Re: Cutting off internet services
> Boo hoo.
ODFO
Vic.
Posts by Vic
5860 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Dec 2007
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French minister: 3 strikes anti-piracy rule a 'waste of money'
Foldable NFC keyboard could tempt Android users
Android app DRM quietly disabled due to bug
Wednesday 8th August 2012 17:18 GMT
Re: "t if the software is sold, obtaining it without paying is quite simply theft. "
> "Section 11 makes it an offence for any person, by any dishonest act, to obtain services for
> which payment is required, with intent to avoid payment"
So copyright infringement would not be covered by that.
Copyright infringement *is* unlawful. It might even be a criminal offence if performed in a commercial setting (s.107), but it's not fraud, and it's not theft.
Vic.
‘Cash for comment’ journos, bloggers under spotlight in Oracle-v-Google
First full landing site and colour pictures back from Mars
Wednesday 8th August 2012 15:22 GMT
Re: Bobak Ferdowsi
> an American was interviewing a black British man, and he was getting more and more
> irate because she kept referring to him an "African American".
That happened to a former colleague of mine. Eventually, he had to correct said American in that he was neither African, nor American. He considered himself Welsh.
Vic.
Russian rocket fails to orbit 2 satellites after booster bungle
YouTube app wrenched from next Apple iPhones, iPads
Wednesday 8th August 2012 08:04 GMT
Re: Why use the app?
> What does the app give you that the mobile site doesn't?
I have a very cheap Android.
On that, the browser frequently fails to play youTube content for one reason or another. The app hasn't failed, to the best of my recollection.
Of course, the real answer is just to buy a decent Android. But I was skint at the time :-)
Vic.
Woz: Cloud computing trend is 'horrendous'
Success! Curiosity Mars lander arrives precisely on schedule
Microsoft tightens grip on OEM Windows 8 licensing
Monday 6th August 2012 06:56 GMT
Re: Well you are overlooking something
> Secure Boot makes Linux more secure just as it does Windows and for the same reasons
No, "Secure Boot" makes no difference to LInux security, just as it makes no difference to Windows security. And for the same reasons.
It's all security theatre. Sadly, Fedora has been pushed into playing that game.
Vic.
Sunday 5th August 2012 13:48 GMT
Re: building it yourself just isn't an option.
> It's part of the requirements to get the Windows 8 certification that a physically
> present user be able to disable this
That's my understanding too - but I just tried to find a statement to that effect on Microsoft's web site. I failed...
Got any current links?
Vic.
Sunday 5th August 2012 09:27 GMT
Re: And if I don't want Windows?
> What happened to the DIY mentality? Still the cheapest way to a powerful rig IME.
It goes through phases; quite often, it's cheaper to buy a built-up machine than to buy the same components from the same supplier.
And if you're charging for time, or putting the machine somewhere it needs to be warranted, building it yourself just isn't an option.
Vic.
Judge rejects Apple's calls for Samsung censure
Sunday 5th August 2012 13:59 GMT
Re: Of course...
> Generally the stores own is from the same place as heinz / kellogs etc, just slightly lower quality batch.
This is absolutely *not* true when it comes to Kelloggs. They refuse to make foods for anyone else.
Other manufacturers do quite often just package their standard product in the supermarkets' foil/boxes.
Vic.
Airline leaves customer on hold for 15 hours
Friday 3rd August 2012 20:30 GMT
Re: Premium rate numbers
> to imply that they are related to local numbers when in fact they're not and never have been.
Well - they were originally. The purpose of an 0845 number was to supply a national number at the same rate as a local call.
But then the local rate dropped dramatically. And the 0845 tariff didn't.
Vic.
[Who has an 0845 numnber on the business cards - because it keeps the cheapskates away. Important customers get the 023 number...]
Bomb sniffing “electric nose” turns cancer detector
Valve: Games run FASTER on Linux than Windows
Friday 3rd August 2012 19:41 GMT
> it'l be the steam operating system that they'll be trying to push next...
i doubt it. That's not what they do well.
