Posts by DialTone

DisplayPort standards bods school USB standards bods with latest revision

Re: Connecting DP

> The problem with DP is the labelling.

This is also a problem with HDMI displays I believe - Just because a device is advertised as being HDMI 2.1 for example doesn't necessarily mean it supports Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), High Frame Rate (HFR) or any of the other features specifically added in the HDMI 2.1 spec - essentially being just HDMI 2.0 in all but name - a name which is required to be advertised as HDMI 2.1 per the spec.

Finding out which of the specific sub-features are supported can be challenging at best.

The return of GPUs on sale may be tech world's monkey's paw of 2022

Re: When there's a component shortage

I'll believe the shortage is over when you can easily obtain an STM32H7 device, or more than a handful of FPGA SKUs, or even a Raspberry PI CM4 module, to name but a few!

Many ICs are still showing 50+ weeks of lead time disappointingly.

Epoch-alypse now: BBC iPlayer flaunts 2038 cutoff date, gives infrastructure game away

Re: A fix for this - You are not required to buy a TV licance

Or DO buy a TV and don't use it to watch live TV - also no need for a licence. It's a fallacy that you need a licence for owning a TV - the licence is required only if you watch or record TV as it's being broadcast, or use the iPlayer service.

I've been licence-free for some time now but I still own and use several TV's as I do watch Netflix occasionally, use my gaming console connected to the TV, watch YouTube etc, and with prices starting at ~£300 for a decent-sized TV versus many multiples of that for a comparable monitor it's a no-brainer to get a TV instead of a monitor!

I do hear what you're saying about radio - I personally don't listen to BBC stations, however you're not required to have a licence to listen to radio (including BBC stations), nor to access BBC websites (including the news).

I agree that this may seem unfair on its face, and there's many legitimate arguments in support of funding the BBC, but I guess that's something that will need to be resolved moving forward, especially as they move towards the end of their Royal Charter. I've no doubt we'll all end up paying for it in some way eventually.

Trojan Source attack: Code that says one thing to humans tells your compiler something very different, warn academics

Re: The example given seems to be incorrect

Unless I'm mistaken, I believe that the bulk of Latin characters are considered to be "strongly typed" as LTR and so are always rendered in that direction (which is why they're not showing reversed in the example). The ordering of the words in each paragraph however is affected by the bidi direction. The handling of punctuation is somewhat more complex.

For example rendering the following source string in RTL mode: "print this word" would produce the rendered output string "word this print". Any characters which are strongly-typed as RTL will indeed be rendered as RTL in the order in which I described.

A second example - imagine the word "arabic" were included (using arabic script - I've used latin to make the explanation obvious), then the source string "print this arabic word" would be rendered as "word cibara this print"

Engineers' Laurel and Hardy moment caused British Airways 787 to take an accidental knee

Re: The engineer's careers

Yes - making things different shapes will solve the problem for sure! I mean, it could, but then again...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baY3SaIhfl0

Enjoy!

Apple supplier Quanta Computer confirms it's fallen victim to ransomware attack

Re: Quanta Quality

I'm not entirely certain, but I had always understood that this was a manufacturing issue on Nvidia's part where there was a die/packaging issue which caused some kind of separation to occur after repeated thermal swings (and the chips tended to run too hot apparently). There was a subsequent BIOS update from HP which essentially caused the fan to run continuously to try to keep the chip cooler.

Usually this sort of fault can be rectified by a reball of the affected chip (akin to the XBox RROD issue) but I understood that in this case a replacement chip may have been necessary to fully correct the problem.

I recall there was a class-action lawsuit against Nvidia around that time claiming that they had known about but concealed this problem, and that ultimately they set aside a couple of hundred million USD to cover anticipated warranty repair issues, but I don't know how that played out in practice.

I myself had a Quanta-branded machine at around this time (circa 2008) which ultimately died from this fault. I never did bother to get it repaired as the machine had had a fairly good innings already and was rather dated by that point.

