WSA?
5'6" and flying Jet Blue, a supermodel? Hm, something is wrong with that picture.
Speaking of pictures, after a quick Google I need a lie down now, Photoshop and cosmetic surgeries or not.
Posts by J 3
896 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
Playboy centrefold freaks out at 10,000 feet
Software re-sale restricted by US Court of Appeals
Email worm wants to party like it's 1999 (almost)
Monday 13th September 2010 10:24 GMT
@BSOD?
Then you must have been really lucky. Win95 (and 98) with rare BSOD? Yeah, right. Any hardware too, nothing dodgy. Look funny at memory allocation and the thing falls over. If you had started your series with Win 2000, the last Windows I used to a reasonable extent, I might have believed you. That seemed much more solid as far as I remember (10 years is a long time). But including Win95 and 98 in that statement seriously undermined your whole point there.
Netizens now Facebook more than they Google
Monday 13th September 2010 02:29 GMT
Maybe, maybe not...
Yes, the numbers are absurd, but... have you seen ComScores' original statistics and methods? I haven't, they are probably for pay. I can't be arsed to search really. I'm speculating here.
But it could very well be that something got "lost in translation" there, either in ComScores' reports, or the media's (considering the average quality of journalists regarding "technical" things like basic statistics' concepts and science, it wouldn't be surprising). I don't know how ComScores monitors these things, but if it is like the old time TV audience stats, they would be monitoring a certain amount of (hopefully) representative users instead of the whole population, and counting the usage patterns of *those people only*. You know, the type of thing statisticians do -- because if you observe the WHOLE population it's not statistics, it's a census.
So, maybe the 40 or so million minutes where spent by the sample monitored, NOT by all the possible users summed, and someone screwed the pooch in the reporting of the whole thing. The significant numbers then would be the *percentage* of time spent in which activity, which should be the same as for the whole set of users represented by that sample (if it was selected appropriately).
It would be interesting to know what the truth actually is in this case. Just for laughs.
'Hyperbolic map' of the internet will save it from COLLAPSE
Rackspace claims credit for shushing Koran-burning 'pastor'
Thursday 9th September 2010 16:50 GMT
@Genius. A pint for you.
Well... I took the mention of the fake hockey mom and fake hunter as a way of implying that condemnation of this guy's plan is coming from all sides -- even the publicly anti-Islamic ones. By the way, now they (the anti-Islamic) are using this to boost their campaign against the "ground-zero" (it isn't) "mosque" (it isn't either), by saying it's the same situation -- just because you have the right to do it in America, it does not mean you should, they say.
Oh well, as other fellow commentards already said, it's the media's fault. A tiny loony ignored is a tiny loony no one would have ever heard of.
New iPod crew: 'Phoney, futuristic, retro, doomed'
Thursday 2nd September 2010 20:52 GMT
Here's my why...
"Why do you or anyone else need a portable music device? Do you not have a cell phone?"
Yup, I do have a cell phone. It's for emergencies and important stuff. I don't want to drain its battery playing games, taking (crappy, at least on my phone) pictures, browsing the web and listening to music and then, when I need to call or text, I can't. And I only call or text when it's important. Because I hate phones. Apparently my phone is capable of playing music, but I've never tried. I did try the camera. It's shit. I'm a photographer and I can't accept that quality even for unimportant stuff. Of course I don't carry my SLRs around unless it's a photo outing -- I just leave an old point and shoot Canon in my backpack for everyday needs. Cheap, small enough to be unnoticed (could even be in a coat pocket), and takes pictures with a quality that cell phones can only dream of. Maybe now one can buy an expensive cell that actually takes good pics as good (without the crazy noise, aberrations, and compression), but sure as hell the cheap ones can't.
