Posts by Thought About IT

England just not windy enough for wind farms, admits renewables boss

Meanwhile ...

The Great Barrier Reef: a catastrophe laid bare

"Coral bleaches when the water it’s in is too warm for too long. The coral polyps gets stressed and spit out the algae that live in inside them. Without the colourful algae, the coral flesh becomes transparent, revealing the stark white skeleton beneath."

"When the coral dies, the entire ecosystem around it transforms. Fish that feed on the coral, use it as shelter, or nibble on the algae that grows among it die or move away. The bigger fish that feed on those fish disappear too. But the cascading effects don’t stop there. Birds that eat fish lose their energy source, and island plants that thrive on bird droppings can be depleted. And, of course, people who rely on reefs for food, income or shelter from waves – some half a billion people worldwide – lose their vital resource."

When will the penny drop that we simply can't keep burning fossil fuels, whatever the inconvenience to us or the implications for ExxonMobil et al?

Norway might insist on zero-emission vehicles by 2025

Re: Political deals...but if they do

You omitted "just like fossil fuels" from your list of subsidised power sources, but for some reason tax breaks and not paying for the pollution they cause doesn't count.

What's wrong with the Daily Mail Group buying Yahoo?

Re: Woe, woe and thrice woe!

Adding the Wail's sidebar of shame to Yahoo News would be one way of increasing its page hits, but a sad reflection on human nature.

India orders 770 million LED light bulbs, prices drop 83 per cent

Who's paying the piper?

In an area of France which I regularly visit, the sodium street lamps in towns and villages have been replaced with LEDs, and this in a country where most electricity is generated by nuclear power stations. Contrast that with the UK, where all subsidies for energy saving have been cut, while fracking is heavily promoted. It's hard not to make the obvious connection.

Israeli biz fingered as the FBI's iPhone cracker

At last, some good news about Windows phones

Unless I missed it, Windows Phones didn't appear in the lists of crackable phones on that Cellebrite video. Too good to be true?

FBI backs down against Apple: Feds may be able to crack killer's iPhone without iGiant's help

Re: Entirely predictable...

Indeed, Edward Snowden said weeks ago that the NSA didn't need any help from Apple.

Look out, Windows Phone 8 users – yes, both of you – here's ... Windows 10 Mobile

Phew!

It's the complete opposite of cold comfort that my 925 is not on the list.

Microsoft Surface Book: Shiny slab with a Rottweiler grip on itself

The keyboard is pretty hopeless for editing text, with the Home/End/Page Up/Down keys sharing function keys F8 - F11, so you're frequently having to toggle or combine with the Fn key, and there's only one Ctrl key.

The clever hinge doesn't allow the screen to be pushed back far enough, so when it's sitting on your lap, the top of the screen is much closer than the bottom, which doesn't help those with presbyopia.

The Edge's scroll bar is very thin, on its high definition display, and contantly disappearing, so drag scrolling is a challenge.

The Surface mouse "scroll wheel" makes an electronic click whenever you touch it, which gets very irritating, and it's all too easy to touch it accidentally, causing whatever you were looking at to scroll out of view.

It's fast and the screen is high quality but, on reflection, I wish I'd bought another ThinkPad.

Only 12% of UK thinks Snoopers' Charter is 'adequately explained'

Re: Write to your MP!

I got what read as a handout from the Ministry of Truth from my MP.

We tested the latest pre-flight build of Windows 10 Mobile. It's buggy but promising

Some 8.1 Apps have started misbehaving

I don't know if it's because of underlying changes due to Windows 10, but the very good Barclays online banking app no longer allows money transfers between accounts and the Guardian app won't even start. I hope this isn't the start of an upgrade push, because everything I read about Windows 10 on the phone makes me want to stick with 8.1.

Uncle Sam's boffins stumble upon battery storage holy grail

Re: Sounds like marketing speak BS to me

"Show me the numbers or GTFO!"

Citing evidence, to those who are in a state of denial about the need for such technology (which this site seems to attract in droves), is a complete waste of time. The mountain of evidence proving that our greenhouse gas emissions are changing the climate in a bad way is a case in point.

Google Project Zero reverse-engineers Windows path hacks for better security

Re: win32? in 2016? really???

"How stupid do you have to be to be using win32 crap in 2016 when 64bit is where everyone is at?"

How stupid is it to sound off about something you don't understand?

California methane well leak filled a Rose Bowl a day

Head in sand

Good job there's no such thing as a greenhouse gas in El Reg land, because you wouldn't want stadiums full of one that's up to 100 times more greenhousey than CO2, released into the atmosphere.

Scariest climate change prediction yet: More time to eat plane food

Re: False premise leads to false results

"The 97% figure is one of the things that makes me think 'hmmm'", that must be a conspiracy!

