* Posts by Vic

5860 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Dec 2007

'Hashtag' added to the OED – but # isn't a hash, pound, nor number sign

Vic

Re: “OED is descriptive”

“Blitz” has become an English word since 1940, despite the perfectly adequate preëxisting English word “lightning”

But "Blitz" when used in English is not a synonym for "lightning"...

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Vic

Re: Bell Labs

> UK Mac keyboard? Alt-3 will give you a hash.

In a bash shell, it repeats the next keystroke 3 times.

Vic.

Toyota catches up to William Gibson with LED hood

Vic

Re: @Ashely Ward - A question and a comment.

A reason for rejection is if the light "shows a light other than red to the rear and white to the front".

That was always my belief - but I'm not sure it's accurate.

The Road Behicles Lighting Regulations 1989 Section 11(1) is concerned only with lamps capable of showing red to the front; it is the colour to the read (defined in Section 11(2)) that is more prescriptive.

There are other sections about blue warning lamps - but these are specifically defined in Section 3 as being "A lamp, fitted to the front or rear of a vehicle, capable of emitting a blue flashing light and not any other kind of light".

Vic.

Vic

Re: A question and a comment.

In the UK, thou shalt not show blue lights at all unless thou art an emergency service vehicle

That's not enforced, though. I regularly see Chavmobiles with blue sidelights, blue lights on the washer jets, etc.

Vic.

Microsoft 'Catapults' geriatric Moore's Law from CERTAIN DEATH

Vic

Re: Slow evolution?

With full custom you are right, lower level masks of the difusion regions need to be produced, but this is not true for semi-custom

I wasn't talking about semi-custom...

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Vic

Re: Slow evolution?

I was working with ASICs - mask programmable mostly - in the 1990's.

I was working with ASICs - full-custom mostly - in the 1990's.

The design of the device was undertaken by the customer and a netlist of the logic circuit sent to the ASIC vendor, which then carried out pre-layout validation checks, design rule checks, pre layout simulation, floor planning, place and route, and then post-layout simulations

So you're doing floorplanning & place/route. That's way more than just configuring the metal layer. That's floorplanning the layout of the silicon beneath that metal layer. Which is exactly what I said...

Take a look at Wikipedia's entry on full-custom ASIC. Feel free to do some more searching if you don't find that sufficiently authoritative.

From a manufacturing perspective, I believe the ULA and mask programmable ASICs were the same.

Nothing like it. ULAs were only customised when the metal layer was applied - long after the dice were sawn. Full-custom ASIC is a custom piece of silicon from start to finish.

Vic.

Vic

Re: Slow evolution?

ULA's WERE ASICS. ASICS - application specific integrated circuits - were/are mask programmable, which is precisely what ULA's were.

The term "ASIC" covers far more than just mask-programmable parts; full-ASIC development would determine the silicon layout underneath the metal layers, and that means a shedload more NRE.

ULAs had a common silicon layout, with just the metal layer being application-specific. That's why I described them as "near-ASIC".

Vic.

Vic

Re: Slow evolution?

ULA's (rather than ASIC's) which were essentially a basic write-once FPGA.

No, you're thinking of PLDs.

ULAs were logic blocks with the function defined by the metal layer; this allowed near-ASICs to be generated comparatively cheaply and with low lead time.

PLDs are EPROM/EEPROM-configured, and are significantly smaller than FPGAs (and generally have much less granularity in function).

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Vic

Re: Here's a Lesson Learned (from SDR) for anyone going down this road...

A software platform which could ease that pain would help, but I trust that might be as difficult as compilers which "automatically" recognize how to parallellise code

Kinda sorta...

A big part of the problem of FPGA development is that you're not just programming someone else's core, you're actually doing hardware layout. That means that, beyond getting your design algorithmically correct, you also need to layout the design such that it conforms to timing constraints. This is not trivial as you approach the capability of the device.

The way this seems to be done is to perform multiple layouts (in parallel if possible), and then to compare each to see which fits the constraints properly. Altera's tool for this is called Design Space Explorer (DSE), Xilinx's is called SmartXPlorer.

I've spent much of the last 3 years implementing & maintaining a Grid Engine cluster specifically to run this sort of tool. It's entirely possible to do, but the complexity of pushing out a new FPGA design should not be underestimated. There's *lots*[1] of compute time burnt in each iteration...

Vic.

