Posts by Andrew 59

AUTOPILOT: Musk promises Tesla owners a HANDS-OFF hands-on

"...the sensors in the front can identify white lines on the road, and keep the car between them, and also sense other vehicles around."

That's nothing new. RALPH was doing that twenty years ago.

Enough is enough: It's time to flush Flash back to where it came from – Hell

Re: This type of mentality is irrational, bordering stupidity.

@ first AC: I didn't read your full comment, just up to the part where you said these companies had to give up all interactive possibilities... And that's a lie. Just ask The guys at Green Felt or Gopherwood Studios. They make excellent games with only a scary amount of JavaScript. No flash to be seen.

Does Big Tech hire white boys ahead of more skilled black people and/or women?

Simon made a similar point 10 years ago(!)

The BOFH guide to equal opportunities

UK boffins: We'll have an EMBIGGENED QUANTUM COMPUTER working in 5 YEARS

I came here to ask that very question, but not as a joke.

My understanding of quantum computers is that they're somewhat equivalent to massively multicore computers, that can generate new cores as needed - although that idea comes from the book Factoring Humanity, which extrapolates the workings of a quantum computer based on the double slit experiment.

If that's right then a quantum graphics card might be better than a quantum CPU, since graphics cards are more transparently multicore to the software that's controlling them.

Amazon: Put our ALWAYS ON MICROPHONE in your house, please. WHAT?

Bandwidth hog

The device is constantly connected to the Internet, and constantly uploading your speech to the cloud for processing, then downloading the results. Ignoring the obvious question of what it does if there's a guest in the house with the same name as it...

"Alexa, would you pass the salt please?"

"I'm sorry Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that for you."

Ignoring that, what about the people who are on limited connections, let's say the basic BT broadband package at 4GB per month. How much of that is it going to take up?

I admit that the kind of person who buys this will probably be on an "unlimited" broadband package, but that's not the point.

Microsoft's TV product placement horror: CNN mistakes Surface tabs for iPAD stands

Re: Apple NEVER pays for product placement...

I remember many episodes of Chuck with a wall of Dell servers in the background of one of the sets.

And apparently they LOVED their Toyota: http://youtu.be/6yobTscScgM

Piketty-Poketty-Poo: Some people are just itching to up tax to capital ...

So if I understand correctly about this Progressive Consumption Tax, then it's like VAT but charged in tiers like income tax is now, so a loaf of bread at a few quid might have 1% or 5% PCT, whereas a new VW Up! at about £10k might be, say 25% PCT, and a brand new £2 million Bugatti Veyron might be up to 100% PCT.

Is that right?

Ad-borne Cryptowall ransomware is set to claim FRESH VICTIMS

Re: Complacency

@Terry 6:

As someone else said while I was writing this: That's the problem. You don't have to click on anything. You browse to a page that has a dodgy ad and, voila, the ad exploits a vulnerability in Flash to drive-by download the virus exe to your system.

The advert itself might look like it's a blank white screen or an ad for the latest Norton or whatever.

I think the only way to stop this is for everyone to stop clicking on adverts. No exceptions. Then online advertising becomes unviable for whoever is paying the ad companies. So they stop paying.

Eventually, the ad men go out of business and the Internet is a better place without them.

I already turned off JavaScript in my primary browser because ads kept redirecting me to 'shag a neighbour' type websites without me doing anything but load a page on, say, a news or comedy website.

And as for backups, my best idea so far is a Linux server (raspberry pi with a USB hard disk or two) that drags files across from shared folders on my computer to a read-only network share that it holds, keeping old versions of files as long as the available disk space allows. That way all your files are backed up and you can go back to how any file was before it got encrypted.

That requires you to over provision your backup hard disk, of course, and you still need to nuke Windows if you get infected.

Sorry. That turned into more of a rant than I expected.

Sign off my IT project or I’ll PHONE your MUM

Re: >> Now, who was this musical entertainer?

Indeed you do, sir.

Best laugh I've had all week. Have a pint on me.

No 12-inch maxiPads for Christmas: Suppliers 'smothered by iPhone 6'

Re: It's been way too long ...

I think you might be right.

But seriously, a quick glance through MacTracker shows that of all the current Apple products, the Mac Mini is the least-recently updated, with the current model being the mid-2012. I wonder if we'll be getting a Mac Pro-style mini trashcan?

Yes, mine's the one with the Apple Almanac in the pocket.

Brace yourself for a 12-inch Apple maxiPAD – probably... maybe... ish

I think I'll wait for the PearPad

As modelled by the lovely Miranda.

