* Posts by Mage

9265 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

NASA spots 'new' star just 7.2 light years away

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Light blue touch paper?

So how much additional mass / gas would result in fusion?

Polymer droplets turn smartmobes into microscopes

Mage Silver badge

Re: truly microscopic breakthrough

I don't think this is novel. I thought that people already doing this many years ago.

Apple patents Wi-Fi access point location lookup

Mage Silver badge
Childcatcher

I dispair.

Please someone close the USPO.

Maybe if enough companies get enough of these stupid patents which are PURELY about stopping competitors launching real products and NOTHING about protecting the investment made in innovation someone will reform the system.

Maybe Apple employs more people creating patents than actually doing anything in a lab.

That's right, MICROSOFT is an ANDROID vendor after Nokia gobble

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: The Grand Plan

Google sells advertising space.

MS Sells HW, SW and Services.

They are not actually in the same market, though it might superficially appear so. Amazon is more likely to be the real direct competitor to Apple and MS in the long term as unlike Google they want to sell physical stuff and Services. Google's Services are all purely a means to the end of making money from selling advertising.

Google would happily scrap Android and endorse WinPhone if it gave them 80% mobile market and MS let them have the info for their Advertising business. Google is loyal only to Google making money.

I don't see WinPh displacing even iOS never mind Android any time soon.

Mage Silver badge

Re: the money is in the IP...

But MS only got a licence to use Nokia IP. It's all still Nokia's

Possibly Nokia still has the toilet roll, Welly boot, Satellite Receiver and TV set IP too.

Unlike most other Tech companies, Nokia has "re-invented" themselves many times. This time they really had to as the Bureaucracy and internal politics has been strangling making the right decisions for about the last 12 years. The take over of Siemens' Networks via NSN "merger" and Motorola Networks hasn't gone too well (Mobile Base Stations etc). Ericsson and Huewei may yet eat their lunch on that if they don't get sorted.

Samsung has plenty of IP.

Mage Silver badge
Trollface

Or maybe

They could swallow their ego, snuff out Windows 8 and Windows phone, sell android phones and a new hybrid NT-Linux with 100% Win API compatibility!

Tim Cook: Apple's 'closer than it's ever been' to releasing new product range

Mage Silver badge

Re: The Facts... Mac User?

Maybe < 5% of purchasers were Mac users then and iTunes was pretty useless without Internet. Even today Broadband isn't universal and some Western countries a 1/3rd have never used Internet. I have broadband. But almost all my music and video is dowloaded on plastic disc via a physical trip to shop or postal delivery. Then I "rip" the CD and put it in a safe place.

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: "And it’s an area where nobody has figured it out yet."

That's sort of bizarre, a Mastercard Debit card fed from Visa Credit card via PayPal.. Maybe useful for discovering in a shop that only takes Debit cards that my Bank Account is empty ... Except most shops that take Debit cards have an arrangement the Bank doesn't mention to you till you discover on the statement you can spend past the overdraft limit without knowing.

So many creative ways to get further in Debt!

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Re: @Mage...

My eyes ....

Till now I lived in blissful ignorance of MS Bob!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob

Arrrrggggh!

Mage Silver badge

Re: The Facts..........

I remember the horrors of installing the required SW to work iPods on Windows 98. With only 19kbps available on rubbish dialup to download the applications.

People bought them at Christmas due to hype and had no way to load music on them! Most people even if they had a PC didn't have internet.

Mage Silver badge

Re: The Facts..........

At least 3 main companies, Creative being well known. Many smaller companies.

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: "We don’t do very many things so we spend a lot of time on every detail..."

How many years ago did they switch from an Apple OS (the last was 9) to simply bolting stuff on and polishing GUI of OS X?

Though Actually perhaps MS should have been doing that since NT 3.5 instead of the evil of Win95, Win98 (bug fix), Win ME (joke OS) and degradation of NT via NT4.0 (Drivers into Kernel), W2K (inconsistent GUI and USB of unreleased SP7 of NT4.0), XP (finished version W2K). Vista (joke based on NT instead of Win95), Win 7 (bug fix / finished Vista), Win 8 (What do you get if you cross a Zune with an NT Desktop OS? ).*

Been nice if MS had released Courier, married Zune and Win Phone CE and just been polishing XP :-) with spinning off Media Center as a FINISHED product based on NT embedded and a new GUI unrelated to Zune / Metro/Explorer etc.

