Posts by Mike Shepherd

China’s chip shop makes dash for flash with huge new fab

Re: A rendition of the proposed plant?

As you will know from primary school, "the standards..." is a separate sentence, so it must begin with a capital letter and the comma should be a full stop.

Phone thieves to face harsher penalties for data theft

"Emotional harm"

I recall one old gentlemen saying how returning to school after the summer break meant discovering which of your friends had died of polio. Perhaps what we need is a generation who don't go faint with the vapours when they lose their online cat photos.

Tear teardown down, roars Apple: iFixit app yanked from store

All your offspring, their offspring etc.

are belong to us.

NEW ERA for HUMANITY? NASA says something 'major' FOUND ON MARS

Allow me

Allow me to end the speculation. They found Elvis.

Astroboffins snap BREATHTAKING, WISPY Veil Nebula supernova debris

"dubbed Veil Nebula"

No, it's been known for over 200 years and it's THE Veil Nebula. No astronomer would say "Veil Nebula", any more than we'd say "BBC announced today...".

US eco watchdog's shock warning: Fresh engine pollution cheatware tests coming

"...This may involve manufacturers having to resubmit cars for testing".

If this puts the car into a different tax band, will the manufacturer also be liable for the previously lost tax on cars which were more polluting than claimed? If the faults are not corrected, will the manufacturer be liable for owners' increased car tax? If the faults *are* corrected, will they be liable to owners for the reduced performance and efficiency? What a tangled web!

BBC Micro:bit delayed by power supply SNAFU

Re: Missed deadlines....

Probably you're thinking of the Philips 'Radio Engineer' kit (1964).

SAP CEO McDermott loses AN EYE, almost his life in horror plunge

"It’s important to stand up after you’ve fallen down"

Where would we be without the philosophy of the Great and Good to help us through our sorry lives?

Vanished global warming may not return – UK Met Office

Thank you, Mr Fourier

Want reality to fit your theory when it doesn't? Just allege a few "decadal" and "multidecadal" oscillations with helpful amplitude and phase, then publish.

As in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "In cases of major discrepancy it's always reality that's got it wrong".

Conference Wi-Fi biz fined $750k for jamming personal hotspots

Translation

"While we have strong legal arguments, we've determined that mounting a vigorous defense would ultimately prove too costly and too great a distraction for our leadership team".

Translation: "We were caught and realise we don't a snowball-in-hell's chance of defending it".

Budget UHD TVs arrive – but were the 4Kasts worth listening to?

Who cares?

Where is the evidence that typical viewers (rather than technical enthusiasts) care about picture quality? They have never been much troubled by gross distortion in geometry, in luminance or colour rendering. None speak ruefully of 405-line TV.

Apart from the introduction of colour in the 1960s, of Teletext in the 1970s and recently of flat displays, the average viewer might not even have noticed. Other "improvements", like digital transmission ("Oh, it's digital, so it must be better") have been driven by advantage to the broadcasters, not to the user and by a desperate hope that the technology has not reached a plateau, where users no longer buy when a shinier version is available and showing off a TV is as naff as showing off a pocket calculator.

Boffins get the inside dope, craft white laser

Phosphor

You are right. That's how "white" LEDs work. (A device with several LEDs would be far more expensive).

So just WHO ARE the 15 per cent of Americans still not online?

Who has the problem?

I know many who are not "online". They are the most delightful people. They live fulfilled lives. They don't pin me to the wall at parties to tell me how this or that IT company is a great evil. They don't show me their latest electronic toy, expecting my fascination. They don't ask each other "Do you remember when we had real lives?"

Did speeding American manhole cover beat Sputnik into space? Top boffin speaks to El Reg

Superpowers

Superpowers spend a lot of time scrabbling for evidence that they did just about everything before anyone else, even if by accident and with no useful result. I may as well claim that my first fart in 1955 included six hydrogen molecules which made it to the interstellar void. Russia was in space first, nearly 60 years ago: apparently that still smarts.

