* Posts by Gary F

394 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Mar 2008

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Behold… a WinRAR security bug that's older than your child's favorite YouTuber. And yes, you should patch this hole

Gary F
Thumb Up

Re: 2 people who paid?

#MeToo! I happily paid for a licence about 10 years ago because I use WinRAR frequently and it was fairly priced. I think the Register underestimate the honesty of their readers.

Technical foul: Amazon suffers data snafu days before Black Friday, emails world+dog

Gary F
Flame

I received this scam-like email - thanks for verifying El Reg

This is a terrible email because it looks like a phishing scam. Because it didn't mention an action it wanted me to take such as clicking on a link, it wasn't obvious how this email would benefit a scammer. I studied the email header but it looked pretty genuine. Then I took to Google and it pointed me to this El Reg article.

I've spent £1,000's with Amazon over the last 13 years and I would expect a decent email from them including an APOLOGY for disclosing my personal details. It doesn't even greet me by name or link to further information to explain in what way my details were disclosed, when the breach happened and how long it exposed my details for.

I feel really let down and would prefer never to use them again to teach them a lesson, but they obviously wouldn't even notice my missing custom and they know I'd lose out more than they would. I only hope the ICO have put their teeth in today.

Oh, Amazon, please stop recommending cat food to me by email and push notifications. I don't have a bloody cat, never had and never clicked on anything cat-like. How can I remove this from your dumb AI's brain? :-(

Samsung stalls Bixby launch because it am English not so good

Gary F
FAIL

Lucky US. Bixby is bilge.

I would have paid a premium to REMOVE Bixby from my S8. It's awful, useless and annoying. How do I disable that hardware Bixby button or reassign it to something useful? Samsung's instructions point to a setting that doesn't exist. Bixby vision is equally useless.

The US are lucky to have escaped Bixby for now. How do you say "take this Bixby bilge off my phone" in Korean?

Doctor Who: Even the TARDIS key can't unpick the chronolock in Face the Raven

Gary F

Bring back Clara!

I'm so tired of the windy speeches that the characters, especially the Dr, enter into each episode. But Clara is so pretty, smart and knowing that it won't be the same without her. I hope it wasn't her last episode.

My 9 year old spotted a continuity error tonight. The tattoo on the back of the man's neck disappeared in one shot while he was talking to Clara BEFORE she took the tattoo off of him.

Pause Patch Tuesday downloads, buggy code can kill Outlook

Gary F
Terminator

Update stops users from logging in to Windows 7

I updated a laptop yesterday and it failed to present a password prompt to log in. I ended up having to re-install Windows. Others have reported the same issue with update KB3097877. It's a nightmare. I've had to remove this update from all other machines.

On one machine I deselected all updates and went to shutdown. It then said "Installing update 1 of 15". WTF?

Microsoft should have put out an emergency recall of KB3097877 but they haven't. It's effectively stopping the most unlucky people from using their computers.

TalkTalk attack: UK digi minister recommends security badges for websites

Gary F

Cattle dung! Kite marks mean nothing.

A kite mark like the Government's Cyber Essentials initiative? Where anyone can tick "yes" to a load of yes/no questions, hand over £300 and be given a badge to put on their website to show everyone how secure the site is?

That hasn't solved any problems and in fact made things a lot worse because the public are lured into trusting a badge that in reality means bugger all.

Even if a site is genuinely very secure it doesn't make it hack proof. It's more of an enjoyable challenge to hackers. Bigger kudos for getting in. Advertising the level of a site's security, even if accurate, doesn't help as it can attract more hackers wanting a challenge.

Still using ColdFusion? Really? Well, you'll want to install this patch

Gary F

Re: SDSS

Why is it a fail if they've just released a patch for it? That's a good thing. It's a fail if they didn't get round to it.

Adobe: I would like a complimentary subscription to Creative Cloud please. Thank you. ;-)

Gary F

Re: Still using ColdFusion?

Why not? It's still current and Adobe are developing version 12 which is in beta right now. There are also open source versions such as Lucee which was launched earlier this year.

Sydney adopts 'world's first' e-ink parking signs

Gary F

In bright Australian sunshine?

I wonder how easy the signs are to read in bright Australian sunshine? Glare, reflection and poor contrast may cause problems when compared to conventional electronic or printed road signs.

Apple workforce touch up iPhones with Force Touch tech – report

Gary F

Air touch is cooler

Samsung introduced Air Touch in the S4 which meant you can get extra functionality out of the device without even having to touch the screen. This was impressive and useful but the fools removed it from the S6.