And if some consumer electronics company rather than Oracle had bought Sun (all SW then OS but financially supported, no Davik and Android or C# as Java and JVM would have been totally free).

(* Yes, I also had Explorer Preview Shell on NT3.51 (no BSOD) and a USB stack on NT4.0 which worked with later released Win2K Scanner & printer Drivers)

So yes, Apple do actually do their stuff well, but it's not innovation nor much R&D, (maybe r&D).

Mage Silver badge

Re: The Facts..........

The iPod wasn't new or innovative, just better marketed and more expensive. No Apple Tech. Only rip of Dieter Rams Braun styling.

The iPhone had a more slick GUI (but not actually new HW, nor as fully featured) and was better marketed and succeeded well due to bundled data package, no innovation or Apple HW Technology, SW a repackaged OS X (which wasn't actually Apple innovation). More expensive than competitors.

The iPad was a larger iPhone. Zero innovaton. More expensive than comparable competition.

Apple TV isn't a TV. It's a media Streamer which really needs and iPad or iPhone to get best value out of it thus in reality £400 more than a Roku, which doesn't need a tablet or phone for full value. There is zero innovation in an Apple TV.

Apple based on profits vs sales has about x3 margin, thus are obviously overpriced.

They are a Product appearance Design & marketing House with a nice "in house" GUI on the iOS and OSX. They are not a Technology company or innovator. They buy in the HW expertise and little SW innovation since they bought in OS X from Steve Job's Next to replace insecure, inflexible creaking OS9. OSX is not very innovative being largely based on BSD.

Apple do what they do very well. But unlike Samsung have developed very little. The original Mac was a "fixup" of the under spec'd Lisa (which was a cheap clone of the Xerox Star, which I played with). The current Mac is largely an Intel design. The Apple II was "ready to go", only needing a monitor on top but only 40 columns and slow non-standard 100k floppy. I believed the hype and bought one. Terrible waste of money.

Apple have always relied on customer perception. Not on technological innovation. Maybe the Newton and Pippin were innovative.

Or the round puck mouse with one button (but stupid).

Microsoft's naughty Cortana NOT ALLOWED NEAR CHILDREN

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Data collected?

Does MS, Apple, Amazon & Google data collection, processing, security and retention comply with

a) US standards

b) EU standards

Is it even obvious to Joe Ordinary what is being collected?

Will Apple's $130bn cash infusion keep investors onboard?

Mage Silver badge

Parasites

All that cash not going into circulation and they borrow money, which results in slightly less money available for other companies to actually invest in Plant. R&D etc ...

Brain surgery? Would sir care for a CHOC-ICE with that?

Mage Silver badge

Mobility

Unless my job is to fix HW, I should be able to work ANYWHERE from my home office. Actually I have a mechanical Workshop and Electronics lab at home too for HW. But Programming, especially today with SVN, subversion, Git, Google drive, Hosting and Broadband etc, I can do in my home office with better productivity. Saves the environment. No office to heat or air condition, no CO2 and particulates etc and time wasting commuting. Lower risk too.

It costs about £8K to move house, minimum, to one worth the same. How long will any job last?

The problem is bad management, outsourcing, HR depts looking for wrong stuff and vetoing Engineering supervisors. To a lesser extent Polytechs becoming Universities and Universities dumbing down to teach a computer language instead of Eduction and Art of Programming.

So Web Server programming and tools are so 1970s and we see the same old stupid array bounds violations and cross site scripting vulnerabilities and bugs on "new" packages. GUIs get prettier and underlying code gets full of gunge and rubbish. Nicely indented spaghetti and "objects"/"Classes"/API designed by Satan's demons high on hash.

Reg probe bombshell: How we HACKED mobile voicemail without a PIN

Mage Silver badge

Re: How do those conversations with the mobile network go?

