Posts by John Brown (no body)

China’s preferred Linux distro trumpets Arm benchmark results

Re: Remind me

"Arm don't design chips"

Don't they? I thought that was the point of ARM. They design the chips then license the designs out.

"So... China goes Capitalist, we go Communist. Interesting plan :)"

Not sure where they are heading, but watching US news and seeing Govt officials, Reps and Sens defending Trumps U turns and contradictions has been fun viewing recently. In particular the way they will defend the party at all costs, logic be damned. Likewise the voxpops with the "common people" attacking or defending Trump. (It goers both ways, but Trump is the incumbent) It's horrifically and stringently partisan that the party members will support and defend the party even when it goes against all common sense and logic.

I'm not sure if the Dems are as bad, but it's become more and more obvious over the last 3.5 years that anyone who disagrees with the party and more specifically, in the case of the GOP, disagrees with Trump, that's pretty much a job if not career ending stance to take. It's all very reminiscent of communist or fascist party methods.

TomTom bill bomb: Why am I being charged for infotainment? I sold my car last year, rages Reg reader

Re: NEVER put your home address in your GPS!

"Do you not know where you live?"

Yeah, I do. But having an ETA, getting out of the town or city I'm currently by the quickest route, avoiding delays that I otherwise don't know about etc. are useful functions. Likewise, getting to places I've never been top before. Pre-SatNav I had a couple of road atlases and numerous town and city maps totalling something like £75, which needed updating at least every few years and, as is well known with paper maps, are at least a year out of date when first printed. A £200 SatNav with lifetime map updates is cheaper and more likely to be up to date.You may have a different use case, or be happy to delay your travel while you stop and ask directions, or be happy to be delayed by taking the wrong turning or getting stuck in a queue, but some us would rather just get where we want to be.

I will add that for a short while between relying on published maps and buying a SatNav, I did use multimap.co.uk for a while, screen grabbing and printing relevant maps at relevant scales to get where I wanted to go. But doing that every night ready for the next day is a bit of a chore when I can put a post code and a door number into a satNav and have to do all the heavy lifting more me. It's kind of the raison d'etre of computers. Making life easier for the user.

Re: As I read that

"(if it's technically possible to start billing via the in-car screen then it's technically possible to stop billing via the in-car screen)."

Try telling that to almost every business that operated any form of subscription service. It's ALWAYS easy to sign up or even to upgrade, but try to downgrade or cancel and 99% of them will make you phone them.

Re: As I read that

I thought that too. If it comes built into the car, then Mazda have some reasonability for it too. It was their decision to install it. They don't send you off to a subcontractor when a non-Mazda built part such an exhaust or manifold fails, let alone an ECU. Who know just what is in a car that the manufacturer didn't actually build.

Re: I don't know what constitutes a lifetime in TomTom's eyes

"So I bought a Garmin."

And from past experience, if the base unit doesn't have enough space to store the latest maps, you just add an SD card and it splits the data across the internal and external storage. I wonder why TomTom don't do that? My current Garmin SatNav is about 10 years old and still gets updates. The only issue is that thanks to the GPS rollover it no longer knows which part of the year it's in so the automatic switch between day and night modes doesn't work at the right times and the clock needs to be set manually because it no longer knows when to switch from BST to GMT.

A volt from the blue: Samsung reportedly ditches wall-wart from future phones

"If the EU really wants to fix "e-waste" this is how you do it. Making the charger comply with a standard doesn't reduce waste in the long run - someday you're going to decide to throw away some of the extra chargers in your junk drawer. Better if you don't accumulate any more than you already have."

Unless, of course, this is the long term result of standardising phone charging connectors. Most people now no longer need a new one so now the e-waste "mountain" of chargers will reduce.

Never mind rail and ports, let's help DPD... and, er, Amazon: UK gov and ESA call for ways to slap logistics with 5G stick

Did you miss the link in paragraph 5?

Hungry? Please enjoy this delicious NaN, courtesy of British Gas and Sainsbury's

The current state of education?

"We realise this message isn’t very customer friendly, so while we fix, we ask that if any of our customers receive to please get in contact so we can check to why it has happened and provide the correct balance."