[1] Especially as the Linux port of some of these tools seems not to be as effective as it might be. Now I'm out of contract on that job, I might have to talk to the vendors to see if I can't get their tools running a little quicker :-)

How practical is an electric car in London?

Vic

Re: Driving in to central london

Now if we wanted to look to the future, it'd look a lot more like petrol or electric motorbikes

I'd love one of these[1] - if only they weren't so damned expensive :-(

Vic.

[1] Yes, there is an electric one. It won its class in the 2010 Progressive Insurance Automotive X-prize, with the highest MPGe of any of the class winners at 205.3 MPGe. And I think that's rather cool.

Vic

Re: More privileges?

The only way to get them used more than once an hour would be to make the buses smaller

I disagree.

IMO, driving is a privilege, not a right. I would like to see people take more care over that privilege.

I see *awful*, dangerous, hideous driving every single day. I would like to see people stopped for such behaviour, and their driving privilege revoked. It doesn't need to be for long - a week's ban would be effective - but it needs to be enforced.

In this way, public transport would be more heavily used - and people would get used to using it too, so they might choose the bus even after the ban has passed. The traffic remaining on the roads would be marginally reduced, and those drivers still driving would have demonstrated sufficient observational skills at least not to get caught doing anything stupid.

I don't expect to see this happen, though :-(

Vic.

Vic

Re: Evil Auditor More privileges?

> Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious

I had an Esprit. Lovely car.

"Lotus" is mis-spelled, though. The "U" should have been an "A"...

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Vic

Re: More privileges?

Are you saying that leccy cars can't overtake cyclists?

Very many petrol cars seem unable to; are you saying that electric cars will necessarily attract more highly-skilled drivers than the norm?

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Vic

Re: More privileges?

The only way it would affect your motoring is if you use those lanes yourself or can't stand the thought of a hippy getting to work faster than you in the morning.

The purpose of a bus lane is to get buses around the city more effectively.

EVery time you allow soething into that lane that is not a bus, you compromise that purpose. I've already seen it on a regular basis in Southampton with useless taxi drivers; adding electric cars to the mix will just make it worse.

Buses are mass-transit; they are an important part of ferrying people around, even if you yourself do not use them. So putting electric cars into bus lanes will diminish transport for everyone using the roads, even if it achieves a short-term gain for those buying the cars. I don't think that's a good thing...

Vic.

Bloke squeezes Apple's boules, predicts millions of iPhone 6s, iWatches

Vic

Doubling of earnings?

Sapphire glass might be lovely stuff, but I can't see Apple *doubling* its earnings with a new iPhone and a watch. That money's got to come from somewhere...

Vic.

Microsoft C# chief Hejlsberg: Our open-source Apache pick will clear the FUD

Vic
Thumb Up

Re: Sheds a single tear

Page 2 - the bit about Typescript? Or perhaps you weren't reading the same article...

Same article - but one of us[1] managed to miss the fact that there was a second page entirely :-)

Thanks for the prod.

Vic.

[1] Who shall remain nameless, natch...

Vic

Re: Sheds a single tear

The thing about ubiquitous JavaScript

Errr - are we reading the same article?

Where does Javascript come into it?

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Vic

Microsoft and other companies clearly have lots of applicable patents / IP that are likely to apply to Linux

Actually, they almost certainly have none.

But that hasn't stopped them *claiming* they have hundreds - and, since it is cripplingly expensive to *win* a lawsuit in the US, such FUD has been as effective as having real patents.

I fervently hope that those days are behind us...

Vic.

Top Canadian court: Cops need warrant to get names from ISPs

Vic

Re: No sympathy.

Overall this is a triumph of common sense.

Yes - a rare gem.

I am always very uneasy when Civil Liberties are used to protect someone I really don't want protected - but that's why they're liberties; they should be constitutionally protected, even for fuckwits we don't like.

In this case, I think the Court got it bang on - both enshrinig the principle of needing a warrat in very explicit terms, and also ruling that the evidence was obtained whilst the Police had reason to believe they were acting legally, and so should be admitted. An excellent judgement on both counts.

Vic.

When will Microsoft next run out of US IPv4 addresses for Azure?

Vic

Re: Perhaps they want to access The Register?

As The Register seems to be solely dependant on IPv4 and doesn't offer any IPv6 access at all, anyone without IPv4 addresses is SoL if they want to read El Reg...

