Posts by The last doughnut

Microsoft open-sources Sora software-defined radio

Strangely the press release doesn't mention WiMax?

The Register's resident space boffin: All you need to know about the Pluto mission

A tremendous achievement

Ashley Madison hack: Site for people who can't be trusted can't be trusted

... oh please do go on

What makes our planet's clouds? Tiny INVISIBLE CREATURES. True story

Re: Global warming help?

So we are all doomed then.

Happy NukeDay to you! 70 years in the shadow of the bomb post-Trinity

Re: No mention of the neutron bomb?

From what I read on Wikipedia (I know, I know) the neutron bomb is just a version of the thermonuclear device where the tertiary fuel (non-enriched uranium) is omitted. The neutron radiation burst is about the same but the explosive yield is reduced. Perhaps the terror of this weapon was exaggerated somewhat?

Feel like you're being herded onto Windows 10? Well, you should

When will the world free itself from the death-grip of the Redmond Monster?

I use a linux lappy for most things these days, but I still have to keep the old Win7 desktop beast for a few things that simply won't run on anything else - except possibly a Mac, and I don't want that expense.

iPod dead? Nope, says Apple: New Touch has iPhone 6 brains

So all you have to put with is the lousy Lightening connector (as in it will regularly lighten your pockets as they break very easily and the iDevice wont even let you use a cheap copy) the rubbish iTunes software, the iCloud stealing away all of your diligently ripped music library, the lack of open extensible storage on the iPod itself ...

Horrifying MOCK BACON ABOMINATION grown in BUBBLING VATS as ALGAE

Re: Single electron

One amp is a flow of 6.24x10^18 electrons per second - but they all move reeally slowly

New Horizons: We've got a pretty pic of Pluto. Now let's get our SCIENCE on

Re: A breath of fresh... Oh.

Have one on me, chap.

Re: "we'd still be roaming the plains of Earth as just another primate"

If you have never roamed the plains of Earth as just another primate, you really should give it a try.

Google joins Bluetooth snoop pals with iBeacon rival tech Eddystone

Re: Mmm

Hm yeah but smartphones are just brilliant

Natural geothermal heat under Antarctic ice: 'Surprisingly high'

Re: Surprisingly high: Compared to what?

I am with Sr Runcible on this. There may be some basic science that links rising atmospheric CO2 with increasing heat retention, I accept that. But what climate scientists have failed to do is quantify the effect.

My much earlier post made the assertion that the Earth's climate is fundamentally stable. It varies over time because it is a complex system and has many non-man-made variables. But I really don't believe that the level of atmospheric CO2 (in the range we are ever likely to see) will make any significant difference to the global temperature.

Hmm yeah well. We are a diverse bunch us commentards. We may not climate experts but I like to think we all bring a little bit of something to the discussion.

If the climatologists were a bit more open to scrutiny and a bit less sensitive and defensive about it, we would all have a lot less to question.

Re: with only a small number of mass-extinction events

There will almost certainly be more.

Al Gore was a rich industrialist before he became a politician.

The Earth's climate is a highly stable system that has supported a mellow biosphere for over 10^9 solar orbits, with only a small number of mass-extinction events.

GIGANTIC galaxy-chomping black hole rips boffins a new one

Re: There's something heartening...

Indeed I hope it will be added to the OED before the heat death of the universe.

Sony phone chief vows to keep losing money forever and ever

I think they will gain market traction as time goes on. Best phones and tablets around. Go Sony.

Ginormous HIDDEN BLACK HOLES flood the universe – boffins

Re: so...

I also used to get chin-rub doubtful about dark matter but recently read a very good summary of the evidence for its existence as something like WIMPs existing in halos in and around galaxies and clusters of galaxies, which I found persuasive.

Dark energy, on the other hand, is where even the tip-top cosmological boffins get all shruggy shouldered, and it seems our current theory set just doesn't explain the apparent accelerating expansion at all.

Icon: Another slapped wrist for El Reg for once again failing to state what is an artists impression and what is an actual observational image.

Pluto probe brain OVERLOAD: Titsup New Horizons explained

Send the data multiple times

That's not a bad idea really. Assuming the probe has sufficient storage and the transmit power to keep sending it. Until everything received with no errors after decoding. Then I assume they will make it sleep a while until there is more science to do further out.

Boffin: Will I soon be able to CLONE a WOOLLY MAMMOTH? YES. Should I? Hell NO

Two thumbs down - just what you need for eating a burger

Get the muscle genes into a vat-grown meat process and churn out those woolly burgers I want to know how it tastes.

Friday beers all round!

Adam Smith was right about that invisible hand, you know

'tis all hot air, sir.

Well that is the last TW article I ever read. All you have done is convince me that economists are pretend academics who start with a falsehood and then proceed to convince themselves it is true by misinterpreting anything written by anyone ever.

BBC (sort of) sorry for Grant Shapps Wikipedia smear reportage

Re: Ahhhh. The Guardian

You don't see any peado-bait sidebar young hotties on the Grauniad website, do you?

Re: Ahhhh. The Guardian

Yes the Guardian, perhaps one of the last examples of actual journalism anywhere.

Universal Credit white elephant needs 'urgent breakthrough' says MP

In terms of government IT this is just a pretty standard colossal fuck-up. One has to conclude it was put in the hands of IDS to ensure its failure.

