Posts by Wayland Sothcott 1
293 posts • joined Wednesday 10th June 2009 22:12 GMT
Re: without releasing any data that could harm someone.
A group plotting something illegal would secure their communications. A group forming and discussing ideas which although not illegal could lead to plotting something is who they are looking out for. This means watching everyone even though nothing illegal will be discussed openly. That's the problem, watching everyone as if they are up to no good.
Central server
If what you need is a single server then trying to use two to do the job of one is a complexity in itself. Also two machines doubles your chance of a breakdown even if the functionality remains. Without someone to notice that you are only running on one machine you are no better off. Providing the system is good enough for the job it's more down to the companies response to a breakdown that matters.
Re: I'm not sure Microsoft *has* won.
It does seem that Microsoft has thrown power users under the bus. I can't get on with Win8 and my stepfather gave his new laptop to my son and getting an Android machine instead. I still wonder if I just need more time to get good at Windows 8. You say they have done this deliberately but for what purpose?
When Labour appointed the wrong Milliband bro I saw parallels with Microsoft and Windows Vista and again with Win8. Some sort of deliberate concession to your competitors.
Re: I'm not sure Microsoft *has* won.
Like most people I using various computing platforms. Certainly the smartphone is the most available since you don't need a desk or even a lap. However if you want to do some serious sit down work then you want a big desk and a big screen or screens, a proper keyboard and mouse or something even better and loads of computer power and storage and a decent printer. There will always be an advantage in having a better tool for the job than your competitors. If you can sit down to do the job then sit in front of the most powerful machine you can afford, not some dinky hand held.
Re: To be fair to MS...
I don't see that Linux has to be number one. It's actually doing very well because of all the variety. However cloning stuff from Microsoft is simply following a company who makes good popular software. It's not innovating and producing something better. Honestly by now there should be one document format that can be worked on by one application which combines all the features of MS Office. Linux is not going to produce this first whilst it's Office is a copy of MS Office.
Re: That awesome Tomorrow People theme
I just watched Children Of The Stones. It's excellent. The pace is such that you can really enjoy the spooky atmosphere.
Re: Is anyone writing anything new in the entertainment world?
You have the escape from the garden of eden theme with The Island, Logans Run and many others.
You have all the Super Heroes as Orphans; Spiderman, Superman, Iron Man, Harry Potter.
You have the Woman In Red (or red hair) theme in Iron Man, Alice In Wonderland and loads of others.
The hero with a gammy leg, I used to be good at naming these until I took an arrow to the knee.
Look out for these themes in movies.
WISP - Wireless Internet Service Provider
The tower is now used by two wireless broadband companies, Skyline and County Broadband. From that height they get vast coverage, far more than your average BT Home Hub, but they put out about the same power.
Re: another way to fix the contactless card?
So the chip 'n' pin gets fried also so the card is useless in shops.
Re: it isn't radio waves
It has radio frequency and it's magnetic. So a tiny step away from being a radiowave. It sounds to me as if radio equipment could be used to extend the range.
Astonishing stupidity
With all this chip 'n' pin song and dance when it was introduced to keep us safe how can they justify a system which bills your card by radiowaves? It's the easiest thing in radio to improve a signal so it goes 10 times further. Someone in a disused office above the highstreet could have all sorts of gear set up to skim the cards. And people worry about the security of Bitcoin.
Re: Thought this might happen...
If you are not wary of Romanians or other eastern Europeans then you are a fool.
If you allow your hip and trendy "I'm not a racist, I randomly kiss Albanians at Bus Stops" brainwashing to influence your actions not just your words then you will get pick pocketed or card skimmed or all sorts of different scams by dubious people.
Re: Lame! Yahoo! Headlines!
It's! Even! Funnier! Now! Someone! Is! Annoyed! By! It!
Re: Lame! Yahoo! Headlines!
You! Mean! Can? we? please? stop? with? this? joke? Surely!
Old hat
My daughter talked to me about Tumblr as if everybody knew what it was.
Re: @JDX
The price of things has to rise and we have to use less of the world dwindling resources. However on the other hand money is tight and we have to extend the existing ways of making money. That means making things that don't last as long so that more dwindling resources can be dug out of the ground.
So cunningly we claim we are doing it to Save the Earth whilst making the problem worse. This will drive up demand to 'Save the Earth' further increasing profits and making things worse.
It's gotta be the shape shifting lizards trying to destroy the earth.
Re: That line.
It's the very repetition that makes it funny. It's the fact that we all know most IT problems can be solved by turning it off and on when IT is supposed to be fantastically complicated. It was hilarious when they had a large reel to reel tape machine answering the phone and suggesting the user turned it off and on again and phone back in 10 minutes if that did not fix the problem.
