Posts by Alan Firminger

Samsung, Visa in pay-by-bonk tie up

If you had it on American Express it made a lasting impression.

This 320-gigapixel snap of London is size of Buckingham Palace

Re: What's that in square fettuccine? And who owns the patent on the file format?

320 GB - No, like google skyview it just gives you what you need.

I don't comprehend why it drags in the wrong direction.

Fantastic.

The universe speaks: 'It's time to get off your rock!'

NASA's preference is "land on the foreign object and deflect it in situ"

Why would humans on the rock be necessary ? We don't have to negotiate with or even civilize the natives.

Mechanics can be automatic. Setting a sail, that is as on a yacht adjusting it for the required effect, can be done from a wonderful control room containing 300 engineers all looking to party, and probably an equal number of tv feeds.

$195 BEEELLION asteroid approaching Earth

Perhaps we're all doomed, again

Was the meteor that crashed into the Urals traveling in formation with tonight's space rock ?

If they are related then how much else is there to come ?

Measurements in yards !!!

Can't we get back to football pitches and Olympic sized swimming pools ?

UK minister: 'There must be a limit to what the gov knows about its people'

Sorry folks

The monarch owns the government. Think HMG .

And we elect an MP who is a representative, not a delegate. So we don't own her or him.

'Gaia' Lovelock: Wind turbines 'may become like Easter Island statues'

Re: Advice please

I thank commentards. And no-one suggested that I shift to the nation's cheapest supplier - perhaps too obvious.

Advice please

I get electricity from a 'responsible' supplier, they buy it from windmills.

And it is the second cheapest supplier in the comparison tables. Just think of the subsidy my laptop is burning.

Tablets aren't killing ereaders, it's clog-popping wrinklies - analyst

Bollocks, Rubbish and Nonsense

The boomers are no more populous than 10 % above the norm compared to younger and older cohorts. That doesn't kill a product.

Shiny, shiny! The window's behind me...

Re: Glossy photos have more contrast than matte--screens may not follow suit

Every surface reflects at least 5 % of the incident light.

It was long ago accepted by photographic science that glossy prints give better contrast than matte. The reason is that since the surface reflection is always there illuminate to let it shoot off at 45 deg. A matte print sends some of the surface reflection to the observer, or densitometer sensor. A computer screen is no different, During daylight I shut a door behind me to lose the reflection of a window.

Cameron's speech puts UK adoption of EU data directive in doubt

Options

There are none. I can only weep for what might have been.

Usually things are put right by a crisis. Not now.

Tech firms face massive tax bill if Dutch vote to end loopholes

Of course, what is the point of tax if it is not collected fairly

Facts :

1 most tax havens are under British Jurisdiction, and

2 the State of Delaware is an outrageous tax haven within the USA, Barclays Bank is headquartered there.

Global mercury ban to hit electronics, plastics, power prices

So it will cost more

And all we get for that is a longer healthier life.

Astronaut yells FIRE ... from SPAAAACE

How can one ditch a camera in space ?

Intel bets the farm on touch-enabled 'convertible and detachable' Ultrabooks

Of course Intel are right, as most contributors above have agreed. Easy. Remove a screen from a laptop and it could be a tablet. Progress means more performance with less hardware so one day it will come.

The issue is when ? Calling the wrong timescale could break Intel.

In the meantime twin hardware may succeed. Start with a laptop, make the screen detachable to become a tablet. Design the package so that when the screen and keyboard are united all the power in the screen is available to the system. It would be a good laptop, just a bit heavy, and a rotten tablet.

If that is not good enough wait five years and try again.

What I really want is a top of the range machine with an A4 sized very high resolution screen and keyboard that will fold so I can slip it into my shirt pocket.

China turns the screws on netizens with real-name registration plans

If you say so.

I have an old pay as you go mob that comes out about three days a year. Originally, on principle, I bought anonymous cards to replenish it. Then they became unavailable. I presume because authority wants to know who. So now I top up at the hole-in-the-wall and they have got me nailed.

I bet that pay as you go SIM either have a secret method of identification or they will soon disappear.

'UK DNA database by stealth' proposed in £100m NHS project

Re: Databases

Because they can.

Assange: Google, Facebook run 'side projects' for US spooks

Re: Already doing it

Eight years ago I did a creative writing course. We shared our work as attachments to emails.

My contributions often contained gibberish, well I liked them. About half of these disappeared in transit.

News International big boss flings himself overboard

Re: @Tom 38

There was no coffin.

Dixons returns to profit in UK, rubs hands as Comet circles drain

Dixons/Currys/PCWorld will be the last shed standing.

Profits will improve while prices rise, sales assistance and after sale service will deteriorate to nothing.

I think the Monopolies Commission should be involved.

