For those of us who don't see in 3D
these red-green glasses are pretty much useless.
Posts by Daniel Dainty
30 publicly visible posts • joined 3 May 2007
Sky hints at 3D TV launch
Reg competition: Cisco goes isup
Tuesday 30th September 2008 00:27 GMT 
It's a special keyboard, y'see
and when you buy it, you can license 7 of the keys. Then, when you've used those keys and need some more, you buy another license, and so on. A bit like the Cisco managed access points system - you buy the hardware, then unlock the ports as and when you need them.
Blatantly obvious, the credit crunch an' all that, the web monkey has decided to sell back one of his/her licenses to the keyboard manufacturer. As a result, he can't use the letter "t", and he can't type the words "free post-sales support".
RM gets fingers into school biometrics market
Thursday 31st July 2008 15:40 GMT 
"you can't re-generate a persons fingerprints from the data stored!"
No, but you *can* re-generate enough information requried to impersonate the person.
"...as Ross, J. Shah, and A. K. Jain, "Towards Reconstructing Fingerprints from Minutiae Points," that just ain't so. You can reconstruct fingerprints from minutae, and they both describe and demonstrate that. Which is to say, the biometrics vendors who persist in making these claims are either ignorant or liars."
http://www.emergentchaos.com/archives/2005/06/fingerprint_pri.html
Heaviest Virgin Media downloaders face new daytime go-slow
Friday 30th May 2008 00:45 GMT
"You are aware that iPlayer is available on the set top box now?"
No, you don't - you get a different interface to the On Demand service that Virgin already do. You don't get half the programs that you do on the actual iPlayer.
It's just another interface to make you *think* you've got the iplayer, so you take the load off the t'interweb.
Slashdot website down
Congestion Charge offers online tool for ANPR cam dodgers
US gov now says Eye-o-Sauron™ border masts are crap
Thursday 28th February 2008 14:16 GMT
Stop hoofing around
Methinks the worst thing to have said in this instance is "the next person to say x will have impossible punishment y inflicted on them".
Especially on El Reg. Doubly so in the comments page.
In other news, testing on the v2 EoS is going so well. Here's some footage recovered earlier today.
http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/1481/11191483.JPG
Armed police swoop on MP3-packing mechanic
Microsoft rejects Yahoo! rejection
Yahoo! launches! flat!-!-rate! web! hosting!
Seabed cables will be fixed by next week
IT problems force HMRC to extend tax deadline
Online advertiser pays $200,000 for deceptive claims
Ryanair battles ASA over 'saucy schoolgirl' ad
Best Buy 'framed' by pesky Windows virus
Nokia confused over handset’s features
StumbleUpon brings human touch to search
Plan for 20mph urban speed-cam zones touted
Wednesday 17th October 2007 10:39 GMT 
Blah, blah, blah. Open your eyes, people.
I'm not going to get into a nit-picking row with anyone. I've done the "speed doesn't kill" / "cyclists are idiots" / "cameras are not the answer" / "pedestrians had it coming" before, and it never gets anywhere, and all it does is piss people off.
Most of the people who were from The Safety Brigade ("most speeding is masturbatory in nature", "Ban anyone from driving who thinks speed does not kill", etc) seem to be just churning out the same message that the Government repeats. Speed kills, they say. No it doesn't - inappropriate speed for the area you're driving through kills. Stop repeating the marketing message that the Government put out to justify the revenue cameras, and start facing up to the facts that it's actually human inadequacy that causes road deaths, not a number. And the human inadequacy doesn't have to originate from behind the wheel.
I hit a young girl once while I was driving down a single track road with cars parked down one side. The girl ran out into the road from between parked cars, and I hit her.
I was doing less than 10mph (yes, I hadn't left first gear), because that's all the road would allow. It was bumpy, narrow, and poorly lit. It was signposted 30mph. Good job I wasn't doing the speed LIMIT, and had assessed the road situation correctly, eh? The girl slumped down onto the road, jumped up, and ran off crying. The parents were grateful for me, and my driving skills, and gave the girl a right bollocking.
A good driver can assess whether or not they are doing an inappropriate speed by thinking about the following things:
- what's round that corner?
- if that corner has something in the road, can I stop in time?
- what's infront of that parked car?
- why are there feet under that car?
- where did that football come from?
- where's that cyclist going?
I find myself being a "what if?" person when it comes to driving. As a result, I'm 25, I've been driving now for six years, and the only near misses I've been involved in are through the stupidity or inadequacy of other people.
It's nothing to do with wrapping myself in metal and speeding around. If you look out for me, I'll look out for you.
Make eye contact with the kid in the road chasing the football, and let them know that next time they might not be so lucky.
Make eye contact with the cyclist to the side of you, and give them a nod to let them know you've seen them. If they haven't seen you yet, give a quick pip of your horn. That's what it's there for.
