* Posts by Bill B

287 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2009

Page:

Menorcan politician flashes substantial chesticles

Bill B

@might work ....

YOU BASTARD!!!!!

Now I've got a mental image of AW in all her glory and IT WON'T GO AWAY

I'm off to shoot myself

NoTW offers apologies, 'regret' over phone hacks

Bill B

New Keyboard!!!

"Our pride in our journalism remains undiminished"

The NoTW said this? With a straight face??

For those who don't know the paper and think it's a quality newspaper, its alternative name is 'News of the Screws'

Past editors include that well known pillar of the community, Piers Moron ^h^h^h^h^h Morgan

Wind power: Even worse than you thought

Bill B

Pumped Storage???

Agree with longbeast. Not sure why the article only comments about pumped storage. There are other ways of storing energy and if anything is true of the renewables business it is that a lot of reserach is being put into it.

Yes the article is correct. Without storage wind energy is very ineffective. So we need some way of storing that energy without building a Dinorwig every time. One technology being invested in is flow batteries .. although these are in their infancy they could be quite interesting.

In addition, research is going into increasing the power density and reliability of the turbines themselves so that the things become cheaper to run and install.

I'm actually a fan of Nuclear Power but i do think that these articles on Wind Energy need to have a certain amount of belief in development behind them.

There's some pretty amazing developments going on in all areas of the energy business .. Nuclear, wind, wherever. I would really love an article from Mr Page that looked into all of them.

Wanted: Nude female web coders

Bill B

Age discrimination

When I last looked its also illegal to discriminate on the grounds of age, so the idea that someone can advertiise for 'young females' to do a job where the person doesn't need to be young or female is a bit off

Mozilla puts squeeze on slow Firefox add-ons

Bill B

Top bar is way too big?

errr .. sampler .. have you actually seen FF4?

I'm running it right now and there isn't a top bar to speak of. .. a bar with tabs and a bar for addresses. That's it

Bill B

trade offs

I downvoted this post and then thought i'd better reply because its possible carol is new to programming and didn't realise that the clever reply was just that .. clever .. but not intelligent.

Any functionality within a program needs to load code to implement that functionality. The process of loading that code will take time. It's possible to optimise the loading of the code so it appears that the system loads fast, but in all cases that code has to be loaded at some point. When the code is loaded is part of the the compromise and trade off.

Any add on adds to the functionality. Opera may have all the functionality of all the add ons that you would ever want in FireFox without having to use an add on but it *still* has to load that code. Having said that, Opera has an add on architecture .. just it bundles some of the stuff FF views as an add on into the system.

It is likely, therefore, that Opera itself has to have made trade offs .. what functionality can it do without in order to speed up the start up (Or to put it simply .. what code can it avoid loading at start up?).

Now i know Opera has a built in debugger. But i can bet you that Opera has made compomises concerning the loading and running of this debugger at start up because, lets face it, very few people outside the esteemed readers of this publication are going to need or use a debugger so it actually doesn't *have* to be loaded so .. oh dear .. I've just made a compromise, haven't I?

Opera, IE, Safri, Firefox will all induldge in trade offs. Which architecture you choose is a matter of personal taste and browser religion. Just don't try and be too clever about it.

George Lucas 'very happy' with 3D Phantom Menace

Bill B

Translated Quote

"our goal has been to enhance the classic Star Wars theatrical experience"

should read

"our goal is the help George Lucas milk his old stuff as much as possible without him having to do anything original or creative any more"

Nokia deal to 'rocket Windows Phone 7 past iPhone'

Bill B

The proof of the pudding

As with any crystal ball gazing, you have to ask how accurate said gazer has been in the past. What's IDC's track record? How well have they done in the past? Do they tend to do a big fail or are their predictions usually born out by events?

I could say that Meego will achieve 90% market share, but I don't expect anyone to believe me.

Google Docs plugs into email, turns 'comments' into 'discussions'

Bill B

maybe but

The problem with the telephone is a) it can be expensive if its a long distance call and b) you can't record the conversation.

The kind of feature here is very good for collaborating between geographically distant design teams. A proposal document is put out and the resultant discussion can then be recorded so that when someone asks "why did you choose to do it *that* way?" you can point to the audit record.

WTF is... cloud gaming?

Bill B

@fixed it

Agreed. Steam games are not lower priced, they are set by the publisher and are sometimes higher than buying off (say) amazon.

