Posts by johnck

Caffeine makes fuel cells more efficient, cuts cost of energy storage

Re: Caffeine or no caffeine

Can you explain how completely wreck ecosystems by building a barrage across the Seven is different to completely wreck ecosystems with climate change?

I'm not being rude I honestly want to know, yes building a Seven barrage will damage existing ecosystems, but they are already begin damaged by climate change and the damage will continue to get worse. If the ecosystems are already damaged why not build the barrage and maybe it will help prevent damage to other ecosystems.

UK council yanks IT systems and phone lines offline following cyber ambush

Jumping to conclusions

Before we go all in on it being ransomware, we need to remember all we know is this is an "cyber incident" its at Leicester City Council and IT systems and a number of its critical service phone lines. It could be a ransomware, or some other form of attack yes, but being as it is a UK council it could also be some 40 year old critical bit of equipment, that they have never had the budget to upgrade\replace. has let out the magical smoke and they cant get a replacement until next week. They are only predicting a down time of 2 weeks, a quick recovery from an attack

Meta's ad-free scheme dares you to buy your privacy back, one euro at a time

Explicit consent?

So if I pay I wont get my data used to show me targeted ads, nothing says they wont show you ads, they also don't say my data will not be collected and used to show others targeted ads, or used for anything else they want to use it for. If I don't pay they will collect my data and use it to show me me targeted ads, and what ever else they want to use it for.

I'm not a legal expert but I don't think that not paying a subscription is consenting to my data being collected and used to show me targeted ads. Guess it will be back to the courts with this

To prevent 'lost' nukes, scientists suggest storing them in a hall of mirrors

Red barrel

Did they try replacing blue barrel with a red barrel of the same size in the same place to see if the system could detect that change? If the did it and it didn't detect a change then the system is pointless as a real thing could be replaced with a decoy and it wouldn't detect the change. If they haven't checked to see if it will detect such a change why not ?

Also this system there still needs to be some way to verify that the value provided by the system to say that nothing has changed has actually been provided by the system when requested and isn't just a replay of an old value provided by the system, assuming it not continuous monitoring. If it is continuous monitoring you still need some way to make sure the data hasn't been tampered with on the way to it being checked, and the potential adversary has access to the hardware. Continuous monitoring also needs to cope with the fact that the things will move around in a bunker, for maintenance and testing if nothing else.

As other have said, it might be useful for Art galleries, or warehouses where the owners don't want things to change, and its an interesting academic idea, but for nuclear weapon storage, no

BOFH: Selling the boss on a crypto startup

Re: Gaaaah “US English”

I thought it was English and Simplified English

Fired credit union employee admits: I wiped 21GB of files from company's shared drive in retaliation

Re: the data IS effectively the credit union

"why in the name of all that is Holy would you skimp on IT ?" thats an easy one, its because IT is only seen as a cost, and cost should always be minimised so profit can be maximised.

The fact that that the cost of IT can only be seen because of IT and the decision to limit/reduce the spend on IT is taken using data provided by IT viewed on equipment provided by IT and comunicated via IT systems is lost on people. IT is only noticed when it doesnt work or somethign goes wrong.

In business IT is a lot like cleaners. No one notices the cleaners, or cares if they have to work 10 hour days to clean the place but only get paid for 8, but if they miss a bit, or heven forbid dont clean for a few days, people will notice and demad somethign must be done immediatly. Oh and its always someone elses fault, cleaners and IT.

The Minimise Cost and Maximise Profit, mantra is so embedded in business that it affects everything, even non profit business

I've got a broken combine harvester – but the manufacturer won't give me the software key

Re: A contrarian view

And this is the problem that confused and dazed was talking about

20 years ago a £200 washing machine was 70% isf of the average UK weekly wage (https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/latest) now its less than 50%, that £200 machine should now be almost £400, but they can still be had for £200 and it will be more efficent

Here we go again: US govt tells Facebook to kill end-to-end encryption for the sake of the children

No encryption no proof

Going a bit conspiracy theory on this.

If the encryption has a back door they will be able to put encrypted things on your device at anytime, and then do an official seize and search and find illegal content. Its encrypted with your password on your encrypted device, so it must be yours. Think of it like the police having a key to your house, going in last month and planting some drugs, then doing a raid finding the drugs. You end up going to prison as you had drugs in your house so you must be a dealer.