Porn-browsing Oz minister quits
Dell data center biz invaded by California hippies
Paris Hilton tweets armed intruder drama
Australian Sex Party stands proud
MOON SHRINKING FAST - shock NASA discovery
Ellison wrestles Google to strangle 'unofficial' Java
Monday 16th August 2010 09:02 GMT
@Stiggy
That was my thought too. If Java is licensed under GPL (even if v 2), no one can restrict where or how it can be run -- that's one of the four basic freedoms. You might not be allowed to *call* it Java if you use in a way Oracle does not like, maybe (I haven't seen the relevant licenses, not want to, honestly), but that would be a trademark issue and not software. Just like you could fork Linux, but could not call it Linux. What about, say, something robotic sounding... :-)
"It seems that Oracle is arguing that Google's Android has violated its Java patents by running on a mobile device, where it's not allowed, instead of sticking to the desktop, where it's permitted."
Now, they seem to be trying to go around that by suing on *patents*... but if the patent forces you to break one of GPL's implied freedoms, then how does it work? Does the license trumps the patent (I'd think so), or vice-versa? If it was GPL v.3, that would be a different story...
119 iPad apps for admins, coders, and geeks
Perseid meteors 'thrill star-gazers'
Friday 13th August 2010 21:22 GMT 
OK
Here in VA, USA it was quite humid and cloudy, but fortunately most of the night was clear (until 3 am when the thick clouds and fog closed in and sent me back home. Condensation on the lenses and other stuff was brutal though, and several photos got a "dreamy look" that I'd rather not have. Not lucky with the photos -- saw several nice ones (manyl of them were not Perseids), but my camera was always doing an exposure AWAY from that at the time. Damn it. Only got a very faint one in a photo, over about 5 hours out there (a more lucky friend caught two). Saw at least two or three strong ones though, and some folks who were there in the woods for about the same time as me counted about 140 total.
Hotmail still not working? Use Chrome to fix it, says MS
Wednesday 11th August 2010 00:41 GMT
@tempemeaty
While I understand your point, even if a little on the loony conspiracy theory side (c'mon, it's not "elitism", it's just that they want to sell more stuff and squeeze people of as much money as possible, i.e. business as usual), I have to point out that I myself do run the latest browsers (except IE and Safari) on an 8 year old computer at home that was donated by a friend who had no more use for it. Everything works fine, even if not as snappy as it is in the dual core computer with 4 GB of RAM I use at work, for example. But I do use an efficient OS.
Just saying.
How an ancient printer can spill your most intimate secrets
Octopus-gate chief exec resigns over private data sale
Saturday 7th August 2010 20:42 GMT 
Good but...
Is it a meaningful penalty? I haven't seen any further details of this anywhere, but how much money did they make by selling the data to begin with? HK$1 million? HK$100 million? If it was the former, then sure, the amount they have to give is reasonable and make them think twice next time. If it was the later, then crime did pay. So, how much did they make?
Private browsing modes in four biggest browsers often fail
Apple preps iOS fix as Germany warns of iPhone peril
Apple as a religion: How the iPhone became divine
Wednesday 4th August 2010 21:12 GMT
Yeah...
That site is funny, no matter what PC people might say -- I'm very liberal, practically an anarcho-socialist, but I don't like PCness for its own sake. And I'm white (at least until people hear my accent). And I don't care what color/species/gender/nationality/OS preference (see, going back to the topic there) the guys who write that comedy site are, I still think it's (usually) funny.
Anyway, the site is not *exactly* about white people in general. It's about *American* while people; just see the entry on World Cup to see what I mean...
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2010/06/01/133-the-world-cup/
Being offensive is not cool, but being overly sensitive is so irritating...
Superhero game beta sucks boobs into honeypot
Is it a phone? Is it a Taser? No, it's a cattle prod!
Wednesday 4th August 2010 21:11 GMT 
Dangers of fast reading...
For more than a second there, when I saw "Novel explanation for mobile stun gun", I thought: Novell is making stun guns that look like cell phones!? COOL! :-)
Then I read the article and found there ARE stun guns that look like cell phones, although the Penguin peddler has nothing to do with it, alas. That could be amusing to watch. Wrong button and a call will be dropped, but for a more, ahem, shocking reason...
Stealth fighter in Canadian Wikipedia brouhaha
Firefox market share drops as IE makes slender gain
Wednesday 4th August 2010 01:13 GMT
@Big Deal?
