* Posts by The Indomitable Gall

1657 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

What’s that Sooty? You want a girlfriend?

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Lets not start on about Captain Pugwash!!!

I'm disappointed that the "alternative" crew of the Black Pig hasn't grown over time. Why no Cox Stroker, For example? There must be more! The myth must grow!!

FCC death vote looms for the Golden Age of American TV

The Indomitable Gall
Coat

Re: All I want is...

Your watch won't be much use tethered to a cable.

World+dog to get retro classic Commodore 64 for Christmas

The Indomitable Gall

Re: And I want this...

I believe the only analogue in the SID was the ladder DACs the filters and a mixer, hence why there's no sinusoid wave form. The filters idea was genius really, as it meant that a triangle waveform could approximate sinusoid (run it through a low-pass filter, and the closer the cut-off frequency is to the fundamental frequency, the closer the triangle approximates a sine wave).

I think the problem with recreating the SID lies less in the design, but much of the specific sound arose from minor flaws -- line interference due to proximity of components and issues relating to power distribution meant that the sound was imperfect, hence a lot less synthetic sounding. I still hold that (restricted number of voices aside) the C64 had the best sounding music right up until Lucasarts put an orchestra on the CD for X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter, and the subsequent move to MP3 soundtracks (although that was a travesty, as iMuse was the cleverest thing ever to happen to computer music and is still sorely missed).

The Indomitable Gall

Re: ZX81

I believe it's already been done. If not, it would take an afternoon, as you've been able to get a circuit diagram for the entire thing in discrete logic on the internet since last century...!

IBM lifts lid, unleashes Linux-based x86 killer on unsuspecting world

The Indomitable Gall

THIS PAGE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK

You'll also see it at times on pages that are after the end of the document, and just included because standard binding is based on sheets that each account for four pages.

Anyone who took school exams in Scotland will be more than familiar with "this page intentionally blank" (or whatever), cos just imagine the consternation if that wasn't explained to you in an exam, and you spend the rest of the summer worried you'd missed a question or hadn't written enough.

WhatsApp, Apple and a hidden source code F-bomb: THE TRUTH

The Indomitable Gall

" "Let alone the inability to compile code except on their machines, which greatly limits my ability to do CI, automation or anything else efficient except on their overpriced POS hardware."

If you can't be bothered to buy a machine for the platform you're developing for (you know, to just test that things actually work as emulators are never perfect) than maybe you should not be developing for that platform. "

The problem is you have to buy a Mac to develop for iOS. OS X is not iOS, a Mac is not an iOS device. The Mac has the best iOS emulator, but as you said, "emulators are never perfect".

It's a massive frustration for a lot of would-be app developers that even experimenting with iOS development has initial costs in the region of a grand. (Well, there's the Mac Mini as the "cheap" option, but most folk skip that and go for one of the portables.)

Is it time to unplug frail OpenOffice's life support? Apache Project asked to mull it over

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Self fulfilling prophecy my ass

The last version-number release of LibreOffice was a near-complete rewrite of the underlying codebase. I'll have a look later to see what the memory stuff looks like (thanks for the tip), but it should be much, much cleaner now.

Google's brand new OS could replace Android

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Re using appsfrom Android.

" If they came out with an OS that was more secure than Android, ran all the apps "

And there's the rub. Why is Windows such a security nightmare? Because fixing security holes properly breaks backwards compatibility.

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Problem...

" Will we be able to use our existing apps on the new OS, or will that require a major rewrite as well? Windows phone flopped because of poor app support, any OS lives and dies with its apps. "

I'd be very surprised if you couldn't. Remember that app developers are basically coding for the Dalvik VM, and the real machine level code is in Google's libraries and the infamous "binary blob". I doubt Google will ever set it loose in the real world if they can't port the Android userspace onto it (and the ChromeOS one, for good measure).

Swedish Pokemon teens terrorised by laser-wielding 'sex pigs'

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Should have stayed away from the water wheel...

Given the general weirdness of all the quotes, I think I'd pin that one on Google Translate....

