* Posts by The First Dave

1589 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009

BLADE-WIELDING BOTS conquer humans in RADIO DEATHMATCH

The First Dave

Looking at this from the other side - if there is a particularly strong emanation from space, will it allow all of these robots to break free?

Or does it take a deliberate 'third party' transmission on this frequency to do that?

Hey, Apple, we’re watching Faulty Tellies. Gonna tell us why?

The First Dave

Re: Sigh

If it is the AppleTV that is faulty, why does the headline blame the telly???

NASA primed for 9-minute live test of mighty rocket motor

The First Dave

Re: Solid stupidity

Please remind me, when was the last time that shutting down a cryogenic booster during the boost phase saved a rocket? They do tend to need them to keep flying, unless you have quite a few of them. Since this appears to have three nozzles in total, shutting down one is not going to magically save anyone.

Chechen women swindle ISIS via social media: 'We need roubles to join you xx'

The First Dave

Re: Why arrest them?

Unfortunately, I _would_ be surprised to hear that the CIA etc was doing this sort of thing.

Earlier today I read on the BBC that this bunch of ****** get paid $40m a day for the oil that they sell - in which case whoever is buying this oil has a LOT of explaining to do.

Small number of computer-aided rifles could be hacked in contrived scenario

The First Dave

Re: spin drift. (Coriolis Effect?)

Shooters at Bisley will have adjusted their sights for many reasons, but if any of them can prove it was the coriolis effect I would be more than impressed. For most shooters, adjustment consists purely of "which side did I miss?", with a bit of "which way is the wind blowing?" thrown in.

Download Fest goers were human guinea pigs in spy tech experiment, admit police

The First Dave

Re: @Adam 52

Indeed, my thoughts were that if this has no benefit to the Police, but they spent time setting it up / operating it, then surely NEC should be getting prosecuted for "Wasting Police Time" or whatever the actual charge is.

Crazy Canucks heat their lab with muahaha-capable server

The First Dave

From the article: "it is impossible to deny the attraction cool technology has"

Surely that's a tautology - if it had no attraction it wouldn't be very cool, now would it?

Google turns cookie monster on AdSense, DoubleClick clients

The First Dave

As the owner of a very small website that just about covers its costs by running Google adverts, I'm not at all impressed.

_I_ don't set any cookies at all - no tracking etc. - but Google does, as part of showing adverts.Personally I'd rather turn off their cookies, even if it cost me a little money, but instead I'm being told that unless I put up a message on my site I may be chased by both Google and by the EU

But neither side will tell me what that message needs to say...

Are smart safes secure? Not after we've USB'd them, say infosec bods

The First Dave

Re: A safe with a USB port?

Yeah, 'cos you're never going to need to run diagnostics on a safe that won't open, are you?

Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo crackup verdict: Pilot error

The First Dave

Re: Motive ?

I've seen loads of comments blaming the pilot for unlocking the lever, but very few have picked up on the fact that this was done eleven seconds too early.

That is a tiny amount of time, under the circumstances.

The pilot may have triggered this crash, but the only real cause was bad design.

UK.gov makes total pig's ear of attempt to legalise home CD ripping

The First Dave

Re: digital / analogue

As the title of your post appears to acknowledge, the opposite of digital is analogue; the opposite of physical is virtual, so your pedantry is somewhat flawed.

Spanish judge dodges the ultimate question – is Uber a taxi company?

The First Dave

And more importantly, they need proper insurance and driver vetting schemes.

Disaster-gawping cam drones to be blasted out of the sky in California

The First Dave

Re: Er...

I presume that fifteen thousand "News" helicopters will still be allowed to attend every incident?

You Musk be joking: Tesla's zero to 60MPH in 2.8 SECONDS is literally 'ludicrous'

The First Dave

Re: One wonders ...

Which Stig would you prefer?

Perry McCarthy,

Ben Collins,

or Paul O'Neil

Proxyham Wi-Fi relay SUPPRESSED. CONSPIRACY, yowl tinfoilers

The First Dave

If you look where this "stealth" antenna is pointing then you have quite literally got the wrong end of the stick.

Oh, and -1 for "ideation"...

