Posts by JeffyPoooh

Beat this, cloud giants! Musk rocket flings 1TB hard drive into SPAAACE

Complication...

"...sub-one-metre dish needed to pick up the Cascade (Ka band) signal..."

That'll need aiming. At a fast moving (LEO) target. Annoying.

500 MEELLION PCs still run Windows XP. How did we get here?

Somebody oughtta...

How about we put all the boring/tedious security wheeze into a wee feisty little box, with two Ethernet sockets: one dirty one for the Interweb and one sanitized one for your PC? Pay some boring/tedious security-wheeze drones to keep that wee feisty little box up-to-date. Obviously the https client and the like would have to be moved to the wee feisty little box (*our* man in the middle).

You'd probably want to glue-shut the USB ports and do something about the optical drives.

Microsoft Surface 2 fondleslabs finally get off ground with airline order

Re: ve have many vays of kontrolling you

"...IT'S no fun when a plane is falling through the sky, YOU'RE running through your emergency procedure..."

Electronic version can be better faster and cheaper. They can tick-off things as they go. They can defer items for later, and be reminded. A vast improvement.

Just not sure about MS Windows. Their management, designers and coders are the sharpest knives in the drawer lately.

Re: product usage rights

M_P666: "I think you will find windows in a LOT of critical environments - Warships, ..."

You mean Windows-for-Warships? Hardly a good counter-example to prove how reliable Windows can be in a critical environment. It actually proves the opposite point. The first UK-built Windows boat experienced a complete PC shut-down within minutes upon entering its very first sea trial exercise. It took them 20 minutes to turn it back on again. Sitting duck. FAIL.

EU move to standardise phone chargers is bad news for Apple

SImple to obey while scuppering...

Future Apple Manual: Under the removable cover (17) is a hidden micro-USB socket that can used for charging, thus meeting EU regulations. However the charging current into this socket is limited by design to 500mA and it would require 11 hours to fully recharge. We therefore recommend leaving this little, easy-to-misplace, intentionally-awkwardly-placed cover in place and just using the goldarn Lightning connector. Nah nah nah.

IPCC: Yes, humans are definitely behind all this global warming we aren't having

What's wrong with the IPCC model:

...and they fail to include macro biological responses in the feedback. We can't blame them because they're unpredictable.

Re: Funnily enough

BBC's "...anti-capitalist policies."

Yes, I heard about that on one of the BBC Business shows. Just after the stock market report, and just before Top Gear came on. Bloody trade unionists.

Re: Let's decide.

@ Pete 2

You Climate Skeptic. SKEPTIC! SKEPTIC! SKEPTIC! Burn him! Burn Him! BURN HIM!

;-)

Yes, I've noticed that the Concerned Climate Scientists and their followers have adopted the vocabulary and techniques of religious persuasion.

Do ye have faith? Or are ye a skeptic?

Their religious approach to a scientific debate is dripping with so much religion/science irony that the irony itself may raise sea level by another eight feet.

Re: Such a waste of time and paper.

"...they plan on having large families because lots of their children will die before they reach 5 years old and they need some surviving children..."

Wow. I'm impressed. Well done. That counter-intuitive relation - where high infant mortality CAUSES over-compensation and therefore results in very high population growth - is essentially unknown. Even though it's been staring us in the face for centuries.

Healthy and wealthy: you want two kids, you have two babies, you end up with two kids.

High Infant Mortality: you want two kids, you have eight babies* but half +/- die, you end up with four +/- kids.

* The uncertainty means they need to aim high to reduce risk of no kids.

With certainty of survival, parents can play it closer to the bare minimum of replacement.

Obviously this relationship falls apart if the infant mortality rate goes extremely high.

Re: Such a waste of time and paper.

Latest predictions put the peak of human population at about 11 billion, or perhaps just 8.7 billion with what is probably a better model. Hardly frightening.

Like the problem of traditional air pollution (CO, HC, NOx) from modern cars in the Western world, the human population explosion is pretty much sorted.

Relax. Have some cake.

Thorium and inefficient solar power? That's good enough for me

Re: Slightly fruity comparison

"...the radioactive release from Fukushima is, per hour, half that from the hourly consumption of bananas around the world. ..."

I take issue with the wording of the banana-half of this comparison. Properly parsed, it implies a 'release' of radioactivity from the 'consumption' of bananas.

BlackBerry Black Friday: $1bn loss as warehouses bulge with hated Z10s

Re: Z10 Owner, And The Only One By The Looks Of It

Not even via wifi?

