* Posts by JimmyPage

3214 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2010

Grandmaster FLUSH: Chess champ booted for allegedly cheating with iPod app in the loo

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Meh

Re: ODWR

Not sure whether to up or down vote you ----------------------->

Before I highlighted Chess: the only way to cheat Death; he can never remember which way the horsey moves. in Chrome; right-clicked (actually left-clicked for me) and selected "search Google for ...." (total all of 0.5s); I had a feeling it would be the sadly recently departed Pratchettmeister. So it would be a downvote for being *that* lazy.

However, the top Google was this

which is a fascinating site I probably wouldn't have bumped into today without your help.

So in balance no votes :)

p.s. It is a Pratchettism

Pre-order consumergasm will leave Apple Watches out of stock for months

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Boffin

Re: meh...

Presumably it was enough of a shit to decide that you had to tell the rest of us how little shit you give? Marble sized perhaps, like a rabbit dropping?M

Stewart Lee on El Reg ?

NSA: 'Back doors are a bad idea, give us a FRONT door key'

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FAIL

Clipper chip

'nuffr said

Who is the fastest-selling phone maker of ALL TIME? Samsung? Apple? No, it's Xiaomi

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FAIL

Missing the point ...

If nothing, the global financial crisis demonstrated how much shite we had been fed, during the good times ...

1) That it's not possible to have asymmetric interest rates. Before 2008, the clarion call of UK business was that the strength of the pound was hurting exports. Cue a parade of financial experts telling us that the only interest rate that mattered was the BoE one, and it wasn't possible to have a separate one for special cases.

(Looks at BoE rate as of 10/4/2015 - 0.5%. Looks at mortage statement - 3.99%).

So that's that myth busted then

2) That credit ratings are sacred texts, that are never wrong. Cue various US and UK outfits going bust despite triple-A ratings. Clearly the ratings agencies opinions aren't very reliable.

Oh, look, Gideon tells us how important these rating agencies opinions are. Do me a favour ....

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WTF?

drifting OT

when did PWC become an authority ?

On anything ?

Google: Give us cash or we'll poke YouTube ads into your eyeballs

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er ....

most of the YouTube content I watch is old clips of UK TV shows. Which I strongly suspect Google doesn't own the rights to...

Oh no, Moto! Cable modem has hardcoded 'technician' backdoor

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Facepalm

field, service

nuff said

V&A Museum shows Guardian's destroyed MacBook as ART

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Black Helicopters

Just occurred to me ...

What did GCHQ know that the Guardian didn't that prompted them to insist on such a newsworthy destruction.

What *else* have they been up to ?

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Headmaster

une Macbook

or un Macbook ?

Met Police in egg/face blunder as shop-a-crim site's SSL cert expires

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El Reg doesn't even offer https connectivity

why would it need to ? What sensitive information is passing between you and Reg Towers ?

That said, if we arrive at an encryption everywhere state of affairs (with the security services going all over the media explaining their confusion at such a thing happening) then using encryption ceases to become a red flag to the cops.

Barry Obama declares national emergency over foreign hackers

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Stop

Used, or "thought to have used"

isn't this circumventing due process ?

What does the constitution say about this ?

Notebooks drag PC sales out the toilet, fondleslabs still falling

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Stop

tablet sales will continue to decrease because of their longer-than-expected lifecycle.

really ?

Or is it because there's nothing new ?

There's nothing the market to best my 1920x1280 quad-core Android tablet (design nearly 2 years old). Certainly nothing to persuade me to part with £200.

Snakes on a backplane: Server-room cabling horrors

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Unhappy

Pah, lightweights

on a visit last year to the RAF Museum at Cosford, I saw a Nimrod parked outside awaiting preparation for exhibition.

Because it had been carried by road, they had folded the wings up, so you could see the avionics wiring. There were several bundles of what looked like *hundreds of wires) which passed into the wing from the fuselage.

All white (certainly from a distance).

All cut.

