Posts by Phil O'Sophical

EU law bods: New eCall crash system WON'T TRACK YOU. Really

location data

"which must be sent only to the emergency services,"

Emergency services as defined by whom?

Re: Lies, Lies and Politicians

It's just makework to justify their existence and salaries. They have no useful work to do, and they know full well that if they asked people what they actually wanted them to do, most would reply "get a real job".

Government locked into £330m Oracle contract until 2016

how could they afford to spend that amount?

Easy, it wasn't their money.

Portland lobs fair-trade gluten-free artisan SUEBALL at Uber

Re: A simple misappreciation

This is why it's called The Land of the Fee, I suppose?

Sacre block! French publishers to sue Adblock maker – report

Re: Money speaks, as usual

Just untick the "allow unobtrusive ads" box when you install adblock.

Égalité, Fraternité - Oui, peut-etre. Liberté? NON, French speedcam Facebookers told

Not a new problem

A long time ago, in the UK, it was customary for AA patrolmen (on motorbikes) to warn passing AA memers of speed traps by saluting them. This resulted in prosecutions for obstructing the police, or some such offence.

The AA then changed their policy so that patrolmen always saluted members when they passed them. Sometimes they seemed to forget, or didn't notice the member, but you couldn't make that an offense, even if it always seemed to happen just before a speed trap.

Why blades need enterprise management software: Learn from Trev's hardcore lab tests

Blades: future, past, both?

Funny, but 10 years ago I'd have written similar sentiments. We had several labs crammed full of blades, cPCI, ATCA. They were the future. We were developing software for them, porting OSes, etc

There isn't a single blade left in any of our labs now. Everything's flipped to rack upon rack of 2U and 4U servers and floor-to-ceiling disk drives, all virtualized to hell & back. Want a host? Just click a few buttons to select memory, CPUs & OS, and bingo, here's your VM. Where is it hosted? I've no idea, somewhere in that "cloud" or "farm", or "forest' or...

A decade ago half the industry seemed intent on building clusters of blades to make big systems, the other half seemed to be virtualizing big systems to create small VMs. Always seeemd weird to me, surely they could make their mind up? Now (outside of the telco world) blades seem to have come, and gone. Maybe they're coming back?

18 million iPHONE USERS HAVE NEVER BONKED to ApplePay

Re: I'm rather careful how and what I bonk.

These, obviously, could be combined.

Would that count as performance-related pay?

Furious GTA V gamers seek similar ban on violent, misogynistic title: the Holy Bible

It might fall foul of the extreme porn rules. Especially if it were on the Disney channel.

If you want to look at only the most current events, I'd probably give The Holy Bible a temporary pass and focus my efforts on the Qur'an first.

Up to the end of the Old Testament you'll not find a huge difference between those two books.

As always, the problem isn't the book, it's those who get a power kick out of interpreting it for the masses. Also note that one of the major reasons for protest of the early protestants was that they weren't allowed to read the Bible themselves, because the ruling cadre was worried that they might not interpret it "correctly".

Met ready to cough £150m to IT bods who'll help coppers go digital

help coppers go digital

Quick! Run. Here come the fibres...

Manchester festival marketers fined £70,000 over spam ‘mum’ texts

An what is £70K as a percentage of the profits from the festival? Or even as a percentage of their marketing budget? It's probably already down on the balance sheet as "additional publicity costs".

Splashdown! Orion lands safely in the Pacific Ocean

Re: I wonder

So, how do these technologies help us get to either objective?

By convicing the crew that they'll get back OK afterwards?

Blast-off! Boat free launch at last. Orion heads for space

Re: Typo? No, they use Farhenheit

and other "english" measurements

Fahrenheit was German...

Stupid humans and their expensive data breaches

Re: Encryption?

So how does encryption help?

If I encrypt some data with your public key, and then accidentally hit "Reply All", at least the data that went to the wrong people isn't accessible by them.

Orion Space shuttle wannabe preps again for test flight

Re: "fuel valve that *refused* to close properly"

> Luckily this can only happen on the launch pad.

You sure?

" I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"

Feast your eyes: 10 'fortysomething' smart TVs

Re: I don't trust any device

I have a "Non Sequitur" cartoon pinned to my wall, shows two guys in a bar, one is complaining to the other "I really miss the old days when we were smarter than our phones".

