Posts by Neil Barnes

Brazil gets a WTF WhatsApp moment

Re: Limited?

And a million tons of coffee, apparently.

Old jet bits, Vader's motorbike gear, sonic oddness: Hats off to Star Wars' creative heroes

Re: Never been into Star Wars

Science fiction: fiction that doesn't work if you take the science away. And by that definition, probably 95% of the stuff labelled SF, isn't.

Star Wars was space opera writ large.

Not that that will necessarily stop me seeing it once the rush dies down.

Brit 'naut Tim Peake thunders aloft

Sometimes I feel really proud to be a citizen of the only country in the world that has ever given up a working space programme.

Apply online to go to Mars. No, seriously

Re: Only Americans?

Yeah, but he'll probably go at night...

Volkswagen blames emissions cheating on 'chain of errors'

Re: Though one might reasonably expect

Thanks, Phil. I had read elsewhere that the adblue refill was not a user-allowed function; apparently this is not the case.

My own Fiat diesel predates this technology so I have no direct experience.

Though one might reasonably expect

based on similar servicing requirements, that the only person able to tell the ECU that the canister has been refilled will be the 'qualified mechanic' equipped with the appropriate software. Only a cynic would suggest that said software will be either restricted to main/approved repair centres, and/or hideously expensive.

One would think that an ECU which is capable of noting when filters and oil require changing by changes in the inputs to the system and the way the car is driven as well as simply by distance or time might also be capable of noting that said fluids and filters have been changed...

Microsoft to OneDrive users: We're sorry, click the magic link to keep your free storage

Indeed...

I too have never used it, but it's nice to know there's somewhere (else) I can use as temporary storage.

US government pushing again on encryption bypass

If I have nothing to hide,

Surely the government has nothing to fear.

So it doesn't matter to them that I hide it anyway.

'Personalised BBC' can algorithmically pander to your prejudices

Re: This is stupid.

Aye, but at least with changing the channel there's a chance you might see something you hadn't previously considered, and having it catch your interest. This way you'll never see anything you don't expect, unless they stick random material in.

To be honest, I think it's an appalling idea, but then, if you cut my head off it would say BBC down my neck.

US Navy's newest ship sets sail with Captain James Kirk at the bridge

Why all the excitement?

Surely stealthing ships was properly done in the Philadelphia Experiment?

If it still works six months from now, count yourself lucky

HP11C, working perfectly from 1987. Rather disappointed that I had to change the original batteries a couple of years ago - does nothing last?

Amazon's new drones powered by Jeremy Clarkson's sarcasm

Re: @James Hughes 1 - Once again

" Low mass, high value, delivered in internet connected low population density areas."

That'll be illegal pharmaceuticals, then.

That's a big drone

From the size of the package, eight or ten feet across?

I'm not sure I like the idea of a sky full of those.

Bank card fraud

Short answer: two debit cards from Barclays.

One used only twice on the internet in the last three months and both times to places I've used before. The other not used on the internet at all.

Both with contactless; neither used with it.

ATM use generally restricted to two or three known locations, banks and a supermarket. POS is (the same) supermarket or garages, though there was one purchase at a garage which I rarely use and which has had a reputation years ago for skimming.

Fraudulent payments attempted in the UK, US, and Italy.

Bank card fraud

Anyone aware of a possible plague of chip'n'pin debit card fraud?

In the last fortnight, I've had not one but two frauds on two different cards, one of which is *never* used on t'internet (and the other only rarely; I prefer to go through Paypal where possible). Some kind soul, or group of souls, is buying the oddest things with my cards: propane, video games, insurance, food... meh.

I am on the strong side of paranoid when it comes to using my cards, and from talking to the bank (who have now issued new cards twice in a month) it sounds like it may be a random number attack. At least they're not doing the 'our systems are secure, it must be you that's given all your numbers away' thing.

The bank have been extremely helpful and tell me I won't lose the cash (though it's in holding at the moment) but it's a but bloody annoying.

Any thoughts?

Who owns space? Looking at the US asteroid-mining act

Re: Home Delivery

So what you do, right (with apologies to the author who first thought of this) is you make your metal into a globe sufficiently thin to withstand atmospheric pressure, but large enough to float at around 30,000 feet. Fill it full of vacuum; there's loads out there.

Then you park it over a convenient lawmaker and drill a small hole...

Second Dell backdoor root cert found

Bet it's not that persistent across a different OS.

Fifth arrest in TalkTalk hacking probe: Now Plod cuff chap in Wales

A ydynt yn hyd yn oed yn cael y rhyngrwyd yng Nghymru?

Well, obviously, yes.

Randall Munroe spoke to The Reg again. We're habit-forming that way

Re: Spirit

You are not alone. Take another upvote.

Doctor Who: Even the TARDIS key can't unpick the chronolock in Face the Raven

Re: "I promise she is under my protection."

