Posts by Kristian Walsh

If that's true, and they think OSX is an answer to this, they're bigger idiots. I suspect the "security" is a retroactive justification for not choosing Windows, when the real reason is a preexisting corporate cultural bias against Microsoft products. It's not like Google wouldn't have good IT staff...

I'm predominantly a Mac user, but I also use Windows 7 and 8, and these are just as (in)secure as OSX, and the anti-malware security measures on both OSes are just as easy for a busy user to click through.

The only difference between the platforms I can see is that the attack vectors in Windows are exploited relentlessly, whereas those in MacOS X have been largely ignored to date. ("attack vectors" doesn't just mean security holes, but things like website popups styled to look like system dialogs, or email mesages styled to look like Outlook's UI; these stick out like a sore thumb on MacOSX, but are less noticable on a Windows system).

Re: So where are the Whiteknighting MicroSoft Shister-Team

Simple question: How can an Android OEM change the default search provider or default mapping solution? "Default", meaning the one that opens when you're sent an address in a mail, and choose to search for it.

I know it's possible to do this when you don't use the Play Store, so can someone explain the technical reasons why the Play store cannot coexist with a non-Google search or navigation system?

I fully understand why IE was not a requirement for the proper operation of Windows, and why Microsoft's claims to the contrary were lies. I'd just like to know why the same lie is not a lie when Google tells it.

@AC Re: GPS is shite ....

Couple of points:

First, It's not the brand of GPS that's a problem; TomTom is as good/bad as Nokia. The reason the route is "wrong" is because it's based on partial knowledge. There are plenty of very good shortcuts in central London, but you've got to know WHEN they're shorter than taking the "long" way... (and that comes down to things like knowing what time of day/night the local hotels and get their laundry deliveried).

Second, you can file a report against a cab driver if you think he's abusive, and the Public Carriage Office are only delighted to hear about bad drivers. Full contact details on this page http://www.londonblacktaxis.net/complaints.htm (The driver's licence is on the back of the car)

My small experience with black cab drivers is that there's about 30% of them who are grumpy (fine, they're there to drive, not entertain), about 5% who have opinions I disagree with strongly and the remaining 65% who are courteous and efficient. Considering they spend their working life driving in the hellhole that is London traffic, it's amazing that there are any reasonable ones at all...

Re: @ Kristian Walsh (was: Harden your browser)

How do you get around California without a car, Jake..? It's not like you know about every single system inside it, is it?

You don't know me, but you still assume that your knowledge of everything is superior to mine... There's a name for someone who reasons without facts... Several names, in fact, but you've already been called them all by now, and maybe you still think it's just jealousy from us "stupid" people.

Re: Interesting

Without your story losing any relevance as an example, I think you have confused ICL and ICI.

Re: All those steps required?

Make a "warez" app-store, that has this app bundled into every download, then publicise it on message boards.

People will disable every kind of security measure if you convince them that those checks are only put there by "The Man" to stop them getting stuff for free...

Re: Still way too expensive

Weight and size. If you travel a lot by air, you'd be happy to pay £100 for every 100g you don't have to haul in your cabin bag in a mad dash between airport terminals. Even with the type cover on, it's about 250g (about 1lb for those in the 18th century) lighter than a similarly-priced MacBook Air.

As an aside, I'm glad that someone has realised that widescreen sucks for laptops. While getting an old 4:3 iBook working a couple of months ago, it struck me that despite the lower resolution, the screen format worked better than 16:10 or 16:9... especially when every OS takes vertical slices out of your screen space for window bars, toolbars and menus. The 1.5:1 ratio is also close enough to the A-series's 1.414:1 ratio to make this a very good tool for reviewing and annotating documents when used in portrait.

I can't help thinking that if this had been an Apple launch, it'd be hailed as a revolution...

