Posts by Not also known as SC

Army Watchkeeper drone flopped into tree because crew were gazing backwards

Re: And then a few days latter the email arrives:

I'm currently being blackmailed by around a hundred people who all send emails just like this. Luckily I have no friends for them to send the videos to :-)

Hey, it's 2019. Quit making battery-draining webpages – say makers of webpage-displaying battery-powered kit

Re: An easy way to save power...

I don't know why you used a joke icon. I am sure that my phone used to load WAP optimised pages on 2G or whatever it was called (I forget now) faster than my current phone can load pages over 4G (it is an iPhone so that maybe why...). It seems perverse to me that loading times have done down as connection speeds have gone up due to all the extraneous crap web sites push out with their content.

GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name

Re: People can feel insulted by anything if they want, it is their choice and it is their right

@Bombastic Bob,

You seem to be quite worked up by the fact that these people are trying to force their will upon every one else. Although I agree about the cat-5-o-nine tails (I like what you did there) you need to remember that some people only feel validated by bitching about anything they can. Do we really have the right to enforce our will that they should be less snow-flaky, even if it is for their own good and the good of society in general?

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

Re: @RGE_Master

At last - something that both Remainers and Brexiteers can agree on.

Re: So, to sum up. . .

The rest of the World haven't agreed one thing and then turned around the following day to say that they will no longer honour the agreement made. For example BJ is claiming we no longer need to pay the £39Bn 'divorce' bill. If we don't pay our debts why would the EU trade with the UK? The UK will have shown the rest of the World that its government cannot be trusted. Who would want to trade with the UK after that? I would list all of the other broken promises and insults aimed at the EU but I guess you already know these and don't care.

Dixons hits back at McAfee's £30m antivirus sueball: Your AV didn't work on Windows 10S

"...they were able to take full advantage of a subsidy offered by Microsoft to hardware manufacturers selling hardware running 10S,"

Microsoft have so much faith in 10S that they have to give a bigger bribe to manufacturers to include it than they obviously give for Windows 10 Home?

Audible hasn't even launched its AI-powered book subtitles and publishers have already fired off a sueball

Re: Why AI transcription?

Format shifting.

***An audio book has paid for both the encoding (story) and the art/performance (reader/speaker) in royalties AND wages to both the author and the performer***

So by the same argument - I have a copy of Phantom of the Opera on CD. Does that give me permission to see the musical free of charge after all, the writer has already been paid?

Electric cars can't cut UK carbon emissions while only the wealthy can afford to own one

That is one beautiful sports bike!

Thanks Wonko,

That's interesting. I'm not entirely convinced about the accuracy of the map because it shows ten charging locations in my vicinity. There are at least twenty petrol stations I can think of in the same area. Several of the chargers are also in private locations (local university campus) so probably shouldn't be counted. However there are far more than I expected so it does look promising.

The Zero SRF 14.4 motorcycle looks nice, has a better range than my 700, but does cost three times as much. However I can see my self buying one of those in the future.

"Charging stations:- There are now over 1000 more EV charging locations than petrol stations in the UK"

What does this mean specifically? There is a local service station near where I live, I believe it has about twelve charging points. The petrol station has sixteen pumps. Would the EV charging location count as 'one' or 'twelve' and would the petrol station count as 'one' or 'sixteen' in the comparison quoted?

(I would love an electric vehicle, especially a motorcycle but I'm just not convinced that the technology and infrastructure are mature enough at the moment.)

Electric vehicles won't help UK meet emissions targets: Time to get out and walk, warn MPs

Re: 50 miles???

"So it is already possible to get a car that is topped up every night (potentially for free)".

How free? If you charge at home then you pay for the electricity and with smart meters it isn't beyond the realms of technical possibility to determine how much electricity was used to charge a car and to tax it at fossil fuel equivalent rates in the future.

If you use council provided charging point which don't charge then the electricity will be paid for via Council Tax like the rest of the council's electricity use.

Promote electric cars but don't pretend that they will be cheaper to use then ICE vehicles. Maybe for now but when fossil fuel taxation drops the government will make up for it by taxing the electricity used or road pricing.

