Posts by Chemist

Herbie goes to a hackathon: Mueller promises cheatware fix

"If a UK VW Passat (as an example) passed its MoT test emissions levels last year, "

What MoT emission test .? AFAIK only particulates are checked

http://www.ukmot.com/manual/7.4/Exhaust-Emissions-Compression-Ignition

Sky 'fesses up to broken fibre cables as cause of outage woes

"Northern England suffering broadband outage since Monday"

I doubt if the areas listed constitute even 1% of "Northern England"

Audi, Seat, Skoda admit they've been fiddling car pollution tests as well

Re: So how would this work in Europe?

" (monoxide? dioxide? can't recall)"

Monoxide, the seriously toxic one

Is Windows 10 slurping too much data? No, says Microsoft. Nuh-uh. Nope

Re: Mint does not demand sys admin skills

"'ve had lying around for years with the express intention of installing some flavor of Linux, not knowing which one to try. I regularly try out Ubuntu and some others, but they all require that you know Linux to use them (aka mounting hard disks, etc). Nuisance."

Just try out a few live-CDs to see what you like - no need to worry about your HD at this point, but allow for it being quite a lot slower. Once you find something you like then install it - usually just a click on OpenSUSE for example, answer a few questions about location/language and a default install will usually be OK without worrying about mounting or very much else.

WATER SURPRISE: Liquid found on Mars, says NASA

Re: Tasty Morsel

"Sounds like a job for Dechlorosoma sp."

Nice spot !

However there's no indication that this organism could cope with the concentration of such salts ( assumed to be high due to the freezing point depression), either from the toxic effects or just the osmotic effect

Re: Tasty Morsel

"When a hardy Earth bacterium gets to that wet soil"

It'll have to be hard with soil containing chlorates and perchlorate in high-ish concentration

NOxious VW emissions scandal: Car maker warned of cheatware YEARS AGO – reports

Re: The VW Diesels pass the emissions test

"Agreed. They passed the tests. That much is fact.

Also a fact, they don't emit levels of NOx when driven that match the tests."

The test value can only be a marker of the possible emissions in real driving conditions allowing (if no cheating) some comparison of make/model and some rough prediction of likely effects on short-term air pollution. Given how fuel consumption varies over a large range with such variables as length of journey, stop start driving, high or moderate steady speeds and so on how could it really be anything else.

The 'easy' alternative would be to issue the worst case measurement for any model and that wouldn't reflect real-life use either.

After all take Euro6 - the test value is 80 milligrams of nox /km for cars whereas the environmental limits of nox are concentration measurements so are not directly correlatable - put another way it's some function of other sources of nox + vehicle density & usage pattern ( & wind speed/direction & rain ) for any location

Re: Today VW ...

"run out of urea"

Just to put it in context many (all ?) urea injection systems have a limit to the number of engine starts that can happen after the urea runs out.

For example : "If the tank reaches one gallon, the car notifies the driver. It does so again with only 20 starts remaining. To reset the system, at least two gallons of AdBlue--or four half-gallon bottles, at $7.75 each--must be added. Roadside assistance plans cover AdBlue, however."

http://www.businessinsider.com/adding-urea-to-clean-diesel-cars-can-i-just-pee-in-the-tank-2011-5?IR=T

Spirit of the Ghost: Taking a Rolls-Royce Wraith around France

Re: Satnav

"And a Velo Thruxton."

Still miss mine even after all these years - sold it for £350 - sigh

VW’s case of NOxious emissions: a tale of SMOKE and MIRRORS?

Re: Alltogether Now

"Urea injection, which only really works during emissions tests too."

Would you like to ref. that. because AFAIK it's simply not true.

Petrol engines also produce less nox than diesel but still a moderate amount.

In my experience diesels use considerably less fuel ( by volume) than petrol engines in similar vehicles partly due to the increased energy content of diesel and partly due to the better thermodynamic efficiency. Indeed large ship diesels are the most efficient internal combustion engines that are available.

Re: Alltogether Now

"Nitrogen oxides are produced in combustion processes, partly from nitrogen compounds in the fuel, but mostly by direct combination of atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen in flames. Nitrogen oxides are produced naturally by lightning, and also, to a small extent, by microbial processes in soils.

"

http://www.apis.ac.uk/overview/pollutants/overview_NOx.htm

NOxious Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal: Chief falls on sword

"For example, apart from he MOT test which is just while idling I believe"

AFAIK diesel smoke tests are carried out at full 'throttle'

NASA rover coders at Intel's Wind River biz axed – sources

Re: Topical

"AFAIK, Canon DSLR camera software is built on VxWorks."

Not since ~2007, it's now DRYOS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRYOS.

DRYOS aims to be compatible with µITRON 4.0 and with POSIX.

11 MILLION VW cars used Dieselgate cheatware – what the clutch, Volkswagen?

Re: Where's the red line?

"The other problem here is that too much credence is applied to the test results."

Indeed. In fact it will be very difficult to have a test that accurately reflects 'real-world' usage as that varies so much.

