Posts by cyberdemon 3487 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jan 2010
Personally, I think the best thing Nokia could do is resurrect their brilliant Debian-based phone OS Maemo.
There's still a huge community surrounding the n900, despite it being nearly 4 years old. It'd be brilliant if Nokia could take that and put it on a modern phone (a Huawei one, perhaps, if Nokia haven't got the cash to be making their own phones anymore)
Despite its age, the n900 is still the most powerful (in terms of things you can make it do) phone I have ever known. (mobile SSH terminal complete with agent, port and X11 forwarding, anyone?)
Absolute brilliance by Nokia, but it was exactly what the trojan horse Elop was (successfully) deployed to assassinate.
I was going to say you could yank the HDD out of your old machine and put it in the new one and it won't notice the difference
But this being Windows, it'd probably BSOD because the SATA chipset had changed, or you'd lose all your software licenses because the CPU serial number had changed.
This is one of the of the many reasons I avoid Windows when I can.
If they insist on making a touch optimised version, then they should make it ONLY for multitouch phones. My n900 works much better on desktop sites with its old-style resistive touchscreen (the touch resolution actually comes somewhere near the screen resolution, unlike with Jesus Phones etc)
Or better yet, just implement the "mobile-optimised" bit in jQuery or the like, so we can turn it off. Saves the cost of parallel maintenance of two sites, and avoids the problem of "special versions" being forgotten about too.
To be honest the best thing would be to just ditch mobile sites altogether.
Usually the full version works perfectly fine (even on my mum's ancient Nokia symbian phone), except for some sites where it is impossible to view the full site unless you hack your user-agent string, because otherwise you keep getting redirected to the borked mobile site.
Actually Mr. Framelhammer, a child could quite happily understand SPI. :)
Master wiggles both clock and data (Master Out Slave In) in sync,
Slave wiggles data (Master In Slave Out) in sync with master's clock.
That's it. Simple.
USB on the other hand is one of those design-by-committee standards that only a <a href="http://www.fourwalledcubicle.com/LUFA.php">genius</a> understands completely, but the rest of us, including children, can quite happily take a well-written library like LUFA to make any USB device we like.
I certainly wouldn't like to have km123 as a teacher - he'd be one of those horrendous old IT teachers who has the class learning how to make a form in Microsoft Excess 97 (despite it being 2013), when we'd all rather be writing games in python.
It's teachers like that who are the reason why Britain has fallen so far behind in computer science in recent years.
I don't use Adblock when browsing the Reg, but I do use NotScripts (ie NoScript for Chrome).
This ensures that the only ads I ever see are the plain HTML ones, which work without Javascript or Flash.
Conveniently, these ads are unobtrusive and I don't mind seeing them or even clicking on them once in a while.
However, as soon as I add doubleclick.net to my temporary whitelist whilst browsing the Reg, I am bombarded with flash ads, background-filling ads, foreground-interupting ads, ads with fscking sound, which insult my eyes and ears and I immediately revoke my temporary whitelist.
@Peter Simpson
> Given that there are different types of users and strong feelings on both sides, why do Microsoft (and Canonical -- sadly, Linux isn't free of this silliness either) feel that it must be "their way or the highway"?
The trouble is, I think, that any user configuration option can double the amount of testing that needs to be done in order for it to be considered rigorous.
So for something like KDE3.5, where rigorous testing was considered secondary to power and functionality, and bugs were fixed on an "as soon as someone moans about it" basis, we could have a gazillion options, so long as we had the sense to change them back when they broke something.
But now, where software is released by companies interested in profit margins and how many salaried software testers they can get away with laying off, we no longer have user configuration and this is a shame.
It might also be why Apple is doing so well - They pick the optimal configuration for the majority of users and then make it completely inflexible. With Apple it really is their way or the highway, even if it for you it is a good way.
see icon.
http://www.debian.org/releases/
Wheezy has existed for a long time, as the "testing" distribution, but it has now become "stable", i.e. the official release, to which no further changes will be made apart from security updates. This ensures that no future update can break existing software.
Raspbian, being a rather experimental platform anyway, uses the testing distribution because the package versions are newer.
Many people use sid, because it is even newer.
Actually that's not true. Slashdot says nothing of WP9, and instead says this:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/03/17/1914209/microsoft-to-abandon-windows-phone
You're probably right, but we're all secretly hoping for the death of Windows Phone anyway.
So the question returns - did Microsoft deliberately scuttle Nokia?
Even if Elop didn't know at the time that this was on the cards, what an utter catastrophe this must be for Nokia.
It turns out that they jumped from two perfectly sound platforms, onto the burning one.
As I have said before on here, Maemo could have been a showstopper if Elop hadn't killed it off (at the likely behest of his friends at Redmond)
N900 still going strong, despite being dumped some years ago. Packages are still being maintained, although I must admit updates are few and far between these days..
