* Posts by M Gale

3500 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Apr 2007

Yes, Internet Explorer is on the wane in Europe

M Gale
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Oh god, more crap analogies

A computer is not a car. A router is not a house. The Internet is not a series of tubes.

..and having a browser made by a company with a history of deliberately futzing standards up being on 98% of everything means anyone wanting to make something without paying the Microsoft tax is effectively screwed. Remember uk.gov's previous utter shite attempts at a jobcentre website that would only work on IE? Ditto some banks that rely on Microsoftish ActiveX controls? Good luck getting that to work on Linux/BSD/Solaris/OS X/Nintendo DS/Sony Playstation/etc/etc/etc.

Now do you see?

M Gale

Control?

Related to locking down settings, I'm currently sat in college typing this via Portable Chrome. About 10 minutes ago, one of the technicians walked past and tutted at me for not using IE. He was about to show me why, presumably by showing me how an alternative browser could bypass proxy settings and the likes. Chrome sort of said "bugger off, this operation has been restricted."

He was happy with that. I continue to use Portable Chrome.

Teen's mobe loaded with X-rated smut

M Gale
Grenade

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

"Sound to me she is protesting a little too much in order to secure some compensation."

Yep, probably. Little like, a small shunt in traffic and OMG I HAS WHIPLASH I HAS COMPO NAO PLS.

Oh well. We'll all go together when we go, as Tom Lehrer once said.

M Gale

Report CP, lose your job.

...that's what happened to said PC World employee. I know because his loss of employment was used as an example to those of us working on customer's computers as a lesson in why not to poke through people's HDDs.

Whether it actually stops anyone is anyone's guess. I don't work there any more, thank fuck.

Nintendo confirms 3D handheld console coming

M Gale
Boffin

Virtualboy? Erm, not quite.

No-glasses 3D is already here and has been for many years. It's been on novelty prints and "special edition" DVD covers for a long time. Also known as "lenticular" stereoscopic 3D, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenticular_printing for more details.

I imagine with a bit of hackery, most/all 3D games for the DS could be engineered to work with it. How they get it to work with the bottom touch screen might be a bit tougher, but if they say they've cracked it.. could be worth a look. Plus, the lenticular system means you could use it for 3D, or for presenting different images depending on the viewing angle. Dunno how well that would translate into games, but fuck it. Is an idea.

Domain registrar follows Google out of China

M Gale

Internet Death Penalty?

Unfortunately, if you were to disconnect every country that wants to do mass censoring, you soon won't have an Internet left.

Nice idea though.

Brown's website as mad as he is

M Gale

You might want to try Google.

http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page22918

Alternatively, http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=tattoos+site:number10.gov.uk

iPhone, IE, Firefox, Safari get stomped at hacker contest

M Gale
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Next week's news story

Delete all browsers and make do with Telnet, German govt warns.

UK.gov blames Israel for cloning passports in Dubai hit

M Gale

Falsified.

"Sure you can clone the RFID data, but at the moment you cannot change it."

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/09/tool_lets_users_change_their_p.html

..I hope an apology will be forthcoming from the people voting me down.

M Gale
FAIL

Ahem

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1204641/New-ID-cards-supposed-unforgeable--took-expert-12-minutes-clone-programme-false-data.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-440069/Safest-passport-fit-purpose.html

The digital information on the UK's so-called "secure" passports and identity cards is so ridiculously easy to grab, copy and modify that only a New Labour drone would still believe that sticking everyone with an RFID chip is anywhere near a good idea or ever was.

The only thing remaining is to make the physical copy look convincing enough for a border guard to wave it through. Methinks a nuclear power has or can get the expertise to do that, without the UK's help.

Commodore 64 reincarnated as quad-core Ubuntu box

M Gale

Nice.

Wonder if it'll have the same screeching tape-noise when you load stuff?

Or is it going to have the more advanced microcassette drive as an option?

Polaroid enthusiasts unveil new instant film

M Gale

@AC 16:55

Crikey, someone who actually knows what they are talking about.

I still have to disagree a bit though. Ever since digital cameras started being more than one-megapixel toys with plastic lenses, they've been producing some excellent imagery.

These days, the whole "but film is just better" reminds me of people who absolutely insist that valve amps are the only way to listen to audio. Sorry.. valve amps are good for guitars because they produce a nicer variety of distortion. They don't reproduce hi-fi style sound any better than a good MOSFET. And so it is with digital imagery.. you'll always get people insisting that film is better, regardless of advances in digital technology. No matter that even after JPEG compression a lot of pictures are a higher resolution than the grain of most domestic films.. film is better!