Re: Panasonic TX-47AS650

I can't speak for this model, but although very few TVs have actual "Freesat" (the branded EPG) many do have a free-to-air "FTA" satellite tuner built in, the two terms are often confused by reviewers. I bought a Sony 805-series a year ago, and the satellite tuner in it works well. One of the available apps is an EPG supplied from the Gracenote database, which gives a very usable 7-day programme guide. It's a bit fiddly doing initial setup, you have to manually re-order the channels into something usable after a scan, but once you've done that it's fine.

Oracle bypasses SAS/SATA controllers in flashy new servers

NOT a pizza box

It's a 1U rackmount server.

Pizza boxes look like this: http://pizzasupplies.ca/images/oyster-pizza-box.png

which is why the term was used for systems like the Sun 3/80 http://www.sun3zoo.de/50/nvram-c.jpg

and SPARCstation 1/1+

1U rackmount servers don't look anything like pizza boxes.

Give nerds their own PRIVATE TRAIN CARRIAGES, say boffins

Re: Nothing new

earnest young things talked earnestly on a train between Cambridge and London.

we used to get regular security lectures about not talking business on trains, after one of our directors heard two engineers in the seat behind him discussing a yet-to-be-released product. Fine with me, I just took a book & bought a beer.

Re: Definitely make Luton a hub - and another thing

Yes, brilliant Beeching closed the Buntingford to St. Margaret's line which made a loss of a few thousand a year, failing to notice that passengers were almost all going to London and contributing £24000 a year to the London line

In fairness to him, Beeching just provided the report on the lines' current status. It was the government of the day who decided which lines to close based on his figures. Figures which were all based on current steam-hauled trains, the government didn't consider the reductions in costs which replacing steam trains by railcars, etc., could have offerered. Which is one reason why it's now proving viable to re-open closed lines, with modern rolling stock.

It was space vs boat at Orion launch. The boat won

> might as well just go ahead with the launch....

Think of it as a shot across the bows...

A brief history of BLADE SERVERS: From the Big Bang to the, er, 'unblade'

Why stop at cPCI?

It was largely obsoleted by ATCA, especially in the telecomms space where blade servers are the technology of choice.

The article also omits one major practical advantage of blades, and the reasons that busses were specially designed for them: Hot Swap. One huge advantage of a blade over a conventional rackmount system is that when it goes wrong you just pop it out and slot in a new one. No cables to disconnect and (mis-)reconnect, no disks to swap or reimage, the blades are booted off external network storage. Blades have IDs related to the backplane slot, so you can configure a DHCP server to assign address 'X' and software load 'Y' to "the blade in slot 3", instead of having to reconfigure boot parameters to use the MAC address of a newly-replaced rackmount tray.

Dead Steve Jobs accuses Real Networks of 'hacking' iPods

"emails from the late Steve Jobs"

Now that is some Apple technology worth having. The new iPhone666, you can take it with you!

UK national mobile roaming: A stupid idea that'll never work

Re: @Lee D

Owned, but not run by Whitehall. With no shareholders

Of cours it would have shareholders. Every taxpayer would be a shareholder.

And who would run it, and for what targets? Charge too little and it won't be able to attract decent staff, so it will get the reputation for being shite. Charge too much and it won't have any customers. How would it be any different from any other player, except for not being accountable to anyone who can actually control it?

Re: @Lee D

£125 to "connect" me (meaning: someone at a console pressing a button - the wiring was already in place)

Unlikely. There wire might have been there, but the various connections at distribution frames and cabinets may not have been. Besides, the universal service obligation prevented them from charging £50 for the "easy" connections, and £5k for the house that needed half a dozen poles installed. A flat fee for most 'normal' connections was seen as simpler and fairer.

Re: @Lee D

BT service was crap because of analogue exchanges - not because of its ownership. BT service became better becasue of digital exchanges - not because of its ownership

The contents of the exchange building, whether crossbar, system X or system Y, had no impact on the availability of underground plant, or of repair times. Digital exchanges certainly improved the network in terms of new features, and simpler (=cheaper) meter reading, but what really improved BT's service was the change of ownership. It could make its own decisions about where to spend its own cash, and didn't have to rely on civil servants to centrally-plan everything.

Re: Just popping over to Calais ...

get a French SIM and then be able to roam back at will in the UK without penalty.

The operators have thought of that. On the SIM-only deals I've looked at there's always some small print to the effect of "if you mainly use this abroad we reserve the right to cancel it:".

Is EU right to expand 'right to be forgotten' to Google.com?

Geo-locking of domains

I can see another more irritating possible consequence of this.

Today, if I type "google.com" in my browser it will take me to google.com. If instead I enter "google.fr" I will be taken to the Google France site.

