* Posts by paulc

770 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Oct 2007

Page:

Fukushima reactor shell ruptured?

paulc
Alert

World Nuclear News is way behind

on what is currently being reported, which is a major pity as a few days ago, it was the only place to get current news about the problems. One wonders if the Japanese are sitting on things and no longer making their reports as they are supposed to do

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/default.aspx

Chicken Little report: Sat-nav dependency spells DISASTER!

paulc
Stop

Unskilled Monkeys?

"A bridge watchkeeping officer who can't cope on passage without an electronic chart and automated collision warning is an unskilled monkey hardly worth paying:"

but that's what the ship owning corporations WANT... unskilled monkeys... they already get their bridge crews from the cheapest nations on earth, now they want to take advantage of as much automation as possible to completely deskill the job so that unskilled monkeys can do it...

Google contradicts own counsel in face of antitrust probe

paulc

Perjury...

requires actual knowledge that what you are saying is untrue... that's how microsoft execs were able to escape perjury charges during the DOJ trial... they were deliberately kept in the dark about certain things so they had no knowledge that what they were saying wasn't true

Router-rooting malware pwns Linux-based network devices

paulc
Linux

Note the true common theme...

Insecure PCs running MS Windows...

Canonical pares Ubuntu down to 2 editions

paulc
FAIL

Just get wireless sorted...

it's a total clusterfsck...

everytime there's an update, it breaks... you cannot trust that it will work from kernel update to kernel update let alone version update...

My netbook claims the module is loaded etc. but does it even see a wireless node 6 inches away? does it fsck...

'Self-incriminators' may be forced to tell the court what they know

paulc

Such a pity...

corporations cannot be executed...

Courtney Love coughs up $430k in Twitter rant settlement

paulc

only things she's ever got right were these:

http://www.gerryhemingway.com/piracy2.html

http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2000/06/14/love

Eurofighter Typhoon: It's EVEN WORSE than we thought

paulc
Happy

EE LIghtning

"Their is an AIrframe in Nottinghamshire and, if it has not been removed, one just SE of Newark East of the A1."

there's also one at BAE Warton, but you can't see it from any public vantage point...

I loved Lightnings... even got a jolly in a twin stick one as well...

Solution found for climate change: Nuclear war

paulc

It's coming...

the excuses for the exchange are being prepared already (the coming problems between Europe and Islam)

and the elite are already organising their bunker spaces...

Traffic-light plague sweeps UK: Safety culture strangles Blighty

paulc

faked the lights?

"Wasn't there a suspicion that Red Ken had deliberately faked the lights to cause congestion as a way to justify the congestion change?"

they did the pre-congestion charge traffic surveys in a week during term time and the post congestion charge traffic surveys during the school holidays when the school runs weren't happening

Judge guts suit against Sony for killing Linux in PS3

paulc
Alert

Who actually owns the box?

this is a fundamental question upon which this case and the other one hangs on...

If the customer "owns" the box, then Sony are dead in the water in BOTH cases as they have committed an unauthorised intrusion upon the customer's hardware and also the "hacker" cannot possibly commit unauthorised intrusion upon his own system in order to jailbreak it....

Virgin Media kills 20Mb broadband service

paulc

poor picture quality

no, that's just them squeezing in more HD channels into a fixed bandwidth...

they're dropping the bit rate on non HD services and increasing the compression which is introducing horrendous artifacts into the picture...

The Internet signal is a completely different frequency to the telly signal which is what enables the splitter box to work in separating the internet carrier off to the modem and the telly signal off to the cable box...

Pirates: Good for Microsoft, great for open sourcers

paulc
Stop

Everyone wins?

"Nor is this developer alone in discovering the value of piracy to increasing sales. Microsoft has long allowed rampant piracy of its software in places like China. Why? For one thing, it's a great way to keep users from trying alternatives like Linux. For another, a pirate today can be converted into a paying customer tomorrow, or perhaps helps to create a network effect great enough that fence-sitters who aren't pirates end up paying for Microsoft products.

Everyone wins."

BZZZTT!!!!! wrong... Linux doesn't win because it is being denied a fair chance at the customer

Lawyer wants WikiLeaker kept off suicide watch

paulc
Grenade

Nuremberg Defence?...

