Posts by John Brown (no body)

Those fake spying cell towers in Washington DC? Ex-intel staffers claim they're Israeli

"The Israelis arent sharing unless it benefits them."

The US pays Israel a lot of money every year.

Brit MPs: Our policies are crap and the political process is in tatters, but it's Twitter's fault, OK?

Re: The Hon Member for the 18th Century

"I do think the perceived need to urgently reply and seize the attention of 'social; media users reduces the quality (and increases the quantity) of the debate - such as it is."

This! I have certain...contacts...with some people who seem to live on their phones/laptops. If they message me (email or text message, call me a luddite, natch!) and I don't reply within a very short timescale, eg a few minutes, I get a where are you? Are you busy? type message. They still haven't realised yet that those kind of messages just make me delay even longer in replying :-)

Vulture Central team welcomed to our new nest by crashed Ubuntu that's 3 years out of date

Re: So which local boozer should I avoid? :)

In the old place, they had beer on tap. I'm shocked at the thought of hardened journos moving from such a place. Probably took three Pickford moving vans for all the physical junk and a few heavy duty tow trucks to drag the staff.

First water world exoplanet spotted – and thankfully no sign of Kevin Costner, rejoice!

Re: thankfully no sign of Kevin Costner, rejoice

"male shavinist pig"????

Someone against pigs with beards?

Re: Thank you!

For the dumber members of the audience.

Breaking, literally: Microsoft's fix for CPU-hogging Windows bug wrecks desktop search

Re: So desktop search is the CPU problem.

"and moving files really fucks it up."

I wonder if that's why since Windows 8 MS have been trying to hide explorer from the users and dumping files into Pictures, Music etc folders by default. They don't want you moving stuff into your own filing system.

Re: What would Windows be without a CPU hogging search?

"publish something that will actually work as advertised."

...until they decide to "improve" it and/or integrate into some other part of Windows and not only mange to remove all the most popular and useful features, but break it beyond repair.

The gig (economy) is up: New California law upgrades Lyft, Uber, other app serfs to staff

Re: Here, have it for free...

"See how long Uber lasts then. :P"

Uber is already running a huge loss, burning through VC at a rate of knots.

Re: No more double-dip?

Yeah, it's called "piece work". There's also a thing called "casual labour". Been around for centuries but now someone invented a new marketing term and we call it the "gig economy", bringing back the 100 year old levels of employment and workers rights we've spent the last century getting rid of for better working conditions.

Re: Its about time....

"The whole business model we operate as a group wouldn't work and we'd all be out of a job"

Maybe rather than a semi-informal consultancy company you should re-organise as an employee owned co-operative.

Fairphone 3 stripped to the modular essentials: Glue? What glue?

"Tool-less battery removal".

Let it go. It's never coming back.

You can pry my Galaxy Note 2 from my cold dead hands! (or vice versa, whichever comes first.)

"has a loose headphone jack, which crackles every time I go over a bump."

I assume your car doesn't have Bluetooth then, otherwise why would you even need to use the headphone socket while driving. I really hope you are too sensible to drive with headphone on/in. :-)

A peeling solution to pothole has split the community... Yeah, they stuck a banana tree in it

Re: Council..

"I recently spent 19hrs and 18min running through the Chilterns. Very nice it was."

Is that how long it took the cops to catch you?

With 6 billion people on the planet, that's a lot of bonemeal!

Lights, camera, camera, camera, action: iPhone, iPad, Watch, chip biz in new iPhone, iPad, Watch, chip shocker

Re: Pedantry

"Why does everybody skip version 9?? Microsoft did the same with Windows."

Maybe they are worried about the German market, nein? :-)

Re: Not even parity

"Making it US$1080 at the current cross rate. I suppose 8% more is not the end of the world, and it won’t cover your airfare to go over to a sales-tax free state and buy one - but still annoying!"