I like this. There is little more irritating than entering, say, company.co.uk and getting a popup that says "you're in Greece, so we're taking to you company.gr', leaving me with a screen that is, effectively, all Greek.

(I'm not in Greece, though occasionally my company's proxy algorithms seem to choose some creative ways out onto the internet, but I could also be sitting in Athens airport, or in a hotel, etc.).

I might also especially want the .co.uk site because I need some UK-specific information, or because I want to make a purchase to be delivered to the UK.

I can see this EU interference resulting in sites like Google rigidly locking down geo domains, so that when in France you can only see the French site, etc. How long before the EU nannies ban VPNs in case we might use them to see something we're not allowed to?

BORGED! Expat moves from New Zealand to Norway to be acquired by Cisco

Re: I sense a trend

There do seem to be two types of ex-pats. Those who want to learn about the place they go, and those who want to make it look and feel like home. For the latter types I have to ask, why go?

As an ex-pat I couldn't agree more with the comments made. Learn the language, enjoy the positive differences and don't get hung up on the negative ones.

Sure, I still watch UK TV, it's nice to unwind in front of something familiar in the evening, but I try very hard to avoid Irish pubs, though, since they are usually full of drunken ex-pats whinging about UK football.

High Court: You've made our SH*T list – corked pirate torrent sites double in a day

Re: The people are voting...

Making a copy is not theft no matter how you twist it.

And if you read my comment you'll see that I didn't suggest that it was.

Re: The people are voting...

File sharing services are people voting with their feet. If it is a small number, then it does less harm than the draconian measures being taken and we should let it go. If it is not a small number then the 'rights' regime is de-facto illegitimate.

Rubbish. I'm paid to write software, my wife is paid to write books. If people simply copied that software or books when they wanted to we would both be out of work. We, as the creators of the work, are entitled to benefit from our labour, which is what copyright law is for. If you make a copy without our permission, you're defrauding us.

Now, you can come up with some tired old arguments that you wouldn't have bought a copy anyway, so we haven't lost out, but the obvious question then is why would you want a copy? The very fact that you want a copy indicates that it has some value to you. Maybe you consider that because it's not that valuable to you, it's OK to make copies, and only the people who consider it to be really valuable should pay? In that case, would you be OK if I stole your car, if it's a model I don't like? Or screwed your wife, if I didn't really think she was all that pretty?

Copyright exists to protect honest work. Honest people respect that, and don't look for specious arguments about why they are exempt.

It's BLOCK FRIDAY: Britain in GREED-crazed bargain bonanza mob frenzy riot MELTDOWN

Re: America...

Goodbye EU, welcome to the good old U.S of A. They don't call us the 51st state for nothing.

Next we'll be joining the Independence day celebrations to celebrate the French kicking our British butt

Don't be so sure. Even the French now "celebrate" Black Friday (and labelled as that, not as "vendredi noir"), with special offers, late opening etc. Even Halloween is beginning to overshadow "Toussaint". US influence (I can't bring myself to say 'culture') is spreading everywhere.

Hi-torque tank engines: EXTREME car hacking with The Register

Re: The Griffon engine

When you blip the throttle on a Merlin powered car, do the wheels on one side come off the ground for a short period?

Might be a bit long for a transverse mount, though...

+1 for the photos, some close-ups of that clutch shaft assembly would be interesting, to help with the explanation.

I remember a TV programme 30-odd years ago featuring someone who'd put a real Merlin on a car chassis (no body at that time), but the torque broke every gearbox and/or driveshafts he'd tried. I'm not sure it's quite enough to assume that tyrespin will act as a limiter.

It would be interesting to see torque/power curves, the peak figures don't tell the whole story. After all, the plain ordinary 2.2 turbo diesel in my car produces 175 bhp (easily remapped to 200+) and 310 lbf-ft torque, much the same peak figures quoted for the half-ton 6.5 litre lump.

Yes, UK. REST OF EUROPE has better mobe services than you

The Moon Under Water

Surely a pub with that name would ban phones, on both noise and radio grounds?

Mysterious BEAM outside London Googleplex ZAPPED

Re: In all seriousness....

then surely someone should be investigating this as a matter of urgency?

They'll be on it as soon as they get back from Loch Ness.

Mighty Blighty broadbanders beg: Let us lay cable in BT's, er, ducts

Re: BT: Over-Spec'd and out of date

Fibre Up The Khyber?

Could lead to Glass up the Ass?

