Posts by DuncanLarge

Stallman's final interview as FSF president: Last week we quizzed him over Microsoft visit. Now he quits top roles amid rape remarks outcry

I'm done, turn off the light when you leave

The world has ended.

Re: Please don't call them hackers. That's offensive to us hackers.

> And he's still don't understand the name "Linux" sells better than "GNU

Well Ford may sell better than Skoda but I dont see anyone demanding that Skoda rename their cars to Ford just because Ford came out with the first one.

Also, do you think that Dyson shouldnt advertise their cleaners as Dysons and not as Hoovers?

UK.gov's smart meter cost-benefit analysis for 2019 goes big on cost, easy on the benefits

Hmm

As much as I will be annoyed about having to put up with another 4 years of pestering, maybe this will mean I can wait for a proper and secure smart meter design?

Preferably one that does not go wrong and start charging me for generating solar energy like some poor guy on the radio this morning found was happening with his meter!

Service call centres to become wasteland and tumbleweed by 2024

Ahem

The good thing about being clued up on 'puters is you know how to break them in ways that require you to be employed to fix them ;)

Time for another cuppa then? Tea-drinkers have better brains, say boffins with even better brains

Re: Smarts drink tea or Drink tea makes smarts

I think you mean teaspoon.

I doubt that a mug of tea could dissolve 2 tablespoons of sugar and youd really have to have a sweet tooth to want that much sugar!

Also think of the amount of tax on it :D

Eco-activists arrested by Brit cops after threatening to close Heathrow with drones

Delusional

> Another one of the idiots had this to say about himself in a press release: “I’m mainly doing it because I’m trying to be a human being. And I’m 53.

> In a few decades I’m not going to be here anymore.

Same here. Enjoy life while you can.

> Maybe in a few years.

What? Assuming you are not suggesting some Hollywood 2012 movie style natural disaster that you saw in a dream and thought was a premonition I'll tell you to eat a balanced diet and keep active. Problem sorted.

Tesla Autopilot crash driver may have been eating a bagel at the time, was lucky not to get schmeared on road

Total BS

> He said his eyes were on the road, and he was looking ahead just before the collision.

BS, total BS. SO he just sat there, watching the road while he plowed into the back of a large, heavy truck that had bright flashing lights?

Totally believe him. If this was actually the case then me must have some medical condition that should prevent him from operating a vehicle.

How idiotic is he to think that someone would believe this and still allow him to have a license?

The top three attributes for getting injured on e-scooters? Having no helmet, being drunk or drugged, oddly enough

> Used properly they are great fun, speedy and great value.

You can only go round in a circle on your driveway.

> I would never cycle around London (a literal cyclist death grinder trap) but scooters get me a few miles quickly and largely along empty pavements.

How? When "used properly" as you say, you cant do this. At all. They can only be properly used on your drive.

> Yes, I have to get off and walk in busy areas.

Are you daydreaming while scooting? Or do you have a problem with tresspassers on your drive? I suggest installing a gate.

> takes a looooong downhill straight stretch to reach this

Your drive needs leveling.

> Funny enough, if I drive high and stoned without my seat belt that's not a good idea either. Personal, self, responsibility. Enforced, by, Darwinism.

Dont talk about Darwinism when you are stupid enough to not use one of these toys properly. The sooner you jump off it when the el-cheapo battery catches fire the better.

Re: Scooter stoopid

It amazes me that people bother to buy these things considering that restriction.

Bascally they only can be used on private land, presumably that means you need to own a house with a large paved area out the front or back. I dont think many people own such property.

Then you can only ride around in circles...

Ah, this should totally reassure Euro workers: They'll get Brexit EU settled status app on iPhones from October

Re: WTF: Passport details on a smartphone

I'd trust it mor ethan being asked to scan and email the passport like some solicitors do.

Also I'd trust it a lot more than the stupid hold it to a webcam so somebody can read it rubbish that many bitcoin exchanges force you to do.

Re: Priceless ...

> Who did they choose as the new supplier of passport documents*? That's right, a Franco-Dutch firm!

Your point?

/me quickly googles

Oh, turns out Gemalto are world leaders in such technology and practicaly every bank seems to use them. Who would have thought that a country on the european continent would have chosen to use a world leading company, already used for many years, to make the biometric passports like they always have supplied.

