* Posts by jai

2310 publicly visible posts • joined 8 May 2007

Mars rover Curiosity snaps explicit selfies from ALL ANGLES

jai

I took a selfy this morning - at least, I think it classifies. it was of a CCTV monitor on the train platform, showing the view from the camera that at that point was watching me, as I photographed the monitor. I got quite lost in the meta-existentialism of photographing something else that was photographing me at the same time that I almost missed my train

So I can quite emphasis with Curiosity. It's gotta get a bit boring up there of mars, why not take a break, have a kitkat, and take a holiday snap of yourself :)

Post-pub nosh deathmatch: Souse versus scrapple

jai

not so sure about this weeks selection

if i'm honest, and i staggered home with a belly full of beer, and went to eat either of these, i don't think i'd have a full belly anymore, just a pending cleaning bill and the prospect of the following morning spent working over the kitchen floor with a bucket and mop and disinfectant...

We don’t talk any more... on the commute

jai

When I first started working in the smoke, mp3 players were popular, but not really in much evidence on the 6am commuter train filled with suits. But as you say, then as now, people didn't really have conversations with each other. No one talked. The oldies read newspapers, loudly and annoyingly. And for the most part, I slept, snoring loudly and annoyingly I presume.

These days I'm watching videos, reading books or listening to podcasts on my journey, and i feel much more awake and alert when i get to the office than i ever did when i was younger.

UK iPad Mini FRENZY: Queues stretch SEVERAL FEET from till

jai

surprised?

this is a niche product - those that want a full tablet will already have an iPad. If you don't then you've got an iPhone. There definitely seems to be a market for the iPad mini, but if the highly unscientific sample set of people in my office is an indication, then the market is about 1/5th that of the full size iPad and a tiny fraction of that for the iPhone.

Captain Kirk does a Crapp on the iPhone: 'Shatoetry' for 'Shatisms'

jai

KHAAAAAANNNNN!!!!!

Bond fans: Test your 007 trivia, now!

jai

Re: ..."you can glean the correct responses from our source code" ??

as they said, doing so is not cricket. it's on your honour as a gentleman to not hack the code and take the test in the spirit in which is was intended.

besides, there's no cash prize, there's not even a leaderboard, so no one's going to know the score you get. if you waste your time cheating and looking at the code, the only person you are cheating is yourself. no one else is going to know or care. but y'know, whatever you need to do to boost your self esteem...

iPad Mini's quite a handful

jai

portrait holding

just saying, why wouldn't you just hold it in portrait the same way that you're holding it in landscape? as you say, it's light enough that it's not an issue.

a mini tablet like this, despite what Samsung would like us to believe, is not the same as a smartphone and doesn't have to be held the same way

A history of personal computing in 20 objects part 2

jai

GRiD

I used a GRiD when I was about 5 - my dad brought it home from work for a weekend.

I remember being quite awed by it at the time, and compared to the big case of the Apple ][e I was used to with a gigantic box of a monitor on top, it was futuristic looking.

That said, I was only 5 or was pretty awed by anything technological at the time anyway.

Then, 3 years later my dad came home and set up a Mac on the dining room table and I spent all weekend drawing bitmap pictures in MacPaint and wondering why anybody bothered with keyboards and command lines

Analyst slams Apple innovation FAIL

jai

Analyst proves they haven't a clue...

...but then we all knew that already, so this isn't really news.

If he's stopped and even thought about it, tried it himself, he'd realise the massive pain you'll get in your shoulders if you try and work for any length of time on a touchscreen that's vertically in front of you.

I guess this just goes to prove how much work your average analyst does. It doesn't take long to throw a dart at the wall and make your prediction based on what it landed on.

British judge: Say you're sorry Apple... this time like you MEAN it

jai

Re: Apple website should be taken down

They could take down the apple.co.uk domain, but it wouldn't make any difference as Apple have only had ownership of it since just recently. all it does it redirect to apple.com/uk which is where everyone has been going for the uk apple site for many, many years. I doubt many people really realise apple.co.uk now points to Apple. 90% of people probably just use google and click through without even looking at the URL, so again, wouldn't make any difference if the UK domain was taken down, the .com domain is always going to be the number one result on google's search results

jai

shocker!!

that Anna Leach is all over this story

jai

Re: Apple told us it had no comment on the matter

Apple actually spoke to El Reg? The sky is truly falling!!

Free Android apps often secretly make calls, use the camera

jai

wall-gardens FTW !!!!!!!!!

Android games console jumps to Jelly Bean for penultimate test phase

jai

but are there really any games out there that are suited to the console playing experience? is android capable of this? i've been moaning to my friends recently, because i like the look of the new XCOM game, but i don't want to sit in front of the telly playing a turn-based strategy type game. I'd rather play a game like that on a tablet. equally, i don't want to play the types of games they are currently on mobiles and tablets on the telly.

are we really looking forward to playing temple run or angry birds in front of the whole family?

