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* Posts by Colin Miller

401 posts • joined Thursday 19th April 2007 11:04 GMT

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Colin Miller
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Part of the problem is that (some) people are bulk-buying bog-roll and other goods, and then exporting them to Columbia/Brazil where it's more expensive. This causing an artificial shortage back home.

Price equalization at its finest.

Colin Miller
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Re: Shurely not THE Adam Hart-Davis?

Yup, it appears to be he http://www.hd.org. Now, that wasn't hard to find was it?

Colin Miller
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Re: "technical issues"

If both machines have auto-install patches enabled, then they'll both get fubar'ed at the same time.

However, that is a good reason to enable the nag-me-to-install-update option...

Colin Miller
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Re: Fines should come out of the council management remuneration pool...

Glasgow CC also has one of the largest populations, at 600,000 or so. What is the executive per 10,000 residents ratio for all councils?

Colin Miller
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Re: What's the point?

Each to their own. Yale locks are a menace if you regularly walk out your door, thinking your keys are still in your pockets/the jacket you're currently wearing etc. The pat-down-your-pockets when you try to lock the door behind you is more effective, IMHO.

Colin Miller
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Re: What's the point?

I read on a Police website somewhere (and it might have been for car sat-nav, rather than phone), that you should set your home location to somewhere near your house, but not actually at your house.

This way, if someone should relieve you of your car and house keys, then when they press the 'take me home' button on your sat-nav, they won't be able to burgle your house at the same time. If you can't find your way to your house once you are in the neighbourhood then (assuming you haven't recently moved house) then you really shouldn't be driving.

Colin Miller
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Re: Baffled

I suspect that if a business makes its WiFi available to all and sundry, then its owners are liable when someone accesses kiddyporn via it. However, Cloud/FON/OpenZone et al will have sufficient logging to point the finger at registered email address (which isn't verified, but that's a different matter...)

Colin Miller
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WTF?

Here's a revolutionary idea: - just eat food stuffs that have anthocyanins in them, including blueberry, cranberry, bilberry, raspberry, cherry, red grape, red cabbage and aubergine skin.

Colin Miller
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Re: The police already knew about these guys - too many possibilities, too few resources

Or

5) MI5 knew about them, but judged them to be low-level background noise, two of several thousand. There are higher priority targets, and not enough resources to keep every person who attracts MI5's attention under surveillance.

Colin Miller
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Eadon, Eadon, where are you?

Colin Miller
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Re: Midi

I don't know about the Speccy, but the Dragon used one tone for a 0 bit, and a second tone of double the frequency for the '1'. Both bits were of the same duration. As long as MIDI allows the representation of pure sine waves at arbitrary frequencies, then you can MIDI it.

Colin Miller
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Re: Safety is never a joke

Standing astride the well head, surrounded by wet concrete doesn't strike me as terribly sensible either.

Colin Miller
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Re: This "problem" will only get worse

Most (httpd)server logging assume that the IP address the request came from is enough to track its owner. With NATs the (httpd)server also has to log the TCP Port number.

With the Port number and time, then the NATs logs (in theory) can be checked to see which customer (unless that is also a NAT; say an open wifi) the request came from.

Colin Miller
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Re: Hack what, exactly

Or, say, unlock all the doors and then have your friends wearing balaclavas turn up in a Luton with blanked-out number plates.

Colin Miller
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Easy security fix

Take of your GoogleSpecs when you enter sensitive information.

This post has been deleted by its author

Colin Miller
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Re: Peas v pancakes?

If you grind the chickpeas in a food processor, then you can make pancakes from them. However, I doubt if I'd do it as part of this experiment, as Lester can't really afford for anything to go wrong. There's no eggs in them, as chickpea flour can be used as egg replacement (as a binder) for vegans.

http://moroccanfood.about.com/od/tipsandtechniques/ht/How-To-Make-Chickpea-Gram-Flour.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chickpeaflourpancake_5094

Colin Miller
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On a slightly more serious, and worrying note malaria is becoming resistant to artemisinin, the last drug that can control it.

Colin Miller
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Is a "diligen search" well-defined? Does that include running the work through services like Tineye, Shazam, etc?

Colin Miller
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Will it? In my case I'm paying for 16Mb/s:1Mb/s but my ADSL modem reports that it synced at 13:1. I assume that's the limit of my phone line. If I move from ADSL to SDSL, will it be 7:7? And would most customers be happy with this?

Colin Miller
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and a second one

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22263706

Colin Miller
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privacy...

Shouldn't you blank out the faces of the two friends in the photo?

Colin Miller
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Re: Already exists!

Unless you have a wireless pass-card car, where the doors unlock if the handle is pulled whilst the card is beside the car. And the engine starts when the the 'start button' is pushed and the card is (again) nearby.

Colin Miller
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Re: Hmm

Asda's SmartPrice bottled water is 17p/2litre

Colin Miller
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Helpful article from Auntie - how to feed yourself for £12/week. Now, this is about 1.5 times your budget, so you'll need even more careful planning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22065978

Colin Miller
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Method for automatically revoking a granted patent when the patent holder frivolously applies for a another patent on an idea that is obvious-to-person-ordinarily-skilled-in-the-art.