It broke my heart ... clearly a reminder that plane will never fly again -->

As an aside it was a hell of a sobering thought (as I mentioned to the Mrs) that someone, somewhere, once knew what every wire did.

Just WALK IN and buy an Apple Watch. Are you mad?

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Meh

Colour me uninterested ...

one of the upsides of a free-market economy is you don't *have* to engage if you don't want to.

My first thought on the article headline and subsequent content was "demand creation" ... Apple may have billions of these [canine] testicular timepieces in the wings. But hint at rationing, and you will guarantee the media frenzy (and associated upsales) of black-Friday style mania ensues.

I wonder if Apple are taking any steps to prevent speculative re-sales ? Presumably the iWatch will need to be connected to an iTunes account ? And only Apple will allow a change ?

I helped Amazon.com find an XSS hole and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

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Unhappy

Re: Fiver

Pretty galling when you know they would happily have paid at least ten thousand times that much for the same information from a whizzy startup outfit ....

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Stop

Or alternatively

Big companies lobby the government(s) to tighten up the law so that it becomes a criminal offence not to disclose bugs you find in websites to the owners. That way they don't have to spend any money on decent development and can use the threat of prison to enforce compliance.

A little bit like it being a criminal offence (in the UK) not to notify police if Uncle Ahmed has popped off to Syria.

Bear in mind there's *already* a delicate line to tread between asking for payment to divulge details of a bug and blackmail.

Greedy web borg Facebook to SLURP news websites' golden nuggets

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Thumb Up

Re: And so we have come full circle....

1970, the only way to access a "computer service" was via a terminal which displayed what the machine in an air-conditioned locked room was doing.

2015 the preferred way to access a "computer service" is via a terminal which displays what the machine in an air-conditioned locked room is doing.

Assange™ lawyers demand Swedish prosecution files or no London interview

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Stop

Statute of limitations ...

there's a phrase regarding US law which goes something like "the statute of limitations cannot be considered active if the offender absents themselves from the jurisdiction"

In other words, nice try buster.

Surely the Swedish system would be the same. I can't believe they have a fugitives charter ....

Home Office splashed £35m trying to escape e-Borders contract

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Facepalm

who the fuck allowed a contract for £750m to be signed without an exit clause?

the same jokers that presented a quote for the Olympics forgetting to add VAT.

Internet Explorer LIVES ON, cackle sneaky Microsoft engineers

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impossible to download the older IE versions from them

we do all keep old MSDN packs, don't we ?

Aged 18-24? Don't care about voting? Got a phone? Oh dear...

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Boffin

Second chamber

should be formed from the runners up in each constituency. How about the top 200 runners up ?

No need for a second election - or indeed any of that pesky thinking UK voters hate so much. Added advantage instant balance (as you are now no longer ignoring the 49% of the people who didn't vote for you).

Bearing in mind the second chamber has less power than the HoC ....

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Stop

Data protection ?

Just out of curiosity, how did these guys manage to marry up the data sets "people aged 18-24", "People eligible to vote in the UK general election", and "mobile phone numbers of the UK".

Because I sense a touch of fast and loose here ....

Honey, I shrunk the Windows footprint

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Linux

Because then ...

...you may as well use Linux ...

Diablo fingered in offensive ASCII art trial doc shock

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Joke

What's your other hobby ?

playing LPs backwards ?

The voters hate Google. Heeeeyyyy... how about a 'Google Tax'?

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Alert

<brainstorming> Total blue-sky thinking

The nub of the problem seems to be that the second transactions happen "outside the jurisdiction", it becomes very difficult to administer any system to monitor the transaction ...

I'm idly wondering if there is a mechanism to lever the currency - sterling - such that transactions in sterling can be taxed. Wherever they happen in the world.

Not really sure *how*, but it's worth a sideline that until recently, OPEC insisted all oil was bought/sold in US dollars, which acted as a boost for the Federal Reserve.

(Side-sideline, the first country to unilaterally stop using USD was Iraq. Followed by Syria, North Korea, and Iran. Curious how these countries were very much Dubya's "axis of evil" .....)