I don't want to have to touch a screen any harder than I do (Apple), it's nice just to wave your finger around a few cm above the screen to reveal tooltips and longer email and calendar previews. Will Samsung revive Air Touch in response to Apple's "touch me harder" feature? Does anyone else get finger fatigue from using touch devices for a few hours every day for the last several years?

UK flights CRIPPLED by system outage that shut ALL London airspace

Gary F

Any critical piece of infrastructure needs to have a site B, so even if other measures fail such as independent feeds from separate substations, UPS, and diesel generators, you should be able to fall back to site B. Obviously some people don't think the control room in question was a critical enough asset to have a site B.

Luckily these days as far as severs go it's easy to move virtual servers from site A to site B within seconds, sometimes without any noticeable downtime. But relating to this article I have no idea if the radar and communications systems can be used from locations further afield. Hopefully lessons have been learnt and more resilience will be added. I'm just concerned if any flights in the air could be at risk if this happened again.

Yes, Samaritans, the law does apply to you. Even if you mean well

Gary F

I wouldn't call the author's test tweet a "false positive". If I saw someone tweet that I'd be concerned. Most people wouldn't know that was a quote from some song lyrics. The app was correct in identifying that tweet. A false positive would be if some words were taken out of context and incorrectly caused the app to react.

UK.gov pushes for SWIFT ACTION against nuisance calls, threatens £500k fines

Gary F

More than half of nuisance calls originate from abroad so any change in the law will have no effect whatsoever on the majority of calls which will continue. Most UK originated calls hide their number or give you a false or unregistered company name in case you do complain about them.

Galileo can't do the fandango: Two Euro GPS nav sats sent into WRONG ORBIT

Gary F
Facepalm

The wrong orbit location was due to a GPS error. You can never completely trust those things for getting you to where you want to be.

Revealed ... GCHQ's incredible hacking tool to sweep net for vulnerabilities: Nmap

Gary F

Is this supposed to be news? Gosh, spying organisation does port scans!

Is the headline "GCHQ's incredible hacking tool" supposed to be sarcasm? If it wasn't meant to be then it should. Port scanning and taking note of returned headers. Yes, that's outrageous. I'm sure GCHQ are employing people who bring better tools to the table than that if they're responsible in some way for protecting British interests.

Boffins run iOS apps on Android hardware

Gary F

Very clever boffins. I can't think of any iOS apps I'd want to run on my Android devices, except the Disney games which are exclusive for iOS for some reason. (My kids are into Disney, not me.)

AMD's 'Revolution' will be televised ... if its CPU-GPU frankenchip Kaveri is a hit

Gary F

A load of marketing hot air

What if I order some new servers for our data centre with AMD "compute cores" and post installation discover they only have 4 cores and not 8 that can be used productively by our web and SQL software? I'll have 4 "compute cores" per socket doing absolutely nothing. I would feel very short changed and annoyed with this silly notion of no longer discriminating between CPU and GPU.

Sinclair’s 1984 big shot at business: The QL is 30 years old

Gary F

Nice article, thanks Reg

I enjoyed reading this because I remember all the fuss in the press in the early 80's. I was very happy to stick to my Spectrum although the microdrives sounded very impressive, mostly down to the marketing hype I guess.

This story is one of the many examples of amazing British ingenuity of the time. We seem to have had the imagination and geniuses to do the work but are let down by the business end of it - finances, cutting corners and unrealistic deadlines.

EU move to standardise phone chargers is bad news for Apple

Gary F

Another benefit of standardisation

100 miles from home with a colleague:

Colleague: "Can I borrow your phone charger cable and laptop as my iphone is nearly dead?"

Me: "Sure, help yourself."

Colleague: "Erm, your cable doesn't fit my phone"

Me: "Sure it does, it's a standard cable"

Colleague: "Oh, well not for the iphone it isn't"

Me: "Ha-ha!"

Ten top new games for phones ’n’ slabs

Gary F

Re: Real racing 3

Not a problem over wifi. But that's almost 10% of your storage space on a new Galaxy S4! It's okay to indulge yourself in just one big game on your phone. Then when you get bored of it just uninstall. Trouble is, the graphics are so good that I like to keep it installed to show people!

This is something you can output in HD to a 42" TV and it still look brilliant.

Firefox takes top marks in browser stability tests

Gary F

I use all 4 major browsers on my computer because I'm fed up with them crashing when I have too many tabs open in any one of them. IE9/10 is the worse. I'm guaranteed it will hang at least once every 2 days, sometimes twice in a day. Grrrr.