Apple's 'lappable' iPad Pro concept is far from laughable

The Indomitable Gall

Re: file

Lack of filesystem is less of an issue than it used to be, and far less a nuisance than I expected. IOS now uses a mechanism called "share sheets" to pass data between apps, and it's almost to the stage where your apps can be thought of as virtual folders.

However, I agree that iOS still has a long way to go. The lack of plug-ins is a real nuisance for photo and video editing, because it forces you to switch between apps if one doesn't have the function you need, and the intermediate step usually seems to involve recompressing in a lossy format, hence constant degredation throughout the process.

The pencil might help with highlighting, but it certainly won't help with typing. Mouse/keyboard switching is generally hassle-free because you just do it, but a stylus has to be picked up and put down as you go.

Anyway, the big limitation with iPads, including the Pro, is the lack of ports. With only one lightning port, you can't plug in a memory expander and an audio interface at once, for example, and that's a serious limitation if you're aiming for high-end video work. (And yes, you can do high-end video work on i-devices, as long as the depth-of-field limitations don't bother you.) IHaving a dedicated interface for the keyboard is a start, but I really think that it will only deserve the "pro" tag when you can attach two or three Lightning and/or USB devices.

Gillian Anderson: The next James Jane Bond?

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Which way will a new Bond lean?

The only good thing in The Fall was whats-his-name as the pyschopath. He switched from everyone's-best-pal to stone-cold-heartless at the drop of a hat. Anderson had no charm and no charisma. Her matter-of-factness about her extra-marital affair made me wonder why anyone could possibly develop any sort of lasting emotional attachment to her.

I really can't stand her as an actress. She should only ever play baddies.

Would we want to regenerate brains of patients who are clinically dead?

The Indomitable Gall

Obligatory Monty Python quote

He's pining for the fjords.

Boffins achieve 'breakthrough' in random number generation

The Indomitable Gall

BBC BASIC rand()

@Nifty,

The BBC BASIC RAND() function was not random, but deterministic. If you seed it with the same number, it will return the same sequence of numbers. It is only once you seed it with a single random number that it becomes a pseudo-random generator. Normally, that seed is taken from user-generated timing data, but it could come from another source. But anyway, in the seeded pseudorandom generator, you are not combining two "poor" random sources -- random_number+algorithm = pseudorandom_source

First successful Hyperloop test module hits 100mph in four seconds

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Snake Oil

@bazza

"That'll happen [increasing movement of work to capital city] anyway to some extent whether or not train lines get built. No population / government / state / civilisation anywhere in history has ever solved this problem."

West Germany did a pretty good job of keeping economic activity geographically diverse. The rail network in the former West is a true network, unlike in former East Germany, where it takes on the hub-and-spoke form around Berlin, the same form that France has with Paris at the centre, and Spain has with Madrid at the centre (and a secondary hub at Barcelona).

Germany rode out the big recession pretty damned well compared to the rest of the continent, so I don't know why we're all still modelling the French approach rather than the German one.

'Apple ate my music!' Streaming jukebox wipes 122GB – including muso's original tracks

The Indomitable Gall

The whole modern concept of cloud is fail...

The original definition of "cloud computing" was based on network diagrams. The "cloud" icon in a network diagram represented a network you didn't have a definition for -- most typically the internet. Academics were fascinated by the idea that the internet was not just a series of dumb switches, and that treating it as such was a waste of resource. There were a number of experiments with getting internet nodes to progressively process data as it was transmitted across the network, and the idea looked promising. But in reality, you would end up with a "tragedy of the commons" scenario, with a few antisocial heavy users using up the resource (like how a relatively tiny number of 24-hour DVD downloaders made unlimited internet packages unviable).

The only true cloud application in use is peer-to-peer sharing (torrents and streams), because there is no map or fixed architecture to the computing/storage element; it is unknown, so can only be drawn on a map as a cloud.

Modern so-called cloud services are nothing more than hosted solutions, the same as we've always had. However, they often use the cloud to obscure what's going on, and the client doesn't get full information. I'm sure this doesn't apply to really big players, but before I left managed IT services (about 5 years ago), I always argued that we should refuse to subcontract to cloud services because they prevented due diligence, or at least push that line until the client accepted that they couldn't hold us to SLAs on something we were utterly incapable of evaluating.

