Posts by Chris Miller

Take your pics: Facebook shuts down Gowalla

Has no-one told them

There's no compass direction 'south by southwest' - southwest by south, yes (cf Hitchcock).

Rub Facebook pals in your wealth with 'social' credit card

Just what I need

I've been looking for a way to link every single purchase I make to my Facepalm page.

That steady diet of EastEnders is turning her into a shrew

Am I alone

In finding Mr Page's familiarity with the Barbie œuvre disturbing on many levels?

Ten... stars of the Geneva Motor Show

Re: That Bentley

But ugly is the new beautiful for Chelsea tractors: Q7, Cayenne, X6 all fugly. And even the Continental looks like a Ferrari that's been fed on a diet of 10lbs of potatoes a day for 3 months.

At last

An updated Reliant Scimitar GTE. Thank you Jaguar.

Solar storm arrives, nobody notices

Don't panic!

It's just a dummy run for December 21.

The true, tragic cost of British wind power

Re: Solar derived is the only option.

jabuzz, did you not read my reply last time you posted this nonsense? World total energy usage is a few parts per million of the solar energy falling onto the Earth's surface. There may be arguments against producing (some of) this from fossil fuels (sustainability, CO2 production), but directly raising our surface temperature is not one of them.

NHS strikes new deal with CSC for electronic patient records

What happened

to those responsible for agreeing the original deal. Are they sitting with their feet up in their agreeable French villa collecting a gold-plated pension paid for by the taxpayer? Have they joined the boards of the companies they gave the contracts to? Or are they now the head of the Civil Service, Mr Watmore?

Until there's some sense of responsibility and people held to account in our public services, these catastrophes will continue.

Ten... e-cars and hybrids

Re: Hot swapping batteries

The problem is that the battery represents ~50% of the value of a car like the Leaf. Are you happy for your brand new battery to be swapped for one of unknown provenance after the first 50 miles? The only way this could work is if you lease the battery (or the entire car) and it then becomes the manufacturer's problem (though you may still find that you've got something that delivers only half the expected range on a full charge).

But that's only half the problem. As TonyHoyle points out above, the electrical infrastructure just isn't there. A small petrol station would need a continuous multi-MW supply to recharge a similar number of e-cars to those it can refill today. Short of a game-changing breakthrough in electrical storage technology, practical (non city car) vehicles will be powered by internal combustion. Where the fuel comes from is the question the Greens need to address.

Microsoft: Cloud will fluff 14 million jobs by 2015

Re: Either my geography is poor.....

The stats (pop. anyway) refer to Sweden. Sweden/Switzerland must look rather alike from Seattle.

For a sufficiently small value of 'cloud'

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

If I put a managed web server into colocation, is that a 'cloud'? If I use salesforce.com in the office, is that a 'cloud'? Does anyone understand WTF they're talking about (of course not, they're in Marketing)?

Venus BELCHES solar wind in shock weather explosion

Re: ' the point where the supersonic solar blast slows down'

Because it isn't a perfect vacuum, there is a speed of sound in space. It's on the order of 100km/s but varies with local 'density'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliosphere#Termination_shock

Chunnel mobile available – but only while heading towards UK

Cue Dom Joly

Diddy-dum-dum, diddy-dum-dum, diddy-dum-dum-DA. Diddy-dum-

"HELLO?"

"WHAT?!"

"I'M IN THE CHUNNEL"

"NO, IT'S RUBBISH"

UK tax fraud IT project 'missed virtually every delivery date'

Re: Also....

Dividends are free of basic rate tax (because they are paid out of profits that have been subject to corporation tax ~= basic rate tax) but will attract higher rate tax, if you're earning enough. You can spread dividends, so if you earn tons one year and nothing the next you may avoid some higher rate tax. If you have a partner who isn't paying higher rate tax, you could pay them some dividends too. But that's about it (legitimately).

You can save some NI, but then you lose some of the benefits for which NI is intended to pay (I know, it isn't hypothecated).

