Posts by David Gosnell

Physical USB security

Secure?

Cheap combination locks are generally a doddle to crack, by either physical or logical brute force. Besides, the determined data thief could just open the drive and bypass the connector altogether.

Slimmer and lighter cameras promised

Re: Are they not shrinking the sensor size with this new micro four-thirds design?

No, the sensor's the same size as normal four-thirds. That's a bit smaller than some of the competitors, but doesn't make a great deal of difference. Full-frame DSLRs are far from typical, by the way!

Re: Or am I just a complete ludite?!

No, but it is a horses for courses, one man's meat, etc thing.

The 4/3rds format took off as much as it did (which isn't hugely, admittedly) precisely because there are people who want a smaller camera for whatever reason. The Olympus E410 and its siblings carry this aspect off very well, yet they are still bulky enough beasts to allow room for further improvement.

I guess there are many reasons to like or dislike a format of camera, but to me the ultimate appeal of a DSLR is the big sensor. In the end it doesn't matter how clever a camera is if the picture quality is crap. If this is a way to get a DSLR-class sensor into more manageable cameras, then I'm all for it. It's not as if true DSLRs are going to suffer for it.

EVIL

So is this finally the EVIL technology certain people in the tech forums have been craving for years? Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens.

I'm guessing there will be an electronic viewfinder rather than just the big screen, the dpreview silhouette seems to include one anyway.

Micron debuts SSD duo

Pricing

Micron = Crucial, right? Crucial are currently flogging 64GB SSDs (without much further detail) for [gulp] £648.59 including VAT. So......

Telly stand technology

Solutions looking for a problem?

Don't really see the point at the asking price, especially with in-built obsolescence.

Not too pretty either.

Lenovo heralds netbook PC duo

Namespace

Couldn't Lenovo have come up with a model number they hadn't already used for one of their own mobile phones?

Interesting anyway, so long as the 9-incher is altogether slimmer, which I doubt.

Fujifilm quietly unveils an HD DSLR

Re: It IS an SLR

The "reflex" bit specifically refers to reflection (via the reflex mirror). Now, admittedly there's nothing in the article flatly denying there's a mirror in there, but you're seriously clutching at straws now.

Re: That's not an SLR

But, but but... it's black, it's got a lumpy bit on top and a decent hand grip. It must be an SLR...

Sadly James is not alone at the Register in this level of ignorance.

Of course, it's probably an SLR as far as ill-informed law enforcement agencies are concerned, so he might have a point there.

Holographic Wii storage en route?

Obviously speculative dredging, but I'd still like to know...

... what this alleged storage crisis is. Especially given that the average Wii owner buys 0.673 games or whatever.

Gmail certificate expiry snafu follows security upgrade

Google and certificates

On a similar theme, they've never been bothered to do anything about the wrong certificates being associated with domains. Last November I raised the issue of the problem in this regard when navigating via http://www.google.co.uk/adsense for example, and they replied "I am happy to pass along your comments to our engineering and product teams", who went ahead and did bugger all as usual. Still broken needless to say.

HP prepping 2133 Mini-Note rival

Via Nano

If they dropped in the Via Nano processor (directly compatible with the crappy C7 used), either of these siblings could be a killer. Here's hoping...

Reg hack insults the Parachute Regiment

At the end of the day...

... or rather at the beginning of the afternoon, I saw both teams on Sunday, and frankly they were both a bit crap. So there, problem solved.

Fugitive spammer in murder-suicide

Thank you John

Thank you for not sinking to the extreme low shown by another place's hack in reporting this story... This one's definitely the time and place for objectivity, so well done.

Dead author's estate snatches child's domain

CS Lewis wasn't first

Narnia was a city of Roman Italy, now known as Narni.

Panasonic manufactures massive megapixeler

@ christian graffeuille

That's fine if you don't mind an effective sensor size about the same as that of a grain of salt. Bear in mind this sensor will be quite small enough already, without further cropping. What you are essentially talking about is digital zoom, which even PC World have stopped bragging about now.

Mind you, the optical zoom race is equally as mad as the megapixel race, with e.g. the new Fuji F100fs having a 14x zoom but the lens suffering some of the worst ever chromatic aberration of any camera, as a result of the compromises needed to get that in conjunction with a larger than average sensor whilst keeping the camera handleable.

Sensible megapixels (I recall someone did a study that determined that for compact camera size sensors, 6Mp was optimum with current technologies) and sensible zoom. IMHO, obviously!

Shouldn't that read

"If megapixels are what persuade you to part with your cash for a camera, you're a misguided shallow muppet of a sheep" ?

Quite probably one of Panasonic's densest (i.e. noisiest) sensors yet.

LG plotting autumn offensive against Eee PC?

Developed by MSI

Apparently [cnet, digitimes] this is being developed for LG by MSI.

