Re: Optometrist Algorithm
" Which is better for actual vision?" Doug's
I've a feeling your optometrist is asking you which you prefer
Posts by John H Woods
2483 posts • joined 14 Nov 2007
Page:
Amazing new algorithm makes fusion power slightly less incredibly inefficient
Adobe will kill Flash by 2020: No more updates, support, tears, pain...
Re: Webmasters, get your act together!
Ookla does actually have an insufficiently publicised nonflash version
But how does our ransomware make you feel?
Re: This isn't RESEARCH its validating known work.
I'm no psychology expert, but is that a huge chip on your shoulder?
Even if the "PhD on the team" as you call him (actually a senior lecturer) had published this in a journal, collating, reviewing, assessing and validating other research is in itself a bread and butter research activity. But he's not even doing that, he's producing a report he has been commissioned to write.
Ten new tech terms I learnt this summer: Do you know them all?
Re: Testiculate
I doubt it. Military slang for long enough from me to remember it from childhood in JHQ Rheindahlen...another useful Mil. portmanteau is the term for someone who is a bit of a dick and gets in the way... Knobstacle.
Re: Testiculate
It's waving your hands about and talking bollocks.
Did they only get half the joke?
Why you'll never make really big money as an AI dev
Q. What's today's top language? A. Python... no, wait, Java... no, C
Re: In over 40 years of programming ...
(Languages sort: [:x :y | x excellence > y excellence]) first name = 'Smalltalk'
US laptops-on-planes ban now applies to just one airport, ends soon
Re: Guns
"What does this mean? Potentially-dangerous objects being carried on to planes *is* the context." -- bloodbeastterror
That's exactly what I meant ... one of the great things about El Reg is that it's one of the few publications that bothers with context whilst others sensationalise terrorist threats, Tesla crashes, SpaceX failures, vaping "risks" etc.
Perhaps I should have used a <sarc> tag...
Re: Guns
"It's kind of weird that the gun stats were thrown into this article"
Indeed, increasingly few news publications understand the importance of context.
Jodie Who-ttaker? The Doctor is in
Re: Not my opinion!
I told that riddle to a female med student (and serious feminist) and she couldn't solve it. Shows how ingrained it is.
User left unable to type passwords after 'tropical island stress therapy'
Re: the nub of the issue...
Ah, I may not have been clear, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. Almost nobody would consider it reasonable to phone the Mechanic with nothing more than "my car doesn't work," so it's not unreasonable for us techies to require more than " it doesn't work"
We're not asking for technical knowledge, just basic observation!
the nub of the issue...
Whilst it is perfectly acceptable for a user to refer to an inability to access the Internet as "the Internet is down [let's have a tea break]" it's not really an appropriate thing to say to a person from whom you seek technical assistance. The blue E has gone from my desktop; I get a dialog box when I click it; it always says Page not Found... I'd have no problem with any of these, just as I'd expect any half decent mechanic to be perfectly satisfied with a client who says the vehicle pulls to the right; vibrates over 50mph; clanks when you change gear.
Nobody expects users to do their own diagnosis... just please be a little less unhelpful!
Man facing $17.5m HPE fraud case has contempt sentence cut by Court of Appeal
Re: Automatic halving of sentence - the joys of a stupid system
"He'll be in the slammer forever..."
No, after 30 rounds of that a 50 year sentence would be down to a couple of seconds.
€100 'typewriter' turns out to be €45,000 Enigma machine
Swimbo
chucked out 3 pristine Model M keyboards whist I was working away from home. Almost divorce.
Adult toy retailer slapped down for 'RES-ERECTI*N' ad over Easter
Re: Its offensive that I must treat people who claim to believe in a sky fairy...
Many of the famous names in science believeD in God, yes.
Of course science and religion wouldn't cross over if the latter didn't make claims the former could prove false.
Fundamentalist scientist? What's that? Someone who refuses to entertain proposition for which there is no compelling evidence whatsoever?
FREE wildcard HTTPS certs from Let's Encrypt for every Reg reader*
Re: There is a dark evil danger to the big uptake of HTTPS
I agree... any but your own WiFi is the wild west... The only thing I'll do after login is go to the appropriate (corporate, client or personal) VPN.
Unless you want a huge download or have poor signal, I agree that mobile is the usually the best bet.
