* Posts by Peter Mount

239 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Feb 2008

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GitHub wipes hand across bloodied face, stumbles from brutal DDoS beating

Peter Mount

Re: GitHub & businesses

Agreed. Use it for public code but use internal repos for the day to day stuff.

The beauty of modern repositories like git & mercurial is that you're not limited to a single central repository as they are distributed. This make it pretty simple to keep both internal and external repostories in sync

Dixons preps home 3D printer for plastic-piping punters

Peter Mount
Facepalm

A bit late & expensive

I'ts a bit expensive compared to Maplin who's had one available for a while now at 699 quid - but even then that's still a bit extreme:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/k8200-3d-printer-783902

At least they have the supplies though, 39 quid for 1kg

Multipath TCP: Siri's new toy isn't a game-changer

Peter Mount
Happy

ipv6 & nat

Ipv6 doors solve the nat problem when possible.

When I need to access an ipv6 only resource when I'm out & about then I set up a tunnel on the laptop & of I go. Works nicely on both 3g & 4g & you can then access inbound back to your local device as if there's no nat in place.

No luck at all for BlackBerry as Messenger apps launch stalls

Peter Mount
Headmaster

open standards

Something like XMPP then?

Live now: LOHAN igniter test flight

Peter Mount

Re: Oh bum...

Same here... I've got a lot of coding to do this afternoon but I'll try to do that whilst watching ;-)

Penguins, prepare to get SPACED OUT: Ubuntu 13.10's Mir has docked

Peter Mount
Linux

Re: What's that you say?

Until recently I've not touched xorg.conf in years... & no it's not empty, it's not there at all.

Last month I had to edit xorg.conf when I added a couple of USB monitors to my setup - so now I've got 4 monitors running.

I wonder how these x alternatives will handle this sort of setup?

Do not adjust your eyes: This Kobo ten-incher has a 2560 x 1600 resolution

Peter Mount
Happy

Re: Tablet and/or ereader

That's why I use an eInk kindle for reading & a tablet for browsing, I find it way easier to read.

Going to look at the kindle dx as it's back as reading technical docs on a 6" is a bit small, the only downside.

Acorn’s would-be ZX Spectrum killer, the Electron, is 30

Peter Mount
Happy

Ah memories

Did my O level on one in 1986 & by 87 had a second one with 64K of ram (Slogger Master Ram board) which replaced the CPU with a daughter board, a faster CPU & 32K of shadow ram.

That machine had a 3 way toggle switch added which provided 3 modes:

* Normal - where it ran as a standard electron

* Turbo - where the new cpu ran at top speed (can't remember the speed off hand)

* 64k - where the video remained on the original ram but the OS ran on the shadow ram - so BBC Basic had more ram available than the BBC B had.

Then there were the floppy drive (+3) added to it.

Ah takes me back.

Blighty street has hottest Wi-Fi hotspot hottie in Europe: We reveal where

Peter Mount
Unhappy

Oxford St the highest density of non-working wifi

As I'm litterally 5mins walk from Oxford St (just of Regent St) WiFi is totally unusable. There's way too many hotspots around here for it to work.

It's made worse because the only config anyone's done is to setup the SID & a password - everything's on either channel 1 or 6 so it's just way too congested for it to be of any use.

Before you asks, it's all on 2.5GHz, there's sod all on 5GHz around here.

They don't recognise us as HUMAN: Disability groups want CAPTCHAs killed

Peter Mount

I've had the same problem

When I setup a forum I started almost immediately getting spam, so I briefly added a captcha. I then got some of my users complaining that they couldn't use them for these reasons, so I removed it.

In the end the spam outweighed the number of comments so as it's UK based I ended up using GeoIP restricting it to UK only IP's.

Although the free GeoIP database is not accurate it's cut the spam down to 0 (every spammer's IP I had traced to India, South Korea or China).

London Mayor shows off GIANT BLUE COCK in busy square

Peter Mount
Pint

One way PM's anti pron law could fail...

It's not just Cockerels which could fall foul like in this instance but our dearly beloved pubs!