A stupid girl of my acquaintance switched the tag, but the store detective got her anyway.

Yahoo! Mail! is! still! a! thing!, tries! blocking! Adblock! users!

A good thought, for those who have unlimited bandwidth and fast links all the time; there may be more subtle approaches which might be considered.

Nonetheless, I remain with adblock firmly on, along with noscript, and my browsing is a much happier (and not coincidentally faster) experience.

Dear websites: your job, on the whole, is to make money for your shareholders/owners. You have chosen, by and large, to make that money from advertising, on the assumption that your provided service is sufficiently enticing that I will watch the supplied advertising.

I will accept, from a retailer, internal advertising - but that's it. I don't want to see it if I am not on your site, and believe me I am not in a 'relationship' with you that gives you the right to bombard me with spam after the event.

I have never seen a site whose content will persuade me to suffer advertising, and I don't expect to. There are only one or two sites - this has been one of them - for which I would pay; and even then, please remember that the majority of the internet is nothing more than entertainment. The total costs I would be prepared to pay, for my *entire* internet use, should be on the order of the BBC licence fee; a few pence per day.

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

Exactly, Bob: I have lost count of the number of places that require an account to be set up before letting you see a pricelist, or something important like the delivery options and prices. The vast majority of those places never saw my money...

There is exactly *no* reason to require an account to purchase goods online, any more than there is to buy bananas at Tesco's. Sure, they need to know your delivery address, your name, and your bank details - but they *need* them only as long as it takes to process the order. What they *don't* need, and I don't want, is a 'relationship' which allows them to spam me forever and a day.

Each transaction is individual, and should remain so, the same as it is on the high street. And just like the high street, if I like the service, I'm inclined to come back; if I don't, I won't.

Looking for a council house in Sheffield City? Meet your fellow tenants

Re: Fault of the mail program

One might wonder, with all the wonderful things one hears about this interweb thingie, that major providers of email clients don't have a group policy which *forbids* CC? Or at a minimum, forbids CC with (as suggested elsewhere in the thread) more than some small minimum of entries.

French Playmobil heist: El Reg denies involvement

Sir, I fear you may be mistaken...

I was there with Lester on the sad day that our brave Playmonaut sank to his watery doom, and I can confirm that (a) the English Channel can be a very uneasy body of water and (b) there was neither hide nor hair seen of the plucky chap.

But then, I would say that, wouldn't I?

GPS, you've gone too far this time

Re: How far off? @Gomez Adams

The way I have thought of it: assume that the error is represented by a circle around the actual position (with the size of the circle being equivalent to the noise introduced by the error). Draw an arc centred on the previous location and passing through this circle's centre; that is, the radius of the arc is the true distance between the two points.

The area of the circle of confusion which is inside the arc, on the side of the previous point, is always going to be smaller than the other side; if the error is evenly distributed radially, then there is a small but significant chance of the error falling to the 'large' sector rather than the 'small' (and very little chance of it falling actually on the accurate arc itself).

Which suggests rather counter-intuitively that the best way to measure distance is to take distant samples rather than closer ones, though that would of course ignore any waypoints off the straight and narrow.

Re: How far off?

But... but... one in a million chances come up nine times out of ten!

iPad data entry errors caused plane to strike runway during takeoff

Re: keyboards

I'd agree with that; while it is fairly easy to hit the wrong key on a moving keyboard, the lack of tactile feedback from a touch control is I think a major issue with them; there is no immediate cue that you have hit a 'key' at all.

Re: Using toys as tools...

Is there not a load sensor on each wheel support? Add them all together, and lo and behold, you have the weight.

GCHQ director blasts free market, says UK must be 'sovereign cryptographic nation'

Re: Paging David Cameron

"First is the myth that the government wants to ban encryption," said the head of GCHQ. "We don’t. We advocate encryption."

Of *course* they encourage encryption: what better way to encourage a sense of security while they find their way in through social programming or physical access.

Google open sources machine learning software

So the world's biggest software companies

not to mention the most intrusive and datagrabbing, are building artificial intelligences?

What could possibly go wrong?

Facebook brings creepy ’Minority Report’-style ads one step closer

"engaged"

Does that include hurling a mobile through a plate glass window?

Let's get to the bottom of in-app purchases that go titsup

Re: Curiously, I am unable to play Dabbsy's supplied videos...

It's something weird that has happened to Firefox and Linux and video; youtube things that worked mid-week have stopped working. The only way I have found to get *some* things working is to uninstall the Adobe package and force youtube to deliver in HTML5.

So now the BBC is dead instead.

Curiously, I am unable to play Dabbsy's supplied videos...

What's an Error 2035 when it's at home? It's all I see when I try and play them.

Re: Re SCART

That would be an English system like PAL.

