Posts by Tromos

Adobe spies on reading habits over unencrypted web because your 'privacy is important'

A bug? In Adobe Software?

Say it's not so!

Leaked: Mobile operators' SCARE campaign against net neutrality

"...bypass the operators' traditional revenue generators..."

But they are not bypassing the newer revenue generators. These greedy bastards just want to be paid twice over.

One million people have bonked on London public transport

Re: Wrong in the first sentence, it seems

Indeed, solely based on the quoted number of bonks. However, basing it on a much more sensible figure of average daily usage, the original "much more likely" statement is quite correct.

Microsoft WINDOWS 10: Seven ATE Nine. Or Eight did really

Re: I'll keep it on the back burner until at least...

What if they go straight to service pack 2?

Apple sues Steven Lamar over Beats co-founder claims

"Beats also wants treble damages..."

Since when did Beats know anything about treble?

Microsoft on the Threshold of a new name for Windows next week

For maximum takeup...

...just call it "NOT Windows 8".

FBI boss: Apple's iPhone, iPad encryption puts people 'ABOVE THE LAW'

The pendulum has swung too far.

A natural consequence of it having being pulled up further on the other side.

Sea-Me-We 5 construction starts

Re: "Sea-Me-We"... seriously?

I'd call it anything that didn't sound like it was something to do with lovers of "watersports".

Apple is too shallow, must go deeper to beat TouchID fingerprint hack, say securo-bods

Better scanning need not cost more

No need to put the prices up. How about sacrificing a bit of that huge margin to actually make a product that better justifies the price?

Bracelet could protect user herds from lurking PREDATORS

STOP THAT!

You will

(a) drain the battery

(b) go blind

My TIGHT PANTS made my HUGE iPHONE go all BENDY!

Re: I'm going to be downvoted but ...

to me, the UK definition of pants makes sense --- whilst the US shortening of pantaloons to pants does not; any more than shortening pantograph to graph would.

Apple iPhone 6 Plus: GORGEOUS FAT pixel density - but it's WASTED

Re: doubled?

Doubled the resolution, quadrupled the number of pixels.

"And they're only £600 plus"

Seriously, is anyone going to even consider the 16 gig flavour when there is no expansion possible? It is only available as a marketing ploy to set a lower price point. Make that £700 plus.

Apple: Beats Music is safe with us. Just like your selfies in iCloud

Re: The lousy headphones!

The people at Apple probably think the headphones are quite good having put up with Apple earphones for years.

Microsoft splurges 2½ INSTAGRAMS buying Minecraft maker Mojang

For a small fraction of 2.5 gigabucks...

...they could have got the Flight Sim team back and actually produce something I might buy.

New 'Cosmos' browser surfs the net by TXT alone

Shortly to be followed by...

...file sharing using bitdrip.

iPhone 6: Advanced features? Pah! Nexus 4 had most of them in 2012

Re: nearly $1000

@AC

One too many asterisks. Anyway, why not spell out 'flying'?

Airbus developing inkjet printer for planes

If they don't use it...

...for a couple of days, they'll have to put half a dozen planes through to get the nozzles unclogged.

Whopping 10TB disks spin out of HGST – plus 3.2TB flash slabs

I can just see...

...someone rushing in and proclaiming (in a squeaky voice): "I've lost all my data!"

Everyone taking part in Patch Tuesday step forward. NOT SO FAST, Adobe!

"problems spotted during testing"

Fixed one bug, introduced two. About par for Adobe.

Don't bother with Apple's 9 Sept hype-day: Someone's GONE AND BLABBED IT ALL

Will Apple be taking their usual...

...30% cut from all NFC payments?

Broadcom's new mobe chip claims 650 Mbps

Up to

The quoting of speeds achieved just once, under ideal conditions needs to be replaced with a legally binding real world performance figure. If a device cannot consistently average the advertised speed it is then deemed faulty and the vendor is required to refund or replace. What's to stop me from claiming I have a chip that is "up to" twice as fast and only costs "from" one penny?

Intel teams up with rap chap 50 Cent on heartbeat headphones

But surely...

...Apple have the patent for (c)rap headphones.

Apple BANS 2 chemicals from iPhone, iPad final assembly line

Now, if we could only...

...get Apple lawyers to stop using oxygen.

Rosetta's comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is one FUGLY space rock

It may be a fugly rubber duck now...

...but one day it will become a beautiful rubber swan. Or possibly not.

Intel admits: Broadwell Core M chip looking a bit thin, no fans found at all

Just the job for a media centre

No CPU fan and as the power requirements are low, a laptop type brick power supply will do nicely, again with no fan and then throw in an SSD to complete the no moving parts silent line-up.

Anonymous wifi the latest casualty of Russia net neurosis

Not just Russia

Happens a lot here too. Even my local(ish) ASDA wants a mobe number before condescending to let you attempt to use their Wi-Fi whose signal is only reliable if stood on top of one of the self-checkout machines.

IBM boffins stuff 16 million-neuron chips into binary 'frog' brain

The first thing to do...

...is train it to say "Hello, world."

Ad biz now has one less excuse to sponsor freetards and filth

Sounds like I now need an ad blocker detector blocker...

Windows Registry-infecting malware has no files, survives reboots

Re: This is silly.( @Tony Paulazzo)

No, it was Windows 8 that was the end of Windows as we know it.