--- Pat. Pend.

Colin Miller
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Re: Way over the top

Buried in the letter sent to VM is "Oh, and despite my wife telling you our sad news as well.",

which (to me) means that Mrs Boyden did tell VM that her father had died, but VM forgot to cancel the subscription.

Colin Miller
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FAIL

Re: just like the phone numbers

London was changed to 01 xxx yyyyy to 071 xxxx yyyyy so that all other land-lines could be changed later from 0 aaa bbbb to 01 aaa bbbbb. At this time, London could then change from 071 to 0171 or (as it happens) to 0207.

Doing London from 01 to 0207 at the same time as the '1' was being added would be a recipe for confusion, as it would be difficult to tell if '01' was the correct new code for an number, or someone using the old London code.

Now, all numbers starting 01 or 02 are to landlines; the second digit of the phone number will give you an idea of what type of number you are calling (although it is not perfect)

Colin Miller
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third-party attacks?

How many of these attacks are from organizations working for the Chinese government, and how many are from poorly secured residential machines that are being controlled by parties unknown?

Colin Miller
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Re: Research Bad News & Laboratory Products

Err. T-flash has a storage of 200 megabytes / mm^3. A 3.5" hardrive full of them has a nominal capacity of 73 TB. That assumes the same amount of actual storage cells per unit volume.

I'm not sure how much of a t-flash card is the cells, the controller, connectors and packages, nor how well this would scale to a 3.5" enclosure.

Colin Miller
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Re: Moons

The detection of exomoons is beyond our current technology. However, the detection of exoplants was beyond the then-current technology of the early '80s. Thus we might be able to detect them in 30 or so years time. IIRC, every credible astronomer says that exomoons almost certainly exist.

Colin Miller
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32GB of books?

Unless you read graphical novels or other image-heavy books, 4GB is around 3,000 books. Enough to last you 60 years at 1 book/week.

Colin Miller
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Has someone been buzzing his back garden and releasing the photos?

Colin Miller
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Headmaster

Re: The English don't know where they are.

The population centre of Great Britain is the village of Appleby Parva, about 22 miles NE of Birmingham town hall. Yes, I'd have put in nearer London than that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_of_population#Great_Britain

Colin Miller
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Re: LENR emerging soon

"long wait list of customers starting this April", would that be the 1st of the month?

Colin Miller
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Re: It Wasn't That Long Ago...

And no doubt there were hidden ANPR cameras in the area...

Colin Miller
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Swiss-French restored it

IIRC, it was a Swiss wikipedian who undeleted the article in question, as he was beyond the reach of the gallic blue line.

Colin Miller
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EU law

IIRC. this is an EU directive, but has been implemented ~1year early in the UK, as a result of certain company (who shall remain nameless) taking the piss.

Colin Miller
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What's so innovative about alpha-blended menus?

Colin Miller
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Re: Just another blinkenlights

Tower block tetris, from 13 years ago http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/718009.stm, also mentions one from 1995.

Colin Miller
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Re: Why is it

I assume that its because the PRS works on the (false) basis of 1 radio = 1 listener. Does seem a bit of a rip off tho.

Colin Miller
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Re: javascript trouble

Hold down the mouse button; the URL changes on the mousedown(); and the URL is followed on mouseclick(). You should be able to see the URL changing before your very eyes! (Or so it does with Google)

Colin Miller
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Hotlist of dodgy websites

Firefox (and I would assume Chrome) check with a list of dodgy sites and warn the user that they really shouldn't visit this site. Now, this depends on kind-hearted souls who know dodgy-meds/419 etc. spams when they see them deliberately following them to report the final sites.

Colin Miller
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filter on sane sender address?

Do ISP filter *outbound* traffic to ensure that the sender's address is sane?

The filtering could be done around the NAS level, or at the peer-exchange (LINX).

Colin Miller
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Pyongyang Photoshop patent prank portrays wet People's Army.

n/a.

Colin Miller
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Re: To the tune of "Oh Canada" (and with some artistic licence...)

That also works to "O Tannenbaum", aka "The Red Flag", the Labour Party's anthem..

Colin Miller
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Re: Surely Not Invisible ... to mesh radar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bistatic_radar#Forward_scatter_radars

Fordward scatter radar can detect when an object passes close to the line-of-sight between an Tx and Rx;

it is a proposed method of detecting low-flying stealth aircraft.

Colin Miller
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Re: Cal me thick, but...

Have you ever looked at a road that's being fully dug up?

Normally there are cables and pipes running everywhere about 3" down.

It would be tricky to fit such a large box underground, even if you set aside the access to it, as others have pointed out.

Colin Miller
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Asimo...

...was doing this years ago.

I'm sure I've seen one of James May's "boy's toys" programs where he met Asimo.

Asimo has the ability to to identify any object presented to it; James showed him a toy sports car, and Asimo replied "(toy) car". James (rather unsportingly) said "No, Asimo, its a <insert precise marque/model of car>". Asimo duly updated it's DB of objects.

Colin Miller
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Heat loss from inside the tube?

Did you cap the ends of the tube, or were they left open, thus allowing (air in) the inside of the tube to conduct heat away?

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