<blockquote>Thus, under Nuremberg Principle IV, "defense of superior orders" is not a defense for war crimes, although it might influence a sentencing authority to lessen the penalty. Nuremberg Principle IV states:

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."</blockquote>

Private Manning is being denied his moral choice to defy superior orders... he was leaking evidence of possible war crimes...

Google gins search formula to favor its own services

paulc
Stop

Mapquest...

If you want something on mapquest, then you should be putting mapquest into your search string... Google aren't telepathic when it comes to determining what site you want the result from...

if you add mapquest to your search string, then the mapquest item is the first returned result... along with loads of others on mapquest...

Basic Set Theory, which should be explained to all numbskulls when they can't find what they want in a search engine...

search gloucester in Google, get about 19,100,000 results with the google maps for gloucester shown first in the header result

search gloucester mapquest in google without quotes gives about 32,900 results with a mapquest link for gloucester massachussets first

search gloucester mapquest uk in google gives me about 45,200 results with a mapquest uk link first

HBase: Shops swap MySQL for open source Google mimic

paulc

milk carton on heatsink

had to put a milk carton on the heatsink and a thick rubber band holding the RAM pack tight against the expansion slot so I could get a program typed in and saved off on my ZX81...

ah the joys of having the puter crash or restart halfway through cos the voltage regulator had overheated or else the RAM pack had wobbled...

ended up building a custom case for it in the end with the heatsink bolted to the aluminim case and the RAM pack screwed hard into place...

and the good old days when printers came with a cable and a massive manual complete with enough info to hand code your own printer driver if needed

paulc

bugs

and he was finding real bugs as well...

EU law not tough enough for online piracy, says Brussels

paulc
Pirate

"Harmonisation" a misnomer surely?

When the EU "harmonise" laws across all states, what always happens is that all the laws end up at the worst for the public... they never get slacker to harmonise with the least repressive laws.

It's a ratchet effect... and freedom always suffers...

Microsoft embraces ARM with Windows 8

paulc

pure vapourware

they have a long history of it... pre-announcing something to cause OEMs and customers to put off purchase decisions

Ballmer says Windows on ARM isn't about ARM

paulc
Stop

pure vapourware

they have a long history of doing it... pre-announcing something to get customers and OEMs to delay purchasing decisions.

Novell's Microsoft patent sale referred to regulators

paulc
Flame

Patently stupid

Patents should NOT be allowed on what are ideas... (that includes algorithms, software, business processes etc.)

there should always be a model or working example provided...

The claims should be written in Simplified English (or relevant local language) NOT legal "gobbledegook".

selling or other transfer of patents (except to relatives via a will) should also NOT be allowed...

you can't afford to market your invention, then licence it to someone who can...

a patent that isn't marketed within 5 years should be automatically void... also outlaw "submarine" patents, it has to be completely filed and issued within 5 years of first application.

In case you haven't guessed... I F*£king hate software patents...

New spaceplane proposed for NASA station crew contract

paulc
FAIL

Shuttle safety records...

First was most definitely a case of management press-on-itis (under pressure from outside) and resulted in launching OUTSIDE the permitted temperature envelope for the O-ring seals (overriding the engineers who knew there would be problems with sealing the gasses)... they just HAD to launch, everyone was waiting for it, especially the media with the first teacher in space...

The second, yet again was a management screw up as they'd had evidence of ice striking the underside on previous launches but as they'd gotten away with it, they kept on riding their luck...

I'm seriously sad that here we are, well on down the road and they still haven't got anything in place... I used to have lots of models of concept spaceplanes back in the sixties... there was a whole range of different Dyna-Soar variants you could buy in the toyshops... and they're still shit scared of a winged re-entry vehicle and want to keep the oh-so-tried-and tested spam-can concept

Patents do not protect small firms, says trade body

paulc
Stop

Dust off and nuke it from orbit

it's the only way to be sure or getting rid of the currently seriously borked patent system...

Try reading a patent... they're impenetrable and most certainly do not enable one skilled in the art to reproduce the claimed invention. To whit, they're useless. Bring back the requirements for a working model of the invention... that would get rid of most of the useless idea patents we have.

