Posts by breakfast

Crucial question after asteroid near-miss: How big was rock in Olympic pools?

Failed skywatching

I'm sorry that I missed the asteroid, but I don't mind that it missed me.

Reg readers scuffle over the ultimate cuppa

Sugar correlation

A friend of mine noticed a correlation between people who like sugar in their tea and smokers - it's not always true, but it does seem to happen a lot of the time. That would make for an interesting survey for someone.

Traceroute reveals Star Wars Episode IV 'crawl' text

Re: Obi Wan...

Obligatory XKCD reference: http://xkcd.com/297/

Strongly implies the Jedi would use Emacs.

New cunning linguist computer has got ancient tongues licked

Re: Can it work the other way round?

My expectation was that it doesn't "know" so much as apply statistical analysis to large amounts of data- the Big Data version of knowledge. In that case it may not be as much use for projecting into the future, especially as many changes to the way language is used come from the description or use of new social, technological or environmental conditions. When we can predict those, things will have reached a very curious place.

Re: Tongues untied

One way that is used sometimes is through poetry - if you look at pieces of Shakespeare where there is a strict rhyming scheme you'll notice that some words just don't rhyme. Given that Shakespeare knew what he was doing when he was writing poetry, there's a good chance those words did rhyme as they were pronounced at the time, though which way the pronunciation has changed may be ambiguous.

Similarly a pune ( or play on words ) will tend to work with homonyms, so when writers of the past are playful about language they can hand useful titbits to linguists of the future.

Curiosity photographs mysterious metal object on Martian rock

Re: It's a tap...

Actually Admiral Ackbar spotted it first.

Microsoft 'touches 16k shop workers' to flog Windows 8 hard

Re: "Ambitious" as synonym for "Awful"?

I'm not saying things should be left as they were. I am saying that things should not *deliberately be made worse*. That is a massive difference.

I love usability changes that make things more usable. I'm all in favour of those.

Re: "Ambitious" as synonym for "Awful"?

You're having to explain to someone who works full time as a Windows developer and has done for a long time now, how to do basic Windows tasks through the Reg forums. This hasn't happened with any previous version of Windows. I should be able to look at the screen, try a few things and figure out what I need to do- I shouldn't need to Bing it on my Zune to find how to do the basics.

The thing is, after 20 years or so of refinement, Windows usability *wasn't wrong* - most people could figure out how to do most things. There was no reason to change it for most users. See also Visual Studio 2012 - it's like they took the usability guidelines and threw them out the window for that.

The whole thing reeks of Microsoft trying to be cool. Obviously, I'm a programmer, I don't know much about being cool, but I do know that one thing that nobody ever got cool by trying.

Re: "Ambitious" as synonym for "Awful"?

Where to begin...

The first problem I have is that the whole damn interface, aside from the crippled desktop, is designed for touch. Now I have never liked Apple, who make pricey gear for graphic designers, hipsters and Nathan Barley tosspots, but at least they understand that there is a difference between a desktop and touch-screen interface. Microsoft seem to have gone for a one-size-fits-all-but-the-desktop approach which as a user of non-touch-screen machines is very frustrating to me. The whole thing about Windows was that it was supposed to be a graphical user interface, but I find myself having to use keystrokes more and more to do things that I could previously do easily with a couple of mouse clicks.

Also what is the deal with the start page and the charms menu? Why are some things "charms" and others start page entries? I'm sure I could customise that, but why should I have to? The whole paradigm is simply confusing. And sometimes, I want to move my mouse to the edge of the screen and not have a menu suddenly drift in between me and what I was doing.

The division between TIFKAM and desktop is just weird - the way that applications can only exist in one space or the other. Also what happens when you minimise an application in TIFKAM? Is it different from closing it? Does that mean I can't close them too or that they can be both close and minimised, but without opening the application it is impossible to know which? I'm no usability consultant, but I don't think when Schroedinger's Box was proposed as a thought experiment, the idea was that it would make for an outstanding interface design.

One thing I think about when I deal with a new operating system is what my life would be like if my parents were to install it and I was to have to explain it to them. In that respect the curious dualism of Windows 8 would make for endless confusion and hours of attempting to explain concepts that make no sense at all to a person who has a mouse and keyboard in front of them.

