* Posts by Mage

9265 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

WTF, EFS? Experts warn Windows encryption could spawn nasty new ransomware

Mage Silver badge

Re: This fails to surprise me...

Yes, a daft warning.

Whether the criminals or vandals can use a built in function or supply their own is irrelevant unless they are inept at choosing and deploying encryption.

Also don't back up over the last backup as everything might ALREADY be encrypted but with the "automatic" key later removed by command or date.

I archive backups.

US court rules: Just because you can extract teeth while riding a hoverboard doesn't mean you should

Mage Silver badge

Re: .hoverboards do not exist outside of fiction

There ARE hoverboards, though not retail. Very noisy and very short battery life demos.

A fine host for a Raspberry Pi: The Register rakes a talon over the NexDock 2

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Why some people keep on reinventing the ill-fated Palm Foleo?

Also glossy screens are headache inducing. They are evil. We have had ultra sharp better than 1080 screens with no reflection or gloss for over 18 years.

US keyboards should be illegal even in USA. The only way to use them for Spanish, French, Irish and Scots Gaelic is International mode with dead keys. Also they are usually missing one key. Why after 30+ years are the USA keyboards still a thing? Less than 13% of world population and many of them need to type accented letters, \ | ~ # ` ¦ etc.

This product is too niche even for a Pi.

WebAssembly: Key to a high-performance web, or ideal for malware? Reg speaks to co-designer Andreas Rossberg

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: disable it in Firefox, Waterfox etc

about:config

type wasm in

double click javascript.options.wasm

It can't be checked by your client, unlike javascript. It's an extra attack surface.

EU declares it'll Make USB-C Great Again™. You hear that, Apple?

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Let's make Qi great again!

And how do you power the wireless charging mat?

IBM, Microsoft, a medley of others sing support for Google against Oracle in Supremes' Java API copyright case

Mage Silver badge
Headmaster

Book Titles

Book Titles can't be copyrighted.

Surely APIs are a little like titles, except might take parameters or return a result.

I've no love for Google, but it seems obvious after almost 65 years of high level software (Wasn't Fortran 1956?) that long ago it was decided that source of the implementation is copyright but the "Titles" (API) can't be.

CES la vie: Shrunken Ultrabooks, muted mobiles and Segway's adult prams at world's biggest consumer tech show

Mage Silver badge

Ultrabook?

Only makes sense if:

1) It has a tablet mode / touch screen. Maybe by dual boot of Andriod (or iOS) and Linux/Win10 (or Mac OS). Yes I know Chrome OS exists.

2) The Keyboard can fold under it. See 1.

3) Lots of battery life, like 10 hours of normal use.

Maybe it's not sensible with an x86-64 unless you really like W10. Maybe Apple will switch to ARM (they've used 68K, Power PC, x86-32/64 and x86-64 only so far) for Mac OS / laptops.

Even regular laptops are getting too skinny and battery life is underwhelming.

I've only ever (in over 20 years) used a laptop on a table or desk. I replaced a garbage W10 Atom based tablet/laptop with a 10" ARM tablet and proprietary wireless keypad. The BT keyboards are all rubbish and the USB based keyboard dock for the W10 was rubbish because of the steel plates needed inside to stop it toppling over. Fold out legs on tablet or arms on keyboard make more sense. Also what do you do with large keyboard dock in tablet mode? The €12 wireless keyboard fits in my pocket.

Flying taxis? That'll be AFTER you've launched light sabres and anti-gravity skateboards

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: Mary Poppins like silhouette

Mentioned above: Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Flying taxis = wrong solution to right problem

Umbrella transit system. "Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow". I think possible without magic.

I must get the 3rd book.

Mage Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: US original Spelling Myth

It's a myth that USA has the older spelling. Sometimes they do have it, but mostly they don't.

UK dictionaries print usage, which reinforces the observed common usage.

Webster (1st US Dictionary), decided on his own how many words should have reformed spelling. He is responsible for -er rather than -re endings, dropping u from -our and changing LL to L in the middle of words. The -re in English may often be from Norman French as are the names of cooked meats rather than the live animals. Normans were originally Norse men, so the French they brought to England in 1066 from Normandy wasn't quite the same as other "French" regions.

Also many other US words are modern contractions. Northern Ireland and Scotland have a better claim to "original spelling" than the USA. Also British spelling is about widespread usage. Hence two words eventually get a hyphen (no one -> no-one) and then sometimes like German, become compound words.

