Posts by ArrZarr

Atari accuses El Reg of professional trolling and making stuff up. Welp, here's the interview tape for you to decide...

Ancient? That ditty sounds American so I can only presume that this was coined in the Left-Pondian prehistory. 1920s maybe?

EU negotiator: Crucial data adequacy deal will wait until UK hands in homework

I mean, it contained bananas so you were warned that it would taste terrible.

National ID cards might not mean much when up against incompetence of the UK Home Office

I actually gave the British citizenship test to my colleagues when it was my turn for the weekly quiz not too long back. The pass rate was 10% for people born & bred in Britain.

Priceless: The cost to BT for bothering you with spam? 1.5 UK pence per email

Set your clock back 20 years and that's a good offer.

Maybe.

Better to be safe and set the clock back 30 years, that would do the trick. You'd be the talk of the nerd of the town!

Shiny new Capita boss to UK.gov: I know you are but what am I?

Re: Where's That Fire?

"...this time to run its fire and rescue services"

The process will be updating at some point in the future to:

"...to provide the service of telling people to run in the event of a fire"

Google-free Android kit tipped to sell buckets

Re: @AC

I think you'll find that it's "button is", or, if you absolutely must, "button's".

While technically okay, using a contraction on the only verb in the sentence makes it read a bit weirdly, you numpty!

Pass gets a fail: Simple Password Store suffers GnuPG spoofing bug

I think he's been aiming to get in 11 bugs earlier for the big ticket number prestige.

Swiss cops will 'tolerate' World Cup rabble-rousers – for 60 minutes

Re: Being sensible

Well, that was an education.

I don't complain to the church about the bells because they keep their practice to a couple of hours on a Tuesday. I don't like the fact that they do but, and here's the rub, it is their right to ring the bells whenever they like and I'm thankful they keep it to that time period with the constant bell ringing in evenings.

And on the people commenting on "as long as it doesn't go too far", we have regulations in the UK on disturbing the peace, which do the same job, just with much less defined boundaries. To me, the ideal body of law would read "Don't be a dick to other people" and would end there. Of course, the only world in which that would work is one where you wouldn't need that law in the first place, but I hope you get the gist of what I'm trying to say here.

This is all on a sliding scale. I can agree with laws about not keeping explosives in a private home. I can agree with laws about not killing people or imprisoning people in a private home (or anywhere for the former and most places for the latter), I just feel that this Swiss noise regulation is a massive government overreach, hence my previous comments.

Re: Being sensible

People seem to get the wrong idea about my first post. I'm not advocating for the entire population of a city to get blind drunk and have city-spanning football chants, I'm arguing against government regulation of what I do in my own house.

I may not agree with those who would cause all this noise, but I will fight for their right to cause it as long as it doesn't go too far. The fact that the Swiss felt the need to legislate what is too far is what's getting my goat.

I live next to a church. If I fancy an early night on a Tuesday, it's impossible due to the campanologists practicing, but that is their right and their hobby so I would never dream complain.

Re: Being sensible

The whole document made me very glad I don't live in Switzerland. Why is it the Government's place to dictate how you live your life?*

However, it says that "admissible" noise specifies Mowing the lawn between 08:00 and 22:00 on working days rather than any day and explicitly says no to noisy DIY on Sundays and Bank Holidays.

On the other hand, I do like the dig at people who have their music on far too loud calling out that volume isn't the same thing as quality. I'm sure many card carrying members of the audiophile community would take issue with that statement with their silver/gold/platinum solid/coated power cables.

*Although this could be extended to the British Government too

Universal Credit has never delivered bang for buck, but now there's no turning back – watchdog

Re: Funny how they didn't mention...

@Jemma

The solution is obvious: A dictatorship, except that the dictator still needs to pay off their supporters. Communism then, except that the leader still needs to pay off their supporters.

At least with democracy, when one party goes off the deep end we can get the other lot in who will then go too far the other way and thus equilibrium is achieved.

It's possible that our position would be less crap if we used a better voting system than First Past the Post and used proportional representation or some such which tends to lead to individual parties having less power and therefore less scope to royally screw over the people who didn't vote for them.

Microsoft says Windows 10 April update is fit for business rollout

Re: best Windows ever

Windows 10 is great and 99% of the time it just works, just like Windows 8 and Windows 7.

Multi screen support could still be improved, especially if running old games on your main monitor - everything else gets shunted along due to low resolutions, but it's a lot better than Windows 7's multi monitor support I find.

But then, I'm one of those hopeless mutants who liked Windows 8.0 and didn't even care about the removal of the start button.

Re: Never safe from Microsoft

What really annoys me is that each evening as I grab my laptop when going to bed, Windows asks if now is a good time to deploy updates - the computer has been sitting there, on (I know, I know), for the past 20 hours and you didn't notice that it was sitting there doing nothing but the moment I move the mouse it's all

"Ohai, I can has update lolz?"