M Gale
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JPEGs future proof...?

Yes, yes they are. And more proof against the sort of degradation that silver nitrate tends to be prone to.

A few years ago I'd have agreed with you, but these days your average digital camera produced pictures far better looking and sharper than pretty much any film camera that isn't ridiculously expensive.. and the JPEG won't deteriorate over time. Just keep copying it to a new storage medium, if you're that scared.

M Gale

Future proof

It's called a JPEG file. See, digital means you can make copies without having a dark room.

M Gale
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$21 for 8 snaps

This is what made the original polaroids so shit, and destined to be used only be a few specialists and people with craptons of money to burn.

Very nice idea, but wtfprice? Also, having no negatives compounds the failure.

Nerd alert: First Lucid Lynx Ubuntu beta fun

M Gale

Ugly Cousin?

Have you played with Compiz Fusion yet?

M Gale

Installing Debian on a mac...

"Installing Debian on a Mac is like buying a Ferrari and ripping out the engine and replacing it with a 2 stroke lawnmower engine. IMHO"

More like ripping out the engine and replacing it with the monster you normally get in a Formula One car. Needs careful, professional handling or you'll either blow yourself up or end up wrapped around a lamp post in short order.

But yes.

M Gale
Thumb Up

Indeed.

Right click -> Change Desktop Background

How hard can it be?

M Gale
Badgers

A title is apparently required.

Or Clippy, Visio, Vista, Aero, kernel32.dll, "STOP Error", and a whole bunch of other names that would probably be considered "geeky" if they weren't used by the masses. Seriously, "iphone"? "Macintosh?" Geeks, the lot of them, I tell ya!

Register.com argues it can't be sued for negligence

M Gale
Badgers

That's obvious

Well of course the Register can't be sued for negligence. Within 24h of trying, the prosecuting lawyer would end up having a fatal accident involving a length of cat6, two crocodile clips and a car battery courtesy of el Bastardo.

Oh, THAT Register...

Pirates of the Caribbean say 'narrr' to Bulgarian airbags

M Gale

The Quest for More Money?

I thought that was going to be Spaceballs II.

M Gale
Badgers

Got a lovely natural pair..

..of tits for you all.

http://cgnw30832.myby.co.uk/tits1.jpg

Oh yes, yes I really did.

Brown creates one UK.gov website to rule them all

M Gale
Terminator

There you are!

Been wondering where the Martian got to. Bet you're just waiting until everything's in one place before you send in the killbots.

Man could face prison over six second 'extreme porn' clip

M Gale
Badgers

Durka durka, bakalakalak

Well, I'll confess it passed through my mind while typing.

M Gale
Paris Hilton

Title

I believe the phrase is "money shot", though I don't know if it justifies a jail sentence.

Paris. Well, do I need to explain?

M Gale
FAIL

Hm

So does that mean we're all in danger of imprisonment come election time, what with it being a bunch of dicks and arseholes trying to fuck each other?

These laws and the politicians that dreamed them up need removing. Now.

Loud sex ASBO woman back on the job

M Gale
Go

But..

..why wait until they've finished?

Victorinox offers hackers £100,000 challenge

M Gale

By "zaps"..

..are we talking deletion of files, or are we talking a full-on EMP pulse to the electronic brain of the device? Only I can see that being a bit of a problem if you stick the thing in a computer and your webmail provider just happens to be offline at the time.

Still, could be useful for certain government employees who have a habit of leaving things on trains.

Sony PS3 Slim

M Gale
FAIL

Eh?

What late 80s do you come from?

Show me a computer from the late 80s that could do Mario Kart DS without thousands of pounds worth of video accelerator, please.

M Gale
Badgers

Yawn

Don't have an HD TV, so not remotely interested in blu-ray. Maybe when players are £30 from China, PC drives are a similar price, blank media is 10p a dozen and I can get the blu-ray equivalent of DVD Shrink or OGMRip. Yes, I bloody well will have HD movies on my hard drive, and bollocks to a DMCA that doesn't apply to me.

As for the console itself, well I gave up PC games because of the DRM encrustation and constant need to spend shedloads on playing hardware catch-up. That and exclusively requiring an operating system that I gave up on for similar reasons. I gave up on most consoles because the prices of the games are blatantly a rip-off. Nintendo DS, see that? You can get pretty much any DS title for under £30. Don't tell me it can't be done for the PS3 or 360.

