Posts by Martin

Whats that little red book with my picture in it for?

At the check in desk the only proof that you are who you say you are is your passport *.

At security and the gate they also check your passport along with your boarding pass.

So this new biometric system just tells the professional security/police/immigration officials to not look at your passport because 'Traci' at the check-in desk, or a card reader at the automatic check-in has already done it?

(or driving licence if you are traveling in democratic Europe)

Erm - sorry to spoil the party...

Isn't this the same as the last set of funding - it's just for the roof of a country house with no historical significance except it was the offices of the officers in charge of the people who did the historically significant work?

So English Heritage automatically preserve any building more than 200 years old but there is no funding for preserving anything to do with computers.

Solution sounds familiar

So newspaper will be forced to continually rewrite their histories to reflect the current 'truth' I'm sure the main character in a book I read had that job.

What's was it called 1997 - or something ?

@PRS shoots self in foot

The PRS charges guitar shops in case somebody plays a chord by one of their members while testing a new guitar.

@Colin

The GSM network was hardly spec'ed on the business model of sending text messages - otherwise they would hardy have paid £Bn for 3G licences if all they want to send is 140bytes. SMS is a windfall for the phone companies - and yes they will happily charge what the market will bear.

But since the marginal cost to them is approx bugger-all they might also decide to carry them fro free to/from iPhones in return for being the chosen host of the Jesus phone.

As to basing a business on free 3rd party services. I rely on Google to spend $Bn on infrastructure to index my site and supply searches for free.

A natural target

Don't bees have built-in barcodes?

Now we can put each bee on a database and all their little problems will be solved

@Big FAT patent ....

Precisely - it's an attempt to get around the fact that you cannot copyright a fileformat. So they patent the implementation of the format.

What would be interesting is if you could claim that UAC in Vista was preventing a user installing an alternative FS river - then you might have some interesting monopoly infringement.

Fud?

So you ring up your granny and talk them through installing and configuring Asterisk and SIP as well as getting their BT wireless router to port forward the SIP packets to their machine ?

The only advantage of Skype is their P2P stuff that means two people behind a NAT/Firewall can talk to each other - yes, everthing else about the app is crap - but they solved the bit that was stopping customers using voip.

>Components inside...

Power supply outside is a great feature (they charge an extra £100 for it on a shuttle)

Apart from saving on a fan it makes it a lot quicker and easier to get to market if you don't have to meet mutually incompatible electrical safety regs from 50 different countries.

The real question is why don't Shuttle/Asus/Dell do one of these for $300 ?

@Who owns the email?

But you just know that in 6months someone is going to have a little word with their Jaqui Jaquidottir and claim that people are using gmail or their own phones to leak company secrets - and the law will quietly extended to allow Nokia to 'request' this data from the ISP/phone company aswell.

Otherwise Nokia will be forced to leave Finland etc ...

@Security 101

No - they have all been promoted for foiling this attempt and more staff have been hired 'to address security concerns'.

Memos will be written to tell workers to check for illegally held software while the ctrl-alt keys will be removed to stop them accessing the task manager.

Developers will have admin rights removed and debuggers will be banned.

Meanwhile the CEO/CFO/CIO will take their laptop home for their kids to play with and then connect it to the company network, they will of course all have admin rights so they can play that DOS golf game.

Bitter - me ?

Corporate sales

>....when you can get a proper computer from Dell's outlet for about that.

I'm guessing Lenovo's market isn't experienced home users.

When you are buying 5000 of them as your standard corporate desktops the price compares nicely with Dell.

@Eh?

Yes but for an 'integral part of windows that cannot be removed' - it's not bad.

Will need IPV6

What about religions with more than 255 gods?

You can't have .name_of_god.hindu with 500,000 different name_of_god.

I'd buy a laptop.

>I love OSX but, if I wanted an integral monitor and almost zero upgrade possibilities,

>I'd buy a laptop.

That's Apple's point - the majority of new home machines sold are laptops, the majority of laptops never travel.

