* Posts by Jerome 0

551 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

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Jumbo-jet ray cannon in missile-vape success

Jerome 0
Boffin

Frickin lasers

I believe it's considered far easier to destroy a liquid fuel missile than a solid fuel missile. There was never any chance, nor any intention, of taking out the second test target entirely.

Secondly, while there's no denying that electrical lasers are the way of the future, it's worth noting that they're still nowhere near as powerful as their chemical brethren, and it's going to be a good few years before they catch up.

Having said all that, I'm certainly no expert on these matters, so feel free to correct me about any of the above.

iPhone must-have crowd inflates UK gadget insurance claims

Jerome 0

Perfect plan

Apple likes to get rid of all old models from the shops? That's even better then - simply take all those "obsolete" iPhones that would otherwise have been destroyed and sell them on to the insurance company at a massive discount, to be used as described in Jaymeister's cunning plan. That way everyone wins: the insurance company gets to discourage fraudulent claims, Apple gets a bit of extra cash for stock that would otherwise have been destroyed, and people who leap into two year mobile phone contracts without thinking it through get a valuable lesson.

Toshiba unwraps second-gen WinMo touchphone

Jerome 0

Windows what now?

Please Tosh, just do an Android version and make everyone happy.

Vodafone eyes iPhone switchers for fresh Sim-only deals

Jerome 0

PAYG

While Virgin are doing 1GB/mo for £5 on PAYG. On the rare occasions I feel the need to do anything as old school as make a voice call or send a text, I'm quite happy to pay the extra. I'm certainly not going to shell out around £20 a month without even getting a "free" handset for my money.

Wreck of 1930s flying aircraft carrier dubbed 'historic'

Jerome 0
Pint

What's the zeppelin angle?

I'm sure you don't have to look far to find extremophile life in the San Francisco area! Fascinating article Lewis, thanks.

Home Office to secure mobile phones

Jerome 0

Gadgets

But I don't have big enough pockets for separate GPS, camera, games console and web tablet. Besides, all those things share components with my phone (screen, battery, storage, processor) so it seems pretty dumb not to just build them in, no?

Jerome 0

Making it up as they go along

Surely even if the other 1,300,000 phones are later recovered (hugely unlikely though that is), they've still been stolen in the first place, and should therefore still be included in figures for "annual mobile phone theft"?

Opera plays chicken with Apple iPhone police

Jerome 0
WTF?

Scripting on the server

So all the client-side Javascript is actually run server-side? Over an intermittent 3G data connection? And this is supposed to tempt people away from the iPhone's own browser? I hate to judge this before I've seen it in action, but I'd be vastly surprised to see this work smoothly on anything but the simplest of pages.

Apple bets on Mac-only photo land grab with Aperture 3

Jerome 0

Apple for Windows?

I'm not sure I get all the references to this software being "Mac only". Is this some kind of in-joke that I'm missing? As far as I'm aware, Apple have never sold software for Windows, Linux or indeed any operating system other than their own (leaving to one side, of course, the god-awful Windows versions of free software like Quicktime, iTunes and Safari).

UK inserts battery take-back scheme

Jerome 0

Supermarket?

I've certainly not noticed a collection bin at my local supermarket. I suspect that handing in a bag of batteries at customer services may just end up with them getting surreptitiously binned at the end of the day.

Google stock shunned by China

Jerome 0

Perceptions of Google?

Perhaps it comes back to Google's failure to achieve any dominance in the Chinese market. Thanks to Google's lacklustre performance in their own country, Chinese investors can't shake the feeling that the big G is a failure, regardless of how well it performs elsewhere in the world. Perhaps they see it as overhyped, and believe that this fact will surely dawn on the rest of the world in time.

Global gov's shrugging lets cybercrims frolic

Jerome 0

Re: First to die?

If you're referring to the Therac-25 incident, this is generally recognised as being due to a software fault rather than operator error. Regardless of the actions of the operator, the machine should never have been capable of delivering the lethal doses of radiation that it did.

So, in the original meaning of the word at least, hackers have already caused several deaths - by hacking together their software with insufficient design and testing.

Nokia C6: is the 'C' for Centro?

Jerome 0

Really?

Don't all non-slider qwerty phones look like that? I'm no expert, but certainly all the ones I've seen look just as similar as those two. There's only so much you can do differently if you want to slap a navigation pad and keyboard under a screen.

London Sperm Bank whips out its wedding tackle

Jerome 0

Re: Sky Cock

I'm guessing this is a viral ad for Jude Law's new outing, Sky Cock and the World of Tomorrow.

El Reg space bureau firms up PARIS kit list

Jerome 0
Black Helicopters

Top secret

If the actual construction/testing process is deemed to be a commercial secret, a playmobile reconstruction would do admirably.

iPad forces operators to shave their SIMs

Jerome 0

iPhone SIM

So now the biggest iPhone ever has a smaller SIM than it's little brother. It's a crazy world.

