Posts by Yet Another Commentard

Compact Cassette supremo Lou Ottens talks to El Reg

Good interview

I enjoyed this, where the interviewer has technical knowledge of the item, and assumes a good level of intelligence on behalf of the reader. As a result honest and open answers are obtained, and kudos to Mr Ottens for those. Respecting his decision not to comment is welcome too.

The BBC (inter-alia) would do well to read and heed this - too often their science/technical articles are written by someone who clearly has no idea about science or technology and I end up feeling more stupid at the end that I did at the beginning. I know that the audience is different, El-Reg attracts a teccy-type of reader, but there is no excuse for general publications to assume all of their readers have no knowledge at all. Bring back Horizon as it was in the 1970s I say, this is the kind of excellent thing they'd do, with no celebrity interviewer/voiceover and no computer graphics, maybe just a diagram to show how the heads worked, or the gearing on differing spool sizes etc..

(I'll stop now before I start ranting)

Microsoft cedes board seat to activist investor

Re: So less than 1% of stock will get you a seat on the board?

@Paul Crawford

It's not as if MS has been re-organised lately to align to an easier split either, is it?

A split may be good, may be bad. Even the renowned might of El Reg's commentards struggled to come up with a good unifying CEO so perhaps lots of "little" billion dollar businesses would work better. I always had the feeling that MS's biggest problem was itself, both in competing with earlier versions of software, and that each bit of it targeted other bits of it rather than what consumers wanted, or the opposition. A split could be a Good Thing™ for MS. Who knows.

Snowden journo's boyfriend 'had crypto key for thumb-drive files written down' - cops

Re: Highly sensitive UK documents? Really?

"Perhaps someone in the Westminster regime wants the Graun bringing to heel (or simply made to be history)."

Sadly given its recent financial performance and insistence on throwing more and more money at the loss making online edition it may well do this to itself.

Are you for reel? How the Compact Cassette struck a chord for millions

Re: TDK SA90...

I went for the TDK Metal ones, for the embarrassing reason of the smell. Like a new car, or opening the shrink-wrap on some shiny gadget, the smell of a new Metal cassette was something special. Mind you, to buy a blank one was my paper-round for the week down the swanny.

Sure, sound quality isn't great, but the kids today do the same thing, compressed as heck digital versions not hissy analogue.

Sadly, having listened to Radio 1 recently I actually do believe that home taping did kill music.

We've cracked riddle of ANTIGRAVITY mountains on Saturn's Titan - boffins

Re: This is why I love Science!

and moreover self-corrects when evidence pops up that doesn't work with what you'd expect.

UK gov dials 999 over Serco prison escort fraud claims

Grr

"He said there were no indications of "systemic malpractice up to board level""

It does not matter if the nice board member took you to a Good Lunch or not, the directors have responsibility for all of their employees (unless, as per Joel v Morrison they are on a frolic of their own). The odd thing you can forgive, but systematic leads to a conclusion of a fundamental failure in the control process, the responsibility of which lies with the directors. You can bet that if every prisoner was really on time and correct the Board would be responsible for it, so they are responsible for the alleged fraud too.

Don't merely hand over "profits" on some weird accounting basis, fine them significant proportions of the contract value.

£2M profit sounds light - SERCO has a 5% net profit margin, so there should be about 5% of 2.5/7 (that's how much of the contract has gone) of £285 million at the very least, so more like £5M. Of course, "net profit" includes all the overhead costs that would exist whether or not SERCO did the contract. So they should be lost. More realistic therefore is the gross profit margin of 15%, so more like £15million. I could understand a number bigger than five but less than fifteen, but two? It's not worth getting out of bed for that.

Who in Whitehall sense checks this stuff?

Hey, Bill Gates! We've found 14 IT HOTSHOTS to be the next Steve Ballmer

Re: Steven Sinofsky

I would assume that given mutual consent such a clause would be voided. Contracts work like that.

Personally, I think he'd be the wrong person, but my opinions count for very little in this game.

