Posts by Jon Wilson

Oooooklahoma! Where the cops can stop and empty your bank cards – on just a hunch

Help the Police!

https://youtu.be/iZyqwOOmETI

Stop sexing up IT and give Civil Servants Macs, says gov tech boss

Don't knock it

@Peter Gathercole

Don't knock it - Mac Minis make decent low-cost, low-power servers for light loads (with Debian installed). Mythic Beasts have been doing it for ages:

http://www.mythic-beasts.com/macmini.html

(full disclosure: I've been a customer of theirs)

Storm brews over Chinese synchronised goldfish

@Joefish

No, he's just writing in English:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/synchronize

HP gives Lou Reed a right shoeing

Heavens to Betsy

I'm absolutely no Reed fan, but that's just toe-curlingly bad. Can I kick it?

NASA sells PC with restricted Space Shuttle data

Re: AC@13:27

> YOU MICROMANAGEMENT JERKS!

Who are you and what have you done with our punctuation marks?

Cinema iPhone pirate escapes jail in test case appeal

I do not think it means what you think it means

"Quashed" is not the right word. He's had his sentence reduced. If it was quashed he'd no longer be convicted of the offence.

'Poo-powered' Volkswagen astounds world+dog

What a lovely mental image

@John Smith 19 you owe me a new keyboard..

"aerobatic digestion" :->

Middle-aged sex is crap: Official

Re: Still Randy at 46

Accountant you say? Phwoar!

Israelis build floating electric hover platform

"just find [a superconductor] that works at room temperatures"

3. profit!

Opera for iPhone: The review

"Pinch-to-zoom isn't implemented, and after a while you start to miss it."

Isn't it? It works for me. Wonder what's wrong there - is it different on disparate devices? 3gs certainly does have it.

Thousands wrongly labelled by CRB checks

I'm sure it's a kick in the teeth for those it affects...

..but a false positive rate of 0.07% isn't exactly the height of carelessness, is it?

Buyer's Guide: Colour Laser Printers

Testing methods

Gonna share how you measured the speeds you saw? It's good form, isn't it, to show your working? :->

Steve Wozniak, your time is up

I get it

He's fat, so he's wrong.

Firefox syncing tool Weaves its way into beta status

AdBlock conflict? Really?

I've been using weave since 0.4, I think, and AdBlock too for ages. No conflicts here. I could only find one forum post dating back to Weave 0.2 about such a conflict, but hey.

As for the haters who are being kind enough to inform us that Opera already does this, who cares? There was a time when most browsers didn't have tabs, or whatever other feature you care to name. If Opera really was there first, then kudos to them, but I want this feature on the browser I use. Get over it.

Neanderthal woman could whup Schwarzenegger

Yer Aboriginal runner

..might not have had "the benefit of spiked shoes, a special track, a strict training regime, and money and glory to spur him on" but he might well have been being chased by a dirty great slavering predator, which I'm sure readers will agree is ample incentive run like the antediluvian clappers.

One in three kids believe Google measures truthiness

"Some 18 per cent said they didn't know how Google and other search engines rank results"

Well, given that officially at least, that information is a commercial confidence, 18% is low, no?

There are gajillions of SEO "experts" who'll tell you they know exactly how to cheat Google's page ranking, but what they don't say is that Google tend to be ahead in that particular arms race.

The short answer to the question of how Google decides how to rank their results is basically "don't worry your pretty little head about it"

Anyway, like most new media press revelations, there's really nothing new here at all. "It must be true, I read it in a book" is as old as the hills.

X-Men helmsman to fly Battlestar Galactica

I'm delighted

..that it's not Uwe Boll.

Everything else in this story makes me sad.

Cameron condemns Tweeters as tw*ts

@The Dorset Rambler

You owe me a new keyboard.

Riot police raid birthday barbecue for 'all-night' Facebook tag

*checks date*

Nope, it's the 17th of July, not April the 1st. Holy crap. This is real.

What's freaking me out is how the rozzers got wind of this menace to society. Either they were trawling Facebook or someone dobbed them in - in which case perhaps there's more to this than meets the eye. Who are Mr. Poole's enemies, I wonder?

Police headcams burst into flames

Proper classic British understatement

"But a couple of them have caught fire, which isn't ideal."

Police told to use Wikipedia for court preparation

Pray...

...that you are never in a court case which involves Ronnie Hazelhurst

'Overweight' people live longer than those of 'ideal' weight

*Your correspondent is 6'3" and 16 stone, eg "overweight".

..and doesn't know the difference between "e.g." and "i.e."

Big Grammar Brother is watching you...

Beeb invites net comments from unconnected

I guess you're deliberately being an asshat

...for effect, since the whole point is that the feedback form says "if you don't have broadband internet _at home_"

That means the people from whom they want to hear would be reading the page somewhere other than home (work, library, mobile, whatever)

Nothing to see, move along...

Firefox passive-aggressives adjudicate Nerd Law

What else is made of wood?

"For someone who maintains software that is antithetical to the internet's general business model, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it really does a number on those social skills."

Uhhh... Burrito?

I'm having real trouble drawing any kind of connection between internet advertising and social skills. Is it just me? Should I be scared that I'm staring at my shoes too much because I'm an AdBlock user? I'm a NoScript user, too, and I'm pretty happy I don't have to pay any actual money for it.