Of course it could also be used the other way. As any back door can/will be found and used by others, you could claim things have been added to your encrypted device encrypted with your password without your knowledge and they are not yours. So someone with power, say a politician, gets found with compromising things, say messages ordering illegal things to be done, on their phone they can claim it’s not theirs. It becomes a get out of jail free card for those who can afford the legal team to argue it in court.

I'm not into conspiracy theories, I just work in IT where unless it is impossible for a user to do something they will find a way to do it no matter how strange or unlikely it is, so I think up those things to and then try to make them impossible to do. Don’t create the SQL script to get order details on your website and just run it, as a user will find some way of changing that script to do something else , simple stuff really.

Researchers solve screen glare nightmare with 'moth-eye' antireflective film

I don't see this as being of any use for anything we look at, its an interesting scientific study, and may have use in solar panels and other areas though. Humans need about a 10% change to notice something has happened and this produces about a 3% change in contrast, we wont see the difference between this and the usual anti reflective stuff

Siri, clone yourself and dive into this Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone

Re: Please adopt mid Atlantic accent

ELEVEN

If you have not seen Bunistoun please move along as you have missed one of the greatest shows ever and it will mean nothing to you

Judge nailed for trying to bribe Fed with fizzy water (aka Bud Light)

I think we should all stop taking the piss out of American beer or there'll be nothing left of it

India orders 770 million LED light bulbs, prices drop 83 per cent

new lighting options

With all the LEDs going into India does that mean that the lighting designers there will finally come up with designs that actually use the flexibility and other benefits of LED. or will they just keep producing lighting solutions based on hot wire bulbs, but replacing them with a group of LEDs.

I mean rather than having a "bulb" or two, or three.... in the middle of the room hanging from the ceiling, run a strip of LEDs round the edges of the ceiling. Its a simple enough idea, I came up with it so it must be simple, but try going in the B&Q to find it, you'll find loads of hang in middle of ceiling options, but nothing really designed, from the start, for LED's just some lights that have LED "bulbs"

Standing desks have no effect on productivity, boffins find

I guess all the people going on about having to have raise the hight of cubical walls to block the noise of people standing on other calls have never worked in a call centre, and are probably american.

Most call centres don't have cubicles, in Europe, and Asia at least, as cubicle walls take up space, that could be user for more staff, and generally make the place feel very poky and small. Its the same with most offices too you just have to have some consideration for others, not a strong point of our american friends. It would be horrible to have to work in a 2 x 2 x 2 meter cube, open plan may not be perfect but its got to be better than cube farm.

Feds look left and right for support – and see everyone backing Apple

Just checking to see if I understand this correctly, and swapping phone for house.

The FBI want to get in to a house built by Apple with an Apple defence system. The FBI are not sure what's in the house but it was rented (is was a company phone) by someone nasty who destroyed the two houses they did own to stop the FBI seeing what's in them, but strangely let this one untouched so almost certainly has nothing in it.

The FBI can get into the house as the don't have the key, Apple also don't have the key as they gave to keys to the owner when they brought the house, who then gave them to the person renting it and thy cant get the keys from them. Trying to smash the door down will activate the Apple defence and destroy everything inside.

The FBI have a court order telling Apple to build them a batting ram that will not activate the Apple defence system so they can get inside with out it destroying everything. Apple have said no as the reason people buy Apple houses is for the Apple defence system to stop other people breaking in and taking everything. If Apple did build the batting ram, the FBI could use on any house they wanted to and crooks could get hold of it and use it to brake in to other houses, thus making the Apple defence system useless for everyone, so they might just as well leave the door open.

I see Apples point on this, but I also understand the FBI desire to get into the house, but as others have said the FBI have the house and they haven't even thought about trying any of the windows or seeing if they could take the roof off. Have I got that right ?

Microsoft Office 365: You don't need 27 floppies, but there is desktop friction

That's an easy fix for the bean counters, just get rid of the firewall, the whole security thing is just an expense to them to be minimised as much as possible

El Reg keeps pushing Apple's buttons – its new Magic Keyboard

Is this review for a production item or a pre-prod item?

No seriously Is this review for a production item or a pre-prod item?

