Posts by JeffyPooh

Skeletal scanner would ID terrorists from 50 meters

Mr. 'Version 1.0' has it nailed

It's a fantasy. Only the most innocent (stupid) and naive would not realize that it's a psuedo-scientific scam. It's obviously impractical and obviously unworkable, and it is therefore an obvious fraud.

Inmate-frying microwave pain blaster turret installed in US jail

From the Tin-foil Hat crowd

They'll be all, "I told you so..." You watch.

I suggest a tri-corner hat. That way it can be whipped-off ones' head and used as a trigonal reflector.

Jobs offers relief for iOS 4-running iPhone 3Gs

New_and_improved signal bar display

I live within sight of several cell towers, including the one operated by my carrier. It's almost certainly less than 1km away and perfectly located for maximum strength. I've always had full signal strength (all bars) on every device, no matter how I hold them. But the very latest iPhone update dropped the display on my 3GS back to 3 (and sometimes just 2) bars. Hilarious. An obvious fraud to cover up the iPhone 4 antenna fiasco.

Facebook Places - why, and why not

iPhone location firewall

I updated my Faceborked iPhone app and then clicked on the Places button. My iPhone responded by asking if the app was permitted to know my location. Clicked Decline.

What I'm saying is that some of the location leakage is firewalled by the iPhone OS if you so choose.

Intel snaps up McAfee in $7.68bn deal

Maybe it's a good thing...

We know that McAfee programmers are the 3rd worst coders on the planet (Symantec and Facebook holding down 1st and 2nd place respectively). By comparison, Intel software (even the old IntelPlay software for gosh sakes...) isn't half bad. Almost always seems to work, with not too many bugs. So maybe the Intel coders could explain to How To Code 101 to the McAfee nitwits and that would Make The World A Better Place (TM). I'm just saying...

DfT denies deliberately misleading on speed cam stats

Paying attention is the key to road safety...

Therefore, these system should present, for example, math quiz problems on an electronic sign. Something like "SQRT(16)=? FLASH HIGH BEAM LIGHTS". The unblinking eye would watch for the correct answer, and send a ticket to anyone that fails the test.

CTIA claims SF phone radiation law unconstitutional

SAR measurements are psuedo-scientific garbage

As a rough guide, sure. Perhaps to *one* significant figure. Maybe "small", "medium", and "large".

Having reviewed some of the associated literature, they have to oh-so-precisely adjust the handset-under-test to ever-so-tight distances and angles to achieve even approximately repeatable measurements. In other words, rubbish.

Anyone with a shred of common sense and decency would raise the red flag and end their involvement in what can only be described as a crock of sh*t. But at many thousands and thousands of dollars for what should be a five-minute test (other than the full day of fiddling), it's a lucrative business.

If you see a SAR value with two or three significant digits, it's just bad science and meaningless "accuracy".

Steve Jobs death-grips iPhone 4 reality

"a more advanced antenna than has ever shipped on a smartphone"

WTF -> "...more advanced..." ?

It's two bits of bent metal, that not-coincidentally happen to be bent into a shape that outlines the outer edge of the iPhone 4. It's precisely and exactly as "advanced" as two bits of bent coat hanger would be... Except that the coat hanger has the good sense to be insulated with a non-conductive coating.

Mobile broadband: not up to the job?

Report from Canada

My iPhone plan allows 6GB a month. The local 3G connection is so good that I tend to use it even at home, ignoring our WiFi hotspot. The 3G connection is generally better than our 1Mbps DSL that feeds our WiFi, and the WiFi is of course shared with everyone in the house. And the 3G is good enough to watch high quality TED.com videos.

Consumer Reports: 'We were wrong about the iPhone 4'

Antenna High-Z tips and replacing batteries

The two monopole antennas are fed from the top of the phone and the infamous junction on the side represents the ** high-impedance ends ** of those monopoles. Seriously, the people that created and approved this design have obviously got little appreciation of how antennas actually work (voltage distribution, and thus Z distribution). The open circuit ends of monopoles are extremely high impedance (voltage/zero current), and are thus are extremely sensitive to being touched. The fix could be as simple as reversing the ends (feeding the other junction), but then it would fail when held sideways. Or they could extend the conductors inside the phone, but that would require reintegration.

