* Posts by BristolBachelor

2200 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jan 2009

HALF of London has outdated Wi-Fi security, says roving World of War, er, BIKER

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I was wondering that too. Considering that all the Starbucks or BTopenzone and the like have no protection, then it's no surprise.

What this guy should be saying is that the WiFi standards group are still completely crap if they cannot implement a standard that allows anyone to connect without needing a password, and then for the two devices to negotiate a secure connection between them.

The current standards either have no protection, or the requirement to enter a 140 bit key on an on-screen keyboard the size of a postage stamp, and no way to know what that key is unless people stick post-it notes up on every lamp-post.

As for honeypots; aren't they one of the reasons for VPN?

SpaceX touts latest gear: new module, rocket demo

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Trollface

Re: Space Elevators

On a similar line, we should stop building cars; obviously a dead-end technology. Everyone knows that matter transport is the way to go, and there have been a few theoretical papers and at least 1 photon demonstation that it is possible!

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Re: There are 2 interesting claims about this.

Another big difference is that Dragon 2 will have to be "life-boat" capable, which means surviving 7 months attached, and able to depart by itself at the drop of a hat. As far as I am aware, the current Dragon can only survive for a few weeks, maybe a month tops.

To be able to depart at the drop of a hat, the Dragon 2 would need at least manually controllable manoeuvring thrusters, like the Soyuz, and even a fully automatic system shouldn't be too hard to qualify; there is a precedent in the Euro ATV.

Google forges a Silver bullet for Android, aims it at Samsung's heart

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Re: Absolutely

To be honest the Sammy stuff in my Note is ok. The bugs I see are in the stock Google mail app, and are still there in the latest, latest version. Also the newest, newest version of Android doesn't get me anything new that I want. On the contrary, it's the forced updates to Play services that you cannot deny or roll-back that are FKing over my phone and also killing the battery. Perhaps a pure Sammy Tizen phone would suit me better?

Boffins build billion-synapse, three-watt 'brain'

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Re: As a matter of interest ....

The 1st answer in Google says:

"The average power consumption of a typical adult is about 100 W." 20 W ... "The human brain is only 2% of the weight of the body, but it consumes about 20% of ..."

I can't see any more than that from here. I'd have to go to a more civilised place that has unfettered internet access. Also the URL for the page that Google pulls up falls foul of El Reg's parser :/

This value as 20-40W is also quoted in Wikipedia

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Facepalm

Re: “you have to know how the brain works to program one of these”.

How many people program brains daily? Except for a few films where the villian may be stroking a white cat, living in a volcano, I've not seen any evidence of people programming brains.

Japan plans SEVEN satellite launches to supercharge GPS

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Re: Is this just WAAS?

I don't think so. I think that it's more about the fact that in Tokyo, and most cities in Japan, the horizon is about 15 degrees instead of 180 degrees in the countryside or 90 degrees in other cities. It's almost impossible to see 4 GPS satellites at the same time, let alone more.

This is more about putting satellites into very eliptical orbits (or geo), so that they are above the local horizon for longer, so you can still see enough of them to get a lock, or enough of them to have reasonable accuracy. At the same time, yes it makes sense to add differentials.

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Re: Compatible with existing GPS systems?

In theory it there is no reason why not. The new satellites just need to transmit a datastream in the same band, with satellite position data that represents the position of the satellite. It doesn't matter if the satellite is in a different orbit.

Reg man builds smart home rig, gains SUPREME CONTROL of DOMAIN – Pics

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Re: A blue LED indicates the light is on

However, since the "switch" is only connected by 2-wires, it is in series with the bulb. If the bulb is dead, there will be no circuit, and therefore the switch will also be dead with no LEDs.

Elon Musk's LEAKY THRUSTER gas stalls Space Station supply run

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Joke

Re: Say what?

