* Posts by James Micallef

2173 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jul 2007

Are you experienced? The Doctor Who assistants that SUFFERED the most

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: Death?

Yes, I would think that losing life or limb and / or ending up stuck somewhere completely different is pain on a different order of magnitude to simply meeting a villain. One is danger (ie potential harm), the other is real actualised harm

Boffins agree: Yes we have had an atmospheric warming pause

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Re: OMG Zombie keeps rising

@btrower

"For the record, I am pro-nuclear, so people like you and I could work for the same thing. "

For the record, I support nuclear energy for the main reasons of energy independance / sustainability. Greenhouse emissions are a secondary concern to me, but it's also good to have support on nuclear from people for whom greenhouse emissions are a primary concern. From what I can understand in your posts our points of divergence are on whether human-made climate change is happening. On my part, I believe it is happening but it's not such a big deal as made out to be.

And energy supply trumps everything else. You're perfectly right that with enough energy, CO2 emissions are moot as we can capture them, but of course that energy needs to come from non-CO2 sources otherwise it becomes an exercise in chasing ones own tail.

Fusion is of course the holy grail, however I suspect that even in best case scenarios like the Lockheed skunkworks and 'shoelace antenna thingy' from another el reg article today, that full commercial availability is still many years away and cost could still be an issue, so better to build a few fission reactors now to tide us over the 20-50-odd years that always seem to be seperating us from fission

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: OMG Zombie keeps rising @ btrower

"Re: "97% of working scientists genuinely believe" in AGW

How can someone be both scientifically literate AND believe that?"

Erm, it's pretty basic chemistry and physics. Burning X tons of carbon-based fuel per year for Y years results in Z additional tons of CO2 in the atmosphere than otherwise would have been. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, this is known, well-understood and based on established tries-and-tested physics. I think that 100% of chemists and physicists would agree with the above, not 97%.

It's true that there are lots of more complicated underlying factors that make climate models such complex beasts but the bottom line is the earth is trapping more energy inside with extra added CO2 than without, and we put the extra added C02 in.

Now, whether all of this will lead to great catastrophe and if so what actions are necessary to prevent it... that's a whole other issue

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: OMG Zombie keeps rising

" If 97% of working scientists genuinely believe that we need stuff like 'cap and trade' and subsidized windmills because our production of CO2 is bringing on the apocalypse, then 97% of scientists should be fired."

97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening and we're the cause. It's the economists* who dreamed up cap-n-trade. It's the politicians and greenies** who dreamed up subsidised windmills. As far as I can tell the real scientists*** have recently looked at the mess that economists, politicians and greenies have made and concluded that what we need to fix all this is a substantial investment in nuclear power.

*economics is NOT a science, economists are NOT scientists

** the hardcore irrational kind

*** Hansen et al

POWER SOURCE that might END humanity's PROBLEMS: A step forward

James Micallef Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: You can buy fusion reactors...

"The trouble is that sustained fusion is extremely difficult to achieve* .... Humanity has briefly achieved artificial fusion reactions, but sadly only in H-bombs"

Thankfully, H-bombs are NOT sustained

El avión Buitre 2 rinde homenaje a nuestros amigos españoles

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: And for those of us...

Don't bother with the official translation, you can always enjoy yourself with a few simple words without needing to understand all that:

amigo

cerveza

jamon

fiesta

should cover pretty much everything you might need :)

Ten top stories from New Who

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Re: Daleks and stairs

"Real Daleks don't climb stairs: they level buildings."

Good point. However that won't work when the stairs are from floor -50 to 0 instead of 0 to 50

I want NSA chief's head on a plate for Merkelgate, storms Senator McCain

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: How on Earth did McCain choose Palin?

It's sad to see how McCain went from being a quite moderate republican to going further and further right just to nab the nomination. I'm also surprised at his tactics of moving further to the right once he got the nomination, since in effect all he had to do to gain the votes of the rabid right was point to his left and say "If you don't vote for me, that's who's getting elected". I'm sure he didn't need to point out himself that his opponent was brown and had 'Hussein' as a middle name, the right-wing talk shows did all this dirty work for him anyway.

What especially saddens me about McCain is how he switched positions to back the torture regime of Bush II, just to cover his party's back, when this is a guy who himself was tortured in Vietnam. He of all people knew that the point of torture wasn't to get information. The point of torture is torture.

Flippin' heck! Magnetic poles of Sun are gyrating: What Earth needs to know

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Re: Satellites not likely affected

"hence the concern over the effect on tech"

Oh no!! Magnetic compasses will no longer work!! Will anyone think of the children?

Brit boffin brews INSTANT HANGOVER RELIEF

James Micallef Silver badge

What the wizard said ^^^^

Alternating a glass of water between drinks is a great way to slow down onset of drunken-ness and also to avoid or at least minimise morning-after symptoms

Snowden: Hey fellow NSA worker, mind if I copy your PASSWORD?

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: I don't find this hard to believe

"being sysadmin in a large corporation, I guess many people *think* the sysadmin knows the passwords..."

Agree 100%.

But the NSA isn't just any large corporation, security is their one and only job. And screening notwithstanding, they should be working on the assumption that at least some of their staff are Chinese, Russian etc spies who got through one or more layer of security. That's why you have multiple layers / levels of security and Chinese walls.

How hard is it to make sure that all new hires / contractors know not to give their password to anyone?

NSA double-fail, they're not only illegally slurping data, they can't even protect it

Boffins build R2-WEE-2: The urine-powered robot with a human-like heart

James Micallef Silver badge

Terminator power source

Beat human up

Point Ginourmous f***-off gun at human's head

(human pisses himself)

"I need your clothes, your boots..."

Anonymous hacktivists' Million Mask March protest hits London

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Re: James Thickalot @AC 11:59

Welcome back to normality Matt :)

What I am NOT doing is throwing stuff. I am simply suggesting alternative rules for a game that is not rigged (or less rigged at least), then maybe I would be interested in playing. And it seems to me that in agreeing to the 'none of the above', that you also support changing the rules of the game. The party I do support with my vote and my money is one that explicitly campaigns on changing the rules of the political game.

I have no interest in playing a game that I know to be rigged against me (same reason I don't buy lottery tickets). Doing hard work that I know will not lead to a desired outcome is stupid. So if you want to call making public suggestions instead of directly campaigning / standing for election "lazy", please yourself, but for me, better lazy than stupid anyway.

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: @AC 11:59

"Actually the democracy part means that you can stand as a third option. No doubt your ideas will be perfect and everyone will vote for you"

The "theory of democracy" part means that you, me and anyone else can stand as a third option.

The "practice of democracy" part means that you, me and anyone else can only get elected as a third option if we are multi-millionaires willing to bankroll our own campaign, or find some multi-millionaires willing to support our campaign*. Perfect ideas don't matter if those ideas can't be heard, and the ideas can't be heard above everyone else's shouting. Not to mention that the current incumbents will lie through their teeth about their own proposals and paint us as monsters. Not to mention that why should people believe us if all the politicians they've ever known were liars?

"Then you have to implement them, and that's when reality will bite you."

In the miracle case of not only getting elected but getting enough clout and following to propose laws and have backing for them, then we have to implement them and all the special interests will come out of the woodwork pleading exceptions. More likely than not these will form a pretty good subset with the people who have financed you and are now pleading special treatment.

Thanks but no thanks, I'd much rather have the "none of the above" option, combined with a framework that allows citizens to propose / amend their own laws through referendum (as in Switzerland for example)

*Said financiers of course will more likely than not dictate or at least influence policy direction or withdraw future funding.

James Micallef Silver badge
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Re: @AC 11:59

"The skies must be falling"

Don't tell Asterix :)

James Micallef Silver badge
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Re: @AC 11:59

" I value my vote highly, and absolutely refuse to cast it for someone just because they are not someone else, or for any other reason than that they (or, at a stretch, their party) are worthy of my vote."

When will we finally get a "None of the above" that is legally enforced? ie if "None of the above" is the most popular option, fresh elections are held with new candidates (old candidates barred from standing)

Tesla shares dip as Elon Musk admits electrocar firm ran out of juice

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: @TT

Problem with Tesla Li batteries isn't so much performance, I think they've got that covered (otherwise they wouldn't offer the guarantee that they do). The problem is volume - each car needs a LOT of batteries. If you're producing cars in the thousands it's OK, but when you start to ramp up into tens of thousands and targeting hundreds of thousands, that's a fcukload of Lithium. And you're competing for it with battery requirements for laptops, tablets, smartphones, more and more and larger and larger every day.

There possibly isn't physically enough readily-available (ie mineable at a decent price) Li in the world to replace more than 50% of the global vehicle fleet* at really expensive prices. At realistic prices (even if Tesla is at the high end of the price range), the supply is necessarily constrained.

*That's an educated guess based on this: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/ . I know el Reg has a resident metals expert who maybe can comment.

The CURSE of WHO: WHY has there never been a decent videogame with the Doctor?

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Re: Oh, you youngsters

@Matt Smith - You're not fooling us with the "Matthew".

'fess up!

