Posts by Steve X

DEC founder Ken Olsen is dead

Sad day indeed

Like so many other commentators here I remember my first VAX. I was an undergrad who'd been playing with the Uni's ICL kit, and was asked if I'd like to try their new computer. Turned out to be a VAX 11/780 which they were still learning about, they wanted some "real" users but didn't want a postgrad losing all his PhD work! That led to work with VAXen, realtime PDP's, and the rest. Eventually after 10 years I went to the dark side and joined Sun but, even 20 years on, Solaris still isn't as good an OS as VMS was. In the light of our recent acquisition by Oracle I can sympathise even more with the ex-DEC folks. They were great people to work with, especially in the field service and training organizations. The less said about DEC marketing the better, though. Who was it said that buying a computer from DEC was like getting a divorce; you had to prove you really wanted it?

In the days of "commodity computing" I doubt we'll see the likes of Ken again, snake oil or not. I must go home and see if my PDP-11/73 will still boot. Ah, nostalgia...

Superphones: A security nightmare waiting to happen

Superphone?

That definition of a superphone is really just a portable computer that can be used to make phone calls.

So, use a computer for computing, and a phone for phoning. You can upgrade one without changing the other, your phone battery lasts longer, you don't need to cart a kilo of computing power around when you're just popping out to the shops.

Very true

I have systems that I don't even *reboot* once a year, never mind reinstall.

iPhone crashes car stereos, Toyota warns

Input screening

No matter what crap an iPhone might send, if the Toyota stuff crashes, it's a bug in the Toyota stuff. They're clearly not doing proper input validation.

In defence of Comic Sans

"Font's do matter"

So do apostrophes. More than fonts, I'd say.

Ten... wireless keyboards

Numbers?

My fingers still have EDT keypad editing commands ingrained in them.

So, fortunately, does my customized emacs...

Malawi poised to outlaw farting

Not quite

The Tories would install a fart tax meter and bill you on the methane content, although you'll be able to sign up for EU fart credits which you can write off against income tax. Labour would set targets for farts, you'll be fined if you don't fart enough, and get ASBOs (Arse-Supplied Body Odour) for excessively smelly farts. The LibDems will insist that everyone be free to fart, but encourage you to choose your diet to be fart friendly, and will end up agreeing to install fart meters provided the tax is on a sliding scale linked to smell. The DUP will ban farting on Sundays, and Sinn Fein will expect everyone to light their farts in the presence of legitimate targets. The BNP will deport any immigrant caught farting in public.

O2's free Wi-Fi in detail: How free is free exactly?

Just use a real OS

# ifconfig bge0 ether XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

Job done.

Antique Nimrod subhunters scrapped – THANK GOODNESS!

That one's easy

Give the daft pedalling buggers a free SatNav. They'll run aground on the Isle of Wight, having put in EuroDisney by mistake.

US cyberwar firing range to demo by July

Realistic software replicant users?

But will they give up their passwords in exchange for chocolate?

O2 to fling out free Wi-Fi for all

One-off registration?

If so, what's to stop me buying the cheapest PAYG mobile, signing up for this WiFi service with my laptop, then dumping the phone in the nearest phone recycling point? Will I be able to use WiFi forever while the SPAM MMS heads for some network black hole? Sounds like a good deal to me.

Couple crash into church, curse satnav

That's what you get

when you blindly follow orders "from above"

China plans city 'twice the size of Wales'

Size of Wales

Does that include Anglesey, and does it take into account coastal erosion?

Philips 21:9 Cinema 58in LED backlit TV

3D

http://xkcd.com/848/

Gates, Woz, and the last 2,000 years of computing

CHM

I've been to the museum several times, and will be back in a couple of weeks when I'm in

the Bay Area again. Highly recommended for all geeks/nerds, as is Bletchley Park

Big new wind turbines too close together, says top boffin

Use vertical-axis blades

Which IIRC fit better with offshore than onshore farms anyway.

Raygun dreadnought project reports 'remarkable breakthrough'

missile fuel

Drive your hypersonic missile with a Bussard ramjet. The more ions you pour into the scoop from the FEL, the faster the missile will travel. As for targeting, it can just zero in on the free food...

Who are the biggest electric car liars - the BBC, or Tesla Motors?

roadrail

Is still possible in France, but so illogically set up that it's pointless.

If you want to go from S. France to the channel, you drop your car at the station in, say, Nice, and ride a fast comfy TGV north. A few hours later you're at Calais.

