* Posts by stu

56 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Jul 2007

Page:

BT slammed for 'importing' cheap Indian contractors

stu

Racism dressed up in Corporate Capitist clothes

that is all it is.

Go back to 1950s America, where 2 works next to each other doing the exact same wage got different salaries because one was black and one was white.

Most people would not suggest this is not unfair and a travesty.

However, ferry in the 'blacks' from abroad under the wing of a friendly corporation.

now company A is not employing white and black people doing the same job next to each other at different salaries... oh no...

now it is 'just capitilism'.

The fact the company A gets company B to supply em with 'blacks' for half the price as the other works is fine.. its just a coincidence apparently that they are onshores....

nothing to see here. all fair....

total sh1te imho.

It's old schoold racism in new clothes and it's pathetic and wrong by any normal persons moral standards.

DARPA at work on 'Transformer TX', a proper flying car

stu
Happy

fah! expensive training my 4r$e

As a pilot of a 'powered paraglider' (we prefer the term paramotor in the UK don't u know).. I can tell you that no expensive training is necessary.

In fact.. no training is necessary at all.

granted, you would probably be long for this world without some, but plenty of my fellow aeronauts self train or get help from mates (including me!)

This is not to say it is easy, but within a few days any fit, non-muppet can be in the air.. sort of falling from the nest so to speak....

comander stu

p.s. see me flying at a spanish paramotor festival a few months back here:

http://www.vimeo.com/3084247

HD of course... only the best for El Reg readers.

p.p.s. It is one of Gilo's parajets (of flying car, and everest flight) that I fly bty.

Fox terminates The Sarah Connor Chronicles

stu
Stop

bumer

I just finished watching the last of series 2 there... bloody cliff hanger an aw. erse.

Acer readies HD netbook

stu
Thumb Up

@AC

Hear Hear. I use AOA150s too for media centres. Play back 720p no bother a baw with coreavc. great wee machines. Did need a 10 quid digital audio USB job for 5.1 but that wiz it.

stu

Man survives death march to display-on-a-chip

stu
Thumb Up

DLP

I got my first DLP HD projector a few months ago.

As you say, awesome picture, but what I find most amazing is the technology. Because of its reliance on 'moving stuff' it can be explained to non-techies. And mostly when I do this they think I must be taking the piss...

a chip with >million mirrors !

they switch off hundreds of times individually every second!

there is a synchronized colour wheel in front and your eye does the rest!

One of the truly remarkable new techs to come out of the last 20 years imho.

Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000

stu
Happy

@MacroRodent

ok. I hear you. but really.. 2 decades ? I mean I only know one person who still has a CRT tv.

and how are you pumping your home vid into them ? DVD I assume ? Most of which will cope with 25/pal/ntsc/30 fps anyway. i.e. they will do the best they can to interpollate to 50 fields per second.

and yeh, you shoot in HD if you want to. But I was like you 5 years ago, and I shoot all HD now. It just gives you soooo much more freedom for editing even if you end up sticking something on youtube ( http://www.vimeo.com/3084247 .. one of my flights).

sure, compiling clips with different resolutions and framerates is tricky. But it will always be that way - some content needs more temporal info, some more definition (e.g. sky tv broadcast some stuff in 720p30, some in 1080i60.. same datarate. different tradeoff). A decent NLE takes care of it (I use sony vegas).

And yeh.. I know 'ntsc' is 29.97. But even then some digital cameras shoot in true 30 fps, so you ALWAYS need to be aware of source fps.

stu

stu
Thumb Down

@MacroRodent

PAL/NTSC ceased to be meaningful when we threw out out CRTs and analogue recordings.

If you have a DVD or a PC, and a flat screen tv or a monitor it makes not a blind bit of difference whether you feed it 24/25/30 or 60fps. It will display if fine.

What exactly is a '50hz tv set' in 2009 ? It does not exist.

720p for example comes in 3 flavours: 24, 25 and 30 (broadcast wise.. though you can obviously have whatever you like). All playback fine at the approporiate rate off a PC onto a monitor or hd tv.

I have numerous video cameras, some shoot 25fps, some 30fps, some 60 fields per second (i.e. AVCHD interflace). As long as your edit sticks to the same fps as the source footage, there is no problem.

you are creating a problem where there is none.

Jobless Apple pumps profits 15 per cent

stu
Jobs Horns

@Stephen

Er.. there are plenty around. they just ain't called netbooks... they are/were called UMPCs.

samsung, acer, they all made em.

