Posts by Tom 7

DSL inventor's latest science project: terabit speeds over copper

Re: This of course begs the Question: How much bandwidth do you need at home?

It seems to be a zero sum game. At home I have 2Mb which is not enough to watch video over but is more than adequate to browse the web except where people fill page with unnecessary and uncompressed images by the thousand.

If you take into account what I ignore the real data rate is as fast as I can read most of the time, its just the noise level has gone up since 2400 baud dial up.

Upgrades can be scheduled to run overnight with minimal effort and caching proxies reduce my bandwidth volumes by the eight or ten machines I'm running regularly. Intelligent downloading of TV is possible - things I miss on BBC are get-iplayered overnight and if tv services did the same for box sets and series I'd guess the average family could live on less than 20Mb - people in my local village who have 70Mb say they never needed the fibre upgrade from 17Mb - apart from one mate who has more video than he can watch in his lifetime already.

Re: Exponential Drop off

The annoying thing is the technology is available to make low power gigabit repeaters for a couple of quid that could be cheaply dropped in every couple of Km on copper anyway.

But then BT had the capability 27 years ago to put in 10km of fibre and have 2.4Gb end to end for an equipment cost less than £100 per line but they 'didnt do research' anymore.

Microsoft's .NET-mare for developers: ASP.NET Core 2.0 won't work on Windows-only .NET

Re: I find it astonishing

Na - the promise was there from the start? Remember the 'End of DLL hell"? I wrote a load of useful shit in .NET1 which of course wouldnt run in .NET2. And those I knew who'd written a lot of active web pages in other languages looked upon ASP.NET as a large pile of poo.

It's like Bazza says above - the Marketing types are running the show and doing a lot of the coding too. I'd recommend nuclear powered seriously pissed off honey badgers myself.

@AC MS Access

Seriously? I was automatically extracting data from Access files into whatever other DB I felt like 15 years ago using simple C or VB.

European Patent Office dragged to human rights court – by its own staff

Vive la republic.

sans text

Rich professionals could be replaced by AI, shrieks Gartner

If AI can do the things that are asked of it

then management will be exposed for what it is.

They will never allow that to happen once they work this out.

Michael Dell? More like Michael in-Dell-nial: No public cloud, no future

Theres no money in the cloud for Dell.

It's not like they can make any money from it - so long as your PC or Laptop can see the cloud there is no need to upgrade. Its not like MS who can update their cloud so you need a new OS to access it.

'Crazy bad' bug in Microsoft's Windows malware scanner can be used to install malware

Re: Use Windows 10 for the best protection

Sting vest condom - lightly ribbed for greater pain.

User loses half of a CD-ROM in his boss's PC

Re: Dying out

I look forward to hi fi buffs re-booting CD music in the not too distant future. I wonder if I can get some green felt tip pens...

Re: Paper yes...

I still think one of the best abuses of equipment was my daughters primary school headmaster who, while the class were working quietly on something, proceeded to laminate various items. These include plastic knifes and forks, badge collections and other small items and only broke the classes concentration when he failed with a cup cake or muffin. It was hard to tell afterwards.

Industrial plant robots frequently connected to the 'net without authentication

Squaring the circle.

So you buy a robot so you dont have to pay for someone's wages only to discover to run it securely you have to employ someone who will be as expensive as the staff you have replaced!

We live in a post capitalist world because the capitalists have got all the money but refuse to invest in the post that holds their world up.

Fortran greybeards: Get your walking frames and shuffle over to NASA

Re: "The code's in Fortran – Modern Fortran, to be exact."

I'd guess its more likely that someone with a lot of experience might just be able to spot where in the program accurate speedups can be obtained - modern fortran isn't slower its just easier to do more generic things so people do that rather than partition things properly. A lot of 3d problems can be mostly solved in 8 bit but only a few bits need to be calculated in 64bit and working out which is which can give you an order of magnitude speedup but leave people gibbering at the code cos that's not how it was done in college.

RE;The notorious (in the UK at least)

The storm was predicted - it was just not predicted as a hurricane which it wasnt but the press didnt give a fuck about that, I lost some of my roof, cried because I didnt park my car under that tree I knew would come down in a storm. The best bit was walking back from the pub at 2 in the morning into the tooth of the gale and almost being able to touch the pavement standing up!

Gig economy tech giants are 'free riding' on the welfare state, say MPs

Re: Time for a turnover limit on IR35?

"If you are billing over £100k a year you probably don't need protection from modern day slavery." I'd imagine there will be people billing over that but after overheads will taking home less than the living wage it their 'employers' can work out ways of loaning them the money for cars, being off sick for a day etc etc.

'I feel violated': Engineer who pointed out traffic signals flaw fined for 'unlicensed engineering'

Re: Any certified Oregon Engineers out there?

