Posts by Michael 47

Monday: Intel touts 28-core desktop CPU. Tuesday: AMD turns Threadripper up to 32

Re: Gimme speed

Sadly, given the way processors work at the moment, it is physically impossible to go above about 5GHz, because the pulse literally can't propagate fast enough. If we assume the clock pulse can propagate at the speed of light, at 5GHz the pulse can propagate about:

(1/5e9)*3e8 = 0.06

or about 6cm, which is roughly the size of the CPU, so if you clock it much faster than that the next tick will happen before the previous one has even reached some of the components in the CPU. I wouldn't say never, because they continue to amaze me with the innovations they make, but in their current configuration I don't believe we will ever see a CPU that can be clocked much above 5GHz

AWS won serverless – now all your software are kinda belong to them

I suppose it is worth it, until Amazon have a monopoly and starts jacking the price up. Then you realise you have no choice except to pay the increase or completely re-architect your app.

Silicene takes on graphene as next transistor wonder-stuff

Re: Interesting

[Citation needed]

Apple v BBC: Fruity firm hits back over Panorama drama

In other words...

"Apple has undertaken to enforce a 60-hour maximum working week and claims that it has tracked the weekly hours of a million people in its supply chain, finding that 93 per cent of the instances were compliant"

Translation: "Approximately 70,000 people in our supply chain are working at least 60 hours a week to our knowledge"

Pirate Bay towed to oldpiratebay.org

Re: Somebody tell the police

That's fine as long as you understand the torrents on .cr in many cases weren't uploaded by who they claim to be uploaded by. It's a completely separate site, run by an unknown party. If the torrents are working and you're happy then great. Personally I'd rather not roll the dice and download a file of unknown origin from an unknown party via a torrent linked from an unknown site pretending to the most popular site on the internet. just my $0.02

Re: Somebody tell the police

The copy at .cr is a fake, see http://torrentfreak.com/fake-pirate-bay-lies-to-press-and-fakes-user-uploads-141215/, and shouldn't be relied upon. However, the copy put up by isohunt seems legit.

Beat the UK's incoming smut filter: Pre-censor your grumble flicks

Re: More evil - possibly crossing the line....

To be fair - I'm not sure any porno in all of history has ever shown a clusterf**k as big as the current coalition...

Texas man charged in multimillion-dollar Bitcoin Ponzi scheme

So... if instead of offering 7% a week he gave 0.5% a year and he regularly made up ridiculous charges he would be bank

I'm 'pretty comfy' with PRISM + 'It's Google. What else do you expect'

Re: Hidden Mike?

Yeah, sorry about that. I farted and they heard. I was so busted ;-)

UK's planned copyright landgrab will spark US litigation 'firestorm'

That's going to be a problem

"If the use of foreign works in the UK is directly or indirectly permitted by this Bill, a firestorm of international litigation will immediately ensue, and any persons, businesses or institutions making use of foreign works under this Bill would be well served to expect to be promptly sued by the copyright holders, incurring significant liability for copyright infringement," the US snappers point out to Cable in the letter"

That's going to cause a bit of a problem, since the policy in the UK now seems to be 'accused of copyright infringement by an american' -> get extradited directly to america, do not pass go, do not collect £200.

McKinnon case is NOT a precedent – says his own lawyer

You used the wrong icon

I think you meant to use 'Joke Alert?'

Pirate Bay moves to the cloud to confound copyright cops

The arms race...

...can't lead to anything good:

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20120321

Theresa May gets a smile out of Gary McKinnon at last

Re: "If only we were a sovereign nation capable of making our own decisions...."

"Thankfully there exist checks and balances to ensure we can't be sold completely down the river by those decisions"

Kind of. But I think Theresa May completely dodged the main issue here. Rather than making serious decisions about whether a crime committed on the internet occurs from the client side or the end point, helping to set precedent and clear things up, it feels like they have just kind of looked for a loophole and said "phew, problem solved"

I think Gary McKinnon Should not be extradited. Not because he has aspergers, but because saying essentially that the crime was committed in america, as opposed to the UK, is a very dangerous precedent to set. They seem to have implicitly said that this is the case, but that because he was a suicide risk he shouldn't be sent over.

If Only...

"It was only thanks to the Human Rights Act that she had the power to stop his extradition. If it wasn't there she would have had to send him over," said Fitzgerald.

If only we were a sovereign nation capable of making our own decisions....

Lancashire man JAILED over April Jones Facebook posts

I still can't seem to find one important piece of information anywhere. Some places on the 'net report that he only posted this on his own wall, and it was someone else who put on the page for the group coordinating the search for April. Others places that he posted it directly to the group himself.

