Posts by John Hughes

Blighty's official Space Agency starts up on 1 April

The US Govt spends more on health per head than the NHS

Yes, you read that right - the US taxpayer pays more money per head to *NOT* provide universal health care than the UK does for the NHS.

Mobile operators ditch Tube plans

Pathetic

Ok, it's harder to do on the tube than other networks (Paris metro for example), but it's just a sign of UK's continuing decline that "hard" means "oh, well, we'll give up".

Disgusted, Champigny sur Marne, France.

Nokia: Keep codin' for Symbian and Qt!

Selling QT

" See if you can spot Green's mention of how Nokia's going to sell Qt to Digia. Clue: he doesn't."

Maybe because they didn't?

Scientists crack spotless Sun mystery

This is all bollocks

Typical of the warmist fools who write for the Reg.

Anyone who reads the truth in real scientific journals like E&E can tell you that the sun is made of Iron.

http://www.neutronrepulsion.ge/Researches/28.pdf

First reports on XM-25 Judge Dredd smartgun in A'Stan

Most of the dying?

But it's wrong.

The PBI do most of the fighting, as usual.

It's the civvies who do most of the dying, as has been true since WW2

The Meeks shall inherit the Office ...

replace it with network-safe and server-safe Java(FX)

2.2250738585072012e-308

The bug that took 10 years to fix.

Very safe.

(Not forgetting http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Over-two-years-and-no-fix-for-Java-1185585.html, a security bug that's been open for over two years).

Worthless iPhone 'Wikileaks App' removed from Apple Store

Buts that what lots of "iphone apps" are.

"an app that simply took money from gullible souls to direct them to a public URL that they could already reach via Safari.":

Russia wins World Cup bid in parrot-sickening travesty

Is that you, rupe?

Why?

50m-year-old mystery space object doesn't look a day over 30

Policemen were bad enough...

... but when even the black holes are younger than I am I give up.

Apple rolls out two new MacBook Air models

1.7cm thick?

Yes, the macbook air is grotesquely thick and heavy.

Have you ever seen a Sony Vaio X series? No feeble "tapering towards the front" to fool you about how "thin" it is.

Apple want...

"As for built in 3G modem... it's called tethering, Apple want people to have iPhones tethered,"

And we always do what Apple want, don't we.

Lone Android dev 'almost brought down T-Mobile'

That's not how IP works

"it seems likely the application was repeatedly setting up and tearing down IP connections, using each one for a very small amount of data and thus generating more signalling load than the base stations could manage."

1. There is no such thing as an IP connection

2. The network shouldn't see TCP connection setup and teardown, that's for the endpoints to worry about.

It looks like T-Mobile have a horrible layering problem. It's probably NAT.

NAT is bad.

This is nothing to do with network neutrality, it's to do with network stupidity.

Guardian super-blogger flames Reg boffinry desk

Well it is a surprise

Why do you think it isn't?

Oh, because you don't have a clue.

For your information the surprise is that falling total solar activity may be producing warming because the visible/infra red part of the spectrum may be rising even though total activity is falling. Nobody predicted this, so it's a surprise.

When did skeptical become bad

When it came to mean "refusing to base my opinions on facts".

A true skeptic examines the evidence and decides.

A "global warming skeptic" has already decided and cherry picks the evidence that they admit to considering.

You just don't have a clue, do you?

"At least, if you believe Professor Joanna Haigh of Imperial College London."

No. There is no "belief" involved.

You mean "If her findings are correct".

Later you go on to say:

"Then, even James Hansen of NASA himself - the man who more or less invented the idea of carbon-driven warming"

No. It was Arrhenius who discovered it, in 1896.

Finaly "But in fact the article title accurately reflected her comments to Nature"

No it doesn't. "Much of recent global warming actually caused by Sun" could have been written "Half of recent global warming actually caused by Sun". But you didn't write that, did you.

'We Want Two' Navy carrier plan pondered by Cabinet

"Develop a new Harrier"

The moment you start talking about "develop a new..." you're fucked.

Buy something that already exists for fuck's sake.

"I do get annoyed that the only options for aircraft are US", or French.

Who cares.

Navy Carriers: We want two or no votes for you, Tories

Top gear?

Carriers are for launching pianos.

Everyone knows that.

Software dev turned rogue trader gets jail and €4.9bn fine

There is no fine

SocGen has been awarded damages.

It's up to SocGen to recover the money.