Meanwhile your car sits in a lot waiting for the car train, which trundles up at freight train speeds, and gets to Calais two or three days later...

Of course you pay for the car *and* full-price TGV tickets for each passenger. And the hotel while you wait for your car.

DUP website translated into Irish by mischievous hacktivist

Dafty Wee'uns

Now why does that make me think of the late, lamented, James Young? He'd have had fun with Ulster Scots...

Cable vendor slapped for unproven claims

Litz != multi-strand

Litz cables are multi-strand cables *with individually insulated strands*. Their skin effect is negligible even at RF .

Ordinary multistrand cables, where the strands are uninsulated and therefore conductively touching each other, behave electrically like solid cables. There's a factor of 0.9 or so due to the fact that the cables don't completely fill the occupied space, but any skin effect differences between solid and uninsulated multi-strand cables will be minimal.

As to the likelihood of skin effect making a difference at audio frequencies anyway, a 0.5mm skin depth means that a cable needs to be more than 1mm diameter before a 20kHz signal would be affected. That's roughly 18AWG, which has a resistance of about 0.02 Ohms/metre (and is rated at 13Amps). With cable like that, you'd need a very big living room to get any significant difference in frequency response due to skin effect, or one hell of a powerful sound system if you'd need thicker cables where 0.5mm skin depth would matter.

I'm fine with basic physics, but I stick with my downvote.

Missed opportunity

I've often thought that companies like EDF are missing a chance to make money here. If people are willing to spend £1000 on the last metre of cable from their wall socket, how much more would they pay for a fully-screened gold-plated oxygen-free directional litz-wound cable all the way to the local substation? Fuelled with green electricity as well.

PT Barnum underestimated things.

HDMImagination

"there is a clear and noticeable difference (picture wise) between those cheap HDMI cables that are supplied with some equipment and other cables from specialist brands, such as QED."

No, there isn't. There can't be. It's an error-corrected digital signal, it either gets there & gives you a 100% picture, or it doesn't get there and gives you no picture. Any differerence that you imagine you're seeing is entirely due to your subconscious desire to believe that you got something for whatever ridiculous amount of money you spent on it.

When one oligopoly screws another

Harvey Norman has stores this side of the pond(s) too

They opened some stores in Ireland (North & South) a while back. I remember looking in the Belfast one when it opened a couple of years ago, it struck me as an odd mix of MFI and Dixons.

Around that time (mid-2009) the Belfast Telegraph had an article which noted:

"Sales at Harvey Norman's Irish stores have slumped by between 20% and 40% and all of the outlets are unprofitable" but they still seem to be there...

If anyone cares to compare prices, you can try http://www.harveynorman.ie/ A quick check on one item, a PS3 250GB, shows it at 349euros, or around A$450, about half-way between US & Aus prices in the article's table.

Startup proposes cheap, printed NFC radio tags

N-mark

Nooooo. It's bad enough with ISPs saying that you need "n-enabled" equipment (meaning IEEE802.11n compatible) without more daft names like this.

N, it's the new X.

Google battles Derby cops over access to Street View data

Quite right too

Decisions about when to hand over private data to a state authority are rarely black & white, even though in this case it might seem obvious. Neither Google nor the police are trained to make such decisions (nor should they make them), which is exactly why the courts, and procedures like court orders, exist.

Spending public money to ensure that the public is safeguarded is not a waste, it's an investment, and it's sad that a Tory MP, of all people, can't see that.

Wireless HD video sticks demoed

point-to-point, or broadcast?

Does this just replace a single cable, or can one transmitting stick send to multiple receivers? If it is one-to-many then it could be useful when your video source doesn't have enough ports to feed multiple display devices., recorders, etc.

BT fibre-up-your-exchange poll in 6-way Mugabe style pileup

Race to infinity?

I suppose the small print says that this will be "*up to* infinity" ?

Microwaved hard disc, run-over PC and other data disasters

faraday cage

Doesn't need to be grounded. Grounding one changes the characteristics, but it will still shield its contents even if not grounded.

Removable disks

Might seem like an easy way to do backups. Dump data to disk pack, remove & store, job done.

Until the day one of our admins got her CLI switches confused, and dumped the blank pack onto the full one...

Call me old-fashioned, but I still miss having a write-protect switch on a disk drive.

Enormous 1km ice-cube machine fashioned at South Pole

Oxymoron?

