Posts by Eugene Goodrich

The big picture is scarier

No one design will win out; our new pitiless robotic overlords will use many of these designs for synergistic purpose: while sniper-copters are fine for gunning down fleshies wherever they may run and hide, and rubble-recovery tractors can drag the corpses out for later consumption (or alternative "processing"), one can see that as soon as the lot have developed a taste for fresher meat - and especially for _live_ humans for some purposes - they're going to find benefit in convincing (or tricking) the weakest-willed into entering a "Mono Tiltrotor"* for a quick trip back to robotic dark mass, fleshie-sushi honorable dinner, or to be plopped into the pen in the center of the "choose your own fleshie" robo-restaurant.

They have learned much from us, and part of what they've learned is that the wild ones have the best color, flavor, and energy-producing reagents.

(* see other Reg article.)

(P.S. Paris, because she's free-range. Killbots take note!)

Bright power lights are not a problem...

... when you have electrical tape. Takes hardly any at all.

Paris, because when she gets too bright and annoying, electrical tape would be capable of helping although it would take quite a bit more.

Just make two decade, century definitions.

One definition will be zero-based. It's right, but like most zero-based systems it seems odd to the average folk because they only understand the number zero as how many beers they have left when they've drunk them all.

The other definition will be one-based. It runs first in all this "best of the decade/century!" hooplah.

Win: this allows us the opportunity to run all the "best of the decade!" hooplahs twice, going forward. An asterisk on the one-based "decade" indicating the fine print "1-based decade counting; truer, 0-based decade counting will be run again next year" should appease all the twitchy nerd types (like me).

Paris, because she may not appease all the twitchy nerd types, but she'd certainly work for me.

P.S. I look forward to seeing all technical media the world over make my suggested change k thx bai

Gait

Is it me, or does that PETMAN look like he's got a funky walk going on?

Paris, because you should see her when she's got the iPod going...

PETApocrisy

Google "PETA Kill Rate".

Then ask about angels.

(Paris, natch.)

Important to have the people you want elsewhere

[[[it's important that we not hire these guys. It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry, as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google.'"]]]

Setting aside the honesty-talk - because it seems _everyone_ usually points out how honest they are and you hear very little from people about what spinning cheats they are, have been, or are about to be - it makes perfect sense that you want successful people out in the industry that makes money without directly competing with you. Those are your customers, and you want them to be 1. dripping with cash and 2. thinking in ways that lead them to buy things from you.

Paris, because you bet she fits into something I just said...

Wouldn't happened in the US of A

We'd have gunned the kangaroo down immediately, in defense of our dog.

Of course, in some of these parts the dog would have outmassed the kangaroo. That's another reason we need the guns.

Paris, because in a situation like this the kangaroo would have been drowning her mobile and whatever else was in her purse along with the dog.

Theater

"We will not give the error rates or technical specifications of the gates for commercial and security reasons."

These are not the droids you're looking for.

(Paris, because she _is_ the droids I'm looking for.)

@Anonymous Coward, ibid

>>Frankly if you are afraid that "the government" is going to "take your guns" you're probably a paranoid schizophrenic and probably shouldn't have gotten the gun in the first place.<<

* Citation needed. Please credibly establish the "probably" link between fear of government gun seizure and paranoid schizophrenia.

>>This is poor-quality logic. Either you overthrow the government with your gun-nut friends - in which case you "own" the gun (in your sense) - or you leave the country and be "truly free" on some island somewhere - in which case you can take the gun with you quite legally, which you could not do with a leased car, for instance. Difference between "lease" and "own", you see. Doesn't really depend on whether or not an item has to be registered in a specific country.<<

* I was talking about a "practical" right, not a legal or Constitutional one. Once a right is legally abolished, it's not actually gone until enforcement. (Nobody has the legal right to ride motorcycles without mufflers around town, but they do anyway, don't they?) My assertion was that guns whose ownership, serial numbers, and addresses of storage have been communicated to a partial overseer are far easier to seize than guns that are more or less unknown. Thus my logical argument is one of negation: the (practical) right to possess such guns is strengthened when these prerequisites to easy seizure are not performed because physical abrogation of the right remains more difficult. Criminals recognize this and refrain from registering their firearms even when directed to by law[1]. (And then the courts respect the criminals' position - U.S. v. Haynes [1968].)