El Reg acquires wildly dangerous laser cannon (with lightsabre option)

jai

Re: Nice lightsabres

all the best Jedi's make their own noise.

that said, hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid!

jai

i want one

actually, i want two! i'm so jealous!!

although, at $1200 for the kit you had, it'll be some time before i'm ready for a jedi battle...

are these powerful enough to use as a means of lifting a craft into the sky? i seem to recall seeing something on telly... was it a James May show? where these guys in the States were pulsing a laser directly into the sky, and placing a silver bowl into the beam lifted it up into the sky

Story gone

jai
Thumb Up

I like it

Seems to work very well - and offline reading means I no longer have to throw all the articles to Instapaper.

Would be nice if it could keep track of the article alerts I've set up via the website so that I don't miss out on any Stob articles

jai

you have an app?

i didn't realise there was a previous version of this app - i've been using m.theregister.co.uk all this time (in truth, i use the mobile site on my desktop too).

Disney buys Lucasfilm, new Star Wars trilogy planned

jai

Re: How long before

yes, because that's exactly what they did with Tron, isn't it?

and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies

and The Avengers

and from the looks of the trailer, Iron Man 3 is going to be chock full of Disney cartoon characters and singing, isn't it?

Your mouse may actually be a RAT in disguise

jai

Dishonoured...

Anybody else playing Dishonoured at the moment and when they read the headline and the sub-headline thought this article was going to be about something totally different?

I felt myself clenching my left fist and about to look up for a suitable place, ready to blink to safety...

Apple exec behind Maps and Siri to exit One Infinite Loop

jai

Re: Dixons Bloke

9 months != 6 months

Nostradamus also predicted the end of the world. By your maths, he's also right even though it just hasn't gotten around to happening yet.

Granny upstages Microsoft, storms stage at Surface launch

jai

Windows 8 doesn't work well on large screens? So it really was built solely for tablets and with the desktop side just shoe-horned in as an after thought.

Better luck next time Blofeld! Five Bond plot myths busted

jai

The implausibility is what makes them enjoyable, no?

Isn't it the utterly outrageous nature of the evil schemes that makes the films so enjoyable. Everything about them is beyond belief, from the names of the love interests to Bond himself, that you have no choice but to suspend your disbelief by a large measure. And with that, you're willing to accept anything, and the film becomes a great thrill ride.

Afterall, the recent Daniel Craig films have been a bit more closer to reality than those films listed here, and arguably, weren't nearly so much fun.

Dr No, Thunderball, Casino Royale? Vote now for the best Bond film

jai

Goldeneye wtf!!

but i wonder if my fondness for Goldeneye is accentuated somewhat by the joy of 4-player gaming on the N64

iPad Mini vs Nexus 7: inch makes all the difference, says Apple CEO

jai

Seems a bit stupid to be asking CEOs of companies about their own products, of course they're going to big them up, or about other companies products, of course they're going to diss them.

El Reginald seems full of articles this morning that aren't telling us anything that we wouldn't have expected

Samsung ships two smartphones for every one Apple sells

jai

i.e. They're both fighting over the same section of the market (with Samsung also covering the cheaper end, Apple's ignoring for now).

I think this is the critical aspect here.

I suspect that the sub £300 end of the market is considerably more than just twice the size of the top end of the range.

This kind of analysis is pointless because the phones being shipped are not equivalent. If you want to claim that one company is beating the other, then you need to compare them on like-for-like range of phones, and further, on phones that are earning the company a like-for-like profit margin. Samsung could sell 100x the number of phones, but if they're not making any money off 99% of them then such a statistic is merely obfuscating the real facts.

As the article says, the more interesting fact here is the Samsung's success is cannibalising the Android market, not eating into Apple's sales.

Dyson alleges spy stole 'leccy motor secrets for Bosch

jai

not actually denying it

Bosch's comments don't exactly deny that they did receive confidential IP information, they're just stating that garden products and vacuum cleaners aren't the same things.

Sounds a lot like the Chewbacca Defence to me.

Apple's skinny new iMac line: Farewell, optical drives

jai

Re: Never worked well anyway!

have to agree. both the intel iMacs i've had have both lost functionality of their optical drive. Oddly enough, the tray-loading drive in the old G4 iLamp iMac is still working perfectly.

but i don't see why people get so uptight about needing the optical drive inside the machine. USB drives to read/write dvds are cheap as anything these days - far cheaper than Apple would charge you for putting one inside certainly. And that way you get to choose between cheap DVD drive, or splash out of a blu-ray drive if you wish.

god the new iMacs look nice. I'm desperately trying to find an excuse to get one, but sadly, apart from the optical drive, my current iMac is still working perfectly

jai

Re: Incredible...

re: "Won't be buying a Mac any time soon."

if you still get your music on CDs sounds like you don't buy anything until it's outmoded and old fashioned. I'm surprised you're even on CDs and not listening to vinyls instead.