Next up: People wonder why we are still buying iPhones made in chinese factories by child/student slaves. Now THATS more of an issue.

Re: Priceless ...

I dont get whats priceless.

I have never head of this Dutch firm nor their platform. I suppose they must have been in the news recently?

Silly, but its fine

TBH it's pretty stupid not to have an iOS and Android app for such a process ready from day one. Luckily its all fine as the deadline for registering is July 2021.

Microsoft's only gone and published the exFAT spec, now supports popping it in the Linux kernel

Re: My uninformed comment

> We'll start with the problem that it's designed for optical media.

No its not. Its designed for a variety of media types. I use UDF a lot and can safely say that it has modes for optical and HDD. Perhaps you should read the page again and you will see that it has specific formatting modes for HDD's and anything that works like them.

Most of the development between versions focus on optical media because there was so much improvement to be had in handling wear levelling etc.

> As in media that can be written a couple of times at most

Lol, hundres of thousands of writes are a couple of times? I know of SSD's that can only handle a few thousand, what say you about those?

To summarise the rest of your comment: UDF is a file system that would have given us everything we would have needed. It was borked by the companies (M$) that want a monopoly on file systems use, with as you say, poor implementations. Thus, like other borked formats like RTF, UDF has basically been beaten up and left in the gutter to be used by those who need its features and dont mind dealing with the vendor implemented incompatibilities.

What other open and free filesystem can you think of? Its not FAT, yet thats on all SD cards and flash drives, its not NTFS, not HFS+. EXT(1,2,3,4), XFS, ZFS etc all meet this definition but guess what, you dont see them, even though they are superior, on large flash drives.

If this exFAT thing allows a Free SOftware exFAT driver to legally exist, maybe this will be a good thing.

UDF

UDF was supposed to be the answer, a universal, free, patent unemcumbered filesystem that was supposed to bridge all OS's while supporting the quirks of each such as POSIX file attributes for UNIX like systems.

Still used in many cases by each of the main OS's yet incompatible due to how the OS's format the UDF partition.

What a wasted oppertunity that was!

Luckily someone wrote a script that can format a UDF partition (i.e on a flash drive) to be fully supported by Mac OS, Windows and GNU/Linux. So I typically format my flash drives as UDF using this script and I get a filesystem that does everything needed by each OS I happen to use it in.

Re: It's a trap!

SMB came from IBM in the early 80's way befor MS got their hand on it, buy buing it.

Also SMB support on GNU/Linux comes from Samba, a completer re-implementation of the protocol. No MS involvement.

GIMP open source image editor forked to fix 'problematic' name

I love correcting people who miss-pronounce GIF.

I start talking about the Jraphics Interchange Format and then keep reffering to Jraphics designers and sometimes I say "Hey look at the tacky jraphics he uploaded onto our site, get him on the phone and I'll tell him what jraphics quality we expect".

Re: Ignorance?

Ignorance has nothing to do with it. Its just an example of language being different across the world.

In fact, as The GIMP was created at the University of California back in 1995 it shows that language was different back then, or just in that area.

I know of many american terms that cause offense over here in Blighty but we just laugh it off as silly americanisms. I remember as a kid almost choking when Marge Simpson offered Bart a "fanny pack" or when some character on another programme told people he keeps his wallet in his pants, something that would be pretty disgusting if you mention this to someone in the UK when you offer to lend them money from said wallet.

I've also gotten used to ignoring the blatent swearing that amerians do on youtube whenever they use their fingers to represent the number 2 when counting.

I think the older UI was great. Recently it has become a bit of a mess but at least its keeping its general layout so its navigable.

Drinking my tea, I cough and splutter

Please tell me this is a late April fools joke?

However, I suppose this is a good example of the power and freedom given to everyone, users and developers, by Free Software such as this. I think the reason to fork is ridiculous, but I defend and applaud having the right to do so.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson moves to shut Parliament

Finally

Its about bloody time!

Electric cars can't cut UK carbon emissions while only the wealthy can afford to own one

> However, as previously stated when the same comment was made. We can't encourage or help other countries to transition until we have done it ourselves. If we become world leaders in renewable, carbon free technology

France moved entirely to nuclear, have the cheapest energy, lowest emissions of anyone else and yet nobody has managed to follow them.