I further claim that when those who disapprove of a right know that enforcement of the removal that right would be difficult, they are less likely to seek legal removal of that right. This is my "poor logic[al]" suggestion of registration being the "thin edge of the wedge" and causing lost sleep among some people - even without the mandatory spy kit installation suggested by El Reg.

Paris, because she's her own country, and I suppose I wouldn't mind living on her shores. She also doesn't use the second person in online posts thereby ambiguously implying things about other posters.

[1] Alas, citation needed for me here, also.

@Can we have a moratorium...

Furthermore it assumes the person in question would get bred anyway.

Paris, because that's more of a valid assumption.

@ Can we eat them?

This is absolutely the solution, if they are at all nutritious and agreeable of flavor.

Paris, because of a reason someone else pointed out earlier.

Need a police website...

... telling you which coat is OK to wear that day.

Paris, because she wouldn't put up with this crap.

Excellent news in the long run

I'm glad Apple is expanding the flash memory market. (Glad in part, of course, because I don't happen to need to buy a bunch of flash market _today_, but I'll be keen to see larger-and-cheaper flash devices for sale sooner into the future.)

Paris, because she also expands markets.

Grinds yer beans

Braun also makes some coffee equipment. And everyone knows computers and coffee go together. So there, I've solved that mystery for you. Let me know when the cheque's ready.

Paris, because she also goes with coffee, I've no doubt.

Electricity is greener than ICE

"When you add up the coal plant emissions (times the loss in leccy transport, the poor efficiency of the motor under load etc) and the pollution caused by the huge batteries (both manufacturing and disposal), the 'leccy part of the thing was hardly as "green" as marketted [sic] to begin with..."

This is a mixing and matching of toxins / pollutants.

The coal plant emissions do contribute to global warming, but I should like to see some rigorous numbers regarding losses in electricity transmission, battery charging, and motor operation before deciding if the power plants aren't a net benefit over burning the fuel directly in the internal combustion engine bolted to the wheels. Also, not all power plants are coal; there are others and there will continue to be others - as e.g. windmills (yes, yes, destroying the planet one bird at a time) come online the electricity goes straight into the same batteries without any difficult work for the consumer, marketers, etc..

Coal plants also have the benefit of (in my country, anyway) polluting somewhere further than 15 feet in front of my face. Usually a lot further. And since they're not toting themselves around corners and up hills and parking in shopping malls, they have the option of having better pollution scrubbing attached to them.

Similar with battery manufacture and disposal. It may not presently be fair to developing nations, but for me personally having a battery made then disposed of is fairly cleaner on the air I breathe and the water I drink than the ICE alternative. And as in the coal plant output scrubber above, there's the option of paying more (i.e. internalizing the externalities) for manufacture and disposal so battery lifecycle is safer for everyone. (This option is again because the mines and recycling or destruction facilities are in general not stopping every block at a red light then accelerating to try and beat the next one in order to carry someone to the office.)

Paris, because her stop-and-go is perfectly safe for the environment.

Defeating knife arches

It seems to me that the trick to coping with knife arches is for everyone to start getting absolutely innocuous bits of steel - I'm thinking a couple short bolts or a properly-constructed Texas belt buckle - and gladly walk through them.

Paris, because she's an innocuous bit.

Monopoly behavior...

My Economics textbook said that monopolies work to maximize marginal profit, not total profit. Bringing broadband to the boonies may make more money overall, or eventually, or in conjunction with these grants, but it's going to be more work.

To be fair, at some point any company that's doing pretty well for itself (and especially if it hasn't got a lot of bigger boys to worry about coming to eat their lunch) _can_ sit back and say it's got enough. In a way, that's almost non-greedy.

It's just that if people want something akin to a utility to be provided in these circumstances, they're out of luck.

Paris, because she knows when enough is enough.

This is how I build my reading / watching lists.

If someone tries to ban it, I have to have a looky. Just one of my rules.

Paris, because she knows better than to try and cover things up.

BMI not statistically helpful information, here.

Due to the way the BMI works, being told one group has a greater BMI doesn't convey any solid information if we don't know their height. It means they are fatter or taller or both.

