Posts by Jeff Power

Huawei's farewell to Android isn't a marketing move, it's chess

Re: Shutterstock thumbnail time again...

Yes, it's disappointing to see the Reg use "AI" images.

The writer of an earlier article mentioned AI writing was verboten, so why not images as well?

White House hopes $180M will solve science, tech gaps in commercial fusion power

AI image?

Is the image used for the article on the main page AI-generated?

Watt the f... Dim smart meters caught simply making up readings

Meter smarts

Those are gas meters, not electrical meters in the accompanying photo.

BlackBerry Messenger to launch on Android, iOS this weekend

Too much, too late

So BBM will be available on Android as of Saturday, with iOS available soon after that.

One less reason to stick with BlackBerry for people that still have the phones.

Completely irrelevant to everyone else.

Google U-turn DID preempt ICANN's block on corporate gTLD-snatchers

If anyone can smell which way the wind is blowing, it's Google

Well, Google does have access to all that search data.

BitTorrent opens kimono, gets out one-to-many streaming tool

Sounds a fair bit like Joost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost

Caught on camera: Fujitsu touts anti-terrorist pulse-taking tech

Also, MIT did this last year

MIT showed off something similar last year:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/amplifying-invisible-video-0622.html

And have since developed it further:

http://video.mit.edu/watch/revealing-invisible-changes-in-the-world-13649/

http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/

Amazon outage whacked Netflix US customers on Christmas Eve

Also, Canadians. This also affected Canadians - or at least this Canadian, in Eastern Canada.

First it prevented me from watching on my WDTV, then I tried my Xbox360 and PS3 with no luck. My Asus Transformer Infinity worked fine for another hour, then that too stopped working. I continued watching on my PC - which eventually got a little wonky, but did keep letting me watch stuff, if after a bit of a longer wait than usual.

(This was the Canadian Netflix, not the US Netflix with the DNS trick.)

JP

WHITE WHALE spent 4 years trying to tell us something, then stopped

I, for one, welcome...

Coat, please.

What happened to Odds & Sods?

Yes, the site rearrangement is not optimal.

When I go to BOFH (after eventually finding it), it doesn't list the articles by most recent, which is important if I want to read the most recent, or realize I have read it already.

Is this some attempt to clean the site up and make it more professional, the removal of Odds & Sods? Seems to be missing the point of the site itself. I hope this isn't going to be a trend.

BOFH: Shove your project managementry up your mailbox!

Dead ringer

Gus Hedges - Drop the Dead Donkey.

TuneIn Radio Pro

Re: Data usage depends on stream rate obviously....

I've been using this every morning and evening on my commute to/from work. I have a 6GB/month data plan and have been worried about the data usage, but my provider seems not to be able to measure the bandwidth this uses for whatever reason, as my usage numbers are nowhere near what they should be. Just hoping they don't suddenly tally them all up at once...

Facebook disses Effin Irishwoman

Nope, I just made my hometown Fucking, Austria. Has a picture of the sign and everything. Might possibly be related to "community standards". I'm in Canada, and this sort of thing on a Facebook page wouldn't raise many eyebrows. I don't know how much the Catholic Church still dominates Ireland, but I can see the "community standards" being less relaxed in such a place.

Google Instant sinks raft of search controls

$%&* the title

I'm very happy to see the fade in effect disappear. It was somewhat irritating as it slowed down the speed at which I could enter a search query. With the fade in the cursor would take a few extra moments to appear in the search box. (This was a problem because: if I'm going to Google, I've got a pretty good idea what I intend to type when I get there, usually; not every computer I regularly access is either fast, or tweakable for various reasons. This was not exactly a huge thing, but I'm at the bloody website for a purpose, and if you slow me down more than what I have become accustomed to, you are an impediment to me and therefore deserve my ire.)

AMD: 'Bobcat' smaller, faster than Intel's Atom

I suppose I should put a title here. Nah.

This is a good move for AMD. From what I understand, Intel doesn't want to improve the performance of Atom, or allow it in anything over a certain size, etc., for fear of cannibalizing sales of the beefier chips. AMD can make it as fast as it can, and let you put it in whatever you want - definite advantages for the AMD chips.

Also, some mentioned there was no info on power consumption, well I quote you this, from the last page of the article:

"The Bobcat design is also meant to push the power envelope down, and can hit below one watt per core of power consumption, according to Hoepper."

Sure, it's about what a future chip may be able to do, and not really as specific as one might hope, but it's something. I'm sure we'll find out more before someone forces us to buy one...

Google plots pre-Christmas Chrome OS iPad killer

Well...

Well, Ferrari is owned by Fiat, and they sure as hell do care about the low end, cheap tat side of the market.