And we're back live with the state of the smartphone market in 2019. Any hope? Yeah, nah

5G

Could someone remind me why 5G is going to be better?

It's 2019 and you can still pwn an iPhone with a website: Apple patches up iOS, Mac bugs in July security hole dump

I'm safe

I only ever visit the The Register on my iPhone.

Yorkshire bloke's Jolly Roger flag given the heave-ho after council receives one complaint

Re: IT connection?

One of the up-votes cancelled out the down-vote?

Re: IT connection?

@defiler,

You morally deserve a downvote for that joke, but considering you are brave enough to ruin your reputation by not going AC, I'll give you two upvotes instead.

Parents slapped with dress code after turning school grounds into a fashion crime scene

Re: Sometimes you learn from your kids

"so my friends and I don't like to show off new stuff..."

Sound like nice kids.

Thought you'd seen everything there is to Ultima Thule? Check this out: IN STEREO!

Re: Kewl!

Thanks for the suggestion - I'd forgotten about those and apparntly I can still 'see' 3D images after all those years without too much trouble.

Return of the audio format wars and other money-making scams

Re: Hmmm...

:Interestingly no-one has ever successfully identified (in double blind tests) any difference between CD quality recordings and 'better' as far as I can tell,:

I most certainly can't. Saved a fortune buying 'low-quality' MP3s instead of expensive 'hi-res' recordings. One advantage of getting old perhaps?

Chang'e 4 wakes and Yutu 2 stretches its solar panels for another day... on the friggin' MOON

Re: Winter on the Moon

@dropbear

My spell checker never flagged it up so it must be right!

Re: Winter on the Moon

@Flocke

Thank you. I completely missed that sentence when I read the article the first time. I though it was still talking about the Moon rover not Opportunity.

Winter on the Moon

Never realised that the Moon had seasons. Can anyone explain how that works?

Smaller tech firms just aren't ready for a no-deal Brexit, MPs told

Re: Taking Back Control!

@codejunky

"And Blue Passports!"

Considering how much this irks remainers this little insignificant thing is quite amusing.

Insignificant? It seems to have been a cornerstone achievement according to the government. You and I maybe couldn't care less about the passport colour but apparently it is very important to a lot of people as representing their national identity.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/blue-uk-passport-to-return-after-eu-exit

Immigration Minister Brandon Lewis said:

Leaving the EU gives us a unique opportunity to restore our national identity and forge a new path for ourselves in the world.

That is why I am delighted to announce that the British passport will be returning to the iconic blue and gold design after we have left the European Union in 2019.

Japanese astronomers find tiniest Kuiper Belt object yet – using cheap 'scopes and off-the-shelf CMOS cameras

Re: Solar system mass.

sigh

Only a small proportion of these dusty particles managed to clump together to form planets

The Sun is not a planet.

NASA's Opportunity rover celebrates 15 years on Mars – by staying as dead as a doornail

Re: A great job of engineering, but next time....

Technically space isn't a vacuum... It's full of planets and stars and stuff.

Google to yoink apps with an unauthorized Call Log or SMS habit from Android Play Store

Apologies if this sounds like trolling...

...but this must be one of my all time favourite quotes "Microsoft’s CEO declaring that Privacy is a Human Right,"

If at first, second, third... fourth time you don't succeed, you're Apple: Another appeal lost in $440m net patent war

Re: Are VirnetX actually Trolls?

The article however states "The company exists solely to sue other companies that are infringing patents that it bought." (I assume that the author is referring to VirnetX here).

Who to trust, El Reg or Wikipedia?

Hubble 'scope camera breaks down amid US govt shutdown, forcing boffins to fix it for free

Re: But he got less votes.

Serious question to BB

I know that you yanks are far more partisan about your political parties than we are in the UK so you like to spend every opportunity slagging off the other lot but I can't help wondering about your use of

DEMO[N,C]RATS

What is the comma meant to represent?

DEMON ... RATS I understand but is N,C meant to mean something as well or is it just stylistic?

