Posts by kwhitefoot
79 posts • joined Saturday 14th August 2010 18:28 GMT
Re: Bad ideas never die...
Scandinavia is not a monolithic block you know. Which bit of it do you hail from? As far as I am aware Norway has no identity card even if you want one. I've lived here for over 25 years now and never heard of such a thing except occasionally as something that some politicians would like to introduce.
Re: I guess that it's back to using Google then.
Can El Reg provide a feature that hides AC comments?
Re: What an arsehole...
For me the principal problem with the article and a lot of the comments is the lack of context. Too much of both seems to rely on the reader possessing a lot of background information.
For instance "choosing to do it my email" suggests that it would have been practical; is it?
I suspect not as Carvalho Chahab lives in Brazil and Torvalds in Oregon but I had to consult a couple of web sites to find out (https://www.linux.com/news/special-feature/linux-developers/636068-30-linux-kernel-developers-in-30-weeks-mauro-carvalho-chehab, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds).
For what it's worth (not much) I think that it is rarely worth swearing in public, it tends to distract observers from the point that is being made.
And, off topic, why the fuck does El Reg not turn properly formed URLs into hyperlinks in comments? Swearing included because I doubt that any attention will be paid to the point so I might as well let off steam.
Re: Red keys? Nah. Get yerself one o' these...
That reminds me of my Nascom-2 which had the best keyboard I've ever used. No crappy mechanical switches in it, it had Hall effect switches if I remember right. Probably still have it somewhere, I wonder if I could get it hooked up to a PC?
Re: User Rights and Facts
You wrote a very long piece but didn't give us the most important information which would be a link to a resource that backs up your assertion that "all rights reserved" has the meaning you attribute to it.
Your name isn't Max is it?
Sounds like Max's autonomous corporations in Charlie Stross' Accelerando.
Only five books is a major problem. On my Nokia N9 I have pretty much all of Sherlock Holmes, the BASH Beginners Guide, On Lisp, Alice in Wonderland, The Origin of Species, loads of Wodehouse, Frederick Pohl, Montaigne, Dante's Divine Comedy, Treasure Island, etc., etc. It gives me something for every occasion.
Can't see it working out unless they have some magical way of getting the hardware cost down so that the 10EUR is actually a substantial fraction of the cost.
Plus it only has a five inch screen so I don't see that it is enough better than the 3,9 inch N9 to warrant carrying another device.
Re: Why should a key fob be a problem?
I'm not that well informed on the specifics but as a onetime designer of hardware I would certainly include some kind of control channel so that it would only broadcast when a suitable receiver were in range. Otherwise it will be very wasteful.
Are you using it for ploughing?
Re: Use the standard units as internationally agreed....
I wonder if SpaceX using SI has anything to do with Elon MusK not being American? South Africa was officially metric by 1971.
Are you trying to wind us up?
I tried to compromise but El reg wouldn't let me give half and up and half a down vote.
Re: SI señor
All the Americans I know say Imperial units but what they really mean is US Customary.
The volume measures differ even when they have the same name.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems
And a message to our hosts: why don't URLs turn into links?
Perhaps you could enlighten us then.
See title.
Why should a key fob be a problem?
Are they seriously saying that this thing pumps out energy without any kind of handshake to make sure that what goes out is actually being delivered to a suitable sink?
Or is it that it generates so much interference to keyfob transponders that the car will suddenly think that they key has disappeared and disable the car while belting down the autobahn at 200kph?
Or what?
A couple of extra lines in the article would have made it a lot more informative for those of us who haven't been close following developments in wireless charging.
I suppose I'll have to go and read the pdf.
Well, now I've read it. It looks to me as though it is going to interfere with pretty much everything in the car even when installed correctly. I'll make do with USB.
Re: @proto-robbie
Tesla beat Edison not because he used AC but because the use of AC meant that he could use higher voltage and therefore lower current. Until a few decades ago conversion to and from HVDC was difficult and expensive. Now, comparatively, it is neither. When Tesla was at the peak of his abilities there were no controllable high voltage valves, even when they did become available they were bulky, expensive, and fragile. ASEA started development in the 1930s but real systems weren't up and running (as far as I know) until the 1950s.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current for an overview. This shows a lot of DC interconnects in Europe and points out that the longest in the world is in China, just over 2000km.
I suppose at this point I should reveal that I work for ABB which makes these things (althoughin a related division). Of course I speak for myself not ABB, etc.
Re: Penny wise, pound foolish.
Perhaps you could explain why we have high power DC interconnects between France and England, Norway and Denmark, etc. if the laws of physics make it unworkable. Yes transmission losses in low voltage high current AC lines are high which is why the electricity transmission industry has been building ever higher voltage transmission lines. Now that we have effective high voltage semiconductor switches we can use DC instead which dramatically reduces the losses and also enables networks of differing phase, frequency and impedance to be connected together.
Interconnecting national grids allows, for instance, solar power to be sold to areas where it is dark. And yes I am aware that all this needs a large investment and a higher degree of political stability than obtains in some areas but it requires no new technology, it can be implemented now. The technology involved is scalable and much of it can be built incrementally.