Re: Get back to me when....

> There's been talk of having EVs fitted with sound generators

This is already the case. The talk is about forcing them to be on at certain speeds. Which they should.

> because they can't be arsed to use their eyes before crossing.

Nice to SEE you have eyes. Do you want blind people to be taken off the streets? What about partially sighted people? Oh and how about people who can barely lift their head. In gact, as its so inconvenient for you your highness lets do this:

1. Remove all blind people off the street. We can use AI to detect if the can react to a sign or symbol place at regular intevals on the street. If the AI sees no reaction then it can target and taser them. This would be basically like a physical version of a CAPTCHA, testing that a subject can see in order to permit access to the outside world. Blind people should be confined to being wheeled around by helpers, who will pass the test and not anoy you.

2. Same goes for partially sighted people, wheel them about if they cant see certain things.

3. Pull all kids off the street too. They tend to run into roads etc, esp when they are young. Why should they be taught to LISTEN for vehicles? Then again perhaps we can run the brats down for points?

4. Anyone with working eyes but unable to move theor head, permanantly or just due to a neck brace, should be declared disabled and confined to a wheelchair operated by a sighted able person.

I forsee and new type of job. The AI will probably end up tasering the kids so will be switched off. Plenty of people will love to walk the streets looking for undesireables, pulling them off the road, hunting and chasing them into corners. All hail the EV driver.

Re: Does EV adoption just encourage 2-car families?

What kind of a road has 16 lanes? Jesus

Re: Chicken and egg...

> but this is still inits infancy.

So not a solution then.

Re: Chicken and egg...

> Not suitable for everyone

Yep, I think the vast majority of people live in a place like one of these:

1. A flat (tower). Parking is provided on the public highway. Your space is dictated by whoever has parked there and how much space they have left you. You may have to walk to your car to grab that thing you left in the boot, that could take several mins. Charging a car at home in such a location would be very difficult.

2. A house / flat on a victorian street. Like with the flat in the tower you most likely have no off road parking at all. The parking is on the public highway and a general free for all. If someone has a party you may not even be able to park in your street. Charging a car at home will again be very difficult. Even if you do manage to park outside your property you would have to throw an extension lead out the window and deal with the council who will likely come to complain about health and safety issues with a cable going across the public footpath.

3. Flat (tower or otherwise) with allocated parking. Depending on the type of parking allocated to you (undergroud car park, parking bays) you may be able to wire up a charging facility. Landlord permitting, location permitting. You may not however always have access to you bay if someone decides to go ahead and park in it.

4. A newer street. You have more space and probably can park outside your house most days but see point 2 as its still an issue.

5. House with a drive/garage. Yep you can probably charge your car without much issue.

Basically the only people who can really make use of home charging are those who have the ability to have the car on their own land somehow.

If you dont have a drive or garage you will have to go to various lengths to implement a home charging facility. If you are parking on the public highway you will be likely charging at public points.

Thing is, most people fall into categories 1,2 and 3. Newer streets (point 4) are built as part of new estates and having visited several I see a mix of on road parking, drives and assigned parking bays. None of which have any charging points already installed.

So, how are the majority of the british public supposed to charge their EV's? Answer, public charging points will be more commonly used than home charging that will be reserved for the few that have the space to use for it.

> Only takes 10 minutes at the most to fill up.

I see this comment many times and wonder how large your tank is? I think its far less than that. My tank is a 40L and fills in under a min.

Then again you also have the time it takes to queue and pay.

Price: Has a looooooooong way to fall. A realy loooooooooong way.

Range: Considering that most ordinary people must get their cars secondhand, range will be approx the 90 miles of the first generation leaf, which is just starting to enter the secondhand market at a premium price.

Charging stations: I have seen this comment recently. It ignores the fact that charging stations charge far far less vehicles in the same time that a petrol station, with all of its multiple pumps, fills combustion cars. Its not equivalient yet.

Charge time: Yes, but till you can charge your car to (as a guess) 50% charge within 5 mins of plug in I think you will:

- Need more charge stations that there are petrol PUMPS to offset the slower "refill"

- Pave over much more land than they typical petrol station. Basically a large car park to replace 1 small petrol station. You could do this with underfloor inductive charging for each space in a service station. Oh and ban combustion cars from that car park as the space is totally useless (iced) should a combustion car park on it.

