* Posts by Alain Moran

107 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jul 2007

German net crippled by top level glitch

Alain Moran
Thumb Up

Today is a very special day

For today we witness the creation of a brand new word 'verkrumpen' - a technical term to describe a knackered knetwork ... we've all used them at one time or another (often accompanied by a liberal sprinkling of lotus notes & IE6), and now we have a word to describe them - WIN!

Outsourcing goes inside

Alain Moran
Grenade

No change there then

The banks are already run by a bunch of criminals, so I guess it makes sense for their call-centres to be staffed by their mates.

HP eyes webOS iPad rival

Alain Moran
Coat

Focus Shift

And so BeOS finally makes it onto an internet appliance!

Cops raid Gizmodo editor in pursuit of iPhone 4G 'felony'

Alain Moran

viral marketing

I'm with Stuart on this one ... the whole 'I lost it while I was trashed' story just doesn't hold water to me ... if Apple didn't want this getting out there, then why did it leave the building in the first place?

'In the wild' trials would be made under controlled conditions, likely by driving about during office hours ... if the trials weren't made under controlled conditions then they wouldn't be much use as a test, since you would not be able to tell what caused the 'error condition' that you observe.

Lets face it ... everyone's been had, including the CA police (who are currently being used like a pawn by apple's marketing department) ... sucks to be Chen tho.

Pinhead Mac Trojan sticks it to fanbois

Alain Moran
Grenade

Excellent :D

I just love the fact that a new trojan for the mac is 'news' whereas a new trojan for windows is not :D

Commodore 64 may come back as Warren Beatty

Alain Moran
FAIL

Ugly as chuff

What an ugly machine, and not even original .. sigh, I really hope these losers don't get the rights to the C64 brand since that would prevent someone else doing something worthwhile with the name - such as using the original case & keyboard design, but putting a modern machine inside it running linux & pre-loaded with a C64 emulator & licensed copies of the original games.

Similarly if someone called Acorn computers came out with a BBC Model B with an emulator on it, then I'd go for that too!

And don't even get me started on how much I loved the sculpted keyboard you got on the TRS-80 :D

Java bug exposes users to serious code-execution risk

Alain Moran
Joke

Why run java in the browser?

So that you can run all of those natty JavaFX applets of course :D

World's biggest app store starts stocking shelves

Alain Moran

Am I missing something?

Given that vodaphone is in control of the network, surely it would be a relatively trivial task to intercept requests to the iTunes app-store and generate data from their own app store?

Apple rumored to put beefy iPad on diet

Alain Moran

Look silly witha 5 inch tablet to your ear?

Not at all, the tablet would remain in your hands the bluetooth headset would be at your ear ;)

'Virtual sit-in' tests line between DDoS and free speech

Alain Moran

Pecked to death by a duckling

This man evidently hasn't heard of the horribly slow murderer with the extremely inefficient weapon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcltSOl7yZ0

Net downloads cause 'millions of lost jobs'

Alain Moran
Happy

Aeron chairs

Somebody has been reading Make Magazine :D

Are West Bromwich Borg pliers actually side cutters?

Alain Moran

Needle nose

If you visit the site and move about to take a look at them, they are very definitley needle-nose pliers.

QLogic sues over video of chip frying egg

Alain Moran
Joke

Yes, but...

Will it blend?

Chips make you chipper: Official

Alain Moran
Coat

Successful experiment?

Judging by the comments here it would seem that we are less susceptible to the worst end of junk science, that scientific method is important to us and we do not necessarily accept something just because a 'scientist said so' and are actively interested in the route that they took to arrive at their conclusions.

Or is it only me that thinks we were just turned into lab-rats?

UK.gov shutters half its websites

Alain Moran
FAIL

Beggars belief

Manchester job-centre recently told a friend of mine that they "aren't there to help you find a job" :o

I'm sorry, but what the chuff are they there for then?

Top Gear's Stig prowls Loch Ness

Alain Moran

Black Vauxhall

Is it me or is the stig driving a Black Vauxhall?

If you spin round, you can see two cars in the lay-by behind ... one silver which appears to have two people in it, and another Black one (I think it's a vauxhall, I'm not very good with modern cars) which has nobody in it ... evidently this must be the stig's own car!

I would have thought he would be driving something a bit more swish than that :o

2010 will be the year of the net tablet, claims analyst

Alain Moran
FAIL

Focus Shift

I swear 1999 was going to be the year of the net tablet/internet appliance: http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/03/03/be_signals_shift_to_internet/

Yanks floored by nail guns, computers and baseballs

Alain Moran
FAIL

That's a bit harsh!

"UNABLE TO REMOVAL BASEBALL, FOREIGN BODY, VAGINA REMOVAL" ... couldn't they have just removed the baseball?