Re: Gabe Newell

He was first on my list - ex MSFT, "gets" the IT space, delivered a liked DRM-esque delivery system (Steam), grasps the presentation to the consumer, "the cloud", obviously he gets games, and how to deliver software as a service. Mobile is the weak spot, which is a BIG problem as MSFT needs to nail that, which is something it has consistently failed to do.

Also, not actively hostile to Linux and open source. Chair throwing ability unknown.

The only problem is I'd like to see a new to MSFT person, free of the constraints of the past take this up.

Picking internal is too stagnating. Look down the coast at Cupertino, Tim Cook is Apple through and through, and is doing a really average job there (not yet Ballmeresque, but it's still early days). He seems to just "expand via lawyers" rather than doing something new. All he's done is keep the Jobs status quo (insert your own "whatever you want" joke in here), not made it a Cookian Cult; Apple has stagnated under him. As I said, not as actively damaging as Ballmer, but stagnation.

Indian IT exporters coin windfall profits as rupee plunges

Re: So ..

In many contracts where there is currency changes involved the party open to risk (dealing in the other's currency) will have some form of risk management in place, hedging is particularly en-vogue at the moment. In that case you run a transaction opposite to the risky one, offsetting the risk.

An easy example, I expect a payment in US$ in a month and I deal in rupees. I could just wait, but that gives me uncertainty. So, instead I go to the bank today and borrow US$. The amount I borrow will be, plus interest in one month the same as the amount I will receive in US$.

Today I convert those dollars into rupees, so I have dealt with exchange rate uncertainty. When I get paid in US$ I pay off the loan I took out in US$, so don't mess about then.

(that's an oversimplification, but sets out sort of how hedging works).

Re: "In particular..."

It is interesting that for senior, director, positions it is vital to pay vast sums of money to get the best talent, but below that level the cheapest option is always the best.

Acorn’s would-be ZX Spectrum killer, the Electron, is 30

Re: Ahhh bless.

Bit like a Porsche Boxster - you only buy one if you can't afford a 911. Doesn't make it a bad car though.

Mind you, I did like the optional use of keywords where you'd hold down an alt(?) key and the main letter keys would each insert a BASIC instruction (DEFPROC, PRINT or whatever). It was a nice halfway house between the BBC typing from a mag with associated errors and bizarre keyboard twister on the speccy to get the instruction.

Oh noes! New 'CRISIS DISASTER' at Fukushima! Oh wait, it's nothing. Again

Re: Radiation Superstition

Ahh yes, the usual "but that's natural radioactivity" claim that leaves me speechless, as if somehow it's magically different. I can only guess these people deal with blocked chakras and distance healing.

Nuclear is the sole viable option we have at the moment, but we need a stop-gap until the new stations are online - and that would seem to be shale gas (inter-alia).

All the protesters in Surrey also forget that their windmills kill 150 people per trillionkWh (Yottawatt?), solar 440, and nuclear (including all the disasters ever) a mere 90. So, not only do renewables fail in supplying power in a predictable and manageable way they kill more people too. But who'd let that get in the way of prejudice!

Space-walker nearly OPENED HELMET to avoid DROWNING

Re: sublimation?

I did think that. My thoughts were that he was saying could open a vent somewhere where the water had accumulated and the water would boil into the vacuum. Doing this would cause the water to drop in temperature, and probably freeze around the vent stopping further venting, and possibly locking the vent open. I then wondered if he meant that ice would sublime.

Having the helmet open a little for a short time wouldn't kill him as long as he didn't try and hold his breath which could cause lung over expansion. Mind you, it's desperate times indeed to be thinking it.

It also shows incredible presence of mind to be faced with death in several interesting ways and to think through how to deal with it. Having had a near underwater panic attack when (in training) someone turned off my air cylinder in space, alone, it would be on the next level (or ten).

Guardian lets UK spooks trash 'Snowden files' PCs to make them feel better

romanes eunt domus

Screw you, Brits, says Google: We are ABOVE UK privacy law

Re: maybe we should follow suit..

Google does have UK registered companies, it is just playing the same jurisdiction hopping game it plays with tax simply because it can.