With respect to replacing batteries in Apple products, the simplest solution is to check the local on-line ads for a nearby high tech fix-it man that will pop your phone or pad apart, install a brand new battery (knock-off or OEM, your choice), and snap it back togther. It takes mere minutes and is reasonably low cost. It's not that big a deal. And probably lower cost than locally purchasing a genuine replacement user-replaceable battery for any brand of smart phone. Much ado about nothing. Having the oil changed in your car is a bigger deal.

Apple bars radiation nanny from App Store

@Darren Forster

Darren, 2m Amateur radio band starts at 144.0 MHz.

1.44 and 1.45 MHz are within the AM Broadcast band.

SAR tests are phoney crap

Read up on the details of how they perform these mobile phone SAR (specific absorption rate) tests, and you'll drop any respect that you might have for the numbers. Because the measurements on any model of mobile are so erratic, they have to align the handset under test to extremely precise angles and distances. Shift the handset by a mm or a degree, and the numbers all change. So they control these parameters to extremely tight tolerances (for the SAR tests).

Also, they purport to detect tiny hotspots within the Jello-head. Yeah, tiny hotspots on the order of a mm^3 probed with tiny probes. Supposedly generated by mobe's RF with a wavelength of about 10-20 cm. Geesh. Have they alerted the semiconductor makers of the world of this newfound sub-sub-sub-sub-wavelength focusing ability using nothing but a tub full of Jello? Amazing. 0.01 nm CPUs can be printed with nothing but Jello lenses. Yippe!

The basic fact is that mobile phones emit a certain average RF power (should be written on the lid of the tin it came in), and at various frequencies (see lid). The antenna system will have a certain efficiency (cough iPhone4 cough cough, LOL). How much ends up radiated away and how much ends up in your head depends upon a thousand variables, few of which are under the control of the OEM.

Providing SAR numbers to three significant digits is extremely bad science and those doing it should be deeply ashamed. It's techno-evil and highly deceptive.

Much like claiming that dropping the BAC (drink drive) limit from 0.08 to 0.05 will save "303" lives. Three hundred ***AND THREE***? Flaming idiots!

I think some of these people have as much Jello in their heads as the SAR phantoms.

Facebook buys, kills travel rec site

Facebook...

...2nd sloppiest programmers in the world (1st place being Symantec of course).

FB could certainly use some talent.

Facebook investigates email notification snafu

Facebook programmers...

Not exactly the best and brightest...

(And I'm basing this on more than just this one report.)

BBC chief acknowledges DAB flop & internet radio

Internet Radio

Stand-alone Internet Radio appliances ($100-$500) are slow to boot, ponderous to program a station, and generally a nuisance. iPhone Internet radio apps (Free-$7) are (for the most part) instant, flexible and easy to use.

BBC Podcasts are wonderful. Listen for many hours per week.

Superpowered energy-storing wonder stuff created in lab

Squeeze -> Heat (lost), Relax -> Cool

When it goes off, it'll freeze everyone in a ten-mile radius.

Apple's iPhone 4 denial: insulting or ignorant?

Ends insulated from each other for a reason

The ends of antennas are extremely high impedance. The current at the tip is (obviously) very low, and the voltage is typically (relatively) high, thus the impedance is very high. Normally it doesn't matter because the tips of antennas are typically well out of reach. But to put the two ends close to each other where the finger can bridge them is unsmart.

Power line tech could crash aircraft and shut down the Archers

Wires strung between poles...

They're called antennas. They radiate.

Sending broadband data over power lines is Satan's own handiwork. Pure evil. And a sign of corruption because the government is responsible to protect the electromagnetic spectrum from such stupid ideas.

Yes, software can be patented, US Supremes say

Let me put this in the public domain before it's too late

10: PRINT "Hello"

20: GOTO 10

Phew, that was close...

Google seeks interwebs speed boost with TCP tweak

Another idea...

It annoys me when my browser is waiting for a picture to load that it already loaded a minute ago. ...Yes, I know that there are cache settings that can make this worse or better...

The browser should ask for a webpage's heiarchical 'parts list' with each element or branch timestamped. Then the browser could send back a much smaller parts list of the webpage elements that it actually needs (comparing timestamps). With such an approach, *applied throughout the entire Internet*, at every switch and router, then the actual traffic would just be what's actually changed since the last buffering.

