Posts by Britt Johnston

French storm the bastille over 'Sarkozy's Big Sister' database

active in politics

I suppose that includes voting?

Judge attacks 'bits of legal boilerplate, bolted together'

Required reading

for those who invented something useful for their company, and are asked to sign off on the legalese.

Eye-o-Sauron™ poked out by Great Wall of America

The best walls

As noted several times already, the best walls are the ones built by the poorer side: East Germany, North Korea, Cuba,

They work by persuading citizens that they are better off staying put, and are much cheaper than stopping immigration with technology. I wonder what the cumulative maintenance costs of the Wall of China were, and still the Mongols got in several times. And Rome, don't get me started!

The sell might be: they have terrorists north of the fence, can't buy decent chili, don't speak Spanish, don't even have proper churches,....

And the US has to shut up about being such a great place, or at least make clear that the American Dream isn't really for this century's immigrants.

IT relevance? Don't use a technical solution to solve an organisational problem.

Boffinry bitchslap brouhaha: Higgs and Hawking head to head

Austrian Rifles

were reputed to have a 180 degree bend in the barrel: not good for snipers.

The CERN duelling rules: each professor sits in one of the detection chambers, and fires off a proton shot at his opponent.

Amazon flash mob mauls Spore DRM

getting around the 3-strike rule

Spore-DRM may count uninstalls, but will surely start from 3 again after a refresh of windows.

While we're at it, games are my main reason for reinstalling, along with viruses. They leave bits around and the whole becomes less stable after a while.

Anybody out there with experience of a policy of one PC for games and/or internet and one for serious stuff? (I'm tempted, but I only have one working at the moment - and don't really want to get a playstation)

Apple revamps iPod line-up

@ and the IT angle is...

that the Mac line is unchanged.

French firm intros remix-friendly music format

Occams Razor operates on excess skins

MXP4 won't cut it

Academic wants to 'free up' English spelling

write how I say, not how I do

Although German writing is phonetically more consistent than English, it does have large regional differences. But it is possible to manage multiple phonetics. Wikipedia takes some account of this, with a regional search www.wikipedia.de/ and regional editions, like the Allemanic http://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houptsyte.

Even if someone got it right, and everyone agreed, it would only take an R-less broadcaster or a lisping king to introduce new chaos. The last good standard was Latin, which went downhill for 1500 years, and took two centuries to finish off after it was recognized as useless.

English speakers are paying a heavy price for not learning languages, allowing others in to simplify the rules and otherwise mess it up. English is doomed to go the way of Latin.

@ dyslexia: mistakes related to complexity?

An alternative explanation for the differences could be the school age. British first graders are young compared to the continent's.

Chinese would confirm this, it takes a lifetime to learn.

DNA database costs soar

duplication count is not error count

Testing against duplicates doesn't give an error. It might even mark up the duplicates in some self-correcting way. This would only be serious if you were looking for, say, identical twins.

Incidentally, if the 13.3% figure were the number of independent samples, since there must be at least two independent samples to get a match, the database contains 7.5 sure innocents for each 1 potential match. And, at a criminal population ~1%, they have a match rate efficiency an order of magnitude better than background.

Dell Inspiron 910 mini-laptop to be a hardware hacker's dream?

risqué ASCII ( = display test )

The idea of marking the alternative characters is useful, until the ink rubs off. Having a non-standard keyboard means they can feel free to improve previous iterations; set <CTRL><ALT/GR>4 to £ or € for example.

For serious writing or coding, I'd be plugging in a USB keyboard on all SCCs.

Burned by Chrome - Fire put out

slippery

The display claim suggests that I only have to leaf through pages designed by Microsoft to transfer free use to Google.

"Think no evil" is more like it.

PC Gamers get Bill of Rights

#14 smooth exit and #9 - CD to run?

14) PC Gamers also expect games to exit gracefully to Windows; I'm thinking of Oblivion, which takes down my sound system and leaves a mess on the screen.

If they ran from a non-boot CD (#9), the battlechest version could come with its own external CD drive.

iGoogle personalises personal pages on other people's behalf

as good as EBAY

Similar problems occured with the coming version of EBAY.