Eventually people will wise up, I hope, to the crass invasion of their privacy that Google wants, and they will simply stop using it. Only I doubt it. For example today I saw a new popup thingy on Facebook asking me to put in my e-mail and e-mail password to see who in my contacts list was on Facebook so I could connect with them. It saddened me to see that apparently five of my "friends" had done just that, handing over to Zuckerberg their entire inbox.

I keep trying to stop using Google for searches, but the problem is it is simply the best engine there is. RIP Scroogle I miss you.

Volvo V60 Plug-in Hybrid: Eco, economy and diesel power

Re: If I don't need ...

@Danny 14

I was about to type the same. It's invisible, and gets it right.

Most of the motoring shows bang on about not being able to turn the traction control off, despite most drivers not being good enough to drive without all of the aids on and humming. It's the same here, for most situations I am not a good enough driver to thing "er, RWD, no FWD, ehhhh, AWD" and press buttons.

Can my XC70 do all I need? Could my old A4 Quattro do all I needed? Yes. And I live on a farm. Down a muddy track. Off a side road that never gets cleared unless we get a tractor out to do it. Could a proper SUV with more user-controlled-stuff do better, well, yes, but I don't need it.

I think I am one of the few AWD owners that actually drives on mud and slurry on a daily basis. The car just deals with it (as did the Audi beforehand), just as it deals with being on the motorway. I can deal with just doing the basics. It's all I am good for, again the meatsack is the weakpoint.

If you are a highly skilled driver that can think faster than the computer then yes, there's a point. But most drivers are nowhere near good enough to do that.

Google goes dark for 2 minutes, kills 40% of world's net traffic

Re: Singularity?

They probably read the comments on youtube.

Re: Explanation

"Companies are very bad at risk management. It always seems that they refuse to consider highly unlikely scenarios that have devastating consequences. "

I agree, but I think it's more a fixation trying to plan for the last disaster, not the next. In a way similar to airline safety, all the checks are to prevent the last hijacking/bombing not the next.

Curiosity looks up, spies Martian double-mooning

Reminded

I was reminded of Millennium 2.2 and Deuteros from the Amiga. Ian Bird, what happened to him?

It's weird just how fast something that big moves, it has an orbit just under 8 hours. Even at proper speed that's darn quick across the sky, horizon to horizon.

SQUEEEEE! Microsoft goes retro with pay-by-squawk NFC tech

Re: Anyone remember BBC micro?

@Charles Manning

It saddens me in a way that today's children will never have the experience of holding a microphone to the hissy mono TV speaker and recording things like this, usually to discover it didn't work at about the three minute load point because you'd moved it and added a "pop" to the sound.

Or even doing the same during Top of The Pops. Did home taping like that really kill music?

Brits: We can stop trolling if we know where they live - poll

Obligatory car analogy

It's the same as saying that instead of a registration number on your car it had your full name, address and telephone number. That way the next time some careless twonk cuts you up you know where he lives and can go around and beat the crap out of him, or if there's a hot bird in the car next to you at the lights you can go and chat her up round at her gaff when she gets home.

I don't see any problems there at all.

Superstar cluster-Zuck as Facebook tries out celeb-only edition

I know I am old now...

"The legendary London rapper Wiley, known as the Godfather of Grime after inventing a genre of avant-garde electronic hip-hop, is one of Britain's most famous celebrity Twitterers."

Famous where, exactly? Never heard of him. Does he play a tune you can whistle?

ind you, I still don't see the point of Twitter so I don't use it. Doesn't look like I'm missing much.

Xerox admits there's no fix yet for number-fudging copiers

Re: Fundamental error?

@AC 07:03

I see the "out of memory" point, but why not just tell the user that after [X] pages the pdf will be written (e-mailed, whatever) and a new one started? Thus freeing up the memory problem.

Surely even at compressed there must be a page limit the memory can take, it's just you'll reach it sooner with uncompressed.

The problem here is the action - to COPY, scanning has a different user mindset. A significant number of users will have grown up with old-style not-scanned-but-copied copies, and therefore have a reasonable expectation that the copy will be just that. In the good old days unclear copied numbers would be a mess (8,9,6 often being the culprits) I knew they were wrong because I couldn't read them, or I had doubts from the quality of the copied digit, so I'd go and look at the original. Now, I can't tell at a glance, as all the numbers look as clear as day because they have been OCRd and rendered in a nice, clear font.