</brainstorm>

OK, they're not ROBOT BUTLERS, but Internet of Home 'Things' are getting smarter

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FAIL

Ah ... the dream ... the reality

So this fridge that "knows" how many beers are in it. Does it *really* know.

Or, (as I suspect) does need a slightly behind-the-scenes tweak of SOMEONE having to scan the beers in, and scan them out again ? In which case you'd be better off keeping your dumb fridge, and putting a whiteboard next to it. If you want it connected, you point a webcam at it.

Grab your pitchforks: Ubuntu to switch to systemd on Monday

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Stop

Improved boot speed ?

How many times do you need to boot. Almost never, IME.

Twitter fears big EU tech payout to pacify lawmakers over data-slurping concerns

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WTF?

Am I missing something here ?

Twitter is a US owned, and based company. That means data it controls is the property of Uncle Sam wherever it is (like paying US tax). courtesy of the PATRIOT Act.

So building an EU data centre seems a little disingenuous - it won't solve the problem.

(Here's the story which sparked the fire)

You're outta here! Baseball star strikes out sleazy trolls who targeted teen daughter

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Re: Dyslexic ?

aren't we all at 02:15 ?

3 spectastic Lumias for price of 1 rival flagship: Microsoft sells biz on cheapie experience

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Thumb Up

Re: [Android] MTP support ?

I haven't messed around with Android yet - my main phone is a [work] WinPho, so that's where I do most work.

I did notice that there are reports that post ICS versions of Android dropped mass USB support. The fact that Google do things like this is a very good argument against Android IMHO. That and it's overall flakiness.

Has anyone else discovered how to enable developer mode on later Android versions ? It's quite a masonic handshake isn't it ?

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Mushroom

Re: MTP support ?

Clearly you missed the bit where I said "only connect via MTP" ?

And you can't just put the files on the card. Windows Phone has a -proprietary storage architecture for content. Trying to copy files directly, either (a) loses them, or (b) corrupts the system completely.

I'm happy to be challenged by someone who's done it. Less impressed by someone who clearly hasn't ...

JimmyPage Silver badge
Happy

HOC S3 spoliers

you're welcome ;)

MrsJP and I are watching an episode a night (because we're old !). With going to a live event (yes, we still get out) on Friday, we're looking forward to E3 tonight.

There's a couple of scenes where phones - Windows phones - are quite clearly identifiable. Either visually, or aurally.

However Macs are also quite prominent ....

JimmyPage Silver badge
Boffin

MTP support ?

Just a tip to anyone whose OS of choice is Linux.

Windows Phone only supports MTP for syncing and streaming music. This effectively means if syncing music is a big deal to you you either

1) Ignore Windows Phone)

2) Get used to Windows 7/8/10 with Windows Media Player (yes, it's not dead) as despite the 4 or 5 hours I have invested in learning all there is to know about MTP, I can only sync via a Windows PC.

I'm not assigning blame (yet !) but it seems Linux MTP doesn't like MS MTP.

JimmyPage Silver badge

Re: Excellent pricing

Until people actually want Windows on a phone it's going to be a tough sell.

It seems to be the phone of choice in "House of Cards 3" ...

First peek at the next Ubuntu 15.04 nester line-up

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Coat

Re: There's at least a distro's worth

Englebert Humperdink ?

Blockheads bork Bitcoin Foundation board election

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FAIL

Your point being ?

You could have said the same about the first computers ...

SSL-busting adware: US cyber-plod open fire on Comodo's PrivDog

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Mushroom

If I were a layman

I'd say the concept of a "trusted" certification authority is bust. Which means SSL is bust.

Anyone care to correct me - as a layman.

Marconi: The West of England's very own Italian wireless pioneer

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Thumb Up

Re:Strowger

ISTR a documentary pointing out that the original Stowger gear fitted exactly into an undertakers (tall top) hat.

And why were punchcards the same size as a dollar bill ?

Debian on track to prove binaries' origins

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Boffin

Fuck that - what about the silicon ?

