Posts by User McUser

Comcast Corp to merge with Time Warner Cable in MONSTER $45bn deal

FIFY

This transaction will create a leading technology and innovation company, differentiated by its ability to deliver ground-breaking products on a superior network while leveraging a national platform to create operating efficiencies and economies of scale.

This merger will create a gigantic and unwieldy lumbering beast of a company which will further retard America's broadband expansion efforts, stifle innovation using its government sanctioned regional monopolies, provide the exact same lousy service (both programming and customer) for which our industry is renowned over an aging infrastructure into which we invest only the bare minimum of funds to keep limping along, all while extracting record profits from both our customers and the content providers on the back-end by playing each of them against the other.

Bitcoin value plunges as Mt.Gox halts withdrawals and Russia says 'nyet'

Re: Why would anyone trust Mt Gox in the first place?

Why, who wouldn't trust the Magic The Gathering Online eXchange with their money? Seems like a fine financial operation they got there.

Boffin dreams up smart battery gizmo for Raspberry Pi fiddlers

Re: Where's the incentive

this kickstarter idea would do much better if a percentage of future profits after taking a project to market were reserved for the backers. At the moment I back something and get a token bit of whatever in return and they get all the profits.

Kickstarter is specifically NOT for investing - in fact the official rules expressly forbid what you suggest[1]. It is a crowd-funding service that lets you effectively pre-order a product that does not yet exist. The idea is to help the creator bankroll the initial production run, and in exchange for doing so they generally give you a discount from the "retail price" or some sort of bonus.

[1] From: https://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines/

Creators cannot offer equity or financial incentives (ownership, share of profits, repayment/loans, cash-value equivalents, etc).

'That was quick!': AT&T ends $450 T-Mobile poaching promotion

Pot to Kettle: You are Black

Because AT&T offering to pay your ETFs is a bribe where as T-Mobile offering to pay your ETFs[1] is just... er, being nice I guess?

[1] http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/switch-carriers-no-early-termination-fee.html

Sprint to buy T-Mobile US? Not so fast, says antitrust official

Re: NOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!

I agree! I get the exact plan I want for a price I am absolutely happy with (Unlimited Data &Text with 100 voice minutes per month for ~$35, taxes included, pay-as-you-go.)

I've no illusions that Sprint would continue this deal like T-Mobile did after the recent shake-up.

Here they come: Dot-word warehouse Donuts to launch new top-level domains this week

Finally...

Dillon/Edwards Investments can register www.clownpenis.fart

The promise of the Internet is now fully realized.

Google patents ROBO-TAXIS to ferry punters into advertiser's shops, restaurants, etc for free

Pointless and Easily Abused

Just find a gullible innovative business nearby your real destination and you're good to go.

Google bus protests are Kristallnacht against the rich – tech VC legend

Re: Blame

It is the high performers that create the surpluses in society that allow the low performers to tag along for the ride. If everyone is just eeking by then nobody is paying that lovely tax that pays for food stamps, unemployment allowances, etc.

Thanks Ayn Rand.

Nobody is suggesting that the rich be taxed out of existence, but it would be nice if they put a little more into the pot. If we're all working together trying to move a heavy load, why can't the strongest persons bear the most weight?

Ofcom says yes to sat broadband on PLANES (and trains and ships)

Round Trip

a 44,000 mile (71,000km) round-trip

Actually, it's at least twice that for a round-trip.

Wikipedia tells me a geosynchronous orbit is roughly 35,700km above the equator. Satellite data requests must go from computer up to satellite (1x), from satellite to ground relay (2x), over the Internet to the server that responds to the request, then back to the ground relay and up to the satellite (3x), and finally then back down to the computer (4x). Total trip is approximately 142,800km.

Almost everyone read the Verizon v FCC net neutrality verdict WRONG

Re: Nice straw man

The way it would really be done would just be via degradation.

I suspect my ISP has been degrading my Netflix streams. Just now I watched "Example Short 23.976" which is some sort of diagnostic video that displays the current bitrate of the video stream and the resolution.

