Posts by Turtle

Robot surgeons kill 144 patients, hurt 1,391, malfunction 8,061 times

Dr Careful Hands...

I don't know who decided on that picture but it was an inspired choice.

Reg top tip: Don't have the same name as someone else if you use Facebook's Instagram

@AndyS Re: Good parting advice

"The risk/reward analysis must be pretty complex. "

I wouldn't think so. The typical user represents an increment of income very close to, but not quite, zero. Any time and effort whatsoever that is spent on supporting the customer means that the customer instantly (see what I did there?) becomes, not an almost-negligible amount of net income, but a net expenditure.

Of course, that's probably only true for those companies that actually turn a profit. Few of them seem to do so. In that case, each customer would be assumed to represent a loss, pure and simple.

Interestingly, as I believe that Instagram, like all of these shitty social networks, runs in the red, it could well be the case that the more popular a user is, the greater an expense he represents.

Although the saying was coined long before the internet came into existence, there is no place where it is truer: "Sure we lose money on every sale, but we make it up in volume".

The US taxman thinks Microsoft owes billions. Prove it, says Microsoft

Re: Lets hope they ARE being gutted

"All citizens and businesses shall pay taxes as a percentage of gross income.The sole remaining deduction will be for Mortgage Interest."

There's someone with a mortgage payment!

Ashley Madison hack: Site for people who can't be trusted can't be trusted

@midcapwarrior Re: They deserve each other

"The hack may lead to a significant revenue increase. Expect and stampede to pay the fee to remove profiles."

Those would be the *really* stupid people, who think that purging their profiles will somehow remove them from the data that was already exfiltrated into the hands of the hackers.

But their money's good. And as we have all noted before, "idiots" are a vast and lucrative market.

@ I ain't Spartacus Re: Using words too lightly

"What an absolute fucking mess. It's a shame people don't look at security beforehand, when they're holding this kind of sensitive data.'

I've looked at "internet security". Here's what I concluded: It doesn't exist.

Windows 10 Edge: Standards kinda suck yet better than Chrome?

@AMBxx Re: It seems good, but...

"Not until AdBlock is available in some easy to maintain form (HOSTS file doesn't count)."

I am waiting for a NoScrpt workalike, myself. NoScript is the one reason and the only reason that I use FireFox.

Science sub spots lost Revolutionary-era SHIPWRECK

@Robert Helpmann?? Re: I was hoping...

Good for Jeff Cohen if he slimmed down! Childhood obesity is a big problem here in the USA, which has been severely exacerbated by the potentially-lethal nutritional advice - hopefully but not necessarily superseded by sane and not-potentially-lethal health advice - that having kids on a high-carbohydrate diet is good.

And I *have* heard of The Goonies - but only in the context of it being on a list of one of ten most disturbing children's movies ever made. I'd actually like to see it for exactly that reason.

I was hoping...

"Marine boffins spot 'undisturbed, well preserved' GHOST SHIP on deep sea floor"

I was hoping to see a picture of one of the ghosts and all I got was a picture of a fat kid on his way to childhood diabetes.

So sad.

GOOGLE GMAIL ATE MY LINUX: Gobbled email enrages Torvalds

Needs And Wants.

"I don't quite get how a thread I've replied in can get marked as spam, whilst 'I'm a 21 years old, so I desire 2bang you' gets an A-OK."

You know what you need, but Google knows what you want.

Google is everywhere, all the time! Google sees all, reads all, knows all!

Run Windows 10 on your existing PC you say, Microsoft? Hmmm.

Re: @codejunky Ha

"I would agree with you. The reason for keeping this clapped out thing working was the owner was an elderly relative and would not pay to replace the machine. I do wonder if it would have been a good idea for old XP machines being thrown away to be bought up and install linux for the older users. They dont care about powerhouses, they want something that works at low cost."

I think that that's actually a good idea.

@codejunky Re: Ha

"I managed to install Ubuntu 12 on a 1GHz celeron, 512mb ram old XP machine (when it became end of life) which took some time for the installer but was definitely usable"

That it is possible to extend the life of an obsolete computer that was underpowered when it was bought a decade ago is really not terribly important for very many people.