There is no single factor in Windows 8s awfulness- it's not like Vista where the "Are you sure you want to" and "Are you definitely sure you want to" and "Please think again, you might not want to do this" pop up boxes on EVERY SINGLE ACTION were the clear thing that was wrong with the operating system. Windows 8 has a passably quick desktop ( but without the start menu, quite annoyingly crippled ) and it starts up quite fast.

In terms of general day-to-day use, however, the main thing it has done is drive me to Linux. If I could play Skyrim on Linux, I doubt I would need my Windows boot partition at all.

"Ambitious" as synonym for "Awful"?

It's interesting that they describe the Windows 8 interface as "Ambitious". In my experience, a lot of people who describe themselves as ambitious, or are described that way, are actually just awful people. Not all of them, of course, but a lot. Windows 8 is an awful interface. Perhaps the words are effective synonyms.

I am wondering whether Microsoft are doing an Inverse Star Trek Movie approach to operating systems, where the odd numbered ones are alright and the even numbers are awful. Sorry, "ambitious."

Ministry of Fun builds crack team to juice up bumpkin broadband

Re: There you go again..

Me and my bumpkins don't care. We shall take back the term from the oppressors and make it part of our cheerfully rustic rural identity. It's going to be totally street... erm.... bridleway.

Patent trolling surges, but righteous cavalry on the way

Outlandish attire

At some point during that article my mind caught onto the idea that a Troll Suit is actually just an item of clothing, perhaps such as might be worn by an actor in a Peter Jackson film. The rest of the article was a lot funnier.

"Carruthers, fetch me my troll suit!"

Hyperspeed travel looks wrong: Leicester students

Cone of light, brighter at the centre

What I'm getting from this is that the Elite hyperspace graphic was in fact not too bad.

NASA: There are 17 BEEELLION Earth-sized worlds in Milky Way

Re: 17 billion what??

I would bet the odds of an earth-size(ish) planet within the habitable zone having other prerequisites for live are probably better than 1 in 17 billion, so it is still interesting news.

I thought nuclear explosion based propulsion was a passable solution, until we figure out how to bend spacetime to our will.

First rigid airship since the Hindenburg enters trials

As I recall ( from a while back, admittedly ) the Mythbusters episode showed that the combination of paint and hydrogen made for a more intense burn than either of them alone would have.

The LINUX TABLET IS THE FUTURE - and it always will be

Re: And this is the problem,

This is a very suspicious comment. Why would RISC OS be using anything other than RISC OS, hmmm?

I call shenanigans.

Polar drilling effort hits snag: Boffins' search for life put on ice

Re: The Fools

As anyone who has read A Colder War ( http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/colderwar.htm ) would be more than conscious...

Musos blast US copyright bods: 'ARTISTS MAKE LOUSY SLAVES!'

Re: The way to do it...

If you're not a musician and you haven't tried this, then your opinion regarding it is probably worthless, but suffice to say the money involved is nothing close to commensurate. Even playing for a signed band touring medium sized venues, you are going to be hard pressed to make much of a living without record receipts. Or with them for that matter.

It's not about mansions, it's about a living wage. If nobody is willing to pay for professional musicians then all the musicians will have to be amateurs. Music and audiences who enjoy it will suffer as a consequence.

The latest tech firm to be accused of tax dodging: Microsoft

If they won't pay tax, maybe they should pay for infrastructure

As they aren't paying any tax, but they are still putting vehicles on our roads, employing people educated in our education system and creating rubbish for our landfill sites, maybe there should be some kind of infrastructure charge that could be levied on companies larger than a certain size who pay tax below a certain threshold, just to cover the burden they create by receiving these subsidies from the taxpayer.

Obviously they would also have to have detailed accounting of this information so the charges could be levied accurately, which would probably prove quite costly and irksome, but that would be a choice they would make if they didn't want to pay regular taxes.

I've got the 'fastest growing THINGY ever', boasts Google+ chief

Worth another look

From time to time I sign in to Google+ just to listen to the wind blowing around the empty and shuttered up buildings and watch the tumbleweed roll past.

Very atmospheric.

Apple share dive scuppers trader's alleged get-rich-quick fraud scam

Re: Double Standards

This is where a Tobin Tax would be a really useful solution- a miniscule tax on transactions would make the high frequency trading approach less viable while also making a whole lot of money for the tax authorities who signed up to it. The markets are primarily machines for making money, if they are to serve any kind of good to the companies invested in they need a little bit of steering from people willing to look at the bigger picture.