When I watch it using just my normal ISP, I get 235kbps 320x240. When I connect to the VPN at the office, I get 3000kbps, 1280x720. Now there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, but it seems awful suspicious to me.

9,000 heads to roll at Dell? Tosh. It'll all go down in Feb and it's THOUSANDS more - insiders

Dell's Problems are Dell's fault

Many Dell employees seem to lack the ability to think logically and it directly impacts the bottom line. For example:

We have a negotiated preset configuration which we purchase for pretty much all of our users. When we first started ordering them, the tower and the bundled display had only VGA and DVI connections, and we received a DVI and a (useless to us) VGA cable with each order.

Then with the latest hardware rev, Dell changed the video-out on the tower to Display Port but proceeded to still only send us DVI and VGA cables. So we had to contact them and add a display port to DVI adapter to the configuration.

Next, Dell updates the monitors to also include a Display Port connector but they *still* send us DVI and VGA cables and the Display Port to DVI adapter. So we call and ask to get a Display Port cable instead.

Now when we order a computer we get - a Display Port cable, the still useless VGA cable... And a Display Port to DVI adapter.

Who's the best-built bot that makes the US military hot? SCHAFT!

Re: Seriously guys?

and no sound either.

There's plenty of sound, just not all the way through. The real problem is that its *soooooo boooorrrriiinnnnggg!* Jump to any random spot in the video; it'll probably be either a full-screen Chyron or a medium shot of a robot standing perfectly still.

You know those old newsreel clips of wacky turn-of-the-last-century flying machines[1]? This will be the robot equivalent of those clips for future generations.

[1] eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMhdksPFhCM

WIN YOUR OWN HADRON COLLIDER pop-up book with El Reg

Eligibility

Is this contest for the Brits only or can us 'Mericans enter as well?

NO XMAS PRESENTS FOR Google Now and Siri: Chirpy scamps get a C+

I'll presume that you've already logged in on all these devices ahead of time... Unless the NSA is handling all the Google Now queries.

People's Bank of China bans Bitcoin over 'drugs and guns' trade fears

Re: Fearmongering from the Masters

Who can guarantee that the market will not be flooded by counterfeit bitcoins?

Math

We're making too much say CryptoLocker scum in ransom price cut

Re: If the spam problem were reduced, then this would be reduced, too

The transfer of millions, if not billions, of dollars is securely processed over the Internet each day with hardly any direct human intervention. I just don't see why email can't be secured using similar technologies.

Re: If the spam problem were reduced, then this would be reduced, too

But this isn't just hypothetical

So you have a duplicate copy of the Internet somewhere so we can test this? If not, it's hypothetical.

Spam is sent from compromised machines. If those machines have credit to send legitimate email, then they have credit to send spam.

Users would have the credit, not thier computers. Compromised machines would still have to sign the email before it would be accepted by mail servers so they'd have to also obtain the user's signing certificate first.

Re: If the spam problem were reduced, then this would be reduced, too

It won't take that because your suggestion simply will not work. The spammers will steal credit in the way they currently steal bandwidth from unsuspecting users. Spam levels will not decrease in the slightest; your proposal simply adds bueaucracy to legitimate users without benefiting them in any way.

The reason you're not flooded with the equivalent volume of junk snail-mail as you are email is that it costs money to print and deliver it all. I only propose to make junk email as equally an unattractive method.

With the proper PKI and protocols in place, I think it is possible to do so, and at a minimum of cost to the legitimate email user. If you disagree then I guess we'll just have to disagree since we are arguing in the hypothetical.

Re: If the spam problem were reduced, then this would be reduced, too

But it doesn't cost them - spammers do not send spam from their own machines. They send it from zombies. So it costs someone else all that money.

Errr, right. That was my point exactly - SPAMing works now *because* it is free. What I'm suggesting is essentially postage stamps for email. If an email isn't stamped then it doesn't get delivered; it wouldn't matter what computer it came from. Obviously this would require new or vastly rewritten email protocols, but if that's what it is going to take...

