Posts by Eugene Crosser

SPEARS fired up for explosive climax

Re: What does it mean?

@Neil, well, that makes more sense. Thanks.

What does it mean?

SPEARS is programmed to issue the launch command only if the current altitude is above 20,000 metres (to be clear of air traffic) and we achieve the desired launch height.

You said it before, too, but the "and" does not make sense to me. Presuming the desired launch altitude is greater than 20000m, the first part is redundant:

if ((x > 2) ∧ (x > 5))

is equivalent to

if (x > 5)

no?

Asteroid miners hunt for platinum, leave all common sense in glovebox

Re: Orbital fuel dump

Hear hear!

for the space economy to make any sense at all, we'll need propellent produced outside of the Earth's gravitational well. Lots and lots and lots of propellent. Everything else will be just marginal costs/benefits.

That is, assuming no wormholes or warp drive is invented soon.

Extreme teleworking: A Reg hack reports from the internet's frontier

Re: The cold cottage

Also, switching from cold beer to hot Glühwein (or Whisk[e]y, depending on your preferences) for the duration of the winter season should help!

Apple said to have let the name of the next OS X cat out of the bag

But... will it be lucid?

that's all I need to know

LOHAN to join mile-high club with BRITNEY or NAOMI?

No good backronym for LINDSAY?

Such a disappointment! (I admit that my own suggestion was not quite up to ElReg standards, but no one else? Pity.)

Easy to use, virus free, secure: Aaah, how I miss my MAINFRAME

Sorry Dave,

I suspect that you lived under a rock for the last decade and a half.

Nowadays, more often than not, you will open a web browser, and have your application run in a datacentre far far away, maintained by a (hopefully) knowledgeable team. And you don't need to worry about the disk or memory errors at all.

Plus, we are always fond of the past, but "easy to use"? Really? Virus free, yes, but just as virus free as your laptop will be if you never connect it to any network.

Troll because they live under a rock, too.

Bitcoin Friday sale event kicks off with deep discounts

"With news reports of 78 per cent of Bitcoins not being spent, we need to do something,"

They hardly can do anything (long-term). Free from inflation, Bitcoin is, so to speak, too good to waste on purchases. For the money to "flow" in the economy, there must be a disincentive to keeping it under the lock. With legacy currencies, inflation gives this disincentive.

LOHAN slips BRA over BOOBIES in ballocket backronym buffoonery

umm,

Location-aware Ignition aNd Disposal System & Aerial Yakker

?

Judge drops TV ad-block block: So how will anyone pay for TV now?

Just let us pay directly to the producers

Because currently the distribution (networks etc.) manhandle the producers into "exclusivity", and as a result everyone (sans pirates) have all the unpleasantness of ad breaks, channels filled with crap, and geographical restrictions.

Make exclusivity illegal.

Please?

Japan Display cranks up ultra low power colour LCD panels

Transflective

Transflective LCD has been around how long? A decade? More? In handheld GPS devices, and some phones (Nokia E61 had a excellent one).

A history of personal computing in 20 objects part 1

Addiator

Along with the slide rule, this was definitely a personal computing device.

Definitely more personal than ENIAC and the rest of electromechanical monstrosities mentioned in the article.

Register SPB hacks mull chopping off feet

Except a pint

As one raised in metric, I take centimetre, gram and second any day.

But not litre please.

"I likes a pint. You could 'a drawed me off a pint easy enough."

LOHAN straps on satellite comms capability

Power requirements

Transmit Current (average) 190mA

Transmit Current (peak) 1.5A

Might be too expensive to send a message every ten seconds...

On the other hand, only 30g module (the board with the power supply and antenna must be heavier by still) is impressive for a two-way space communication gadget!

LOHAN poses for sexy wide-angle vid

Aww!

the vid makes me want to come visit the area!

LOHAN sets clock ticking for explosive climax

"we decided to add an accelerometer to the package, to help us detect balloon burst."

+1

This is wise indeed! You do want to use this last chance if things don't go by the plan.