I have a Sony UX1 (which does have a slide out keyboard admittedly).

British film board rejects 'disturbing' sexual torture film

stu
Thumb Up

Why the surprise ?

The BBFC has always been about 'protecting the unwashed masses', not educated people like you and me.

I'm not saying that is right.. however look at the shitstorm the likes of the SUN can kick off about things - they are sheep.

the decline in art house cinema (the 'permitted' place for such films to be shown to the more 'educated punter') has left the BBFC with no alternative channel with which to only reach the educated gentile..

Apple seeks to patent movement, vibration and pleasure

stu
Jobs Halo

Steve Jobs: the truth comes out

Yesterday, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Corporation finally decided to reveal the truth about his illness.

Over the past few year rumours have been circulating that Apple may be about to enter the advertising market, however details of how or why have been thin on the ground.

Yesterday we were told that Apple have been working on a mechanism to ‘harness the power of AIDS’.

iADS is the result – a retro-virus based on a genetically engineered live AIDS virus.

Apple has long known that the vast majority of its male customers are metro sexuals.

“By harnessing the iADS port on all current Apple devices such as the iPhone, macbook and iPod we can remotely activate the unit to emit iADS viruses into the atmosphere” says Steve. “Anyone inhaling the virus becomes metro sexual within 24 hours. Our market research overwhelmingly points to them then being unable to resist buying Apple products. As you will know, the majority of my ‘fanboys’ are ‘at least’ metro-sexuals”, says Steve, “ It was a logical next step to create more of them.”

Unfortunately the research programme has not been without risks. Early in the development of iADS, live modified AIDS virus was still being used. On a trip to the laboratory, Steve Jobs unknowingly became infected with the modified virus.

Initially, he showed no signs of infection. However recently it became clear that he had been altered at the generic level. Whenever he had contact with one of his many ‘fanboys’ he risked exposure to ‘bad AIDS’ which could activate the early prototype.

It is now believed that this has happened, and that Steve has only a limited time left to him before his brave fight against AIDS is over.

Obese cost London fire brigade £300k

stu
Stop

spontanious combustion

Also, fat people spontaniously combust.

i.e. they are the ones you find burned to a cinder in a perfectly good armchair.. having had their fat slowly burned off by a wick (clothes, etc).

These stats don't take account of that either.

fat b4stards.

3D TV by Christmas, hints Sky

stu
Happy

@Fuzzy & @W

Hmm.. all I can say is.. are you blind ??

Don't base your judegements on what you see in comet FFS.. I mean you wouldn't go there to hear how good your cambridge amp sounded would you ?

Decent blueray + decent (even 720p) large modern plasma or LCD and it looks MASSIVELY better than DVD.

Now, fair enough some HD content is going to be bandwidth squished, and to be honest some stuff doesn't really benefit from HD anyhoo (QI in HD.. so what?)

But your basic argument is akin to 'why does anyone need more that 640x480 resolution on their PC' from 15 years ago..... personally I'll stick with my 50" HD plasma, HD projector in the bedroom, and 42" HD plasma in the conservatory.... :-)

UK IT should 'fire men first', says Kate Craig-Wood

stu
Joke

sexchange

"This would not have been true some years ago when Craig-Wood was an executive at Easyspace - and a man."

always check out the adam's apple.

Polish Spitfire shoots down BNP

stu
Stop

@Sam : Sheeple

"The mugs have also swallowed the BBC/ dead tree press line that they are "right wing".

They are in fact national socialists.

Sheeple."

er.. oh our mistake.

you mean like that nice group of 'socialists' that won an election in the 1930s in germany ?

what were they called again.... National Socialist German Workers' Party. that was it. or Nazis as we more commonly refer to them.

just 'cause it has 'socialist' in the name does not, a left wing politcal party make....

Apple updates full desktop Mac line-up

stu

@Bod mac mini as HD HTPC

Got the minimum spec 1.6 dual core 2 1/2 years ago from apple refurb store for 300 quid.

30 quid got me a 2.33ghz dual core cpu.

30 quid got the memory upgraded to 2gb.

Oh, and I fired vista onto it (massively better codec support that osx).

result: plays anything you throw at it. 1080p @50% CPU, 5.1 DTS spdif output to amp, etc.

The smart folk will be on the lookout for old spec mac mini discounted pricing and do the same thing.