Neil Young yanks music from streaming services: 'Worst audio in history'

@1980s_coder Re: Bizarre And Inexplicable Opinion.

Considering Neil Young's age and the fact that human hearing acuity deteriorates with age, and considering that it is more than likely that he has abused his ears in the course of playing amplified music for decades, is it really likely that he is hearing anything that other people would hear?

The only explanation that occurs to me, is that he is comparing the music as he remembers it sounding in the recording studio as he played it, and is then comparing his recollection of the sound with what he hears through the medium of his highly-imperfect-due-to-deterioration (both through natural loss of acuity and through abuse) hearing.

"The problem is that once you've heard it once, you hear it every time..."

I'm familiar with the difference between the music being played in the room by the musicians as it was being recorded, and the audio files captured from the mikes. The only way to hear the original music the way the musicians heard it, is to be in the room with them when they are recording it. Once that music has been played in the room, that sound is gone forever and can't be recaptured.

The differences at between the original waveform as captured by the recorders (which is not identical to the sound that was in the room). and 192kbs and higher compression are really slight. At a certain point, be it a 224kbs or 320kbs, or flac or ape or whatever else, there's no reason for compression to impede anyone's enjoyment of the recording.

Unless perhaps if someone is an audiophile and has been informed of the technical characteristics of the audio files before hearing them...

But we're listening to music, right? Not to the test tones that we needed to use in order to calibrate the electronics of 24-track Otaris, Studers, and Ampexes.

It's possible to hear a difference when comparing the sound from the microphone in the studio, captured to a 32-bit float wave, when compared to a 192kbs mp3 of that same file - and in my experience it the first capture that determines the quality of the sound as 16 and 24 bit waves really do sound very noticeably different.

I've seen listening tests where no single auditor always preferred the sound of either bit depth for every instrument - they all preferred a mixture of 16 and 24 bits.

And there's the effect of dithering algorithms when you dumb down your stereo master from 24 bit or 32 bit floats to 16 bit audio to make a cd... But after that, once you are taking your audio from the two-track master, effort is required to make any derived files sound more than very marginally inferior.

It shouldn't be an issue.

Bizarre And Inexplicable Opinion.

At 192kbs, the difference between an mp3 and cd audio is *very* minor. At 320kbs the difference verges on being undetectable - at least to my ears. So I really don't understand what Neil Young is either hearing, or thinks that he is hearing.

Nokia will indeed be back 'making' phones – and it's far from a foolish move

Business Economics.

"Billions are spent by Android manufacturers marketing their loss-makers. Samsung has just recorded its seventh quarterly loss in a row, despite producing the year's best flagship. HTC lost 24p on every pound of revenue. Sony's smartphone division is dragging down the rest of the group, losing £1bn last year. But fear not, Sony's new Mobile chief has vowed to keep on losing money"

Well I guess that maybe I don't understand business economics as well as I thought I did.

Brit teen who unleashed 'biggest ever distributed denial-of-service blast' walks free from court

Re: @Ledswinger Serious.

"If he is receiving leniency because of mental illness then the public has a right to know the details. Not if he was a minor while the crime was committed."

Oh I doubt that. Minors are tried in closed courts. This kid was apparently being tried as an adult in an open court. His picture was in the paper - which I am not sure would have occurred if he was considered a minor for the purposes of this trial. And it makes no sense whatsoever to refuse to disclose the details of the kid's mental illness after the subject was brought up in open court - especially if that mental illness was the basis for the leniency shown by the judge.

@Ledswinger Re: Serious.

"I smell a plea bargain."

In the US, a plea bargain would be announced as such. But it is *possible* that he plead guilty and threw himself on the mercy of the court.

If he is receiving leniency because of mental illness then the public has a right to know the details.If British law does not demand that the details be disclosed then, as far as I am concerned, that is a glaring defect in the law. If mental illness is being used as a defense then all the details belong in the public domain. I am pretty certain that resorting to such a defense in the US would require that the defendant forfeit any right to confidentiality of their medical history.

Images.

"I would have thought the illegal child images on top of everything else should have resulted in a custodial sentence in some sort of institution at least.";

That depend on the specifics. This little shit was 16 years old when he was collared and the images found. If the images were of girls who were also 16, then that's one thing. If he for example were 23 and the girls in the pictures were 6 years old, then that's something else again. But because he's a minor himself, and if we don't know the age of the girls in the images, there is no basis to form an opinion - other than the fact that the judge didn't think any of this crimes were very serious.

