Posts by Steven Knox

@Oninoshiko

"Search a loss-leader."

And that means nothing. Markets can exist around loss-leaders. Look at the games console market. The majority of games consoles are loss-leaders for the sales of video games, yet there are analysts whose entire careers are based on watching the games console market.

"Google is an advertising company. Google users are not their clents, Adwords users are. even if they do somthing that we all love, if adwords users hate it (and start to leave because of it) it wont stay around."

Sounds a lot like the broadcast television market. You only neglected to mention the equally important third leg of the triangle. Google's users are like television's watchers -- they're the audience -- i.e, the product sold to the advertisers. If people start to flock to another search engine, just as if a network's ratings drop, the advertisers will lose. So Google has to sell search as much as it sells advertising, just as broadcasters have to sell their shows as much as they sell ad spots.

So search is as much a market as broadcast television is. That's why Google continues to invest in its search technology and why broadcasters continue to invest in new programming.

Why not..

just issue stillsuits to the ISS crew?

The one with the gom jabbar in the pocket, thanks.

Coding

Yes, coding for IE6 is a pain, and yes, coding for IE7 is better.

Coding for IE7 is very easy. Simply ensure that you have the XHTML doctype, and then when the page still doesn't render correctly, tell the user to get a functional browser.

But Shurely...

The JesusPhone provides the perfect Internet Experience and so tethering is completely unnecessary anyway, right?

re: re: The Sony works?

"Clearly by trying to view PDF's on a ebook reader, [Trygve is] failing to miss the point. "

Absolutely true. How dare he realize that a portable ebook reader with built-in and advertised PDF support might be used to view PDFs! Like you, he should miss the point entirely and not use any additional features on any product he buys!

Bollocks!

"It then hides itself on a computer's master boot record, making the infection extremely difficult to find. About the only remedy for victims fortunate enough to learn they are contaminated is to reformat their hard drive and reinstall their operating system."

Any PC manufactured within the past 10 years has MBR protection built into the BIOS, and good antivirus software has had MBR protection for at least 15.

Also, a quick check of the major AV vendors' sites indicates they are all aware of this trojan and can detect and remove it.

Finally, you can easily find (and fix) an MBR infection by simply booting off any disk other than the standard one and running the tool of your choice. Reformatting a partition does NOTHING to the MBR. The jackass who told you to reformat is simply giving IT pros a VERY bad name.

Or...

"The fact that the systems IPS has in place have identified just 16 instances of unauthorised access over the past three years, and these resulted in 14 dismissals, is testament to the way in which the agency protects its data and the seriousness with which it views breaches,"

Or it's a testament to the weakness of the IPS systems. Only 16 of 4,000 misused data?

BTW, a pedant would note that according to the second para. of the article, there were no instances of unauthorized access, only instances of unauthorized use. I'm not, so I won't.

Based on the quality of the new series...

<- You might as well go whole hog.

Point Missed

Vista failed for two major reasons:

1. Microsoft allowed users and OEMs to install it on machines that were vastly underspecced for it (or to take another view, MS included so much bloat in Vista that it failed to perform well even on machines on which MS said it would.)

2. A good deal of existing hardware that was supported by XP could not be used in Vista. I remember that happing in 3.x -> 95 and 9x -> 2000 as well, but back then, the upgrade cycle was much faster (I would have replaced every component in my machine within a year back then. Now, I've been on the same hardware for over 2 years -- and I still don't feel a compelling reason to upgrade.)

There were other problems, but those two took the wind out of Vista's sails very early on, and were the major cause of the perceived performance problems. So a "Vista Test" should check an OS against marginal hardware and to pass, the OS would have to perform well. But you played with it a little bit on a laptop "loaned for the purpose". FAIL

Eggs -> Basket

See title.

What Books?

I wonder what books they used for this test. Were the subjects allowed to chose something that interested them, or were they forced to read a specific book or one from a list? Was the subject matter informative (i.e,primarily stimulating only data retention) or entertaining (possibly stimulating data retention, visualization, problem-solving, etc.) My guess is that people were simply less interested in the book-reading tasks, and so less engaged.