Microsoft: That $900m Surface write-down is smarting

Re: Good Luck

mmmm bacon...

Looking at the classical 4P's of marketing, they have quite a bit wrong:

Product (ignore the OS, that's a different argument) - is confused. Is it a tablet, an ultrabook, or a laptop replacement? The two models confuse consumers further. It's trying to be all things to all men, so nobody knows if they need/want it or not.

Price - waaay to expensive for a tablet, too expensive for an underpowered laptop. This is driven by the above

Promotion - Despite the spend I see little of it, but anecdotes are not evidence. MS is confused, is it promoting Windows or the Hardware? So the promotion fails as it's too removed to make sense to consumers.

Place - distribution is discussed in the article.

Given it's the marketing guy in charge, you'd think they could get the basics right wouldn't you?

Google: Cloud users have 'no legitimate expectation of privacy'

Indeed

The quote to me reads that by definition the telco must know the number I dialed in order to make the connection, so I have no right to expect them not to know the number. It's a bit circular, but makes sense. It does not mean I dialed using their equipment, so they can eavesdrop on the call.

Your mail analogy is correct, I understand the post office needs to know the address to which a letter is sent. Often there's a return address outside the envelope, and by disclosing that I accept that they can link sender to recipient. I do not expect them to open all the letters, read them, insert appropriate advertising leaflets, make a note of some keywords "for my convenience" re seal them and then deliver them.

Google need to know how to route an outgoing mail, so I have every expectation they can see/read some form of address. Not the content. Of course, the T&C say otherwise (but I doubt it was shown in a big font in red underlined on the first line of the T&C and in plain English, but not using gmail I wouldn't know.).

Samsung Mega 6.3: Enter the PHONDLESLAB

Nice phone

If only it had WIndows Phone on it...

WoW gold farmer throws sueball over real world gold theft

Re: death and taxes

Which begs some questions:

1) why buy bullion? Why not put it in a bank, she's below the insurable limit. Or if she wants a commodity backed thing, buy a derivative which can't be fenced

2) Why put it in her own safe? With that much banks offer a pretty good and secure safety deposit box scheme which would be well protected and insured

3) Unless the safe was cut open, why tell her boyfriend the combination?

I realise the case is between her and the insurer, but she could equally well go after her (I assume ex) boyfriend and his cronies to recover the amount, if he has the funds to cough up.

The fear of the insurance company is partly "your boyfriend has hidden the gold. You'll get an insurance cheque, and then the gold back too."

The insurers are saying something like "you voided your policy by either conspiring in the theft or by being an idiot and telling nefarious characters how to access it, thereby not taking sufficient care."

Peak Apple? HOGWASH! Apple is 'extremely undervalued,' says Icahn

Re: Chats with Cook

Not really, more the opposite.

The driver behind it is mostly about limitation of liability, and ease of transference of ownership. As a shareholder you have a barrier between you and the company's problems (so if the company were sued to oblivion, you pay no more in, for example). If you were a partner in an old-style partnership you are personally liable. As a partner if you want out, the partnership has to buy you out, which can be a pain in the neck. Likewise if you die it's a pain. With shares the name on a piece of paper changes and the two parties agree a price independent of the company.

It's a separation of ownership and control, which is fundamental to how this works.

Having shares gives you ownership, but not control You grant control to the directors of the company, and every year get to vote on their continuance in office or otherwise. That is how you get your direction of the company.

The other way is to say "I don't like the direction CompanyX is going in, so I will sell my shares and invest in CompanyY whose direction I like".

Of course, if you own a lot of shares it's likely you'll get direct access to directors as they know you can have a big influence come AGM and director re-election time (or just dump shares and crash the share price, which causes them and other shareholders some pain).

There she blows! Mid-October release date for Windows 8.1 sighted

Re: If they haven't removed anything it's a service patch...

@graeme leggett

It may well be that they are trying to catch the "don't buy until SP1" crowd, and trying to make it sound bigger than it is with ridiculous Apple-esque secrecy/hype.