Dont worry - Trump will probably realise that those doing the chartering are in fact running a union and build a wall round them, If he can get someone qualified to build a wall. They'd need to be chartered by a union too..

Apple fanbois are officially sheeple. Yes, you heard. Deal with it

Re: More Apple ClickBait

Well the sheeple rise to the bait with surprising consistency. Its almost not worth fishing as a sport anymore,

BOFH: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back

Re: Luckily ...

Pants? You keep screenwipes near your home workstation?

Waiter? There's a mouse in my motherboard and this server is greasy!

Re: I'm not surprised in the slightest

Nothing wrong with a bout of food poisoning - boosts the immune system and works out cheaper than weight watchers.

UK.gov throws hissy fit after Twitter chokes off snoop firm's access

Re Mr. Python

But the pebbles were used as hygrometers in the sketch. Here they are used as brains.

TVs are now tablet computers without a touchscreen

Re: Don't worry. dumb flatscreen.

Na - used to have trinitron and the flatscreens dont seem to be anywhere near as good. I'd keep the sony until it stops being better which could be a few years yet.

IT error at Great Western Railway charging £10k for 63-mile journey ticket

Are they reducing prices in case the election goes 'wrong'?

It costs a lot to get in a replacement bus for a non-existent service.

(You can't) buy one now! The flying car makes its perennial return

Re: 3 wheeler

I think the major worry is this will be bought by BMW driver types and the skies will be full of aeroplanes with their wings knocked off from banking too fast to avoid some dick who has overshot his destination.

systemd-free Devuan Linux hits version 1.0.0

Re: Honest inquiry

Ten years and more ago booting a machine faster was a useful thing. But even a raspberryPi zero is up and running without systemd by the time you've hung your jacket on the back of the chair and cleared the shit off your desk.

There is no problem for systemd to solve anymore.

Microsoft touts SQL Server 2017 as 'first RDBMS with built-in AI'

Re: Ha Ha

AI in this case is a neologism for back door - Arse Inspection.

Zuckerberg's absolutely mental: Brain sensors that read YOUR MIND at 100 words a minute

Impedance missmatch.

Shakespeare wrote good stuff cos it was hard for him to get it onto paper and gave him time and the need to think about what he was writing.

Today it is a lot easier to put your thoughts on paper and we get the sun and the mail as you can write shit without thinking,

If your thoughts come out without thinking I really dread to think how seriously low the usable data rate will be.

30,000 London gun owners hit by Met Police 'data breach'

Re: If any crims want to know if someone has a firearm in your area...

Having had to break into a friends gun cabinet once this is a bit worrying - it only took 3 minutes or so.

Will the MOAB (Mother Of all AdBlockers) finally kill advertising?

Re: WRONG

I knocked up a website for a company I worked for - 30,000 customers and 300,000 products. Three months work and customers could see all their orders and order items etc. This was early in the interwebly and it was only when someone though they were going to lose commission did sales get involved. Ended up with a dozen people working on how to stop the customers doing what they wanted - repeat orders that they had been doing for decades in some cases - to pushing shit they would never want and in many cases weren't allowed to buy!

Last I heard they were employing half of India to re-do the coding the other half of India had screwed up.

I havent got the bandwidth yet

but I was hoping someone would just blank all adverts out and intercept any javascript calls to 'visible' so the advertisers have no clue if we are seeing their shit or not. Its my browser - fuck your business model.

Until I get the bandwidth I shall just block that shit and go elsewhere if necessary.

Fixing your oven can cook your computer

Re: Firewall

We have a washing machine on its third motherboard and god knows how many other bits that have been replaced as the motherboards said they were FUBAR.

I think the problem here is the desire to make things more complicated than they are prepared to pay to actually have maintained. I do not see this changing and I think its safe to say any IoT device should be de'I'ed with extreme prejudice unless its open sourced.

Oh snap! UK Prime Minister Theresa May calls June election

Wow - so all those dossiers the CPC got were going to lead to convictions?

Just a thought.

Alert: Using a web ad blocker may identify you – to advertisers

Sorted.

Just ritted an extension to randomly load and delete fonts!

Re: Corner shop

I'd charge him a fiver just for soiling my lino.

'Tech troll' sues EFF to silence 'Stupid Patent of the Month' blog. Now the EFF sues back

RE Should someone point out to the EFF that the US constitution for free speech ...

I think you missed the bit where companies in the US are treated as individuals in that they are allowed to interfere in elections and other things that any sensible democracy would have rejected as abhorrent.

Re: @hrearden360

Give em a break - we can all learn from our mistakes, I know shitloads but this one has the opportunity to catch up fast!

