Posts by Eddie Edwards

Sony re-releases latest PS3 firmware

Oh yes

We'll all be rushing to test that for them.

I suppose they expect n00bs who don't read t'internet to do the beta this time.

Paris, 'coz even she'll wait a week and see what happens.

Lower VAT could help small businesses amid recession fears

Irrelevant given the family business tax

If the govt wants to help small businesses, how about not changing the tax law next year to make all family-owned businesses liable for about 100% more tax than they were this year?

Paris, because Daddy never had to worry about the family business tax.

Europe drafts law to disconnect suspected filesharers

Shred of evidence please?

"They shouldn't be targeting the individuals anyway. It's the pirating "companies" they need to smack around. These are the groups that make the difference in profits."

That may have been true before the internet but it's rather difficult to prove now. I've heard it claimed many times (usually by folks who are "harmlessly" downloading stuff and have never heard the term "categorical imperative"). But I've never heard a shred of evidence.

A company pirating 10,000 copies of a disc is clearly not worse than a billion internet users pirating 1,000,000 copies of a disc. It's also rather easier to take down. So without numbers how are we to judge?

It seems to me there's probably been a step-change in the magnitude of the problem since the internet. If the problem was largely confined to organized crime that's existed as part of the status quo for decades then why would the RIAA / MPAA etc. be so worried now?

BSA slams EC's 'narrow-minded' interoperability vision

I'm with the BSA on this one

Going for patent-free IP-free open standards is a dogmatic approach, not a practical one.

For the rabid FOSSer above, I presume you never play MP3 audio or MPEG-2 movies. Those are open, IP-restricted standards, and they work just fine.

This is something that needs looking at case-by-case. Document standards might want to be more open and less IP restricted but to say "never" to any standard that has any aspect of IP is just stupid ideological bullshit.

(BTW, is it just me, or was that article nigh-on incomprehensible?)

Sony pulls PlayStation 3 software update

Warranty

It goes to show that the old-fashioned notion of "warranty" means nothing when companies are forcing new firmware onto the console at a whim.

They broke it, they need to fix it. It should be illegal to charge money for that "service" even if the console is out of warranty. I'd be inclined to take that to the small claims court or even find someone to start a class action.

It's like a Ford engineer comes to your house and messes with your tuning to the point the car will no longer start, and then you call Ford and they say they have to charge you to fix it because it's out of warranty. It could be argued that this is a deliberate ploy to make money out of naive users.

And that's on top of the absolute annoyance when you finally clear 2 hours to play GTA IV only to spend 20 minutes of that waiting for a bloody update to download. You can't even queue it. It makes Windows Update look user-friendly.

However ... I have reasonable confidence that Sony will eventually agree to fix the bricked consoles for free. They usually tend to do the right thing, once they have exhausted all possible alternatives.

Google a broken hell for five-year-olds

Berkeley sockets API not in K&R

I don't think the Berkeley sockets API is documented in K&R. So IIRC that is a wrong answer. The correct answer is "fucking Google it", of course.

Google's Street View spycar clocked in London

Owner of photographs?

"the owner of a photograph is the photographer, not the subject"

That'll be why models sign release forms ...?

Asus readies iMac attack with all-in-one Eee

What Phil said

If it doesn't run OS X, Steve Jobs has absolutely no reason to be concerned.

Microsoft searches for meaning with Powerset buy

Microsoft Wheel 1.0

I've seen the beta for this.

It's square.

Boffins invent 42GB DVD

Interesting fact

An interesting fact is that current BluRay readers will accept multi-layer BluRays of the future without hardware modification (only firmware upgrade). So the drives are pretty future-proof and in theory support 2700GB or more.

Phil Harrison told me that, and he should know, as he is God.

Duff UK nukes risk 'popcorn' multi-blast accident apocalypse

What am I missing here?

The warheads used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were measured in kilotons. They devastated whole cities. The warheads we have today are measured in megatons. There is no missile shielding in the world that will not melt if standing 10 feet away from a megaton warhead going off. Of course they'll "popcorn" in that scenario. Who cares? One warhead going off at location A, ten going off at location A ... everyone's going to die anyway.

Sony touts weird multi-sensor handheld gadget tech

He is a God

"But, to keep the hope alive, it’s worth noting that Phil Harrison is listed as the inventor of the Sony gadget."

Phil Harrison - smooth PR man, VP of development, mostly responsible for the success of the PlayStation name, and now inventor ... is there anything he can't do?