Unfortunately the people who could possibly apply steering currently are all good friends of the ones with their snouts in the money trough, so they aren't going to upset their buddies by making the markets serve their original purpose any time soon.

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean review

Re: Yes to this

I tried all the keyboards around a year or so back and found Swype worked out a lot slower than Swiftkey for me- the super-predictive approach finds words after far less work and if you have to send the same message twice it's faster than copying/pasteing. Pretty neat technology.

Oracle lowers the flag on Fortress language project

Lambda Calculus?

Does that mean that the closest we can get to the native language of computer science is Unlambda? ( http://www.madore.org/~david/programs/unlambda/ )

Is running IT for the Olympics the worst job in the world?

So...

When it fails will anyone give Atos?

Olympic Security cock-up was down to that DARN software

Poor old Buckles

I like to imagine that Buckles is basically a simpleton who refers to himself in the third person at all times. I picture him receiving the news thus:

Buckles is skipping through a field, a freshly picked dandylion in each hand.

"Buckles is happy!" he announces to no-one in particular.

A serious looking man in a suit approaches.

"Chief Executive, we have a serious problem with staffing levels for the Olympics. This could be a very high profile failure for the company- we need to find another 6000 staff and we only have a week to do it; what do you suggest?"

Buckles' face falls and his plump bottom lip begins to wobble slightly. A dandylion falls from a pudgy hand.

"Now Buckles is sad."

A butterfly flutters past and Buckles face returns to it's previous seraphic grin as he runs after it, arms outstretched.

"Chief Executive?" The suit implores, but he is gone.

'Extreme' solar storm speeding straight towards Earth

Re: X28 missed us mostly

They say the chances are a million to one.

Study: Climate was hotter in Roman, medieval times than now

Climate versus weather forecasting

Imagine you put a pot of water on a hotplate of your cooker and switch on the heat.

You can predict that the water will boil. Can you predict where each bubble will appear during the boiling process?

Being a skinny is much more unhealthy than being fat – new study

Re: Here we go again...

This is an important point- strong weight loss is often an indicator of cancer, among other things. That alone is highly likely to affect the mortality outcomes for a lot of underweight people.

Ten... alien invasions

Re: What about Chocky?

There should definitely be some Wyndham here- Day Of The Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos and The Kraken Wakes are all fantastic alien invasion stories.

CERN catches a glimpse of Higgs-like boson

Theoretically they could be that powerful already, as long as the simulation didn't run in anything close to real time. The computation could be performed by a Turing Machine, assuming it is computable at all. Obviously, time within the system would be subjective, so there would be no way to know from inside the simulation.

If this is possible, then it is likely that a civilisation capable of creating these simulations would create more than one. At that point, it becomes statistically far more likely that any universe is a simulation as a single "real" universe can have many simulations.

There's no way to tell, of course, so no point worrying about it really. But the probability that we are alife is quite high.

Good news for the masses

It turns out that the Higgs Boson was in our hearts all along!

I think those purporting to be underwhelmed by this news don't understand the gravity of the situation.

Windows 8: We kick the tyres on Redmond's new tablet wheels

Re: *rolls eyes* 3rd place

It's pretty hard to make a dent in the iPad. They usually shatter.

But then again...

Windows Metro is basically "Windows Me" with a bit of added troll.

Ten... Star Wars videogame classics

In Dark Forces 2 you had a light sabre...

The automatic blocking of enemy blasts with the lightsabre was supercool- one of the only games I went back and played through again. I always wanted to try the dark side but the moment I got my light sabre I knew it was time to be a hero.

Google+ dying on its arse – shock new poll

Re: Get creative...

For creating documents and workshopping ideas, Wave was actually pretty good. I just suspect that there aren't that many people who actually need to do that.

ARM creators Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber

Re: IBM ROMP vs. ARM

If ARM and WANG had worked together they could have greated the Jenerally Executable Reliable Kompiler, which would have been a major release.

Predatory IP threatening the progress of open innovation

It's the wrong kind of patent

If there is space for patents in the world of software I think it needs to be way smaller - a soft patent might last 18 months unexploited up to three ( or perhaps five ) years exploited. That way the potential for trolling is greatly reduced but it is possible to protect your IP for long enough to get your startup working if you are genuinely doing something with it. If this was applied retrospectively to existing software patents it would make everyones lives a lot less hassley and open the door to all kinds of exciting new endeavours.

