Posts by Colin Miller

Greek journo who published list of Swiss bank account holders cleared

Re: Tex evasion?

Why should we avoid TeX? It's damn useful for writing reports, or so I've been told.

Felix Baumgartner sadly turns out to be blinkered FOOL

Re: Bit harsh

> If your Mum had called you Bear, you'd drink your own urine too.

'Cept he was born "Edward Michael Gyrlls"

'We invented Windows 8 Tiles in the 1990s', says firm suing Microsoft

Microsoft Tetris for Windows 3.1 could be played in minimised mode - its 32x32 icon would show a mini-game field.

Petition for Alan Turing on £10 note breaks 20,000 signatures

> Terry Wogan - love it. He would be on Irish punts though, not sterling.

Err. There haven't been punts for over 12 years; their euro coins all have the Irish harp on them.

Hackers crack Texan bank, Experian credit records come flooding out

I'm not sure if there is easy way for Experian et al. to block this.

They probably (hopefully) have systems in place to monitor the access rate, and possibly autoblock if it is exceeded. This might have been how it was detected.

ESO's nine-gigapixel galactic image has 84 MILLION stars

Wall mosaic

If you were to print that out onto a sheet of A0 paper (1189x841mm), you'd achieve 2318 dpi (90 dpmm )

Does anyone have a 1000 dpi A0 colour printer who could print it onto 4 non-overlapping sheet please?

Kindle Touch bites the dust

Amazon, after memory-holing 1984 and Animal Farm, due to a copyright dispute, have said that they won't remote-remove books.

The Kindle Touch can store 3000 average-length novels. If your books are lost or stolen, then you've lost them. If your Kindle is lost/stolen, you can get a new one, report the old one as lost, and then connect your new Kindle to your Amazon account. It will then spend the next hour or so downloading all the books you bought for the old one.

The hoarder's dilemma, or 'Why can't I throw anything away?'

Does anyone want:-

An ISA soundblaster AWE64.

A ISA NE2000-compatible networkcard, with AUI port

A SyQuest 135 drive with 4 (I think) cartridges? Might even have that drivers on 3.5 floppy.

Young Frenchwoman desperate for fat pipe tumbles out of window

What was the device in question,

and did it survive the Defenestration. Enquiring minds want to know!

Pirate Bay moves to the cloud to confound copyright cops

Re: Not that ressilient

I think by "put a tab on" our anonymous friend meant "passively monitor the IP traffic to and from" .

In theory, at least with only a concurrent few requests, this kind of traffic monitoring can help track where the data is going.

If there was world-wide co-operation, then after determining where all the servers are located, then all of tem could get raided at the same time,

Six months under water and iPhone 4 STILL WORKS

Xpress Music

I left my Xpress Music upsides down on in by back lawn for a week, which was wet and dewy - it fell out of my pocket on a Thur, and I went away for a week's holiday the next day, straight after work.

Found it on the Mon, 10 days later, took it in, removed the protective back cover, the actual back cover, and battery, gently dried it for 24hrs, and it's still working fine 2 years later.

It had an interesting tartan pattern - I assume that's the resistive touch matrix - which slowly faded over the next month.

Sites can slurp browser history right out of Firefox 16

Re: Is this the old vulnerability?

Nigel, the vulnerability you are thinking of involved guessing what pages the user might have browsed,

and then checking what colour a link to them would be rendered as. Most examples used the root page of common websites.

This sounds like a nefarious page can read the either the full history list of the browser, or a least the backwards/forwards list of the current tab.

Microsoft really is watching us from above

Re: 3.3 TB?

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 40ft container full of microsd cards hurtling down the highway. --- Andrew S. Tanenbaum (paraphrased)

You can fit 40 billion microsd cards into a 40ft container; Given that a microsd card can store a day's worth of recordings, that is probably more capacity than you'll ever need.

Natwest's Get Cash app pulled, but NOTHING to do with frauds

Camera in ATM

Most new ATMs have a small camera in them, pointing at the user.

