* Posts by TeeCee

9432 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007

Ikea to integrate TV, Blu-ray, sound system into sideboard

TeeCee Gold badge

"...but at least B&O's panels are made by Phillips."

I reckon Ikea's stuff is also made by Philips. They always used to have Philips' kit dotted around their showrooms. These days it looks like the same stuff with Ikea badging stuck on it.

TeeCee Gold badge
WTF?

Re: It's called a Radiogram

Damn. You beat me to it.

There's a telly in the mix...........a Televisiogram? Tell you what, let's just add a webcam and a Skype connection and call it an Interrossiter......

Minister blows away plans for more turbines

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Re: 230 million cups of tea per year!

That is purely an economic decision though and nothing to do with tree-hugging.

Otherwise explain the "greenness" in shipping megatonnages of Bauxite around the world in Diesel-fuelled ships to Iceland for refining using geothermal power, as opposed to providing renewable power sources and refineries locally to the sources and merely shipping the vastly smaller tonnages of aluminium resulting directly to where they're required.

SpaceX Dragon gets green-light for launch to Space Station

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"....the cargo isn't critical stuff for the astronauts...."

They've put the cheese on another spacecraft this time then?

Microsoft to bake Windows 8 in three flavours

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Happy

Re: Hmm...

Ah yes, but you're considering 98SE as a seperate release rather than the 98 SP1 it actually was. Worth having, but not worth spending release money on to move to it from 98.

2k was on the NT track, not the consumer desktop track which limped off into ME land. While it made a great office desktop, it wasn't for general use as it lacked the back-compatibility with the consumer stream which materialised in XP.

So that's 3.11 --> 98 and/or SE --> XP --> 7. In meerkat terms, simples and the future is thus 9-shaped.

As for starting from 95, well that puts you firmly at the start of the "dog" track, giving you ME and Vista to look forward to and quite rightly so IMHO.

Himalayan glaciers actually gaining ice, space scans show

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Facepalm

Exploding icebergs?

They missed that one in the current incessant deluge of "This is the real reason the Titanic sank" documentaries.

'Woz' wants $100,000 for Mac 128K prototype

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WTF?

Re: 'Wrong way round'

You mean Apple made something prone to "holding it wrong" errors back then too?

Matt Groening reveals location of Simpsons' Springfield

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Re: <title of hated>

Yup, definately another one straight out of the Seinfeld "Emperor's new suit" school of comedy.

That's where they manage to become so incredibly famous for being funny that nobody's got the balls to stand up and point out that they're, er, not.

550,000-strong army of Mac zombies spreads across world

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Mustn't........laugh........

"......capable of installing itself on unprotected Mac machines without user interaction...."

Well at least there's no danger of Apple being sued over that one. MS have let the patents lapse through disuse.....

Aliens Blu-ray disc set

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Thumb Down

Re: Close ...

Except that neither of them were SF films.

Close Encounters was a meandering, turgid pile of poo with added flashing lights and ET was a Lassie film with a cuddly alien replacing the cuddly dog.

I have never understood the "commercial and critical success" of CE. Best I've ever been able to get out of it is the feeling of Herculean triumph generated by managing to stay awake 'til the end.

Apple plugs Java hole after Flashback Trojan intrusion

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Coat

Re: Mac botnet

Hmm, maybe the fanbois are going to have to eat crow over their pooh-poohing of the old "security through obscurity" tag....

Feathered Tyrannosaurus uncovered in China

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Alert

Re: OK

Thank for that. I just had a nasty vision of one hanging off the tin bird feeder thing full of peanuts that dangles from my verandah roof.

Probably wouldn't need the binoculars to identify it from the sofa though......

Arizona bill makes it illegal to 'annoy or offend' online

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Headmaster

Oops. You have a spurious "m" in there.

Samsung slips on Ice Cream Sandwich

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FAIL

Re: ICS ON T989 FIRST!

You'd have a point if:

1) All mobile users were in the US.

2) All of them were on T-mobile.

3) All of them were using a T989.

Unfortunately you've managed to fail epically on all three.

Google plonks reCAPTCHA on Street View, makes users ID your house

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Mushroom

"..reCAPTCHA users don’t know which word is which."

Hint: The "unknown word" is the one spelled "rscintunf" or similar.

I had sort of wondered why these things popped up with a word and a rejected new car name from the nearest Strategy Boutique. I'll save myself the typing and just enter the obvious control word from now on.