Sony, Vodafone vie for X10 UK launch first

Jerome 0

Fingers crossed

Let's hope they've fixed the lagginess in the interface then, or that Snapdragon won't mean jack. This is a phone I really want to love, but those early demo videos don't look hopeful.

Think Aussie election rules are draconian? Look at the UK's

Jerome 0

Blogs aren't local

How can rules regarding "locally distributed print media" be construed to apply to blogs? Blogs are international in nature - you can read them on the ISS if you want. A more fitting analogy is with national newspapers, which certainly don't do anything to hide their partisan nature. Blogs also cost nothing to run, so they're unlikely to fall foul of spending rules.

Alreet, Apple!

Jerome 0
Joke

MacBook Air

"The sales assistant asked if I really had an MBA and I was prevented from wasting 15 quid."

The staff in the store thought you didn't look classy enough to own Apple's luxury model, and you're grateful? :)

Hubble snaps space conker bonk aftermath

Jerome 0

Fighting falcons

Alternatively, the closing speed of the asteroid impact was almost twice as fast as two colliding cannon shells fired from two F-16s* flying towards each other at top speed.

Top speed of an F-16 is around Mach 2 I believe (1,500mph), plus the two lots of 1,700mph for the cannon shells makes a total of 6,400mph.

* An aircraft which *does* have a cannon. :)

Medion E54009 touch monitor

Jerome 0

Pricy

"Any concerns about the non-digital video connection were forgotten in use."

Because there was no way to plug in a DVI cable, and see how much sharper the picture would have looked.

"For the same price, you could buy a 22in device with DVI, multiple HDMI inputs and a built-in TV tuner"

For half the price, you could buy a 24in monitor with DVI.

I hope the huge price of touch screens is due only to the fact we're still at the "early adopter" stage. If adding touch-screen capabilities to a monitor doubles its price, I can't see it taking off any time soon.

Disk capacity growth rate slowing

Jerome 0
FAIL

Idiots!

Oh Christ, not another stupid BIOS limitation - I wasn't aware of that one coming up. Why must we go through this crap again and again - will they never learn?

Oh well, hopefully they'll increase it to something sensible like 8Tb this time around - we'll never hit a limit like that.

Most consumers reuse banking passwords on other sites

Jerome 0

Encryption

It's funny that the Microsoft tips linked from the article recommend not storing passwords "on a file in your computer, because criminals will look there first". Trust MS to get this so mind-bogglingly wrong.

These days, we have to create logins for so many different sites, and it would be foolhardy to share passwords between them. With truly secure passwords, it's hard enough to memorise one of them, let alone one for every site.

A single encrypted file seems to me to be the only sensible way to go.

Steve Jobs dubs Google's 'don't be evil' motto 'bulls**t'

Jerome 0

Flash crash

"Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash"

I do hope that's a misquote. Otherwise, it appears that Mr. Jobs is saying that a crashing browser plugin can bring down the whole system. I haven't seen that kind of instability in an OS since Windows 98.

Adobe sounds off on iPad's Flash slap

Jerome 0
Grenade

Aaargh - commentard dissonance

On the one hand, I hate Flash. On the other hand, I hate Apple.

I'd love lack of Flash support to slow the relentless rise of Apple's locked-down products. But I'd love the popularity of Apple's products to hasten the demise of Flash and the adoption of web standards.

Which side am I supposed to be on, goddammit?

Microsoft 'offered sex and drugs to distributors'

Jerome 0

I wonder...

Interesting that Microsoft filed suit for breach of contract, but not for anything to do with the drug-fuelled orgy allegations. Is that a tacit admission?

Playmobil throws down animation gauntlet

Jerome 0
Boffin

Well, duh.

It's the minimum amount of Playmobil that one person could survive on in a year. Obviously.

Potty mouth hackers pwn TechCrunch (again)

Jerome 0
Coat

Pony trekking Guatemalans

"and a passable command of the English Language"

You had me convinced up until that point.

Jerome 0
Thumb Down

Poor effort

Why do these hackers never do anything cool with their defacements? If they're going to go to all the trouble of carrying out the attack, and even risk jail time in doing so, you'd think they'd spend 10 minutes knocking up something a little cool to put on the front page, rather than some pissy little rant shoehorned into the top of the HTML.

If these guys are the equivalent of little kids scrawling their tags on overpasses, I want to know where the Banksy of hacking has got to.

Apple's Tablet won't save Big Dumb Media

Jerome 0

Apple micropayments

I agree that micropayments are the way forward. I've been saying that since they were first hyped by the media several years ago, and then completely forgotten about.

The trouble is, Apple is hardly the ideal company to implement micropayments. To them, a micropayment is not a penny, it's more like £2.50.

Gates backs China in Google censorship spat

Jerome 0
Gates Halo

Credit?

“Now, if Google ever chooses to pull out of the United States, then I'd give them credit.”

He'd give them more than credit, he'd give them a great big hug.

'Aurora' code circulated for years on English sites

Jerome 0

Target of the attack

Surely which attack was used is virtually irrelevant. The important fact is that the attackers seemed interested only in accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents. I can think of very few groups who would find that particular information valuable.