Dark matter's such a pushover: Baby stars can shove weird stuff around dwarf galaxies

Re: Sums over matter do matter

That's the way it works. Also dark matter doesn't mean just one type of 'dark matter', it could be lots of different types of dark matter none of which we can detect directly. The models used to explain our understanding of the Universe however require dark matter and dark energy. That is why there is so much effort to prove dark matter exists because then we know that the models are accurate (or at least on the right lines). Astrophysics is a strange science in that it is all based upon observation unlike most sciences, which as you state, require you to physically interact with things, repeat measurements etc. In fact from that point of view astrophysics actually fails the definition of being a science - it is more observational mathematics.

Oregon can't stop people from calling themselves engineers, judge rules in Traffic-Light-Math-Gate

Re: Great for this Engineer

I'll stick with keyboard monkey

Sticking with one mobile provider gets you... Oh. Price rises, big exit fees, and lovely, lovely lock-in

Re: And another thing.....

I ‘upgraded’ from a contract to a SIM only plan. Again kept my number but got a far better deal than I had (20GB v 2GB) before even factoring in the handset cost.

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave me tea... pigs-in-blankets-flavoured tea

Re: Crimble Free Zone?

"We can't even point and laugh at how silly it is? You sound like a right Scrooge McDuck."

This always bothers me. Scrooge was mean at the story but by the end he had become one of the finest men the City of London had ever known and was famed for his generosity. Is this remembered? No. Instead he is a byword for meanness. Why did he waste his time?

Re: Sprouts

are evil.

Holy smokes! US watchdog sues Elon Musk after he makes hash of $420 Tesla tweet

Re: 5 minute recharge time

" It's also impossible to charge duty on electricity used to drive a car without charging duty on other electricity. Electricity is electricity."

Are you sure about this? Smart meters can analyse your power consumption so should be able to determine that you are using electricity to charge a car by the consumption rate and determine the proportion related to the car. If that isn't plausible at the time the government would probably insist on an annual report of your mileage (or even a detailed breakdown depending upon the monitoring used by the car) from which it could work out the electricity consumption rate and charge accordingly. Electric cars etc are great, but don't expect them to be cheaper to run.

Re: 5 minute recharge time

" And to travel that 250 miles has cost you a lot less than if you had used a petrol engined car.(cost to travel not including the vehicle)"

This works on the dangerous assumption that governments will not boost tax on electricity used for electric vehicles / introduce road pricing etc to replace the drop in tax from fossil fuels. Justify electric vehicles any way you like but don't rely on running costs and 'fuel' being cheaper once they become mainstream.

Bouncing robots land on asteroid 180m miles away amid mission to fetch sample for Earth

Pity it was Posted on Twitter

For a moment I actually thought that I'd consider joining Twitter so I can find out about these sorts of things first hand, so I followed this link

— HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) September 21, 2018

【MINERVA-Ⅱ1】

Heeeeeeere weeeeee cooooome!!!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/Ppcjr40SgG

Although the top photo is amazing I couldn't help wondering about the other images in the post. Am I just a miserable git?

I've seen the future of consumer AI, and it doesn't have one

Re: CLIPPY!

"OH DEAR, CLIPPY! I'VE MISSED YOU!"

No one misses Clippy.

Re: FIRE ! FIRE ! FIRE !

"Bad cook, Good physicist?"

Even better chemist! Wouldn't burning water produce hydrogen peroxide?

2H20+02 -> 2H202

Fruit flies use the power of the sun to help them fly in straight lines

Re: Flying Round in Circles

@Gene Cash According to the Mighty Boosh, a human will walk in a circle with no reference points to refer to because we have one leg longer than the other. I just wondered if the same thing applied with slightly different wing sizes leading to the fly moving in an arc as you said. However as the text referred to the flies aligning with the light source I wondered if the researchers meant that if the inbuilt compass cells weren't present the flies would always head towards the light source.

Flying Round in Circles

"Without these special compass cells in their brain fruit flies ... would end up flying endlessly in circles."

Any idea why? Are the wings different sizes, or do the researchers mean to say that they'd expect the flies to always fly towards the Sun so would they follow the sun? My initial theory was too much fermented fruit but I'd be interested in the real reasoning behind this statement.