> Except that volcanoes don't actually produce as much carbon as mankind. Not even close.

What school did you go to? Its the other way around.

The amount of c02 produced by man pales in comparison to a single eruption. Check your science book again buddy.

> I don't think anyone would, but no one is proposing dumping the batteries all over the countryside are they?

Like Lead acid cells they get recycled.

I'm not talking about when they are end of life. I'm talking about when they are activley being used.

Dumping them around the countryside to be charged up by a wind or solar farm is a disaster waiting to happen. When they are end of life, assuming they survived till then, they will be recycled to a point.

My post was about the active live batteries dotted around the landscape that wont be recycled becaue they can and will easily fail, taking the rest of the cells with them, spewing their innards into the sky. I never leave a li-ion battery charging that is unsupervised, certainly if its old. Lol I dont sit there watching it but I'm there to try and limit the damage should it go up. Some people I know use a metal baking tray to charge devices/batteries in especially if they are old or 3rd party ones.

Just think about it for a second.

1. The post office (other services avalable) require you to DECLARE your package contains li-ion batterues or not. Once declared a large warning sticker is placed in the package, if the post office even permits you to post it as some refuse to handle them. These pakages are then treated like potential explosives. Some of the other couriers will flatley refuse to even handle anything that contains a li-ion battery

2. Planes dont let you carry them without following certain restrictons. In fact I know that anyone with a 2015 macbook will be asked several questions should they be found trying to take on on a plane.

3. The samsung Galaxy Note 7

They are not safe enough to have dotted around the countryside in some big metal box with loads of other batteries all exposed to the blaring heat of the record breaking summers that are hot enough to cause pandemoium on the rails. Maybe they will use A/C to cool them, till that fails. Maybe they will encase each cell in its own fire resistant case so that should one, just one go up it wont take all the others with it.

This is what happens when one, just one cell fails surrounded by others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdDi1haA71Q

And this will be dwarfed by the number of cells used in a facility to be charged by wind or solar in a feild somewhere.

> The removal of high carbon sources and replacement with low/zero carbon sources reduces the overall carbon footprint

Ok, not that really makes a difference but why do you think that there is no issue with replacing a so called "high carbon" source with a high litium source?

Why are we sitting back and ignoring the litium pollution threat?

> Every new upgrade to renewables/battery storage that is added to the grid instantly upgrades all vehicles to cleaner energy as well.

Er no.

Sorry but the so called renewables are just the same issue: pollution and environmental destruction, only re-formed into a new shiny package that lets everyone go crazy about how shiny it is and ignore the problems it causes. In 30 to 40 years time I'm expecting we will all be screaming and protesting about how the dead old solar panels are being dumped in some poor country somehwere, poisoning their water and creating a crisis that will end up on the BBC in a documentary just like the plastic one they recently had.

I also dont think that placing highly flammable, unstable, heat intolerant and poisonous lithium based battery tech all over the countryside is a good idea. I certaily wouldnt want to live near one in case it go up and the wind is blowing in my direction. I'd expect emergency gas masks to be carried by all adults and children aka WW2 in towns and villages near such facilities.

Wait a minute, we're supposed to haggle! ISPs want folk to bargain over broadband

Re: How much time would you need to invest?

> You don't HAVE to use the default settings

You should NOT use the default settings.

FTFY ;)

Electric vehicles won't help UK meet emissions targets: Time to get out and walk, warn MPs

Re: The ones calling for it first.

> I know plenty of guys in skilled trades whose pay rises have been below inflation for years

I left university around 2006 and got a job as a Software Tester.

I got 1 pay rise during the six years I was there. That was when my probational period ended.

When I was forced to leave that job I was out of work for 8 months and got a job in IT again, but only after taking a pay cut. The money paid all the bills and got some food. The rest went onto the petrol used to drive there and back leaving £50 at best at the end of each month.

Re: The ones calling for it first.

> utilities are soaring in cost to fund "smart meters" now forecast to save nothing and in fact to be a growing cost and thus the roll out has stagnated.

And those of us smart enough to avoid them are being punished by having all the deals and fixed rates etc removed from selection, thus taking more money out of the household.

