* Posts by Dave 126

10643 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010

How to build a plane that never needs to land

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: 2000 hour inspection cycle

Even having a day's downtime a week would allow one spare plane to provide cover for or six operational planes, allowing continuous uptime (weather and acts of dog, allowing). Having routine maintenance every month wouldn't be too onerous. Components, such as motor and prop assemblies can be swapped out / swapped in quickly.

I'm assuming the small size of it makes inspection of the airframe easier and quicker.

iPhones clock-blocked and crocked by setting date to Jan 1, 1970

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Why would anyone set their iPhone's time to 1/1/1970

>This allows an NTP attack on almost any public wifi which permanently bricks your phone.

Has this this been demonstrated in a proof-of-concept attack?

Health and Safety to prosecute over squashed Harrison Ford

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: The rule is

I was under the impression that Jackie Chan underwrote his own film because he couldn't get conventional insurance.

Still, it would seem that nobody has been injured more in Jackie Chan films than Jackie himself (I've tried looking online to see if any of his employees have been seriously injured on set, but I can't see past the "Jackie Chan's Top Ten Injuries"-type articles.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Trebles all around...

The BBC reported it as being a criminal prosecution, so penalties beyond fines are possible.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: "What a piece of junk!"

On one of the Indiana Jones movies Mr Ford was keen to do his own stunts... until a stunt man pointed out that it was doing him out of work. Mr Ford was, by all accounts, genuinely embarrassed that this hadn't occurred to him.

(Remember he started out as a carpenter on a movie set).

(For a very young looking Mr Ford, search Google Images for "Terminate With Extreme Prejudice")

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Are all employer liable?

>AFAIK the M.O.D has a "sort-off" waiver for 'elth un safe'y, but ONLY during combat situations.

Indeed, I've heard of UK military compounds where it is compulsory for car drivers to reverse-park into parking bays. It is good practise - you are less likely to knock into a pedestrian whilst reversing into a bay than you are reversing out of a bay and into a thoroughfare.

Depressed? Desperate for a ciggie? Blame the Neanderthals

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Echoes from the past

>The one on the right looks like me.

You're Gérard Depardieu?

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Echoes from the past

A rosier frame indeed, we likely won because we were more aggressive.

Move over, Google. Here’s Wikipedia's search engine – full of on-demand smut

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Why reinvent the wheel?

@Ilgaz

The Google search algorithms - and thus DuckDuckGo - are designed for the WWW, where any idiot can create a website (and search results are, in part, ranked by how many other pages link to it).

The approach to searching within a more structured, centrally hosted, collection of data would be different. The requirements of the user might be different, too. A user might, for example, want to search for all Wikipedia articles related to [SUBJECT] that have not been edited in the last [LAST EDIT DATE] and cite only those sources that come from [EXTERNAL SOURCE: ".ac.org"] or whatever.

Dave 126 Silver badge

>We had to rent videos - a VHS M*A*S*H cost GBP49 to buy

Is it possible that was the price video rental shops had to buy it at? They were not allowed to rent out copies that were sold to Joe Public.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: porn...

The 1970s book The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort featured black and white outline illustrations by an artist by Chris Foss.

Other readers might recognise him as the man who illustrated the covers of a good many sci-fi books, but in a completely different style (full colour, brush and airbrush), often on Asimov books.

He combined the two styles in a book called Diary of a Spaceperson. Citing an Amazon.co.uk review of the same:

Imagine you have this archive of fantastic science fiction art depicting highly original and organic spacecraft with vibrating colours, painted by a legendary artist. And you also have this even larger pile of pencil sketches of topless women. Wanting to show these to the world your natural reaction might be to compile a work about spaceships and another with drawings. Not so here.

Amazon's Lumberyard invaded by zombies

Dave 126 Silver badge

>One wonders what they will make of each other.

Mutual disinterest, probably. It would make for a very boring monster mash-up movie, a la the SyFy Channel.

"Zombies Vs Skynet" The undead and terminators go about their daily business without disturbing each other

[In fairness to SyFy, whilst they are known for films like 'Sharknado!', their recent adaptation of The Expanse has been very good. Recommended for fans of hard sci-fi, set in a colonised Solar System with political intrigue. It sticks to its own measuered pace, but stay with it. Series 2 has just been commissioned.]