Re: BT: Over-Spec'd and out of date

All of those approaches are used by BT and its rivals when convenient. I remember some years ago when C&W (I think) bought up the long-defunct London Hydraulic Company because some bright spark discovered that they had pipes running into all sorts of buildings from the days when office lifts were run by distributed hydraulic power.

After the BT breakup the new rival Mercury communications was planning to use railway wayleaves.

And as for new technology, does anyone else remember the Blue Peter programme when Lesley Judd was valiantly trying to handle the new BT "mole" which could tunnel new ducts under roads without the need to dig up the surface, but which unfortunately looked to hundreds of sniggering schoolboys (and I suspect to Ms Judd herself, going by her expression) like a giant vibrating dildo?

Re: Are Ofcom a complete waste of space?

I have to complain to my ISP, but they have no control over the infrastructure as it's all provided by Openreach.

It isn't so much "provided" by Openreach, as they buy it from Openreach. If they don't get what they need then they certainly do have control, and can start legal proceedings against Openreach if they want.

Why should I have to open a formal complaint with my ISP

Because your contract is with your ISP. Bang on them until they fix it or "downgrade" you back to where you were before.

BT in talks to re-slurp O2 after spitting it out a decade ago

Funny old world

It's just one giant game of "chicken". Customers choose suppliers purely on price. Providers start race to bottom, only to jump out before impact. After the dust settles, remaining providers buy the rubble and start building again. Customers change to new provider because they're even cheaper, then complain about even more dropped calls and worse customer service. Rinse & repeat.

And the award for the world's most tech-savvy country goes to …

they become useless once everyone has a mobile phone…

How do you figure that? Fixed line phones are more reliable, don't suffer from flat batteries or dropped calls due to congestion. They "just work", 99.9999% of the time, which you'll never be able to say for mobiles. Those fixed lines are also used to deliver most broadband services. We have active three mobile phones in the house, on two networks, and a VoIP service, but I still keep a fixed line. I know it will be the one that will be there when I really need it.

Get a job in Germany – where most activities are precursors to drinking

Re: @ Phil O'SophicalGood luck if UKIP/Farage succeed

I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that sovereignty of states would be abolished, but there is a genuine concern that it will be sidelined in daily life so that countries are unable to run their own economic affairs as they wish. There are a number of politicians who make no secret of their desire for a federal europe (usually with themselves in charge).

The eurozone is already in a poor economic state, where Germany has the only strong growing economy, and other countries are unable to make the changes they would have done if they'd had economic independence. Within a single country it's accepted that rich regions pay to help poor ones, and although people grumble they're generally OK with that. That isn't the case within the EU as a whole, where there is increasing resentment in successful countries about paying for what they see as the economic incompetence of the poorer ones. There is no widespread feeling of european solidarity, and Europe is moving away from, and not toward, that.

Perhaps if that solidarity had been built first, on economic success, it might have been possible to make an EU work, but the politicians fiddled the books around the convergence criteria in order to create a eurozone for political, not economic, reasons, and they are now paying the price for that in terms of popular resentment.

I disagree that UKIP are only "stoking fantastical and nonsensical fears", polls in most EU countries showed increasing dislike and mistrust of the EU institutions long before UKIP were more than a loony fringe, and those concerns are being expressed by people well placed to know the diference between popular hysteria and fact. UKIP is certainly reacting to that and benefiting from it, as are other parties in other countries, but the concerns are real, and predate UKIP. To assume that simply preventing UKIP from "stoking fears" would make the problem go away shows a deep misunderstanding of the issue.

As for "failing to help their members live in the reality of modern life." that is somewhat patronizing, and is very symptomatic of the paternalistic attitudes people are reacting to. It's the old "if the people don't like it, it just shows they're too stupid to understand it" attitude, which underpinned far too many autocratic regimes.

Incidentally, I personally would not like the UK to leave the EU, if the EU can indeed be reshaped not to impose a "one size fits no-one" economic policy, and working to that should be a priority. I have very little hope that it can be done before the eurozone implodes, though. Apart from anything else, I am quite sure that the EU "powers that be" will not hesitate to make an example of any country with the temerity to unilaterally leave the EU. The chances of the UE permitting a calm exit into a Norway-like membership of only the EEA, which would probably suit Britain well, are close to zero.

Re: Good luck if UKIP/Farage succeed

UKIP is a symptom, not the problem.

When the UK was a member of the common market, it worked well. A trading bloc of independent nations, ensuring a level playing field and free movement of people and goods, it played to Britain's strengths.. OK we all had a laugh at some half-assed rules inverted by politicians with an axe to grind but overall it worked (I've been an expat for over 20 years, working in another EU country).

