* Posts by Mage

9265 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Nov 2007

Mozilla makes first-ever acquisition: Web-clipping app 'Pocket'

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Gurr!

Why can't they focus on Firefox security & bugs?

Stop messing with other projects and stop messing with GUI.

I've not used Pocket as I don't like the idea of a 3rd part server. I simply save webpages or paste into LibreOffice Writer. Sometimes I convert them to ePub/Mobi via Calibre.

Google Chrome 56's crypto tweak 'borked thousands of computers' using Blue Coat security

Mage Silver badge

Re: "That these products broke is an indication of defects in their TLS implementations,"

Astounding arrogance

US Air Force terminates Predator drones. Now you will fear the Reaper

Mage Silver badge
Flame

Re: AI and blockchain and social media will replace these tired pilots!

AFAIK the V1 & V2 were drones with some sort of analogue computer inertial guidance and the original US Cruise missile is operating as a drone plane after the launch phase, with both GPS and image recognition for map reading.

It's just incremental developments.

Now there is live encrypted video and ability to remote control rather than be autonomous, so it begs the question, why so many civilian casualties? These things have had remote control and GPS for years.

Mage Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Well

When are they appearing in the International Criminal Court for Extra-Judicial Executions? Deployment of drones in countries they are not at war with and also against non-military targets?

Yes I know terrorists put missile launchers in schools and hospitals.

Linux on Windows 10: Will penguin treats in Creators Update be enough to lure you?

Mage Silver badge

Re: What's the open source Visual Studio beater?

MS crippled Visual Studio years ago with three incompatible forms/Windows API/Toolsets and death of VB6. Yes, C# is nice if you want a C styled VB, or Microsoft's concept of Java (that's what it was developed from).

The "Universal App" is a broken idea. What suits a TV screen, phone, tablet and desktop/Laptop is all different, or far more would have been in Java more than 10 years ago (I've written apps in Java then that worked, looking native on Linux or Windows or a tablet etc 10 years ago).

Mage Silver badge

Re: Well, it's final then

The turning points were Vista, Win 8, Win 10?

Or Tablets and phones more used by home users than PCs. Windows share there is?

Mage Silver badge

Re: ls / \ dir

Remember DOS "switchchar"?

You could make options be - and dir slash be / on DOS.

Mage Silver badge
Happy

prefer what they're used to

Which might be why Office 2003 users, XP / Vista / Win 7 users prefer Linux Mint + Mate + Redmond theme, rather than "Ribbon" or Win8 or Win 10.

I was just handed another laptop that "automagically" went from Win7 to Win 10 and now hated by user. They've seen Linux Mint + Mate + Redmond theme and want it instead.

I wish I'd never admitted I knew about Linux.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Like automobiles ? Diesel ? Petrol ?

I hate Outlook, esp, its ability to import malware. The only reason for it is Exchange + Scheduling/Meetings/Calendar.

The last decent MS Office was 2003.

Anyway, this is hardly a new approach from MS, is the Microsoft Services For Unix reached 15 years old or is it older?

Telco Orange to open bank next month

Mage Silver badge

Bank?

Can't be worse than HSBC, RBS etc?

Better than trying to bring back WAP.

Banking is about computers, security and communications. Which is why it makes no sense for banks to outsource IT.

With closures of rural banks and post Offices, doesn't seem stupid?

It depends how well they do it.

The Psion returns! Meet Gemini, the 21st century pocket computer

Mage Silver badge

Re: As BlackBerry dies ...

Don't even think about the pyra/pandora GP2X replacement. It's for a particular kind of gamer and has been in gestation for YEARS. It's also tiny keypad.

Mage Silver badge

Re: That display...

No subpixel addressing colour fringed fonts needed.

It's like 1200dpi laser vs 360dpi ink jet. You can't really see the dots on 300dpi if its not dithering, yet 600dpi or 1200dpi text is much easier to read.

