Posts by Steve Knox

Will Google's rivals swallow the 'labelling remedy' pill?

Re: "Can we all stop pretending.........it's Microsoft and their industry pals........"

@Arctic fox

On the other side of the coin, the fact that those entities have been called "national", "consumer", or for that matter "bodies" does not in any way diminish the possibility that they are stooges for MS or their industry pals.

Quite frankly, I wouldn't trust any of the organizations mentioned or even alluded to in this piece to come up with a solution to this issue which is in any way motivated by concern for consumers.

Nearly a quarter of all books sold in US in 2012 were ebooks

Re: They haven't caught up to real books

I was rather surprised to see the Android reader doesn't even support footnotes when I was re-reading one of my Terry Pratchett favorites.

In other words, it doesn't support Terry Pratchett novels.

I can't underline/circle interesting things, which I do with a lot of my technical books, nor can I mark important things that I want to refer to later.

This is the worst. My favorite games magazine publisher was absolutely gushing about the fact that their puzzle magazines are now in electronic format, so I tried them out -- the system they used also did not allow any form of marking -- on a puzzle magazine.

Re: Oranges and pips

With the too-often seen current situation, where a $20 book is a $17.95 ebook, then they unfortunately approach equivalence.

Except all too often (at least in the fiction market), that $20 book is a hardcover, and the $17.95 ebook should really be compared to the $7.95 paperback, which is what most people end up buying...

'You can keep it' - Brit's nicked laptop turns up on Iranians' sofa

Re: no windows

Makes perfect sense. Microsoft's licensing fees are horrendous.

BizNAS at the front, party at the back: Tandberg adds Dropbox to NAS crate

Re: Dual-Core Atom = Home

If your metric for the quality of a storage system is the type of processor it uses, you've missed the point.

Real NAS use whatever CPU can handle the administrative overhead without slowing down the storage <-> network pipe. No more, no less.

Mozilla CEO exits just as Firefox mobiles roll out

Re: Anyone can recommend a better browser?

Try http://lynx.browser.org/

Mali to give away .ML domains for free

Re: QR Code Redirects

So, as mentioned several times above, junk/spam.

Google U-turns on exclusive snatch of .app AND .search addys

Re: Ban Google from gTLDs

Well, not quite right. There actually does not need to be a period in there. http://search is valid. However, it does not necessarily point to search. (i.e, the search gTLD under the root domain.)

According to the DNS RFC (see page 7), any character string which does not end in a period should be treated as a relative name, which should be resolved against a predetermined origin or list of origins -- but the exact list and methodology is not prescribed.

In practice, clients generally test single-word (i.e, no periods) strings against the local domain (e.g, search may be resolved as search.thiscomputersdomain.com.), and multiple-word strings against the root domain, with a possible fallback to the local domain if no root match is found (e.g, search.com is resolved as search.com. and failing that search.com.thiscomputersdomain.com.)

Re: Are there any good reasons for adding more TLDs?

The only potential benefit I see is if the rules for the new gTLDs can be and are tailored to the domain. The common example is .bank -- this could allow such things as requiring registrants to actually prove that they are XXX Bank, requiring secure communications, etc.

Sadly, I doubt that's how it will end up working...

Get lost, drivers: Google Maps is not for you – US judge

Re: I always use my phone for Google's GPS when I'm in California

In this case, the driver was specifically holding the phone in his hand. Read the ruling on scribd (linked in the article), and you'll see that handsfree operation would have been fine (at least with respect to this particular law.)

Re: Actual Satnav units

Well, you apparently don't know much about US law. But not to worry, El Reg apparently knows just as little.

There are actually quite few US laws on the books about acceptable driving practices. There are probably thousands of state laws, however.

This article, for example, was about California law, not US law.

Review: HP ElitePad 900 Atom tablet

Re: Overpriced

Have you not shopped HP before? Overpriced is their business model.

Bitcoin briefly soars to record $147 high, driven by Cyprus bank flap

Re: NO

Gold has some industrial uses - but gemstones are only valuable because De Beers run ads...

Diamonds et al do have some industrial uses as well, as cutting tips or abrasives, for example.

Furthermore, "fashion accessory" is still a use, as incomprehensible as that is to us code monkeys.

NO

Bitcoins aren't government-backed and don't have a central bank, leading some investors to treat it as a kind of online version of gold or silver - a safe haven for their cash.

...

Creating a limit on the total quantity of Bitcoins puts it into the same monetary league as gold, with finite supply creating greater demand.