WHITE WHALE spent 4 years trying to tell us something, then stopped

jai

Re: What he is trying to say is.....

so _that's_ what those big yellow things in the sky are...

Hero police robot back on duty after 'unstable man' blasts it with shotgun

jai

Applied Research Associates...

...a subsidiary of Omni Consumer Products by any chance?

Please tell me they have a loudspeaker on there that calls out "Come quietly or there will be.... trouble."

BBC pulls plug Ceefax ahead of analogue TV's end tonight

jai

fondly remembered, but not missed

I remember being taught how to write ceefax pages when i was 7 at school - gave me an appreciation for what was required by the people who made them each day for the telly.

while i made a lot of use of it as a kid, looking up tv listings, the top 40 results, grand prix results, i don't think i've used them since the early 90s. certainly, now that it's gone i won't notice the difference.

a shame, but purely for nostalgic reasons.

Slideshow: A History of the Smartphone in 20 Handsets

jai

Re: Nokia N-Gage?

i guess the N-Gage does deserve to be here - it's a prime example of everything that was wrong with smart phone and why people weren't buying them, prior to the current golden age of Android and iOS devices

A lesser-known new feature in iOS 6: It's tracking you everywhere

jai

Re: Sensationalistic title

this is El Reg - titles and the facts of the story do not often correlate.

iPad voice app back after patent spat: Mute kids get 'voices' back

jai

what the deuce!?!?!

A patent law suit where the out come is a bit of common sense?

Is this the first sign on the coming of the end of the world or something? Next Hell will freeze over, seas will boil, the moon will be as blood, cats and dogs living together, seven seals being broken, harpers harping with their harps..... somebody tell us about the Twinkie!!

Vote NOW for the vilest Bond villain

jai

what no Onatopp?

i can see Pussy Galore not being a villain, she'd fall into the Bond Girl category. But surely Onatopp was pretty villianous, especially with her preferred method of assassination, no?

El Reg VULTURE logo FOUND ON MARS

jai

mars

hah! reminds me of that episode in The Tick where the villain tried to write his name on the moon...

Samsung shoots Galaxy S III with shrink ray, unveils 4in Mini

jai

copying again?

<trolling>

so Apple bring out a 4" screen phone and [SHOCKER] Samsung rush to copy and produce a phone of the same size.

</trolling>

Boffins baffled: HUGE EYEBALL washes up on Florida beach

jai

there is, as Qui-Gon Jinn once said, always a bigger fish...

Japanese cellco drops veil on futuristic hands-free video phone

jai

But, when this is productionised for consumers and enclosed in a robust package, is it not going to end up looking like those huge VR headsets we used to have to wear to play those VR arcarde games back in the early 90s?

I think I'd rather have a vid conference with someone looking slightly below my face than have to wear something like that everytime i go into a meeting room.

Microsoft plans midnight launch for Surface

jai

They'll take a queue from their new partners Nokia and they'll fake it by getting their own employees to queue up at midnight to collect their free Surfaces.

Samsung claims Apple jury foreman LIED to get REVENGE

jai

Seagate?

But... Apple make use of Seagate drives as well? I don't see how, if the foreman is prejudiced against Seagate, he would have a bias either way in the trial as both companies work with his former employer.

This smacks of Samsung clutching at straws. Further evidence that these lawsuits will never, ever end. Future generations in 200 years will still be contesting the results and holding appeals and retrials without any knowledge of why...

(there's a cherry thought to get your Friday morning started :) )

BYOD cheers up staff, boosts productivity - and IT bosses hate it

jai

VM the solution?

I was thinking about this - would it not be possible for the employer to provide a VM image which contains a locked down environment that only contains licensed software and only connects to the office network and is also ringfenced from the laptop it is running on. That way, you can BYOD, but it stops any garbage you've installed on it yourself from accessing the office network or corrupting work files. And also could be set up to prevent people moving files out of the VM environment? And at the worst case, the employer could remote wipe the VM image or re-deploy a clean image, saving the effort of troubleshooting (because all work documents should be being stored on office network anyway).

Or are these the kind of things that they're talking about in the article when they say the tools are likely on the way in the near future?

$3500 will get 13.3in Mac tablet in your mitts

jai

Dumb, dumber and Apple buyers ToddRundgren I guess?

fixed it for you

From Dr No to Skyfall: The Reg's one month of Bond

jai
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and this is why El Reg is the best tech website i read :)

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 review

jai

no thanks

too big to be a phone, too small to be a tablet

US court lifts ban on Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

jai

Re: Now, let this be a precursor to ending

Ending? You missed the part in the article where it said Samsung's case to ban the iPhone 5 will be in 2014?

This isn't ending any time soon, the lawyers and courts are making far too much money. $2.6m held by the courts? How much interest do they make out of that while it sits in their bank account?

Oregon farmer devoured by own hogs

jai

Re: Strange...

more like a sequel by Thomas Harris, no?

Sharp punches out über-retina phone screen

jai

Retina quality eyes? now there's a novel idea...