Posts by Annihilator

PlayStation-processor-powered plutonium probe prepares Pluto pics

Re: Routers... in Space!

Three reaons against that immediately spring to mind:

1) Where are you putting these relays? They would either be in orbit around a planet, or in a sun-orbit similar to a planet orbits. Orbital mechanics means that they wouldn't be in alignment very often (so right now, Jupter is pretty close to Earth, but Pluto is further away from Jupiter than it is from Earth due to it being on the opposite side of the Sun, while Jupiter is currently on the same side of the sun as us. We're currently closer to Mercury than we are to Mars)

2) Power, as someone else has already mentioned - how long would these things last?

3) Interplanetary comms relies on a massive dish/array at one end (for ease of logistics, we tend to keep that one on earth), and a small dish at the other - massive dish to be able to hear the feeble signal coming back from the small dish in space, and powerful enough to blast a mighty signal out that will stand a chance of being heard that far away. A relay comms satelite in Jupiter wouldn't be powerful enough or have a big enough dish to talk to a probe near Pluto, even if it were halfway between Earth and Pluto.

Hawking and friends: Artificial Intelligence 'must do what we want it to do'

"* (We note that Mr Freeman did not sign the letter. Whose side is he on? – Sub-Ed)."

He works for Black Mesa I believe, he's on their side.

Erik Meijer: AGILE must be destroyed, once and for all

Re: the mantra...

Spot on - also known as the project management triangle, but ignored/dismissed by simpletons who believe you can nail all 3.

Broadband isn't broadband unless it's 25Mbps, mulls FCC boss

Re: 12Mbps is more achievable

These go to 11...

By the power of Xbox, WE HAVE THE POWER! - Leakers publish One's SDK

Re: Homebrew with strings

"The main purpose of "modifying" a console is not to run homebrews, or "copy your [original I presume] games off an external hard drive"."

It absolutely can be. I've still got an original PS2 with a hard drive shoved in the back, HD Advance in the DVD drive and all the games up the loft. The primary reason for this was a) convenience and also b) speed of loading - the PS2 didn't have any internal storage and so loaded games painfully slowly off the DVD, making Gran Turismo an absolute bll-ache.

For some PS3 games this argument still holds, as they don't all install full content onto the HDD.

Euro iTunes customers get 14 DAY refund option

Re: The Library of Apple?

"now have access to a pretty impressive and free lending library"

Much like I've got today already? Not to mention I could already abuse amazon in similar ways with physical books.

https://www.gov.uk/local-library-services

You could also abuse it by re-encoding music that comes from iTunes now, given it's all unlocked these days, but I doubt the majority of people will bother.

Here's Johnny! Top Ten fantasy Blu-ray boxsets and special editions

"Bizarrely, this fan-friendly mix does not to include the 3D special version of The Day of The Doctor, which could irritate hardcore Whovians."

Good, frankly.

Worth mentioning that it also includes The Night of The Doctor short too.

BT takes broadband to NEW PLACES. That's right: CITIES

They don't dig up the roads to lay the cable, they run it through the existing ducting, either via push-rods or a little remote-controlled mole to pull the cable through.

The issue they have in cities is finding the additional space to put an FTTC cabinet next to any existing ones.

Even cheaper

They could at least enable VDSL on exchange-only lines, ie those that can't get FTTC because they have no cabinet. IIRC most DSLAMs in exchanges are capable of VDSL2 but aren't allowed due to the apparent noise on the rest of the lines - though how this doesn't effect lines from the cabinet I don't know.

HOLD IT! Last minute gifts for one's nerd minions

"but I spend about 10% of my (quite expensive) time watching windows painfully redraw, or staring at the hourglass while a storm of page faults thrashes the disk."

They pay you for that 10% though, right? Happy days!

"believe it or not it's noticeably faster than my USB 2 Thermaltake coaster toasters"

No trouble believing that at all. My USB 2 coaster toast topped out around 20MB/s which made for a painful backup process.

Easy Tinder prank hack lets you play stupid cupid

Re: And..?

Quite. I could do it without faffing around with nicking cookies either - just use the fecking terminal they left unattended to directly play with it.

Kepler's STILL GOT IT! Space telescope spots SUPER-EARTH 180 light years away

Indeed - imagine how good it would have looked with all 4 spinning reaction wheels working. I expect you could have even spotted the telescope's reflection in the watery surface!