China aims its most powerful rocket ever AT THE MOON

But not the short ton

On the west side of the pond it's 10% lighter (2,000 lbs).

Apple claims its 'innovation' creates 514,000 US jobs

Quoth Twain: 'Lies, damned lies, and statistics'

When Twain said this, he explicitly attributed the remark to Benjamin Disraeli.

Quantum computing in our lifetime - IBM breakthrough

A common misconception

Assuming a working quantum computer could be built today and that something similar to Moore's law will drive increases in speed and complexity, it would still be a few decades before any existing systems (e.g. 4096 bit RSA) are threatened - and by then, we'll doubtless be using new, improved cryptographic methods.

Much more at:

http://emergentchaos.com/archives/2008/03/quantum-progress.html

Top Gun 2: It's happening - and the choice of star is stirring controversy

Re: here's a ripe opportunity

... and vote on who gets to play the 'Dead Meat' character.

Steve Jobs' death clears way for '7.85-inch iPad prototype'

7.85"

That would be 200mm. Has California gone metric and joined the C21st?

Microsoft's Azure cloud down and out for 8 hours

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Uptime

Yes, SLAs are agreed with the business and inevitably include some degree of averaging over space and time (our agreed level was 99.99% measured annually, which we comfortably exceeded). If the business had required 99.99% availability at each individual location, we 'd have arranged for multiply routed WAN links (ideally from separate suppliers, but that was difficult to achieve nationwide back then). When we'd shown the bosses the costing figures, I'm sure they would have settled for a lower guarantee.

PCs dying was rare, but still more common that reboots. I'm not sure it's possible to guarantee 99.999% availability to an individual workstation - you'd not only need UPS but also lots of dual components. Does anyone make a desktop with dual power supplies? (If they do, I bet it's pretty expensive.) In reality, all you had to do was walk across the office and use the PC of a colleague who was away. A replacement would arrive with minutes at a big office (where spare systems were held), but at Preston you might have to wait a day for repair or a replacement to be shipped.

Re: Re: Re: Uptime

To be pedantic (and why not?), our service was based on 10 hrs a day and 6 days a week, so 99.997% is just 5 minutes. Preston was down for 4-5 hrs, but it only represented ~1% of the work force, hence the 99.998% (can't remember where the other 0.001 went). We didn't count (though we measured) individual workstation failures, since we effectively had roaming profiles and no data on the local drives, so if your PC died, you just used a spare.

True story: PCs would occasionally behave erratically, which a reboot would cure. It turned out that there was a bug in the Netware client for Windows which was failing to release a user handle after each logoff - after 25 or so logon cycles there were no handles left. Most of our users logged on once a day, so Windows 3.1 had to run for a month without a reboot to show the problem. Try telling that to t'youth of today ... and they won't believe you.

Uptime

If the service has been down for 7 hours already, they'll struggle to achieve 99.9% availability for the year. Actually, before I escaped from corporate IT, I was achieving 99.997% availability across the UK - and that was in 1996 with Win3.1/Netware4.1/mainframe (IIRC the .003% was BT losing a Kilostream link to Preston for an afternoon).

Guaranteeing 99.999% can get expensive (and adds complexity) and is probably more than most businesses require. But it's not rocket science.

Hubble snaps exploding star's near-fatal weight-loss bid

Relax, Fred

Similar supernovae have occurred every few centuries with minimal adverse effects. Supernovae have been proposed as causes of mass extinction events, but they would have to be very close* (<< 100 ly). Alternatively, a Gamma Ray Burst occurring inside the Milky Way would be seriously bad news.

* Back of envelope - supernova ~10^12 luminosity of Sun. So (due inverse square law) a supernova at 1 million AU would be of similar apparent brightness to the Sun. 1 million AU = 15 ly. No doubt a SN chucks out more nasties than a normal star, but for order of magnitude puposes this should be some reassurance.

"one of the closest to Earth

to explode when there was someone here to see it" - err, not really. Of the 5 supernovae for which we have historic evidence, most were (10-20%) nearer and only one (Kepler's in 1654) was several times farther away than η Car. Its real significance is that it may be the first galactic SN to be observable through a telescope.