I know iPhones call home to momma, because with unreliable connections they will hang up with their Apple.com left dangling.

I guess I'd better keep my PlayBook up to date in case they pull the plug at BB's GCHQ.

$965M three months 12,000 staff

Now I know that they'll have other expenses than just staff payroll, like power and water bills. But the raw numbers are $26,000 per staff per month. Since that makes little sense, where exactly did the money go?

LAST CHANCE to get yer cut-price Iridium satellite comms unit

Cheap as chips

Wow. Last I checked such gadgets were $1000+.

Now under 200 quid.

Nice.

There's ONE country that really likes the iPhone 5c as well as the 5s

Re: Foolish figures

"...without about 65 million people."

Without? OMG! Where'd they all go?

:-)

Not fair

Of course the UK will win any Frugality Contest.

You've got wee-feisty, tighter-than-a-tight-thingy, Scotland.

T-Mobile pulls BlackBerry products from US retail stores

Re: Stock valuation floor.

If I recall correctly, it was K-Mart where the stock price tanked towards zero. Somebody clever started buying like crazy because K-Mart's real estate holdings and other assets were worth several times the Market Cap, even accounting for taste... ...I mean liabilities. Blackberry should be worth something, even as a lifeless carcass.

Of course, I wonder how come there are hundreds of little companies making hundreds of models of mobile phones? It shouldn't be lethal to be in 5th (?) place, amongst dozens of players.

Apple Maps directs drivers INTO path of ONCOMING PLANES

My car's GPS...

It says, "TURN RIGHT..."

So I do, and immediately crash through the flimsy guard rail and over the cliff.

As I'm falling, it continues, "...IN TWO HUNDRED METERS."

Chaos Computer Club: iPhone 5S finger-sniffer COMPROMISED

Re: OMG

Simple solution, don't use your finger. You leave your fingerprints all over the place.

Use... ...another appendage. One less likely to leave appendage-prints all over the place.

"Hey, why do you keep sticking you iPhone down the front of your trousers?"

Ellison ditches own cloud keynote for billionaires' America's Cup boat race

Re: BREAKING NEWS - This just in...

OMG. The chaos continues!

With the crew's view blocked by the tangled mess of advertising banners, they become utterly lost... ...in the cloud.

Oh the Humanity!

Re: BREAKING NEWS - This just in...

More details on this incident are still coming in...

The unwanted 'Ask Toolbar' was attached to the Oracle boat with a long thin rope. The rope was long enough that the impact of the Ask Toolbar was delayed for ten minutes. This unethical trick made detection of the giant 'Ask Toolbar' by the Oracle boat crew much more difficult. They were well into the race before they noticed something wrong.

The Oracle boat was dragged off course by the hidden underwater giant 'Ask Toolbar' attached to the underside of the boat. The boat crashed off course and got tangled up in some advertising banners lining the course.

It's mayhem.

BREAKING NEWS - This just in...

The Oracle America's Cup boat was sabotaged. Somebody with no ethics and a weak moral code sneakily attached a huge 'Ask Toolbar' to the underbelly of the boat; it skewed the steering and impacted performance.

Dodgy 'iMessage for Android' app deep-sixed by Google

It's so confusing...

BFM (Blackberry-Fairfax Messaging) on iOS and Android, eventually, maybe. iMassaging (LOL) on Android, or maybe not. Dogs and cats sleeping together...

My head is spinning.

Great Fall of China: iPhone 5C sales lag as blinged-up 5S sells out

Re: Told ya so...

It's amazing that, with all the Apple executives flying back and forth to Asia, they would have noticed this upmarket-reaching characteristic of the admittedly-stereotypical (but ~75% true) consumer in Asia.

If Apollo 13 was a "successful failure" then this marketing boondoggle is a "failed success".

Told ya so...

S = Social

C = Cheap

I supposed it's not a bad problem to have, as problems go.

'Occupy' affiliate claims Intel bakes SECRET 3G radio into vPro CPUs

Detecting mobile transmissions

The original GSM TDMA signal was very easy to detect. Just place any cheap clock-radio near the mobile device in question and you'd hear the transmitted signals via the clock-radio speaker: "Dah-da, dah-da, dah-da, dah-da...." and then your mobile would start to ring. It was easy to answer on the first ring, since you had about two seconds advanced notice via the clock-radio.

The same GSM "dah-da..." noise is a regular feature of BBC WS news interviews from Africa; when the signal from the old GSM mobile in someone's pocket starts to get into the reporter's, sorry - correspondent's, audio recorder.

