Posts by khisanth

These centrifugal moon towers could be key to life off-planet

Re: And the first meteor strike

Storms on Mars are not as strong as on Earth due to the thinner atmosphere.

Co-founder of coronavirus vaccine biz holds in-person tech event... 20+ attendees later test positive for COVID-19

Too many people seem to find wearing mask as being a HUGE inconvenience,pain,affront to their sensibilities,infringement on their "rights" or offensive to them for some reason. Here in the UK most people do wear a mask when out/in shops etc , but STILL there are people who either dont bother, "forget" , "have a condition" or have one but it doesnt cover their nose or face.

and THEY get annoyed/angry if anyone says something! So the potential spreaders of a virus that could KILL you and your loved ones are the ones getting annoyed?

America's largest radio telescope close to collapse as engineers race to fix fraying cables

I think the fact nobody has mentioned replacing the snapped cable nor replacing the remaining cables is very telling! Engineering firms are going to check or probe the cables, then what?

Let's go space truckin': 1970s probe Voyager 1 is now 14 billion miles from home

Lets hope we don't see it again in case it wants to see The Creator.

Microsoft to charge $200 for 32 GPU cores, sliver of CPU clockspeed, 6GB RAM, 512GB SSD... and a Blu-Ray player

I think it's good to have an option like this. This would be perfect for my older 720p only TV !

(also an Amstrad CPC owner/user here)

Re: IBM mainframe

I visited the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Ca (lucky to get sent to the US for a meeting!!) and I played Spacewar on the DEC PDP-1 , the display being an oscilloscope.

Total War: Warhammer, Blood Bowl and other Games Workshop table-to-screen delights

I enjoyed the first blood bowl, but didnt enjoy the constant releases of new versions adding just one race, it wasnt even DLC to add to your existing game.

Dawn of War 1&2 were damn good, Space Marine was okay, Armageddon was pretty good and the newest Space Hulk game was not bad I thought.

I cant wait for the Total War game, looks stunning and exactly what I have been waiting for since childhood!

What I really want is a decent Titans or Epic scale game :)

Windows 10 climbs to 3.55 per cent market share, Win 8.1 dips

W10 is really good, a few driver issues at first, but quickly resolved and everything is back to normal and faster boot ups/shutdowns.

There will be a huge number of home XP users who will never upgrade and are not aware or even care about updates/security etc.

Sinclair stretches to new major GSMA role

Nice clickbait article.

BONK! BONK! Windows 10 whack-a-mole – Microsoft still fixing bugs

I am now very nervous about hitting that upgrade button!

Buh bye fakers? Amazon tweaks customer product reviews system

Re: What about cable reviews?

I had to review a usb cable for Vine. Not much you can say with cables other than if it works and its build quality.

When you get people reviewing hdmi, ethernet, usb and optical audio cables and they say things like "its faster, its so much better" then you know its utter rubbish.

The NHS pays up to NINE TIMES over trade price for commodity kit

IT suppliers to the NHS charge them extortionate amounts of money for products and services, prices normal companies would just laugh at and tell them to get lost.

Also the public sector in general seems to throw money away. I know someone who works under contract for a section of the public sector and they put in their costs at a silly amount of money per month assuming that they would get talked down to a sensible level. The result? They got the full amount they asked for without any discussion! (we are talking about Prime Minister level wages)

These institutions make it really hard to do anything, change things or buy things, but when they do they delight in throwing away so much money. Top level management does not have a clue and the people doing the actual work on the ground suffer.

Force Touch tweak: Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display

I am still running my mid 2009 Macbook Pro 13" and all I have done is up the memory to 8Gb. Same core 2 duo processor and original hard drive in there. Works perfectly for everything I want still at a decent speed. Startup time is a little longer with the current OS but nothing I cant live with.

Until that breaks or wanders off somewhere, I aint getting a new one :)

Boss splits as Symantec UK consciously uncouples

Symantec always struggled to absorb the Veritas brand internally

Space Commanders lock missiles on Elite's Frontier Devs

I work for a company that does software licensing technology and we allow for end users to effectively "return" the software if they don't want it or it doesn't do what they want. You revoke the license, they send you an electronic receipt showing its uninstalled and thats it!