Drew's Cookie Jar - psst. want a forum upgrade

Don't HTML markup tags already work? Still, put me down for some superpowers - I fancy X-ray vision, Drew.

Apple chief thinks about his MOUNTAIN OF CASH a lot

Re: "it's more than we need to run the company"

On this basis:

http://demonocracy.info/infographics/eu/debt_piigs/debt_piigs.html

it's about 36 lorry loads. ($1 = €0.75)

Global warming COULD SHRINK THE HUMAN RACE

I thought Stephen Jay Gould had debunked this

Read Chapter 5 of "Life's Grandeur" for the fascinating complexity of equine evolution. To vastly oversimplify - the traditional story (developed by TH Huxley) of small many-toed horses evolving linearly via larger specimens with fewer toes up to modern Clydesdales is erroneous. At any given point in time and space there were many different species of equus trotting around - some smaller, some larger; some with fewer toes, some with more - it's just that the surviving examples we find today are of the larger, single-toed variety (and the earliest ones were the opposite).

It may be that warmer climates drove selection of smaller animals, and vice versa, but this would not have been a simple linear process.

Daniel Craig like Connery, Skyfall helmsman suggests

Is he trying to tell us that Craig is a secret slaphead?

Smut site lifts skirt on user credentials

Employers?

People really use emails such as [e-mail] to register for porn? Can the clueless bastards!

GPS jamming rife, could PARALYSE Blighty, say usual suspects

Spoofing a passive receiver is not that difficult. The article suggests you can record an actual set of signals and play it back (timestamps would give this away, of course). Spoofing an active receiver so that instead of a drone flying to point A it goes to point B instead looks much more difficult, if not actually impossible.

Bob Cockshott*

is a Challenge Delivery Manager at the government's Technology Strategy Board ICT Knowledge Transfer Network. I bet his business cards are something to behold. Does anyone know where I can apply for such a non-job (or should I just join the local lodge)?

* No sniggering at the back

Toy Story: Mystic Met needs swanky new kit, swoon MPs

Old met joke

Our new supercomputer will allow us to predict the weather 24 hours ahead with 72% accuracy. Unfortunately, simply predicting that "tomorrow's weather will be the same as today's" achieves 75% accuracy.

Activist supplied illegally obtained docs to DeSmogBlog

Why?

No other publication (print or electronic) seems to feel the need to aim for a perfect balance. I don't see the Grauniad hiring Jeremy Clarkson to balance the views of the Moonbat, to take a random example.

French National Front woos internet pirates

Frightening scenario

MLP beats Sarko into third place, leading to a run-off between Marine and Francois Hollande (the Socialist candidate). MLP gets the Front National vote, plus a significant chunk of the Gaullist vote, plus (maybe now) the Pirate Party vote. Can she win to become President? Discuss.

Unions: MoD 'mad to fire staff while increasing consultant spending'

Lewis is too generous

The usual rule of thumb for estimating the real cost of employment is to add around 80-100% to the actual pay rate. This is to cover overheads such as NI (may not apply to HMG), paid holiday, training, employing useless managers and HR drones to carry out regular staff assessments, etc, etc.

70 London 999 calls lost due to clock-change IT glitch

Unless you're running an atomic clock, UTC = GMT. The name was changed to appease our French amis who were sulking because the world runs on London local time and meridians and not Paris (as they wanted in 1884).

Oh, and Jake, DST may not matter to dirt farmers, but modern society is a tad more complex than that. Sure every school, factory and shop could decide when they were going to adjust opening and closing times to fit in with local daylight, but do you really think that would be easier or less confusing than having a government mandated day for everyone to do it? Now, if only we could convince good ol' Uncle Sam to follow the same dates as the rest of the world - we've done it for autumn (sorry, fall), just spring to sort out ...