And (as an aside) because of the continuous FM colour subcarrier that SECAM uses, it's impossible to mix two SECAM images together. So every French TV studio had to decode video and work in the RGB domain, or (quelle horreur!) do the much cheaper approach of transcoding to PAL, use PAL internally, and transcode to SECAM as the signal left the building...

Touchnote breach: Wrote a postcard with us? Thieves have your pal's name, address

Is there actually any business need

To keep a name and address and in particular payment details once the transaction is completed? In the vast majority of cases, things I buy online are one-off events and I'm unlikely ever to use the store again; or if I do, it is of no consequence to type in my details again. Certainly I don't want so see advertising, and I don't want a 'relationship' with a retailer...

Space fans eye launch of Lego Saturn V

Re: The Real Thing

Made a point of seeing it years ago. Touched a moonrock, too. Cried a little.

Here's the little-known legal loophole that permitted mass surveillance in the UK

Well, I got a reply from my MP

But it doesn't really reassure me - all the usual platitudes: metadata not data, children/terrorists/criminals, and no mention of website observation or security. Hmm.

Re: What the what?

63 groats.

Coding with dad on the Dragon 32

Re: AIM 65

I used to lust after an AIM 65.

My first was a Sinclair MK14 (still here, but the PROMs have bitrot now) which had a no-longer-extant homebrew video display: took me a week to design and three months to debug a stupid level converter error.

Then came the wonderful Tangerine 65... things in plastic cases were for wimps. This came on 160*100 Eurocards, with a proper backplane, and fitted in a 3U 19" rack with space for heaps of expansion cards. All of which you could make yourself! Whee!

NASA photo gallery: How to blow $200m of rocket in seconds

"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program."

Nah... they just could push the launch button with those silly little arms.

TalkTalk offers customer £30.20 'final settlement' after crims nick £3,500

Re: Ossett ...

>Storrs Hill - That hill was a bugger at the end of the cross-country.

Aye, and climbing it every day didn't make it any flatter.

@Mike - My father went to QEGS and ended up a lorry driver; my grandfather went to QEGS and ended up a coal miner. Ossett Comp was on the whole I think an improvement; although I didn't attend university straight after school (to the headmaster's annoyance) I was the first in my family to have a Bachelor's or Master's degree.

Re: Ossett ...

Where us poor sods that were considered too bright to go to Horbury Secondary Modern got to walk up Storrs Hill and go to Ossett Comp instead.

(If I'm so smart, why aren't I rich?)

Fancy flying to Mars? NASA's hiring

Don't care...

There probably isn't room to take sufficient Marmite for the duration.

The spy in your pocket: Researchers name data-slurping mobe apps

"It still is."

To those of us who care.

But so many billions don't...

To be honest, I never understood the purpose of the telephone book: if someone knows me, they can ask for the number; if they don't, do I want to talk to them? (I except commercial listings).

Licence to snoop: Ipso facto, crypto embargo? Draft Investigatory Powers bill lands

For the first time ever

I have been moved to write to my MP.

Usually I restrict myself to haranguing him on the doorstep once every five years.

Alumina in glass could stop smartphones cracking up

Quick!

Count the whales!

Firefox 42 ... answer to the ultimate question of life, security bugs and fully private browsing?

Nice to get the bugs out...

Now stop integrating Pocket and Reader, and any other crap I might not have noticed yet.

Thank you.

Apple’s TV platform just became a little more secure (well, the apps at least)

While I ended up with a 'smart' TV recently, as the only thing that was both in the price range and had a decent picture in the size I wanted, the network attachment has never been connected.

The PVR to which it is attached has a similar network attachment, but at least that one lasted long enough to see whether iPlayer worked before it was removed.

Annoyingly both the screen and the PVR seem to think that there is no-one in the world who might watch a single channel for over three hours without using the remote. I have turned it off on the screen but haven't yet found the equivalent setting for the PVR - a task for when I am bored sometime.

We're not killing Chrome OS ... not until 2020, anyway – says Google

Re: Still gonna

That's my approach. Got seabios onto this Tosh CB2, with the latest Ubuntu Mate appearing to work properly; still investigating Mint. 17.2 loads and runs but has issues which I hope will be resolved with a kernel upgrade to 4.2 as used by Ubuntu Wily.

Big mistake, Google. Big mistake: Chrome OS to be 'folded into Android'

Re: Might be time...

My post upthread triggered me to do another websearch - and woohoo, someone's worked out how to get seabios onto the Toshiba CB2, so now I have an almost working Mint running natively on it.

Instructions from the Captain at www.fascinatingcaptain.com/howto/install-ubuntu-on-the-toshiba-chromebook-2-in-5-steps - still need to find a solution though for no sound, no touchpad, and no suspend - of which only the last is for me a real annoyance since I don't do a lot with the audio on this machine.

Kudos to John Lewis for sorting the seabios scripts.