Analogue, and it not being digital... and why 192k could be useful, not audible

Bravo Stoneshop for mentioning the -3 dB measure. A lot of people talk about "Bandwidth" of analogue systems and think that if a system has "20 kHz", then nothing beyond that is registered when that's only true of digital sampling. In practice, the recorded signal level rolls off beyond this point (just as human hearing does).

I'm surprised that the author didn't consider the anti-alias pre-filtering of the original analogue material when producing CDs. Often the fitering starts at around 16kHz with gentle rolloff, rather than 20 with a sharp cutoff, because CD's high-frequency phase response isn't particularly good (a problem that's solved by using a higher sampling rate, although beyond 96 kHz, it's hard to make a case on "listener" grounds). Also, sharp-cutoff filters have "leaky" passbands, allowing alias signals through: another problem fixed by using higher sampling rates.

I accept that nobody can hear anything much over 18 kHz, and most adults with the money to spend on fancy hi-fi can't even hear 15 kHz anymore. That is statistically speaking, however, and there are a very small number of people who retain a wide hearing range well into their 40s and 50s, but never much beyond 15kHz. But it's still odd to see a defence of the 44.1kHz sample rate of CD as if it's scientifically based: it's not, it was the highest rate that could be placed on NTSC U-Matic video-tape without the machine's horizontal-blank insertion destroying some sample packets. The fact that every subsequent format has used 48kHz or multiples of it, shows that it wasn't quite good enough. 16 bits also wasn't quite enough for preserving linearity of low-level signals; 24 appears to be the minimum for preserving everything that's audible as the signal goes through its various stages from studio, to medium, to replay, to ear. (I'd argue that the extra bits of the "high res" formats are more significant than the extra samples)

There are also a couple of non-technical advantages of higher bitrate formats: mainly, they require components and system makers to work to higher standards. Before CD arrived, most amps (non-hifi) had a 15 kHz top end, because that was good enough. As noted above, most adults can't hear beyond this anyway, but an amp designed to only reproduce 15kHz is going to be working reasonably close to its fastest swing when reproducing a very audible 8kHz, and failure to track signals accurately will increase harmonic distortion. Signal-to-noise was also not a real issue at this time, as all sources had quite high noise floors anyway.

Suddenly, CD players arrive, and amplification needs to nominally support 22 kHz. That means new ICs and transistors (valves, if you're rich enough to run Class A, and not care about your electric bills) with a faster slew rate (the speed at which an amp can change output voltage), which means more accurate tracking of signals in the audible band. Similarly, the lower noise level of CDs pushed equipment makers to produce lower noise amplification, which is a good thing in general, because for other, analogue, sources the noise floor still had small amounts of signal buried in it; signal that a lower-noise amplifier would now not obscure.

So, if 24bit, 192kHz audio became commonplace, we'd have amps that are good for 30+ kHz, with an improvement in linearity in the audible range and noise. What's not to like? So what if it's driven by marketing fluff? So was CD, and it raised the bar.

But the real, hidden benefit of 24bit 192kHz is something that the author almost touched on but then left hanging in the air: and again it has nothing to do with human hearing. Room-tailored reproduction. If you're designing an active, adaptive speaker system to compensate for the room's acoustics, your task is made a lot easier if you have a source signal with lots of resolution, as rounding and errors are less significant, and lots of samples, giving finer control of signal phase..

Right now, home cinema system DSPs already upsample to higher rates before applying processing, but upsampling a signal is no match for working with more original data. It doesn't matter that this extra data is inaudible to listeners; it still allows the processing equipment to produce a better audible signal after applying lots of other processes to it... after processing, a CD-quality signal can never have the fidelity of the original (you cannot add information by processing a signal, only remove it). On the other hand, a 192k/24 signal, after processing, can be every bit as good as the unprocessed theoretical CD signal.

Britain* (exclusions apply)

It's simple:

"Britain" = Area covered by a wave of the hand over Map of Europe somewhere to the North-West of Belgium to distract the viewer while waver silently mouths the word "England".