The thing is, at least I think, is that MS is stuck in this October-or-bust mode to tie in with corporate accounting and budgeting, while trying to say this is all about consumers who in the main have no such constraints. The secrecy/non-technet rubbish is so they can continue to code the release up until release day, as it's likely most upgraders will download (no physical media to press) and those who haven't bought it yet will wait and see if it's going to be good enough for their needs.

Remember, it's only new sales Balmer cares about. Upgrades, no revenue stream there.

'Abel, you're fired!' Hear AOL supremo axe exec during conference call

Wait...

"is instead a teacher at Miami Ad School."

There's a school for advertisers?

Feds arrest rogue trucker after GPS jamming borks New Jersey airport test

As Bob Marley would have said:

"wi jammin'"

NSA to world+dog: We're only watching 1.6% of internet, honest

Re: Lies, damned lies, and statistics

Father Ted: “Well, we’re not all like that, Niamh. Say, if there’s two hundred million priests in the world, and five per cent of them are paedophiles, that’s still only ten million.”

Werner Herzog's latest film warns drivers not to text while driving

Interesting

I agree with the poster above, 35 minutes seemed to be almost too long, but it wasn't.

In my day this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb00H6mCTM8 was the sort of thing we had. Scared the living daylights out of me.

This weekend: Watch HOT STARS shower! Moon won't interfere

Re: The Persys

Indeed, just checked the forecast - low level thick cloud until further notice, so sometime in 2017.

ULTIMATE cuppa contenders prepare to go mug-to-mug

Re: I wonder

This was the premise of the clippers, such as the Cutty Sark, fresh, fast delivered tea was better. As it turns out, no there's no depreciation in quality so all that effort was merely misguided marketing.

Tea leaf taste does vary, so each tea manufacturer employs tasters and blenders that get samples of the tea from the ships, blend it all in clever ways until they get the mix that matches the taste of Tetleys, PG (insert brand here). Then that mix is sent back to the production line, and the leaves are mixed on a huge scale.

Facebook to get IN YOUR FACE with video ads

Intesting

I wonder if this will be the golden-egg killing moment, or if everyone will suddenly become aged 55 overnight?

NASA boffins release Europa mission wish list

Raman

I misread that as ramen, and thought they were looking for life emanating from His Noodly Appendage.

Horrific moment curvy mum-of-none Mail Online spills everyone's data

I'd always thought we were an equal-opportunities bunch of haters myself.

They don't recognise us as HUMAN: Disability groups want CAPTCHAs killed

Re: I use CAPTCHAS

Can bots get around pictures?

So, for example rather than an obscured word I get a picture of a herd of cows and am asked to type in, in English, the singular of the animal/object in the picture. There could be quite a lot of pictures to pick from, and not necessarily animals.

Just a suggestion.

Bloke in shed starts own DAB radio station - with Ofcom's blessing

Re: DAB? I'll just get out of my car first...

I did consider getting an iPod sized one to plug into the car's audio "in" jack so I could get the cricket back while driving.

Even that is expensive - £50-£100 for one, and I don't know how good reception would be stuck in the glove box where it would live, tuned to its one lone station sipping power from the 9V socket.

There is a Pure one that rebroadcasts the Decoded DAB as FM for use in a car. How nuts is that? I need a radio to turn the radio broadcast into another radio broadcast so I can listen to it.

An aside, why have car makers dropped AM and LW from their receivers?

Geneticists resolve human dilemma of Adam's boy-toy status

Re: Hang on there Cheetah...

"I think you will find that humans and chimpanzees shared the same ancestor at one point.

We didn't evolve from chimps, they are simply our closest living cousins. Humans share about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees."

Yep, indeedy.

We share a common ancestor with modern day chimps (common and ever-shagging-but-still-endangered bonobos) about 6 million years ago (about 250,000 generations, giving rise to a whole new category yo great-great....great grandmother's so ugly jokes). It wasn't a chimp and it wasn't a human, its population split into the two genuses pan and homo.

We actually share a common ancestor with every living thing on the planet if you go back far enough.

