Posts by Parax

Thousands of fingered crims, informants spaffed in web security COCK-UP

Re: Hire peanuts, paid monkeys

There's only one this worse than an untrained monkey who doesn't know what he's doing; An untrained monkey who thinks he does know what he is doing.

Supercomputer vid proves NASA black-hole ring sniffers were RIGHT

Re: The study was based on a non-rotating black hole

fair enough.

The study was based on a non-rotating black hole

Is that even possible?

Why on earth(or in space for that matter) would you assume that the black hole was not rotating? there are infinite positive spin speeds and an equally infinite number of negative spin speeds so why choose the one zero state?

Would you always bet on green at roulette?

It's the same reason why a straight line is so unnatural, there are an infinite number of curves either side. (try walking unaided in a straight line whilst blindfolded, its not possible.)

MacBook Air now uses PCIe flash... but who'd Apple buy it from?

Re: Nothing New.

^ the NEW Air.

Nothing New.

There's Sammy in the Air too.

Re: it's a chimney

Complete with warmed cup holder insert in the top.

NSA accused of new crimes ... against slideware

Re: FAIL!

yup I agree.

Timeline is clear to understand.

Names of companies are easier to understand than logo's like the speech bubble... also if you don't recognise a name you can note it down and google it, if you don't recognise a logo you're screwed.. what are you supposed to do? sketch it scan it and ask google image search? Let me know how that turns out for you...

The only thing he has achieved is to invert the tones, dark background with brighter forground is sometimes easier on the eyes than the white background...

But, I wouldn't pay him a penny for that.

Microsoft in sexism strife again over XBOX rape joke

Re: WTF?

These words would have been said whether it was a man or a woman playing. The context of these words is not about rape, but about beating the opponent. There is a big difference between someone who looses a game they choose to play and a victim who does not choose. The fact that she was beaten in a game does not mean she was beaten in real life.

Rape is a very serious thing, we should respect and understand what it really is, not degrade it by using the term about gaming, saying 'she was beaten in a game' is accurate saying 'she got raped' is the wrong usage. saying that his gaming talk/banter is akin to rape talk is likewise wrong usage.

Apple at WWDC: Sleek new iOS, death of the big cats, pint-sized Mac Pro

Re: Pint sized?!?!

What, they come in Pints too?!

Power lead on the front? what are they thinking?

At least its got a heated cup holder.

So, who ought to be the next Doctor Who? It's up to YOU...

Bandersnatch is good as Sherlock, But I don't think he'd bring anything interesting to Who. I like the Idea of Ayoade though.. that would be an interesting roll for him to try, I think we've seen all his daft characters, would be interesting to see if he can do a straight and deadly serious.

Reg readers tumesce as they get their tongues round 'podule'

Academic Disgrace.

I've put in a complaint to the OED, absurd omission.

Albert Einstein brings cheese and clean pyjamas to space station

Re: do you really want that smell wafting around a small, sealed space station

Yes, but what is scrubbing? the ISS scrubbers are CDRA units. which is a 'Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly'

Converting Carbon Dioxide to Oxygen does not really do much to complex aromatic hydrocarbons (or non-complex ones either!).

Forget phones, PRISM plan shows internet firms give NSA everything

Disturbing.

But does it do more good than harm?

Boffins develop 'practically free' sulphur-powered batteries

Re: But note it's only 2x better than Li ion.

Could you cite a source for that "2x better than Li ion" the Oak Ridge National Lab is stating 4 times energy density here.

Re: Voltage?

Yes another story has the crucial missing detail. Seems they are achieving 4 times the energy density.

So the cell voltage must be about ~2.0V

Four times the density is actually a pretty good start. will keep an eye on this.

Re: Biggest Clue of all:

This quote: "enabled the ORNL battery to maintain a capacity of 1200 milliamp-hours (mAh) per gram after 300 charge-discharge cycles at 60 degrees Celsius."

Re: Voltage?

Exactly what I was thinking It would have been much more appropriate to have used Wh instead of Ah.

Without cell voltage the whole 'discovery' is meaningless.

This could just be some wonk's attempt to get his 15 minutes.

How to spot a coders comment

How to spot a coders comment

So you can spot a T-SQL coder's comments because he uses 'single' instead of "double" quotes.

A TCL Programmer uses {Braces} instead of (Brackets).