"How the hell did they develop a helium leak in the first stage?"
My guess would be that the last test technician didn't fully close the valve after taking a lungful to do the squeeky countdown from 10. I believe that the guys here always make sure that they close the valve afterwards. (Bootnote: filling a Guiness inflatable chair with helium doesn't make it float)

Sony battery recall as VAIO goes out with a bang, not a whimper

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Re: The perils of having Panasonic as a partner???

Sony also make Li-Ion cells, but tend to be the cylindrical cell type more than coffee pack (although I believe that they do make coffee pack style). The standard commercial cells that they make are also used to make batteries for satellites (not Tosh laptops!).

It was testing those cells that lead to the discovery many years ago that a machine on one production line was dropping small particles of zinc into the cells leading them to fail early, which in turn lead to a major recall.

OpenSSL Heartbleed: Bloody nose for open-source bleeding hearts

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Black Helicopters

You meant yo say that the Google engineer who found it teported it to the people who could fix it.

However, the NSA hack who found it added it to their exploit list.

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Re: "Google's Android 4.1.1 is vulnerable"

The keep alive may be sent from the client to the server, or from the server to the client.

Are you saying that Android does not make SSL connections?

Anatomy of OpenSSL's Heartbleed: Just four bytes trigger horror bug

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Trollface

Re: Sloppiness or malice?

So the RFC iasued in 2012 tells you how to do it. And the code submitted in 2011 does it a different way? I suppose that is possible in a causal universe, where you can't tell the future; it's Einstein's fault.

British Gas applies to wind up UK colo outfit Alphadex

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"Pulling the plug" isn't so easy at the moment. ISTR that you have to send a bod to their premises with a court order to get inside and do the dirty (or a slick talking "I'm here to check the phalanges on your meter" guy).

Of course once you've got one of the new digital meters, it's a different matter. Then the person cold-calling you to change your insurance to BG will turn off your electricity out of spite because you were rude and hung up on them.

Web data BLEEDOUT: Users to feel the pain as Heartbleed bug revealed

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Facepalm

Re: Your observation is flawed

"But for other devices, including the webservers at companies"
But wasn't the first post about home routers and access points? How many companies use a home router for their webserver? :-/ (Judging by the speed of some of them more than one!)

Apple execs: 'Consumers want what we don't have'

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I see Samsung's slides as being important on their high-end ranges (Galaxy S and Note) where Apple was their major compoetitor. Presumably they were watching the others too, but thought that they weren't a problem.

On the other hand, Apple's slides seem to be suggesting that they are refusing to deliver what their potential customers want to own, or their potential sales channels want to offer.

I don't see the slides as equal at all. Samsung is at worse a bit paranoid (but with some reason). Apple seems to be realising that they are close to the thin end of the extinct wedge unless they change. The question is: are Apple willing to change to compete with what people want (to own or supply), or do they just want to bog down the competition so they don't have to?

Furious MyCloud users descend on WD website as borkage continues

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I also read that the NEST smoke alarm can be silanced by waving your arms at it (a selling point if you regularly burn toast). However Google has decided that it might mis-interpret movement and disable itself by accident, and therefore might not be working when you thought it was. So their solution? remotely disable all of them (WTF!?)

I'm starting to think that I may not connect my automated home to the net after all.

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

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Re: Administration knightmare

When you say a table of 27 entries, you mean a table with 27 countries. But then each country has a set of VAT rates (e.g. utilities, childrens clothes, cultural items....). Note that the VAT rate per category may vary by country; printed books are 0% rated in UK, but 21% rated in Spain. Theatre tickets 8% in Spain, but not in UK.

Also B2B may be VAT free or not, depending on the country you are supplying to, and how the company is registered (including what categories it is registered for).

It is true; for a small company VAT is a nightmare.

HTC One M8: Reg man takes spin in Alfa Romeo of smartphone world

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Re: Double-tap to wake

With the Note 3 sitting on the desk, you just wave your hand over it to get the time and any missed notifications. Touch the phone? Why'd you wannt do that?

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Joke

Re: IR

"The amount my wife looses remotes !!!!"
So does that mean that she'd just lose the phone instead?