New Tosh drive can wipe out 4TB 'near instantaneously'

I don't believe it

The algorithm will be known to the spooks. So find the key from perhaps 1TB of cybertext, there are plenty of supercomputers around the world dedicated to that purpose.

Elon Musk envisions small town of vegetarians on Mars

Re: Is this a terraforming attempt?

With all respect I think carnivores indirectly produce far more methane than veggies.

APPLE reveals complete updated blueprints of SPACESHIP JOBS

Re: It's not on an empty lot either!

It looks like about 600 housing units are on the site.

Why did Comet fail? Hint: It wasn't just the credit insurers

Re: They'd become mere showrooms for Amazon

Curry's is PC World ( or vice versa ) . So who else ?

World's oldest digital computer successfully reboots

Each holding a single digit

The decatron was a type of neon filled gas discharge tube with 10 or 12 separately connected anodes for a static discharge arranged round a common cathode. Between each of the anodes were intermediate anodes for transferring the discharge, these were connected to two circuits. In a gas discharge tube there can only be one active discharge, and this is stable. From any of the 12 anodes the discharge could be transferred clockwise or anticlockwise by applying overlapping pulses in turn to the two circuits supplying the intermediate anodes.

The tubes plugged into valveholders, each requiring connectors for the number of anodes plus three to be soldered.

Brilliant. They counted, you could read whichever anode was conducting, and of course this could be used for a carry, and you could see the content of every tube.

So the single digit in this machine was almost certainly decimal.

I used this in the first electrostatic copying machine built in the UK. It used a continuous length of paper on which the image was projected from an original lit by an electronic flash. The paper was taken through the process to be cut to sheets and delivered to the output tray. The problem was that at the time standard paper came in two lengths, 10 and 13 inches. We wanted to be able to adjust the paper size while running. The machine gave a pulse for every inch advanced, a chain of pulses marking the cut positions passed through the valves. We used 10 output decatrons, when set to longer sizes a spurious signal advanced up to three anodes and then received a reset from the previous tube.

NASA suggests robotic return to the Moon

But why ?

Curiosity and the Google driverless car show that we humans are redundant.

Re: 0.2 second ping

It is not an 0.2 second response because that is the time for a single transmission. Effectively there is 0.4 seconds delay between the signals going up ( or down ) and the reply going down ( or up ).

Question

If the moon has a dark surface why could I take well exposed photographs exposed as if it was a mid grey subject in bright sunlight ?

Nazi Enigma encoding machine sells in London for over £80k

Double bluff

The air raid by the RAF on Caen killed over 2000 French people. The only explanation I can imagine is that it was in reaction to a German dummy which if refused would show that we had other more reliable sources.

Plenty of our own people were allowed to die because the secret had to be kept.

Yes

Model launched the Bastoigne attack assuming that his codes were broken. That is why it was such a nuisance, no one knew it was coming. Even after his initial success the Germans generally still did not comprehend.

At Arnhem Model was waiting. It is understood that he told his Panzers to take the tracks off their vehicles so that he could report to Hitler, using the high level Siemens system broken by Colossus, that he had no armour. He knew that if he was honest the Fuhrer would steal them from him and throw them away. When the airborne assault came and was defeated that should have triggered German doubt about their codes.

"The code was unbreakable until code-breakers at Bletchley Park ..... "

Polish cryptographers broke the Enigma, and invented the automatic machinery to do this. This information was passed to the British as Poland fell to the invaders.

Most of the Polish cryptographers were interned, and never let on.

This is well documented in pretty well every serious book about the subject. I understand why the popular press like to publish a patriotic success story even if it is fiction, it is disappointing to see The Register doing the same.

Musk to blast right of way through California with railgun Concorde

Thanks for that, it reminds me of past musing

I dredge remaining cells for what I concluded over forty years ago.

I visualised a network that roughly replaces railways, motorways and A roads. It would carry independent fully automatic vehicles that formed themselves into trains for maximum track capacity, these would take up to half of time to pass a point leaving the gaps for units to join and speed to the back of each train. At Y junctions units would drop out of the train leaving the residue to close up.

Of course it would take every sort of traffic. There would be auto taxis, group travel vehicles that connected one station to another, freight and car like vehicles that could leave the system to be driven on the roads at up to 15 kph. Speeds up to 300 kph would be defined for each length of track. And it would be an overhead monorail.

The track would provide power, signals and would otherwise be passive. Steering would be on the units which would select ahead or change. The default would always towards an exit from the system.

New track would consume minimum land, allowing cows to graze beneath, we had grazing cows then. Through urban space it would run high out of reach. As it would have immense capacity for traffic it could be built in place of railways and motorways.

To build the system start somewhere, then grow sideways, then routes parallel to the start could be closed for installing track without loss of capacity as like the internet a unit of traffic can take an alternative route. We can have car ferry units where you can roll up in your Merc, or whatever, drive into a box and be whizzed away.