"England" = 1. A small village in Shropshire where they still play cricket on a village green every Sunday. 2. Any number of sports teams drawn largely from places that don't actually exist, they being north of London, yet not in Scotland.

"London" = Ornate tax-haven for Russian oligarchs. When lit professionally, it looks a bit like Cardiff.

"Wales" = Rugged outcrop west of London. Locals friendly despite epidemic of nasal catarrh.

"Scotland" = Oilfield and country-sports resort off the northern coast of London. Invented everything important. Except whisky. They print their own special money to make sure none of it ever leaves the country.

"Northern Ireland" = Not actually part of Britain, except when it is. Populated by two factions, both of whom want to live in different countries, but who are afraid to leave in case the other changes its mind and stays. Sometimes mistakenly called "Ireland", which more correctly refers to "Ireland, the Republic of": a rustic revenue transit-point for American corporations, also vehemently not part of Britain, despite all cultural, sporting, commercial, legal and societal signs to the contrary.

Use of adjectives:

"British" = Scottish or Welsh or Northern Irish person who has just succeeded at something on the world stage; or English person who has spectacularly failed to do same.

"English" = English person who has just succeeded at something on the world stage.

"Scottish", "Welsh" = Scottish or Welsh person who has spectacularly failed and/or disgraced themselves on the world stage.

"Irish" = Warning: unless you've got documentary proof that you are talking about a citizen of the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland, this word is best avoided, unless you actually intend to start a heated and pointless argument that will rage for days.

Note, none of these should be confused with the special noun, "Briton". This is reserved solely to describe a holder of a passport issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland who has just come to a very sticky end very far from home.

Helpful comment?

Dear Guus,

I am at an utter loss as to why you don't know what the English idiom "to teach oneself" means? Reason being that you have composed a message in grammatically-correct English whose sole purpose seems to be to insult the original poster.

Re: Zero compression

I seriously doubt the "zero compression" thing. Sounds like marketing gimmickry to appeal to uneducated customers who just think "compression= bad", while not realising that compression in an analogue medium isn't the same as in digital.

All analogue recordings are compressed at some stage. Often at several stages. If they weren't, you wouldn't be able to hear them half the time, and you certainly wouldn't be able to listen on headphones without risking serious damage to your ears.

Fetish is a good description of the modern attitude to analogue. It's better "because analogue." - and that's the about the depth of the knowledge behind the dogma.

I like analogue - the world we live in is analogue. But, there's no reason why a digital recording can't match and exceed an analogue one (the reason is that the "recording" isn't one step, but several, and in an analogue chain, every process raises the noise floor, something that's only true of some digital processes).

The reasons why CDs in particular sound like crap have nothing to do with the digital audio technology, and everything to do with misinformed record company execs forcing mastering engineers to do terrible things to their work. Here's a very good example from Ian Sheppard of Dynamic Range Day : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-O5l6NSsdY

Re: "What methodology is used to calculate StatCounter Global Stats?"

Herr Berger, if you think El Reg is "Pro Windows", you're either not reading its coverage of Microsoft at all, or your other reading is so rabidly anti-Microsoft that it has skewed your judgement.

After twenty years online, the Register is the one site I still visit daily. Firstly, because they're an equal-opportunity cynic. Nobody gets a free ride: not Google (the tech press's current Golden Child), not Apple, not Microsoft, and not the Free Software business. The fact that everyone accuses the staff of being biased against their favourite OS/company is a good sign....

(The other reason I still come here is that its one of the few news sites where the user comments actually add information and reasoned opinion to a lot of the stories; long may it continue)

@Tom Re: @kraut, re: goto fail;

To be a little clearer, I generally only use that syntax when checking function returns. For comparing boolean variables in expressions, I do use the ! operator.

The reason I do this only for functions is that it's consistent with the way you'd check for numeric error-codes. (e.g, "if ( eNoErr != thisFunction() )").