I don't know of any other phone that functions as a full remote SSH terminal complete with authentication agent forwarding, port forwarding, X11 forwarding if I so wish and of course a hardware keyboard. I can even run Matlab remotely, complete with figures.
@AC
Actually I think it probably has to happen quite a few times to be fatal. For starters, your company has an RCD on the office sockets, right?
If the live wire shorts to the desk or earth, there'll be a flash and a bang, maybe even enough smoke to trip your fire alarm, people will be frightened and then annoyed because the power went off (mind you in a BYOD office they wouldn't have lost any work). But it's not going to start a fire. You need a resistance between 10 and 10k ohms to generate the heat without blowing the fuse, and a frayed cable will almost never have that range of resistance, and if it did, the frayed strand causing the partial short would vaporise.
If the live wire touches a human, he'll get a nasty shock and the RCD will trip. There's a small chance it could upset his heartbeat, but for it to actually be fatal he'd have to have an existing heart condition.
I've had enough mains shocks to know that they bloody well hurt, especially if there's no RCD, but they aren't as dangerous as crossing the road half the time. At least so long as the current doesn't go across your chest.
A friend of mine was once servicing an 11kV busbar at some scottish mansion with its own substation, when the janitor of the place, wondering why the power was out, ignored the signs, unlocked the substation and threw the switch. He is still alive despite having each hand touching a different 11kV phase.
Anyway my point is that people are scared of electricity because they can't see it.
Reminds me of those Health and Safety posters about electrocution - If you see someone who's been electrocuted, don't touch them, find a wooden broom handle and poke them with it, otherwise the electricity will get you too!!
Oh and also, that laptop PSU with the frayed cable was a company PSU you say? Must've been PAT tested then? Fat lot of good that did. And who'd be responsible if it DID electrocute someone? You would.
Maybe with BYOD, the idiot who wrapped it like that would be responsible instead.
Bloody 'elf and safety bods...
When was the last time a faulty laptop PSU ever electrocuted anyone? And if it did, would a PAT test -really- have prevented it?
For starters PAT testing is just a parasite industry that serves no real purpose, a bit like PPI claims and errr, ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyers. Companies just pay some cretin to go round sticking stickers to stuff, because they perceive it as necessary arse-covering. Half the time said cretin doesn't even do any testing, and when he does, it's just to make sure the live wire isn't connected to the earth wire.
Also, a laptop PSU draws typically no more than 80W these days. How many of those would it take to overload a 13A wall socket? More than 30. Yes a 3kW fan heater will trip it, because 3kW draws almost the entire 13A all in one go.
As for who has responsibility for laptop fires, I'd hazard a guess at the laptop manufacturers and/or their insurers, or your insurers. Laptop battery fires are pretty rare anyway. And PAT testing certainly isn't going to make that go away!
While I agree with most of the other posters here that BYOD is a terrible idea for the reasons of an IT support nightmare, health and flipping safety is the worst reason to cite.
Unless you happen to be employed in a parasite industry.. In which case, carry on spreading the FUD! And don't forget to sanitise your telephone. Swine flu and all that..
I don't know if you remember this from a while back: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-02-05/uk/31026669_1_british-aid-international-development-secretary-end-aid
Basically, the Indians don't want our aid money anyway, but the government wants to be seen to be doing something for international aid in general, so they are reluctant to stop it.
They did agree to stop it in 2015: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20265583
The sad fact is, plebs have trouble remembering 4-digit PINs.
The great unwashed (girl with a croydon facelift??) are not going to be able to use this if it involves even the most miniscule amount of brain-work.
And many will complain "What's the point? Why can't I just use a password".
If a site like LinkedIn (their example) decided to use this, it'd be dead within weeks. Even I would complain that the login system was too convoluted and paranoid for its purpose.
The only organisation I could see adopting this would be something like MI5, where not understanding how to adopt a new authentication system is a sackable offence.. But one would hope they already have something even more convoluted and paranoid than this.
And still very happy with it.
The platform is just about staying alive DESPITE being dumped by nokia two years ago.. Applications like Yappari (a Whatsapp client) are still making releases.
It strikes me that if Nokia had stuck with their Maemo platform instead of sacrificing it to the gods of Redmond, it could have been a game-changer for the whole industry.
The technology already exists for bendy batteries (e.g. http://www.gizmag.com/bendable-thin-film-lithium-ion-battery/23656/), and it certainly exists for bendy PCBs.
Not sure about bendy chips though, but perhaps they could be made small enough to fit inside one end of the thing, and you could then roll it up?
> But terribly inefficient. 2.5kW yields .72N of force at current rates.