Your 99%DNA quote may be correct; we share an incredible amount of DNA with most things, it's just how evolution works. You can see this in some proteins. I think one of the cytokines is identical (or near as dammit) in every living thing on the face of the planet.

"The Bible has Jesus's exact lineage back to Adam, and we have a reasonably good idea when he was born. Not 1AD. The bible says it was during the reign of King Herod, and King Herod died in 4BC."

Er, no. The Bible (in Matthew) gives St Joseph's lineage, but one of the pretty important things in the Bible is that St Joseph, whilst being Mary's hubby, had nothing to do with the conception, so not Jesus' lineage at all. Her lineage wasn't important, as she's just a vessel. The Bible can be a bit sexist like that. Just look at Abraham's treatment of women. it looks to me as being just a really bad post-event justification to fit in with earlier prophecies that Jesus would be of Abraham's lineage, missing the point that he's nothing to do with fathering Jesus.

Also there's a problem that Herod was dead before the Census of Quirinius (about 7AD) as described in Luke. No other censuses that even remotely fit the bill are recorded, and you'd assume events like that would be noted by those pesky Romans. Even then it wouldn't apply to St Joseph as he wasn't Roman, and there was never a universal census involving non-Romans. So that gives Herod a few issues making the massacre of innocents decree on account of being dead. Mind you, there's no other record of the massacre either. You'd expect that sort of thing to feature somewhere in Roman history. So we have Luke and Matthew contradicting each other, and neither making sense in the overall history of things. Doesn't bode well for an infallible god or any guessing by counting method.

In short - "We have the fossils. We win"

Corrections

Drew

(or whoever) there's a word missing in the first paragraph, it's the word "recent" as in "most recent common ancestor" not "most common genetic ancestor".

Herewith from the paper's abstract:

"we estimate the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of the Y chromosome to be 120 to 156 thousand years"

Where has the "send corrections" button gone? Am I just being blind?

Apple files patent for iPhone enabled auto-adjustable auto interior

I know nothing much about patents, but...

It's not going to stop me from commenting.

How can an idea that's just an idea be patented? I mean, this to me simply reads "wouldn't it be cool if..." rather than "here is a [device] and its associated processes that would facilitate [function] to happen."

Can you really patent an idea before you've worked out how to actually implement that idea?

The O2 4G Lottery: Are YOU in one of the three LUCKY cities?

Or even G. Hey, a signal would be something.

Apple kept us waiting while it searched our packages every day, claim shop staff

Surely the problem just moves...

I assume the worry is that nefarious iEmployee removes an iThingy from inventory, and its attendant security tag, stuffs it in their bag and leaves at the end of the day. There is then a search, and they are caught.

Surely the half-thinking nefarious iEmployee would just do all of the above, but have a partner in crime who visits as a "shopper" who leaves with the iDevice in his or her bag, and isn't searched on account of being a customer.

So, who here LURVES Windows Phone? Put your hands up, Brits

@GarethPN

"I would be tempted to switch, if I hadn't already bought apps for another platform."

An interesting observation. I wonder how many users of iOS/Android feel the same. If I had spent a serious amount on iOS apps I'd be reticent to switch away from iOS to any other OS for the same reason. As Apple was in there first in a big way, I wonder how Google has managed to overtake. Is it because it was hitting people who didn't have an iPhone already, or was there some "buy App X on iOS and you get it on Android too" licensing? Not owning either, and having little interest in such things, I wouldn't know.

But, the thinking for MSFT could be that it cuts a deal with developers to say that if a user bought (say) Angry Birds for iOS they could use the same license to download it to WindowsPhone, cancelling the iOS license. MSFT could pay the devs a subsidy for a while until it had a critical mass of users, which should encourage some positive feedback loop.

May the fourths be with you: Muso John Williams returns to Star Wars

Re: Surprised...

@Minophis +1 for the Spaced reference.

Ha ha, Osborne, these Gov 2.0 web wranglers have wiped out UK debt

Re: That Times article ...

Outright lies in quite an uncomfortable-to-read font (typeface? I have no idea what the difference is) at that.

I'm just happy to see we're not wasting money on this guff. Oh, wait.