Real people (ie not readers of el'reg) don't want a machine on a desk covered in wires and mouldy coffee cups. They want the electronic equivalent of a coffee table book. These things are going in the living room instead/next to the TV.

@World Word II ...

>A Messerschmitt 109 would be a more fitting symbol for the BNP.

But you just know they would use pictures of this one http://www.xs4all.nl/~tozu/me109/foreign/109-Israel.htm

They don't understanfd web 2.0!

> Paid £120M .. six months to June last year the website pulled in revenues of £10m,

> down £1m on the same a period in 2007.

So they paid £120M for a business that was making £22M a year and is now making £20M/year = a 15% return, and this is the bit they are getting rid of ?

That seems to make a lot more sense than Google/MS buying a non-profit making/no-ads social networking site for $umpteen-billion.

@Why would you want to be non-MS?

It's not that the government is refusing to use opensource solutions - it's that the page to even find out about them is deliberately MS only.

It would be like forcing everyone to submit their tax returns online and having a site that only worked in IE - now who would be stupid enough to do that?

Timer

Of course any real supervillain would know that the timer should go off when displaying 10, while the hero is still smiling at the camera.

@Even if they put in regulations

It's not so much the encryption that's worrying them. Nobody is going to say "the illegal drugs arrive tomorrow on flight XYZ, the tracking number is 1234, Mr Real_Name please go and collect them at 9:00am"

The real value of telecoms intercepts is to build up a network of who contacts who - then you get a nice 'linked to terrorism' flag on your database. With skype it's difficult even with the cooperation of all the international ISPs involved to know who is calling who.

@What does Tom Tom have?

The first case is against them using microsofts 8,3 shortening of long names.

They copy long filename upates into a FAT formatted SD card.

@I think the question

I think he meant his average monthly bill is $220, not the bill for watching a game.

If he has unlimited data plan the incremental cost of watching a game is zero.

@Is This So New?

There's a difference between everyone you were a fag for at Eton turning out to be a Russian spy and having someone with a name begining with 'Al-' sending you a tweet.

iPhone version?

That might explain driving here - the mobile phone clamped to their heads is actually being used to remote control the car!

Erm 21:9 ?

I suppose my old 44:33 portable is better then?

Downloads already are taxed

Anything you buy out of state (either physically or download) is already taxed.

You have to add up all those amazon/ebay/itunes buys and pay the sales (use) tax on it - they only difference with stuff sold by merchants in the state is that they collect it for you.

Of course sometimes people forget to pay it.

@Real threat, or just distraction avoidance?

Three possibilities.

1, Mobile phones do affect planes, but nobody anywhere in the world in the last 10years has ever accidentally left a phone turned on during a flight.

2, Mobile phopnes cause hundreds of crashes everyday but the government covers them up

3, Mobile phones don't do anything. The ban is to persuade you to use the $5/min airphone and because the FCC is worried it will bugger up cell towers if you fly over them at 600mph 6miles up.

ID cards for all.

In parliament today Jaqui Smith announced that all crime in the UK had been committed by a "Mr I.D. Card" and police were tracking him down.

Minimum porn browsing requirement

Religious fanatics (of all brands) don't like porn.

Therefore if you look at porn your aren't a religious fanatic.

So anybody that doesn't browse enough porn is a probable terrorist.

@The point

>I for one am all in favour of the return of Capital Punishment, never did me any harm,

Crucification, best thing the Romans ever did for us - nail em up I say.

Or did you by chance mean corporal punishment?

You aren't allowed to shout at or touch a kid, so if a student refuses to leave the classroom calling the police is the only legal option. If you suspect they have a knife (and remember you aren't allowed to search them) then an armed response unit needs to be called.

@Looking

That's why all previous directors of the BBFC are kept in a secure dungeon under the South Bank centre in Hannibal Lector style face masks.

In my day..

We used to have a dolphin with a red flag swimming in front of them to stop this sort of thing.