* Posts by Mage

9252 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

The 'DUP' joins El Reg’s illustrious online standards converter

Mage Silver badge

Dane Geld

Ironically they don't need paid anything, the DUP certainly doesn't want Corbyn.

Remind me why the SF MPs get paid?

Remind me why the peace loving majority of people in NI vote for the two parties that least believe in peace, tolerance, honesty, integrity and democracy. Not much to chose between SF or DUP. Both toxic, though the SF have better PR.

Researchers blind autonomous cars by tricking LIDAR

Mage Silver badge

Lidar is a dead end.

We need to solve self driving trains, ships, aircraft and trams (in about that order) FIRST.

We might need real AI and better positioning / maps.

We might need better passive vision analysis systems.

We need fully autonomous vehicles that work without remote data or GPS etc as tall buildings, tunnels, trees and interference are issues. Privacy too.

It's evident that existing self drive tech has too much hype and needs to be better tested in secure mock up road systems away from pedestrians, cyclists and others.

Lidar isn't reliable or scaleable.

FCC: LEO ISPs A-OK

Mage Silver badge

FCC?

Sorry, FCC, you can only approve TERRESTRIAL usage.

Satellite / Space usage requires international agreement. The UN became the umbrella for the ancient ITU which allocates frequencies.

Even with LEO (lower latency) it's going to be rubbish capacity compared to terrestrial services. Like all the existing struggling to make a profit (DTH TV makes a profit) retail satellite data services expect it to be only any use in not-spot areas and to cost lots, or else they'll go bust.

There is competition in LEO, MEO and Geo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communication_satellite_companies

AES-256 keys sniffed in seconds using €200 of kit a few inches away

Mage Silver badge

Re: AES was not cracked, cut the click bait

But most of the worlds encryption users are now running ARM based phones or tablets. The majority of x86 are either work related laptops or in server rooms and now seriously outnumbered by ARM based gadgets etc.

Mage Silver badge

Re: How well was the PC prepared?

Fine mesh over the holes works. The SDRs only work up to 1.7GHz away even that would allow larger holes than on a perforated Sky dish. (Small enough so it looks solid at 12.6GHz, but poor reflector at 20GHz). C band "Mesh"/Perforated dishes have bigger holes as maximum is less than 4.5GHz.

A lot of gear is badly screened, shielded or filtered. The FCC and CE RFI tests are both too lax and also often not realistic test scenarios (RFI from electronic ballasts or SMPSU radiated by lighting wiring that tends to be a loop, "power line ethernet" that are really transmitters and pass by only testing one or having no data). Sometimes after the FCC / CE approvals are obtained they leave out the filter parts to save money as there is little to zero in market retail sales testing.

Not Apr 1: Google stops scanning your Gmail to sling targeted ads at you

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Re: 1.. Never

History shows that they may continue and then if found out, claim it's a mistake.

WiFi scanning during Streetview survey (replaced by Android anyway).

The only company I trust less *AND* have more destain for is Facebook.

Google to remove private medical data from search results

Mage Silver badge
Mushroom

Abusive Megacorp

The person that agreed to share 3rd party info with Google ought to be tried for something.

They are one of least fit companies on the planet to have any such stuff.

Google also should be in the dock for abuse of privacy and market dominance.

Apple, LG, Huawei, ZTE, HTC accused of pilfering 'find my phone' tech

Mage Silver badge

I'm baffled

How are these ideas valid patents at all?

Report estimates cost of disruption to GPS in UK would be £1bn per day

Mage Silver badge

or is it just cheaper ?

It's cheaper.

An "atomic" clock is maybe $2,000. I've not checked lately. Could be less. You can even get one that fits in your pocket (battery life may be an issue). This is why DTT, DAB, Mobile phone masts all use GPS. Obviously only for timing as they are not mobile.

One GHz terrestrial system I know has an oven based "clock reference" only in the main mast and then the clients lock to a pilot carrier for stability, to save £100 per unit.

The BBC used to distribute an atomic clock signal nationally.

A GPS receiver is so cheap! Just a few quid. Much smaller and lower power, so very many systems just take the easy way out and don't worry about the US turning it off or a big Solar Flare (which might fry all the satellites, will Sky refund customers?)