Ten... eight-bit classic games

That game was so intense. Knowing the Sentinel was turning towards you and you had to get out somehow. Amazing stuff, given the technology they were using.

Googler squeals: 'We don't get platforms'

Sounds like Steve Yegge

He's never been backwards about saying what he thinks and he is, for all the deliberately controversial debating manner, a very smart guy.

MS kills, un-kills Zune HD media player

I'll just Bing it on my Zune

I might even have got one if I could have found one here a while ago as I quite want a decent size music player, hate iTunes with a passion and have heard bad things about the reliability of the Creative offerings.

I think sometimes to try and catch up with the leader in a given area, Microsoft end up making pretty good kit which is just inherently uncool because Microsoft are inherently uncool and so never really gets the credence it might achieve if it didn't have the stamp of Technology Walmart on it.

Trust me, I'm a computer: Watson takes on health care challenge

About time

I remember when I studied AI as part of my CS course at university, we had a few lectures discussing medical expert systems. The statistics were interesting both in terms of how much accuracy was increased by the use of expert systems and how bad doctors did in general. These were very much area-specific applications but if a system like Watson can offer a more general solution and becomes widely used, that can only be good news for anyone who gets ill in future.

Faster-than-light back with surprising CERN discovery

The who now?

There are no serious philosophers who espouse free will- within a determinate physical universe it just doesn't make sense and by this point enough brilliant minds have failed to argue convincingly against it that people who take their philosophy seriously accept determinism.

An interesting question though - is there just one timeless brick or are there many endlessly dividing timeless bricks, intersected at certain temporal locations? In the latter case could what we perceive as free will be the decision as to which timeless brick happens to be the one we experience?

Experientially we will only know one future, so we can treat the future as absolutely fixed, but while it remains unknowable that really makes no difference to how any of us lives our life.

Hackers break SSL encryption used by millions of sites

Opera was amazing for a while, then somewhere around version 10 to 11 they seemed to lose track of the things that made the browser good - it got slow, clunky and it kept failing to work on sites I use regularly so after sticking with Opera since version 6 or thereabouts, I switched to Chrome.

Then Chrome started getting slow and clunky - it seems like Chrome installations accumulate cruft like crazy and you have to just reinstall and lose all your profile data on a regular basis - and I went back to the old faithful to discover that as of 11.50 they seem to have bucked their ideas up and it's working nicely again.

It may be annoying that most users ignore the most useful browser, but I guess it saves Opera users from being targeted by malevolant scripts...

LOHAN to suck mighty thruster as it goes off, in a shed

Problems with dry ice

If you are using dry ice for cooling make sure that you have facilities to exclude goths from the system. They go crazy for that stuff.

Mine's the black trenchcoat...

Outbound space probe looks back at tiny Earth and Moon

From a distance...

Planet Earth is white and ... erm... there's nothing I can... bite?

DARPA wants a working manned starship for $500k

Applying for a grant?

Surely at that budget, the materials used couldn't be much more than paper and a bunch of balloons. Have they specified that they need interstellar humans or would playmonauts be sufficient?

Acer Aspire 5755G 15in Core i7 laptop

Wasted horizontal space is not the problem...

I don't care about having too much width, that doesn't bother me at all. But having not enough height is another matter entirely. In order to get the vertical space that you would have on an old 15" monitor you need something like a 19" widescreen one. At that point it starts to get very impractical to carry around.

Facebook wannabe rioters cop large helpings of porridge

The correct way to punish looters

The looters in general have cost the nation hundreds of millions of pounds at the least. It seems to me that there should be some way for them to bring money back into the economy. I suggest that as a community service type sentence they should have to run the nationalised banks free of charge.

They are vile looting scum who went out with no moral sense to destroy, steal and burn everything they could so they're a lot better than the people running the banks at the moment and think of the savings on bonuses!

Re: Re: Strong message

That works great if anybody thinks they will get caught when they commit a crime. But they don't, which is why the deterrent effect of strong sentencing exists only in the minds of the people who insist on stronger sentencing.

US breakthrough in Oz bomb hoax case

New South Flippin' Wales

I would appreciate it if NSW would add a word beginning with "F" between the South and the Wales so that I can stop being momentarily baffled every time I read their initials and instead become permenantly baffled.