I'm sure that's Three.

Mage Silver badge
Thumb Up

Not surprised

Many companies will not even interview older experienced people. Too much is outsourced or implemented by inexperienced fresh graduates or work experience or people qualified in a different field.

I'd have been especially surprised if Three had it right. They only know how to Sell and Market.

Where are the regulators? Soft touch?

If a network isn't doing their engineering responsibly they should lose their licence. The consumer is lucky if the Regulators even slap a wrist lightly.

DeSENSORtised: Why the 'Internet of Things' will FAIL without IPv6

Mage Silver badge

Re: FTP & SIP

There are NAT solutions for FTP and SIP.

Though certainly not elegant.

Probably IP6, or something like it is needed. But the so called "Internet of things" is actually irrelevant. My "things" want to be as simple as possible. The Gateway server (which can be an application on my existing Router or something like a Raspberry Pi) can provide a VPN and security.

If I'm using public WiFi I want a VPN. Does IP6 solve the security issues of Public WiFi? Tell me when the majority of WiFi and Gadgets are using IP6 for a year.

People that sell network gear keep claiming we are running out of IP4 (likely) and we should up grade to IP6(Well they would say that).

Of course many USA Universities, USA Organisations, USA Corporations and friends that need 6 to 600 public IP have as many public IPs assigned as a small country.

EU: Let's cost financial traders $400m a day, because EVIL BANKERS. Right?

Mage Silver badge

Re: What's wrong: "Flash boys"

Very interesting read.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Utter crap

Trading in Shares isn't investment. The company that issued the shares gets little or no value from subsequent share trading, except sometimes a beneficial increase in what price it can sell EXTRA shares at.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Speculation

But is any of this good?

Is it actually inflationary as nothing is invested, no service or good is produced?

Investment only occurs when people buy share issues, buying shares already on the market may make profit but it's not investment!

Speculation obviously makes speculators a profit. But that money has to come from somewhere (I know the Governments can print more when needed, which can but doesn't always devalue existing currency).

Speculation doesn't create liquidity. Actually sometimes it can do the reverse. The second evil after speculation is to loan people money they can't even pay the interest on, on the basis that what they are going to buy will be worth more than the loan when they sell it (soon). That increases when the economy is stable and results in a crash eventually when the leveraged buyouts / housing bubbles etc burst.

The 3rd great evil is to be a Dragon. That's to consistently manage to sell your goods or services to others and then sit on the profit made. Dragons also like to do this at higher profit margin than competitors of course. This sucks money out of the economy. This it problem with Offshore banking for individuals or Tax Havens for Corporations. How can they spend the money? So they borrow when they need to expand. Which reduces the amount others can borrow.

Making money from share dividends is acceptable. I don't care if you are a pension fund. Making profit from speculation isn't acceptable, especially if it's HST (High Speed Trading, I meant HFT), HFT (High Frequency Trading).

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Speculation

Speculators are not creating wealth for the pension fund, they are evil parasites. It's not investment in the original companies that issued the shares.

HST is the worst type of speculation. Perhaps shareholding should be for a minimum of a year or six months?

Sat comms kit riddled with backdoors for hackers – researcher

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Satellite Comms

Always had rubbish security. The Geostationary 2 way data traditionally poor too.

The vendors only ever worried about:

1) Control access of Satellite

2) Getting payment for use of it.

Security of the actual transmission has mostly been rubbish, though the DOCSIS derived Ka Band 2 way stuff might be better. But that doesn't apply to Iridiium, Thuraya and Inmarsat who have probably all relied on cost of kit and security via obscurity. Iridium I think is now effectively owned by US Government after going bust so either way NSA, CIA etc no doubt track everything. Inmarsat may not so much worry as long as everything is paid for. Similarly Thuraya, who I think are smallest but do have cute GSM/Satellite dual Mode, I think their main market is Arabs from Morocco to Qatar..

The control channels traditionally on satellite generally are poor sensitivity so that you need a 3.5m+ dish or larger with real time tracking. I've wondered how good C&C security is?