If the review is for a pre-prod item then its very bad. A keyboard should not cause you pain when using, as others have said go see a Dr if it does. As for the rest of the review its still bad, I would expect even a pre-prod keyboard to have keys that are correctly mapped to what's printed on them. The fact its not recognised by the OS, though it should have been recognised as a default keyboard just like any other keyboard would be, and the fact the wireless paring didn't work as advertised, OK it could do it with some special key presses, would be a bit more acceptable.

If the review is for a production item, then its very very very bad, so bad I'd say this item was broken and would return it and get a new one before doing the review, mentioning that the first one I had not worked, and why it didn't work, as you would for any other item I reviewed. Then I would have had a massive issue, as above, if it caused me pain in use.

Giving a keyboard 4 out of 5, that doesn't work as advertised, and caused the reviewer pain when using it, WTFF! All I can say is can I have some of what ever drug they're taking please because it must be mind altering, What's that you say its £79 for just the keyboard, OK give me the drugs

Cards on the table time, I did once have a Power Book G4 (yes it was a few years ago it had OSX 10.4 on it when it died I think) it was good and did everything I needed it to, but when it died I could not justify the price of a Mac book, a cheap laptop (Windows Vista worked for me) it was good and did everything I needed it to, lasted about as long as the Power Book did to. I don't care where the computer comes from just does it do what I need it to, like any normal person does with any tool they use, no pro or anti any fandom, just anti things that don't work and pro thing that do. Oh before anyone thinks it same thinking applies to Linux its just a tool, and like a hammer you need the right tool for the job.

Hated smart meters likely to be 'a costly failure' – MPs

Gov and Capita again

I don't know if its the gov side, constantly changing what they want or simply not knowing what they want, or the Capita side, not being able to deliver or promising things that are not possible, that is messing this up. But why did Capita even get the contract in the first place when they are a known tax avoider?

Is there a cure for cancer sitting at the back of the medicine cabinet already?

Re: Nah

I mostly aggree with you but to reply to your points

1) Agreed, and oncologists probably do it too, but the ones who shout about it gets noticed and reported on

2) No, unless you made a typo it costs about $2.5 Billion, yes that's billion, to get a new drug to market. for reference see http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cost-to-develop-new-pharmaceutical-drug-now-exceeds-2-5b/

3) Agreed, no law abiding company can be evil they may do things you don't like/agree with, and not do things you want them to do/agree with. After all you vote for the politicians who make the laws so unless you are evil and vote for evil politicians to make evil laws, companies obeying the law can not be evil. They can be bad and tricksy and find ways round the laws but then the politicians, who work for you, need to do their job and fix the laws not bitch about it

4) Agreed, trials are very expensive, and you may have to go back to phase 2 trials if you are changing the dose.

Broadband routers: SOHOpeless and vendors don't care

I dont know what to do

I don’t know what to do without “something of a security star rating could help guide consumer tastes”. Maybe a magazine or website dedicated to IT things could set something up, it wouldn’t have to do all of them just a selection, and allow the manufacture* to put a little badge on the product giving “4 out of 5 stars Mar 2015” or something. It could even make more people come to the site to find information about this security rating, leading to an increase in ad revenue.

Does anyone know of an IT focused site that could do such a thing? ... Anyone? ...

*I mean the name on the box not necessarily the manufacture, but you know what I mean

The BBC wants to slap a TAX on EVERYONE in BLIGHTY

I like the BBC

I should first state that i like the BBC and don't mind paying £12.13 a month for everything I get from it, including some of the old shows on other channels (Dave, GOLD, History), as others have said no BBC no shows made to be shown on the other channels

If the BBC goes commercial no TV licence any more, like Channel 4 (Channel 4 is a commercial set up but is publicly owned and had its change over to digital was paid for by the TV licence) what will happen to the other advert supported broadcasters and internet sites. The ad agencies only have so much money and now they have an extra 9ish TV channels, 11+ national radio stations, many more local radio stations, and 1 massive website to spend their money on, iplayer could be considered as separate like the other subscription services, which still have some add on them.

No offence to this esteemed organ but would you advertise on here if you knew that 90%+ of your audience would also read very smiler stories on bbc.co.uk and could advertise there getting aditional readers who don't read things here. Same with TV why bother with the scifi channel when 99.9% of your audience will be watching Dr Who on the BBC, with many others as well, you would spend your money on the BBC adverts.

