Posts by Sandpit

There's a tide of unstructured data coming - start swimming

Not a problem

This is all a self limiting problem. We have the abllity to generate more data now than is possible any use to anyone, this is because it is cheap and easy, but it still has a cost. When the value of that data diminishes below it's cost to create then the problem starts sorting itself out.

The problem at the moment is that we are in transition, there are a lot of people spending a lot of money in a futile attempt to organise, understand and preserve a lot of worthless garbage. Once they grow up enough to realise they are wasting their time (and money) they will eventually stop.

Data of real value will generally be treated well enough. Some will be lost, no big deal, we will always create some more; that data wasn't as valuable as some would like us to believe in the first place.

Roses are #f00, violets are #00f. This witty code is a boffinry breakthrough

No wonder they are not funny

The idea of computers coming up with jokes isn;t hte problem as to why they are not funny, it's those programming the algorithms. Judging by how they came up with LOL and ROFL there is no suprise that the quality of the jokes generated by their software was of the same standard

1953: How Quatermass switched Britons from TV royalty to TV sci-fi

Made up rubbish

"And that monster - borging individual consciousnesses - could easily be seen as a metaphor for communism, or even consumerism"

Er no. This may have been new to TV but SciFi was a very well established genre in other media by the 1950s. No need to invent metaphors 30 years before they were trendy.

Rest your head against a train window, hear VOICES in your SKULL

Your mileage may vary

Sky - The thicker the skull, the more effective the advert!

Schwarzenegger says 'I'll be back' for Terminator 5 reboot

1985?

"Arnie played the Terminator in James Cameron's original 1985 film,"

I thought the first was in 1984

Mint 15 freshens Ubuntu's bad bits

I would certainly recommend MINT as the best way to get into Linux. The more people that use Linus the better it will be in the long run and it needs that larger adoption before it can become truely usable for ALL PC uses.

Pink Floyd blasts Pandora for 'tricking' artists with petition

Fee cut?

I wonder, how much of the money that Pandora pay goes to the artist? Does an 85% reduction in royalties equate to 85% less to the artist? What about the middle men?

Very dangerous to try to stifle the new media forms. It may be a choice between getting 100% of very little or 15% of a lot.

This is all fall out from the era where a few powerful moguls controlled everything, can we please get over that and move to the bright new world where artists can connect directly to their audience.

As for Floyd, have a cigar, by the way, which one's pink?

What do you mean WHY is Sony PS4 so pricey in Oz?

Same as Xbox?

Not only Aus, but there is a big price hike for EU/IK punters too, begger even than the XBox hike in percentage terms.

And the people who object don't buy it, but sadly, therea re still too many people in this world that have more money than sense. We still live in a must have society.

Jack Vance: Science fiction’s master of magic, mischief and sex

D&D

Much of Dungeons and Dragons was based on the Dying Earth world.

Microsoft tops list of software piracy nailed in UK by FAST

I wonder how much of these corporate piracy cases are actually just technical infringements caused by the completely incomprehensible licence models that M$ employs.

Microsoft exposes green users' privates in web quiz snafu

I wonder how much CO2 the Eadon troll has been resonsible for generating. Probably a lot more than all of MS OS put together!

Not cool, Adobe: Give the Ninite guys a job, not the middle finger

Try to not do it

I recently build my new main PC. So far I haven't put flash (or any Adobe) product on and hoping to never have to. Only think I have currently not been able to do is watch game promo videos in Steam.

Java too is on my resist list but that may prove harder in the long run as too much excellent software uses it.

Black-eyed Pies reel from BeagleBoard's $45 Linux micro blow

@billium

I don't care what the target market is. The MK is a much samller, much more powerful device, more RAM and flash, with USB, HDMI, SD and WiFi that you can put Linux on. It does everything these boards do, much more and better for cheaper. You even get a case (which you can cut off if you want your device to look like an unfinished hobby mess).

I was interested in these things until I heard about the MK808. Makes these things look so overpriced and under achieving.

SanDisk '2-3 years' away from mass-producing 3D flash chips

Re: Flash gets worse

Maybe you should have stuck with ferite core? What was wrong with that?

If you can't see the benefits of smaller and higher density storage...

Maggie Thatcher: The Iron Lady who saved us from drab Post Office mobes

So we have to thank Thatcher for technological advances in an industry that didn't even exist in her day? I think not. Regardless of ploitics and how you think about her it is ridiculous to suggest that things are better now because of her that they would otherwise be. All we know is that we have different technologies and systems now than we did in 1979.

Thatcher did not give me fiber broadband, I know this for a fact because, like most people, it isn't available to me yet.

Review: HP ElitePad 900 Atom tablet

So what's the point of this then?

They can't be going for the "more money than sense" market, Apple already have that sown up!

Publishing ANYTHING on .uk? From now, Big Library gets copies

@heyrick

"Did they think this through?"

Did you think this through? This is enabled by an act of parliment. It is protected by law. look up legal deposit legislation, it's been a round for a long time, this new provision extends that to non-print, something that was granted in 2003 but has only just gone through today 10 years later.

Yes, this has been thought through, a lot!

Andy why is this being done at all? It's for YOU, to make everything that is published (in whataever form) available to the public and forever.