Despite Microsoft Surface RT debacle, second-gen model in the works

Gary F

Microsoft do stupid things

What's one of the best features about Windows? There's a shed load of software for it and your favourite programs are likely to run on it. What what nincompoop thought it would be a good idea to create a new OS that looks like Windows except it doesn't run Windows software? That's pretty much what happened.

If you want a cheap, portable device that runs lots of software and has a good battery life you'd do well to buy one of the many different types of Android tablet. It has 100's X more software available for it than Windows RT and is much cheaper too.

There are some good Windows compatible tablets out there but are expensive and could do with shedding a few pounds in weight. Windows RT will continue to fail, the concept is all wrong. Windows 8.1 for Intel/AMD CPUs makes a very good tablet and laptop but it's the hardware that still needs development, not necessarily the OS. When I need Windows on the move I'll carry my 11.6" laptop, when I need nothing more than web, email and office I'll take a lightweight Android device. (Office is covered by a cloud app or even Polaris.)

KingSpec's 2TB Multicore PCI-E SSD whopper vs the rest

Gary F

What about databases?

It would have been good to see a database IOPS test. Database reads/writes are like moving small files but databases can be massive in size. So would the KingSpec SSD bomb or win in this scenario? We're always looking for ways to speed up databases from a hardware aspect.

Surface RT: A plan worthy of the South Park Underpants Gnomes

Gary F
Headmaster

Spell check please!

"Business strategy at Sun Microsysetms became a joke..."

And spelling at Vulture Towers also become a joke... Sorry, that's bit of a mean comment. Maybe we should blame the proof reader for missing a typo 5 words into the article? You do still have proof readers these days? Or someone who can click on the spell check button? ;-)

Government dials 999. What service do you require? DIGITAL

Gary F

£1000/year just to access Govt tenders?

Why do we have to pay over £1000 per year to subscribe to access Govt tenders? Surely the Govt should publish opportunities out in the open, free of charge on a public website? It's almost like having to pay to walk into a Job Centre.

Maybe I'm doing this wrong? I went to www.ojeu.eu and clicked on Access The Tenders which took me to www.tendersdirect.co.uk/Search/TenderSearch.aspx

When I find a tender and want to know more there's a fat Subscribe button leading to a form and payment requirement. If 999 SMEs want to pitch for this tender the commercial company providing the website will earn £100K. Wow, a nice earner for doing very little.

Is there an open source version of this new tender from the Govt I could access please?

BBC abandons 3D TV, cites 'disappointing' results

Gary F

"I have never seen a very big appetite for 3D television in the UK," said Kim Shillinglaw, the BBC's head of 3D.

So what idiot gave you the job of head of 3D then?

And why did the BBC waste so much tax payers money on 3D?

3D is a sham, or maybe a scam. Can't wait for the whole 3D phase to finish. Terrible idea, terrible implementation. A gimmick to fleece the public of more money.

Bigger than Twitter: Opera releases rebuilt Chromium-based browser

Gary F

And the point of Opera v15 is...?

The first versions of Opera in the early days were great. A browser a fraction the size of the competition (1Mb I seem to recall) and some interesting features to set it apart. Compatibility was hit and miss until version 9 that seemed to play well with most sites (or most sites played well with Opera - I'm aware of the difference.)

I don't understand why someone would use v15 rather than Chrome? Choice is good but there's not much to set them apart in Opera's favour. Maybe Opera is thinking that by releasing itself from engineering its own rendering engine its developers can spend more time cooking up cool new ideas. If that's the plan then I wish them all the best. Opera are the underdogs and have held their own against the big players for over a decade and that's why people like them.

Judge nixes Microsoft SkyDrive name in BSkyB court ruling

Gary F
Unhappy

This time I feel sorry for Microsoft

SkyDrive and Sky TV are completely different products in a completely different market. The court's decision is unjust. I hope MS appeal.

The 2010 survey is poor evidence because it's 3 years old which is a very long time in technology and buzz words. Redo the survey now and the results will be different.

Possible new names:

SoftDrive (because it is)

NotDropBoxDrive (cos it ain't)

OneDrive (to bait Sky One and BBC One)

StratoDrive (sounds powerful)

365Drive (to tie in with their other cloud product)

DrinknDrive (accessible in your car through any mobile device)

Facebook's first data center DRENCHED by ACTUAL CLOUD

Gary F

No emergency aircon?

