Posts by Tim Bergel

So you want to integrate OpenAI's bot. Here's how that worked for software security scanner Socket

Re: Obfuscated code

Exactly my thoughts, nobody should be including highly obfuscated code in a project, seems to me.

Gummy bears as a unit of measure? The Reg Standards Soviet will not stand for this sort of silliness

Re: Even El Reg is guilty of ignoring prior art.

I would like to second the suggestion that the Smoot, a well established unit of length, is added to the accepted Reg standards.

Health Sec Hancock says UK will use Apple-Google API for virus contact-tracing app after all (even though Apple were right rotters)

Re: "we discovered a technical barrier that every other country [...] is also now hitting."

Every other country except France, apparently, where they have produced a home-brew app that works and was available in good time, albeit with privacy concerns because of the centralised database.

Press F to pay respects to the Windows 10 April Update casualties

Re: "Upgrading users should be able to ignore the viewer as before."

Am I being foolish here or are you? Or is it the article that is incorrect? I'm pretty sure that WinHlp32 is used to open .hlp files, .chm are handled by hh.exe. So if the article is correct, then its only really old help files that become unavailable, and those who what to can use .chm as usual. Personally I quite like .chm and Help and Manual makes it a breeze to create them.

After seven-hour operation, the ISS has a new 'hand'

400 operations

No doubt the environment is very hostile to equipment & moving parts, but Canadarm2 cost $100 million, surely at that price it is possible to provide a mechanism which survives more than 400 operations?

Don't want to vote for Clinton or Trump? How about this woman who says Wi-Fi melts kids' brains?

On!y sensible response - break out the popcorn and watch the crazy show for the next three months. And don't forget: no president has enough power to change things significantly for the worst

Get out of mi casa, Picasa: Google photo site to join Wave, Code, Reader in silicon hell

Re: Local app

Are you feeling a teensy bit paranoid today? Anyway no worries: Google specifically state that the desktop app will continue to work OK, it just won't get any more updates. Fine by me - the existing software does (almost) everything that I want.

Brit boffins brew nanotech self-cleaning glass

Re: Question

As I recall, the radiation from the sun arrives at the outside of your window with a lot of energy in the short-wavelength part of the infra-red spectrum. This goes straight through ordinary glass and I expect this stuff too. The re-radiated heat is of course coming from a much cooler system so the infra-red is of the long wavelength variety and this doesn't go through ordinary glass at all well - which is why greenhouses work.

So they are saying (rather badly) that this is something that acts like ordinary glass and keeps heat in when its cold, but lets the heat escape when its hot.

El Reg mulls entering Robot Wars arena

Re: Make it properly Autonomous

No, no - that's exactly what's needed....

Re: March is far too early.

Mine too - I was going to suggest a thermic lance as an alternative to dropping thermite.

Files on Seagate wireless disks can be poisoned, purloined – thanks to hidden login

Re: That picture

You actually used a Bessemer converter to destroy old data? That is a very impressive level of overkill and can only be applauded.

ONE BEELLION Windows 10 devices?! OH REALLY

Gartner expects 422,726 million units ...

Errr ... that's a bit more than 422 billion which seems a tad overoptimistic - about fifty devices per person. 422,726 thousand perhaps?

Astroboffins mine data in pursuit of lonely, homeless RUNAWAY GALAXIES

Re: UP TO 75% OFF!!!!

Absolutely! In my youth I read somewhere "always remember that 'up to X' includes the number zero" and it has served me in good stead over far to many years.

Google TUGS Nexus 7-INCHER from its online store

Re: Nexus 7 or Nexus 7 2013

From the comments here & elsewhere it appears that its the original N7 that is having problems, my 2013 model is fine with lollipop 5.0.

Boffins build Cyborg beetles, fly them by remote control

No, as soon as the unfortunate insect is out of sight they have no way of knowing what it is doing or of usefully guiding it. Something that is always carefully ignored whenever you see a 'scientists create cyborg insect' story.

RIP Sir Terry Pratchett: Discworld author finally gets to meet DEATH

Re: We are all a little poorer today

Exactly my thought

BORGED! Expat moves from New Zealand to Norway to be acquired by Cisco

The second thing...

