Posts by druck

Record numbers of readers flock to The Register

Good.

In the meantime Firefox users can install AutoPager, which turns all the multi-page articles back in to one easily scrollable story.

Phone maker punts AA-powered blower

A backup phone isn't for just for emergency calls. If your battery is flat and you can put your normal SIM in it, that's OK (assuming its unlocked). However the main use is to have a phone you keep in your bag/car/desk for when you've forgotten your normal phone, and it's sod all use if the operator keeps killing the SIM all the time.

6 months and they kill your SIM

15 years standby is sod all use as a lot of networks kill your PAYG SIM if not used to make a call or send a text every 6 months. If you have a backup phone, you can be pretty sure it will no longer work when you need it.

Google attacks Twitter's search bias claim

Good

I have no desire to see any tweets in my search results.

CES outing for 'world's thinnest' tablet, Ultrabook, says Toshiba

Yet another netbook...

...practically identical to a two year old one - why no progress in this sector?

Shed Xmas flab and debug code with treadmill laptop contraption

Black mirror

Nah, you want a video wall with gesture recognition in front of the running/cycling machine, like on Black Mirror last week (not the one with the pig).

Stolen, remote-wiped iPhones still get owner's iMessages

Feature now flaw

I would have thought being able to bombard the recipient of a stolen phone with guilt inducing messages, a feature rather than a flaw.

Comet Lovejoy spotted plunging toward fiery doom

Stereo

We wont be able to see it get burnt up from Earth as it's side of the sun, but NASA's Stereo solar probes are able to see all of the far side from their locations ahead and behind of Earth in it's orbit.

MPs: This plan for proper navy carriers and jets is crazy!

Under licence and then some

But equipment built under licence is never just a carbon copy. Usually we end up developing our own electronics at enormous expense, as either the US wont export the best stuff, or we make up some additional requirements to justify it. Then we normally swap out the engines to keep Rolls Royce workers in business. Off the shelf costs 2x the dollar price in sterling as a minimum.

Yes, but...

...only if you want them to be as expensive as an F35B per unit.

Samsung outs 'retina display' ARM chippery

Oh ye of little faith

We'll see.

Intel sneaks out low-power microserver chip

Pentium?

Why dredge up the old Pentium brand, when we can still remember our eyebrows being singed by the last of the P4 beasts?

Smart TV shootout

Missmash

The main problem at the moment is all the different boxes (TV, set top box, home cinema, games console) offer various bits of on-line content. Not every box has each feature, and some things are done better on one than another. It's a nightmare of remote juggling and finding your way through very different interfaces to find the thing you want. A single box which does everything would be far better.

Cabinet Secretary: Freedom of Info law stifles policy confabs

Don't let the fact the Sir Gus O'Donnell is a civil servant, not an MP, get in the way of your rant.

UK's first stealth jumpjet rolls off line – but we don't want it

You didn't read the aritcle

Except steam catapults aren't being fitted, they are electric ones.

No chance now to save Phobos-Grunt Mars mission

Eliptical orbit

Its in an elliptical orbit, so it's height varies as it goes round.

HELL ON EARTH: The Great Dying

Try reading the article

It was before the dinosaurs.

Ultimate flight-sim crashes into living rooms for 36 grand

Don't be a sad geek all your life

Don't be a sad geek all your life, the best flight sim in the world doesn't compare with flying even the most modest training aircraft yourself. Get down your nearest flying school and take a trail lesson, you'll never want to sit behind a monitor again.

Nokia Lumia 800

Ordinary?

"WinPho 7 now offers a better experience for ordinary punters than its Android rivals"

Just how ordinary do they have to be? Or did you mean thick?

Manufacturers testing wider cars for swingbellies

Garages too

Its not just car parking spaces which aren't keeping up with the width increase in modern cars, garages in houses in the past 20 years are woefully inadequate. If you can even get the car in, you have great difficulty getting out of the car.

Android 'stands on Microsoft's shoulders', says MS lawyer

Bull

Anyone stood on the shoulders of Microsoft would still be waist deep in their bullshit.