No anti-aliasing needed, Your eyes will do it.

Google trumpets cloudy Skylake silicon nobody else is running

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Google Exclusive

Well, that's not a problem, "Do no evil"?

Machines taught how to 'smell' by new algorithm. How will they cope with shower-dodging nerds?

Mage Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Milk

The dairy issue is ethnic. Only a minority of the world's population (mostly Ethnic European so maybe Neanderthal genes?) can tolerate non-human milk, or milk at all when adult, though goat and sheep dairy may be less a problem.

Milk (particularly) is designed for babies. Cheese and yoghurt production not only "preserve" milk (most of all hard cheese), but actually make it more digestible for Ethnically non-Europeans.

It's nothing to do with if a society is pastoral or not.

Most raw beans have varying levels of toxin depending on species, maybe peas too (peanuts are a legume not a nut). Raw Kidney beans are a bad idea!

Mage Silver badge

Re: Dreams

Smell is rare to non-existant in dreams

Colour seems pretty rare or a bit like a colour film on a B&W TV you know well and you are tired. It's not clear how much colour perception there is.

Real sound /dialogue, like real life or a recording isn't common.

On the whole dreams may be more immediate and vivid than remembering, to the point that it seems real at the time. They are much less realistic when you wake.

Memory or Dreams are not much like a video recording, far more disjointed and erratic in detail per scene. I'd imagine the 3rd party viewing if you had a device to show / record dreams or memories would be disjointed and almost incoherent. In that respect most SF or "psychic" stories on the subject seem unrealistic.

Smell also depends often on the appearance (correct colour too) and temperature of an object, also if obviously real or fake. Taste / flavour depends on smell, texture, colour and temperature of food.

Both are affected by previous exposure to something and to an extent by emotion and health.

Taste and smell are the least reliable and consistent of senses.

Autonomous cars are about to do to transport what the internet did to information

Mage Silver badge

3D printing

It's good for prototypes or very low volume poor quality. I can't see it replacing factory production.

c.f. FPGAs and ASICs, though an FPGA is a far better quality item than anything from a 3D printer.

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Trains

Sort driverless trains and I might start to take the hype about autonomous cars more seriously.

Nokia’s big comeback: Watches, bathroom scales, a 3310 PR gimmick, Snake, erm...

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: Makes you wonder

Because they got MS to pay them billions for a phone division, managers, staff and factories that were going to be worthless. MS didn't get the name or a scrap of IP and now has nothing to show for it.

Their main business is Infrastructure. This consumer stuff is a sideline.

Bring it BACK... with MODs! Psion 5 storms great tech revival poll

Mage Silver badge

Colour eInk?

Colour eInk doesn't work as the screen is about x6 dimmer or worse than mono, the absolute best possible is about 1/3th brightness as you are filtering reflected light, (twice) to get R G B.

Colour eInk is ghastly. Mono (black balls in a milky white liquid) eInk is fantastic.

Mirasol might be an option. Except Qualcom own it and want too much money.

If it is for notes, programming, looking up Wiki, text search on internet, ebooks, calendar, email etc, then regular eInk will work (based on using annotation, wikipedia, google, ebooks on a Kindle eInk and on a Kobo HD eInk).

Video processing eats battery faster than OLED or LCD+backlight anyway.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Bit pricey and it'll be a few more months until it's out but...

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gpd-pocket-7-0-umpc-laptop-ubuntu-or-win-10-os-laptop--2#/

Better than the pyra/open-pandora/gp2x replacement, but still no cigar.

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Bit pricey and it'll be a few more months until it's out but...

Vapour probably, like the Open Pandora before it. Inspired by GP2X

It's a Gameboy based on ARM with keyboard on steroids. It's been a few more months for a very long time.

It's pointless as the keyboard is too small.

I want it hot and wet – preferably with Wi-Fi

Mage Silver badge
Happy

Re: Where was this, pray tell?

