Posts by CaptainHook

Casio touts 'Bluetooth Low Energy' wristwatch with 2 year battery

Pointless Watch

As a watch it's pointless, and ugly, and as a buzzer for the phone it's not really a compelling product.

But if you could display messages from the phone on the watch and you might have something. Make the thing display the title of the upcoming Calendar event, or show recently recieved SMS message so I don't have to dragged my phone out of the pocket when sat on a bus crammed into a seat next to that fat bloke who wont let your arms move properlyand it might have a use.

Even then, it's all a bit one way, the form factor wouldn't work for inputting text, so you couldn't reply to an SMS or Twitter message which means if you want any significant interactivity you still need to pull the phone from your pocket.

I suppose you might be able to get away with a few buttons to answer Yes No questions (like mark this SMS as read? Yes/No).

London's tube demands faster-than-NFC ticketing

Whose who

They don't care who everyone is (although thats a nice set of extra data they are collecting). They care that the funds to pay for the journey are going to be transferred to TfL.

That is my biggest concern

Visa / Mastercard have both said that the cutsomer will not be out of pocket at all if your credit card is stolen and all NFC transactions after the theft will be refunded, but just the fact that a thief can steal and immediately get monetary value means that petty theft becomes profitable again.

Embedding this stuff in your phone just means you can't ring the service provider to report the device stolen as quickly which increases the time the thief has to buy as much stuff as he can under the £15 transaction limit and the amount he could spend is far more than most people would carry as cash these days because it's back by your credit limit.

It just seems a bad idea to me.

National Identity Card holding chumps have buyer's remorse

Government Laywers

Wouldn't they be Government laywers?

I.e. they get paid the same if they are sitting in an office making paper airplanes or if they are preparing the defence for a court case.

Assange: Text messages show rape allegations were 'set up'

Gary Mackinnon

I've wondered if Gary Mackinnon is why the US would prefer to do this via some 3rd Party State.

Gary Mackinnon , unlike Assange, has publically admitted breaking into US Government computers and stealing information, which is clearly a crime in the US using existing laws not some hastily made up laws after the event to charge Assange with, it's been 5 years since Mackinnons extradiction was first requested and he has still not been anywhere near the US because of our fear for his safety under US criminal system.

There have even been arguments in this country that the law we enacted to enabled this fast-tracked extradiction process should be repealed since the US haven't enacted their side of the treaty.

So the UK already has a history of not compiling with Extradiction requests under the exact same treaty that the US would need to use to get hold of Assange. This goes as high as at least 2 PM (Brown and Cameron) discussing ways to hold Mackinnon accountable but to serve sentences in this country.

I suspect if Assange were to be extradicted from the UK, we would resist on similar grounds, after all we are not allow, by law to send anyone (Prisioners or Asylum Seekers etc) to a country where their life maybe at risk or where they are being charged for a political crime, but the US has senators publically calling for Assange execution which fails both of those requirements.

This law is shared by most EU countries, which Sweden is a member of but maybe they don't have those laws enacted (at all/in quite the same way). Maybe someone who understands the Swedish Law System could comment on that aspect.

Is cloud data secure?

Amazon

"We’re picking on Google here because it is the “cloud” player that, rightly or wrongly, receives the most criticism about security and privacy."

Given Amazon has recently and publically removed Wikileaks content from their cloud, I think you could have targetted them more far more legatimately than Google.

'London black cabs to go electric in 2 weeks' – Boris Guardian

Taxi Ranks

Have the battery mounted under the taxi rather than in it, it pulls up at a taxi rank with an evalated pedestrian loading area.

Tray slides out from under the pedestrian area to take the old battery out, and put the new one in and stores the battery under the pedestrian area.

You only need a method of positioning the battery accurately before pushing it back up under the taxi, and that could be done with mechanical guides rather than expensive optical robotics. A 5 minute job.

Railway stations would be especially good spots for this because they already have the high power electric connections which would be needed for onsite charging.

No special trips needed for the Taxi, it's just going back to a central location it would probably be going to at some point during the day anyway.

US Navy achieves '100 mile' hypersonic railgun test shot

I know horizon isn't just a sudden drop

My concern was that the trajectory would be so flat in the early stages of the flight path that the curvature of the earth would be greater than the drop of the projectile resulting in an area which couldn't be hit. However, I've now done some spreadsheet calculations.

