Posts by David Cantrell

War On Standby: Do the figures actually stack up?

Energy usage in standby is so low these days and so the possible improvements are so marginal that I wouldn't be surprised if any funky design that improves it actually costs far more energy than it saves - energy used in design and manufacture, and the extraction of the raw materials.

The most obvious case of energy savings in daily use being swamped by the cost of manufacture is the greenies' friend the Toyota Prius. It is far less environmentally friendly, both in terms of lifetime energy use and in pollution, than the sort of vehicle they love to hate, such as my (evil, oil-burning, FOR BUY FORE OH NOES!!!!!eleven!!) Hilux. Why? Well, the Hilux is basically a few bits of simple metal bolted together, with an expected lifetime mileage of 250,000 miles. The Prius has a lot more plastics, a lot more fancy metals (the raw materials and manufacturing cost of the battery is awful), and has an expected lifetime mileage of 100,000 miles.

The Prius is so bad that, per mile, from manufacture to death, it costs twice as much energy to run than a Hilux, despite the Hilux getting only half the mpg.

No one watches TV, Nielsen, and you know it

"We know of nobody who watches linear TV if it can be avoided"?

You are aware, right, that there are an awful lot of people who pretty much raise their children on the surrogate tit of TV, and who have the TV on all day? But none of them are rich media professionals - media professionals know better than to turn the idiot box on - which I guess explains why media professionals don't pay any attention to them.

Apple pulls in TomTom, kicks Google off iPhones

Re: TomTom iPhone/iPad app

Google Maps never had all the functionality of a Satnav, and I'm guessing that the maps app built in to the iPhone won't either. Here's a few differences ...

* a Satnav has to work even when you don't have a data connection

* a Satnav has to give directions

* a Satnav has to recalculate your route when you deviate from its instructions

* a nice-to-have is that it knows about heavy traffic and can navigate you around it

Apple's Retina Macs: A little too elite?

The screen (I want 1900-ish by whatever, which it will do) and memory are it for me. Not for video, or photos, but for writing code. Being able to have half a dozen files open at once, all visible, plus run my tests, plus a debugger, will mean I no longer need to attach a huge external monitor. 16GB of memory will mean that I can run several virtual machines at once. Now, all of that is available in PC laptops, but all with niggling little irritations. The Thinkpad W series, which I know will work with Linux, have a clitmouse in the middle of the keyboard. Anything else and it's down to luck whether things like sound and playing videos will work.

I expect I'll get one of these new Macs in a few months time, once all the idiot fanbois have beta-tested them for me and the last few manufacturing snafus have been ironed out :-)

What's copying your music really worth to you?

Re: Economic harm?

I'd not involve either a record company or a bank manager. There are plenty of people who make a living from their music without involving either. They make money by teaching, playing lots of gigs, and flogging recordings and other merchandise, both at gigs and online. Thanks to t'interweb you don't need someone else to do your PR and you don't need massive up-front investment to manufacture your merchandise or distribute your recordings. You don't even need to spend much on studios and engineers these days, given how much you can do at home on your Mac.

Watchdog tells Greenpeace to stop 'encouraging anti-social behaviour'

I think he's already made that clear - nuclear power. Because "renewables" are *not* the only other source that there is.

Also, so-called renewables aren't renewable. They're powered by the sun, which will eventually run out.

British 4G mobile data rollout 'will mean NO TELLY for 2m homes'

Anything to wean people off the TV teat is a good thing.

Engineer Doe thought people's private info 'might be useful'

And even if your favourite car does remain constant, you still have to remember whether you told them it's "E-type", "E type", "Jaguar E type", or any of several other variations on the theme.

Hanging's too good for 'em - so what do you suggest?

Bring back the stocks!

Google founders, James Cameron, go asteroid mining

My money's on this being use of satellites to prospect for minerals and other resources on Earth.