Re: A suggestion for those worried about all that extra time, fuel, CO2, ...

That's a bit of a generalisation, as it often takes 20 minutes at Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam to taxi from the terminal to the runway.

Re: False premise leads to false results

"It's not a conspiracy, it's skepticism. It's looking at the data provided and finding it lacking."

When over 97% of those qualified to study the evidence find it compelling, only a conspiracy theory explains your so-called scepticism.

Re: False premise leads to false results

"Boffins" can predict all they like, but no evidence will change the mind of those who are convinced AGW is a conspiracy. Some "boffins" even calculated that, given the number of scientists involved, such a conspiracy would fall apart after 3.5 years at most, but conspiracy theorists are immune to evidence.

TalkTalk admits losing £60m and 101,000 customers after THAT hack

Funny way to say sorry

According to an article in the Guardian, TalkTalk offered its 4 million customers a free mobile sim worth £5 a month to say sorry, and then charged for it!

Only TalkTalk could charge for saying ‘sorry’.

Having said that, my Internet connection is with TalkTalk Business, and I have no complaints about them.

Google UK coughs up £130m back taxes. Is it enough?

Re: it is deficiencies in the tax laws

The other problem with it being a deficiency in the tax laws is that google has spent more than this tax payment lobbying for taxation and laws that are favourable to it. These mega corporations own the politicians.

The last time Earth was this hot hippos lived in Britain (that’s 130,000 years ago)

@ Preston Munchensonton

"You should try taking your rose-colored glasses off. No one can say that climate science isn't really now climate politics."

Are you really ignorant of the deliberate plan to politicise climate science by propagandists funded by the fossil fuel industries? They reasoned that all they needed to do to maintain their profitability was to delay action to cut greenhouse gas emissions by making it politically impossible. As is all too evident, they've been very successful.

French say 'Non, merci' to encryption backdoors

That assumes politicians even seek out expert evidence. Owen Paterson, for example, reputedly refused to read any document from his advisers containing the words "climate change" or "global warming", when he was Environment Secretary. Cameron is perhaps the exception on that subject, in that he listened to advice on what he needed to say to get elected, resulting in the ironic slogans "vote blue, go green" and the "greenest government ever"! Mind you, his idea of an expert adviser is a spin doctor.

GCHQ mass spying will 'cost lives in Britain,' warns ex-NSA tech chief

Re: Gosh, a voice of reason speaking to our government!

The power that mass surveillance gives to the spooks and select members of the government makes it highly unlikely that they will take any notice of any evidence of its ineffectiveness against terrorists.

The Register's entirely serious New Year's resolutions for 2016

Re: Loose?

Should of, shirley.

Re: Page and Worstall "moved on" in the Autumn, right?

Getting rid of Page was something El Reg had to do, if it was to retain any credibility. He was using it to push his ideological agenda about climate change, which was ludicrously anti-science and completely undermined every other science or technology based article which was published here.

As part of your New Year's resolution, I hope you give that issue a wide berth.

Upset Microsoft stashes hard drive encryption keys in OneDrive cloud?

Re: How dare you...

... not credit The Intercept for this article.

Windows 10 won't come to old WinPhones until some time in early 2016

Re: For about one in fifty ?

I much prefer the user interface on my Lumia 925 with 8.1 to the Androids and iPhones which preceded it. Sure, there aren't many apps for it, but the ones I need are there. However, I'll be just as pleased if MS never get around to forcing Windows 10 on it, as that messes up the UI.

Sneaky Microsoft renamed its data slurper before sticking it back in Windows 10

Re: Can't find it?

I've just disabled it on the same Windows 10 version as you. I had previously turned off all spying options so am not at all happy that MS is using their update service to override my preferences.

Blocking out the Sun won't fix climate change – but it could buy us time

Re: Optimism! Reg commenters wise up ...

If Lewis Page has gone, as mentioned in a comment above, perhaps his agenda went with him. After all, it was undermining everything else The Register does.

Re: Remind me why cold is good and warm is bad?

"No. A denier is a measure of the fineness of certain fabrics"

It may surprise you to read this, but some words in the English language have more than one meaning!

Re: Remind me why cold is good and warm is bad?

"If our choice is things warming up and some low-level land getting flooded" - Valerion

It isn't. Our choice is drastically cutting CO2 emissions, which the fossil fuel industries are strenuously lobbying to prevent, or changing the climate from the relatively benign one during which human society has evolved, to one of extremes of weather and sea level rises which we won't be able to control control.

"Also need to say that "deniers" and "believers" are not scientific words, so I don't know why they get used in scientific debate."

A denier is someone who denies something despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It doesn't have to be scientific evidence, but clearly is in the case of AGW deniers such as yourself.