I'm wondering how many other good tells for other languages are out there?

Raspberry Pi DUMBS DOWN to target world+dog

Re: A good thing in small doses,..

That should be the second 'with' not the first one.

iPHONES and 'Pads BANNED in US for violating Samsung patent

I'm still asking:

Why is Apple so happy to shower money on to lawyers, yet wont pay dividends to it's shareholders?

Microsoft SQL Server 14 man: 'Nothing stops a Hekaton transaction'

Re: Nothing can stop a Hekaton transaction

and a metric fuckton slaps that hands down..

Re: Question...

SQL transactions only commit if the log is physically written. You will not loose data if you crash.

Log writing is 'synchronous write' hence the reason you'd put it on a separate physical volume (preferably mirrored not raid 5 - no data processing overhead is fastest)

There are many ways this will be welcome, you can build fast access tables, separate to your main data, ie Contact search fields could be held in memory whilst all none-searchable data can reside on disk. This would result in faster front end searches.

It would be even better if you could specify which columns of a table were to be memory resident rather than just whole tables. like having memory resident indexes for a table held on disk.

LOHAN team regroups for second pop at SPEARS

Seems Playmobile is just not up to the job. Must be time to get a Lego man suited up ready.

Ecuador: Let's talk about not having Julian Assange on our sofa

Re: A lotta donuts

Whether its 170, 21, or 13 its still far too expensive! At most you are requiring 4 persons onsite (its a small building!) and one situational commander. 3x 8hr shifts +cover = 20 persons, at a generous 60k per plod and 100k per command person that's 16x60+4x100 = 1.3 million. No helicopters, No fast-pursuit cars.

I suspect that what we are seeing is also a bill for a certain amount of espionage/intelligence.

Ex-Microsoft man plans brand of consumer marijuana 'fine cigars'

Accepting Cookies

Hash Prompt, (Pass the Dutchie/Kouchie)

and that's it....

So who knew drug culture and PC's didn't have many cross over references.

Sacred islet Rockall repels Brit adventurer's first assault

Re: "Have you tried flying a quad"

One simply does not fly a quad, one sets it's gps and altitude, and leaves the rest to the computer.

Of course these days it would be trivial to design an optical target bolt for automatic targeted mating.

In fact I'm sure the navy would be very keen to purchase such a system for other ship to ship/shore requirements.

they are doing it all wrong!

Since the islet is already bolted, you just need to clip on... Which could easily done with a bit of British ingenuity and a Quad copter with first person video and a detachable carabiner clip with fishing line. then once clipped on pull over a wire then decent rope. then traverse all the kit.

Not the cheapest method but probably cheaper than many round trips to keep trying to land.

Never mind your little brother - happy 10th birthday, H.264

Actually

I think you'll find it's Pronounced H462

Watch quantum entanglement – IN REAL TIME

Re: if only

Technically that is exactly what it is...

It would be a better experiment if the did not use the 'A' beam as the trigger, but instead split the 'B' beam to be both trigger and detector. This way the control filter (input) on 'A' beam is remote to the measured 'B' beam (output) and could be further away.. not requiring the electrical trigger link between the two.

Windows 8.1 Start button SPOTTED in the wild

Re: Well done, you missed the point

@Richard 12

Exactly.

Using any kind of fullscreen interface makes Multi-tasking impossible. I often have 3 to four apps open at a time, sometimes I may have Video or TV playing whilst I am researching and writing. Now a simple click to launch another program blocks out everything on screen, it's utterly stupid, and very poorly conceived, by a bunch of amateurs with no user experience.

@Lusty I'm sure you have misunderstood somewhere. the new start-menu thing is full screen and not a partial popup like the old start-menu. ( win95 - win7 ) changing that damages usability. I understand that the old start-menu was fine for 'search' but the new style is still terrible. 'love the changes' is the last thing that's going to happen.

Samsung plans new R&D centre in Finland

Sounds like a good idea..

lots of decent technicians and developers to poach.

it will keep Nokia/Microsoft on their toes, and make them not so keen to lay off staff at the drop of a hat.

Soyuz brings new crew to International Space Station

Re: @Parax

Last time I checked the ISS still had a good amount of oxygen.

