* Posts by Gene Cash

6338 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2007

Air NZ safety vid provokes terror in the skies

Gene Cash Silver badge
FAIL

Emergency shoot?

I guess that's what the air marshal is for?

Oracle cash grows on new licenses, hardware

Gene Cash Silver badge
Go

What I want to know...

Is who the hell wants Larry on their jury panel? Is it a lawsuit against Microsoft? :)

Fukushima scaremongers becoming increasingly desperate

Gene Cash Silver badge
Go

Compared to the US papers...

I'll take Lewis any day. He's got at least a glimmer of the situation and the ability to apply a little intelligent skepticism to the Chicken Little situation out there.

Even if he's a little over the top the other direction, he's nothing compared to the "OMG BAYBEEEZ ARE DYINGGG!!! THREE HEADED GOATS GLOWING IN THE DARK!!!" garbage passing for journalism right now.

Android gets in-app billing

Gene Cash Silver badge

Not only that

But I think the API is only available on 2.3, and most phones are barely 2.2. So unless you root your phone and install a later OS yourself...

ObOffTopic: got to play with the XOOM today, in the Verizon store. In the 3-4 minutes I had, I couldn't figure out the GUI... hmmm... that doesn't bode well.

New movie gives Yuri Gagarin's view of historic 1961 mission

Gene Cash Silver badge
Go

Hyperdrive...

R2 hasn't been unpacked yet, I think...

Seriously though, I would *KILL* for a personal view from the ISS cupola... "cut that bloke's throat and we'll put you on ISS..." Done! After 3 months on ISS, the rest of life would be an anticlimax.

MeeGo or MS? Nokia ponders tablet OS

Gene Cash Silver badge
FAIL

Meh

My original Motorola Droid has tons more functionality & hackability (despite Verizon/Motorola) and a better keyboard than my N810, and is a better phone than my friend's N900.

I coded apps on the N810 for 2 years, and it was a drag, compared to the first couple weeks with Android. Maemo was a horribly documented schizophrenic mess.

So I think Nokia's ship sailed about the time of Christopher Columbus.

Microsoft sues trio over Androidian book reader

Gene Cash Silver badge
Thumb Down

Not going after Google??

Microsoft can get both of Barne's & Noble's remaining dollars. Nice to see they're picking on a nearly-bankrupt company that can't afford much of anything, especially a prolonged legal fight.

AT&T acquires T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39bn

Gene Cash Silver badge

Marriage of the genetically deficient

T-Mobile had customer service so bad, I avoided cell phones for 3 years afterward. They charged me for an in-warranty replacement phone and there was nothing I could do about it. My friends hate AT&T customer service, and their poor coverage.

At least T-Mobile is dead now. Thank god.

X-51 hypersonic scramjet test bird ready for second flight

Gene Cash Silver badge
Thumb Up

Well done, Lewis!

I'm American and read a half-dozen aerospace sites a day, yet the first mention I see of this is an El Reg article... with a nifty pic too.

New York Times tucks skirt behind stilted paywall

Gene Cash Silver badge
Go

Already asked Google News

"Fewer NYT stories, please!"

Police just rubber-stamping US data slurp

Gene Cash Silver badge
Flame

No kidding

The way Americans drive, terrorists are WAY behind cars in killing Americans...

DDoS malware comes with self-destruct payload

Gene Cash Silver badge
Thumb Up

Simple tools

Yeah, but the yahoos that'd have malware in the first place probably won't have either the tools or the knowledge. Hopefully.

Discovery glides into history

Gene Cash Silver badge
Unhappy

Sonic boom

The BOOMBOOM was pretty heavy in Orlando... shook the whole house.

I'm very sad. I've watched the Shuttles go from brand-new bleeding-edge technology to museum pieces. Going to be a rough rest of the day.

Microsoft 'paid Nokia $1bn' for WinPho 7 deal

Gene Cash Silver badge
Paris Hilton

We know what you are...

... all we're doing is haggling over the price. I guess if you've got to be a whore, $1B is a nice tidy sum to do it for. Really glad I bought a Motorola Droid over the N900. Really sad my N800 is in a bag.