Lenovo intros choose-your-own-adventure Yoga Slim 7: Ryzen spend $360 less on shiny or take a dip in Intel's Ice Lake?

Mage Silver badge

Re: Nice premium

All my older computer gear is BETTER than 1080. The 1080 was so as to use cheap panels and controllers for video. EIGHTEEN years ago computers and laptops were better than 1080.

A 16:9 HiDPI / Retina panel at 14" or 15" isn't much improvement for PDFs or spreadsheets, you want 4:3 @ 15.5" or the SAME HEIGHT of a 16:9 panel, maybe 17"?

There are Newish laptops only 768 high with 17" screens. What madness is that?

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Windows on ARM?

I don't think so. Android or Linux.

For me Windows on x86-64 is no longer viable due to Windows 10.

Obviously if you are using online CRM that insists on Edge or IE + Silverlight, or a Windows accounts or payroll etc, you are captive to Redmond. But most 3rd party business local applications don't work on ARM either.

Long-term Linux Mint: 19.3 release unchains the Gimp, adds HiDPI, is kind to your older, less-beefy kit

Mage Silver badge

Re: Shame Forums (pinned onto Firefox supplied with Mint) are a bit tumbleweed ...

Mouse with more buttons?

Also I use Waterfox on 64 bit Linux.

Why ask here rather than on a dedicated Linux site?

Windows 10: PC Settings, Control Panel or where? Is that text, a radio button, checkbox or a link to change window? Is the application I want an "App" or a "program"; where do I add it / remove it or run it? I find Win 10 GUI MUCH less accessible and productive than NT 3.1 to NT5.x or Win7.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Linux Mint love

18.3 64 bit using Mate is fine on a 1G RAM Atom laptop and 18.3 32 bit Mate is fine on 1G RAM P4.

Some P4 laptops XP or Linux seriously outperforms one Atom I have running running Win 10 32 bit. Same Atom WILL run 64 bit Debian, but not 64 bit Win10, not enough RAM or Flash! There is a 32 bit EFI, so you need to edit the Linux Mint 64 bit ISO to add the 32 bit EFI files from Debian. At least the 18.3 and 19.1 Mint 64 bit can't install if the EFI of the 64 bit CPU is 32 bits.

Mage Silver badge
Linux

HiDPI

The 18.3 seems to have some HiDPI support.

Also the look, feel and performance of Mint depends purely on the Desktop used, the Window Manager used with that and then the Theme installed or customized. Win 10 has none of that being like a throw back to Windows 2.0. At least on XP you could get rid of Fisher Price look and you could ENTIRELY and easily turn off all the stupid eye candy on Vista. All you can do on Win10 is change some of the colours. Some GUI options (like no snap and always show scroll bars) are almost hidden.

I have 19.2 on a test machine, I must update it to 19.3, not been using it as I do all my "real" work on Linux Mint 18.3, Mate Desktop and a customised theme that's sort of like a mix of Win98 and Win7 without much eye candy. I've a decent GPU, so I have a sort of shadow on the active window.

I bought my Lenovo Laptop just as Win7 sales ended about 2 years ago and initially had dual boot to Linux. I wasn't using Win7 so copied off all the data, reformatted that partition as Ext4 and mounted it in a directory in my home. Migration of Thunderbird & Firefox data from Win7 no problem.

I'd abandoned PaintShop Pro7 for The Gimp (better text, PDF import and export) and MS Office for LibreOffice (styles are your friend) about a year or so earlier on XP. Ran Notepad++ on WINE till I figured out that KATE was better and native. ADI/LT Spice installed fine on WINE. I have my old Eagle (with licence key) on WINE and a newer "free" entry level Eagle on Linux before it was sold again (Adobe?).

I have an XP in a VM for the very rare occasion it's wanted, about 3 times in 2 years. Saves getting out the old XP machine.

From Soviet to science fiction icon, the weird life of Isaac Asimov 100 years on

Mage Silver badge

Re: brought SF to the world?

Loads of SF before E E "Doc" Smith. He did popularise Space opera.

Is this the oldest SF?

"A True Story is a novel written in the second century AD by Lucian of Samosata, a Greek-speaking author of Assyrian descent."

Available on Gutenberg and very entertaining, more so than I M Banks, IMO. The 1940s and 1950s was maybe the "golden age" of SF short stories.

By 1980s even the popular folk that had written well in 1950s seemed poorer. But then I think that ST-TOS had more real SF stories than ST-TNG, if you subtract off Time Travel and Parallel Earth Development stories.