Dad sues Apple for pushing cash-draining 'free' games at kids

Re: When will parents learn

A better question is "when will parents *re*learn" that their childrens' little misdemeanours are their responsibility.

It's true that parents can't stop their kids from doing any stupid things, but what's different now from when I were a lad is that back then my parents took responsibility. They didn't look for third parties to blame. They could have smothered me in supervision and not let me out to play (and steal, and vandalise) on my own to prevent me from doing many of the stupid things I did, but they decided it was better to allow me some freedoms - and to punish me when I screwed up.

Well, this geezer seems to think (and he may be right) that his kids are better off if allowed a little bit of freedom to play without him looking over their shoulders all the time. He has to accept the risks that come with granting that freedom to people who are fundamentally irresponsible.

Big Media drags 142,000 through UK's courts in a year

Re: Err...

Have you ever listened to commercial radio? Sure, Radio 1 and Radio 2, and most of the local radio stations could survive, but their content is indistinguishable from commercial radio anyway. And for that reason they should be closed. The BBC should not compete with commercial broadcasters but should provide services that the market chooses not to - such as Radio 3, Radio 4, and good quality TV. There's not enough good quality BBC TV programming to fill four channels, so some of them should be closed.

The argument that "waah, I don't watch the BBC so I shouldn't pay for it" is stupid - I don't receive benefits, so do I get to opt out of paying for those? No. There are some things which I don't partake of but which are beneficial to society as a whole. Unemployment and disability benefits. Education for your children. Roads in Wigan. The BBC is another of those things that is beneficial to society as a whole even if, like going to Wigan, it isn't something you take advantage of personally.

Re: Only compulsory if...

You do *not* have to prove anything to Capita. I've been ignoring them for years, and just putting their monthly letters in the bin with all the other junk mail.

So, what IS the worst film ever made?

Re: 500ish posts later, and nobody's mentioned 1967's "Barbarella"?

What? Barbarella is in "so bad it's good" territory. Which is far better than "so bad it's unwatchable".

The Navy Vs The Night Monsters

It has to be The Navy Vs The Night Monsters, which is, thankfully, one of the most obscure bad films ever made.

Why on Earth would you build a closed Android phone?

Yeah, great. It's good that old people are being catered for. Blind people are catered for too, by the iPhone which has awesome accessibility gubbins built in. Shame that us deaf people are ignored unless they're also old. We can either use a Smart Phone for all the apps that we want, but struggle to hear people talking to us, or we can get a Cripple Phone with a volume control that goes to eleven (or works with the telecoils in our cybernetic enhancements) but is utterly useless for anything other than phone calls.

Part of the problem, of course, is the RNID, which seems to think that crippled 1990s-style phones are actually useful these days for anyone apart from old fogies and that "large clear buttons" are more important than functionality.

Lego space shuttle hits 114,000ft

And unlike the real thing, it could launch when there was a bit of a breeze. NASA should hire these guys.

Hello? You'll never guess where I am ... I'm under a ferry

Re: Je suis dans la train!

But even then compulsory reservations only work well with "quiet coaches" if you can both choose to be in the quiet coach and choose *not* to be in it. When booking trains in the UK you can often choose "i want to be in the quiet coach" but I've never seen "I do not want to be in the quiet coach" offered. So you might want to make calls, but have been dumped in the quiet coach anyway without anyone telling you in advance.

Squirrelled away: seeds survive 30,000-year winter

But what's 70 Grays in El Reg units?

Vodafone squirrels cash into Blighty nightly as Europe falters

So they move their money overnight to where it can work hardest for them. Big deal. All large companies do that.

Anonymous releases law firm's emails about Haditha killings

But PETA aren't painted as being the leader for animal rights. That would be the RSPCA. Are you seriously saying that anyone pays any attention to PETA anywhere?

‘Oldest animals’ show up in Namibian dig

Dr. Brain? What next - a real Professor Branestawm?

