* Posts by Antony Riley

212 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Nov 2007

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MySQL's growing NoSQL problem

Antony Riley
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Seriously.

Why is it news that a product in a new market segment shows more growth than a product in an old crowded market segment.

Anonymous hacktivists dump 1.7GB load slurped from DoJ site

Antony Riley
FAIL

Worrying...

... that they seem to be more concerned about having their website defaced than private data stolen from it.

VIA outs $49 Raspberry Pi-alike

Antony Riley
FAIL

Re: gpu

Knowing Via is has some awful non standard homegrown chipset which has little or no support.

Dear Via, if you'd ever shipped the nano cpu with anything resembling a working & supported graphics chipset I'd have considered buying one.

Amazon takes on Microsoft Azure head on

Antony Riley
Coffee/keyboard

The Cloud Formerly Known As Azure

You sir, owe me a new keyboard.

Solar quiet spell like the one now looming cooled climate in the past

Antony Riley
Joke

This would make a lot of crackpot astrologers right, I hope it doesn't go to their head.

Pirate island attracts more than 100 startup tenants

Antony Riley
FAIL

So it's basically Sealand on a boat in a more useful location.

The fail is strong with this one.

Nokia dinged with shareholder lawsuit over poor Lumia sales

Antony Riley

Well they're kinda right, apart from the bit about "Did not tell share holders".

It was blindingly obvious from the point when they made the deal with the beast onwards.

Are Valley VCs playing hide-the-money?

Antony Riley
Coat

So the question is: do VCs deliberately help the companies they invest in inflate their valuation so that they can be sold on for a profit?

Isn't that a bit like "Do bears shit in the woods?"

Google, PayPal protest against Brits' pay-by-bonk threesome

Antony Riley

I wouldn't trust my payment details going through any big multinational payments company (visa, mastercard, american express). Unfortunately there's not really any alternative these days, one imagines phone/nfc payment will eventually replace plastic in ubiquity.

PR mag: Let promoters edit clients' Wikipedia entries

Antony Riley
Coat

The bans there because PR firms don't seem to know the difference between factual and fanciful.

WTF is... UltraViolet

Antony Riley
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To Sum Up

Digital distribution platforms need to pay more attention to pleasing prospective customers and much less on making retailers and rights holders happy. What a piece of shit.

Antony Riley

Re: Remind me?

I was going to downvote that until I saw the joke alert icon :)

Nature ISN'T fragile nor a bossy mother-in-law - top eco boffin

Antony Riley
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I'd never say nature is fragile, but I'm not happy with the opinion that humans can't twist nature to serve them without unintended consequences. It's a very complicated and poorly understood system, and changing it often results in unforeseen consequences which often have a direct, negative impact on man:

Salination of crop land in Egypt.

Salination of crop land in California.

Dust bowl in the US and Canada in the 30s.

Soil erosion in the amazon rain forest due to deforestation.

Soil erosion in southwest China due to human activities.

I'd agree that nature will balance itself out in the end, but lets not forget that humans are a part of nature and we might be subject to balancing out.

UK hacker jailed for nicking PayPal, banking data from MILLIONS

Antony Riley

Re: A fair cop

It's a well known fact that they only throw the book at you if you attempt to profit or cause wanton damage.

ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. - Humans begin artificial CO2 emissions

Antony Riley
Happy

"Then, disaster, as annoying British people worked out ways to turn burning fuel into useful energy wholesale."

Whilst I've nothing against blaming the British for everything, I think you're giving them too much credit here.

Google ads 'misleading and deceptive'

Antony Riley
Coat

If they moderate 3rd party content in any way (and they do) then they are liable. You either serve as a blank slate for all comers or become liable for your content, there is no way out of this.

Use the holy word of God to stay secure online, says bishop

Antony Riley
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Re: urandom

You forgot to count the amount of time it takes you to type it in, also, for this purpose you should probably both be using /dev/random not /dev/urandom.

Zombie LulzSec brags of exposing loved-up privates

Antony Riley
Stop

If there's anything that's going to invoke national pride and piss off a lot of people it's something directed against the service men and women of the country on a personal level, who are getting paid pretty badly to do a fairly crappy job*. It's a pretty stupid thing for LuLSec or people claiming to carry on their work to do from a publicity point of view.

However labeling it "terrorism" is silly, I think childish and stupid is more appropriate.

Regards the security risk - I suspect this sort of website counts as 'low hanging fruit' in the cyber espionage game, and they either already have the data, are incompetent or most likely don't care.

West Yorkshire Gay Police Association in email list leak FAIL

Antony Riley
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Re: Wembley Police (Met) have made the same mistake

They're the police, since when did learning to use computers apply to them?

if year > 2013 then PC != Personal Computer

Antony Riley
WTF?

And in other news...

...in 2012 Gartner will continue to produce studies that have less credibility than some of the more 'out there' articles on the register, and get paid more for it.

