Posts by Antony King

Gone

Re: V-Tec

My son had one of those. He managed to crash it :-)

Author Iain (M) Banks falls to cancer at 59

No-one mentioned song of stone?

That's the only one I *won't* read again, after two goes. The rest are have been thumbed to death over the years. Very very sad to see him go; definitely a wee dram to be raised methinks.

Top tools for junior Linux admins

Re: my list

probably a nano/emacs addict objecting to having VI on the list...

Boffins: Our memory film is like your girlfriend - transparent and cheap

Re: Life span too short

depends what you're storing. A counter of 'how many times the windscreen has been hit' could be useful for example, or 'when this vehicle last had an MOT'. A programmable RFID tag? Any number of applications for cheap flexible memory.

Intel builds 'can't be built' working digital RF transceiver chip

gnu radio

How is this different from the Gnu open radio project:

http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki

Is it just a speed thing or what?

Google to axe 4,000 Motorola Mobility staff

xoom ICS

my ICS upgrade turned up a couple of days ago on a 3g/wifi xoom in the uk. Fixed so many browser bugs that I ended up using Opera :-) Don't get too excited over it, really.

Airline leaves customer on hold for 15 hours

fear factor

I must say that my one and only Qantas was also the one and only flight that I've been truly scared on - and I've been up in a 6 seat single engined cessna in the southern alps during 'interesting' weather.

Boffins build eye-controlled interface out of game-console cams

Going by what Nobii charge, it'll be more than £1000 for the trolls.

About bloody time. my kid has CP and a basic eye tracking system, that doesn't even work as a general purpose mouse type device, costs in the region of £10,000. I can employ a whole human for 4 hours a day for a year at that rate! (and in fact, his school do just that)

I had a crack at doing this with glasses mounted cameras - the tricky bit is to work out where the head is pointing and subtract the difference - otherwise, my 'hacked together in my back shed' prototype actually worked quite well, provided you didn't move your head! You don't /really/ need to track both eyes, though if you have normal vision it'll give you some depth clues. Nystagmus sufferers are more likely to get problems if their vision is partially occluded, so two cameras might set it off worse than one. Anyway, that's why the good lord invented Kalman filters.

Online bookie can't scoop £50k losses made by 5-year-old

Re: Does anyone really think...

My 3 year old's pretty good at getting round websites and he can only just read. a 5yo would have no trouble. He's also really good at clicking on wildly random stuff that breaks things - which is why he has his own desktop account and I watch him like a hawk - a couple of close shaves with facebook and ebay taught me that in a real hurry!

Swedish men ordered to present cervices in database flub

I know know that my fondleslab is resistant to coffee /and/ snot. not sure my sinuses are going to recover any time soon though... (and why did autocorrect come up with 'fondleslap'!)

Cloudy crypto SSO firm: Passwords must go

So, I've got one set of security researchers telling me to use different passwords everywhere, and another saying we should have one central repository for authentication with some wierd scheme that involves bouncing text messages about. I must log in to different unix boxen 50+ times a day - how's this going to help?

Emirates wedges national ID cards inside NFC phones

tracking

so presumably they'll know who you are, and where you are (thanks to GSM/GPS location) at all times? UK.gov must be wetting themselves in anticipation to see how this one pans out.

Tesla 300-mile e-car UK debut set for 2013

A one square metre solar panel will give you roughly 100W if you park it in the sun. So to charge your 85KWh battery would take about a solid month of sunshine - ie, a whole year if you live in the UK :-) If you're lucky a full day of sunshine might get you to the end of the street, assuming that 17" panel doesn't draw more than 100W of course.

Asus Eee Pad Slider SL101

Apple patented godly unugliness, so there's not much hope there.

Euro beaks mull copyright of software features

a about f

Can we start using IP to protect the _solution_ instead of the problem please. This is all getting far too silly.

Firefox devs mull dumping Java to stop BEAST attacks

Fact!

None of my customers is using IE for business (in the last 5 years), only Firefox. This idea of corporate using IE is quite far fetched. Unless they are some weird hippy corporation that hasn't yet learned better (not because IE has a problem per se, just because a lot of business software still doesn't work 100% properly in it).