It wouldn't be that hard - indeed, I'd do it for them in exchange for a few games - but that's a fallback solution; they'd be much better off working with one or more commonly-available distros to make sure it works well and is easy to use.
Vic.
Software bug flattens NYSE trader
Friday 3rd August 2012 15:41 GMT
Re: A Quick Way to Lose Everything in a Great Flash Crash of Quant Trading Machines*
> these are the same buffoons that think short selling is a good thing
Short selling is an *essential* thing.
Without shorting, a share price can stay artificially high long after the value of the company has decreased - those who own the shares just don't part with them. Short-selling stops this problem; it allows those who own the shares (and expect their value to go up) to loan them to shorters (who expect their value to go down). If the value goes up, the short-seller loses. If it goes down, the share owner loses. But importantly, the value does not stagnate.
Naked short-selling, on the other hand, ...
Vic.
Russia slashes space station ship trip to just six hours
Apple demands Samsung flogged for 'unethical' court doc leak
Will Samsung's patent court doc leak backfire spectacularly?
Lords call for the end of TV transmissions
Thursday 2nd August 2012 07:31 GMT
Re: Fine in principle
> A "national grid" ethernet network.
An interwoven network of networks. Wow. You could call it something really slappy, like - oh, I don't know, an internet, or something like that?
> dial a friend using their IP6 address? phone://......
If you used "sip:friend@example.com", you'd be standards-compliant...
Vic.
Wednesday 1st August 2012 19:46 GMT
Re: 80 posts, and no one mentions ...
> the actual content will be encrypted so no, they won't have any idea what you are watching
The content might be, but the IP stream isn't (and can't be) and, unless all the broadcast encoders in the world are re-engineered, nor will the transport streams be. It's only the elementary streams that get encrypted.
> but Joe Public can't currently and won't be able to in the future either.
A single TS can carry multiple programmes. Anyone sniffing the traffic can tell trivially which TS is being watched. It's rather harder to tell which programme within that stream is being watched if it contains more than one.
Of course, once we go to IPv6, and multicasts are no longer (comparatively) scarce, it's quite likely that each programme will be carried in its own TS.
Vic.
Wednesday 1st August 2012 15:31 GMT
Re: I'll be damned...
> Yes, but will they persist with multicast and schedules
Yes.
If they go unicast, you're going to need to budget for a *constant* 10Mb/s stream to every subscriber - possibly more. The ONS says there were 26.3 million households in 2011. That's a *lot*[1] of bandwidth.
CDNs will mitigate the problem, but not eradicate it.
My pet suggestion is to do NVOD distribution ober multicast, with a unicast stream to each subscriber to provide the data they've missed prior to the nearest NVOD stream. This gives you on-demand video at the cost of little more than NVOD multicast. But it does mean you've got to cache the data at the receiver. The meeja companies will probably object :-(
Vic.
Wednesday 1st August 2012 13:43 GMT
Re: rural communities and 86-year-old mums
> only after you've got the infrastructure delivering several megabits of capacity
...Only after you've got it delivering *reliably*.
Who wants to be awtching something on the telly when it stops in its tracks. The router is showing LCP disconencts from the head end. But your ISP takes 2 days to take any action, and thtat's just to tell you to disconnect all your phones, plug your router into the master socket, change all your filters, and try your kit at someone else's house[1].
You don't need much data loss to make IPTV unwatchable. Until and unless broadband suppliers start fixing problems *urgently*, removing broadcast TV is not going to work. People will not put up with not being able to watch telly for days on end. And ISPs aren't going to make any move on that front while BT still charge £183 for a callout.
> a composite video signal output containing the half-dozen channels that you want to watch
STBs don't really work that way. You need hardware support for each channel decoded. Opportunistic decoding like that would be expensive both in terms of compute hardware and power requirements.
Vic.
[1] Thankyou, Eclipse. I had hoped the log file would show you the problem, but apparently that's far too much effort to read.