Even since Echelon days, never mind today's wholesale tapping of fibre and Internet the Satellite comms was all tapped.

Rent a site with disused 4.8m or bigger telcoms dish claiming you will be opening an industrial park. This isn't script kiddie territory.

Apple patent LOCKS drivers out of their OWN PHONES

Mage Silver badge

Sack the USPO

This is crazy.

Trivial and should not be patentable.

Slip your finger in this ring and unlock your backdoor, phone, etc

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

But it's still pointless.

NFC concept is OK contactless stock control where a barcode is inconvenient. It's stupidity as part of a secure system.

NASA finds first Earth-sized planet in a habitable zone around star

Mage Silver badge

Nu Earth?

Any Sentient beings already there might disagree.

A tidal locked planet with atmosphere might not be frozen on the dark side. But massive winds from dark to bright at ground level and reverse at jet stream level? But I know nothing about meteorology so maybe it does all end up frozen on dark side. If so there may be thin margin at the terminator?

Amazon wires up email-to-Kindle to its gigantic online hard drive

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Yes

Before it just delivered the document sent to @kindle after conversion

Now they keep a copy in original format.

But presumably you still have to "whilte list" who can send to the Kindle.

Also some Kindles have no WiFi and are 3G/Edge only. In such a case browsing Amazon or Wikipedia is free, anything else is I think 60 Mbyte (not G!) a month only and all personal documents emailed may be charged at some cents per Mbyte depending on country.

So I only use USB to transfer to Kindle DX. But the unlimited Wikipedia is good and I've never used up the monthly non-Amazon/Wikipedia limit. It's only handy to look up something when you have shut down the lap top or maybe in bed.

I looked up "Earth" the other day though and all the detail was gone replaced by "Mostly Harmless".

So the only new aspect I can see is the unwanted and not needed to me storing of original format document in Amazon's so called Cloud (Hosting). I use USB for Kindle and have my own personalised unlimited hosting with out "Cloud" marketing label stuck on.

Feast your PUNY eyes on highest resolution phone display EVER

Mage Silver badge

DIY Projector Time?

But AMOLED, so can't have a stronger back light like LCD and be hacked as a projector. So not hackable as a Projector.

I wonder what the life of the "blue" is?

Unfortunately the life of AMOLED is short compared to LCD or real LEDs (they are diode characteristic Electroluminescent dots, not LEDs in the sense the backlights and indicators are).

But life probably doesn't matter for a phone panel.

Audio fans, prepare yourself for the Second Coming ... of Blu-ray

Mage Silver badge
FAIL

High Fidelity Pure Audio

Codswallop!

Where is the decent 5.1 Audio Music Content?

Do more than 1% of BD player owners have decent speakers?

Anything distributing sampling above 44 to 48KHz is pointless. Yes, by all means sample at 192kHz so the anti-aliasing analogue filter in front of ADC in studio isn't affecting audio. But then you can down sample to 44.1K or 48K samples per second and lose nothing.

We don't need more than 16 bits either.

Also the problem is many newer CD pressings are CRAP mixes. Too compressed and processed. Rubbish studio mixing is still rubbish at 192kHz and 5.1 and 24 bits.

I'd be surprised if there are enough AudioPhools out there to make this a success. It's as pointless as SACD (or whatever it was called), even though in theory any BD player can play it.

Just release the flippin' music properly mixed and engineered on CD, and at a sensible price . Why are many CDs (esp. old titles that already made the money) same price or x2 the price of a DVD?

Want a free Bosch steam iron? You'll have to TALK TO THE DEAD

Mage Silver badge

Re: Other companies

Bill Gates is still alive

Mage Silver badge

Clever

The Moroccan Tourist Board has hacked Currys.

It's a viral marketing campaign!

Google looks to LTE and Wi-Fi to help it lube YouTube tubes

Mage Silver badge

Garbage

Unless Google is going to pay for about x10 as many base stations Mobile can never deliver Video to the masses. It can only manage about 3 to 5 users ON AVERAGE per cell.

Fibre to home and home WiFi. Even Home WiFi at 250Mbps can struggle to provide more than 3 video streams as the total peak speed is no guide of real life average speeds.