ESA: Venus probe doomed to fiery death on weird planet's surface

Quagmire

" ESA engineers decided to risk a deeper insertion."

Giggiddy

If 4G isn’t working, why stick to the same approach for 5G?

Re: Priorities

"While I agree, I'm still hoping the tech will quickly reach the stage of docking with a high-res desktop KVM setup and allow a light-weight desktop OS. In that case, 2560x1440 is a good idea."

Yes but if you're docking with a KVM, why do you care about the size of the screen on the mobile device.

Ability to drive a high res screen doesn't necessitate an actual high res screen on the device.

I'll be back (and forward): Hollywood's time travel tribulations

Re: Judgement Day

"You know, when thinking about it it struck me as odd that postponing Judgement day was seen as a good thing"

They also assume that what they're doing is a positive thing. In their existing timeline, the human race exists (barely) - who's to say that it would exist at all when they meddle with it?

It's like the argument over whether you would kill Hitler by time travel - Hitler lost the war and was an atrocious war tactician. Would you really want someone better skilled to take his place?

Cool Large Hadron Collider to fire into doubly powerful ring

Re: In theory

"a parallel Universe also doing the same experiment at the same time?"

Same time according to...? Time is unique to the observer. Not to mention more powerful collisions happen frequently in nature without any adverse effects.

BT to gobble EE for £12.5bn – BTEE phone home

Re: @annihilator

"Plus the £22.5bn raised from 3G auctions that wouldn't have happened had we had a single state owned operator. And the many billions gained from the sale of BT. And the corporation tax from its profits."

The money "raised" from the 3G auctions though - who do you think paid for it (and the effort required to run the sale)? You - the consumer. All you've done is be taxed in a massively inefficient way, allowing a portion of that to be carved off to private equity funds.

As for the corporation tax on its profits - you realise that we'd still have that plus the actual profits?

It's like the people who were very excited to purchase shares in the Royal Mail's IPO and get very excited that they now own part of it. They always owned it, but are somehow pleased to be able to pay for something they already owned.

I'm not a complete communist though, I'm well aware that the broadband market we have now has driven faster speeds and that BT would probably still be doing 512Kbps broadband if it weren't for LLU and competition, but let's not get excited about us going back to single companies and expecting that we'll benefit from it.

"I want several companies who compete with each other to have the best products and best customer service"

That's not gone particularly well so far though, has it? Looks like we're giving the ol' monopoly approach another swing.

" A near monopoly broadband/landlind provider in the UK, will own a major mobile provider."

Ah, takes me back to the late 80's when all you could see round here were BT landlines and subsequently BT Cellnet masts...

Remember when we owned that company? But then the powers-that-be decided that privatising would give us cheaper prices, and subsequently opened the industry up to multiple players when they realised that wasn't working.

Good to see that we're gradually regressing back to being spanked by one big company (it'll be cheaper cos of the synergies I'm told). That we used to own.

Sony quietly POODLE-proofs Playstations

"Hey, I know a joke! A squirrel walks up to a tree and says, "I forgot to store acorns for the winter and now I am dead." Ha! It is funny because the squirrel gets dead"

97% of UK gets 'basic' 2Mbps broadband. 'Typical households' need 10Mbps – Ofcom

Re: Typical households need 10Mbps

"Why do they need such a thing? To keep in touch with their relatives? To check their e-mail? To look at ads? To exchange cat videos? To watch pornography online? What could be motivating the dear, caring government to insist on ensuring that EVERYBODY has at least 10 Mbps broadband at home?"

I'm sure there were arguing the same when they built 3-lane motorways.

Re: Errr WTF?

Weird stats all round:

"The telecoms authority said 97 per cent of folks in Blighty are able to get at least basic broadband of 2Mbps, and altogether 15 per cent of people are stuck below the 10Mbps mark."

So 85% gets at least 10Mbps? Rather strangely worded headline suggesting that "97% of UK gets 'basic' 2Mbps broadband" when really it's "97% of UK could get *at least* 2Mbps *if they wanted it*"

Bloke, 36, in the cooler for leaking ex's topless pics on Facebook

Re: Good, good

"How do we know the photo subject wasn't the one getting revenge by privately agreeing to the photo upload and then denying it afterwards?"