My English teach would be turning in his grave if he read that piece of poorly constructed word-smithing. Clearly this problem extends to their devs too.

Heir-to-Concorde demo model to debut in October

Re: Lost Opportunities

"it turns out that supersonic airliners are not actually that interesting."

There was also an element of "Not Invented Here" no-fly bans too.

Re: Starship?

Did you mean New York USA or New York UK?

NASA trusted 'traditional' Boeing to program its Starliner without close supervision... It failed to dock due to bugs

Re: A calculation

I said OS/Desktop specifically to differentiate between Windows (an OS) and Desktop, which here on FreeBSD in my case is either KDE or XFCE - The only penguins here are running on RasPis for Kodi. All the rest are Daemons, which eat penguins for lunch :-)

Re: A calculation

"Damn getting older, and Damn small fonts :-) Looks like I need to change the handle to 'Magoo'..."

CTRL-+ is your friend, at least in the browser. Going through the settings for your OS/Desktop and increasing all the font sizes is a little more involved.

GCHQ's cyber arm report on Huawei said to be burning hole through UK.gov desks

Re: WTF ....... Is the service demented and infiltrated?

"whenever any controversial former MI6 spy such as a Christopher Steele is wheeled out of confinement/quarantine/therapy/shady shadows to share his formerly anonymised ramblings?"

It appears he managed to elude the large bouncy beach balls.

Shopped recently in a small online store? Check this list to see if it was one of 570 websites infected with card-skimming Magecart

Re: Upscalestripper was hacked!!

I thought it was Upscales Trippers. Holidays or drugs, not sure which :-)

Another anti-immigrant rant goes viral in America – and this time it's by a British, er, immigrant tech CEO

Re: "popular justice" is no justice at all

My feeling on the use of the word lynching is that it brings back memories of old Westerns. No Western was complete without the lynching of a horse thief, murderer or sheep farmer. It's just american for hanging. It's become more racially charged since even the US outlawed hanging as an official means of execution and become linked to racist rednecks and the KKK in certain states.

Sometimes words or symbols get hijacked and sometimes you have to fight to take it back and stop it being associated with "bad" things. eg the hijacking of the English flag some years ago by the far right. We fought and took it back. Whether "lynching" is one of those words or symbols that needs to be taken back is another matter. There's less use for it nowadays other than in old Westerns and history.

Re: "I was taught to respect people of all races"

"Alcohol has the peculiar effect of revealing who you actually are. If you're a nice guy to be with when sober, and a misogynist asshole when drunk, then you are a misogynist asshole but, when sober, you listen to that little voice in your head telling you not to do that."

Isn't this why it's called "The Demon Drink"? ie when sober, you listen to the angle on your shoulder and when drunk, the demon ion the other shoulder wins out.

Re: mad internet

"Mob justice looks rather like a lynching."

That still happens every now and then in some southern US states.

Re: He's not an imigrant

"If you are white some people won't see you as an immigrant and won't say "fuck off back to your own country"."

Unless you are Polish or Romanian in the UK. Spanish, French, German, Italian, and of the Scandi countries etc are ok of course, most of the time. It's odd, because you can't tell by looking but for some reason Poles and Romanians in particular often get discriminated against while other Europeans don't.

Re: We hear these stories all the time

Yep, humans are herd animals or, as it's more commonly known amongst allegedly thinking creatures, tribal. How that tribe is defined varies from situation to situation. Sports fans, political party members, neighbouring towns, neighbouring countries, and so on from the micro to the macro. People will always identify with one group more than others so "others" become the "enemy" at some level.

We'll pay £400k for a depth charge-proof robot submarine, says UK's Ministry of Defence

Re: Thats our whole navy ...................

"Apparently they can be heard 30 nautical miles away. "

Since you mention the Chinese, is the sound of the engines relevant when they have live sat coverage of the area?

Psst: Want to know who else has their snout in the Copernicus trough? (spoiler: it's not the UK)

Re: ESA is not EU

And for that matter, we still paying full EU membership fees until the end of the transition period so yes, UK tax payers are most definitely contributing to these missions.