Furious Google techie on NSA snooping: 'F*CK THESE GUYS'

James Micallef Silver badge
Flame

Re: The real problem is the people of the US

"When questioned about the fact that stuff is illegal under US law they say US law dose not apply to non US citizens"

Putting to a side for a moment the wrinkles about NSA's jurisdiction or lack thereof over data of non-US citizens, it seems that the NSA are hoovering up all Google's data. They aren't filtering out data from US citizens and on US soil, therefore they are automatically and unequivocally breaking not only the law but the US constitutional amendment against unwarranted search and seizure.

As Google's techies point out, there already is a clear and fair legal procedure to get warrants to collect data on known and identified suspects. There is also an opaque and unfair (but at least established in law, however dodgy and potentially unconstitutional) procedure to ask Google for any part of their data while preventing Google from even mentioning that this programme exists. To go even beyond that and tap Google's interconnects is clearly illegal even under the provisions of the Patriot act and all related dictator-state legislation.

As Google's techies also point out, the chances of anyone involved in the decision-making on this (ie someone high up in the command chain who actually gave the order, not the poor sods on the front line) ever being even indicted for this, let alone arrested / prosecuted / jailed are effectively zero. Same as the CIA torture programme, government makes it's own laws, and when even that is not enough it breaks them.

You've been arrested for computer crime: Here's what happens next

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: Excellent stuff

Top read, very interesting.

One thing, if the case DOES come to court, how is the integrity of the evidence chain verified? I mean, the police will say "yeah of course, this is the data exactly s it was on the suspects' disk", but can the defendant get an independently-appointed consultant to verify (or refute) that?

Actually I guess that question holds for all investigations involving forensic evidence, not just computer-related

Drugs e-souk Silk Road back from the dead with new Dread Pirate Roberts

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Re: Obligatory

Silly FBI, don't they know that "Dread Pirate Roberts" is a title, not a person?

Japanese boffins unveil INVINCIBLE robot rock, paper, scissors 'bot

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Re: not so clever now, are we

"What happens if you grab the robot hand and fling it across the room for being a smart arse?"

"I suggest a new strategy, R2, let the wookie win"

James Micallef Silver badge
Devil

Cheating

So what the robot is actually doing is waiting until it sees what shape it's opponent is forming, and then countering with a winning move. In a 'true' ie fair game of rock-paper-scissors, both players should only know what their opponent 'threw' after they have already themselves thrown.

There's a very simple way to test this - get 2 of these robots to play against each other. They will end up never playing because each robot is waiting for the other one to make a first move.

Can't stand the heat? Harden up if you want COLD, DELICIOUS BEER

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: a simple real experiment - results

Interesting stuff. After about 1 hr the 'hot' sample had already formed a film of crystallization on the surface, the 'cold' sample hadn't. However after 1.5 hours the 'cold' sample had frozen more than the 'hot' one.

One possibility is that I used very small amounts (about 1/4 glass) and maybe in this case the heat loss through the sides is a larger component than surface heat loss (same could be said of jake's ice cubes)

The experiments described in 'Cool?' paper used wider beakers that are more fully filled, so maybe I'll give it another go with full glasses.

Is anyone else trying this??

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: a simple thought experiment

@monkeyfish - I don't really have the time / equipment to do a more rigorous experiment so surely there are many small details that can be improved. However the cold water is coming from a filtration system and the hot water is coming from the coffee machine that uses the same filtration system as source, so no crap in the hot sample. Coffee Machine is cleaned very regularly as well so there should be the same mineral content in both samples, though I really don't have the equipment to test this

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: a simple thought experiment

"Take two identical freezers and add internal camera" - you forgot to add a flashlight :)

"Surely the vessel that started at 60C will have to cool to 20C and meanwhile the one which was at 20C will now be colder. Logically the one which started hotter will always be chasing the cooler one."

If you read the 'Cool?' paper, they suggest a possible mechanism - The water loses most energy from the top surface, and the rate of loss depends on temp difference between water surface and freezer. The hot water is not at a uniform X degrees because there's a convection current that cycles the water. It's possible that 2 beakers with water both have the same average temp of 20 degrees, but the one that went into the freezer at 20 degrees is uniform (so 20 degrees at surface) while the one that started at 60 has a surface temperature of 40 and is mostly 15 elsewhere (so with 40 degrees at surface loses temperature more quickly)

Anyway, my experiment is currently in the freezer, will see how it goes

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: Total, complete & utter bullshit.

@jake - I wouldn't go so far as to say "complete and utter bullshit", since clearly the people writing the "Cool?" paper seemed quite convinced with their results. As another commenter posted, there are maybe some situations where the effect works and others where it doesn't.

Anyway, this IS bloody curious, so I've decided to try myself. There's plenty of space in the office freezer, and 2 identical glasses just went into it, one with room temp (approx 20C) water and teh other with water from the coffee machine (approx 80C). Will let you know how it goes

China funds devs to write smog-clearing vidcam code

James Micallef Silver badge
Devil

Re: how about...

" some Chinese mandarins get a hard on watching their flock getting lung cancer..."

Actually, China has world's largest smoking population, and the supply is of course a monopoly that rakes in mega-billions, so they are fairly ambivalent on anti-smoking laws and campaigns

Galaxy is CRAMMED with EARTH-LIKE WORLDS – also ALIENS (probably)

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Re: Cool..but also oddly disturbing

Or, in the words of Monthy Python,

"pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth"

Twitter jacks up IPO price range as the blabbergasm begins

James Micallef Silver badge
Devil

facebook IPO territory?

$23-$25 will briefly be topped, then drop to below 20 and stay there until their business plans become clearer (ie they start to generate more revenue than hype)

Want a Microsoft cloud subscription? You'll need to be 'committed'

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Devil

Committed?

"Committed" as in "confined to a mental institution"?

Dying HealthCare.gov bagged JUST SIX registrations on first day

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Boffin

Re: @Moof (Is this really an IT issue?)

" you do not know of-hand how much your health insurance costs."

Most likely he doesn't know how much of his personal taxes end up in NHS budget, however the aggregate per-person healthcare spending of USA vs rest-of-the-developed-world are well known, and most likely what he's paying in taxes that go towards healthcare is around half what he would pay in the USA

How Dark Mail Alliance hopes to roll out virtually NSA-proof email next year

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Coat

Re: Definitely a bad choice of name

>> thinking 'Dark' automatically means 'nefarious'

OH NOES, the dark matter is out to get us

WE'RE DOOOOOMED!!!

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: If it's based in the US....

I think it's taken as obvious that it's not going to be US based.

We'll build Elon Musk's Hyperloop ... if you lob us ONE-MEELLION dollars

James Micallef Silver badge

Interesting comparisons. I guess a lot depends on manpower involved. The New Delhi / Mumbai projects seem a LOT cheaper than the US ones, possibly due to cheaper labour (and cheaper land? )

This is mostly going to go through empty land, and because it's an elevated tube on stilts there will be a lot less issues / costs with land acquisition. And no drilling involved maybe sharply decreases the cost of labour? I don't know, maybe not. I'm sure elevated construction + vacuum has it's own set of problems / costs.

On the whole I agree with you that a claim of $6bn is very optimistic, I make that $10mln/km, 1/3rd of the cheapest comparison. Plus, metro systems and drilling are fairly well understood, lots of prior art and best practice. Hyperloop is completely new tech so even if $6bn were somehow theoretically possible it will lend up costing minimum double that

Cameron pledges public access to list of who REALLY owns firms

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: I just made this suggestion yesterday

@Ledswinger - "Will that stop the executives of Google undertaking apparently legal tax avoidance, as part of their fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders? "

No it won't which is why tax reform must go hand in hand with this. What this system will show though, is that there is a formal relationship between Google UK, Google Ireland, Google Bermuda, Google Inc, whatever, and that link is established even if "Google Bermuda" is registered as "Bob's offshore company". This will allow a revised tax law to cut down on internal profit transfers to lower-tax jurisdictions.

You're right that without any change in the tax laws that regulate "internal" transfers then nothing will change. That's why I said "Of course it needs to be combined with other changes to the tax law."

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: I just made this suggestion yesterday

I agree with this, it's an important step towards tax fairness IF implemented well. Of course it needs to be combined with other changes to the tax law. For example encourage other countries to do the same by giving beneficial tax terms to companies with ownership that is either UK-based or based in countries with a similar disclosure regime. Otherwise the UBO would just register ownership through an offshore shell company.

Couple of things, not sure about making it totally public vs available only to HMRC. Pros and cons to that I guess. The other thing is, where do you draw the line? A publicly listed company like a big utility can have thousands or hundreds of thousands of shareholders. many of these shareholders will be pension funds, mutual funds etc. Some funds are themselves 'funds of funds'. So where is the line drawn? Because if all ownership has to be traced back to a physical person it will be VERY messy. And if ownership is not traced back to a physical person but stops at particular financial instruments, then these types of financial instruments can themselves be used as shell companies.

Google's new Glass: Now with audio connection INSIDE the SKULL

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: One thing puzzles me.

Economies of scale. Once it's ready for production I'm sure they will produce a 'leftie' version if there's enough demand.