Ford used to own Aston Martin and Jaguar - which, while not really quite at the same level as Ferrari, are certainly well at the end near it. This would be better with the later poster's comparison between BMW and Ford, as Jaguar and Aston Martin are more in that market than that for Ferraris.

What are we talking about again?

Oracle sues Google over Java in Android

@Allison Park

Yes, but by being that to the Java community, they'll be loved by the everybody-else community, as Java is generally hated, except by those who love it.

Apple denies iPhone 4 antenna glitch, blames inaccurate signal bars

Yeah, but...

If you read Anand's review over here: www.anandtech.com/show/3794/the-iphone-4-review

you see the signal bar formula was clearly skewed, but if you read further you see that they tested the absolute variation in signal strength due to hand contact, and it was worse on this than the competition. (As also pointed here: www.arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/07/apple-says-iphone-4-algorithm-is-to-blame-not-signal.ars )

God particles breeding like bosons

Whatever makes it work...

One more particle, one more dimension, ten more dimensions, twenty-six more dimensions, whatever...

BOFH: On the couch

The title is required, and must contain etc, etc.

"Remember when I said it was what I'd do? As it happened it's what I did do."

That's the stuff.

Apple 'real cost' comparison shows inflation beaten mercilessly

I need to put in a title.

Real cost: $270, according to these folks:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2010/02/02/apples-ipad-bom-cost-around-270-for-16gb-wifi-version/

Think about it. iPad = Netbook - keyboard + touchscreen flattened out a bit. Swap the hard drive for a bit of flash, swap the cheap Atom for a cheaper, less powerful, less power-hungry ARM, swap the MS OS for an Apple one and voilà! iPad. People were "amazed" at $499 as the price. I'm amazed they're asking that much for it.

They also mention the 3G has an even greater profit margin, as the radio bits only cost $16.

Quite a bit of room to pay development expenses and make a bit of profit, I would think.

(Also room for the competition-crushing price drop we'll probably see when the other tablet makers launch their newest devices at current-competitive prices. (Although maybe not, Apple doesn't like to charge less than it has to.)

'We're on a virtual walk out of Africa', futurologist tells Intel partners

3D in laptops in three or four years...

Guess he hasn't heard of this:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10401585-1.html

or this:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2009/10/18/asus-launches-nvidia-3d-vision-laptop-156-120hz-lcd2c-3d-goggles.aspx

or these:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/18/hp-and-dell-working-on-3d-gaming-laptops/

but maybe he's thinking this could take that long to reach laptops (if it launches (has launched) as soon as the article predicts, I don't think it would be long before someone would jam it in a laptop):

http://hd.engadget.com/2009/05/07/glasses-free-3d-lcds-on-the-way-from-nec/

Sun squeals over 'UK's first iPhone baby'

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

"Calendar used to conceive for first time ever"

Yes, that says it right there. This was made possible by the iPhone, as though no such capability existed before the iPhone. Like the guy in Haiti "saved" by his iPhone. He had a first aid app on his phone which suggested methods at preserving his life. Unlike actual first aid training. Or a little booklet. And the iPhone woke him every twenty minutes to keep him from sleeping with his concussion. Unlike an alarm on a watch. Or every one of the last four cell phones I have owned have been capable of... Also, from what I have heard (which may be apocryphal), some of the first aid advice was actually harmful given it couldn't be given with consideration to the whole context of his situation.

This is irritating.

Nokia limits N900 shipments to pre-order customers

I want one.

Yes, I want one. I want one with the proper radio bits to work in Canada on the new HSPA cross-Canada network not operated by Rogers.

Depilatory Dell debuts beard-busting laptop?

This is why I read the Reg.

As I said.

Explorers unearth cat-sized rat

I for one...

From the BBC article: "The rat, _which has no fear of humans_..." (emphasis added)

Um...overlords...welcome...something...

Cyber crooks hijack 10,000 websites

Re: To all Javascript/PHP haters

Umm, the issue here isn't that people are being complete idiots and clicking yes or going to suspect web sites.

The issue is that, first of all, legitimate web sites have had nasty code injected into them, and that said nasty code exploits security loopholes in various browsers' implementations of your precious javascript.

I turn off javascript because:

A: The nasty people are very good at figuring out these security loopholes, and often put them to use before a working patch is available.

B: Sites I wouldn't have a reason to distrust on the surface, may have dodgy security and be susceptible to the attacks we are seeing reported in this article.

C: Javascript is often used not just for good, helpful things like forms validation and such, but for things like annoying scrolling text and other crimes against my eyes.

When I really need to use javascript for a site, I temporarily enable it with NoScript. If I go there everyday and don't worry about "B" happening, it gets permanently enabled, like iGoogle.

Now, full-fledged Java is another thing. I hate it because of the amount of resources I have always seen it use up just using it.