It is a gun
Ok the ZX81 was a computer. People did amazing things with it. Now people are doing amazing things with the Raspberry PI. People will do amazing things with 3D printers but I expect they will also buy lathes and milling machines. A whole cottage or garage industry will spring up where people are doing big things in a small way. The Internet is like this too. Everything the Internet is made of you can do on a small scale yourself. The government is losing it's ability to tell people what to do.
Re: Fingerprints and Retina scans are fine.
Did you see the trouble that Tom Cruse had in Minority Report when he wanted to change is retina. If someone starts logging in using your retina you are going to need surgery to reset the security.
Googles delete button for the Internet
That's funny coming from Google. Anonymity is what children should be using. When I started online people always used a nick. That way you could create some distance. If people post in their own name then ofcourse it will follow them. Google has been trying to get people out of the habbit of using their nick and to use their own name for some time now. YouTube constantly nags me to use my name.
Re: Unfortunately...
Presumably you have checked to see if there are any Wireless Broadband providers (WISP) in your area?
These small companies can provide very fast low latency service (better than ADSL in most cases) and plenty of bandwidth to watch video. If You don't have such a company then start one. If you do and that's what you are complaining about then help them upgrade, faster gear is available now.
Re: I'm rather looking forward to this
Not seen any YouTube ads? That's amazing. On a standard PC browser they make you watch about 20 seconds of adverts before you can skip to the video. Chome blocks this?
Re: A few points
A PC is easy to upgrade. Even a Laptop can have more RAM and more HD. Windows XP will run on some computers made before 2001 all the way up to current computers and probably a bit further.
A PC will run Linux and that will run on any computer from 1990 to forever. There are many single board embedded computers based on the 386 CPU which run Linux and probably Windows 98.
The Android ought to be a device that we can treat like a PC and just keep hacking. You can't expect an Apple to be like that.
Re: Neither XP nor iPhone changed the world
MS Windows changed the world back in 1989, Windows XP is just an improvement.
The iPhone changed the world but the iPhone 4 or 5 or whatever is just an improvement.
Re: Behind Firewalls is akin to living in the Jail System ......
The Man From Mars is back. The firewall must be very sophisticated if it could tell that this grammatically correct email is gibberish. But then how would government be able to send emails through this firewall?
Bitcoin mining
It ought to be good at Bitcoin mining. As long as it does not use too much power.
Re: Spamhous must really be hurting those parasites
Exactly his point. I run a 'desktop' email server. Actually a Linux box but to send to AOL I have to set my smarthost to my ISP SMTP. Email arrives at peoples inbox much quicker if I send it directly from my server. I just need a way of redirecting only those that must go through my ISP.
Re: Spamhous must really be hurting those parasites
It's about power and control. Spamhous have achieved a powerful position and can now effectively decide who can send email and who cannot. They must use this power responsibly. There used to be a time when SMTP was a system that forwarded email for anybody needing it. Those open SMTP servers have been secured due to abuse by spammers.
Re: Torvalds
It's easy to rotate your display.
Re: Hmmmm
A customer bought this big Sony PC to use in the kitchen. When they keyboard folded up the screen switched to a clock. Typical Sony cleverness. However when XP SP3 came out this feature would not work and could not be fixed. The customer blamed me.
Re: I have to say....
You had sold the Sony phone to me until you said it had built in Facebook and Twitter.
Re: OpenDNS
Turned off by default, what does that mean?
Turn off porn access by default or turn off filtering by default?
Keeping the terrorists on the back foot
My mind boggles at all the secret stuff that's going on just to keep the sun coming up each morning. It looks like terrorists may learn to encrypt their data like others are already doing. If they figure that out before MI5 are able to snoop into it then we are all doomed, doomed I tell ye.
Re: How long
It's illegal to show cartoons of children sucking adult cock but the PTB get away with the 2012 Olympic logo.
Re: Over the top
Gears of War 3 ?
Was there not a law against glorification of war?
Re: Over the top
The poppy used to be a symbol of the lives of soldiers lost in the first two world wars. It has been expanded to include heroes. Heroes are not the sort of people I want to encourage, the war crimes they allow themselves to be used for are disgusting. Wearing a poppy means you support the heinous crimes committed by heroes, they deserve no help from us.
Outsourcing
Essex are outsourcing services and cutting department sizes to save lots of money. I was wondering when this would start happening.
Heisenberg Mobile
You can have everything somewhere and something everywhere.
You can't have everything everywhere.
Re: Unfortunately,
You should get into trouble for lying or for telling secrets you said you would keep.