French top MOT failure league

Alain Moran
WTF?

Morris Minors

OK, so where is the data on morris minors ... I know of at least one minor that failed it's mot in 2007 for brakes and structural problems (which it later passed) ... her name is masie and I driver her to this day :D

LHC Xmas shutdown today - massive boffin roister planned

Alain Moran
Thumb Up

If ever...

If ever the world ends in some apocalyptic catastrophe and by some miraculous coincidence the reg coverage of the LHC is the only history of the world available, historians are going to have an interesting time disemminating fact from 'fiction' ... heh .. well done el reg :D

Cyborg MIT prof touts iPhone-controlled power-jumping legs

Alain Moran

The wrong trousers?

Where's the Wallace & Gromit icon when you need it?

Generators and UPS fail in London datacentre outage

Alain Moran

BANKING GRADE?

Pah .. I have an account with the halifax - well, soon to be I DID have an account with the halifax, since after their 'power outage due to the weather' the other weekend their UPS's failed to work, their generators never kicked in until someone phsically went to the site two hours after the power dropped, and they spent all day rebuilding their servers.

Apparently Halifax dont believe in offsite failover, and from what I gather they dont have any UPS either ... for me HBOS have earned a new moniker

Halifax, Bank of FAIL!

HBOS, your summons will be in the post!

Sarko caught short in Irish VIP footie box shocker

Alain Moran
Happy

Heee!

Joke or not, I still love this story :D

3UK shapeshifts on traffic shaping

Alain Moran
FAIL

Sigh

Heh, long term all this is going to do is stimulate P2P apps into wrapping their data transfers in such a way as to make them look like video data!

BOFH: The stupidity criticality

Alain Moran
Happy

Nice

TY, thats the best BOFH I've read in a while.

Android to overtake iPhone in 2012 - analyst

Alain Moran
Pirate

Windows Mobile

I'm not sure you could call Windows Mobile 'popular' ... ok, so my Xperia/X1 runs WM at the moment, but that's only because there isnt currently an Android rom out for it ... you can bet as soon as they start releasing the X2 Android roms that someone will hack them into running on the X1 and I can finally cease contributing to the 'popularity' of WM6 :s

Tories oppose charges and speed cameras

Alain Moran

ANPR

They wont need those archaic speed cameras once they have ANPR anyway ... this is just a vote buying exercise with no meat to it.

SpinVox offers pounds of own flesh to staff

Alain Moran
Thumb Up

Spinvox is excellent

We use spinvox for converting our incoming voicemail to JIRA issues so that everybody in the company (that have the right permissions) can view the call & the right can person respond to the message.

We have found that while it doesnt translate 100% of the calls the success rate is excellent and we find it very useful, since it prevents useful voicemails getting lost in and amongst the morass of marketing calls we get - marketing calls can be easily spotted in seconds & deleted immediatley, real messages can then be assigned to the member of staff who needs to deal with the call.

Vulture Central plans Brit-Yank dictionary

Alain Moran

Pronunciation

One of my pet peeves with the US is that a 'bouy' is pronounced BOY not BOUIE

Also bastardised is not spelt with a Z

Mysterious organic blobs found in Alaskan waters

Alain Moran

Primordial Slime

Could this be a sample of the primordial slime from which we all came (except the christians of course) that has defrosted out of the arctic ice?

Mobile co fails to stump up for pointless structure

Alain Moran
Joke

I beg to differ...

This most certainly isnt the largest folly built in the last hundred years ... the O2 arena is much bigger than this, and the olympic village will be even bigger!

Google's vanity OS is Microsoft's dream

Alain Moran
Happy

guess what's in my pocket ;)

"a lovely QWERTY keyboard for messaging, a screen that's good enough for browsing and a photo album, and small enough to fit in a jacket pocket."

That would be the Sony Ericsson Xperia-X1 then.

London gym floors hoodies with Chav Fighting classes

Alain Moran
Flame

Thats just too much

I have to take exception to "fire an AK47 at the feet of an immigrant worker who's stolen your job" ... it is racist comments like that which give the BNP a foothold in this country.

One of the greatest strengths of the UK is its ability to adsob other cultures and grow as a result, making racist comments like that and expecting them to be acceptable is undermining the strength of our great nation.

I'm sorry but if you have the attitude that you are better than anybody else in this country then you should track down your ancestry and piss off back to where you came from.

The mobile phone as self-inflicted surveillance

Alain Moran

beat them at their own game

Buy yourself a nice contract phone, with all your juicy completely traceable details ... then leave it at home switched on and plugged into the charger ;)

X2 triplex supercopter gets tail-drive hooked up

Alain Moran
Black Helicopters

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with

FLYING CAR

Exploding core counts: Heading for the buffers

Alain Moran
Coat

Sigh

Whatever happened to BeOS?