EE rolls out London bus pay-by-bonk app – only fandoids need apply

Pointless

The only people who would find it more convenient to use this rather than an Oyster card are those that go around with phone permanently in hand. Generally, those irritating types that spend the entire journey shouting "I'm on the bus" and other inanities down it, or those that tap away at some game ensuring a constant stream of tinny beeps to fray the nerves of nearby passengers.

Anyone who would find using a phone more convenient (and this would work for iPhone users too) could always glue an oyster card to the back of it.

Australia floats website blocks and ISP liability to stop copyright thieves

Websites that facilitate copyright infringement

aka Search engines

Help yourself to anyone's photos FOR FREE, suggests UK.gov

So it's OK to copy a series of photographs...

...let's say, around 25 a second?

Apple fanbois SCREAM as update BRICKS their Macbook Airs

Oh goody

Another class action suit coming up to keep the Apple Lawyers happy.

Attackers raid SWISS BANKS with DNS and malware bombs

My accounts should be safe...

...I only ever buy Austrian Emmental, never Swiss.

iPad? More like iFAD: We reveal why Apple fell into IBM's arms

Re: Do Apple know...........?

In my day it was always thought to be "It's Being Mended".

Are you broke? Good with electronics? Build a better AC/DC box, get back in black with $1m

Re: Single phase 240V AC @ 60 HZ?

"I guess output amperage isn't important?"

Guess again. The article stated that the inverter has to be able to handle loads of 2kVA. Anyone with sufficient electronics savvy to go in for this should be able to work out the A given the V.

UK mobile sales in the toilet: Down by FIVE MILLION this year

Would you get a new camera every year?

Why would things be much different just because it has a phone attached to it?

And now for someone completely brilliant: Stephen Hawking to join Monty Python on stage

Re: Never mind that, my lad.

And even after observing it, Heisenberg wasn't sure.

'World’s dumbest' suspect collared in Facebook sting

Fancy wasting time on facebook...

...when he could have been on eBay flogging off some household goods.

Apple wins patent to pump ads to your iDevice while you're watching TV

Like the ice pick...

...that the serial killer is using? Click here to add to basket.

David Cameron wants mobe network roaming INSIDE the UK

Name 'em and shame 'em

Why not just publish monthly charts of national and regional coverage and let market competition sort the problem out? Customers who spend virtually all their time in, say, the south-west don't really care about coverage elsewhere and will be looking at the number one or two for their area. Those who travel further afield may want the national chart topper. It will encourage the big firms to get a good place in the national chart by filling the holes in their coverage while leaving the smaller ones a chance to shine by specialising in a region or two.

Traffic lights, fridges and how they've all got it in for us

I want my breakfast...

...but I've forgotten the password for the toaster!

Hackers steal trade secrets from major US hedge firm

Bring me...a shrubbery

Hedge firm attackers unknown? Obviously the knights who say 'ni'.

YouView loses YourView trademark fight, may have to pick new name

An opportunity to rebrand

How about 'YourTube'? I can't see any problems with that.

Stephen Fry MADNESS: 'New domain names GENERATE NEW IP NUMBERS'

Re: Man passing himself of as being knowledgeable in the field makes fundamental mistake

...passing himself OFF...

Fixed your fix for you.

Remember Control Data? The Living Computer Museum wants YOU

Re: Port That Job!

Quite right about the A and X registers. There were indeed also B registers of which B0 was actually a set of connections soldered to chassis earth! B0 gave a handy constant of zero and could not be changed. By convention B1 had the value 1, but this was not fixed by the hardware. Woe betide the programmer who forgot to kick off with a SB1 1 instruction.

There was a stack, but not in the conventional sense. It was an instruction stack and if you could code your loops so that they fitted in the stack, they ran a lot faster as no instruction fetches from memory were necessary. The MNF Fortran compiler mentioned earlier did a fair job, but it was the FTN compiler at its higher optimisation levels that did the best job of getting those inner loops slimmed down and in the stack. Took a while longer to compile, but those extra seconds could shave hours off a complex scientific task.

The other interesting part of the architecture was the peripheral processors. The CPU was completely incapable of any I/O, so this was down to the PPs. They had parallel access to the central memory, so a program requiring I/O would write a request to a certain memory location which was monitored by the PPs and they would then perform the required I/O to a central memory buffer pointed to by the request. The program could carry on running while waiting for the request, or could relinquish control to another task and be recalled after completion.

60-bit word lengths

15 or 30 bit instructions packed into these words, or 10 characters of 6 bits apiece. The peripheral processors used 12-bit words and had all of 4k of these to perform their tasks. Octal was the order of the day, hexadecimal has no place in a 6-12-15-30-60 bit world. And not forgetting 18-bit addresses of course.

Unrealistic job requirements

I can only really comment on the Control Data aspect of the job requirements but I think I can safely say that anyone who had knowledge of both central and peripheral processor assembly languages and architectures some 40-odd years ago will definitely not be looking for a museum job. There may be a handful prepared to do some part-time work, but if they are up to the CDC requirements, they will be seriously lacking in IBM/DEC/etc. To a CDC systems man (or even the extremely rare woman), the architectures and languages on these other systems are arcane and illogical and to be kept at bargepole distance. I'm sure the converse is also true.

What the job needs (if the budget will stretch to it) is a keen but inexperienced person and half a dozen part-time consultants to steer him/her in the right direction.

GAME ON: Top 10 tellies for a World Cup kicking

Re: Wot no 3D?

I suspect that 3D capabilities are there in all of the televisions covered (possibly not the projector). It has just become ubiquitous and is no longer a major selling point so it gets glossed over.