Google Apple grapple brings crypto cop block to Android

Nothing to fear

If you have no left-wing notions to hide, you have nothing to fear.

Dodgy mobe dealer jumps on VAT carousel, gets 13-year ban

Under a million?

When HMRC (then Customs and Excise) "pursued" VAT fraud only a few years ago, the cases collapsed, because it was clear that HMCE had encouraged the fraud (estimated at about £2bn) and lied in court e.g. see Panorama 23/3/2005.

This new case allows HMRC to announce how it shows that "we are determined to...blah, blah, blah". But the earlier losses led to no more than a wagging finger and admonition that "if you carry on like this, you won't get your knighthood".

Secure web? That'll cost you, thanks to Mozilla's HTTPS plan

Comical

Firefox would be as popular as any browser that insists on well-formed, standards-compliant HTML. Can you think of any?

The time on Microsoft Azure will be: Different by a second, everywhere

Why?

Why invite trouble by changing the time reference to match civil time? Surely the reference can continue to advance steadily at some agreed pace? Then all you need is a simple algorithm to derive civil time (for display) from the reference (with appropriate "jumps" at the leap seconds). I don't understand.

Pavegen: The Company that can't make energy out of crowds tries to make money out of them

Even if...

Even if you converted every footpath in the country, the unpleasant experience of walking on a spongy (or constantly clicking) surface would have us all walking in the road.

Far better to invest in my hamster-breeding and treadmill mass-production program.

AI pioneer reckons China's where the Rise of the Machines will start

Re: He's not wrong

I once worked with a diminutive Japanese software engineer. I refrained from physical assault on the annoying t**t only because I thought he might be skilled in karate.

Facebook 'fesses up to running an ideological echo chamber

Don't disturb me with new ideas

Given the ubiquitous invitation "seeks like-minded person...", Facebook, Google etc. merely satisfy the majority preference not to be unsettled by anything novel (presumably as they hide behind the sofa).

Met Police in egg/face blunder as shop-a-crim site's SSL cert expires

Yawn

In other news, their coffee machine has run out of sugar.

BT fined £800k over lax emergency text relay delay blunder

Public floggings

I quite like the idea of public floggings for BT people. Is there somewhere we can send suggested names?

Hated smart meters likely to be 'a costly failure' – MPs

Re: UK market specifics

Since load management can save a lot of money (for suppliers), it's more important to be able to cut you off (whether or not you've paid your bill) when demand exceeds supply. With smart meters, you're in the dark while the little old lady next door can still run her dialysis machine. This fine-grained control wasn't possible before e.g. in the early 1970s, when you could avoid the power cuts by living close to a hospital.

GSMA: Er, sorry about that MWC brothel ad with our logo

Exploitation of women?

I always thought that prostitution was the exploitation of men.

Top Euro court ends mega ebook VAT slash in France, Luxembourg

Writers

The writers to whom you allude are presumably "struggling" (as the popular image goes) and hence unlikely to be registered for VAT, so VAT changes will not make it "incredibly hard" for them to publish their own material.

Microsoft comes right out and says backup software is dead

What I want

What I want is a cloud of encrypted data I can operate with family and friends, not with a corporation (probably foreign) hiding behind a sheaf of terms and conditions. It will let me know if duplication is falling behind target and, if I ever need a complete restore, I can call round and take a fast copy.

Mobe-hungry BT's sales slip over Xmas amid EE buyout silence

'...reflects a "modest" decline in...revenue with...customers moving to data and VoIP..., it said'

No connection, then, with customers' unpleasant burden of dealing with BT?

'BT also unveiled plans to tackle its burgeoning pension deficit of £7bn...part of a 16-year recovery plan'

16 years? Would that mortgage lenders were so patient!

Microsoft cuts Facebook Messenger, Google Talk from Outlook.com

"Doubling down"

"Doubling down" ???