Mage Silver badge

Re: Galileo

Not really a backup.

If we had a solar flare like in the 19th C, it might knock out ALL satellites.

Does the report even consider Mobile Basestations, DAB and DTT transmitters etc where the GPS module is used purely for timing instead of a local stable clock? Or even one distributed by fibre?

Microsoft's new Surface laptop defeats teardown – with glue

Mage Silver badge

Re: Apple timecapsule

Or a generic USB HDD.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Does Microsoft offer an exchange program too?

It's not the fault of designers, but the Beancounters.

Beancounters should ONLY be employed to count and report. Ultimately if they are in charge of decisions they destroy the company. That's what killed most of the UK companies successful in the 1950s.

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Apple

MS copying Apple.

This abusive manufacturing should have been made illegal years ago, with glue limited to parts that never need to be removed for repair.

Batteries barely last 2 years if charged every day and can fail earlier.

It pokes "Repair, Reuse, Recycling" in the Eye.

Fine them AND Apple and the others. This has gone on too long. Rescind the CE mark of anything other than like a greeting card with glued case / display / battery!

Elon Musk reveals Mars colony rocket capable of bringing pizza joints to the red planet

Mage Silver badge
Alien

So many flaws

Sending "ships" back is stupid. Better and cheaper to make more and use them as ready-to-use materials at destination.

However the very idea is arrogant, elitist, unpractical.

We need to make fairer (the USA, less than 13% of world population, consume 75% resources) and better use of this planet rather than trying to colonise a totally unsuitable one, with an elite of less than 0.0001%, probably more likely 0.0000001% of people.

Insert coin: Atari retro console is coming back

Mage Silver badge

Re: cut-price Apple-style effort

Intel then sold the StrongARM line to Marvell. Some Marvell SATA chips have ARM cores.

DEC also developed the MS NT Cluster inspired by VAX cluster.

First 64bit NT was for the 64 bit Alpha.

Shame that DEC are gone.

Mage Silver badge

Kodi

Be better than the garbage Android TV that Sony inflicts on TV owners now instead of their own better SW. I could fill a page with what is wrong with Android TV, short version, apart from privacy the fonts assume desktop use or bigger than 72", it also assumes you don't care about organising 2500 satellite channels (Diseq 4 way) and that Android apps are more important than TV. I bought it to have a TV! I have a phone, tablet, laptop etc.

Why shouldn't it do media too? More sense on a games console than a TV set.

Mage Silver badge

cut-price Apple-style effort

It doesn't look like a pippin to me (which curiously ran Mac OS, note version 9 and earlier are almost unrelated to Mac OS X*, later OS X then Mac OS. It made the Newton look really successful. The Newton could have be a success if they hadn't hyped the handwriting recognition so much. Maybe needed a bit of a tweek, but it and Archimedes did help launch the ARM CPU.

[Curiously Apple then stuck on 10, presumably liking the X, which came out the same year as Windows XP, really NT 5.1 Windows 2000 was NT 5.0, Server 2003 was NT 5.2 and Vista / Win7 are NT 6.x family. Perhaps that's what MS means when they claim Windows 10 will be the last Windows]

Microsoft HoloLens apps to be piloted with 'Hogwarts for the MoD' chapesses, chaps

Mage Silver badge

Education specialist Pearson

Or specialist at making money from Education, at high end, rather than Research Machines, Easons etc?

I'm curious.

EU regulators gearing up to slap Google with €1bn fine – reports

Mage Silver badge

Fines?

Perhaps 10% of turnover per month of non-compliance, or total share value. No point in basing it on "profit". Fines do NOT punish shareholders if they are merely a business cost and can be passed on to customers.

Perhaps fine the top executives 1% of worth per week... (Quango, Gov Agencies, Councils too?)

Fines do work, they just are useless if regarded as a cost of doing business or passed on to customer or taxpayer. They have to hurt the people in charge.

I think there is a lot of other stuff they need fined for too.

Samsung releases 49-inch desktop monitor with 32:9 aspect ratio

Mage Silver badge

Field of view.

More than about 19" is too wide for reading, and especially reading glasses.