LOHAN turns up the heat on Vulture 2 motor

KISS objection

Extra piece of equipment to stick to the glider? Dangling wires? Don't like it very much.

Surely simply using more flammable material for the igniter will sufficiently heat up the part of the fuel that needs to fire up. After that it will heat itself. No?

Or, attach the motor to the glider in such a way that until launch it can rest inside a cylinder that is attached to the truss, and heat the insides of this stationary cylinder. (But this, too, fails the KISS principle.)

Work for the military? Don't be evil, says ethicist

By the same reasoning...

... working on any armament should be a considered immoral. Any weapon (except a narrow case of suicidal weapons) is designed to give the wielder an upper hand, and consequently increase their chance to survive unharmed in the battle. And consequently (by the author's reasoning) increase the willingness of the government to engage in a war.

He's just read the "Kill Decision", that's all.

PLT chair: UK Radio Society is 'living in a dream world'

Exactly. Or manufacture them (jammers for cell phones, air traffic control, police radio, anything), as long as I ensure that they do not produce interference when antenna is not plugged in.

Sounds as nonsense to me.

SHOCK: Poll shows Americans think TSA is highly effective

Re: Flawed sample set? Flawed question!

oops, to correct myself, there was a separate question about being effective. Jumped to commenting before reading properly. *facepalm*

Flawed sample set? Flawed question!

Given the TSA's brief is to perform in the security theatre, i.e. to make a show to the Americans (and visitors) of how the state cares about keeping them safe, they are doing good or even excellent job. If I was asked this question, that would've been my honest answer.

The jump from "doing good job" to being "highly effective" is absolutely unjustified (unless you count "highly effective in stage performance").

If the question has been "is TSA useful for averting the terrorist threat?" then the answer would have been quite different.

British radio telescope genius Sir Bernard Lovell dies

Re: Put down that Axe Eugene...Microwaves can kill, easily.

Dan Paul,

I know for sure that KGB has done much worse things than the alleged microwave irradiation.

But, with some understanding of the technology, I can tell that this method having been applied is much less likely than the alternatives. For one thing, being invisible, it is very far from being unnoticeable by the victim. It's effect is largely immediate, not deferred. (And for the record, to make it long distance, you need to focus a narrow beam, and for that you need a large antenna.) Even using a Cobalt 60 gamma source would be easier, and fits the symptoms much better. That's not to mention "contact" methods like hard to detect chemical poisons.

However, as I think more about it, this story actually very well may not be a sign of the man's psychological condition, but a part of the campaign to disseminate the myths and disinformation to the public. Now, that thing was at full rage at the time, on both sides of the iron curtain.

Re: Put down that Axe Eugene...Microwaves can kill, easily.

Dan Paul,

High power microwaves can certainly kill. They are well absorbed by water and will heat your body inside, possibly to lethal effect. If the energy is not at lethal level, it sill is dangerous to the eyes, because there is no blood flow in them to dissipate the heat. Staying in front of a working high power radar is definitely a very bad idea.

But the idea that the adversary favoured that method over others, that it was unnoticed by the subject at the time of application, and that it caused a month-old illness (without causing blindness) does not fly with me. I stand by my assertion.

And, there was no axe here, not in the least.

Irradiated by microwaves with an intention to kill him?

I can easily believe chemical poison or short-living radioisotopes, but the claim that his own technology was used in an attempt to assassinate him is, in my opinion, a clear sign of paranoia.

Of course this is no way diminishes his achievements! There is no contradiction between being a genius and being mentally unhealthy. Especially in those times.

Apple, Amazon, close password door after horse bolts

Re: Depends on where's the wealth

All right, all right, not as real as a thousand years ago. I concede.

The point still stands.

Depends on where's the wealth

It's the consequence of proliferation of the "cloud".

Ten years ago money in the bank was as real as a thousand years ago. It was worth the effort to go and try to lift it from a bank. The banks had to learn to deal with that.