(Why have home LTE Femto cells and pay Mobile ISPs for the traffic you already paid for on on your ISP? Femto cells are for Public places or Voice only GSM/3G calls as they don't work on WiFi).

Apple says iOS, OS X is immune to Heartbleed SSL bug

Mage Silver badge

Remind me ...

How long ago did Apple stop making servers?

Is it 1% or 0.1% of Web Sites that run OS X?

If you have no open inward ports [on firewall and/or no server services / daemons running] and don't access an evil Server how does the client matter?

Apple to flush '£37bn' down the bog if it doesn't flog cheapo slabtops

Mage Silver badge

Re: Why would they do this?

When they can make more profit selling a second larger cheap to make tablet-keyboard-iOS along side existing tablets instead of X86 Mac with OSX.

If you have a 12" to 21" with BT keyboard you likely want a tablet to travel with or on the couch.

Mage Silver badge

I said it ages ago

When they killed the OS X servers I said that eventually the OSX laptops would be killed and replaced with more locked down iOS versions.

They are just not ready yet. Perhaps they will wait till the XPocalyspe Hype dies down to get maximum OSX sales from that. So no earlier than next year.

The CPU performance and compatibility is not that important to Apple. They don't have "loyalty" to the niche customers that actually need CPU performance. Likely they will keep a high end OSX machine for a while longer than that.

BlackBerry not afraid to throw its mobe biz under a bus, says CEO Chen

Mage Silver badge

Reality

They have admitted they are doomed.

VAT's all folks: Telecoms and services tax to be set at consumer's homeland rate

Mage Silver badge

Re: Glad I live in Switzerland...

And Toblerone, Salami, Cheese and Swatch Watches etc are Cheaper in UK and Ireland.

I do like the trains there though.

Nice scenery, but cheaper to look at in EU (Austria). A Swiss guy told me.

I do like the lack of street rubbish, the lack of big billboards etc too in Switzerland. But there is a reason why a lot Swiss shop in France, Austria, Italy, Germany ...

Mage Silver badge

Re: What has the EU been smoking?

No, Zero is lowest,

I think

Children's clothes, Children's shoes, Food (cake not biscuits though!).

Not sure about books and magazines.

Varies from country to country.

eBooks have full VAT though usually.

Is there VAT on house rent?

So not entirely regressive.

Extra duty on Petrol & Diesel? Why?

Toll roads when Car Tax (not been Road fund for years) is nearly 40% cheaper to collect is madness.

Qualcomm uncloaks new chips for 'ultimate connected mobile computing experiences'

Mage Silver badge

Apple

CPU core licence from ARM. They bought a company that can use the ARM core IP and then someone has to make it for them. The first iPhone used a Samsung 6400 family. But that was only the main application CPU. The phone part all bought in chips.

Phone & RF Hardware?

I doubt Apple have the 2G, 3G or 4G IP. When did they start designing RF chips?

Mad Raspberry Pi boffins ripped out its BRAINS and SHRANK them for your pleasure

Mage Silver badge

Re: An old dog

A HUGE number of projects & designs do not need even as powerful as the Pi, but well documented dev tools, less than £200 cost and convenience. I've used an embedded 486 kind of thing at £200 because it had the I/O I needed and a single 12V jack.

There are LOADS of ARM chips sold every week replacing the kind of stuff PIC, Atmel, Z80, 8051 etc is used for. Down to $1 each or less. These can't even run Linux.

State of the Art and CPU power isn't the only consideration.

Microchip sells LOADs of PIC chips which have a joke architecture over 30 years old. Probably every IR remote control handset has one.

Horses for courses.

Mage Silver badge
Thumb Up

I like it.

The existing board is an awkward layout with connectors all around it, and not ideal for GPIO projects.

A board to one's own desire with all the HW that is driven by the GPIO and more sane PSU and I/O will be good.

I look forward to this and the documentation. Where do I find the correct connector for Eagle?

Oracle smacks JD Edwards help site with cease and desist order

Mage Silver badge

Ego wins out over common sense.