Because it went through the justice system, the standard by which we judge and measure guilt.

I'm not sure why these sorts of crimes invoke such a response. I never see these ass hat responses to murder convictions: "How do we know the victim wasn't getting revenge by murdering herself and setting her husband up?"

FOUR, count 'em, FOUR big rockets launching in next seven days

Re: Hayabusa bombing the asteroid

It's going to be there for about a year - it'll be in orbit around the asteroid, not hovering behind it.

It won't be an explosion though - it's a collision from its first probe, so will be pretty small. Besides, all the crap will still land on the asteroid, it'll just take a few hours to do so in the low gravity (see Philae's 7 hour bounce)

UK.gov mulls three-point turn on three-point turn thanks to satnav. Weeeeeeee. THUD

"have any of these people ever tried pulling a car out of a parking spot? Or reversing into one for that matter. Reversing out of a driveway?"

Absolutely - one of the entire points of reversing around a corner is to test your manoeuvring skills in tight spaces.

Get rid of 3-point turns and reversing round corners, and you've lost the ability to turn your car around when necessary. Such as dead ends. Or car parks as mentioned.

BIG FAT Lies: Porky Pies about obesity

"That's the most unmitigated nonsense spouted since someone inferred that Ed Miliband was electable"

You mean implied.

SO LONELY: Woman DARED to get rid of her iPHONE - Apple DUMPED all her TXTS

Re: Oops!!

"I thought Apple iMessage would send a message via SMS if it can't deliver it via iMessage, so how can it be clever enough to be able to switch when both users are using an iPhone, but not when one switches to Android?..."

You can configure the sending device to do that, or not. But it's up to the sender whether they want to use SMS as a fall-back (given there are potentially carrier charges involved).

I have my set to "no" as I message a number of people in Australia and wouldn't want it to send SMS without my knowledge.

The cloud that goes puff: Seagate Central home NAS woes

Re: The problem with "cloud" as backup in this context...

"Oh, and c: finding somewhere (if you worry about these things) that doesn't keep your data in the US and is therefore subject to US data (non)protection regulations."

To be fair, storing it anywhere in the world is pretty much susceptible to a data (non)protection regulations. Do you really think the rest of the world's outrage at the US is anything other than hypocrisy?

Toyota to launch hydrogen (ie, NATURAL GAS) powered fuel cell hybrid

"In a future where hydrogen was widely used it would obviously not make much sense to keep making it from natural gas - you might as well just run the vehicles on gas, as indeed is often done today."

You're dodging the significant advantage of being able to shift the burning of hydrocarbons away from the centre of big cities. I don't see people arguing to have petrol generators attached to houses instead of a national grid...

Getting towards a green mode of transportation will be a two (interdependent) step process. Getting the internal combustion engine out of the car. Figuring out a means to cleanly generate whatever fuel source replaces it.

At the moment, batteries aren't nearly as efficient enough to take the place of a fuel cell.

Lights OUT for Philae BUT slumbering probot could phone home again as comet nears Sun

According to one of the press conferences, nuclear wasn't "allowed" due to safety and political concerns - the ESA hasn't ever developed one for that reason.

Looking GOOD, probot. Philae good, humans: 'Yes ... YES! The lander is sitting on the ground'

Radio 4 presenter asked one of the scientists following the announcement that Philae wasn't capturing as much solar energy as hoped:

"So, how are you coping having a probe where the sun don't shine?"

Comet lander drill cliffhanger as last dregs of power used

Re: shock absorbers for landing

"Is there a Nobel prize category for this? The whole team deserves it!"

For Physics, maybe, but doubtful - they didn't come up with new physics to do it. Peace, perhaps, at a stretch.

The challenge is who gets it. It can't be shared across more than (I think) 3 individuals.

£2k burning a hole in your pocket? Let this 'advanced' DRONE relieve you

Re: Awesome Toy

"I'm quite surprised that it cannot go down as fast as it can go up? Can anybody explain?"

It can when the battery runs out. Significantly faster.

Why can't a mobile be more like a cordless kettle?

Re: You aready can

Much like every cordless phone in existence too. I had a similar charging dock for a Nokia 8310 and miss it dreadfully.

Oculus Rift tech-specs 'many months away' from hitting the shelves

Re: Spec creep?

