Posts by Britt Johnston

FTC to host town hall meeting on DRM abuse

@ DRM or copyright - pick one

Thanks for the great choice: since copyright for digital media is only respected by the willing, I suppose DRM is left.

Or maybe there other alternatives.

Asus Eee keyboard opens CES

user-defined keys

This looks more like a flexible keyboard than an embedded netbook. I can't imagine wanting to use an upright itouch-sized screen as a display except in emergencies.

The touch screen could prove useful for music programmes, which often enough need a special keyboard to reach the function keys- one reason less for musicians to be impoverished.

If the Asus quality weren't up to it, Logitech will bring out their version soon enough.

Home Office denies remote snooping plan

Easy to implement

A can think of a couple of cheap* ways HMG could sucessfully implement this:

- licence the German system

- use the back door(s) in Windows 7

I suspect the timing is ill-defined because such stuff is still illegal in a few countries. Europe is waiting till the last major one (US?) has set up a legal patch.

*Both could be had for the price of an internet browser and a back-scratch IOU.

MoD tops lost security pass league

Slapdash Manor

sounds like a title for the sequel to Yes Minister.

HMRC gets it wrong on one in ten personal records

the wiki way forward

What gets me in so many of the cases is that the way to correct errors is such a labyrinth.

Please add a user requirement to the national database "all data pertaining to users may be corrected online by them".

This may bring new difficulties - why are my police convictions set to 9999? - but maybe a decentralised approach offers more hope than than a centralised one.

Any clouds in your sky?

after outsourcing

Those who buy the outsourcing story will go for clouds, too, for seamless exchange between themselves and their partners.

Pain? What pain?

The application platform’s in play. But where’s it going?

@jake - data and hardware sharing

You have a fine memory, no need to keep the papers. And you are right, 'one user one CPU' is more exact, says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle.

That said, you are describing fast switching rather than multiuser multitasking, and a system - a nebulous idea in itself - today would surely bundle in the printing and viruses(cookies, codecs) as well as processing and I/O. Data and hardware sharing are the important drivers for platforms, as opposed to each his own spreadsheet or system.

'Dogma' and 'laws' make things sound over-certain, too - my pointing was away from the direction of small machines doing one thing, that doesn't fit well with larger businesses - I had modern database servers in mind as I wrote.

platform = set of kit shared by >1 application

The opposite concept would be "one application, one system", which is pretty much a non-starter for larger companies, though it used to be PC dogma (Pournelle's law).

I was once involved with a cross-platform product numbering application, jump-started after a merger. For speed, the original data was set up on a database, the decision which ERP and which groupware to use came later. As different parts sought an interface, we observed that they were connecting to existing copies: the replicate of the database, the ERP copy and the groupware copy, which made them de facto platforms. Smaller customers sometimes made their own copy in a corner of their application.

It is rare to watch platforms grow from seed. but pruning to fit is pretty common.

No remeniscence icon, I'll make do with a smiley - it was a fun project.

Register Hardware revamped

another good thing

I always thought twice about visiting the hardware, since the link treacled.

Today is better, did you splash out on a new server - or is that just year-end?

Middle Earth says hi to Sony's new Vaio

@ jerome - double trouble

'two touchscreens and no keyboard is... er, the worst of both worlds?'

...better than two keyboards and no screen, though.

Inside Dell's containerized data centers

how many USB connectors?

...would be nice to see a picture of the I/O socket.

Groupware put to the test and found wanting

say it clearly

<setting clearer goals and objectives> is too mealy-mouthed to change a mind set.

So here, black on white, is my #1 cause. The most important decision is to share data rather than to secure it. Put another way, 'need to know' blocks knowledge working.

Harvard prof slams US nut allergy hysteria

@allergy sources

I'm not an immunologist, but have chased up the question where the allergies come from, especially as they seem so much more prevalent in USA than Europe. Americans also eat more peanuts than Europeans, and peanuts are the largest source of fatal allergic reaction. Peanut allergies are becoming more prevalent.

Some chemicals are thought to prime allergic reactions: proof is hard to come by, the chemical classes are unclear. Such chemicals wouldn't have to be sprayed on the peanuts, just absorbed somewhere earlier. As mentioned, cleanliness is also considered a source of allergy, an immune overreaction, because the body's defences are short of practice, e.g. children growing up on a farm have less allergies than city children. The chemicals in the cleaners themselves are not under suspicion.

One likely source of peanut allergies is a toxin from a mould is found in small amounts in peanuts after storage. The same mould grows on many other stored crops, though, so something in the peanut must be particularly effective at triggering the immune reaction.

MIT boffins crack fusion plasma snag

collywobbles like quarks?