So thanks but no thanks. At least when I have some money, I'll be spending it on much nicer toys that aren't made to actively shaft you. Like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x2mbEVqJW4

So much more fun than being stuck indoors pretending to fly something around, and you get full surround sound and ultra-high-def graphics provided by Model 1 Ear and Eyeball as a bonus!

(also, didn't Sega try this years ago with the Megadrive 2, shortly before they drank the kool-aid?)

Blunkett: 'The dog howls when I whip out my ID card!'

M Gale
Badgers

Mowie Wowie

Smoking anything is bad for you.

However marijuana is significantly less dangerous for you than alcohol. You don't want to smoke it? Boil a couple of grams of the green stuff up in some water and enjoy your tea.

Yes, marijuana can do funny things to people who already have a predisposition towards schizophrenia. Alcohol can too. If you're schizophrenic, you want to be avoiding strong coffee, let alone anything with a bit of a kick to it.

By the way, the ratio of getting drunk to getting potentially dead with alcohol is between 1:6 and 1:10. That means if it takes you two pints to get nicely merry, it'll take you at most 20 pints to put you in severe danger of pushing up daisies come the morn.

Marijuana? 1:40,000 mate. No, that's not a typo. One to forty THOUSAND. You'd need to smoke or otherwise ingest an entire plantation of the stuff. Good luck trying.

Energizer battery rechargers still haunted by trojan backdoor

M Gale

*coff*

That worked up until you said things like "camcorder batteries" and "LCD display". Unless you have a charger the size of your house, you won't drive an LCD display and get it to show anything much meaningful without a few logic chips in there at least. Also the newer camcorders tend to go for lithium-based batteries, which are a bit fickle with regards how they get charged, in the same way that everyone's favourite systems administrator is a bit of a bastard.

As soon as you start needing fine-grained control, and features such as an LCD display telling you how full the battery is, you start getting into microcontrollers. They're cheap (cheaper than a boatload of logic chips), they work, and.. well, they contain software. Or firmware if you like.

Granted, if all you want to do is bake a 12v lead/acid battery, then you can get by on little more than a transformer and a rectifier of some sorts. Four diodes in a bridge, that sort of thing. Just be careful to watch what you're doing, as even lead/acid has a tendency to start boiling, hissing and spewing vapours if you try to ram a load of current into it.

(yes, I've done my EE coursework)

M Gale

@jake

Depending on the charger, you really could save money by having a £2.50 Atmel thing monitoring the charge rate. Also handy if you want a charger that'll do NiCAD, or NiMH, or Pb, or Li-Ion/Li-Po, or whatever the battery technology-de-jour is. Little bit of a rewrite, and your charger supports the new tech without a rebuild.

Marketing, possibly. But also economics.

Amazon posts Kindle for Mac

M Gale

Bloomin' title.

"Books you buy buy don't download - or delete after they've been read - are always accessible at a future time."

Grammatical errors notwithstanding, are you really sure about that?

Ubisoft undone by anti-DRM DDoS storm

M Gale
Badgers

Doom 3

Not sure about the Windows version. I know if you install it on Linux (wot, games on Linux? Yes really!) it'll contact some kind of validation server if there is a connection available. That said, it also doesn't require any disk in the drive and doesn't fall over if you're playing it without network connectivity.

Seems to run better under the toy unix too. That or I'm just not running as much crapware on that box.

M Gale

Re: http://www.su27.de/seite83.htm

Dammit, I wish I had £3k per engine to blow. Dat is sum sweet big boy's toy.

M Gale

Screw this for a lark

Membership, tuition and liability insurance at BMFA-approved model flying club: ~£40-£120 per annum.

Weston UK Magnum racing airframe and .50-ish engine w/tuned exhaust: £280

2.4ghz Spektrum DX7 radio gear: £262 with 4 high-speed servos

Fuel: Roughly £20/gallon @ 15% nitromethane, enough to last all week.

200MPH so low you're cutting daisies with the prop: Priceless.

There's some hobbies where you don't get actively screwed over. For everything else, there's DRM.

..plus the long-term costs are cheaper than keeping up with PC game specs.

Ubuntu Firefox shuns Google for Yahoo! search

M Gale

Grumpy, Mikebartnz: Agreed.