They can probably get a judgement to seize all his assets, and take that part of his salary above the minimum wage untill he's finished paying it off.

"he should be limited to jobs.. involving manual labor."

Well, since he lives in a free country, such an insane judgement would immediately be struck down.

You obviously don't know how banking works

""fictitious accounts" still need to have money in them,"

No bank account has "money" in it.

It's all just numbers and promises.

Qualitative easing?

He's not in the UK.

He owes the cash in a real currency, not dodgy stuff like sterling.

All his bosses are gone.

Almost everyone above JK has left or been sacked, from the President on down.

All but one jumped ship before they were sacked. (The guy who was sacked now has a nice case before the employment tribunal - how could SocGen claim simultaneously that JK's boss should be sacked, but that it was all JK's fault and the bank did nothing wrong?)

Only one of his "superiors" is still there - the head of derived products got a slap on the wrist..

(Source - Today's Libé).

He;s not unemployed

He currently earns EUR 2300 a month.

(Well, until he loses his appeal and goes back to jail).

Legendary steampunk computer 'should be built' - programmer

Is this your mum?

http://www.icl1900.co.uk/images/1906A1971.jpg

Nice legs.

£1bn+ Royal Navy destroyer finally fires 'disgraceful' weapon

Fudge

"French and Italian garbage,"

Yes, not like the good old Exocet that you're so fond of.

"we should do this mainly in Britain, using British talents, and British people. And British money."

Ah, there's your problem. "British money". There isn't any. Since Britain makes nothing that anyone else in the world wants where do you think it would come from?

But it said so in the manual

Default? Yes. Only? No.

"After significant research, he discovered the was the default, and only configuration."

-i bytes-per-inode

Specify the bytes/inode ratio. mke2fs creates an inode for

every bytes-per-inode bytes of space on the disk. The larger

the bytes-per-inode ratio, the fewer inodes will be created.

This value generally shouldn’t be smaller than the blocksize of

the filesystem, since then too many inodes will be made. Be

warned that is not possible to expand the number of inodes on a

filesystem after it is created, so be careful deciding the cor‐

rect value for this parameter.

Short file names

No, turning off the useless 8.3 filenames that nobody uses any more.

Server? NTFS?

"The numbers I live by: for every million files on your *server* you should have a gigabyte of RAM "

Well, there's your problem, guv.

Windows is not a server OS.

Viking Modular busts SAS SSD price premium

At last!

"artificially high price premium"

Now all we have to do is find out what the bloody price is without an "artificially high price premium".

Wikileaks' Assange to reenter the fray

Anonymous coward is sure...

Why are you sure? Based on what evidence?

Or are you just flapping your mouth off for nothing?

Trident delay by the Coalition: Cunning plan, or bad idea?

And this is exactlt what would go wrong

The sane thing to do would be just to buy the existing French system.

The normal military procurement way would be to get together with the French and a few other countries, arse around spending billions, and end up with something that doesn't work.

Intel eats crow on software RAID

Still not admitting the truth

"Referring to software-RAID I/O performance of years past, she said: "Historically, it was slower. It just was. And it's not anymore. And in fact in a lot of cases it's a higher-performing solution.""

Software raid has ALWAYS been faster than hardware raid, unless the hardware RAID is caching to (hopefully battery backed) RAM.

All CO₂-spewing kit now in existence is OK for the planet

Volcano

"I have not seen the figures.. How many tonnes of CO2 did that last Icelandic volcano spew?..."

Not much.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1852153/volcano_co2_output_could_be_150300000_tons_daily/

"Experts said on Monday that the volcano in Iceland is emitting 150,000 to 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per day, a figure comparable to emissions released from a small industrial nation."

Google is your friend.

Greenland ice loss rates 'one-third' of what was thought

Volcanoes aren't fossils, neither are trees.

3. Was fossilised organic matter being burnt at the same rate before people started digging it out of the ground to burn?

"Possibly more so (from things lke volcanoes/forest fires etc,"

We know total CO2 output from volcanoes. It is a fraction of the output from burning fossil fuels.

Trees aren't fossils. Burning forests does not increase long term CO2 concentration (where do you think the carbon in the trees came from?).

Why are we still at the point where people who don't have a clue feel like they can add their 0.05EUR before making an effort to find out what the fuck is going on?

Debate?

"You're assuming that human activity is responsible for climate change. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't - there's a bit of a debate about that at the moment:-)"

Is there?