... Kane Archer's tale of moving from New Zealand to Norway and back teaches us is what it's like to be acquired by Cisco

It does? Where? Or are we supposed to assume that because Kane is back in NZ, the experience was not a happy one?

World's best threat detection pwned by HOBBIT

Uses javascript

so good old NoScript would have stopped it dead.

BONFIRE of the MEGA-BUCKS: $200m+ BURNED in SECONDS in Antares launch blast

Range safety officer?

"The base of the rocket exploded and it began to fall, at which point it was detonated by the range safety officer"

Really? It seems clear from the video that the main explosion happened when the rocket hit the ground, surely if it had been detonated as described the explosion would have been in the air?

MOM: CHEAP Mars ship got it right first time. Nice one, India

Massive congratulations, India

for an extremely difficult task achieved both quickly and cheaply.

Rickety rock deemed unworthy of Curiosity's drill

Re: hmmm

The straight line indentations in the dirt are wheel tread marks from the rover. It weighs almost a ton (890 Kg) so that's why the rock shattered recently...

Mystery solved.

TRANSMUTATION claims US LENR company

Re: "Ignoring that issue"

"Why indeed would you even read on past that point?"

Because it's fairly clear from elsewhere that they actually only got 18 Kg of hydrogen?

Microsoft claims victory over second-hand software broker

Yes indeed, and in the para following:

"that Microsoft is committed to saving punters from these risks, and will "therefore continue to bring action against those who infringe its rights and distribute its software unlawfully".

"committed to saving punters from these risks" indeed!

Mystery 'doughnut' materializes in front of Mars rover: 'OH MY GOD! It wasn't there before!'

Re: Shivers...

I cant resist: http://xkcd.com/695/

Boffin benchmark battle after D-Wave quantum kit crawls in test

Re: Somebody needs to define a Turing test for quantum computing

Yes, just what I was thinking - if it cannot solve a classically hard problem of that sort, what use is it?

Boffins hampered by the ampere hanker for a quantum answer

If I understand this correctly, what they are doing here is coming up with a way of counting electrons accurately. As a coulomb is equal to the charge on a fixed (& very large) number of electrons, surely this will lead to defining the ampere in terms of the coulomb?

Google poised to become world's first TREEELLION DOLLAR company?

A quick look

at the marketwatch links shows that Google's P/E ratio is 31 whereas the other three are all sitting rather more comfortably at around 13. So Google's value is already *2 inflated relative to the others by expectations of future growth. I don't hold out much hope of future Microsoft growth so I would bet that Apple or Exxon Mobil would be the first to make it ... not that I am investing any of my money either.

Scottish SF master Iain M Banks reveals he has less than a year to live

Damn it all to hell and back

This news has completely ruined my day.

The Sons of Kahn and the assembly language of the internet

Laughed and laughed

Thank you Verity - most excellent!

Facebook invites users to vote away voting rights, some privacy

Current votes

are about 90% in favour of keeping the old rules but as there are about 60K total votes cast the quorum of 300 million looks pretty out-of-reach.

Boeing zaps PCs using CHAMP missile microwave attacks

Re: Immune Virtual Operating Systems for Attacking Defence Platforms ....

I'm convinced that amanfrommars1 is software........

Gates: Microsoft will merge Phone and Windows platforms

I absolutely agree with you, trying to shoe-horn a desktop UI onto a phone was brain damaged and the reverse is equally so. Say what you like about Apple, they didn't make that mistake.

Rumour: Asus rejects $99 Nexus 7... rumour

Re: "Google Play shop to which the Nexus 7 is tightly tied"

Bravo from me too - I've had no problems getting everything I wanted onto my Nexus 7 without having to use Google Play.

iPhone to account for half of US economy by 2030 - projection

"that's a pretty speculative and wild-eyed bit of curve fitting"

... but fun though.

Google's Nexus 7 tabs 'can't perform' if flash RAM crammed

Re: Maxing out the device

I managed to nearly fill my N7 frighteningly easily - but I must say it was a real pleasure to do so as it makes such a good job of dealing with directory trees of data just dumped into it. Can't say I'm seeing it running slowly though - but I'm still going to trash 2-3 GBytes of music files...

Microsoft promises Metro developers 'fame and fortune'

Re: Fortune ?