> (Likely to be discovered in 30 to 50 years that the whole thing involved brown envelopes between ministers and smart meter manufacturers along with copious levels of incompetence.)

I think thats going to be a lot more than just smart meters. Que the panorama investigations and weeks of breakfast radio talking about the swindle(s) over and over till they get distracted by the UK suffering from a weak storm that only touches the northern tip of scotland, yet we named the storm.

> Latest ad campaign has dropped any mention of savings in favour of branding the electricity grid "outdated"

Reminds me of that CGI silver robot trying to convince us that FM was being switched off and we all had to, ahem, downgrade to a low bitrate, 1980's codec using, mono, expensive and battery eating radio service called DAB. Better than FM quality my asre.

> If you want to make a difference - don't have kids or keep it to two maximum

Actually the scientists say this has no real effect at all, Harry, Kate, pay attention.

> that suspending democracy in favour of a climate saving dictatorship is being openly discussed in positive terms by some green activist groups.

Thats the first step for some of them to start floaing the idea of human culling...

Re: 50 miles???

> The point of 99% of drivers being within 50miles of a charge point

Only 20 more miles to the beach then!

Also, what about those who are (more likely) to have a dead car when 6 miles from their home, say in the village down the road a bit, yet the nearest fast charge point is about 50 miles away.

How do you charge your car then? Just to get home?

Re: 50 miles???

> Most don't have auto transmission, they are single geared

Thats the same thing, no clutch and an auto transmission stick.

> prefer not to go back to manual. Try a test drive in a Tesla and you'll never consider a manual box a useful addition. This is coming from someone who had many fast manual sports cars.

Well, sorry but I have know many people who are completley dying to have clutch control on their auto systems. I like my cluctch control. A small ramp in a car park thats covered by snow is no issue for me yet several on my workmates are pratically drawing up plans of attack because their auto transmissions would just use too much power or just slip. It was quite annoying when they wouldnt let me go first, probably because they knew I'd just exit the car park like it was nothing.

Drive a tesla? I havnt ever seen one and I really dont think they will let me test drive one, unsupervised considering how expensive they are. If someone is looking over my shoulder asking questions, watching the manual user try to figure out how to stop himself graspong for a gear stick that does not exist I'd rather ride a bike.

As for sports cars? I drive around tonw and the countryside. A manual sports car is very different from a manual everyday car. You would have fared better compating with an auto land rover. Oh wait, they dont exist, I hope.

Re: 50 miles???

> They have become common and normal in some countries like Norway

We are talking about an article that is UK specific.

Re: 50 miles???

> Given orbital solar panels or a transplanet grid

We are talking reality here, not sci-fi.

Re: 50 miles???

> visit a public fast charger to top it up in a few minutes

Visit? Currently that would be a day trip. Also, it wont charge your car fully in a "few minites"

> and you didn't have a second car

That is most likely the case considering the government want us to give up our cars, even the EV ones. Also, who the hell would have/could afford to have a second EV??

> and there was no possibility of taking a taxi

A taxi, on a 80 mile trip? Good luck finding a cab company that will do that and when you eventually find one good luck taking out the loan from the bank.

> or ringing a friend or relative

Ah but maybe your phone is dead (died after you got the call to collect the kid) and you stupidly disconnected the landline. Oh and then there is a national powercut because a wind farm was shutdown due to "too much wind of all things" and the lightening from the storm blew up some stuff that killed a gas powerstation (sounds familiar, I think this happened about a week ago), so now you cant charge your phone, or your car.

Yet, if you keep a full jerry can on petrol in the shed "just in case" suddenly you find you can drive...

Re: 50 miles???

> Once it stops being a niche market the overnight period will become peak, not cheap.

Actually, what is likely to happen is all the smart meters will be able to let the energy provder detect when you are carging the car (they will use data mining on the usage data supplied in 30 min segments to determine your pattern) and they will charge you differently during that time.

Some smart meters have been able to allow researchers to identify what TV programme you are watching, although I doube that will work in practive it shows that be monitoring your power draw they can determine when you wahtch TV, when you are out, when you run the washing machine etc. All of which are ripe for offering different pricing models.

The EV's will at some point also be talking to the meter and the larger network. The power companies are hoping to use EV's as a power reserver, having some discharge power back into the grid when they need a boost. Whether they refund that money or not is a good question, as you already paid for it.

