Posts by Phil O'Sophical

Boffins teach cars to listen for the sound of a wet road

Re: Hmmmm...

You didn't actually read the article did you?

You assume that because the research is aimed at "autonomous and semi-autonomous" cars today, it somehow won't end up as a gadget in tomorrow's luxury saloon?

Detecting a wet road alone isn't very useful,. Water on top of good tarmac is far less dangerous than water on tarmac which regularly gets diesel and oil dripped on it. A road that is just wet after a shower can be far slippier than the same road after a downpour that has washed all the oil off. Then there's rural wet roads with tractor mud (or worse) on them, the effect of worn tyres, etc.

Sounds like just another pointless gadget designed to lull the careless drivers into a false sense of security. How long will it be before insurance companies start increasing premiums for cars with excessive driver "aids"? They don't care about advertising and boffins, just the hard numbers.

Is ATM security threatened by Windows XP support cutoff? Well, yes, but …

will become less secure once Microsoft ends extended support for the embedded version of its Windows XP operating system next month

Not so, they will simply remain exactly as (in)secure as they are now.

Linksys routers vulnerable through CGI scripts

Re: Remote access?

Just turn it off ffs.

Isn't it usually off by default anyway? Who would ever turn it on?

Most businesses collecting data they never use, survey finds

Re: Slow news day?

who is to blame?

I suspect that's the wrong question.

My guess (IANAL) is that the provider is to blame, but you will be held responsible. The onus is on you to protect the data, which includes choosing reliable subcontractors.

Think of a purely internal equivalent. You store it on a single disk, which suffers a head crash. Who's responsible, you or, say, Seagate?

And the reasons for buying new IT gear are as follows ...

Re: Not just an SMB problem.

The 3 year refresh cycle in big companies really only applies to stuff that is seen to change over that period. We replace servers that often, because we need to be running/testing on the same new kit our customers are. We replace disks because even if they don't die, they fill.

Network equipment will get replaced if it's facing the external world and can't be upgraded to the latest security patches/rules, but internal gear? That gets replaced about as often as the building plumbing does. If there's a blockage, or maybe if there's major rework to move a server or a lab, but otherwise it'll be there until it rots.

NAO slams £830m e-Borders IT project as ‘not value for money’

Re: I can't tell you

but it has no non-Schengen borders as Switzerland is also a Schengen member.

I was thinking more of it's North Sea and Baltic Sea coastal borders, which are considerably easier to police than Greece's coastal borders. All it's land borders are indeed with Schengen countries.

Re: I can't tell you

I can understand making it mandatory for those who aren't British or EU citizens

But that's what makes the whole system so silly. In order to know that you're someone whose details don't need to be collected, they need to collect and check your details.

It's the basic failing behind the whole idea of a zone like Schengen. Once someone is in the zone they're supposed to be able to move freely with no other checks, except that this means the outermost borders of the zone have to be fully trustworthy, the "weakest link" problem. Clearly they aren't, with the best will in the world Greece is never going to be able to police all its external island borders, especially given its current parlous state.

Germany, on the other hand, is rich and has a very small non-EU border. It would be logical for it to help police the Greek and Italian borders, but that's never going to be acceptable to either the Germans (for cost reaons) or the Greeks & Italians (for political reasons).

So, the UK (rightly in my view) wants no part of Schengen. This is even without considering the migrant/refugee problem.

Security theatre wastes more time in transport centres than passport control these days, I really don't care if I have to wave a document at a border crosisng, It's no big deal.

IETF's older white men urged to tone it down

penis measuring

That does seem to fly in the face of proper IETF behaviour. One wonders what an RFC on the subject would say,although I suppose it would have to consider the Postel principle ("Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept").

London councils splurge wildly differing amounts on Oracle software

Meaningless numbers

There is no such thing as an "Oracle license", it's bound to vary with product, system size, number of users, etc. This is a little like pointing out that a "household" in Westminster spends less on, say, tea than a "household" in Birmingham, and ignoring the likely difference in household size and makeup.