If it's the former then this is a travesty, and I think free speech should definitely trump people right to not be offended.

If it's the latter then I think his post is bordering on harassment, and the sentence makes far more sense.

Anyone have any any more information on this?

UK.gov's web filth block plan: Last chance to speak your brains

Voice your opinions

I think its important not only that everyone here fill in the consultation. Now its a word document don't be afraid to add a secret option number 3 - 'Do you think systems like this should be in place for all internet connections and households, or just for those with children?' - Erm neither thanks.

At the end of the 'form' is an email address to forward opinions about how you feel this and other DfE consultations are run - [e-mail]. I recommend sending Carole an email letting her know how much of cock-up this whole thing has been.

If you're not sure what to say, I've enclosed my email to her below for your enjoyment :

Carole,

I have recently finished completing the response form noted above, and felt I had to voice how appalled I am at how this whole consultation has been handled. This was without a doubt one of the most biased surveys I have ever had the misfortune to come across. For a start, perhaps people who aren't parents or corporate representatives also deserve to voice their opinion? Additionally many of these questions are incredibly leading, e.g. '11 - Do you think systems like this should be in place for all internet connections and households, or just for those with children?'. How about neither? This means you are either incredibly incompetent, or incredibly biased. I am curious to know which it is, so please email me at <email> to let me know which.

There is also concern over how the input is being collected. Initially there was an on-line web form and somehow you managed to leak the personal details of those who submitted that form. This is itself is an excellent reason to not require people to register that they would like to have an unfiltered interned connection; Because those details will get lost, and the chances are doubled (at least) when a government department is involved. So it is now handled through an extremely poorly put together word document? Really? Kudos for the discovery of time travel, I must have missed when we went back to 1997. To compound matters your department would not extend the deadline when they were required to revert to the word document in the first place. Surely after the delays caused by the loss of the web interface and the viceral pain involved in navigating that document the deadline should be extended.

In summation, I'm not sure why this 'consultation' is being done. Clearly the decision has already been made. I weep for the future of this nanny state, nimby-ist country and all those who have the severe misfortune to live here in the future.

Looking forward to your reply on these points,

Michael 47

Nike+ Fuelband activity monitor review

Re: Jesus f***ing H Christ

Chances are, if someone is a "weak willed, tech dependent pathetically undisciplined numpty..." then they won't own one of these. But for those that do excercise, is there anything wrong with using tech to measure your energy expenditure and spur you on to greater achievements? I think having little achievements etc helps turn excercise into a game and make it more fun. I can't see any way that is a bad thing.

Also a troll icon for you, you miserable git

Publishing giants sue open textbook startup over layout

That's not quite the same thing...

I think a closer analogy here would be that they have developed a system that, when you input the name of a hedgehog related story, searches through many open source/freely available hedgehog stories and compiles a complete story from these to match the approximate size and layout of your story.

We don't know if they are copying the fonts etc, but at the moment the lawsuit seems to be based on 'we had a paragraph of 7 lines long on page 53 and so did they! Also they seem to show some similar pictures. The audacity!'

BT, TalkTalk lose final appeal against Digital Economy Act

Re: "we will continue fighting to defend our customers’ rights"

Of course BT don't care about your rights or privacy. Allow me to translate:

A BT spokesman said: "We have been seeking clarification from the courts that the DEA is consistent with European law, and legally robust in the UK, so that everyone can be confident in how it is implemented. Now that the court has made its decision, we will look at the judgment carefully to understand its implications and consider our next steps."

Translation:

A BT Spokesman said "We have spoken to every possible court to get this law struck down as we don't want to pay to implement it. Now the courts have decided it's okay, we are going to get a lot very smart lawyers to find any loophole possible so we can safely ignore this law, and continue doing as we please.

US judge: Ad-pushers may be liable for 'facilitating' website piracy

Probably not

Team America: World Police - Fuck Yeah!

It's the ALL NEW FUTURISTIC WEAPONS Black Friday Roundup!

Seconded

couldn't agree more, please more footnotes at the bottom of the relevant page

Bloke claims ex swiped his sperm to make twins

Why not?

*If* it's true (and I'm not necessarily saying it is at this point) that she stole his baby gravy then he shouldn't be required to pay crippling child support payments.