Wednesday 1st August 2012 13:28 GMT
Re: I'll be damned...
> You do know that IP can be multicast?
Yes, and IPTV *should* be multicast.
But take a look at how many domestic ISPs carry multicast traffic :-(
> It makes you wonder what the point of scheduled programming will be if this persists
Multicast programming will still involve schedules.
Vic.
Microsoft RTMs final Windows 8 and Server 2012 code
Smutty books strip Harry Potter of Amazon crown
Tesco in unencrypted password email reminder rumble
Wednesday 1st August 2012 12:57 GMT
Re: Iceberg - and not a Lettuce
> the web sites run the login on HTTP in the clear across the internet.
That's fucking disgustiong, in this age. There is no excuse for HTTP logins.
I mean imagining logging into a site over HTTP, sharing your credentials with any random network sniffer. You wouldn't catch me doing that. In fact, no-one who comments here would even consider it.
And now I've got to use pliers to get this tongue out of my cheek...
Vic.
Neurotrash creativity 'expert' created Dylan quotes from thin air
Wednesday 1st August 2012 08:01 GMT
Re: The debunked field of sociology ...
> at least some social behaviour has genetic foundations.
It's trivial to show that this is so. Just get some chicken eggs.
Chickens can be hatched in an incubator. You can produce a small flock that has never had any contact with other chickens. Yet that flock will behave exactly[1] as you expect chickens to behave.
That behavior cannot be learned - there are no other chickens from which to learn. It is either the only possible way of behaving - which is a daft idea - or else it is laid down in the genetics.
It is reasonable to assume that humans are not immune to this effect - but I have no way of knowing whether it is more than statistical noise compared to the learned behaviours we have.
Vic.
[1] All the cockerels my mate hatched would crow. But some weren't all that good at it :-)
Solar, wind, landfill to make cheapest power by 2030
Tuesday 31st July 2012 13:35 GMT
Re: Cheapest?
> In what way is adding a carbon tax not the cost of pollution?
It ignores the fact that most of these renewable sources can only provide what is needed if they have a fossil-fuel backup. Thus you actually need a hybrid system to cover variation in output, so the tax should be spread across both elements of the hybrid.
Once you do that, renewables often don't look nearly as cheap :-(
Vic.
Tuesday 31st July 2012 13:26 GMT
Re: A small question
[Disclosure: one of my customers is a large wind turbine manufacturer]
> When the wind blows hard you make hydrogen and oxygen.
Actually, when the wind blows hard, you shut down.
Wind turbines have a range over which they are useful - too little wind, and they don't turn. Too much, and you risk mechanical failure. Only inbetween these extremes is the tubine at all viable.
But even if you're in the right windspeed range - how are you going to *store* that hydrogen? It takes a fair amount of power to run a cryo setup (which would need to run whether the turbine is operational or not), and a compressor - although simpler to operate - is unlikely to be a sufficiently reliable and effective means of energy storage. Hydrogen just isn't that good as a long-term storage medium. It's unlikely that you'll end up with a net energy contribution outside of a spreadsheet model...
> Keeping the oxygen means that higher thermal efficiencies can be achieved when burning the hydrogen.
Burning it *in what*?
Raising Th for the same Tc will always improve the peak thermodynamic efficiency - but you still need a combustion chamber that will function at such temperatures. Have you seen a NASA launch?
> General cost can be reduced enormously by taking away subsidies
That is probably true of the wind energy market: take away the subsidy, and the market would vanish. The cost is dramatically reduced (to zero) - but this doesn't actually help at all.
> With payback times of less than five years
Such payback times are possible only because of the way the FIT is structured. This takes money from those that cannot afford generation systems and passes it to those that can. If the FITs were abolished tomorrow[1], you can wave goodbye to that payback period...
Vic.
[1] Yes, I know there are "guarantees" that they won't be. But they've already been halved once.
The asymmetry implicit in Internet data retention
Hobbyist builds working assault rifle using 3D printer
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