If a fire does not spread, it will starve itself of local oxygen (no convection to replenish), but Fire spreads so much more easily as it is so much hotter in the localised burn area (no convection to cool) so radiates much more heat. Even when a flame goes out the gasses in the burn area remain immensely hot (no convection to disperse heat) and invisible hot areas 'bubbles' of gas are a significant danger to astronauts.

Re: reduced the travelling time from earth from several days to a few hours.

Also In case you didn't notice Soyuz TMA-09M was using the fast rendezvous profile:

Launch took place at 20:31:00 UTC on 28 May 2013.

Docking with the ISS occurred at 02:10 UTC on 29 May 2013.

That is less than six hours.

Saying it's orbit height or shuttle limitations is BS.

Re: now that there is no Space Shuttle anymore, the ISS could be brought into a higher orbit

Where do you get this stuff from?

The shuttle could go very high, go look where Hubble is.

The ISS is as low as possible to reduce radiation exposure.

If the Russians prefer higher orbits why did they launch Mir so low?

Watched the launch last night was surprised to see so many cuddly toys strung up in the capsule like Piñatas.

Trying to light an olympic torch in space would be a Very stupid thing to do. Without convection fire is a remarkably different beast.

Russians draw liquid blood from frozen woolly mammoth

Re: I want my...

all of those are mythical, you can only reanimate what once existed.

Jokes of no more than 2 lines

What is the most common owl in Britain?

The teat owl

Raspberry Pi puts holes in China's Great Firewall

I like it.

but is there a neater solution? there are many network to wireless access point boxes available.

And what about wifi-wifi, running via hotel/other/public wifi to your own wifi hotspot?

Microsoft loads botnet-crushing data into Azure

Re: ????

Wouldn't it be easier to just write a more secure OS?

There I fixted it.

Prankster 'Superhero' takes on robot traffic warden AND WINS

Re: If it is not a Penalty Charge Notice...

Private parking is covered by Contract Law, it is enforceable through Civil Court.

In order for a Private ticket to be legally valid, the Contract must be clear, ie unambiguous clear signage must be displayed. and their must be evidence of the contractual offence taking place.

It is possible to issue tickets to people who park in disabled spaces, without displaying a blue badge if there is an appropriate sign indicating it is not permitted.

Boffins' brilliant plan: CONCRETE COMPUTERS

But

What happens when the cement sets?

Stand by for PURPLE KETCHUP as boffins breed SUPER TOMATOES

Re: Boffin: Good news everyone...

No Boffin it's not working. I can only hear Professor Farnsworth's voice.

Tennis pro serves up pic of bad French Open line call

Re: Rules are Rules.

The rules state that the umpire makes the call, irrespective of whether his call is correct or not. If it were my match I'd be upset, but ultimately I know that arguing is pointless.

A correction can only come from above the umpire, an appeal could be made to the governing body if it were serious enough.

Sportball players/fans need to accept that it's not, if the ball crossed the line, but if the umpire says, the ball crossed the line.

Better Place electric car outfit goes titsup

I think that unless you operate like tesla providing both cars and network , you are doomed to fail with a one sided operation reliant on another industry sector to support you. AFAIK There is only one car manufacturer in Europe adopting the better place battery system, and I don't think they are selling the cars yet in the UK (Renault Zoe).

I don't see electric cars becoming common without the middle step of range extended electric vehicles (like the Volt or BMW i3) first, walk before you run. not only does the technology have to work it has to be seamless and critically it has to be trusted/embraced by the buyer.

I wish Elon Musk and Tesla all the success their hard work deserves, but I feel they would be far more successful if they were taking little steps with Range extended EV's rather than big leaps to pure EV.

China's 'human flesh search' hunts down teen vandal

Usually nothing wrong with name and shame, but vigilantism is often too much.

'Leccy car biz baron Elon Musk: Thanks for the $500m, taxpayers...

Re: Okay then...

They are getting on with it.... Just have to wait for the Model X... that will be the more affordable model.

Perhaps Tesla should consider re-applying for the loan and getting the X out faster... the S is not your average man's motor but it is selling surprisingly well..

Seems the US is far keener on electric cars than us Brits. Even with the price of petrol over here! Are us Europeans falling behind? The percentage of new cars that are electric is way higher in the states than it is in the UK. and why not? Electric cars have great performance, just need to fix the refill time issue. I think the 'Volt' electric car with a backup engine is a great idea though, can't fault that idea. (Volt sales in US: 31,000 in UK: 550, That's a significant difference!)