Obama's rainbow stealth aircraft uncloaks over Virginia

Alain Moran
Black Helicopters

Looks like it is based at langley

Given the path of it's con-trails perhaps the fleet of rainbombers are based at langley?

Are iPhone users just tight?

Alain Moran

Enter the android manifest xml

I recently attended a lecture by Romain Guy on the android UI at devoxx, and was introduced to the android manifest xml ... with the ability to re-purpose/use other application controls so easily its not so remote a possibility that application development costs can be brought down to a level where real profit is viable ... not having to re-invent the wheel every time could be a real saver ;)

The lecture itself should be up on parleys dot com 'real soon now', so you can watch it and judge for yourselves ... much as I will get flamed here, I think that google has an edge with the manifest concept.

Cry havoc and let slip the SSD dogs of war

Alain Moran
Alert

Added value

Perhaps the added value will come from software which optimises the usage of the SSD's?

IIRC there are a limited number of read/write cycles that can be performed on SSD's, and I would imagine that this is related to the individual chips within the 'disk' ... if a software solution can be found that ensures that writes are made in a distributed way across the 'surface' of the 'disk' so as to optimise/extend the life of the SSD, then I think the vendor of this 'app' would have an advantage over the others.

Remember folks ... you heard it here first, and if you make a million I want a cut ;D

US sky marshals submit to Heart of Gold randomware

Alain Moran
Joke

@Wize

Damnit, you beat me to it ... I totally agree finite improbablilty is by it's nature not even remotely random, for that you would need an infinite improbability generator ... if the US govt wants one I know this bloke with two heads who might be able to help, he's a bit unreliable though but that kinda goes with the random territory :D

3G iPhone disassembled, photographed

Alain Moran

Sigh @ lloyd

Heh .. macs arent just about graphics apps ... I'm a java coder and there is nothing that would persuade me to go back to wintel after using a macbook pro for 6 months.

For the most part they are stable, have a decent shell, and they 'just work' ... in fact the are the complete antithesis of a doze box (unstable, useless shell, and require constant fiddling with a zillion dialog boxes to get them to do the simplest of things)

'HD TV gas' 17,000 times worse for planet than CO2, claims boffin

Alain Moran

The solution...

Chuck that kin telly in the chuifing bin ... all it has ever done is fry your brain to the point that you dont ever have any original ideas of your own ... throw it away and read books.

Glastonbury Festival forecast: very windy, hopes Orange

Alain Moran
Happy

@hedley

Personally I would say that glastonbury started to die when mean fiddler took over and started to erect all of those fences!

Actually, scratch that ... the rot really began back in the early nineties when they killed off the traveller's free festival (a field outside the main gates where travellers erected their rigs and partied all night - unlike the main area which shut down in the wee hours)

Sigh ... those were the days ... acid smiley, just because ;)

UK.gov plans central database for all your communications

Alain Moran

easy peasy

If Mr A visits his email while visiting site a.com, and Mr B also visits his email while visiting b.com then any data collation routine worth it's salt would tie them together pretty easily.

And it doesnt need to be email either ... anything that has you log in would give you away.

Boeing raygunship fires first blasts in ground testing

Alain Moran

lazer/laser

I wont bother explaining the laser acronym since several other people have posted it correctly, however I think that the term 'lazer' refers to a collimated beam of light produced from a lamp of some kind.

'lazer' light is not usually polarised in any way, nor is it made up of bands of frequencies ... it is simple white light that has been filtered and then passed through a system of mirrors/lenses to create a cheaper simulation of laser light for use in disco lights.

X-48B mini flying-wing drone prototype resumes testing

Alain Moran

@ graeme

I think the point is that the difference between slats out and in is only 15 knots, making it possible? to land without extending the slats ... resulting in a considerable reduction in landing noise ;)

Apple sued over iPhone caller ID

Alain Moran

@herbys

Umm, I think you are getting confused between UK patent law and US law ... the US takes the stance that you can patent anything you like and it is upto the courts to decide whether the patent is valid in that particular case ... those damned yankees they do love their lawyers.

Facebook loses a few bitches

Alain Moran

death by notifications

the thing that prevents me from wanting to use facebook is all the blinking notfifications ... in fact, it's not even that .. its the fact that the page refreshes each time you click ignore, and that accept doesn't open in a new tab .. if it werent for these relatively minor usability fixes then the site might actually be useful.

How I wrote an iPhone application

Alain Moran

Back button

IIRC, you should be able to address the back button issue by altering the window.history Array, as for the onLoad issue, search for the </body> and inject a <script>parentFrame.doOnLoad()</script>.