I don't think I've been in a café like that since about 1968. Though it had heavy "pottery"/"china" cups, plates, metal cutlery and no coffee. Serious tea.

I don't think they actually served spam, but sausages, bacon, fried egg, un-toasted white pan were all options.

I wonder did Dabsy's café serve fried bacon with the back crunchy bits?

Rule of thumb:

1) US Franchise fast food places: Avoid the so called tea in cardboard cups as they refuse to use boiling water on H&S grounds. Avoid the chips, as the milk shake might have seen more potato.

2) Ancient places with catering tin of instant visible: Order a pot of tea. Only purchase fried goods, the buns might be ex- British Rail (see Heath Robinson illustration as to how those are made).

Thanks for entertainment just before lunch, Dabsy.

We want Waymo money from you! Uber sued for 'stealing self-driving car' blueprints from Alphabet

Mage Silver badge

Re: Baffling

It's really copyright violation, though, if the internals are a copy.

There is no limit on that, as it's based on damages.

Mage Silver badge

Baffling

1) Doesn't Google own part of Uber / Otto anyway?

2) The patents have prior art and/or too general, they should not have been issued.

I've no sympathy at all for Uber, I think they are exploitive. But this is weird.

Motorola's modular Moto Z: A fine phone for a weekend away

Mage Silver badge

Stupid

Should be fatter

Should have 2x or 3x battery life

Should have 3.5mm jack

I could go on.

It's not Motorola either.

The final 5G technical performance specs have been set

Mage Silver badge
Headmaster

Peak vs average

Peak is a meaningless metric.

As is "up to".

4G or 3G can easily be "up to" 20Mbps, or even 100Mbps for 4G. It's meaningless.

You'd need ten times mast density to achieve these specs, non-LOS, at which point 3G or 4G would deliver it.

Where do you find 100MHz per channel (minimum 300MHz cellular) below 3GHz (above 2.6GHz is no use for mobile outside an office), especially with regulators wanting to sell to multiple operators instead of a RAN?

This will make almost no difference in the real world, because in the real world the mast density and having a single wholesale operator for mobile is more important than which "G" it is.

The 5G is more usefully about infrastructure and backend. Obviously, though the driving factor is desire of infrastructure companies to sell upgrades and regulators to sell more spectrum. No more spectrum is needed. Mobile has a disproportional amount already scheduled. The 800, 900, 1800, 2100, 2500 are already misused and could deliver 20x more speed and capacity on average by a combination of more masts and a single wholesale operator per land mass.

Ex-employees sued for £15m over data slurpage ordered to pay up just £2

Mage Silver badge
Coat

Re: "metadata [...] had been erased after he installed Windows 10"

Maybe he just clicked on the X and Win 10 installed anyway?

Maybe even while forensics had it!

'First ever' SHA-1 hash collision calculated. All it took were five clever brains... and 6,610 years of processor time

Mage Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 sha1 calculations

The SHA-1 was already depreciated because it was already known it would be possible soon.

It will only get easier.

That's why SHA-256 exists already.

A special offer weekend deal on AWS just when someone wants to do this?

Ad men hope blocking has stalled as sites guilt users into switching off

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Morality?

What about the morality of dishonest adverts, scams, malware serving, bandwidth use, fake use metrics, lack of third part audits, privacy theft/illegal tracking?

I don't have an adblocker, despite what telegraph.co.uk thinks. I have noscript and for my own safety I only whitelist enough to get a site working.

The Admen are like some sort of protection racket that want the ordinary public to use random drug pushers and hookers, with no protection.

GET LOST.

Maybe if you advertisers had honest adverts, as static images, no trackers, no javascript and only served by the domain of the web page, you might be seen more.

As for clicks? I can't remember clicking on a visible advert EVER, except on shopping sites, when I'm actually trying to buy something. Like eBay, or Amazon etc.