Serious.

"'I said at the outset that these crimes were and are serious and indeed that is so,' said Judge Jeffrey Pegden in summing up the case."

... but for some reason the judge doesn't feel like imposing a penalty reflecting that seriousness.

So really not too serious at all.

Canadian dirtbag jailed for SWAT'ing, doxing women gamers

@Graham Marsden

"People like that need help and understanding, not jail time."

What you need to understand is that psychopathy / sociopathy can not be cured.

Pan Am Games: Link to our website without permission and we'll sue

Re: "First kill all the lawyers"

"First kill all the lawyers"

It was said by Jack Cade's follower Dick The Butcher in Shakespeare's Henry VI; it was in the midst of a harangue in which Cade lays out his, errr... social-political program.

Consider the following: "'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers' You know the line, from Shakespeare's 'Henry VI, Part 2.' Like a mantra, it is mindlessly quoted by pundits, stenciled on T-shirts and generally marshaled as condemnation of the legal profession from the very pen of the Bard of Avon. Not only is this a gross calumny, it is a symptom of gross cultural illiteracy.[...] Dick the Butcher shouts enthusiastically, 'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.' There it is - the phrase so frequently used to damn the legal profession, shouted by a butcher in response to an ex-convict and confidence man who was in London to foment anarchy, burn the city and loot the commonwealth. But that's not all. Cade shows us what his world would be like without lawyers. Immediately after Dick the Butcher mouths his famous line, a clerk enters. Someone accuses the clerk of being able to write and read. Cade orders, 'Hang him with his pen and inkhorn about his neck.' Yes, second thing let's do, let's kill anyone who can write or read." (http://articles.latimes.com/1993-12-14/local/me-1614_1_jack-cade.)

I don't know if this was an idea ever espoused by the real Jack Cade. It might not have been, as Shakespeare's account of Cade and the events surrounding him seem to be quite ahistorical.

Shakespeare wrote the line but that's not nearly enough reason to think that he espoused the idea himself. He put those words in Cade's mouth to show the audience the barbarity and ignorance of Cade and his followers.

I have also seen the quote attributed to Leon Trotsky, who might have been well-enough read to know it from a translation of Shakespeare. I do not know if Trotsky ever said it or not, but it would have been both appropriate and ironic if he had.

'Real' vampires reluctant to 'come out of the coffin' to social workers – barmy prof

@hplasm: "It Will Have Blood, They Say. Blood Will Have Bllood."

I must have missed something because the idea that there are people who feel the need to drink blood seems to me to be unsurprising. Whether their "vampirism" is based on a Richard-Trent-like psychosis, or just on the circumstance that they have picked up some half-witted occult ideas, is to a certain extent irrelevant.

Now, if this Dr D J Williams said that drinking blood gave them supernatural powers, or enabled the vampires to live forever, then that's one thing - but that's not the attitude he seems to have taken.

Who could doubt that there are people - mentally ill, suggestible, whatever - who somehow have gotten the idea that drinking blood is beneficial to them? That this guy has studied them (after succeeding in what must have been the rather more difficult task of *finding* them in the first place) could prove interesting.

If we recall, for example, Heaven's Gate, Marshall Applewhite, and the Hale-Bopp comet, where otherwise well-educated people actually killed themselves at the behest of a former mental patient preaching a doctrine than can only be called "moronic" - then what is the difficulty in thinking that there are also people who have "reasons" to drink blood?

We see people who entertain and act on the most bizarre beliefs every fucking day. And it's worthy of study, don't you think?

Norks execute underperforming terrapin farm manager

What I Kinda Like.

Personally, I kinda like terrapins.

If a guy had horns growing out of his head, he'd probably attempt to disguise it with exactly the kind of hairstyle that we see in the photograph. And he'd wear shoes to hide his hooves. And he'd keep his tail in his pants so you'd never see that either.

Makes you wonder...

How a Cali court ruling could force a complete rethink of search results

Versace.

"...Timex makes Versace watches..."

Ha-ha-ha!