Australian test finds robot essay assessors on par with human teachers

Re: Ideas

I can't see why you're expecting a fourteen year old to offer much originality.

That says a lot for your expectations of the educational system. When I was 14, originality in essays certainly was expected, and marks given for it. We certainly weren't prodigies, just average (although one of my classmates is now a well-respected SF author).

As always, tell children that you don't expect them to go aywhere, and unsurprisingly, they won't. Give them a challenge and you may be surprised how they rise to it.

Re: In defence of teachers

a large part of that work is actually unpaid.

Unless teachers are paid an hourly wage, which I doubt, none of it is "unpaid". Like the rest of us, they're paid a salary to do a job, and like the rest of us they sometimes find that job encroaches on times they would prefer to have free for personal use.

They may not consider their salary sufficient compensation for the work they do, that's a different issue, but the work is all paid for.

Team America, world police, take down 37,479 counterfeit sites

Re: American laws don't apply in other people's countries

"other people's countries" ?

I think I see where your misunderstanding is...

The truth is, no sane person would spend $5000 on a fucking handbag. But they would spend a couple of hundred bucks on a knockoff, and be happy with it.

True, but if thousands of people do so then the genuine article stops being desireable. Where's the fun in being seen in your £500,000 Ferrari, if there's a £25,000 lookalike parked outside every pub? Don't underestimate the value of being seen to own something exclusive. That's where the luxury manufacturers worry about losing out.

Just in time for Xmas: Extra stealthy Point of Sale malware

Re: Bah!

> That's at a french bank.

Interesting. Which one?

Hyper-V sets VM created date to 1601, in the reign of Good Queen Bess

Re: Of Course 1601

Well, real computers use 1/1/1970

<nomex on>

Those are just toys. Real computers use November 17, 1858, 00:00:00

Nuisance call blocking firms fined £170,000 ... for making nuisance calls

Re: @Ledswinger -- Can we have some collection statistics?

What penalty for ignoring the 'ban' would work?

Prison.

Thai women drugged punters 'with Xanax-spiked nipples' – cops

Re: Dosage Xanax

A dose of 250ug is effective, but if a tablet was crushed to dissolve the drug that means about 6ml would be required, which doesn't sound very practical.

I am impressed by the research effort you've put into this.

Why Microsoft yanked its latest Windows 10 update download: It hijacked privacy settings

Re: people's unique advertising ID numbers

So what's the format of this unique ID, and how much effort would be to develop a small background program that randomly changes it every 20 minutes?

Cyber-terror: How real is the threat? Squirrels are more of a danger

Re: It's all about the blinky lights

we'll have to splash out on armoured cabling

Armoured cabling? How very passé. Surely the best solution would be armed guards in the basement to shoot the little buggers when they get in, a new listening post to detect any rodents in the area that might have a taste for PVC, and a major extermination offensive to bomb all rat nests within 20 miles?

Uber wants UK gov intervention over TfL’s '5-minute wait' rule

Re: Eh?

A Black Cab can be flagged down in the street and instantly engaged.

Once you've hung around for 20 minutes looking for one that isn't already engaged.

What's the bet that if Uber agrees to a 5 minute wait it will gradually creep up to 15, 30, etc. ?

Amazon now renting physical servers you can cuddle and love

Re: Desktop Private Cloud(tm)

I'm sorry, but the term "Desktop PC" is already taken...

EU's Paris terror response includes 'virtual currencies' crimp

Re: Hawala uses an honour system

Something I suspect western banking systems may struggle to understand.

Except when prefixed by "New Year's" or "Queen's Birthday", of course.

Blocking out the Sun won't fix climate change – but it could buy us time

Re: Utter Tosh

it's in line with the overwhelming scientific consensus

There is one?

It's interesting that someone is recommending mucking around with the atmosphere to reflect 2% of solar radiation as having a positive benefit on climate change, yet most of the global warming advocates deny that solar variability has any significant impact and insist it's all down to greenhouse gases.

