Posts by peter 5

Google mocks Steve Jobs with Chrome-Flash merger

@Flashing

Why have you started posting anonymously, amanfromMars?

Times websites want £1 a day from June

To add something constructive to the debate.

The pertinent question isn't how many of us won't pay to read The Times, but whether there are now enough people on the Internet who think £2/week is good value. (Think about your mum, your sister, your mad uncle.)

FWIW I occasionally do read it and I'd be prepare to put a fiver into an account and decrement it 1-2p *per*article*. But no more than that.

Apple director 'disgusted' by Jobsian health secrets

@Shareholder values

"but most companies that build up large reserves without good reason are doing the shareholders out of their dues."

I wish the bloody banks had had the decency to build up large reserves - then we wouldn't be facing cuts in public spending more savage than Thatcher imposed.

Trojan armed with hardware-based anti-piracy control

I can't believe nobody has said this...

...but clearly, there's no honour amongst thieves.

You won't find my coat: it's being beta tested by some completely respectable looking Russian business men.

New use found for 'world's most useful tree'

@Richard padley1 (And the reply button in still invisible in Opera 10.5)

From your link: "The water itself cannot be too dirty in the first place - if it is too cloudy it might resist the sun’s rays." Which is the condition the Moringa seeds deal with; to wit: "When the solution is added to turbid, dirty water it causes the suspended gunge to rapidly stick together into bigger flecks and so sink rapidly."

Oh and plastic bottles don't grow on trees, you know.

Opera 10.50 goes from pre-alpha to final in 10 weeks

It's not rendering the "Reply"/"Report" buttons on these pages....

Which, frankly, is an improvement. But I also lost the caret when the title box scrolled. And I've seen it mixing up background colours on other sites.

So while I love the speed and the (long overdue) progressive search so much that I'm not gonna rollback, I will be telling other people to hold off till 10.51

P.S. We need a 50/50 "horizontal thumb" icon.

Forget SETI, this is how you find aliens: Hefty prof speaks

@Graham Bartlett

It's called "Victory Unintentional" by Isaac Asimov.

iPhone: The OS with big aspirations

@You're sure right?

Here, let me fix your comment:

"But how do you know your [Mac/iPhone is virus free]? The best viruses are invisible (if you don't know they are there, you won't remove them). Virus-free [Mac/iPhones] are a lot rarer than you'd think, where do you think all the spam comes from? Unless the virus writer is "doing it wrong" you might never know."

@see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/23/smartphone_rootkits_demoed/

@see Boot on other foot.

What do you call the iPad in Arabic?

My chance to use the "Grammar Nazi" icon.

Loanwords are foreign words embedded in a language with only the spelling and/or pronunciation adjusted, like, say, bungalow. But none of the fruit you cite come directly from the Arabic. Apricot and lime are--at a stretch--loaned, loan words, but orange has a far richer etymology, and the pedant in me wouldn't describe any of them as loanwords, except for the purpose of snappy journalism--

Oh, I see. Carry on as you were...

Windows 8 possible July 2011 release?

@Daniel Evans

One of the reasons for switching to 64-bit is that the x86 has twice as many registers available in 64-bit mode, and Windows passes a couple of arguments in register, so things run a good deal faster.

Oh, and I remember finishing the upgrade from 16-bit to 32-bit and thinking "2Gig of addressable memory - we've never gonna exhaust that."

Verified by Visa bitchslapped by Cambridge researchers

My CVV is ultra-secure...

The CVV number on my debit-card has worn off. Fortunately I can remember it. But I still can't remember my VbV password.

Can the iSlate kill off Web 2.0?

It will still be capable of input...

I like the argument. But it will still be an input device: there'll be a virtual keyboard or it will be capable of handwriting recognition. So while the temptation to input might be diminished, it will still be there. And iff it does voice recognition, then the temptation to yell a comment will increase ten-fold...

(There are no comments as I type this. So apologies if I'm the ten-zillionth person to note this.)

UK mobile networks line up to bash net snooping plan

This feels like...

This feels like a T-rex sparring with a saber-tooth tiger: you know whichever one wins, they'll come after you next. But it's still nice to watch them tear each other to shreds, for a change.

Who owns science? Manchester Manifesto can't answer

A house built on sand.

I'm with the AC @ 16:42 GMT, at least for the first four paragraphs. The best programmers program for the thrill, the glory, and the money - in that order. Ditto most of the scientists I've known. You don't need to pay us to innovate: just make sure we have a roof over our head and a well stocked wine cellar. That's why we only get 3% of the wealth. We don't need to be encouraged; but barriers discourage us.