PLEASE stop comparing Bitcoins to gold -- there's a fundamental difference which makes the comparison void. The first cited sentence is the worst, as the conclusion is antithetical to the fundamental difference.

Gold, silver, gems, precious metals, all have non-monetary use. THAT is what makes them a "safe haven" against the vagaries of monetary markets: no matter what happens to the currency markets, you still have your useful commodity, which you can use for yourself or sell for functional value at least.

Bitcoins, on the other hand, have no use other than as a form of money. That makes them more susceptible to the vagaries of monetary markets rather than less. If they become worthless as a currency, you have exactly nothing.

Publishing ANYTHING on .uk? From now, Big Library gets copies

On whose whim does a government agency decide what 'you' 'need'? Or which 'yous' to take into account? Or what constitutes a 'need?

Too long to go into here. Since this is the UK we're talking about, try looking up "constitutional monarchy" in wikipedia.

A government agency only exists as a servant of the 'yous'? Unless it exists by divine providence.

I do believe you've just profoundly illustrated the dichotomy of a constitutional monarchy...

I need them to not spend a single penny on breaching website T&Cs.

No, you want them not to spend a single penny on breaching website T&Cs. This is demonstrable by the fact that they already have on at least one occasion, and yet you survived to post ex post facto. Had this point actually been a requirement, you would have expired upon the breach.

Re: Thoughts THEREin lies the problem

Does a government think that it "created the concept of copyright"?

Yes. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#History.

In what sense is it being done for YOU when YOU didn't ask for it and doesn't want it or want money to be spent on it?

Government agencies don't exist to do what you want. They exist to do what you need.

There is valid space for discussion on what actually is necessary, but personal whim is irrelevant to this discussion.

Microsoft: 'Facebook Home just copies Windows Phone'

Degrees of Clever

"And lest you assume the video was cleverly cooked up after the fact, it's actually promoting Windows Phone 7.5, not 8"

Meaning that it was very cleverly cooked up after the fact?

Shark-tooth war cutlery reveals tale of fishy extinction in Pacific

The weapons are from the 19th century. Planetary changes and evolution generally do not cause such changes so quickly. But don't take my word for it -- go and actually read the article yourself rather than just assuming that the authors' conclusion was simply the first thing that came to their mind. You'll find some real food for thought there.

Building the actual real internet simply doesn't pay

"If they'd invested in larger back-ends and not new technology and licenses, "

then they'd lose to those operators which did.

Because the cost of the larger back-ends comes out to about the same or more than the cost of the new technology, but the advertising value new shiny technology is much greater than the advertising value of large back-ends (except to those who are enamoured of such,and incapable of dishonesty.)

THAT is our problem. As a society, we tend to make decisions not based on what is efficient and gets us what we need and want in the long run, but based on what is cool and new.

Firefox: Use new stealth window to satisfy your wife, suggests Mozilla

Re: Really?

Glaring eh? I've been using FF since version 3 and have never ahd need of this glaring ommission... obviously not important, and that's why it wasn't done before.

See, everyone? RISC OS didn't need this, so it was obviously a wasted effort. I don't know how many times I've told Mozilla to stop faffing about with this "community" crap, and just ask RISC OS what to do...

Re: Why this is good

Yeah.... That'll put an end to all that. Sure it will.

Flash to the future: Memristors, photonics, MLC-y tsunami

Re: Memristor vs. Flash

On the other hand, Flash has a real-world history to go by, whereas Memristors' performance characteristics remain at this point theoretical, and even upon launch will have very short-term lab history to validate HP's longevity claims...

Major blow for Apple: 'Bounce back' patent bounced back by USPTO

Wrong Decision

The USPTO decided that prior art anticipated the bounce-back patent that gets documents or photos to bounce when you try to scroll beyond their end on a touchscreen

The USPTO should have decided that the patent was based on a stupid animation that doesn't rise to level of an invention, let alone an original one.

Steve Jobs to supervise iPhone 6 FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

Re: Wow so he knew about all the chip roadmaps.....

1. Chip roadmaps can extend decades into the future. Once you get past a few years, they become less reliable, but...

2. As mentioned in the article, designs do begin several years before the products are actually built. At the beginning they might no't get into specific details, but are based on the current roadmaps' estimates of functionality. As the release date gets closer, features, functionality, and even the product/release date are adjusted to account for what actually has happened in the supply market.

A perfect example of (2) is the iPhone 4S. Everyone was expecting the iPhone 5 with Siri, and Apple comes out with an updated 4 with Siri in beta only. Why? Because the anticipated battery life, CPU speed, economics of the larger screen, and development of Siri all came in behind schedule.

