Posts by Tim 182 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Sep 2007
If you're unhappy with the light from your CFL bulbs and they are more than a couple of years old, lob them in the bin and buy some new ones. I have tried this (I actually had some unused ones left over from 2 years back) and was very impressed by the improvement. To make this approach environmentally sound, use a bin woven from organic stuff.
Alternatively, buy a stock of those nice 100 watt incandescent bulbs whicle you can still track them down.
Tim#3
Interesting that it should be in Greece this is happening. When their Vodafone network was hacked about 4 years ago, to intercept about 100 senior politicians phones (Google for Kostas Tsalikidis for info), their privacy regulator fined Vodafone £75m for allowing this, and their telecoms regulator fined them too. On this basis, their privacy regulator certainly has got teeth.
Tim#3
Thsi tech sounds great, at last it would mean being able to look at the web on a phone without having to put up with a squitty little screen. Would also be awesome for videocalls/videoconferencing over a mobile.
As Wolf points out it's the input device that needs attention now; but suspect that voice is the likely best way forward with site interfaces using it in the same way some companies' phone systems voice-operated IVRs do, they seem to work pretty well.
Tim#3
A noano-shed is awesome, everyone knows that the cubic size of a shed is soon dwarfed by the volume of its contents. And it would be so easy to creosote it too.
Furthermore, if each invisible nano-shed is bupplied with a pair of binoculars, you can give them to nosey neighbours who wonder what you're putting up in the garden now.
Tim#3
So, this generates 1% more thrust than it needs. Er, and they expect people to fly in it?
Anyway, how much is jet engine performance affected by atmospheric conditions such as altitude, air temp and humiidity? If you only have 1% spare in test conditions, how much will you have spare in the tropics?
Tim#3
UK CO2 emissions now are way lower than when we we burnt lots of coal in the 1950s, so I guess he's right that the volume of sulphur must be much lower too; it seems we have traded acid rain for a bit of global warming.
Admittedly I thought water vapour instead of CO2 was being blamed for GW nowdays anyway, tis hard to keep up nowdays. Anyone know what's the current probability that (a) GW is actually happening and (b) GW is man made, and what is the trend for the probabilities?
Tim#3
I suspect Playmobil pron is very illegal nowdays, it being a particularly orrible perversion. Anyway, there is a precedent that the Playmobil characters watch normal, er, vanilla flavoured, grumbleflicks.... check out the Hans Beck tribute here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/06/hans_beck_tribute/page3.html
Congrats to El Reg for the excellent coverage, tho I'm concerned about the missing Somali pirates. I hope they weren't hiding under that hat.
... but was never a possibility, as it would mean that they would have to show all the many demonstrations which go totally unmentioned in the press and on TV.
Years back I left a "management circular" that I had created on a colleague's desk, about the new charges for cycle parking at work. He was absolutely steaming livid at the proposal, ranting and swearing and banging piles of stuff down. Probably still hates me for it. Hehe.
Tim#3
Based on my email addys, I feel the level has only reached maybe 25% of pre-McColo levels, presumably this indicates the spammers are using different mailing address lists; implies it may be different spammers.
I couldn't see any indication of the source of the spam now in the article, but are we going to have to wait for the Washington Post to publish another identifying article before the US webhosts will take this lot down?
Tim#3
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that was true. The CCTV industry is one huge racket, they charge extraordinary amounts for equipment & licences which are nothing special whatsoever. On one contract I worked the camera company (who were already charging us extortionately for the cameras) insisted we used their licenced "storage boxes" at over £3k each; opening up their branded casing revealed a 200GB 3.5"HDD. We had to buy one for each of 20+ offices, that's a clean profit to CCTV co of over £50k.
However, it does get worse, ANPR companies charge even more than CCTV ones, they really won't get out of bed for £10k.
Tim#3
Personally, I've been very disappointed that Street View is not living up to it's name at all, I was expecting something much more wicked and maxxxed. Innit.
However, there's something ironic that the, er, saluting, gentleman in the final pic is making such a greeting of friendship to the Googlecar while he is standing next to the base of a large CCTV post.
On a different note, has anyone managed to find an image of a policeman anywhere on Street View?
Tim#3
Interesting that they give the dollar costs there in this press release- I would like to see the figures (especially for the VMWare licences) in GBP instead, the $ figures there look way too cheap to me.
@the spectacularly long named chap....sounds like you'd be better off upgrading your LAN/ buying some new storage devices first. Aslo, people usually recommend against virtualising any app which runs high CPU too, as the VM overhead (somewhere between 10% and 25% of processing power is used to run it, though those figures are very hard to confirm) will actually reduce the available CPU.
Tim#3
Although the idea was entirely laudable, holding a race for electric vehicles may be better on a course which is neither 37 miles long nor known as the mountain, at this stage of their evolution. My local cycle club holds its races on public roads (nice flat ones) and that would be a far more suitable place to get the technology out there & known amongst people. It would also encourage teams from local schools and individuals to have a go themselves, whereas a famously testing course in a fairly inaccessible location is probably the finest deterrent going.
So, how do I get Bernie E to sponsor the UK Electric Bike Road GP series?
Tim#3
So, where does this 70% figure fit in?
I just renewed my passport (£72, ouch) and one of the accompanying leaflets points out that the Identity & Passport Service is self funded & non profit making, receiving nothing from central Govt, and while part of my £72 is for producing the passport, part of it is for funding the global network of British Consulates.
Going back to my original question, I guess I am asking how much would (a) a passport and (b) an identity card cost me under the proposed scheme, and how much extra funding would it require from central Govt.?
And yes, I will not vote for a party which supports this waste.
Tim#3
Has anyone noticed ebay fees are going up (again) this month- there's an announcement about cheaper fees, but delving into it turns up that it is cheaper listing fees for 99p start items only, while for almost every item the final value fee has been whacked up to 10%. Yes, 10%. Plus Paypal's fee, other listing fees etc etc etc, the total cost of selling must be approaching 20% of end price now. Would be interesting to compare this to other countries' rates to see if it's just Britain that's being ripped off.
Tim#3
If people are that concerned, just use Opera, then right click and select "block content". Easy peasy.
Alternatively, click on all the ads but never ever buy anything from those companies. In the long run they will realise that such advertising is producing decreasing conversion rates and will give it up.
Tim#3
So, yet another (albeit welcome) u-turn by this hopeless govt.
<continue rant>
I have noticed that this has been an increasing trend over the last couple of years, with the culmination so far being last autumn's (pre-) budget statement that was merely a long list of things "the govt has decided not to introduce". Presumably this is all due to them clutching at any passing policy then throwing it aside when they have finally understood it's implications, however it does mean that they waste a huge amount of time ultimately achieving absolutely nothing. On which note, I will follow this with a list of Gordon & Alastair's top 5 achievements, feel free to add any I have overlooked.
Ah, I cannot think of any. Hmm.
Tim#3
It's done that for quite a while, and yes it is jolly useful too. Re security, there is a setting somewhere to delete most stuff on exit. I also disable the Wand feature.
Opera has loads of features I like, as well as it being quicker, (love the easy-to-use ad-blocker, particularly useful in ebay nowdays)... though I could never get on with (/remember) mouse gestures. I keep meaning to try the voice control feature too - has anyone had a go at that?
Tim#3
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