Chinese patent app tries to own Wine on ARM

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Coat

Re: Don't you have to INVENT something?

Sadly, no.

New Sammy patent trial: Apple seeks $40 PER 'infringing' handset

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Trollface

"Can somebody please try and explain this to me?"
US Patent Office

We dig into the GTech GDrive Mobile ... and watch WORST tear-down vid OF ALL TIME

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Re: Thunderbolt

Yes, it's a DisplayPort monitor. It's NOT a Thunderbolt monitor - it has a 17Gbit Display port input. It's the Thunderbolt peripheral that has to detect that there's a displayport down-stream and regenerate the 17Gbit DisplayPort data stream for it by demuxing it from the 10Gbit Thunderbolt datastream.

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Re: Thunderbolt

In my case, Thunderbolt could be useful. The huge HP laptop I have does have a ESATA port, but the Macbook pro does not, so a SATA interface doesn't help there.

However, the problem with this device is having to UNPLUG the monitor to use it. FAIL, fail and fail again. If I have to choose between monitor and external disk, monitor wins every time.

Zuck: Web drones, not balloons (cough, cough Google) are way forward

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Re: cancer cells ...

...and economists. If they want continuous growth, we should force feed them to ensure that their mass increases by a minimum of 10% per annum. Anything less than that would be a failure.

Samsung Galaxy S5 in El Reg's claws: This time the 'S' is for 'sensible'

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Swipe less heavily

"Have you ever seen someone say they're desperate for a phone they can swipe less heavily?"
While waiting in the snow waiting for a bus, being able to use gloves with a phone is a real bonus. The phone already cost an arm and a leg; I don't want to lose my fingers to frostbite too!

Oh and the after-market cover that has a window in it is very useful (although a bit over-priced). It gives you wireless charging, and with the cover shut you can still access a limited set of functions because the touch screen works through the ~1.5mm glass window.

And don't know about the S4 or S5, but the gestures on the Note 3 are not 2mm above the screen. It's more like if it's on the desk sleeping, and you wave your hand about 6" - 18" over the top of it, it wakes up enough to display a brief status (missed calls, messages, etc.). All in all not unuseful (although it doesn't work with the aforementioned cover shut).

No, Minister. You CAN'T de-Kindle your eBooks!

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Re: Unconstitutional

I wanted to comment on the phrase "The stipulation that contracts cannot be enforced is merely one example of creating legislation with two contradictory meanings.".

I call bollocks on that phrase. If you sign a contract with me that says I can harvest your organs when I want, while you are still walking and talking, does that mean I can do it? NO. Other legislation says that I cannot enforce that claim in the contract. Where does the legislation have contradiction? Is there really legislation that says anything written down in a contract overrides all other laws?

Google grabs Gmail-using HTTPS refuseniks and coats them with SSL

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Re: https not universal

No. At this particular site, all traffic that is not clear-text gets bocked. EVERYTHING. You can use http, and smtp in the clear, but https, ssl, vpn, etc gets blocked by the regional/national firewall. I seem to remeber having mixed results with ftp sometimes working, sometimes not. At one point they started allowing https, but they were actually doing a man in the middle, so the certs all reported failures, and it was god awful slow, but they've turned that off again.

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https not universal

Google really pisses me off with their HTTPS insistance. I was visiting a site in a not so friendly place, and ALL https from that part of the world went to /dev/null. Doesn't matter what you use, wired or GSM, https just gets blocked (similarly VPN). Go to www.google.com (or .co.uk) and it just redirects to HTTPS, and fails right there.

Google's solution is to login using https, and turn it off. Firstly the fact that HTTPS doesn't work is lost on them. Secondly it requires you to log in just to use search, and that if you only use HTTP, it means logging in with the password in clear text.

I had to find out in that moment how bad Bing really was.

MPs blast HMRC for using anti-terrorism laws against whistleblower

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Re: Lawmakers and the law

Wanted to comment on this too.