Euro police forces infiltrated encrypted phone biz – and now 'criminal' EncroChat users are being rounded up

Re: It's an interesting dichotomy

"Beer, because its Friday and whispering in pubs is relatively low risk for most comms."

Whispering in the pub is a little more risky these days, what with the music turned down and the 2 metre gap :-)

Re: Is alt.binaries still a thing?

Yes, it's still "a thing".

On my last perusal, most of the TV and movie groups are full of posts using randomised senders, subject lines made up of randomised letters/numbers, may or may not be complete, sometimes are clearly posted in "sets" but often across multiple groups. If you aren't "in the know", then they are just noise. Most likely it's pirate groups passing their wares to their mates/members, but for all I know, even if you manage to get a full set of posts, they may well be encrypted as well, if not just passworded RAR or ZIPs, but getting a full set looks like you need to scan many different groups in the hope of finding related posts. I assume they have some other channel or method of informing the recipients how and where to find the relevant posts.

On the other hand, there are still live and lively discussion groups going. There's even binary groups that are used as intended.

Manchester, UK seeks IT-slinger: £235m for number-plate-and-fines system to clean up vehicle emissions

"All of that is BS, NO2 isn't really relevant in any town and it's really a movement tax. You move, you pay."

Does that mean we'll all need a "Smart" shitter with a camera and fingerprint scanner?

If there's a lesson to be learned in these torrid times, it's that civilisation is fleeting – but Windows XP is eternal

"In a funny note, the replacement VOIP system is universally considered to be a step down in functionality, usability and flexibility compared to the 23 year old system it replaced."

It feels like maybe it's from HP. They like to fire their lowest 10% every year. So maybe they remove the least used 10% of functions/features every year too. This will lead to an evolution of the "fittest" which will be a programme that loads up, displays the corporate logo then just sits there. The ultimate in efficient apps that do only what is required and no more. Of course it will be bigger and more bloated than any previous version, only be available by an even more expensive daily subscription, updated every week and the biggest and best bug list. And you WILL be happy to install it.

Analogue radio given 10-year stay of execution as the UK U-turns on DAB digital future

Re: Radio 4 LW?

"don't break it out as a separate selection to AM/MW anymore, so you just hit AM, and keep scrolling on down to 198."

Yes, I first noticed that a few years ago on car radios. No MW/LW any more, just an amalgamated AM. I'm of an age where AM stations are what they have in America and over here we have MW and LW stations :-)

Re: Thank fuck for that

"Rubbish! My HiFi has all that, AND a built in virtual inhaler to remove the sound of the conductor's asthma..."

It's not asthma affecting his breathing, it's the lack of oxygen in the cables you heatless bastard!

Re: The future is behind you ....

"So if for no other reason, keeping the AM band for talk, news, and emergencies is a good idea."

On a slightly less apocalyptic note, during and the immediate aftermath of hurricane Katrina, a cheap battery operated AM radio which lasts for many, many hours on a single set of batteries was the only way to get news for quite a period of time for a lot of people. a battery DAB radio will get you far, far less time.

Re: The future is behind you ....

Bear in mind that in the US, radio stations do not pay royalties for broadcasting records. Here in the UK, every song broadcast incurs a cost.

Re: The future is behind you ....

"I listen to Radio 3 or classic FM in the workshop. I'd like DAB quality for both of those - but no DAB signal."

Do either of those transmit a stereo DAB signal with enough bandwidth to at least be equivalent to FM?

PS, the answer is "no", so in realty you are asking for a downgrade in quality.

UK government shakes magic money tree, finds $500m to buy a stake in struggling satellite firm OneWeb

Re: LEO broadband with ubitous coverage

And by using sats, they can even charge if you head off to Europe or beyond with your car!

Re: Just what we need

Sounds like my first ever car, a Vauxhall Shovette,

E-scooter fanboy so hyped for Teesside to host UK's first trial

Re: Here's an idea...

That's a TukTuk!!

(and quite possibly larger than the smallest Smart cars.)

Re: No consistency.

"of course the latter can go much faster if you pedal."