Paris because maybe she can give Nokia tips on "the business"

Yanks outweigh Canucks: Official

Gene Cash Silver badge
Unhappy

Yup, I'm officially a fat bastard

That's what getting tied to the desk for 9hrs a day does to you. Then I have no idea how to cook, so I eat out, and it's not just that it's greasy fatty stuff, the portions are large enough to feed half of Ethiopia.

There's a burger joint (5 guys) where a small helping of fries fills most of a shoebox. I'm not kidding. Most Italian places, you can't get just a slice of pizza, it's the whole pie or nothing.

Thunderbolt: A new way to hack Macs

Gene Cash Silver badge
FAIL

Gimme a break

The TB cable limit is 3ft. If you can hack through that, you've got a lot more problems than an open port. Physical access to the box buys you a lot. Not much different from pulling the CMOS battery and resetting the BIOS password on a PC. Get real.

Google opens curtain on 'manual' search penalties

Gene Cash Silver badge
Unhappy

Nothing keeps you from making your own search engine

And as we see from Yahoo & Bing, nothing keeps you from making your own crappy search engine.

Anyway, because people are trying to game Google, they have to keep some of this stuff under wraps. I don't like it, but then I also don't like it when expert-sexchange is the top 10 results, either.

In my opinion... SEO should be a hanging offense.

Stuxnet blitzed 5 Iranian factories over 10-month period

Gene Cash Silver badge
Unhappy

NYT link doesn't work...

All I get is a login page...

America spared Top Gear Mexican quips

Gene Cash Silver badge
Grenade

Now I can sue the BBC too? (or at least BBC America)

So when they shout "shown in their complete uncut glory" then I can nail 'em for false advertising?

What do you expect where the country is completely run by drug lords and all the cops are on the take? I guess all the ones with a sense of humor were shot.

Ford Focus 2011

Gene Cash Silver badge
IT Angle

I don't want that American-made crap

"ability to spot speed signs and present them on the dashboard display"

"Edge over on a straight and the new Focus will turn the wheel to get you back"

Are you shitting me? I'd have that thing back in the dealer lot in 30 seconds if it did either of those to me. *I* am driving the car, TYVM.

And reviewing cars? Seriously?

HP cans WebOS 2 updates for older Palms

Gene Cash Silver badge
Go

Same as Nokia

None of the newer Maemo OSes will run on the N810, N800 or N770, which is why I have a Droid instead of an N900.

TERRORISTS IN SUBMARINES menace the Free World!

Gene Cash Silver badge

TERRORISTS IN SUBMARINES menace the Free World!?

Wasn't that also called "World War II"??? I'm sorry, I'm American, so I get my history mixed up)

Seriously, the narcotics trade funds this. Real terrorists are not going to have the bucks for this sort of Buck Rogers.

Fort Wayne officials refuse to slap Harry Baals on public building

Gene Cash Silver badge
Go

Title Needs Moooorrreeee Powwwerrrrr!

That was on Top Gear on BBC America last Monday, as a matter of fact.

Alabama sex shop owner swaps 'Guns for Toys'

Gene Cash Silver badge
FAIL

Blame the original colonists

The Puritans came to North America to get away from folks who wouldn't let them force other folks to worship the way the Puritans wanted them to. A Puritan is a person who is very much afraid that someone, somewhere, is having a good time.

Twenty-tonne space truck poised for ISS trip

Gene Cash Silver badge
Flame

Just need 1 (extra-wide) seat...

I'd be that brave volunteer!

Mexican woman gets litigious on Top Gear's ass

Gene Cash Silver badge
Go

BBC America! Get on the ball!

Man, our new Top Gear season doesn't even start until Monday. At least they now show the entire episodes no matter how stuffed full of fat American commercials it is... (yes, even our commercials are fat and boring)

I can't wait to see this episode, and see if it's shown or altered.

Motorola Defy Android smartphone

Gene Cash Silver badge
Thumb Down

It's not Motorola, it's the carrier

Verizon has upgraded my Droid (US Milestone) to 2 different rollouts of 2.2 a couple months ago. At least in the US, T-Mobile has the rep of being the most "slacker" least-they-can-do carrier (worse than AT&T) and nobody I know would touch them.