Ironically, (from the UCLA newsroom) '[a]dditional details on the study ... are highlighted in Small's new book, "iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind," published today' -- meaning that to learn just how they determined that reading a book is less stimulating, you have to... read a book.

@sas

Well, only if they are numismatic fetishists, "[r]ubbing nickel-heavy alloy against sweaty skin _for_hours_"

@Stars Pedants

You're right. My bad.

I guess you're not civilized after all. Let me know when you've got the stars sorted.

Privacy Policy?

"We asked both companies to supply us with samples of their anonymized data...But Compete declined, saying this would violate its privacy policy..."

If the data are anonymized, how can a privacy policy even apply? How can you even have a privacy policy if you do not hold private information? Either the data are fully anonymized and therefore there would be no privacy issue in sharing samples, or there is a way to track the data back, say to specific IP addresses at specific times, thus to specific accounts, and so to specific people and hence the data are not properly anonymized.

Which is it, Compete?

Well there's your problem

"...it made no measurable difference to the performance of our test PC which was built on an MSI DKA790GX motherboard with a Phenom X4 9850 processor and 2GB of 1066MHz DDR 2..."

Well, duh. You have a respectable system there. Shutting down extraneous processes would only have significant gains on marginal systems -- the ones that need every byte of RAM and ever cycle of CPU to even qualify to run the game.

Let me guess: you also ran it on a clean install that was fully patched, so you didn't have to worry about Windows Update or the rest of the stuff that invariably takes more and more memory and CPU time as a Windows installation gets more use (i.e, the stuff this software was designed to help you deal with.)

Not quite

"... the link appears to point to https://securelogin.facebook.com/reset.php? ..."

No, it appears to point to http://securelogin.facebook.com/reset.php?...

"... the address bar shows only https://securelogin.facebook.com/reset.php?...

Again, it would actually show http://securelogin.facebook.com/reset.php?...

One would expect a tech reporter to know http from https. Of course, one would also expect a software developer to be able to write a proper URI parser. Perhaps one's expectations are too high?

@TeeCee

1. research != production

2. The earlier article mentioned the same perceived upper limit for TMR as in this article (1Tbit/in^2). TDK's development is well under this limit.

3. "cannot continue" != "will stop immediately"

4. Identifying a potential problem != FUD

$$$$$$$$ IS a title

Properly implemented, SSD may be able to win both the performance and capacity crowns, but currently their performance (especially per watt) can be dismal, and with a cheap 64GB [i.e, GiB] SSD costing ~$140 vs a low-end 120GB [~=111GiB] HDD coming in at ~$40 (which puts the prices at ~$2.19/GiB and ~$0.36/GiB respectively), which do you think will continue to be the standard for the near-to-mid future?

SSD will only dominate the market if and when the manufacturers implement intelligent controllers to get performance to where it should be AND bring the price down to no more than 2x the cost of HDD.

I see the net effect of the technologies mentioned in the article to be pushing that eventuality out into the distant future.

meh.

"UCSniff runs on a laptop that can be plugged in to the ethernet port of the organization being probed. "

So it won't run on a desktop, then? Does it only work for orgs with only one ethernet port?

I agree with AC* above. There's really not much that this tool can ethically be used for. Basically, if you organization's management requires you to use this tool to prove to them that they have to turn on encryption, then the governance problems in the organization vastly overshadow the security issue of unencrypted VoIP.

*See what you've done? You've made me agree with an AC -- and one with a case of Grocers' Apostrophe as well. Oh, and nice link to an empty site (http://ucsniff.sourceforge.net/) too.

Really?

"The flaw was a rare example of a bug that gives extra functionality to users."

I though the current attitude in commercial software development today was that anything that gives extra functionality to users is a bug.

Fair Enough

"...the only open source principle that doesn't get communicated is the actual source code."

And for that the only part of grudging respect they'll get from me is the actual respect.

Go Lightly

Now that's a name some security "professionals" should know better.

