* Posts by Matt Milford

26 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Feb 2007

The cost of beating Apple's shrewd screws? £2

Matt Milford

VW Clips

Those clips VW use are easily taken off with vise-grips.

Google TV transplants Android on Intel

Matt Milford

Atom

Up and AT THEM!

Chancer punts 'lucky' Wii for $1,234,567...

Matt Milford

Maybe theres a bird that lays golden eggs at the end of it

Plant the lucky wii and a giant wii-stalk will grow, and take you to an enchanced land in the clouds where you must kill a giant to get his bird that lays golden eggs.

Microsoft hawks Home Server

Matt Milford

...Why?

Why would you buy this?

What does this do that a NAS box doesnt do.

Aren't servers more for like... running web applications? How many homes do that.

You need your media centre on 24/7 to make sure it records everything, do what I did, stuff it full of disks. Job done.

Europe grows more (and more) GM crops

Matt Milford

GM Organic

Could it be that growing GM crops organically is a damn sight easier than growing non gm crops?

Whatever insects eat the crops dont have to be killed with pesticides... is that not the point?

21CN: It's not the data saviour

Matt Milford

Plusnet's Analogy

An analogy based on all you can eat pizza, bless...

What happens when there isn't enough pizza again...

Microsoft opens Xbox 360 Arcade

Matt Milford

Memory?

256 meg memory card... and cartoon downloads from xbox live...

Assuming that it has no hard disk like the core... where are these downloads going?

Canadian prof develops drunk-driving sim

Matt Milford

Errrrr.....

Won't some high scoring chavs think that since they can pull off drink driving the game, they can pull off drink driving for real?

London council to use lie detectors to finger benefit cheats

Matt Milford

Do they even have to turn it on?

Won't this put a lot of people off if they think they're taking a lie detector test on the phone, regardless of whether it works or not?

Windows Genuine Advantage cries wolf (again)

Matt Milford

Badly Designed

Is it not more of an issue that if your PC cannot connect to MSes servers that WGA craps out and says it's a pirated copy?

Failing to have a valid copy and cannot connect to servers are 2 different scenarios, not one. Would it not make more sense for the OS to say "cannot connect to WGA servers", and then not really make a fuss of it for a few days, when it could try again? If servers have been gone for a week, then it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that this might be (I stress might be) a pirated copy and somehow access to the servers has been blocked to prevent WGA notifications, and could you ring MS and have a chat about it.

Not only would this reduce frustration of many users, its bound to save money, as a great number of people are going to ring up about it as they have, to manually validate their OS. Not to mention saving face, and considering a lot of the comments made about MS on this site, that might not be a bad thing.

AwayPhone aims to slash mobile roaming costs

Matt Milford

Prepaid SIM?

Why don't you just buy a prepaid sim for €10 which comes with €10 of call credit? If you're not going back anytime soon, bin the simcard when you're done.

Tidal power project fails to start on schedule

Matt Milford

Backup Hydrocarbon plant?

Surely it doesn't have to be Nuclear or hyrocarbon based backup. They can be renewable!

I can think of at least one example of storing power in grid like quantities, in Ireland there's a hyroelectric dam (near Glendalough, Co. Wicklow) which is already does this.

Aside from generating power from water flowing from a man made lake to a natural one, at night it takes surplus power from the grid and pumps water back up to the top lake again, ready for the morning surge.

Boffins chill chip with ion wind

Matt Milford

Is an ionic wind anything like static electricity?

Would it draw the dirt and dust off the heatsink for my CPU as well? No dust on your heatsink is bound to be worth something in terms of efficiency.

Dubai claims world's tallest building title

Matt Milford

To answer your question

"Like how many seconds of free fall for a base jump from the top of it"

That would be about 10.2 seconds, neglecting air resistance. Also that would be about 100m/s when he hits the ground.

(except it wouldn't, it will be longer, and the max velocity a falling man can ever reach is 55ish m/s, with all that air in the way)

Sky is 'silly' to whine about HD for All

Matt Milford

Freeview HD

Remember that Freeview's implementation of HDTV will be probably suffer from the same problem that affects freeview today.

