Posts by Gotno iShit Wantno iShit

Yeah but.. @ Faszination

I like Elon Musk because he is as mad as onions in all the right ways. We need more like him.

Re: Gotta love that cloud

Yeah but... Citrix. The poor bastards who have to sit facing that abomination day in day out are probably dancing in the aisles at the sheer joy of reverting to pen and paper. Such productivity! Such speed!

Re: Fuck that

For most people it does - where else were you thinking you could put it?

Well to reduce the chance of the server getting pinched just putting it in the loft would likely do, no help against Torchy the Arsonist Burglar though. How about in the garage or at a mates on a reciprocal arrangement?

Re: that really gave Star Trek muscle was, in a word: science.

Oh good grief. I'd forgotten all about Jar Jar Crusher, did you have to remind me?

Re: No, signed devices would be the fix @Adam 52

In the old days Windows would say "new hardware found, would you like to search for drivers".

It'll still do that if you tweak a few policy settings but as usual the defaults are set for convenience not security. See the link below.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530324.aspx#grouppolicydeviceinstall_topic3b

There is no defence as far as I am aware if an attacker uses a modified device for which the driver has already been installed. But if the attacker knows what devices you use and what USB ports you use them on you're hosed anyway.

Re: but...

Y'know how there's a word, paragraph and page count? There's a Lie count too and it commonly blows a fuse on anything coming out of a sales department. You need the Government Edition software which obviously has a much larger counter.

@AC Re: Tesla's progress is amazing

Joking aside, that is the exact situation I'm wondering about - just how many solar panels do you need to install to charge a Tesla from empty in one night? It would be an interesting metric.

Very roughly... Tesla is 100KWh, you never run them to zilch so I'm going to assume when you've used 70% of that the car is 'flat' (the reason for this choice will become clear in a moment). There are charging losses and I'm going to use 10% as a number plucked out of thin air. Therefore your source needs to deliver 77KWh to recharge your Tesla.

The most appropriate source for overnight charging is obviously a, or rather several, PowerWalls. These are 10KWH boilerplate but to get any reasonable life out of them you need to use no more than 7KWh (the above is clear now I hope). Therefore you need 11 PowerWalls.

Each PowerWall needs charging and again assuming 10% loss the source for that needs to deliver 7.7KWh. The first link below says a typical solar panel can deliver about 400Wh per average day. Rounding up for easy numbers that's 20 panels per PowerWall and 220 panels per Tesla.

That's pretty obviously beyond the size of most rooftops so I'll assume installation in a field. The panel in the second link is 670x1015mm, call it a meter square, double it to allow row spacing and you need an area 21 meters per side in the US, at a guess double that in the southern England or in Scotland, Scotland.

http://www.windynation.com/jzv/inf/Sizing%20a%20Solar%20Power%20System

http://www.windynation.com/Polycrystalline-Solar-Panels/WindyNation/100-400-Watt-100W-12V-Portable-Solar-Panel-with-Adjustable-Mount-Rack-RV-Boat/-/1324?p=YzE9NDU=

Re: They're taking over Linux!

I'd rather not imagine that if it's all the same to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOxeH_OQpFw

There is no amount of money in the world, not even all of it, that could persuade me to click that link.

Re: I wonder

They wouldn't spend long up there, the previous tourists typically stayed about a week though with all the training involved it was pretty much a full time job for about a year I recall reading.

That was possible when the permanent crew was lower and two incoming long term crew (+ tourist) could go up before a different long term pair (+ same tourist) returned a few days later. Now the crew is nominally 6 a crew of 3 leaves before the next goes up. Even if the crew dropped to 5 nominally up-before-down would mean 8 temporarily aboard. Russia must think this possible and within the capabilities of the ISS, will Nasa agree? There have been no tourist flights since the long duration crew increased to 6.

Re: double standards? @Fortycoats

Have you a link for the "creative" software by non-VAG companies? Interest not snark.

Many others have been found to be outside the emission limits in real world tests but that's largely due to unrealistic limits combined with distinctly not-real-word test methodologies. The latter being the only way with current technology to meet the former. I've not seen any other company caught having software that is creative in remotely the same way as VAG hence the interest.

As for why VW are getting a complete reaming and GM didn't, nail on head IMO.

Re: Won't work

Yes, that thing you thought of in a few moments reading a page on the internet, the SETI boffins won't have thought of that for sure.

