* Posts by Mage

9252 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

SE's baaaack: Apple flings out iPhone SE 2020, priced at £419

Mage Silver badge

Re: Only took Apple 2 years...

Still x2 overpriced.

We lost another good one: Mathematician John Conway loses Game of Life, taken by coronavirus at 82

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: excited us Biologists

"Not Life as we know it, Jim." A simulation slightly related to how some organisms replication is affected by environment. But not alive in any sense at all.

It is a fascinating algorithm. Though ultimately Conway thought it overshadowed his more important work.

XKCD Tribute

How to make a stranger's insecure 3D printer halt-and-catch-fire – plus more alerts from infosec world

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Can that be done by a drive by java attack

Javascript. Which is about as much related to Java as BASIC to ForTran.

Mage Silver badge
Devil

and spoof the online repository it fetches its firmware

Can that be done by a drive by java attack, maybe in an advert?

The JS in the Browser checks default IP addresses, user names and passwords of routers. Then programs in a malicious DNS to spoof a variety of websites and repositories.

I always change the default router passwords. I notice loads of people don't. Not all companies with expensive equipment have IT depts. Many businesses now think they can use the "Cloud" and have no IT staff at all and have no better password security than a home user. Or put all the passwords in a spreadsheet "in the Cloud". Or entirely rely on MS 365 accounts.

RAND report finds that, like fusion power and Half Life 3, quantum computing is still 15 years away

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Even if an iPhone . . .

The PS/2 used different I/O cards. MCA. It never had an open BIOS. Nor did the PC/XT/AT.

The compatibles of the PC non-PS/2 systems didn't have an Open BIOS either. Compaq developed their own and the Phoenix BIOS a commercial clone supposedly created by a separate team reverse engineering the IBM PC BIOS (not PS/2) and issuing a spec. It was licenced. It was never open source at the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Technologies#Cloning_the_IBM_PC_BIOS

The IBM PS/2 was really the third generation IBM-PC. Unlike the first which used catalogue HW, IBM proprietary BIOS and MS's version of a reverse engineered CP/M-86, it had more proprietary HW and more IBM designing in it.

"These models were in the strange position of being incompatible with the IBM-compatible hardware standards previously established by IBM and adopted in the PC industry. "

The higher spec models were supposed to run OS/2, incompatible with DOS. The lower spec models were inferior spec to PC-AT clones at the same price, so despite about 3M corporate sales, the PS/2 was a failure. The PCjr even more so outside the USA.

No PS/2 models could take the popular ISA expansion cards.

Ironically the PS/2 came out the same year as the Archimedes running on ARM. 1987.

PS/2 and OS/2 were too little, a couple of years too late.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Over 30 years ago I was teaching

In 1987 I was writing C++ tutorials That's 30+ years ago.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Quantum vs COBOL

XKCD. Hit him with the spanner till he gives the key

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Even if an iPhone . . .

What have iPhones or Apples to do with it? Also Apple is for people with money to spare. Us plebs buy $99 android phones and $400 laptops, some of the laptops run Linux.

The PS/2 didn't have an open BIOS and was a failure in the market place.

Real Quantum computers may or may not happen. Currently they need cryogenics, so even a "small" tower cased sized one might need a room full of support.

Also Quantum computers are not simply faster computers. They handle specialised sorts of problems, so even if really useable ones ever exist you'd probably not want one.

-

Fusion power might be closer, it's hard to say. Basically unless there is a sort of working prototype of something any forecast is total guess work.

Prototypes can take 6 months to 10 years to be commercial:

See Passenger Jet Aircraft (idea is from 1938!). LED is 1924 or 1962. Radio 1898, but home in 1922. Electronic TV proposed 1905, working 1935. LCDs.

Lithium cells nearly 20 years before used in phones and laptops.

Linux fans thrown a bone in one Windows 10 build while Peppa Pig may fly if another is ready in time for this year

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: I will avoid Windows 10 for as long as I can

PS/4 and an Android phone and/or Nintendo gameboy and/or switch for games?

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

explorer.exe from the Linux command line.

Since when did Linux fans care about Windows or Unix / Linux subsystems on them?

I looked at MS Unix offerings for NT4.0 in 1998 and instead ran dual boot with Red Hat Linux.