Decent mobile data speeds and allowances are widespread (my 12GB/£13/mo is just about perfect for me) and gets at least a few Mb/s in most places, more than enough for most work purposes.
Plus... No need to register a temporary email address; no need to keep signing back in (not to mention the difficulty loading the signsign-in page when your browser wants to HTTPS) and no having to randomize your MAC to limit tracking.
Microsoft boasted it had rebuilt Skype 'from the ground up'. Instead, it should have buried it
a colleague skyped me..
... for some advice. I replied there were two options: a) do a particular thing b) do some other thing.
I then pressed return and looked on in dismay to see that Skype had, in my already sent message, translated A and B into the angel and beer emojis respectively.
El Reg partners with Action for Children to give IT industry an uncomfortable night
Re: @ ACs
"fully free market involves slaves and the wealthy"
No... read Wealth of Nations and you'll see that Adam Smith himself had a very good handle on the constraints needed to ensure the free market worked its magic. What you're describing is closer to a post-apocalyptic anarchy, not civilised capitalism. But then maybe that's what we are closer to ...
Five-eyes nations want comms providers to bust crypto for them
Arms race ...
Although the codebreakers have been snapping at the heels of the codemakers ever since the end of the Second World War, I'm guessing they will remain a little behind right up to an eventual limit where all non quantum cryptography can be broken instantly, and quantum cryptography never.
Even then, I suspect there'll be absolutely no way of detecting, let alone comprehending, a signal formed by including, in set of innocuous looking Facebook photos of the account holder's dogs and cats, say three pictures in succession of only the dog.
And all this effort for what ... to counter a threat that takes less lives than bathtubs, let alone traffic.
US engineer in the clink for wrecking ex-bosses' smart meter radio masts with Pink Floyd lyrics
Linus Torvalds slams 'pure garbage' from 'clowns' at grsecurity
Re: Ego Overload
"@John H Woods: Ridiculing somebody by calling them a clown isn't an ad-hominem? Riiiight"
Correct. Ad hominem is not a fancy synonym for name calling. It means attacking someone's work, argument, position, etc. by just attacking them personally ... " I wouldn't even look at their code, they're Trump supporters, it's bound to be awful"
HTH HAND &c
Re: Ego Overload
@Snorlax
Rejecting someone's technical input "because they are xxx" is only ad Hom. when xxx has nothing to do with the matter ... if xxx is (as implied) "technically substandard" then it may lack justification, and it might be rude, counterproductive or even false ... but it's not really an ad hominem attack.
Capita flogs Asset Services division for £888m
Latest Windows 10 Insider build pulls the trigger on crappy SMB1
Genoans flout terror ban with bumper basil hand baggage policy
Re: Why would anyone bother?
Did you forget to toast your nuts, or are you leaving that to us?
Researchers take the piss with pee-powered liquid energy project
Re: Ethanol resistance
oh, microbes are pretty good at evolving ... and once you have a mutation with a small reproductive advantage (usually because they've found a way to reduce production of the product (including electrical energy) you're interested in, a tiny advantage of <1% will result in the less productive strain overwhelming your bioreactor within days (at the outside) and you'll have to flush the lot, resterilise, and start again.
Re: like pavement power...you are looking at am absolute max of 5W per person.
Voyna, I took it for granted that we all know the relationship between energy and power.
You are right, of course, that with my max. 5W and your entirely reasonable 10% efficiency, you could power a moderately busy smartphone all day. But I still think that unless you are processing vast quantities of urine a day, you are going to struggle to get enough energy out to do more than manage the material handling and bioculture maintenaince.
There's better, and less sticky and smelly, ways of getting a few kJ of energy when you are off grid.
BTW, according to this urine solids are about 1700 kcal/kg so the 2000 max I "picked from empty air" doesn't look too shabby.
like pavement power...
... this is nonsense. Max solids in healthy urine 40g per litre, maybe 60g per day. Max calorific value of those solids is 2000kcal per kg. If you can get them all out ofsolution for free (you can't) and you can oxidise them 100 percent efficiently (ditto) you are looking at am absolute max of 5W per person.
You'd probably be better off with a nice clean baseball hat with a solar panel in the peak than messing about with stinky sticky solids and unreliable bioactive films.