Paris, because I know her BMI's all in those long legs.

@article, @various

"... the power gauge, which lets you know how much charge you have left in the battery."

That would be an energy gauge, wouldn't it?

"...dump the pig iron .... use aluminium and modern composites."

"Modern composites" (if the term isn't too vague) are expensive. Way more than stamped steel (on a per-car basis). Aluminum is only somewhat more expensive (on a per-car basis assuming equal stiffness, not equal mass or equal volume).

"Does it have a heater?"

Yeah, you're more or less sitting on the batteries, so you just drive it harder and things heat right up. (Not serious.)

Paris, because I just described how the heater works.

@SMS not an answer

"When they ding you the price of a minute for each message, what does it matter if it takes an extra minute for voice mail?"

If you pay for each minute in whole-minute increments, then a 15-second voicemail prompt (vs. a 0-second, theoretically-perfect prompt) will 25% of the time push you over the next minute boundary if we assume a random distribution of the number of seconds within a minute you were going to end on naturally.

If you can guarantee your message-leaving plus the 15-second wait time will be under a whole minute, then this might not affect you. And if your message-leaving would typically take 46 to 59 seconds (or, say, 106 to 119 seconds) then you'll buy an extra minute much more often.

If we assume that voicemail-leaving calls are typically short calls, i.e. 1 or 2 minutes long, then adding an extra minute (even a quarter of the time) is a significant increase: a 25% or 12.5% increase in charge (assuming 25% of the time an extra minute is added to what would be either a 1-minute call or a 2-minute call).

At 12.5% extra taken for no particularly good reason, you'd think they were the government or something.

Paris, because I'd give her the extra 15 seconds for free.

Missing the "why"

Why is it disabled in the present VAIOs? Is this a black helicopter issue, or are there believable practical reasons?

Paris, because she'd have written _something_ on the reasoning behind this decision.

@Motorsport...

"Doesn't sound much different from motorsport telemetry with different radio gear attached."

Typically the Formula-One racetracks are less than a thousand miles from one end to the other, and do not include any traverses over oceans or trackless mountain ranges.

(Paris, because she's also less than a thousand miles from end to end.)

Saw this in a movie once, too...

Has anyone seen the end to "The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes"? Disturbing. Matches parts of the description in this article perfectly.

Paris, because I assume she fancies going out to see a surreal movie.

@Y'all

"Also when is the diesel version coming out? that [sic] would be more efficient that [sic again] the petrol one I would have thought."

Most (all?) hybrid cars use a modified Atkinson cycle, not an Otto cycle, increasing the average energy efficiency of and reducing pollution produced per energy extracted by the engine. I believe this reduces the gap in desirability between diesel and gasoline engines (except for volumetric energy density and per-joule retail pricing in the respective fuels).

"I still can't get my head round the 'electric' car arguement [sic]. If you have to burn 'stuff' (coal, oil etc) to create electricity to fill up the cars where is the saving?"

Chevrolet figures they can get this car to drive around four miles per kilowatt-hour of input electricity. If charged only at night, that works out to one cent per mile at present residential electricity rates, and the power is typically produced by power plants that are optimized for producing power with minimal pollution. Whereas burning gasoline in an engine in a car typically gets fifteen to sixty miles (depending on the car) per gallon (currently $2.40 to $3.00) working out as four to twenty cents per mile, and that being run through a power plant optimized for constantly moving itself around and being able to rapidly switch off and on. Furthermore, technically the electricity could come from some "nice" source like non-toxic solar cells made out of seaweed and bubblegum, as soon as that's invented. (Meanwhile we'll use nuclear-waste-generating, bird-chopping, fish-grinding, rainforest-clearcutting, people-starving transition technology, in addition to the classic "find it and burn it" power generation.)

"Those are nice figures considering they forgot to meantion [sic] how much energy it takes to create one (so carbon produced), and the metal and processes needed to create the battery."

EPA mileage figures have never included any reference to the energy, raw material, pollutants, etc. involved in creating a vehicle. So there's nothing odd about this EPA mileage figure not including that for the Volt.

"Great - A car that is only economical on the kind of journeys where you should be walking and biking anyway."

Perfectly true. Except that now you don't need one of those specialized bikes that holds the wife, two kids, six sacks of groceries, and which keeps the rain off and gets you where you're going at a mile a minute on the freeway.