Now I just run Linux Mint.

Windows 7 was sort of OK, Win10 was horrible.

Even you have to run a business application that only works on Win10, a VM on Linux with Win7 or XP for that application is better. Use Linux for the Internet.

Also one reason for Mac / Windows used to be Adobe. But with Indesign being rent only at nearly $240 pa and rubbish now compared to alternates? Or twice as much on a month to month basis. Even serious Photoshop users now only use it if corporate rented.

Upstart Americans brandish alligators at the almighty Reg Standards Soviet

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: It's crocodiles that'll eat you.

Who mentioned hippos eating?

Disposal <> Eating

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Re: It's crocodiles that'll eat you.

Unless there is a nearby hippo.

Hippos also dispose of small yappy dogs.

Last thought of a Croc springing out at a shadow on the bank that's a hippo.

"Oh no"

The croc can't easily abort the spring out of the water. Hippos are bad tempered and really don't like crocs anyway.

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Of course there is an XKCD

https://xkcd.com/2290/

"I'm going to change the sign so the pole is horizontal and the sign is mounted on the front like a plunger, so I can carry it around like a lance to gently push people back if they try to approach."

French pensioner ejected from fighter jet after accidentally grabbing bang seat* handle

Mage Silver badge

Re: they'd only buy stuff they thought I ought to have wanted

Bubble bath shaped like a toy.

Why have they been selling that for maybe sixty years? A cruel birthday/Christmas present.

Cloudflare dumps Google's reCAPTCHA, moves to hCaptcha as free ride ends (and something about privacy)

Mage Silver badge
Thumb Up

Good

This is good.

The less people using thieving, parasitical Google services the better.

Ofcom waves DAB radio licences under local broadcasters' noses as FM switchoff debate smoulders again

Mage Silver badge

Re: OFCOM really have screwed DAB in the UK

Also 128K is too low for stereo even if AAC / DAB+

In practice DAB+ is used to offer 64K stereo at slightly less quality.

Ironically the artefacts are worse for people with impaired hearing as the compression schemes are based on a normal healthy person average perception.

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: To summarise

And now it's a duplication of stations on DTT. Also niche nationwide stations are far cheaper to run on the Internet. The only use for Broadcast is mass market content. FM does that very well locally and a few totally nationwide sport / talk / news stations get better coverage on LW and MW.

Mage Silver badge
Devil

It's political.

Though the only beneficiaries of DAB are national stations.

There is no other use for FM. Community stations would still be on FM.

We know Ofcom is usually in the pockets of the Mobile Operators, but not in this case.

Ethernet standards group leaves its name in the dust as it details new 800Gbps spec

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: isn't all the radio stuff 75 Ohm

Only TV, FM/DAB and Satellite. TV and Sat LNB 75 Ohm cable wants to be rather better stuff than the 75 Ohm equivalent to "cheapernet" which is 50 Ohm like RG58. The 75 Ohm equivalent is RG59, only used for FM radio/DAB now. RG6 / PF100 etc is the usual 75 ohm cable now.

BNC is usually 50 Ohms, though 75 Ohm exist. PL259 is 50 Ohms (CB, Marine radio, Ham Radio). N-type is usually 50 Ohms, but a 75 Ohm version for cable similar size to RG213 does exist.

Almost all other radio applications use 50 Ohms. Though I'd only use RG58 for patch cords or a shortwave receive only cable. The RG213 (much fatter than RG6) 50 Ohm is better for VHF/UHF receivers or transmitters.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_cable#Standards

Coax ethernet (Vampire Tapped and certainly Cheaper net) was probably pre-existing RF cable?

I've some 92 Ohm cable that was used for some sort of terminal.

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: Hang on a minute...

Ha, the ZX Spectrum did 1500 bps!

I remember 4 Mbps token ring and 10 Mbits "cheapernet".

The coax based 10 Mbps could easily drop to 500 kbps. I demonstrated this to a customer and he upgraded to Cat5. Though a lot of the PCs were still 10 Mbps, it used a switch, not a hub. The 10 Mbps Cat5 with a hub was just as slow as coax, but you didn't have to check the back of every PC to see where the BNC cable had come off the T-piece. We did add plastic T-shells to some offices too mean to upgrade to Cat5. Twenty five years later I'm still using some of the scrapped 50 Ohm cable to make patch cables occasionally for radio gear.