Who are the participants in this "debate". How many of them have the vaguest clue what they're talking about?

Egocentrism

"Are we not just a bit egocentric in thinking that we can control global systems?"

Who claimed to control them?

Are we being egocentric in thinking that we can affect global systems?

No.

Colonel who slammed Afghan HQ PowerPoint culture is fired

though much fewer officers overall

Please rewrite in English.

Electric mass-driver catapults to beat Royal Navy cuts?

Carrier version of the ...

"Might it not be possible to have a carrier version of the Typhoon or Tornado?"

There you go again.

"Let's develop a new aircraft, it's bound to be cheaper".

Intel's SSD roadmap leaked

SATA, SATA, SATA

I don't want to sound like an obsessive bore (or do I?) but SATA is no bloody use for those of us who want to use SSD's in servers.

SATA may be good enough for the laptop or desktop, but for servers we want SAS, there is no way I'm going to be putting my data on a device that is tied to one server - we need multi-initiator.

Micron intros SSD speed king

SATA is no good

"Micron has entered the enterprise SSD space with the RealSSD P300, a SATA-based drive it claims is the fastest on the market."

SATA? What bloody use is SATA for the "entrerprise SSD space".

We want SAS!

Researchers: Arctic cooled to pre-industrial levels from 1950-1990

Interesting - pity about the editorial nonsense

"an assertion which will cause some irritation among academics who contend that atmospheric carbon is the main factor in climate change.:"

Why will it cause irritation? One part of the world cooled down. Now, like the global average it's warming up.

Nobody has ever "contend that atmospheric carbon is the main factor in climate change". The contention is that the observed current warming is caused by the observed current increase in C02 and that the CO2 is released by human activity.

It is well known that CO2 can come from other sources. But those other sources don't explain the current increase.

It is well known that other causes can increase global temperature, but they just don't happen to be occurring at the moment.

Android surges past iPhone in smartphone sales

Not all Symbian phones are smartphones?

Oh yes they are.

What else would you call them?

Apple as a religion: How the iPhone became divine

He runs a scaffolding firm: he owns a BMW. It's unremarkable.

Well duh, you think someone who runs a scaffolding firm would be driving anything other than a beemer?

Palin puts paid to Boob-gate

senior US politician

Wasilla, Alaska (pop 10,256) city council, 1992-1996

Wasilla, Akaska, mayor 1996-2002

Chair, Alaska Oil & Gas conservation commission 2003-2004

Candidate for Vice President of USA 2008 (defeated)

Governor of Alaska, 2007-2009 (resigned)

Senior?

Nokia and Intel birth mobile Linux baby

RPM

"Does it use Debian packages and repositories?"

No, MeeGo, like Moblin, is RPM based. (release announcement includes thanks to Novel Suze team).

Pity.

Nokia veteran leads MeeGo and Symbian fight

no notification of messages received.

What the beep, buzz and blue flashing light don't do it for you?

Trident, nuke energy looking poorly under LibCons

Fast Breeders

"Do you know what a "fast breeder reactor" does?"

I don't know? Makes fuel out of pixie dust?

"You know we've got those, right?"

Who is "we" in this context? If you mean the UK then the answer is no, you don't have fast breders. Dounreay was shut down in 1994.

Nokia and Intel defensive on MeeGo Linux patents

It doesn't matter whether you think your code is patent free...

...what matters is whether you can fight off an attack.

Your nice Inferno based system _might_ be found non-infringing, but by the time you get the judgement you'd probably be dead.

That's why you'd like to have Microsoft (eurgh) or Nokia/Intel (better) behind you, promising to use their patent portfolios and cash as protection.

C language inventor spurns Google's language exam

Flamebait

"Between 1969 and 1973, Ken Thompson implemented a version of the Multics system at Bell, called Unix, with Dennis Ritchie."

Riiiight, that's what happened alright.

Swiss HSBC data breach victim count trebles

Naughty frogs.

Bad things the Frogs have done:

Exploding nuclear weapons during an international test ban treaty

But since they hadn't signed up to the treaty...

...and they were only exploding the bombs to check there bomb simulation code

...so that they no longer need to explode bombs

...so they've now signed up to the treaty.

Qwerty Keyboard Smartphones

Want to buy a 2nd hand E90?

Much better keyboard than the 9300.

Also comes in handy as a personal defense weapon/emergency window opener.