Valve had some excuse for it but can't be bothered to look it up.

Fukushima update: No chance cooling fuel can breach vessels

Bill B

Upvote

I would upvote your post about 10 times if I could.

It makes my blood boil to see BBC News headlines "Disaster in Japan" followed by a story on the difficult (but progressing) shutdown of a nuclear plant. Very little is said about the massive humanitarian disaster in the surrounding countryside caused by the earthquake and tsunami.

The biggest danger is that people focus on the minor incident and forget the major one and that much needed support is lost as a result.

Adobe releases Wallaby to jump Jobsian Flash ban

Bill B

Apple reconsider?

I don't see that happening whilst Jobs is involved in the company. His 'Flash' letter effectively painted Appple into a corner. Flash could be completely rewitten to provide a low power, highly reliable tool and Apple still wouldn't be able to use it because Jobs put the stakes so high.

Cloud gaming storms into the UK

Bill B

Nope .. no invites left

Follow the link .. it tests your bandwidth, then says 'Congratulations, you're in; We'll let you know when more Beta Invites are in'

Anon Mail commenters to stay anon

Bill B

Nooooo!!!!

@Rob Moir ... Damn you for injecting a Rick Astley song into my head!!

Man found guilty of battery after ejaculating in co-worker's drink

Bill B

To all those males that don't know what semen tastes like

This may be true. But it is very likely that a woman might. If you don't know why this is you need more sex education.

Fujitsu relieves Ballmer's iPad pressure

Bill B

had to read this twice

I agree with the conclusions you came after visiting the Apple Store. The iPad isn't a computer.

On the other hand ...

a) In this country it's not necessary to visit a store to come to this conclusion. We have something caled the I-N-T-E-R-N-E-T which allows you to do research before travelling to a store with a lot of cash in your pocket.. You may have something similar where you are

b) I'm confused. This was a present for you or your wife?

Bill B

you sir ...

Owe me a frontal lobotomy. Nothing less will expunge *that* image.

One third of Russians say Sun revolves round Earth

Bill B

which leads on to

Does the moon revolve around the Earth? Or the Sun? Neither? Or the centre of the galaxy? Or ...

(pick your frame of reference)

Anonymous hacktivists: We've got Stuxnet code

Bill B

complexity

The complexity of Stuxnet partly lies in its ability to infect very different targets. In particular, its ability to infect the programmer message handler and get it to infect the PLC points to a knowledge (possibly reverse engineering) of the Siemens programming toolset and PLC. It's quite likely that the coders had access to the PLC hardware in order to reverse engineer it.

So getting Stuxnet to work on 'another' brand of PLC might require the purchase of the PLC so that it too can be reverse engineered.

The infection by Stuxnet of windows PCs is only part of the infection. That was the easy part.

Enough with the Apple App Store apathy

Bill B

What's the problem?

Unlike the Microsoft episode, its not a single market. Android has a greater share of the smartphone market than Apple. If you don't like it, there's other, bigger fish in the sea.

Apple are taking a gamble .. that a closed controlled market is better than a free open one. The fact that there *is* a free open one .. and it is able to take Apple on, means that we have a bit of healthy competition.

If Apple loses developers, and loses significant market share then it will change its (i)tune. Its not a monopoly. Let the market decide in this case.

Flickr flap illuminates cloud concerns

Bill B
Pint

Could the cloud allow you to backup?

OK all you IT experts, help me out here.

Would it be possible for the cloud service to permit you to backup your own data?

Simplistically, lets take an example. I use Picasa to share me photos. It allows a 'web synch' that synchs what's on my computer with what is in the cloud, but only to a limited extent. It doesn't synch other people's comments, links or a lot of other meta data.

But .. wouldn't it be possible for the service provider to provide that as additional synched data. In that way I could 'backup' the cloud data myself.

Possible or completely unrealistic?

Can't find the icon for 'embedded systems grunt' so beer will have to do.

'You don't even know what change management is'

Bill B

Will the real AO stand up.

I agree. This article has a comments section so it can't be a real AO production. There are *some* things in life that you *can* rely on.

Boffins hope for dimensional portal event at LHC by 2013!

Bill B

in your coat

The dried frog pills are in your left hand pocket.

Passenger cleared after TSA checkpoint stare-down

Bill B

Airport public property?