I dumped the last box of swapped out Token Ring ISA cards at the recycling centre only a couple of years ago, with a couple of token ring "hubs" and the giant hermaphroditic auto closing plug//socket patch cables.

Just cough into here, please: Cambridge-developed app slurps the sounds of COVID-19

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

This is a data grab.

Self selecting?

Google's reCAPTCHA service should be illegal on any non-Google site.

Also don't you need a large selection of coughs that are NOT Covid-19 and proper verification of the data or else it's useless research.

Data gathering disguised as research?

From Amanda Holden to petrol-filled water guns: It has been a weird week for 5G

Mage Silver badge
Paris Hilton

SM platforms need to be regulated!

Well meaning comment from the New Statesman:

"Platforms such Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram could delete these posts themselves, listening to warnings from users on cases of misinformation and introduce a specific tool to report fake news on coronavirus." -- https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2020/04/how-celebrities-became-biggest-peddlers-5g-conspiracy-theory-coronavirus-covid-19

Add WhatsApp, LinkedIn, YouTube.

That doesn't work. Accounts need to be PRE-MODERATED by humans till they prove trustworthy and then a link on EVERY post to report to Moderators. Just like every decent Forum.

But SM sites hide behind "Safe harbor" [sic] because they are not really providing a service like Forums, but purely monetising personal information to sell adverts. So they will not do anything that reduces posting volume or requires human labour without being forced to by law.

Things that go crump in the night: Watch Musk's mighty missile go foom

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Starship?

It's probably not even able to leave the Solar System.

I also think Musk has watched too much Thunderbirds.

Internet Archive justifies its vast 'copyright infringing' National Emergency Library of 1.4 million books by pointing out that libraries are closed

Mage Silver badge

All true

And the solution isn't to abolish copyright, or pirate the books of living writers and books in print, but reform copyright.

The extensions to copyright have done nothing for Authors, nor employees in corporations producing music, software, screenplays, animations, filming etc who only get their wages and no cut of the royalties.

The fact that creatives are exploited and copyright has pointlessly been extended mainly to suit music and film publishers is no excuse to do this. The books are a soft target and the most vulnerable creatives as almost none are paid a salary by a publisher, they are self employed relying on the royalties.

Even the Bern 50 years is worthless to authors and not huge value to book publishers. It's for music, TV and cinema. Corporate owned works that get re-releases. Book sellers / publishers even publish classic public domain content and sell it, that you can easily legally download.

IA is attacking a soft target and the one that suffers the most. Writers.

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Re: cosseted authors?

That applies to less than 1% of Authors. Most would starve without a paying job or welfare.

The biggest issue is the Corporations and Corporate owned copyright.

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: It has been pointed out ...

Over 90% of authors can't live on their royalties. That's authors that are actually published.

But the USA inspired changes to copyright laws are really about corporate produced music, cinema and TV. Authors don't benefit.

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Re: I'd have sympathy....

Yes, copyright has been wilfully extended, mainly to suit USA music, film, TV and animation producers/distributors.

It's still the original Berne Convention Life + 50 in many countries, though life +25 would be plenty. USA insists on their version, plus DRM on trade treaties.

However the ills of the system and totally evil DRM do not give IA any right whatsoever to do this.

Mage Silver badge
Pirate

Disengenious

When did any Government suspend copyright for the emergency?

Little of it is Educational. Almost all is in copyright and much in print.

They are using the Covid-19 crisis to justify their own attack on copyright that has been years in the making.

US libraries are still lending ebooks. The Internet Archive "Open Library" has been running for some time. I didn't realise till recently that it licences nothing and pays no royalties.

The abusive extending of copyright and addition of DRM doesn't excuse this immoral behaviour.

Earlier

https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/all/2020/03/24/internet_archive_ebooks_national_emergency_library/

ZX Spectrum prototype ROM is now available for download courtesy of boffins at the UK's Centre for Computing History

Mage Silver badge

Re: 16KB

Jupiter Ace had 1 K RAM and could run Pacman written in Forth on that. I had one and even got a 2nd for work to control some test gear.

