* Posts by Steve

366 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Aug 2007

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Blighty might have astronauts in future, says UK gov

Steve
Thumb Up

Re: Does the UK do space?

Yes, surprisingly, the UK does space, and has done for a long time. Have a look at Surrey Satellite Technology http://www.sstl.co.uk/

Amazon pooh-poohs (ingenious) New York net tax plan

Steve
Boffin

@scrap it

That's a fairly fundamental political issue.

The leftist approach, taken in France and much of the rest of the EU, is to heavily tax income on a sliding scale. The government then takes that money and spends it for you on things like health, pension, public services etc. It leaves you some so you have a little discretionary spending power. Those in favour of this approach will say that it ensure that the less fortunate are looked after. Detractors will point out that it removes the incentive to work, since the state takes all your money & looks after you in some minimal fashion anyway, and so it is bad for the prosperity of the country.

The rightwing approach, popular in USA/UK/Ireland, is to tax income as little as possible, on the basis that individual choice is important. You should make your own decisions about what you spend your money on, and only if/when you choose to spend it is tax is then collected on what you choose to spend. Those in favour will say that it encourages savings and self-reliance and respects individual choice, which is good for the nation as a whole. Detractors will point out that it reinforces inequalities.

In reality neither one nor the other workds perfectly, so most countries go the middle course. The US still has income tax, and France has VAT, for example. Shifting the balance between them is far from simple, and is one of the reasons that a single currency (and hence fixed interest rates) will never (IMNSHO) work properly.

Steve

Re: Sales Tax?

A more accurate comparison would be like VAT in the EU (not just in the UK). The rule is that if a business has a presence in the country of destination, it charges VAT at the rate applicable in that country. If it doesn't have such a presence, it charges VAT at the rate for the country of origin.

When Amazon UK ships books to someone in the UK it charges the UK rate of VAT (zero). When it ships to France it charges the French rate (5.5%) because there is an amazon.fr.

London Congestion Charge becomes CO2 tax

Steve
Flame

Diesel?

Has it occurred to Red Ken that by changing his taxation policies to encourage the use of low-CO2 diesel vehicles he will be vastly increasing the particulate pollution in London? It's already a filthy city, this will make it worse. Not to mention the asthma problems... Sadly his Red Roots are showing: to hell with comfort and health, the people must conform.

Thievin' teen bot herder admits to infecting military computers

Steve
Flame

@just deserts

Which ones, Sahara, Gobi? I'm all for dropping these guys in the middle of either. Give them a laptop, and no water. See how much fun they have then.

Polaroid to close instant film plants

Steve
IT Angle

replacement?

So, when do we see the first mobile camera-phone with built-in inkjet printer?

Yahoo! to! reject! Microsoft! offer!

Steve
Stop

Re: Competition

"As individuals we have no power to stop this merger if it is agreed by boards/shareholders "

So buy a share in each of MS and Y! and vote against it...

Forth Road Bridge hack redirects to smut bazaar

Steve
Thumb Up

OK, so I had time to waste...

Oresund Bridge

http://osb.oeresundsbron.dk/frontpage/?lang=1

Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge

http://www.carrickarede.com/

London Wobbly Bridge

http://www.arup.com/MillenniumBridge/

Le Pont du Gard

http://www.pontdugard.fr/index.php?langue=GB

I'm sure there's more...

Steve
Go

@James Picket

The Millau Viaduct has its own website: http://www.leviaducdemillau.com/index.html

I have to say it is also just a tad more exciting to cross than the Forth Bridge, although the latter does score by having Edinburgh at one end.

US expat casts ballot from Vienna, wonders if anyone got it

Steve

@JonB

secret != anonymous

If you voted in an election in the UK your vote can be tied to the stub of the ballot paper, and that stub can be linked to you. It needs a court order to be able to assemble the information to make that link, but it is possible.

Sarko and Bruni take Ryanair for €60k

Steve

Charges

So will we see this as line item #97 on a Ryanair invoice: French Insult Charge €1.00 ?

Dutch fire up petrol-pumping robot

Steve
Happy

Sanity check?

Anyone remember the Candid Camera stunt where they put a 50-gallon drum into the boot of a Mini (original, not BMW) and connected it to the fuel filler, then drove into a garage, and said "fill 'er up"? After 20 gallons or so the pump attendant was down on his knees looking under the car for the leak...