A well designed data centre should be able to cope with heat, fire, power outage and excessive humidity and moisture. Surely in the type of data centres that Facebook designs they'd have moisture / humidity detectors, alarms, and emergency aircon that kicks in when the ideal environment is no longer sustainable.

Clearly there is a risk of this problem occurring but there's no protection against it - apart from rainjackets! That doesn't protect everything or avoid the risk of people getting electrocuted. I'm sure they can afford whatever it costs to install emergency aircon and powerful fans to help avoid expensive and embarrassing future outburst of indoor rain.

Is the next-gen console war already One?

Gary F
Thumb Up

Kinect 1.0 is technically very impressive. Kinect 2.0 will be awesome. The new console's design is terrible, very boxy, but that's so surprise when it's name is xBOX. However, it does allow it to be stacked with other AV units you might have under your TV.

Stephen Hawking nixes Intel voice upgrade plan

Gary F
Happy

I know that voice!

It sounds like the speech synthesiser built-in to the Amiga! Or maybe all computer speech sounded identical in those days. Since no one else uses this old voice these days, it really is a unique identity for the Professor.

If he started using a modern voice then no one could tell if it's their smartphone, TV, car, or fridge talking! ;-)

Mobile tech destroys the case for the HS2 £multi-beellion train set

Gary F
Meh

Sensible hat on - a better use of £12bn

Our railway is an embarrassment if you compare it with faster and more efficiently run French and German trains. I'd love our own TVG or Bullet but we're too broke and too over populated to support it.

However, wouldn't the £12bn be better spent on improving existing lines, increasing capacity, enhancing 3G and 4G reception along on all routes, and the rest spent on smaller infrastructure projects. I would suggest improving Wi-Fi, but that those prices they can get stuffed. I'd rather struggle with 2G/3G on my own device.

jQuery 2.0 kicks old Internet Explorer versions to the curb

Gary F

I have corporate and government users still on IE6, but most have migrated to IE8. Remember a lot of corporate and Govt depts are still using Win XP. I don't think we can move to jQuery 2 for these customers for at least 2 or 3 years.

I'm annoyed that jQuery 2 support for IE8 is being dropped, that's too premature. jQuery's original appeal was being compatible with really old browsers. Originally with IE5 or 5.5 I recall. That was impressive.

How to save UK's open data: Meet the 'Fair Value Licence'

Gary F

So long as the licence cost doesn't increase

We pay £7K a year for PAF and Postzon. It was a massive cost at first for a small company but over the years we've adjusted and grown so the cost isn't an issue anymore. If the new private owners increase the cost to get their money back on their investment then it will become an issue for us and possibly devastating to other small companies who depend heavily on it.

As it stands it's impossible for a penniless creative thinker or programmer to use Royal Mail data to create something innovative or useful without securing funding just to pay the licence fee. This is what Tim is talking about. So should it be free? Not if it makes it difficult for the owners to finance the resources required to keep it up to date. This is no easy task and lots of people are employed to manage the data in terms of people calling/emailing requesting changes to data, adding new addresses, and more people to manage data quality and supply.

The current format of PAF is very 1970's and it's horrible to work with. The RM have had many opportunities to update it but fail every time to act. There isn't even a unique identifier for each record. This is supplied on request only as a separate file where you need to cross reference the two datasets in order to match up the correct unique identifier. So maybe a new private owner will choose to modernise the whole database and offer it in modern formats. There are other quirks in how the data works and can only be realised by reading the manual cover to cover.

Review: Intel Next Unit of Computing barebones desktop PC

Gary F

No USB3?

Without USB3 it should be called the "Previous Unit of Computing", not the Next! The form factor is its best feature but I'd prefer to buy an Acer Revo because it's better value, has USB3, more ports, and cheaper.

iPads in education: Not actually evil, but pretty close

Gary F

5 ipads or 10 Android tablets?

A teacher friend said her school bought 5 ipads to teach pupils. It's not a well funded school so that was a lot of money for them. I was really annoyed they thought they *had* to buy an Apple branded tablet rather than one of many cheaper brands of Android tablets. They could have bought 10 Android tablets for the same money - that's twice as many children using them at once. Double the value for money. It's inevitable that kids will break some of them so it's better to have a cheaper device broken - cheaper to replace.

There is no disadvantage in buying Android. It's unbalanced and uninformed coverage in the mass media that always refers to ipads when talking about tablets that causes this, plus a bit of Apple snobbery out there too.

