Posts by JeffyPoooh

HBO shocks US pay TV world: We're down with OTT. Netflix says, 'Gee'

Re: Broadcast and Comercial TV is dead

YouTube ads? What's that?

Translation: there are solutions for most of them.

City council thinks what we're all thinking: 'Comcast is terrible – and NOT welcome here'

Confused...

"...*New* England..."

Is living with Dolby Atmos worth the faff?

Re: Well it's not just the hassle and faff is it?

A&W "... tells me to turn it down :/ "

Once upon a time, I was once pulled over by a police officer from the other side of a dual carriageway, I suspect because my car had four 12-inch speakers and the stereo was turned up to 11. At my car's window (with everything off and my ears ringing), he mouthed something, and I replied "WHAT!!??" Again, his mouth moving in silence, deafened me responding "WHAT!!??". This exchange repeated several more times until he realized it was pointless and wandered off. Real life comedy.

Re: Pure H2O versus Flavoured drinks

Interesting posts.

I also have some speakers equipped with Dipole Ribbon Tweeters. Quite a few actually (a dozen perhaps?) because I went around two provinces and bought up every last one when they were on clearance sale for 75% off. They're very nice, the tweeters themselves. The speakers they came bolted to are, at best, average. But the dipole ribbon tweeters themselves are 'to die for'.

For live recording classical music and ambient 'nature sounds' pieces, these tweeters get quite a few -2 point penalties for being so distractingly good.

I have a 'St Martins in the Field' CD where there's a truck gently rumbling by, outside the church, embedded in the track. When I forget, I have to pause the CD and look outside. Crazy.

Pure H2O versus Flavoured drinks

Has the marketplace shifted from striving to achieve perfectly pure audio reproduction towards the flavour of the day?

Such home theatre systems should be judged on one criteria: start with 100 points and deduct one point each time the judge thinks "God, that's sounds awful!" and deduct TWO points each time the judge thinks "OMG! What an amazing sound system! The bass is... Oh, did I miss an important plot twist? Rewind a bit."

My silly 15-inch 200 watt RMS subwoofer rates about -158 Points due to the real world movie interruptions caused by breakable things falling off shelves in the next room, and dust raining from the ceiling.

Scientists skeptical of Lockheed Martin's truck-sized fusion reactor breakthrough boast

Re: Physics 101

AC: "fast breeder reactor has a core ~~ 1 m^3 ... ~ the power in question."

A bit disingenuous.

1) You're comparing FB core to LM entire reactor vessel (the fusion core being a plasma).

2) You've ignored the difference in the geometry of a pressure vessel (surface area vice flow thru).

3) You've inserted more than the allowed number of "~" into your argument.

Anyway, the point has been made. How do you shove 100MW of heat through the walls of a vessel. 100MW from a little box becomes a major plumbing problem. Perhaps liquid metal cooling is the way forward. Hopefully the liquid metal in question is not their vessel walls having melted. I trust they'll be thinking of this (they're clever), but I suspect that the optimum solution might settle down to a bit less than the "100MW on the back of a truck" headline.

Re: Physics 101

"What's its surface area ?"

You may assume the 1 cc object is made from carbonized coconut, and has a surface area that is vast (Wales sized) on the microscopic scale, if you think it'll help. The area at the macro scale is on the order of 6 cm^2 (if we assume a cube for simplicity).

"Thermal conductivity ?"

Feel free to browse the Periodic Table. Help yourself.

"...in a vacuum ... or liquid sodium ?"

Help yourself. Anything you want. Your goal it bring the temperature down to, heck, 4 digits would be a major accomplishment.

The point of the 1 cc Thought Experiment is to assist those with poor conceptualizing skills to catch-on to the fact that moving power as heat implies temperature. 100MW is a lot of power. Size matters. It cannot be made arbitrarily small with practical materials.

Back to the LM example, at some point in the future the Steam Turbine folks are going to knock on the reactor room door, with their 1m diameter 100MW class steam pipe in tow, and everyone will be left wondering where they're supposed to connect the 1m diameter pipe to the wee cute little 100MW reactor.