You know the type: "Selling candy to babies, but with a computer..." or "selling candy to babies using an internet site"... oh how so non-obvious... anything that looks or smells like just an idea should not be allowed unless accompanied with a working model or source code that can successfully compile and when run actually does what is claimed on the box...

Browser add-on updated to slaughter Firesheep

paulc

wondered what happened yesterday...

I'd updated https everywhere and suddenly most links on facebook were forcing me to log in when following them... restarted firefox and then came back in and things started working properly again

Ten... sub-£50 budget MP3 players

paulc
Stop

Linux support?

Unless the player supports .ogg & .flac files and also appears as a removable drive when plugged in via USB I don't want to know

Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect

paulc
FAIL

Pointless as most houses in the UK are too small

not enough room to swing a cat in, let alone use this new device...

How I built a zero energy cost, zero carbon home server

paulc
Stop

What happened when the sun went down?

You were trickle charging big leisure batteries during the day I hope...

This article has implications for those of us who want to go off grid in mobile homes, caravans, tents and boats...

Falklands hero Marine: Save the Harrier, scrap the Tornado

paulc
FAIL

Carriers

If we'd had proper aircraft carriers with gannets and phantoms back in '82, the argies wouldn't have dared... but no, we had those poxy little through-deck cruisers with ski ramps that allowed previous administrations to get away with scrapping the real carriers

Top Ten Retro PC Games

paulc
Stop

What?

No Civ, Railroad Tycoon

no golf games: PGA Tour (the old pre 486 version), Links 386 to name a few...

and distinct lack of any version of Flight Simulator (FS 98 being my favourite, but FS 5 has a soft spot in my heart for all the time spent creating scenery and planes for it)

App Store II: Steve Jobs sucks Mac's soul

paulc
Unhappy

GPL software?

From what I'm seeing on the web, the Apple app store is completely GPL incompatible in that it imposes restrictions on the customer in addition to those of the GPL itself. And Apple's response so far is that instead of making their app store terms GPL compatible, are just removing GPL'd apps from it... Customers are being denied choice and their rights under the GPL are being infringed.

Trucker jailed for deadly motorway gamble

paulc
WTF?

WTF?

were they doing searching his laptop... all they needed was evidence of whether it was on and if he was on facebook at the time and using it.

Anything else was a fishing exped... and should have required probable cause as to whether it should be searched for.

of course, it would have been amusing if he'd had the laptop encrypted and refused to divulge the password...

PARIS grounded by whipping wind

paulc
Stop

Flight tested?

we still don't know if the plane has been balanced and trimmed to fly. There is nothing on this vital subject...

Is it just going to be dropped from altitude with no attempt to trim it correctly?

Royal Navy running-jump method confirmed for F-35B

paulc
WTF?

big nets...

I would like to propose catching them with very big butterfly nets...

New Euro multicopter aims bitchslap at American X2, V-22

paulc
Stop

Fairey Rotodyne?

Just google it and look at what we could have had 50 years ago if it hadn't been for political interference... oh and it didn't help that the airports got involved in draughting nois regs that made it impossible for the Fairey Rotodyne to actually do it's job in flying in and out of central London... nah, didn't want to lose valuable executive transport to something that didn't need an airport...

Las Vegas death ray roasts hotel guests

paulc
FAIL

Cue oblig Thunderbirds quote...

in old man voice:

"It will be a great disaster"...

google the episode where the solar mirror to beam the sun's rays into a dark alpine valley falls over when struck by lightning and the next day starts a fire when the misdirected reflections hit a thatched roof...

Vulcan seeks further £400k refuel

paulc
FAIL

Poor salesmanship...

As it forms such a major crowd draw, then perhaps they should have set the appearance fees higher to ensure it remained commercially viable...

Crash grounds RAF Eurofighters - for Battle of Britain Day!

paulc
WTF?

naff off Lewis...

the grounding is ONLY for non-operational flights... if we went to war, they'd be given a waiver and any modifications needed would be given a crash priority (scuse the pune... ).

General Motors bitchslaps Tesla with Range Anxiety™

paulc
FAIL

battery stations?