Apple, Samsung, et al. live and die by keeping up with the bleeding edge of technology -- but design, prototyping, and testing can take years. So they have to design based on future specs, prototype with often half-baked silicon, and test on emulators to get the product out the door while it's still relevant.

So, yes, SJ knew about the chip roadmaps as of 2010, and was actively involved in the first stages of design and development of products extending at least 5 years out. In the archives of any decent tech company there are designs for devices and feature sets we don't even know about simply because the roadmaps were off and the capabilities were either not there or were superseded by something even better.

Arista wires software-defined networking into its kit

Arista, eh?

Was Mr. Parsons in charge of this project?

IT Pro confession: How I helped in the BIGGEST DDoS OF ALL TIME

Caching?

If someone asks your server "where is www.google.com" a whole bunch of times then your server starts flooding google.com's DNS servers.

Not if your server is set up to cache recursive results for a period of time (which I believe is the default.) More likely attackers are asking for:

www1.google.com

www2.google.com

www3.google.com

.....

which would result in multiple lookups even if caching is enabled.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Boffins probe into moons – and associated rings – 'beyond snow line'

Re: Yeah but..

Someone forgot the leavening agent?

ASA says 'unlimited' broadband can have 'moderate' limits on it

The definition of unlimited: "limitless or without bounds; unrestricted"

By that definition, of course, no unlimited service can exist -- unless our model for physics is completely wrong.

Every ISP's offering is limited by the technical specifications of their delivery mechanism, so the existence or not of traffic management policies wouldn't enter into it.

A more practical definition of "unlimited" for this discussion would be "without arbitrary restrictions placed by the ISP which limit the speed or availability of the service below that which is technically possible." Then of course, we run into the question of "arbitrary" -- are traffic management rules based on statistics of customer access, which provide for relatively equivalent* bandwidth to all customers during periods of high demand, arbitrary?

(NB I'm NOT saying VM's rules fit this description -- I'm pretty sure they're biased against their higher-bandwidth customers. But given that all ISPs are oversubscribed to some degree (those which are financially viable, at any rate) some form of traffic management is necessary to prevent unequitable service disruptions.)

*As in, relative to the bandwidth paid for. For example , if you have two customers, Bob who paid for 120mb and Alice who paid for 20mb, and you were oversubscribed by 14mb, cutting Bob to 108mb and Alice to 18mb would be relatively equivalent (10% each); cutting them both by 7mb (Bob to 113mb and Alice to 13mb) would be unfair to Alice, cutting Bob by a higher percentage would be unfair to Bob.

MI5 undercover spies: People are falsely claiming to be us

"...the warning is not specific and therefore difficult to act upon..." !?

How much more specific does it need to be? The only "acting upon" we need to do is to not give money to people claiming to be from MI5.

The only way the supposed lack of specificity would make it more difficult is if one regularly receives legitimate financial requests from heretofore unknown MI5 operatives by phone or e-mail, thus having need for information to distinguish the legitimate requests from the illegitimate ones. Does this happen to you? If so, I would suggest you visit (a) the police, to give them the details of all of the requests, (b) a library or dictionary website to research the meaning of "legitimate", and for good measure (c) a psychiatrist to diagnose a set of delusions whose symptoms include believing that MI5 agents would regularly ask you for money.

West Virginia seeks Google Glass driving ban

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The solution of course is to train drivers to not be distracted easily when driving...

Pull the other one!

Swedish linguists nix new word after row with Google

For US readers looking for an example of this...

Google "Santorum".

Actually, it was removed for a much simpler reason

One of the requirements is that neologisms must be in common usage, but searching for ogooglebar on the internet (a common test for common usage) returned nothing.

Dragon capsule makes fiery entrance, safe splashdown

Re: Your science is rubbish

You're all wrong.

The pound is a unit of currency.

Voda: Brit kids will drown in TIDAL WAVE of FILTH - it's all Ofcom's fault

Fix the symptoms or fix the problem

Operator A accounts for more than 80 per cent of complaints about price changes ... Universal reckons Ofcom should just slap that particular operator about a bit and forget the entire matter.

And then next year there will be a different Operator A, which will account for 80% of the new complaints about price changes.

Lightspeed variable say intellectuels français

Ultrafast Lasers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrafast_laser_spectroscopy

Google is your friend.

tl;dr: ultrafast refers to the pulse time, not the propagation time.

Next from Microsoft: 'Blue', the Windows 8 they hope you don't hate

Troll

Look at the clock 2/3 of the way in: 13:37

Coincidence?