Nokia celebrates milestone with nostalgic exhibition

The Nokia Museum

Probably the only viable strategy open to Nokia now.

0.5mm² ARM chip offers 5X energy efficiency, jacks up performance

Naming strategy

Sounds like a fantastic chip, but the naming strategy is confusing. Apparently it's a higher performance than the A8 and possibly the A9, but less than the A15, so surely it should be an A10, A11 or A14?

Or perhaps there would be strong resistance from the ARM employees to those, given that the are probably stuck on roads of the same names trying to get in and out of Cambridge every day!

Ten... Freeview HD recorders

Re: PC + MythTV beats them all and has done for years

Come back to us when you've upgraded to HD tuners, and transcoded the sound so it works with the amp - without loosing sync halfway through playing!

Stop the whinging

Stop the whinging and get the Humax HDR Fox T2, they've done a superb job on it, and it richly deserves the editors choice.

It does everything asked of it, with superb 5.1 sound through any surround sound amp, and has a gorgeous looking easy to use interface. It's an order magnitude better than the old 9300, solving all the problems such as forgetting series record half way though and jumping out of catch up play if you are recording that program. The only negative point I can hold against it is the volume level differences between SD, HD and HD with 5.1 sound.

The life and times of Steven Paul Jobs, Part One

Page 11: "It was Rubenstein who managed the breakneck pace of the iMac's development that enabled it to make it to its May 1988 coming-out party."

That should be 1998.

UK punters happy to pay £3 to top up e-wallets

...fuck and off.

Firefox devs mull dumping Java to stop BEAST attacks

Java is to Javascript as a Clown is to a Clown Fish.

4G or 'faux G', it's a mealy-mouthed marketing mishmash

Re: Simple definition

"You can even re-use all the old marketing. Just change the 3 to a 4."

Well Intel has been playing that game for years.

Intel rejects Atom rename claim

The ORIGINAL Atom...

The original Atom was Acorn's predecessor to the BBC Micro, back in the 8 bit 6502 days, before Acorn invented and spun off ARM.

I wonder which 80's home computer they are going to sully the memories of, with their next underperformed netbook/tablet orientated processor?

HP readies AMD, Intel sub-notebook

And the rest!

It will be at least £100 more over here. HP's 10.1" netbooks go for more than £250 with weedy Atom processors.

Antitrust nemesis accuses Google of 'WMD program'

Google Shopping Spam

It's about time google also demoted the spam sites in the shopping section. Many of the results are of the form "£xxx from n stores", but when you go in to that page of results the legit sites are all twice as much and the one at the bottom that returned £xxx is nothing bug a bogus page not featuring the product at all.

New UK 'leccy meters remotely run via Voda 2G

Re: Frequency?

M Gale wrote: "There's a lot of expensive equipment goes into making sure the frequency of AC doesn't change or, more importantly, go out of phase between different bits of the grid. "

There is a lot of equipment to make sure the frequency stays within a tight range, but it's obvious to see with any decent DVM the frequency changing by a couple of tenths of a percent, particularly when high demand kicks in during an advert break in a soap. Equipment can easily detect the frequency starting to drop and suspend themselves for a few minutes.

Smart devices not meters

You don't need smart meters to signal other devices in the home which may be capable of suspending when the grid is experiencing high demand, a smart device can sense this itself by looking for the frequency of the mains supply dropping.

Renault Scenic Bose Edition 1.6 130dCi

Drive a better BOSE

If you want a drive a BOSE get an RX-8, with the smooth as silk rotary engine you'll actually be able to hear it, unlike if it's in some clattery old diesel mini van.

World telly shipments stall

Re: Ah Well

"but do many of them care that LED is better than CFL for the back-light?"

Any that have compared the two?

Marriage makes women get fat, divorce does same to men

Re:Wedding dress

Ok, not posted anonymously then, anyone know a good lawyer?