Anglo-French nuke pact blesses 4th-gen reactors

Re: Renewable the only long term option

Sun delivers ~1,316W/m2 to the surface of the Earth, multiplying by the effective cross-sectional area (pi.r2 where r=6,400,000m) gives 170,000TW of solar energy delivered to Earth's surface. Multiplying by 8,750 hrs per year gives a total annual insolation ~1.5 billion TWhrs. 5,000 TWhrs is a rounding error on a rounding error ...

Reactor closure

"four of those are due to be closed in the next four years"

Get rid of the Magnox designs (one of them is 'only' 500MW anyway), but there's no reason why the AGRs shouldn't have their lives extended by a further 5 years. There are plenty of reactors in operation that are older than them (though they're not AGRs - but that's probably a positive factor).

Feds to carmakers: 'Rein in high-tech dashboards'

@STB

You're that bloke wearing a flat cap in the L-reg Volvo 244 estate with a fish sign on the back, aren't you?

@jake

I'm not sure you understand the meaning of 'Tragedy of the Commons' - look it up.

Sometimes, I have to drive somewhere I've never been before. Sometimes, I have to drive alone. On those occasions I find a satnav less distracting than trying to wrestle maps while driving. Other occasions include when there's been a smash on the motorway* and I need an alternate route through an area I don't know well.

* Fender-bender on the freeway, to you.

Epitaph

Here lies the body of Joshua Gray

Who died defending his right of way.

He was right as could be as he sped along

But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong.

Philips intros dual-view telly tech

Re: I don't

Fair points, but I was thinking more of the TV halfway up the wall with no visible means of support. I know this is technically possible, but I prefer to think of my telly as something I put in my house, rather than something I build my house around. YMMV

I agree

It always bugs* me that publicity images of electronic kit never show the power leads, let alone the plethora of trailing wires that most of these devices require. (I know, you can bury them in the walls, but I don't fancy remodelling the living room every time I get a new TV.)

Yes, I really must get out more.

Sensitive council data sent to hundreds via PERSONAL EMAIL

Oh dear

To quote from the first paragraph of the Microsoft page on the Outlook 'Recall' feature:

"The recipient of the mail you want to recall must also be using an Exchange server e-mail account. For example, you cannot recall a message sent to someone's personal Internet service provider (ISP) POP3 e-mail account."

Given the article says the email was sent via a personal account, it's pretty unlikely the Exchange recall was used, probably more a case of sending another email asking all the recipients to delete the previous one.

Still don't let that prevent you from posting a snarky comment, preferably using 'M$', which makes you look a really cool dude.

500 Brit techies at risk over NHS IT fiasco

"costing everyone involved with the fiasco dearly"

Unless they happen to be Ian Watmore, of course.

Apple's Chinese labourers get 1.6 per cent of iPad loot - report

Quite right

>40% GPM last year, cf LVMH (handbags, perfume, premium booze) ~14%.

Sun hacks cuffed after being DOBBED IN by News Corp

Peter, like 'Is it me?', I don't care much for The Sun's journalistic style. But if you want journalism that proceeds only by 'moral and legal' means, you will have news that consists solely of recycled press releases. Make no mistake, where laws have been broken, those responsible should be punished, allowing for suitable mitigation where genuine 'public interest' defences can be mounted. But without illegal methods we would know nothing of MPs' expenses, to take just one recent example. And that's very much the way a lot of rich and powerful people would like it.

If this type of behaviour is shown to have been confined only to News International publications, I'll eat my copy of The Guardian (without relish).

Be fair

The Daily Star makes The Sun read like 'Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society'.

NASA plans manned Deep Space Moon outpost

I don't think there are stable orbits around libration points (other than the two 'Trojan' points that are co-orbital with the Moon). Anyway, the accompanying article from space.com talks about "the quiet zone behind the moon".

LG DM2350D 23in passive 3D monitor and TV combo

2.5m from a 46" screen equates to 1.25m from a 23", which is close to the distance I sit from my monitor. I sit about 5m from my TV, though. Blocking effects would suggest that you need a better signal.