"Battery stations, where they simpy change your battery for a full one, now I wonder what type of places would be suitable for this?!?"

would require some degree of standardisation to become effective... there would have to be laws to force manufacturers to use standard battery packs...

we all know just how difficult it is to source battery packs for laptops with each manufacturer having different ones and ones that are not even standardised amongst their own products...

Paul Allen launches patent broadside on world+dog

paulc
Stop

no...

"It is up to the court to determine if this patent describes an obvious device or a practical invention. It does include specific formulaes for rating and correlating interest, but those would too narrow to apply to the implementations of Netflix, Google, Apple, et al.

-dZ."

It's time for all software patents to be invalidated immediately unless, and only unless, they are tied to an implementation on a specific machine as a way of enabling the machine to perform the function...

software running on a general purpose personal computer should NOT be patentable at all... only stuff like software that enables something like an MRI scanner to function where it is tied to that particular machine and even then, the patent should only run for ten years at most... plenty of time to make money out of it before the machine (+ software) becomes obsolete

Linux kernel purged of five-year-old root access bug

paulc
Thumb Down

complete utter bollox...

"As I recall Linux was derived from previous strains of Unix and included uncorrected bugs from its predecessors."

^^^ Totally false... ^^^ as well as the rest of your gibberish...

OpenSolaris axed by Ellison

paulc
WTF?

Solaris?

monumentally boring film... I've never been able to stay awake all through it... trying to watch it beats counting sheep for getting to sleep...

Oracle sues Google over Java in Android

paulc
Gates Horns

Personally I suspect that

Microsoft are really behind this attack on Google... after all, who really benefits from it? Especially as there's a host of Android based tablets coming out and getting them blocked from import into the US will benefit Microsoft as they have a load of Windows 7 based tablets coming out as well...

London tenders for speed cameras

paulc
Black Helicopters

replacing speedbumps YES!!!

"Replacing speed bumps is also interesting in the Chinese sense. It means more GATSOs in suburbs and boroughs, showing off how safe you are by leveraging another hidden road tax. And because of lower traffic there, lower yields, making the things less likely to yield enough to pay for themselves."

they've got some of these in notorious rat-run estates in Gloucester... they work and there is no need for speedbumps making life far easier on the suspension and no screeching tyres as people brake hard for the speedbump/Gatso...

the estates with them are now nice and peaceful and no longer used as rat-runs

of course, the other use of these average speed cameras is sources for ANPR hits... bit difficult to drive an untaxed car in and out of the estates as it pings on the Police system

Google patents search that tracks your mouse moves

paulc

touchscreens FTW...

cos there's NO pointer to hover with, you just tap on the screen surface

James Bond's autogyro revived by Brit spec-ops pilots

paulc
Thumb Up

Germans towed them behind submarines

so they could spot convoys from far away...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP6VnbeWXSY

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Focke-Achgelis_Fa_330

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Fa330-100503-Cosford.jpg

NHS loses massive Microsoft licensing rebate

paulc
Linux

simple choice for employees

"Our source said the only alternative - a move to open source software - was unlikely to overcome reluctance from staff to move to less familiar systems."

give them a simple choice... adapt or quit...

eBay whacked with giant patent suit

paulc
Stop

Ideas are NOT patentable...

only the specific implementation of it... and as far as I'm concerned adding "with a computer" and/or "stored on computer readable media" does not make it patentable...

a patent should only be awarded for something that physically exists and there is a working model available lodged with the patent office... what we're now seeing is so much obfuscation in the claims that it's nigh on impossible to work out what the actual patent is for or for one skilled in the art to reproduce it.

Patent claims should be written in plain language and accompanied with clear instructions so that the invention which is being protected can be reproduced.

paulc
FAIL

you forget the fundamental problem...

these patents should not be granted in the first place as they're basically patenting an idea with a flowchart and a computer involved...

Life on Earth gets wiped out every 27 million years, say boffins

paulc
IT Angle

orbital period?

question, how long does it take the solar system to perform an orbit of the galaxy? also while doing so, wouldn't we be passing in and out of the spiral arms (I believe they are waves of compression and do not orbit at the same rate) and therefore in and out of material which would block the sun's output significantly.

SCO rises from the dead (again)

paulc
Thumb Down

management, not lawyers...

the lawyers only do what their client is asking...

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