Unless you are a gamer the 9400 is useless... sure with MPC HC it will reduce the cpu usage of h264 playback, but so what ? its plugged it.. and you ain't doing anything else with it when watching a movie.

How to upgrade an Acer Aspire One netbook's memory

stu
Happy

Asda

Asda do the 160gb HD, 512mb job for 150 squid.

I got one, fitted an extra gb memory and whacked XP/ffdshow on there.

With hyperthreading it plays 720p with only 50% CPU usage. sweet.

Pro-Heathrow demo challenges Carbon Cult killjoys

stu
Alert

@AC

"Also, call me a snob, but I don't think chavs get their minds broadened very much through cheap package holidays abroad."

hear hear.

Heaven forbid that they go on holiday for something as base, trivial and unneccesary as 'enjoyment'.

philistines clearly. Open the pits again, etc.

Vatican endorses Darwin, slights intelligent design

stu
Flame

@AC 19:04

"What did the Pope ever do to you lot?"

oh.. I don't know... how about single handledly slaughtered millions in Africa due to his moronic take on sperm for starters ?

Hackintosh maker lands Apple punch

stu

@p.Lee

"I'd like to see some display & control innovations too,"

yeh, one day some apple engineer will realise that those things on the end of his hand number more than one, and add more buttons to their crappy mice /touchpads.

The moronic tosser who invented the mighty mouse for example (one button.. which 'intelligently' decides whether you are pressing with your left or right button finger) should be lined up against a wall and shot..

1) it is ONE button.. what if I want to press both at once (gaming, etc)

2) I'm left handed like 10% of the population... trying to persuade the thing to recognise a right button click was like russian roulette.

And finally, have just spend a week putting OSX on an acer aspire one in a last chance attempt to 'give it a fair hearing' (I've got a mac min that runs vista for home entertainment as the box is nice and windoze is head and shoulders better than osx for efficient video codec support (coreavc, ffdshow, etc) ).. I finally admitted defeat and admitted that I USE APPLICATIONS not an operation system... the applications I want to use (Sony Vegas) are on windows. FCP is not sony vegas... it's like going back in time 10 years to Adobe Premier.. pathertic... not a criticism of osx, just FCP.

Palm Pré WebOS: video guide

stu
Thumb Down

video reviews

anyone else hate video reviews ?

It's like "I can't be bothered writing this down and taking pics and uploading them, so I'll just video me talking drivel and post it on youtube... much easier"

Microvision protoypes iPhone-sized projector

stu
Thumb Up

lasers

nice idea with the lasers, but I can't help thinking that the small LCD based (LED projecting) ones that are already out will kill it dead... they put out 2-3x the lumens, and won't suffer from any strobing effects which this tech will surely lend itself to...

Irish govt powers up electric vehicle drive

stu
Joke

hmmm

what it should do is give millions to some dodgy bloke who could set up a factory in ireland to knock out electric cars...

or has that been done before....

Vuzix iWear AV230 XL video glasses

stu
Boffin

agree: rubbish

I have 3 pairs of LCD glasses (yeh.. I'm a geek)

A set of old Olympus Eyetreks

A set of chinese 640x480 things

A set of 800x600 vuzix PC 3d ones (vga and support 3d).. bit of fun to use with my wee Sony UX280

Sure, the resolution on the vuzix is good, but the optics are crap.

The Olympus ones have awesome prism optics, but very low resoution, however the complete lack of chromatic aberations make them by far the easiest to use.

Why the hell 6 years later we still have crappy cheap plastic optics in front on decent OLED panels I cannot get my head around (sic)

Asus Eee PC S101 luxury netbook

stu

@b

yup. I too went for the 2133. 199 squid from misco. 15 squid for a 2gb simm.

ok, the C7-m is not the quickest, but with a striped down XP, latest graphics drivers, etc I am sitting here using it now as my main work PC and its bloody great. I even run an XP vmware image on it running the full rational suite of stuff no bother a baw.

Its great for SD video too. Sure, can't do 720p, but apart from that its bloody awesome.

The screen is just the mutts. Why anyone would settle for 600 vertical I can't understand.. even my first P90 did 1024x768 back in 95.

Also, crappish as the chrome9 chipset is, its better than most netbooks and runs older stuff lilke RTCW and Unreal at 1280x768 smooth as could be :-)

And a great keyboard, solid aluminium and magnesium case and chassis (no plastic crap)... it's a ruddy bargain imho.