Tautological, surely... :)

Yes, it exists. ISBN 1 86197 346-2

Highly recommended, and not just for grammar nazis.

yes they are

The Economist Style Guide, which is close to being the Bible on such issues, puts it very succinctly.

Data are plural.

UN defends human right to WikiLeaked info

not quite

The League of Nations was created *after* the Great War, in 1919. After 8m or so were lying dead in trenches.

Famous 'Silhouette' Flash illusion unravelled

doctor or a psychiatrist?

I'drecommend a barman.

Senior Guardian hacks turn on Assange

why US Military IT security isn't being put through the wringer?

Maybe it is, but now they've fixed the leak we'll never know...

but of course

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

Merry Christmas to you too!

Christmas shoppers hit by BT fire

Remember "SIDE" ?

Switch off

Isolate

Dump

Earth

i.e.after you pull switch and remove fuse, you short-circuit the cable you're about to work on to earth. If it goes bang you made a mistake, but at least you're alive to fix it.

(yes, I used to watch those 1960's trade test films...)

dual internet access

Looks like your CIO did things backwards, as usual when unskilled people try to setup disaster recovery. I've lost count of the number of times a customer relationship has started with the note "customer has bought XXX, and wants to know how to set it up to get maximum availability" :( As the old Irish joke has it:

"Can you tell me which way I should go to get to Dublin?"

"Oh, I wouldn't start from here."

Before even thinking about the solution you need to make the business case. Work out what can go wrong, what impact it might have, how likely it is, and how much money it will cost you when it does.

Then you can figure out if it's financially worthwhile to protect against, and what sort of solutions are worth considering. Just leaping in with "oh, two internet feeds must be better than one" isn't the way to start.

it seems that disaster recovery plans are very hard to get 100% right

They are indeed. That's why you test them. Lots. Preferably not the week before Christmas...

Duke of Edinburgh gives spintronics researchers a pile of cash

Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851

Isn't it just a little bit late to be getting around to this now?

Daily Express social network pwned by slew of smut

pregnant sluts masterbating

No doubt the good burghers of Tunbridge Wells will be writing in their droves to complain about the poor standards of spelling shown by the present generation of spammers.

No more books on Ireland's banned book list

<pedant>

4d is 1.67p, or just /under/ 2p </pedant>

> Any suggestions as the the banned film?

From Here To Eternity ?

Isn't it encouraging

that even in the land of philistine IT geeks, we can still get someone who can answer a question like that?

Assange lawyers fume over leaked rape case docs

Poor Julian

So they're worried because leaking the documents might "make Julian look bad".

Where's the ROTFL icon?

SGI forges overclocked servers for Wall Street

For every problem, there's an over-the-top solutiuon

They could have achieved this performance with lower temperatures just by going to PowerPC or SPARC chips. Is there some reason they're stuck with x86, or with SGI?

David Attenborough dino doc shows limits of 3D TV

stereoscopic, not 3D

This is exactly why "3D" as pitched today is just a gimmick. With a true 3d image of a fossil skeleton you'd be able to move around it, study it from different angles, really see how it fitted together. With Sky's 3D you just get a frozen stereoscopic view, like those old ViewMaster transparencies. It looks clever, for the first 10 seconds.

I'm holding out for the laser holo TV.

WikiLeaks.org resurrected in US of A

spoilt?

You could replace "US Govt" with "Julian Assange" and the point would be equally valid.

Windows 7 really was some girl's idea, rules ASA

comedic and ficticious manner

Sadly "in a comedic and ficticious manner" seems to apply to far too much of the Windows design. Indeed, my use of the word "design" there could be taken in that context...

Google Chrome OS mauled by Richard Stallman

and?

So, Stallman's just noticed that if you take something you own, and give it to someone else to look after, they might not be as careful with it as you would be? Especially if you've "signed" a weasel-worded "contract" that limits your rights? Wow, such insight.

I would have thought the security hierarchy was fairly obvious, something like:

Secured home PC = home wallsafe.

Online banking = bank safety deposit box.

Unsecured home PC = home cupboard.

Cloud = rented box in out-of-town warehouse.

All useful in their own way, but you wouldn't put your share certificates in the rented box (I hope).

Is Stallman having a slow year?

Article deleted

two stroke

I thought the big advantage of a two-stroke was that it would keep going in any position?

US Navy achieves '100 mile' hypersonic railgun test shot

Nope

Mach 5 (at sea level) is pretty much exactly one mile per second.