However shouting fire when you think there is a fire should be OK. The way you are talking it's as if anything which might upset people, like a fire, should be kept quiet.
Re: @ mad mike
"very explicit detailed comment such as X mp shagged Y who was 12, then I would likely end up in trouble."
Yes you would end up in trouble and presumably you would be expecting trouble. Perhaps you would not say it if it was not true. Better still you would be able to prove it. If you say something that is serious enough you might drown in a lake or die in a plane crash after meeting Obama. See what I did there, I linked a couple of facts and made an insinuation. I don''t think I will get into trouble for that because what I have said is already reported in the news. I never said Obama held her head under the water or cut the hydraulics on the plane.
Re: Willing to be flamed for this, but.....
"If freedom of speech means I can say what I like, and offend who I like, can I post rascist comments on the Reg?" Well actually it should be up to the moderators. If you can say something good about race then you are in effect saying other races are not as good. If we are all the same then you have no right to be proud of who you are and what you stand for since you're nothing special. The Olympic games for instance show that people are all different and so some can be proud of winning a gold medal. The fact that some races and some countries are better at some sports is a racist fact. The truth does not follow politically correct protocol.
If you stop offensive speech you are censoring truth as well as lies.
Re: Mars Rover bollox
"Obviously he has been boggled by the enormity of what has been done, and his brain rejects it!"
Well it is pretty amazing. However what amazes me more is what they failed to achieve.
1. Video if the landing
2. Colour photography
3. A decent telephoto lens on the camera
4. Enough program space in the computer to hold landing and roving software.
5. Not landing in a crater but land somewhere higher up for a better view.
The things NASA failed at any Reg reader would have got right.
Re: Mars Rover bollox
So the only reason you think this is real is that they would never fake something like this?
Don't you think that if they really did this amazing thing that they would have actual video footage of the event rather than some pathetic computer animation which they were showing even before they had actually landed?
Don't you think that they would have some amazingly good pictures and video footage of the surroundings? Why are you prepared to accept such poorly exposed fuzzy black and white pictures? Do you realize how amazingly good modern TV cameras are these days? There is a photo on the web of the crowd at the Diamond Jubilee, it's in full colour and you can zoom in and read the time on a mans watch way into the distance.
If you think NASA are capable of landing the rover on Mars but not capable of excellent photography then I can see why you have been gulled.
Do try some critical thinking and stop blindly following the people you worship.
Re: Mars Rover bollox
You tell me what evidence you have that this is real?
Re: Mars Rover bollox
Surely it's more nutty to believe this stuff without proper evidence. Can you explain why they did not video the landing? Can you explain why the photos are such poor quality and in black and white? No, you just accept it because it's so far away you expect the pictures to be degraded by the time they get here. Think logically, they use digital cameras and digital communications, any loss of data would be error corrected. This is not the 1960's.
There have been no underwear bombers since they installed the body scanners in response to the first underwear bomber. However if you believe they installed the body scanners in direct response to the underwear bomber you are easily gulled. The underwear bomber cam at a very helpful time, just before the installation of body scanners they had already bought.
If you are controlling both the problem and the solution it's likely you will come out looking good.
Mars Rover bollox
Why do they always land in a crater? For the same reason The Trueman Show was set on an island. It's actually a studio with limited horizons. The 'studio' could be an open quarry. Mark my words, they will never climb high enough up that mountain to see over the edge of the crater.
Why did they not fit large enough program storage to hold both the landing AND the roving software?
Why did they fit black and white TV to the Rover? Most places on earth have been watching colour TV for decades. Probably because last time they fitted colour TV they got caught faking the red colour.
Why did they not fit cameras on the lifter thing? That would have been an excellent show. Probably because that bit never happened.
Why did the Russian mission blow up? Probably so there would be no witnesses.
It makes me sad how people believe these ridiculously badly faked missions are real.
What a whiner. Oh we may not be allowed to have 3D printers because we might be naughty. Grow up.
Re: I can see this selling
Don't be daft. They put codes in money to tell the printer not to print it. Who's going to put codes in gun part drawings to stop them from working?
Posted in The Dragon 32 is 30
Still have mine in the loft
1983 was an amazing year in the UK home computer business. There were loads of new machines battling it out. I bought my Dragon in Colchester and carried it home on the back of my bicycle. I really wanted a BBC B but could only afford £200. The 6809 CPU was beautiful to program because it used position independent machine code. It was a baby 68000.
However it would have been nice if they had included the Teletext graphics chip as per the BBC micro because this gives the clearest text on a TV screen. It was the high cost of disk drives which really prevented home computers being useful in business. Who has time to wait for tape to load?