It's like schools who spend £20K on Macs to teach design when they could have bought twice as many PCs for the same money or just saved half the money. You get the same leading software on both platforms so it makes no difference to teaching or the children.

What's worse is the kids mindset is forced to think they *have* to buy a Mac at home if they want to design at home or do it professionally. Finding the extra money for a Mac is unfair on some families who would have been so grateful to be told that buying a PC for half the price would have been just as good. Apple is a badge and that's what you pay for. They make good machine, I'm not knocking the quality or innovation, but when schools and families are struggling to keep afloat they shouldn't be made to think Apple is the only solution for tablets or computer design.

Drones with freakin' CLAWS grab objects like eagles

Gary F

Imagine what a full size drone could do

Abduct an evil dictator while he's still being driven in his armoured car and bring him in for "negotiations", or definately not torture.

Or grab a useless "celebrity" off the street and drop him/her by "accident".

If you've played the Android game Grabatron you'll know exactly what kind of fun you can have! :-)

Carrie Fisher dusts off THAT bikini for Star Wars VII

Gary F

Oh guys you make me ashamed to be a nerd. She is too old to "give one to" unless you're 50+.. Not all nerds are desperate males that will bang anything with a pulse. She's a mature actress, not a 20 year old princess. The line must be drawn! Put some dignity back in the nerdsphere! The next film might feature the princess's daughter who'd be fit and able to do action scenes. Save your juices and fantasies for her... assuming such character exists.

Microsoft teases possible Jan. 29 launch for Office 2013

Gary F
Unhappy

What? It hasn't launched yet?

As a MS partner I downloaded the final release of 2013 at the end of October. Why would MS chose to sit on the final release for 3 whole months? I doubt they were carefully considering my comments...

My advice to anyone who is happy with Office 2010 is NOT TO BOTHER upgrading to 2013 unless they like Windows 8. I'm bitterly disapointed as it's turned the Office GUI on my lovely Windows 7 desktop into Windows 8. I hate it. Talk about 50 shades of grey, this literally is just grey. When I have lots of windows open on my monitors the Office 2013 windows blend in to each other and are very hard to find when stacked because the Win8 look is so bland. The edges are bland. I hate bland, I hate Win8's blandness being forced upon me as a Win7 user who swore never to upgrade to Win8. The swines did it to me by stealth! Foul!

First rigid airship since the Hindenburg enters trials

Gary F

Re: How can this be viable@Mr Fuzzy

A payload of shrapnel detonated close to the airship will puncture enough cells to bring it down. I'm sure rockets or missiles can be modified to carry shrapnel. I don't see the point of this aircraft as it's too big, too slow, too vulnerable. Because of the load it can carry the loss of life and equipment if one was brought down would be huge.

Now you can control ANY Win 8 kit with your EYEBALLS

Gary F

Good news if you have aching wrists

I have RSI and possibly CTS too, so something like this is a positive step forwards as I've been wearing out my wrists for the last 25 years - by using a mouse, which is not a pet name for anything else. There are lots of people like me who are in constant pain when using a mouse.

Once I tried a head tracking device to control the mouse (works a bit like the PS3 Move except you just put a silver sticker on your forehead!) but I developed neck pain as a result from constant, tiny head movements!

Anti-virus products are rubbish, says Imperva

Gary F

Blame staff for infections more than poor value AV software

If you're going to get a virus infection then it's most likely to be one of the more common viruses. Therefore any anti-virus program is going to be reasonably effective on average in terms of protecting you. Any brand new virus can take time for AV software to receive an update to detect and resolve the infection; there will always be casualties to begin with, much like any human viral outbreak. Sad but true.

I have used AVG Free for well over a decade on many personal PCs and it's been fantastic, and certainly lets machines run smoother than the more bloaty and costly products. I pay for AVG for use on servers and it's very cheap so the value is excellent. (No infections in 6 years)

In my view enterprises should spend less on AV licences and more on implementing and policing better IT security policies for staff. Most infections are down to the ignorance or risk taking of staff - which can be avoided if staff were better trained on the subject and IT was better policed (physical and network). That sounds a bit draconian but what do you expect if staff bring in files on a USB stick to print off on the office printer, or download executable files at work, or open emails that most of us would find suspecious, or access Facebook (clicking on links), etc. This stuff should be done on computers at home or personal smartphones.

When I was younger I hated these sort of rules and I was a risk taker. But 15 years on I'm more experienced and have bigger responsibilities so this "draconian" approach helps safeguard the business, jobs and reputation. Damn, I sound l like my old boss. I'll be wearing the same sort of clothes as my dad soon too probably.