I'm not an expert in such things, but...

If the webpage was just one simple chunk of HTML, then the latency only counts one round trip. But if the initial webpage goes back again and again and again and again, spawning an ever growing cascade (word chosen intentionally) of Internet calls, then the latency is going to be multiplied by some factor such as ten or fifty (or whatever).

This is very obvious for those poor slobs stuck on satellite Internet with huge "a-thousand-and-one" latency. They visit certain simple websites and click, delay, bang, done. They visit other more-complex website, and it can take 10 or 15 seconds before the silly thing finishes loading all the bits and pieces.

Apple iOS4 upgrade adds multitasking, folders... and pain

"it's still a crap phone..."

It's a phone? Holy shit. When did they add telephone capabilities to it?

One minor glitch

My "high speed" DSL is only 1 Mbps, so it took a couple of hours to download the latest iTunes and then the iOS4, but the update for my 3GS went pretty smooth.

After the update, my user-generated Internet Shortcut ("Home Page") icons would not respond. I began to think that it might be an OS bug, but that seemed to be a bit much... Anyway, a simple Off/On power cycle fixed it.

I love folders. More apps.

Apple's iOS 4 beams into unprepared world

Yummy, folders...

...which means -> More apps. Many more apps.

Took a several hours, but smooth as silk.

I wonder if they fixed the constantly-crashing browser?

Apple asks US gov to hide iPhone details

Prediction: Request denied

FCC will only grant the most-inarguably reasonable of such requests, and only until such time as the device hits the market (where upon the competition will buy one anyway).

You think mobile voice is expensive?

'The Land Of The Brave And Home Of The Free' (TM)

PS: I even used, for the most part, iPhone Skype (with various hotels' WiFi) for calls back home. LOL.

iPhone - Canada roaming to USA

<- Epic

iPhone -> Set 'Data Roaming' OFF and relax. Never, ever, never ever turn it on.

For a trip to the 'The Land Of The Brave And Home Of The Free' (TM), my Canadian telco offered me various options that were almost as insane as roaming. For example, pay an extra $30 fee for a 10MB chunk of roaming data. WTF? Did you say 10GB? No, 10MB. 10MB? Useless. I've seen one stupid (badly designed) blog page that was about 24MB.

Yes indeed, the worldwide shortage of bits continues... {rolls-eyes}

Sony Vaio P netbook

VGN-P720, Cdn$540 w. coupon

Sony Canada has had the P720 on sale for $600. And with a 'good attendance' coupon, you can knock off another $60 or so. Mine lacks 3G and GPS, but I have an iPhone so I can Tether via Bluetooth onto the 'net without paying yet-another monthly fee. It's amazing how much farting around MS Windows needs to do before the PC eventually turns its full attention to the human user. It's best to turn it on just before supper, and let it grind away for 15 minutes while you eat.

It's obviously MS's fault, but the damn thing seems to need about an hour a week of updates, installations, and reboots. I've seen military aircraft with better flight-to-maintenance time ratios.

One huge disappointment is when I tried to play an HD TV show from the hard drive. Even using VLC (presumed to be efficient), it choked. Perhaps I've not got everything setup correctly. The screen is lovely, too bad I (apparently) can't watch HD video.

Overall it's well worthwhile at the price I paid.

Hayabusa in fiery return to Earth

"...retrun"

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/14/hayabusa_retrun/

BT quotes pensioner £150,000 to get broadband

"If I decide to build a house in the middle of nowhere..."

Being in the UK, any chance that she's been living in her (for example) 200-year old house for (say) about 40 years?

Geesh, I'm just a young fella and my house (that I decided to build 'in the middle of nowhere', ...a mile up the road from civilization) was built BEFORE the growth of the Internet into an essential utility.

Canonical updates Landscape manager

When are they going to fix my Vista dual-boot?

The update to 10.04 borked my dual-boot Vista/Ubuntu machine. The Grub update offered in conjunction with 10.04 was a complete MBR-eating fiasco. And the very best instructions I've seen to fix it, those instruction span about two pages of mysterious command line incantations interspersed with dire warnings. Mouth, meet sour taste.

Google in shock reveal of AdSense revenue shares

$100 minimum cheque

They've had my $50 for at least a year. I'll bet that they've got a few hundred million dollars of ad revenue on the books that 'belongs' to all the little bloggers.

