Posts by Stephen Hurd

Broadcom sues Netflix for its success: You’re stopping us making a fortune from set-top boxes, moans chip designer

Re: Do Broadcom actually have any proof that Netflix are using their IP?

Broadcom Coproration was sold to Avago who changed their name to Broadcom Ltd. and changed the name of Broadcom Corp. to Broadcom Inc.

You wanna be an alpha... tester of The Register's redesign? Step this way

Ok, maybe I understand now...

So after reading some of the comments, I think I "get" it now...

There's a block of four "Top Stories" (chosen by editors) first, followed by the seven newest articles (Top stories and most read excluded), followed by a row of four "Most Read" stories followed by all the rest newest to oldest.

At the bottom is a link to "older stories" which links to a list of days in the current month (oldest first) with some breadcrumbs in reverse order (July -> 2018) that you can browse other days with... clicking "July" let's you choose other months in the current year, and clicking 2018 lets you choose a year, then a month. None of the links here takes you to a page where the first story is the one before the last story on the previous page.

So the "older stories" link I find irritating... I want to view the older stories when I click it, not a list of days in the current month. I'm not suggesting an infinite scroll, but a link to the stories that came before the last story on the page would be very nice.

Advertising breaks layout

Every row with an "---- Advertisement ----" placeholder block gets borked... the remaining headline blocks are narrower and it breaks up the grid fairly badly... makes the adverts stand out (and therefore easier to ignore) while at the same time making the three headlines harder to read.

I'm also not sure what the difference between a "Top Story" and a "Most Read" one is... maybe "Latest Stories" or "Breaking" or something? If they're called top stories just because they're on the top, I think you need a new name picker outer.

Breaker, breaker: LTE is coming to America's CB radio frequencies

Aha, CB = Citizen's Broadband

Details here: https://www.fcc.gov/rulemaking/12-354

So yeah, CB (Citizens Broadband), but not CB (Citizens Band) as we know it.

That's not CB...

The FCC has defined the Citizens Band Radio Service as 26.965 - 27.405 MHz (not GHz) in Part 95 sub-section D. Not sure what these frequencies are currently allocated to, but it's not CB radio.

Microsoft hops onboard bonk-to-pay bandwagon

Ah, it's finally back then?

When I first got my Windows 8 phone, it came with ISIS (later renamed to SoftCard) which allowed NFC payments at most retailers. People were amazed when I paid with my phone. Later, I got an email that said "We are pleased to let you know that Google has acquired technology from Softcard to power the next generation of mobile wallets. What does that mean for you? As of 3/31 [2015] your Softcard app will no longer work."

BT claims almost-gigabit connections over COPPER WIRE

Re: Gigabit over copper?

CAT-5E will carry a gigabit signal for 100m (330 feet)... considerably longer than the 19m specified in the article.

Elon Musk says Tesla's stock price is too high ... welp, NOT ANY MORE

Re: Shurely shome mishtake - ed

> sell the unreliable occasional solar electricity

I don't think you've visited Nevada.

Intel, Ford: Project Mobii will harpoon unsafe, unauthorized drivers

Front facing?

The blokes who put together the image also don't seem to know where the front of a car is if they're locating a "front-facing camera" on the dash to monitor the interior.

Microsoft: Don't listen to 4chan ... especially the bit about bricking Xbox Ones

Re: Brewing a self inflicted shitstorm?

Those commands don't brick the computer.

Snowden journo's partner wins partial injunction on seized data

Re: Amature Hour or What!

Uploading via TOR makes it *more* likely to be intercepted, and you don't really care about anonymity here.

LCD to have killed all* other TV technologies by 2016

DLP

Just bought me a massive 92" Mitsubishi DLP for under $4000 USD. LCD can't even get within a foot of that.

Arizona bill makes it illegal to 'annoy or offend' online

Alarm Clocks

Digital devices specifically designed to harass and annoy!

Bullhorn because it is likely covered as well.

Wikipedia simplifies article editing for world+dog

Fewer casual edits

For myself, my casual editing days ended when Wikipedia imposed a block on the entire /16 net block which contains my home system. It no longer became possible for me to edit casually, I had to log in first. The bloc kwas removed, re-added, removed again, re-added again, and now I don't even bother trying to click the little "edit" link when I find myself looking at an error.