Re: My money's on Bigelow Aerospace

This is about deep space not LEO. Bigelow have a lead in the game but it is diminished by the much higher radiation further out. It could even be a disadvantage as they will inevitably go down the route of increased layers of the technologies they have already developed. Other players could take a clean sheet approach and come up with something superior.

I'd put money on Bigelow being in the top 3 come the prize giving but that's as far as I'd stick my neck out.

Re: I wouldn't know... @Shadow Systems

Not uncommon for WUC to be godawful slow but there doesn't seem to be a fix. I have two primary machines and both are 7 white box installs of the same age.

The desktop takes 10 minutes to do WUC each month, it takes me longer to check the list of updates for GWX & telemetry trojans to reject. At least I don't have to worry about GWX any more.

The laptop takes 48-60 hours. I managed to get the July updates installed last weekend as it has taken that long for me to be in one place long enough for it to complete. If I hibernate the machine WUC starts again. And here we are 3 days later about to start again. For further annoyance WUC flatlines a core so the laptop is permanently in hovercraft mode for a task I know it won't complete. I used to kill the task to get some peace but it respawns so now I've disabled the service until I know I'll be in one place long enough.

@Paul

Bastard Airways are not perfect and nor is Heathrow but both are light years ahead of any American major airline or airport.

Re: Those updates BB promise....

Ta bazza, missed that.

Exactly. It's similar to the tests done on (IIRC) Fifth Gear that showed a when a Smart was driven into a concrete block at 70 MPH the safety cell remained intact, no external injuries to the occupants at all. Their internal organs however would be purée due to the deceleration. It took a couple of volunteers driving smart cars into very solid objects and not surviving to prompt the test to be done.

A Tesla has more crumple zone than a Smart and had there been bars on the lorry they would have deformed too but enough to save this guy? I doubt it. His head would be less than 10 feet from the front of the vehicle, assuming negligible sideways movement of the fully loaded truck that measurement is the distance he would need to stop in.

@James 51

I see your point about vision but I just can't accept that this technology will be ready in 25 years, certainly not in 10.

The first flight of a jet pack was claimed in the 1950s and certainly happened (tethered) in 1960. Some claimed we'd all be using them in the future but we aren't. The technology works but only at the bleeding edge. There have been small incremental improvements over the decades but a step change in fuel energy per unit mass is still needed to make it remotely practical.

Solar powered flight is the same, it works but every component is at the bleeding edge. Incremental improvements are not going to change that. If someone invents solar cells that can harvest 10x the energy for a given area and battery technology with 10x the energy storage for a given mass then it's game on. Incremental improvements every few years are not going to deliver 50 passenger aircraft in 10 years.

Re: Oh the memories

Does it matter how good the workers are? History has proven time and again that with public servants in charge and politicians interfering every public sector project going is guaranteed to be a colossal clusterfuck.

Re: Sorted

I'd like to calibrate the vindictive b'stards that write printer drivers. To be fair they are very clever, they know through some kind of mind reading exactly what combination of colour/grey/b&w/sheet size/dup or simp/flip vert or horiz/2on1 or 1on2 etc you desire. Then carefully deliver something else no matter what settings you've used.

While we are on the subject it's a shame El Reg still doesn't have https by default

El Reg doesn't have HTTPS at all never mind default. Given the number of articles bemoaning the privacy offered by other web sites it really is a piss poor example of 'Do as I say not as I do'.

@veti

I agree, this is now correct behaviour. The dialog presents options do, schedule or FOAD. Cancelling the dialog means a choice has not been made and so asking again is the correct behaviour. Those saying cancel should mean FOAD are as bad as Microsoft in making cancel=do. But haters are gonna hate and this is probably going to be a downvote record for me.

Re: hmmm

The competition is power limited at 2x 1560W. I guess it uses that limit rather than $ as one of the things they seek to encourage is vendor collaboration. Trouble with using pure $ as a limit would be scale, some really cheap implementations could return huge bang/buck but not be capable of scaling to be useful at real world problems.

I agree though, the cheaper approach ought to win, the completion needs weighting to account for both Watts and $.

Re: Zuckerberg is running Thunderbird

Pegasus still works just fine. It's a very, very good email client and dumb as rocks when it comes to dangerous content. It can't play Flash or the zillion other corruptible things so if you get sent a dodgy one it cannot get launched. Whatever comes in is just attached data. KISS rules.

Re: Cheers

I came here to say I'd be watching for just the opposite reason, I always got good service from Dabs. However...

