Posts by oopsie

Samsung's little black box will hot-wire your car to the internet. Eek!

Hopefully, my car will be able to drive itself before this kind of thing becomes mandatory.

Dust off those White Space devices: New rules finalised by Ofcom

PMSE?

Curious to see how this works out with PMSE licences - suspect they'll be ignored...

As we all know, snark always comes before a fall. Mea culpa

Decision Importance

I'd be curious as to how the relative importance of the decision affects rationality :

We only take out a few mortgages, but they do tend to be a significant portion of our outlay.

We don't buy laptops that often (mostly...) but once bought tend to invest quite a lot of time using them.

We buy apples pretty often, but if they turn out to be 'bad' it's not the end of the world.

Photo finesse: Eyefi Mobi Pro Wi-Fi SD card

Disable Cloud Option

Is it possible to disable the cloud upload? If not, does blocking whatever IPs the software uploads to stop it working locally?

AT&T and Netflix get into very public spat over net neutrality

Pass the cost on?

How long until Netflix pass the extra charge back to the consumer? I can imagine people being particularly overjoyed to find an AT&T surcharge on their bills, but if serving AT&T customers is more expensive...

NHS preps spammy mailshots advertising 'BIGGEST medical data grab in HISTORY'

Newborns

If there's no way to ever get off this database, how do parents avoid their kids (born after this goes live) ending up on it?

Kinky? You're mentally healthier than 'vanilla' bonkers

Re: It's not the stuff you do

I've been beaten for calling it BSDM before now...

Other than that :-)

Ofcom ploughs up UK spectrum fields, reseeds them with 4G

3dB

3dB is 8 times the power?

I thought 6dB was a doubling of power / 3dB was a doubling of voltage or some such?

TSA to pull backscatter perv scanners from US airports

Why do these have operators?

So, the new machines put a splodge over a picture of a person if there's something suspicious. If there's no splodge, i assume the person is free to go? In which case (assuming that the sensors don't have a horrific rate of false positives) shouldn't you only need a few people for a bunch of scanners?

Panasonic pitches Ultra HD 4K x 2K monster tablet

Handy for CAD

This would be particularly handy for looking at system diagrams and the like, rather than printing them out at A3. Probably gonna need an awful lot of printing before it's economical though :-(

Wind, solar could provide 99.9% of ALL POWER by 2030

Assumptions?

Are there any studies out there that look at what would happen to oil, gas, coal, photovoltaic and wind prices under a significant change of demand?

If America were to move from burning 'stuff' to renewable energy, wouldn't that lead to significantly cheaper 'stuff'? Supply and demand, etc? On the flip side - if you needed that many cells and sails, plus ongoing replacements, you'd certainly get economies of scale but would you also meet supply constraints? Don't PVCs use rare earth metals in their production? The name leads me to wonder if they're hard to come by.

Facebook shoves your face in Microsoft's Bing thing

And your photos will never be shared with the public...

I'm surprised that photos that're visible to everyone on Facebook won't be public on Bing search. As someone who posts a lot of public photos (I do photography at night clubs) that might actually have been useful.

UK kids' charity lobbies hard for 'opt-in' web smut access

Also...

It strikes me that if a child finds 'bad' porn on the internet and they feel that their best course of action is to call Child Line, the most pressing problem probably isn't that they've found porn on the internet...

Possibly an Opportunity?

While I'm against censorship, and would opt for unfiltered internet access simply on principle (some of the stuff that Vodafone censor in the name of blocking adult content would be amusing were it not worrying) if the "think of the children 'cus the parents aren't" brigade feel that we should have censored internet, I'd suggest that the problem is that those who should be responsible for the internet connection are either unwilling or unable to control its use. As such, if there are going to be filters put in place, can they also filter out the command and control addresses of known viruses, possibly block ports that're currently being used for attacks and rarely used for other things, etc? This would seem at least as feasible and more likely to do some actual good.

Canon debuts EOS M compact system camera

Re: No custom settings?

I assume there's no custom settings as it's one of the differentiators between the 650D and the 60D (which has 1, iirc) and they're trying to make it a 650D equivalent.

UK.gov proposes massive copyright land snatch

I wonder if they've thought about the number of photographs that amateur photographers take every week. Would Bastards Ltd have to charge for registration of works or be overwhelmed?