Next iPhone to make you a film editor?

@David Wiernicki

You, sir, are a genius. I snorted wine from my nose.

Florida cops taser satnav lake plunge woman

You had me until

"Charlene W Pensacola"

...which makes me a bit of a doofus, doesn't it?

Happy G20 riot day!

Leaving PCs on costing UK business millions

Newsflash

Generally, corporate PCs are *backed up* overnight.

Dimwits.

That doesn't mean we can't do anything because you can try tinkering with wake on LAN etc., but for me at least it's always been flaky as hell.

US woman says Ubuntu can't access internet

@Chris Hawkins

"One Answer - a civilisation of Paris's, Lindsay's and Dubya's!"

Paris's, Lindsay's and Dubya's what? I presume those apostophes were posessive?*

*Or should that be "apostrophe's"?

A computer is a means to an end

...and believe it or not, sometimes that end is not directly computer-related. You daft buggers who are taking a cheap shot would not expect to get the piss ripped out of you for not knowing how to use an opthalmoscope or a set of vernier calipers, so why the hell should everybody be as knowledgeable as you about computers?

I write software for a living, so it's no surprise that I know one end of emacs from the other, but that shouldn't mean that I expect everybody else to. For a lot of the normal people I know, I'd consider any knowledge they had of skeleton mode or dabbrevs to be a bit freaky :->

Computers should be like cars. You should hope to get good advice from the dealer (which she didn't get), good service from the garage (again, I doubt she did) and after that, it should get you from A to B. Sure, there are people who like tinker with the suspension settings or Barry up their Mum's Saxo with carbon-fiber effect sticky-backed plastic, but most people simply want an effing car, preferably one that just works.

Nikon D90 digital SLR with HD video recording

Not that it matters too much

@Pat: "Single Lens Reflex" means there's a mirror for composition that moves out of the way when you shoot. The Casio doesn't have one of those. Doesn't make it a good or bad camera, it just means it's not an SLR. It's marketed as an "SLR style" camera, but that's really more about the size and shape of the thing.

Mind you, the situation's even more complicated than that, since the live view and video modes on modern Nikons and Canons keep the mirror out of the way and just use the LCD for composition, in exactly the same way as the Casio.

In the ditch with DAB radio

I was right with you until..

"Just as we already have right-hand drive cars, pounds/ounces and sterling instead of Euros, we can now add ‘DAB’ to our esoteric list."

Um, what else is made of wood?

As the voice gets higher, the face redder and the supporting points become more and more preposterous, so the core argument gets diluted.

Seagate slashes bare drive warranties

Fail

Well, they just lost their edge as far as I'm concerned. I use 3ware cards and Seagate drives, both largely because of the high level of data security the combination gives me - they fail rarely in my experience and in any case they're backed up by good warranty service. I've had a drive fail in one of my arrays (one of 12, after 4 years - not bad) and the smooth way they replaced it with no fuss was a major factor in buying more. Now it ain't. Bad decision.

Judge: Breath test firm must hand over source code

Secret Sauce

Sauce code, eh?

I'll get me coat. Mine's the one with BBQ run-off and dribble down the front.

BBC races away with five-year F1 rights deal

Murray

God love him, he was a part of the landscape of F1 for so many years, but those calling for his return should just listen back to the Race of Champions commentary from Wembley last year. Even compared to his lovable, enthusiastic bumbling from the glory years of the 80s, it was completely inept. He was right to retire when he did, take nothing away from his achievements, but we really need to move on.

I'll certainly look forward to more in-depth coverage (maybe practice sessions, interactive choice of on-board cameras, live T&S etc.) from the BBC's much-vaunted selection of digital platforms. I might even be persuaded to pay for HD if F1 is added to the mix...

By the way, it's amazing how many people care what the theme tune is. Struth - don't you lot have Sky Plus?

As for hiring ITV personnel or not, for me the first against the wall should be Blundell (talking through a lap in Canada: "Concrete walls both sides, you don't want to be getting involved in none of those"). I can take or leave James Allen, and it seems to me that Louise Goodman probably has better contacts in the pit lane than Holly Samos ever will! I do think, though, that within reason they should pay whatever it takes to get Martin Brundle. You need someone who's been there and done it, and with him he delivers domain knowledge with a lovely dollop of good old British cynicism - and as several people have mentioned, he does give drivers other than Lewis their due, unlike most on ITV. As for the duffer who holds the mic and talks to camera at the start and end, I couldn't give a stuff. Ryder's as good as any other, I suppose.

(Actually, there is one bit of Murray I'd want to hear. Each race when those five red lights go out, Auntie should play in a sample of Murray screaming "Go! Go! Go")

Not happy with PC World's customer service?

Don't forget to order online

Most folks will know this already, but PC World are actually quite competetive on price IF YOU ORDER VIA "COLLECT @ STORE" online. Otherwise if you pay the full store price, their prices are gouge-worthy.

You order online, get a reference number and take it to the shop where they *should* have already picked the item off the shelf for you. The staff competence varies, of course, but I've done it several times and not been too badly treated (this is at Cambridge, where funnily enough the Currys is right next to the PC World too).

I don't know quite what certain regulatory authorities would eventually have to say about it, but it's certainly handy to know, for now.

Jon