EU to ban the patio heaters that ate the planet. Not.

Steve
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Ventilated rooms

aren't a solution. Employers have a legal (and I'd say moral) duty to provide a safe working environment for their staff. Concentrating the smokers in one place only makes the problem worse for the people who have to work/clean in there. It's one of the reasons airlines went non-smoking years ago.

You could try and hire smokers, but that would be discriminatory, and even if the staffer (smoker or not) signed a disclaimer it still wouldn't stop them coming back in ten years when they have lung cancer and suing the pub/brewery claiming "You didn't tell me it would kill me".

Some people like a glass of champagne while they have sex, but no-one suggests that pubs provide bedrooms. Some things are assumed to be private and better done at home where no-one else will be offended. Smoking is in that category.

Steve
Flame

What *is* a patio heater?

So, how exactly do they plan to define patio heaters, compared to,say, indoor space heaters (that one could take outside)? This is a bit like the plan to ban incandescent lightbulbs. How are they going to stop me filling my house with 60W radiant heaters purchased on the web from, say, Poland?

At the end of the day it's just another civil-service plan whose sole object is to create work for civil servants, and so justify hiring even more timewasting jobsworths at our expense. The (dis)United States of Europe, run by unelected bureaucrats. Even Sir Humphrey would be impressed. I'm not.

Secret bidder delivers 'open access' to US airwaves

Steve
Linux

Year 2039?

Isn't the next Y2K-style scare due for January 2038, when the Unix clock variable wraps? Eric will only be 82 & 8 months then, maybe he's hoping to hang on a little after the world ends?

Reg readers bring down HMRC website

Steve
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You're not alone...

I used the French equivalent system a couple of years ago (they offer a whopping 20 euros rebate if you do it online) . To set up initial security it downloaded a certificate into C:\<somewhere>. So my first attempt to do this from a non-Windows system failed miserably.

Following their hackaround instructions, it put the security certificate in my home directory. World-readable. On a shared system. I fixed that, and eventually got the submisison done.

The following year I tried again, to be met with similar issues to the ones in this thread, systems unavailable, please come back later, etc.

Since this I've filled in the form on paper. The online hassle isn't worth it for a miserable 20 euros. Don't hold your breath for HMRC to get better.

Amateur code breaker honoured for defeating Colossus

Steve
Go

Bletchley Park

If anyone reading this hasn't been to BP, I can highly recommend it. Don't be put off by the mandatory 2-hour tour, you'll happily spend an entire afternoon there, even if you're not an IT geek! Colossus is far from being the only interesting exhibit.

It was interesting to see folks working on Colossus, while on the service benches around them were thermionic valves lying between laptops :)

The 'blem wit' error messages

Steve

Cars do it too

In these chilly mornings my wife (a usability designer) is amused by the screen on her car radio which pops up a picture of a snowflake and the text "3°C Warning Icy Road" with only an "OK" button. It certainly isn't OK, but what can she do?

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned

"No keyboard found. Press F1 to continue" yet...

Sony signs on for made-to-order DVD service

Steve
Alert

head in sand

So, they're offering this model:

- log on and order DVD

- wait a few days/weeks for email saying DVD is now in stock

- go to shop to collect DVD

instead of this one

- log on and order DVD

- wait a few seconds for email with download URL

- download DVD, watch/burn at home

I can only assume that they think the physical model offers more in the way of secure DRM. Will they never learn?

Polish IT worker calculates exact speed of snail mail

Steve
Boffin

@Matthew

Velocity is the rate of change of distance travelled *in a given direction*. You can do a steady 100mph in a circle, and although your speed is constant your velocity is continually changing.

Just how cute are cats? W3C can help

Steve
Coat

Cats

This is all completely irrelevant, <em>no</em> self-respecting cat would admit to being <i>cute</i>.

Tesla shifts gear out of park and into interim

Steve

Remember the Rx80...

Give it 5 years and the magazines will be full of articles on how to showhorn in a Ford V4 instead, once the batteries won't hold a charge.

Autothrottle problems suspected in Heathrow 777 crash

Steve
Happy

overridable autopilots

At the end of the day it comes down to which scenario is more likely, the plane being saved by a pilot overuling a faulty computer, or by a computer overuling a faulty pilot.

Looking at how many "accidents" end up classed as pilot screwup, compared to how many are due to mechanical failures, I think that the odds are on the computer override being statistically safer. Obviously no consolation if you're on the occasional plane where the reverse is true, but..

