* Posts by Anonymous Coward 99

23 publicly visible posts • joined 25 May 2011

RIP: Software design pioneer and Pascal creator Niklaus Wirth

Anonymous Coward 99

Pascal wasn't just for purists, despite the implementations

In the 80s I had many long & heated conversations about how pure Pascal was, and therefore couldn't be used into real world stuff like bit twiddling where you knew word ordering - despite there being statements that these were intended so that Pascal was useable as a real world control language, and not just abstract computing. This presaged the wars over Java/C# and the underlying metamachines/machine interface libraries by at least 20 years. When they got into dogma like "else statement are unnecessary in Case switches, because all inputs should be known", us engineers left them too it.

As a result, I mostly skipped from assembler to C, and then C++, while waiting for Aida to sweep the world.....

The perils of building a career on YouTube: Guitar teacher's channel nearly deleted after music publisher complains

Anonymous Coward 99

Education has a "fair use" exemption

It's worth noting that, under US copyright law, there is a copyright exemption on educational commentary, and self-written tabs would fall under this.

Another YouTube creator, Rick Beato, has run into problems in this area. The vast majority of his content is demonitised, and some is straight blocked. He's discussed this extensively, but the most relevant video is the one where he discusses his deposition in front of a senate committee about such use.

Moving out a rung further, Leyland Sklar has been taken down for writing tutorials to his own bass parts on other peoples' songs (eg James Taylor). Guy Pratt not. You have to assume the artist/label and number of subscribers matters more than the principle.

Remember that clinical trial, promoted by President Trump, of a possible COVID-19 cure? So, so, so many questions...

Anonymous Coward 99

Thanks to the possibility this might work, there is now a worldwide shortage of the drug, which is currently used to treat patients with things like Lupus. India has slapped on an export ban, so no more is coming. Net result - people are going to get worse and die from not having it.

All I can say is it better help Covid patients, or Trump has harmed people (again) by ill-advised comments.

F-35 'incomparable' to Harrier jump jet, top test pilot tells El Reg

Anonymous Coward 99

Stealth Landings?

Harrier - First generation/F35 - Second generation

VTOL was designed as a capability to allow non-airfield deployment more than anything else. But Navy harriers used the "ski jump" to allow heavier loads to be launched from what is effectively a runway. The new capability is an equivalent rolling landing.

What I would like to know is whether autolanding is less stealth than a conventional one.

Voyager 2 finally agrees to a long hard thrust

Anonymous Coward 99

Correct

The available power has fallen to the stage that they have to prioritise instruments. I mean, it's not like you want to launch with a lot more isotopes than you actually need for the primary mission....

Apple was OK to fire man for private Facebook comments

Anonymous Coward 99

The important thing about this is the new definition of "private". If something can be copied, made public and attributed to its original, then it is no longer private. At a second level, there is no expectation of privacy on people who have been given express permission to see your content

I suggest this walks a coach and horses through any sense of privacy for ANY stored media - Wikileaks, anyone?

Or is this a commentary that FarceBook privacy is not worth the paper you could print the T&Cs on?

CERN boffins re-running neutrino speed test

Anonymous Coward 99

Neutrino Physics 101

Because neutrinos hardly interact with matter, you can't steer them once they have been produced. The only way the experiment works is by putting the detector in line with the beam that is being produced. Then you have to work out which neutrinos MAY have come from the source (since the universe is filled with background, ....)

Anonymous Coward 99

Neutrino Physics 101

Because Neutrinos hardly interact with normal matter, they cannot be steered, you have to put the detector in line with the source.

Robot resolves Rubik's Cube in record time

Anonymous Coward 99

I did my first time under 30 seconds the same week the world record dropped to 20...

Theory says that any cube can be solved in a finite number of moves, currently proved to be 20, but working out the optimal route is VERY non-trivial. What speed solvers do is apply a suite of moves to solve groups of pieces, without breaking previous progress. The better the solver, the more sequences they can recognise and apply - but these are of the order of 60-65 total moves.

WHSmith launches e-book reader rivals to Amazon Kindle

Anonymous Coward 99

Not a threat to Kindle?

I can see Amazon wanting to embrace this - If Kindles are being sold below cost, why not? The question is who will Smiths lock out to protect THEIR book business.