France's 3-month state of emergency lets govt censor the web

Re: They had this ready?

Bad laws can be written very quickly.

Indeed. I'd say that was almost a prerequisite.

Re: They had this ready?

That's why I said "credible". If the FN presented something to parliament they'd vote against it on principle, even if they agreed with it. Le Pen may be getting increasing support among ordinary people these days, and be less of a pariah than her father was, but the main French political class won't touch anything do do with her.

Re: They had this ready?

some right-wing totalitarian organisation

It's hard to think of any credible political party in France that meets that description, and certainly not the bunch of wet champagne socialists currently in power.

Cat discovers GNOME desktop bug

Re: True thing happened

How did you train it to say "please" ?

DS5: Vive la différence ... oh, and throw away the Citroën badge

Shows promise

I've not seen a DS5 up close but I've had a DS3 as a hire car a few times, and was impressed despite myself. Definitely a cut above the non-DS Citröen/Peugeot equivalents, in both quality and driving experience. It's no Audi, but as a Citröen++ it has a lot going for it.

Coffee fixes the damage booze did to your liver, study finds

Re: Okay, got it

one whiskey IN one coffee

Since saturated fats are also now supposed to be good for us, does this make Irish Coffee the perfect balanced meal?

Re: Short on the key metrics.

What's needed to counter a 2 litre bottle of cider?

A good piss followed by a full english breakfast usually works.

Reg reader achieves bronze badge, goes directly to jail

Shirley depriving someone of El Reg when in prison must count as cruel and unusual punishment?

Re: Geesh

Quicktime? Or maybe just one with escape sequences in it?

GPS, you've gone too far this time

Re: It isn't that

Can @CM explain the build up of random movement comment a bit more...

I'm not CM, but...

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. If you divide that straight line into, say, 10 segments, and the end points for each segment as calculated by GPS are slightly off from the actual position, the resulting join-the-dots path will be a zigzag. That is always going to be longer than the simple straight line distance between the start and final endpoints.

GPS has a built-in error for civilian GPS

Not a built-in error, a built-in lack of precision, which isn't the same thing and would have little or no impact on the problem described here.

iPad data entry errors caused plane to strike runway during takeoff

+ ( passengers * set estimate )

Ah yes, if your bag weighs 25kg instead of 23kg the airlines are happy to screw you for $100s of excess bagagge charges, yet the 400+ passengers are all assumed to weigh 75kg each. Accuracy is clearly so important.

Re: Yes it is

The landing gear requires dampers to prevent bouncing when taxying or landing. These work by friction and thus affect any reading that may attempt to be taken.

That would surely affect dynamic measurements while the plane is taxiing, but a static measure of weight while the plane is sitting at the gate should not be affected by friction in moving parts. It may not be accurate to the kg, but I'd be surprised if it couldn't be sufficiently accurate to notice the difference between 66 and 76 tonnes.

Aircraft laser strikes hit new record with 20 incidents in one night

Re: Dangerous, stupid and highly illegal"

I wonder if this has anything to do with flightpaths being changed so that there is far loess variation on their approach and departures than there used to be?

No, it's to do with high-powered lasers now being cheaply available online. Combine that with stupidity and poor education, and you get idiots who'll end up in court, crying "But I didn't think..."

BBC encourages rebellious Welsh town to move offshore

Re: Way to go, beeb! Increase your viewership at home. Any way to help us smaller left-pondians?

some place where the "authorities" really don't want to go for a working vacation

I think Alcatraz is vacant these days, is that offshore enough? Still handy for a cappucino and decent broadband.

BOFH: We're miracle workers. But you want us to fix THAT in 10 minutes?

Re: Turkeyshoot Mascara & MonarcoRetardo

But as a font can it be worse than Adrenaline Bubble Outline?