Still, I hope they figure this one out before June 23rd, when I'll be on a 10-hour 777 flight.

Hull disappears off t'internet

Steve

and a broken-hearted woman

There's a one-eyed yellow idol

To the north of K...

Oh, sorry. Wrong Karoo

Illegal immigrants spared the gamma-ray scanner

Steve
Stop

@Fazal Majid

"Countries that have bills of rights tend to be funny that way."

Ah, that old chestnut. The English Bill of Rights was passed in 1689, a full century before the French one, and much of its content was reused in the amendments of the US constitution, so we got there a LONG way first.

Steve
Go

So do it to *everyone*

Install some scanners at the ferry terminals in the UK. Require *everyone* to sign an authorization form saying that they accept that they *may* be scanned (it's not practical to do 100% coverage) on entry/return to the UK, including day trippers, holiday makers etc. Voilà, instant radiation-inspired-paranoia-driven boycott of French ferry ports.

Then wait 'til the Calais beer & wine shop owners start screaming that no-one's coming to shop any more, and tell them to lobby their local "deputé"...

Japanese to launch paper plane from ISS

Steve
Happy

Re: Sillier and sillier

"It's really overwhelming that a boomerang will go to space instead of me."

Maybe, but probably reassuring, if it turns out that it doesn't always come back...

Great newspaper though. Surprised El Reg hasn't followed up on:

"Transport official caught forging train passes to get cash to buy model train set"

not to mention

"Frisky judge quits after biting sex shop employee"

Computer system suspected in Heathrow 777 crash

Steve

What's cookin'?

A friend of mine was on a plane that had a bird strike at Heathrow. She said that there was a bump, a slight change in engine note, and then a distinct smell like roast chicken drifting through the plane... Did anyone ask if the passengers could smell dinner?

(Same friend was on a plane that was hit by lightning. Lots of people don't want to fly with her again...)

Amazon defies French courts over shipping costs

Steve
Thumb Up

@viet

I think you misunderstand the point I am making (and for information 'home' for me is France, not too far in fact from Echirolles, referred to in case C-9/99. I know the Centre Leclerc well).

That case specifically refers to the situation of import of books *for sale*. In that respect the law has been tested and upheld.

My point was that if I, as a private citizen in France, import a French book from another EU country for my personal use, I cannot (and should not) be prevented from paying the price in force in the country of supply. e.g if Amazon.co.uk choose to sell me "Asterix chez les Bretons" en Français for 6 euros, well below the 8.46 euros fixed as the French legal minimum, I am breaking no EU law by buying it. Therefore, if Amazon chose to close their French operation entirely, and operate Amazon.fr from some other jurisdiction, I see no way in which restrictive French law could be applied to the situation, other than by prosecuting every individual purchaser as an importer, which I think would be ridiculous and thrown out by the courts. Additionally if they operated from the UK, they would be spared the cost of French VAT, which would offset shipping costs.

As for people agreeing it's good for business, permit me to be sceptical. If that were the case then obviously no-one would buy at a discount from Amazon.fr. This is the same myth used by booksellers in the UK who protested that the removal of the Net Book Agreement would make it impossible to buy anything but classics and bestsellers. The reverse has happened, the tiny High Street bookshops with knowledgeable staff and very small stock may not be physically present but their trade is booming thanks to the web with eBay and paypal. They have a much larger market, and no need to pay High Street rents for what was essentially a stockroom, and there's no shortage of specialist and minor-market books around. You can also still go into larger bookstores like Blackwells, Foyles, Waterstones/Borders in the UK, Decitre in France etc. and find knowledegable staff to discuss all sorts of books.

Steve
Flame

@viet

"If objective elements prove that a book was edited or printed in the EU only to avoid being in the scope of the law, but are mostly imported in France and not sold elsewhere, then the importer must comply with the fixed price law."

If I, in France, buy a book from Amazon UK, who is the importer? Me. So the French courts are gling to sue me for non-respect of the law because I bought something from another EU country at a discount? I would *really* love to see that one come to trial in the European Court :)

Steve
Thumb Up

Running from outside .fr

There would be another advantage to operating exclusively from outside France.

As EU rules stand, when you buy goods from one EU country and have them shipped to another (e.g. by mail order), the supplier has to charge VAT. If the supplier has a presence in the destination country then they must charge VAT at that rate, otherwise they charge at the rate applicable in the country of origin.

