Posts by alain williams

Final Office 2013 for ARM may not ship until January

Use OpenOffice

It has been running on ARM since 2004.

UK govt to KILL OFF Directgov within weeks

Another set of broken links ...

I am getting annoyed how links that I have to govt web sites all seem to break every couple of years, so I seem that I am, again, going to have to spend hours tracking down where the various pages have moved to. What a waste of time :-(

Prof casts doubt on Stuxnet's accidental 'great escape' theory

This is ignoring the real question

The USA and Israel have engaged in an act of hostility on another country. They have caused real damage and show no contrition at all. I doubt that the are going to even think about bringing those responsible for this outrage to book - in spite of their indignant expostulations when they think that someone has attacked them -- think Gary McKinnon.

This is highly hypocritical of the likes of Hilary Clinton. They have, in effect, started an undeclared war.

What is their justification ? Iran might make bombs and that Iran might start a war. If you look at the history of the USA in the last 50 years you will rapidly realise that this is the pot calling the kettle black.

AMD CTO spills 'Steamroller' core specs

What does ''emergency schedule handling'' mean

As in ''The integer scheduler will sport better emergency schedule handling'' ???

Judge begs Apple, Samsung to get a room, or trial will end in tears

Apple doesn't want to stop court cases

The whole point of this is Apple showing the world that it has bigger, more expensive lawyers than the rest of them - so keep off what it claims to be its lawn even if others have a valid right to be there - otherwise Apple will cost them more in legal fees than it is worth it. Apple does not really mind if it looses as long as the Samsung legal bill is high.

It is not about who is right, but who is richest.

Nokia CEO: No shift from Windows Phone

Re: Put Android on the Lumia 900

No reason why they should not try the same hardware with 2 different operating systems... other than pissing off Steve Ballmer. If the Android one does not sell - then Ballmer was right. Chances are that they will sell some of each, but which sells more would be interesting to find out.

Give them different names to avoid confusing the public, but that is about it.

Airline leaves customer on hold for 15 hours

Re: Premium rate numbers

http://www.saynoto0870.com/ is your friend - look up corresponding 01/02 numbers

Anonymous declares war after French firm trademarks its logo

This is what they have done to themselves

http://tinyurl.com/cc8eq27

Big biz 'struggling' to dump Windows XP

If I tried to migrate them to Linux

and it was not 99% pain free then I would get howls of anguish telling me that they had made a crap choice and how Linux was incompatible with everything, why did they listen to me, no I cannot have any budget for redoing a few things .... - why could they not stay with MS Windows ?

But when it comes to upgrading from one version of MS Windows to another - they just accept the pain!

UK Border Agency to create 'national allegations database'

Low Yeild

''it is still interested in the "low yield" of actionable intelligence that results from these tip-offs''. Ever heard of GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) - if this is just rumours from curtain twitchers, what do you expect ?

I am not saying that they should not be looked into, but don't expect a ''high yeild''.

Yesterday I was amazed at Keir Starmer saying that the conviction rate for rape was too low. Maybe this is because the judge/jury looking at the evidence in the trials decided that they could not convict. Just because a woman makes an allegation does not make the man a rapist. You can't twist the evidence to suit your prejudices!

Gov must act on 'innocent' web-browsing copyright timebomb

If you don't want me to see it - protect it

It is not hard to stop visitors seeing all, or part, of your web site until they have paid a fee. The Times does that (which is why after 30 years I switched newspaper - to The Guardian).

I get the feeling that someone is angling for a way of demanding retrospective fee -- you visited our web site yesterday: so cough up.

What next ? I pick up a newspaper left on a train and have to pay to read it ?

CEO of fallen flash sweetheart STEC charged with insider trading

Just the tip of the iceberg

These are just the ones that we get to know about. How many more where they don't make a mistake and rake in the loot ?

Religious wars brewing in ICANN gTLD expansion

I would be much happier ...

to find my kids getting off to something in a .xxx domain than something in a .catholic (or similar) domain. If they spent too long in one of the latter I would have concerns about their rationality and their inclinations to be nice to others and treat people on their own merits rather than the colour of their skin or mythological beliefs.

Can neighbours grab your sensitive package, asks Post Office

Compensation if it is nicked ?

I am lucky - I don't think that my neighbours would steal something that they took in for me. Many cannot trust their neighbours. so what happens when the parcel becomes ''lost'' ? The standard compensation rates for lost packages is not enough, quite apart from the hassle of having to buy another whatever, if it is indeed replaceable.

Making someone put a sticker on their door saying ''My neigbours are thieves'' is not acceptable.

Boffins pull off room-temp quantum computing with home-grown gems

Wow! What is next ?

If they can get room temperature superconductors - we will all be happy!

CERN catches a glimpse of Higgs-like boson

Re: They found the Higgs Boson?

Are you saying that I should check down the back of my sofa - see if some of the critters are hiding there ?