Apple 13in MacBook Pro to fall into line this autumn

MBP/Air differentiation

If the 13" MBP goes retina, then having Airs with dual core + integrated graphics + 'normal' screens and MBPs with quad core, discrete graphics and retina displays would seem a logical differentiation. The new MBPs would also seem to be slightly better off ports wise.

If other laptop manufacturers start releasing Air type laptops with decent screens, I'd imagine that the next logical step would be for Apple to push the Airs to retina, but leave them thinner, integrated graphics/dual core and less ports. Perhaps that's what they'll do with the airs next year. If the retina display yields are becoming more economic by October, they should be pretty good by the next Air refresh.

We'll pull the plug on info-leak smart meters, warns UK.gov

Data Protection?

So far there seems to have been some debate about the security of communications to/from these smart meters but little in the way of discussion as to what the utility companies will be able to do with the demand data they gather. I'd imagine that there'd be someone somewhere who'd be willing to pay to find out what kind of TV i have... On the flip side, I've little faith that the markets will produce a supplier who's willing to promise not to share this kind of information, if they think they can make money out of it.

Will Nvidia 'n' pals pwn future gaming?

Latency

Is 30ms latency a reasonable expectation for network latency on ADSL nowadays?

Interesting that the NVidia offering has 30ms of network latency, while the 'version 1' offering has 75. Were that 75 included in the NVidia total, i make it as adding up to more than the 200ms average response time.

Ten... digital adult toys

Magic Wand

Surprised that the magic wand scored so low - i guess the Love Honey version must be louder than the Hitachi original?

Then again, it'd be much duller without the attachments, which weren't mentioned.

Apple Thunderbolt Display 27in monitor

further displays

It's a shame that you can't daisychain another display from the thunderbolt port on the monitor (according to the internet - no guarantee it's right, of course). I thought that Thunderbolt actually ran two 10gb/s channels, so not sure why, but it would have been handy.

First look at Toshiba's Portégé Z830 Ultrabook

Ports

Is that a VGA port i see on the back?

The main reason i'd take a display port over HDMI is that it seems a lot of places still don't have great support for digital video built in to their projection systems, so a method of getting analogue out is still pretty welcome. As said, executive oriented, perhaps?

Apple gives green light to Eton solar cell iPhone case

letters and/or digits.

I assume the idea is that you leave the thing charging up during the day, and then use it to charge your phone overnight so the additional size wouldn't be that important?

Shame it's a little late for the festival season - doubt i'll be able to get a hold of one in a fortnight's time!

Last ever batch of TouchPads isn't coming to Blighty

price?

Had anyone said that they'll be the same price?

Were i them, i'd try for $150 or something and see how they do.

New UK 'leccy meters remotely run via Voda 2G

2-way comms

If it's function is to send meter readings to the motehr ship, it doesn't need 2 way comms...

That would seem to solve quite a few of the worries.

Elgato readies iPad 2 TV tuner dongle

a title is required

Is it possible to charge the IPad from an accessory?

If so, i'd have thought it was possible to power the tv receiver and the pad from the same usb, unless the combined power requirement is too high?

Google gets UK OK on privacy in slurping probe

Re: If I leave my front door open

Google slurping unencrypted wifi data isn't really like them stealing from your house though, is it? I mean, isn't it more like them coming and taking photos of something you left out on your lawn? Which, incidentally...

Don't get me wrong, i'm not entirely comfortable with the whole street view thing - the internet remembering things in general rather scares me - but making inflamatory comparisons doesn't really help.

Microsoft loses grip on slippery Mango

mixed blessing

Are the operator's distinguishing features a plus or a minus on win phone? Not had a play with one yet.

Sony VPL-HW30ES 3D projector

for gaming?

The lamps are a lil costly for me to consider gaming with them. Hopefully the casio laser projectors will continue improving to the point where i can use some of those - the latest are pretty good!

Next 15in, 17in MacBook Pros to be MacBook Air skinny

2nd laptop sans optical

Just bought one of the new airs to replace another laptop with no optical drive - the only thing i've missed it for is playing old games that want to have the CD in the drive. Especially as macs are able to borrow a neighbour's optical drive when necessary, i'd rather not carry the weight around with me.

Did take me a couple of minutes to realise why there was no OSx DVD in the box though... Doh!

I'm far more worried by the lack of ethernet port - but that's only so that i can get at the web interfaces of kit to configure it before it goes on the network proper. Much more convenient than going in via serial - which not laptops seem to have anymore either :-)

Market rationalist pigs get the best choice of totty

but...?