Re: If the spam problem were reduced, then this would be reduced, too

The solution to unsolicited junk email, IMHO, is to get off it and start charging money for email service. I suggest the sender pays 1¢ (or equivalent) per email sent between domains, split equally between the sender's and recipient's ISPs. (Intra-organizational email would be free.)

This has two positive effects: First, it requires that ISPs verify the identity of a sender so that they can bill them (or else they would have to pay other ISPs a 1/2¢ per email themselves.) And second, it destroys the spammer's business model; they can't spam-blast 10 million email addresses hoping for 1000 replies if it costs them $100,000 to do so.

You could even establish a bulk-class email system that still allows for free email, but its all marked "3rd class" and gets automatically routed to a Bulk Mail folder for your ease of ignoring.

Space hotelier Bigelow wants capitalists to FIGHT comm-MOON-ist takeover

"It's the psychological impact that has the value, of every soul looking at the moon and knowing that it belongs to China," he said

Oh man, we should come up with some sort of international treaty to prevent exactly that scenario from happening.

Sorry, what's that? Oh, they did? Back in 1967 you say? And the Chinese signed on to it in 1983? Huh...

'A measly 3 Instagrams? NO!' Sexy selfie Snapchat spurns Facebook's $3bn

How is $3x10^9 not "big bucks?"

Spiegel is reportedly holding out for the big bucks.

Can somebody get this kid a Math book or something?

Mainstream Chrome spits ARM, Intel apps on the fly from cross-platform code

I see what you did there Google...

[...] Native Client (NaCl) technology [...]

[...] Google's pepper.js library.

For the lulz I presume.

Personal web and mail server for Raspberry Pi seeks cash

Re: Been there, done that

Congratulations, you've now just lost 99% of the population.

As opposed to the what, .03% of people who own a Raspberry Pi? Lets face it, if you're doing dev work for the Pi then you weren't aiming for the mainstream anyway.

This is easy stuff for anyone like us, but it is not for the majority of people (even tech-aware people) due to knowledge, time or financial constraints. You have to think of things like an end user would see them.

So what's the scenario for this? Average user Bob sees an ad online for the Pi, buys one (by accident perhaps?), and then one day suddenly decides he's going to run a web and email server on it but won't/can't be bothered to work out for himself how to do this so ArkOS to the rescue?

I thought that the point of the Pi was to encourage people to get in there and program, fiddle, and mess with the thing in order to computers. This project seems to be the opposite of that.

Tesla battery fire pushes beleaguered firm's share price even lower

Not that big of a deal.

A couple of Google searches yields this data:

Approximate number of cars on the road in the US in 2009: 254,212,000

Number of reported fires in 2009: 190,500

Rate: .075 fires per 100 cars

Approximate number of Tesla Model S sold in 2013: 19,000

Number of Fires in Tesla Model S: 3

Rate: .016 fires per 100 cars

Feedly coughs to cockup, KILLS Google+ login as users FLEE

Re: ANYONE USING SOME ELSES LOGGING SERVICE

A) Security. EVERY different site needs its own log-in. A universal Login is stupendously idiotic. Even more stupid than using the same password for everything

I don't know... Seems like there are downsides to either way.

A single sign-on is convenient as hell, though there is the problem of it being a single point of failure/compromise. On the other hand, using separate logins for every single web site is tremendously inconvenient (forcing users to have to remember yet another MF'ing username/password pair which inadvertently encourages password re-use) and requires every site operator to provide security to protect the login info many (most?) of whom are probably not as well suited to the task as, say, Google is.

Note to web developers: Please stop making me pick a unique username; just use my email address. It's already unique and you're going to ask for it anyway so why not just use it as the username?

They've taken my storage hostage ... now what?

Re: Backups, backups, backups!

How much power/cooling do your disks cost to keep running? How much energy does that tape use on a shelf?