The Great Barrier Relief – Inside London's heavy metal and concrete defence act

The First Dave

Re: Balanced article

-2 for: "The Thames Barrier's signature are a set of seven, silver-coloured domes on boat-shaped piers that straddle the river and resemble a fleet of yachts with the wind behind them, in flight into the center of London."

My top three IT SNAFUs - and how I fixed them

The First Dave

Fibre != BNC

Surviving Hurricane Katrina: A sysadmin's epic DR (as in Didn't Realise) odyssey

The First Dave

Re: Guns and Katrina @Jason Hindle

Funnily enough, in the UK only the criminals have guns - massively reduces the number of innocent civilians that the police get away with shooting...

Pan Am Games: Link to our website without permission and we'll sue

The First Dave

Re: @ JeffyPooh - "...mockery..."

You're wasting your time with that particular analogy - most English speakers truly believe that "Loch" and "Lock" are pronounced the same...

EU squashes bogus copyright scare as red-faced Guardian slaps down Wiki's Wales

The First Dave

Re: Wrong!

However US Law is not Earth Law, nor even UK law (not entirely, anyway) so some of what WP _claims_ as Fair Use is not fair under the law of the land where the image was produced, and it is the latter that actually matters.

I cannae dae it, cap'n! Why I had to quit the madness of frontline IT

The First Dave

Re: I also agree, but...

@Trevor:

Surely your responsibility now lies in _changing_ the system for the better, if only a little, not running away from the problem.

Whining to the choir on El Reg isn't going to change a damn thing.

Goodbye Vulcan: Blighty's nuclear bomber retires for the last time

The First Dave

Re: A beautiful aircraft though

Saw her at Biggleswade on Sunday, magnificent sight, magnificent sound, very glad I made the trip to see her.

Not quite as spectacular as Miss Demeanour, but certainly top of the list when it comes to bombers.

Firefox to speed up dev cycle, go multi-process, rip and replace UI – soon

The First Dave

Re: Don't fix what's not broken

Waste of time for me, now stuck on out-of-date (?) versions since they refuse to run the SSL consoles for Firewalls etc. that I need to maintain.

What an eyeful: Apple's cut price 27in iMac with Retina Display

The First Dave

What's with the placement of that SD-Card slot?

It's on the side of my current iMac, and that's hard enough to find.

Airbus confirms software brought down A400M transport plane

The First Dave

Re: "Partly filled with wrong"

Indeed, the plane wasn't completely borked - IIRC three engines shut down, but the fourth kept running, and one does rather wonder why that one was ok?

UK safety app keeping lorries on the right side of cyclists

The First Dave

Quite agree with that one - no problem with people cycling to work etc., but get royally pissed off when I get stuck behind a bunch of sweaty lycra for no good reason. My particular sport is Archery - but I bet they wouldn't be happy if I carried out _my_ sport on the _Public_ road.

iPhone case uses phone's OWN SIGNAL to charge it (forever, presumably)

The First Dave

Re: I'm calling bollocks here

Given that they are sending the power back to the phone via wireless charging, I would seriously doubt that it can get more than 30% of _harvested_ power back into the phone once all of those losses are dealt with.

I would doubt that the phone is using as much as 30% of its power for its radios - the display is usually a bigger drain than the processor, and that is bad enough.

And, of course, I doubt that anything of that sort of size can harvest more than 30% of the RF in the air.

So, what is 30% of 30% of 30% ?

Oh, and what is the efficiency of the battery?

18-wheeler robot juggernaut hits Nevada's highways. Cower, fleshies!

The First Dave

Re: Won't work in England.

Hint: Maybe your speedo is telling you a different number to theirs?

Hint Two: Your speedo is deliberately designed to read HIGHER than you are actually going...

VOTERS! This Election: Vote #Smart, Vote #Digital

The First Dave

Would have been funny if it wasn't true...

Building the world's biggest telescope array - with machines that don't yet exist

The First Dave

Not at all, writing software for something that doesn't exist is trivial. The difficulty lies in de-bugging / unit-testing etc.

Finally, Mozilla looks at moving away from 'insecure' HTTP. Maybe

The First Dave

Re: If I'm not sending private details..

* Protection from alteration

* Protection from interception

HTTPS provides minimal protection against either of these - I've never come across a case of HTTP content being altered in transit, and analysis of HTTPS content is still possible, just not very easy.