I know of one local to home which is actually called "The Cock" and if that pub's website got blocked because of the name (it dates from the 17th century) then it could go the way that the Australian's equivalent did initially... when they blocked a dentist's website :-S

As for Scunthorpe, I remember when url blockers first appeared in the 90's (was working in local government at the time). Anyhow Scunthorpe's own council blocked their own website from their employees - for obvious reasons.

Beer icon for the danger to certain pubs...

Google Reader replacement 'Old Reader' crashes

Peter Mount
WTF?

same here

Exactly. Ssd's are fine for reads but I wouldn't trust them for storing data. Caches maybe but the database?

The closest I have for a ssd is where my homemade nas boots from a USB flash drive. It works & I can restore quickly if it fails. Main storage still traditional disk's & raid 5.

Vulcan? Not on our tiny balls. Pluto moons named Kerberos, Styx

Peter Mount
Facepalm

There was once a vulcan before

It was a mythical planet that was once thought to orbit the sun closer than Mercury...

Which is why some people thought it was a bad idea for Pluto (ignoring the theme the IAU correctly went for).

In Star Trek Vulcan was a hot desert planet, so having a real Vulcan out in the outer part of the solar system doesn't tend to go with that theme either.

3-2-1... BOOM: Russian rocket launches, explodes into TOXIC FIREBALL

Peter Mount
Mushroom

Amateur footage shows it better

This footage taken from a few miles away shows it failed shortly after it left the ground - something you can't tell from the official footage.

http://youtu.be/DSTVkkDv30k

Don't exactly blame them from ducking when it hit the ground.

Mint 15 freshens Ubuntu's bad bits

Peter Mount
Thumb Up

Mint 15 is pretty stable so far

I've been running Mint for years on the desktop - ever since Ubuntu started having issues with wifi from v10 & then Unity & haven't had any major issues with it. Thinks like WiFi just work (almost).

On a desktop running Mint 14 it had intermittent graphics issues causing the machine to hang but so far since 15 was released thats been stable (touch virtual wood).

Might get round to upgrading the lappy to it when I get chance (running M14 at the mo)

NASA: Our ALIEN HUNTING star-scan 'scope is KNACKERED

Peter Mount
Boffin

Never an option

Even if we still had the shuttle that wouldn't be an option.

Kepler is in a Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit - as such it's not even in orbit around this lump of rock. It's orbit around the sun is slightly longer than the earths so that it slowly falls away from earth as time goes on.

The shuttle never left low earth orbit - in fact it couldn't go any higher than it did. IIRC the highest it got was the Hubble maintenance missions.

Review: Western Digital Sentinel DX4000

Peter Mount
Thumb Up

Re: £1580 ?!?!

Agreed. I'm actually working on a NAS for home right now & I'm also going down the HP Microserver route - already have one running a db & it's just ideal, & quiet!

It's working out at about £800 like you say, eg £150 for good 4TB drives - no Green ones - they are evil.

Another blow for Flash as Unity gaming engine kills support

Peter Mount
Thumb Up

RIP Flash you won't be missed

The day when flash is no more is eagerly awaited. It's a cpu hog more so when some moron thinks having 20 swf's on a single page is a good idea because it's 'cool' but you can't do anything because you're standard spec machine cannot do anything else.

EE: Of course we're going to get 1m 4G users by the end of the year!

Peter Mount
Facepalm

Ah the A930

I think I still have one in a drawer somewhere. The only phone I've ever had that actually had 2 batteries in the box (& chargers). Battery life was really bad.

Anyhow with 4G the costs are far too much & so little actually has 4G coverage. For me why pay 4G prices when I'm mostly going to get 3G?

I was a T-Mobile customer since before they were T-Mobile but since the merger the service just dropped so I'm in that list of people who have left

Whoops! Tiny bug in NetBSD 6.0 code ruins SSH crypto keys

Peter Mount
Boffin

Raspberry Pi

Apparently the CPU used in the PI has a hardware RNG. Back in February they added kernel support for it:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=19334&p=277747#p277747

it sounds like it uses a thermal entropy source.