At Mach 7.5, after the first second of flight, assuming a completely flat firing angle, the earths curvature means the surface would be 35 cm lower but the projectile would would have dropped by nearly 10 meters. So this thing wouldn't have a flat enough trajectory to cause a problem.

My bad.

There is still a dead spot

Imagine an Artillery target, just the other side of a steep hill. The guns can send shells which either hit the hill, or fly too high and the shell ends up miles down range, in either case the target is unaffected.

The flatter the trajectory, the bigger that dead spot behind that hill that a ballistic flight profile can't hit.

A railgun has a very flat trajectory because of the speed of the projectile, therefore although it will come back down to earth I don't think it could drop fast enough to hit a target just beyond the horizon, the curve of the earth is acting like the hill in my Artillery example. Either the projectile hits the water before it hits the target or it flys harmlessly overhead and splashes down miles (and miles and miles) down range.

I suppose you could vary the power output of the railgun so that the velocity of the projectile allows it to drop faster, i.e. less power the closer the target is but that means less energy delivered to the target.

I suppose that targets just beyond the horizon could be dealt with using missiles but that kind of defeats the point of a railgun battleship to start with since you now have to load the battleship with explosive, large expensive ammo which is what Railguns are meant to avoid.

I still think the projectiles would need active guidance to be useful, i.e. they aren't just following ballastic flight paths, and that means they need electronics and actuators capable of being acceralated from 0 to 2800m/s in the space of 10 meters.

Trajectory

Wouldn't a project moving so fast have an extremely flat trajectory, how do you hit anything just below the horizon?

Or is the projectile going to be guided?

If so, then you need electronics and actuators which can with stand reliably being accelerated from 0 to 7.5 Mach in the lenght of the rail (based on the video about 10 meters at most). The G-Force would be insane.

WikiLeaks' Assange to be indicted for spying 'soon'

Whats the difference?

Scale.

Watergate was about a few people in position of power going 'rogue'. Once the truth came out, it was easy for the rest of government to dump them and contain the problem.

Wikileaks has provided evidence of the systematic illegality and arsehattery by the US government as a whole. Anyone is any position of power in the US government or diplomatic services is tainted.

Google launches 'free' 'open' 'cloud' eBooks digiback service

Yes... it does

I've just downloaded the Hans Christian Andersens Wonderful Stories for Children and the second page states it was scanned by Google to make it seachable online.

What I like about the Google Book Store is that its the first ebook retailer that I know of which sells both DRM and non-DRM books, based on what the publishers require. Most obviously only sell crippled books, while a few small retailers sell non-crippled books.

That means I can buy all the non-DRM books I can get hold of while completely ignoring the DRM'd books and hopefully send a message to the publishers (OK, I admit those publishers are never going to get the message based on my buying habits, but it makes me feel better)

Buffy to slay her way back into cinemas

Modern Retake

"take the touchstones of the Whedon world but frame them in 'a new story' that is very much of the moment".

The vampires which normally suck the live blood of humans are actually bankers who just wont die until you give them a good staking. Unfortunately these bankers are more durable than vampires because unlike vamps who go "poof" in the first hint of sunlight, the bankers can take a full dose of brilliant exposure in the media spot light and come back stronger.

Burn em, burn em with fire.

US crewless, automated ghost-frigate project takes shape

ghost subs

cue a small electrically powered automonous craft pretending to be a much larger sub programmed to circle the atlantic for the ghost frigates to follow while the real sub sneaks off at a opportune moment to pursue its real mission, prehaps in a heavy shipping area where the ghost frigate might be temporarily out of the idea position because it has to navigate around cargo ships.

Shell's London office UNDER WATER and besieged by GIANT EELS

Eels

The biological UPS, those servers should be humming along.

Has CERN made the VATICAN ANTIMATTER BOMB for real?*

"how many Wales' would that devastate?"

Depends on how close the device is to the wedding party.

US may disable all in-car mobile phones

Agreed

"I think it will be very difficult to jam a signal inside the car without affecting the signal outside, and the measures could do more harm than good"

Imagine arriving at a car accident, the first thing you would do upon reaching the scene of an accident is to ring for help, but if any cars which are running nearby can block the signal then you are stuffed.

And its not just a case of turning off all the cars involved in accident and your own car. If you are next to a main road with a constant stream of traffic going past you may never be able to get a connection to the cell tower, in fact if this this technology became mandated and you couldn't be absolutely sure that the jammer didn't effect phones outside of the vehicle then entire communities near to roads could loose mobile phone connectivity.