Nanocapacitor slab to boost car batteries

Antony Riley
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Re: when in doubt, complicate.

- Significantly extend battery life time, especially in pathological cases.

- Capacitors of a similar size to a battery typically weigh a lot less.

- Capacitors typically have a much larger operating temperature range.

Antony Riley

Re: Capacitance in uF or...

rated at at least 14 volts and 150 farads according to the linked video.

Mozilla to drop Windows 8 Firefox bomb on IE 10

Antony Riley

"The other is whether or not Mozilla's work will easily transfer to Windows on ARM, about which Microsoft has said very little and for which a Windows 8 Consumer Preview is not available."

They'd have to do something pretty screwed up for it not to, remember there's lots of 3rd party Firefox packages for obscure processors, these guys should have more experience with multiple targets than Microsoft (Anyone remember the failure that was NT for Alpha?).

'course that's assuming that Microsoft haven't screwed up Windows on ARM and made it horribly incompatible...

NASA: The future of space is public/private partnerships

Antony Riley
Joke

Re: PROFITS?

Interplanetary LPG shipments...

3D: 10% of LCD TVs in 2011, 25% in 2012

Antony Riley
Boffin

Re: So...

Given a TV or DLP that can hit 100 or 120Hz, active 3D is virtually free with the addition of an infrared led (and the opportunity to sell 100 quid accessories ad infinitum, only compatible with your product), nearly all TVs are HDMI 1.4 (has option for 3D support, which is just a handful of simple video encodings the TV must understand) compatible now anyway.

Of course when choosing between two TVs which are exactly the same in specs, punters typically by the one with the big "3D ready" logo.

I don't think the industry is pumping prices, just using it as an opportunity to sell brand locked accessories (which isn't much better, but anyway).

GitHub reinstates Russian who hacked site to expose flaw

Antony Riley
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Common practice for severe security bugs to 'vanish' to a developer only section of the bug tracker, though not notifying the poster privately is stupid and far too common. Happened to me before.

Unlikely they just deleted the ticket, more likely to languish at the bottom of the bug queue for years if they didn't see it, so both versions of events are perfectly plausible.

Banning the account was over the top when he did something innocuous for a bug which could be used for many nefarious purposes, irrespective of EULA crap.

Tick-like banking Trojan drills into Firefox, sucks out info

Antony Riley
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Re: Correction - firefox on MS's rubbish OS's

No, it installs in ~/.mozilla, which means no matter your operating system you are still very much vulnerable.

Hacking scandal: James Murdoch quits UK newspaper biz

Antony Riley
Coat

Re: Re: Unequal extradition?

Unfortunately I don't place that much trust in the US legal system, remember OJ?

Death to Office or to Windows - choose wisely, Microsoft

Antony Riley
FAIL

Flabberghasted.

By the same logic, because I refuse to use windows because it's a broken operating system, and LIbre Office does everything I need, everyone will switch to Linux and Windows and Office are both going to die.

Unfortunately not everyone chooses their operating system on the same criteria as me, nor Matt, and making that assumption, even in an opinion piece on the register is ridiculous.

Microsoft blasts 'web video killer' Motorola Mobility in EU gripe

Antony Riley
WTF?

"He said companies including Microsoft, Motorola Mobility and others had made a pact to make such patents available on fair and reasonable terms."

Isn't this known as price fixing and fairly illegal?

Ubuntu for Android: Penguins peck at Nokia's core problem

Antony Riley
Coffee/keyboard

I wonder if these guys have somehow all moved into an alternate reality where Ubuntu Unity is anything other than unusable and people actually want to use Windows Phone.

Microsoft claims Google bypassed its browser privacy too

Antony Riley
FAIL

Oh dear, someone made a specification whereby websites are trusted to communicate their privacy policy correctly to the user agent? What sort of idiots would come up with such an idea, it's no wonder it never got any traction.

http://www.w3.org/2002/p3p-ws/registrants.html

Were I a shareholder in Google I would be calling them idiots for not making use of this to enable 3rd party cookies in IE and Safari with default settings (every other browser allows them).

Probably also worth a mention - how to disable third party cookies in most browsers:

http://www.bobulous.org.uk/misc/third-party-cookies.html

Personally I think Microsoft are the fools in this for including half baked browser privacy protections and then blaming other people for bypassing them.

Apple goes to European Commission with complaint about Motorola

Antony Riley

Bored of all these 'Obvious to someone practiced of the art' patents.

Given a touch screen pocket device, how is making some obscure gesture on the screen with visual feedback patentable?

Surely it's obvious, you have to use a gesture as otherwise the screen could be unlocked accidentally, and you have to use visual feedback otherwise the user is never going to figure it out.

The only part you could argue was even vaguely non obvious is not just using an obscure button elsewhere on the device, on the grounds you can power down the touch screen completely thereby reducing battery usage.