"i won't buy another box until start menu appears and metro is switch offable at install"

Which of course is exactly what will happen. Eventually.

Win 8 is obviously going to be another Vista and MS will waste a huge amount of time and money telling us that it's great and we will all ignore them and about 2 years down the line they will come up with something (Win 9? Guess not - it's about time for them to change to a new naming scheme, no?) that allows you to completely conceal the Metro section and we will all ask ourselves why they could not have done this with Win 8...

I'm past caring really, but I'm certainly going to stick with Win 7 (& XP) on the desktop.

Windows 8: Not even Microsoft thinks businesses will use it

Re: I like the Metro interface... but it's so UGLY!!

I can't understand why any mobile phone user would want a user interface built out of those orange, purple, blue and green rectangles - I've always thought it looks horrible - don't get me started on putting this on the desktop....

Space Station crew enter the Dragon

Wasn't there supposed to be

some sort of surprise item included in the ISS cargo?

Special Projects Burro pops his hooves

What a pity

... hope Katerina is not too upset

LOHAN to straddle meaty titanium rod

Would it be a good idea

to have the launching rail extend somewhat past the end of the truss so that by the time LOHAN becomes free from the rail it is sure to be completely clear of the truss?

Revealed: Apple's plea for fairness in mobile patent war

Un-clickable links are fine

if using a recent Firefox, just select all of the link and right-click on it. Very useful.

Hubble shows images from record-breaking 13.1 billion light-years

What I want to know is where's the middle?

There is no middle. Its space itself that is expanding and its expanding everywhere (I think).

Android-powered goggles bring virtual reality closer

First thing I thought

was "Why did they bother to include that totally rubbish video?"

Codebreakers find evidence for hidden puzzle in GCHQ challenge

Steganography would involve altering the pixels...

not so I think. Steganography means "hidden message" and a wide variety of methods of hiding messages are referred-to as steganography, for example concealing data in apparently corrupted packets that are part of a Skype voice call. Agreed, meta-data is pretty poor steganography but I think the term is valid.

Spillover from 400lb man squeezed fellow flier into galley

Yes

surely you can simply refuse to raise the armrest: "I've paid for all of this seat and if you cannot fit in yours then it is your problem"?

Larger Kindle Fire coming soon, say moles

Another

person who joined The Register just to compare the Fire unfavourably with the iPad...

Adventures in Tech: Taking the plunge into IPv6

All sorts of aggravating issues

The best one was when I converted the internal email server to Win-7 and allowed it to use V4 or V6. All the Win-7 clients in the building immediately switched to using V6 to make their POP3 connections. That was OK with Thunderbird but I found that Outlook (inevitably) says that the connection works but when it actually tries to use V6 it manages to fail. I had to enter the server V4 IP address in directly to get them to stop it.

And of course the ISP can't cope...

But my real bugbear is the Kerio Control firewall, which will not work with V6. The latest version at least does not kill it off internally but all external access is blocked and all attempts to get Kerio to commit to providing V6 support at any time in the future have failed. So I'm going to have to replace it with something - pity as it was really easy to work with - any suggestions?

As iPhone 4S battery suckage spreads, fixes appear

Yeah, sad about Stanza

I wanted to upgrade my iPod touch to iOS5, but I can't unless I'm willing to kiss goodby to the 200+ books I've accumulated in Stanza.

Insulin pump hack delivers fatal dosage over the air

There is a good reason for wireless

"There is absolutely no reason for any of these kind of drug delivery devices to have a radio control system. None"

Not quite. If you connect almost any sort of electronic equipment to a human for clinical purposes it has to undergo extraordinarily stringent safety tests to *prove* beyond almost any doubt that it cannot pass mains voltages through to the patient and thereby kill them. The pump assembly will have to be tested but as it is presumably battery powered that will not be quite so bad.

If the controlling system connects to the pump assembly wirelessly the existence of a 1 meter+ air gap allows you to say 'its safe' without any testing of the controlling PC. Which is a great advantage believe me.

Not that any of this excuses the completely insecure link design - even 10 years ago.

Just seven solar cars reach Adelaide alive

Hey Lester

Can you tell us how many non-finishers actually broke down and how many were still moving, but didn't make the deadline?

Beer icon as you will probably prefer to drink it than dig out answers to trivial queries...