Wedding dress

I can easily explain weight gain after marriage - she's just returning to her natural weight after spending a year dieting in order to fit in to a wedding dress which was deliberately bought too small!

Posted anonymously as I don't want to find out what weight gain after divorce is down to.

Neighbours cop an earful from screaming Swedish w*nker

@Wize

If it was Maggie in her younger years as portrayed by Andrea Riseborough in The Long Walk to Finchley, that may only serve as encouragement.

ARM vet: The CPU's future is threatened

@nyelvmark

The 486 was a classic CISC like the 386 before it and the Pentium after it. The Pentium Pro was the first to use the P6 architecture which translated x86 instructions in to more RISC like micro ops, which the core executed.

Ofcom clears 4G for maritime navigation

1/2 KM

I don't see how claiming the radar is only affected with in 500 metres can used to dismiss the issue. Approaches in to busy harbours or passage along navigable rivers, which may well be within 1/2 km of a mast, is where radar might be crucial.

RFID drives the self-service pub

Spillage

If you pull your own pint, not only will you be charged for any you spill, but the pub still gets to retain the 'spillage' reduction in alcohol duty. With one they pull, you still get a pint, no matter how much they poor down the drain in the process.

PCTV NanoStick T2 USB TV tuner

Net books?

People have asked about the minimum specs, but does it actually work on Net books? I've yet to find any that do, Win7 starter does not contain Media Centre and the drivers seem to crash when used with the units own user interface, even the latest versions claimed to be Win7 compatible rather than XP or vista.

Lastly, £80 is ridiculous even with HD capability given the average price of SD ones is around £15.

ICO won't investigate Tory minister

The real reason

As I commented on The Register's previous poor reporting of this issue:-

The reason he had to hire a PI was that someone was giving false stories to the press about his expense claims, and he was trying to find out who was responsible. The PI was instructed to pose as a journalist and approach staff and consistency members to see if they would leak further lies.

It is a fair and reasonable thing to do with your own money, when someone is trying to damage your reputation by associating you with the expenses scandal for political motives. Unfortunately the Right Honourable Mr Mann (Labour) then tried to damage his reputation by associating him with the phone hacking scandal for political motives, as confirmed by the ICO.

ICO probes Tory minister PI blagging allegations

The real reason

This had nothing to do with trying to find out opinions, the real reason he had to hire a PI was that someone was giving false stories to the press about his expense claims, and he was trying to find out who was responsible. The PI was instructed to pose as a journalist and approach staff and consistency members to see if they would leak further lies.

It is a fair and reasonable thing to do with your own money, when someone is trying to damage your reputation by associating you with the expenses scandal for political motives. Unfortunately the Right Honourable Mr Mann (Labour) then tried to damage his reputation by associating him with the phone hacking scandal for political motives, as confirmed by the ICO.

Canon crossbreeds mouse with adder

Windows Calculator - you are joking?

Use Windows Calculator - you are joking? The program that produces two different results for 2+3*4 depending on whether it's showing a simple or complex button layout. (Standard gives the wrong answer of 20, and you have to switch to scientific to get the right answer of 14).

Freesat ITV Player out of beta

iPlayer great on the HDR T-2

BBC iPlayer is great on my Humax Fox HDR T-2, playing HD streams it's smoother than my new laptop when attached to the TV. I'd welcome the inclusion of ITV Player, but I suspect there's nothing of interest on there to watch. 4OD player would be a better bet.

Four illegal ways to sort out the Euro finance crisis

Re: @rse

Socialist bloody claptrap. Those bond holders you are telling to fuck off, include YOUR pension company, and probably a hundred other entities which you rely on, and would be well and truly screwed if they went under.

NASA 'nauts wrap box-shifting duties at space station

BBC Shuttle Tracker broken

The BBC Shuttle tracker seems to be broken. Briefly after refreshing the shuttle is shown separately, but after a second re-docks to the ISS.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13877321

Samsung Chromebook: The $499 Google thought experiment

Half height cursor keys

Another device with stupid unusable half height up and down cursor keys just to keep the outline of the keyboard regular.