Burger King's 'OK Google' sad ad saga somehow gets worse

Re: Talking about fast food

Because glucose-fructose syrup. It has the ability to make shit taste nice and make you hungry as well. You could as well ask - why milk chocolate when dark chocolate, Even my youngest daughter is stopped in her tracks by two or three squares of dark chocolate but will eat a whole lorry load of milk chocolate if we dont stop her. Fortunately our nearest BK or MD is 20 miles away and she cant be arsed to cycle,

No more IP addresses for countries that shut down internet access

Censoring is bad

if you censor people we will censor you - and the people you want to censor obviously.

Half-baked security: Hackers can hijack your smart Aga oven 'with a text message'

Re: True Sloane Range-r

I think one of the thing people dont seem to realise about the permanently on aga is it is nowhere near as inefficient as people make out. If its properly looked after (the internal insulation needs checking every few years or so) it will just sit quietly in the corner keeping your house warm. Not hot - with an aga you can get by with it several degrees cooler as one its up and running and temperatures are stable you dont have the cold wall heat sinks that you get with a normal on-off heating system so it actually feels warmer than it is. We have ours on nearly half the year over winter and it provides us with heating, hot water and cooking over the coldest part of the year for pretty much the same oil use as our high-efficiency boiler provides hot water and add-lib heating the rest of the year.

Re: Incredibly inefficient - not

We have a similar age aga that runs on oil and it sits there for maybe half the year heating the house and water. Its never turned off or down over the 'winter' period. I dare say you can get something a bit more efficient but no-where near as nice. And the food that comes out of it is extraordinary and modern 'smart' agas dont come close. It has two ovens and you can put a chicken carcass for stock in the 'cool' oven and take it out three days later and the stock is unbelievable. I have looked into the idea of seeing if it can be converted to rape seed but Aga are so up their own arses these days I'm not going to make their fortune for them.

Prisoners built two PCs from parts, hid them in ceiling, connected to the state's network and did cybershenanigans

The raspberryPi zero is going to bugger things up

if you'll excuse the image.

As you stare at the dead British Airways website, remember the hundreds of tech staff it laid off

Re: I realise it's simplistic but....

And what on earth makes you think they would actually pay for the staff they need?

An echo chamber full of fake news? Blame Google and Facebook, says Murdoch chief

I can only assume Murdoch is complaining because Google and Facebook

are linking to his rags in their news feeds.

Ex-IBMer sues Google for $10bn – after his web ad for 'divine honey cancer cure' was pulled

Re: An interesting paper...

Using Voltaren as a price guide for other quack medicine is a bit rich. A simple understanding of the circulatory system would show that an emulgel is a fucking rip off to start with. My doctor recommended some once and I asked her how it was meant to work and after two seconds thought she realised it was just woo that contained a tried and tested drug with an improbable delivery mechanism.

BOFH: Defenestration, a solution to Solutions To Problems We Don't Have

Re: Seven pints

Not challenge as such. More bias-confirmation research. Top drawer research too!

Aviation regulator flies in face of UK.gov ban, says electronics should be stowed in cabin. Duh

Re: Please discharge battery before entering the aircraft.

There are two billion passenger flights a year. Coming in 2 hours early equates to over 6000 lifetimes wasted every year in 'security'. We effectively kill more people every year in airports than have ever died in air terror related incidents.

We know what you're thinking: Where the hell is all the antimatter?

Re: The little man who wasn't there

They have - they have shit loads of men who aren't there so they can miss most of the things that dont happen and still have a good chance of seeing it.

Re: IANAS Boring? Never

My first proper job after big school was chip designing. Running automated checks on the computers that were around then used to take several days. Several days spent researching things related to work that may or may nor help in my job. Never a must-see supernatural event but the flashes of recognition of other peoples brilliance were fireworks enough for me. Admittedly working with people at the pinnacle of any 'discipline' can give you imposter syndrome but if you cant get a buzz out of learning you should move into management and abuse people instead.

Revealed: Blueprints to Google's AI FPU aka the Tensor Processing Unit

So about par with the (soon I hope) new Parrallella chip.

Ish . Possibly. Who knows - it should be back from fab soon?

Riddle of cannibal black hole pairs solved ... nearly: Astroboffins explain all to El Reg

re first star to collapse into

No - the gravitational field outside the event horizon does not change when a black hole forms. If fact you cant actually tell when a black hole forms - its normally associated with some form of supernova event and we assume a black hole has formed but - what with it being out of our purview and all that - we just have to assume there is one there.

Teenagers think Doritos are cooler than Apple

Re: Teenagers think Google is cool...

Its not like they're going to have any money to prised from their digits though.

Boeing details 'Deep Space Gateway' for Mars mission staging

Lunar mining?

Not worth it. Scraping might be good if you can find where a meteorite rich in something you want landed. But without lots of geothermal activity and water flow to concentrate certain minerals you'll find the moon is made mostly of moon rock and not anything useful.