Woman charged with blowing AU$4.6m overdraft on 'a lot of handbags'

The Indomitable Gall

Something doesn't add up here....

So she spent a lot of money on designer handbags... that's fine.

When she thought she was going to get cuffed she tried to skip town... OK.

But how was she planning to get her loot out of the country if the airline only allows one piece of hand baggage...?

Prof squints at Google's mobile monopoly defence, shakes head

The Indomitable Gall

@ Throatwarbler Mangrobe

" A previous article mentioned that the Android "monopoly" is in regard to licensable smart phone operating systems, a narrowly-defined category if ever there was one, and one seemingly created for the express purpose of chasing after Google. "

I don't know where you picked that up from -- the IDC are reporting that Android has a market share of 70% of all smartphones in Western Europe. (Source: Bloomberg)

While the Android/iOS/Windows Phone split might not be as extreme as the Windows/MacOS/Linux split at the turn of the century, the parallels are striking. Windows got its dominance through the ability of limitless OEMs to market PCs, leading to a competition between OEMs on price, lots of marketing paid for by others, as well as multiple OEMs meaning more ready supply of devices. Microsoft used that dominance to squelch competition in various parts of the application space.

This is almost exactly the same.

How Apple's early VR experiments accidentally led to RSS

The Indomitable Gall

I wouldn't trust Portals with my data -- GlaDOS apparently has a backdoor put in by the NSA.

Official: EU goes after Google, alleges it uses Android to kill competition

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Others?

I think Android's problem is that they're open source (ish) and have therefore given their clients some rights that they strictly didn't need to, but they've then turned round and made it thoroughly impractical to exercise those rights.

Paradoxically, the best course of action is for them to just close up the platform and turn the whole thing into a binary blob.

UK competition watchdog gripes to Brussels about Three-O2 merger

The Indomitable Gall

Re: What I don't understand

" What I don't understand

Is why there is a picture of a neo-nazi muppet to go with this story "

You may have confused this with a story on the US presidential primaries....

India continues subsidising elite IT schools

The Indomitable Gall

@Anon

" Anon just because some of the people that these places turn out are a total waste of time and more importantly yours if you are fool enough to employ them. "

And this is different from other countries' education systems in what way exactly? I've met some total muppets who graduated from top universities, and government is typically full of them.

Defining a whole population by the few individual members you've met is what is known in the trade as "being a bigot".

Final Euro Parliament vote on passenger name records delayed

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Thank $deity for the left-wing!

Yes, planes would be very difficult to fly if the right wing was all they had.

Sorry slacktivists: The Man is shredding your robo responses

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Meanwhile back in the UK

Well, if they all sent the same email, surely it follows that they all expect the same response? All it takes is a wee change to the mail server and client and you'll be able to do exactly that.

AI pioneer Marvin Minsky dies at 88

The Indomitable Gall

There's a name that I don't think I've heard since university -- sad way to be reminded. A very influential man indeed, and his contributions to the field should never be taken for granted.

Police Scotland will have direct access to disabled parking badge database

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Safeguards? Pff, what an old-fashioned notion

I suspect the reason for the direct access is the issue of non-visible disabilities. If a police officer sees a single, fully mobile person get out of a blue badge car, how is he to ascertain whether that's not someone with brain damage leading to reduced memory (thus needs the car in plain sight on leaving the shop) or someone with a colostomy bag who just needs to get to a WC in a hurry.

I've heard plenty of stories about such people getting regularly stopped by police, and the police have (rightly) toned down their checks to avoid embarrassment to the public. But this has left them unable to challenge any abusers, and that's not fair on those with a genuine need. At least now they can radio in to the control room and ask to confirm whether the car/badge is flagged as non-visible disability or not, and only challenge where it isn't.

After Burner: Sega’s jet-fighting, puke-inducing arcade marvel

The Indomitable Gall

Re: After Burner was a blast

Is it my imagination or were the Thunder Blade cabinets branded as After Burner: Thunder Blade? I think I saw that at motorway service stations....