Smut email hubby claims iPhone glitch

stu
Happy

First face shot, then smile shot...

Wow camera technology is really coming on.

Cum-Shot(tm) mode ?

PETA cooks up gory game in Cooking Mama protest

stu

awesome

that is awesome.

If a game is that much fun, killing a real turkey must be even better.

I will be popping off tonight to the local farm to see if I can kill some.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T700 compact camera

stu
Boffin

Oh dear.. 1920x480....

1920/3 = 640

You have been duped by the old '1920 pixels' spec sheet where they count red, green and blue as seperate pixels. This is just a bog standard 640x480 display...

If it was 1920x480 it would be the highest definition 3" display in the world.

HP loads PC with nonexistent web browser

stu

thinstall

title says it all. owned by vmware now. I use it all the time for the same reason and/or portability of apps.

stu

Hadron boffins: Our meddling will not destroy universe

stu
Thumb Up

restuarant at the end of the universe

I Promise u this: if a restuarant pops up orbiting the earth on friday.. I will be the one standing outside with my thumb up.

Wind turbines put bats under (low) pressure

stu
Boffin

Flappitricity

Surely the solution is to cover the blades in some sort of 'bat glue'.

then, when they get stuck on, they can add their wing power.

Soon we will have wind turbines working to full efficiency even when there is no wind!

All that will be required to keep the bats alive is for us to dump, say, decomposing human bodies at the base of the turbines - as these decay and generate maggots and then flies, the bats can feed and continue to generate much needed flappitricity.

nice and environmentally sounds solution imho.

Booze and breasts combined, finally

stu

preggers one

can't help thinking they are missing a trick by not making a preggers one:

1) far far more space for wine storage

2) you will have it all to yourself.. if the wife tries to have a drink she is gonna get dagger looks from everyone around.. pregnant and drinking!

Fujitsu intros 5.6in bonsai laptop... with Vista

stu
Paris Hilton

UX range

Nofink new.

My UX280p has a nice fast core solo 1.2. 512gb ram, I've upgraded it to a 60 gig HD. it has 2 webcam, finger print gubbins, touch screen, etc

wifi, bluetooth, gprs, memory stick.

I run XP, but it can run vista fine.

I take it on hols and can edit my video with sony vegas and piccies in photoshop sitting at the beach with a beer.

And it looks a damn site better than that thing.

'Course sony don't make em anymore....

Paris because clearly when she sees me at the beech editing photos on my UX, she gets hot and wants me.

Satnav turtle locates cannabis stash

stu

turtles

americans dont know the difference between turtles and tortoises.

Admittedly this is not helped by one of their most common tortioses actually being called a turtle.

Blade Runner quote 'picture a tortoise lying on its back in the backing sun.'

leon: "what is a tortoise?".. etc, etc

Red rag, meet bull: The software resilience gamble

stu
Boffin

When will Engineering principles ever reach IT

As a EEE in IT, and an engineer through and through (takes his car to bits, builds his own sheds, knows how to build stuff generally), I lay the blaim firmly at the feet of the 99% of 'computer scientists' whatever the feck that means... most people doing IT are not engineers. Even if they did 'computers' at uni, it will have been a comptuer science course 9 times out of 10.

I have never understood why building software is any different from building a bridge, a car, a house, a shed, or an amplifier. Yet the people we have building software wouldn't know basic engineering principles if they hit them on the head... to use an EE analogy, they would happily spend 2 months building a 1.234 ohm resistor if that is what the calculation demanded rather than using a 1.2 ohm off the shelf.

They have no concept of quality as a variable, an absolutely fundemental engineering principle in the real world and no less so in the virtual world of software.

And finally, they have this incredible pious attitude when encoutering a problem which always seems to lead them to 'how on earth can we solve this problem that has clearly only ever been seen by me and my company and never anyone else i n the known world. An engineer sees a problem, and expects the solution to be builld somewhere already most of the time, and knows to use one of them nearly every time.

muppets.

Slimmer and lighter cameras promised

stu

@drunk@Kieron

Hmm. I have an FZ30. I used to shoot B/W with SLRs many years ago.

To me, the bridge camera is exactly what I need. I admit the sensor is an issue, and focus is not as quick, but I take most of my shots in good daylight and not of fast moving objects.