As IT project managers know, it is important to appear to pay attention to feedback. The more so, if you are asking some subsection of the world to provide it for free.

McKinnon loses extradition fight

@William Old, charles

Thanks William, you are correct, but missed out the bit about extradition between Scotland and England.

I think nana and TomJ have it about right, we are back in the other Elizabethan era, where malicious fooling around poking holes becomes terrorism, treason or espionage if the recipient is "the State". (Conspiracy doesn't fit unfortunately, he was too anti-social).

That is why extradition was, until recently, limited to serious crimes. And why it should be withstood when there is, as Charles says, no common ground.

I accept the point that English Justice, and ECHR felt it was a waste of money to argue the point, but that is no solid foundation for a more justified case.

petty nationalism

In these days of hacking, hijacking aircraft, internet betting, or offshore banks, the world is so small that national boundaries aren't relevant. Yet there is disagreement on what an extraditable (i.e. serious) crime is.

What's needed are some first steps in international justice. The Hague or Guantanamo spring to mind: too bad the Hague ducked the question.

Hackintosh maker bites back at Apple

use comparison with pharmaceuticals

Pharmaceuticals products can be useful for diseases other than approved. Doctors decide when to use, Health Authorities forbid marketing until proven useful.

This matches the Mac status where homebrew is tolerated, but clone sales not.

While warnings of active component interactions are common, I can't imagine anyone writing a licence forbiding use of one tablet with another. They even build the competitor's active component into the same tablet, after patents run out.

If Psystar can write an original ROM that runs a Mac OS, and lets users buy the OS, they should be okay.

The status of licences for old versions seems more favorable to manufacturers than a patent: though that's more an XP/ Vista problem at the moment.

In the end, a licence cannot control end-point use, despite monitoring, registration, and other DRM-like spoiling tactics.

Joss-sticks increase cancer risk: Official

Re: Research on burning matter of any type

While waiting for results, garden refuse can no longer be burned in Switzerland - it must be composted.

Exceptionally, high-temperature incinerators are excused, and that only because so much is recycled that the remaining wets don't burn properly without additives.

Tories want data loss prosecutions

data loss or data reuse

The German Chaos Computing Club starts from the standpoint that everyone's data has been lost, stolen or resold by now, and therefore suggests to politicians that it makes more sense to regulate the use of such data.

The fuss in Britain about data loss, the least reliable and controllable of the sources, seems to be a passing storm in the wrong teapot.

Intel's Barrett goes for Washington on education, innovation

okay, so far ...

US Govt "failing to back innovation or stem the decline in the public education system"

Okay as far as it goes, he left out the bits about keeping healthcare unaffordable, driving the last world power towards bankruptcy and ruin, and making the world a worse place. Maybe there's a sequel planned.

Intel's Atom laptots 'are here'

I'm waiting for the i-tot

sez macboi

Asus goes official on extended Eee PC line-up

less memory for Windows

We're tallking flash disk memory, I'd guess that Windows with virtual memory takes up more room than Linux, leaving less free for other use.

COBOL thwarts California's Governator

something fishy here

I would be surprised if a pay rise were not implemented recently, or if it took so long. Does COBOLl not accept negatives?

Well done the old buckaroos.

The BPM Buzzword Bonanza

BPM's not the problem: process fitting is

My experience of process mapping implementation is that it covers standard cases, more or less, then collapses exhausted. If a job lives from exceptions, change or details, like logistics or data management, then it's fit in or join the army time.

Google's $1bn AOL stake turns to dust

@deliver your entire desktop

Yep, that about nails the marketing side. For my part I would outsource the delivery to Eastern Europe.

business opportunity for AOL?

I have long felt that there is a market for a provider to play the same role as corporate IT depts, to support users who don't understand or care about their OS and its environment. AOL looked the best candidate, as they have customers who are used to being shepherded.

Since the gold rush didn't happen, I guess I was wrong. What point did I overlook?