President Obama declares VICTORY over JUSTIN BIEBER

Gary F
Megaphone

Useless over-statement (not in reference to Obama)

"the most retweeted tweet in the history of the internet"

Because we had Twitter in 1969 and every decade through the history of the Internet, didn't we.

Since "tweets" can only be tweeted using Twitter then where is the relevency in comparing it to the "history of the Internet"? Twitter is only 6 years old.

Apple unveils iPad mini, upgrades its big brother

Gary F

Re: UK pricing

I paid £56 inc postage from ebay for a new 7" Android tablet. It does email, web, video Skype, Angry Birds, movies, Google Play, etc. What more is a 7" device supposed to do? I accept for 3x the money a £160 Nexus is faster and the top of the line 3D games run smoother on it, but what more would I get with an ipad mini for 5x the cost? 5x as much fun? 5x as much productivity? I doubt it. Not everyone has cash to splash so every £/$ counts.

A few years ago I thought only rich fanatics bought Apple products but I've seen friends who always say they're broke own the latest iphones and ipads. If they're hard up they should realise a designer label isn't important and the functionality they need can be found is products at a fraction of the cost. Moan over.

Google rolls out new, cheaper Chromebooks 'for everyone'

Gary F
FAIL

And the 2012 Pointless Award goes to...

I really don't get this. Why doesn't it have Android installed? Why are Google marketing 2 incompatible OSes? This is confusing, I'm sure the public would expect a Google branded laptop to run Android apps or something Windows compatible.

For £220 Joe Public will be better off buying a £160 Google Nexus running Android with access to 1000's of apps, or a netbook running Windows. Where on earth does a Chromebook sit in the market place exactly? Google should have spent their money on subsidising a 10" version of the Nexus for £199 with 3G to compete very favourably with the ipad market.

Microsoft plans big licencing price hikes, shifting to per-Device model

Gary F

Re: Think this will affect you?

Good open source advert! :-) However, most organisations have their own in-house IT people who specialise in Microsoft software. It's not economical or practical to retrain those IT people to use, say, Linux, to the same level of expertise they currently have for Windows, SQL Server, etc. It would take far too long, cost a fortune in training and they'd be without in-house support for a number of months.

If they dumped MS and went open source the only business option they'd have is to make their IT staff redundant and hire new people who already have years of experience with Linux or whatever the chosen platform is. :-(

I've been hit by the MS price rises and the thought of going Linux has been there for a while, but none of us have the time to learn the ins and outs of a different platform to the same level of expertise we already have with Microsoft technologies. It's not possible to swap a decade of Windows experience for a decade of Linux experience unless you're Joe 90. (If anyone remembers that TV show?)

One could argue that we're trapped and hostage to Microsoft's will and pricing policy. But given the retraining costs and the huge dip in skills we'd suffer for several months (or years?) it's still worth paying a bit extra to remain users and developers on the Microsoft platform. I believe that's exactly what Microsoft is depending on.

Successful launch readies Galileo satellites for test

Gary F

Sub-metre accuracy

By combining data from 2 or 3 different positioning systems it should be possible to compute a more accurate position. I'm trying to think of some useful civillian applications for this potential accuracy. But I can't help thinking there is a better use for 22 billion Euros to give us something new that we don't already have. It was a 5bn Euro project but current estimates put the cost at 22bn at the end of a 20 year project period. The number of satellites it would use has already been cut.

Japanese boffins unfurl banner above newly-discovered Element 113

Gary F

And the purpose of this element is...?

Why haven't they named it Japanite?

Techies cook up Minority Report-style video calling

Gary F
WTF?

Why we persist with voice?

Because I don't have to look at a camera and ACT INTERESTED for every second of the call! With voice-only I can multi-task! Maybe the term "multi-task" is new to BT?

e.g. eat my lunch, reply to an email, pick my nose, check my phone for messages, scratch a spot, talk to colleagues or wife (depending where I am), read a news article, etc.

How can I do any of these with a video caller watching me every second? NO THANK YOU, BT.

NYT fights back against links-in-texts patent

Gary F
Thumb Down

If someone owned a patent for the paper bag...

...could he sue cafes for putting sandwiches inside paper bags and grocers for putting shopping inside paper bags? There is absolutely no additional technology or thought involved with putting a URL in a SMS, so it's not something that should be patentable. Saying that, a US court says a rectangle with rounded corners is the upheld patented design of Apple. How can something without sharp corners be patented? Only in America. :-(

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