Different in the US then.

In the UK the airports are owned by private companies (e.g BAA) who then allow the public on their property for the purposes of business.

We've already had incidents in the UK where people were photographing the chaos at airports over winter and were asked not to. I think it was established that the airport was within its rights to do this unfortunately. *They* can say what goes on on *their* land.

Bit surprised to find that that airports in the US are public property.

Bill B

So the next step ...

As I read it this means that internal flights in the US can be anonymous. The ticket does *not* need a name on it because no ID is required to check that the name on the ticket matches the person who is carrying it. Puts the airline on the same footing as a bus or train.

That means the only tickets that need a name on it are international ones, which can be checked by airline staff.

Be interesting to see how this pans out.

Bookshop swaps Kindles for real books

Bill B

Only downside of an e-reader

is that you can't lend books.

I'm hoping that eventually the publishers will lift themselves out of the middle ages and permit a mechanism that allows me to lend (or give) a book to someone. I don't think they would lose out. There's a few books I've read because someone has lent me a book and said 'Try this, you'll like the author'.

And no, it wasn't Dan Brown. Come to think of it, that is another downside of an e-reader .. I can't give crap books to a second hand bookshop.

Raised res iPad 2 to sport four-core chip?

Bill B

@idle speculation

Oh come on! You can't possibly be complaining about this. The ONLY reason for an iPad/Googlepad release is the months of fanciful speculation that it engenders.

That and the Fanbois/Fandroid handbagging.

California's green-leccy price system will stifle plug-in cars

Bill B

So, who is right?

Following the link, the key quote from the LA Mayor's office is

"The cost on a per mile basis for charging an EV versus paying for gasoline is approximately 50% – 75% less. In other words, a family who currently spends about $60 per week on gasoline for one car could instead pay as little as $15 on their electric bill by charging their vehicle at night."

Mythical 'iPad 2' caught on camera

Bill B
Pint

Ahh the iPad rumours have started

I was getting worried but I'm happy now.

I can look forward to months of speculation on how it will be made, whether the latest order of 10" e-ink screens from a factory in Mongolia are for the iPad, the latest leak of feature set and of course, the interminable handbagging between Fandroids and Fanbois.

Life is good

China's 'stealth fighter' flies – brown trouser time, or not?

Bill B

"Success of western economies"

You may not have noticed but these successful western economies have tanked recently. The only substantial economic growth at the moment is in places like ... er .. China.

Besides which, China has a massive internal market.

Other posters have poo pooed Chinese quality. I'm old enough to remember when 'made in Japan' was a joke (cars, electronics etc). Japanese cars are now among the most reliable. Maybe China will follow the same path?

Ubuntu tablet rumored for early 2011 launch

Bill B

Don't understand

Sorry .. don't understand this comment. Why could an Ubuntu based tablet be "a more credible rival to the iPad than Android"?

Android for tablet has some big development muscle behind it, in the OS, in the UI and in the marketplace.

The iPad demonstrated that success is a lot about the user experience, both in the way the thing 'feels' and in what is available to it. Goggle's picked up on that, developing a version of Android that is more suited towards tablets.

Ubuntu may be attempting this, but what makes it a 'more credible rival'??

US Navy's electric plane-thrower successfully launches an F-18

Bill B
Grenade

So basically what you are saying is...

"They are powering up their weapons, Captain"

McDonald's breach bares nuggets of customer data

Bill B

An unmanned firm?

"The data was held by an unmanned email database management firm "

Does that mean they sacked them before the event, or after?

Apple chap knocks up ancient Lego computer

Bill B

broaden your horizens

I don't think that religion was the only factor, Chinese science was stifled more by politics than religion.

Mass mind control artist condemns El Reg to obscurity

Bill B

I agree

I thought it was a specialist shop till collectors magazine.

Couldn't understand why everyone seemed to be off topic.

DHS airport spooks stalk star hacker

Bill B
Coffee/keyboard

You, sir ...

owe me a new keyboard

So did Windows Phone 7 'bomb in US'?

Bill B
Paris Hilton

@lead balloon

Complex, held together with tape, leaks all over the place and goes down sooner rather than later?

Paris because well..err..ummm

Google: Oracle doctored that 'copied Java code'

Bill B
Thumb Up

my reaction as well

I think Google have just painted a large red target on Android and sent a messge to every IP owner saying "Come and get me".