AC, Of course Stephens had a duty -- not to LookC, perhaps, but to their customers. It's not a duty born of law or contract, but of ethics. He was right to disclose the fact that there was a flaw, and he was right to disclose the existence of that flaw to both LookC and the general public. Where he failed is in publishing not just the flaw, but (a) how to exploit the flaw, and (b) further information on how to use Google to find flawed systems to exploit. If you wish, you may be able to justify (a) as giving customers the info needed to test their systems, but (b) does nothing but ensure that anyone can exploit any of the flawed systems. It doesn't help fix the problem in any way, and releasing that information without giving LookC or its customers time to respond to the discovery of the flaw, he did nothing but make the problem worse.

Oh God, more crap about fixed widths.

@Chris Miller: "I like my browser with a width of around 1080 pixels (on a 1920x1200 screen), in part so that I can view sites that display 1024 width pictures. The 960 width of El Reg seems to fit rather well."

You're joking, right? You're not actually stupid enough to not know that if El Reg was set up in similar style with non-fixed widths it would look ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME ON YOUR BROWSER AT THAT WIDTH, are you?

I advocate for non-fixed widths for two reasons, and two reasons only:

1. So that the page adjusts itself to screens/windows smaller than the one the web designer happened to use (so that we don't [often] have to use a horizontal scroll bar.)

and

2. So that the page adusts itself to screens/windows wider than the one the web designer happened to use (so that those with wider screens get more content for their investments and don't have to use the vertical scroll bar as much.)

My problem with your explanation, Mr. Lettice, is that I happen to develop web sites, and I know that you can have BETTER control over your site with non-fixed widths, if you know your CSS properly -- and you immediately score points with geeks like me, too.

Having said that, I find the new style of the Register to be easier on the eyes than the old style, and even with fixed width formatting, it's better than most of the sites out there. So, I'll probably just spend a few hours with Opera's Dragonfly working on a user-mode CSS fix for the site to satisfy my unholy obsession with percentages.

Mirror Edition MyBook

"WD also offers a RAID 0-protected Mirror Edition My Book"

s/b

"WD also offers a RAID 1-protected Mirror Edition MyBook"

WD's site implies that you can choose RAID 0 (striping), but makes it clear that you lose the protection that RAID 1 (mirroring) gives you.

AC, Please check the original source before complaining in the future -- or at least identify yourself so that we can avoid you. Thank you.

Icons

But you can't have an evil Google Icon, because they do no evil. How about a "Where's the Google app?" icon?

And to refer to (questionable) fact-checking, how about a Wikipedia icon?

I still want the dead vulture back, as well. But I'll settle for a live vulture as long as it eats that flaming onion.

Actually...

This is a very good idea, if you focus on "why evolution is a sound scientific theory and why creationism isn’t.”

The purpose of science is to explain how things happen, which more often than not means debunking "common sense" knowledge. It makes sense to contrast a given scientific theory with its non-scientific counterpart to show how the theory better fits the observed facts.

It's also good to highlight how a theory is just that: a theory. It's not the truth; it's just the best explanation we have so far*. Regardless of the fact that it's not based on the scientific method, creationism was for a long time the accepted explanation of life on this planet even among scientist. Showing how that was replaced by the theory of evolution, and how more evidence might replace evolutionary theory with a better theory in the future, would help students understand the evolution of science.

* So many creationism-bashers (even other commenters here!) don't seem to get this fact. Evolution isn't true any more than Newtonian or Ensteinian physics are true. But does fit the facts better than any other hypothesis we've so far come up with.

Is there a color version?

Do you need special toast to burn in the highest resolution?

How many spm can it do?

Does it duplex?

Admittedly, I'm biased...

My first mp3 player was a SanDisk (an m100 I believe), and they've alwas been my favorites, so I'm pleased to see them at the top of the list.

As for iTunes doing exactly what it says and just working, I guess I missed the part where it says iTunes will take up loads of space on the hard drive, install unwanted additions like QuickTime, and make an overly complicated mess of COPYING FILES.

With most non-iPods, esp. the SanDisks, you actually have the option to simply treat the player as another USB drive, so you can just copy the files using the file manager of your choice. No need for extra crap. What I'm saying (Missing Info) is that if you need supporting software*, then the player is crap.

*Other than, perhaps, a transcoder to optimize video.

Missing phrase?

"Joensson suspects even the survivors suffered DNA damage from radiation, but were able to genetic material."