Not forgetting the all inclusive full 2 year "no quibble" warranty as standard in the UK. Is the US offering a similar 1 year warranty yet or do they still just get 90 days? That 2 year warranty might be "free" but it's factored into the selling price.

Not so easy to make a quick getaway when it takes 3 hours to juice up your motor, eh Brits?

Re: 30m quid on removing greenhouse gases?

"A robust comparison would be vehicle throughput per hour, fuels stations vs. fast chargers."

Interesting point. LPG vehicles all have a mandated standard fuel filling point and can fill up at any filling station which sells LPG. There are multiple standards for EV charging and not all charging points can charge all EVs. Both relativity new fuelling options in terms of widespread use. I wonder why that is? Tesla in particular, like Apple, seem to be able to flout any existing connection standards, even when they are mandated.

Re: A load of ignorance about charging etc in the article and comments

"All LED streetlights can be converted to also be a charging post."

One lamp post for, at best, every 10 cars. On a terraced street with no off-road parking. Being better, cheaper and more efficiant means when councils replace street lamps with LEDs, they tend to space them further apart than the current ones.

Re: Other Fun Stuff (TM)

"Cutting off their options before new options are ready is going to price people out of driving at all."

Shhhhhh. You're not supposed to talk about the real reasons for banning ICE cars in the next decade or two. The rickshaw factories aren't ready yet,

Re: For the millionth time...

"I quite like El Reg's style, and I suspect they do some things on purpose to throw a bone for aspiring pedants like me to chew on."

Like every article since the first one in the last week or so to mention of the number charging points exceeding the number of filling stations. El Reg writers are well aware of that issue but of mentioned it without explanation or qualification in every relevant article since then. They know damned well it's clickbait and triggers the commentards every time :-)

"Once again Tories using taxpayers mnies to scr*w taxpayers."

When was the last time a Labour government "bought in" with an investment instead of just giving away free money on the form of grants? But don't let your politics get in the way of a good swipe, eh?

Re: A waste of time and money

"Indeed, my neighbour regularly does the 250 miles between here and London in his Tesla."

How much does a Tesla, about the only all-electric with that range, cost?

Almost every all-electric on the market is a short range runabout and cost 50-100% more than petrol/diesel equivalent. Based on the vast numbers of vehicles on the motorways I see every day, all day, I'd say there is a significant number of us who absolutely require the range of a Tesla but at about 1/3rd the purchase price, and no, adding a 1/2 hour onto every 2 hours worth of driving is not always an option. A 6 hour round trip is now 7.5 hours? No thanks.

"Comparing counts of fuel stations to fast chargers is deliberately skewing the figures. It's highly disingenuous and doesn't help anyone make an informed decision."

Not to mention that filling stations have been closing down for years, especially smaller and/or rural ones because the margins on petrol/diesel has been tiny for years. As charging points have been increasing, the so-called equality point has been falling and as many have pointed out, the figures seem to be being deliberately misconstrued and obfuscated. There few, if any, charging stations that can compare to a 24 pump motorway services. Current ones are more like the two pump rural filling stations (with the similar rural pace of life when it comes to "filling up" with 'leccy.)

Re: Maybe Base 10 is not used

"Double 3 * n^x can't be 5 * n^x (where n is an integer greater than 5)."

It most certainly IS possible and the proof is actually quite simple. Sadly there is not enough room in the margin to explain it.

Re: 30m quid on removing greenhouse gases?

"Is carbon capture and storage the right thing?"

Of course it is! Don't you realise that our governments around the world are in this for the long haul? When the next ice age is approaching, we'll have all this spare carbon to pump back into the atmosphere to stave of the cold. Who ever heard of governments only thinking in the shirt term?

Psst. Wanna brush up your supervillain creds? Get a load of this mini submarine

Re: No Das Boot here

"A villain on a budget?"

Mini-Me?

Wunderlist creator asks Microsoft to sell him back his biz as Redmond updates To Do

"...access from anywhere..."

