Posts by Toastan Buttar

Very subtle geek prank

I'm sure the suits at Mattel are unaware of what phrases are actually spelt out on Barbie's clothes and screen (Hint: convert every 7-bit word to its ASCII equivalent).

User experience is the primary consideration.

Until you've actually used an iPhone/ iPod Touch, you can't fully understand the user experience. I think that once people start getting hands-on demos of the iPad, they might decide that it is in fact exactly the kind of thing they'd find useful / enjoyable to have around the house.

Logical criticisms can sometimes evaporate once you try a device in real life. The lack of app multitasking for example, becomes a non-issue for most people, especially when each app occupies the entire screen area when it has focus.

Pint, because you have to drink it to appreciate it fully.

Re: What?

Well, 13 years is a very stiff sentence.

Not a new iPhone in any sense.

"Apple wanted to reinvent the iPhone"

No they didn't - they wanted to redefine what people wanted from a netbook. Time will tell whether they've achieved that or not. I already use my iPod Touch more than my netbook for the kind of things the iPad is designed for. I reckon Apple have got it pretty much perfect.

I agree

The iPad is for people who love what a computer in the home can do, but who can't be bothered having a computer in the home.

UK price ?

I wonder if it'll be a straightforward £=$ ratio ? Looks gorgeous, I must say. Techno-lust !

Utterly disgraceful

I thought the App Store allowed Apple to control the types of things apps could and could not do. Letting through crap like this leaves a bad taste in the mouth, especially after turning off call confirmation. I've got an iPod Touch, so I'm immune to it making premium rate calls but it's all too easy to touch an ad by mistake when playing a game / whatever. The number of times Safari has launched to go to the app maker's home page !

Manipulate the data ?

"There is a danger that people can manipulate the data, but the benefits from being open far outweigh that danger.”

By making your data open, there's LESS chance of people being able to manipulate it to draw false conclusions.

HFOURRDWFOURRE ?

Catchy name !

Make Way For CGI !

I must say I prefer the CGI of Make Way For Noddy to the old Cosgrove Hall stop-motion stuff. And Rolie-Polie Olie is just fantastic, of course !

No match for a Wii

The great thing about the Wii is that the remotes are separated from the screen. Your arms can be flailing about while you can still watch the action. This phone combination just doesn't work for bowling, tennis, etc. For example, the iBowl game for the iPod Touch is quite nice, but isn't a patch on playing Wii Sports bowling in front of your telly. The accelerometer-based games which work best on the iPod Touch are those which simulate gravity, such as Topple, Jellycar or Labyrinth. The only large-gesture based app I really feel works is the Light-Saber simulator, because it's the sound that's important, not the visuals.

iPint's quite fun, too !

Record-breaking ?

“shattered theatrical box office and videogame records".

Has MW2 shattered the Titanic box office record ? Err.....no. Unless he means the record for first five days of sale, which I don't remember being listed in the Guiness Book of Records.

There's the iPhone OS...

...then there's everything else. After using an iPhone, all other smartphone user experiences are clunky. Linux Mobile is not what MS should be fearing !

Strange kind of pill

"temporary reduction in penis pill".

I thought it was temporary enlargement of penis pills that were usually sold ?

Pint for brewer's droop.

Sky+ FTW

It'll take a hell of a good system to beat Sky+ for ease of use. I was originally sceptical of our family's need for it but we couldn't go back to ordinary telly now. "It just works".

Re: Truecrypt considered harmful

"If the experts know about truecrypt then they'll demand both keys."

But that's exactly how TrueCrypt achieves plausible deniability - there's no way to distinguish between unused space on a TC volume with one password or a hidden volume (with a second password). [*]

In other words, you can't tell from a unique TC volume whether there is one key or two. If someone was convicted and sent to prison for "not revealing the second key" without there being solid evidence of a hidden volume existing in the unused space, I'd be looking to leave this country.

I use TrueCrypt so that I can keep my private files on my HD without them being accessible to any other users, even if I leave it logged into my user account. I've found it to be the most useful encryption program out there - once you mount the encrypted volume it behaves transparently just like another disk. Unmount it once you're finished and you end up with a file that just looks like random noise again. Simples and free (as-in-beer).

[*] If you have previous copies of the TC volume container file, then there ARE ways to detect the presence of a hidden volume if its contents have changed. In that case, expect to have the RIPA book thrown at you.

Bu..buu...bbbbbuuuuut

I thought Opera was the Bestest Browser Ever and you'd have to be the victim of a cruel medical experiment to choose any other.

Missed opportunity

Why didn't you print a piccy of Ms A. Mussolini ?

Paris will have to do instead.

Hmmmmmmm

"The research, from SquareTrade which flogs extended warranties......"

I stopped reading right about there.

Hope he pulls through.

I've seen too many people die from the Big C (I've also seen a lot of people cured lately, so things are looking up).

PA's a bit of a hero of mine, mostly for this reason:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC

(Read the "Origin and Development" section for a tale of Real Programmer prowess).

High Energy Physics

"Not that it ever happened, but reading about those dump caverns and thinking about the energy (and engineering) involved in all this does give me a slight, passing sadness "

Personally, thinking about it gives me a stiffy.

What's the point ?

There already exist plenty of educational videos of women giving birth. What happens if something goes horribly wrong during this delivery whilst it's being broadcast live ?

A bad idea.

Nutt Sacking

The new form of 'Tea-Bagging' ?

Marvelous neologism !

What AV software ?

I've been impressed by MSE. You'll need more than 512MB of RAM on XP, or else your system gets a bit bogged down. Apart from that, it's the least conspicuous AV package I've ever used under Windows.

Inexplicably ?

The explanation is that X-Rays got the most votes.

Interesting

This looks like a genuinely innovative product. I'll be watching its uptake with interest.

As Captain Beefheart might say:

"Fast and bulbous !"

@Graham Marsden

Spooky ! That was _word-for-word_ what I was going to write as a comment when I read the article - even the subject line.

Optimus Prime

I'm sure I can see him engulfed in flames in one of those pics.

Brookie, 20-odd years ago

Gordon Collins wrote some software on Alan Partridge's ZX81 and they had to come to some arrangement over selling it.

Can anyone say...

...Streisand Effect ?

Long-life butterfly ?

"The butterfly is the symbol for long life". How in the heck did that happen ? Wouldn't a turtle or a parrot be more appropriate ?

Re: I salute your perspicacity

"you will indeed be freeing up resources for tree planting,k eradicating poverty, producing clean water, curing malaria and cancer..."

Is there a GNOME version of Eradicating Poverty ?

El Reg delivers

Marvelous.

RTD

You can't slag him off too much - without his tireless campaigning there might not even have been a new Doctor Who to discuss. Besides, I thought the final story of Series 4 was a pretty cool way to bow out as writer.

But yeah, most of his stuff was pants.

Do YOU know how PageRank works ? Really ?

"Some 18 per cent said they didn't know how Google and other search engines rank results, significantly up from four per cent last year."

I wonder how many of us adults would be brave enough to admit that ?

The Bells ! The Bells !

By combining matter and anti-matter, would it be operating in a quasi-mode, oh ?

Movie ?

"Which movie was it, which had banks and banks of people watching cameras of normal people going about their lives"

The early George Lucas film "THX1138", perhaps ?

Re: Can you say...

> "Someone should put a bomb under them." nowadays?

I believe the correct turn of phrase is "Somebody should set up them the bomb".