AFAIK the RIPA is only there to LIMIT how far that they can legally go. Nothing says when they can use the powers, only that they can't go past them. Terrorism was given as an excuse to create the powers, but nobody saw fit to have the law written so that they may only be used in those cases.

GSMA: EU net neutrality reforms are the enemy of business

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Re: Actually they're perfectly right.

I thought that they wanted to block/throttle Netflix to death, and hence make their over-priced and piss-poor alternative the only choice?

They want me to install CCTV to see what YOU did in the TOILET

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Re: Virgin

My previous employer installed CCTV in the toilet. They also had them installed in the office to protect us, even though you couldn't get in without a keycard and registered fingerprint. They didn't mention CCTV on their DPA entry though.

NASA: Earth JUST dodged comms-killing SOLAR BLAST in 2012

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Re: Remember it's a low probability event *until* it's actually happening

Backup to GPS is a sextant. However in the middle of the day, the time to get a lock is a bit longer than GPS. I have seen some star trackers that will work during daylight hours, but they are not cheap, not small, and still unlikely to work with UK cloud cover.

More of an issue is that the Early warning system told us about it 1.5 years late; OK so it wasn't heading directly for us, so wasn't within the perimiter of the warning system; but that's just being pedantic.

Blighty goes retro with 12-sided pound coin

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Re: Queens Head on one side

In common parlance, the coin has head and tail side. How about the queen mooning to the world?

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Coat

Re: iSIS...

It's called marketing...

PAF! MPs go postal over postal location data sell-off by Coalition.gov

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FAIL

Re: A fair price

So presumably, the share price should've been zero too then?

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Re: Maintenance by someone who knows about data

When people built 2 new houses in the middle of my parents' street, the one next door to them got the same post code as them, but a name. The other got the same postcode as the house it was built next to, but number 2A. Neither got a postcode from a different street, even one with a similar name. I always that that was normal, and a good thing. There are some bad things about postcodes; like where you put the break can sometimes be important, but it's generally good.

Where I am currently based, the post code doesn't even narrow down the town, and covers probably 100,000 people. Worse, the address as "number", "road", "town", "post code" only narrows it down to one of 10 buildings, and each building contains 9 separate dwellings

Earth's night-side gets different kinds of neutrinos from day-side

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Trollface

Re: One moment.

You have a point, and I'm waiting to read your paper on the subject. I enjoy reading your posts, so I await with baited breath :)

The paper should at least hypothesise the mechanism that affects the sun depending on which side of the Earth is facing it. Ideally, it should also say how this mechanism changes the rate at which it fires neutrinos at us that are detected as electron neutrios.

Reports say Vodafone to gobble Spanish cable outfit Ono

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Re: As a Spanish national and ONO customer...

"It can't even provide a decent mobile conections in the UK."
Vodafone seems to provide a workable service in Spain. OK so they spam message you every day, and phone you to try to sell you things, but at least the service works.

Last week Jazztel, one of their competitors, dropped their entire mobile voice service for 12 hours and mobile data for 20. Also orange keep pestering me to move landline/mobile to them, but their mobile service doesn't cover where I live, and their landline service would be voice only; no ADSL were I am. For me at least, Vodafone is the best option.

BuzzGasm: 9 Incredible Things You Never Knew About PLIERS!

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Re: Always use the right tool for the job

If you can't do it with a hammer, then you're not using a big enough hammer.

From Dave who used to assemble satellites, before moving to French Giana to launch rockets.

WhatsApp chats not as secret as you think

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Trollface

Re: Strange

"yes, yes, thats what YOU want, maybe not what others want."
Indeed. What I want is sandboxed data. If I save a spreadsheet attachment from en email, I don't want no other app reading it; certainly not Excel! And when I've finished writing my monthly progress report in Word, I don't want another app to be able to read it either.

Oh, and those pictures should only be available to the camera app. Not the Photoshopmini app, not a gallery app; only the camera app!

Nurse! I think my meds are wearing off!