Sounds like it's going cloudy so they can slurp more data on us.

What a bunch of DoSers: Wikipedia says it was walloped by 'bad faith' actors over weekend

Yeah, a lot of homework around the world probably didn't get.

Please Sir, the DDoS ate my homework.

Apple will wring out $18bn by upselling NAND to fanbois – analyst

Re: Off topic but..

It's monkey see, monkey do. People on TV hold their phones like that, especially in documentaries so that we the viewers can hear both sides of the conversation.

Outlook turned eBay into DD-Bay: Topless busty babe mysteriously fronts souk's emails

Total Inability To Support Usual Pictures?

Can you download it to me – in an envelope with a stamp?

Re: Post Codes

...and not to mention that just a door number and a postcode will almost always get a letter or parcel to where it's intended.

Re: Post Codes

"However the solution is reform, not privatisation."

Reform of a unionised government institution? You must be joking. Sometimes the ONLY option is privatisation. At least then the government can wash their hands of the "issues" when the strikes happen due to the needed reforms.

Re: Nothing much has changed since 1993...

"Other couriers have left quite expensive items "in secure porch". I don't have a secure porch, "

And even if you did have a porch, it's not secure if some random courier deliver drone has access to it then so does every Tom, Dick and Harry who is passing.

Re: Linux.

"Anyway, beer for Dabbsy. Welcome back!"

He's been back for months. But it took this long for the courier to turn up with the article on floppy disk from the sticks.

Re: Not so many years ago...

"African or European?"

Both. African is used to send data to the customer, European for sending data to the ISP. This does result in some latency as the swallows have to be couriered back to the origin point and for various obvious courier-related reasons don't always arrive on time (or at all). There is, of course, a standards committee currently working on a specification for a hybrid Africa/European swallow which will full-duplex, but as you can imagine, creating a new standard is fraught with difficulties and complications, such as which tropical beach front hotel to hold the next committee meeting at.

Re: Moved to France

"Shall we start a petition to get a wine icon?"

To be fair, the beer is just a typically British representation to the underlying text info "I'll drink to that" and so, by definition includes wine, Perrier or whatever else might float your boat in that situation :-)

Re: Moved to France

"(b) dumpt back at a depot where they ask for id. You we're going to stick it through the letterbox ffs!"

The customer is the sender, not the receiver. Whatever you may have paid the sender for the parcel contents and the P&P bears no relationship at all with the senders contact with Parcelforce. If they use the cheapest option, Parcelforce, like all couriers will only make one single attempt to deliver then give up. It's up to the sender to pay for multiple deliver attempts and permission to use the depot as a storage warehouse (although even the cheapest option will always allow the parcel to be held for up to a week.) As for the ID, the ID is the address on the parcel. If they can't leave at the address then of course you have to prove that you are from that address.

Re: Moved to France

"The point of the nice round number is to not have a shedload of change. If you're paying by card, what does it matter?"

Not sure how common they were, but I remember putting fuel in cars 30 or so years ago here in the UK by feeding £1 and £5 notes into the pump. It might even have taken a tenner! The garages which had these pay-at-the-pump models generally only had two of them and for some reason only enabled them after they closed for the night.

Re: obliged to return to the commune of her birth

"Also, accurate sources were not a priority since it could be safely assumed the the original prophecies (that were being fulfilled) were correct. :)"

(yes, I do note the smiley there)

It's always easier to write down the stories and predictions after they happened. It proves the predictions were true!

The time a Commodore CDTV disc proved its worth as something other than a coaster

Re: Any key

"To be fair though that one makes some sense. It's telling you there's no keyboard, therefore the solution is to plug one in and then hit f1 to continue."

Which was fine for the DIN plug older keyboards, not so much with the PS/2 keyboards. That required a re-boot or power cycle.

Re: Self fixing

"A refusal to consider me for an office role (despite clearly being the most PC proficient person in the company) being the deciding factor for leaving said company."

