Posts by Jason Scrutton

Big Blue red-faced over Congestion charge crash

Testing?

It certainly is possible to test the system properly prior to go-live.

Funnily enough we did, and were also pleasantly surprised re about how day one went overall...

Jay.

Wacom Intuos4 L

Me want...

I have an old (13 years+) Wacom ADB tablet which i use with an USB adaptor, and it STILL works fine.

Grey squirrels invade Nutt house

100% effective remedy

It isn't overly pleasant, but after attempts to 'rehome' the little frs and otherwise encourge them to go elswehere, I found an air rifle with telescopic sight to be very effective indeed...

Council fields world's first rubbish-fuelled rubbish truck

A vroom box would do the trick!

Perfect...

Yahoo! mocks Google Privacy Theatre

Use scroogle.org instead!

Problem solved...

AVG slaps Trojan label on Adobe Flash

And?

Seems about right to me

Yes, there was a viable liquid bomb plot

Other options

Having recently had the dubious pleasure of flying from gatwick to edinburgh on a regular basis, I was not a little surprised to find a large twin-tank welding kit within arms distance of anyone getting on or off of the plane....

It's pretty basic stuff - but apparently not always covered

Europe loves HD TVs - but not HD broadcasts

Yes

is colour TV really better than black & white?

MS takes Windows 3.11 out of embed to put to bed

3.11? pah cutting edge

I remember the 'joys' of using an Apricot Qi and Windows 286 in the late eighties

Samsung PS42Q97HDX 42in plasma HD TV

Samsung HDTVs - be carefull

As some models have a little sticker that says '1080p input', which is nothing of the kind at all, it means it can re-interlace a 1080p signal to display it on the screen in 1080i mode, which is a bit cheeky to say the least!

Also HD is dramatically higher res than SD, I do some HDV filming/editing and I would compare it to listening to a fave album on tape, then hearing it on CD!

My ha'penny for the day.

Most home routers 'vulnerable to remote take-over'

The Orange Livebox...

Has UPNP on by default (well mine did)

Warner Bros gives all its hi-def loving to Blu-ray

My ha'pennies...

We got a 1080p set a little while ago, and will sort out a PS3 in the not too distant future.

Reasons why:

- Xbox & HD DVD is technically v good indeed (esp, online) but it makes so much racket it sounds like an industrial dishwasher on acid, it also looks like a bunch of plastic boxes glued together at random...

- The PS3 can play SACDs as well. which for me is a major plus point, I can then 'cupboard' the current DVD player and move the standalone SACD player elsewhere.

As to those who believe that there is minimal quality difference between HD and SD, I would love to know what you drank for lunch before benchmarking them....

And that is before the HD audio options are considered (which are pretty good on BR as well as hd-dvd).

Researcher: 'Second wave' HD adopters favour HD DVD

It's a bit more complicated than that...

Folks,

only material that was originally either shot on film or recorded digitally at 24 frames per second (fps) can be transcribed onto Blu-ray or HD DVD at 24fps. Everything else is usually transmitted at almost the same frequency as your local mains electricity.

Anything 'shot' originally at 24fps is transferred onto HD with the audio speeded up by about 4% and the frames rejigged to keep it in sync on a 50/60hz set..

Also not all blu-ray/hd dvd discs have the highest res material on them, in the UK btw not all HD sources (Sky HD/Virgin) transmit in 1080i all of the the time, so unless you are going to get a blu-ray or hd dvd player, a 1080i/p set could be a waste of dosh.

A SD DVD can look surprisingly good when upscaled.

Oh, be very careful if you are thinking of buying a LG (or any other) TV that has a '1080p' input label on the front, all this means is that it can display 1080p stuff at 768, which is quite cheeky eh?

And if you are thinking of buying a current blu-ray or hd dvd player, make sure it can have its' firmware upgraded (yes the standards are still evolving), otherwise you may have a very expensive book-end in a few years time!

And for the cynics, no-one is saying you need to buy anything, so why the vitriol?

My ha'pennies...

ISP bosses told to get real on broadband speeds

Turkeys voting for Christmas?

Yep, that'll clearly fly won't it?

IT risk becomes board-level issue

Wrong!

IT risk is much more simple, it is about (in IT terms) what COULD go wrong (and is worth tracking, as most risks are not) - i.e. will it get in the way of achieving your objectives?

And naturally the organistions' objectives are well defined and everyone who should do understands them...

The board should know what they aim to achieve, and have a better than evens idea of what is likely to go wrong.

IT is important, but it is just a tool that may contribute to achieving strategic objectives, if isn't that, it is usually a waste of capital and lots of overhead.

And whoever defined Northern Rocks' 'commercial strategy' knows less even about basic finance than they do about risk!

California clamps down on in-car mobile use

We are better drivers!

Well, from my unscientific observations I think so anyway, as does every Brit I know that has emigrated to the other side of the pond!

Unsung software developers behind rise in online fraud

Apple...

Jason.

No it doesn't...

Regards,

jason

Original thinking in a derivatives market

Basic truths

The bottom line, is, you can't polish a turd, and with lots of clever people being daft enough to lend someone some dosh to buy a house, without checking (or being bothered by) how much they earn in the first place, some of these now not-so-clever folks are going to get a haircut.

Which is a risk to my eye!

The Sage of Omaha is right again...

Vodafone takes one on the chin for billing problems

Outsourcing is not the problem!

Regardless of what they have or have not outsourced, whoever (miss)managed the programme is responsible for setting themselves up to fail.

Clearly they also had no fall-back position in case it went bang, you would hope they won't make that mistake again.

And all 100% predictable, oops...

Pentagon: Chinese military hacked us

Real security

If a system isn't connected to the net AT ALL, it is a lot harder to hack...

Linux database becomes a browser

Testing...

If your browser isn't setup to accept cookies there homepage has a hissy fit, methinks they need to do a bit more testing and design it with fewer assumptions??

Jason

The cold, cold heart of Web 2.0

More efficient twaddle?

Having had a fair amount of experience of umpteen different types of hype over the years, the remarkable web 2.0 phenomonon simply reminds me of the advent of desktop publishing and presentation software...

Whereby they can help someone to communicate their message more effectively, or produce more consistent, unintelligible rubbish in a shorter space of time.

Web 2.0 is not much more than a moniker for a bunch of technologies and techniques that COULD serve up some very interesting concepts - but only as long as the underlying idea makes some sense in the first place; and generates more cash than it costs to setup and run.

At the end of the day, tools are just tools...

So what's in a URL? The Reg URL?

A no brainer, as our American cousins would say

As a long time reader, and recent contributor, methinks .co.uk is all that is needed!