I find the use a ! when checking function calls is a little too subtle, simply because about 50% of APIs I've ever used use 0 to mean "no error" and the other 50% use it to mean "not successful". (dishonourable mention here to Apple's CoreFoundation that gives no status at all for operations that can actually fail under some circumstances).

For performing "logical NOT" on variables inside expressions, of course, I do use !, but only if the variable is actually a boolean. I do not write "!x" when I really mean to ask "has the value of the counter/numeric variable x become zero". It'll all end up as the same CPU instructions, so I think it's better to say "x==0" when I mean "test if zero" and "!x" when I mean "test if not true", if only to help the maintainer later on.

Especially as the maintainer may be a future me who has completely forgotten how the code works.

Re: Must be the hippy in me...

Speaking of co-op games and STs... Bubble Bobble!

(I can hear that bloody music in my head now!)

Re: Nextweek Security through transparency

The Internet of Things might be a geek fantasy, but the Internet of More Than a Billion Addressable Computers certainly isn't. Also, the unequal geographical distribution of IPv4 addresses means that India has just over half the number of static addresses per head as the Isle of Man: 29 per head, versus 54 for IoM; the remaining UK has 1,958 per head; the USA has 4,911. [ source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_IPv4_address_allocation ]

Because of this, businesses in India often have to contend with ten levels of NAT. That's ten routers that can fail between your company server and your customer's; ten routers that have to be paid for in your service plans; ten routers that slow your traffic. And getting a static address? Hah!

Even in IP-rich countries, getting a static IP address costs money, something IPv6 would abolish. But the lack of an agreed 4-6-4 translation mechanism makes it difficult to integrate (and also a lot of ISP routers just don't talk 6 at all, which rules out virtually every Small/Medium Enterprise and home worker)

One other problem is that most networking professionals have made their career on getting IPv4 to work in an exhausted address space. IPv6 removes the need for that experience, while posing a new, unknown set of challenges to their customers' networks.

I've never met a good network engineer who says things like "hey, let's deploy this everywhere because it's the cool new thing": Network engineers are cautious and conservative profession, and that's a good thing if it's your job to keep a vital infrastructure up and running. (Same goes for water, gas, electricity...)

Until ALL the migration problems are solved, it just won't be done. But these problems won't be fixed in the West, but in countries like India and China, where the need is greater and more pressing..

Re: KitKat - no complaints?

Despite the name changing from a J to K, 4.4 really is just a "0.1" release; bugfixes, a few APIs and performance enhancements. Nothing to get excited about from a user's point of view. It fixes stuff people didn't like, and doesn't add too much new stuff for them to dislike.

WindowsPhone 8.1, on the other hand, despite being named like a "0.1" release is a actually a huge revision to 8.0. In Android terms, it's like the move from Gingerbread to Ice-cream Sandwich. Holding the version at "8.1" is a marketing decision, basically, to support the message that there's now a common API for both desktop and mobile "8.1" platforms.

Re: Three cheers for the EU

Creating jobs in the fire-damage repairs, glazing, and street cleaning industries doesn't count as manufacturing innovation, so civil protests are irrelevant in this study.

If you don't like the current government, you should round up a mob of like minded people, march down to the town hall... and register to vote.

Re: Am I missing something?

Yes, you are.

While I was having a crap yesterday, I had an idea about using nanotubes to make a new class of super-light, super-dense batteries. I must check to see if I'm a millionaire by now.

This may come as a surprise, so sit down: The mental and physical effort required to conceive an idea isn't even a tiny fraction of the effort needed to bring it to reality.

Re: Cuing the obligatory audiophile discussion regarding sample rates...

So even slight head movements will affect the phase relationship.

Yes, but while you were surviving to adulthood, your brain had plenty of time to learn how to compensate for the movement of your head.

After all, a human race that couldn't place sources of sound while their heads were in motion would not have survived long enough in the wild to be able to eventually make specious arguments on internet forums.