Leap-day Visual Studio beta provokes 'passionate' response

Software made in, for example, VB 6 didn't need a whole framework installing, just MSVBVM60.dll, so why does software made in any newer Microsoft dev suite need this framework thing? Your oh-so-clever response makes it clear that you neither understand the question nor know the answer..

What I don't understand is what this whole dot net framework thing does, apart from making my life (as someone who supports friends with these dot net apps) more of a pain than it needs to be. Why does an app written for 3.5 not work with 4 installed?? Why is a framework needed anyway? What is the benefit to it?

</rant> :)

Third of Blighty stuck on snail-speed broadband

Re: Re: The slowest place is wrong

Ingleton in County Durham struggles to get over 200kbps. Usually it's between 110 and 130kbps.

And they say this is a civilised country :)

Japanese boffins fire up 802 teraflops ceepie-geepie

Optional

I think you meant in the last paragraph that the extra GPUs will let it break the petaflops barrier, not teraflops?

UK crime-busters knock hiphop site off the Internet

lol

Well done... Now they've got to investigate w3.org :)

Students busted for hacking computers, changing grades

To quote ZB

Ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, OK.

YouTube tops one hour of video uploads per second

Re: This just goes to show...

YouTube does screen videos for copyright violations, but the content provider has to have an arrangement with Google. Disney doesn't care but the likes of NBC do, that's why every episode of every recent Disney show is on YouTube at least five times but there's no full episodes of quality content like, say, Heroes.

**Snicker**

GAGA prepares to inhale some grass

5 blade laser

How about a laser that points across under the mower from left to right, then is reflected by a tiny mirror slightly forward and slightly upward, repeat as needed to mulch the grass. It would cut the grass long then shorter and shorter with the different passes of the laser.

I don't know how powerful the laser would need to be, but I heard that a DVD burner laser is powerful enough to start fires if used (im)properly.

You can pay me in eBeer :)

Ford unwraps '2013 Mondeo'

@ Andy Miller

Excellent :)

Now I have another question: taking the details from the Micra which has a 1.2 litre supercharged Miller engine, and (let's assume) it spits out about a third of its compression cycle, what advantage is there to the 1.2 Miller engine over a supercharged 800cc Otto cycle engine?

And when I say advantage, I mean other than to marketing people.

So if this car has an Atkinson cycle, but the new Micra has a Miller cycle. Can anyone explain the difference to me in simple terms that even Jeremy Clarkson could understand?

Make room, internet, there's another 5 million domains to fit in

There's an app for that

There's a website for everything.

http://www.turnofftheinternet.com/

Microsoft copies Google with silent browser updates

I hate Chrome because this loop never finishes...

<!script

for (i=1;i==0;i-=1)

{

alert (i);

}

script!>

Most browsers work fine, but Chrome does weird things.

Simple maths fail.

Also, Google is evil and their software won't respect what MSConfig tells it to do.

Happy 40th birthday, Intel 4004!

Correct me if I'm wrong, Sir Wiggum (or anyone else for that matter) but x86 is also known as CISC, or complete instruction set computer/ing, whereas ARM, PowerPC etc. are RISC or reduced instruction set computer/ing. And Apple not too recently jumped from PPC to x86 for their processors... Why do you describe x86 as crippled?

We really need a ? icon!

The Register Guide on how to stay anonymous (part 2)

Optional

Safari preferences has always (since 10.3 anyway) had separate options for disabling Java, JavaScript, and other plugins. I've had Java off for years, and I have been thinking that it might be time to rid myself of the others too.

BOFH: We don't need no stinkin' upgrade

Re: Firefox

Not Firefox, Chrome. I seem to remember once checking the version history for that on Wikipedia and it insisted that version 12 was released a couple of days before 11.

Airbus brews Scandium smackdown for carbon Dreamliner

!

But would lightning be any issue if they're flying above the clouds? And if they're below the clouds, why does it have to conduct? I'm not being obtuse (at least not deliberately) but surely the carbon skin is an insulator so the lightning would find another route to ground... Which the plane is nowhere near when it's X thousand feet in the air.

Icon, just in case I'm wrong ;)

iPhone 4S pre-orders obliterate sales records

Re: user experience

I'm posting this from my iPod touch. This device is the only reason I got an iPhone. I plan to upgrade to whatever iPhone is out when my contract runs out next year.

And to whoever's bleating about battery life: my 18-month old iPhone still runs for 2-3 days on a full charge... Just like when it was new.

YMMV, as they say, but that's my experience.

Anonymous Twitter alternative developed for rioters

What else are they good for?

Cleaning, of course!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-7NDP8V-6A

Virtual cloud monkeys go bananas writing Shakespeare

"Ford, there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet that they've worked out" - Arthur Dent, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.