Symantec lays out $1.3bn to buy VeriSign's security business

Some of the least-capable software staff anywhere

Based on the self-evident mistakes with some of their products (many blatently obvious with even a cursory glance at the screen...), this cannot be good news. I guess we know where all the 'D' IT students end-up. And it is nice that they hire the visually-impaired to perform the QA function.

Ball lightning is all in the mind, say Austrian physicists

These boffins require a brain transplant

If something is sufficiently rare, then it's expected that there wouldn't be any clear-cut irrefutable evidence (such as one example captured in a bottle and delivered, still pulsing and sparking, to the overly-skeptical boffins).

But chunks of floating highly-electrified plasma isn't all that controversial a claim. It's not "an extraordinary claim". There's no reason not to accept that reports of ball lightning are probably true (but yet to be ultimately confirmed).

And there's no absolutely reason to invoke bizarre and silly explanation such as the one offer from these boffins.

Most browsers leave fingerprint that can ID users

We are all unique, like snowflakes

I think it's obvious that they're making an error by assuming that because you have a detailed fingerprint, it's unique. I suspect that one could format the HD, install a fresh OS, take the test, and be told that you're unique. And a hundred others could do the same thing on the same type of PC and screen (etc.) and could get the same result. I'm not sure, but seems likely.

Getting your head around mainstream mind mapping

My brain doesn't work that way

I read about human brain neural nets many years ago, probably about the time that they were discovered (or at least mentioned in popular science rags). I immediately began to structure my learning into the same natural undrstanding-based format. By doing so it makes learning relatively easy, and (as a bonus) allows one to instantly leap across different fields and apply what you know in one field to a completely separate field. That latter outcome is actually frightening sometimes.

Structured 'mind mapping' is diametrically-opposed.

Competitors vie to provide earthquake-proof radios

Ah, duh!

It's called "Amateur Radio", also known as Ham Radio. The ham radio enthusiests will have radio gear tucked away in various locations, and the know-how to get it working again *no matter what*.

Tower knocked over? Use a tree.

Beam antenna bent? Use a wire dipole of length 468 feet / f (MHz).

Power off? Use a car battery.

Car battery dead? Dig out the solar panels.

Running low on power? Use "QRP" (5 watts and Morse code).

You *cannot* knock ham radio off the air for more than an hour or two. It's impossible. Not even roving bands of alien death squads could do it.

Such last-ditch emergency communications are the justification for the Amateur Radio service. Some of them even practice their "message traffic handling" skills.

They've even got packet radio for point-to-point data traffic. The data rate isn't the highest, but it can be forwarded anywhere.

Virtual Instruments nabs Symantec ex-CEO

Google: Symantec Sucks

So he was in charge of Symantec during the same period when Symantec's Norton-branded consumer PC "security" products went from not-too-bad to utterly-pure-evil crapware (NIS 2007)? He must be so proud. Those bums still owe me thousands of dollars of wasted time, frustration, and lost PC usage.

Apple in shock talks with Reg reader

Update to 9.1.1 is 92.44MB

Requiring a 92MB download for an update is Symantec-quality software (that's as bad an insult as I can think of right now). Worth considering is that we have iTunes on a desktop and a laptop. So these stupid x.x.1 updates will plug-up our 1Mbps Internet connection for about half an hour. And it seems to happen ever month or so.

Every major software product team should have at least one mid-range PC connected to the Internet via dial-up. And every team member should be forced to use that PC for a full day at least once a month. Otherwise they're out-of-touch with a sizable fraction of their user-base.

...and another thing

This minor x.x.1 update (from iTunes 9.1.0 to 9.1.1 ) not only downloads 92.44MB, it also requires a friggen PC reboot !!!! Unbelievable.

And it put an iTunes icon on my desktop without even asking.

Sony sued for dropping Linux from PS3

I just updated my PS3 Linux to Ubuntu 10.04...

...and the Sony PS3 OS has completely disappeared from the boot menu.

Ubuntu 10.04 triumphs over GRUB bug

Reports of the "solved" have been greatly exaggerated

Last night, I updated my dual-boot Vista (yes, I know) / Ubuntu PC to 10.04. And Vista disappeared from the GRUB offerings. So I've just done the Unbuntu updates and rebooted (as suggested) and Vista is still not on offer. So it's an error to mark this issue as being totally solved.