"I'd love to see the repair bill when fixing that thing after its warranty lapses. Also, I'm guessing resale values of used ones will be crap as is always the case for vehicles like this. That's going to suck in a few years when people start trying to trade them in."

All first-generation vehicles suffer these sorts of problems. I suppose that's why we should never innovate.

"Considering the Prius when driven NORMALLY was less effecient [sic] than a Golf diesel, ..."

Efficiency has many meanings. The Prius never shits a diesel stench-cloud into the air I'm trying to breathe, and so in terms of "volume of carcinogenic crap that enters my lungs" efficiency, the Prius is a wonder. (Not just from burning gasoline - also from using the modified Atkinson cycle and spinning constantly at the speed it thinks gets the most energy and least pollutants out of the fuel.)

"If they would just shorten the test loop distance so that the petrol engine isn't actually required during the so-called test, then it would achieve INFINITY miles per US gallon."

_I_ think they should give the car's mileage as an algebraic equation. Then everyone would be perfectly capable of comparing this car's "actual" mileage to other vehicles by simply graphing the various equations along with a curve describing their typical daily driving distances by frequency. That would also allow them to do some calculus to determine their actual fuel savings between different options. Nothing could be easier*! (* Not while still being this correct.)

Paris, because I'd like to do a couple integrals with her.

(no title)

Paris - because anything more might be copyright infringement.

That tenth of a percent?

It may have been Media Design School course leader Kate Humphries' minor concern that the student had pictures of _her_ to punt.

Paris, because we've all got pictures of her.

Followup needed

Reg, please be a dear and post a followup with the location when known. Perhaps a link to Google Maps so we can do a "Directions to this location"...

And I have to say I'm in the same situation as some of the other posters - having a bit of difficulty understanding the situational details of how this could happen. Certainly a Playmobil re-enactment would clear things up. Oh, hey, and it's Friday tomorrow, how about that?...

Paris, because we don't need a followup on her location; she's always at the center of the Universe.

In defense of RegDik

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fanboi

Paris, because I believe she can do no wrong.

more problems to a magazine than just space!

" ...and wouldn't use up space in the ship's magazines."

Aside from the presumably astronomical rent in ship's magazines, there's also that problem that ammunition is to some degree or another what I like to call "explody". So lasers have the advantage that keeping them fed doesn't mean storing a steady supply of small bombs in a room on your boat. (Just fuel for the generators.)

Paris, because she's like a laser in more ways than you might think at first.

Yellow = warm?

Warm like piss, perhaps?

Paris, because... well, not really polite enough to put in print.

Link or cause?

Have they established that being in the overweight category causes longer life, or only that it is linked to longer life? If it's only linked to longer life, then purposefully putting one's self into that category when one would normally be in another category may not confer any benefit. (In fact, the only result it would have would be to cause the statistical analysis, if reperformed at a point in the future, to cease seeing a benefit related to being in that category.)

Paris, because I bet she had this same complaint and won't be hitting the cobbler to "move up a notch" until the jury returns, either.

How to eat horse, then, with EU's blessing and protection?

I think it's excellent that the EU is concerned about vet drugs unintentionally getting into food supply via eating horses. That shows EU is paying attention to the details of the food web.

So, does EU have a set of recommendations on how horse-meat farmers can keep their animals healthy, _and_ safe to eat? Surely they must have at least something at the draft stage on this, since their concern is for food safety from what I read.

Paris, because the EU hasn't yet printed up a form for me to sign saying I won't eat her...

re: assuming the owner is (re)acting in bad faith

"If you're not running an insurance scam, you have no bulldozer to fear."

Paris, because... well, let's just say my use of "bulldozer" would be strictly figurative, and my use of "fear" might be slightly archaic.

Crash test vid

Whenever I hear "Chinese" and "car" (or truck, automobile, etc.) in the same sentence this is what I look for right off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqCaDtzK-V0

Paris, because I heard tell there was an offset frontal test vid of her out there somewheres at one point, too.

Impossibilities

"Or are they merely saying that it's impossible to make someone look like someone else using the current CGI and make up?"

Not just "someone else", but "any arbitrary someone else." There are bound to be some actors who look so unlike someone else that there could be problems.