I can sense some problems with the plumbing. It's because I tend to pay attention to numbers, such as (for example) 100,000,000 joule per second.

Physics 101

100 Megawatts emitted as *heat* from a medium-sized thing. Calculate temperatures involved *at the interface* where the heat is extracted.

Yes, we know that the plasma is bloody hot; that's not the point. What temperature is required to shove 100MW though a given surface area, out where the power meets the plumbing?

By way of clarifying your thoughts, imagine 100MW being emitted as *heat* from an object with a volume of 1cc. Calculate temperature.

Even if the physics of the nuclear reactor is all good, they might well run into basic plumbing problems in moving that much power out of that small an object. That said, perhaps the world could be changed in 10MW steps instead of 100MW steps.

Auntie hires API firm to manage new online BBC Store

Canada calling. Where can I send in my License Fee?

For £150.00 per year (under Cdn$300 even now), and you give me full on-line access to all BBC TV programming in HD (as well as all BBC radio too, of course), where do I sign up? Live and Play It Again, just as if I lived down the street and had an aerial. Including Top Gear and everything. None of this 'Not Available in Your Area" crap. I'm paying, let me in.

Seriously. Please. Make it so.

Coughing for 4G, getting 2G... Networks' penny-pinching SECRETS REVEALED

Puh! You think that half-rate codecs are bad?

Rogers in Canada, at come cell sites in rural Nova Scotia, has 3G towers connected to the Internet with what appears to be a dial-up connection. Five bars of lovely 3G signal. Excruciatingly slow connection to the world. I suspect the tower is wired to the world with copper phone lines for the audio, and (being too far for ADSL) dial-up data.

I've seen it in enough different locations at enough different times to support my conclusions. Perhaps there's another explanation, but I can't think of it.

Apple hit by INSIDER LEAK: New iPad Mini 3, iPad Air 2 blabbed

"...*the* [?] Apple employee who made this particular gaff..."

"the" ? Do you think that's how it works in large corporations?

Usually there would be about 50 different people involved in preparing, reviewing, approving, formatting, publishing, reviewing, authorizing, reformatting, updating, reviewing, planning, supervising, approving, scanning, approving, reformatting, approving, scheduling, authorizing, and finally uploading - exactly as was planned, scheduled, reviewed, approved and authorized.

Re: I don't get the fuss

"I hate people shoulder-surfing when I unlock my iPad."

Shoulder? With the larger devices, your 7-8-5--2 swipe unlock code can be easily recognized from low Earth orbit.

Something ate Google's 8.8.8.8 at about eight in Asia's evening

Re: Bah Humbug

"OpenDNS is getting soooo sloooow."

An automated system should self learn and automatically push slow DNS servers down the list. This would eventually balance the load.

2014. Geesh.

Re: Yeah...

Same thing with NTP. Why do I need to try this one and try that one and try another one until it finally gets a response. Happens sometimes.

A tiny tweak to the code and let the code go up and down the list of NTP servers until it gets a response. Send out the initial pings to several NTP servers in parallel so that the human isn't kept waiting.

Each NTP server should host a list of other NTP servers it considers reliable. Let them score each other. Ranked and voted. So even the list of NTP servers is automatically maintained.

2014 folks.

Re: Yeah...

"...I'm actually a little curious as to why someone would have only one entry for DNS resolution."

I'm still wondering why, in the year 2014, somebody hasn't automated exactly what you suggest and more. Having a billion+ people all still fiddling with their DNS settings seems a bit unnecessary in this day and age. It would only take about 100 lines of code and multiple online repositories (perhaps another small section within the DNS themselves) to precisely automate it to be optimized. Self learning, etc. Default On, untick if you want manual control.

IT folks sometimes have a blind spot on such things. They love to fiddle and don't even notice the hours slipping away. I prefer if someone code it up once, so everyone else can get back to watching cat videos.

Re: Why are we limited to just two?

A C.A. wrote "...thinks he's an admin..."