France charges 5.5% VAT on books, the UK zero-rates them, so today anyone in France who buys from amazon.co.uk has to pay French 5.5% VAT on top. By closing Amazon.fr and shipping everything from the UK the applicable rate would be 0%, an automatic reduction of 5.2% or so, which could offset shipping :)

Steve

Hardly a level playing field

Amazon.fr have a petition on their website about this.

High Street stores don't charge for shipping either, so it's a bit rich to claim that Amazon, who have no High Street presence, are somehow discounting books by more than the legal 5% by not charging for something which the High Street shops don't have to charge for anyway. Free shipping just levels the field, no more.

NASA embosses space images for the blind

Steve
IT Angle

Missed opportunity

What about the companion Audio CD "Listen to the Universe - Microwave background remix" ?

Most home routers 'vulnerable to remote take-over'

Steve

Re: Confusion about WRT54GL

On a WRT54GL it's on the Administration tab, Management subtab, right at the bottom. Should be disabled by default.

Terrifying farm mechanoid plan for Japan

Steve
Coat

Low batteries?

Just when you have 200kg of rice above your head ready to put on top of a pile...

Wile E. Coyote, anyone?

UK faces big jump in renewable targets

Steve
Coat

Just a question of definitions

Oil and coal *are* renewable, it just takes a while. What's 10m years to a bureaucrat?

Academics slam Java

Steve
Thumb Up

Well said

"no feeling for the relationship between the source program and what the hardware would actually do"

Too true. There are way to many people around today who have no clue what's happening underneath, and who leave cr@p everywhere because the underlying implementation will clean up their garbage for them so they don't have to care.

It's not the language that's the problem, it's the sloppy practices it encourages by hiding the programmers from the consequences. That's why we end up with monstrostities like Windows Vista that won't run in less than 1GB of RAM. My home file server has 32MB (and no Java) and even that seems extravagant... Now where did I leave that Fortran compiler?

Excuse me sir: there's a rootkit in your master boot record

Steve
Thumb Down

Re: Where's the issue?

Well, if I did FDISK /MBR on the PC where I'm typing this, it would completely trash my grub setup, and render the machine unable to boot any of the Solaris, Linux or WinXP OSes currently installed, so it doesn't sound like a great fix to me...

Steve

hardware fix

Critical memory like MBRs and BIOS should be hardware write-protected, with a jumper to enable writes in the rare occasions when new data needs to be written.

Camouflaged code threatens security apps

Steve
Stop

The other approach

Would an alternative not be to find some existing whitelisted app, and add appropiate extra bytes to some malware so that it matches? Wouldn't require access to anything but the malware.

Kent council approves 'cleaner' coal-fired plant

Steve
Flame

Renewables

"I don't know about Europe, but the US has essentially dammed all of the useful hydro locations that it has"

The problem is that in much of Europe the useful places to generate renewable energy are far away from where it is needed. In the UK, for example, the best place for hydro and wind is Scotland, yet the major consumption is in SE England. Of course it is possible to ship it, but the Scots don't want ugly pylons all over their landscape to supply the English, and shipping power that distance has losses and other severe challenges, not least that of grid stability.

When you have a grid with widely varying supply and demand patterns (very common with renewables like wind) it can become unstable. It's like trying to carry a shallow tray full of water, once it starts to slosh you have almost no chance of avoiding a disaster. Figures usually quoted suggest that 16% is about the practical limit for intermittent renewable power on a grid like the UK has before the grid risks falling apart under extreme conditions. That could probably be improved by building massive pumped-storage hydro stations as buffers, but that requires drowning lots of land for water storage reservoirs, and the greenies will probably whinge about dead butterflies if we do that.

Obviously we need to reduce dependence on oil, if for no other reason that in some decades time the only countries that will still have oil are not the ones we want to have in control of our economies (and as a separate issue, why are sanctions that prevent them selling that oil today considered useful? Better to force them to sell it all now, but cheap :) ). Reducing waste is important, but not to the extremes that the hair shirt brigade seem to prefer. That leaves nuclear as the only practical option., Works for the French, 74% nuclear today.

Mobile phone users should drive faster says prof

Steve
Alert

@Rick

"I hear drunk drivers also often drive slower and change lanes less too, in order to not attract attention of traffic enforcement."