What's the betting it turns out to be yet another customised MSI Wind?

Looks like MSI are keen for just about anyone but themselves to sell it (Advent, Medion, now LG?), not really being an end-user manufacturer historically.

@Andy

You can of course see her (sans EeePC) any time at:

http://www.inmagine.com/dvs037/dvs037084-photo

For a mere £719.99 you can have her in XXXL 76cm x 94cm goodness.

DIY SSD packs in CompactFlash card pair RAID rig

Re: Crucial CF

Curiously unavailable from the GB£-priced site (SD/microSD only), though still there on the US$-priced one.

Very peculiar.

Panasonic goes back to black

Re: I want to know

A thin layer of monolith. Otherwise, I suspect it's slightly brown.

Farnborough Airshow goes public this weekend

Re: Re: Ceasars Camp

Well that was a bit silly, when there's three public car parks with ample spaces within a mile or so... They've normally been pretty clear about the restrictions in the past.

Re: Freetard

It was all a bit tired. I've been up on Freetards' Hill for the last three events, and it's definitely declined even in that time. I don't think there's been anything much actually new since the first time I went, and even the old favourites like the Harrier, MiG and Tornado have been dropped from the programme. I guess we can make an exception for the Vulcan but that's a special case, and even that wasn't a patch on when I saw it at Abingdon in the 80s. I simply don't get their Spitfire infatuation. The Blades were fun this year though, and the Red Arrows justified our viewing position without question. None of the paytards can say they had them passing 30-40 feet over their head, or saw the whites of the pilots' eyes.

Samsung gauges TL9 snapper success

Gauges

Love the gauges! Cute retro style - they could build on this, and potentially design something as iconic as a Contax, but affordable.

Shuttle intros Phenom-friendly media centre barebone

Pitched as media centre

And very nice too, but why oh why don't they make these with at least the option of an LCD/VFD display? As it is, about the only viable cube format cases are the Morex 668 and 669 - which don't have such a display but at least have enough space (and no fancy but hindering stealth covers) to slot one in (decent displays, e.g. iMon, all seem to be 5.25" format) and still sport an optical drive.

How can I free 'hidden' hard drive capacity?

Not likely to be identical

Not all platters are the same, even from the same manufacturer. Different products have fundamentally different data densities, so the same size platter fundamentally holds different amounts, and the read/write hardware will be specifically made to match.

It is conceivable a drive could support the data storage equivalent of overclocking. I've seen it done on floppy disks, but reliability goes through the floor, and you might be OK with risking a couple of megs but not several hundred gigs. It's not very likely to be possible on a hard disk though - unlike floppy disks, the controller is built into the unit itself, so not likely to be "hackable".

Microsoft confirms 60GB Xbox 360

Can someone please explain...

Can someone please explain why hard-disk equipped consoles are factory-fitted with such paltry units? 20GB, 60GB ... like wow, didn't I have that on my desktop five years ago? The drives are hardly mainstream any more, so surely cost above the odds unless they're using dusty stockpiles no-one else wants to touch with a bargepole.

Europe loves HD TVs - but not HD broadcasts

Re: Why bother?

For the average viewer (rather than the average Register commenter, who considers any screen < 40" to be not worth watching), no the change isn't particularly meaningful. This is getting as silly as the whole PC "arms race" thing, where the envelope was unnecessarily pushed for years, with the consumer losing out when finding perfect good kit to be obsolete/unsupported. Shops sell LCD HDTVs exclusively (well you might find one Nikki-nakki CRT if you're lucky) because they have better profit margin and lower warehousing requirements. Now public have HDTVs they are told they are wasting their potential if they don't receive in HD.

Blears pitches prize draws and online polls at young votes

If they want to encourage young people to vote ...

... engage with the way young people want to vote. There have been incredibly successful trials of telephone and internet voting in local government, but these have been repeatedly rejected by national government for fear it will devalue the vote, i.e. that if people can vote by a convenient means, they won't take it as seriously.

So in other words, encourage the young to vote, but not in such great droves that there's actually a chance of changing the establishment status quo.

Polaroid 'inkless' handheld photo printer hits UK

Cost per (tiny) print

23p per print that's a quarter the size of anyone else's and doesn't even match the aspect ratio of most consumer cameras so will either waste that minuscule space or be distorted to hell?

No ta. I suspect if I was given one I would test if it lived up to its silly name, by throwing it out of the window and seeing if it bounced.

Elonex shows off second Small, Cheap Computer

Re: Drop the SCC (not literally though)

I thought we had already agreed on laptot?

Some of those suggestions are already in use as product names!

Nvidia spurns Intel Atom for VIA, spurns VIA for Intel Atom?

Via Nano

Hopefully this wrangling won't be the death knell (or too much of a further delay) for the commercialisation of the Via Nano... Not too optimistic though.