Become a blockchain-secured space farmer with your hard drive

Mage Silver badge
Joke

AirBnB

Gig economy for your spare HDD space and Broadband capacity?

Regular readers know what I think of the "gig economy". Summary: exploitation of ordinary people to make money for privileged folk.

Mage Silver badge

In theory vs practice

In theory a nice idea.

But can we do this reliably and securely?

The data needs to be redundantly stored. I can't see how it can scale to any sensible number of users and providers without central servers at least doing indexing of some kind.

More brilliant Internet of Things gadgetry: A £1,300 mousetrap

Mage Silver badge

Re: Cats

UK domestic cats eat about 5,000 species, so they may not pay much attention to mice.

A plastic trap with peanut butter is extremely effective (the cheese thing seems to be US Tom & Jerry?).

A terrier or ferret is alleged to be better for outside rodents, I've not tried that.

Certainly an off the shelf $10 module will detect a trap being sprung. I've found that peanut butter works within a day of spotting a mouse. The rats are a little more suspicious. A large drop door cage with bird mix "glued" on the trigger plate using peanut butter works best for rats, especially in the garden. Accidentally caught birds can just be released. Though dealing with a large, scared and angry live rat in a cage may be a problem for some people.

BBC admits iPlayer downloads are broken

Mage Silver badge
Devil

Re: Just ditch the BBC.

Amazon prime

Much more evil to content producers than Sky or BBC.

Subscription services MUST be bad value, because you pay the same even if you take a break watching and the people selling them make a LOT of profit. That's why Adobe has switched to sub. Cheaper subscription services are only cheap because they are in customer acquisition/growth mode. I expect Netflix to double in price in Ireland and does Spotify actually make money?

Different judge, different verdict? Diageo's £54m SAP legal slap could have gone another way

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

Appeal

Can it be appealed?

I wrote a server service that provided web access to data stored on Sage Accounts. It was not using any Sage feature / api other than the data access. 2003.

Are users to be charged extra to access the data they put into a package, or do they need to create a separate database and export that data to SAP, Sage, etc.?

It seems restrictive and greedy.

Fitbit hit on Pebble kit cost just 20 million quid? Oh s**t!

Mage Silver badge
Unhappy

Sad though

Though Orwell was writing about contemporary 1948 in "1984", many main stream SF authors saw a dystopian future were the world was ruled by a few mega-corps.

We have seen "consolidation" in food (all the companies making up Heinz-Kraft and Unilever and Nestlé), Chips (NXP and others eaten by Qualcomm, Altera and others by Intel, Softbank eating many, not juast ARM, Analog Devices & Linear Technology, Texas & Nat. Semi. Microchip & Atmel, and more), Hard Drives, OSes (we are down to 2 main and one niche desktop, 2 main and several niche servers, two mobile). Car & Truck makers, Aircraft makers. Credit card companies, Energy companies, Tobacco companies, Alcoholic Drinks Companies. Bananas etc.

Media Giants.

TV sports Rights..

Big six paperback publishers (eBooks though are healty apart from Amazon's KDP Select & Prime distortion.

Ebay, Amazon, PayPal, Wikipedia, Facebook, Google almost monopolies in different areas. It seems the Internet has a positive feedback where instead of the envisaged diversity you get one operator per kind of thing.

Pack your bags! NASA spots SEVEN nearby Earth-sized alien worlds

Mage Silver badge

Orbits

They do have interesting resonant orbits.

The "goldilocks" zone might be too close to star, so planet(s) might be tidally locked or periodically hit by solar flares. Both mitigate against life.

The Talmud suggests there are 18,000 planets with life. Given number of stars in the Milky Way, that might be a serious under-estimate.

We are only at the beginning of this kind of search. The James Webb telescope will allow search for biological or industrial activity via better spectroscopic analysis.

Facebook scales back AI flagship after chatbots hit 70% f-AI-lure rate

Mage Silver badge

Social Problems

The "social problem" is that Facebook exists.