Old ships' logs show temporary global warming in 1730s

more nits

In the spirit of PTS (pedantry tolerance summer) allow me to point out that 1670 was some centuries later than the plundering era. In fact there was global Spanish gold inflation and a total collapse of the galleon market in between.

No doubt the authors would like to go back to earlier sources, but there was no navy, and no school system, so no reliable naval logs.

another reason to slow down on oil consumption ...

is that when oil is used up, there will be none left.

It is easier to follow the consequences of this correlation than the one between CO2 and climate.

Sub-prime 'woes' infect world’s laptop market

downturn in demand from the West?

I don't see downturn either, for reasons like:

1) Demand for better replacement products still exists - today's laptop is better than a PC of 4 years ago

2) Service economies (e.g. UK) are spent out more than other parts of Europe (DE, PL)

3) There are signs of memory prices dropping, but demand for whole systems drops later than memory

Home Office to order fingerprinting of air passengers

on the contrary

If there is a problem mixing passengers for domestic and and international flights, wouldn't a more direct solution be to use separate terminals?

On a personal note, there is a chink in the armour: come to England, and stay, or blow yourself up first. There are no fingerprints on the way in. I might retire, and buy one of the cheap houses in the panic sale.

The Germans have a nice new twist, they will introduce e-ID cards by 2012, and fingerprints are optional, in the premium version only. Carrots and sticks have not yet been anounced.

EU emissions trading to include airlines

Worth something?

So can Silvio buy El Italia for a Euro, and more than pay off the redundancy costs with CO2 coupons?

Apple's fourth Leopard spits out 25 patches

software + hardware = faster

I recall this ancient formula for a better PC being used as an argument against hardware-agnostic OSes. It still applies to updates I suppose. On related topics, note that :

ZDnet are reporting that they have ways of overclocking a mac - @MrT, they also ran foul of kernel panic - http://www.zdnet.de/news/hardware/0,39023109,39192717,00.htm

And you mention OS-X on the eee yourselves.

Microsoft dishes up interoperability version 1.0

the EU could buy a licence, ..

for europeans in the club.

It might be a good use for the fines that keep rolling in.

Japanese girls taught English by Nintendo DS

bad teaching - @ spider

I taught in summer schools for several years, and agree Japanese and Arabian teaching of spoken English is pretty poor, a bit like French taught in GB/US. The Nintendo will fix part of this, by providing correct sound patterns, but will not provide talking practice. That part, I approached by, for example, trying to get students to butt into an argument - though they were really too polite for our lifestyle, which worked against my purpose.

Force listeners onto DAB by killing FM

Radio either/or?

Stop grumbling about radio, it is the same as TV with the brightness turned down to zero.

If both FM and DAB were abolished, we might get lots of music, even opera, moving to ITV, without costing a p.

Just snap ideas, if you want a reality check, I could follow up for a small consultancy fee.

IBM fills chips with water

Other than water?

Recently losing a USB stick in the wash confirmed my inate distrust of mixing water and electrons. What's wrong with low-watt components?

City anti-Scientology protestor avoids court summons

could have been worse

Are we barking up the wrong cause_and_effect tree?

If senior police had been cultivated, that would have changed their view of normality.

If it's simple corruption, then any cause with sufficient funds has a chance of helping the hand of justice get heavier.

SMS costs more than using Hubble Space Telescope

SMS to Hubble

I tried sending Hubble an SMS to download pics at 410.338.4444 (number from http://hubblesite.org/contact_us/)

It doesn't work; maybe the dots got in the way.

Jacqui Smith un-downgrades cannabis

residue of '68

Is this the comments page of Private Eye?

And now it's time for Data Warehouses as a Service

words between the buzz

This looks so good, I read it twice to make sure I didn't understand it.

In my corner, we are less looking for sophisticated real-time analysis, and more at sorting through garbage for useful titbits.

- can we outsource our SAP business warehouse? - 10 minutes wait for query-on-demand sounds great, our offshore developers turn one around in 3 months.

- if rules processing is minimised, perhaps it can provide insight into multiple flags meaning almost the same thing to different departments.

- getting results without rules processing sounds even better.

