Posts by Lee Mulcahy

I AM ERROR: Tired of chewing up your RAM? Razer tells gamers where to stick its special gum for the RGB crowd

Which is it?

Razr, Razer, Razor -- which is it?

Profit-strapped Symantec pulls employee share scheme

"a publicly usable statement"

Should we guess as to what the statement did say?

German researchers defeat printers' doc-tracking dots

In response to many of the previous comments...

Codes are unique to the printer, not the document. Some include date/time stamps

Laser printers only (so far)

Printouts with three-color images (so far)

Regards

Massive cyber attack targets mid-Atlantic nation 'Berylia'

They do indeed have the Q-bomb. I built it myself in my high school prop department lab (the electronix class lab). Such fun!

Eggheads: Cities, don't woo rich Amazon with sweetheart HQ deals

It's the jobs

Never mind that the benefit is to Amazon, not Bezos directly (granted, he will benefit), the main benefit I see is the promised jobs. Yes, it will cost the city and county, but if they do not pass a significant amount to their citizens via taxes, it might be worth doing.

CSS and Javascript on GOV.UK page take early Christmas holiday

"we have nothing further to add"

In other words, "Go away kid, ya bother me".

O Christmas wreath, O Christmas wreath, thy potent skunk's in bunches

Manzanita is not an herb...

"the wreath uses Manzanita, a potent proprietary herb"

Manzanita is a bush/small tree that has branches that are probably being used to make the base of the wreath. The wood is hard, but the branches are flexible before drying out - once formed into a wreath shape, it would be perfect for holding the other stuff.

-- California guy

Stand up who HASN'T been hit in the Equifax mega-hack – whoa, whoa, sit down everyone

New kind of social security numbers?

The Register

@TheRegister

To avoid hackers, ensure you use lower and uppercase characters, and at least one symbol, in your social security number #equifaxadvice

Did I miss something? social security numbers are digits only.

FCC kills plan to allow phone calls on planes – good idea or terrible?

I don't know about y'all, but I find that there are people who can (and do) hold annoying, loud conversation with or without a cell phone. I find Pai's arrogance extremely disconcerting. If he were to announce these decisions as coming from the FCC, not from him directly (using the first person), it might be more palatable.

This is more regulation from the govt; I was under the impression that Republicans wanted minimal interference.

Alabama man gets electrocuted after sleeping with iPhone

Re: so much wrong here...

Jeez Louise.

Is it a rule that folks in Britain and Europe MUST find fault in everything American?

You must have one hell of a 'back', cause unless the receptacle is 60 years old (like in my house) and only has two prongs (like in my house), they DON'T fall out easily.

Yes they are technically upside down according to code, but do you really think they are less secure with the ground pin on the bottom rather than the top?

Actually, I feel the same about European plugs - I don't have a lot of experience with them, but they scare me. They usually stand really far out from the receptacle, and I've always been afraid I was going to touch the conductors when I pull them out. And the ones I've used seem prone to slipping out of the receptacle - they are just smooth round pins, with no tension.

Granted, my experience is limited to European to U.S. adapter plugs, so maybe that makes it worse.

Reg now behind invisible HTML5 Bitcoin paywall

Got me for all of about 2 minutes, especially after I followed the patent link

The web is past peak innovation: It's all negative returns from here

>>> Open source was simply, presumably, the best designed tool for the job.

Or, quite likely, the cheapest...

Don't panic, but a 'computer error' cut the brakes on a San Francisco bus this week

Re: Emergency brake controlled by a computer!!!

Reading the article, it seems that it was a thyristor or some such electrical component that failed. This is not the same as a computer.

Peak Cable looms: One in five US homes now mobile-only for internet

Re: long live cutting the cord

The article is talking about internet, not cable TV shows. Or at least that's the way I read it. Am I living in the past? Although I do use internet for some streaming, I mostly use it for browsing activities.

And my wired internet is much cheaper and more reliable than the 3G/4G mobile links. I don't understand how anybody would be satisfied with mobile only.

This year's H-1B visa lottery jammed full in just six days

H-1B vs. just send the jobs overseas

The article talks about replacing locals with H-1B workers at lower salaries, but another trend is to replace the local jobs with jobs overseas at MUCH lower costs. The logistical nightmares that can occur are often ignored because the cost savings are so great, and the (local) executive staff get their bonuses and raises because they have increased the profit for the shareholders. What's gonna happen when all the lower positions are overseas and they still need to increase profits?