You could code your first assembler (F1 ?) in raw machine code. But it would still be compromised if the actual architecture of the CPU had been nobbled.

And with daily revelations about what the NSA/GCHQ have been up to, it's not impossible (and the likeliness is certainly non-zero) that CPU instruction sets have been hacked. After all, has anyone checked what 27 NOPs in a row *really* do in the latest Intel offering ?

I have to smile when people make a big fuss about open source, while ignoring the chipsets you're running that source on.

Want a MEEELLION-year data storage? Use DNA of course

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Back in the 80s

this got discussed when I was studying at Uni - as a theoretical possibility. We were just waiting for the technology to catch up.

Of course it does raise the possibility that this has already been done elsewhere in the Universe, and *we* are the result ?

HOLY SEA SNAILS! Their TEETH are strong enough to build a plane

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Thumb Up

Re: Back to nature

Well I was quoting from memory, and have the excuse of not being a particle physicist.

If I understood the general thrust, it was that the current theory of how smell works - that it's the *shapes* of molecules which receptors recognise and report on - is incomplete. Mainly because there are several isomorphic molecules, which smell completely different. However, molecular bonds have a quantum dimension, which is unique to that molecule.

More here.

To be honest, the thing that impressed me the most was the technique of using isotopes in compounds to produce different quantum signatures. It seemed so ... simple.

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Coat

subliminal text ...

Why did I think I saw something about "crumpet mines" ?

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Thumb Up

Re: Back to nature

Total upvote and respect for mentioning the awesome, and sadly missed Feynman.

If anyone here wants some Kindling, then "What Do You Care What Other People Think" and "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" are great reads.

And the story of his involvement in the Challenger disaster enquiry is well worth a watch.

JimmyPage Silver badge
Happy

Re: Back to nature

It was in two parts, and if you feel comfortable with the big concepts of quantum mechanics, the first is optional. It describes the history more than anything - although you hear some lesser known names.

The second was more interesting. It explained how biologists have started finding quantum effects all over nature. From memory:

1) Robins navigation systems (detecting infinitesimal magnetism)

2) How plant cells process sunlight so efficiently (using the fact a quantum particle is in all places at once)

3) How enzymes work at a molecular level, using quantum tunneling

4) How the sense of smell distinguishes between similar shaped molecules (by differentiating their quantum "signature")

5) Was an examination into an ongoing hypothesis that evolution has been driven by quantum changes.

All proof that what we knew 30 years ago was incomplete at best and wrong at worst.

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Thumb Up

Back to nature

With the usual caveat about BBC programmes (even BBC4 programmes) being science-lite and gimmick heavy, the recent 2 part documentary about quantum physics in biology (Jim al Khalili) was quite fascinating.

Seems we could learn a lot from nature.

(I was slightly taken aback that a real scientist like JaK would be mixing imperial and metric units though. Shame on him !)

iBank: RBS, NatWest first UK banks to allow Apple Touch ID logins

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Thumb Down

Re: Not smart.

Downvoted because

you appear to have ignored the linked articles in the story which relate to creating serviceable fingerprint prosthetics using gelatine - in the form of gummi bears.

So the proof of concept is their.

Is cloud the answer to all your storage problems?

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Stop

Re: One big problem with online storage is when you become too reliant on them and they shut down.

To be fair, there's a world of difference between an corporate oriented provider, and one that hopes to make money slinging ads.

Most of the dodgier filesharing sites worked by hosting copyright material and charging users to download it, with the promise of a cut of the action for the uploaders.

However you're still at risk of single point of failure - plus having data stolen (unless you encrypt it, and face jail time in Camerons Britain).

Vodafone didn't have a £6bn tax bill. Sort yourselves out, Lefties

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Alert

Serious question

is it cheaper for a company to spend money paying tax, or lobbying politicians,

Maybe the tax avoidance we are seeing is evidence our politicians aren't grasping enough ?

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FAIL

Re: Great article - *completely* missed the point.

to be fair AC said "seemed to be".

quod Caesaris coniugium non suspectis