NASA's Kepler space telescope finishes its original mission catalog
Re: We are soo not alone in the universe.
"Did I read correctly. every 4000 or so planets gives around 40 - 50 earth like candidates" -- Avatar of They
You read correctly.
"(call it 10% then)"
You call incorrectly.
Pedantry aside, up voted because it is pretty amazing ... even at 1% that's a lot of other "Earths" and my mind is similarly blown.
AWS launches celebrity-spotting-as-a-service: What a time to be alive
Re: misfortune to resemble a celebrity ...
... is the least of your worries. I'm going to have people on the train thinking Anders Breivik has escaped ...
I fought Ohm's Law and the law won: Drone crash takes out power to Silicon Valley homes
BA IT systems failure: Uninterruptible Power Supply was interrupted
Nothing leaked to El Reg
I am extremely suspicious that nobody from the inside has tipped off the Reg with the real story. it suggests an unfeasible level of loyalty (given all the outsourcing) or that nobody involved reads this esteemed organ which, in turn, suggests a paucity of people who actually know anything.
US laptops-on-planes ban may extend to flights from ALL nations
Re: Trump: Making America shit & taking the World with it.
I doubt the President of the USA would be shot by one of his own agents* but I think even as POTUS one might be wary of accidentally oversharing Mossad Intel...
* oblig. CIA wetwork joke: How do we know the CIA wasn't behind the JFK assassination? Well, he's dead, isn't he?
Sergey Brin building humanitarian blimp for lifesaving leisure
Re: Vought XF5U
Thanks, Yank ... I continue to learn more in the comments of El Reg than almost anywhere else.
British prime minister slams Facebook and pals for votes
Re: Get it right...!
You mean all those interviews where he repeatedly condemns all bombings? And in fact the IRA campaign specifically the other night.
Re: What we need is increased tolerance
"FGM? you drank the koolaid!"
I am also against religious circumcision of minors but not only is it quicker to type FGM it is much worse in terms of the effect on adult sexuality, and serves as a better example. And that's what e.g. means...
Re: searching for any grievance
Possibly also overcompensating for having been a bad, pot-smoking Muslim who liked looking at girls. I wonder if there was a psychosexual motive for what appears to be a very specific targeting of young women and girls in particular. As with the Orlando shooting, i suspect it's a guilt-driven serial killer mindset looking for a higher justification.
Re: What we need is increased tolerance
This is only possible If you actively combat intolerance. You can tolerate all the beliefs in a society, but some of those stupid beliefs lead to unacceptable practices (e.g. FGM) and those practices absolutely cannot be tolerated.
Cultural relativism is bogus: some cultures are superior to others.
WannaCrypt ransomware note likely written by Google Translate-using Chinese speakers
AI-powered dynamic pricing turns its gaze to the fuel pumps
If you spend 10 minutes trying to save £1 you're working for less than minimum wage, even before the expense of taking your car on an unnecessary detour, let alone a specific journey.
Dixons Carphone: Brexit not a factor as Brits' gadget lust holds strong
Could it be ...
... that DSG customers are more likely to be optimistic about Brexit than those with the brains to shop elsewhere?
IT firms guilty of blasting customers with soul-numbing canned music
EU security think tank ENISA looks for IoT security, can't find any
please...
Rule 1) No access without credentials
Rule 2) All devices have different default credentials
Horse named 'Cloud Computing' finds burst of speed to beat 'Classic Empire' in actual race
Re: Take offense at "nag"
All humans are descended from a handful of ancestors, too. But for any sensible measure of "inbred" say a duplicated ancestor within four generations, your kennel club dog is much more inbred than a racehorse. Bearing in mind what horses are bred for (sporting excellence rather than physical traits) and that, naturally, horses have a herd structure where only a few males father the next generation, the idea of thoroughbreds being "inbred" needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Wannacry: Everything you still need to know because there were so many unanswered Qs
Opinion sought
As I continue strongly advocating better file management, storage and backup as the key* defence against ransomware, I'm very interested to hear from people who think this is the wrong approach.
Also, what do people consider the current state of the art with respect to internet facing file stores? So far I've got certifcate-based sftp on a non-standard port with fail2ban or similar, all other ports firewalled.
* emphatically not underplaying the importance of up-to-date FW, AV and OS.