Facebook phone app attempts to seize ALL YOUR MAIL

Computer misuse

Does this not fall under the computer misuse act -- aka hacking ?

If this happens to phones in the UK does this mean that we get the chance to extradite Zuckerberg from the USA to stand trial ?

AMD and Intel mainstream desktop CPUs

Useless benchmarks

What is the point of using only single threaded benchmarks on a chip with multiple execution units ? I really want to know how they compare with a desktop running multiple simultaneous applications/processes and some virtual machines.

Please can we have benchmarks that show how this millenium's chips perform.

Vint Cerf: 'COMMUNISTS want to seize the INTERNET'

Neither the USA nor the UN should control the Internet

The USA has shown that it cannot be trusted to administer the Internet in an impartial manner - look at how it has blocked countries with which it is currently waging war; and how it has grabbed domains that are legal elsewhere but upset some commercial USA interest.

The UN is far too political an organisation. It will be pulled to decisions decided on who short term expidiency. For one recent wacky example I see that it has made that butcher Robert Mugabe the UN leader for tourism!! See:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/29/robert-mugabe-un-international-envoy-tourism

The ITU is too sluggish and backward looking an organisation. Look at the dire mess of the ISO protocols that it was pushing for a few years - thankfully now a distant memory.

So who then ? The Unix greybeards who developed it in the first place ? Maybe a good idea, but they will be subject to pressure ... so choose those who ignore pressure and say what they think is right. But would we want the likes of Stallman to be in charge of the Internet ?

LOHAN sucks 27 inches

I read the bit about sucking inches

and thought that you were talking about Paris again ... but then remembered that that was a previous project.

Dole Office staff snooped into private data 992 times in 10 months

992 times

What is it ?

a) 992 times that they know about ?

b) 992 times that they are willing to admit ?

c) 992 times with no possibility of any more ?

I strongly suspect (a) with a bit of (b).

Only global poverty can save the planet, insists WWF - and the ESA!

There are too many of us

Like it or not we have problems living on what the planet can supply us with. So we either reduce our population or take less per head of what is sustainable. The arithmetic is quite simple. Unfortunately many people stick their heads in the sand and think that we can have both, it is rather like the Greeks thinking that they can continue to avoid austerity while also not paying taxes and staying in the Euro.

Spend 5 minutes here:

http://populationmatters.org/

ISP kills off country-ban dodge after just 48 hours

Globalisation

Remember boys and girls that globalisation is for the big companies to take advantage of, not for the rest of us. It is, apparently, OK for the big boys to buy where things are cheap and then sell at different prices according to what the market can bear and so maximise their profits. They don't like it one little bit if we buy where it is cheap.

The use of GEOIP is much the same.

Kelvin MacKenzie blasts 'footie rights warehouse' BSkyB

Competition on sports broadcasting

It is claimed that there is competition in broadcasting of things like football matches as no one company can have all of them -- but you still end up where one company will have the exclusive rights to an individual match. That is not competition -- if you want to watch the match you have to go to whoever has the rights and they can charge what they want.

Competition will only happen if the rights to every match must be available** to at least two broadcasters; then the football fan will be able to choose and presumably go for the cheaper. This will result in real competition and downward price pressure.

Until we have that: sports broadcasting competition will be a sham.

**available does not mean that the rights have to be taken up. There will be competition for the interesting matches, not all are 'interesting'.

Britain prepares for government by iPad

Security - can we trust them ?

Given that some MPs see *very* sensitive stuff we have to assume that this will end up on the ipads. Apple knows who the owner of these ipads are and thus the USA government also does. Since Apple seems to have total control over these things we have to assume that the USA government is not going to be able to resist the temptation to see what is on these machines and, perhaps, even 'borrow' the odd document or few.

Question: would the NSA let Obama have one of these unless it had a special build that had been crawled over by their top security people ?

I had not realised that spying had become so easy!

London Olympics 'not immune' to cyber attack

New Olympic Sport ?

Maybe that ought to be a new event: Who can crack the web site and get themselves a free ticket to the upcoming sports days.

Moon at annual perigee this weekend

Re: Close approach of the moon?

''I'll just take my hat off, then.''

What ? To replace it with a tin foil one to protect yourself from the moon's rays ?

iTunes fanbois outraged by Apple's sex-life quiz probe

Least favourite job

For plenty of people that question is a complete non starter, it implies that they have had at least 2 jobs ... what about the lazy arses who have never bothered to work ? Ditto cars - unless you count the ones that they have nicked, or even know who their father is.

I suppose that they do need to provide a list of questions, most people would not be able to come up with things themselves - although it would be nice for those who are more able.

'Apple will coast, and then decelerate' says Forrester CEO

Bet on Apple stock price

So, has George Colony shorted Apple stock ? If not -then how sure is he of what he says ?

Intel discloses sub-10-watt 'Centerton' Atom chip

Try to compete with ARM

Intel needs to have some low power stuff since ARM is starting to move into the server market. Power/cooling are starting to become very important in data centers.