Yes, big deal.
Why do you think browsers are better about open standards nowadays? Because MS saw the error of their ways and decided to come to the light side of the Force?
And why do you think that if one browser reaches near-monopoly again (specially if it is a browser from some big company) it will not just do things as it wants, creating its own "standards" ? (again)
As long as NO browser gets too much of the market (how much exactly that cap would be, I don't know), then we can have a reasonable chance of things improving in the open standards department. Not to mention that they keep each other on their toes -- everyone would quite likely still be using IE6 or something only slightly made up for looks if it wasn't for the growth of non-MS browsers.
Liberal Google, Yahoo!, Apple hurting America claims Reagan
Social-engineering contest reveals secret BP info
Sunday 1st August 2010 15:30 GMT
@Yep
The problem is that, paradoxically enough, the most educated people are actually an easier target of skillful charlatans -- it's what I call the Randi effect, although I don't remember if it was him who first said it or not.
Why? Intellectual hubris.
Well educated people have higher opinions of themselves and of their skills than less educated folks. So, when confronted with a scam, trick, whatever, they sure are more likely to spot what is wrong (or that at least something must be) than the "simpletons" -- but is the trickery is actually better than they can spot, they are more likely to believe that everything is real and fine. After all, they are so smart and no one could be tricking them, right? Whereas the "simpletons" are more likely to accept that they are not able to see the trick.
That's why one has to be weary when hearing that some psychic event, for instance, was witnessed by scientists. Without knowing the exact circumstances of the "experiment" (was it controlled? happened at a neutral setting? was it independently and consistently verified? etc.), that means nothing.
And that's why James Randi hasn't have to get rid of that $1 million yet.
RFID chips snooped from 66 metres
'Death to browsers!' cries Apple mobile-app patent
'Suspicious' Android wallpaper app nabs user data
Data for 100m Facebook accounts published to BitTorrent
Friday 30th July 2010 08:54 GMT
@Nader
I see you haven't heard of the Internet Archive and similar projects.
When I search for the site running on my lab's computer I get:
"We're sorry, access to http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt."
And no, my site's URL is not xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Or go here to see El Reg in 1998 (instead of annoying Flash you get annoying animated GIFs, yay):
http://web.archive.org/web/19980628145626/http://www.theregister.co.uk/
Battle joined for future of open source IPS
3D films fall flat
Monday 26th July 2010 21:04 GMT 
Meh too
Yeah, Avatar looked great in 3D, even if the story was a bad space-age rewrite of Pocahontas.
Clash of the Titans looked terriblein 3D, and ever since I haven't bothered with 3D movies anymore. When they are just $1 more than the 2D (or even same price, if you bring your own glasses from a previous show) and the 3D version was not a rushed conversion from the 2D, as CotT was, then I might go back to seeing the 3D version.
Unpatched shortcut vuln exploited by mainstream malware
Malaysia bans 'satanic' Man Utd kit
Apple 'stunned' by iProduct demand
Thursday 22nd July 2010 03:59 GMT
Maybe now
Maybe it does not increase demand directly. IANAE, but I remember reading somewhere ("Superfreakonomics", maybe) that artificial scarcity of a product is a common and well known (in economist circles, at least) way of increasing the "value" of things. The price, at least. Something that is always sold out must be good, right? (thinks hoi polloi) It sure gets the product in the news. Flood the market and the value goes down -- and so goes public interest and therefore profit. Sure, it might make a few inpatient folks give up and buy something else or nothing at all -- although I seriously doubt that someone with their mind set into buying an iPad would think "oh, I'll just get a netbook instead". And I love my netbook and would not buy an iPad (at least not at current price and being the first version of the thing). But most folks just get in line, place the order and go home wait for their toy -- which will fell like the best ever, since it was so "hard" to get.
I mean, who would be silly enough to believe Apple did not foresee the success of the iPhone 4!? The iPad, I'd be more willing to believe, since it was a "new concept" (a giant iPod Touch, will people fall for it? my girlfriend did and she and her daughter love the thing). But given the 3 years of iPhone history, they sure knew what was coming.