We muddle through... Our home network is fiber optic 175 Mbps. Three wifi routers filling the 2.4GHz band, two more on 5 GHz. A half-dozen 24-port Gb switches (many spare ports to be honest) wired with Cat 6 STP. Eight desktops. Nine laptops. Half dozen game consoles. Dozen and dozens of gadgets, endless tablets and phones, two Apple TV, two WD TVs, Chromecast, you name it. When I run Fing, I have to scroll. Per network.

So at home, yes I am the one and only admin. Uptime is enviable. Still learning all the boring, tedious, mind numbing, repetitive settings ("admin" slog) and wondering why the coder drones at MS et al still miss some blindingly obvious things. Like improving DNS.

My day job is in another tech field. More interesting by my standards. If I ever need someone to supervise the low level formatting of a multi-TB drive, I'll contact you.

Thanks.

Re: Why are we limited to just two?

My recollection was off. It was all the various routers that have two DNS slots. And the growing Internet of Things, who knows where their DNS settings are even located. Thank you for the corrections.

I still think that there is room for improvement. What you wise and experienced network experts so carefully tweak, clearly true in this DNS area, you could be replaced by about 100 lines of code and some online meta-ness. Maybe an Autopopulate button linked to a reliable online reference. And a default list to bootstrap. Maybe DNS majority voting.

It's 2014, it should "just work". Why do we even need to notice when a DNS server crashes. With a couple of RFCs, it'd be invisible. Even for Grandma.

Why are we limited to just two?

Talking to you Microsoft et al.

Why not allow a list of eight or ten or ... ? At first use, and periodically thereafter, have the client run a wee contest to rank the list. Any hiccup outside the norm, immediately send out another request to an alternate DNS. Why do the clients sit there waiting? It's 2014 already. Daft!!

There should be meta-DNS lists to provide an initial sorted list.

Somebody needs to RFC this already. Not me, cause I know nothing about this topic.

Jaguar Sportbrake: The chicken tikka masala of van-sized posh cars

"...technology solves the problem of length..."

Must. Not. Take. This. Out. Of. Context...

US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson: US is losing science race

Re: who?

"...an hour-long science show in the US?!"

PBS.

More generally, on North American satellite or digital Cable TV, waaaasy up into the 4-digit channel numbers, there's actually some high brow programming. Problem is, you have to be in the $100/month cost area before such channels come into view.

"There's nothing on TV worth watching", means " I choose not to pay $1200+ per year for access to high quality TV channels."

"...Carl Sagan's former student..."

They reportedly met, but was NdGT actually CS's "student"?

SHATTERED: Apple's jilted glass supplier to shut down sapphire ops

Re: Shock news. Startup pins whole business plan on single big order and gets screwed.

Perhaps GT could prove that they clicked through the "I Agree" button while much of the contract wasn't visible on their iPhone 4's smaller screen.

White LED lies: It's great, but Nobel physics prize-winning great?

"Our energy consumption is not going to fall..."

I don't think that tablets and smartphones are even worth mentioning. With USB power, they'd peak at about 10 watts (5v x 2A max), and the actual average would be much less than that. Consider also that they spend much of their duty cycle on standby - best measured in milliwatts. If you own a cat, then it is almost certainly a larger heat source than your tablet.

The EnergyStar / EnerGuide lables tell the story. Year after year, the latest apppliances and TVs are off the low end of the scale as compares to the min-max range set by the previous year's models. Our new 50-inch TVs are anticipated to require just $14 worth of power per year.

My ongoing attempt to heat my house using consumer electronics is becoming more difficult with each appliance upgrade. I have achieved an annual baseload that is several times the winter hump for electric heating.

LED Lighting: RGB vs UV/Blue + White/Yellow Phosphor

"...enables blue LEDs to be produced, and once you've got those to add to red and green ones, white light is possible and the LED light bulb could become reality."

Is the above extract correct?

Although it is certainly possible to purchase an RGB LED, such RGB LED light bulbs or similar RGB LED lighting strips seem to be more commonly sold as a accent lighting or novelty items. Based on what I've seen, most (virtually all?) LED lighting is based on LEDs using UV or Blue plus White or Yellow phosphor. Available as Warm or Cool coloured white light.