*shrug* I honestly don't know and don't particularly care (NMJ). All I know is when a idiot user accidentally deletes a file I can restore it from backup in less than a minute versus who knows how long from tape. Wall-clock time is all that anyone here cares about.

Re: Backups, backups, backups!

Funny how backup software works best with tape. Lots and lots of cheap tape, cartridge after cartridge, no problems. Backup software doesn't work so well with anything else, despite what's claimed on the package.

Our replicated disk-to-disk backup servers (physically isolated from each other in different buildings natch) would disagree with you.

Scared yet, web devs? Google smears malware warnings over PHP.net

@AC 12:00GMT

if the advert on that page tries to trick the user into clicking on it

Don't they all? I mean, that's the whole point of ads on a webpage, right?

NSA-friendly cyber-slurp law CISPA back on the table with new Senate bill

"Saxby" is apparently of Norse origin while "Chambliss" seems pretty likely to be of French origin (and it is.)

Acronis CEO: Anyone can undercut Amazon. Reg hack: Prove it

Re: Confused

Indeed, thanks for the clarification!

Confused

I don't seem to be able to match his numbers...

25TiB * 6 = 153,600 GiB

$30,000 / 153,600 GiB = .1953125 Dollars/GiB

Even working backwards from his numbers doesn't work:

0.0082 Dollars/GiB * 153,600 GiB = $1,259.52

Whose math is wrong here, mine or his?

Rorschach test suggested as CAPTCHA replacement

Re: Interesting...but...

I think you've misunderstood what it's for. It seems to be a replacement for "think of a question you'd like to be asked when you want your password reset"

The problem is that the article specifically says that the GOTCHAs are supposed to replace CAPTCHAs. But the technology, as described, seems incapable of doing so.

Ofcom, it's WAR! Mobe networks fire broadside over 2G spectrum pricing

Comeuppance

So basically, cellphone providers got screwed with higher fees based on the fine print in the contract?

Who here needs to explain things to ELEPHANTS?

Re: Something to point with?

Well, the domestic dog understands pointing despite lacking anything with which to point.

Wolves do not possess this skill; it's believed that humans selected for this ability, intentionally or otherwise, when domesticating wolves into dogs.

Boffins create bulk-process on-silicon optics

Re: And the LASER?

You mean something like this?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/17/intel_silicon_photonics/

OUCH: Google preps ad goo injection for Android mobile Gmail app

The service is free.

Not if there are adverts. (That just means someone else is picking up the tab for you.)

Tightwad music spaffer Pandora opens box for Wall St to fill with cash

Re: Equal terms and conditions for equal transmission

90% of all successful radio stations have an Internet Radio offering. How is that at all different than Pandora?

Radio stations are a fixed stream; the station decides on the programming and broadcasts it. Those listening over the air get the same songs and what-not as do the Internet streamers for the same station. They might take requests, but only those that fit within the station's chosen "format" (eg: Rock, Pop, Jazz, etc)

In contrast, Pandora lets each individual user create and customize their own music stream where they can skip songs and incorporate preference data in the form of likes and dislikes. It's more of a music concierge that learns what songs you like and automatically plays new ones it calculates you will also enjoy.

Re: Equal terms and conditions for equal transmission

It's not quite the same... Radio (even satellite radio to a lesser extent) is limited by their broadcast power and location. The internet is theoretically available anywhere on the planet.

Tracking the history of magnetic tape: A game of noughts and crosses

"each reel could store 1.5 million characters (224kB)"

1.5M characters stored in 229,376 bytes is 1.2 bits per character, which seems awfully low to me...

Surely 1.5 million characters is 1.43 MiB?

Senator halts Google's taxpayer-subsidized executive jet fuel deal

Gallons?

Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't aviation fuel usually sold by weight and not volume?

Verizon finally drags FCC into court fisticuffs to end one-speed internet for all

Re: How would this even work?

What you're describing is co-locating or geographic content caching servers; I have no problem with this. What Verizon wants to do is to give priority service to certain packets based on how much money they've been paid by the packets' originator.