"Then they'll never release. There will always be a potion of the population who get motion sick in VR environments - if you have a sensitive inner ear and the eyes say "moving" and the ear says "no you're not" then they feel sick. They can minimize it perhaps, but they won't solve it for everyone."

It's really a minority of people who have that though - otherwise they wouldn't be able to have darkened cinemas.

The nausea they've been apparently experiencing is more to do with keeping framerates up, latency down, and reducing image tearing, as the human sensory sytem apparently goes haywire over that.

Space Oddity redux: Hadfield's cover back for two years

That confuses me a bit though - I thought that changing the lyrics made it a parody that was allowable under fair-use laws. Weird Al doesn't *have* to get permission, but he does out of good will and under the guise of keeping good relationships with artists.

http://www.weirdal.com/faq.htm

Re: 23 million views.....

About as bored as people who choose to read such articles and then comment on them to register their disappointment.

Manufacturers slam UK.gov: 'High speed broadband' rollout is too slow

Almost exactly the same story, the difference being that in September it changed to March 2015. No reason or explanation, but the FTTC cabinet was installed about 9 months ago and since then abandoned. Really annoyed, and obviously no-one at BT can give any information as it's all down to BT Openreach who they're not allowed to talk to.

BBC clamps down on illicit iPlayer watchers

Re: Smart TVs too

"You'd think they'd have worked out by now some way to update TV firmware over-the-air."

Sarcasm? They already have.

http://www.dtg.org.uk/work/download_schedule.php

Re: illicit viewers?

"The beeb are trying to restrict the online catalogue to BBC only devices."

In what way is my x86 machine with Firefox installed a "BBC only device"?

Trolls pop malformed heads above bridge to sling abuse at Tim Cook

"Trolling morons shouldn't be allowed to access the internet."

Sadly though it seems to be their natural habitat.

PEAK APPLE: iOS 8 is least popular Cupertino mobile OS in all of HUMAN HISTORY

Re: Still refusing to admit

"Well yes, obviously, it makes a lot of sense."

Actually it doesn't - surely if it were done via iTunes it should require zero additional storage:

1) Take backup (squirt data over USB to computer)

2) Flash iOS directly over existing iOS

3) Reboot

Only additional space required is whatever size larger iOS 8 is over 7. If it's 1GB, that would be a rather terrifying leap.

Jim Beam me up, Scotty! WHISKY from SPAAACE returns to Earth

Blasphemy

How dare you sully the good name of single Islay malts with corn-based Jim Beam. All for a punning title, have you no decency?

Breaking records: Google exec in terrifying SKY PLUNGE DRAMA

Re: Brilliant, but...

"I wonder what it feels like to go 800+ MPH without a vehicle? At that altitude, I'll bet it's depressingly pedestrian unless you go into a spin..."

Speed is all relative. From his point of view he wouldn't have felt like he was moving, after the initial acceleration that is. Following that, he'd feel weightless.

SHOW ME THE MONEY! Ballmer on Amazon: 'They're not a real biz, they make NO cash'

Pyramid scheme

It's basically a pyramid scheme. Or the Martingale betting scheme (double your stake after every loss, you'll eventually win and recover your sum of losses). All valid schemes assuming there's infinite room for growth, which there isn't.

Eventually, Amazon will need to generate sustainable profit/growth in order to stop collapsing under its own weight. Or bubble, if you will.

Of course, Bezos and his many billions will be nowhere near it when that happens.

France to draft blacklist banning alleged piracy websites – what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

Vive la revolution!

So, pretty much what we've already tacitly accepted in the UK then?

Something ate Google's 8.8.8.8 at about eight in Asia's evening

Re: Why are we limited to just two?

Ignoring the fact that you can add more than 2 DNS servers on a windows box (as already pointed out, click "advanced"), if you're really in need of highly available DNS then having your own DNS to manage this would probably be the way forward. For the majority of home users, 2 is enough.

Free! (ish)

"Those who rely on free, unsupported, services have surely had enough warnings that their optimism may be misplaced."

Pretty much everything people expect from the Internet these days then, from DNS, to gmail/hotmail, via Facebook/twitter and music streaming services. Even ISPs if you're savvy enough (not a good one mind)

Want a customer's call records Mr Plod? No probs

Reading even further between the lines, O2 haven't been arsed to build a system. Or are incapable.