Loads of 19th C and some 18th C. SF.

Mage Silver badge

Re: EE 'Doc' Smith

But certainly you might regard the Skylark as "inventing" the Space Opera genre.

Mage Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: suddenly lost interest

Frankly a lot isn't exactly SF, but Fantasy and Space Opera. Or full of egotistical Transhumanism and infeasible AI.

Mage Silver badge

Re: frustrating genius

Certainly I think it was a mistake returning to the Foundation series in the 1980s. His detective stuff was good.

I always thought the 3 laws where really a sort of "locked room" detective thing, set up the laws and then have a story figuring out why the robot broke them. I never (even in 1960s & 1970s) thought they were serious suggestions about what humanoid robots would be like. Also the give-away is the idea that the Positronic brain INHERENTLY had the laws, they weren't simply an addition to programming. Also the "robots" are not much like computers today, nor like the computers in his stories, it was SF themed detective stories. See also Caves of Steel.

Now which is the only story he wrote himself that it's suggest the characters are not humans?

v

v

v

v

The original Nightfall short story (not so much the late novelization).

SanDisk's iXpand Wireless Charger is the unholy lovechild of a Qi mat and a flash drive

Mage Silver badge
Happy

Re: Of course, you could make a privacy argument in favour of..

It's called renting hosting. I spend money on that, but I also have a dozen web sites. Dropbox? I've heard of it.

I've no idea where it is really and it's not Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM etc, all of whom want to do more than sell you CPU, internet pipe and storage. No doubt some hosting companies are dubious on privacy or reliability, but mine has had better up time than some well known Cloud and Social Media sites.

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: difficulty plugging the charging cable

How does the mat connect to the mains for power, and how long is the cable?

Hint put a line of luminous paint (or Halloween nail varnish) along the socket edge that faces top of cable. Even blob that side of cable (usually has USB logo) with black or white nail varnish.

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Cheaper solutions?

1) The mat needs a cord and wall wart or PSU on the mains of some kind.

2) Transferring FROM the mat to other backups uses the WiFi. My LAN is 1000 Mbps.

So a USB cable and charge from the power brick OR a laptop while transferring to the laptop using USB storage mode. Less flaky and more secure than wifi. Though does not work with expensive iThings.

Technically a dock like security radios and DECT phones have makes more sense than a charging mat though a cable still works when you lift it from the table.

Also travelling the mat is a bulkier solution than USB cable + charger as the mat needs a PSU with more than 10W to deliver 10W. Does the mat and its PSU fit in your coat pocket? What if you leave the mat in hotel, office visted etc and it's gone? A USB charger is easily replaced.

Use a USB cable with no data wires for public charging points.

Want to live long and prosper? Avoid pirated, malware-laden Star Wars free vid streams – and pay to watch instead

Mage Silver badge

Re: Mary Sue

A female Wesley Crusher?

I always suspected Wesley was the script writer either trolling the studio or the fans. My theory is that he was meant to be annoying to distract from fact too many ST-TNG episodes were just Soap in Space.

Xbox Series X: Gee thanks, Microsoft! Just what we wanted for Xmas 2020 – a Gateway tower PC

Mage Silver badge

Vertical

Also was option for the PS2 but not the PS1 or Sega Saturn.

LightAnchors array: LEDs in routers, power strips, and more, can sneakily ship data to this smartphone app

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Re: Sounds like a good idea, but...

Most have no thermostat. It's just a dumb heating element and a neon across the mains. The trigger is purely a mechanical hoop pulling the glue stick into the heated barrel.

Some have a low / high power switch for cooler or hotter sticks. I'm not sure if a tap on the heater or more likely a rectifier added in series (half power) that is shorted out by the switch.

Suitably mounted, the entire glue stick will puddle at the nozzle.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Sounds like a good idea, but...

The 1980s wants its Philips RC5 back.

Though it is 14bits, using 5 for address and 6 for data. It and variations are still very common. Because the typical phone camera has no IR filter, the IR LED is visible as a bright bluish tinged white spot. If you use three of the 32 addresses, you can have a 18 bit payload, or more if you cunningly use the control bit.

So security / encryption so only an authorised application understands the payload? I'd have used maybe 1024 bits payload with added FEC framing to give 2048 bits. I'd have to think about it and discuss it with security experts. This sounds more amateurish than student projects I advised on over 10 years ago.

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

For devices such as glue guns and power strips, their LED can be co-opted

Those usually have a neon.

Technically a neon can be used instead of an LED.