Surprise: Neil Young still hates digital music

True, many charge over the odds for FLAC. But many don't. And, of course, FLAC is common on sites that fly the jolly roger.

'You will download your sneakers within 20 years. Yarr'

I most certainly will *not* be downloading "sneakers" within 20 years. I am not a fucking chav. Therefore I will be downloading decent shoes and boots.

Untangling the question of antimatter mass

Given that positron tracks can be observed in cloud chambers, and we know their electric charge and can measure their velocity, surely we can calculate their mass from how sharply their paths bend in a known electric field. In a horizontal cloud chamber, gravitational effects are irrelevant. So to then see if gravity affects antimatter differently from matter, turn the cloud chamber on its side and see if you get different results.

What am I missing?

O2 3G stops giving punters' mobile numbers to websites

press hard? where's the 'hard' key?

Pirate Bay dropping torrents after magnetic attraction

It was not the entertainment industries that "attached the name pirate to copyright infringers", and certainly not going "right back to the days of pirate radio". Extended figurative uses of "piracy", including for unauthorised reproduction of creative works, have been around far longer, since at least 1606, which was before copyright was invented.

And "pirate radio" wasn't called that because of unauthorised copying, but because they were broadcasting without a licence. The name has historically been attached to just about anything illegal or even which the speaker merely disapproves of. For example, on 16 Jul 1897 the Prime Minister spoke in the House of Lords about "theological piracy" in the context of a debate about church schools and non-conformists in Wales.

Apache: Old, out of touch, but worth it...

Within the enterprise, "Apache" is tantamount to saying "safety"? No, it's tantamount to saying "web server".

Bumblebee boffins rediscover long-vanished species

If it hadn't been seen since the Dark Ages (and in biology, 1956 really is the dark ages) how did they know it was a separate species?

And anyway, who cares, it looks exactly the same as the bees in my garden according to that photo.

Windows 8 fondleslabs: Microsoft tip-toes through PC-makers' disaster

I want to pay for two data plans. A decade or more ago when Sun were advertising "the network is the computer" they got slated for it, but they were right - they were just a few years ahead of their time. A computing device without always-on connectivity - which means wifi when available, 3G/EDGE/GPRS the rest of the time - is not fit for purpose these days. I *really* regret being a cheapskate and buying the Wifi-only version of the iPad.

and WinCE ran on ARM, MIPS, and the Hitachi SH-3.

Psst, kid... Wanna learn how to hack?

"it became too expensive to give kids a simple computer to toy with"?

Rubbish. Back in 1984 my parents bought an Amstrad CPC 464 for me and my sister. It cost 400 quid and came with a monitor. That's about the same as a grand these days, for which you can buy *two* cheap Dells, with monitors.

No, the problem of kids not having simple computers to play with isn't cost, it's that users aren't forced straight into a programming environment, which makes it more difficult to just play with the damned thing and see what you can make it do.

A side issue is that families these days appear to be addicted to the telly, and so kids can't unplug the idiot box to use it as a monitor. There's no technical barriers to doing this - lots of modern digital TVs have VGA ports, and DVI-to-HDMI converters are common.

Spillover from 400lb man squeezed fellow flier into galley

It is apparently also still OK to take the piss out of well-off well-educated people for the way they speak, but not to do the same to plebs who couldn't be bovvered with going to school.

Why GNOME refugees love Xfce

Urgh, desktops

I'll take just a window manager thankyouverymuch. olvwm by preference.

Threesome ends in arrest as wife struck by pair of TVs

ANY TVs in the bedroom, surely

Compact Disc death foretold for 2012

I bet it doesn't sound crap - or at least, no crapper than a CD. You can't hear the difference when you take into account engine noise, road noise, and the fact that you're not concentrating on the music.

Catholic Bishops: 'Would you mind not bringing guns to church?'

You think you need a gun to travel to unfamiliar places? Seriously?

No, God definitely said "kill", not "murder" when dictating the bible to King James.