Repair store faces hefty legal bill after losing David and Goliath fight with Apple over replacement iPhone screens

I think it's the interpretation of "counterfeit" that's in question

I remember first hearing about this case after he won the original case (leading to these final rounds of appeals) and while the issue was allegedly about having Apple logos on the products, with the exception of some genuine second-hand components, the remainder were apparently refurbished screens (certainly some had replaced glass, but it's not clear what other repairs) and that the Apple logos had been covered up with ink to prevent any claim that they were to be misrepresented.

Even though Henry won his original case - that was despite the court acknowledging that the ink could easily have been removed - something Henry says he's not interested in (and that nobody would see them anyway) - they clearly also agreed that the logos being present (albeit covered) were not de facto indicators of intent to defraud (customers) or to infringe trademarks (Apple's). One can only surmise that Apple have convinced the higher courts otherwise.

There's a Vice article about his earlier win here that alludes to some of the details:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3yadk/apple-sued-an-independent-iphone-repair-shop-owner-and-lost

A little product renaming here, a little RISC-V magic there, some extra performance, and voila – Imagination's 10th-gen PowerVR is born

Re: And driver support?

I'll always associate PowerVR with the Dreamcast - where it was used to great effect!

Watchdog asks UK.gov to reissue freedom of information guidance after councils are told to STFU about Brexit plans

Re: "True but that doesnt account for the doom-mongers"

Incomplete stats are so beautiful. They can say anything you wish.

If we assume that those 11000 lorries arrive between 5am and midnight each day, that gives about 10 lorries a minute. At 10% that's 1 per minute that needs searching, so if a search takes 1 minute, there would be absolutely zero delay.

The problem of course is that 11000 passing through Dover each day says nothing about the distribution of that traffic by time period (as one would reasonably anticipate there to be specific high-traffic periods).

Furthermore, just because it takes 1 minute to search (the first lorry) doesn't mean that all search times are accumulated as a delay to the last lorry (whose planned arrival time was significantly later than the first). There's no way of calculating the accumulated delay to the last lorry based on the numbers given.

I'm not disputing that there are significant challenges which need to be addressed when it comes to border security and customs enforcement (amongst many, many other issues), but with respect, the "Project Fear" nomenclature has arisen in large part due to similar click-bait/sound-bite statements and statistics which are demonstrably inaccurate, either in whole or in part. (I don't suggest that the lorry comment was made with that intent, but its simplicity and inaccuracy is exemplar of the statements I'm talking about - inability to drive on the continent, planes unable to fly etc)

Sadly, as such "information" serves well to mask the incompetence of "those in charge" it will continue to be excreted in order to distract those who are either unable to tell the difference (as would appear to be the case with many in our political classes), or apathetic towards such nonsense. Unfortunately it also serves to mask those lesser-spotted truths which are sandwiched within and to which we should all be most concerned.

London's Gatwick airport suspends all flights after 'multiple' reports of drones

Are these stealth drones?

I was led to believe that the police had a helicopter in the air - I'm a little puzzled how they are unable to follow the drone to its point of landing? Surely the drone has a much shorter possible flight time than a fuelled helicopter, and the heat from the ESC, motors and batteries can easily be seen/followed on FLIR camera, especially at night?

On a related note, despite the increase in "naughty pilots" (OK, imbeciles in this case), the airports and police still appear to have no strategy for dealing with this growing "problem" - like procuring and operating their own technology to aid in both the prevention of such issues and the locating and arresting of rogue operators? There are several possible approaches to this (ranging from capture nets, signal jammers; either for control or FPV, Blinding FPV cameras with lasers etc) that could form the basis of such a strategy. Is this simply an "acceptable risk vs cost" situation?

On the first day of Christmas, MIPS sent to me: An open-source-ish alternative to RISC-V

Re: Interesting

Totally agree about opening up the IP.

Back when Imagination still held the reins, I did register to download the MIPSfpga SoC core from their student programme (as a hobbyist interested in FPGAs) only to have my download request rejected as I did not have a student email address.