AI sucks at stopping online trolls spewing toxic comments

Definition of Trolling

So has El Reg gone down the line of changing the definition of a troll from 'prat who likes to get a rise out of people on-line' to 'anyone you disagree with' or is trolling the term the researchers used? Hate speech is hate speech - it isn't trolling - and calling it trolling, instead of what it is, legitimises it to a degree because 'it's only trolling'.

You won't believe this but... everyone hates their cable company: Bombshell study lands

Re: Obviously Not American But...

"Virgin Media ... the shittest customer service I've ever encountered,"

To be fair I've just moved from Sky to VM (half the price and 350Mbps v 75 Mbps) two months ago. I've only had to call customer services three times. Getting past the first line call centre is incredibly painful. The call centre staff totally failed to even understand the issues I was having when I spoke to them.

(For example when I had phone problems.

Me: "I can make local calls in my own STD* area but cannot call someone outside this area".

VM: "So you can make national calls but not international calls?"

Me: "No..." etc - repeat for about thirty minutes).

However once you get onto the local (UK?) support staff then they are quite good. So re the call centre part then yes you are totally correct but let's give credit to their UK staff.

*STD, for non-UK residents Subscriber Trunk Dialling or area code.

UK cyber cops: Infosec pros could help us divert teens from 'dark side'

I understand what you're saying with "In my family, the diagnosis, and relevant medication and mental health services don't seem to have really helped those receiving them." but the problem is without these medications / interventions how bad would things have been? It might have been better as you observed later on, but as everyone is different it could also have been a lot worse.

If you need a bright side at least your family members are in the system now and are less likely to fall through the cracks in the future as someone who is completely undiagnosed but does have problems.

Re: Not much hope for the rozzers, it seems

I'm also interested in the fact that out of 36ish teenagers on the programme so far only one was a girl. Statistically that means the number of girls is insignificant so we can say for all intents and purposes that the 'crime' is being committed by boys only. So assuming that there are equal numbers of boys and girls does this mean that half of all teenage boys have committed a cyber-crime? This seems remarkably high unless the definition of crime is really wide.

Wasted worker wasps wanna know – oi! – who are you looking at?

Re: / Smug

I also have *never* been stung by a wasp or a bee.

I put it down to running around and screaming while waving my arms about.

Devon County Council techies: WE KNOW IT WASN'T YOU!

I thimk my ketbored has the same sooftware.

Almost 1 in 3 Brits think they lack computer skills to do their jobs well

Re: Training

"Why do people assume that training should be provided by the company?

Training is YOUR reasonability, it’s YOUR skill set and you are responsible for it."

Not really. Extreme example: If I'm employed to operate a paper cutting guillotine and cut my hand off because I didn't know how to use the tool correctly then the employers would be liable for not providing the training, not me.

Training is to give people the ability to do their jobs correctly. If employers need a job done then they need to ensure that staff know how to do the job either by offering training or employing staff who do know. Sometimes you're not going to find staff with the required skill sets.

As a professional I agree with you that you should look after your own skill sets and make sure you are up to date but if your employer turns around and says we want you to switch from technology A to technology B then the onus is on the employer to provide and pay for the training.

Cloud Storage

I find this comment interesting

"The ... survey also reckons that 16 to 24-year-olds are the most likely group to be using cloud storage services"

By this do they mean that 16 to 24 year olds subscribe to a cloud storage system like Amazon's or that they just store their photos / music (automatically) online in iCloud / Google's / Microsoft's version? In other words do they use cloud services through choice or by default? Are mail servers considered cloud storage or not because if they are then surely practically everyone stores data in the cloud if they are using IMAP?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a giant alien space cigar? Whatever it is, boffins are baffled

Re: Ahem....

"Photons that are seen haven't passed through. They've stayed."

Bugger!

Re: Ahem....

even bigger pedant alert!

"Oumuamua is an extremely rare object, and is believed to be the Solar System’s first interstellar visitor to be seen passing through."

As light is made from photons which are considered particles (from a particle physics point of view) we have seen numerous interstellar visitors - billions every second - albeit very small visitors.

.

Shared, not stirred: GCHQ chief says Europe needs British spies

Re: Cmon

All good points and I'll be more than happy to be proved wrong.

There is one thing you're forgetting though - the bunch of clowns doing the negotiation on behalf of the UK...