Presumably though if you were already going 3km/s and it was still producing .72N, it would be near on 100% efficient?
It's not hard to reach those speeds either, if you're in a vacuum and prepared to wait. A probe en rourte to Pluto was said to be going 22km/s in 2006.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8587-pluto-probe-set-to-break-speed-records.html
Which of course raises the question: How does the efficiency drop off with speed? If there's no mass ejection, it shouldn't?
But then past 3.5km/s it would be >100% efficient?
That alone makes it seem to me like it's not going to work, sadly.
As if it could get any odder.
Gizmodo would claim to have the full story, published yesterday with what it claims is an account written by McAfee:
http://gizmodo.com/5960138/the-crazy-secret-journal-of-john-mcafee-volume-1
It doesn't sound like the kind of place you'd want to go on your holidays anyway, and whatever happens to McAfee is likely to reflect on that reputation.
40% "Of those available to the internet" are vulnerable.
Then don't make them available to the internet? Surely the proportion of SCADAs that ARE available to the internet is extremely low (and decreasing!!). If anyone has any sense, they keep their process controllers as disconnected as they possibly can, for when the Cylons attack, right?
@Bep: I have had that, but rarely. Usually it is because some application has used up too much RAM, and it has started swapping. If it runs out of RAM and swap, then the kernel (actually, init) will kill the offending process. So in some respect it may be useful to have less swap as this would happen faster. But it is not something that can be easily designed out. The N900 is a powerful phone and lets you do whatever you want with it, whereas crapple will screen each app to make sure it complies with their UI principles and doesn't eat too much memory etc. This makes the iphone more stable, but in exchange you get a phone that is limited in what it can do.
So it is probably some package you have installed. Try running 'top' in a terminal, press the M key and it will show you the processes using the most memory. Failing that backup and, reflash to the latest OS version. Only reinstall apps that you suspect are not causing the problem.
@Tom 11:
I've heard about that, and I dread the day it might happen to me, but I've had my N900 since launch and touch wood, the USB connector has never come loose.
You could probably pick up a replacement on fleabay. Or failing that crack it open and resolder the MicroUSB. If the phone is knackered in its current state then you've nothing to lose..
As a continuing N900 user, I can understand your sentiment.
But for me, it is, and always has been, the best phone _ever_. I use Debian on my PCs anyway, and a phone that can natively ssh back and run apps, complete with GUI, on my home machine is just brilliant. Any software I need is usually on an apt repository, and if it isn't, I don't even need a cross compiler toolchain to build it. I can install GCC and compile it on the phone.
Maemo is debian based (unlike Meego which is based on Redhat afaik), which makes package management easy etc etc.
Basically, I have a phone running general purpose Linux (natively with X windows, not some nasty Java layer), with a slide-out qwerty keyboard. What more could a geek want?
But then Elop came along, from Microsoft. He killed the project dead, sacked all the developers, along with half the company's R&D staff in general, binned 10 years of R&D in Maemo, and announced that all the company's smart phones from now on will run exclusively Windows.
The share price predictably tanked, and frankly it reads like a Microsoft conspiracy to scuttle the company in order to either buy it or just make sure that a disruptive technology never comes to market.
It really makes me sad that I will never get a hardware upgrade for what is basically the best phone OS ever.
How long before whitelist javascript blockers like NoScript/NotScripts are used in the majority as part of the Standard Internet Condom? They certainly seem very useful against most forms of website antifeature..
For example, I find that I don't need any blacklist adblocker such as AdBlock, since the vast majority of ads don't show up at all without Javascript. After all what's the point of advertising if you can't track people, right?
Some sites use plain HTML (<=4) ads, which are not tracking my every eye-movement, and thus I don't find offensive. These I will occasionally grace with a click. (NoRef/RefControl enabled, of course)
The problem is that banning stuff just doesn't work. As someone here has already said: it rarely affects the real criminals, but causes major problems for legitimate users. There are plenty of legitimate uses of a >100mW laser.
One of which, for example, is in your CD writer. It is also relatively easy to disassemble a cheap CD writer and turn it into a very powerful laser pointer.
What would you prefer to do? Ban imports of blu-ray writers (which contain a >1000mW blue laser) or criminalise curious youths (our future scientists and engineers) for wanting to have some fun taking things to bits?
Anyone else see the potential application here?
With a camera on each wingtip, you could get pretty good binocular vision at long range.
If in addition to the high-FOV cameras on the wingtips, you have a long-lens that can seek to any point on the ground, you could automatically obtain both the location of the perpetrator, and maybe even a snap of them for evidential purposes if your telescopic lens is good enough.
Send that to the local police automatically and people would think twice about doing this sort of thing.
For laughs you could have a kilojoule pulse laser instead of the long-lens. >:)