Re: Cool the Core

"Most of the CO2 put into the atmosphere is natural, from volcanoes which are mostly under the ocean, so the green campaigners do not see them."

Why did you make that up?

France's 3-month state of emergency lets govt censor the web

Re: They had this ready?

It doesn't have to be a political party. The security services could have presented this as a fait accompli to incompetent politicians.

Microsoft Windows Mobile 10: Uphill battle with 'work in progress'

Re: Oh dear

Too many cooks working to different strategies?

How to build a city fit for 50℃ heatwaves

Re: This isn't a really difficult problem

An easier solution is to accept what the science says about the effect of our greenhouse gas emissions, and curtail them as quickly as we can. Leaving fossil fuels in the ground is going to be much cheaper than any technological solution to clean up the mess afterwards.

Re: Green Loons

You don't want to believe everything Lewis writes!

TPP: 'Scary' US-Pacific trade deal published – you're going to freak out when you read it

Re: Eh?

There's nothing to preclude fossil fuel companies from using ISDS to challenge a government’s ability to ban or limit energy extraction as a way of addressing climate change and other ecological risks, although there is a special opt out for countries that don't want to be sued by tobacco companies - which led the way in developing the propaganda techniques used by the fossil fuel companies. The fact that the TPP authors think that the default option of a country allowing itself to be sued by a tobacco company is OK reveals much about what they've been up to.

The provisions allowing drug makers to avoid competition from generic drugs, even after the original patent expires, can only make medicines more expensive.

Ludicrously, it contains a separate agreement with Vietnam that would create a right to unionize and go on strike in the country for the first time, and the U.S. could withhold trade privileges if the accord is not implemented after five years. That from a country which effectively destroyed its own right to unionize!

There's sure to be more nasties hidden in that woodwork to be revealed, now that it's been made public.

LG uses sucky logic to force Dyson admission its vacuums suck badly

Re: Sucked in, bad

Dyson would be better off claiming they make the noisiest vacuum cleaners. Nobody's going to take them to court for that!

We applied to Google's €150m journalism fund – here's what we sent in

Pot meet kettle

I hope the irony of complaining about google pushing its agenda to the detriment of all else isn't lost on Page and Orlowski. Their anti-science agenda devalues all else they do here.

Euro privacy warriors: You've got until January to fix safe harbor mess – or we unleash hell

Re: One small problem with all this....

"transfers to third countries where the powers of state authorities to access information go beyond what is necessary in a democratic society will not be considered as safe destinations for transfers."

So, that will affect any business wanting to store its data in the UK where GCHQ is a subcontractor of the NSA.

On its way: A Google-free, NSA-free IT infrastructure for Europe

With GCHQ acting as a subcontractor of the NSA, won't the Yanks get our data anyway?

BBC joins war against Flash, launches beta HTML5 iPlayer

What about smart TVs?

The current implementation of iPlayer works fine on my Samsung smart TV. Is this change likely to break it?

Tits and ads: Malware-riddled banners stiff X-rated websites

I thought sites could pay Adblock to allow advertisements through. That's why I use uBlock Origin.

Ballmer's billion-dollar blunders: When he gambled Microsoft's money and lost

Re: Sigh

Visual Studio's got to count as a market leading success - even if the market is small.

Spamquake subsides: less than half of email is now processed pork

I wish ...

The volume of spam going through my mail server is still over 90%, so I'm dubious about their statistical methods.

Flash HOLED AGAIN TWICE below waterline in fresh Hacking Team reveals

Enable click to play?

"Everyone with Flash installed should remove or disable the software until the critical security bug is patched, or at least enable "click to play" in their browsers"

How does one enable click to play?

Will rising CO2 damage the world's oceans? Not so much

Re: Limestone

No, because that happens over geological timescales, while we're pumping CO2 out at an ever increasing rate now.

Who wants a classic ThinkPad with whizzy new hardware? Lenovo would just love to know

Re: @Gritzwally Philbin, re Thinkpads.

"Lenovo ThinkPads have since given up the Nipple Mouse in favor of track pads"

Maybe that's why, every time I reboot my X220, the trackpad enables itself again. If Lenovo don't produce something as good soon, I hope it survives the upgrade to Windows 10!

That shot you heard? SSLv3 is now DEAD

You can add PayPal's email servers to that list.

Climate change alarmism is a religious belief – it's official

"Look at Lewis' previous rants diatribes tirades articles on the subject and it may become a little clearer..."

Judging by the downvotes, even that simple statement of fact is contentious in this context. Those who downvoted should ask themselves if any evidence would convince them that humans are changing the climate due to their greenhouse gas emissions.

Re: Ha!

"For that I will wait for science."

You go far beyond scepticism if you think you still have to wait for the science!