Having the EV's talk to the network will also allow the companies to control which EV's charge, at what rate and when.

I can imagine the complaints now, when people wake up to find their EV's discharged due to a configuration issue in the power company that ended up having the EV's never charge and instead emptied them into the network. Combine that with a smart meter that is not metering correctly so charges you for the discharge of your EV (it thought you were charging it instead) and you will then not be able to get to work and wll spend a long while in a premium rate call queue to india on the weekend to try and convince the supplier that you are owed a refund and compensation.

Today we have people calling up their power company to try and convince them that they have not been using huge amounts of electricity over the past month and that the smart meter is faulty:

https://community.scottishpower.co.uk/t5/My-Energy/Smart-Meter-showing-incredibly-high-usage/td-p/1530

Re: 50 miles???

> 800 mile round trips in a day are common

Even in america with a perfectly straight road I dont believe its that high!

Thats 13 hours constant driving @ a limit of 60 (I think the max in the US is 55mph but maybe they go a bit hgher).

Re: 50 miles???

> As in Solar powered, battery storage

We live in a world that used to tax people for the number of windows / bedrooms and clocks they had in their homes.

I wouldnt put it past the government to tax the number of solar panels on your roof once they need the money. And the great thing is they can see them from the street, or from a future drone that they may use to detect panels.

Re: 50 miles???

> So, with car of 200 miles+ quite common now

I wouldnt say that electric cars are common!

Most people thinking of getting one will go for the first generation Nissan Leaf as on the secondhand market thats starting to look like having a sensible price.

But EV's are far from common. Every time one is in town charging on the normally unused/abused/faulty charging points people turn their heads like they are seeing it for the first time. This year so far I have seen maybe 3 EV's driving and 1 charging. However I see hybrids everywhere, plug in hybrids almost but not quite as rare as EV's.

It will be a long time before more EV's are seen. Downsides are auto transmission and price. In a country (UK) where the vast majority of cars are manual transmission, being forced to an auto one is a big step. Only people rolling in money or wiling to risk financial agreements would get a brand new car anyway, most going for the 2nd or 3rd hand one from the local showroom/garage or independant sale. Those cars are very likely to be 5 or 6 years old at the youngest with many still in decent condition at 10 years.

Brits are sitting on a time bomb of 40m old electronic devices that ought to be recycled

Re: Crisp Packet?

> Let's be honest, the council tip will do one of two things... landfill if it's old

I was at the tip a while back and took a look in the "small appliances" skip as you do.

Saw a BBC micro in there. Probably chcuked in there "because its old". If only they knew the National Museum of Computing in bletchley down the road would have had it even for parts.

If I had grabbed it I know what I'd do with it. I'd use it like a big RPi and have it water my garden by operating valves and pumps.

> Don't be so picky. Just take dollars, like everybody else.

Alterian dollars?

> Cheaper than buying a Ring Doorbell to do the same thing

Also under your own complete control and not accessed by the police to turn your doorbell into a CCTV system for the streets.

Re: contain elements that could run out in the near future

> Scavengers cut their costs, so they're fine with "withdrawals" as well as deposits.

Where I live in the UK the local tip has CCTV cameras to catch you in the act of scavenging. The tip staff however scavenge openly anything they think will go on ebay. When you walk up to the skip with something that catches their eye (like a sky tv box) they will helpfully take it from you to "save you the trouble" of chucking it into the skip yourself.

I even found that the entrance to the tip is covered by ANPR so they can match you to your numberplate thus find out where you live should they need to recover any items you "stole".

Re: contain elements that could run out in the near future

> And will he recycle it, or just dump it in the bin out back?

If the shop is like the one I worked at as a teen the stuff will be looked through by the young teens/adults and carefully placed out the back next to the skip on a day with good weather. Then they will go round the back "on the way home" and grab whatever took their fancy.

The geeks in the bunch will pick up the stuff the normie ones leave because they dont know what it is, it looks too old and uncool or its broken and they cant think about fixing it. Its like a buch of seagulls picking apart a bag of rubbish!

Re: contain elements that could run out in the near future

> Potentially we might use up oil or Helium

Helium baloons. STOP SELLING HELIUM BALOONS!!!!