Dave 126 Silver badge

Hello Mr Haines. Are there any other examples of strange ToCs that you and your colleagues have seen over the years? Perhaps you could appeal to the readership here to provide examples they have seen?

Just an idea!

Dave 126 Silver badge

>It has certainly worked - the Register has now reported it twice.

I've read a couple of articles around the web about the release of Lumberyard, and this is the first I've read of the zombie clause in the ToCs - save for a comment by 'Clockworkseer' yesterday.

Firemen free chap's todger from four-ring chokehold

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: @symon - "a course of leaches"

@TRT

>Any self-respecting leach would, of course, refuse to put their mouth parts anywhere near the pervs prives.

You can believe that if you want to to, but if you go skinny dipping in a swamp and find a limp dangly thing clung to your limp dangly thing - please do share with us here at the Reg!

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Oh, why not?

It's been said that Aristotle Onassis had the bar stools on one of his yachts clothed in sperm whale foreskin. I'd assumed that this was removed from a dead whale, until I read Mr Maloney's post.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Oh dear sir,

>Idiots who self inflict either through drink, drugs or just being fucking idiots do NOT deserve first line care

On the grounds that laughter is a good medicine, it is appropriate that they be admitted to hospitals.

Dave 126 Silver badge

>Low flow priapism by any cause for more than four hours is a medical emergency. Deprived of oxygen the cells start to die

Again, just don't do it. Also, before any of you ask, a 'kiss of life' will not help oxygenate the cells.

(Although there is a joke in which a male patient, who has been instructed to relive pressure in those parts through manual manipulation, looks over to the next cubicle and sees the silhouette of a nurses head bobbing up and down over its occupant: "What about him?!" he asks.

"Oh, he's on BUPA" replies the Doc. )

[Edit: For the benefit of non-UK readers, BUPA is a brand of private healthcare available in the UK, as opposed to our free-at-the-point-of-treatment National Health Service]

Dave 126 Silver badge

There a few comments here along the lines of "Why not just make it shrink?"

In normal operation, turning off the pump is sufficient to reduce the pressure, since the blood will escape back into the rest of the body. Unfortunately in this case, the rings block the return path*. The patient would have been de-stimulated by the time he called for assistance - the pump had long been turned off - so another approach was required.

*That is the whole point of cock-ring, I've been led to believe - though I'm no expert on sticking my extremities into unsuitable apertures. I'm not an expert on sticking my face into a pan of boiling oil either, but my take on it remains the same: Just don't do it.

Hold the miniature presses: Playmobil movie is go

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: And the zen question may be

Weebles! (those egg-shaped figues that wobbled on their base... sort of the antidote to Barbie's equally unrealistic body shape)

Dave 126 Silver badge

Check this out:

Next time the Reg needs to recreate a scene featuring a yuppie:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Playmobil-3911-Porsche-Carrera-Showroom/dp/B00O4E399M

It's a Playmobil exact scale replica of a Porsche 911 Carrera S, with functioning rear and front lights, customisable body and wheels, removable roof and illuminated dashboard.

Why does the VR industry think 2016 is its year? It's the hardware, stupid

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: 1994?

Well if all you are training is Cockpit Procedures, then yeah, 64k RAM (and a a whole fake cockpit of switches and instruments) will do it.

However, if the now-more accessible techniques of simulating complex fluid dynamics and finite element analysis (to reduce, not replace physical testing) didn't save money and time in the design of aircraft, they wouldn't be used as widely as they are.

In engineering, product design and architecture, CAD isn't isn't just about visualisation (though that itself is often invaluable); it is also a whole suite of tools to help groups of engineers - often from different disciplines - work together.

At a more modest level, a man down the road from me makes wooden propellers for light aircraft. His CAD needs aren't as sophisticated (single user, standard file system), but to model new propellers and generate cutting paths for his CNC router he still benefits from a modern, consumer-class desktop.

For sure, one of the influences that has made 3D CAD cheaper is that GPUs were made in huge numbers (thus sharing the R&D and tooling costs amongst more people) for the price-concious gaming market, so on that point I will concede your point that a lot of computing power is 'wasted' on mere entertainment.