Which neatly explains why they are different. You can't can't "scoot" a scooter up to those speeds and so the motor is the primary means of propulsion, making it a "motor vehicle" in law, unlike an e-bike, where the motor is legally an "assistive technology", is NOT a "motor vehicle" in law.

"so you can plan ahead."

If your lucks in. You head to the nearest dock to where you want to be, but by the time you get there, three other people have already arrived, used up the two remaining spaces and left one wondering if a space will come free or bike off to the next nearest one. Like the apps which tell you where parking spaces are, you can't reserve it, you are still relying on luck.

And only 100 of them across 5 towns. They will be hard to find even if they are all properly looked after and properly returned.

Dutch national broadcaster saw ad revenue rise when it stopped tracking users. It's meant to work like that, right?

Re: The grocery loyalty card is no more

There's possibly bluetooth beacons in the store tracking which aisles you go up and down, how long you take, if you stop at a certain point, eg near a display, and how long for too.

Re: Dear Advertisers,

Or maybe millions of people click on 1000's of ads per year?

Re: Old fashioned?

Oddly enough, I was watching CNN the other day and weather forecast came on. Part way through, the map disappears and some tractor company logo fills it. The weatherman then proceeds to tell me this tractor company sponsors the weather and they also supply animal feed. The 1950's called and want their "now here's a word from our sponsors" tagline back. And for what it's worth, I'm watching in the UK so am unlikely to buy from them anyway. I guess CNN think it's mainly farmers watching their weather forecast and they can't find a way to use technology to put a more localised advert in.

Re: There is one enormous benefit of targeted ads

"They are an effective way to convince people that their advertising budget should be spent on targeted ads."

This is because marketing have been lead to believe the maxim that "half of all advertising is wasted, they just don't know which half" is true.

Re: Shocking news!

Next big marketing hype. Blockchain powered AI to analyse pages and place ads based on context which will never go wrong, honest, no siree Bob! (Such ads for porn sites on sexual health pages)

Cool IT support drones never look at explosions: Time to resolution for misbehaving mouse? Three seconds

Re: Green and Amber screens

"Restoring the brightness and contrast levels to a central position soon wiped the grin of the smug git's face"

Turning the brightness and contrast down to minimum used to be a fun jape. Usually it stopped after the first contract maintenance engineer (me!) arrived on site, explained that this was not a contractual fault and we'd be billing them for the call-out.

Re: Simlar ...

"I turned the mouse the right way up - student was using it upside down as a trackball having never used such a device before."

But may well have used a trackball on games like Missile Command and/or Centipede, so not really all that odd when you think about it.

Re: It normally the Caps lock

Back in the days of MS-DOS, it was trivially easy to programmatically alter the keyboard CAPs, NUM and SCRLCK LEDs. I've no idea if it's still possible, but it was used in some games for extra status info or just for a cheap extra effect of flashing them in sequence.

Re: Mouse mats with logos -avoid, avoid, avoid

"Am I the only person who doesn't use a mouse mat any more?"

Upgrading a lab with new kit and the new mice are optical, partly because they are the new "in thing" and partly because the lab has to be spotless and bio-secure at all times. Except the mice act as though they aren't plugged in. No pointer movement at all. Oddly, the buttons seem to work, eg right mouse button brings a context menu up. It turns out optical mice really don't like beautifully smooth white shiny lab benches which get cleaned and sterilised frequently. A sheet of A4 paper worked as a mouse mat which was cheap and could be replaced every time the bench got cleaned.

Re: Switching on the "monitor stand"

Hollywood "cool" has a lot to answer for. From people ripping faxes or printout off (and causing jams) to modern times when people have learned from Hollywood to SLAM their laptops shut. Even when there a pen or other foreign object just waiting to smash the screen. At least the HDDs are solid state now and can survive the shocks.

Re: Jimmying open a lock

"the excitement of doing something illicit seemed to be quite titivating, in fact."

I think that's the effect on the girl that A-nonCoward above was hoping for too,

Re: Switching on the "monitor stand"

He's a meercat?

Re: Mondarin?

What makes you think an accountant has O level chemistry in their list of qualifications?

"Oh, look, shiny!"