I do find that ReCaptcha does seem to generate the most unreadable ones of all the types out there. Certainly the only ones that give me a consistant "miss" rate. I can see why Google wanted 'em, a fiendishly clever algorithm that produces useless shit is right up their street (Living at number 43a actually).

Ten... ADF-based inkjet all-in-one printers

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Re: Does Such a Printer Exist

The home Epson ones do the first. They only have one tray, but it has two sections, one for regular paper and one for photo.

The second I have only ever seen on high end office printstations. They don't really do this "without a computer being involved at all" as they cheat by, er, having a computer inside them.......

3D is the future of cinema?

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Thumb Up

Seconded, thirded, whatever on the FOV problem. Headache guaranteed there.

The problem is that dropping the use of depth-of-field removes the most powerful tool in a film director's arsenal for getting the audience to concentrate on the bit he's trying to emphasise. It's also nigh-on impossible for live action to film with a depth of field permitting everything between the camera and infinity to be in focus in all bar the strongest light levels.

The other snag is they'd have to either shoot the film twice or post-process the 2D version to add the depth-of-field effects. Presumably post-production depth-of-field for 2D would look about as good as 3D conversions on 2D material do. I.e. Shit.

Works well for animated features though.

Forums front page flipped to http://forums.theregister.co.uk/

TeeCee Gold badge
WTF?

Dunno what you're smoking. It took me all of about 30 seconds to find my way around on The Day Everything Changed!!111!!!!!

I strongly suggest that you avoid evaluating Windows 8, as it could well cause your head to explode.

TV?

TeeCee Gold badge
Happy

Re: Game of Thrones

Yup, ruddy marvellous.

My only gripe with the new series is that they just had to fuck around and re-orchestrate the theme music. The original had the most fantastic impact to it and was one of the best opening themes of all time IMHO. The new version's just sort of, er, "limp" (for want of a better term) by comparison.

The original was one of the very few things that had me making a point of sitting through the opening credits, even when watching on PVR and having the option of skipping 'em.

Someone at HBO needs to be sent a plaque with; "If it ain't broke, don't bloody fix it!" on it to hang on their wall.

Prehistoric monster snake crushed prey under 1.5 Brooklyn Bridges

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Coat

<Whale>

GROAN, BOOM, WHINE, DRONE, SQUEAK.

</Whale>

There, does that make sense now?

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Coat

Re: Now they've done it

Eight out of ten monsters (that expressed a preference) said that they'd far rather attack Tokyo.

Dutch firm slams limping RIM with patent lawsuit

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Well, yes. Or....

"...now is a good time to launch an attack on the smartphone firm as its dwindling popularity weakens its position."

Well, either that or they were hanging on in the hope of getting a multi-gazillion dollar payout from a huge, cash-rich company, but have decided to cut their losses and grab what they can before the whole thing goes titsup.com.

Facebook accused of 'wanton' use of Canadian woman's pics

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Re: Depends on Canadian law ...

Yup, always amusing to see the words "statutory rights unaffected" on guarantees, contracts, etc.

Makes no odds, nothing that they write can affect any rights you have that are enshrined in statute (i.e. law), as they override any contractual weasel words. It's there to protect them ("we never intended our contract to ride roughshod over our customers' rights, look it even says so!"), not you.

It's like putting "Warning: contains nuts" on packets of peanuts.

Sky joins BBC for Olympics coverage

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Meh

What's the betting?

That even with 24 channels continuously pushing this tripe they'll still cancel something decent on BBC1 or BBC2, just 'cos some British bloke has an outside chance of coming better-than-last in the second qualifying heat of the 400m synchronised egg-and-spoon race.....

Thumbs down and Comments

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Facepalm

Re: Thumbs down and Comments

Thumbs Down Missions.

I've noticed that. It invariably occurs when I've wound up the raving freetards[1] by pointing out something that pisses on their picnic.

Try having a look back through your comments and see if you can spot a similar pattern. Look for a rash of one or two downvotes on trivia and then look for the controversial post that sent the wingnuts off into a frenzy around the same time.

[1] I.e. the ones whose argument is basically; "I can get this for free, therefore any rules saying it shouldn't be free are wrong."

Sugar content now to be measured in Cadbury Creme Eggs

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Re: Let's not forget the Mars Bar index

I hung around for a while with a bloke on the expat circuit who worked for Mars and I can spill the beans here.

I asked about the "New Bigger Bar" that turns up occasionally. The way this works is that they gradually reduce the size of the Mars Bar over time and preserve the price. Then, when the thing gets too small, you get the "New Bigger Bar" and a stonking price hike.

Clever, huh?