Freeview looks like bollocks because they cram too many channels into the multiplexes. Analogue TV looks soooooo much better. Standard definition Sky is also compressed, but there's a lot less compression artifacts floating around.

If anything, it could sky's much better (premium) HD service a lot more tempting. It'll look better, and there'll be more channels.

Internet users living secret lives online

Matt Milford

Re: What about the pr0n?

Evidently noone in Ireland is embarassed they are looking at porn.

Jet-powered go-kart roars onto eBay

Matt Milford

Cooooool

That doesn't even look slightly safe

Paris Hilton dragged back into court

Matt Milford

More appropriate?

"house arrest was a more appropriate sentence for a celebrity"

Yeah, but there's shit to do in your own house. Isn't this like sending a child to their room when their toys are in there?

Linux fans go nuclear over Microsoft's patent teasing

Matt Milford

Re: Open Door Policy

You might not be arrested for walking through an open door, but you would be areested for stealing the things in the house.

Home Office discusses thief-proof phones

Matt Milford

Reporting back to the police?

"Um, doesn't this also mean that the police can get ANY phone to report its position? So if they suspect you of possibly doing a crime in the future (hasn't el Reg already reported on this?), they can watch your every move (tie the mobile to surveillance cameras).

How far behind can the FBI be?"

They already can do this, just not very accurately. The police can tell which cell tower your mobile phone is connected to. In large cities where there are a lot of mobile cells, they could certainly work out what street you're on, and track your phone changing mast as you move, giving an indication of your direction.

Notorious car clamper facing Asbo

Matt Milford

Asleep in your car

Are you parked if you're asleep in your car?

My understanding is, while you're in the vehicle you are "waiting".

How legal is it to remove a clamp, without damaging it of course, and leave it at the side of the road?

Or bring 4 clamps, and clamp your car there, lets see your man clamp you then. (Maybe cutting off your nose to spite your face)

Apple moans over sex toy ad

Matt Milford

Free (Illegal) Advertising?

I would have thought the legal dept at Ann Summers where well aware that apple would probably do this, as this is quite clearly copyright infrigement.

But now its on the register, and no doubt being reported in the media elsewhere, how much free advertising have they got in this way?

True, they have to remove the poster, but as apple don't own the copyright on the letter i, people will still remember the iGasm.

Take a bad example, I wonder if Thermos could sell the iFlask, with the same type of advertising campaign, and wait for the all free press about copyright infrigement.

HP to sell low-cost ink

Matt Milford

Re: Want to *bet* printer costs won't go up?

Err... of course they will go up, HP make a LOSS on every printer sold (certainly the low end ones) and make the money back from Ink.

Buying new printers every time for sample paper and cartridges, I'd be careful, a lot of manufacturers give you a set of starter cartridges which are only half filled to get you started, making buying the new printer a false economy.

You may be able to buy a gallon of ink in the large scale printing agency, but with an HP printer you replace the print heads with the cartridge, which I'm sure make up the bulk of the cost.

Thats not to say that there isn't a signifigant markup on ink (and paper too).

Griffin Elevator laptop lift

Matt Milford

Perhaps Ergonomic?

".for 2 u-shaped bits of metal and a plastic bar, then? There's no height or angle adjustment, which makes it an ergonomic no-no as far as I'm concerned. Kensington do it better - for a few quid more, you get full height and angle adjustment, and a 4-port USB2 hub.

Nick"

Why would you need to adjust the angle? You should never be using the keyboard when you have a laptop on such a stand because that makes the keyboard too high. You need an external keyboard and mouse to use it properly.

That said, you should be able to adjust the height, as you definatly can't stack them.

IBM thinkpad users wont think much of it either, getting your thinkpad dock on the top of that won't work too well.

I do agree though, £30 is a bit steep.

Could chocolate protect your brain?

Matt Milford

Chocolate contains Sugar...

Chocolate contains sugar, your brain runs on sugar...

I'm no expert but... it seems sensible enough.

Are there secrets to life-long brain power?

Matt Milford

Sensible advice

Makes sense, not overly surprising I must say, basically what all these reports say: Eat less junk, exercise more.