Asda knocks out Kobo e-reader for £49

Is it hackable ?

See title

Lords give automatic smut censorship bill the once-over

while they are at it ...

Ensure that the Post Office check that they are not delivering any copies of Playboy/... unless the householder has signed a we-want-smut agreement. Then fix TVs to not show saucy material broadcast after the watershed.

Just because computers are involved there seems to be this cloud cuckoo notion that any controls are possible and should be put in place.

Or is it that now that the boys at MI5 will get to see what we are looking at they don't want them getting ideas and wasting time & government bandwidth when they should be spying on us ?

Windows 8 on ARM vs iPad: Has Microsoft lost already?

The reason to use MS Windows ...

is because of the 3rd party apps. Most of these have only ever run on Intel compatible CPUs. The ISVs are going to have great fun getting them to work on a different architecture. It isn't that hard if you know what you are doing and have the discipline -- but I suspect that if you have never had to do it before then things may be surprising.

OK, you may also want to use MS Office, but OpenOffice is a credible alternative that is good enough for most people's needs.

Fujitsu's King K thrashes Top 500 rivals

Energy creation!!

I note that one of the 6 areas where it will be used is ''New material and energy creation''. If they can do that then the physicists would be *really* interested. All that they know how to do at the moment is to convert one form of energy into another form. If these guys would be able to bust the conservation laws and create new energy - that would be great!

Lawyers of Mordor menace Hobbit boozer

Obvious solution

1) The pub is not really doing SZC any harm.

2) SZC need to protect their property else risk losing control of it.

The obvious solution is for the pub to pay SZC a nominal fee to continue to use the name. £100 would seem about right. Everyone can then get on with their lives.

Cameron denies personal Trident missile firing iPad app

Dr Strangelove would be disappointed

we have the technology but don't use it as he would have wished!

World's Raspberry Pi supply jammed in factory blunder

Raspberry Jammed

Come on El Reg, you are slipping -- that should have been the headline!

Unlawful tweets could land Twitter in Blighty's dock

Re: The E-Commerce Regulations

"Twitter does not moderate posts/tweets so should be covered... theregister does moderate posts so would not be covered?"

The Register (these days) moderates post-facto -- most posts go straight up. If el-reg receives a complaint it then has to make a judgement and remove the item if it is illegal. That judgement is the tricky bit - how do the moderators know that the complaint is valid and not just someone trying to bury an inconvenient truth by hoodwinking them. Moderators will probably act on the cautious side to protect The Register from legal action.

UK will share passenger data with US in Euro deal

Questions

* What data will be shared with the USA ?

+ Name, address, ... what else ?

+ Trips to/from the USA or trips elsewhere as well ?

* What the USA can do with the data is restricted ... how can we be sure that they won't use it for other things and keep it for longer than agreed ?

Crap PINs give wallet thieves 1-in-11 jackpot shot

Re: You carry your birth date around with you?

Like many people I carry my driver's license around with me (the plastic card one). So I am one of the 99%.

Apple orders PC builder to 'choose sides' in laptop battle?

iChildish

iNfantile

Cabinet Office moves step closer to killing Directgov

Breaking it

What this new web site will do is to break links that other web sites have to directgov - they keep on doing this, it is a pain.

Re: Cookies

'closing this signals your acceptance to cookies'

You only see that if you have javascript enabled. No JS no popup.

Google finally admits it wants to OWN YOU

Run different web browsers

Next

Re: "Google's results are all Google URLs that redirect."

I have noticed that they sometimes are and sometimes are not. I'm not sure what it depends on. I surf with javascript turned off by default.

NASA shuts off Voyager 1's central heating

@ShelLuser

I agree with your main argument. The main problem is that people do not distinguish between planned and forced reboots. I like to reboot customer machines when a new kernel is installed, this takes a few minutes and is done when is convenient.

The machine at which I am typing is 10 years old, but runs an up to date kernel. I leave it on 24x7 andhave had few hardware problems over the years, just: CPU fans and hard disks.

Record numbers of readers flock to The Register

How is that measured ?

If it is by analysis of your server logs, OK - but if by counts from doubleclick.net then you don't count me -- firefox noscript blocks that.

Boffins quarrel over ridding world of leap seconds

2038

""You'll enjoy 2038 then.""

You are confusing method with implementation. The Unix problem can (will) be solved by moving to 64 bit integers.

(At Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038 GMT Unix time as a 32 bit number wraps round)

Wikipedia to shut down Wednesday in SOPA protest

El Reg darkening

''I hope El Reg will also be going dark''

The idea is to bring the issue to the attention of the great majority who have not heard what is happening or who have vaguely heard but not bothered to find out what SOPA is. El Reg readers are very likely to know what the fuss is all about - so there is little point is darkening El Reg.

However a large banner, in sympathy, would not go amiss.

NASA's ageing black hole-stalking probe switched off

Pictures please ...

or we won't believe that it happened :-)