Wind power key to UK's desperate renewable energy bid

Er ...

"SPain in 2007 produced 10% of its electricity through windpower."

That's 10% of its electricity. Spain has a low reliance on fossil fuels at only 56.8% (http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Europe/Spain-ENERGY-AND-POWER.html) so 10% of electricity is about 4.3% of total energy.

"It's taken them about 10 years to do this."

So another 25 years to get to 15% of total energy then ...

That's hardly within the 2020 timescale and they've got a 10-year head start.

North Carolina targets WTF licence plates

Reminds me of Zurich Hauptbahnhof

Zurich Central Station has the letters "SBB CFF FFS" above the entrance. FFS.

Makes me smile whenever I go past.

http://railroadpictures.net/Stations/Zurich_Hauptbahnhof/IMG_9354_tn1024.jpg

Dell debuts designer laptop line

Oh noes! 2.8% UK price differential

If I was a grey-market importer I'd focus on stuff that is 2x the cost in the UK versus the USA, not stuff that is 2.8% more expensive. FWIW.

BT starts threatening music downloaders with internet cut-off

10 years on, we still don't understand copyright

BT is not threatening music *downloaders*.

"I have received a complaint regarding one of our customers offering copyrighted material over the internet"

The complaint is about music *uploading*, which is against copyright law.

Let air passengers smoke dope, say Denver potheads

Won't somebody think of the children?

What happens when some terrorists get hold of some of that LETHAL marijuana that Gordon Brown smokes? It'll be easy enough to get it through security, not being metal and all. Then you just have to threaten the plane with lethal marijuana blowbacks and it'll be 9/11 all over again.

It's time for a close-up look at mobile porn

Disappointing article

Absolutely no NSFW links in there at all.

Cardiff 'copter coppers give chase to UFO

Never mind UFOs

I live in the country and I keep seeing unidentified plants.

I've researched this (unlike you other guys) and apparently this happens all the time. Since 1990 there are at least 10,000 recorded incidents of people seeing plants which they were unable to identify. Not a piece of grass on the car's wing mirror reflecting in the sunlight - actual plants, growing in the ground.

Now maybe *some* of these can be explained as just plants the people had "never heard of" but even if that explains 99% of the sightings, there's still the awkward 1% which can't - statistically - be explained this way.

It's obvious to anyone with half a brain that at least *some* species of Unidentified Plants must have an extraterrestrial origin. But people's minds are too closed to appreciate this obvious fact.

It's also a FACT that the government tries to bury these unknown plants. Ever seen a farmer drive a tractor through a field with funny-looking spikes on the back? Do you know those guys are paid by the government to do that?

Flirty texting could land Scots in jail for 10 years

Simulated orgasm?

"or by communicating the sounds of actual or simulated sexual activity"

Meg Ryan's fucked then.

Oxford tops Blighty university rankings

@ Kyle

"But then again, as with most education related league tables, the tendency is to look at the placing on the table rather than the actual performance metrics."

Well of course it is, that's why they make the table.

Of course, as you obviously realize, you can't create a "well-ordered" relationship from more than one independent metric anyway.

Therefore, the idea of "league tables" themselves is silly and vying for #1 and #2 is about as sensible as two people with IQs of 180 and 181 arguing about who is smarter.

The article is, in case you hadn't noticed by the end, somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

Personally I find it rather entertaining that we can bicker about something so totally pointless. I think it's more fuelled by people who don't take it so seriously, than "wankers" per se.

Disclaimer: Maths, Cambridge, 1990-93

Preachers caught squatting in white spaces

Does this remind anyone else ...

Does this remind anyone else of that bit in Spinal Tap with the wireless guitar pickup at the Airforce base? :)

Al-Qaeda targets net-connected coffee machine

@ Greg Fleming's IP-enabled toaster

No problems with butter overruns?

Firefox 3 Download Day falls flat on face

They wouldn't have this problem ...

... if they used IIS on those servers <g>

Mine's the one being jumped up and down on by scores of Apache fans.

Nvidia blows out Moore’s Law with fresh Tesla

Pieces of string and Moore's Law

"The consensus seemed to be that it takes about a month to learn the CUDA nuances and tweak code for the GPGPUs."

"About a month", eh? Are you serious? The amount of time to learn CUDA may be constant, but the amount of time taken to port (not "tweak") code to CUDA depends on how much code there is and how hard the "tweaks" are going to be. Often a complete refactoring is required which can take years for a complex engine. The phrase "about a month" makes CUDA look good but it's in the top percentile of meaningless statistics.