Many years ago one of my Mum's friends was pulled over by a policeman who clearly thought she'd been drinking (nose stuck well into the car as he asked to see her licence). After agreeing that she was completely sober he explained that he'd stopped her because she was driving so precisely at the speed limit and signalling every turn that he was sure she was trying to hide :)

They both had a good laugh when she explained that it was her first time driving in the UK after years of living in Germany, and she was concentrating very hard on driving correctly on the left, and with speed limits in MPH again...

Steve
Flame

Slow *and* dangerous

They drive more slowly because their concentration is divided, so they don't *notice* that they could use the faster lanes.

Of course, nor do they notice the white line between the lanes, nor the person trying to overtake them as they wander between lanes, nor the red light in front of them, nor the fact that the car in front has just stopped. Needless to say they don't notice that they're doing *any* of that either, so they all think they're perfectly safe and not causing any problems to anyone else. Until they hit something.

At least they can't send text messages hands-free (yet).

French government decides mobiles 'may not be safe'

Steve
Flame

Re: ...and the risk indeed!

"It seems the general public don't have an appetite for scientific proofs of anything..."

The problem there being that you can't scientifically prove a negative, i.e. "mobile phones are not dangerous".

If you test 100 people with a phone, and 100 without, and 20 of the first group get cancer while 1 of the second group does, you can say with some certainty "the tested phone is dangerous".

If you test 100 people and none gets cancer, you can say "probably safe". If you test 1m people and none gets cancer you can say "very probably safe", but you cannot ever say "no-one will ever get cancer" unless you test everyone for ever, which is impractical if not impossible.

That is why no reputable scientist will ever say it, they have to say "probably very safe", and our scaremongering press translates that as "might be dangerous", in order to sell more tabloids :(

Microsoft readies Hal 9000

Steve
Pirate

Pharmaceutical opportunity?

All of the effects they want to measure are caused by chemical changes, which can be induced by more than just work/stress etc. I can see it now, dubious characters hanging round the pub "Hey Guv, want to buy eight hours of 'hard work'? Or I can do a great deal on three days of 'over stressed', if you need a sickie for the big match."

Ofcom investigates X-Factor debacle

Steve
Alert

Phone numbers

Even though the same phone numbers were used nation wide there's no guarantee that they all terminated in the same physical place. These days it is trivial to ensure that all calls to, say, 0900 123456 in Belfast get counted in a Belfast exchange, while calls to the same number from Edinburgh could be counted in Edinburgh. There's no point in saturating the whole network just to route all calls to one place where they'll get dropped.

Of course, that presumes that the organisers bothered to organise this with BT...

BT learned this lesson may years ago when a newspaper (Daily Mail?) ran a bingo competition and printed the wrong number on the last day, leaving thousand of people across the country thinking they'd won. It jammed the trunks right down though central England as thery all tried, and failed, to get through to London. The result was development of a technique (back-busying? it's been a long time) by which the calls could be turned away locally before they even get to the trunk network, if it is clear that they have no chance of being completed. That way the destination exchange doesn't become so saturated that it drops other unrelated calls.

I suppose that, if the latter situation happened, a geographic bias could result in an unbalanced rejection of calls to one or other number.

Incidentally, what's the X-factor, and who is Leon?

Fire stations too much like fire stations, says Govt

Steve
Flame

Only a matter of time

before Nu Labour cancels the whole fire service and just legislates for it to rain every time there's a fire. Then when it doesn't they'll be able to blame a junior civil service clerk for mislaying the paperwork

New DARPA scramjet-drone contract award

Steve
Coat

what about the hard part?

Take off from a runway and "do a barrel roll at Mach 6"

That just takes a rifled barrel. Surely making it *NOT* do a barrel roll at Mach 6 after takeoff is the real challenge?

Beeb censors Fairytale of New York

Steve
Thumb Up

BBC is getting a few comments too

This story is carried on the BBC news website. Stats for the "debate" as they quaintly title their forum are:

Total comments: 1740

Published comments: 759

Rejected comments: 25

Moderation queue: 955

Busy moderator :)

Story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7149525.stm if El Reg will permit the URL.

Germans debut kitesurf-powered autonomous windjammer

Steve

Not new

Didn't the Japanese try this with fixed blade-like sails on cargo ships, years ago? It didn't seem to catch on.

@DaveS - presumably they can tack, else there would be a lot of kite surfers sitting in the doldrums trying to hitch a lift home...

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