The IPv4 address space is available within IPv6 as ::ffff:<IPv4 address>.

Vic.

Vic

Re: Confused about IPv6 vs. NAT.

Unless your ISP allocates a public IPv6 range for all your devices you will to use NATing and private addresses anyway.

The Minimum Allocation Unit for IPv6 is a /64 - meaning each of us gets at least 1.8x10^19 addresses. And yes there are plenty of allocation units - 1.8x10^19 of them, meaning there are enough MAUs for each of us to have at least 10^9 of them...

The IPv6 address space is *enormous*.

Vic.

CIA rendition jet was waiting in Europe to SNATCH SNOWDEN

Vic

Re: I'm surprised this works, and wonder if it works when it matters

why wouldn't they turn off the transponder? (yeah, I know they're made to not be turned off

On the contrary, they *are* designed to be turned off.

Here's a picture of one of the units I use - note the "on", "off" and "stby" buttons in the circle. Another type (similar to one I use, but not quite the same) can be found here. Again, note the "off" position on the switch...

Then they could turn on a transponder with a fake identify

Not all transponders have any knowledge of the aircraft identity (although I suspect this one would have).

Seems like it would be easy to avoid this type of amateur tracking if they wished, so given that they didn't, that means they didn't care in this instance if they were tracked.

I suspect it's more along the lines of flying a jet at high speed is significantly safer if you have a mode S transponder active, and the risks of being tracked are nothing like the risks of flying into something because you haven't seen it in time. I don't know the capabilty of this particular aircraft, but an indicated airspeed of 400 knots at 45,000 ft comes out as a true airspeed of 760 knots. That's bloody fast in anyone's language (although I'm pretty sure the aircraft won't achieve this, at it would be supersonic at that altitude).

Vic.

DINOSAUR BLOOD: JUST RIGHT, as Goldilocks might say, if drinking it

Vic

Re: Jurassic period didn't have FOUR TIMES the atmospheric density !

Thruxton, eh? ... They sold me a tankful of Avgas.

How many kidneys do you have left?

Vic.

Vic

Re: Jurassic period didn't have FOUR TIMES the atmospheric density !

Pterodactyal flying reptiles had 11 meter wingspan and todays Peruvian Condor has a 5 meter wingspan. Doubling the wingspan would double the area, and only be possible by having four times the air density.

The aircraft I usually fly has a wingspan of 9.2m. A Boeing 747 has a wingspan of 59.6m.

By your "logic" above, that would prove that the air density at Heathrow is more than 40 times the density at Thruxton. I'm surprised we can breathe...

Vic.

Everyone can and should learn to code? RUBBISH, says Torvalds

Vic

Re: @AC101 and in general

I recall the late great Dennis Ritchie saying somewhere in his writings that the first part of design was to push the keyboard away and get pencil and paper.

A mate of mine had a wonderful saying - "A week of keyboard-bashing can sometimes preclude the need for an hour's thought".

Usually when I post this, someone feels the need to "correct" the statement :-(

Vic.

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Joke

Re: Depends what you mean by 'code'

Q: What do you call someone who hangs out with musicians?

A: A drummer.

Q: What do you call a drummer without a girlfriend?

A: Homeless

Vic.

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Joke

Re: @Trevor

give someone a fish ... and they eat for a day, teach them how to fish ... and they eat every day.

Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day.

Teach a man to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

Vic.

Vic

Re: Everyone should learn how to design internal combustion engines

Actually it used to be mandatory to learn how to design a radio transceiver before you could get a ham radio licence.

It certainly was when I got mine[1].

Vic.

[1] Long expired...

Vic

Re: The man is correct

It goes to show, I think, that even if something is good/enjoyable, being forced to learn it (or the pedagogic methods used) can turn it into something that you come to hate.

I really hated learning History at school. It was an excessively dry set of data; learning without understanding.

These days, it's something I enjoy - getting to grips with the *why* of what these kings did, not just the *when*. These names I learnt at school have become characters, and those characters are interesting.

The method of teaching employed has a huge effect on how the subject comes across. I had a rather heated discussion with my missus (an art teacher) about how Shakespeare is taught in schools; I didn't understand how anyone could find it boring, as I never had. Then I spent an evening in the pub with the Englich department, and they told me all about how they are *told* to teach it. Once again, understanding flowed from that...

Vic.