NASA drops Ubuntu's Koala food for (real) open source
The Register comment guidelines 2010
Tuesday 20th July 2010 08:27 GMT
Titles, titles...
"6. We're thick-skinned, but... if you slag off The Register or its writers your comment is likely to get canned - this is our house, after all. Requests for writers to be sacked or for stories not to have been published are never going to get through. Use your common sense."
Maybe it is my non-native English understanding of "slag off", but isn't this one a bit too much? Sure, as stated (twice) in the guidelines it is your thing and you do whatever you want. No problem with that. But if people think an article (or a writer) is bad and gives reasons for that opinion (even if you don't agree with said reasons), would that count as "slagging off"? What's the harm (except to egos, heh) of people expressing their opinion that a certain article should never seen the light of monitors because of X, or that author Y always writes the same old monotone whatever about Z?
Anyway, cheers for the guidelines and all the moderating efforts, specially on a free content site.
Vista-hating Microsoft throws poo at Apple's iPhone 4
Thursday 15th July 2010 16:06 GMT
@D'oh
And since when do phones come with a manual stating how to "hold it like a normal human being"?? If you did hang around human beings at all, you'd have noticed nobody needs instruction on how to hold their phones, they just pick it up any way the want and use the thing, no worries about not touching this or that corner -- my el cheapo phone that came free certainly didn't come with such instructions, and I've never paid attention how I'm holding it, which can be several different ways and either hand, depending on what I'm doing. Amazingly enough, it's yet to drop a call in two years of use. Funny, that.
Famous 'Invisible Gorilla' trick vid gets sequel
Tuesday 13th July 2010 08:25 GMT
Arrogant but possibly stupid as well.
So, trying to save face after being spotted being a dick, Tony Barnes? Sorry it feels bad, but that's life.
Or maybe you're slightly psychopathic and do not consider, as most normal people would, that saying (and I paraphrase you here) "hey, I can do this; everyone who can't must be stupid" is neither arrogant nor the worst way to make friends and influence people.
After all, you did write something like "that is just retarded" (I assume you're talking about the test) and questions over the intelligence of people who can't spot the changes. How else should people understand those terms?
Oh, and just in time: I didn't see the color change or the person leaving.
'Holland wins World Cup' declares CBSNews
Consumer Reports: 'We were wrong about the iPhone 4'
Iomega eGo Desktop USB 3.0 external HDD
Monday 12th July 2010 20:56 GMT 
Cool, but...
OK, it looks interesting. But the brand Iomega brings back bad memories from the days of the unbelievably unreliable Zip drives and cartridges (I had the 100 MB version some 10 years ago or so, and it was always getting corrupted and non-readable; other friends had similar horror stories). The disk itself is Seagate, but still, the bad taste lingers...
Waterfall Niagara speakers
Saturday 10th July 2010 12:44 GMT
what 25 grand’s worth of speaker actually sounded like
I reckon they probably sound exactly like the 10-20x cheaper ones, once you do a proper double blind evaluation of both with a good sample of listeners. Knowing the price of something makes it look/taste/sound/feel/etc. better, it's a well known psychological fact.
I can't believe nobody has used this icon yet, on a story about pathetically expensive speakers.
Hup Holland, viva España
Cowon iAudio J3 personal media player
Thursday 8th July 2010 00:04 GMT
Almost....
All this screen goodness seems pretty wasted on a device that is not used for applications or web browsing, I think.
Anyway, this is a very tempting device and what would have made me buy this one today is one piece of functionality that the iPod touch has but the J3 (see, it even matches my Reg handle!) doesn't: web connectivity. Apps, I don't care that much about -- maybe there are good ones, maybe not. I've never had an iThing that uses apps, so can't really tell. But having a pocket Internet device can be very useful. A friend here at work has a Touch, and I've seen it be quite handy several times when a quick browse was needed.
And no, I don't want to have a phone to do that. Phone, for me, is for talking or texting when something important / urgent is needed. I don't want to discover I don't have enough battery left for that important communication because I drained it all listening to music, playing games and/or browsing the web on the phone...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
