Posts by Mark Rosher

Google OUTBID on g.co.uk at auction

too many letters

I must be old as old, but didn't I recall once that all domains had to be mre than two letters, with a couple of anarchic anomalies like BT that got away with it?

Where's the icon for old fart who hasn't kept up?

Bloke ordered to remove offensive numberplate

sex pistols

Didn't the sex pistols case prove bollocks was plural for old word priests? Perhaps th plate is reserved for the new plopemobile...

Acer Android 3.1 update leaks out early

so what's new

I can't see much difference in the images to what I've got here (although of course my desktop is much tidier...). If they've fixed the occasional power off on to wake up issue I'll be very happy.

Acer Iconia Tab A500 10in Android tablet

Absolutely wonderful, but...

I've had one of these for a few weeks now, and to be honest I'm finding I don't boot the desktop PC for days at a time - apart from hey photo work and a couple of specific apps I don't need to. I'm typing this on the tablet now, as fast as I ever type on the PC, and with similar accuracy. :-)

However, things aren't perfect. You talk about Skype but fail totally to note that the app can't use the cameras, so no videoconferencing. Total fail by Skype, shirley. Also, the tablet goes to sleep and fails to wake up, requiring a power off and restart from time to time.

The graphics are Fab, and if I have only one game apart from the obligatory Angry BoFH then let me applaud GameProm for the Pinball HD port. Makes full use of the graphics and processor power with nary a flicker.

I'm using it with a 3 mi-fi mobile broadband router on PAYG, and really can find little apart from the above niggles to rant at.

Virgin Media begins 100Mb upgrades

%Mb/s? 10Mb/s? 50... 100? Give me 2!

Nice though it will undoubtedly be for folk to get 100Mb/s broadband, I'd be rather pleased if we could get 2Mb/s... Congratulations on the technology rollout in the urban environment, but it feels slightly naff when I allegedly have the highest download speed in my village at a miserable if reliable 1.7Mb/s. 'course, it's lovely out here... swings and roundathings, I guess.

Mines the one with the 1's and 0's falling out of the pocket as fast as I can throw them.

Google: Street View cars grabbed emails, urls, passwords

Missing the learning opportunity...

To be honest, Google clearly did some evil; intentional or not remains a moot discussion. What should happen now seems not to be happening. Everyone who understands encryption and encryption techniques is shouting from the treetops how daft it is for anyone to not encrypt their wireless networks, but the folk who don't understand the technology - who just use it semi-blindly - aren't getting the message.

Google could only gain kudos from this if they went out, as perhaps the major search engine on the planet, and headed their every page with 'is your wireless network secure... do you want to know more?'. After a year, the majority of user base would have thought, 'hmm, need to read that / act on that'. The rest will just fail.

(Whether or not wireless encryption is truly effective, it would be the envelope on the letter - in terms what we've had here is everyone yelling their lives out of an open window, while Google has wandered past with a tape recorder switched on. You might think it naive, but that's what folk are doing on their home networks. And even then that's perhaps a secondary concern to the fact that their otherwise squeaky clean neighbour is downloading gigabytes of pr0n using their access details, probably (IANAL) making them the downloader in law.)

Robot goes berserk in Balkan lab: 6 boffins given dead arms

Checking the BoFH files

Is this an errant episode?

BT blasts hundreds of would-be customers' data into Infinity

Why was everyone replying to all tho?

I was on the list. I was very unimpressed. But I just emailed the sender and asked for my address to be deleted (in fairly sarcastic terms, it has to be said). I didn't feel the need to copy in the other 965 addresses (965 in my copy anyhow, I presume there were several versions if yours only had 500 addresses in it). Later that evening, I got a human authored email of apology from Jess, but nice though that was it doesn't remove the feeling of utter fail I gained from the experience...

BOFH: Lock shock

Film...?

Belly laugh out loud!

Shirley there's the plot of a decent comedy film in that somewhere...

US forces drop dead drug-poison killer mice from helicopters

And if the Chamorros folk get a headache...

You really couldn't make it up!

Badgers coz, well, they might too... I just don't know.

Herd of sheep, off tits on drugs, savagely Tased

highly unlikely to win

The study seems highly unlikely to win over the weapons' critics.... no error there. Anyone with any ounce of ethical probity would not treat another creature with such callous disregard. So they're sheep... that makes it ok to pump them full of drugs and then fry their brains? oh, hang on, reality check. That's what we do every day, isn't it... Ho hum.

Johnson reveals ID register linked to NI numbers

Hey! I was enjoying that sandwich!

Anyone got a tissue?

ID card minister forgets ID card

It's been done before...

I think this is in preparation for phase two. Insertion at birth of RFID tags. Come on people, it'll help prevent absent mindedness and keep us all safe from the nasty terrorists.

Don't tell 'em your name, Pike.

Religious discrimination law may open door for decent deviants

Who is in and who is out? It's as bad as OS's...

@ Michael 36. Yes, I would suggest you have some confusions regarding religion and what it is if you based it's definition only upon a few book based Abrahamic faiths.

@ Michael Proffitt. You may not be aware that there is now a "Pagan Oath" which is an agreed honourable statement that could be utilised by folk even if they are not Pagans. http://www.pebble.uk.net/justice.html

As a professional engineer, a parish councillor and a trustee of a pagan organisation I feel able to be open in all my dealings. All religions or none, I don't mind, but let's not pick and choose.

BOFH: Slab happy

AND THE GAME OF OFFICE CHESS BEGINS!

Spat my sandwich over the screen!

Facebook 'fesses to bad hair day

you get what you pay for

Facebook has proved really useful, hence its current problems are more noticable. But it's free at the point of use, and generally whatever is free is worth what you pay for it. How many of the 300 million profiled users would pay a sub? Not many. Not me.

BOFH: Stick this

A User Grins

But over here, if your mailbox is full the system sends you an email to tell you, and another, and another until you can't actually access the mailbox to delete your mail. Funnily enough this happens every time I take a couple of days off...

But there's no target icon for admitting to being a user...

E-cars are a dangerous myth, says top boffin

He's right

The main thing about most electric cars is that the pollution is not emitted at the point of use, making cities relatively cleaner but is still emitted at the power station (fuel cell technology is an exception).

Power gadget set to cut electricity bills

Not exactly new...

I've had a similar unit in my home for some time now. While the best way to economise is clearly to use the flippin' power switch (duh!) it does come in handy for holiday absences; I can turn off the entire network, monitors, storage units, printers, ADSL router and all the wall wort chargers that are normally needful - all at the push of a button rather than crawling in the dust. Yeah, I know, but it is easier....