I've got a super free multi-petabyte storage box for you: /dev/null

I offer a /dev/null storage archive at extremely competative rates (4 or 6 times lower than the tape storage guys)

I also offer a low cost option for destruction of data should you ever decide you don't need it any longer.

BT scores £146 meellion more UK.gov cash to fibre up Balamory

BT always get the blame

It's all too easy to blame BT, but why isn't anyone else able to do this stuff? Is anyone else willing to do this? I wonder if all the problems we have now stem back from the days when the government wanted to open up competition for cable so allowed a bunch of US companies to come in, cream off the profits before screwing everything up and sodding off again, at the same time shackeling BT to make it favorable for said companies to come in and do that.

Ten serious sci-fi films for the sentient fan

Android

Not a bad list for the brief. Angreed with many, Start trek is a wtf.

Agree with Contact, that is a seriously good film imo. But a nice little quirky one I remember is Android, rather dated now, covers similar things to Blade Runner (in a different/lighter way)

Six things a text editor must do - or it's a one-way trip to the trash

Shame, could have been a useful article; but went for pompous and unfunny instead.

BT to slap overalls on 1,000 new bods in fibre broadband boost

Not just the exchange

My exchange is currently in the latter stages of the upgrade, due for completion by the end of the month.

My cabinet will still be long lenght rusty wired adsl and will continue to be so for decades after the shiney openreach vans have driven off to pastures new.

Upgrading your exchange is not all it's cracked up to be; but I bet my area will be listed officially as fibre enabled for targets purposes.

Europe tickles Microsoft with €561m fine for browser choice gaffe

Half a billion for a bug affecting some old system that nobody noticed for 18 months.

Meanwhile, everyone has to put up with a retarded choice screen. Thank you EU, and can I say I particularly like having every other site I visit tell me all about cookies. (that one no doubt paid for by M$ first fine).

I wonder how EU will choose to annoy me with this half a billion.

<troll> Linux because one day soon it might actually become usable </troll>

Pirate Bay 'seeks asylum' in, er, 'North Korea'

Is poor connectivity that much of an issue? It's not as if the torrents will stream from there. Just the search and links.

US woman cuffed for 'booking strippers for 16th birthday bash'

Valuable

Glad to know no valuable police resrouces were wasted conducting this 3 month investigation. Serious crime is serious!

Google whips out pocket cannon, fires VoIP patent sueball at BT

Re: I wonder what would happen

Dunno, but I'm pretty sure we would all lose

Micron glues DDR4 RAM to flash, animates the 256GB franken-DIMM

"Kinda like Hibernate but simpler and better"

You mean like sleep? I always sleep my PCs now, they come on in <3 seconds usable. Not quite instant but I haven't worried about boot times for quite a long time now. I have no idea how long my PC takes to boot, I only do it when there is an update once a month and I that happens when I am asleep.

Björk gives up trying to Kickstart Android music app

Does it need programmers that cost nearly £10K a month?

YouTube's hilarious cat videos could soon cost you $5 a month

For cat stupidity/userland video - no

For a netflix/lovefilm etc like chanel - maybe

Huddled immigrant masses face 'British values' quiz

So here is a question for you

What is a sensible population for a small island with sever houseing shortages?

Answer: A lot less than it is now.

Every country in the world really needs to take a look at it's population and come up with policies to promote moving to an ideal and sustainable population (whatever the ethnicity).

Canadian astronaut warns William Shatner of life on Earth

"And we're detecting signs of life on the surface"

Did tweety tawt he taw a putty tat?

Musos blast US copyright bods: 'ARTISTS MAKE LOUSY SLAVES!'

Wait...

Does this mean that when some average person is fined $8000 per track for illegally downloading a song, that money doesn't go to the artist?!!

'We are screwed!' Fonts eat a bullet in Microsoft security patch

Those be high quality commentards at GrahicsUnleashed.

Many Reg articles could benefit from their inclusion :)

Sinclair ZX Spectrum FAILS latest radio noise rules SHOCK

Spectrum

The clue was in the name all along

Microsoft licence cops kick in TWICE as many customers' doors as rivals

Given the number of business products Microsoft have out there its hardly surprising that they check more businesses. I would be more worried about a company that only had one product but still managed to "kick down the door" of so many businesses...

Why you need an interactive file archive

It's a sales problem

While there are genuine use cases for archiving, most people do not have an archiving requirement. The "Problem" is how solution providers can convince everyone that they need an archiving solution when they don't.

Archiving is more about what you don't archive than what you do.

Not all data is equal, most of it (99.999999999999999%) is worthless junk.

South Korean convicted for tweeting Pyongyang propaganda

Re: Have I broken the law too?

Surely that's Vogon poetry?

BBC in secret trial to see if you care about thing you plainly don't

They should turn off radio 1 to see if anyone (important) notices or cares.

Man who put the manhood into the Speaking Clock dies

Precisely

Apple must apologise for its surly apology on its website on Saturday

Great fun

I'm really hoping they mess it up again and we see some jail time.

Why isn't there a popcorn icon?

Mozilla: Windows 7 browser bungle cost us nine MILLION downloads

These figures look like the sort of junk the media industry use to justify stupid levels of damages caused by file sharers. Insane creative accounting

Nominet mulls killing off the .co from .co.uk

Re: Cat's already out of the bag

There are already .uk addresses, you just can't get them any more eg. www.bl.uk