There was not enough value in what was hosted with the tech companies to justify the effort of stealing it, so the techs could afford laxer security practices than banks.

In the few recent years, more and more of the stuff that matters is going to the "cloud" which makes it more attractive target for the evildoers, so only now the shift to stricter security practices becomes justified.

Jimbo Wales: Wikipedia servers in UK? No way, not with YOUR libel law

Problems vs. Merits

Wikipedia and its "spiritual leader" may have all the problems mentioned in the article, and more. And deserve bashing. But at the same time, Wikipedia has one advantage compared to the projects that the article claims to be examples of "wikipedia done right".

It is useful.

Success! Curiosity Mars lander arrives precisely on schedule

Forget the macbooks,

look at the Motif look-alike interface of their image viewer.

Looks like being in space also means being 15 years back in time.

Which, if you think about it, makes sense. If your kit is going to work for years, without any chance of upgrade, you might as well start with technology that is several years old. If not shiny, it's at least sufficiently well-tested.

Raspberry Pi served with Ice Cream Sandwich

"you can't get much sweeter than raspberries and ice cream"

you can: raspberries and jelly beans.

LOHAN fizzles forlornly in REHAB

Re: Silicon seal

Even if the seal does not pop off, the chances are that the air will slowly leak from inside the motor. The body of the motor may not be leak-proof in the first place, and as the temperature drops imperfections of the sealing will be getting worse. Even it works in REHAB it may fail at launch as it will spend hours in near vacuum and in the cold.

I would rather try to find some substance that could act as "ignition booster" to put between the igniter and the "main" fuel.

Total bankers: Twitter and LinkedIn's cynical API play

Re: FFS...

The sentiment is "if you rely on someone else's service it increases your vulnerability", whether because the provider decides to change the rules of its (free) service, or because their (paid) service experiences an outage.

And I'd say, creating an open source like definition for open APIs (/services) is not going to help here...

CIOs should fear the IP police ... have your get-out-of-jail files ready

Re: Oh what sensationalist nonsense...

No company needs an IP lawyer in house: all they have to do is to create all their own content. Need a photo of people in the street - send someone out to take one. Need a sketch - find someone who can draw.

Need MLK's speech - fetch him from the grave and ask him to speak at your school.

Its not hard.

Vint Cerf: 'COMMUNISTS want to seize the INTERNET'

Which evil you choose

The question here is which evil is less: to stay under the US jurisdiction and allow some lunatic judge from West Texas to tell ICANN/Verisign which domains they must throw away from the root zone, or surrender to the consortium of colluding incumbents who kept the telephone system the way it was until 90s. Until a few years ago, the US stayed away from ICANN, and the answer was obvious. Now it is not.

Pirate because I am in favour of the "meritocratic democracy" J.P.Barlow style.

Google to show China what it's missing

SSL

Any reason Google cannot switch the searches to SSL? The authorities would not be able to intercept the queries then, unless they do wholesale MITM. (And the latter would raise enough eyebrows in the business world for then to think twice before trying.)

Researchers find backdoor in milspec silicon

Real but greatly overlayed

If you read their blog you could feel that the thing is likely hyperbolized for the sake of self-promotion. Another researcher has analysed the actual paper and came to the same conclusion:

http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2012/05/bogus-story-no-chinese-backdoor-in.html

Special Projects Burro pops his hooves

Working donkeys in the poorest countries have a life expectancy of 12–15 years;[14] in more prosperous countries, they may have a lifespan of 30 to 50 years.[5]

... and he was less than two years old. so sad. poor chap!

Only global poverty can save the planet, insists WWF - and the ESA!

Re: Don't shoot the messenger, shoot the journalist.

Don't shoot the messenger, don't shoot the journalist, shoot the reader!

(you might go even further)

More seriously, it's easy to bash idiots. It would be much more interesting to do some calculations. Intuitively, it seems that if you try to limit the use of fossil fuels without decimating the population, you will do much more harm to the environment than you are doing now. Such as, trying to grow food locally and/or without industrially produced fertilizer will turn the land into desert rather quickly. But having this properly modelled, with figures, would help to make the case. At least, would help it more than just calling idiots idiots.