Am I correct on this point?

OMG, we're gonna be invaded by NEXUS 6 replicants – no, wait. It's just a rumored phablet

Re: CPU to be an Snapdragon 805, really? @ Jedibeeftrix

PG "...64 bit processor ... does not mean that it is a good idea at the moment."

At the moment? How about in 2 or 3 years? Most of these phones will still exist then, although perhaps with a different owner.

Oftentimes, the correct posture for moving forward is to be leaning forward a bit.

Reminds me of the Ford Mustang "5.0" with the 4.9L engine

Nexus 5.9 anyone?

Intel 'underestimates error bounds by 1.3 QUINTILLION'

Missed opportunity

We should've gone with π = 3.2 back when we had the chance.

SPLITTERS! Symantec cleft in twain

I hope it hurts...

Idiots.

First gigabit-over-COPPER chipset lands

Re: Wrong solution?

FTTH is a completely solved problem. Bell Aliant (eastern Canada) is doing it. Not Gb, but 175 Mbps in my case.

They outsource running the fibre to the curb. Later, a technician shows up to run the fibre from the pole to the side of the house; this is only about an hour's work. The cable was precut and terminated back at headquarters, length presumably based on something like Google Maps. Another technician shows up to drill a wee hole in the wall, and pokes the fiber inside. Indoors there's three boxes to screw to the wall. He's gone in about two hours, but they might need all day in the worst case where they're doing a complete TV installation. The telephone/ISP company can now offer 'Cable TV' (by fiber) a new market that probably pays for the whole thing.

The fibers can reach a reported 40km, and each fiber can feed 16 homes.

The delta between FTTC and FTTH is about an hour's work (the tech stringing the fiber down the driveway). Maybe two. The rest is common to both approaches.

There will be more difficult circumstances, where the only wires into an apartment building are buried below a national monument and can NEVER be changed. You have my sympathy.

LTE's backers vow to KILL OFF WI-FI and BLUETOOTH

As long as it all runs on my 3D Printed Software Defined Radio

Just as with God's Algorithm for Rubik's Cube, there is going to be a family of waveforms that will be mathematically proven to be the ultimate-ultimate; with not one iota of room for any further improvement.

And then somebody else will invent something new like OAM modulation, and off we go again.

Strange tale of an angry bean counter, Comcast and a shock 'firing'

Re: Just for the record...

"Comcast does provide telco services ... but ... isn't a telco."

Okay.

We should adopt the El Reg's policy as in "Maker of Printer Ink HP...", or "Retiree's Funding Vehicle General Motors".

PEAK APPLE: iOS 8 SHUNNED by refusenik fanbois

Re: 6 GB free

BW suggested: "...they can connect their iPhone to a computer running iTunes..."

Yes, but the significant downside of your otherwise helpful suggestion is that you'd need a computer running iTunes (a horrifying prospect in itself).

Another issue is connecting one's iPhone to a computer running iTunes. Sixteen hours later it will have automatically "Sync'ed" one's files and photos into a nonsensical disaster area.

I'm scared that it might cause my iPhone 4S to bend.

One can't be too careful...

How much is Microsoft earning from its Android taxes again?

Re: I do wonder

@AndyS asked: "@TheVogon: Why are you replying to a comment below yours?"

Because there's a discontinuity in the Space-Time Continuum.

Will we ever can the spam monster?

Re: Email spam? What's that?

JP: "I send an email ... Gmail silently drops it as spam."

That's why I didn't write: "Gmail's filters are perfect..."

Reading comprehension is a valuable skill.

Email spam? What's that?

Gmail's filters are not perfect, but they are very close to perfect.

Email spam is a complete non-issue for me; due to Gmail.

If you're suffering, then now you know what to do.

MAC BOTNET uses REDDIT comments for directions

Dialog boxes as "Security" (theatre?)

What if the baddies spell 'Install' as "Cancel", and spell 'Cancel' as "Install"?

No matter what the OS tries to do, there's got to be a thousand ways to make even the most informed user click the 'wrong' button. Overlays, offset pointers, transparent buttons, zillions more...