LightSquared screams 'conspiracy' over leaky test results

Filters

Band-pass filters are well understood and they work. You install them inline with the antenna and a good filter absolutely will solve the problem in your 2008 Mercedes.

These problems were solved in the 60s... but it's cheaper to build a less selective receiver. The lower the Q, the lower the cost.

There is no modulation overlap, GPSs just let almost anything in, and their amplification sections get overwhelmed by frequencies that are of no interest. Any application that uses a barn door as the first filter will have this... which is why commercial equipment doesn't.

Netflix shares fall on profit warning

Re: "It was broken!"

Shipping physical DVDs to people is the *present* of watching content at home. It's also the only way to get all content which has ever been comitted to DVD.

Whatever the future is is still in the future. Even with my super-fast broadband connection, there are a huge number of movies I can't simply watch on any streaming service. The Netflix DVD service was what I used when I wanted to watch something old and not available via streaming.

Until all content every digitized is available via streams, there is a need to ship physical media.

As for DVD "rights" being charged by Hollywood, you only pay extra if you're renting the DVDs out before they are available for sale. By simply not doing that, Netflix can just buy the physical media as needed and rent it out however they please.

Anyway, Netflix has lost my DVD business and is on the cusp of losing my streaming business because the lack of DVD availability to add value... it was my "Every Movie Ever" library before, now it's just my casual junk library - something which I can provide myself with via better PVR management.

RedBox is supplying me with recentish movies, television wil older popular ones as well as television shows. The value of Netflix is now just a teensy bit more content at a low price. If they lose content or raise the price at all, I'll be gone... because I no longer have a reason to keep them.

Steve Jobs: mystery patent pool to attack Ogg Theora

Re: Open Standards? Fuck'em

Yes, an open standard is one which can be implemented by anyone who wishes to under a reasonable and non-discrimanatory licence... like NTSC, VHS, PCIe, USB, CDMA, and Bluetooth. A closed standard is one where you cannot implement it because you are unable to licence/access the specification... like the Microsoft protocols.

Apparently you want people to design things for free and give them to Apple/Nokia/Microsoft/Whomever so that those companies can then sell/give them to you.

Responded perfectly...

Roy said "... that H.264 is not an open standard", and the reply stated that "an open standard is different from being royalty free or open source". This directly addresses Roy's point.

If Roy's point was that Theora is a "better" solution, Steve addressed this too. When he stated that "A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora..." this would be a solid reason to not ship it.

The letter was written sppecifically to remind Steve of things he may have fogotten... specifically that H.264 is not an open standards (it is) and that the FSF definition should trump that of the ITU-T (pure silliness).

AVG scanner blasts internet with fake traffic

This should work grea with Firefox!

So now, with Firefox preemptively downloading all the links on a page, and Linkscanner doing the exact same thing, now every link you don't follow will be followed twice on your behalf! Yay!

Seriously people, if I want it, I'll click on it. I really don't understand what AVG thinks could be accomplished here that transparent proxying wouldn't... and definitely not one that makes it worth downloading everything (twice? thrice?). ISPs are rolling out the bandwidth caps and the web folks are cranking up the bandwidth any way they can.

The thing that's even more fun is that (unless AVG is caching what it downloads and acting as a caching proxy anyways) the web site you get to when you follow the link quite likely won't be what AVG scanned anyways. The ads (a common source of malware) will rotate.

World realizes Google home page is 'illegal'

Two steps too late...

Eh? "Google for Google's privacy policy, you've already given the company your IP address. And you won't realize that until you read the privacy policy."

If you load their home page to look for a policy link, you've already "given" them your IP address. Even if their home page IS their privay policy, you can't read it until you "give" them your IP address. If you don't realize that, their privacy policy most likely won't help you unless it has a paragraph which says "We already have your IP address and we will do whatever we want with it! Bwa Ha Ha!"

Seriously, this may be the dumbest paragraph I've ever read in the body of an article on El Reg. If it's part of the quote from Marc Rotenberg, you should put quotes around it quick.

Apple store detains teens for installing iPhone game

Peanuts

While it may take several hours to completely reinstall everything onto an XP system including updates etc, it most definitely does not require several hours of *work*.

You spend five minutes, go do something else, spend another minute, etc. In all the actual amount of time you spend interacting with the computer is on the order of half an hour. It may take eight hours before it's done, but it doesn't take eight hours of work.