Devs, welcome your EVIL ROBOT OVERLORDS from MIT

When I'm not hacking merrily away I'm secretly working on my masterpiece - set to revolutionise the automated generation of code based on pre-idealised functional N-vector text space re-use - I call it regurgicode.

Why OH WHY did Blighty privatise EVERYTHING?

Economists and markets

You can regulate a market. And you can design a system. But the two verbs and the two nouns are quite different.

Pluto plastered in what looks like 1970s orange wallpaper – proof

A tremendous feat of engineering. I doff my hat to those involved.

Any chance of an in-depth El Reg article about the technology used at the receiving end, to pull the data out of the noise?

Verizon promised to wire up NYC with fiber... and failed miserably – audit

To be fair, the Telco are just doing what they do, trying to reduce costs and make profit for their shareholders. The real failure is on the part of the city authorities and regulators to ensure the Telco deliver according to contract.

Also, nice use of "We're victims of evil trade union" tactic.

Sharing Economy latest: Women's breast milk is the new 'liquid gold' of the internet

That's why I read El Reg - to keep abreast of developments.

Version 0.1 super-stars built the universe – and they lived all the way over there, boffins point

Nice article but a bit annoyed they've used an artists impression as an image without saying it is such.

Cinnamon 2.6 – a Linux desktop for Windows XP refugees

Last time I tried Cinnamon the blocking point was not being unable to place the menu/task bar in a vertical configuration on the side of the screen. This is essential for me on a letterbox laptop screen. I'll give it a go if they have added it. Otherwise sticking with XFCE.

Only good thing about Twitter CEO storm: 140 character limit gone

Re: ...and has 3,900 employees...

They must have fairly large compute resources so I guess some proportion of that are in IT.

No Silicon Roundabout U-Bend U-Turn: Build that peninsula boys

Earlier this year I had to travel that route by car. It was not by choice - I simply had to take that route into central London. I could not use the tube or a bus or a bicycle or a taxi. I am not a London resident but I do have an Oyster (we snoop your movements) card. It givse me great joy to learn that it may become more pleasant for the locals, and I can say that with only a minor amount of sarcasm. But please spare a thought for those who travel in a private car.

Kaspersky Lab reveals Duqu 2.0 attack ON ITSELF during Iran nuke talks

That's nice but if a virus is believed used by <Nation A> spies does that stop <Nation B> from using it? I think not.

Nobel bro-ffin: 'Girls in the lab fall in love with me ... then start crying'

I am not offended by this but somebody else may be so therefore he must be humiliated across the entire internet.

Brit plods' post-TETRA radio omnishambles comes home to roost

Re: Jamming.(@ The last Doughnut)

Er - ok. You all make several assumptions. And you seem to think that perhaps 4G or AM SSB is more robust in the presence of jamming than TETRA. And you forget that the TETRA base station is not necessarily in the cop shop or car or that there may be more than one of them, or ...

Re: Jamming.

I think you underestimate the abilities of the Home Office, the Police and other government agencies.

Jamming police radios, even with a "cheap chinese jammer" of some sort, would put you on the wrong end of an attempting to pervert the course of justice change and you'd be looking at 6 months in jail. That's no joke. But at least you'd never be called for jury service.

Re: Jamming.

And you think the Home Office aren't able to find jammers and send the operators to jail?

Re: why?

TETRA, which is based on GSM technology works a lot better than the old UHF radios they replaced. Plus the UHF units did expose their users to fairly nasty RF radiation, and were open to eavesdropping.

The real question is why are they replacing TETRA at all?

Remake, remodel: Toshiba Chromebook 2

Yes you can get very cheap underpowered (windows 8.1) 'tops now. Just replace the 1TB hard drive with a 64GB SSD, load your choice of Linux and away you go.

HTC execs: Oh dear, did we say we'd sell lots of smartphones? Our bad

If its water and dust proofing you want and better battery life, you should have bought the Sony Xperia.

Hubble spots Pluto's moons are a chaotic mess of tumbling rock

Uranus is also strange, having its axis of rotation inclined at 89 degrees.

Personally I'm very excited about seeing the results from New Horizons.

Please feel free to snigger/make jokes about the name I still don't want to see yours thanks.

Sorry we called you a fatty, say Kiwi spies to Kim 'Slim Jim' Dotcom

Here is a man who appears to give not a f*** about what anyone says about him, his girly name or his physical appearance and for that alone I salute him. Have one on me, Kim

KFC takes legal axe to eight-legged mutant chicken claims

Re: Fried

He meant median, But "Think about how dumb the median person is ... " isn't quite so catchy.

What can anyone say about food that is served in a bucket?

'iPhone 6S' to push fanbois around with 'Force Touch display'

I heard a rumour that Apple are going to skip the 6s and 7 and go straight for the iPhone 8. They plan to release about a dozen different versions that are all fundamentally incompatible with each other. Then withdraw support for all but a few within 18 months. Now that's what I call customer service!

RAF Eurofighter gets a Battle of Britain makeover

Indeed a lovely shot - he's even managed to leave the propellor a little blurred.

School's in for Chromebooks, Google's the top swot in class

Created by Google as a low-cost method for increasing the number of people using the internet without feeding the Redmond monster.

It’s Adobe’s Creative Cloud TITSUP birthday. Ease the pain with its RGB-wrangling rivals

Re: the real problem with the Gimp

Work has been in progress for a number of years! But anyway 8 bits is plenty for most purposes.