Posts by Steve X

ANONYMOUS: Behind the mask, inside the Hivemind

old idea?

"This is a reincarnation of an old idea ...From slaves fighting for freedom or the fragmentation of religions to "no taxation without representation", there have always been people willing to agitate, gather en masse, and even die for the right to speak their piece."

And what has distinguished those people is that they were NOT anonymous. From anti-slavery campaigners, to Tianemen Square and after, the courage of the protesters can be seen because _we know their names_.

Anonymity is the cowardly shield of the balaclava-clad yobs thowing petrol bombs, versus the visible, sometimes uniformed, courage of those who stand up to them.

Facebook snuffs Chrome extension for uncaging 'friends' data

Google+

http://www.xkcd.com/918/

Do we really want 100Gig Ethernet?

Youngsters?

Huh. I'll see your 300-baud accoustic coupler and raise you an ASR33 with tape reader (paper tape, that is). On George III.

co-ax wasn't so bad

Until some b*stard dropped some 93 ohm Arcnet co-ax into the bin for the 50-ohm Ethernet. Boy did that take a while to find. Everything worked just fine until you hit some threshold, then collisions went through the roof & the network dropped to 1200bit/s.

This was mid-80's, not even into the 90's. When you could statmux 4 TTY connections on a 9600 bit/s private wire & think you were getting something good...

Where's the "I'm feeling old" icon?

German chemical giant depending on biscuit-based security

Earthed faraday cages

It's a common misconception, but there is absolutely no need to earth a faraday cage to make it work. Earthing a cage can help to bleed off any charge which builds on the external surface, perhaps for safety reasons, but earthed or not it will still act equally well as a screen to prevent charge on the outside getting inside, or vice-versa.

Arkeia bigs up sliding windows dedupe

Let me see if I understand this

They not only want people to backup to a potentially unreliable medium, they think that ensuring that there's only one copy of each piece of backed-up data on that medium is a selling point?

I'll pass, thanks. If I backup anything to a cloud I want as many copies, in as many places, as I can comfortably and securely manage.

Cambridge gets a white (space) wash

won't work

The problem is that simply because you can't hear signals on a given frequency doesn't mean that you can use it without problems.

One such situation is the 'hidden transmitter" problem. Consider a transmitter "A" on one side of a hill, being received by someone on top of that hill, or off to one side of the hill. At a site "B" on the opposite side of the hill the frequency will seem to be clear, since the hill blocks the signal from "A", but anyone broadcasting on that frequency from site "B" will interfere with the signal being received from site A, since the receiver can 'see' both transmitters.

It is less of a problem for Bluetooth because it's very short range.

Refusal to unveil scuppers French refusal-to-unveil trial

Trousers

Amusingly enough, there is a never-repealed law dating from the French revolution which does indeed forbid women from wearing trousers in public, unless they are holding the handlebars of a bicycle.

What makes it especially fun is that trousers are a required part of a gendarme's uniform, even for women...

Re: Burqa?

> I thought they banned the niqab, the face-veil?

AFAIK the way the law is phrased is to forbid anyone (male or female) from covering their face in a public place in such a way that they are unidentifable. It includes scarves, helmets and balaclavas. There is no specific mention of any cultural or religious item like a burqa or niqab.

BOFH: CSI Haxploitation Cube Farm Apocalypse

oh noes

Get some pliers and cut the network cable to your boss's computer immediately, before you get blamed. It isn't enough to unplug it, that could let the virus leak from the unprotected socket. Then wrap your own computer in earthed aluminium foil, and call the IT department.

Brit CompSci student faces extradition to US over link site

he's an idiot anyway

According to the story I saw on this today, his first site with a .net domain was closed on the orders of the law because of copyright issues, so he opened it again with a .cc domain. Prat.

Leaving aside the one-sided extradition law, which is indeed ridiculous, this guy certainly can't claim he didn't know it was wrong. He certainly merits a trial, although it should be in the UK.

NHS trust issues nurse jub flash alert

is crap from the 80's cool again?

What do you mean "again" ?

Peugeot 508 Active e-HDI micro-hybrid

MPG

"64.2mpg is excellent from a large saloon car, and makes you wonder what all this hybrid fuss is about!"

I assume that's what they get on the (wholly artificial) EU "cycle" that manufacturers have to tune for these days to get lowst CO2 figures.

My money's on more like 45-50 in real driving, less when the car is fully loaded.

BT to embrace IPTV as it upgrades broadband network to multicast

Multicast

About time too, but why don't they do it properly & go for IPv6 as well?

Nokia: regular WinPho handset releases through 2012

A new model every two months?

So they'll get even less testing than the current range of unreliable Nokia tat? They really do have a death wish...

Danish embassy issues MARMITE WAFFLE

Cold Dead Hands?

I *told* you that stuff wasn't good for you.

Apple seeks anti-snoop display patent

innovation

> So they patent all conceivable solutions to a problem.