The extremes might be the city dweller who mostly does short trips in busy conditions with lots of stop/start/idling/acc.

My car might be the other extreme - almost no short journeys, live in the country, travel mostly fast A-roads and motorways at quiet times (overnight), little acc.

I suggest no testing regime will adequately reflect that and that's without considering driving 'style'

Microsoft Office 2016 for Windows: The spirit of Clippy lives on

Re: Not available

" It takes 23 seconds on average for Writer to start on my desktop machine"

Well as I mentioned below on this laptop,OpenSUSE 13.1, LO 4.1.6.2 500GB HD i7 it take (at the most) 2 secs from clicking the icon to Writer open with a cursor. .

In fact it takes 2 secs to load Calc and my finance spreadsheet and that's via WiFi from my fileserver

Re: ODF?

"Unfortunately, the use of ODF for engaging with HMG is bobbins. All of my customers require files sent in .doc/.xls format for tender responses or any other formal engagements."

Glad you joined today to let us know about that. /cynical-moi ?

Re: Not available

" in the shops and then the bargain bin before Writer has even opened."

Congratulations on your phenomenal productivity - you put us all to shame !

It takes me 2 seconds to have Writer ready so you obviously pack a lot in a day. ( Mind I'm running it on Linux )

The UK IS better than Europe, FACT! (at implementing cybersecurity measures)

Re: "All Europe"...

"Last time I checked, the continent still extends past Moscow, and well past Istanbul."

Not quite that simple. Some countries are 'transcontinental' like the Russian Fed. & Turkey. The demarcation line for Turkey for example is the Bosporus and Dardanelles. So Istanbul is in Europe but most of Turkey is in Asia.

CHEAT! Volkswagen chief 'deeply sorry' over diesel emission test dodge

Re: Oh dear, VW got caught.

"don't do it when revved while stationary in a test station"

They don't need to use much fuel to rev to max when they're not under load. The situation is quite different if you accelerate hard on the open road esp. from low revs.

Indianapolis man paints his ball every day – for FORTY YEARS

Re: I'll raise a glass to eccentricity

@Michael H.F. Wilkinson

I seem to remember there was a publication "Journal of Irreproducible Results" where the title font tailed off into a wastebin. You seem to be the sort of chap that might remember it.

This ball wouldn't qualify, of course, as no-one is likely to try to reproduce it ! It also gives a whole new meaning to paint-balling of course.

Microsoft has developed its own Linux. Repeat. Microsoft has developed its own Linux

Re: Finally hired someone who knows good software

" the Windows network stack significantly outperforms off the shelf Linux "

Ahahah !

Re: I for one welcome our new Redmond overlords...

"Perhaps looking at things 'the Redmond way' could help a few of these issues."

I really don't think so as they really don't exist !

" user since the mid 90s"

Let's NUKE MARS to make it more like home says Elon Musk

Re: Greenhouse gas

"Plants don't. They need CO2 and water (plus the minerals for growing). Plants will PRODUCE oxygen."

Plants do need oxygen - it's just that in sunlight and CO2 they produce more oxygen than they need. When it's dark they are a net consumer of oxygen. Plants do need oxygen to survive.

http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=760

Re: Carbon Dioxide

"'ve seen something, somewhere, about how to solve that part...

... Oh, I remember, they call them "plants"..."

Well oddly enough I'm a physical scientist and I've come across them - well at least on Earth where they have a reasonable supply of carbon dioxide and oxygen.

Problem on Mars is the high percentage of carbon dioxide still represents a pitifully small amount due to the very low atmospheric pressure and there's very little oxygen which plants need as well. Now I'm not a botanist so I can't tell you if current plants will grow under such conditions but I'd bet it's not too likely.

Oh I wonder who might know ? Maybe NASA

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2005/mars_plants.html

"The plants would probably be housed in a greenhouse on a Martian base, because no known forms of life can survive direct exposure to the Martian surface, with its extremely cold, thin air and sterilizing radiation. Even then, conditions in a Martian greenhouse would be beyond what ordinary plants could stand. During the day, the plants would have to endure high levels of solar ultraviolet radiation, because the thin Martian atmosphere has no ozone to block it like the Earth's atmosphere does. At night, temperatures would drop well below freezing. Also, the Martian soil is poor in the mineral nutrients necessary for plants to thrive."

Re: Greenhouse gas

"you need more CO2"

It's already got 95%+ how are you going to keep anymore there !! Will existing plants grow in 95%+ CO2 ? They also need oxygen

Re: Greenhouse gas

"The polar ice caps contain lots of frozen carbon dioxide, that is why."

So ? The last thing the Martian atmosphere needs is more carbon dioxide as it's already >95% such

"would likely be a planet with even less water"

The other 'small' problem is the almost total lack of oxygen and the very large amount (>95%) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere already.

Intel's 6th gen processors rock – but won't revive PC markets

Re: Too many processors will confuse the market

"Offering just the fastest processor and the lowest power processor in each i3,i5,i7 sector is all we need."

But as you point out these are just selected bins so what would they do with the rest ?