I thought patents were supposed to help innovators, not protect market leaders and stifle innovators by making it impossible to produce anything which doesn't violate a dozen trivial patents.

Megastar personalities are intellectual property in draft law

Antony Riley

That'd require SeaLand to sign up to international IP treaties.

International enforcement of IP is a horrible mess, made worse by the Internet. It's a horrible subject which could be argued at length.

Antony Riley

You're right, it's still funny though.

I could have called it just another example of lawyers making laws more complicated to ensure their future fruitful employment. Any attempt to simplify laws by making new ones (without repealing older, more complex legislature) is a joke. But that'd be boring, depressing and right.

Antony Riley
Paris Hilton

RIP Political Satire

Paris Hilton icon, since it'd probably fall foul of this law, where it to ever come to pass.

Googorola's desire for iPhone royalties will upset Apple cart

Antony Riley

Apple says that "seeking an injunction would be a violation of the party's commitment to FRAND licensing".

Why does this remind me of the whole Samsung Galaxy Tab 10 fiasco? Admitedly this wasn't related to patents subject to FRAND licensing.

Microsoft ad campaign savages Google over privacy

Antony Riley
Big Brother

Single sign on.

I'm finding Google's single sign on, and ability to switch between accounts a time saving feature. I actually don't really care how much they know about me, since I block the vast majority of their ads anyway. However I'm not very happy that by extension the DHS knows all about me.

New Earth-observing satellite snaps 'blue marble' shot

Antony Riley
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NPP

Wonder why the call it polar-orbiting then? Reading the article ftw.

Greenland 'lurched upward' in 2010 as 100bn tons of ice melted

Antony Riley

Irrespective of whether the reg is right or not, I suspect your figure of 99% of climatologists is entirely wrong.

Apache: Old, out of touch, but worth it...

Antony Riley
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Storm in a teacup, not newsworthy.

Most people don't care what someone uses for source control as long as it works for them. The only really major bonus of git over subversion is working offline, git is significantly more difficult to use.

As far as ASF forcing people to use subversion, maybe it's their source revision control of choice, but I'm fairly sure they don't force all their projects to use it, couchdb being an example. Sure they'll always be resistance from people familiar with one technology to using a new one, but I don't think it's some organized top down policy.

RIP mice and keyboards: Kinect for PCs incoming

Antony Riley

Funny how we keep replacing accurate fast input devices with slower "more intuitive" devices.

UK nuclear: Walking into darkness with eyes screwed shut

Antony Riley
FAIL

Author not qualified.

Lewis, if you want anyone to listen to you you'll have to stop quoting the most conservative estimates of deaths, even the WHO quotes (an eventual) 4000 deaths from Chernobyl as a result of cancer related deaths.

It would also have helped if your articles about "Don't panic there hasn't been a meltdown, and even if there was the containment wouldn't fail" regards Fukushima had turned out to be correct at any of the running reactors.

New pics of giant black sphere hurtling toward Earth

Antony Riley
Boffin

I think I'd rather be more than 100km away from the impact point if there was a snowballs chance in hell of it actually hitting the earth.

http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?dist=100&diam=400&pdens=3000&pdens_select=0&vel=13.7&theta=90&tdens=&tdens_select=3000

Even if it's made of ice and impacts at only 30 degrees, it'll still make a substantial crater according to that site. Meteroids < 10m in diameter sometimes survive the atmosphere, so you can be pretty sure one which is 400m in diameter (that's 1600 times as massive) is gonna make a pretty big dent.

Ginormous sunspot spews solar guts towards Earth

Antony Riley

Not earth directed (yet), so it isn't going to cause geomagnetic storms or much trouble other than radio blackouts from the flare activity. Hopefully it'll chuck a few CMEs our way and light up the sky in the north in a few days.

Spotify 'sold soul' to boy king Zuckerberg

Antony Riley
Pint

Jesus, they cost 20 quid each these days?

It's been a long time since I bought a (new, album) CD, I guess it's going to continue to be a long time.

I struggle to justify more than 20€ on a computer game, let a alone a music CD.

Save it all for the beer fund.

Meltemi is real – Nokia’s skunkworks Linux

Antony Riley
Thumb Up

This is the first thing for a long time I've heard about Nokia that hasn't made me think 'omg wtf are they doing'.

Maybe the positive reception for the N9 in the few places it has shipped has helped some people see the light.

It will take me more than a few Microsoft sponsored gartner studies to make me believe windows phone will ever be anything but a flop.

Ed Miliband signs up for another hour of insults from Twitter

Antony Riley
Joke

They're cracking down on short terrorism? Some sort of new midget threat? I would have thought if they wanted to get back into power they'd avoid mentioning terrorism given the mess they made of it last time.

Ex-Microsofties' IE6 kill squad hits UK

Antony Riley
Thumb Up

Write crap software, give it away "free", then charge for cleaning up the mess later, sounds like win-win.

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