Finally! Some actual, novel tech: Apple patent to revive geriatric gear

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That's not the only problem. I can't install any apps on my iPod touch because iOS is out of date. Apple won't let me install a newer one, and made the devs remove all apps that worked with the old one. Worse; the last restore I did wouldn't re-install some apps because that version was no longer on the app store, so I'm hoping that I never have to do another one. So try to convince me what Apple would really do it they could automatically detect that my kit it old?

Jobless mum claims Spanish councillor told her to 'go on the game'

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"That's possibly enough to get a conviction."

Yeah but in Spain, all that happens is that they grant a pardon to the person convicted. There is a tug of war between the judges on one hand saying that new laws are unworkable or unconstitutional, or convicting people of crimes, and the politicos on the other hand passing "illegal" laws, or pardoning their amigos so they don't suffer.

Given that this guy is in the PP club, chances are that nothing will happen. He might even get voted in again at the next election, because he may still be see as less bad than the other guy!

German freemail firms defend AdBlock-nobbling campaign

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Coat

Re: "Merely...make money"

"It's actually a breach of copyright as you are creating a derivative work of the page "

<sarc mode>

At last we can get IE6 banned because it does not render pages properly, and is therefore unlawfully infringing copyright.

</sarc mode>

Well done on the privacy lawsuit. Now NSA will keep your phone records INDEFINITELY

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Re: Good!

"Good luck suing the US Government for money."
What's the problem? They'll just pass another act allowing them to borrow even more money to pay it and forget about it.

Oh they do have a plan though; when the economy has improved and is growing at 10000% per anum, then the tax receipts will pay off all the past debt.

SpaceX set to try HOVER LANDING for re-usable rockets on March ISS mission

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Re: I hope he

"...he's sunk money and time and money and more money into making a cheaper space launch system, even if it does'nt work, at least he has tried."
There is an apt saying here that goes something like:
"To make a millionare rocketlauncher businessman, first you start with a billionaire"
The business has very few customers, and it is hard to amortise anything with the low quantity of launches and the extreme cost of doing anything, analysed to the nth degree.

I hope to see this succeed, even though that will initially negatively affect some of my customers (and therefore also potentially me). However as a whole, I expect to see it positively affect all of them in the long term.

DARPA wants help to counter counterfeits

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Sounds like same again

They are only just finishing the last round of this. They passed a ruling saying that everything had to be supplied with verifiable DNA on it. The problem was that it was a lot of bother for quite a few suppliers, so they said no; the business isn't worth it.

The end result was that the army had to buy the parts through the grey-market, via another company who added the DNA to say that the part was OK - end result was acutally the opposite of what they wanted because they just went ahead with it, even though the suppliers said that they weren't playing ball.

The other thing is we are still using things like op-amps/comparitors/diodes/transistors designed in 1970 or before. Add a die containing a processor and encryption to a diode?! That's even more fucked up than DNA.

Steelie Neelie 'shocked' that EU tourists turn mobes off when abroad

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Re: Once again the EU makes a good call. @MrXavia

"...block us from kicking out terrorists..."
Ah, but that isn't the EU. That's the European Convention of Human Rights. It was put in place to try and prevent another world war and the abuses that lead to and resulted from the last ones. Also a good part of it was written by us, a conservative MP, I believe. The European Convention of Human Rights is just about the only thing that has stopped the UK getting so bad that 1984 and V for Vendetta look like a fairy tale by comparison.

IT'S ALIVE! China's Jade Rabbit rover RETURNS from the DEAD

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Re: Lose face never lose rabbit OK

The original report I saw came from SAST and said that they would not be able to return the rabbit to 100% functionality. I assumed that this meant that they still couldn't open/close the solar panels properly, maybe something suffered from the cold, and maybe there was less power available.

When I saw lots of headlines reporting it dead, I wondered if it was pessimism or exageration (my own body doesn't work 100% but that doesn't class me as dead!). In the end, I think that each site picked up the story from another site, changing the words a bit along the way, and it went from <100% eventually to =0%. Could you call it Chinese whispers? (ok, I'll get me coat.)