Also who would pay for You View as that come out of the TV licence, the government likes it so they might just add a new tax for it, and waste money setting it up and collecting it

Microsoft loads botnet-crushing data into Azure

Re: What about..

If they dont like that one may be Nearly Omnipotent Destroyer Leaving Electronic Homes Safe

Hot new battery technologies need a cooling off period

Re: Holefully someone can answer this

So I did see that on TV a while back, wasn't sure if I'd had one too many an dreamed it up.

Sadly I think your all too right about the backhanders and bungs, as it’s the only thing I can think off that explains the lack of water wheels and stuff in rivers. They were there a hundred, or so, years ago, every town on a river had a water wheel powering a mill of some sort and people think they are “quaint” so no complaints on that front either.

Holefully someone can answer this

I don’t know if this is would work but, given that to use all electric transportation would require much more electricity generation (where this comes from is a question for another time although it is related). Why no simply take the extra energy generated and use it to reverse the chemical process of burning petrol/diesel/LPG/JP8 or whatever, and using the current system to distribute it and use it, may be with a slight change to use the most efficient fuel form.

It can be done see http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022072894033005 (you need to pay if you want to see the whole paper as PDF sadly) and http://phys.org/news/2012-10-air-fuel-synthesis-petrol-future.html or just search for it using your search engine of choice

I suppose my question is would this system be more or less efficient then batteries given the whole cost of batteries (production, transport, recycling/replacing, and changed to infrastructure)? Comparisons would have to be made with existing technologies from both sides as it is impossible to predict what will happen in the future, as either side could see massive improvements in efficiency.

Microsoft reveals Xbox One, the console that can read your heartbeat

Re: Rest of the world?

I was just responding to what is reported in the article, but if you know how it will interact with Sky, Virgin, and the others please tell us as i am actually intrested in knowing about it. Do you also know about providers in other countries?

Rest of the world?

I know that Microsoft is an American company, and this event was in America, but how do the TV parts of this apply outside America where there is no HBO, ESPN and NFL. In the UK, I don’t know about the rest of the world, how will it interact with Sky, Virgin, Freeview, or Freesat?

It does seem that this falls into the stereo typical arrogant American company forgetting about the rest of the world announcement.

Soylent Corporation prepares to DEFEAT FOOD

This is Plausible

In theory as we know what humans need to consume, in terms of fats, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and all the other stuff , we could easily make a gloop take fulfils those needs on a daily bases and is nutritionally balanced. The problem is just because his gloop is good and nutritionally balanced for you doesn’t mean it will be good and nutritionally balanced for me.

As for the other claims… well I’ll leave that up to others to discuss

James Bond inspires US bill to require smart guns for all

Whats the problem with this again?

To combine two things that some Americans seem passionate about guns and cars, isn’t this like adding electronic security, think immobilisers or alarms, tthat can be deactivated by a car keys.

But all of these smart systems change the nature of a car key from being a purely mechanical device relying on the energy of the person turning the key to open the car/start the engine, into something which requires batteries.

Based on his arguments does this mean that NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam is happy for his complicated electronically enhanced locks on his, no drought, expensive car to be replace with purely mechanical ones, that can be bypassed with a screw driver? No, thought not.

Don’t even get me started on the "a luxury tax on self-defense," quote, guns and ammunition are a luxury in self defence as they are expensive. I'm expecting down votes for that last statement is nothing else

O2 brushed off outsourcing 'rumour' - but it's happening ... to THOUSANDS

I’ve never understood outsourcing/cloud computing, same basic idea, unless it’s for economies of scale.

If it’s costing company X £1000 to do a job in house but company Y come along an agree to do it for £900 for the same service, and still make a profit out of it, then company X must be doing something wrong in the first place and the managers should be fired for being incompetent. Or if company X goes with company Y and the service is worse than it was before, and not as agreed, then the managers should be fired for being incompetent and going with company Y.

A backdoor into Skype for the Feds? You're joking...

one for the fraudsters

Think about this for a second. A transaction appears on your credit card statement that you don’t recognise, so you call your bank only to be told it was authorised by PIN so you must have done it. Now you have to fight to get your money back as even though we know it’s possible to hack chip and pin all banks deny it. With this new law there must legally be a hole in all encryption methods used, the bank can’t say chip and pin can’t be hacked as legally it must have a hole in it so they must refund the transaction.