Thinking about it, I would probably have one laptop fewer if that were the actual message.

Xen Project patches Intel’s Lazy FPU flaw, VMware doesn't need to

Because it's

a) More hassle than it's worth if you operate in a single territory

b) Planned ahead of time, probably a time that you decide for yourself or with your contact which means that it barely counts as downtime unless you're truly 24/7

c) More complicated than you think

ICANN pays to push Whois case to European Court of Justice

Re: What are ICANN smoking?

The problem is that this whole saga has been so insane that it almost makes me question the fine journalism on display at El Reg, as to whether real life can possibly contain this much concentrated failure and corruption.

Turns out China loves VR. Wires and powerful hardware, less so.

Re: Is anyone besides Western tech companies suprised?

Ask the market and you'll get a product that is only possible in cloud cuckoo land, like a standalone, light VR headset. The sheer horsepower required for a good VR experience means that the cooler for the graphics card alone weights more than the pixie-dust powered magic that you seem to be expecting.

I haven't seen ready player one, but I'm fairly certain that current tech won't be capable of matching any VR experience shown by Hollywood with full tethered VR, let alone standalone headsets.

I wish it were possible, but I honestly don't think it is.

Keep your hands on the f*cking wheel! New Tesla update like being taught to drive by your dad

Re: Crash Test Dummies.

Why does it need to be 10x safer? 2x safer is a huge improvement.

What I haven't seen is the number of Tesla autopilot miles that have been racked up compared to the number of deaths (3 now?) compared to the number of manual pilot miles that have been driven compared to the number of deaths in a country (probably the US at this stage) from that driving, as this will give us some good, hard data on miles per death/crash ratio.

Although, something that I've never seen brought up in these discussions is how computers think* differently to humans. When a Tesla crashes on autopilot, it's always seen as something utterly stupid that any human driver would have avoided but what we'll never get data on is the number of crashes that didn't happen because it turns out that computers are much better at avoiding that kind of accident than people.

Re: Auto-crash-pilot

The Tesla is obviously braking in that situation. That's why it stopped well before the next fake car. I can also guarantee that if you didn't have the freedom to pull out as a human driver, your thinking time would have made any subsequent action worse.

Astroboffins 'sprinkle iron filings' over remnant supernova

Re: Not too shabby indeed

"Traffic-control-laser"

I'm okay with this as long as I'm the only person with one.

Audit of DeepMind deal with NHS trust: It checks out, nothing to see here

What makes you think that the symptoms table of the database includes PII? I was under the impression that any database worth its salt would assign an ID to a person and use that as a primary key instead of anything else.

The anonymous person can be identified by the hospital, not by Google. From Google's perspective, 13891231 is anonymous. From the hospital's perspective, what's the point in having medical data that they can't access when that person comes back to the hospital?

"I don't see why you need to do this anyway, just send a questionnaire to the patient then doctor and add a score to determine risk. Job done." - AC

"Everybody lies" - House

"I also doubt it being anonymous because what's the point? You detect someone at risk but have no way of telling them."

Deepmind detects that 10231940214 is at risk. The hospital takes this information and provides information to the GP to perform test X on 1023194024 in future checkups.

Youth crime falls as kids stay inside to play Grand Theft Auto instead of going out to steal cars

Re: So basically ...

Yes, you only have one life. One life that you should spend enjoying as you see fit (as long as this doesn't involve being a douche to other people). Who the hell are you to cast judgement on others for enjoying different things than yourself?

Re: So basically ...

Wow, I've never wanted to reply to a post with ODFO quite this strongly before. Lucky for you, I recognise this for the joke that it is.

Anyway, RealWorld sucks. The mechanics are terribly defined and nobody really knows the rules. Graphics are pretty good, if you're into that sort of thing.

Tesla undecimates its workforce but Elon insists everything's absolutely fine

Re: sustainable, clean energy

All we need is a space elevator and we can fire the nuclear material off into the icy vacuum of space, which it's mathematically impossible for us to clog up.

I call this the IPv6 strategy.

Shock: Google advises UK peers against more legislation

They should hire enough people to be able to vet content properly.

A quick Google tells me that 300 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube every minute. One person can check 1 minute of video every minute just to keep up.

300*60=18,000 people actively managing this 24/7 at 100% efficiency.

If we assume 75% efficiency then we go to 24,000 people working 24/7.

US minimum wage is $7.25/hour

8760 hours/year * $7.25 * 24,000 = $1,524,240,000 in wages

rule of thumb for HR - it costs double the wage to employ somebody (+ extra HR staff to manage 24,000 people)

Bill - $3,000,000,000

This is not feasible, on any level.

US regains supercomputer crown from Chinese, for now

Re: Well, It's about time...

That's a lot of Datas.

A fistful of Datas, you might say.

Yahoo! Kills! The! Messenger!

Re: Grammar Gremlins

Yu durnt nede dat commer afta suggests.