Excuse me being pedantic on a Friday, but isn't the colleywobbles, like news, plural-looking with singular meaning?

My coat had a quark in it when I hung it up.

Human rights court rules UK DNA grab illegal

fix it before asking for more

As pointed out by some of the thoughtful press, one way to protect from random identity capture would be to take everyone's DNA. This decision would be political, and has pros as well as cons.

The administrative responsibility to keep the data correct, current and complete lies with the owners (the police?). Since they don't allow changes, corrections, complaints or even viewing rights, they do an abominable job at present..That is not a good basis for arguing to globalise.

Is the pause to see if they are able to implement suitable policies to manage correction processes?

CRB database wrongly labels thousands as criminals

@ good stuff, from a database

I agree that 99.9% is a good figure.

The level of complaints corrected is of the same order as those which were refused. That could mean that crooks want relief, but could equally mean that the rules to prove innocence are tricky - conclusion open.

The last case is the % of uncontested wrong data, which is not mentioned. It could be estimated by following up on a sample of data. If this had a larger error rate than all contested data, that would not be such good news in the context of broader new usage.

Keep testing for usage (applies to all databases).

Co-op IT workers vote to strike

step 2 of 4

As the earlier linked article says, the Coop FS IT department was passed on to Steria in 2007, a fairly common occurence.

Wasn't there a requirement at that time for ex-employees be maintained at equivalent salary for a few years? If not, Co-Op FS didn't do a great job at handover time.

DNA convictions fall as database doubles in size

consenting youth threat

It would be possible to have 100% coverage, and still not solve any crimes. The reduced efficacy by increasing coverage suggests that there are other agendas.

As nearly one quarter of the records are from persons aged 10 - 17, capturing young person's DNA records is likely to be one of these.

I would have imagined it is used much less for minors, as voluntary consent - the basis for DNA testing - probably also should require parental approval. Can anyone who knows explain?

The US and the impossible green revolution

Reducing energy is easy, details to follow

"...last nail in the coffin of the postwar European welfare state" - excuse me If I and other Europeans don't find this a good idea.

Isn't a welfare state potentially less energy intensive than, say, a west coast SUV highway economy?

...China's leaders constitute a central authority. Where does this help with energy? Because they can push unpopular measures through?

This is not my understanding of Nazi priorities.

Why not try to copy the Zimbabwe model, and reduce energy by 90%?

McKinnon suffers further legal setback in extradition fight

why not move?

If he moved to Europe, he would have the right to work, no extradition for petty crimes, and British justice wouldn't be so embarrassed.

CIO surveys murdering IT budgets

CIOs vs CFOs

I remember the good old days when the CFO was the CIO, and just had to have an automated bean counter.

Bill Gates = nostalgia icon

Schneier sticks it to surveillance

clarification

I think it is helpful to put liberty and control as extreme positions of one scale.

The same polititian who asks for 10% more control has difficulty saying to his voters that he wants 10% less liberty, and for who. The more honest ones do this, and point out they only want it for criminals, terrorists, immigrants, homeless, patients, children and other non-voters.

Google settles Book Search suit for $125m

pretty good effort

This compromise could become a reasonable update of copyright principles for web products around writing, at least for America.

It is much better than the situation for music, spoken audio or even pictures.

Asus' sexed-up Eee PC 1000-series netbook spied on web

@What happening to Moore's law?

There are other laws around that may be more relevant:

- As soon as a category, like laptops, becomes decent, an lower spec is introduced to create room for improvement.

- The form factor reduces until there is no room for the chip set/drive/cooler (keyboard and screen don't count).

- The small cheap £200 computer is here today, but the makers are still asking £350 for them.

UK Govt claims lead in 'green motoring revolution'

The cheaper, more efficient way

is to buy Daimler shares at rock bottom and wait till the electric Smart comes out.

Forgotten what an egg looks like? We can help

international conspiracy?

The object doesn't seem to meet the EU standards. It is missing a stamp, and should look like this...

http://www.britegg.co.uk/lionquality05/startlionquality.html

'Magnetic Death Star' fragments unearthed in New Jersey

no cause for effect

The expansion of large mammals occuring at the PETM does not mean that CO2 caused mammals to grow - or deathstars, for that matter. The two things just happened at the same time. Another reason could be that after the demise of the dinos, there was plenty of room and food, hence less pressure on fuel-inefficient organism designs.

Public ID card support holds steady - says gov report

El Reg could do the nation a service

Given a sample size of 300, I think El Reg could do a better job of whiping up a survey of readers (call them IT experts, if you will). Going out of your way to prove your figures are unbiased, please don't just survey the people who commented on this article till now.

