Comment: Re:Did they use the mosquito sound? (Score 1) 567
"440 Hz sine wave 30 secs" - there, I encoded it as human-readable in 24 bytes.
Comment: Re:It's called autism (Score 2, Insightful) 579
This thread gets more self aware as you scroll down, but your comment makes me feel quite sad. Don't give up on pursuing a relationship just because you had a bad experience - what you have said suggests that you are sufficiently mature and emotionally 'in touch' to recognise your own faults, which is the biggest stumbling block in most relationships.
I'd suggest you look for women who you share interests with. Maybe they won't be into coding, but someone with an analytical mind, or with the autistic traits you have identified in yourself (or that others have identified in you). I'd guess you have a lot of good to share with someone, so don't punish yourself for one relationship that didn't work out.
Comment: Re:Amazing... (Score 1) 174
In fairness, the Telegraph (while a bit right-wing for my tastes) is usually a pretty high quality newspaper. It is certainly not down at the level of The Sun and Fox News.
Comment: Re:Let Me Be the First To Say... (Score 2, Insightful) 128
Don't IBM and HP make operating systems?
Comment: Re:Pictures versus digital photos... (Score 1) 345
That is not a good comparison. Photographing a person is translating a 3D scene into a 2D image; photographing a portrait is replicating a 2D image into a 2D image as closely as possible.
There are infinite number of different images that could be generated from a 3D scene. There is only 1 image that could result from faithful reproduction of another 2D image,
Comment: Re:Why not just use slashdot instead? (Score 1) 297
How about turning it into a CAPTCHA? The only way to detect and decode the torrent file is to type the code that is shown in the PNG. The code could be written over a screenshot of whatever creative commons/public domain film the torrent points to, and the filename is something like charlie_chaplin_the_champion_screenshot.png?
The code wouldn't even have to be that well distorted, as I'm sure most image sites don't have the same computing resources that spammer have to break these things.
Comment: Re:If it's an exploit for ATM *Machines*... (Score 1) 229
You mean a personal PIN number?
Comment: Re:I used to be schizophrenic (Score 1) 334
That sort of delusion (suicidal, blaming oneself) is more likely to be associated with a psychotic episode as part of depression or the depressed part of bipolar disorder. Schizophrenic delusions are more likely to be bizarre (think aliens) and may involve a belief that one is being controlled by others, or that one's thoughts are being broadcast or played on the tv, or that one can hear others' thoughts.
That said, depression is often a comorbid factor of schizophrenia, and it is entirely possible that a schizophrenic person would think that, but the example you gave is not stereotypical.
Comment: Re:So what's it gonna be? (Score 2, Informative) 257
When this came up first time round I emailed Günter Verheugen, Vice President of the European Commission and in charge of this. One of his staff replied after a few weeks (in TIF format, usefully). This is hastily retyped, so spelling mistakes are likely mine.
...
You observe that phones have non-standard connectors and therefore require special cables to be connected to computers. A standardised charger requires a standard plug. I expect that this standard plug would not just be used for charging, but also for connecting to computers. The issue will therefore be addressed in parallel.
So it seems they are aware of the issue and 'addressing' it. I'm interpreting 'expect' in the sense of 'England expects every man to do his duty' rather than 'I expect it'll be alright'.
Comment: Re:Possible to do dirt cheap one-way. Analog cheap (Score 1) 541
Have some sort of simple one-way streaming multi-cast protocol. (You'd only need to do multi-cast on the LAN, and depend on distributing lots of units to get wide area coverage.) You'd have to distribute a new piece of software so that RSS readers and web browsers could view the content. Opera Unite might be able to do this. Any kind of locally installable web browser would do.
Basically, Teletext?