While i can see that initial attraction might be less explainable by the systems theory, i'd have thought that for things to last you need some common ground etc? While dating sites may take this as their initial criteria rather than a prolonging factor i'd be surprised if that didn't at least increase the likelihood of dates resulting in relationships that last a while, even if it doesn't increase the initial success rate.

Plus, don't some sites go beyond interests - i think OkCupid's model is reasonably good, in that it's fairly unlikely to pair you with someone you'll have blazing rows with?

Samsung Chromebook: The $499 Google thought experiment

My Mother

Sounds like something i'd give to my mother

Feds declare victory over notorious Coreflood botnet

licencing conditions

I'm moderatly surprised that Microsoft havn'g introduced licencing conditions yet that allow them to remove software from people's machines.

Yes, i'm aware of the implications etc. Still kinda surprised that they havn't done it though.

Hannspree Hannspad 10.1in Android tablet

microphone?

Any idea if it has a microphone?

Smart Fortwo Electric Drive e-car

Motorway Driving

Is the top speed limited to 62 miles an hour by performance or by some other form of limiter? If the former, is that with the 'boost' active?

Either way, i can see why people are worried about it on motorways - one of these passing a lorry might be quicker than lorry racing, but by the same logic it'll happen more often as it'll gain on more lorrys.

I'm also curious as to how it fares on dual carriageways, where it may have trouble pulling out from any lorries it gets stuck behind?

3D-printed bikini goes on sale

shame about the price

@ Jeepboy - have you tried wearing a corset? :-)

of course, if there is a lack of support they do need to do something about that, but if it's 3d printed that shouldn't be that hard.

the price, however, is a little silly...

Powerline network radio interference debated in Commons

RE: radio bands

"DSL uses long and medium wave frequencies down your phone line

...

PLT uses long and medium wave frequencies down your mains wiring; modern PLT extends this into the short waves and far beyond."

Does this imply that the #1 victim of power line networking may infact be the broadband it's supposed to be distributing? Given the whole 'up to' debate, it'd be pretty hard to quantify without a controled trial but were it proven i'd have thought it'd make the issue more interesting to people.

FBI fights to protect ISPs that snoop on their customers

Sued by their customers?

Doesn't this imply that the ISPs think that they're doing something of at least questionable legality?

Google lobbying to make driverless cars legal in Nevada

Insurance

Wonder what kind of no claims bonus they'll attract...

Council loses USB of patient records

print scanners?

Does noone make memory sticks with finger print scanners on? If the data's inaccessible without the print i'd have thought they'd be reasonably secure and the odds of loosing all of your fingerprints seem low?

Skype's mega-FAIL: exec cops to cause

exponential back off?

Would some form of back off on clients trying to reconnect have helped with this? I'm thinking that this way, the supernodes would have had time to reestablish themselves without being slammed with a huge amont of traffic?

Any idea where they found the bandwidth/processing for their mega-super-duper-nodes to fix the system? I guess it'd be one of those things that processing on demand would be pretty handy for?

Massive new US spy airship 'could be used to carry big cargoes'

a plan so cunning...

If the engines are able to thrust both upwards and downwards, would this in part negate the problem of it becomming uncontrolably bouyant (sp?) once it's offloaded its cargo?

Alan Sugar's 'cockup braindead in call centre clueless' BT row

a title is required

doesn't he own viglen?

Ofcom mulls popular number charge

the title is required, but may be superfluous

With even the most basic of mobiles having a phone book, the comparison between mobiles and fixed lines seems shakey?

Is there anyone out there with some landline user demographics? I'd have expected a disproportionate number of people who're still using land lines to be more resistant to technological change and therefore the group that'd complain loudest about a big change to the numbering system.

Privacy-protecting social network opens up

Greatest adoption?

I'd have thought that Facebook has a great enough critical mass to be more worried about revenue per user than increasing adoption - hence the privacy controls getting more and more... creative?

Cable lays plan for graduate tax

Student Loans?

If a specific graduate tax is introduced, will student loans be annulled? I can see people being upset at paying both simultaniously!

Siphon Wars: Pressurist weighs into Gravitite boffin

pressure?

Unless the 'in' part of the syphon is right at the surface of the liquid (in which case, it ain't going to work for long anyways) surely the liquid above the tube's end point could be considered to be providing atmospheric pressure anyway?