Japan develops powered armour suit for nuke workers

For radiation purposes I'm not sure I see the point

Not sure is see the point of this suit (in terms of stopping radiation, I'm sure every commentard could think of a few other interesting uses). In terms of actually stopping radiation a couple of layers of cotton will stop any alpha particle, and a bit of plastic sheeting will stop beta radiation. On the other hand it takes several feet of lead plating to even slow down gamma radiation, and I doubt any suit could generate enough power to move all that around (unless there a nuclear power plant strapped to back, which I think would defeat the object somewhat,,,)

Universal Music sued by its artists over downloads dosh

Delicious

Unfortunately I missed breakfast and forgot my lunch today, but this news is so delicious I think I'm going to make 'til dinner now

Corning launches can-stand-the-heat Lotus glass for phones

Thermal expansivity has no units, as it is basically a percentage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_expansion

TDK fires up LASERS to double hard drive capacity

Speed issues

With regards to read speed, I believe you're right that the increased density will cause an increase, so bonus! However, i believe i read somewhere that the additional time need to heat the media means that write speed will take a hit

Game denies Steam threat claims

And with good reason...

"Retailers fear Steam will become as powerful a force in games sales as Apple's iTunes has become in the music business"

Its not really surprising. With steam, I can get the game as soon as its available, without having to go to the nearest shop (not that it's very far, but a massive pain with parking), they never run out of stock, they never try and sell me loyalty cards or any other tripe and I can re-download the game when I wish, no questions asked. Not only that but the game will probably cost me less too!

I know it has some downsides too, I'm not a fan of DRM, and I can never sell any games bought on steam (not that I ever sell my games anyway) but without a doubt steam provides far more positives than negatives. Bricks and mortar stores should be afraid... very afraid. In fact how they have managed to survive this long is frankly baffling

Greyhound spatters Nashville with semen

I can maybe understand flying...

Don't know about other forms of transport but i don't think most planes have a pressuried cargo hold, and the pressure drop may cause the LN2 to become just N2 (purely speculation)

Also, el reg please expect a bill for a new keyboard from my office :)

Microsoft unveils file-move changes in Windows 8

Windows does this now...

Windows 7 (and maybe Vista, not sure...) already does this now. It will transfer all the files it can, and then gives prompts for each file it couldn't copy (or a tick box for 'do this action for all remaining files of course)

Reusable e-paper rolled out

No power?

Perhaps the intent is that you would have an external powered device you would run the paper through (perhaps heating using a laser?) to write to it. It would then be like normal paper you would load into a printer, sounds kind of like a re-writable version of the thermal paper they user to print till receipts.

SMART unveils smarter, faster, fatter SSDs

Not so much of a problem

These days wear isn't so much of an issue. For exaple they say these drives should be able to support 10 full writes a day for five years. with the 1.6TB model, my back of the envelope calculations put that at nearly 30PB! I think 30PB of write is enough to cover 99.99% of users. Only realy big enterprise is going to go beyond that.

Microsoft kills Windows Vista SP1 support

Not really fair on businesses

To say 'just upgrade to SP2 or windows 7' is fairly simple for a home user, but for large companies, rolling out major OS upgrades can be a months long project. Hopefully businesses can still get teh support they needs for a while since vista isn't even that old yet

Aussie retailer accuses UK shops of HDMI 'scam'

PC World is the worst

the one that made laugh is once in PC World when someone tried to sell me a fibre optic cable with gold plated connections. He looked a little confused when i just laughed and said no thank you...

Google sees 15% speed boost with HTTP tweak

This is a title

Sorry, no, wasn't being serious. Should have ended that </sarc> ^_^

You think that's bad?

below TCP it's the IP layer. If the thought of google having its own special transport protocol is bad, then the though of having to get your own Google address(tm) to user their services is truly horrifying

AMD promises 10 teraflop notebooks by 2020

It's a relative term

" I work with boffins. Boffins collectively are a small market segment, but every one I know would like to run simulations on their notebook at Starbucks if they could;"

I too once worked with boffins, but i think the thing is super computer is a relative term. Sure if you could take said notebook back to the 80's (or as some people have pointed out even 2000) then yeah, boffins would get that glazed look in their eyes as they image running huge simulations on their home laptop.

But by 2020, the boffins will just say '10 teraflop? why would i run my sim on that, when i can run it at 1000 times the resolution in half the time on the department's 100 Petaflop cluster?'

So the term super computer really depends on what you're comparing it to. Even if they invented an Exaflop laptop. Some smartass boffin would lash 1000 of the together and create a Zettaflop cluster...

that would be cool *eyes glaze...*

Stand by for more big, windfarm-driven 'leccy price rises

Really?

"We have perfectly serviceable, (comparatively) well developed, 24/7, ecologically appropriate, renewable energy systems, in the form of wave and tidal power and solar furnaces..."

none of those systems are able to provide more than a fraction of the power necessary to for the grid and certainly aren't up to scratch if you consider the price/kwh.