The problem many people in the UK have (and it isn't just the Tory right*) is with the "ever closer union" of the EU, and the career politicians who want to create a US of Europe, mostly to assuage their own vanity: "Look what I've achieved!". For a very large number of people in the UK that is an unnecessary step too far. They don't see what there is to gain from centralizing political and economic policy between countries who have such different fundamental political and economic philosophies. It plays directly into the hands of the populist parties like UKIP, Front National, etc. who will jump on any passing bandwagon. It's significant that the two most anti-EU parties in France are the Front National and the Communists.

The real threat to expat jobs isn't from any EU-bashing party, it's from the economic stagnation that's been destroying jobs in the eurozone for years. Not only does the lack of growth means there are fewer jobs for everyone, but it does lead to the nationalism exemplified by the "France for the French" slogan of the FN, when jobs are in short supply there is always a backlash against 'foreigners' taking 'our' jobs. The best way to resolve that is to make sure there are plenty of jobs available, which means growth, not centrally-planned economics by political diktat.

* I say not limited to the Tory right, because this isn't just a "tory" issue. There used to be a group of UK voters known as "working-class tories", stereotyped by Alf Garnet in the 70s sitcom "'Til Death us do part", but of course not all so exaggerated. These were people who lived in a council house, worked for the 'corporation' or similar, and hadn't been to University. They tended to be nationalistic, loved the Queen (but not the rest of the junior layabout royals), flew the flag at every opportunity, etc. They were determined that their children could to go Uni, could own their house, etc. They used to vote Tory because that sort of mobility was espoused by the post-war Tory party.

Over time, especially the 60s/70s, Labour worked hard to convince these people to become Labour voters, but that's changing. New Labour firmly put itself in Guardian-reader territory, and Emily Thornberry's "white van" tweet at Rochester last week will drive more of those voters into UKIP territory. I'd say that working-class Labour constituencies have more reason to worry about UKIP than the Tories do at the next election.

Brit mobile firms in FOURPLAY TUSSLE – how very French of them

Re: MVNO

Lots of people seem to be building offerings which rely on using "someone else's" network. Reminds me of the early days of the web when everyone expected their new service to be advertising-funded, only to find that there wasn't enough funding to go round.

What happens when all but one supplier is an MVNO, and the real network they all use goes TITSUP?

I suspect we'l get a foretaste this winter from the power companies, when they discover that assuming you can make up a domestic shortfall by buying electricity from a neighbouring country doesn't work when everyone wants to do it at the same time...

All aboard the Poo Bus! Ding ding, route Number Two departing

Re: SCAT BUS

Does it run a Shittle service?

Renewable energy 'simply won't work': Top Google engineers

Re: Safety of Nuclear Power

Honestly, more people have died from bloody windfarms..

And coal-fired power stations emit more radiation than nuclear ones. But it doesn't fit with the treehugger agenda to recognize that.

Re: I seem to remember

I heat my house with a Ground Source Heat Pump. The pump is powered by a 2ft square Solar Panel. This covers 95% of my heating needs for the year.

You live in the Caribbean?

A 2ft square Solar panel will receive ~ 350W max incident power, so even the most efficient panels aren't going to give you more than about 70W electricity from that.

GS heat pumps can generally generate about 4x the energy required to drive them, so if you're using 70W of electricity to drive the pump, you'll get maybe 300W of heat pumped. At best, during bright sunlight.

If you can heat your home with 300W you're either living in a shoebox or in the tropics. Or it's BS, of course.

Assange™ slumps back on Ecuador's sofa after detention appeal binned

Re: "select markets"

the Swedish police/prosecutors.just don't have a reasonable explanation for why they are refusing to conduct their interviews as things stand now.

They have a perfectly reasonable explanation: "why the fuck should they?".

Assange wants to have his cake, and eat it. If they question him they may decide to charge him, or they may decide there's no case to answer, and he goes free. Assange just wants to make sure that if they go for the first option, he can still evade arrest by staying in the embassy. It's like letting a burglar decide that he'll only show up for trial if he's sure of being let off. Why should the Swedish authorities give him the choice, it's no problem for them if he wants to deprive himself of his freedom for the next ten years.

Webcam hacker pervs in MASS HOME INVASION

Re: Default passords

Sadly the result of that will be poor reviews on Amazon for being "hard to set up", and people will go elsewhere for the easy "works right out of the box" option.