No, they patent all the solutions that *they* have conceived.

Innovation comes, as always, from someone looking at their ideas and saying "Neat, but *I* can do it better like this".

Patents

> Isn't it the case that a patent application requires the existence of a working model or process?

Nope. You patent the detailed design, not the implementation. No need to even build a prototype, although it might be better if you did have to.

If the design is too general they aren't supposed to grant the patent, and even if they do it's usually easy to challenge.

Microsoft replaces Xbox 360s after disc-format switch

How many GB or DRM?!

It's a far cry from the days when punching an extra hole in a floppy was sufficient...

GCHQ man: Powerline networks do interfere with radio

Nobody cares about your services...

> Deal with wireless router channel saturation, video senders and badly shielded microwaves

Those all operate in the ISM band, which is unlicensed and has no guaranteed level of service. If quality of service matters to you, get your AmEx card out and buy a license for some spectrum where you can reasonably expect QoS. Then you can complain. Like the beardie weirdies you are so dismissive of do.

Otherwise you're just a whinging freetard cheapskate who's getting exactly the level of service you're paying for. Anything above zero is a bonus.

Netgear XAV5001 500Mb/s powerline Ethernet adaptor

all subjective?

No, not subjective at all. It is objective and measurable. A lot of power line kit violates the standards it is required to respect, and Ofcon are doing Sweet FA about it.

Microwave ovens operate at a specific frequency, and the unlicensed ISM band that they could interfere with was created precisely because the interference from ovens could render it useless. It therefore isn't saleable spectrum.

If people pay for the use of certain parts of the RF spectrum, they are entitled to expect other users not to interfere with that use. What's so subjective about that?

Up to $650 for a .xxx domain - or to keep your name off one

Beer?

So, are we going to see an Australian brewery buying x.xxx ?

In-app payment patent scattergun fired at small devs

Not really

Isn't that a bit like claiming that laws against theft are stupid, because they prevent you having a Mercedes like your neighbour?

The problem here isn't the patents, but but the patent office inspectors who grant them without properly understanding the issues. And perhaps the law that allows patents to be sold, instead of just licensed.

BOFH: Every silver lining has a cloud

hole punch & 100w soldering iron

Brought tears to my eyes, that did.

And coffee to my keyboard.

Australia cuts solar subsidies, and not before time

Confused?

I'd be more than surprised if people that do home wiring installation for a living have even heard of the IEE/IET, never mind belong to it. They are more likely to have technical qualifications (HND/HNC/C&G-type) than to have the degree-level qualifications and years of experience needed to become an IET member.

I think you're confusing need for compliance with the IET wiring regs, with the need to have "Part P" building regs certification.

I do agree, though, that the insistence on all installers being certified under Part P has merely increased the number of cowboys around. It puts up the cost of work done by those who are qualified and encourages the cowboys (who know that householders won't check) to undercut them. Maybe they throught it could work like the "CORGI" gas scheme, if so it was woefully-badly implemented.

HP's beloved 12c calculator turns 30

RPN

I still have a working Sinclair Scientific, built from a kit around 1975(?). It's RPN as well. I remember trying to show school teachers how to use it. Fun times...

Facebook fails webmail tests

Modern?

The "modern internet email we're all used to" dates from 1982, with RFC821, but UUCP goes back many years before that. Single-system email really only dates from perhaps the mid-60's, so the email that we know today has been around for about 75% of the lifetime of the concept. That's hardly "fairly new" in my book. I can remember sending network emails via DECnet/X.25/IP in the early 80s, and it wasn't an especially new concept then. I seem to remember that HRH QE2 sent her first email back in the 1970s.

Hacker pwns police cruiser and lives to tell tale

Labels

True. I used to work in a company which had a large internal library. We couldn't buy "books", they had to be acquired on internal loan from the library (which was at the other end of the country). We could buy all the "manuals" we liked with just a simple purchase order, though...

Sony brings Skype to Bravia HD TVs

Indeed

Double plus ungood ?

Boffins pull plug on SETI alien-seeking antenna array

Spectrum scarcity

Alien Ofcom, now there *is* a scary thought... but like any quango it would never allow its reason for existence to disappear, so we can be sure that aliens will be using radio for centuries. They might even still be on DAB++++

Hubble celebrates 21st with gorgeous galactic 'rose' snap

It's not rural Poland

But I do have the good fortune to live in open countryside where lights are few and far between. There are nights that I stop to get the post at the end of the lane and the Milky Way is truly stunning. Then some swine drives by on full beam, and it takes ages to get my night vision back!

well then

by that reckoning Sundays should be a lot longer...

Amazing

How can anyone *not* want to fund research and experiments that just might, someday, allow our descendants to get out there and see things like that first hand?

Some politicians should be ashamed of themselves.

So, what's the best sci-fi film never made?

Bujold?

No-one's mentioned Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan" series yet? Don't tell me it's already been made into a film?!!