Our PARIS becomes GLOBAL MEDIA SENSATION

Bill B
Thumb Down

What?????

The Playmonaut is married???

I am devastated!

Bill B
Thumb Up

Yup I loved the story

Good on the Reg for getting in the papers. The editors sexed up the story a bit .. like "the team then tracked the plane using GPS as it took an hour and a half to glide down" .. or .. "the paper plane glided back taking dozens of photographs".

But that's the big media for you. At least you got the publicity and hopefully more sponsors for Paris II

PARIS laid bare in intimate snaps

Bill B
Thumb Up

One last throw

I would love to see a video of Paris being thrown from a high building, just to find out what her flight characteristics actually *are*.

But I also appreciate you might want to keep her in one piece and give her pride of place in the office.

Apple to triple iTunes song sample length

Bill B
Megaphone

Spotify

I still use ad supported Spotify to find out if I like a track. No idea why iTunes doesn't allow the same listening model.

Airport screeners go for the groin

Bill B

Staff Volunteers

When these people applied for the job the job description probably didn't include "Regular feeling up of someone of the same sex". So I tend to agree .. this could be as humiliating for the staff as it is for the passenger.

PARIS nursing mother of all hangovers

Bill B
Black Helicopters

Set-Up

I agree. The photo is quite clearly staged to make it 'look' as if the happy rescuers have spied the aircraft and are running towards it. However, it's obvious that the cameraman has just put the plane on the ground and told them to walk away a bit and then run joyfully towards the camera.

In addition its completely impossible for the aircraft to have come down in a thick pine forest without bouncing off some branches and sustaining more damage than a small hole. There is no trace of skid marks on the ground. The 'loss of telemetry' is suspicious (yeah right) and anyway the shadows are all wrong.

It's plainly obvious that this is a fake and anyone who disagrees is an idiot and in the pay of the government. and probably a Thetan as well.

Damn this tinfoil hat scratches

PARIS HAS LANDED!!! Epic supra-atmos flight ends

Bill B
Black Helicopters

Goat track

Yup, watching the car chase and i reckon they have a sat nav in there just about to direct them up a goat track.

Black helicopter 'cause they may need that to get them off the mountain

Behind the Kindle, under the iPad: an unholy alliance

Bill B

20%

Having done a bit of reserach on this it looks like the conclusion is ...

"For a large print run 10% of the cost of the book is the printing; 10% the distribution"

So in your example $2 would be saved by skipping these steps

Bill B

Cost of ebooks

"Yes, it's outrageous to pay as much, if not more, for an electronic copy "

OK, it's a small sample, but so far I've bought 8 Kindle books .. each time they were cheaper than their 'paper' equivalent .. and amazon tends to be cheaper than others as well.

Admittedly, one did cost 8 quid .. but that was cheaper than the only other available hardback version. On the other hand, one cost me 2 quid .. an old book that had been (presumably) republished because a film had been made of it.

The pricing logic on Amazon seems to be that the older the book, the cheaper it gets. A bit like the paper based stuff really.

One final thing .. there is this myth that an ebook should be a *lot* cheaper than a paper book. The costs of publishing involve a lot more than just printing onto paper. In fact, I would suspect that is one of the minor costs. Editing, proof reading, layout are all people intensive tasks and likely to be the expensive bits.

Bill B

Just a minor correction

"The iPad by comparison is tied to a single closed platform, though some of their books are decidedly pretty — and the animations distracting."

I think you meant iBooks. The iPad is agnostic about what books can be read on it .. apps for iBook, Kindle and Stanza for starters

Amazon shrinks books with Kindle Singles

Bill B
Thumb Up

Agreed

I went for Kindle because they seem to have a good marketplace for what I read (mostly sc-fi) and the reader is platform agnostic (runs on their own Kindle, a PC, iPhone, android).

You can take it as read that I wanted an ebook. Run out of bookshelves for the paper stuff and having to make decisions as to what books to throw out .. Azimov or Arthur C Clarke?

Navy Carriers: We want two or no votes for you, Tories

Bill B
Unhappy

Research needed

"The .. Korean ...yards don't need constant propping up with government money"

Really? Massive debts written off by State owned banks?. Ships sold at less than the cost of production? You should do your research before making a statement like that.

Page: