Posts by Kamal Hashmi

Quantum computing dreamers face stock market reality check

If they really did that in the general case then the Salesman Problem would be a doddle !

But not seen any press releases about that so....

Also any place and route of large SoCs would be easy,

Etc etc etc

If you're wondering why Google blew $5b on Mandiant, this may shed some light

Secure process memory?

VME had an option which wiped or scrambled memory after a secure VM used it. Also there were built-in guards against any out of VM access.

'Dear Daddy...' Max Zuckerberg’s Letter back to her Father

Re: inserting the corruption and inefficiency of government into charit

Yes and no.

MSF seem quite efficient.

I always look at a charity's income/outgoings before I decide.

There are quite a few efficient charities - most of them tend not to be the sort that have government links/chats/lunches - doers rather than talkers.

Mozilla: Five... Four... Three... Two... One... Thunderbirds are – gone

Re: Somebody's already taken the reins

Aaaaarrrgghhh!!! 13 posts with the very annoying very WRONG title!!!

THERE I've fixed it for you. Now KEEP it fixed on any further replies....

I'll just calm down now.

Science Museum trumpets Da Vinci expo

Re: Not forgetting his paintings ...

I don't think Mona Ogg would do the washing up - more like take charge of his life and tell him what to do, starting with the washing up.

Car radars gain sharper vision after ITU assigns special spectrum slice

Re: Interesting link

Saw that in the US once - the car in front simply braked and forced the car behind to slow down, then sped off again. I suppose having a gun in the car meant the car behind couldn't say too much....

Fujitsu hits the data accelerator and parallelises SSD access

Re: CAFS?

And since FJ took over ICL they own all the patents...(might be out-of-date though)

Hold on, France and Russia. Anonymous is here to kick ISIS butt

Re: No, it's worse

Let me just correct that for you:

The commonality in all of them: religion. Hence TimeMaster T's comment "I am convinced that the world will never know any kind of lasting peace while ANY humans exist."

(If not religion then some other belief system will replace it).

UK lawmakers warn Blighty to invest more in science, or else

Re: Not all sciences are created equal

Ack! Not all Sciences *are* sciences...

Can you experiment and observe? (science) Or just observe, imagine and draw up untestable hypotheses? (not-a-science)

Our intuitive AI outperforms (most) puny humans, claims MIT

Re: mind reading still required

Yep. True peace always comes bottom-up not top-down - but the top needs to be receptive.

Of course, war can come bottom-up or top-town.

Playboy drops the butt-naked ladies

Re: Still Nude here!

plenty of neo-prudes here in the UK as well...

Playmobil cops broadside for 'racist' pirate slave

Re: Interesting complaint

Erm, yes we were the pirates... (it's like our destroyers being self-funded by doing of bit of free-range piracy - like the Somalians, who only took it up when the rich nations nicked their fish...)

Google's new parent Alphabet owns abc.xyz – and, yup, there's already an abc.wtf

Quite impressed that they'd created a hooli.xyz to go with the series....

...

Ah.

There's also a piedpiper.com

Nice.

World, face Palm: PDA brand to RISE FROM THE GRAVE

Smartphones DO NOT cover all PDA and Palm functionality - if they did, I'd have moved off my cheapo Z22 ages ago!

I want something that has a calendar with customisable categories, a useful contacts, a to do list and memos - AND I want this saved to multiple machines (home,work,PA).

Google and the iPhone cloud are getting near but not as easy to access and you need internet to use it AND it's MY data - not theirs!!

Microsoft: Hey, don’t forget Visual Basic! Open source and new features coming

Re: Why VB is better?

The great thing about the original book for BCPL - "BCPL, the language and its compiler" - is that it taught you how to write a simple compiler as a way of teaching you BCPL.

Sick of the 'criminal' lies about pie? Lobby the government HERE

No it's not - recurring would mean 3.1111111 etc

See http://www.virtuescience.com/pi-in-other-bases.html

TPP takes another tiny step forward

For the European/US version - you can do something....

https://stop-ttip.org/sign/

Languages don't breed bugs, PEOPLE breed bugs, say boffins

Programming/Coding is NOT Design

Oh, for c**p's sake, the language is merely used for implementation.