US military readies drone submarine hunter

Re: This is a game changer

Never mind hypothetical rocks, just have a fleet of little underwater drones equipped with big hifi systems capable of emitting sound signatures of all kinds of submarines, enemy and otherwise. Send them out into the oceans with a drunkards-walk course and watch the sub-chaser drones running in circles. Naval Robot Wars :)

Pause Patch Tuesday downloads, buggy code can kill Outlook

Re: It may just be me--

But I haven't had the slightest problem with Windows 10 since I installed it the day after it was released.

And I'm sure it's been regularly reporting that to Microsoft.

Instascam! Apple yanks phoney app, Google follows

Re: "A popular but malicious fake Instagram “who viewed your profile” app has been pulled"...

Er no... It was a free app therefore zero profit to both Apple and Google.

No such thing as a "free" app. At the very least Apple/Google will know you downloaded it, that information alone is something they can sell to advertisers. As always, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

So. Farewell then Betamax. We always liked you better than VHS anyway

Re: SECAM

SECAM was 625 lines like PAL (about 576 visible). NTSC 525 (about 480 visible)

There were various incompatible Secam systems eventually, surviving till Analogue switch off.

There isn't any necessary connection between NTSC/PAL/SECAM and resolution, the UK experimented with 405-line NTSC, and some S. American countries use 525-line PAL (PAL-M). NTSC just suffered from being first, and by the time other countries moved to colour, the minor shortcomings of NTSC had been noticed and PAL/SECAM invented to fix them. That coincided with 625-lines being the norm.

I don't think the broadcast SECAM signals were ever incompatible at a video level (the French system L used different values for sound/video, but SECAM is SECAM), but there was a strange hybrid for VCR recording called MESECAM (Middle East SECAM). It only ever showed up on VHS systems, AFAIK.

The simpler nature of a SECAM colour signal meant that SECAM-only VCRs could use simple circuitry, PAL was more complex to process. The Middle East was a mix of PAL and SECAM (depended on who the ex-colonial masters were!) so for simplicity they just used PAL-type VCR circuitry everywhere, which was cheaper than a true dual-standard machine. The result was an MESECAM recording that wouldn't play back on a true SECAM VCR.

I remember using an old PAL VCR to record French SECAM TV, it played back fine on a SECAM TV set.

Re: V2000 Philips

All the schools in the UK seemed to have V2000.

After my time. I remember the Philips N1500 in my school that were occasionally used to play some BBC "schools" programmes recorded by the teacher.

Re: Can we finally settle this?

Both systems needed fancy computers to convert encoded video signals that were at different resolutions between tape and TV.

I don't remember the resolutions being different, both recorded the visible part of the 625-line picture, one strip per field, with the head switching done in the frame sync interval. The horizontal resolution was bandwidth-limited down to the equivalent of (for PAL VHS) about 240 lines, but there was no need for standards-conversion type of analogue circuitry.

Re: Can we finally settle this?

They all use a spinning head to write in diagonal stripes aross the tape, it was the only way to get the high head-to-tape speed needed for video without the monstrous Ampex-type systems of the early pioneers.

Betamax writes at 6.6m/s, and VHS at 4.8m/s, one reason for the better Betamax quality. V2000 is somewhere in-between.

You're quite correct, though, that the heads on the V2000 drum were mounted on a piezoelectric plate, and some clever signal processing allowed that plate to' 'tilt' the heads slightly to one side or another, so that they still scanned the striped tracks correctly even when the tape was running fast, slow, or stopped for freeze-frame.

I'm not sure if that was the cause, but they did have a reputation for wearing heads out more quickly than the other systems, so there are very few left in working order. The only one I ever had a chance to play with had badly worn heads, and wasn't at its best

Reg mashup rates CompSci unis for books, booze and boogie

Re: Fewest Tokens

I never got the multiple access working, though.

E.ON fined £7m for smart meter fail

Re: What *customer* wants this?

when a machine actually points out the specifics it's more likely to change behaviour.

How so? I put the dishwasher on when it's full, the washing machine when my clothes are dirty, etc. Knowing precisely, instead of approximately, how much power one of those appliances uses won't make the slightest difference to my usage pattern.