Allegedly it was a sort of cost reduced Spectrum, according to Wikipedia, because I've forgotten most of what I knew. It had 8 K ROM. I did remember that the designers had worked on the ZX81 and Spectrum. Nowadays in the USA, they'd likely have to work at something else for years due to Serf contracts.

I gave it away maybe less than a year after buying it in 1983. I was using an ACT Sirius 1 (Victor 9000) in work (replaced later by an Apricot) which made the IBM look stupid when I first used it in 1982. I'd had a Spectrum as a test card generator in 1982 to align and check Thorn TX10 CTVs customised as AV/Computer monitor/TVs for Apple & BBC Micro and VHS.

Boeing 787s must be turned off and on every 51 days to prevent 'misleading data' being shown to pilots

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: Am I surprised?

So I for one have cancelled all my orders for Boeings. Actually I don't seem to have any customers either.

NASA mulls restoring Saturn V to service as SLS delays and costs mount

Mage Silver badge
Alien

Re: There are no golf courses yet.

I'm sure I remember one of the Apollo guys with a golf club. Video!

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: If only it wasn't April the first.

Yes, though the start of the article was believable.

Soichi to join three-spaceship club, SpaceX is going to the Moon (no, really), and rocket boffins step up COVID-19 fight

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

demonstrated broadband speeds of 400Mbps

But for what size of area / projected number of users?

Bare in mind that ONE street cabinet, even for cable or VDSL, might have 100 times that capacity of fibre feeding it and at least more than twice. Just for maybe 1/2 a street ( short suburban European/UK one, not the US concept).

Internet Archive opens National Emergency Library with unlimited lending of 1.4m books for stuck-at-home netizens amid virus pandemic

Mage Silver badge

Re: Out of print

Though the US led increase from Berne 50 to 75 & 95 is Corporate greed and DRM is evil, it doesn't give the Internet Archive any right to do this. They are cynically exploiting the covid 19 pandemic to advance their own aims, they have started scanning more than 10 years ago and the "Open Library" ages ago, which pays no licence fees or royalty.

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: Current copyright terms ignored... the world keeps turning

Yes, it should be life +25, the children of the Author. I'm an author with about 30 books. The repeated extension of copyright is wrong.

However all of the ills of current copyright, stupidity of publishers etc don't affect the fact that Archive org is depriving LIVING authors still in print!

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Out of print

But LOTS of these are IN Print.

I agree, with POD for paper and ebooks, it's irresponsible and cheating authors that any publisher should now let any work in copyright go out of print.

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Not Artificial scarcity

Real libraries pay royalties and purchase the initial copy. The Internet Archive isn't doing either!

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Immoral, blatant Copyright violation.

They started this Open Library a while ago. Real Libraries buy a copy and pay royalties.

https://nwu.org/book-division/cdl/faq/

I appreciate the service that Archive.org provides in "saving" copies of vanished websites. AKA "Wayback Machine".

They have Google's attitude to scanning copyright works and not just archiving dead websites, but providing copies of copyright works, beyond webpages, with no remuneration to those selling them.

Also from time to time a book, comic, song, video or program might be distributed "free of charge" by the copyright holder or publisher. That doesn't put it in the Public Domain, nor does it give ANYONE the right to redistribute it.

No author or publisher should have to search to opt out of anything. See also Clearview.

it is just blatant copyright violation, far beyond what Google is allowed (snippets on web pages). Why does Google need to scan an entire copyright work to produce a web snippet? I think we can all work out why. Also the "snippet" is disingenuous as tests show that Google has OCRed entire copyright text and will respond to ANY unique text in the book. The results often come higher than sellers of the book.

Sucks to be you, ICANN. We can go our own way: Opera to support sites using renegade top-level domain .crypto

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Maybe glimmer of a good idea?

My initial reaction:

- This sounds good.

Second reaction:

-- Oh, no! It's stupid because it supports Cryptocurrency, which is only useful to support evil!

+

Third reaction:

--- "The system is also going to suffer from the exact same problems as the dark web. It attracts fraudsters and criminals and so scares off most users while drawing in law enforcement like a magnet. And then to top it all off, there is the price for a .crypto domain: $200."

