Posts by Brian Cockburn

Eclipse staggers to feet, gets smacked by second DDoS

I'm an Eclipse customer and I have had only poor service, no email telling me anything. In fact the last communication I had from them was along these lines: Me "When will you be implementing secure email connections?" Eclipse: "Never. We don't care. Use webmail."

NASA preps lobotomy for Opportunity rover to cure amnesia

More info?

Does anyone have a link to some more in depth info about what NASA are doing? I've googled about and can't find anything. I'd like, because I'm interested in the reliability of NAND Flash, to know what they are actually doing. Are they just throwing away the 'seventh bank' i.e. shortening the partition size, or is something more sophisticated happening? Enquiring minds want to know.

Gorilla Glass fights dirty, dirty germs with antimicrobial coating

Speeling?

Should that be germ-wary rather than germ-weary??

SCADA flaws put world leaders at risk of TERRIBLE TRAFFIC JAM

Move 'em to an island

I think that the G20 (and the G8 and whatever) need to make themselves a purpose built venue on an island with no one else there. This way the costs will be reduced because of:

Venue re-usability

No possibility of protests because only the attendees and their entourages (press & lackies) will be there

No 'security audits' for the host city / nation

Security is way easier

Chap unrolls 'USB condom' to protect against viruses

Problems with the design

The problem I see with the design is that it isn't USB A male to USB A female, so it isn't a simple in-line job. It looks like it is USB A male to USB mini female, which means one needs a USB mini male to USB mini male cable - which is pretty non-standard.

This http://lockedusb.com/ on the other hand looks quite good. It is truly in-line, it does some stuff to make the connected device charge properly (courtesy of the Texas Instruments TPS2511), although this may cause it to suck too much juice from the host port.

Intel caught faking CES ultrabook gaming demo

Have they heard of preparation?

So what if it takes two minutes to load? Surely it is not difficult to have a second laptop (or whatever it was that they were demonstrating) ready with the software already loaded (or loading during the babbling) and then bring on a 'company gamer' to do the actual playing rather then have some be-suited nob showing that his skills lie in PR (or running a company perhaps) rather than gaming? If, as is suggested, the keynote speech is well rehearsed and critically important then doing it right should be quite high up on the list.

China pad peddler wins iPad name from Apple

So surely Apple will now be sacking the legal team who wrote and negotiated the 'global rights' deal as it would appear that they have failed to grasp the meaning of the word 'global'!

British Library sprinkles digital dust on dusty newsprint

OCR not particularly good IMHO

Here's an example "“ ne t- Cookbnrn, 'Eq., and niece of thVry ev Si'lln Ooebr Ba In- Camp, AdrianiopleRodn a ;ofcoeont 1h ta u himo rP James Lindsay, of thea Cbtrn ieta e 1511B~ ~ ~ idsy b4,,,e r, ' - Deatet ut Mr Alexander Lidsy.brwe, ba atDalkt At Gallipoli, on the 14t ... ?". So If one wanted to look up one's ancestors to see what they were up to one would have to include as search terms every possible OCR cock-up. In the example above I happened to find that one OCR version of "Cockburn" is "Cookbnrn" and searched on that, which turned up nine pages each of twelve references (108). This may well limit its usefulness at the moment.

Google flight search engine lifts off

Why is this news here in Europe? Delete the item and have another go when all European countries are supported.

CEOP announces 'record results' in child protection battle

Missing information

Having read the full report I note that there is a lot of information missing and many terms left undefined.

There is no breakdown of the 'arrests'. How many are actually charged (this would have to be the number charged during the 12 month period which would include arrests from previous years and exclude those not charged from this year's arrests). How many are prosecuted and found guilty? How many fined? How many imprisoned? How many added to the sex-offender's register? (How many lives ruined by arrests made in error?)

No breakdown of the geography of the arrests, UK vs Europe vs Asia vs North America vs ROW?

No definition of what 'safeguarding' a child actually means. No definition of what 'protecting' a child actually means. And no split of the numbers in each category. No breakdown of the geography of these activities, UK vs Europe vs Asia vs North America vs ROW? (On page 10 there is a reference to 'safeguarding' 42 children in a Cambodian orphanage, were they perhaps 'safeguarded' as a result of the imprisonment of one offender? Or is there more to it than that?)

I note that the actual description of the category with 132 in is "The number of high risk sex offender networks disrupted and dismantled". So although the word is "and" the meaning is "or" i.e. networks that were either disrupted or dismantled. There is no definition of what 'disrupted' means, it could be as little as removing one subscriber.

Perhaps The Register could ask such questions so we might know these things?