WORLD temporarily FREED from BURDEN of TWITTER!

Peter Mount
Alien

Was it HMV's fault?

When there was a tweet just over an hour ago stating:

'Just overheard our Managing Director ask "How do i shut down Twitter?"'

Was it a coincidence? ;-)

BBC pulls plug Ceefax ahead of analogue TV's end tonight

Peter Mount
Thumb Up

Teletext on the BBC Micro

Anyone remember the teletext modem the old BBC had which downloaded software broadcast over Ceefax?

Or the bulletin boards of the mid eighties which used teletext (Mode 7 on the Beeb) ?

Ah they were the days. Still miss them occasionally

Argos flyer confirms incoming 32GB Nexus 7

Peter Mount
Boffin

it depends on what youre running the SD card on

Do you really think the Raspberry PI (which uses SD cards) use FAT?

The last time I played around with the partition table on one it was using ext4 - yes they can have partition tables as well.

When I wrote http://blog.retep.org/2012/06/19/using-the-full-space-on-your-sd-card/ I actually add an ext4 partition to an SD card.

Canonical bungs kill switch onto Ubuntu's Amazon 'adware'

Peter Mount
Thumb Up

Re: Canonical should have a care....

I'll probably be joining you soon. I've already swiched to Mint for the desktop - except it's using ubuntu as the base & sometimes these things do get through - whoopsie crash reporting on by default is one.

For server side well I'm already using debian on the raspberries so I'm probably going to look at debian on the next round of servers rather than ubuntu.

I'm just about having enough of canonical with this sort of thing & basically just want something that works without any baggage associated with it.

LONDON iPHONE 5 MADNESS: 'You must be CRAZY to buy Apple'

Peter Mount
WTF?

Maidstone didn't have queues

Carphone warehouse was open early this morning & had a few inside as I walked past to get the train - but no one queueing.

The funny thing was getting stopped outside & being asked why they were open - so Apples PR machine hasn't brainwashed everyone ;-)

Dice swallows Slashdot, SourceForge, Freecode in $20m deal

Peter Mount
Unhappy

Its not what it used to be

Things have changed since the early days on Slashdot, the quality of posts have changed for the worse IMHO. Originally they were more for the geek part of the spectrum but these days they seem to be more aimed at getting more eyes than quality.

Saying that, ads can't be the main reason, I do see the option to opt out of ads appear every so often even though I use Adblock when I can (can't on the tablet for example).

Still, Im puzzled on why a recruiter wants this type of site though.

#5613 & wondering how many on here have 4 or less digits in their uids - uid envy being one of the /. contributions people will remember ;)

Amazon cosies up to Nokia for Google Maps alternative

Peter Mount
Holmes

Yet another Mapping service

I gave up trying to keep up with the various API's - especially when Google started charging so I've gone the other more extreme route, OpenStreetMap data on my own tile server & OpenLayers as the front end.

I don't need the whole world but the UK still needs 7Gb of disk space just for the PostgreSQL database - but it works & I can customise it to how I want not to how some advert farm wants it.

LOHAN straps on satellite comms capability

Peter Mount

Re: Use?

Similar to if the balloon bursts prematurely, when she lands (or just before as might not have clear view of the sky) sends the gps coordinates so she can be found easily.

Although the existing tracking is there, nothing like a backup

Ultimate bacon sarnie scrap starts to sizzle

Peter Mount
Pint

Orkney Dark Island + Bread

OK as Orkney Dark Island was mentioned in the article, years ago when I then had a bread machine I actually tried using beer as part of the recipe & Orkney Dark Island came up tops.

Simply use white bread mix but replace 1/2 the water with Dark Island.

It comes out brown but tasty. Could be a good one to try again with some decent bacon

Hacker uses Kindle as Raspberry Pi screen

Peter Mount

& why not?

Although it might look useless & although using an eInk display for normal use is going to be horrendous, I can see some use cases for a low power display.

All he's done here is to use the kindle as a terminal so it's not that great a hack (& why using a USB keyboard with it is difficult). What would be great is if someone ame up with a true eInk display then you'll see lots of uses for it - think nagios or displaying the current weather etc.