If you want to simulate a real desktop then you need about 1700 pixels high at 200 dpi, or about 2500 pixels high if 300 dpi.

About 133dpi is a minimum if you rely on sub pixel addressing at edges of fonts, but 200 dpi or higher with subpixel addressing on text off is better.

Mage Silver badge

Vertical resolution 1080

Actually sounds like low visual resolution and less than 1200 vertical is rubbish for WYSIWG documents and PDF.

It's obviously only any use for games.

When we said don't link to the article, Google, we meant DON'T LINK TO THE ARTICLE!

Mage Silver badge

While we are at it

Can we stop Google scanning entire copyright works and poisoning search results with them and allowing FAR more than fair use to be viewed online.

Also PRIVACY? Single sign in to even non-Google sites using Google. Cookies, Analytics, Android. There is a TRUCKLOAD of stuff to sue Google for in most countries other than USA.

Irrelevant: The OCR versions of stuff Google thinks are public domain are not proofed. They are rubbish quality compared to Gutenberg.

Operators and vendors agree that Europe is falling behind in 5G

Mage Silver badge

Re: 450MB/sec, 1GB/sec?

Ha, ha!

Only on in Office femto cells and only if no-one else is in. That's fantasy on any frequency that's not pure line of sight and with a pointed aerial panel.

PHYSICS.

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Falling behind on 5G?

Really?

What is MOST needed is not new kit or agreement on what 5G might be or deployment of it. All of that is nearly irrelevant. This really is tired old chestnut now. The only people that will benefit from 5G will be infrastructure equipment sellers. It will have little effect on handset or modem sales.

What is needed is more masts, a single wholesale RAN (would double performance/capacity), and er, more masts.

But better coverage and especially better capacity (smaller cells = more masts) generates almost no extra revenue and probably a drop in profit due to extra operating costs.

What IS needed is more fibre to the home / kerb / premises, not a cabinet 1km to 3km away. Any improvement in mobile needs that anyway to feed all the smaller cells.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Microsoft's 'Ms Pac-Man beating AI' is more Automatic Idiot

Mage Silver badge

This achievement seems a bit late.

Though it wouldn't be late if it really was AI. The Chess and Go winning programs are not AI, not in the sense meant in 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. Any "expert system"* with a big database is now called "AI".

(*Expert System really just meant the programmer tried to codify the expertise of a human expert, they never have been actually "experts", only like parrots remembering which shape is associated with the audio/vocal "doughnut". No parrot has language, they merely associate a list of tokens and objects.

Marissa! Mayer! out! as! Yahoo!-Verizon! closes!

Mage Silver badge

The Oath portfolio includes

"The Oath portfolio includes HuffPost, Yahoo! Sports, AOL.com, MAKERS, Tumblr, Build Studios, Yahoo! Finance, and Yahoo! Mail."

Presumably also Yahoo Groups and Flickr?

Waymo waves off original Google Firefly driverless car

Mage Silver badge

Re: Don't hold your breath..

Yes, ships and trains are easier, and ships might be ten years away.

Anything more than five years away, it means they are guessing / wishful thinking.

How does delivery work without a person?

French firm notches up 50km unmanned drone inspection flight

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Flight Corridor

Power lines?

Not an issue for general Aviation congestion then, no pilot wants near them anyway, so an ideal application.

There are also ingenious "robots" that can crawl the live grid cables and others that can add fibre to them. Electricity Network operators seem to be creative geniuses. At college I foolishly thought it would be too boring, not realising:

1) It's not.

2) You get to change job too often and have too much pressure on the leading bleeding edge of tech.

Too late to change my mind now.

Damian Green now heads up UK Cabinet Office

Mage Silver badge

Cabinet Office

Did it used to be Dept of Administrative Affairs?

Mage Silver badge

Re: "another PPE graduate from Oxbridge..Parliament formed..exclusively of know-nothing arseholes?"

"They select undergraduates who already think they such gifts to begin with."

I misread that as "they are such gits", sorry.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Oh bugger!

Transfer that to proper Universities more interested in real Science and Education than reputation and ego.

Specsavers embraces Azure and AWS, recoils at Oracle's 'wow' factor

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Google Docs more expensive than Office 365

Yes, MS may indeed be cheaper.

