Posts by ColinP

Strong ARM: The Acorn Archimedes is 25

Great memories

I remember these from my school days, and how in awe we all were about the GUI. Having sneaky games of Lander when the teacher wasn't looking. Using the art program to draw the usual cock-and-balls, etc.

I found a great bug in the operating system that you could use to bork your classmate's floppy disks. You could drag and drop a parent directory into it's child, and then it would recursively copy until the disk filled up. For some reason, it wsn't possible to simply delete the directories, so your only recourse was to reformat the disk.

Dell XPS 14z 14in Core i5 notebook

Agree

I'd like to see that in all laptop reviews as well, as Linux on a modern laptop can be hit and miss, depending on the hardware.

As for the XPS, it uses Nvidia Optimus, which doesn't well at all in Linux, and Nvidia have said they do not intend to support it.

New account of Flight 447 disaster published

"Computer rashly let meatsacks take over"

Is this really the sort of story for an attempt at humourous Reg-isms?

AMD Llano vs Intel Sandy Bridge

Agree

I'll second that about the battery tests. I'd also like to see some temperature charts for when the CPUs are idling or while being benchmarked.

Good review

I've been following reports on the Llano for some time, so it was good to see a nice side-by-side comparison. From the looks of it, Llano has a good balance between price, CPU performance, GPU performance, thermal output and efficiency.

Acer Timeline X 5830T

Nice

This looks like a good machine and I'm glad that laptop makers are getting in on the act of making stylish computers. It's a shame that the stylish ones are all Intel i3s with integrated graphics though, as I'd buy one if it could do at least some basic gaming. I'm waiting until they put an AMD Llano (or its successor) into one of these.

Lexus CT200h hybrid

Good review, but...

I clicked on the "Buy from Amazon" link, hoping to find a good deal, but - alas - no luck.

Sony teases tablet fans with bizarre 'mousetrap' vid

kthxbai

Honda just called. They want their advert back.

'Leccy price hike: Greens to blame as well as energy biz

Lewis is on a roll

First today from Lewis we get a Eurofighter rant, then one about green technology.

I predict a totally objective article (with "analysis" second page) about the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency doubling its estimate of the amount of radiation released at Fukushima, and how that is somehow further proof that Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power. (Build more reactors now!)

Skype reverse-engineered and open sourced

IANAL either

That may have been ok if that was all he had done. From the sounds of it, he de-compiled the binary back into source code and then posted it to the internet, which is a flagrant breach of copyright.

Steven Moffat fumes over Doctor Who plot leak

A bit harsh

Russel T Davies did something that nobody else had been able to do since the 80s, and that was to at least bring Dr Who back to our screens in a format that works for a modern audience, to grown ups and kids alike.

So what if some of his scripts sucked? There were still some cracking episodes in the RTD years, and now Moffat can take it to the next level.

Can Bing ride IE and WinPho to Google triumph?

Find / replace

"Stefan Weitz, director of Bing, The Huffington Post that the web surfing public has had its expectations shaped by a decade of second best from Google. They now expect second best, he says"

[ctrl]-h

web surfing -> office-software-using

a decade -> two decades

Google -> Mircosoft

Libya fighting shows just how idiotic the Defence Review was

"This is how you suppress enemy air-defence networks"

There is one very simple and compelling why a jet, whether it is a Tornado, Harrier or F18 is better than a cruise missile in a situation like Libya: It's that a fighter/bomber crew can make a real time decision to not fire on a target and thereby save innocent civilian lives. For that reason alone, it'd be better to have more Tornados and support aircraft in the air, not fewer.

Stardust comet hunter drifts off into space

Sad

I know it's totally irrational, but I feel sad for those space probes that reach the end of their lives and are sent off to "die" or slowly fade away. Spirit, Galileo, the Voyager probes, etc. have all advanced human knowledge of the solar system by so much, performed magnificently and beyond their predicted lives, but are gone forever.

When Hubble is finally de-orbited, I'll probably hold a vigil and shed a wee tear.

China's 'stealth fighter' flies – brown trouser time, or not?

Bad for business

Modern China has no interest in agression or expansion. Why on earth would they need to when they will be the major economic power in the world by the end of the century? War with your major trading partners tends to be bad for business.

So this fighter isn't some sort of escalation of their ambitions. At most, it'll be used to keep those uppity North Koreans in check and will be available for export to anybody who wants it, at a fraction of the cost of an F-35, and completely unhindered by US trade embargoes. Expect Iran to be a client. Again, it's all good for business.

LOST Vulture One PARIS spaceplane FOUND!!!

Best news all year

Beats those Chiliean miners any day

Vulture One PARIS spaceplane telemetry LIVE ONLINE

G6UIM-12

G6UIM-12 (the spaceplane) hasn't had its position updated since yesterday. Did somebody forget to charge the GPS unit for today's flight?

Brits not buying into Freeview HD

@Richard Porter

You seem to be talking about an older generation of TVs, as all the modern ones have digital audio outputs to plug straight into a surround system. No "set top" box needed.

What is a low-height slittyvision tv? I want to get me one of those if the vision in my head is what I think it is.

Android phone auto reverts jailbreaks

Patent hell

"What's the betting Apple will add this 'feature' to their phone next?"

I'm betting that this bit of tech is coveredy by some patent somewhere, so either Apple will have to license from HTC, or (more likely) HTC will get clobbered by some patent troll company that nobody has heard of (and probably recently aquired by Oracle or Microsoft).