Other tidbits led me to try booting the offered 'Windows Recovery' boot option, and it turns out that it's actually Vista (Hello World!). So I've found Vista, but the GRUB is all screwed up. And I guess that means that the actual Windows Recovery option is actually missing. That makes two errors...

Given the circumstances, I think I'll just let it 'cheese ripen' for a few days...

California's 'Zero Energy House' is actually massive fossil hog

Comparison with my house

"...averaged 85 Therms a month from December '09 through march 2010 (our heating season in LA). ... ...same as 2491 kilowatt-hours per month."

My house uses about 30% more energy (my *total* energy consumption during the heating season, compared to 2491 kwh/month). But my house is, I believe, larger. And located in Canada (where's it is quite a bit colder during winter than SoCal). And occupied by five people, several of whom are home all day. Make the necessary adjustments, and I believe my 20-year-old house is more energy efficient per any reasonable unit of comparison.

Credit to Mr. Page for spotting a phoney. Good work.

Google backpedals on IP 'anonymization' claim

The Art of War

I spend a great deal of time searching for, browsing, viewing and blogging about topics in which I have absolutely no interest. I'm a member of both PETA and the NRA; ...both the ANC and the BNP; ...both Mensa and the US Republican Party. This technique should thoroughly confuse anyone monitoring my on-line habits.

Global warming dirt-carbon peril models are wrong, say boffins

Computer models << Reality

It's impossible to *reliably* model what will happen because some latent lifeform will spring up under the new conditions, and either eat or belch CO2. They don't know. They do not know. They don't know.

Or to quote comic Lewis Black (on a slightly unrelated topic): THEY DON'T KNOW!

Reverse-engineering artist busts face detection tech

@Ed Blackshaw

Moi?

My point was apparently insufficiently clear. For this I apologize and offer this more-verbose version:

Wiles proof of Fermat's Theorem is so exceedingly complicated and modern that there's little wonder that Mr. Fermat's book margin was "too small" to contain his proof. In other words, the proof by Wiles reveals that Mr. Fermat was either deluded, or joking.

Similarly, by the time facial recognition (of the general real-time arbitrary terrorist-spotting variety), *actually* works - years hence - it'll become obvious in hind-sight that the present-day claims must have been pure rubbish.

Clear?

@Jimbo 6

Jimbo 6: "Last time I went to a sports stadium you had to access through a narrow turnstile..."

No, you had to pass through one of many dozens (perhaps a hundred) narrow turnstiles. This massive IT multiplier moves the decimal point about two positions to the right and turns the whole thing into a financial fiasco with zero upside.

And the facial recognition techno-scam artists have made fraudulent claims about "scanning the crowd..." [at the Superbowl] "...to look for terrorists". And the people with the applicable anti-terror budget are so massively tech-illiterate that they can't even perform the rough order-of-magnitude math in their head to notice that it's mathematically impossible.

Marketing of purported automatic facial-recognition schemes are a bit like Fermat's Last Theorum. By the time they actually solve it (maybe 15 or 20 years from now), it'll reveal just how difficult a problem it really was. Thus proving that the early-2000-era claims were bogus.

Geesh, the "Hey it's a face (I think)" systems barely work.

Microsoft FAT patent appeal upheld in Germany

What's this with Germans and theirloveofverylongfilenames?

See title...

McAfee offers cash for clunkers

"The free products are the best."

@Gary F - Hell yes. Amen. Absolutely correct.

I suffered for several years after Norton went to hell in a handbasket starting in the mid-naughties (~2004-ish?). The worst rubbish EVER. My PCs basically sprung to life after I finally and painfully removed NIS-07 from them. Instant and massive improvement in reliability and useability. I now use AVG Free and (more recently) MS Security Essentials. By any reasonable measure, Symantec owes me many thousand of dollars damages for pain and suffering.

Gary F is correct. Find a light-weight AV solution that is free. They're actually better.

Android on an iPhone? There's an app for that

iPhone Tethering in Canada

@Red Bren - a data point from Canada

My iPhone telco of almost-random choice (Rogers, they had the iPhone first) now includes tethering in the data plans. Obviously you still have to pay for the bandwidth consumed, but they no longer care if the bits end up on the iPhone or your laptop.