So it certainly is possible to do.

From what I have read they are looking to see if you actually played it online before deciding to refund. If you never went online with it I think they will consider refunding, but if you did go online then they wont. Seeing as you claim not to have wanted online play,but still went and did it or something.

Kickstarters are about getting a project up and running, but too many people see it as a way to get something on the cheap or only it for the perks.

I saw one guy complaining that it wasn't the same as the X series and that there was nothing to do in the game !!!

Virgin Media customers suffer YET MORE YouTube buffering blues

Ahhhhh , this was driving me insane the over the weekend. Changing DNS and rebooting the router seemed to help a bit, but it wasnt great.

Sony borks fanboi funboxes with dodgy PS4 update

Ahhhh so this is why my voice control with the camera is buggered

KRAKKOOOM! Space Station supply mission in PODULE PRANG EXPLOSION CHAOS

The guy narrating also mentioned something about secure documents on board and for everyone to secure their workstations and files.

Whisper tracks its users. So we tracked down its LA office. This is what happened next

Is it possible that the reporter is at the wrong address?

Bruges Booze tubes to pump LOVELY BEER underneath city

What about cross contamination? Different beers , different breweries etc. Cleaning the pipes will be annoying!

Apple 'Genius': iPhone 6? We've had NO COMPLAINTS about our BENDY iThing

I would NEVER put my phone in a jeans pocket front or back, especially if I was going to sit down at any point. Teething problems with a new product are nothing new, yet people make out its the first time its happened and only to Apple!

Apple: SO sorry for the iOS 8.0.1 UPDATE BUNGLE HORROR

Re: Oooops!

I did , with my 5 and the update process failed ! Now it says I dont need to update, but the red highlight on the settings icon is still there as if it wants me to finish the update!

Re: Maids a milking

Agreed. More time will mean less bugs, better product and also people will value it more. Getting a new OS every year and also for free in my head makes me value it less.

Move over, Apple Pay: Tesco trials PayQwiq phone-flash pay app

Agreed this is definitely too much faff. also does the app require internet access? If so my local huge Tesco has no 3G signal inside and the wifi is flakey and never works.

Vodafone to buy 140 Phones 4u stores from stricken retailer

Phones4U were very profitable so I am sure they will return in some capacity. Personally their stupid adverts put me off ever considering them!

These days all the networks have their own brick and mortar stores, so there is little need for a service provider like phones4u anymore. Last one I used was Carphone warehouse about 10 years ago and even then I just used their website.

I am glad that the typical high street is not flooded with mobile phone shops any more.

Boffins attempt to prove the universe is just a hologram

How can a 2d "thing" create 3d "things" ?

Lets say the universe is indeed a hologram, who made the hologram? is the hologram a hologram?

Re: Interesting times

Seems to be plenty of similar experiments like this either to detect the ether, gravitational waves etc and they all suffere from the fact the Earth is a bloody noisy place with vibrations coming from so many sources.

this is an experiment that if proved true, does not actually help us with anything!

Kate Bush: Don't make me HAVE CONTACT with your iPHONE

Never understand why people try and film concerts with their phones. You cant see anything but a tiny fuzzy blob and the audio is horrendous.

THE worst thing are idiots using iPads/tablets to do the same. Hold a big square thing up blocking peoples view.

Re: Flash

I suspect they had their cameras on auto flash. It was actually cool watching the flashes ripple down the coastline

Wetsuits, sunshine, bikini babes and a competitive streak: Epyx California Games

I liked the fact on the C64 version you could choose your sponsor/clothing brand. Thus because of this game I have an affinity for Ocean Pacific t shirts :)

Chomp that sausage: Brits just LOVE scoffing a Full Monty

Re: Carbs are the killers

Yet people who eat fruit and rice based dishes every day (pretty high carbs) are generally slim and lean!