Re: Lucky
Did they? Can someone provide some backing for the belief that he is on the register? DM doesn't mention it, nor the Sun or the Telegraph.
Re: Jury Nullification
Since the rule against double jeopardy has been abolished I'm not sure jury nullification as powerful as it was in the 19th century when juries started to refuse to convict when the punishments for trivial offences was transportation or hanging.
Now the CPS could try again, under some circumstances at least.
And I wonder if a jury refusing to convict when the evidence was admitted in a strict liability case might not arguable be grounds for declaring a mistrial an starting again.
I'm not a lawyer, just thinking out loud. I'm also not resident in the UK either.
Also there have been mutterings about getting rid of juries both in the UK and Norway.
We need a head in the hands despair icon.
Re: tags for all?
Especially if they are so small that they don't get noticed. Could make smart dust a reality.
Posted in WTF is... NFC
The only thing that made me get new
I use a contactless card on the bus every day. It certainly doesn't take two seconds to recognize that I have paid for a month of travel and tell me how many days I have left.
But this is in Norway, perhaps it is better implemented here. (Not everything works well here either I do realize).
premises where the Royal mail and others can drop off packages for collection
In civilized countries like Norway this is what the post and other couriers already do. The local supermarket, petrol station, florist, whatever, takes delivery, the courier sends you a text saying it is ready for collection and you pick it up on the way home from work. As a lot of these places are open until 21:00 and open at 07:00 (or 24 hours a day in the case of petrol stations) this is a lot more convenient than going to the sorting office (which here would be at least 25km away).
In densely populated areas the post will also call you to arrange a parcel delivery to your door in a two hour window in the evening.
Re: New plan
Reminds me of this post http://m.forums.theregister.co.uk/post/424485
Can't find any other source for the supposed quote but even if it isn't real it should be. There is a tendency to think that spending money makes things better when in fact it is getting what you actually need that counts. Where I live (Vestfold, Norway) practically every class room has a full scale audio-visual system, students in the academic line (studiespesialiserende) in senior high school (videregående) have officially provided (though not paid for) laptops, and as far as I can tell this has zero effect on the quality of the education provided. I speak from experience having had one child through the system before all this was common, one who attended when it was new and the third is now going through the same process with as far as I can see no greater quality of education than the previous two. If it doesn't result either in a reduction in teaching costs or in an improvement in the outcome then what is the point?
Posted in How hard is 3D printing?
Re: Not just prototyping
You beat me to it.
In addition to having the manufacturing fully automated my dentist has a screen in front of the chair so you can see the 3D model and then watch the progress of the cutter as it creates the crown. Not only much faster and accurate than the old way of doing it but fascinating to watch.
Unfortunately most countries either already have or are proposing to institute similar rules. Or in the case of countries like USA the security services simply ignore the rules against wiretapping.
Re: it's pretty obvious how to turn it off
The snide remarks about Opera are tiresome. And anyway Opera 12 has a Do Not Track option, and the default is off.
Re: And what..
>TFA didn't become practical in the consumer sphere until recently
Not at all. My bank here in Norway uses two factor authentication with printed one time pads by the simple expedient of sending me a credit card sized printed one time pad in the post. When I log in the web site asks for a specific one of the numbers in addition to my id number and a password that I can set myself. When it has used about two thirds of them it sends out a new pad.
Now I can also ask it to send send a time limited one time code as a text to my registered mobile so I can use either and I don't need to be concerned about not being able to log in if my mobile is not available.
Downvoted for trying to make out that something so simple can only be made practical by the application of high technology.
Re: Why C
>makes good reading for any C programmer
Not just C programmers. A lot of the rules in the JPL Coding Standard are worth following in any imperative language. Also it is written in an admirably down to earth style.
Re: interruptable...
Summer? I take you don't know much about Scandinavia. It is now only 10 deg. C in the midle of June here in Norway 40km south of Oslo. And the cooling plant would not be shut down in the winter it would be used to transfer the waste heat to a district heating system via an industrial scale heat pump of the same sort that we use to pump heat out of the river here to warm up pavements to keep them ice free.
Re: interruptable...
Perhaps they should locate them in a country like Sweden where district heating is very common, or Norway where it is becoming common, then all, or at least a lot, of the waste heat can be used for space heating and keeping pavements clear in the winter.
I know this is strictly off topic
but why has the Register never covered any of the launches by Copenhagen Suborbitals? See http://copenhagensuborbitals.com/ for some real professionalism on an almost non-existent budget.
Non lucror, exposita scientia, ad astra.
Tux because 'The project is both open source and non-profit in order to inspire as many people as possible, and to envolve relevant partners and their expertise'.
Re: Yes, I do believe IT does, in a series of bright flashes and swift crashes too.:-)
Long time no see! Welcome back, or possibly forward if the signal is superluminal.
Re: Too many people get the basics wrong...
I'm curious. You wrote a well reasoned piece that sounds very plausible and appears to be written from experience. You are also in a business where effective advertising can make the difference between selling your product and not selling it yet you tell us neither your own name nor that of your 'main app'. Why?