Tech-savvy UK kids = (over)confident writers

Not all homework involes writing.

It's been a couple of decades since I was in school, and even then most of my essay writing was done in class under "controlled conditions." It was solving quadratic equations and trig that took up the hours and hours and hours of fscking homework.

NASA hands over $900K for Laser propulsion system

@JeffyPooh

The cable isn't a uniform thickness. In order to support its own weight it starts thin at the ground and increases in thickness as it approaches the satellite.

Missing dot sends Sweden tumbling off internet

DNS trailing dot (FYI)

For those who've not set up a domain - it's a relative path. So writing "somewhere.se" (no trailing dot) when you meant "somewhere.se." (trailing dot) is like writing "root" instead of "/root" or "Windows" instead of "C:\Windows": the paths are potentially valid but unlikely to be what you intended.

ID card support hits bottom under Brown

@stef 4

43 million unemployed? By my calculation that's the whole country out of work. Everybody else being retired, in full time education, or wearing nappies. :-P

Hands off our boffins!

Wasn't the second page shamelessly playing to your audience?

If so, it worked.

Microsoft Live Messenger in worldwide hiccup

@Mighty Error Code Number !

While I agree with the sentiment, only the low 16 bits are used for the error code. The high 16 bits are used to identify the source and provide other classification info:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms819773.aspx

So if it's a genuine windows error, it's code 0x1D (29).

Undead COBOL celebrates (another) 50th birthday

@Daniel4 Re: Java

In the late eighties I seem to recall hearing similar arguments about C programmers who hadn't spend several years coding assembler...

Men far worse than women on password security

@Allow me to post the following copypasta replies:: #

"Even if a single password is used, it being something like 'EF8EWfw__42*k' makes it more secure than having one site as 'password', one site as 'secret', one as 'login', etc."

Not if the website doesn't encrypt your password (i.e. any site which can email it to you when you forget it).

The multicore future, and how to survive it

Intestesting, but..

A proprietary extension to C when I have to write cross-platform code? Go away. If it was a C/C++ API then it might be usable.

SpinVox: The Inside Story

Sarky comment #1

From Julie Meyer's blog:

"Spinvox is a turbo-charged, over-the-top success story of which the UK should be enormously proud."

A company from the Alan Stanford league of "over-the-top successes", it would seem.

Royalties deal lets internet radio play on

@kindaian

"un-copyrighted music" ?!

"UN-COPYRIGHTED MUSIC" ?! ?! ?! ?!

You anti-capitalist, Commie-loving, pinko liberal scum. All music should be copyrighted. And any that's not merely represents a temporary failure of congress to properly extend retrospective copyright.

I mean, the latest medical technologies will ensure Cliff Richard can live into his 150s, and he still wants to be able to live off his royalties then. :-P

NASA takes stick over feet and inches

@Graham Bartlett

The problems were indeed discovered in testing. It crashed. On Mars. But no doubt they'll add a test case for that eventuality and fire it up again...

Actually my current project does what you say: it flips between radians (for obvious reasons) and degrees (because the multi-page formula are all in degrees) storing an index into a conversion table for each value. The system proved so convenient I used it for distances, flipping between Parsecs, AU and Metres. So if people really wanted miles, it wouldn't be hard to extend.

Branson breaks ground on US rocketplane spaceport

No, actually this is a good thing...

I've spent my life being snarky about manned space flight, but this is genuinely good news. The bearded tycoon is not gonna stop with suborbital flights. And the fact that their are dumb rich folks stupid enough to throw cash at this "experience" means the industry will grow to a point where it is possible to spend a weekend at L1 or L4. (Now I all I gotta do is figure out how to earn enough cash to be able to afford it...)

Sweden: IP numbers are personal...unless you're a pirate

I'd like to have see a bit more analysis...

Web servers routinely produces logs full of IP-addresses. So what does exactly does this mean? Is it as farcical as it sounds?

F1 waves goodbye to KERS

@Mike 35

So, does a flywheel store energy? Or is that potential energy? What about electrons caught in superconducting “cable”?

Or suppose I’m watching a proton whiz here from the sun. My friend, who is travelling alongside the proton, matching its speed, says it has *no* (kinetic) energy. But I think it has a truck load of MeV. Which of us is right?

Site news: Unique commenter handles coming

Ability to delete comments would be a plus.

There's one mad rant I'd like to delete, if I'm no longer able to claim it as the outpouring of another "peter".