Daily Mail loses employee info

Opportunistic thief

Given the amount of publicity given to loss of sensitive and potentially valuable data, surely any truly opportunistic thief would at least try and have a look-see?

Sounds like the Mail being just as pathetic as those they vilify.

PC World pips Asus to UK Atom sub-laptop premier

"Although MSI are no IBM either"

My first ever true PC was an Advent (and had the obligatory lousy driver support even then, back in 1993, Windows 3.1 and all). It was a rebadged IBM. Said so on the bottom of the chassis.

AVG chokes fake traffic spew

Too late...

We've switched to Avast!, which is proving much slicker in every way. Even without the real-time scanning, AVG8 was bloaty and turned even a fast PC to treacle for several minutes after start-up.

Re the scanning, they could settle for an intermediate solution of checking URLs against their own list of dodgy ones (wasting only their own bandwidth) updated automatically based on the on-demand checking initiated by actual visitors to the sites in question. Of course, that would upset those who might be uneasy about Grisoft potentially collecting searching-habit data, but it's probably not as bad as actual connections being unknowingly opened to sites of dubious repute.

Driver-updated satnavs to beat traffic jams

Timeliness

Might work for current issues, if it can be done in a more timely manner than the local radio traffic updates which always seem to be way behind. I remember one recent trip, where they were warning of a big accident, road partially blocked, emergency vehicles in attendance etc, over the course of a couple of hours. We went through the alleged location twice during the period they were reporting updates, and didn't see a thing. Either huge information delays rendering the service useless, or some canny motorist realised that if he rang in with a phony report, it would significantly lighten the traffic on the road and help him get to his destination quicker...

Asus readies iMac attack with all-in-one Eee

Any idea on video connectivity?

i.e. does it have SCART, HDMI or anything?

No use to many people if it can't replace the existing goggle-box for use with DVD players, consoles etc.

Nikon unveils mid-range pro-friendly DSLR

@Bronek, re: Full frame, FX, 35mm

Yes, all different names for the same thing, but doesn't change that this new D700 is one of a very select and noteworthy handful. My original comment wasn't directed at you; I was surprised this wasn't mentioned outright in the article rather than only by allusion to the D3.

Full frame

You forgot to mention it's full frame, one of only a very select handful.

Arnie terminates driving and dialling

Yet again....

.... a surprisingly sensible and laudable bit of motoring legislation from the bloke who not so long ago was done (or did he get away with it?!) for not having a licence when he crashed his Harley.

Asus to revamp Eee PC 901 with bigger keyboard?

Bezel

I guess it will appeal to those who liked the "retro" look of the 701...

Asus pledges end to Eee PC 900 battery swap 'delay'

Re: Any contact details?

Do any of these match the number you've been given?

http://www.saynoto0870.com/companysearch.php?search_name=asus

Re: The solution is simple.

But then Asus could perfectly legitimately charge just as much for the keyboard swap most UK users would presumably need...

BBC begins fresh Freeview HD TV trial

Point proven re the "Brits confused by digital TV switchover, report claims" article

HD over Freeview will require new decoding hardware, so better wait a bit longer, right? On the other hand, people who heeded the message and upgraded to digital ahead of schedule are going to get mightily pissed off.

The gold standard in data storage?

"The firm’s not giving much away about how it makes each 25GB disc so durable"

Let alone how it even knows...

Who will our descendants sue when it turns out to be the usual?

Brits confused by digital TV switchover, report claims

Muddy waters

A large part of the problem is how muddied the waters have become. Every time there's a marketing push towards digital take-up, it seems to be cunningly accompanied by some new potentially-divisive initiative that persuades anyone with any sense to hold off a bit longer, and a bit longer, etc etc. The timing of Freeview Playback, Freesat, the whole HD nonsense, iPlayer etc all are perfectly understandable reasons why the technologically cautious are playing the waiting game.

Force listeners onto DAB by killing FM

"I wouldn't start from 'ere"

DAB's currently mp2 based in the UK. That's really not going to cut it in the long term, is it? Enough people whine about it already. So the 17-point-whatever who've signed up are going to be kicked in the teeth when they need new radios too...

Motorola develops Kodak cameraphone

Re: Telling bones?

Ah, but the only thing stated as "thrown in" is software. That's squishy and won't cause damage.

Could be a goer

Real flash (take note lazy journos) and sensible megapixellage for the unspecified but inevitably tiny sensor size. I wondered what (if any) zoom facility there was other than pointless digital zoom, and found this on the Motorola website:

"Fixed optical zoom lens"

I'll take that as a yeah-but-no-but...

Yes! It's the Knight Rider satnav!

Killjoy alert

Animating the lights would probably fall foul of whatever legislation it is that decrees against flashing lights on car stereos etc while the vehicle is in motion. I suspect satnavs in general only get away with it because of the questionable value of finding good deep rivers to ditch into.