Sysadmins: Your favourite tool's now ready for, er, fondling

Peter Mount
Thumb Up

Re: Prior art

If they were real sysadmins with a pub across the street I'd have thought they would have put a terminal in the pub.

Not quite the same thing but was told once that during power strikes of the 1970's there was a pub across the street from a certain uk news service of the time which was protected from power outages. Let's just say the pub never had a power cut due to a spurious cable running above the street, so I'd be surprised if no-one ever did that with a terminal ;-)

Apple Java update fails to address mega-flaw – researcher

Peter Mount
WTF?

Re: Erm...

yes you are right - Java 6 and earlier are not affected by that one, only Java 7 is

So the only way to have it on OSX is to be running a build of Java 7 thats not from apple & tbh if you've got that installed then you'll most likely have got the patch on there as it's not a 'normal user' level thing to do

Raspberry Pi 2.0 ready to ship

Peter Mount
Boffin

Radio on the pi

Ive got an am/fm/sw breakout board sitting next to my development pi waiting for me to find some time to hook it up.

The lack of audio in is a pain but understandable as not everyone using a pi wants it & it needs more circuitry - the audio out is done using the existing pwm outputs of the CPU.

Anyhow with that chip if I can fathom out the codec used by that chip I'll have digital in working anyhow.

Hipsters hacking on PostgreSQL

Peter Mount
Boffin

Nothing OSS wise gets close...

I started using Postgres around 1995 (this is before PostgreSQL) & by 98 I was one of the developers so I'm a bit biased but whenever I need to do something serious then I always use it & the more recent versions are simply getting better.

Large DB's, no problem. My biggest currently runs around 7+Gig & yet it's lightning fast. I'd dread trying to do that in mysql.

Right now I'm setting up my own OpenStreetMap server covering the UK & guess what, they use Postgresql. From what I read a full earth DB is around 90-100Gb!

It's a pity I ran out of spare time 10 years ago to continue working on it personally but it's still weird that even now I get people emailing me with questions about large objects or JDBC :-(

Raspberry Pi sales limits lifted

Peter Mount
WTF?

Re: Rubbish

I think you've not got the point - the pi isn't meant to be a general purpose machine. Maybe the MK802 has 1GB of ram etc will it run off AA batteries for example?

This board is targetting a specific niche which the board you are trying to push probably does not.

WiFi isn't everything - what use is WiFi if you've got the board attached to a high altitude weather balloon - in fact if you don't need it then why waste the power with one.

I've actually have had 2 now for some time & so far not needed wifi nor any more ram than the onboard 256. Someone else mentioned no flasg - erm what's SD then? Running fine with 4Gb & could put up to 32Gb if needed.

Nexus 7 and Surface: A bonanza for landfill miners

Peter Mount
Happy

Re: tablets - whats the point

I was originally in the same spot as you 18 months ago, wondered what use a tablet would be.

Now I use an iPad (Mk1) and a Kindle Fire (rooted, ICS) daily. The iPad mainly for the web (what doesnt work is minimal) & the odd simple spreadsheet. The kindle is great for email handling (ok ICS crashes once in a while but I knew that when I reinstalled the machine).

The phone is android as well (gingerbread) so out & about email is on it as well but it's surprising what you endup using them for.

The downside is the odd weird look I get on the train when using all three at the same time.

Super-powerful Flame worm could take YEARS to dissect

Peter Mount

Lua?

Could it be simply because they don't know Lua?

I'm not surprised that Angry Birds uses lua as it's quite popular within gaming circles

UK mobile broadband carriers compared

Peter Mount
Meh

It does depend on coverage

I always see people say XXX is crap or XXX is fine but it does all depend on where you are or where you use it the most, as always it's usually down to either coverage or too many users.

I use both T-Mobile & Giff Gaff for data & for where I use them they both work well.

T-Mobile works best at home as I get a good strong signal, all the other networks don't have good wall penetration.