What are your tech priorities for the next year?

open ends

The questionnaire could use a final comments field to explain why some questions are irrelevant, or require explanation, e.g. Our IT spend could be going down because:

- there is nothing worth buying

- the company is in chapter 11

- we've outsourced everything, so all IT spend is on someone else's books

Microsoft's 'ordinary Joe' promises Windows 7 bliss

home vs office

Vista teams noticed that offices want complete control, full encryption, virus updates, cross-platform integration,... but couldn't really deliver.

Window 7 guys shouldn't forget that consumers want instant start-ups, few changes, no fiddly messages, integration with all devices, and Vista didn't really deliver that either.

I hope the split between the two worlds gets real. Otherwise it could be neatbooks for fun and the clouds for business.

Hands on with SanDisk's SlotMusic SD-not-CD player

upgrade and recharge: model fitting

1)All the good bits from my 100 CDs fit as mp3 downloads on a shuffle (728 Kb).

2)Currently (2008 - 2010) I'm downloading my vinyl at about 10 per week to mp3. And cursing the big 4 distributors, who don't have an upgrade policy (Actually its a downgrade but the mp3s are okay over headphones). I'll be blowed if I'll pay full CD price for the conversion, but perhaps 10% for nuisance value and 5% for better quality, and I'd willingly take them on micro SDs, even better on a few multi-Mb SDs.

3) A question: I assume home-recorded SDs also fit? Its not clear from the article. Most PC have an SD slot, and you can get a micro SD converter.

4) I'm not going back to rechargable batteries either, that's just as fiddly as ripping mp3s.

So all in all, maybe Sandisk can tweak their product to fit my profile

How should software developers be paid?

by the hour

..not that you whip up people to working at top speed all the time, but it does provide an incentive to project managers to keep the runway clear.

@ gulfie:

on bonuses, our internal developers do get overtime as time off, and when the going gets tough (when the boss approves) they can choose between cash and time.

on project costing - agreed that risks taken on the project shouldn't be passed on unfiltered to the developer - unless he is a one-man-band, taking on both. Often such hybrid guys are worth hiring, they are good at optimising effort and results.

'U-turn' West: MI5 watching 'great' terror plot right now

@ richard Johnson - entertainingly inept

A few comments point out how ineffective terrorists have been. It has probably taken HMG a while to come up with a suitable matching response.

no, the string vest, please, not the coat...

Ruling makes it easier to get software patents in the UK

who is we?

<...where there may be a difference of approach or of principle, one must try to minimise the consequent differences in terms of the outcome...>

In other words, you can belong to any group, communist to nazi, as long as you do what consensus (i.e. my affiliation) demands. Is mumpits too strong a word?

What if one approach is inadequate and the other misguided?

Dial 'M' for Microsoft's new programming language

I missed one

What happened to the point-and-click package to deliver good quick 3D DivX games?

MEPs vote to recognise flag, anthem, motto

trusting times

The current financial climate will be an interesting test for the Euro. Nations are united in calling for trust and confidence, but, as comments above show, it isn't clear who to trust. The fix-it programmes so far are national. Today's hole in the fabric: German accounts in bust Islandic banks are not covered by the German safe-saver guarantees.

Could be that Germany finds it is dragging a lot of beggars on its coat-tails, with little control of the financial direction.

EU battery rule may zap iPhone, blow away MacBook Air

next define standard lithium battery sizes

Unlike Ni/Cd, alkaline, Pb/Mn or C/Zn, Lithium dimensions and contacts are as standardised as pre-EU cucumbers. Why, then you could even replace them with Toshiba fuel cells (see related article in ElReg)

Wireless-data LED lamps to replace lightbulbs - US profs

low-voltage DC in houses

I agree with both Tim Schormer in principle, and Graham Ts reminder on Ohms law.

The point is that each gadget with electronics requires a highly inefficient transformer. The energy savings plus the melted down transformers would allow you to install broad-band copper underflooring.

I haven't yet worked out how to turn this into the next Microsoft, or what to do with my Rio Tinto shares.

1 password per lightbulb - valid 60 days

A signal converter needs embedding in every light. (The signal must come from somewhere: a wifi router linked to the house mains? Perhaps a LED bank in the cellar and fiber optic pipes to each room would be cheaper?)

This will move GNP on and upwards. Lights will become so expensive that they can be taxed. A licence to fit lightbulbs will become obligatory for safety reasons.

Seriously, this discussion might be valuable to the floater of this lightly-baked idea, since many legitimate problems can probably be solved in the design phase.