It would be cheap, fast, safe and quiet - win win win win. I discussed this with colleagues, they liked the speed and the absence of traffic jams but not the automatic driving. No one liked driving slowly to an entry, running on, setting 'Mum and Dad' as a destination and then becoming a passenger.

New York Times uses palpably fake pic to illustrate Syrian warfare

Re: It is faked, but not from a FPS

Good guess. I am impressed by the photographic quality but troubled by the lack of reflection from the flames on the gun and the person.

Alan Sugar's YouView loses brand judgment in court

I have not been paying attention

Is this the result from an Apprentice ?

Curious robot rover Curiosity chews a second mouthful of Mars dirt

?

Perhaps it will find a friend; they will have lunch together.

Swedish boffins: An Ice Age is coming, only CO2 can save us

The Irish have a way with peat

They build a power station where the peat is, water is always there also. Then they strip the surrounding soil and leave the land barren.

I think a power hungry world won't leave any beneficial peat, we'll burn it.

Walmart workers filmed playing iPad frisbee

Doubt

The storeroom appears to be muddle. Likewise the load on the trolley. Is it really like that in the backroom of the greatest shop on the planet ?

The camera was expertly placed to see the thrower and the throw.

BBC in secret trial to see if you care about thing you plainly don't

Correction - 6

Sattelite Freeview.

Transmitting the same radio station in four formats (AM, FM, DAB and over the internet) ....

No, five channels, you forgot DTV .

Pristine WWII German Enigma machine could be yours

Re: unbreakable

One author, I think it was Cave Brown, reported that the Germans had a team trying to crack the British TypeX machine, which was in principle the same as the Enigma but had 8 rotor positions. Year by year as they made no progress the team was reduced in size until there was one person on the task.

This is interesting logically. If they believed that the Enigma was secure what hope did the have for six years of breaking something clearly far better ? Why did they not apply the team to breaking their own machine first ?

Cracking the Enigma depended on having a long crib to match against the cyphertext from which was derived all the settings. As the Enigma never encoded a character to itself the match was exact. Odd. The reason for this give away is in the circuit. The signal passes once through the rotors, is reflected at the end and returns through the same cats cradle on different wires to the input side of the first rotor. If the reflected signal were picked up after passing through the middle rotor then although the complexity of the system would have been reduced, possible combinations are unchanged and the method of decryption would have been frustrated.

Re: Not All Enigmas Had 3 Rotors

From my reading all Enigmas had three rotor positions.

The configuration for the day fitted the available rotors in different positions, each with defined side to side orientation.

To improve the security of the system the possibilities were increased by adding rotors to the kit. The options are to the power of the number of rotors. The army added one, the submarine service added two.

A guide at Bletchley assured me that rotors were extremely difficult to make.

And the bombe was designed by Polish cryptanalysts who cracked the system. They managed to get their result to the UK as Poland fell. Most of the team were interned, and kept shtum.

Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid car review

"Indeed, that’s exactly what I did on a trip to Wakefield"

From where ?

Wales: Let's ban Gibraltar-crazy Wikipedians for 5 years

A possible response to misuse might be that every publicity seeker pitches in. DYK and for that matter the rest of the site are open to this abuse. Wail.

Wonder why you live longer than a chimp? Thank your MOTHER IN LAW

Re: Old women are useful

Yes on education.

We do not have schooling until puberty as an arbitrary choice. Children are made to be taught. They sometimes react against large groups, which are an arbitrary choice.

This is true for both girls and boys. So grandfathers can be useful too.

Kaspersky Lab to create new OS 'to save the world'

And

Although a secure OS is possible, until it fails no one can be certain that it does or does not contain a flaw.

Perhaps the way forward is hardware based, accepting instructions only from ROM .

Re: Why don't they just

With all respect I believe that it is possible to produce a bug free and break proof tank full of code. It requires critical logic at all stages, and hypercritical logic when modifying something already written.

As Kaspersky realises KISS .

NURSES' natural DESIRES to be SATISFIED, by technology

Beaurocracy

If these ideas will help nurses why are the police not similarly assisted ?

Re: Just a thought

Perhaps patient data will be wirelessed directly to the hospital server.

LASER STRIKES against US planes on the rise

Two separate issues

If this is a serious threat to aircraft why is it not a more common threat to road traffic ? There are roads everywhere and irresponsible fun would be to see how many cars we can crash tonight. But it doesn't happen.

These cheap and powerful lasers are probably a counter in drone wars ? Blind the sensors. Hundreds of innocent people die each year because of outrageous irresponsibility of the U.S. , the president of which should be got to the Hague as quick as possible. So on balance I this could be a good news story.