As for Moore's Law, it has not been "blown away" or any other such nonsense. Moore's Law refers to the density of transistors on chips, and with this nVidia are significantly BEHIND the curve.

I liked the breathlessness of the article though. nVidia fanboyism is clearly alive and well at El Reg.

Firefox record breaker sets the date

What kind of nutjob

What kind of nutjob downloads the new version of a program the day it is released?

Surely you should wait for at least SP1.

US bars ID refuseniks from planes - but not ID losers

Sheer class

David + Steve FTW.

More about England from people who've never been here, please.

Multi-threaded development joins Gates as yesterday's man

Silicon doesn't care what you wish for

The hardware manufacturers will deliver what they can, not what computer programmers wish for. What programmers wish for is a single 100GHz thread and it just ain't gonna happen. After that, opinions may vary on what the "best" MP architecture is, but these opinions are hardly relevant. Hardware has to go where it can, and that means you won't see 1,024 processors sharing the same DIMM. Multithreading in the "shared memory" sense is already dead. As Ken says right above, the future is (probably) clusters, which design parallels the design of actual massively-parallel algorithms (by which I mean algorithms designed for 100s of processors, not algorithms retro-fitted to handle 3 or 4 threads). The Cell is a cluster on a chip. So is any modern GPU.

Following this, software will follow. And not because the current experts will make it happen - to a man, they have spoken out against where hardware is going, rather than suggesting ways to approach it. (Their actual approach tends to be to shoe-horn existing code into 2 or 3 threads.)

No, the next generation of software will follow from younger people to whom this hardware seems natural and obvious and who have no investment in the status quo.

What we are seeing here, IMHO, is the death of a generation of software developers. Good riddance to Gates but I do hope Knuth stays along for the ride ...

Boffins build self-replicating replicating machine

But can it ...

make a smaller version of itself? Then in two years we can all have nanobots!

Heathrow T5 security tackles Transformers t-shirt threat

Nerd dress code

Don't know about any other industries but in the games industry you can be sent home for *not* coming in to work in a T-shirt.

RIAA abandons iTuneski suit

Yes! The AC is so right!

Clearly the MPAA are more DANGEROUS than the Mafia, Yakuza, and all the other criminal groups from GTA. The death toll from the war on copyright is only "low" because we don't count the death of innocence that comes from being propelled into a cold uncaring world where no-one cares about your right to free music and where you're expected to get a JOB if you want to have STUFF.

And yes, when artists sign contracts, that's not an agreement with benefits on both sides, it's STEALING. Whereas, of course, taking stuff that doesn't belong to you is not STEALING as long as there is an "infinite" supply.

FREETARDS FTW!!!

Brown opts for morality over science on 'lethal skunk'

Brown is lucky

It's a while since I've seen any lethal skunk around my way.

Sky One to resurrect Blake's 7?

FFS

Blake's 7

Blake

Avon

Jenna

Vila

Gan

Cally

Zen

That's seven. Anyone who forgot to include the sentient computer, your coat is draped over Orac.

But I agree with the AB - it's already been done, and it was called Farscape.

LG says laptop batteries safe despite 'billion to one' blast

Ogilvy the Astronomer assured me we were in no danger

"The chances of a battery exploding are about a billion to one, he said."

But still they explode.

Calls to ban hoodie-busting sonic weapon

Alternatives

Instead of irresponsibly installing devices that could possibly damage the hearing of babies and small children, I think they should instead legalize tazer use on anyone between the ages of 13 and 21, for whatever reason. This is the age-group the tazer is ideal for - strong hearts, you see. Of course a few of the more crack-addled ones will die, but that's just clearing the gene pool of debris. Most will go on to lead full and active lives, secure in the knowledge that they'll continue to do so as long as they behave themselves in public.

US military prepares for plummeting spy satellite

Debris already burning up?

I've seen two quite spectacular "shooting stars" over the last couple of days. Best I've ever seen in my life! There are no meteor showers due. Could this be debris from the US satellite? Anyone else seen these?

El Reg collectible pops up on eBay

900 Euros

Free to those who can afford it; very expensive to those who can't.

Baylis Eco EP-MX71 hand-cranked media player

On a plane?

You can already buy "wind up" rechargers for mobiles and iPods ... Virgin have had them in their duty free selection for years. But you can't use them on planes. I presume the dynamo causes electrical interference. Is this *actually* rechargeable on a plane?