No surprise.

Open Office

Java

MySQL

Hudson

Solaris

Sun Sparc

Oracle has form.

Samsung's thumb-achingly ENORMO Galaxy Note Pro 12.2

Mage Silver badge

Re: re. use in portrait orientation

Or sketching?

Technology is murdering customer service - legally

Mage Silver badge

Frightening

With some products there are helpful people out there that know MORE than the Company's R&D. Unfortunately there are others who are total ignoramuses but posting as if they are expert. You need a certain threshold level of expertise to tell them apart :-(

It doesn't help that the HW appears to be designed from application notes written by the OEM suppliers Intern / Co-op Student and the firmware / drivers/ application / user manual produced by other students and possibly badly ported from ancient C or the User Interface (buttons on a radio with minuscule text LCD, or Camera with random GUI and buttons) designed by a Chimp/Alien/Rat with no human understanding or logic (perhaps a Corvid would do better).

42 languages of user manual that's mostly disclaimers or warning about incorrect battery insertion (they ignore the excellent battery manufacturer's app notes on how to design battery compartments so batteries CAN'T be inserted wrongly!).

You don't even get what you pay for as often the expensive brand is same product as cheap one.

Time is on their side: NIST's new atomic clock accurate for 300 million years

Mage Silver badge

Only NIST?

What about ANSI then?

Mage Silver badge

There is better

In theory there is some tech orders of magnitude more accurate.

"The estimated amount of uncertainty achieved corresponds to a Yb clock uncertainty of about one second over the lifetime of the universe so far, 15 billion years, according to scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) and the University of Delaware in December 2012."

NIST in USA have at least two prototype clocks far more accurate than this one. But their standard time isn't based on them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock

Also there some development of Optical Clocks instead of Microwave (as the one in article is Microwave). Would that be a Crystal Clock?

Why is the handle on my clockwork winder on the back where I can't reach it?

One Win 8 to rule them all: Microsoft talks up 'universal apps' for PCs, slabs and mobes

Mage Silver badge
Mushroom

For Fart Apps

and pointless widgets.

You can't write a serious GUI application for every platform without differences in design.

I hate to bang on about this AGAIN

But this is garbage and always has been except for trivial widgets:

" Finally, at long last, developers can use "90 per cent" (its figure) of the same code base to create Universal Windows apps for Windows Phone, RT, desktop Windows and now Xbox."

No you need DIFFERENT GUI and UI strategies for

1: small phone/screen

2: big phone

3: tablet

4: Desktop / laptop etc

5: TV with only a remote

6: Games console with game pad etc/

7: Server, even if GUI as it has to be bandwidth / Remote Access friendly

Underlying non UI related code could be the same in some cases. But writing the SAME non-trivial application for these is fantasy. The same GUI dehydrated death no matter if old idea of miniaturising Win9x for WinCE 320 x 240 or expanding Zune GUI ported to phone up to a desktop.

Sinfofsky was doubly mad forcing one tile GUI yet different APIs.

Obviously APIs to access storage / files / draw primitives / print / communication etc should be the same. But even if EVERY API was identically compatible for the 7 platforms there you'd be moron to port say the same 3D modelling or accounts package with no GUI or design changes. I'd guess a trivial thing like an eBay sniping tool could be a little "widget" the same on all.

Nothing's as SCARY as an overly aggressive SOFTWARE PIMP

Mage Silver badge

Wonderful

Best ever.

You can have a coffee or cup of tea here any time you are passing.

The commentards arguing about pro or con of XP vs Win X have missed the point.

I QUIT: Mozilla's anti-gay-marriage Brendan Eich leaps out of door

Mage Silver badge
FAIL

Re: byy bye moz.

Except Google, Microsoft and Apple are possibly far more immoral than Mozilla. Mozilla has possibly made a mistake. The other three have consistent clear policies of anti-privacy, dubious corporate pressure and consumer exploitation (respectively).

Of course this is only my opinion. But unlike Eich I can't be sacked for it as corporate greed, ponzi schemes and inept corrupt regulation I had no control over lost me my job and the the entire Department.