Do RBS group take a photo of the withdrawer of money via the EasyCash system?

Might be useful incase the transaction is disputed. However, if the withdrawer is known to the account, it would then come down to she-said-he-said.

New Zealand issues Hobbit money

Cirth!=Norse

In Cirth the text is an unpronounceable mess, but in Old Norse runes, it is "middle earth - new ?ealand" - the Z rune is upsides down.

Re: Calligraphically Challenged

The Cirth was invented by the Elves, and later expropriated by the Dwarfs. The Elves then used Tengwar.

That horrendous iPhone empurplement - you're holding it wrong

Purple haze (it's) all in my brain

Lately pictures just don't seem the same

Photos lookin' funny, is my gripe

Apple says I'm not holding it right.

Motörheadphönes ears-in review

Heavy metal umlaut

Isn't that þhöñës?

Satellite broadband rollout for all in US: But Europe just doesn't get it

Re: A Walk Down Memory Lane

Microwave needs a clear line-of-sight. Make sure that the transponders are installed during summer as microwaves don't like trees, as my parents found out, before being forced to move to satellite internet.

Other satellite internet is available

Whilst BSkyB might be the only satellite TV supplier in the UK, it isn't the only satellite internet company. Infact I'm fairly sure that Sky's internet are FTTP or ADSL only.

JK Rowling's adult novel arrives on ebook full of FAIL

Re: Tax

> Corporation tax-dodging does not help with VAT.

Actually, can't they pay the VAT at Luxembourgish rate?

Tesla drops veil on top secret solar Superchargers

cars per day?

And how long does the carport take to charge its batteries?

Solar energy is ~1kW / m^2 (directly facing the Sun), panels are around 5-15% efficient at converting that to electricity.

I seriously doubt that the carport has 200m^2 of solar panels, so it must be slowly charging a fixed battery, which then rapidly charges the car's battery.

How hard is 3D printing?

Re: Metal

There's also jet cutting, which can produce complex shapes,

but needs a clear path through, so can't build tubs, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_jet_cutter#Multi-axis_cutting

Fans rap Apple's 'crap' Map app

Ovi maps?

Nokia's Ovi maps looks better; perhaps Apple can use that, if Nokia is switching to Bing maps.

Smartmobe Wi-Fi blabs FAR TOO MUCH about us, warn experts

Bluetooth?

Does Bluetooth broadcast a UUID if it's left in discoverable mode?

Mind you, as Dave216 implied, most people will turn that off as well, to save the batteries.

Work for beer, Neil Gaiman's wife tells musicians

Surely, she can ask her hubby for a $35,000 loan to pay the musicians, and then get it back from the ticket sales?

Reg hack uncovers perfect antidote to internet

strop

Which poor sod had the job of pulling the stropping out?

I take it each section was lowered onto a bit of wood, the stopping pulled out, and then the section gently angled over, wood removed, and then angled back?

Hacker uses Kindle as Raspberry Pi screen

Re: & why not?

A "terminal emulator" is UNIX speak for a DOS-box - it's origins are when UNIX machines had multiple serial-port text-only terminal connected to them.

When X windows was created, one of the first apps was xterm, which created a pseudo serial terminal, and started a command shell (command.com in DOS/windows speak) connected to the terminal.

If you wan a graphical display, then you need a full X display. Since the X Window protocol is network based, you can use a low-end machine, run a X server on it, and have the server connect to your Pi, and have the Pi's application displayed on the separate server.

Nokia apologizes for faking Lumia 920 ad

autocrop?

Given the 48M pixel res of the camera, you could make a passable stabilised video simply by cropping to the centre 5th by 5th of the first frame, and then use image processing / the accelerometers to keep track of where that is in each subsequent frame.

UK ISPs crippled by undersea cable snap

Re: I thought

Sigh. And if the other links are running at 80+% of capacity? Traffic will be rerouted, but then the other links are saturated.