MozyHome stiffs unlimited users

Gene Cash Silver badge
WTF?

Is an extra HD and eSATA toaster that expensive?

I just rsync everything to an identical HD every weekend. Takes 5 minutes and has the extra advantage that if my system takes a crap, I just slot the backup drive in, and it boots. I don't have to install an OS somewhere to get to my backups on the net.

I'd think *this* crew would be the last to use cloudy online backups. I guess I'd be wrong.

Mexico demands apology for Top Gear outrage

Gene Cash Silver badge
FAIL

British jokes without... the British...

They completely recycle the scripts. They even made British Agincourt jokes against the French, but being American hosts, it made absolutely no sense.

Syffy is doing "Being Human" and it's a wreck. You can barely tell who's the vampire and who's the werewolf. MTV did "Skins" and got "iddn't dat child porn, Martha?"

American TV is just so totally horrid, except for BBC America and Discovery Channel. We need a "facepalm" icon.

Utah to honour Browning M1911 semi-automatic

Gene Cash Silver badge
Grenade

Silly british...

Get back in the dole line and quit whining about guns. If God had intended for the british to have guns, He would have told the Queen so...

NASA 'naut falls off bike, misses shuttle launch

Gene Cash Silver badge
Go

Dremel tool

Nice to see they're using a frickin' Dremel tool there on the shuttle tank. At least it's the latest model.

Amazon preps upmarket US Android app emporium

Gene Cash Silver badge
Unhappy

Weeding out the crap is important

I think that'll be a lot more valuable than you think. Google's crappy search (from Google!!) combined with a ton of just plain garbage apps pretty much makes the app store useless for me.

I haven't trawled through looking for interesting apps in months, now I just look for a specific app when someone else says it's good, or when I get referred via the barcode from some website.

It's no longer an app store, it's more like a large FTP site where you happen to be able to purchase some of the files, and there's no overall file listing available.

Asus slips out keyboard equipped Android tablet

Gene Cash Silver badge
Heart

Finally

A keyboard without all the extra wasted space under the spacebar, and a touchscreen instead of the stupid irritating touchpad. *and* it's an ASUS... if it's got decent battery, I'll take one!

Standard smartphone charger to dominate in two years

Gene Cash Silver badge
Heart

Already has, in the US, for at least 6 months...

For example, my TomTom GPS, my Motorola Droid phone, and a couple other things already charge through the same micro-USB style ports.

My Droid came with a really cool charger that's a small wall-wart with a desktop-style standard USB port on it, meaning it'll take *any* USB cable as a charging cable. It's rather well made too, and puts out more juice than the usual chargers, so I bought a couple more online.

Vulture falls asleep in front of Christmas TV

Gene Cash Silver badge
Pint

Christmas party?

Are ya'll having a nice party, and will there be any incriminating pictures later?

Microwaved hard disc, run-over PC and other data disasters

Gene Cash Silver badge

Old quotes...

"Nobody wants backups. What everybody wants is a restore."

"How do you convince family members to take periodic backups? Repeated, tragic data loss. Same as everyone else."

"The zen nature of backups: if you are wondering if you can just throw the tapes in the garbage, the answer is no, they have data on them. But if you're wondering if you can restore your crashed disk contents from a tape, the answer is no, they have no data on them."

"If you link /dev/tape to /dev/null, your backups go WAY faster - and only about 20% less likely to fail a restore than if you'd used Exabyte."

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

Gene Cash Silver badge
Unhappy

The Brits INVENTED the carrier catapult...

As well as the "meatball" landing aid. So this is pretty sad they can't field true carriers with catapults.

Google Maps for Droid phones becomes a LOT better

Gene Cash Silver badge
FAIL

Google store just gets crappier and crappier

I'm wondering why I don't have any of this goodness, so I search the market for "Google Maps". It shows up as "automatic update enabled" but "needs a manual update" - what?

So I update it, and there we go. But... it doesn't show up in my list of downloaded apps. You might say "well, Google/internal apps don't" but I've updated GMail the same way, and it DOES show up in my list of downloaded apps. If I search for it, it says "installed" like any other downloaded app.

Nice. Way to be consistent there, Google...