Digital radio may replace FM altogether - even though nobody wants it

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: I'm Curious

Thanks all for the excellent clarifications. One further question - @Len: "FM is very inefficient as it costs a lot to run... "

From the original article I gathered that many small local stations do not want to switch to DAB because it's more expensive than FM, so what gives? Is it that FM is cheaper on a smaller scale but costs scale up rapidly, while DAB is more expensive for a small installation and is cheaper nationwide?

James Micallef Silver badge
WTF?

I'm Curious

Why do the powers-that-be want to get rid of FM outright? Perhaps it's a big chunk of spectrum that they can then auction off? Ker-Ching!!

Samsung is officially the WORLD'S BIGGEST smartphone maker

James Micallef Silver badge
Devil

@Don

" I stopped using the Internet years ago."

El Reg allows comments by carrier pigeon? I would have thought the vulture would eat them!

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Coat

That's what immediately jumped up ate me: if they outsold every other maker combined, their share should be more than 50. Someone is comparing Apple to oranges

Anonymity is the enemy of privacy, says RSA grand fromage

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Re: RSA Royale with Cheese

"Nobody likes the Spanish Inquisition."

More to the point, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

James Micallef Silver badge

Privacy can be improved if your 'customers' stop grabbing on to every bit of data they can nab from their user base and hold onto it forever. I don't see how knowing who usernames are in real life can help the users protect their privacy.

What's needed to protect users' privacy is TOR built in at the OS level

Google tired of endless AGONY over alleged EU search biz abuse

James Micallef Silver badge

Re: Yawn.....

I was on the anti-Google side of this debate till I saw Barry's post and did a simple test:

Search "online picture storage" in Google, there's shutterfly, snapfish, flickr above picasa (which is the 7th entry)

Search "free online data storage" in Google, there's 6 or 7 products and google drive isn't even on the front page (it appears in the ad section together with a bunch of others)

Search "online translation" in Google, google translate is number 1 (as expected, while far from perfect Google translate is really good at what is a hugely difficult problem, and miles ahead of anything else I've ever seen)

Search "online maps" in Google, mapquest is numbre 1, google maps is number 2 (!!!!)

So, quick look around, I can't see any evidence that G is promoting it's stuff artificially, it's products are ranked exactly where I would anticipate on a 'fair' search (even lower in the maps case). Now, possibly they have done this now and this wasn't the case before the EU started digging...

Spread the gospel! Tim Berners-Lee's Open Data Institute goes global

James Micallef Silver badge
Happy

Re: Stupidly expensive head office.

"NOTHING is done to promote moving offices and job to the North (or East or West) because no MP or senior Civil Servant..."

An episode of "Yes, Minister" springs to mind :)

Big Content says Pirates of the Caribbean do their worst in Australia

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Re: "A local market located ...."

A local market for local people

Coding: 'suitable for exceptionally dull weirdos'

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Re: Comment from the Cockwomble in question

"However the problem I see is that the current (relatively undemanding) IT curriculum is being badly taught across the board. I just don't see how the new, fantastically ambitious one, can be implemented successfully."

This is spot-on. It's not so much a matter of "what's the ideal?" as "what's achievable?". i'm all for setting high standards and targets, but without overreaching.

Also as an aside, I think that changing the curriculum as an answer to the current curriculum being poorly implemented is a very "governmental-style" solution, akin to introducing new laws as a solution to current laws not being enforced.

Why Bletchley Park could never happen today

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Re: It just goes to show....

"So in an imperfect world we have only imperfect answers to difficult questions."

Agree on this. What I don't agree on is the imperfect answer settled upon by NSA / GCHQ. Yes, if secret spy agencies did not exist, there would probably be more violent criminal actions* involving death, injury and damage. There would probably also be a more open society that is less paranoid, and better-off**.

On the other hand you could have what we have now - lots of intrusive and expensive spying, a complete disintegration of trust between government and governed, and you STILL don't have any security guarantees - SOME plots will still succeed.

The main thrust of whistleblowers like Snowden and that of many articles and comments on these forums aren't to go completely to the first scenario and dismantle NSA / GCHQ, it's to limit them with due process and to only spy on people whom they have reasonable suspicion of. As another commenter mentioned, full unfettered access to all data communications just gives a much larger haystack to search through for the same number of needles, so it would also be more efficient on the part of NSA / GCHQ to focus their attention on likely sources instead of hoovering everything up.

*In this case motivations matter little to outcomes, so I won't use the t-word

**hopefully the money not spent on spying would be spent on something useful to the general public rather than ending up lining the same 1% of pockets