You use (and learn) whatever the customer wants.

A proper study would have looked at bug rates in different language implementations of the same design.

The 'fun-nification' of computer education – good idea?

Re: Compulsion vs aptitude

Did they give a reason? Age? Ability/CV?

Astroboffins map GIANT MASS of dark matter

Re: That picture looks 2D to me.

Sigh.

In reply to The Serpent: I’m looking at a pretty, blonde girl in the office right now....

You have only one eye?

(I'll type slower next time...)

Re: That picture looks 2D to me.

You have only one eye?

Moon was formed when PLANET SMASHED INTO EARTH

Re: with that rendered photo

I thought it was beautifully shot and acted and didn't shy away from the End.

It was a bit boring though...

Re: There are many ways to skin a cat...

I think the fact that the common point around which they orbit is inside one of them makes the other one a 'moon'.

If the point was even fractionally outside the Earth then I'd formally accept the 'double planet' description.

Regardless of that, the Moon certainly has a greater influence on this planet than most satellites on their planets - the tides and consequent evolution of land-based life being the most notable.

Astroboffins to search for mega-massive alien power plants

Re: Reg Standard Units

googol is 10^100 (googolplex is 10^10^100).

Is there anything inbetween googol and yotta?

Plan hatched to view Milky Way's black hole heart

Goudal-e-Markaz

Literally "Pit at Center"

Equipping pre-teens with web mobes spreads beyond West

We used to dream of finding old newspapers...

...so we could sell them for clothes to richer kids.

We used to tie twigs round our waist then roll in mud and let it dry - brilliant clothes.

Now, if we could find good mud...

Brit boffins print blinking booze bottle labels

"feet like lightning..."

Beeb measures Blighty in doormats

Re: Standard form - SI standards

SI prefixes with:short scale / long scale names

10^6 - mega - Million / Million

10^9 - giga - Billion / Milliard

10-12 - tera - Trillion / Billion

10^15 - peta - Quadrillion / Billiard

10^18 - exa - Quintillion / Trillion

10^21 - xetta - Sextillion / Trilliard

10^24 - yotta - Septillion / Quadrillion

Note that the short form bears little relation to the power of 10, e.g. Septillion is 10^24 but 24 isn't 7 times any integer, whereas 24 is 6 (million) times 4 - hence Quadrillion. Simples.

However the short form is more universally used as the world isn't run by techies but by Marketing and PR (e.g. D.Cameron).

This also explains a lot about the world today...

Google+ opened to world+dog

Optional

Y'know why don't you have two accounts? One for your nefarious activities, online stalking, flaming etc; and one with your real name for your friends and family....

I have one of the latter (and one more for business use).

I may need one of the first kind when I turn into a grumpy old git in a few years (every time I think I already am one, I just read a few pages of comments on TheRegister and I realise I'm still relatively a cheerful positive bloke).

ARM daddy simulates human brain with million-chip super

1

> Well you're a large collection of neurons and you seem to simulate intelligence quite well.

It's all that's is needed....

> So the question is are you a smart machine?

We are all complex machines - but not very smart.

The only proper ending for the Terminator series of films is the future AIs make one that's much smarter than humans instead of just as smart but faster. It would end the war rapidly and the remaining humans would be contented pets.

They shoot mainframes, don't they?

Re Bad idea

You prefer buggy software and a ramshackle OS? (And I'm not talking about Linux).

Steven Moffat promises 'darker' Doctor Who

a title

Er... yeah.

You do realise that they no longer like to admit that Dr Who is Science Fiction? (*)

All the emo stuff is to satisfy the critics who want to see a more 'real' story.

(*) The critic's criterion is "If I happened to read/watch it and liked it then it can't be SF, but I'll make up some other excuse". (**)

(**) See http://news.ansible.co.uk/a283.html#12 - there are many other examples.

BBC-led RadioPlayer arrives at last

small internet stations ...

The £200 doesn't seem like much to me - how much is it to belong to OfCom?

Or they could always get together and do one for internet radio - this should do well as it needn't just be limited to the UK. I'd definitely be interested in finding foreign stations easily.