So.. what if my browser's default home page is http://127.0.0.1/myhome.html or similar?

Bloody "clever" software is what's wrong half the time. Just make it useful, please.

Acer H5360 3D projector

M Gale

More than 1080

2048x1536, on a 10 or 12 year old 19" CRT at 60hz. Most times though I'll stick with 1600x1200 or 1280x1024@75-100hz though. The novelty of icons that require a microscope to see wears really thin after a while.

HDMI isn't about resolution. It's about HDCP.

New robot aircraft eliminates need for fleshy slaves

M Gale

Nice trick, however..

Extra cool points if they get it to shout "I see you" before firing.

Oops! Mobile masters of universe forget mobiles make phone calls

M Gale
Badgers

It's like a comedy sketch.

"It's got 4G connectivity. You can go on Myspace, Facebook.."

"But does it do phone calls?"

"..over fifty gajillion apps from cooking guides to tour guides.."

"But what about phone calls?"

"..WIFI connectivity, Bluetooth, it even has an IR link.."

"I JUST WANT TO MAKE CALLS."

"..what? Then why are you in a mobile phone shop? Go get two cups and a string, Mr I-Want-To-Make-Phone-Calls. I mean.. phone calls. How quaint!"

Microsoft stokes Google 'antitrust concerns' fire

M Gale
Flame

Title

<<"Our concerns relate only to Google practices that tend to lock in business partners and content - like Google Books - and exclude competitors, thereby undermining competition more broadly," grumbled Heiner.>>

This from Microsoft? And without a trace of irony?

Kill them. Kill them with fire.

(Flamethrower icon please)

Oz censorship debate censored on Comms minister's website

M Gale
FAIL

Hm.

isn't the comparison operator case-sensitive in Javascript?

If so, "isp filtering" != "ISP Filtering".

But then, "internet censorship" != "ISP Filtering" too.

Linux kernel R&D worth over 1bn euros

M Gale
Thumb Up

Also notable..

From the poster:

"Legal and regulatory framework must allow companies participating on commons-based R&D to generate intangible assets for their contribution to successful projects. Otherwise, expenses must have an equitable tax treatment as a donation to social welfare."

Tax breaks for OSS developers? Expect a certain operating system vendor to argue strongly against this recommendation.

US unveils planet-hugging London embassy

M Gale

Well..

..so long as the UK govt has a realistic chance of getting the same deal in reverse, I don't have a problem. After all, the idea of an embassy is that the ground space it occupies is the sovereign territory of the country it belongs to. Air Force One is a mobile example of this.. once on board, you're on American soil.

Polygamist Microsoft picks Amazon as latest Linux wife

M Gale
Coffee/keyboard

See Icon

You bastard.

M Gale
Grenade

Translation

“Microsoft’s patent portfolio is the largest and strongest in the software industry,"

We have a vast nuclear arsenal.

"and this agreement demonstrates our mutual respect for intellectual property"

Pay us or we launch.

"as well as our ability to reach pragmatic solutions to IP issues regardless of whether proprietary or open source software is involved,”

Pay us or we launch.

Nexus One in trigger-happy 999-dialling bother

M Gale
Go

Been there

..well, in a way.

I used to have an old Motorola L6, and it had the spectacularly stupid "feature" of being able to unlock the keypad by holding one of the side-mounted buttons down. Pulled it out of my pocket more than once with "99" and "999" on the display, just waiting for the call button to be depressed.

So, how about a nice new standard feature for mobile phones? If the operator can determine with certainty that the call is coming from a pocketed phone (say, normal background hubbub from a pub or workplace), they hit a button and the target phone starts with an ear-piercing din and something on the display along the lines of "you're a twit". Keep the call connected on the off-chance that the operator has got it wrong.

Well, maybe the idea can be refined a bit, but something like it might help to tackle the problem of badly-designed mobile phones calling emergency services by themselves.

Chuck Norris botnet doesn't infect routers...

M Gale
Badgers

wnd

Chuck Norris writes articles for WorldNetDaily and still gets taken seriously. He's that hard.

Argentinians invade Falkland Islands website

M Gale
Badgers

Title

"Also why do you think 2 sea harriers could take on 12 mirage jets and win, because we had the latest greatest crop of american missiles backing us up."

Also helps that Harriers can fly backwards and Mirages... can't.

<mirage pilot> "I'm behind you, fucker! ....oh."