Incidently, he confirmed something else. Back in the day, Mars Bars really were harder and more chewy than they are now. The old paper wrapping didn't preserve them as well as the modern plastic/foil one, so they had to be a harder mix of ingredients to provide decent shelf life without forming that white surface of sugar that you used to find on them if they'd been sitting around too long.

I pointed out that I rather preferred the old, chewy bar to the modern soft thing. That piqued his interest and he went back to raise a "Mars Bar Classic" suggestion with his peers.......I live in hope.

What does the Titanic's sinking tell us about modern science?

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WTF?

"...which has trawled through some old shipyard records..."

Hmm, IIRC that was the technique used to "prove" that the iron plating used was substandard. Unfortunately, inspection of the wreck itself and the section of hull retrieved proved it wasn't.

That hull section has rivets in it too. I wonder why going and looking at the physical evidence was eschewed in favour of reading between the lines of old documents? Probably something to do with likely being unable to get the film-release-bandwagon-friendly results required from the facts.

Coders' 'lives sucked out' by black-and-white Visual Studio 11

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Facepalm

WYSIWYG?

"On screen it looked like a definite red/orange colour, but when printed it as a washed out puke shade of terracotta"

Hmm, sounds like someone's screen and printer colour settings are not in agreement. That's hardly M$s fault.

Angry Birds want to be Donald Duck

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With that much more than they can chew bitten off.......

.....they'll be Donald Ducked soon enough all right.

Adam Sandler's cross-dresser shocker is Razzies stonker

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Nah, conflict of interest........

Are you an ECO POET? Climate science needs YOU

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Coat

McDoggerel.

A degree in eco-poetry?

You'll feel like such a prat.

All that time spent studying for;

"Do you want fries with that?".

Tibetan activists' Macs targeted using trojan-laden MS Office files

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FAIL

Re: Nice of Microsoft...

Nice of Apple's O/S to allow malware to be installed to the system by an application. Of course, we may not have the full story.

Usual stuff. If the users are being prompted for admin rights for the malware installation and letting it happen, then there's no story as no O/S is proof against stupidity. If, on the other hand, the O/S is allowing this to happen without complaint, then Apple would appear to have implemented some of M$s legendary failings themselves.

No O/S should rely on applications being bug-free and well behaved for security, there'd be some top-quality FAIL there, if it were the case.

Vote now for the WORST movie EVER

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Thumb Up

Re: Highlander 2

I saw it at the cinema when it came out. A terrible mistake, which I have regretted ever since.

It was utter shit then and it hasn't got any better over time.

Still gets my vote as the greatest stinker I have ever seen and yes, I did see "Phantom Menace" when that came out too. Not a good film, but nowhere near as godawfully shite as Highlander II. Comparing the two is a bit like comparing rotten apples with putrifying pears in a barrel of shit.

Microsoft: Keep Moto vid codec patent fight in US, not Germany

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WTF?

"filed by a Motorola subsidiary over patents for the H.264 video codec standard"

That'll be the same H.264 looked after by MPEG-LA, a group that includes, er, Microsoft......right?

Since when did "patent pool" and "shark pool" become synonymous?

'People expect privacy on Facebook and Twitter'

TeeCee Gold badge
WTF?

So which is it?

"People have an expectation of privacy when using social media like Facebook and Twitter."

Does this mean that:

a) "People" are, in general, as thick as pigshit.

b) "People" are not actually that dumb, but he's a gibbering idiot.

Discuss.

UK government says no to turbo e-bike

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Re: Not entirely stupid

That'll be why it's mentioned in the article that some countries which have permitted them have made them "road only".

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Happy

"Green credentials?"

Well, preventing a load of energy and raw materials being used to build a new one by getting the most out of an existing one beats out the veg oil use by several orders of magnitude eco-wise.

It's just like recycling, only without the effort.

TeeCee Gold badge
Pint

"Pedalling furiously" is the actual offence and was probably signed into law by Noah.

When I was at Poly, a mate got done. He might have got away with a ticking off, but for two important things:

1) He was shitfaced.

2) On being told what his offence was, he countered with the fact that he wasn't pedalling at all, merely freewheeling.

There's only one thing the plod hate more than a smartarse and that's a pissed smartarse.

Brush up your Microsoft skills, win date with Ferrari

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Unhappy

UK residents only.

Bummer. The autobahn system starts just up the road.

Bit pointless getting one of those for a weekend anywhere else......

What would happen if Rupert Murdoch BOUGHT Twitter?

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Re: What would happen if Rupert Murdoch BOUGHT Twitter?