Vic

Re: The man is correct

Mandating that anyone learn anything they hate is a waste of time. You're good at what you love, you don't love something because you're good at it.

I spent 8 years learning Latin. I hated pretty much every minute of it.

But I was reasonably good at it.

I couldn't see the point at the time, but it has served me well since then, both in terms of understanding my own language and learning new ones.

It's also kinda useful for taking down pompous arseholes; quidquid latine dictum sit, inflatum altum videtur,,,

Vic.

DOCX disaster recovery: How I rescued my wife from XM-HELL

Vic

Re: @ProperDave

Use vi for much of my document drafting, unix or DOS version. It has no smarts

Vi actually has a *lot* of smarts[1]. They're just not turned on by default...

Vic.

[1] A colleague of mine would show me many natty features of her preferred IDE. I'm not entirely sure if she was pissed off or secretly impressed that I could duplicate them in vi...

Microsoft in hunt for the practical qubit

Vic
Joke

Re: A quantum computer running Windows?

MS tends to create software that exists in the superposition state of working, but not working properly

The Blue-Cast Screen of Death?

Vic.

UK govt preps World War 2 energy rationing to keep the lights on

Vic

Re: "we haven't worked out what to do with the nuclear waste"

It's justified in the rest of the text, feel free to go read it.

It isn't.

Basically he's saying that courtesy of the tides, you can put (say) 2GWh of electricity in and get more than 2GWh of electricity out, by adding some tidal energy too

If that is the case, then what he's got is a hybrid energy extraction tool. What he has *not* got is something that's >100% efficient. Claiming it is so is a decidedly worrying proposition, whatever the guy's title might be.

Vic.

Vic

Re: "we haven't worked out what to do with the nuclear waste"

it’s a storage system that is more than 100% efficient.

That line, on its own, should ring every alarm bell in existence...

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Vic

Re: Bring back the night!

While the increase in insurance might hurt one individual company the power saved in total outweighs this surely?

No - that's the point. You save some power, but your business gets ransacked. That's not a net gain...

That sort of money first thinking is one of the major problems that got us into this mess in the first place.

And pretending that money is infinite gets us into even more of a mess. It's no point saving a bit on your lecky bill if you go bankrupt through having all your stock stolen; you'd have been better off not having the shop, thereby saving *all* of the electricity, rather than just the nighttime-lighting portion of it.

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Vic

Re: Power storage?

they were talking about large masses in basically mineshafts hundreds of metres deep (clearly nothing new there). I wasn't quickly able to find a reference and don't have time to work the numbers from first principles just now (eg 500m mineshaft).

OK, so use your 500m mineshaft.

Pick a mass that suits your fancy - 10m cube I talked about early is probably about as big as you could even think about manipulating (I very much doubt minshafts are drilled 100m^2).

Work out how much energy is stored in that putative system. Now extract just 10MW from it and see how long it lasts. Go on - do the maths. It's very informative.

To achieve the current STOR of 2GW, you'd need 200 of those generators. And they want to quadruple that...

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Vic

Re: Power storage?

it's entirely possible to store the surplus energy *before* it's turned into electricity, e.g. offshore wind being used offshore to compress gas, lift weights, etc.

Do the numbers.

Think about lifting a *huge* piece of steel (I used 10m x 10m x 10m lifted to 100m high in my calcs - that's a *very* bug bit of metal lifted *very* high). Now work out how long that energy store would last if it were full to start, and you had to extract several MW of power from it. Feel free to assume 100% efficiency throughout (which, naturally, you won't achieve in practice).

Now look at how much wind energy you'd have to use to lift that weight in the first place, and suss out where you're going to get that power from if the turbines are supplying your base load...

Vic.

Stephen Fry MADNESS: 'New domain names GENERATE NEW IP NUMBERS'

Vic

Re: Ansible etc

You started well enough, but :-

It's nothing like near infinite if it does become as ubiquitous as Bluetooth or 3.5mm jackplugs. What if Apple gives 2 x IPV6 to every Beats headphone? (One for each ear).

Take a look at *how* many addresses IPv6 gives you. Even with the minimum allocation unit of /64, you've got 2^64 addresses *minimum*. That's nearly 2x10^19 addresses - and we could easily have a MAU each, as there are nearly 2x10^19 of them available (so there are more than 10^9 such allocations available for every human who could possibly live on this planet).

IPv6 gives you a *ridiculously* huge[1] address space. Exhaustion will not happen.

