army cartoon and Mr Gallant here is that your guy is only poking fun at his employer. Gallant is making fun of the people who called him for assistance. I don't know how things work where you are, but over here I would expect anyone in a customer-facing role who openly held customers in contempt to be fired for misconduct. Under the circumstances and given how few people had downloaded the game Gallant's employer should probably have given him a severe dressing down and told him to pull the game and replace it with an apology before moving directly to dismissal, but he can't complain about unfair treatment.

(That's not to say his customers weren't stupid, by the way - just that he should have kept his thoughts on the matter to himself.)

Have Brits fallen for Netflix, or do they still LoveFilm?

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FAIL

"you are on their database, as you are a customer. ..."

True dat, but a company that doesn't separate existing customers from potential new customers is so wilfully incompetent that they don't deserve business.

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HateLoveFilm

LoveFilm cold called me asking if I wanted to try a subscription. I informed them that I already had one, but would be cancelling it because they had cold called me and I don't do business with companies that use cold calling.

Naked intruder cracks one off in Florida rampage drama

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Headmaster

"a little more careful murdering people under the Stand Your Ground law "

Legal note (IANAL): SYG isn't the law that applies here. "Stand Your Ground" laws remove the duty to retreat from a public confrontation before using force if you are acting in defence of life, and are primarily invoked to allow white people to shoot black people - SYG has a habit of being thrown out as a defence when it's a black shooter or a white victim. This case is castle doctrine, which allows the residents of a property to defend themselves against intruders regardless of whether they believe their life is endangered.

Sympathetic Scots scoff-house offers hard-up Apple fanbois a discount

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FAIL

An interesting way to drum up publicity

They might have wanted to try regular advertising first, though. I live in Aberdeen and I've never heard of this place. Not that I'll be trying it now - finding the advert before the restauarant, to me it feels more like a 25% surcharge for not being an Apple owner.

‘Anonymous’ hacks Oz Uni’s email to protest bulk iPad buy

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Angel

"Pencil and paper? No Spam either."

Sir, I submit that you have never had someone else doodle in your margins.

Spanish city renames square in Clash frontman's honour

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Pirate

The square?

Pfft. It should have been the casbah.

Amazon-bashed HMV calls in administrators, seeks buyer

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Holmes

"HMV was too expensive to survive"

Honestly, there is no need for further analysis beyond this. HMV have been selling their core products - CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays - at RRP. That's rendered them uncompetitive not only with online retailers but with every other remaining physical retailer as well. I could walk into my local independent music store and get The Wall Immersion Edition for £99 if I wanted it, while 100 yards away HMV are still asking the full £120.

When a chain store isn't able to compete on price with a single-outlet small business in the same town, you know there is mismanagement at work.

Hyperspeed travel looks wrong: Leicester students

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Headmaster

"Try again fanbois."

Normally I'd downvote your ignorance and move on, but as it's the OP's fault for not properly spelling out the scenario I'll correct him instead. The area of space through which the Kessel Run is made is dangerous because it's littered with black holes. The more powerful your ship's engines, the closer you can get to the black holes before you're unable to escape the gravity well - so being faster shortens your run as you can take a more direct line. Other, slower ships cannot take your route.

Review: Google Nexus 4

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Alien

"They should offer us a choice though"

Samsung sort of do - the Galaxy S2 at least has an official extended battery which comes with a replacement back cover for the phone. With the extended battery the phone is about 1mm thicker. It's an option more companies should consider offering.

Disney World slaps pay-by-bonk stalker cuffs on grown-ups

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Unhappy

"Am I the only one that finds this just a little bit disquieting?"

Disquieting but not surprising. Ex-Disneyworld staff have referred to the place as "Mauschwitz". While that's slightly hyperbolic, Uncle Walt's Magic Kingdom really is not a very pleasant place.

Fatty French Kilogram needs a new-year diet, say Brit boffins

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"water has this nasty habit of changing it's density with pressure"

Yeah, another reason to use the metal kilo instead of water, although you could specify the pressure and temperature conditions for the water. On the other hand, water's freezing and boiling points can be altered and even the speed of light changes under certain conditions so the metre and degree Celsius really aren't any better.

We should all go back to Imperial measures. The area one man can plough with one ox in a day may be variable, but by gum, at least it's got history!

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Headmaster

"Just how do you convert a physical entity to a mathematical scribble?"

In the case of the kilogram, with remarkable ease. If a metre is fixed by the speed of light, then a kilogram is also fixed because a kilogram is the weight of a volume of pure water 0.1m x 0.1m x 0.1m. The trick is getting pure dihydrogen oxide, of course, which is why the reference kilogram is made of platinum and iridium.

Is this possibly the worst broadband in the world?

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Headmaster

Worst broadband in the world? Well, no.

Because at 0.1Mbps, it isn't a broadband service. If memory serves, the minimum speed requirement for a service to be considered broadband is 160kbps. Services which cannot consistently attain that speed cannot legally be described as broadband.

Bletchley Park boffins start trailblazer EDSAC computer rebuild

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Mushroom

"It's not very fucking useful."

And yet, still more useful than your post.

There are a lot of good reasons for going back to first principles, not least of which is because it gives a better understanding of those principles. Considered in that light EDSAC-2015 is not a computer, it's a map. If the writing is in big letters and it only shows main roads, that's to help you read it better.