Giff Gaff works well at home when used in an unlocked MiFi unit hung up high but I tend to use it more when on the train. On the routes I use I find that the O2 network tends to be better than T-Mobile (I had tried 3 PAYG on the routes as well). Each one has it's own set of 3G blackspots but you get to know where they are.

NB: I had used O2 for the train until recently, switching to Giff Gaff last month to try it out - actually finding it more responsive but that could be down to the APN not being as heavily used as O2's.

Amazon drops planned 8.9in Kindle Fire for 10.1in job

Peter Mount

10" kindle might be better than 8.9"

As the original is a 7 incher it would make more sense for them to bring out a 10 inch & target apple.

I'd have to say that in the month since I've had my fire (rooted & rebuilt obviously) it's been pretty impressive.

PS: I couldn't wait for Amazon to release it over here & rooting was a doddle

Ten... eight-bit classic games

Peter Mount
Happy

Ah Chuckie Egg

I still play it on the odd occasion using an Electron emulator on the mac - sometimes you just can't beat the old games :-)

Vote now for the WORST movie EVER

Peter Mount
FAIL

Re: Starship Troopers 2

As someone else has said avoid 2 & 3.

I dread to think what 4 is going to be like & yes they are planning a fourth!

LOHAN's fantastical flying truss menaces kiddies

Peter Mount
Facepalm

Quit launching balloons?

I have a feeling what the payloads of weather balloons weigh a lot more than LOHAN would do & how many are launched around the world each day? In fact how many accidents have happened with something falling out of the sky let alone from a balloon?

Definitely a comical comment from a troll or typical scaremonger/nanny state type moron ;-)

Sick of Ubuntu's bad breath? Suck on a Linux Mint instead

Peter Mount
Thumb Up

yes & no

Yes the default version is based on Ubuntu & even shares some of the repos but the development version is more debian based than ubuntu.

I switched from Ubuntu to Mint just after 10.10 when the wifi drivers were unusable (usually with system hangs). Since then been using Mint on the desktop & not looked back, both wifi works out of the box & none of the Unity crap.

Hold on a sec - leap seconds granted a last-minute reprieve

Peter Mount
Boffin

All because they are lazy

At the heart of this is where they say telecom equipment can't handle the odd leap second (most are added but they can be taken away as well), citing things like navigation - presumably GPS.

The thing is that GPS doesn't use UTC - it has it's own time system strangely called GPST which doesn't use leap seconds.

So since GPST started in 1980 it's now 15 seconds ahead of UTC

A good example of the various clocks & how far they are out: http://leapsecond.com/java/gpsclock.htm

Raspberry Pi Linux micro machine enters mass production

Peter Mount
Happy

I'm already lining up projects for these

I don't care if these have a case or not - there's plenty of uses for them as they are & I'm intending on getting a couple - one to play with & one to run my weather station.

At the moment the station is running off the back of an ancient itx linux box but one of these would be ideal to replace that box. Not much local storage is needed & the rest is pushed over the ethernet.

Nuclear Mars tank thrusts hard into perfect position

Peter Mount
Alien

Mars vs Earth scores

There used to be a page carrying the current scores - i.e. point to Earth when we get a probe to Mars & a point to Mars when a probe fails - but I can't find it anymore (possibly gone).

Anyone remember that page & got a link to it?

Christmas headaches? We prescribe a year long course of BOFH

Peter Mount
WTF?

Reg must drink in the most expensive pub in the UK

£4.59 for half a pint! The most expensive full pint I've come across is in Soho & even that was about £6.50 - I won't be drinking in there again I can tell you :-(

Voyager probe reaches edge of Solar System's 'bubble'

Peter Mount
FAIL

Launched in 1972?

Strange as I always thought they were launched in 1977, Voyager 2 first in August then Voyager 1 in September?

Ebuyer knocked out by own £1 deals site

Peter Mount
Mushroom

It's now 2pm & they are still down

well I'm still not able to get in :-S

Acer to murder Gateway brand

Peter Mount

Ah the old cow boxes

I remember Gateway from the mid-late '90's with their distinctive 'Cow Spot' boxes. Not seen/heard anything about them in years now.

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