Nuclear Mars tank to roam imposing crater

Specs

Was it just me that read it as "Nuclear Mars tank to cause imposing crater" ? Was disappointing to read given that build up :-(

Dell considers Google+ for video customer support

And the point is?

If I'm calling Dell, it's because my computer has failed. If my computer is working well enough to make a video call over the internet, then it hasn't failed.

For application support it might be worth while - provided you can send the desktop rather than a mugshot of an angry customer.

Making a storage mountain out of a molecule

Massive?

Hmmm, what's the spin-up power surge going to be like on a uranium platter then?

Would Microsoft's Skype buy strengthen Lync or push it off a cliff?

Oh joy.

I'm guessing the Linux port of the Skype client will get even attention then.

Prof debuts miniature laser diode for fast networking

zap!

Not sure I like the idea of laser hair removal from space!

US lawmakers eye internet 'kill switch'

Post your own message

"some evil worm or attack on the National infrastructure" - like, one that targes the internet kill switch for example? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_the_nose_to_spite_the_face

Microsoft hits autistic Xboxer with cheat evidence

poor mum!

Parents of kids with ASD or indeed any other disability are so used to their children being criticised or abused or generally treated badly that they get very, very defensive, neurotic even. Someone mentioned 'majorly traumatic event' - an autistic friend likened something like that to feeling as bad as the death of a close relative. Don't ever pretend to understand how brains work, especially non-typical ones!

Prisoners cannibalise mice for mobile power

picocell?

Why don't they just bung a few pico cells in the prison, so any calls get met with 'I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. ' followed by a rough triangulation to see which wing it came from?

Tea Party activists accused of rigging Dancing vote to favour Palin

voting integrity

Interesting that there's usually more fuss made about vote fraud on a reality TV show than there is during a presidential election.

Speak geek: The world of made-up language

common misconception

"non-speaking disorders such as cerebral palsy" - one does not imply the other. Our local pool manager has cerebral palsy. My son has CP. They speak to each other in a way perfectly understandable to any other english speaker. CP is primarily a motor cortex disorder so although speech can be affected it's by no means a given.

AMD chip chief: 'one day, microprocessor skyscrapers'

stacked memory

We were using stacked memory devices 15 years ago at <insert defence co here>. Amazing that it hasn't caught on - unless all the patents on this kind of thing are just tying people's lawyers in knots and stopping progress.

ICO spanks careless Kent Police after data was stolen from car boot

Secure Briefcase?

Just how secure is it? Do the contents get destroyed on opening? Or can anyone get in with an angle grinder?

School IT quango to be expelled

it grads!=people who learnt IT @ uni

He didn't say IT Uni grads, he said people who had learnt IT while at Uni. Subtle difference :-) One of our best IT guys studied hospitality management

Flash and the five-minute rule

Flash life

Flash is well over 10^6 write cycles now even before write wear levelling. We've found that flash lasts longer than hard disk. Our proxy servers with disks on customer sites generally last about 3 years; we've yet to swap out a unit with a flash card but the oldest is 5 years.

Physicist unmasks 99-year-old mistake in English dictionaries

Beer?

The trouble with using beer in a siphon is that after a while, all the bubbles would get trapped at the top and stop the process. Anyway, have you /tried/ drinking beer through a straw?

Desktop Colour Laser Printers

laser vs inkjet

I got through about 4 ink jet printers before getting the HP CP1215N - it's shocking how much better it is, compared with fishing damp bits of paper out the out tray, endless cleaning cycles, nasty drivers, ink cartridges that last for, oh dozens of of pages. I tend to print 50 pages, once every 6 weeks or so, so inkjet printers tend to dry out and you end up with a crappy first page. I plugged it into my network, and all my (linux) boxes just popped up a little box to say they had found it and would I like it to be my default printer. Still barely a quarter through the 'demo' toner cartridges after 1000 pages or so.