Apple surrenders the Pink (to Microsoft)

the real pink

Google 'pink' and you'll find a singer tops the listings - an ex-president, and a great voice she has too.

Reg readers: Distributed software development is hard

Try again, please

I didn't participate in the survey, because I'm only a data manager (=user with funny ideas) who happens to sit in the same office as an even mix of about 150 from India and internal IT working on a global SAP implementation. But I also don't agree that blogospherics would improve the stresses I currently observe. There IS constant talk, and passing on of information, though often enough analysing what went wrong, or what is really needed.

In our case, the workflow and responsibility is also pretty well solved (accepting a time and documentation penalty) which is currently leading to an interesting work-to-rule from the out-side after adding a complex SAP module.

The bottom line is that our case ducks the old IT adage that one good programmer is worth lakh average ones, so you want the good guys in the right places. At the moment we keep our head above water, among other fixes, with pensioners rehired as consultants.

You could bring much to light as journalists if you sat down and discussed in depth with a few of the willing who answered the questionnaire.

Ofcom to create 116 bureaucracies

how many 116ers are enough?

I am convinced that any topic generating more that 30 comments in El Reg is worthy of its own support line.

And please reserve 116999 for people worried about running out of numbers who want to know what to do next.

That coat has a 10 digit number on the back...

Get ready for the coming data centre crunch

Underclocking, anyone?

Unnecessary cooling might be a left-over practice from the bad old mainframe days. A colleague who recently retired described one of his first jobs, keeping a department store's computer up and running. " At[...], the air conditioning was under-powered. If a hot day was forecast in summer, we knew where we would be spending our time. The beasts only functioned between 19 – 21°C".

Since heat increases more than linearly with speed, what about underclocking?

Brits happy to hand over password details for £5 gift voucher

only four in five ?

Keep it up, for the 20% that believe their own data is safe. We've all lost control of our data many times, from addresses or medical records to creditworthiness, and can only hope that those who collect it aren't sheep, black or any other colour.

The double standard observed in the survey is akin to the well documented one of risk-taking. Joe Public accepts high risks under his own control, such as smoking or driving motor cycles. Where he has no control, he objects to much smaller risks, like a vaccine campaign.

Are today's developers more creative?

creativity is but cut & paste*

What you describe is that when technology is primitive, the mechanics of cut and paste require more specialist knowledge. As platforms are today easier to use, the total creativity is much greater, though the individual contribution may have dropped.

The ideal project takes existing data, shows it in a useful new form, and costs nothing. Wikis come pretty close to this ideal, for instance.

*For proof, see John Livingston Lowes, "The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the

Imagination", Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1927 or a short summary like http://www.xanadu.com.au/mail/xanadu/msg00192.html.

What's the cost of global warming?

NEO (not either or)

What's wrong with trying to increase energy efficiency, reduce consumption, support the industrialising world and fix the worst problems as they arise?

Reminds me of the BBC discussion of how north sea oil revenues should be spent: education and housing, better pensions, developing new technology, or whatever. In the end, the presenter, aged with make-up, concluded from far-future 2010 that Britain had just muddled through.

Cambridge tech boss rips gov over innovation cash

Hard sell

I am unaware whether the success of Cambridge start-ups was driven by the funding, or the role of this or previous heads.

I agree with his tenor, that Europe's only advantages are longer-term planning (really?) and a few brains with good ideas.

And I do wonder how close start-up support comes to corruption - the 'all our competitors are doing it' argument would seem to fit.

Royal Society says goodbye to creationism row vicar

I would prefer teaching of tolerance

nuff said

Media standard backers attempt Apple-less solo run

i-tunes is the weakest link

Yes, things are changing, and yes, Apple is the 400kg download gorrilla.

I'm sure the others are hoping that Apple will stumble with an i-Tunes update, and open the door. One slip with advertising or usability might reveal customer loyalty to be skin-deep.

Yes, there was a viable liquid bomb plot

which state?

The point is not whether liquid bombs could be made, but that solid and compressed gas bombs are more efficient. The banning all states of matter is more logical, but less economically viable. So 100% safe is not possible, and some Body squeezed out an extra 0.01% by taking away our shampoo, perfume, drinks, eyewash etc. (>>0.01% convenience)

Things started the 70s, when nations fought hard - and won - to stop hijackers becoming an everyday occurrence. Presumably, they wanted air travel, on national carriers, to be a positive experience.

Well, it hasn't been fun for decades. Imagine car travel being channeled like airlines today, body/bag checks/separations at every crossroad. If security gurus want to be proactive, they should be fighting the increase of sea piracy, ready for intercontinental airlines going belly up. And, in the meantime, non-intrusive spot checks with a small group of intelligent people.