Vic.

[1] I suspect this is connected to the slow uptake thereof...

Vic

Re: When do they become available?

I'd like to grab it to use alongside my .org.uk

I have a .org.uk domain, and I'd quite like the .uk to go with it.

Sadly, the .co.uk is owned by a domain squatter. And he gets the rights to the .uk domain :-(

Vic.

Vic

Re: so every new domain/user generates another server farm, eh?

I suspect the reference is to an NS record

I'm quite sure the reference is to either an A record (IPv4) or an AAAA record (IPv6).

Which you will need for a new domain, and will be a sort-of redirect.

Exactly so, except for the fact that it's nothing like a redirect.

Vic.

Vic

Re: so every new domain/user generates another server farm, eh?

a new domain name creates a new table in the core DNS servers.

Well, it doesn't. But never mind that.

a new domain entry for a new destination creates a redirection record.

What? Why would you use a "redirection record"? The closest to that in real parlance is a CNAME - and there's no need for that if you're creating a new domain...

if it points to an existing web site, no IP address is created, the old one is used.

So if you're vhosting, you don't need new IP addresses? Yeah, we knew that. But it's irrelevant; aside from the fact that it gets quite difficult to vhost if you're using SSL connections, it still doesn't get away from the fact that new IP addresses are required for other things than vhosting, and new domain names do *fuck* *all* about that.

if it's a service on a hosting company, it may be a virtual server within the private network of the hosting company, and everybody in the world is using 10... private networks without bothering anybody else, because they never go to the net itself. the internal link is in the hosting company routers.

So you're trying use use NAT in front of a web host? Yeah, that's pretty pointless. You still need a routable IP address to server the domain, with the above discussion about SSL still in effect. NATting doesn't save you a thing.

so, BZZZZT. your suitcase can fit in anybody's car without making a new car for it.

Well, if we were talking about suitcases or cars, you might have some sort of bizarre point. But as we're talking about IP addresses, you seem to have a few misunderstandings...

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Vic

Re: Isn't a number that is almost infinite, er, infinite?

> (1 - 0.999...) / 2 will fit nicely.

It won't...

Vic.

Snowden's Big Brother isn't as Orwellian as you'd think

Vic

What a load of apologetic nonsense.

Indeed.

I think it's very nice of El Reg to allow our shadowy watchers the opportunity to pen an article from time to time...

</sarc>

Vic.

Mobe-orists, beware: Stroking while driving could land you a £4k fine

Vic

Re: Safety mode on GPS

The average wage in the UK is something like £25k, so a £10k fine would *not* be easy to pay for most people.

Errr - yes. That's what I said...

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Vic

Re: Speeding and the police

If for example they accidentally write 94mph instead of 98mph, then a fixed penalty is applied, rather than going in front of a magistrate for a minimum of 4 points and a much heavier fine.

I got caught[1] at 102. Braking heavily. And got a fixed-penalty notice.

I've always found the best plan of action is to be extremely submissive - which, whilst it annoys me to have to play the part, seems to work quite well.

Vic.

[1] This was in 2002; I'm not sure if they've changed the guidelines. I do know that the copper in question didn't know about the crash resistance of a Lotus, but I wasn't going to argue with him...

Vic

Re: Safety mode on GPS

hands free which while not perfect is still safer.

The stats I saw (some while back - Google probably knows about them) says the opposite; there is no difference between using a phone in your hand and using it hands-free.

The former is rather easier to detect and prosecute, though.

So while you could get stung £10k for a first offence, for the fourth that could be £40k.

Do you not think those numbers a little large? For much of the population, anything £10K or more can be considered "infinite", and there's no way they'll ever be able to pay.

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Joke

> I feel like giving up my PM job

You're the Prime Minister?

Why can't you stop this nonsense, then?

:-)

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The one that bugs me is the tacked on one about the quadrupled fine for speeding on the motorway.

Indeed. Ten grand seems somewhat ... disproportionate.

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Vic

Re: For some definition of "use"

> there should be some form of retest of licenced drivers every 10 years

Every 10 years might prove to be unworkable, but there should definitely be a check-up.

I passed my test when I was 17. I don't need to do a damn thing to keep my licence until my 70th birthday - and even then, I only need to *self-certify* that my eyesight is still up to snuff.

Compulsory eye-tests would be a good thing all round.

Vic.