Apple Watch sales in death dive after mega launch, claims study

Life Buoy.

"Slice Intelligence claims Apple Watch sales have fallen from 1.3 million units shipped on launch day to fewer than 2,500 watches sold on July 1. [. . . ] As recently as June 1, Apple was selling more than 40,000 Watches per day, we're told. That figure plummeted over the month of June as the end of the month saw just 4,947 units sold on the day, it is claimed."

I wonder if sales figures comprise a first wave of early adopters and if those figures were then temporarily buoyed up by a wave of sales to people who bought them as graduation gifts for stupid kids. And now perhaps both waves have been exhausted.

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Uitsmijter

We *Could* Be Done By Now.

"It's a fair point that some of our wobbly dining delicacies do require a bit of dedication, but if we restricted ourselves solely to grub suitable for preparation by the truly incapacitated, we'd be done after a swift bacon sarnie..."

And the problem with that would be...?

It's all Uber! France ends its love affair with ride-sharing app

@regadpellagru Re: Correction, here ...

"However, it is not true the service is illegal in France. This is up in the air at courts."

Although I am not very familiar with legal systems based on the Napoleonic Code, I'd think that this statement is probably wrong. Uber *is* illegal in France; the courts might eventually decide that it must be recognized as legal, but until they do so, it is, in fact, illegal. Laws are valid until actually annulled and the existence of a lawsuit seeking to annul the law does not invalidate the law and does not prevent its enforcement (unless the courts issue an injunction preventing enforcement).

Biologists gasp at lemur's improbably colossal bollocks

Tanuki.

The Japanese tanuki is also known for the same thing. I don't know whose is bigger. I also don't know how much folklore concerns lemurs but there's quite a bit concerning tanuki. Apparently statues of tanuki are very popular in Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_raccoon_dog - and of course look at the pictures.

Silly Google's Photos app labelled black people as gorillas

@ TRT

"Except Google don't have any sort of noble rationale behind why they are doing something so utterly stupid and offensive."

Look, no one hates Google as much as I do, but they didn't do this intentionally. And when they say "We’re appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened" I actually believe them. And I don't believe much of what they say, I promise you.

@Bob Wheeler Re: AI is hard

"How do you define an algorithm to describe a chair, something to sit on. Is that algorithm good enough to correctly distinguish a dining table chair, a stool, sofa, a park bench?"

That's a good question. And what's particularly interesting is that scientists do not even know how the human mind is able to distinguish the incredible variety of things that are subsumed under the heading "chairs".

Because intelligence of any sort, artificial or otherwise, is hard.

Teaching people to speak English? You just need Chatroulette without the dick pics

@Anonymous Coward Re: No True Statement...

"English people often understand each other when the speak a foreign language like French - yet the native speakers find them incomprehensible."

There's a very simple reason for this: people will learn the vocabulary of a foreign language but not its grammar and syntax. So someone might speak, as in your example, French words with English sentence constructions, or, for a native French speaker, English words with French sentence structures.

It's interesting to note that, once you have a very basic familiarity with a given language, you can begin to understand the reasons for some of the mistakes that native speakers of that language make when learning your own native language.

No True Statement...

"Thus the increase in literacy is going to come about as a result of the existence of Facebook..."

No true statement could possibly be more depressing.

Goodbye Vulcan: Blighty's nuclear bomber retires for the last time

Bad Year For Vulcans.

First was a farewell to Mr Spock, and now for the bomber...

Supreme Court ignores Google's whinging in Java copyright suit

@Anonymous Coward Re: Amusing.

"What's truely interoperable are the tools to make software, and the knowledge and syntax in the heads of programmers who write it."

Kinda like how your idea of "interoperability" exists only in your head, and not in any court of law?

Amusing.

"Asked for comment on the matter, a Google spokesperson told The Reg via email, 'We will continue to defend the interoperability that has fostered innovation and competition in the software industry.'"

Since Android/Dalvik and Java are not interoperable, it amuses me to see Google using interoperability as a defense.

Giant FLYING SPACE ROCKS could KILL US ALL, warns Brian May

Raise High The Roof!

"Scientists are trying to raise funding by invoking planet-killing chunks of flying space rock with today's Asteroid Day."

Better now.