Re: Iots of other internet radio stations...

Thanks for the url!

Re: Another new standard →

You need a UK based proxy.

I think the BBC should sell an optional license for people outside the UK - and I should get one free!! (With my TC license).

Fukushima explained in crap cartoon

title

Doh! Missed that.

Cartoon

Yayy! A comment about cartoons!

Yes, the Japanese use comics to tell a story much more than in the West.

Also, I think the article title is an insult - it's a decent cartoon. Should change it to "kids' cartoon" instead of "crap cartoon".

Hamburg vice girls to be serviced by cable car

Other things to see in St Pauli

FC St Pauli! Well worth a visit. Even when they lose.

Jobs stand-in ranks iPhone over sex

Re: Ummm, sorry that's not right → #

So how does the research that baby monkeys value love/belonging over food/water fit in with this very logical triangle?

Mobile industry looks forward to spanking Apple

RE: this is not a title

Not quite in sync...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX9wKN2lKiU

China plans city 'twice the size of Wales'

this is not a title

I've been to that hell-hole called LA - that's roughly 200 miles long N-S and 100 miles W-E

Of course, most of that is empty wasteland or freeway.

And there's a constant haze in the air, and every breath feels like you're in a smoke-filled room.

Ford cars get draconian parental controls

shawl?

No, but I wear a scarf when I watch them play football with their teams.

They don't have a Wii, or an Xbox. Got them a 2nd hand PS2 a few years ago - but they don't play computer games much.

The Buzz Lightyear ride is good, but we don't have a competition - it's not much fun me beating my wife or my teenagers beating the younger ones is it? We just have fun.

Small World is still the one ride I'd buy to have in my back garden if I was rich enough.

Best Ride Ever!

You're mad! Small World is the best ride in Disney with usually a small queue - the mesmeric music means you can doze while the kids are entranced and quiet for a few minutes. Once took the kids round three times for a long rest. Also good at the end to calm them down so can rush them past the shops and into the car.

Ah. I understand why you don't like it now. You go to Disney for yourself?

Standard smartphone charger to dominate in two years

The Wonderful Thing About Standards .....

is that there are so many of them. ;-)

This year's comedy Xmas No. 1 contender: Silent song 4'33"

How many other works by John Cage have you heard?

At the RNCM on Monday, one of the encores was a nocturne by John Cage - it was excellent!

(Violin/Piano - Faust/Melnikov)

Christians vs metalheads in FB flame war

re Crusades

> No. The Crusades were staged (initially, at least) in an effort to roll

> back Islamic military conquests in the Levant, which had subjected

> the population to Islamic rule (where non-Muslims had the choice

> to convert or pay heavy 'infidel' taxes.)

Read a real history book, dimwit.

Four hundred years is a long time to wait to 'roll back' conquests.

The Crusaders were a lot less tolerant of other religions than the Muslims.

And the tax is the equivalent of the 2.5% Muslims have to pay for the poor - so it evens the field rather than discriminates against non-Muslims.

Sir Norman Wisdom dies at 95

Flowers for Algernon?

Wasn't it Norman Wisdom who starred in the TV version of the short story "Flowers for Algernon"?

Google, boffins crack Rubik's Cube mystery

others too

Doesn't work unless they're dumb people who just learnt the moves. Someone did this in the Maths coffee bar in 1982 and everyone recognised what had been done while solving the cube.

David Singmaster wrote an interesting note about the Cube and Group Theory about that time.

If you're bored of just solving it then get someone to randomly make 5 or so moves and then try and get in back in the same number of moves.

Internet 1 - England goalkeeper 0

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

There wouldn't be any "normal" crowd noise anyway at most world cups - especially the later rounds. Maybe the rustling of notes in wallets and the ching of jewellery... Like at Arsenal games ;-)

Government says axing Becta will save £10m

Re Someone lied to you...

It was probably the Local Authority that forced the deal. Most (state) primary schools have little or no IT expertise and depend on help. This is also true for a lot of secondary schools even though they teach IT - the teachers are employed to teach not set up or maintain the system.