Smut oglers told to opt in to keep web filth flowing

Anonymous Coward 99

ALL ADULT content

The example given on the BBC content was "Go to Wikipedia and request Al-Queda" and it would be blocked". This was referred to as "Not fine grained".

Therefore a simple list of blocked terms, not site blocking, and implying inspection of content on a per request basis.

This is far scarier than just porn site blocking.... and totally inworkable.

London public transport tap-cash plans will be 'entirely safe'

Anonymous Coward 99
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Contactless pickpocketing?

Bet I can stand less than 20cm away from someone's pocket at rush hour....

Can I either have a card that makes a loud sound when being read or a wallet that is screened until I open the flap?

And if they bring in "free-flow Walk-through" systems, then I definitely DON'T want my cash linked to the same card.

Ofcom mulls smackdown for rogue religious TV channel

Anonymous Coward 99

"Think of it as evolution in action"

'nuff said

ISS 'naut shoots first ever 3D footage in space

Anonymous Coward 99

And the link

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290296/

Google+ bans real name under ‘Real Names’ policy

Anonymous Coward 99

Personal Safety?

Or what about people, like one of my friends, who has been strongly advised by the police (due to threats made against them by various nondescript nutters) NOT to use a real or well-known name on Social Networking sites.

Even FarceBook allowed their name change after being showed this

Better ATM skimming through thermal imaging

Anonymous Coward 99

Or...

... Use pattern-shape entry; or

... Use a matrix which has movable digits and/or extra keys allowing positional replacement

UK will obey Euro unisex-insurance rules from 2013

Anonymous Coward 99

What sort of equality?

I have no problem with equality of access as a principle, where the service delivered as a result is the same.

But where risks are applied according to statistics, why not measure by equity of output?

Music on plastic discs still popular, apparently

Anonymous Coward 99

Support Live Music!

Physical CDs are a lifeline to new artists - the "merch stand" where you can buy a CD after the show often makes them more money than the actual fee, and gets permanent publicity out into peoples' hands, where hopefully they will play or lend it to their friends....

HTTP-on-steroids busts out of Google

Anonymous Coward 99

Rollout?

HTTP Compression came along years ago, and if anything would have been more use then. But how many sites enable it?

Microsoft loses Supreme patent fight over Word

Anonymous Coward 99

Never really understood this one

So Microsoft were sued, for implementing an "obvious" way of embedding custom data structures into their document format using XML - a system designed specifically to build custom data structures, then remove it without any apparent consumer harm from their product (thus implying it is relatively valueless technology) - and still get hit for $200 big ones.

It always sounded almost as stupid as the US Patient decision to allow patenting the CONCEPT that Potatoes could be genetically engineered.

Is Microsoft's Javascript chief killing his .NET creation?

Anonymous Coward 99

History

From someone who was an active developer when this was all introduced - The common runtime was quite clearly a "best of breed" taking a fresh look at byte code engines like Java's (but with the restriction that the world was ALL Java removed), Garbage collection tweaked to work better in real time environments, reflection, fine grained security and versioning - working in a hot swap way, etc.

It was also the basis of consistent end-to-end tool and debug support, which was brilliant for us poor "code monkeys" to use, and meant MS could have been completely independent of processor model, had they wanted to.

Even after it was published in standards, and Mono came along, I was always disappointed that it wasn't used as the basis of more outside Microsoft, as it was one of the best bits of tech MS ever produced.

Facebook: 'We should've been more clear' on face-scanning tech

Anonymous Coward 99

And...

I was more worried by the setting I saw at the same time, about making photos available to the the friends of those tagged? Does this override my OWN settings?

BT cheerfully admits snooping on customer LANs

Anonymous Coward 99

Bored now, move along

I have had both models and NEVER plugged EITHER in. A quick check of the Comtrend website does say TR-069 is supported for the new model - so what it is being said is that the device HASN'T phoned home.

In any case, we are talking about BT supplied equipment going through BT supplied equipment to say that a product recall has been correctly implemented by a BT customer. Would respondents be happier if the recall hadn't happened?

If I have any issue, it is that they haven't matched up the bag I sent back for recyling - they could have known I was safe from there.