I'm surprised you didn't become the head of IT. Your experience, for the time period, is exactly how many people ended up running everything IT related, especially in smaller companies.

Re: hmm

More likely in Cardiff. Too close to the space/time rift.

Re: BAUD

"I definitely rhyme pure and cure while rhyming pour and poor."

Up here in the grim North of Geordiland, Poor is pronounced more like poo-er, so almost rhymes with pure and cure, not pore or pour.

Tesla Autopilot crash driver may have been eating a bagel at the time, was lucky not to get schmeared on road

Re: Did he get a ticket?

most purchasers don't give a shit about saving the environment, they are instead helping to stuff the HOV lanes just as full as the regular lanes in the name of "convenience".

Yes, that was the point I was alluding to. EVs are still expensive for most people so the those who can afford them also get to buy the right to use the less congested lane. It's a bit like the congestion/pollution charging zones here in the UK. If you can't afford a decent car or an EV, then you pay a lot more to drive into those zones. I do see the point in reducing pollution and congestions, but the wealthy just see it as a minor cost for the extra convenience while the plebs either can't go there or have to travel cattle class on the bus.

In Hemel Hempstead, cycling is as bad as taking a leak in the middle of the street

"A lot of the cyclists I seem to meet think they own the road and the pavement. Everybody has to move out of their way, they just don't seem to care and then they play the victim."

This is where most people need to reflect on their own personal bias created by experience. You probably don't even notice all the responsible cyclists because they barely impinge on your awareness.

Re: Oxford has it right

"In two town centre streets, you have to walk bicycles between 1000 and 1800. Outside those hours you can ride down those streets."

Good idea. The same should be the default for bus lanes too. Many places have bus lanes with "active hours", sometimes only in certain directions in mornings and afternoon/evenings, ie in or out of town. Around here, they are all 24/7. Probably because someone said they had to have bus lanes but couldn't be arsed to spend the time and money on where and when they were most needed.

Re: Pedestrianised

"I have no (particular) problem with folks pushing bikes or buggies or tartan shopping trollies around a pedestrianised area, as they are then only moving at pedestrian speeds and, hopefully, watching where they and the equipment in their charge is going."

I think the law should also be clarified and people made aware that mobility scooters usually have two speed settings, the lower being walking pace, and should also be enforced in pedestrian areas.

Re: Could be worse

"If at that point they decide to veer into your path and get squished the fault would be theirs no (albeit the onus would be on you to prove the fault was theirs)? How is that any different to what I'm saying happens on a bike?"

It's not different at all. It's up to you slow or stop so as to not kill or injure someone.

Re: Could be worse

"You miss my point, I have slowed down, I have blasted a 110db air horn at them if they veer into my path whilst I'm going past them then it's unavoidable as far as I'm concerned and therefore it's entirely down to them and I have the video evidence to prove it."

You think? Now do that in a car when a pedestrian is in the road and doesn't get out of your way. Pedestrians *always* have right of way. If you hit one and could have avoided it, it's your fault.

Using your logic, it's ok for me to drive through cyclists riding two or three abreast because I sounded my cars horn and they refused to move out of the way.

Re: Banning Cyclists

"Therefore unless explicitly allowed there would not be a need to ban them, just enforce the existing law."

Sometimes, it's because enforcing the existing law, especially if it's being flouted on a regular basis, becomes very expensive and may require lots of concrete evidence. Eg the specific law banning the use of hand-held mobile phones while driving. The punishments is an on the spot fine and points on your driving licence unless you choose to try and defend it at court. Prior to that law, existing law already covered it but required a court case every time at much higher cost plus a police officer taking time off from front line duties to attend court as a witness for the prosecution.

This pedestrian zone ban is probably a by-law that can be enforced by a police officer, a PCSO or Council Enforcement Officer by issuing a ticket on the spot.