Where is your evidence that carbs are killers and go straight into fat? Whats the fat doing that you eat?!

Facebook goes down, people dial 911

Re: Wait... what?

The kind of people who don't know what to do when McDonalds or their favourite fast food restaurant is closed. Saw a video where some fried chicken place had run out of chicken and people were up in arms complaining that their kids were going to starve, that they didnt know what to do and how would they eat?!

'Things' on the Internet-of-things have 25 vulnerabilities apiece

Re: It'll be messy

The IoT bubble wont burst, it will just evolve like the cloud. All these things are nothing new. Cloud = mainframe with dumb terminals logging in to use applications on it. IoT = the internet :)

Re: Use case?

A large part of the IoT benefit is for the vendor, usage tracking is really important to them from a business intelligence stand point, seeing what what parts of a product are actually being used etc to using that data for billing purposes.

A lot of IoT use cases will be in the background and not just in the home. Cars, factories, telecoms, mobile phones, air craft the list is endless!

Information gathering, sharing and analysing is one of the big benefits. for the home user, then right now its just a fancy way of turning things off or on in your house!

Re: Not surprised, but...

The internet of things is more than just home automation devices or intelligent appliances, smart mobile phones are a big part of the IoT for example.

Beam me up Scotty: Boffins to turn pure light into matter

Re: Whats the matter?

I really like that theory

Potato in SPAAAAACE: LOHAN chap cooks up stratospud with Heston Blumenthal

Yet more precious helium wasted to send a potato into the sky.

AOL confirms security breach from spam attack

I have a netscape address which was given over to AOL so, yes I am an aol mail user :(

Schoolkids given WORLD'S CHEAPEST TABLETS: Is it really that hard to swallow?

Re: GAMES

Yes if they can make the games educational that would be a good idea, stealthily get the education in! Also give them the tools to make their own games, so they learn and enjoy.

I watched a news item on TV last year talking to kids in a poor African village who had been given cheap laptops in a similar scheme to this tablet one. They were all excited to have them and the reporter asked them how they would use them and guess what every single one of them said?

GAMES.

EVE Online erects mashed-up memorial to biggest space fight in history

I love reading about Eve and watching it more than playing. Get to a certain level and you cant be a lone wolf for missions etc unless you spend a long time getting better etc. So you join a corporation and if lucky its run by/made up of decent normal people, but if you get the OCD types then it just becomes a chore and more like work than a game. I got pestered to always be available on skype, to login every day at specific times etc. If I didnt, then I got so much grief and then I found i was not in the corporation! put me off the game and never logged back in.

Haters of lurid supershow CES: The consumer tech market is still SHRINKING

I am guessing TVs are the main thing on show at CES?

Sega’s Out Run: Even better than the wheel thing

Still a game that I play to this very day. It holds up well, the music instantly takes me back, the sounds give a visceral thrill and the undulating track still makes me want to try and "look over" the hills !

Outrun 2 and Coast to Coast are worthy sequels which capture the spirit perfectly.

Outrun will always be my favourite racing game

Analogue radio will CONTINUE in Blighty as Minister of Fun dodges D-Day death sentence

DAB is still flaky in many parts of the country. They say it has no interference, yet ignore the fact it can break up and sound WORSE than interference.

I have a DAB radio indoors and the signal is usually okay,but can drop for no reason. However in my car its FM of course. The coverage of digital is simply not good enough to allow cars to get as good a signal as FM.

The Colosseum, Hagia Sophia, Tower of London... and, er, Steve Jobs' GARAGE

This is a fanboi thing plain and simple. Sure its cool etc, I am a huge Apple fan myself, but what about the rest of the world who don't care about Apple, let alone some nondescript garage in California!

China confirms plans for first Moon visit later this year

Well I am glad to see someone actually making some progress with Moon exploration and not just sending probes to smash into the surface.

Might be the boot up the backside NASA and the ESA need.

El Reg Playmonaut soars to 113,000ft

More helium wasted

I do love these kind of things, but this yet another waste of a rapidly dwindling supply of helium