Re: anybody remember the $999 Ruby app on the iPhone?

Apple only pulled "I Am Rich" when two of its eight customers complained that they'd installed it in error. [ L.A. Times report here : http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/08/iphone-i-am-ric.html ]

The app's description was very clear: It said that it did nothing, and the sole purpose was to show your friends* that you're the sort of person who's so rich they can throw a thousand bucks away like that. As such, it didn't violate the App Store rules. (Had it dared to show a woman's nipples, or two men holding hands in a loving relationship, we'd have been spared such a scam, but no, the author chose a picture of a ruby, so that was okay).

* yeah, if you're the sort of person who throws a thousand bucks away to show off, those people who hang around you are definitely your friends.

Re: 'and if you need sideloading keys, you can purchase an unlimited number for around $100.'

"I just don't agree with the bloody fee"

If you're a personal user, and it's own software you want to run, on your own machine (and remember this restriction is only for Metro/new/whatever apps), then you can get a developer key for nothing.

If you're a business, it's likely the fee won't apply:

"As of May 1, 2014 customers in the following Volume Licensing programs (regardless of what product they purchase) will be granted Enterprise Sideloading Rights and provided with a sideload key at no additional license cost: Enterprise Agreement, Enterprise Subscription Agreement, Enrollment for Education Solutions (under a Campus and School Agreement), School Enrollment, Select and Select Plus.

"other customers who want to enable sideloading will be able to purchase an Enterprise Sideloading key for $100 through the Open License program. An unlimited number of devices can be enabled for sideloading using this key."

[ source: http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/springboard/archive/2014/04/03/windows-8-1-sideloading-enhancements.aspx ]

The $100 is most likely there to dissuade malware authors from conning you into allowing side-loading of their shite over the phone, and also to allow MS to automatically kill such shite if it does get there.

Your learned colleague is indeed wrong about Apple: they do allow enterprise customers to sideload to iOS devices, but only as part of a $299 a year Enterprise Developer programme, and it's open only to registered businesses, not individuals (a reasonable restriction, I think, given the intended use case). Although that figure does include some dev support hours, it's not clear what happens to your ability to install apps when you stop paying Apple... It's still a better deal than the original programme, where you had to prove to Apple that you had enough employees and, obviously, iOS devices to be "worthy" of a sideloading key... pricks.

Re: Too Little Too Late

"The world has moved on from Microsoft's proprietary API's to FOSS solutions like Android, ChromeOS, Ubuntu, and SteamOS. "

With the exception of Ubuntu, all of those are like Free, Open-Source Software, but not actually FOSS. However you build them, the free sources of Android can't make the Android or ChromeOS that Google gives to its OEM partners.

To add to Jamie's point, above: I'd argue that the products that have done most commercial harm to Microsoft are Apache, PHP and MySQL, but I guess as they're not GNU-licenced, they don't count?

Re: Can I play the analogy game?

That's funny you should say that, as Chrysler had a similar fate after allying themselves with a giant German company that in hindsight nobody should have trusted.

Today, Mercedes are neither beautiful nor reliable. But it wasn't Chrylser that did this.

Chrysler's quality actually nosedived after Daimler came on board, simply because the German engineers didn't understand how to do mass-market car production. The Mercedes brand had relied heavily on retroactive quality fixes on failed units during manufacturing; something you can afford to do at Merc's margins, but not on a Dodge. So, they started to abandon the few things that were working in Chrylser (notably its then-new lean-manufacturing quality programme) without addressing the problems.

Luckily, with some Italian technology and manufacturing know-how from Alfa Romeo/FIAT, their quality problems are becoming a thing of the past. Mercedes, well... less so.

(The worst car I ever owned for reliability was a Mercedes A140, Bought from new, it had three gearboxes fitted before I gave up and accepted that 2nd-3rd would always grind the box; then the steering and suspension failed, outside of the very short warranty, leaving me to pay £1200 to fix it. All within 24,000 miles.)