However relying on the "cloud" and MS instead of their own system might be a false saving. That and the IBM deal may break the law.

There is no evidence that IBM's hyped system delivers anything yet. Specsavers are are essentially going to give IBM data and outcomes (with INFORMED permission of customers?) that eventually IBM MIGHT make sense of.

From landslide to buried alive: Why 2017 election forecasts weren't wrong

Mage Silver badge

Simple

The only poll that counts, are the actual valid votes cast.

Ban all polls once an election is called.

Uber board: We accept all recommendations. Any execs left to carry them out?

Mage Silver badge

How did they come up with

All the information on drivers, passengers, trips. In great detail. That's the the valuable stuff.

Most of that should be illegal to store.

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Disruptive

Easy if you lie, cheat and under pay.

Amazon, Lyft, eBay, Facebook, Google, AirBnB, Uber etc need to face the same taxes, insurance and regulation as any retailer or newspaper or services in the street. Using the "internet" as an interface or being multinational should be irrelevant.

Law needs changed too so that people making immoral or illegal decisions can't be insulated by being Council, Government, Civil Service or Company Executives. That is not why "limited liability" was invented. Though the problem on unscrupulous people ripping people off via shell companies is in both Dickens and more clearly Anthony Trollop's "The way we live now."

People making bad decisions need to be found personally liable if found guilty rather than fining a company or a council (which the public will be paying for!)

Raspberry Pi sours thanks to mining malware

Mage Silver badge

Re: I just hooked it to the DMZ, and it's fine...

ports open?

Wut no firewall.

I take no prisoners. We have no DMZ.

Windows 10 Creators Update preview: Lovin' for Edge and pen users, nowt much else

Mage Silver badge

Linux bits?

That goes back to before Windows 2000, except it was called Microsoft Services for Unix or something then.

Today a VM on Windows makes more sense, or indeed just using Linux, and maybe WINE or a VM for Windows apps. Seems to me that Win7 was last version that could be customised without 3rd party software to be "sane", though file Explorer horrible compared to XP.

Mage Silver badge
FAIL

Fail for content creators

This has really nothing of value for people interested in working rather that fiddling with websites and games?

"Pin websites on Taskbar" That's a feature????????

Bah!

Ability to have Icon for a specific web page is about 25 years old on Windows. Basically since pre-Win95 supported TCP-IP and a web browser.

Stop trying to be cool and give back a version of windows with

1) Privacy

2) Proper customisation of desktop like we had from Win95 to Win7

3) Decent WIMP GUI for people not using tablets, phones, wacom, touch etc. Available on various GUIs from 1976 till win 7.

4) No Ribbon or flat, or menu items that hide because they are little used. The 3D effect on GUI elements added approximately Win3.11 is fine. No need for fancy effects or flat UNLESS people select them by customisation.

MS has lost the plot. Probably around 2004 actually.

Who will save us from voice recog foolery from scumbags? Magnetometer!

Mage Silver badge

Re: Quad

Or piezo

Or plasma

Or a horn

It's pointless research because biometrics can't be a security key! ANY security mechanism has to be replaceable and in many cases transferable or user created.

DUP site crashes after UK general election

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: DUP?

The black and decker catalogue is in the post to all posters besmriching the DUP.

Proven bullies and bigots. Previous party leader (Robinson) led a mob attack on an Irish Garda station, which unlike NI police stations, are usually just like a regular office or even in rural areas a house.

Mage Silver badge

Tories sold themselves as the only way to avoid Indyref2

Yet lost.

Total of ALL opposition to SNP 40.7%. Tories only got 13 seats, 22% of seats on their Unionism platform and Sturgeon / SNP managed to hold on to 35. Yet Indy ref was 55% for unionism. So you might claim support for Scottish Independence has gone from 45% to 59. SNP only did so well at last election (and far better than expected) due to backlash against Westminster, hence Ruth Davidson choosing Unionism campaign, thinking that might give majority.

Mage Silver badge
Big Brother

Scotland & Tories

Before last big election win the SNP had maybe 6?

Ruth Davidson fought Scottish Tory election on Unionism (55% in Indyref) and lost. All non-SNP (mostly Unionists) was 40.7% to the SNP 59.3%. I'd call that a win for SNP.