Furious Stephen Fry blasts 'evil' Reg and 'TW*T' Orlowski

Re: He's very good...

Correction:

Well I think a scholarship to Cambridge and graduating with upper second class honours demonstrates that he does did at one point know a thing or two on the subject (source: Wiki if that doesn't scare you)

Past performance is no guarantee of future (or indeed present) results.

How to survive a UEFI BOOT-OF-DEATH on Samsung laptops

Re: Where are the real BIOS programmers ?

@Roland6

You've never used any of the more "creative" Award BIOSes, then -- or AMI's graphical abomination, then, I take it.

Researcher sets up illegal 420,000 node botnet for IPv4 internet map

NO..

Anyone sufficiently intelligent to do something this amazing would have no problems remaining anonymous if they really wanted to...

First of all, this is not that "amazing". A script kiddie could have done this.

Second, ability in one field does not necessarily translate to ability in another. There's no reason to assume an "amazing" physicist would make even a passable geologist, for example. So ability in creating a botnet doesn't necessarily translate to ability to hide one's tracks.

Software bug halts Curiosity: Nuke lab bot in safe mode

Re: NASA does not have a computer simulator

1. Lee D was talking about a simulator of the onboard computer, not a simulator of the mechanical components. All that is necessary for a simulator of the onboard computer is a copy of the hardware and software, which NASA should have. Heck, they probably have a VM image that emulates the onboard computer that engineers could fire up on their workstations on demand. Most likely what happened in this case is that they did test the command upload, but the unrelated file became attached somewhere between testing and the actual upload. These things do happen, which is why there are additional sanity checks like the one which prevented the rover from using the improper file.

2. While there is no detailed information in the link you provided as to the age of the linked presentation, events referred to in the presentation indicate that it is from 2004 (dates of Opportunity and Spirit exploration events, provided without year implying same year.) This indicates that you linked to an 8-year-old presentation to back up your assertion that they don't have a simulator to accurately predict a physics problem completely unrelated to the computer science problem suggested by Lee D.

Weev gets 41 months in prison for exposing iPad strokers' privates

I don't get the $72,000 restitution to AT&T. Is this what it cost them to fix their own shoddy code?

More likely it's what it cost them to notify their affected customers and deal with hacks related to the breach of information (possibly x3 as that's a popular punitive proportion.)

Microsoft issues manual on Brits to Cambridge exports

Heaven

There seems no mention of indifferent British shop assistants who not only don't greet you with a cheery Banana Republic "Hi" but would really rather you just fucked right off and didn’t interrupt their conversation at the back.

Better than the US shop assistants who will be fired if they don't constantly follow you around asking if you're looking for something in particular, if you need any help, or if you have any leads for someone sick of being paid minimum wage to tail shoppers around and annoy them with useless offers for "help". (Okay, that last one may not be mandated by the employer per se but it does seem the common logical conclusion to the other requirements...)

National Security Letters ruled unconstitutional

Re: Actually, No

If the care you took when typing "letter's" reflects the care you took with your legal analysis, I'd suggest you review your work. Better yet, post it here and we'll review it for you.

Crack Bombe squad dismantles Reg encryption in an hour

Amazing German Technology

...was sent via Twitter from the Big Bang Fair in London on a real German Enigma machine...

I knew they were advanced, but they had a WWII code machine with a Twitter interface !?

Report says #Facebook #to #adopt #hashtags

#Let's! #Hope!

#Yahoo! #Doesn't! #Follow!

We shall CRUSH you, puny ROBOT... with CHESS

Shurley the best CAPTCHA would be a fiendishly difficult problem which a computer can solve relatively easily?

Then you only get through if you fail...

Every SECOND there are EIGHT more Seagate drives in the world

Re: eight drives every second...etc

Upvoted in large part for:

Seagate also have by far the easiest to access and arrange warranty/RMA online forms, and typically turn the disks around within a week (from day of posting to day of receiving the replacement disk).

I had a Samsung drive fail under warranty shortly after Seagate bought them. Samsung's support site was already redirecting me to Seagate's warranty pages, and I was a little nervous as to whether the required diagnostic tools or the RMA system would work with my drive (having been burnt by other mergers) but everything went smoothy and I received a Seagate drive to replace my dead Samsung.

BT engineers - missed appointments

Re: Statistics

That's just fiddling with semantics, and you know it.

No, the more logical conclusion is that BT is indeed missing the same or fewer appointments, but they're specifically targeting Reg readers to get your wind up...