Well, it'd probably be the first News Corp aquisition where they wouldn't have to dumb it down to fit their empire.

Lucy in 3.4 million-year-old cross-species cave tryst

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Coat

Re: A foot skeleton?

You think they're jumping the gun, declaring this evolutionary step from a sole example?

Well if they're wrong, they'll get a shoeing from their peers.

With this ring, I thee frag

TeeCee Gold badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Ahhhhh!

Damn, you beat me to it.

“Accept my trade, b#*!h!”: I'm betting that one's not been used as a proposal line before.

Cameron's attempt to cram a robot arm wearing a Rolex into his pristine bottom

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Coat

Re: Non-Warring, Friendly, Kind, Caring, Loving, Insightful Entities = 'Hippies'

Ohshit, now you've gone and done it!

Aliens vs. Abyss dwellers. Coming soon to a cinema near you.....

Currently re-reading:

TeeCee Gold badge

Hmm, I quite agree about Dan Brown.

I remember that when the hype was getting really breathless over "The Da Vinci Code" I went out and bought a copy to see what everyone was on about.

The fact that my previous read had been Iain M. Banks' lastest oeuvre only served to enhance the feeling that I was reading a "Janet and John" book. The only thing missing was the "New word" footnote on each page.

When the court case over blatant plagiarism of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" came up, my only reaction was "Funny, that's exactly what I was thinking after the first couple of chapters.".

So it's someone else's plot with a hero, villain and dolly bird dropped in, rewritten to appeal to the terminally thick.

Weird interview questions

TeeCee Gold badge

Anecdote.

A mate told me this one. He found an HR droid giggling to himself in the pub and bought him a beer to get the story.

They'd been interviewing a candidate who had an impressive CV and who countered every question with a referral back to it. E.g:

"We frequently encounter time pressure due to legislative changes. How would you deal with this?"

"Well, if you look at my CV, you will find that while I was working for XYZ, I ran a project where the scope repeatedly changed. Through keeping tight control of planning.........etc, etc, etc."

"Well, we also find that we sometimes have to respond rapidly. How do you ensure that resource availability is managed?"

"If you look at my CV, you'll see that while I was working for ABC we had a project where the deadline moved forward. I was forced to work with my staff to reschedule holidays.......etc, etc, etc."

Then the punchline:

"As a follow up to that last, we often see changes that render existing projects moot. Say you had moved heaven and earth to acheive a date, including cancelling holidays and such, only to find that on that date it was not going ahead. How would you feel about that?"

"Well if you look at my CV in the 'Hobbies and interests' section, you'll see that I am a season ticket holder at Tottenham Hotspur. I'm used to handling disappointment....."

Apple IP details tech for 'iTV' innards

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Facepalm

Re: Never mind the corners...

So you prefer your black bars down the sides?

Think about it..........

Incidently, most of the widest film formats date from way before there were any widescreen televisions, so it's utterly incorrect to talk about TVs "catching up" and film changing formats since. If fact, these days the majority of films are shot in 16:9 format........

Arista juices switch with x86 server, FPGA, atomic clock

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Coffee/keyboard

"...like a photon turd moving through a glass goose."

Magic, sheer magic.

Shakespeare would be pleased with that.

BMW recalls 1.3m motors over fire risk

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Re: Could someone explain to me...

Obvious example is the original Mini (1959). No space under the bonnet for it.

The MGB (1962) has the battery behind the seats, forward of the boot. Originally two six volt ones, then a single twelve volt. The reason here is that when it came out, they couldn't get a single 12v unit that provided sufficient cranking amps to turn over the engine reliably and two 6v units wouldn't fit in the front. The fact that the "B" series V8 engine that required that cranking power never got made is beside the point. The resulting unnecessary pig's ear, of a car having a bonnet mostly full of fresh air and a battery in the back, is just typical of the british car industry....

CD: The indestructible music format that REFUSES TO DIE

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Unhappy

Re: Fidelity issues?

Yeah, right.

Try playing that on your car stereo without fannying around with transcoding first. This made all the more interesting by the fact that all the transcoding utilities I've found that support FLAC have proced to be buggy as hell and come with offensively shite UI's.

I've moved to using WMA lossless, purely for practical reasons.

Web hosting

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Re: Web hosting

UK2? Support not only in English, but they fairly recently insourced their support to, er, England IIRC. They always seem to get a round of approving noises from the commentarderie whenever they get a mention here too.

"Support in English" can easily mean "supported by muppets who speak something resembling English from a call-centre in India".