Canonical reckons Android phone-makers will switch to Ubuntu

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: On what merit will they be trying to convice the users ?

>The bloatware that my Samsung came with annoys me - duplication of Google ware mostly

> A Google Nexus is a nice phone, but I'd rather not have to trust Google so much.

So, you'd like to have the option of not using Google, but the preliminary work that Samsung has done to to offer you a non-Google Android annoys you?

Here's the thing: If a phone vendor ships a phone without Google Play Services version of Android, it is not allowed to ship *any* phone with Google Play Services ( APIs for location and other stuff, plus the Play Store, native GMail client, Google Maps etc). So, the only way for an Android phone vendor to break away from Google is to do it wholesale, and that would mean providing alternatives to all of Google's services.

Samsung have been hedging their bets for a while (I don't know what their own strategists currently think of their chances), hence the duplication of apps and services (an app store etc). It also explains their Tizen OS efforts.

Amazon tried an Android phone without Google. I haven't seen many of them.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: The real reason?

>Pehaps the Canonical coffers are starting to run dry and they need to make some money and lots of it?

I'm not sure that there is lots of money to be made by offering an OS to ODMs in competition to Android, which is 'free'.

What the ODMs might want is a Google-free flavour of Android, as Amazon have attempted and Samsung keep flirting with. (That is why Samsung phones come with Samsung alternatives to 'Translate', 'Mail', 'Calendar' etc).

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: On what merit will they be trying to convice the users ?

Exactly.

Just because you could get a desktop GUI Linux application running on a phone, doesn't mean that it would be pleasant to use.

So, you could plug your phone into a TV (and mouse, and keyboard) and use desktop GUI applications, but it would be much easier to just use a separate 'computer on a HDMI stick', which is a form factor that is already available in ARM and Intel flavours. I mean, it just seems a kerfuffle to plug your phone into a TV, and then unplug it all again when you need to pop out for half an hour.

Amazon UK boss is 'most powerful' man in food and drink

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Amazon for Groceries?

>so what happens to the frozen goods that I might buy from them if they do the same?

That's a question of implementation, not concept. In theory a refrigerated delivery van *could* bring frozen goods to your door in a better state than you could (if your car doesn't have air-con). Other options include a reuseable thermal box, and maybe a phase-change thermal store 'brick'.

The rest of your points are valid. People's shopping habits vary a lot, but some might have a supermarket deliver the bulk boring stuff and get meats from a local butchers. I use Lidl for many items, but use Sainsburys/Waitrose for other stuff, a farmer's market if I'm passing... My habits are partly informed by my drive home from work.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: the geeks shall inherit the earth

>When machines replace workers in site automation and self-learning AI automation robots, the geeks will be kings.

No, the people who hold the power over the geeks will be kings, as has always been the case. For 'geeks', we can substitute 'stone masons' - they were people that the rulers needed, and couldn't treat too badly (else they would take their skills elsewhere), but kings they were not.

Of course, some geeks have become very powerful today, but they are a few individuals and that power isn't distributed amongst everyone who can code

Microsoft researchers smash homomorphic encryption speed barrier

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: So let me get this right..

>doing stuff that makes my head hurt just trying to substandard,

Makes my brain hurt so much I commit bizarre typos, evidently. This was typed on a proper keyboard, I can't even blame an auto-correct system.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: So let me get this right..

The Windows teams are expected to take input from MS's strategic business team, which itself would be trying to work out how to use Windows to maximise profits or footholds for other products and services, in a rapidly changing, competitive environment. Or something like that.

The research teams, whilst doing stuff that makes my head hurt just trying to substandard, have in some ways more simply defined tasks.

Fleet of 4.77MHz LCD laptops with 8088 CPUs still alive after 30 years

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Wait, but laptop still have LCDs

>640x200 pixels in monochrome is pretty archaic by today's display standards.

For a general purpose computer, yes. But similar displays are still common in kit made today - music players, for example.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: the unchanged fact that most solid-state electronics...

Even parts - or the connections - that are not designed to move may still suffer some mechanical strain from thermal expansion cycles.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Wait, but laptop still have LCDs

From the article: "it also offered a rather archaic LCD display as illustrated above"

I believe Christian read the article text as meaning that LCD technology in general was archaic, whereas the same sentance could be also read as meaning that this specific LCD display was archaic. I read it as the latter.