However while the CPU is less than $1, a circuit board, PSU, other parts etc puts the price a lot higher.

Also the data rate possible on most Router LEDs etc is quite low. Unless they think 1 to 100 bps is fast enough. I suppose each light source only needs to be a unique address. I think pre-programmed self-adhesive "stamps" with an IR LED is a better idea than trying to program existing devices or retrofit controllers to existing LEDs and neons. Maybe with a small solar cell and only responding on interrogation from the AR goggles to save power. You can use an LED as a photodiode or detect IR modulation on the solar cell illumination.

This is more a coffee break chit chat idea than something practical.

$13m+ Swiss Army Knife of blenders biz collapses to fury of 20,000 unfulfilled punters

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Book projects generally work out

No-one at all should back book projects.

The production cost for an ebook is simply the author's time.

A glossy colour coffee table book costs as much in postage outside the USA as the proof copy. POD is cheap.

Board games cost more to produce. However a playable mock-up can be done for less than posh night out for two, so only back ones that have already been prototyped and playtested.

I agree, do not back any sort of gadget unless you are a rich expert and getting real voting shares.

When is an electrical engineer not an engineer? When Arizona's state regulators decide to play word games

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: "veggie burgers"

Sunflower oil, corn oil, castor oil, but baby oil?

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: UK: It's all in the 'title'

In the UK, people that are not even qualified as fitters or installers, maybe have a 2 week course, are called Engineers by Sky, Virgin, BT etc.

Engineers are not usally sent on a house call to install/fault find a TVRO sat dish and box, a cable modem, connect a washing machine or a VDSL/Fibre modem. They MIGHT be sent when the install dept has failed dozens of times and it sounds really odd/interesting to the Engineering Manager or CEO or CTO.

Apple sues iPhone CPU design ace after he quits to run data-center chip upstart Nuvia

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Apple bought a Chip Design house

It's immoral to try and own the people too, like serfs.

This has been going on for over a hundred years. The claim is always that the employee is "poaching staff" or customers or IP.

Well, only the IP should be protected and some of it actually ought to have belonged to the designers (authors) and not exclusively forever to to the Employer.

Elon Musk gets thumbs up from jury for use of 'pedo guy' in cave diver defamation lawsuit

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Surprised

Would have been different if the case was in the UK.

Or if the defendant was a poor black guy and it was somewhere in the Southern USA?

Apple completes $1bn amputation of Intel's 5G modem biz, Chipzilla out of mobiles for good

Mage Silver badge

Re: 5G Futures

The 5G is nearly irrelevant. Basically subscription WiFi tech as far as RF. The important aspects of 5G are infrastructure changes which allow more seamless use of 2G, 3G, 4G and WiFi with voice and data. A more unified backhaul and back office.

An actual 5G radio in a phone doesn't much matter.

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: It was a failing business

No-one made Intel sell most of the ARM to Marvell (though it had come from DEC).

Their Cable modems were a problem, not just the xDSL.

The i960 was good, but that was a long time ago.

The 64 bit instructions of the successful x86-64 were an AMD idea, Intel had done the HP inspired Itanic, which had a very short lived Windows XP, a fail.

The Intel integrated graphics were a disaster for years, crippling performance of cheaper PC/laptops.

I suppose the 10/100M ethernet cards and the Intel WiFi was/are OK.

Now it seems almost all the clever performance enhancements of Intel CPUs are security risks.

Where is the persistent storage product and is it anything like as good as promised?

Why did they buy McAfee?

The shine seems to have gone off Chipzilla.

I could write about why 10nm isn't, however no-one's chip geometry now means anything like it meant at 90nm or maybe 45nm. The figure isn't the typical geometry, but the width of the smallest feature.

There are more ARM cpus shipped in less than a week than Intel cpus in a year. The majority of users use ARM now to message, browse, view video, read ebooks (52% on phones), listen to audio books etc. Intel had a full ARM licence and did do ARM development.

Den Automation raised millions to 'reinvent' the light switch. Now it's lights out for startup

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Electric toothbushes with bluetooth?

Yes.

Someone programmed his so that if the doorbell rang, the caller would be given an estimate of how long to wait.

It's a sort of fitbit for teeth, the theory being you need to brush after every meal, brush for at least x minutes, brush properly and it seems people need an app to explain this.

Mage Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Pitty, was a great idea

10 years late, no better than existing products and depending of company servers? It was doomed.

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: Crowd Funding - The Wisdim Of Crowds

Also often a poorly executed version of a problem solved 20 years earlier!