Still, your advertising machine threw up some interesting suggestions, thanks. I guess that is what buzzwords are for.

SanDisk warns that unsecured flash drives are coming to get you

keeping one step ahead

I bought a Shuffle as a floppy replacement - CD-R are no better, are they?- I kept slides on it to show when networks are down, and documents to finish at home.

Since then, the company net blocks executable files - Shuffle lost its value, had to buy an honest USB stick. The Office documents keep changing format - it is a struggle to keep one step ahead of admins so I can work like this.

Then, last week, the USB stick died in the washing machine. Reduced to carrying the laptop around.

Fresh blood - the new fight for open source

Recognition is enough

Most day-job paymasters are looking for solutions, not protection of employee creativity. It seems reasonable that if an employer cares, it will recognise creative code contributions - something like the $1 patents in Los Alamos (read R.Feynman). If not, the code in your head can be used for other applications, and so become public knowledge - which is also the cheapest protection against patent pirates, and thus in the interests of employers.

Note that this is not the same thing as developing outside applications in company time.

Galaxy's smallest known black hole discovered

remnants? @chris miller

Assuming more mass could be "used up", the minimum black hole would become coloured or, worse, regurgitate its spoils.

Help, my mind is being sucked in.

Intel launches R&D initiative to invent PDA

Futureproof

It is no good these days just shoving M-Office into a palm-sized slab. Expectations on intelligence are rising continuously. The current ideal machine should:

- create a slides for marketing campaign from a set of buzz-words

- connect you to a suitable producer in China

- synchronise buying and selling of your shares to the campaign

- keep you advised on the best GPS location for tax purposes

- randomly generate mobile calls to keep employees busy

Since it is the first of April, maybe I should maintain this is possible within 5 - 10 years with sufficient R&D.

Children should get keys to their data when they come of age

Making it stick?

This smells like a tar-baby: a non-problem with huge legal uncertainties to attract attention to the real problem being ignored. That is, full-blown citizens cannot sensibly protect their own data, but HMGovt doesn't want to hear, as providing an enabling framework would weaken the state.

Which icon for conspiracy theories?

MPs and Lords turn on government over data protection

Setting standards

These figures seem to be small, compared to databases I know, presumably because the processes for detection, reporting and correction across databases are a bottleneck.

I'd like to see something like a yearly quantitative spot check against standards like

Typing errors <10%

Duplicates <1%

Misclassification <1%

Malfeasance <0.01%

You can debate higher standards for special cases till the cows come home - an ID database should have less misclassification, for instance.

And audits of sources by similar checks before each new use would solve contamination problems within a few years.

Minister wants more mashups

@Nick Palmer, on up and downsides of Wikis

also

8) less responsibility

9) agenda setting

10) cheap to maintain

Still, on cost grounds, I'd set wikis before databases any day -

Hey, why don't we combine the advantages, and have people maintain theit own medical records, footprints, tax returns and the like

Mine's the cape of knotted string

Stamen punts new approach to data aggregation

Rule-based reverse engineering

As the article mentions data looking for a question, I've been looking for some time for a way to extract business rules out of big databases, say SAP. This would be useful for upgrade projects, as you wouldn't have to start from scratch, you could list rules to check their currency, and you could provoke discussion on exceptions.

Does such an animal exist, or would it be an unusable concept? Till now, I have only had offers from consultants to build our company a bespoke version.

Greenies give IT industry a black eye

Green PC gets award

Around CEBIT time the german PC mag makes its annual awards.

http://www.chip.de/artikel/CHIP-AWARDS-08_31030672.html

They gave an award for green hardware to Fujitsu-Siemens for its "green PC". You might care to review it and see if it matches up to El Reg standards.

Clean up at whose expense?

Discussion in Switzerland, which adds a disposal charge at sale to every electronic product, is picking up on the re-use of donated machines in developing countries. Shouldn't the charge be passed on to the 3rd world country, they ask.

Here, greenies are attacking the other end, suggesting that recycling could be improved - since disposal is pre-charged, not taxed, it should then become possible to lower the fee.