Remember Netbooks? Windows 10 makes them good again!

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Netbooks had one good use

I found them handy for plugging temperature probes into, logging and displaying temperature against time (when developing a cooking product).

- All the essential ports, inc. serial

- small size

- WinXP - ran the software that came with the temperature probe.

For reading websites, it was horrible though - like peering through a letter box.

That's cute, Germany – China shows the world how fusion is done

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Already corrected

>But donut store coffee cups very rarely have a handle... which I assume makes them spheres or something.

Topologically the coffee cups are like spheres, whereas donuts are similar to tea-cups with handles. Teapots with one handle and no lid are similar to figure-of-eight pretzels.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: British efforts

"LENR-CANR.ORG A library of papers about cold fusion"

If it were legitimate, the website would by subtitled "A library of papers about some experiments that produce some as-of-yet unexplained data"

A clue is that they have jumped to a conclusion. The other clue is the name 'Rossi' on the page.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Soon...

>Well, have you seen the west's records on Human rights?

If you could move in time, you'd observe more distance travelling a few decades than you would a few thousand miles.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Soon...

>We will be copying Chinese designs... gulp

For much of the last five thousand years, Chinese technological and organisational superiority has been the norm... the Twentieth Century was just a blip.

Well, kind of... Glass technology (what we Occidentals used for drinking wine) opened the doors of chemistry, microscopy, astronomy, perspective in art...

Reminder: iPhones commit suicide if you repair them on the cheap

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: @ Walter Bishop -- When iPhone is serviced by an authorised Apple service provider

>If I have a puncture I don't expect to have to buy a new car.

True. And if your clutch went wrong, you would choose to take your car to a 3rd party garage with a good reputation. Some cowboys might cause more problems. Similarly, a good phone shop can replace a phone screen without disturbing the fingerprint sensor.

Unlike a tyre, if an ECU dies, the replacement would need to programmed with variables specific to that car's engine values, physical variations in the manufacture of engine components that the original ECU was programmed with and then made allowances for physical wear over time and use. It wouldn't be a straight swap out, swap in job.

So yeah, Apple have messed up with the implementation*, but the principle of protecting the user's data from bad guys is sound enough. Otherwise, the bad guy could just swap out the fingerprint module to gain access. Law enforcement officers could of course just take your fingerprints.

*Especially for the journalist who originally promoted this story - he was on assignment in Macedonia, very far away from an official Apple store.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Hardly a surprise

>every second one is broken. This is because Apple use sub-par materials for the application.

The 'application' varies by user.

And that is true of most Android phones, too. My Sony has a cracked screen because I bought the wrong case (also, the screen bezel was thin and made from ABS, not aluminium). If you work on a building site, buy a beefier case - or a 'toughened' model from Motorola or Samsung. If you work in a carpeted office, a slimmer case might be fine. If you buy a Galaxy Edge, you'll struggle to find a case with protective bezels that allows you to use the curved edges of the screen.

All engineering is compromise. A plastic screen will not shatter, but it will scratch and dent. A mineral glass screen won't scratch as easily, but it will shatter. You can pay more money and engineering another compromise: a laminate of mineral glass atop a plastic substrate. Or you could take a hit on the pixel-to-surface distance and make the screen thicker. You can supply the phone with a replaceable plastic screen guard, to nudge the user into replacing it periodically. Sony chose to attach a thin layer atop their screen to reduce shattering, in addition to the normal replaceable plastic. And so on...

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Hardly a surprise

>Rubbish. Apple don't manufacture anything of any significance, they just get other companies to make stuff for them from the same Chinese made components that everyone else uses.

That's true of many companies these days. What you haven't acknowledged though is that 'he who pays the piper calls the tune'. By that I mean the customer (Apple, Samsung, whoever), negotiates with the OEMs as to which manufacturing processes are used, the tolerances, yields, materials. Now, just because several companies use the same factory, doesn't mean all parts are made to the same tolerance or QA process - everything is negotiable.

That said, high tolerance parts are cheaper to make (and check) today than they ever have been.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Halfway

>Put it another way: where is there ANY evidence that third party repairs to Apple kit result in security breached?