New spaceplane proposed for NASA station crew contract

Gene Cash Silver badge
Go

Virgin Galactic

Looks like Virgin Galactic wants to sell seats to orbit on it. See http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1012/16virgingalactic/

Now that's a VG ticket I'd buy! Maybe with Branson involved, it'll get pushed to completion.

Gene Cash Silver badge
FAIL

Powerpoint frequent flier miles

Actually, it's probably closer to the HL-20 than Dyna-Soar. Anyway, it's yet another in literally hundreds of powerpoint rocketships. I'll believe it when it's on top of a rocket. HL-20 didn't get that far before it was canceled. These consortia of large companies rarely get far.

Including Boeing and LockMart, Musk is the only guy putting his money where his mouth is.

Amazon Kindles cash from Wikileaks

Gene Cash Silver badge

Not actually the docs themselves, but "commentary and analysis"

The footnote in Nigel15's URL says "Please note: This book contains commentary and analysis regarding recent WikiLeaks disclosures, not the original material disclosed via the WikiLeaks website"

Elon Musk's Dragon capsule reaches orbit successfully

Gene Cash Silver badge
Flame

It did it!

Apparently it's splashed down right on target, and supposedly 100% success, according to SpaceX & NASA-TV.

And what competitors? I don't see anybody else that's flown anything other than some powerpoint slides. Orbital are the only ones I see being anywhere close to bending metal.

Let's hear it for the first successful commercial spacecraft re-entry!

SpaceX Dragon bathes in the Pacific

Gene Cash Silver badge
FAIL

Press conference

NASA had an hour-long press conference on NASA-TV ... with no sound at all. Facepalm.

The Mac that saved Apple (and Steve Jobs)

Gene Cash Silver badge

Did bring in USB

I think the iMac was the first computer where the USB "just worked" - Win95 died if you hotplugged anything, and I remember even Linux had USB issues.

And holy crap... translucent this and translucent that, and everybody wanted to look like an iMac. I remember joking about buying translucent plastic stock.

Nice little trip down memory lane... punchcard avenue... whatever you want to call it.

Yes! It's the Reg Top 5 FUTURISTIC GUNS Thanksgiving Roundup!

Gene Cash Silver badge

Rule 37

There is no 'overkill.' There is only 'open fire' and 'I need to reload.'

Brits blow millions on over-priced ink

Gene Cash Silver badge
FAIL

No ink for me!

I got tired of my printer being clogged every time I went to use it, no matter what cartridges I bought, so I switched to a mono laser from Brother. It's PS too, which means I was also able to ditch that CUPS shit.

Parent-thwarting bypass tool takes kids to internet badlands

Gene Cash Silver badge
Joke

Finally!

Someone is thinking of the children!

US may disable all in-car mobile phones

Gene Cash Silver badge
Go

That would be AWESOME

Pretty much all of the drivers that cut me off, drive slow in the left lane, sit there when the light turns green, go when the light is still red, pull out on me, blow through stopsigns, etc etc

.... have a goddamned cellphone glued to their ear.

I'd vote for Mr. LaHood for president.

Acoustic gunshot locators get UK military field trials

Gene Cash Silver badge
Thumb Up

Better than the original

The original design had a couple of hedgehogs of microphones, and needed a HMMV to carry it around. This shoulder-mounted kit looks a hell of a lot more practical.

Two days ago, Military channel had a show about counter-sniper ops, and showed the amount of effort this one guy went through to track down one sniper in Afghanistan. He would probably have given major organs to have one of these devices.

They also showed a counter-artillery radar that backtracked incoming rounds and could have 3 rounds in the air toward the shooter before the incoming round hit. The entire thing including automated mortar with 20 rounds was only the size of a refrigerator. I want one of those!

Great and Good honour the designer of world's first laptop

Gene Cash Silver badge
FAIL

@Goat Jam

Yeah, that's what happens when hardware becomes standardized & commodity. OTOH, it also becomes relatively cheap. Take a look at the price tag on the GRID and honestly tell me you want to go back to shelling out that much dosh for a computer.

It's not corporate greed, it's consumer greed, bucko. And it's not monopolist, it's standard. You go out there, "whack together a prototype" and make a non-PC-compatible and tell me how much it sells.

Idiot.