And even before it crashes it doesn't work properly. Never mind the jaw droppingly bad UI.
Posted in Sweden: talk, text and drive? OK
Re: Downvoters are missing two points:
>Swedes can probably do a pretty good side-by-side comparison
I'm afraid it is not quite so simple. Road construction standards and the topography are quite different between the two countries. Roads in Norway frequently follow contours along the edge of a fjord or lake and are just barely the minimum 6m width. Even major roads generally have no hard shoulder in Norway whereas many even quite minor roads in Sweden have a broad hard shoulder which slow traffic can use briefly so that faster traffic can safely overtake. And of course the Swedes have a lot more dual carriageway and motorway than we do. So it would be reasonable to expect that the same distracting behaviour would have more serious consequences in Norway. Head on collisions are relatively common here, especially in winter when the road is even narrower because of snow piled up at the edges.
But still, congratulations to the Swedes for taking a rational attitude to the matter.
Would have used the I'll drink to that icon but it#s much too expensive here.
Re: schweinebraten and russ roulade...nom!
"No serious company will run software which is out of support."
Anyone making such a laughable statement should be willing to put their name to it.
Re: Free stuff
"There are still quite a lot of Windows only tools in the office arena."
And you know the names of some that are relevant to Iceland? Perhaps you could tell us so that we could either tell you how to get around the problem or indeed let us learn of a real reason the stick with Windows.
Posted in iPad 3 'first tablet' with Bluetooth 4.0
Re: Re:
That's just ridiculous. I use it everyday and transfer several megabytes of pictures. I've just sent disc one of the remastered Made In Japan (128kbps, MP3) to my N73 from my Acer One, it took 14 minutes and is 70MB, that's just over 80k byte per second. That's fast enough for MP3 streaming.
Granted it is not as fast as WiFi would be but then I would need some kind of router and my mobile would need both WiFi and access to the network. With a peer to peer connection like Bluetooth I can transfer data even where there is no network or where my device does not have permission to connect, for instance, in my office where only company computers can connect to the wireless network.
Posted in iPad 3 'first tablet' with Bluetooth 4.0
All the time
I have a Nokia N73 with which I take a lot of photographs. Both my Windows laptop and all my Linux boxes automatically copy the pictures and video via Bluetooth. Also when I want to take a shopping list with me it is convenient to type it on a computer and send it to the mobile. Of course it is also a good music player so again I send tracks to it via Bluetooth. If I could afford the data traffic I would also use the mobile as a 3G modem.
Re: I think
As a one time Unix admin I still think the idea that you should be able log in as root is strange. On our DEC OSF systems the one would log in as an unprivileged user and use su to become superuser just for the time necessary to perform a task and then end the su session dropping back to your normal privileges. No one was every allowed to actually log in as root.
sudo on Debian/Ubuntu seems a good solution to me (typed on my Acer One running Debian).
Re: "quite successful"
It's probably American English where 'quite x' means 'exactly x' as opposed to English usage meaning 'barely x' or 'only just x'. At least that's what I've been told.
If I were more certain I would have used the grammar Nazi icon.
My objections begin at the first paragraph
which says:
"THE PARTIES TO THIS AGREEMENT,
NOTING that effective enforcement of intellectual property rights is critical to sustaining economic
growth across all industries and globally;"
This assumes something that is by no means proven. Namely that enforcement of 'intellectual property rights' are 'critical to sustaining economic growth'. The early history of the USA suggests that it is by no means a foregone conclusion that the assertion is true.
Even if we discount the possibility the agreement is a bad one made for bad ends it is quite reasonable to think that its premises are faulty and that it will therefore not have good effects.
But as Armando Ianucci once said
in a different context: it's getting hard to write satire now because it's hard to tell the difference between satire and reality (something vaguely like that anyway).
So stop using Twitter
and use identi.ca instead, or as well.
And no one mentioned Cory Doctorow's Makers
http://craphound.com/makers/
Not to mention Printcrime http://craphound.com/?p=573
I don't think you have missed anything
because it certainly isn't clear from the article how it will work.
However Sugata Mitra has a track record of this kind of thing so you can be pretty sure that it isn't as silly as El reg has made it seem, take a look at http://www.ted.com/speakers/sugata_mitra.html
Are you trying to wind us up?
Or are you serious? Sounds mightily unlikely to me.
Posted in Psst, kid... Wanna learn how to hack?
I upvoted this post but
you say:
"To me learning to program is learning to use a tool like learning to drive or use a hammer. Not an end in itself. If it is the end, where are the jobs for this mass of kids? These days the grunt work of programming is done in India and China. Maybe there are a few specialists here and there and Uni CS departments will need a handful post-grads."
So what happens when the Chinese are rich and don't need our money anymore, how are we going to afford to buy their products if we don't generate any wealth of our own? Don't forget that they have perfectly good universities of their own, it isn't just our unskilled workers they don't need, they don't, or soon won't, need our high level expertise either.