IP registry goes to Defcon 1 as IPv4 doomsday nears

You think IPv6 is the cure?

http://www.xkcd.com/865/

Dixons' best chance? Quit the UK and move to Sweden

move to Sweden

What have the poor Swedes done to deserve that?

Perhaps an alternative would be for Dixons to hire store staff who are sufficiently competent that people choose to go to them for overall value, rather than buying on line just because it's cheaper?

Oh look, bacon on the wing...

Nissan Leaf electric car

Most journeys fall under 100miles

Which is not at all the same thing as saying that most cars are used exclusively for short journeys.

My daily commute is ~ 30 miles, but every month or so I do a 200-mile airport trip, and a couple of times a year I do 1000mile+ trips. If I had a car with a 100mile range, I'd need to buy a second one just for the long journeys, which would be both uneconomical and environmentally wasteful.

Ah! I hear the cries, just rent one when I need it. Not viable; most of those longer journeys are at weekends or holiday times, when everyone will want to hire long-distance cars. The only way to meet demand would be for the rental companies to keep huge fleets that lay idle most of the time, which would be both uneconomical and environmentally wasteful.

What about trains/planes? Drive my short-range car to the station, train to near my destination, rent a short-range car when I get there? Fails again, since it:

a) assumes I have a point-to-point journey to a single destination

b) costs a lot more

c) means I can only take luggage or other items that fit on a train/plane

d) all the other inconveniences like not having my choice of music, temperature, company, or the option to stop at interesting places on the way past, etc.

Short range electrics are really only useful as second cars, in households that can afford a main large car. These are unlikely to be the households that the taxpayer should be subsidsing with 5 grand off the electric runabout.

And don't forget that plug-in EVs are only cheaper because you're not paying the duty and tax on road fuel, the power they use is still probably coming from oil or gas in the first place. As soon as the fuel tax income drops significantly, the government will simply raise the same money from motorists in other ways, by road charging, or an annual electric car fee, or...

A fifth of Europeans can't work out how much a TV costs

1960's mental arithmetic

And that was in pounds, shillings and pence, when calculating a discount meant more than just moving a decimal point.

How many of "today's yoof" would even know where to begin calculating 10% discount off £3 7s 5¼d in their head?

Grammar

"majority" is a singular noun.

Wind power: Even worse than you thought

wrong

When a piece of machinery (like a wind turbine) is quotes as, say, "2MW" that is it's *rated* capacity, i.e. the maximum continuous output already taking into account the safety factor.

Well maybe

it's because he's been right about Fukushima, and is right about wind power?

Swedish newlyweds enjoy lively honeymoon

Bet they're grateful

that they didn't run into Kate Adie as well...

MythBusters: Savage and Hyneman detonate truthiness

So...

If the religions with provable beliefs have been disproved, and only the ones who insist that non-provability is a fundamental tenet are left, doesn't this prove that natural selection and evolution must be at work?

Salt Lake City goes wallet-free with Isis

starbucks coffee?

It's thin, bitter and has hardly any flavour. It bears the same resemblance to coffee that Bud does to beer. Which is probably why Americans like it.

Surprisingly, though, Starbucks in the US does know how to make a decent cup of tea. Good tea (Tazo) and *boiling* water.

keep their secure element in the SIM

If the secure element is in the SIM and so managed by companies that aren't banks, and aren't subject to banking law, does that mean that in case of fraud the punter is unprotected? Does delegating this function to the SIM mean that said punter has also violated bank rules on keeping secret info secret, and so isn't protected by the bank either?

Sounds like a losing proposition for the user, to me.

McAfee recovers from Sesame Street email filter mix-up

off by one

Does that array index start at 0 or 1? Did they test it?

Bunch of muppets indeed.

Ofcom refuses to interfere on powerline networking interference

ofcom

a) Too much.

b) Sweet FA.

Steven Moffat promises 'darker' Doctor Who

Agreed

No matter what physical age the current 'body' might be, he's supposed to be 800+ years old. The relationships with the assistants should only be on paternalistic lines. They're all children to him, as are their families.

And, Please <insert Deity>, don't bring back Billy Piper or Catherine Tate again. Ever.

satellite signals

> nobody's figured out how to stop a satellite signal from crossing an arbitrary line drawn on a map

They're not far off, look at the Ka-band Irish Freesat proposal for details. Tiny spotbeams, with frequencies reused in each spot :(

Ofcom forced to publish tests on dodgy radio kit

Missing the point

"These devices have deep notches to prevent ingress and egress to and from the amateur bands - it's part of the specification"

True. The trouble is that the devices as defined DON'T MEET the specification, which is what the whole complaint to Ofcom is about. Ofcom is allowing non-compliant devices to be sold without taking action against the suppliers who are flouting the very rules that Ofcom is mandated to uphold. If the devices actually met the spec there would be much less of a problem.

The guy sacked from the RSGB was the general manager, so not specifically dedicated to the spectrum defence fund. Not good for them, though, in any event.