Apple tablet wins open source Appceleration

Jerome 0
IT Angle

Prescient computing

In the event that there is no Apple tablet (admittedly unlikely, sadly) can we get an assurance from Titanium that their entire Cynical Media Hype Generation Department will be sacked?

Mozilla buries heels on un-YouTube open video

Jerome 0

Really?

I'm sorry, I'm no fan of Flash and I'll be glad to see it die out as a video platform, but the alternatives at the time Flash video first appeared were dreadful. If you didn't notice how much nicer video on the web suddenly became, you must have been living on another planet. Or running Linux. Yeah, that's below the belt. Sorry.

China denies role in cyber attacks on Google

Jerome 0
Thumb Up

Re: Google's new motto

That's the only surefire way to do no evil.

Jumbo-jet laser cannon tested against missile

Jerome 0
Boffin

Lethal destruction

Yes, you're missing the part of the quote which says "This test engagement was not intended to lethally destroy the missile." I suppose that does leave the possibility they were intending to non-lethally destroy the missile, although I'm not quite sure how that would work.

Google explains China Syndrome by advertising - on Google

Jerome 0

Common sense

They probably assumed that anyone incapable of changing their default search engine from Binghoo to something decent is too dumb to understand their message.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-WX1

Jerome 0

No card

No card supplied? Good. How many people use the tiny capacity card that manufacturers include with their products anyway? It just ends up at the bottom of a drawer. May as well keep the price down by not providing customers with something utterly worthless.

Can't argue about the Memory Stick though. I certainly won't be buying any product that doesn't support SD.

Oz man coughs to DD-jub job advert outrage

Jerome 0

Expensive

Man pays $300 to apologise for giving people all over the world a good laugh.

Euro astro biz: It's time for solar panels in Spaaace

Jerome 0

Monty Burns would be proud

"Space-based solar power is a potentially unlimited resource"

By the time we've completely encased the Earth in a shell of orbiting solar panels, we'll have not only exhausted this "potentially unlimited resource", but possibly also caused some minor side-effects to boot.

Bill Gates hits Twitter, re-opens Facebook

Jerome 0

Friends or fans?

"That compares to 31,361 following him within the four hours of joining Twitter. So much for his complaint in 2009 when he closed his Facebook account of being overwhelmed when just 10,000 people wanted to be his friend."

The clue is in the words here: "friends" and "followers". Facebook is not designed for you to have a bunch of random strangers as friends. Twitter, on the other hand, is there so that your legions of adoring fans can hang on your every word. There's no comparison between BillyG's 30,000 odd Twitter followers (all good) and 10,000 Facebook "friends" (you are doing it wrong).

Google ices Android launches in China

Jerome 0

Business sense?

I wonder how the companies who used the (open source) Android OS for their handsets will react to Google effectively scuppering their product launch? That's got to give them pause for thought when they start to design their next handset, and consider whether to go with Android, WM or an in-house solution.

New service hamstrings Google data hoarding

Jerome 0

A joke?

Why? It's perfectly amusing enough, without coming up with a joke around it.

Avatar kills Taiwanese man

Jerome 0

Another planet?

The actors were motion-captured and their movements and expressions animated onto the 12 foot tall blue guys. Acting *and* CGI, no plastic surgery required. Amazing what you can do with modern technology, eh?

Germans unveil robots 'controlled by chaos itself'

Jerome 0

Choas?

Controlled by chaos? Looks more like an iPaq to me.

'Anti-cyberbullying' rapper sorry for SMS smack talk

Jerome 0

Dumbshow

"If you can't see that there's one big difference then you are as dumb as you seem."

Why thank you!

"Ross and Brand were employed by the BBC"

So your point is that it's okay for celebs to do anything they like, including issuing death threats to members of the public, as long as they're not employed by the BBC? Interesting viewpoint.

Jerome 0
Flame

Over-excited?

"Dappy himself is yet to apologise to Moody directly for his childish behaviour (which led one over-excited newspaper to cry "BBC in new 'Sachsgate'")"

Over-excited? Let's see: -

Sachsgate: two celebrities annoy another celebrity by phone, in an unfunny but relatively harmless prank.

New Sachsgate: celebrity(?) makes death threats against a member of the public.

I know which of the two seems worse to me, but perhaps I just have an odd opinion of this kind of thing.

Google Wave invites stack up - who's still playing?

Jerome 0

shinning testimate

I don't know - personally I think his post was a shinning testimate to his intelligence.

Sony Ericsson Yari

Jerome 0

No headphones either

In the case of this particular handset, it's not much of a loss. No headphone socket? In 2010? Not even the option of one of those incredibly annoying adaptor cables? Laughable.

Acer T230H multi-touch monitor

Jerome 0

Widescreen

I quite agree, losing that extra bit of screen resolution is rather annoying. Calling 120 pixels "nearly 200" is pushing it a bit though. :)

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