Scientists create 'no-tears' onion

The proper way to cut onions ...

The proper way to cut onions while avoiding any discomfort to yourself is to get your wife to do all the cooking, as any fule no.

She uses a similar technique to avoid the stresses induced by working in IT.

Bill Gates advice to UK wannabes? Don't get sued

Lucky bill

"There's certainly been stressful points along the way – try not to get sued by anybody... especially not your own government... especially if unjust."

He must be happy then. He only got sued by his own government with just cause.

New Bond film title voted a 'Licence to Thrill!'

News feedback explosion

The Beeb thinks what bloggers think is news.

Now the Reg thinks what the Beeb writes about what Bloggers think is news.

If the Beeb does a story on the Reg writing on the Beeb writing on the opinion of Bloggers I'm going to explode in a mess of bloody recursion.

High Court orders Manhunt 2 release to be re-evaluated

New certificate?

"There are adults who could be classed as vulnerable and we’re legally bound to protect them from games like Manhunt 2, as well as children."

What will be the upshot? A new "18-NAN" certificate for those 18 years old or older who can prove they are Not A Nutter?

Inside the Windows 2008 stack experience

Bad choice of platform

I think you should use MapReduce instead.

Sony denies $299 PS3 talk

Lies, damned lies, and Sony PR

Watch what Sony say carefully.

"No plans for a pricing announcement" means that, whether or not the price will drop very soon, they haven't yet planned the *announcement*. It does not say "No plans for a price drop". These weasel words are typical of Sony PR.

And of course rumours and speculation are "just rumours and speculation", as opposed to an official announcement. That does not imply that they are incorrect in fact.

Nothing of content has actually been said here by Sony. They have neither "denied", "confirmed" nor "verified" anything.

Major HTML update unveiled

Restrict the license

Rather than changing the standard to "fix" the Microsoft problem, why not sell an HTML 5 license for $10K together with a contract that says "if you don't pass this array of conformance tests you don't get to put the code into any public app".

And have a reference implementation.

OK, I'm dreaming, back to work.

Software pirates put sizeable dent in UK economy

Que?

"IDC's chief research officer John Gantz said that reducing PC software piracy would benefit small business owners by cutting back the legal risks associated with using unlicensed software."

What risks? The risk that someone in your small business is using unlicensed software without your knowledge? Surely that doesn't go away?

Or do they mean, if there was less piracy, no-one would bother policing it any more, so using unlicensed software would then be "fine" ... thus increasing corporate piracy and bringing us back to square one?

I think we should be told.

Couple sue over Shanghai metro snog vid

Privacy?

Yes, we all expect privacy when we go out in public, don't we?

Viva VBA - alas

I don't want to go all wikipedia on your ass ...

... but do you have a citation for this?

"VBA, for example, runs the world financial markets. The credit crunch happened mostly in the minds of Excel spreadsheets doing horribly complex calculations in a language designed to change formatting, or to capture and validate user input."

... or is it just some sort of question-begging "common knowledge"?

Apparently CitiCorp have a daily turnover of (cue Dr Evil) one trillion dollars. It's somewhat hard to believe that this amount is managed in a big Excel spreadsheet.

I can believe that Excel may be used for ad-hoc forecasting, but if that's "running the financial markets" they my diary runs my business.

Since it was El Reg that broke the "news" of VBA being dropped I'm taking this all with a large pinch of NaCl.

And vinegar.

Lightsaber voted top movie weapon

Slashdotted

"Going to prove that neither George Lucas nor ST fanatics paid any attention in school science or physics ... assuming that ST fans even finished grade school."

I agree, George Lucas should lose all his NIST funding.

Do we need computer competence tests?

Oh that's easy

"Why does my office have signs on the fire extiguishers : "Do not use these fire extinguishers to hold the fire doors open" ?"

It's because some idiot decided that, because fire doors should always be closed after use, they should not have any way to latch them open during use.

Then, when normal use turns out to involve leaving them open for a few minutes to load or unload heavy stuff by hand, people use the nearest heavy weight that's to hand. Which turns out to be the fire extinguisher.

In other words, it's a consequence of proscription without proper thought towards need. You see it every day in any sufficiently large organization.

Then to "fix" the problem they put stickers on the fire extinguishers but again fail to provide a solution to the *actual* problem of the doors not having latches or wedges provided.

It's at this stage that it all seems not so much a lack of foresight but a lack of any kind of sight at all.

This is why employees sometimes buy their own door wedges.