PayPal freezes 400-job expansion in North Carolina over bonkers religious freedom law

Who are Americans?

Any of you remember where Americans came from? Not THAT long ago.

'I bet Russian hackers weren't expecting their target to suck so epically hard as this'

XML == cool?

"Also, there's got to be a better way to store configuration data than using raw binary. JSON, YAML, or (dare I say it) XML are pretty cool instead."

Yes, let's used bloated, overwrought file formats instead of compact, efficient storage, and open it up so that anyone with a text editor can manipulate it.

Motorola-powered Mac from 1989 used to write smartphone apps

Masochist?

"That 9” black and white screen is part of the pleasure of using it"

You're not one of them there mass-o-christs, are you? I stayed away from the original Mac because it just looked like a toy, and even in my 20's the screen was too small to read for very long or to take seriously as a programming tool. Now, the Mac II was a different thing.

You've seen things people wouldn't believe – so tell us your programming horrors

I used various girls names (Monica was a common one) until the office Monica happened to look over my shoulder one time and see her name... awkward to say the least. In my defense, I only used them in place of iteration variables instead of i, j, or k, etc.

Intel and Micron's XPoint: Is it PCM? We think it is

Unlike != Not?

Although I agree that it sounds like phase change memory, I disagree with the author's contentions. The phrase "Unlike Phase change memory" strongly implies that it is NOT phase change memory.

Many UK ecommerce sites allow ‘password’ for logins – report

Re: I am probably going to be downvoted...but

I was going to add a similar comment. If I want to be stupid, it should be on me. If someone uses a password that is simple, such as "password" then the institution should not be liable for any hacking of that account.

Re: "some consumer-focused sites do get it right on password security"

Then they should be shot -- The password itself should not be stored, just the hash or whatever it is they use these days.

USA, China find common cyber-enemy within

“We've made very clear to the Chinese that there are certain practices that they’re engaging in that we know are emanating from China..."

The phrase "emanating from" may sound like distancing from accusing them directly, but the phrase "they're engaging in" sounds like a pretty direct accusation.

Influential scribe Charles Petzold: How I figured out the Windows API

Re: "a paragraph in my first chapter explaining why tiled windows were better"

Windows 1 was non-tiled because of worry about infringing the Macintosh's overlapping Windows. I think there was a legal agreement there somewhere. Don't know how they got out of it for Windows 2

Firefox, is that you? Version 29 looks rather like a certain shiny rival

I will shoot the next person I hear using the term reimagine or any of its variants (see, even spell check doesn't like it!).

Samsung slurps up full charge in 30 seconds with bio-battery

Re: Battery?

The first thing I thought of was 'how long does the charge last?' I can understand the information not being in a press release from the company (because it probably is not great), but I think the author did not do his job by not even mentioning charge life.

The heat thing would not be a problem if the charge life is only an hour.

Android voice assistant shootout

More apps to compare

I agree with IR that a consistent test script is very desirable. Also, I'd like to suggest that the application Jeannie (also known as Voice Actions). It has a large list of built-in commands that the others do not seem to have...

Apple tops Microsoft market cap, revenue, and profits

How about profit over revenue?

Hmmm..

Microsoft: 5.23 billon / 16.43 billion = ~31.8%

Apple: 5.99 billion / 24.67 billion = ~24.3%

I wonder whose money worked harder?

World's fastest production car to gain electric twin

Bad facts

If it helps, the announcement on the Shelby Super Cars website says it charges from a 220 volt outlet, not a 110v outlet. And the car has twin 500bhp motors for a total of 1000bhp.

Dublin airport was crippled by flakey network card

Run to its limit?

“will not operate the system to its limit until the system has been re-validated”.

I would think a system like this would be spec'ed to run well under its 'limit'. You should always design a system to have more than needed capacity to account for fluctuations.

Most spam comes from just six botnets

If you can detect it, block it!

I'm sure I'm missing something here, but if these agencies no the precentage of spam from each botnet, they must be able to identify the botnet that sent each e-mail. If you can identify it, why can't you block it. I know they're detecting at an endpoint, but if they can identify the source, why can't the ISPs?

Lee