Open your eyes, people. And that goes for the people doing 50mph on the motorway, as well as the people doing 50mph past a school. There's nothing automatically dangerous about going faster than the numerical speed limit that the Council have arbitrarily placed on the road you're on.
Ignore the speed limit signs. Look at the actual road and decide for yourself if it's even safe for 30mph. Match your driving to the surroundings, and we'll all live happily ever after.
Peace.
ISP bosses told to get real on broadband speeds
Wednesday 10th October 2007 11:02 GMT 
"Unlimited" - what he said
Absolutely agree with this.
un·lim·it·ed /ʌnˈlɪmɪtɪd/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uhn-lim-i-tid] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective
1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined: unlimited trade.
2. boundless; infinite; vast: the unlimited skies.
3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional.
Doesn't say owt in the dictionary about a fair usage policy.
Aztech V500DS-S1 Skype DECT phone
Premium rate Virgin Media cuts tech support jobs
Wednesday 12th September 2007 11:06 GMT
Dear Cretins
I've had Cable/Telewest/Blueyonder/Virgin Media for six years at the house I currently live at, and I've had less than 7 days of downtime. I'm actually quite happy with the service I receive.
But that's because I'm a Telewest customer, and not an NTL customer.
Yes, you may have to jump through hoops and lie to them about not having a router and yes you're definitely using Windows, but the odd occasion that you get through to a person that knows what they're talking about, the problem is resolved or an engineer booked to come out and tweak your connectors.
I've got friends on BT Yahoo (what a joke that is), BT Openworld, BT Broadband with the talk package, and I also had a line at another premises with Wanadoo/Orange.
Even though VM are crap, their lines are crap and the throughput is usually crap, they are by far the most reliable provider I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with.
- Orange staff are largely unhelpful and rude.
- BT Yahoo/Openwound/Broadband staff are Indian CS based and don't seem to have access to the actual fault diagnosis tools, and don't know what an exchange is and why they should send an engineer there. Queue times of 45 mins were not unheard of with a fault that was their problem.
They're all as bad as each other, but I can see the managers getting annoyed with people phoning up to complain about popups, viruses, etc, and the fact that when they water the plant that's resting on their monitor that the monitor starts smoking.
So, does anybody fancy starting a cable-modem-based broadband provider for experienced computer users that need a decent pipe and someone on the end of a phone to reboot servers/routers/etc when told to do so? The admission questionnaire can go like this:
Q: "Do you read The Register?"
A: "Yes"
Q: "Fantastic, welcome aboard."
PS - "Dear Cretins" - read this... http://www.geocities.com/antryan2000/ntl.html
Sony to exorcise 'rootkit' from USB drives
Masturbating lag cops 60 days' extra porridge
Mobile roaming. Do you care?
Apple iPhone
Saturday 30th June 2007 19:16 GMT
Buttons rule.
I'd rather have buttons on my phone any day. Can't text properly without buttons. Need tactile feedback to tell your fingers that you've pressed the buttons.
Also, the POP thing that you mentioned with Gmail is just an annoying thing about Gmail. Does that all the time, always has done. Even lets you download all your spam and stuff that you've told to skip the inbox over POP which is nice.
Looking forward to hearing from you in a month!
Vodafone data bundle pricing slips out
Thursday 31st May 2007 15:43 GMT
512mb for £45 per month, on 3
Or 56mb for £15/mo.
I got a free 3G data card with a laptop I purchased a while ago, it was a Vodafone card, and I had to register it.
I asked the person how much the data was, and she said £2 per megabyte. I couldn't believe my ears! This was after 3 had launched their 56mb = £15 deal. So I aborted the registration and unplugged the card.
The card ended up on ebay...
Motorola lays off another 4,000
Thursday 31st May 2007 15:32 GMT
...and nobody's surprised!
I had a Motorola once - the v3x. "One of the most powerful 3G phones on the market". Massive megapixel camera. Huge resolution screen. Haptics vibration features. Stereo speakers on the phone. Best of all, it looked sexy and had blue LED lighting.
Three weeks later, I sent it back and got a Nokia. Why? Because the text message application crashed. It was too clever; it learnt words that I used frequently. But if I used one key combination to type two different words with equal frequence it would surprise me with which one it would put on the screen.
Take any other phone, and you know that when you press 63 you get "of" and then you can change it to "me" - the Motorola would see which word you have used more and would display that one first. So I'd need to wait for the phone to display what I've typed on the screen (I haven't seen a use for a keyboard buffer since Windows 3.1) and then I'd have to alter it.
Also, I have a big phone book. Huge. I've been using mobiles since I was 15, and it's a good few years on from there. I've taken most contacts with me, and the synchronisation software had quite a problem with taking a contact (with DOB, photo, email addresses, postal addresses, etc) and either filtering what it can't handle or storing it all on the phone.
Once I did get it all on the phone, and the phone book application failed to load.
So, I sent it back, received my Nokia, installed the software, synchronised my entire phone book no questions asked, and have been a happy Nokia fan ever since.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