Asian countries dominate global spam deluge

It's hardly news that Asia is where most spam comes from. Back when I last analysed my spam three or four years ago, *75%* of it did. What's news here, despite the misleading headline, is that spam sources are spreading out more evenly across the world.

Ten... small screen HD TVs

If you're using the TV as background then you need your head looking at. Seriously.

I find that having one TV is a side-effect of me having better things to do than stare zombie-like at a piece of furniture.

Brit boffins' bendy bamboo bike breakthrough

1700 quid for a bike? A bike that will rot when it rains? And people think us Apple users waste our money!

Chaos feared after Unix time-zone database is nuked

Yes, it's vital. Quickly, answer these questions: at 1969-11-11Z01:00, what was the local time in London? And in Moscow? And in Hobart? And when it's 2012-03-15 04:00 in London what will the local time be in Maine and in Arizona?

Online government services would exclude many Welsh

A computerised index is not just faster, it lets you do more, and it can enforce referential integrity. To search a bunch of cards by either author or title, you need two indexes. It's way too easy to end up, through simple human error or misfiling, to make stuff disappear from one of them, and there's no way to tell that this has happened. A computerised index stops that from happening, and also lets you search by, for example, words in the middle of the title as well as by other attributes such as the publisher, or year of publication, or language.

Think those things don't matter? Think again. When I was learning Italian, I went to my local library and asked "what books do you have in Italian?" They didn't know, because this was in the Dark Ages. All they could do was point me at a shelf with half a dozen books on it. They couldn't tell me what other (interesting, worth reading) books they had in Italian at other branches.

As for searching by publisher - some publishers specialise in particular genres, and so if you like, for example, light-weight space opera, you might ask the librarian "what do you have published by Baen books?"

Or by year - if you're interested in the history of a subject, you might ask "what physics text books do you have published before 1900?"

A computerised index *is* cheaper, because it enables all of this stuff which can't be done in a cost-effective or reliable manner with card indexes.

But with perhaps five exceptions, total, all Welsh people of school age or greater can read, write, and speak English, so they get just as "rewarding" an experience as the rest of us.

"8.73 million adults in the UK have never used the internet, mainly because of age"? No. No-one doesn't use it because of age. They miss out because they are technophobes, or because they think it might be difficult. There are *plenty* of people who prove that being old doesn't prevent the use of new technologies, including the internet.

Memo to open source moralists: Put a sock in it

It's a false dichotomy anyway, as any Moslem, Sikh, Hindu, Wiccan, or follower of any other primitive superstition will tell you.

Microsoft exec departs after tweet about Nokia phone

No, but we promise to take turns making sympathetic noises in between the pointing and laughing.

Microsoft's high-risk Windows 8 .NET switch

Wow. I recognised almost all the words but have no idea at all what that article was about. I sure hope that Microsoft's documentation does a better job of explaining their platform than this article does.

Why Android houses should give Google the 'fork you'

Is Amazon's version really going to be a fork of the OS (and thus maybe incompatible with mainstream Android apps) or is it just a different UI and some different bundled apps? Given that Amazon presumably still want apps in *their* app store to work on both their hardware and other Android vendors' hardware, I don't see that the assertion that Amazon hardware will only be able to use stuff in the Amazon app-store holds.

And even if it does, I bet it doesn't last long cos the hardware will be rooted a few days after it goes on sale.

TomTom fights falling satnav sales with iPad app

Pointless title, which must contain letters and/or digits.

I bought the Tomtom iPhone app ages ago. I now use Copilot instead, for one reason and one reason only. With Tomtom, you can't easily plan an itinerary more complex than "go from A to C via B", and you can't save that at all. With Copilot, I can plan far more complex itineraries - eg go from A to D via B and C, then back via E - and I can save several of them in advance of my trip. Being able to plan such itineraries in advance is essential.

About the only thing Tomtom does better is that its speed camera warnings are far less annoying.