The solution to a high percentage of Internet scams, bullying, exploitation of personal information, fake news etc is simply to turn off Facebook. It provides nothing for the public that isn't available more privately (or publicly), for free, just as easy to use, elsewhere.

Mage Silver badge
Alien

TenCent's Success

The "west" has it wrong. TenCent's success is nothing to do with chatbots. Or even chat exactly. It's more complicated than that and has many Chinese aspects.

Oracle crushes Apiary's hope in slightly awkward email to customers

Mage Silver badge

Re: Reading between the lines...

"If you are with Apiary, I'd suggest looking for work _outside Oracle_ now, "

Might apply to customers using Apiary too?

I certainly prefer MariaDB to OracleDB (easier to calculate licence costs) and the shenanigans over Java (free vs pay $$$ parts) are scary.

Highway to HBLL: The missing link between DRAM and L3 found

Mage Silver badge

Or

What about a smaller CPU (less transistors, like ARM) and then a really big L1 cache?

Neuromorphic progress: And we for one welcome our new single artificial synapse overlords

Mage Silver badge

Re: Nonsense

Chimp, not chip. Though chips only have vocabulary and never language, try asking a Russian, Chinese or German of what they think of your English story "translated" by Google.

Mage Silver badge
Alert

Nonsense

The way in which the synapse cell stores information by subtly changing the write-mode voltage is similar to how real neural pathways are strengthened and weakened during the learning process in the brain

A real synapse is only one aspect of a biological brain. We don't actually know how brains work, or where intelligence comes from, or why a rook can be as "smart" as a chimp. Or why some birds have more ability at vocabulary than a chip (no non-human has language as understood by experts in language, a vocabulary and communication is not language.).

This is interesting, as is the EU funded "human brain" project. But it has very little to do with real biology or real intelligence.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Thinking Machines

Resistance is Finite!

Zuckerberg thinks he's cyber-Jesus – and publishes a 6,000-word world-saving manifesto

Mage Silver badge

They are delusional

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39051972

Clone it? Sure. Beat it? Maybe. Why not build your own AWS?

Mage Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

Are they really doing things we couldn't – and don't – do ourselves?

No.

Nor are IBM, Oracle, Google, Microsoft or any cloud service.

Ultimately they are doing it to make a profit.

Sometimes it makes sense to use them, other times it makes sense to do it in house.

Mage Silver badge

Re: Baffling

AWS guarantees are not worth the paper they are written on.

Where is the trustworthy 3rd party audit of any claims?

Suffering ceepie-geepies! Do we need a new processor architecture?

Mage Silver badge

Re: "graph with 18.7 million vertices and 115.8 million edges."

view background gives

https://www.graphcore.ai/hubfs/images/alexnet_label.jpg?t=1487676776004

However it's not "real", just artistic.

EE unveils sky domination plans with drones, balloons

Mage Silver badge

Re: How long before they enhance the incident...?

Satellite backhaul. Expensive, low capacity and high latency. But quite useful for emergencies. Though hooking up a two way sat link to an emergency mobile, 45 ft (telescopic plus tilt) mobile phone base is over 15 year old tech I think.

Nothing new here.

Mage Silver badge

Yet-to-be-patented technology

There should be NOTHING patentable about this.

The ideas and even deployment are over 100 years old.

You can buy gear off the shelf.

Balloons have been used for radio over 100 years and useless in bad weather, tethered or not.

Kites are worse! Also been used since radio was invented.

Sat links and mobile towers with any comms type desired are off the shelf.

This is PR nonsense.

$350m! shaved! off! sale! price! as! Verizon! swallows! Yahoo!

Mage Silver badge

Re: Verizon must see something I don't...

Yahoo Groups are still a thing.

The senior people of each live group (and Google's) ought to migrate to proper forum sw, phpBB isn't bad for free and most groups are low enough traffic for cheap linux hosting.