FCC boss mulls free* wireless for all

95% coverage measured how

Do they want 95% of the area of the USA or 95% of the residents? It reads like the mean area which is quite silly since there are large swaths which do not have any permanent residents (easily more than 5% of the total area).

Lesbians turn on lesbians in battle of Lesbos

Uh... they're greek?

So the island is not "Lesbos" nor "Lesvos" but Λέσβος

What's the problem again?

Windows Server 2008 to come in 8 flavors

Actually, that's 15 versions...

1) Windows Server 2008 Standard with Hyper-V (32-bit)

2) Windows Server 2008 Standard without Hyper-V (32-bit)

3) Windows Server 2008 Standard with Hyper-V (64-bit)

4) Windows Server 2008 Standard without Hyper-V (64-bit)

5) Enterprise Edition with Hyper-V (32-bit)

6) Enterprise Edition without Hyper-V (32-bit)

7) Enterprise Edition with Hyper-V (64-bit)

8) Enterprise Edition without Hyper-V (64-bit)

9) Datacenter edition with Hyper-V (32-bit)

10) Datacenter edition without Hyper-V (32-bit)

11) Datacenter edition with Hyper-V (64-bit)

12) Datacenter edition without Hyper-V (64-bit)

13) The Web Server edition (32-bit)

14) The Web Server edition (64-bit)

15) Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based systems

Aussie gov anti-porn filter 'useless', says teen

Re: The elephant in the room

You obviously mean ANOTHER generation of sexually messed up men.

I assume, of course, that you can define "sexually messed up" and explain how having the ability to view porn causes that.

Wii wins console war, market watcher claims

[the Wii is nothing more than a toy]

Exactly. And what in blue blazes do you think the rest of the console are? ALL consoles are toys. That's the POINT.

I'd be fascinated in what you think the rest of the consoles are.

AT&T sued by poor man's Formula 1

Peanuts

Sell NASCAR's Daytona 500 for the $91 million dollars and use the money to run a sub-standard Formula 1 team for a year.

Or run a top-notch NASCAR team for five years. Your call poor man.

The money spent on a NASCAR team does not approach even the paltry amount spent on Super Aguri. You need to post a $48 million dollar bond just to play.

Regardless of how much NASCAR makes or how many people watch it, it costs FAR less to play in NASCAR than it does in Formula 1. If you can't afford an F1 team... but a NASCAR one.

So what's in a URL? The Reg URL?

.co.uk of course

Well, considering that around one third to one half of all the content is UK stuff (Who is Orange and why, exactly, do I care?) the .co.uk serves as a gentle reminder that the news will have a UK perspective.

Regarding content duplication, just do a URL rewrite. It's not like you honour language tags... same thing really? (Must experiment... fiddle with EN-US/EN-UK/EN-CA... is there an EN-AU?)

Digg buried by users in piracy face-down

Reply to "Corrections" by Martin Owens

"the only way we can legitimately play our paid for dvds is to break the DCMA/EUCD"

That's a silly assertion and you know it (you COULD buy a DVD player... I'm fairly certain you actually have one). Obviously what you meant was "The only way we can legitimately play our paid for DVDs on our PCs running a Linux-based OS exclusively is to break the DCMA/EUCD"

By a happy chance, that's wrong too! If you purchase a copy of Mandriva 2007 (possibly only PP+, unsure), you get a licence for LinDVD which you can go ahead and install on whatever distro you happen to like.

Your welcome for the information.

Damage liability

Regardless of the number being copywritten, patented, subject to draconian DMCA rules, etc, posting the number shows the same level of social responsibility as gaining access to (say) the pentagon computers then posting a userID/password online.

While posting the number itself, or a series of hex bytes comprising the number (you never see it in base 10 and rarely see it without separation between the individual bytes which makes the form it's posted in not a single number) is not illegal the same was as posting "killemall" isn't illegal. Posting it in the context of "This is one of the important pieces of information to bypass DRM" is just as actionable as posting "Joe Doe's password on the internal pentagon mainframe is ``killemall''" or (say) if El Reg decided one day to make all account holders email and password pairs public because they had a sudden dislike for their readers.

Before anyone defends this behaviour, they should ask themselves how they would feel if their own passwords were posted in the same way.

Anyone who belives posting the number is a Good Thing is barred from making the "We should torture the truth out of George W. Bush" point.