Personally, I typically close the entire window or app. And I pray (not really) that the baddies didn't spell 'Install' as "X".

Be nice to the public, PC Plod. Especially if you're trying to stop terrorists

"...a mark of mental health..."

Many (all?) debaters on this topic fail to consider the unfortunate fact that a given person could be perfectly sane, right up until the day when they're not. Or perhaps more commonly, they start out perfectly sane, but then follow a long slow trajectory towards madness (such slow downward spirals can be mistaken for the widespread irritability of late middle age).

So all this chatter about "preventing lunatics from obtaining guns" fails to address the other case:

People already with guns waking up crazy.

This point is a vast chasm of missingness from the debate. I can't offer easy solutions, but I do suggest that this point at least be added to the agenda.

At the very least, it'll be entertaining to see the reaction of those whose future sanity is being questioined.

Thing is, it applies to a gun-carrying police too. Do they have a morning madness test before allowing the up-to-then sane officer sign out his machine gun for the day?

Why US Feds and g-men kick up a stink about a growing smartphone encryption trend

Code Space

If the vast unbreakable encryption key is protected behind a 4-digit PIN (or worse, behind one of about a couple dozen common swipe-PINs, such as 7852), would this security concept still work if it was extended by one additional step so that the PIN was in turn conveniently protected behind a "Press Any Key To Display PIN" dialog?

Hmmmm...?

Top 10 SSDs: Price, performance and capacity

Interesting experiment on SSD life

http://techreport.com/review/27062/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-only-two-remain-after-1-5pb

Interesting tidbit: "The Intel 335 Series is designed to check out voluntarily after a predetermined number of writes. That drive dutifully bricked itself after 750TB, even though its flash was mostly intact at the time."

MX100 256GB "Price £85"

£85 ...which is apparently exactly equal to $116 Canadian dollars, ...shipped. :-)

I installed an MX100 256GB SSD into a lovely 2nd-hand Lenovo T510 that I bought off eBay. A really nice result; satisfyingly snappy.

So long Lotus 1-2-3: IBM ceases support after over 30 years of code

Re: Fanboy wars

OMG - scrolling a bit further down the comments, I can see that the 30-year-old fanboy wars are still going. LOL.

Fanboy wars

I can recall some arguments (fanboy wars) about the various spreadsheet programs.

Apple tool: Buying an iPhone in a carpark? Find out if it's STOLEN

Re: Remote IMEI check

I've gotten PayPal-enforced refunds of products not as described bought through eBay.

I'm out the cost of return shipping, but the refund otherwise was 100% including the original delivery shipping fee.

Re: if your worried...

If my worried? What's my worried?

I'll show you the D next week – billionaire space baron Elon Musk

D = Dilithium

You know it's true.

90% ?

(Ring-Ring)

Hello?

Hi Gramps! Yeah? Yeah?

How far did you get this time?

Where? Oh my, that's bad.

What did the police say?

Wow...

Oh my gawd.

Okay.

Good luck.

Bye.

"...and long-range ultrasonics."

Unless the ultrasonic waveform includes some form of CDMA, because it is essentially a single channel that everyone would share, it simply will not scale.

Short range sensors for parking work, because they're short range.

Also, it's not clear that barking out high power ultrasonics is something that should be permitted. All kinds of bad things might happen. There should be an environmental impact study on this.

POISON PI sniffs WiFi from your mail room, goes on rampage

Re: Not likely to succeed

"Most banks and other interesting targets..."

...do not run their IT networks on Wifi. Ever. Never ever.

Microsoft's nightmare DEEPENS: Windows 8 market share falling fast

Re: A suggestion for MS

"...shoot Windows 10 straight in the head."

Not if this happens:

1) Windows 10 is actually attractive, with the stupidity surgically removed.

2) Windows 10 works well with the hardware from the Win 7 era (2010 +/-).

3) They offer a reasonably price upgrade (correct answer is $60).

As of right now, our nice 2nd hand gaming PC is running Ubuntu. So how is their clever (not) marketing scheme working out for them so far?