This time we really are all doomed, famous doomsayer prof says

To Append A Necessary Phrase.

"...the 1968 book Population Bomb, which in early editions stated that basically everyone in India would inevitably starve to death due to overpopulation in the 1970s..."

If I correctly recall, he said a bit more than that. He said that we (the West, the US) should simply let them (India, and Egypt too, I think) all die and that we should make no efforts to help them. I was so impressed with this that I almost incapable of saying or writing the name "Paul Ehrlich" without appending the phrase "virulent racist" to it.

Taylor Swift boycotts Apple Music over no-pay-for-plays shocker

Interesting Opinion.

For anyone actually interested in this, Faza at The Cynical Musician has something to say about this matter, and not what I would have expected.

His basic idea is that musicians should grant Apple a royalty-free window for the sake of insuring that Spotify has some serious competition in the streaming market.

For those of you without ADHD or similar, you can find his opinion at http://thecynicalmusician.com/2015/06/apple-musics-free-trial-period-a-lesson-in-windowing/

@Anonymous Coward

"To be honest I'm confused as to why anyone would buy these albums in the first place"

I can explain it to you; it's really very easy. People would buy these albums because they have likes and dislikes that diverge from yours.

But could you please explain exactly what the fuck your personal likes and dislikes have to do with the fact that she's decided to call attention to a scheme that tends to do the most damage to artists that can afford it least - amongst which might even be some of the musicians that you seem to think are so much better than Taylor Swift.

PS One of the several (shallow) ideas underlying your post is that there's some formula that makes it easy to write hits. You could not be more wrong. Another is that "good music" resides someplace other than in the ear of the beholder, and that you are some sort of objective judge. As Duke Ellington said, "If it sounds good, it is good". Everyone gets to make that judgement for themselves. Neither your dislike of Taylor Swift's music or your need to advertise that fact make you superior in any way to people who do like her. Quite the contrary, actually.

A Worthwhile Venture.

"I'm so glad an internationally recognised artist is standing up for all the smaller artists out there. It warms my heart that 'it's not about her' or her lost revenues. She makes me believe the world isn't so bad after all and her act of altruism should be awarded, arise Saint Swift. /sarcasm"

I'd venture to guess that you're exactly the kind of lousy human being that you accuse her of being.

Verizon promised to wire up NYC with fiber... and failed miserably – audit

Can It Really Do That?

"Broadband is a key component of this Administration's fight to create opportunity and sustainable economic development in every corner of the five boroughs."

Does broadband actually create "opportunity and sustainable economic development" anywhere? And I don't mean menial lackey-work like Uber, or the mooted "Be A Delivery Drone For Amazon In Your Spare Time" gambit. I mean good, workable, middle-class payscale jobs on which people can live and have a family and place to live other than a refrigerator carton. I have the impression that broadband (and the internet itself) actually destroys more such jobs rather than creates them.

'Oracle, why are your sales f-' CLOUD CLOUD CLOUD, blasts Larry

451

I know that this is kind of trivial but that jacket that Safra Catz is wearing makes her look like she just stepped off of one of those fire engines in Fahrenheit 451.

Apple no-pay-for-plays streaming risks indie boycott

Re: @ecarlseen

"owning means I can keep playing after that single purchase, streaming requires an ongoing subscription so isn't owning. If we are going to compare streaming to owning then surely each track should only pay out once per subscriber - just as owning would. I stream a track, the artist gets paid and from then on subsequent plays pay nothing."

Once again, the key difference between streaming and owning on the one hand, and the radio on the other, is the ability to hear a song whenever you want. All other differences are trivial.

If you want to listen once, buy the stream. If you want to listen to it repeatedly, then buy it outright as a download (or a physical product if available). Streaming and buying are two very different products in that respect. But either way, that specific track is there when you want it.

The radio is not like that at all. In fact, it couldn't be more different from either streaming or buying: the listener has no control over what the radio plays. There is one and only one reason why airplay and the radio in general were considered important by musicians and record companies: it was the best way to spark sales. I hope that I need not explain why, but I will anyway: someone might hear the track on the radio and decide that instead of waiting for the track to be played again, they would like to spend the money to buy the record to have the ability to hear the track whenever they want.