Is streaming pirate video legal? Europe's highest court will take a look

The Indomitable Gall

No money from record sales...?

Are you sur bout that? I do recall musicians talking about touring as basically promotional activity as a way of selling more records, because the recordings was wher the money (meagre though it was) was coming from....

Google and pals launch Accelerated Mobile Pages project

The Indomitable Gall

It's not just about speed though.

The big issue with JavaScript isn't that it's slow, it's that it can easily break a page-viewing experience.

JavaScript that tries to dynamically resize a page can flip you out of your reading position if you accidentally tilt your phone/tablet. Or worse -- there's something you can't quite read, so you zoom in for a closer look and BAM! -- the whole thing repaginates and you have no idea where you are or what you're doing.

I don't think they're really trying to "kill" JavaScript, just trying to get people to use CSS for text formatting and keeping JavaScript to content.

Vulture-branded LYCRA can be yours, if you're feeling charitable

The Indomitable Gall
IT Angle

What's the IT angle?

:-p

Only joking -- happy cycling guys!

WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

The Indomitable Gall

Aw, Dad...!

First you signed up for Facebook and ruined it for me. Then you started following me on Twitter. Can I not have one thing...?

Find shaving a chore? Why not BLAST your BEARD off with a RAYGUN

The Indomitable Gall

" That's if they patent it, "

A bunch of experienced professionals have spent years inventing a new revolutionary technology. There is no question of "if" (even before you see this stated on the Kickstarter page).

" or if whoever makes a cheap knockoff is based in part of the world that cares about such things. Given how many counterfeit goods already exist, I assume that we'll be able to buy cheap (and dangerous) laser shavers if this ever takes off. "

Even if the manufacturers don't care about patents, the importers have to. Any cheap knock-offs that are legal will be battery-guzzling high-powered lasers.

The Indomitable Gall

That would be illegal under most patent regimes.

The Indomitable Gall

@ David 132

Bugs was a wabbit. You must be a wacist.

The Indomitable Gall

@Nameless Faceless Computer User

" Laser hair removal works by absorbing heat. Grey hair doesn't absorb as much heat as dark hair so it removes all the dark hair leaving the grey hair behind. (I'm dating an esthetician) "

That would be IPL. This is a new invention (from the guy who invented IPL, incidentally) and as stated in both the Kickstarter page and the article, he's found a single structure common to all human hair that reacts to a specific frequency of light. This means it gets the greys too.

The Indomitable Gall

@readinthereg

" What ever happened to the ceramic razor blade ? "

Ceramic knives aren't always all that sharp -- they cut food well due to the cleanness of the edge, not absolute sharpness. One of the reasons they're so handy, is that the lack of sharpness means you get the "ouch" reaction from you finger before you're deep enough to draw blood.

Ceramic razors can be done, but it seems to be a pretty serious undertaking.

The Raspberry Pi is succeeding in ways its makers almost imagined

The Indomitable Gall

Scratch?!?

Scratch is an abomination. To be fair, pretty much every attempt at "visual programming" is.

The problem is all the "shapes" in a Scratch program are the shape of plain-text, linear code. Surely the biggest difficulty most newcomers to programming have is the fact that branching code is displayed linearly -- a visual language that retains that linearity rather than modelling the code flow therefore fails to address the main problems and serves little purpose.

Wow, Barcelona really has a problem with tech disruptors. Watch out Airbnb

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Get it right.

Exactly. The concept of couchsurfing is sharing, because you're... well... sharing. Paying for services isn't "sharing", it's "commerce". You pay for a room with AirBnB. It's commerce.

The Indomitable Gall

Re: uncontrolled tourism

" Yes, I can see how that would potentially be a huge problem for a country with such a booming economy right now. "

You realise that one of the things that obliterated the Spanish economy in the economic crisis was that their economy relied excessively on tourism, right? When Brits and Germans stopped buying holiday homes, their GDP tanked. I would have thought this measure would fall quite sensibly under "learning from your mistakes".