Exactly how do you genetic material? Can you even verb genetic?

@Kanhef -- I rather suspect the scientists who came up with this idea were studying water bears and the conversation went something like:

"Man these things can survive anything!"

"Nah, bet they can't survive the vacuum of space."

"How much?"

IANAS, but even I've heard of the resilience of these little buggers. It's not surprising at all that a scientist familiar with their strengths would want to see how much they can survive.

The Problem With Focus Groups and Target Marketing...

is evidenced quite nicely in the posts here.

Sony and MS focused on the target market that they see, the ones who will waste their time in focus groups and posting comments to articles like these: the "serious gamers" (an oxymoron if ever there was one!)

Nintendo decided to generalize their console to give it mass market appeal, and it's worked. Yet still the "serious gamers" decry the Wii and fill fora with reasons why their favorite console will beat it in the end. Why? Because they've fallen into the same trap Sony and MS did: they've come to believe that perfomance and realism and immersion are what make a game great, when all it actually takes is a little fun.

@Tim Begal

"maybe we can then introduce wolves to predate them?"

Surely if we want the wolves to predate them, we should introduce the wolves first?

Surely...

they should power the chips this way as well, leading to Ultraperformance Nanophotonic Intrachip Voltage And Communications (UNIVAC)?

OK, I'll be arsed

"In reporting on previous instances of URL mainipulation we've been told that using the HTTP Post method of encoding a database query would mean that a requested page comes with a URL that looks like gibberish, reducing the problem of URL manipulation."

Whoever told you that should in no means be let anywhere near a web site. Using the HTTP POST method sends the query in the body of the request instead of the URL. It means URL manipulation is no longer possible, although content manipulation is still possible for those who know enough. Many websites continue to use GET and simply use some form of encoding/encryption to make the URL hard for a human to parse. That's hard, not impossible. The best answer right now, of course, is complete encryption and POST -- but as with most best practices, it's pretty much ignored.

@Paul Bennett

Obviously, they were measuring it in portrait orientation. And the extra ~.5m is the framing around the screen. (3.81*16/18.69~=3.32)

@Tony

It IS revolutionary. Nothing really exists until Microsoft has written their own version of it. It's how they've become the most innovative company in history.

Show Your Work

"the small risk of developing upper respiratory tract cancers nearly doubled"

So it went from @0.27% in the general population to @0.54% (325/@60,000) in the test population -- or from a @1:369 chance to @1:185?

Of course that's assuming that "more than 60,000" is actually close to 60,000, and not, say, 6.022x10^23. Seriously, these people are doing statistics, and the closest thing to a number they give us is "more than 60,000"?

I think they've found their market.

At $300, it's cheaper than most college textbooks!

Yes, well written.

I couldn't help but notice this little gem:

"However, after being starved and put in stress positions for some days, the US agents threatened that he would be taken to another nation and tortured if he kept silent."

Who starved and put the US agents in stress positions?

I also particularly liked the way you reported Mohamed's allegations in such a way as to read as reporting of facts, rather than allegations.

@"May in fact be a complete fabrication"

But every working CPU is a complete fabrication -- the incomplete ones don't work!

Alas for...

the poor state of reading comprehension. Used to be, anyone who could read was required to be able to identify satire in 5 words or less. But now that the lower classes are allowed in the schools, far too many people are reading well beyond their comprehension level.

Jim, my boy, it was a noble effort. But ours is a dying breed, for soon the progressives will make it illegal to write that which the lowest simply cannot understand.

Given: n=3a

Prove: n=3a

"As VIA SN hardware sells for £150 ... that suggests Nano might be three times the price of Atom. Ouch.

If so, it'll be roughly three times the price of a comparable Atom."

The Important Question

How long ARE the EU regulations on the export of duck eggs? I've checked the linked resources and found no answer to this critical issue.

BBoT?

A few questions:

If you bend all the light around you, how do you see where you're going?

Does painting the object pink first help?

How closely does the material resemble a towel?

code-named "Shrike"

Named after the bird, or the horribly-beweaponed metallic assassin from the Hyperion series?

<--- a shrike after crossing the Shrike