And bear in mind it's not just about ensure the jammer only affect phones in the vehicle at the point of sale for the entire life of the vehicle and in all conditions - e.g. a car with the windows rolled down or even worse a convertible.

Cyber cops crush plod-snapper site following Millbank riot

Agreed

The police can request a site be taken down, the proper response to such as request is of course

"Justhost.com will be happy to take down the fitwatch site as soon as the appropriate court documentation is provided"

If I was using justhosts.com for any hosting at the moment, I would be making arrangments for a new provider PDQ.

Steelie Neelie calls for 'every vehicle digital'

Orbiting Cars

"We here on the Reg future motoring desk tend to suspect that there might be a tendency for car owners, failing perhaps to find affordable parking in city centres, to simply order their vehicles to orbit locally while they did a bit of shopping or went to the pub etc."

I suspect you are forgetting that what makes parking expensive (beyond the obvious money grabbing profit machines that are parking authorities) is the price of land near to where everyone wants to go. If the cars can drive themselves then they can drive themselves to lower priced out of town parking while still allowing the occupants to be picked up and dropped off at the destination.

Think about having no on street parking, only pickup/drop off/loading bays and a few massive parking centers 5-10 minutes drive away. Especially if those massive parking centers double up as automated charging points.

Airport screeners go for the groin

Rail travel

I would really like to invest in some US long distance rail companies right now.

There will come a point where all the short to medium distance travel is just less hassel and cheaper than flying and aircraft will just be used for the really long distance time sensitive travel like the coast to coast runs.

No wonder CompSci grads are unemployed

CS or accountancy

"and who are thus choosing between a degree in CS or accountancy"

I wish I had done Accountancy instead, I would have been chartered by now and earning a small fortunate for doing something which only required diligent, albeit boring, work.

Instead, I'm now doing stuff which requires diligent albeit boring work for far less than the accountancy monkeys with similar number of years in the job.

Judge tosses lawsuit from copyright troll

Not Righthavens Benefit

Directing vistors to the papers website may benefit the paper but it doesn't benefit Righthaven who if I remember correctly from other stories on the interwebs buys the copyright from the paper just so that they can sue other websites.

i.e. Las Vegas Review Journal doesn't own the copyright and has nothing to do with the case despite the fact that they wrote the article.

Righthavens entire business model is to aquire the copyright of some article then extract money from other websites for using that copyright even though they have no intention of publishing the article themselves.

It's the publishing version of a patent troll.

MoD braced for painful weight-loss surgery next week

Draw

The colonials never managed to invade us :)

Android phone auto reverts jailbreaks

signed updates

I would imagine official updates are signed against a private key hidden somewhere in the hardware, if the modifcation has the correct update then it doesn't get wiped at boot time.

Find that key and you should be able to sign your own updates as being official.

Skype and Facebook sitting in a tree?

Agreed

The idea that all my contacts are equal is what prevents facebook being a useful addressbook where my contacts maintain the details.

Without being able to maintain seperate groups of contacts with different privacy and contact options is what prevents facebook being used for anything other than mindless time drains.

Car wrecks rise after texting bans imposed

Distraction

"Even though my set of wheels has a cell jammer, it is ineffective in stopping message entering, of course. I have seen all manner of collisions yet the plague of distracted drivers continue"

You mean like the distraction cause by their cell phone suddenly losing it's signal and the driver looking down at the screen to see whats wrong with the call they were on? No wonder you see so many accidents near you.

Kia POPs out see-through OLED dash readout

No Flaming Tyre Tracks

There's no way those lithium batteries are going to be able to supply 1.21 gigawatts.

US forces drop dead drug-poison killer mice from helicopters

@ Torben Mogensen

In captivity, snakes can be trained to take dead food quite easily; Snakes are easier to keep as a pet compared to Lizards because the lizard generally only takes live food.

I would bet in the wild snakes will eat anything they can get their jaws around so long as it doesn't smell to decomposed - for example, a lot of snakes love an egg if they can find one.

Half of UK road users support usage-based road charging

Electric Cars

What happens when Electric cars start becoming wide spread, if they ever do.

You would have to find a way of seperating the electricity used in the home and the electricity used in charging the car battery so that you can add extra tax to it.

And since there would be a financial advantage to charging at the domestic rate, even if the charging units had their own meters somebody would run an extension cord out the window.