So a scam that enables scammers. However there is the glimmer of an interesting idea in it.

The better solution is to scrap ICANN, Verisign and the other parasites and put it all under the ITU, despite all the failings of the UN and ITU (which predates the UN by nearly 75 years?)

Official: Office 365 Personal, Home axed next month... and replaced by Microsoft 365 cloud subscriptions

Mage Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: Orson Welles?

I don't know, aren't some of these Cloudy Corporations more like the speech he gave on the Wheel in the Third Man? Though not spoiled by the inaccuracy. Germans, not Swiss, invented the Cuckoo Clock. Though the Swiss were tardy at giving votes to Women and joining the UN. Perhaps they are related to Ents.

Mage Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: inferior office suite compared to the desktop offering

And if you don't need REAL time collaboration, a decent hosting package and an offline copy of LibreOffice is a more reliable, better quality and more private experience. Cheaper too for a family.

Call for netizens to demand scraped pics from Clearview, ML weather forecasts, and Star Trek goes high def with AI

Mage Silver badge
Big Brother

"Folks covered by the EU’s GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act, and similar laws, can ask Clearview – the controversial face-recognition startup that scraped three billion images of people from the internet – to reveal what images it may have of you in its database and delete them."

Really that's crazy. They should be fined by EU and California and forced to delete all of them. Most people impacted will never have heard of Clearview.

Planet Computers has really let things slide: Firm's third real-keyboard gizmo boasts 5G, Android 10, Linux support

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: Whilst I loved (and still have) my Psion5mx...

BT keyboards sleep and miss characters or randomly unpair and can take ages to setup. Sometimes they work. However proprietary 2.4 GHz wireless mini-keyboards with a USB mini-dongle work better even on an Android phone.

It's a niche product for someone that wants a nearly real pocket computer, like what a version today of the 2001/2002 Nokia 9210i would be like. Unfortunately by 2003 Nokia Phone division Management had seriously lost the plot on management and GUI choices/development.

Yeah, that Zoom app you're trusting with work chatter? It lives with 'vampires feeding on the blood of human data'

Mage Silver badge

Re: What are the alternatives?

Viber? Not sure about groups for video/audio more than 1:1, but text groups work. Unlike Skype which broke, it seems to work on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. Japanese company.

What happens when the maintainer of a JS library downloaded 26m times a week goes to prison for killing someone with a motorbike? Core-js just found out

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Shirley!

I thought part of the idea of open source is that it's not just available, but unencumbered, thus anyone can take it over (fork if there are no write/update permissions on the "server" where it's offered)?

Or am I missing something?

Don't believe the hype: Today's AI unlikely to best actual doctors at diagnosing patients from medical scans

Mage Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: essentially standard pattern recognition

<pendant alert>

Replace "recognition" with "matching" and you are totally on the money.

No machine or computer or algorithm or AI has ever "recognised" anything in any field if we use the word "properly".

</pendant alert>

I did upvote.

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Marketing

Look at the sorts of companies making the claims (= Issuing PR) and their track record of real deployments.

Having taken up programming in the first place due to reading SF about AI, I conclude very many years later it's going to remain SF.

Amazon, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft speech-to-text AI systems can't understand black people as well as whites

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: "Black speakers are more likely to use African American Vernacular English (AAVE)"

Most of the darker skinned people in the World are not USA Citizens.

Most actual Africans, or non-Americans of African origin do not use African American Vernacular English (AAVE).

Lots of Black people in the USA don't seem to use AAVE either. At least not the ones I met. Perhaps it's particular urban socio-economic groups in the USA that use AAVE.

Personally I think Speech recognition has hardly improved since the 1990s and over 15 years ago when it was on devices locally. I suspect a major reason for the Speech Recognition using the remote server now is the invasive capture of your behaviour. Maybe it's really much better for a certain narrow class of White Americans.

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: "it assumes race creates an accent and speech patterns"

There is negligible difference genetically between a tall fair, blue eyed Scandinavian and an African bush person. There are more genetic differences within Africa.

The tint of the skin or your height, eye or hair color or kind of hair is irrelevant to Speech Recognition. The very idea of Race was only invented to justify exploitation of various ethnic groups by more powerful groups.