Photos are OK; agreed ink jets on coated paper do a better job for that, but it's good enough and besides, not what I bought the printer for.

Roger Boyes probes Vienna Boys’ Choir

A perfect example of...

nominative determinism

Darling confirms telephone line tax

General Taxation

Doesn't practically everyone have a landline - even if they don't use it for voice? Surely this should be added on to general taxation - then those on silly salaries (ie, the bankers that the gvnmnt bailed out) get to pay a bit more, and those of us earning peanuts don't have our nuts squeezed, so to speak.

Ford preps anti-hacking tech for in-car WiFi

Unsafe

That's it, I'm off to earn me a pilot's license. Fords are scary enough on the roads without them being jam packed with MS software!

Exchange 2010 dumps single instance storage

Backup is cheap.

Deal with it by buying more. Oh, oops.

Whitehall plans 'White Noise' phone network collapse

fibre

@Giles Jones "Yet another reason why we need more fibre and less copper. You can't really sell glass fibre for scrap."

That doesn't seem to stop the usual suspects from digging it up - someone I know runs the IT at a chemical plant and they had all their fibre dug up a while back, by, how shall I put it, the residents of a local unauthorised encampment.

Hotmail phish exposes most common passwords

Wallet

So your password list gets nicked along with the wallet. Exactly how do you change your password then if your list of passwords has been nicked? Especially if you have to change it before the thief looks at the contents of the wallet and logs on to your bank - I can imagine your bank's response when they find out you kept your password with your bank card!

Virgin Media network goes down down south

I'm alright Jack :-)

In north kent about 30 miles east of Bromley, all was well last night and has been fine all day today - I'm a network engineery type working from home so if anything goes down all merry hell breaks loose! I'm in an ex telewest area and the service here has been rock solid for the last 5 years.

Buddy, can you spare a PC processing cycle?

very little incremental resources my arse

My quad core box draws about 45w when doing the usual work chores - reading el Reg, email, wordprocessing etc, and about 80w at full tilt. It also goes from silent to 'Jet Engine' and warms the office up nicely - to the extent that in winter, if it gets cold I just fire up a FaH process.

Herschel space 'scope flips its lid

Debris?

What's that bit of debris bottom middle, about 30 seconds in ? Anything important ?

SCO threatened with Chapter 7 destruction

Ha ha ha

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Oh that's the best thing I've read all year.

NASA rover resurrected twice over Easter weekend

MFM

Hell, I accidentally read the manfrommars comment. Must stick head in bucket of something cold...

Apple cracks down on rogue app stores

@LaeMi Qian

> When can I get an OpenMoko Freerunner in Aust??? THAT would be NEWS.

We've sold a few to aussies already - most of the distributors listed on the openmoko site will ship wherever you want.

Roberts RDK-2 kitchen radio

@ac - egg timer flaws

Ostrich eggs take about 2 hours, so it'd be crap for that...

Tories, retail ISVs decry Darling's VAT cut

vat update

Do commercial systems really hard code the vat rate ? I wrote my own as none of the commercial/FOSS ones quite suited. Here's my cron job for next sunday at midnight:

update products set vat=1.15 where vat=1.175

covers all the zero rated stuff too. Magic. Perhaps I should book 4 hours just to make it sound complicated...

UK's 'secure' child protection database will be open to one million

What's it for??

How on earth does this database prevent someone from abusing their own chilldren ? We're not quite in a 24hr domestic surveilance society (yet) and as far as I know there aren't cameras in my home watching me bath my baby checking that I'm not taking /too/ much care washing his bottom...

Wireless power delivery gets blended

mega what ??

@AC (Access point = Desk??? ) - if you have a megawatt microwave, I want to know which county you live in, so I can move to a different one :-) Military might be interested though...

Amazon patents 'customer review incentives'

prior art

Re "an (arguably) obvious idea" - you're forgetting that prior art only exists in the USA - the US patent office doesn't count anything invented outside the US.

Now if we could only get the reverse to apply, ie that US patents could safely be ignored if you are not based in the US, then we could let them patent themselves into oblivion and let them go the same way as their bankers.