The 3G signal is much stealthier. I've never actually heard it. Too broadband I suspect.

Boffins debate killing leap seconds to help sysadmins

Same logic - eliminate Daylight 'Savings' (sic) Time

Seriously, eliminate DST puhleeze.

Suggestion, how about we adjust the lines of longitude to match the atomic clocks AND the sky? Easy solution I think.

BlackBerry BLOODBATH! Company warns of nearly $1bn quarterly loss

Ouch.

Another Canadian success story.

First look: Apple iPhone 5S and 5C

Re: Camera issues

˙ʇɐɥʇ ɥʇıʍ ɯǝןqoɹd ɐ pɐɥ ɹǝʌǝu ǝʌ,ı ˙ʇnoqɐ uo buıob ǝɹ,noʎ ʇɐɥʍ ɐǝpı ou ǝʌɐɥ ı

Re: Whatever.

Telephone *VOICE* calls?

I was wondering what that green telephone handset app icon thingy was for...

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

"Much more plausible for life to originate in space..."

Shortest possible rebuttal: How much evidence of Alien life forms wafting down from ...S-P-A-C-E... was found amongst the 843lbs of rocks and dust that were brought back by Neil and Buzz and the others?

Boffins: Earth will be habitable for only 1.75 BEEELLION more years

Re: Gliese 581d, getting there

"Sending ~1000 people with sufficient genetic diversity would work."

We send the Hair Dressers and the Telephone Sanitizers - right?

Cisco email accidentally sent to 1000s of employees causes message list MAYHEM

Re: size

Me too. Top posters are idiots.

> I make that 94Mb per email.

I blame the top-posters.

THE TRUTH about beaver arse milk in your cakes: There's nothing vanilla about vanilla

Re: This is nothing

"...an additive that I quote 'comes from the vaginal secretions of port beagle dogs'. "

What about the starboard beagle dogs?

Re: Come on

"...extract every last scent..."

I see what you did there. Good one - intentional or not.

Life … moves … in … slow … motion … for … little … critters … like … flies

Life is logarithmic

Life is logarithmic; it's half-over by age ten.

Massively leaked iFail 5S POUNDS pundits, EXCITES chavs

Re: Count the fanbois

Re: iPhones assumed to be more expensive

Here in the cold colonies, I hadn't really noticed that the Apple iPhones were significantly more expensive than the compatible top-end competitors. They're all about $250 when bought under a two-year contract. You choose whatever ecosystem you want, the phones are all about the same price.

Since its a bit utterly pointless to have a smartphone without a generous (e.g. 6GB/month) data plan, and the monthly fee doesn't change much with or without a brand new subsidized phone every two years, your point about how "expensive" iPhones are is not really supported by the facts (although YMMV).

Granted: the guys at work with Android phones generally take the tight Scottish approach. They typically have a 100MB (0.1GB LOL!!) per month data plan. So they have a nice Android phone (e.g. a Nexus 4 for - again - $250, Contract Free), but then they can't really use it due to their tight fisted approach. They're so hardware centric and tight, they forgot that there's a larger purpose (actually using it in locations other than wifi hotspots).

In summary: The total cost for a smartphone (one that is useful and actually connected to the 'net via a generous and honestly useful data plan) is dominated by the monthly fee (~$50). The hardware is effectively about $10 per month (pay $250 every two years) for your choice of phone. Within this environment, the cost of the various desirable phones are all about the same, and relatively negligible.

Hmmm... Does this explain why so many of the unwashed masses cluster around wifi hotspots like bugs around a light? Perhaps if they didn't spend $8 a day on mocha-latte, then they could afford an actual mobile data plan.

Sorry if this is a bit complicated.

PS: Not a fanboi. We have many Apple, Android, and Blackberry gadgets.

Re: What a pile of immature excrement.

"I liked because it was angry. Most amusing. ..."

Yes, exactly. El Reg are the 'Northern Rage Comics' of the Tech News world.

It's comedy.

It's official: The iPhone 5S bling-mobe IS chavvy. OR, Burberry isn't

Apple misses the mark...

The 5C goes against all that is Asian.

Marketing FAILS:

1) "C" as in 'CHEAP' - a branding that might work in Scotland

2) Everyone knows it's cheaper than the 5S (S = 'SOCIAL')

3) They're brightly coloured to highlight your life's failures

4) All iPhones are too small

The general aspiration is a huge gaudy smartphone that is obviously expensive. Not one that is small, and obviously branded as the "I'm a failure" cheaper version.