In NI, despite near parity in Stormont (and a hung assembly with no prospect of a government), the Nationalists (SF) only got 38.9%, DUP (10) + 1 Unionist Independent = 61.1% Adams & SF will go quiet on calls for a border referendum.

SF should take seats or get no money.

Ericsson leads 5G connected car gang towards pot of EU gold

Mage Silver badge

Coverage

Better coverage than now needs about x6 more basestations. Not more spectrum, not a new protocol, not 5G.

But where is incentive for operators? They'd hardly see any increase in customer revenue.

This seems to ignore basic physics and economics.

Uh-Koh! Apple-Samsung judge to oversee buggy Intel modem chip fight

Mage Silver badge

Intel?

Presumably Arris is unhappy with Intel. Given the number of issues with Intel products, they are looking tarnished.

EU, China may demand concessions for Qualcomm's $39bn Dutch chip plant slurp

Mage Silver badge

buys them political clout in Europe

How?

NXP is the spun off Philips Semiconductor.

Qualcomm only regards product as a vehicle to get royalties. They only want the ex Philips RF IP.

Any European staff will be laid off.

Only chips with ability to charge a % on final product for royalty will be kept, and only far east production. Likely ANY remaining NXP chips in production will be licensed to highest Asian bidder.

So there will be zero NXP European jobs and production. Possibly no NXP chips at all after a couple of years. It's about eating the real RF IP. I've seen it before with Qualcomm acquisitions!

Qualcomm has no interest in $1.50 ARM cortex or car radio ICs.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Rory must be on holiday

Sounds like Stephen Fry,

Mage Silver badge

Qualcomm buying NXP.

Should Not Be Allowed.

OTH look at all the companies Amazon has eaten.

These corporate acquisitions go beyond synergy, scaling up etc, to simply extort customers.

Infosec guru Schneier: Govts will intervene to regulate Internet of Sh!t

Mage Silver badge

Regulation

We need FCC, CSA, CE marks that actually mean something more than an licence to import and retail, with proactive regulator sampling of the market. There is not just security, but also every kind of safety (not just electrical), RFI and RF susceptibility, ability to repair, and ability to sensibly recycle, rather than built in 18month to 28 month life due to sealed in batteries or poor component quality.

We need to look at the big picture.

Also there has to be SEPARATE security and functional updates. I received a forced automatic update in a Kobo eBook reader while making annotations. It did add one "security" feature, a PIN to unlock, but dramatically reduced functionality of the home screen to almost useless.

So Microsoft is not the only bad guy. If people get "Security" updates that interrupt their work or remove or downgrade features, they will block updates.

Also MS lack of security patches on some older products is pure marketing to force people to upgrade, as they continue often to develop and release the patches to specific users or products using same code rather than in public. MS is quite entitled to charge specific customers for support, but it's sheer bloody mindedness to turn off patches to the ordinary public when in reality they are still AUTOMATICALLY distributing them.

Ex-MI5 boss: People ask, why didn't you follow all these people ... on your radar?

Mage Silver badge

IRA: not anxious to kill a lot of people

REALLY?

Indiscriminate bombings, mostly of civilians. The shootings and beatings were more targeted... mostly at their own community. Look at the figures.

From 1969 to about 1998:

More than 3,500 people were killed in the conflict, of whom 52% were civilians, 32% were members of the British security forces, and 16% were members of paramilitary groups.

More people were killed in the Irish Civil War than War of Independence: Previous incarnation of IRA.

Most attacks on security forces were ambushes.

Though from 1916 to the GFA, reacting with force, executions, internment, shooting at protesters etc, only created followers.

Though contrary to much media reporting, unlike current terrorism, it was purely about politics, not religion. It was just historical accident that the two sides mostly belonged to two different denominations.

What is this person thinking?

Would you let DJ E-to-the-Musk set the playlist for your roadtrip?

Mage Silver badge

may move into music "matching algorithms"

I dunno, I'd never employ him. Except maybe to proof read SF, if he's any good at proof reading.

Why would ANYONE want "music matching algorithims"? Except folks wanting to make money out of you.