Moreover, there is a massive homelessness problem due to bank foreclosures and repossessions. The last thing Spain needs is inflationary pressures on accommodation when so many people are out of work. I know at least one person who is already renting a flat privately purely to sublet it as an airbnb business (this is in Valencia, not Barcelona, though) and that means one less flat available at normal rents for a family seeking permanent lodgings in the city.

Global spy system ECHELON confirmed at last – by leaked Snowden files

The Indomitable Gall

@goldcd

" Maybe nobody did get secretly caught and imprisoned though.. maybe. "

Imprisonment isn't an effective means of silencing someone. I suspect that the collapse of the ABC case resulted in an increase in "suicides" among troublesome types....

Enjoy vaping while you still can, warns Public Health England

The Indomitable Gall

Re: "Almost certainly"

" The 2 most popular brands of 'e-juice' have been found to contain chemicals that are not safe to be inhaled and those are the ones that are supposed to be legitimate. "

The last time I read a report of this type, the leading vape brands responded by pointing out that the study had heated the wick to higher than normal operating temperature, and had burnt the product. The temperature in the study was in the public domain and the manufacturer's claims appeared sound.

You wouldn't accuse a cake mix of containing "carcinogenic black carbon" on the grounds you'd turned your oven up too high and left the cake in too long, would you...?

Digital doping might make you a Tour de Virtual cycling champion

The Indomitable Gall

As a road cyclist, I'm under trees about as much of the time as your average car driver, if you leave long-distance journeys (ie motorway travel) out of the equation.

Gazan medico team 3D-prints world-leading stethoscope for 30c

The Indomitable Gall
Coat

Re: Autosculpt?! Really?

Maybe it's the brand of 3D printer he was using...?

'WOMAN FOUND ON MARS' – now obvious men are from Venus

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Ignoring the bleeding obvious...

Bloody hell -- you're right! It's giant Skeletor, buried in sand, and the tiny woman is trying to escape from the grip of his bony fingers!

Sengled lightbulb speakers: The best worst stereo on Earth

The Indomitable Gall

Re: inside out

" There's a PA company (mackie?bose? someone odd) who used to use a bulb for speaker protection. If you drove it too hard the bulb lit up, increasing in resistance as it got hotter. The bulb would then finally blow, saving the drivers, with which it was in series. "

Not that long ago I was sitting in a public talk, entranced by the flickering blue lights on a pair of Bose PA speakers, and wondering how the professional crew responsible didn't understand that if the overdrive warning light is coming on, words get pretty unclear...

This is TRUE science: Harvard boffins fire up sizzling BACON LASER

The Indomitable Gall

Re: standard comment in laser physics:

What, they had to pump the pigs to get them to lase? Sick fuckers!

Why the BBC is stuffing free Micro:bit computers into schoolkids' satchels

The Indomitable Gall

Re: Essential introduction to computing

[stares disapprovingly at DIM statement]

Now go back to your room and think about what you've done.

China wants to build a 200km-long undersea tunnel to America

The Indomitable Gall

Re: When it's finished will?

The reward wil outweigh the Risk....

The Indomitable Gall

Re: I wholeheartedly approve.

The business class service would have to have fully-appointed meeting rooms, as you'd be spending your entire outward journey with you team prepping for the meeting you were going to.

The Indomitable Gall

Re: The Chinese and Russians are going to build it??

WRT modern sailing ships...

Problem 1 has already been mentioned (weather-dependent journey times make the logistics of running a business tricky.).

Problem 2 is why sailing ships went out of fashion in the first place. In actual transit, tall ships were more efficient than powered ships (because a twx lot of a powered ship's capacity is dedicated to engines and fuel) but they took an awful lot longer to load and unload because of rigging etc. And that was before he invention of the modern container ship, which is the easiest thing in the world to load and unload, given that everything is stored in lorry-sized containers and piled on deck.

Sails mean surface use, which is unacceptable, even without the need for all the ropes and cables of traditional rigs, so no-one's interested.

The high altitude kite idea, IIRC, was targeted specifically at supertankers. They have nothing on deck anyway, and they travel between specialist locations where there's not as much competition for berths.