On my last visit to Hong Kong, I saw hundreds of expensive supercars, including Porsche 911 models. But I don't recall seeing any Porsche ("I can't afford a 911") Boxsters. This verified Clarkson's theory.

Windows 8.1: Microsoft's reluctant upgrade has a split-screen personality

Jeremy Clarkson had a comment applicable to Windows 8.n

"Boring. Boring. Boring. Tedious. Boring. ..."

Fingers crossed! Half a trillion quid in public cash entrusted to ageing gov IT

Re: Legacy is good for serious work

Running original software on (carefully-proven) emulators is the best initial step for major hardware upgrade cycles. Your example London bank has very clever IT managers.

On the other (tree stump) end of the intellectual spectrum is found the naïve approach of switching over to SAP.

Fancy a new iPhone 5C or 5S? READ THIS or you may not get 4G data

Re: OK not a radio engineer

"...based upon geographical location..."

My iPhone 4S spent a month in Asia. When I landed back in North America, it steadfastly refused to find the Rogers network. I hard reset it, and it still couldn't find the network. It was however looking for location using (probably) GPS.

It wasn't having much luck with the GPS for the simple reason that I WAS DEEP INSIDE THE MADE-OF-METAL TERMINAL BUILDING.

Point being, geographical location is often unknown (by the phone) in the precise location where you'd need it most (having just changed continents, thus 99.99% odds of being inside an airport terminal building).

Re: SDR?

@Mage

Exactly correct. Thank you. You're my hero of the day.

Startup claims 1W wireless charging at 10 metres

Stoopid...

Why didn't they they grab a cheap and cheerful microwave oven and jigger the door interlock so that it'll transmit 600 watts on 2.4 GHz for a total cost of $50?

This is in addition to the *many* other layers of stoopidity inherent in this concept.

Re: More than 100W

No.

Apple quietly revives iPhone charging and syncing docks

"...it's not clear how that's accomplished."

Duh, it's Apple. It'll be accomplished in the most technically-complicated possible way, that excludes the aftermarket.

Something like Bluetooth 5.0+ from the phone to two tiny hidden micro speakers in the dock.

Instead of having 'ugly' holes to let the sound through.

Apple seeds Golden Master iOS 7 to devs, calls Sep 18 ship date

Thanks for the satisfactory level of detail in this report

The mainstream snooze outlets are detail free.

Torvalds shoots down call to yank 'backdoored' Intel RdRand in Linux crypto

Linux vs. Windows

"...Relying solely on the hardware random number generator which is using an implementation sealed inside a chip which is impossible to audit is a BAD idea."

MS Windows-based software would have suggested "...Relying solely on the hardware random number generator THAT is using an implementation sealed inside a chip THAT is impossible to audit is a BAD idea."

Bin half-baked Raspberry Pi hubs, says Pimoroni: Try our upper-crust kit

Speaking of half-baked USB hubs...

Back-feeding 5 volts into the Raspberry Pi via its USB port is not a feature, it's a bug.

It means that the subject USB hub has left off the special, low voltage drop, Schottky diode that should be used to allow the host to power the hub while preventing the hub from powering the host. That spot on the PCB has been jumpered.

The problem to be prevented with the diode is the situation where the host (perhaps not a Raspberry Pi, or perhaps a combination of gadgets) requires some arbitrary amount of current that's just enough to cause intermittent problems (low voltage at the host) but not enought to be the obvious cause. Recipe for frustration.

The only reason to leave off this "expensive" Schottky diode is to save a couple cents on the BOM.

I bought a USB Hub from a famous online vendor based in Hong Kong with the name starting with DX and ending with .com. It was about $8 (shipped!) and has ten (!) ports. It had the same missing diode cheapskate short-cut. I cut an internal trace in the cheap hub to isolate the power supplies. It now *requires* the included AC adapter, but at least I don't have to worry about sharing power in a manner that will not help with reliability of the Rasoberry Pi in outlying cases where the current is creeping up to the ill-defined trouble point.

Nice Raspberry Pi logo on the reviewed USB Hub though. Full credit for style.

Google Nexus 7 2013: Fondledroids, THE 7-inch slab has arrived

Re: iPad Mini 2

They're so cheap these days that you could buy one of each. Totally avoid the whole fanboi 'I-can-only-afford-to-choose-one-or-the-other' (very sad) nonsense.

Uh-oh. If you're in the UK then my assumption of inexpensive price (= UKP 140) is way off-base. Sorry.