So we have three purchase options:

1) Pay-per-listen: buy a stream;

2) Listen-at-will: buy the download or physical product;

3) Listen-whenever-the-radio-plays-it-and-hope-that-you-are-fortunate-enough-to-be-listening-when-they-DO-play-it: Buy a radio, because once you've bought a radio, there's no additional cost.

I think that these three options cover all use cases.

@ecarlseen

"...comparing the price of a stream to the price of buying a track is so idiotically dishonest as to make the entire piece suspect. Any value above $0 is better than they made for radio, which is the traditional model for comparison. "

The radio pays. While some small radio stations pay a blanket fee, most radio stations (and television stations too I believe) keep records of what they play and each artist gets paid accordingly.

Irrespective of what you think is the "traditional" comparison, the proper comparison is between streaming and owning - irrespective of whether you consider it to be "idiotically dishonest" or otherwise. Why? Because both streaming and owning allow you to listen to a track whenever you want, which is not possible with radio. The FCC also uses "interactivity" to decide what rates an entity pays for playing music.

Ethics

"No service has yet to cross the ethical line of demanding bands allow use of their catalogue for free."

But their failure to do so has nothing to do with ethics.

Pirate Party founder: I wanna turn news into a series of three-line viral gobbets

The Consumer.

"His Falconwing News service will pump out three-sentence 'stories' scraped from real news sources and posted as images. Advertisers will be able to inject their ads into this stream."

I don't really understand why a person who would consume 3-sentence news stories needs to read the news at all. Couldn't they just get all the information they need to know from t-shirts, bumper stickers, and song lyrics?

'Lemme tell you about my trouble with girls ...' Er, please don't, bro-ffin

He Has To Know Better..

He has to know better than to say that he's in favor of single-sex labs. The rest of it is foolish but saying that he's in favor of single-sex labs is a real problem. Once those words leave his mouth, irrespective of the exact circumstances in which they were uttered and irrespective of the remark being an attempt however feeble and stupid at humor then anyone who is so inclined would be fully justified in questioning how much his hiring and promotion decisions are effected by the same attitude.

Belgium trolls France with bonkers new commemorative coin

Re: How about more annoying the French!

"To be fair we celebrate Dunkirk as if it was a victory when in fact it was our troops running away as fast as they could. That's not intended as a slur on their bravery, it was the right thing to do it's just that we seem to act as if it was some great victory."

As Churchill said at the time, "We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory".

(Churchill if I recall did want to sent the whole of the RAF to France at the start of the war but his war chiefs refused, wisely.)

FLYING SAUCER crashes into Pacific off Hawaii - NASA

@Elmer Phud

"'The number seven has many mystic properties' Why?"

You're going to have to ask Pythagoras, sorry.

Seven Is A Lucky Number - And Thus A Key To Success!

"But the seventh mission succeeded and it just so happened that one of the mission's controllers was munching a handful of peanuts at the time. Since then good luck peanuts are eaten as a superstitious tradition in this most scientific of organizations."

For some reason, I find that reassuring.

Still, it is interesting to note that the Nasaeans, very capable sciencemologists, apparently overlooked the significance of the mission being the seventh. The number seven has many mystic properties which could well have influenced the success of the mission. For example, as the Pythagoreans taught: "The Hebdomad [i.e., the number seven]—as being motherless, and a virgin—possesses the second place in dignity." See https://books.google.com/books?id=Sve3fLUG3bEC&pg=RA2-PA8-IA8&lpg=RA2-PA8-IA8&dq=number+is+%22motherless+and+a+virgin%22&source=bl&ots=DC_Tjqrzjm&sig=IheluBOygkBx311l2lcx-h_j34s&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-2V2VZX1EsaYyASO8ICABw&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA

Cynical Apple says it'll gouge less cash from iTunes strummers' sales

Re: Cynicism

" I can't actually be cynical about a company reducing it's cut to try to increase usage."

Yeah, you can. But you're doing it wrong.

What they're trying to do is sacrificing their high margins which will result in making the field less attractive to potential entrants / competitors. This way, while their profits will decline, the lower profits will be effectively safeguarded. This strategy is not original with Apple. It's very much like predatory pricing. Apple is maximizing its profits in changed conditions.