I myself was thinking of the dead actor factor. How wonderfully might Ed Wood have finished Plan 9 from Outer Space with this technology...

Paris, because she can finish my plan 9 from outer space quite well without any need for this technology.

I really think

"Hmm, do you really think that a company making a product like this will not have thought about rotating the frequency upon which the puke ray is transmitted?"

Yes, I do. I think they made it work one way and didn't worry their pretty little heads about anyone who would work around it technically. This is in line with the folk who originally made wireless phones so you could listen to them using a shortwave radio, and made subway cards so you could add cash to or clone them fraudulently, and are making identity cards you can read from a dozen meters away using ordinary equipment.

"What happens if you run away? I.e. Turn your back to the beam?"

In this case, if you were a threat, you've just been controlled, and the device was successful.

From the article: "... the threats vision is temporarily impaired, their balance is effected, and they become affected by nausea..."

Apparently it also messes with your ability to manage the definitions of affect and effect, possibly leading to getting it right and wrong in two different instances of the same usage in a single sentence. Apostrophe loss is another reported side effect.

Paris, because she cures apostrophe loss, if you know what I mean.

Link?

I see the link to the ruling, but I'm completely missing the link to the recording.

USB cable easy to use for now

As it is, using the USB cable couldn't be easier: you get your converted file back from Amazon's free converter service and save the file from your email right onto the Kindle attached to your PC, which looks like a USB mass storage device. (You have to put the file in the "Documents" folder, I believe.)

The hardest part may be that you then have to "eject" your Kindle from your PC before you can see the new document. Anyone trying to see whether a change they made to their doc makes it look better after it gets converted can find those few seconds inconvenient.

But presently it's pretty easy to not have to pay the ten cents, or whatever the new fee is. I suppose we can read a lot into whether it stays that way.

See also the MobiPocket converter, which I haven't tried.

Paris because, alas, I haven't tried her yet either. (No info on whether she's as easy as Kindle's USB cable copying, which frankly would be too little of a challenge for my tastes.)

There are two ways to upset people...

The first way to upset people is to be unrealistic about a real problem. The second way to upset people is to be realistic about a real problem.

They need to switch to depersonalized enemies in a made-up location without any difficult decisions that ever happened to anyone in real life, and everyone will be happy. (Except people who care about uncomfortable social commentary.)

Paris, because she doesn't shy away from uncomfortable social commentary, I'm sure.

This is why El Registerrrr is the best rag there is.

'This piece is famous for its "long squeaky bit in the middle", according to the Reg defense and opera desk.'

As far as I know, no other IT magazine has a defense-and-opera desk. It's this deep coverage that keeps me coming back.

Paris, because you can read the previous line yourself.

Nothing is truly invulnerable

I'm sure there is some way it can be vulnered.

Paris, because she too has a weak spot, even if nobody knows what it is yet.

Coincidences often have an unrelated, common cause

In this case I think the 40 mile all-electric range is because in my parts, at least, 20 miles each way is seen as the "sweet spot" for capturing daily commuter traffic.

Paris because she's a sweet spot.

No good deed goes unpunished

I hope they all avoid jail time.

Paris, as a model.

Losing the cold war

Is it this way in Ireland and Scotland, too? Or might a yank still feel like visiting either of those places? Because, your police aren't making me feel very "safe".

Paris, because I'd like to visit 'er.

What is non-obvious to us may be stark relief to hackers

"As long as the login page/prompt doesn't divulge anything about itself..."

Typically the login pages/prompts spill out the make, model, and even hardware revision of the device. And even if they didn't, attackers can work it out by how many bytes are in the page, how long the page takes to load, what the self-signed SSL cert looks like, and if necessary how the device responds to a carefully-selected smattering of invalid requests.

We must assume bad guys know exactly what they're attacking. Or, the scripts they run do.

It's not all doom and gloom, of course. Manufacturers hardened payphones and put ignition locks on cars; they can give home routers belts and suspenders as soon as they're sufficiently bothered. (Actually, most routers I've seen won't allow configuration from the WAN interface by default anyway. The customer has to be going in and turning that on, presumably at their ISP's tech support's direction...)

Paris because she, too, divulges things about herself.