"Thorium based reactors are far less advanced in development terms."

Well maybe if they pumped as much into researching thorium reactors as they did into ridiculously expensive windmills we'd all have nearly infinte free 'leccy by now

EA angers fans over Battlefield 3 pre-order exclusives

Surpised?

EA treats customers like shit.

In other news: Sky still blue, bear shits in woods.

Tory terror changes promise moon on stick

The difference

I think the difference is obviously that china's web blocking is state suppression of information whereas when the home office does it its because they know better than you whats good for you.

</sarc>

Really?

"The Internet Watch Foundation is usually rolled out as an example of how a blacklist can work successfully. It told us that its success depends on its very tight remit of child sexual abuse images and that this was unlikely to change in the immediate future"

I don't really consider the IWF as an example of a successful blacklist. For a start, the list is a closely guarded secret, so we dont really know what on it. I know it sounds like i thinks its a big conspiracy, i don't. I just dont like the idea of having a black list that no-one i allowed to see.

Antimatter hangs around at CERN

Where do they go

When a particle and antiparticle collide they are both converted into energy (this is where good old E=mc^2 comes in). A lot of that energy goes into 2 massive gamma rays though ^_^

Apple to open iCloud for 'free' before slapping $25 subs on service

The record labels get how much?

So just to stream your own music *that you already paid for* (in theory at least...) the labels want a 70% cut? No wonder google wouldn't deal with them.

New Sony hack exposes more consumer passwords

Not quite...

$171,000,000/100,000,000 customers = $1.71 per customer

So not even enough for a cup of coffee. That's how much of a shit Sony give

Ballmer: Time up for 'stuck in the past' Microsoft CEO?

Nope

"Do you really believe it is a simple matter to write a new OS"

Nope, i think it is incredibly difficult, and to create a decent consumer OS is a assive amount of work. I know more than a little about software development myself, so it wasn't a statement I made lightly. But just because something is difficult doesn't mean it couldn't or shouldn't be done. You can't keep building on top of the same OS over and over again, or the result is Windows ME. If everyone was like you, there would never be any progress... "The Moon! Do you know how far that is? or how much it would cost? It would take years and billions of dollars - and ts only a big rock!"

Time for a change?

"Also they should rename Windows before trying to put it on a mobile phone or tablet. Keep the "Windows" badge for desktops only"

Maybe its time to get rid of the Windows brand entirely. Windows 7 is doing well and should scale with hardware over the next few years. In the mean time, perhaps microsoft should drop Windows and design a new operating system from the ground up. It would give them a chance to innovate and to shed some of the negative perceptions regarding Windows.

Dear Dell and Microsoft: You're not Apple

@Jeff 11

"...And they're still lagging behind EVERY SINGLE ONE of their competitors in making it work well, and adopting standards and features..."

While im not a huge Microsoft supporter, and Chrome is my browser of choice, I dont think thats really accurate any more. Certainly it once was, when sites had to be twice, once 'properly' and once the 'IE compliant version'. IE9 however is far better is terms of standards and compliance and all things considered is not actually a bad browser at all.

Dell intros world's thinnest 15in laptop PC

Treasure Island

Looks like a lovely laptop, but once again us brits get the shaft:

"...6GB (4GB in the UK) or 8GB of 1333MHz DDR 3 memory..." "£899 over here, or $1000 in the States."

so for the lower spec model (which somewhat arbitrarily has 2GB less RAM?) we are paying an extra £280 (at current exchange rate).

I should be used to it by now, but it's still infuriating

Euro report slates wireless comms, recommends smoke and mirrors

Link to the express

Unfortunatly, I read the linked article in the express and it made me sad. I particularly

liked

"When it came to household domestic appliances such as microwaves ... the body warned that leaving them on standby 24 hours a day meant that the products would constantly be emitting electromagnetic radiation"

I'm going to go cry quietly into a pint that people who are even willing to consider this report as anything more than toilet paper (i.e. have no idea what they are talking about) have the power to make recommendations of any kind, on anything, ever

Super-injunctions 'unfair' cos of Twitter gossip, says Cameron

letters, digits etc

True, but the issue is if it is contested. You can't just ask a judge for a super-injuction, as I understand it a super injuction is taken out against someone in particular (for example the sun). As for the price, according to the channel 4 website (http://www.channel4.com/news/the-rise-of-the-super-injunction)

"The cost of super injunctions (£20,000-£50,000 if bitterly contested) may put them beyond the reach of most, but the media seems only interested in the rich and beautiful anyway."