Bitcoin bank Bitcoinica still titsup after cyberheist

Upside

What I see as a good thing here is that these operators cannot rely on feds with guns hunting the intruder, but rather have to invest in proper security practices. And give example to the rest.

Researchers propose solution to ‘bufferbloat’

see also

this post from Bram Cohen of bittorrent fame:

http://bramcohen.com/2012/05/07/tcp-sucks

Anonymous takes the Kremlin offline in Putin protest

> At the moment we can’t establish who’s behind the attack.

-- fair enough, they are anonymous, aren't they?

Compulsory coding in schools: The new Nerd Tourism

Re: Maybe?

@Tomas

Writing HTML as a lesson of "computer science" is like mixing epoxy as a lesson of chemistry. In the school the fundamentals of chemistry are taught, acids vs alkali as you said. For "computer science", the fundamentals would be a bit of semiconductors, a bit of Boolean logic, a bit of information theory. Then, a chance to write a few simple programs in Python for Raspberry Pi, or (better) for Arduino. Not HTML pages.

Oracle v Google could clear way for copyright on languages, APIs

factual

It's always entertaining and educational to hear the argument of the opposition, but it is no longer fun if the author starts to make unfounded claims.

"without protection for authors the economic incentive to create disappears"

-- not true. There are other economic incentives for creation besides being able to sell the product. One of the incentives disappears, right, but not "the economic incentive"

"In recent years, a strangely zealous campaign against patent protection for software has been successful"

-- not true. In recent years, the law practice with regard to patent-protecting software has been shifting in the direction opposite to what the "campaign against patent protection for software" is advocating.

Teens break up with Facebook

Privacy is about who do NOT watch you

A side note is dropped in this article that is, I think, really important. The perceived privacy is not as much about who can see/listen what you do/say. It's more about who can't. Your average person rarely does/says anything really awkward. So, most of the time, [s]he does not care if strangers eavesdrop on them. Parents and teachers are another matter: must me much more careful about what to show and to say.

Cue to social networks: "exemption" circles may become a popular thing.

170m people 'upgrade' to Google+, but how many stick around?

Re: And...

Please get a downvote because I am one of these sad people who sat on (and ran) BBSes in the 80s and from whom you are experiencing hate and vituperation.

"Upgrading is compulsory"

I knew that Google is the current base of the Cybermen

Merry Christmas, Stratfor

RFC 1983

Actually, Charles 9 is misinformed and the following AC is poorly informed.

According to Internet documentation http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1983

hacker

A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the

internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in

particular. The term is often misused in a pejorative context,

where "cracker" would be the correct term. See also: cracker.

Pay Jobs due respect - by crushing the empire he created

Either Or

Some observers suggest that the "true motif" for Jobs/Apple was control over others (perhaps for perfectly valid business reason), i.e. making them "think in unison", while the "think different" slogan was simply hypocritical PR.

The author of this article suggests to take "think different" at the face value. If so, one has to figure how comes that the company's practice went counter to that slogan.

So, hypocrisy or betrayal?

In any case, I fully agree with the "do not try to outapple Apple" argument.

Memo to kid coders: Enterprise software exists

and then look back

the best minds of his generation are taking freely available tools and software, and building massive distributed computing systems that power some of the biggest websites in the world.

And the only way those marvels of technology are able to plug into the "real money" economy is by plastering ads all over the place and making people click on them.

Now, THAT sucks!

Plus,

more expensive staff to just make the already expensive "enterprise software" work than people who can create the equivalent "in house" software from open source pieces.

BTW I am certainly on "those" side of the age spectrum, but I totally concur with your sentiments.

People are fleeing enterprise software for a reason. It wastes money and spoils happiness for those involved.

Shagbook won't take Facebook thrust lying down

"Facepalm"

they should've challenged that too...