Larry leaves, Sergey splits: Google lads hand over Alphabet reins to Sundar Pichai

Mage Silver badge
Windows

Re: Google will a Yahoo within 20 years

Maybe when Eric is dead. He must be about 65. He's always been the hand on the tiller.

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Re: "do no evil" wandered off

So what's the 3rd one of the trio doing, the one that bootstrapped it with his money and management expertise?

The guy that says teens should get a new ID when they become adults.

He hardly ever gets mentioned.

Eric Schmidt

Hasn't Eric always been in control?

Have the other pair done much other than create the search engine?

Alphabet/Google has developed less than you'd think.

"This incomplete list is frequently updated to include new information."

High-resolution display output or Wi-Fi: It seems you can only choose one on Raspberry Pi 4

Mage Silver badge

Re: x86. Great for "Personal Computers" and yet they now pretty much run everything

Um, now pretty much ONLY laptops/PC and Servers.

TVs, Disc players, phones, tablets, modems, routers, switches, washing machines, microwave ovens, IOT garbage, embedded SATA controllers (Mobo end or HDD end) etc are rarely ever x86 or x86-64: Too expensive and too power hungry.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Interference

But all electrical wiring has always been manufactured "oxygen free", or else it's brittle. Black copper oxides on the surface is a deployment issue.

It's STILL a problem if using CAT5 or coax outdoors that doesn't have proper waterproofed covering or joints.

Why can't passport biometrics see through my cunning disguise?

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Imp Y Celyn from Llamedos, spelled backwards, "sod 'em all"

Imp takes the new name "Buddy", as "Imp Y Celyn" literally means "bud of holly", and Lias starts calling himself "Cliff".

I preferred almost anyone else to Elvis back then, especially after I was married. Certainly Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Gene Pitney, even Cliff.

Many years later when we started married life the next door neighbours were Elvis fans. The anniversary of his death was bad. It was a Victorian terrace with one brick thick party wall that didn't quite reach the roof.

You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: A quirky investigation into why AI does not always work

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Re: more likely to have the relevant

No, because the young men got past HR. In the place I worked, women and older people only were permitted to be shortlisted for Engineering posts by HR if there was a shortage of applicants. Also they didn't get promoted if they did get in.

However there were less actual female applicants, because less females did engineering at college. Since then less are doing maths and computer science. So there are less female applicants.

It's not about their quality. Often above average because they needed to be to get that far.

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: model of how we think brains work

I don't think how we think real brains might work is anything to do with any computer system "Expert Systems", misnamed "Computer Neural Networks", misnamed "Machine Learning or misnamed "AI".

Mage Silver badge

Re: We are getting there.

Rubbish. If we knew how to do it, we'd have at least very slow AI, or maybe slow and limited. Years ago. A more powerful (faster, more storage, whatever) computer will just do the garbage we have now, faster.

Hardware and software doesn't evolve either. It's designed by clever & educated & experienced humans, who in 10,000 years have only acquired knowledge, not more creativity or intelligence or anything else.

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: "Does this make my ... "

And oddly now people are wanting the bum to look bigger.

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: It's not AI...

It's not even "learning". Learning is far more than storing curated examples; the current systems are just human curated databases of a specialist nature. More akin to a Data Flow based architecture than a Neural Network. Computer "Neural Networks" are just Data Flow machines with storage and comparison. Nothing like neural networks in nature, which we don't yet understand fully anyway.

Close the windows, it's coming through the walls: Copper Cthulu invades Dabbsy's living room

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: Dumb TV to replace it

Just don't give it passwords, nor plug in the ethernet. On some you can disable the BT and WiFi.

I'll go now, being late to this party people have written all my comments already.

Halfords invents radio signals that don't travel at the speed of light

Mage Silver badge

Re: Norway in the summer, with perfect DAB reception everywhere

Because they spent a fortune on DAB masts. More than anywhere else. And turned off FM.

It's almost certainly political to benefit NRK.

DAB most benefits National stations with multiple channels. Also car and table top radios, bad for portables.

It certainly wasn't done to give higher quality or save money. You also need a power hungry DAB+ receiver, so not great for portables. Phones with DAB+ rather than FM are rare or non-existent.

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Wavelength in kHz?

Middle East, Africa, maybe Far East and Australia. Not sure about last two.

When UK made radios, usually the export models for outside of Europe and North Africa had SW instead of LW.

I've seen the odd German clock-radio with 49m SW band. Not sure why.