People seem to forget that the SLRs main purpose was to see what you were taking the picture of.. well the very first LCD viewfinder digital camera did that.

I prefer to see a 'digital rendition' of what I am taking a photo of, because... guess what... I am taking a digital rendition of that I am taking a photo of....

My friend has a DSLR, and playing around with it has made me even more sure I made the right decision (for me).

Plenty people use bridge cameras not because they can't aford DSLRs, but because they are the right tool for the job.

stu

http://powerlord.smugmug.com

Extra-heavy minicopter 'Jetpack' astounds world+dog

stu

fah! call that a personal flying machine!!

Get yourself a paramotor!

I can take off from anywhere I like, and fly in relative safety.

www.parajet.com

stu

North Americans just don't steal handsets, apparently...

stu
Coat

@W : Scandanavia

Will, they were still merrily sterilising the disabled and 'feeble minded' until into the 1970s.

Scottish gov OKs Europe's biggest onshore wind farm

stu
Happy

Windy Miller

This is surely an ideal opportunity to have one straddling the central resevation of the M74.

You have to time it just right, just like Windy Miller, to drive through the blades.

It would make the trip north much more fun.

Operation Sprogwatch: Keeping tabs on the kids

stu

Overkill and complicated.. here is a much better idea

A regular dog electric shock collar can be fitted to children up to the age of about 10.

With simple modifications this can be made to emit the shock when seperated from the parent by a certain distance.

I was thinking of calling it Childlock.

stu
Happy

@Jared

I would like to go into business with you my man! I think your anti-tiger pebble has legs.

Tell me, have you patented this yet ?

I am thinking perhaps, of a deluxe version which can be used on any wild animal,and for a monthly subscription will protect against lightening attacks and embola virus.

Street View spycar prowls Inverness

stu
Stop

Privacy

What am I missing here... a bloke with an SLR taking pictures of buildings or the odd person in a town gets linched by the coppers for being a terrorist, but it is apparently ok to go around taking high resolution shots of every ruddy street in Britain.

Oh, I am sure the non-obscured pictures with people, vehicle number plates, etc, etc will all be immediately deleted by Google and not provided to the government if they ask nicely so I have nothing to worry about.

City anti-Scientology protestor avoids court summons

stu

@heystoopid

I love these comments. Somewhere in there is always one absolute mentalist.

you tell them 'heystupid'.

whatever TF you are talking about.

Then you can have a wee biscuit and a cup of tea before you take your next set of pills.

Napster flirts with Apple fanboys

stu

it is not US only

where do you get USA only??

http://www.napster.co.uk/more_about_napster.html

shows tracks at 79p....

Welsh student exposed to nude webcam operators

stu
Thumb Up

Welsh bird naked

The basic problem here seems to me... who in their right mind wants to see a welsh girl naked ?

Now a Welsh sheep.. maybe with a live 'shaving cam'...

now your talking !

Net think tank: Phorm is illegal

stu
Boffin

tesco's clubcard

I can't help thinking it is no different from a tesco clubcard though...

I don't have one, because I don't want to give tescos valuable info on what I buy, when, how often, where, etc, etc.

But the vast majority of people do seem to have tesco club cards.. have they all given 'informed consent' ?

Have they buggery. They got a card almost by default, are happy to use it cause they save money, and seem oblivious to the actual reason for it's existance*

*and if you point it out to them they don't seem to care either, but that's the great unwashed public for u...

Three questions for the Jesus SDK

stu
Jobs Horns

sticking with my N95

Well, this weekend I will be devin' on my PC, creating some nice N95 apps... easily... in java... with a full API and no big brother (surprised El Reg hasnlt brought up the 1984 apple ad again.... abused becomes the abuser, etc...) telling me what I can and cannot develop and sell/give away my creations.

Chilean hooker plans 27-hour charity sexathon

stu

last turkey in the shop

From the look of 'her' I'd want be checking I wiz getting what I was paying for....

And pity the poor bastard who's last.

Atari may hit reset button again

stu

C64 paris hilton simulator

How do you manage to slow the C64 sim down to real time ?

stu

atari vs amiga

even more amazing that a tongue-in-cheek comment can kick off the rivalry again after 20 years!

Anon: get a SOH...have a read of the register.. it's 'joke alerts' will have you spotting them in no time. In practice you might be able to detect them without an alert....

stu

STs.....

are cr4p. Long like Amiga !!!

Page: