Posts by caffeine addict

Malaysia Airlines mystery: Click here for the TRUTH

Every day, this feels a little more like the beginning of an 80s Bond movie.

I'll give it a week before someone suggests a supervillain with an Airbus Beluga super transporter is plucking planes from the sky.

NHS England DIDN'T tell households about GP medical data grab plan

Since this opt-out is on a person by person basis, and the head of the household / first to the post doesn't have the right or ability to opt is or out for you, why wasn't this sent out as individually addressed letters to everyone with an NHS number?

Yeah, I know the answer. Still need to ask though...

Battle of Bletchley Park: TNMOC chief calls for review of museums' Mexican standoff

So, what unreasonable demands did TNMOC make regarding ticketing? Its the first time I've heard this accusation, and it seems really odd when everything else has implied it's BPT being hits.

Unmanned, autonomous ROBOT TRUCK CONVOY 'drives though town'

New terrorist plan...

* Stop trucks with innocent pedestrians

* Get someone to fit a quantity of explosive to the trucks

* Get your innocent pedestrians to move

* Let the trucks drive into the base

* ???

* Profit

Is modern life possible without a smartphone?

Re: Why?

Come to think of it, my old 1974 Austin Allegro had a 6 day battery life too...

Mystery of Guardian mobos and graphics cards which 'held Snowden files'

But you can't be to blame if someone mails it to you...

So, it would be terrible if someone /outside the UK/ was to email a copy of the encrypted files to them. And cc-ed some random email addresses at the same time...

"Hi, GCHQ? Yes, we've got some copies of that file again. Oh, and would you like to go trash the mail servers at bbc.co.uk. thetimes.co.uk and bobsgerbilemporium.co.uk? I'm sure that will fix the problems..."

They don't recognise us as HUMAN: Disability groups want CAPTCHAs killed

Why listen to a group this clueless...?

Take a look at the ACCAN website - they've managed to hide their "Contact Us" in plain sight.

http://accan.org.au/index.php/about/contact

When you find it, they've obscured the email addresses for human visitors (badly, using the cunning trick of replacing @ signs with (at) ) but left the addresses machine readable in the source - so it's deliberately harder for humans than computers.

O2 looses legal torpedo at Everything Everywhere 4G monopoly

Re: Oh look...

Sod 3G. I'd be happy to have ANY signal from Orange.

I live in a decent sized village in Cambridgeshire (with it's own world famous hospital - you know the one) and none of the networks can provide reliable signal.

Scrunched Street View spymobile spied in India

The car does look a little small compared to the driver, but humans have an annoying habit of not being a standard size.

More importantly - where is the car supposed to have come from? The camera man is stood on a narrow ridge. Is the car supposed to have fallen off the ridge, or driven up the other side at high speed?

Crime Map

But does it count...

thefts of smart phones from people waving them around like idiots because they're looking at the world through their camera?

Everything Everywhere rolls out the 4G astroturf

Here's an idea, "EE"...

...instead of using the 1800 spectrum for more pointless bollocks, how about using it to plug the holes in your coverage? Like the village I live in (near Cambridge) where there's a mast on either side of the village but magically sod all signal in the village itself.

comp ended

"whinging its way"

It has Register commenting software preinstalled then, yes?

Toyota teases next-gen Prius styling

Well, they look a lot better than the old Prius (although it would be hard not to) but what's with the huge gaping grills? Surely a 'leccie car should have a smooth rounded front for good aerodynamics?

Doesn't the new Ford Focus petrol even mechanically close it's grill when it doesn't need the extra air under the bonnet...?

Reg man the most-flamed recruiter in the UK?

Oh, come on... if you're going to "IIRC" at least check your recollection. The first google result for "brown M&Ms" is a snopes pages confirming the Van Halen story.

Prang finder site reveals accident blackspots

I'll distract him, someone go find a shotgun...

Designer styles bendy Samsung smartphone

heh

Good job patents only last 20 years then... :)

Ice Cream Sandwich Android out 'by November'

voice dialing

"WORKING AND RELIABLE BLUETOOTH VOICE DIALING (Honestly, seriously - it's a fucking phone OS and you can't reliably voice dial)"

Ten years ago Nokia let you voice dial by:

* press button.

* speak

* phone compares sounds to recordings you made previously

* dials most likely number

Nowadays, on my shiny new Android I have to

* wait for a E/H/3G connection

* press the search button

* record my voice

* wait for it to go to the server, get mangled by voice recognition software, get sent back

* Wonder as it translates my words into gibberish and tries to ring someone who doesn't exist.

The Nokia version didn't care about accents or how clearly you pronounced the words - as long as the two samples were fairly similar, you got what you wanted. Now you need a data connection and (presumably) a Californian accent.

Yay! Progress!

Oxford adds woot! to dictionary

can't words have numbers in them?

Shirley, it should be "w00t" not "woot"....

'LONDON IS THE CENTRE OF THE technology WORLD'

37,000...?

As someone who'se just been on the HR end of the agencies, I don't believe that 37,00 for a second. As soon as you post a job somewhere, the agencies decend and then repost the same position on the same site.

I think I counted 5 versions of our advert last time so I'd be very surprised if the real number is greater than 20,000.

'War texting' hacks car systems and possibly much more

But... SMS are crap...

Part of me can see why you would allow this functionality from a Bluetooth style connection, but SMS is frankly crap for this application because there's no requirement to deliver the messages at a certain time or (in fact) at all.

Just try sending a text message at 11pm on new years eve and then have a think about how bright an idea it is to use SMS to warm your car.

11pm - send sms start message.

11.15pm - arrive at car, get annoyed the car is still cold, leave for party.

11.55pm - arrive at party just before midnight, get drunk, crash out on sofa

5am - SMS arrives, car engine starts...

Lunchtime - find your car hiding in a fog of exhaust fumes with no petrol left.

HTC 'dismayed' by Apple's bizarre patent allegations

technically, no...

You can't name buildings at Cambridge Uni after the living - it's named after his father. Or grandfather, maybe...

Universal Music passwords exposed by Anonymous hack

No...

storing the password or storing the encrypted password would be storing the password. Anyone with access to the data (or data + key for encryption) knows your password.

storing a hash (salted or otherwise) would be storing a string of crap that can't (reliably|easily) be converted back into a password. You could find a string of text that results in the given string, but you can't be certain that's the actual original password.

nitpicking, maybe, but I agree with the original comment.

NHS Direct

Shame it's not an app really...

It doesn't have any content built in - it gets it all from the internet every time you answer a question. It might as well be a web site.

BOFH: Ready for the Judgment Day

I thought...

all posts were moderated. So how did a 'first' get through? Actually, how come we often see "deleted by a moderator" messages?

I don't know why I'm asking - I'm pretty sure this will never see the light of day. :)

Samsung Galaxy S II dual core Android smartphone

UMA

Any ideas if this thing does UMA?

Mummy, mummy, there's a nuclear monster!

Oh the cowards...

Dear god these comment pages would be boring if the Anonymous option was taken away.

Bloke with hammer fixes London's Olympic clock

letters and/or digits.

Omega is owned by Swatch.

iDect iHome Android phone

Binatone

I used to know someone who worked for Binatone in their R&D department. His opinion was that if you could get your hands on a preproduction model then you had something indestructible and really rather wonderful, but that if you went to a shop and bought a Binatone product then you were in for a world of disappointment and frustration. Some of the toys he had were fantastic.

If one of the big names can knock out one of these with a resistive screen (worked well enough for finger dialing on my old HTC Diamond), Android 2.0+, gmail contacts and four handsets for under £200, I'll be first in line.

Until then... meh...

Home Office crime maps go to street-level detail

Well now, that's a surprise...

it's slow as hell and keeps returning half loaded pages.

Has there ever been a gov IT project that hasn't fallen over on its first day?

Becks offloads Posh Porsche on eBay

remember the exchange rates....

£100k + £50k = $230k

BT fibre-up-your-exchange poll in 6-way Mugabe style pileup

Interesting...

From memory, Madingly has signs up in the village encouraging people to vote, but Caxton has absolutely nothing.

And I know for a fact that not every eligible person has voted in Caxton because I know people who live there who have no fecking clue what the race to infinity is.

But I think we all could have guessed that was the case...

This year's comedy Xmas No. 1 contender: Silent song 4'33"

I'll buy it...

...if only to see how the radio stations handle trying to play it. How long til the Emergency DATs kick in?

Kicking Simon Cowell in the balls is just a bonus.

ASA rules 'Bare T*Ts Project' ad offensive

I'd have gone the other way...

I'd have turned that title into the WereBitch Project, about men in the woods who discover a wolf that turns into a sex mad woman every full moon.

Don't look at me like that. No, don't. It's not my fault if my time working for an porn factory broke my brain...

Google data center links shot down by 'bored' riflemen

You Were Lucky!

We had to use shards of glass to etch the individual bits into the shells of snails and hope they arrived in the right order.

Dixons sales ain't all that

Competing with themselves

When they're trying to work out where it all went wrong, how long do you think it will take them to find the twat who decided they should start competing with themselves?

Cambridge can't be the only place with a Currys next to a PCWorld, but they've started carrying identical stock to each other. Since when does PCWorld need to sell white goods and Currys need to sell computers?

Ten unlikely iPhone insurance claims

Stupidity

Don't underestimate how stupid people are.

Back in the days when I worked for Do It All, I watched a guy drive off with a 10 litre drum of paint on the roof of his car. The drive home that night suggested he made it about a quarter of a mile before he braked too hard.

I once saw a guy load his roofrack up with sheets of hardboard then forget to lash them down. When we tried to tell him he just hurled abuse at us. No idea how far that tosser got.

So, yeah... a phone should be pretty easy to leave on the roof of your car.