Lenovo to customers: We only just found out about this Superfish vuln – remove it NOW

We moved swiftly and decisively...

...as soon as we were found out.

BT coughs £12.5 billion for EE as fourplay frolics pay off

Been here before

I'll wait to see how they talk it up. From past ventures, the more celestial the choirs of praise and the more effusive the talk of a beautiful relationship, the more likely, as a rocket on bonfire night, to blow apart in sparks - think Philips/Lucent (company song) or - something BT would prefer to forget - their "merger" with AT&T.

US kills EU watchdog's probe into EU cops sharing EU citizens' data

Re: Consistency

I'm confused as to what you mean by "this side of the Atlantic". Since you write "practised" as "practiced", you're on the US side? What are you trying to say?

Hackney council leaked thousands of locals' data in FoI blunder

Yeah, right

"Hackney Homes and the Council takes data protection very seriously..."

Apple v BBC: Fruity firm hits back over Panorama drama

God bless us, every one!

And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless those Chinese kids working 20 hours a day so I can have my kit cheaper....or is it so that Apple can mark up 200 per cent instead of 185?

DoJ's extra-territorial data demands: now Ireland is baulking

Surely...

Surely there's a simple commercial solution. Don't trust your data to any US company.

ICANN, ICAN'T, IWON'T: uWHAT? How the internet is actually run

Don't worry, Mr Lamb. It's only public money!

Supercapacitors have the power to save you from data loss

"...it is becomes increasingly important to learn about the supercapacitors that help prevent data loss"

It's no more important than learning how my car works or how electricity gets to my house. It may be of interest and no doubt it's a concern for the people who provide those things, but that's what I'm paying them to do.

ISPs 'blindsided' by UK.gov's 'emergency' data retention and investigation powers law

Necessary

These laws are necessary since Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

UK gov rushes through emergency law on data retention

How helpful...

How helpful of the US to claim only a few days ago that increased airline security was needed. It is remarkable how "pressing" legislative needs so often follow high-profile "security" stories.

Russian law will force citizens' personal data to be stored locally

Re: Amazing.

Does it matter? Visiting Moscow or St Petersburg, you may have the impression that plastic is as widespread as here. But most Russians don't use credit cards at all.

NSA dragnet mostly slurped innocents' traffic

Re: Second leaker

No citation? No evidence? Just "Some people believe..."?

Windows users: You get a patch! And you get a patch! And you get a patch! Everybody gets...

Month after month, year after year

When security patches are needed, month after month, with no apparent reduction, for faults which "...allow an attacker to take complete control of your PC", you have to ask if the architecture is flawed.

Maplin Electronics sold for £85m to Rutland Partners

Online

"...Maplin is working to build the online portion of its business, as many old world retailers have belatedly done".

Maplin had online ordering (via a 300 baud connection) at least as early as 1983, although orders placed at the weekend might not be processed until Tuesday, which made you wonder why they provided the service at all.

David Cameron wants mobe network roaming INSIDE the UK

"Boondocks"

Maybe the author could explain his parochial version of English (after explaining his weird opinions).

Cisco: You think the internet is clogged with video now? Just wait until 2018

Don't worry

Hardly any of it will be worth watching, anyway.

Déjà spew: US would accept higher bills for less CO₂ by two-to-one

It's simpler than that

The mistake is to believe what people say they'd do, especially when it involves reaching into their pockets.

BT snatches crown: Soars to top of complaints list

Re: BT =

I agree that, in this case, a more considered analysis would be pointless. After more than 30 years, it is a great relief to abandon all direct contact with BT. My ISP will deal with BT Openreach, a transfer of sustained pain for which I feel some guilt.

Home Office terminates order for 16,000 PCs from Dell

Don't worry, Mr Lamb...

...it's only public money!

French data cops to Google: RIGHT, you had your chance. PUNISHMENT time

Re: Fines are fine

Go, Frenchie!