You’ll be the coolest guy in IT if you ain't got your ID

The First Dave

Re: That's why you get to know the security people

You've never actually met an RSM, have you?

ISIS: You bomb us, we’ll interrupt your TV transmissions

The First Dave

"ISIS: You bomb us, we’ll interrupt your TV transmissions"

Fair enough, I can live with that.

Microsoft, Getty settle image snatch 'suit

The First Dave

That's true, but then again I don't start a dispute with your girlfriend _every_ day...

'Oh great Commission, save us from the French' pleads Uber

The First Dave

Just so we are all clear - are there _any_ countries where Uber operates legally?

Blockhead fugitive Snapchats himself into police custody

The First Dave

Re: I can't stand burglars

How many under-counter cabinets use the floor as the bottom shelf?

Elon Musk plans to plonk urban Hyperloop subsonic tube on California

The First Dave

Re: PayPal

PayPal is not a bank, in fact they go to great lengths to avoid any financial regulation, despite what their adverts imply. That should be a big red flag to everyone.

Pi(e) Day of the Century is upon us! Time to celebrate 3/14/15 in style, surely?

The First Dave

Re: Pi Approximation Day

Sorry, but 22/7 is a much _closer_ approximation to the one true value of Pi than 3.14 is.

Filthy – but sadly frothy – five door fun: Ford Focus 1.5 Zetec

The First Dave

Re: I hate bad usability in cars

Except that if the radio is playing, it probably won't be able to hear you telling it to shut up...

UK Supreme Court waves through indiscriminate police surveillance

The First Dave

Re: UK Govt are idiots

To be accurate, this has nothing (directly) to do with the Government. The police are basically not accountable to Gov., and the Courts are officially not accountable either. Technically, the Gov should, and should already have, written legislation that prevented this, but plod would just have ignored it anyway.

Shove off, ugly folk, says site for people who love themselves

The First Dave

Re: Tawnie Lynn (pictured)

Of course not: in that context * has a meaning within the Regex, but neither †

nor ‡ do, conversely both of the latter are well-known as being mainly used for footnotes, while * has about a billion different meanings.

£280k Kickstarter camera trigger campaign crashes and burns

The First Dave

Re: and closer to home....

But LOHAN is nothing by vapour-ware, so no chance of any unfortunate accidents. Not for real, anyway, maybe some photo-shop pictures that look a lot like the Challenger disaster...

What time do you call this, BT? Late, state-funded broadband rollout plods on

The First Dave

Re: Baffling

Really?

So there are no rural areas of the UK without mains water? (Such as around half of the Scottish Highlands)

And there are no rural areas without access to mains electricity? (Such as around half of the Hebridean Islands)

Partly, of course, because of the difficulties due to being unable to stop along the motorway that leads to every house in those areas...

Smartphones merge into homogeneous mass as 'flagship fatigue' bites

The First Dave

The data from a "switching site" is bound to be biased towards the thrifty, surely?

'Revenge porn' bully told not to post people's nude pics online. That's it. That's his punishment

The First Dave

Re: "This behavior is not only illegal but reprehensible,"

No one else try reading that statement in reverse? Nice to see it acknowledged that not all illegal behaviour is immoral...

Ex Machina – a smart, suspenseful satire of our technology gods

The First Dave

Re: "The Machine"

I would expect the ch to be soft, a bit like in, to pick a random example: machine

The First Dave

Re: "The Machine"

And presumably all of the blurbs were pronounced correctly - really gets my goat when I hear the voice-over at the end of the trailer saying "Ex Mack in a"

FBI-baiter Barrett Brown gets five years in chokey plus $890,000 fine

The First Dave

$890,000 surely can't be regarded as "free" food, can it?

Mind you, I have to assume he was being ironic, at least about "the greatest prison system in the world" unless by greatest he really meant nothing more than "biggest"

Alabama tops US teacher-pupil sex league

The First Dave

Re: meh

Yes, Yes it does.

Bloke in Belgium tries to trademark Je Suis Charlie slogan

The First Dave

Re: WELL DONE

I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that it is generally accepted that _any_ image of a natural object (flowers, animals) counts as "copying God's work" and is therefore unacceptable. This is why mosques can easily be identified by the somewhat abstract decorations, and complete lack of anything recognisable.

(Not quite sure where TV fits in...)