Ton-up speed merchant blames dyslexia

Clip clop, clip clop...

Don't you think there's a slight difference between "breaking the speed limit" and "doing 103 in a 60 zone, weaving in and out of traffic"?

I speed. I think speed cameras are hateful. I'd have phoned the police about this dickhead.

Now go annoy those clip clopping goats...

IE9's Acid, speed and HTML5 trip to land lost surfers

because...

When I've asked people it's normally been because they've used previous versions of Opera and hated them so much they'll not give Opera another try.

You know, the same reason I'll not be using IE for a hell of a long time, even if it becomes the bestest browser evar!

What's the difference between an iPod and an iPood?

this is a title

Not really, seeing as how the iPod turned up in 2001...

Ten Essential... Budget Compact Cameras

Why use percentages...?

Seriously guys, why the hell bother using a scale with 101 discrete options if you're only going to use 3 of them?

Were the four cameras rated at 80% really identically good? Or the three at 75%? or the three at 70%?

Mozilla's next Thunderbird gives Gmailers hope

Wishlist

Dear Mozilla, for Christmas I'd like you to fix...

* When I shut down Thunderbird (or Firefox), I'd like it to actually go, not lurk is memory for up to ten minutes.

* I'd quite like you to fix the mess you made of my calendar when you upgraded Thunderbird to 3.0 and broke Lightning. We've been on 1.0b1 since January.

* I'd like to be able to interact with Google without needing 3rd party extensions.

* I'd quite like it if you reliably marked as read stuff the message filters are told to mark as read so that I don't get alerts for irrelevant reports or supposedly deleted spam every 2 minutes.

* I'd like it if my calendars didn't spontaneously duplicate themselves across all other calendars - including copying my wife's calendar onto my boss' calendar. He was most surprised to discover he had a smear test booked.

I'd keep going, but I doubt I'll get any of these, so I'm going down the pub instead...

HTC slaps back at Apple patent slap

I agree

Lets have no articles that Joe doesn't approve...

*sigh*

Waterstone's whips out its pendulous dugs

What have they actually changed...?

Is this a new logo for the whole company, or just the internet brand?

I ask because their blogs, marketplace and store finder all use the old Serif logo and refer to "waterstone's". The only place they are reliably using the saggy tits and "waterstones.com" is for their web presence.

In which case, the new logo makes much more sense - differentiating the stores from the (presumably cheaper) web store...

Lords: Analogue radio must die

But we don't want DAB...

When DAB first appeared I jumped on it like the geek I am. Now I'd happily ditch it completely if Planet Rock and BBC7 were on analog.

The transmissions just aren't up to it. We can't listen to the DAB in the living room if the cooker or the microwave are on, and we can't listen to the one in the bedroom if next door is using her hoover.

Oh, and the one in the garages next to useless as the battery drains so quickly I need to rig up an extension lead for it.

I'd rather have the static than the bubbling mud...

HTC Legend

all well and good...

... but where the 2.1 upgrade to Hero on Orange you lazy bunch of gits. It's been promised for months now...

Researchers rip iPad apart to reveal Apple's profits

Tried it. Hated it.

In this office, the multi-tasking is a major issue.

We're all HTC or Nokia users, and (to a man) we hate our office iPhone. It's very, very shiny and swish and it it makes everyone go 'ooooo...' But then when people use it, they have all hated it.

It's the keyboard. And the layouts. And the lack of multi-tasking (hell, my WinMob 6.1 had that). And the control. And iTunes. It even refuses to let you turn it on unless it thinks it has enough battery - ignoring the fact that it's on charge.

The only saving grace is the multi-touch, and non-US androids do that...

Google pushes new multitouch onto Nexus One

multitouch from 2.0?

If Android has had multitouch since 2.0, why does my HTC Hero (1.6) have multitouch on it?

That said, multitouch in google maps would be rather nice. Come on HTC, where's my 2.1 upgrade...?

Naked scans: Net cries nude-o-geddon

Inverting an inversion...

If you go down the comments on that Prison Planet post, it looks like the "airport inversion" is a fake. Someone found an eerily similar photo of the same girl in the same pose, just without the fabric outlines...

http://www.photoalto.com/index/fa/c.image/pid/PAA246000018 [NSFW]

IDC Ecco Personal

£70?

Shirley anyone dropping £70 on this will already have a smart phone, so why not just get an app...?

[ says the man who started writing just this in Java because he couldn't find an app for his Touch Diamond... ]

Play.com leaves Modern Warfare 2 buyers empty handed

No more play for me...

I used to use Play all the time. Then I started having the same problems everyone else is talking about.

Then I ordered £125 worth of hardware through them. It sat is 'packaging' for a week, then got shipped by HDN. 2 days later the internet announced that it was in a 'secure location' at my house.

When I got home it was sat in the rain, outside my kitchen door (visible from the road), blocking the cat flap so one of our cats crapped on the kitchen floor.

Never again.