Posts by chris

How the Google stole Christmas

Lies, damned lies

The article makes some dubious use of statistics there. Average Ads/Keyword is down overall over the period shown but the article only mentions the couple of months where it rises. Also, it's not at all clear what that rise means for advertisers, we can't tell from this data if they are paying more or less.

As for the first piece of news, that adwords ads will appear on the iPhone, G1 and presumably lynx running on your internet toaster. What do you expect? It's a browser looking at a web page it will see pretty much what any other browser looking a web page will see. That's the point.

As far as I can see Google have done nothing strange or evil.

This whole story is a PR piece by AdGooRoo to say "Gosh aren't all those settings in AdWords complicated. Maybe you should pay someone to manage all that for you.... Well yes since you ask we do sell that service." I cannot believe you've printed it for them.

Fraunhofer boffins: Laser printers safe after all

Danger!!

As dangerous as a toaster is pretty dangerous.

Top tip from experience. When dislodging stuck toast, use a knife with a plastic handle.

We'll never get alien telly, says Zagreb boffin

Surely any civilisation with the technology for inter-stellar travel..

..will realise that a third series of Fawlty Towers wouldn't be any good. Have you seen any of John Cleese's recent output?

Yangtze river dolphin is an ex-cetacean

Not just cute animal fixation

There is some justification for being more concerned about the extinction of a large mammal than a bacteria. Bacteria reproduce and mutate extremely rapidly. If one species disappears, that's ok there will be another one along in a minute.

The more large and complex a creature is, the slower it tends to breed and the more likely it is that a mutation will render it non-viable. AFAIK, there have been no new cetacean species in the last few hundred years so we should be concerned that we have removed this one.

US robot carrier-jet contract announced

Good news for the army

Soon telling women that you're a pilot will have the same social cachet that telling them you're a programmer has now, fantastic. The only heroic jobs left will be infantry and fireman.

There's a serious point here relating to E's comment.

It's already the case that you can bomb less powerful countries without any risk to your own servicemen. We were quietly bombing radar installations etc in Iraq for years before we went in. This technology doesn't change anything.

The reason it doesn't matter is, no one surrenders to aircraft. Look at the Blitz, the fire-bombing of Dresden or the Kosovo War. You can do massive damage to a country and they just get more pissed off with you, reinforcing the current regime. It's boots on the ground, or at least the credible threat of them that are required to force a surrender.

The BBC iPlayer 'launch' that wasn't

Disappointing

I was so excited when I got my username and password. I know I was only falling for the oldest salesmanship trick in the book. Artificially restricted supply to create some more hype. But damnit, I was excited anyway.

It's such a disappointment though. Ewen Bruce describes quite nicely what a pita it is to install, so I won't do that again. I got a different error at the end though. Instead of telling me I wasn't in the UK, I clicked a link in iPlayer that took me to a web page which told me I didn't have iPlayer installed.

Deleted and forgotten about.

I'm glad that it exists though. I'm not sure about legally but morally I feel that the existence of iPlayer means I can download those programs from more user friendly places.

HP offers 3-D thermal mapping for data centers

Life imitates art

They clearly got this idea from watching Die Hard 4.0

US seeks mini-Imperial Walker mule-bots

Real mules?

Real mules are faster, probably quieter, and carry heavier loads than this thing. So why don't modern infantry use them? Because they're a ridiculous idea, that's why. Either you're being stealthy, in which case sorry but you need to carry your own kit. Or you aren't in which case, throw your kit in the back of a 4 tonner, warrior or quad bike.

Gloriously Belize have a mule load as a standard weight measure. It's 200lb.

http://www.sizes.com/units/mule_load_standard.htm

Geek Squader gets fruity with customer porn

Why bother?

I'd have thought any geek squader would be able to find plenty of free porn and music on the internet. Why on earth would they bother pulling it off customer PCs. Especially since people who feel the need to take a PC to the geek squad will probably have a poorly organised collection of dubious quality.