Really it's an extortion racket.

"Those are some nice packets you have there... It sure would be a shame if anything were to, you know, happen to them... Probably best if you let *us* handle them with our 'priority delivery' service. Otherwise it might take a surprisingly loooong while for them to reach your customers. Packets get lost all the time you know!"

How would this even work?

How can a non-neutral network even function? No entity controls the entire Internet after all, it's a collection of many thousands of large and small companies working together.

An example: I get my Internet from Comcast. Lets say I want to watch a TV show on HuluPlus who for the sake of this argument have paid Verizon a big pile of money to give Hulu's packets priority over other video services.

So I start streaming an episode and the video packets race through the Verizon network getting green lights all the way... until they pass over to a segment of the Internet owned by Comcast. Hulu hasn't paid Comcast anything, so now what happens to the packets? Do they just wait in line with all the others like they used to? Or will ISPs honor each other's priority requests?

Could Hulu pay Verizon to specifically *degrade* a rival service's performance?

Android malware spotted hitching a ride on mobile botnet

To be fair, Apple abandons their devices too. Just usually takes longer.

Ministry of Sound sues Spotify over user playlists

Re: Madness

I agree that the use of the trademarked name "Ministry of Sound" would be a copyright/trademark violation except that it is the end users that are naming the offending playlists, NOT Spotify who shouldn't be held accoutnable for users' decisions.

I will assume that MOS has some talent in making commercial mix tapes or they would have folded by now. It's perfectly fine to do what they do, but in all honesty they've not really produced anything "unique" IMO (at least not in the sense that the creators of the music they curated have done. But that's an entirely different debate anyway.)

Re: Madness

Right, but so what? How does that hurt or injure MOS?

What kind of business model did they really have? They license music and resell it in compilations. I can do the same thing without them by buying all the tracks and making a play list in iTunes. Or I could buy all the individual song's albums and make a mix-tape (unless British law prohibits this.)

To quote from the linked article:

... the largest part of our business comes from sales of compilation albums. ... [Spotify] does not recognise that our products have any material value. It doesn't consider them worth licensing.

They're really just mad that Spotify didn't want to double-license the same material and Presencer wants his pound of flesh.

Ofcom launches idiot's guide to traffic-shaping

Apt analogy

Because in the future, if you can't afford to pay for packet priority then you get to ride the bus with all the other "unimportant" traffic.

Unless I, the consumer, have total control over what packets get priority and when, they can cram it with walnuts. If you don't want me streaming video at 10Mbps, then don't give me a 10Mbps connection. If you don't want me downloading hundreds of GB of data a month, then don't sell me an "unlimited" connection.

'WTF! MORONS!' Yahoo! Groups! redesign! traumatises! users!

WFM

Just logged in to the Groups console... What is everyone complaining about?

Seems like they just did a "Modern UI" 2D/flat style CSS job and added some more Javascripty crap. Runs perfectly fast on Firefox 17ESR and the emails are still going through to our subscribers...

Granted we're a small private list so maybe it only affects those with 100s-1000s of members? Or perhaps they've just fixed it already?

WTF is … Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks?

Re: Isnt this what USENET was designed to do?

[...] they'll all have to come with 1TB of flash memory.

Sure but by the time this sort of thing is in wide spread use 1TB of flash (or equivalent) will probably cost $10, so who cares?

Google cursed its own phones with wacked Wi-Fi, say Nexus users

Re: A slightly different problem

That's not an Android specific issue; I often have the same kind of trouble with my iPhone.

The worst is when I'm leaving the office and start to send an email right as the WiFi signal is at the edge of reception. I hit send, the WiFi goes out of range, and the f'ing thing will wait forever for the timeout error before switching over and resending my mail over the 3G connection. The timeout for TCP/IP must be set in the 1,000s of ms; probably a good idea for 3G/Edge but not so much for WiFi.

I'd leave WiFi off, but my office is in a lead-lined room (they used to do X-Ray crystallography in here) and we get next to no signal on a good day.