I just had a look at their web site, everything is 'Log in for pricing'. They can poke that where the sun doesn't shine. They'll only learn about me when I decide to buy and without pricing I will never decide to buy from Entatech.

@ Code for Broke Re: batteries

Buy OEM not compatible - this is hard to do as vendors on tat bazaars lie. My history:

- Compatible for a previous laptop lasted a year, replaced laptop instead of trying another.

- Fake for HTC phone lasted about 3 months.

- Genuine for same HTC phone out lasted the phone.

- Genuine for current Acer laptop has lasted longer than the original.

- Genuine for Samsung phone working fine, too soon to declare good as yet

Re: My two year old Samsung S5 Mini just got Android 5 last weekend

Thrilling isn't it. Like you I now have an S5 mini with a not quite so outdated and vulnerable OS as it had. Only took Samsung 14 months. It still doesn't have the only new Android feature I actually give a crap about - selective permissions. There is nothing of value in 5 so far as I can see. Oh and a feature I rely on daily is now unreliable - alarms.

@Loyal Commenter Re: Good news, I guess

"so in order to bring the bill down, Labour will need to convince not only the other parties, but also a portion of the Tory party to vote against the bill. The best way to do this would be to go through the due process of having the bill examined, and fault found with it, thereby putting forward a strong argument for voting against it"

Funny how Labour are interested in due process now they are in opposition but when they first drafted the snoopers charter were having none of it. The reverse is true of the Tories, strongly opposed to the snoopers charter while in opposition but now they're in they've renamed it the IPB and are pushing it through.

Two faced weasels the lot of 'em. Not to mention spineless puppets of those really pushing for legalisation of bulk surveillance - Whitehall.

@tacitust

"If you don't want to live in a surveillance state, refusing to adopt new technologies isn't going to help one iota."

Yes it is, and I'll allow you to conflate 'state' with 'multinational global enterprises' because the refusal helps in both cases.

The state has proven they are willing to break into any equipment we own and use it to spy on us whether we are guilty or not. I'm not advocating giving up internet access, mobile phones, home computers etc but if we did refuse to adopt these technologies the state would not be able to use them to spy on us. Your statement that it isn't going to help one iota is false.

Multinational global enterprises, especially Google, do all they can to spy on us for business reasons. Refusing to adopt their hardware and software in our lives clearly will restrict their spying, again your statement is false. But I'm not advocating rejecting all Google offerings either. I have an android phone, wifi and data are off at all time except when I am actively using them. I'm not paranoid enough (yet) to distrust the activity indicators.

I do advocate rejecting this blatant spy in our homes (and Amazons Echo). I'd happily have a voice activated home assistant and will do so when all the processing is done in my home. Sure, if I ask such a device to tell me the weather in Milan I accept it will search the internet for the weather in Milan in exactly the same was as if I typed a search into duckduckgo (or others) myself. So wake up tech world, I want this function but I will not accept your current implementations.

Your convenience / acceptable loss of privacy demarcation line may lie elsewhere. This is mine.

It's not the desire of the Tories driving this. We're on our third PM and 6th home sec since this BS started and todays IPB is virtually unchanged from the original Snoopers Charter. Whitehall is driving this, the politicians we get to choose are just puppets.

Re: Samsung is the worst of the big manus

I would have agreed with you a 10 days ago but last week I got notification of a patch being available for my S5 mini. The first since the initial flush when it was new 14 months ago. It was on 4.4.2 IIRC and now has 5.1.1. Do I thank Samsung or EE? I've no idea so I'm not going to disagree, I've just sent my jury out to reconsider.

Re: "Remembered" the PIN

Perhaps he didn't remember, perhaps he's been trying to be helpful but couldn't. I wouldn't remember many of my passwords without a keyboard to look at, the pattern is the key in part. Perhaps since he's a drug dealer, an emotive bad guy, the feds have let the case go to court in the hope of getting popular support for their precedent. Now they've realised that isn't going to happen perhaps they've lent him the keyboard he's asked for all along.

"why go for almost a billion like they planned?"

Perhaps they don't plan to collect it all. 95% could be used to build false trails and abandoned still leaving a healthy payoff. Split the money up and move it as many times as possible. I don't know which countries are hardest for Globo-Plod to follow the money through but I'd be finding out if I had something like this in mind. Some countries will allow automated follow-the-money enquiries and so are no help in hiding the loot. Any country that requires transaction data requests to be hand written (signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, firelighters etc) is going to be really handy to know about.