No, because of this very safeguard:

The fingerprint module is a self-contained enclave that tells the phone that the a thumbprint belongs to the owner. Clearly, a safeguard is needed to stop a bad guy from swapping the fingerprint module in the target phone for a fingerprint module already trained to the bad guy's own thumb. This is done by by iOS comparing the hardware ID of the fingerprint module to the value it is has stored. If it finds an anomaly, it shuts down the Apple

Now, a competent 3rd party repair shop can replace a broken screen without disturbing the fingerprint module. However, a shady repair shop who haven't practised on their own phones before messing around with their customers' phones might mess it up. Hence the Apple support notes that say the error *can* occur from an 3rd party screen repair.

Apple have dropped the ball in communication, policy, and implementation, though.

Mozilla officially kills Firefox OS for smartphones in favour of 'Connected Devices'

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: This is a distraction!

I only read The Reg because there is no browser in existence that correctly renders the website that I really want to visit.

Scottish MP calls for drone-busting eagles

Dave 126 Silver badge

We're going to need a bigger eagle:

Government drones often big, high altitude, jet powered.

Did you know ... Stephen Fry has founded a tech startup?

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Compare and contrast

>an expectation that a series of precocious spelling bee competitions will imbue an appreciation of Shakespeare, Auden and Tennyson in the participants.

I used to read Spot the Dog, and take spelling tests... doing so has not dented my later appreciation of literate. In fact, learning to read was a positive aid to my enjoyment of books. Did your analogy come across as you intended?

[Strange choice of examples from Mr Pollard: they are all playwrights and poets, whose works can be performed aloud and so be appreciated even by people who can't read. ]

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Cruel and viscious.

>[Before you ask, giving me video of any sort is pretty much a waste of time. I prefer the written word.]

Stephen Fry was a columnist, novelist and screenwriter. His acting and television presenting followed from that.

Paperweight', a collection of his columns, makes a good book to dip into whilst on the porcelain throne. 'Making History' is an alternative history jaunt, playing on the old 'kill Hitler with time machine' trope, but with its own message. Worth a read, certainly more fun than a Philip Roth alternate history novel!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Fry_bibliography_and_filmography#Books

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: More words

All that AC said.

His books are good, too. And fascinating to read in the context of his own story of self acceptance.

> He loves shiny Apple stuff that's true, but then a lot of people do.

As did his late friend, Douglas Noel Adams (of Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy fame). Between them, the pair bought the first two Apple Macs in Europe in 1984. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams#Technology_and_innovation

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: "... a fair resource ...?

>To me it looks to be another ghastly collection of "interesting facts"

Would you care to suggest alternate sites, so that we may compare and contrast?

I scrolled through quickly, but the format of tests interspersing the videos is in keeping with retaining information. The diagrams about latent heat (just the section I clicked on) would impart knowledge and understanding, not 'facts'.

Maybe you have a different learning style?

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Cruel and viscious.

And yet the comments and votes on the forum for the Reg article that Stephen Fry mentioned were mostly on Fry's side.

German Chancellor fires hydrogen plasma with the push of a button

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan

Thank you guys for bringing this to my attention.

According to Wikipedia, the later editions that weren't translated to English were more sophisticated and less pulpy than the earlier stories.

,

'Dodgy Type-C USB cable fried my laptop!'

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Who ever designed..

>And what is it about your 5 year old Mac that is so magical?

>(sent from my 2010 Sony Vaio Z11- with a removable battery)

VAIOs and Macs have a lot in common. The whole VAIO brand was created by a Japanese fan of the Esslinger design of the Mac, after he created the Playstaion. After Steve Jobs ended the official Mac-clone program, he wanted to make an exception for Sony VAIO kit, since they had been testing OSX on Intel. FireWire. AV editing. Premium price. Proprietary on occasion. Early adoption of Thunderbolt. Former proponents of the PC as 'digital hub'. Etc

- Digital Dreams: The Work of the Sony Design Center ISBN-13: 978-0789302625

- http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/5/5380832/sony-vaio-apple-os-x-steve-jobs-meeting-report

-http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/sony-vaio-z-series-laptop-boasts-external-graphics-and-thunderbolt-tech/