Actual control of Windows 10 updates (with a catch)... and more from Microsoft

Re: ScreenPad?

You have all the freedom you need - not to buy it if you're allergic to Windows.

If the feature takes off, which it won't, then more laptops will have this feature, the Open Source community will build support and life will continue.

IBM to GTS: We want you to 'rotate' clients every two years

You could view the laying off of staff as building redundancy.

You know, if you were in the mood to make tasteless jokes about things that ruin lives and create stress. Shame on you, dear reader, for thinking this; shame on you.

ICO smites Bible Society, well fines it £100k...

Well everybody knows that the Believers don't get any research points for the first 20 turns and have -1 labs as a base modifier, so it's understandable if their tech lags behind the other civs.

Icon: Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "For I Have Tasted the Fruit"

Don’t talk to the ATM, young man, it’s just a machine and there’s nobody inside

Let’s just keep the bird motif going here and think blue logos, okay?

Ravenclaw!

Oddly enough, when a Tesla accelerates at a barrier, someone dies: Autopilot report lands

Re: Playing Elon's advocate here..

Absolutely. People seem to be treating Autonomous Cars as if they need to be perfect before they will be better at driving than humans.

They don't, they just need to be faster than your friend while you're both running away from a bear.

BlackBerry Key²: Clickier, nippier, but how many people still want a QWERTY?

Re: I don't even want a querty OSK

Having *not* spent much time on T9, having QWERTY means I didn't need to learn the bloody thing.

The Blackberry Priv

To my mind, the Priv's sliding keyboard is the best of both worlds. Tthe much bigger screen makes reading wonderful (the spacebar on the keyboard turns pages in the kindle app, which is a nice touch).

When the Priv breaks, I'll probably go for another BB with a hardware keyboard but I would almost certainly choose a slider (if one exists) over something with a hardware keyboard taking up screen space.

SAP cofounder admits: Biz goofed on branding, confused customers, depressed staff

I'd go with "Kahana" or maybe "Klahana" depending on how miserable I was feeling at the time. There is a nice assonance to the former, at least.

UK's first transatlantic F-35 delivery flight delayed by weather

Re: New better technology?

@Pen-y-gors

Sure, but the Mosquitos, Camels and Gladiators weren't all-weather aircraf-

Oh. Never mind.

Re: Carriers??

'I believe the US have been more picky about this in the past, until selecting the F35C.'

You shouldn't ignore stuff before 1945 as the dual engine long range requirement was the driving force behind the creation of the original Lighting (Lockheed P-38) as they needed a figher that would be safe(er) for pilots on long pacific missions.

Microsoft sinks another data centre with Natick 2

An Azure datacentre in the Azure seas of the Azores?

UK.gov lobs £25m at self-driving, self-parking, self-selling auto autos

Re: Data marketplace

Obviously a place where all of the SlurpTech (TM) in the Autonomous Automobiles (Auto^2 (TM)) can be bought and sold by interested parties.

No lie-in this morning? Thank the Moon's gravitational pull

Re: Interesting times...

@jmch

Not all ladies are witches, my friend.

DIYers rejoice: Hitting stuff to make it work even works in space

Re: "a configuration that means it can no longer use its sieve device, the CHIMERA"

El Reg - Quo cum venisset iocos Duis congue sem.

The layman knows to hit it.

The support team know where to hit it.

The engineer knows how hard to hit it.

Nadella tells worried GitHub devs: Judge us by our actions

Re: "Judge us by our actions"

That's odd, because over the three computers I use - all on Win10 - I've never noticed anything taking over 10s unless it was a huge file, which good software informs you on loading progress.

Re: At Jim Mitchell...

@Shadow Systems

Everybody has their price. No rethinking required.

Did you test that? No, I thought you tested it. Now customers have it and it doesn't work

@Caffeine addict

That reminds me of a time at school when somebody held the Gauze over a Bunsen burner until it went red hot then proffered the (no longer red) hot corner and asked me to put it in the cupboard that I was standing next to.

It still shows on my fingerprint.

Re: Had a close call

@OP AC

The Mgmt overruled you eventually and the fix went in. You were working for TSB at the time and I claim my £5.

Your F-35s need spare bits? Computer says we'll have you sorted in... a couple of years

Re: Israel F35

Isn't the F-35 meant to be a stealth plane? Why would it need additional RADAR-messing kit on it?

ZTE can't buy chips from America – but can still get sued for patent infringement in the US

Re: U S NAY

Sure, but the EU isn't a country.

AWS outage killed some cloudy servers, recovery time is uncertain

Re: Isn't cloud supposed to be fault tolerant?

This. More of this.

If you build your system properly then it will never* go down. On top of that, if the power goes out, any data centre you manage will have just as hard a stop as a cloud data centre.

*If the power goes out in the US and EU, then something big is probably happening and your site is probably the least of your worries.