Half the Fanbois in your office are unpatched ATTACK VECTORS

Re: In other news

"At El Reg the glass is ALWAYS half empty."

And what's left in it is vitriol !

Don't want to upgrade to Windows 10? You'll download it WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

Re: I bought windows 7 retail

"Seeing as competing Open Source OS distributions generally have far more known vulnerabilities that on average take longer to patch (more days at risk) than with Windows "

You must have been listening to that AC chap - now what was his name ?

Re: Don't ya just hate it when...

"'ve hated Linux for as long as I can remember."

At the risk of opening a very large can of very spiky worms - why ? It's an OS - it has faults but if it can enable you to do all you want what's the problem ? If it can't don't change.

For me the advantages massively outweight any disadvantages -in fact I can't think of any disadvantages for me

Re: FSF recommended distros

"The URL you've given results in a 404 error. Please try again. Thanks."

Works for me ~0700 BST

On the other hand it's a very odd, limited list

Batteries on wheels are about to reshape our cities and lives

Re: Batteries?

"Longer journeys might need to be in some kind of relay where you swap taxis."

Ah, the return of the coaching inn

"Already, you can buy a Ford that parallel parks"

Well we've owned two by VW for 6/3 years that will do auto-parking. No doubt other manufacturers vehicles are available.

Never used the auto-parking though !

Ubuntu Wily gaggle builds 15.10 beta beachhead

Re: Fool me once...

"Fool me once... "

As usual posting as A/C ( without any reason) tends to remove any serious credibility from your post.

In my experience KDE uses more resources than other Linux desktops but it's still quick even on modest hardware unless all the (large number) of mostly trivial effects are enabled.

Microsoft's 'successful' Nokia slurp kills off Lumia photo apps

"Because I will happily lay down real money that at least 80% of those self-proclaimed penguinistas are using Windows 8.n and have never owned a linux box in their lives. It's pretty easy to spot them if you've been using a linux distro since 1998 or before."

What ?

(Linux since the mid-90s, exclusively since ~2007)

Posted using Firefox 40.0.3, OpenSUSE 13.1

Photoshop for 40 quid: Affinity Photo pushes pixels further than most

Re: £40 too expensive...

"From the Affinity web site: Built exclusively for Mac"

Should have read the thread - it was about Darktable !

Re: £40 too expensive...

"Thanks for the recommendation for dark table"

Powerful and has many modules for image processing. I esp. like the profiled denoise if I have to boost the exposure by a large amount due to considerable underexposure.although I generally use a lot less than the default setting. Depending on the model/lens it might not be found in the lens correction module but that uses an external database. The shadows/highlight module is also very useful.

Re: £40 too expensive...

Also available for Solaris and FreeBSD

Re: £40 too expensive...

"£40 too expensive... "

Darktable for Mac & Linux if you need RAW photo processing and manipulation - free & excellent.

http://www.darktable.org

Is 'MetaPod': a) a Pokemon; b) servers running OpenStack?

"that “sounds like a respiratory disease”."

or

"that “sounds like a respiratory disease with the last letter wrong ”. or "that “sounds like a respiratory cisease”. Oh good grief !

Windows 10 grabbed about five per cent market share in August

Re: So What!

I've just updated Lazarus from 1.0.10 to 1.4.2

OpenSUSE software center website (http://software.opensuse.org)

Search for Lazarus, choose distro, 13.1 in this case, - choose 1.4.2 and press 1-click install. A few clicks and root password and it's done ( after a modest download time - it's quite big)

Note : The root password is for the local client GUI installer not the website

I'm sure you know the pitfalls of blindly installing software outside of the distro environment. Most people should be very conservative.

Re: Linux on Desktop ? Let me see...

"Of course I don't, since when posting on Register required any knowledge ?"

It doesn't but ignorance shines through every time

Re: Linux on Desktop ? Let me see...

" nothing changed in last ~20 years, still good enough to run browser but that's about it."

I see you are someone who knows nothing about it.

Re: So What!

"buy into the fact that opening a terminal window for anything other than once in a blue moon disaster"

So don't use such a distro. Although I'm perfectly happy with the command line I use OpenSUSE so don't need to use the command line on a regular basis except where I've written CLI only programs and even then I usually wrap them up in a launchable icon form for regular use.

All system admin/program installs/updates via GUI (Yast2/Config desktop)

Popcorn time at Popcorn Time: More vid slurpers hauled into court

Re: What are they trying to do

"Possession of a burglary tool or theft device is a Class A misdemeanor."

I confess to being the owner of a crowbar !

Space paparazzo captures bipolar butterfly

Just a bit worried that if a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane what this devil might get up to.

Great pic though.

Prof Hawking cracks riddle of black holes – which may be portals to other universes

Re: Plasma Spewing

"How is that energy concentrated around the black hole, a giant energy sucking beast?"

Try : http://www.space.com/5285-powerful-black-hole-jet-explained.html

Re: Plasma Spewing

"I think scientific theory has a long way to go on the black hole subject."

It said by a black hole not from a black hole

"Astronomers have witnessed two big blobs of plasma, shot into space by a black hole"