While that would have been relatively easy to spoof, I gave up at that point as it became obvious that the "freely available educational version" was nothing more than a marketing stunt and I decided to either write my own ISA or look at a truly open platform (such as Risc-V).

Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the data centre temp's delightful

Re: Tonnage

Here in Blighty there is also the BTU (British Thermal Unit) which, in typically Imperially-measured style, equates to the energy needed to heat/cool 1 pound of water by 1 degree Fahrenheit at sea level.

So when you see heating and air-con units advertised here, it's not unusual to see a rating in BTU/hr

Latin-quoting Linus Torvalds plays God by not abusing mortals

Re: Veni, vidi, ...

Closest I could think of was. "Veni, Vidi, Feci".

Translation of feci could mean "I did", or "I made", or "I committed", but at least has a vague git reference in its pronunciation "Fetch-ee".

Hazelcast trousers cash, poises open-source cutlass against Exadata belly

Competitor to?

Surprised that the article makes no mention of which product it was originally (and probably still?) made to compete with (and to no small extent "copied" from)? And that's Oracle's "Coherence" (their In-Memory Grid Caching solution they acquired from Tangosol). I believe that it was also pitched against Terracotta, although a different type of product.

Douglas Adams was RIGHT! TINY ALIENS are invading Earth, say boffins

There's a fire, sir!

They already have Andromeda programmed! The purpose of Scoop was to find new biological weapons in outer space, and then use Wildfire to develop them!

It's Grand Theft Auto 5 day: Any of you kids remember GTA the First?

Port to GP2X

There was also a version ported/remade on the (now defunct) open-source handheld.

http://gp2x.co.uk/payback.html

Headmaster calls cops, tries to dash pupil's uni dreams - over a BLOG

Re: excluded

@Captain Hogwash - You are absolutely correct.

Technically it appears that "exclusion" is for under-16s only and requires that they be registered at another school. "Expulsion" is for 16+ and there is no obligation to find a new placement for the student.

In practice the distinction here is whether one is talking about the particular educational establishment (as might be expected), or about the educational system in its entirety. Any sane, rational person would assume it were the school itself given that the law already makes it clear that the state has a legal obligation to educate until the age of 16. The distinction in terms is therefore somewhat superfluous.

Furious Frenchies tell Apple to bubble off: Bling iPhone isn't 'champagne'

@Shane McCarrick "Champagne- is not a colour. If it were- would it be golden, or pink"

http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/colorfinder.aspx

Searching for "champagne" reveals that there are 4 colours named as such. 2 indeed are pink, the other 2 are beige.

Tony

Oracle wants another go at Google over Android Java copyrights

Poor analogies as usual

The analogy presented by Oracle is, as one might expect, completely meaningless. Comparing the copying of a (portion of a) copyrighted material is not the same as copying the definition of an API method.

The chapter titles in the analogy presented are in fact part of the material as a whole, and would themselves be copyrighted, I'm sure. Just because O'Reilly, for example, makes the contents of books visible prior to purchase does not automatically entitle you to duplicate them, nor give you any rights over the content.

Public APIs on the other hand do not work this way. They're designed for the purposes of inter-operability by 3rd-party content to the underlying application (there's the start of a clue in the name - Programming Interface. Not code library.) Presumably by trying to claim such APIs as copyrighted (and therefore as private APIs), Oracle is also making a statement about their objection to permitting inter-operability.

I can't help but feel that this is unwinnable for Oracle (as their prior court loss should have suggested to them): If they're intent on their claim, then I'm sure this is something for either the Competition Commission, European Commission or DoJ to investigate further as this would surely give them an unacceptable monopoly in this field?

Steve Jobs' Atari memo, Apple I to go under the hammer

Expensive Apple hardware?

$120k+ seems a little over-priced - yep, it's definitely genuine Apple hardware then ;) Seriously though, what a cool piece of history.

Thai floods derail Hadron-colliding antimatter boffinry

Carpathia?

Perhaps they could assist Carpathia with their MegaUpload legal battle and free up about 6 months worth of storage for themselves?