Of course this law will only apply in America and they haven’t got chip and pin yet, but if the American system legally must have holes then the whole worlds baking system is broken, unless the rest of the world cuts America off.

NASA: Our ALIEN HUNTING star-scan 'scope is KNACKERED

Honest Queston

If it can’t do anything useful anymore will it be deorbited, or do the rules on deorbiting broken/obsolete satellites only apply to others?

Don’t say it’s too far out (I don’t know how far out it is) or not causing any problems where it is, as that only applies right now why knows what will happen in the future, bit like the current space junk that didn’t need deorbiting in the past as it want causing any problems

Deep inside Intel's new ARM killer: Silvermont

Power consumption of the system?

What is the power consumption of a system using these chips and how does it compare to a similar ARM setup?

From what I can recall whenever Intel have gone on about reduced power consumption and performance per watt compared to ARM, they have compared a single CPU, conveniently leaving out the rest of the chipset, to an ARM system and not done that well either. Are Intel doing the same thing again?

Google's Schmidt calls for 'DELETE from INTERWEBS' button

Clever move by Google

I’m not surprised Google want this at all. In order for Google to make the most money out of selling the information they have it needs to be relevant.

If you went on a skiing holiday and used Google to get all the information you needed then told Google exactly what you thought about every aspect of your trip. You may think that this information would be priceless to Google as they can sell it to the advertisers of snow sports as they know everything about your likes and dislikes in snow sports. Except the information is basically worthless as your ski trip was ten years ago, and snow sports companies know that some of the information they get from Google will be like this.

The overall value of the information is lower as it may no longer be relevant, as it the ski trip. If Google got a law passed that says all information over a certain age has to be deleted, the value of the information they have on people would go up, as it is more likely to be relevant, and Google search would be in the same position it is now, as all other search providers would also have to delete old information.

Clever move by Google, make it look like they are thinking about privacy, but actually be thinking about how to get more cash for the information they already have.

Spooky action at a distance is faster than light

I thought someone had proved, using the same maths as Einstein, that it is possible to travel faster than c, it was even reported on the veritable organ of news. From what I can remember the only problem was that the energy needed to travel at c was infinite, but beyond c energy requirements became more achievable. The overall effect was that if you were slower than c you could not go above c as you would have to pass through c, same would be true if you were faster than c, you couldn’t go slower.

With this in mind why should it not be possible for entanglement states to be “transmitted” between two entangled entities faster than c, as we don’t know at what speed the transmission is to start with, so it may always be above c and have to remain so.

Einstein almost tagged dark energy in the early 1920s

Re: But what about the cat?

As the great philosophical group Squeeze once said “It’s very cool for cats”, though we have not idea with it is that is cool for cats

Astronomers find biggest black hole, 17 BILLION times the size of Sun

Re: No! Bad! BAD REG!

Swim? no think of the amoutn of beer it would hold. That would make for one hell of a party, or just pre dinner drinks if you ever go caving

America planned to NUKE THE MOON

Re: Note on Sagan

Demanding proof of negatives is actually very scientific, follow this thought experiment if you will.

I can prove the oxygen is toxic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity) and if you believe that you don’t have to prove negatives (in this case oxygen isn’t toxic) ,then you must agree that you would be better off living in an environment free of oxygen, as its toxic.

This is one of the things that annoys me about Richard Dawkins and his religion of god doesn’t exist, yes I called it a religion. If you believe god(s) exist good for you, if you believe gods(s) don’t exist good for you too. However, from a purely scientific point of view neither hypothesis, the existence or non-existence of god(s), can be proved so both are matters of personal choice, faith, or religion if you like.

Google avoids tax with ‘Double Irish Dutch Sandwich’

Here's an idea

Most of the multi-nationals that use the tax systems of the world, legally, to reduce the amount of tax they pay also do a large amount of business with national governments. So if the governments of the world wanted to do something about this they could make it part of the contract conditions that companies are not allowed to reduce tax in this way.

Sure some of them may not go for government contracts, but a lot will as they make a lot of money from them, and will it be such a loss if contracts are given to smaller companies. It’s not as if big multi-nationals have a great track record on delivering government contracts, and people will still be employed, just at smaller companies.

Texan schoolgirl expelled for refusing to wear RFID tag

With apologies to Dara O’Brian

Come on people it’s only the Bible it’s not Gospel