Idiots analagy. Assume you work in London and drive to Hemel Hempsted or Milton Keynes, and both the M1 and M11 are closed. Yes, you can divert. But it's not going to be fun…

Amazon UK to offer collection service at corner shops

Re: Idea

You can already collect RM parcels from the sorting office, or for a small fee (around 50p. IIRC), can have it delivered to your local post office for collection.

Boffins create 100,000 DPI image

Witness the "Thatcher Effect", and the "uncanny valley".

Microsoft: It was never 'Metro,' it was always 'Modern UI'

KDE skin

"Modern" is, IIRC, a skin for KDE, and has been for about 10 years…

Deadly pussies kill more often than owners think

Re: The reason they leave the liver/kidney

Be careful with that - cats' livers can't breakdown the sulphur compounds in alliums.

SCO keeps dying, and dying, and dying

Have we finally scattered its ashes widespread enough that it can't resurrect itself at the merest drop of blood?

Size does matter: Outlook.com punters want meatier passwords

Re: And if the password is hashed

Hashes are a fixed length, independent of the input length, but a property of the hash itself. Placing a maximum length of the password might be a sign that they are storing the unhashed password in a fixed length DB string…

Russia slashes space station ship trip to just six hours

Re: Recycling?

Probably too expensive to install parachutes, their control system/sensors and heat shields to make it worth while. Remember LEO launch costs are around $21,000 USD/kg for the Ariane 5, and around $7,000/kg for Ariane 4. Progress is approx. the same cost as Ariane 4.

Freeview EPG revamp set for September

BBC Alba

Channel 8 is used by BBC Alba.

Old-timer Odyssey to babysit Curiosity's Mars landing

Re: Wait a minute. What's that?

... which has about 9/10 chance of actually occurring, according to the laws of narrative causality.

Expert: BA doesn't need permission to google your face

Why don't they scan your passport photo, and (for the cabin crew) take a note of your seat-number?

That way, they know that they can positively identify Jo Bloggs when she comes up to them.

Gaping 'open data' loophole could leave your privates on display

Cuts both ways

"Hello David. Thanks for inviting me to this job interview. Before we start, you have access to your company's financial records online. As you know, I want to make sure that you have all the hallmarks of a cooperative employer. I wonder whether you would allow me to look at your company's last 6 months of bank statements..."

No? Didn't think so.

Top spook: ISP black boxes NOT key to UK's web-snoop plan

HTTP

In HTTP without persistent connections it is reasonably easy to separate the headers from the data in a PUT request (or all other requests).

With persistent connections, how can you pick up the headers from any requests following the PUT without parsing the entire conversation?

Post-pub nosh deathmatch: Haggis pakora v huevos rancheros

Re: But Haggis in a sheeps stomach is freely available

... in a Spanish provincial Asda?

Re: Here in the USA

Unfortunately, Hall's is (probably) no more

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-18733890

Computer error triggers mass rocket launch

Happend in Oban for Guy Fawkes night

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-15611160

Rifle-waving Yank's premature detonation ruins city's big bang

Elven safety gnomes?

Surely

1) Not storing the fireworks in strong box is an Elven Safety violation.

2) Discharging a gun in a location where ricochets are possible, and could result in the bullet leaving your land is also an Elven Safety violation.

NASA counts down to nuclear tank invasion of Mars

Re: Stop!

Isn't that lithobreaking especially when it goes wrong...

Vatican subtly shifts its position on The Blues Brothers

No digital tech?

Blues Brothers was released in 1980. What tech were they expecting?

There were police mainframes, but how many records were stored on them is another matter.

The game'n'watch series was released that year; the original Gameboy was release 9 years later.

NASA's Curiosity rover will try risky landing near Mount Sharp

Re: "Curiosity is not as life-limited as the approximate 90-day missions ..."

MERs' estimated lifespan was 90 sol (Martian days), or 92 days, 5 hours, 22 minutes and 51.68 seconds by Earth reckoning. However the NASA engineers under-promised and over-engineered, and dust-removal from the solar panels happened more frequently than they'd anticipated, which is why MER-B is still rollin' after 8 years.