* Posts by Number6

2293 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

Amazon reports rare profit and is punished by Wall Street

Number6

I think you missed the "bn" on each of those numbers, so that's $470million difference. Still small change to some, I know.

FCC says US telcos can start moving to IP-based calling, but in baby steps

Number6

Already There

Comcast already does with with their XFinity service, or at least I assume that's how they do it. Cable modem with built-in VoIP adapter and (optional) battery pack. Of course, if they were smart, they'd tweak the CM software so that a VoIP phone connected via a LAN port could also use the number, then people could use their laptop for phone calls as well as Skype calls.

Given the number of people who use cordless phones and probably don't have a backup wired phone, I'd say a lot of people lose phone service when the power goes out.

Cameron: UK public is fine with domestic spying

Number6

I read the headline and my immediate reaction was BOLLOCKS!

Yes, Google can afford to lose $9bn in Motorola sale. But did it really?

Number6

I would say this says more about those who write tax laws and those who interpret them than anything else.

Perhaps the world could club together to organise a big convention for them on a tropical island in the Pacific somewhere, and when they're all having a party, nuke it from orbit.

Google Glassholes, GET OFF our ROADS, thunder lawmakers in seven US states

Number6

Re: HUD?

It's a few years ago now, but I think Jaguar had a proper HUD system for use in fog that used radar (or lidar) at a frequency unaffected by the fog and projected an image onto the inside of the windscreen to show what was outside. I'm not sure if it was on 1st April though. Having said that, GM is working on such a system based on this Wired article from 2010

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/03/gm-next-gen-heads-up-display/

Reg reader crafts 3-axis GoPro 'Stubilizer' for skull-mounted cameras

Number6

Re: Why's it always KickStarter these days?

It depends on what the money is used for - if you can fund it with a Kickstarter for the whole amount, you can end up with a viable small company with an established product and demand that you own. If you get it funded by venture capitalists then they end up with a viable small company with an established product.

Reality is usualy somewhere in between, and often you will need external investment to fund further growth, but that's easier when the VC has sight of a real product and a real market rather than a bunch of Powerpoint slides.

NatWest 'spam' email cockup got me slapped with late payment fee, says angry Reg reader

Number6

Re: SPF natwest.com

That said, there are other questions. Like; do Natwest really send outbound mail from more than 65,000 IPs? Doesn't this make it so broad as to be essentially meaningless?

Or someone didn't actually understand how SPF works... Or their network is disorganised enough that it really does have outbound mail servers spread all over the subnet.

Number6

Re: Lessons learned

"Setup a recurring reminder to pay every month" - it's YOUR responsibility to make the payment, regardless of whether/if you get a statement.

This is why I refused to have electronic statements and insisted on a paper one each month when this first started. For some reason I trust the postal system to deliver something more than the electronic one. It can be hard to pay off a bill if you don't know how much it is,even if you know that it should be due.

Now my habits have changed and I have electronic statements, but then I also log in and check my accounts a lot more so it's obvious when the statement date has passed and the amount payable is clear.

China's Jade Rabbit moon rover might have DIED in the NIGHT after 'abnormality'

Number6

Say Cheese

It turns out that the moon is not made of green cheese, it's made of Swiss cheese and the rabbit fell down a hole.

Number6

Re: Space != reliability

How exactly will beancounter mannage improve a space expedition?

Self-interest. Go look up the quote about John Glenn who, when he was asked what he was thinking when in space, answered that he was considering the fact that all the equipment around him was made by the lowest bidder.

Number6

Re: Space != reliability

Sendnig the chief beancounter along on a manned mission would probably vastly improve its reliability, alrthough it would cost a bit more.

Mail Migration

Number6

Doesn't it also depend on what client software they want to use? If everyone is gung-ho on Outlook, they're going to want something that gives them all the Outlook features. Even without that requiremkent, do you need to integrate with Active Directory and other Windows technologies?

I'd stick with a Linux system with IMAP, but then I have less than ten users to worry about so the scale is somewhat different. At my level, lack of licence issues means it costs less, but with a large system the running costs will be a significant part of the equation.

Number6

Re: Don't do this.....

That just means they migrated to somewhere other than where the users are looking, probably the bit bucket...

Icahn slurps another $500m in Apple shares, demands buyback AGAIN

Number6

Icahn is the poster boy for short-term thinking. See the stored value, move in, strip it and move on, leaving behind something that may well struggle to cope. To me, he typifies the whole problem with the modern economy, it's all NOW! NOW! NOW! and ME! ME! ME! with no thought as to what happens in ten years. From his perspective, he'll be OK if he's got lots of money under his mattress and who cares about the rest of us.

Facebook will LOSE 80% of its users by 2017 – epidemiological study

Number6

Usenet FTW

None of this web-based stuff is a patch on Usenet for public discussion. Proper threading of discussions, flame wars, killfiles, spam, it had (still has) the lot. RSS is a sort of halfway house, but not as good. Of course, it's useless to advertisers and the binary groups pretty much killed off most of the servers, but what's left is still useful and a lot quieter than it used to be.

Number6

Alienating Users

As Facebook try to extract revenue from the users, they'll gradually annoy more and more of them, then someone will start something new and clean and people will decamp in droves and it will implode. And so the cycle begins again.

We can't get rid of Google because in the limit, we don't interact directly with it, the business end is between Google and all the websites out there that install the Google Analytics and advertising packages. I block them on principle, but you can be sure that if everyone started doing it, Google would find another way. With Facebook, their model relies on the users connecting to their site, so until/unless they can evolve their business model, they're vulnerable if they manage to annoy too many people. They're already walking the line with businesses and the fact that fans of business pages don't all get to see updates unless the business coughs up lots of cash. As they disrupt the newsfeed of users (how hard is it to have an option to display everything in chronological order?) with their fancy and useless attempts to guess what we want to see, they're going to irritate more of us.

There's a reason why Fluff Busting Purity and SocialFixer are popular amongst users and hated by Facebook.

Bored with patent trolls? Small fry - prepare for the Design Trolls

Number6

It depends on how much you can afford to pay your lawyer.

If your telco or mobe provider hikes 'fixed' contract fees you can now ESCAPE - Ofcom

Number6

Which inflation?

As we all know, there are several measures of inflation, and the government uses the high one or the low one depending on whether they're raising prices or benefits. Which one does O2 specify should be used?

Pay-by-bonk? YEP, it's an Apple patent now...

Number6

I guess this comes down to whether you trust the retailer's NFC set-up or their WiFi more. Which one is going to be easier to compromise or eavesdrop?

NSA: It's TRUE, we grab 200 MILLION of your text messages A DAY globally

Number6

Random Data Club

We need a worldwide random data club. At random intervals, generate 1MB of random data, email it to someone else in the club (obviously choose the recipient at random...)

Ian Williamson: The engineer who gave Sinclair his first micro

Number6

We had one of these at school, and mostly we programmed it with the moon lander program from the manual, none of us at that point having the skills or understanding to cope with the assembly language or what it meant.

I went on to build my own little computer in the same style in about 1982 while still at school, except I used big seven-segment LEDs rather than the tiny calculator display, and I had a 24-key keypad. I also used a Z80A and added a PIO and CTC. By then I'd learned machine code, so I could write the software. The PCB was designed using 0.1" graph paper and carbon paper (cheap way of producing a mirror image of the bottom) and laid out directly on the copper board using tape and then etched at home. I was quite pleased with it in the end and found it in the loft a few months back. I'm hoping that it stil works. I also made an expasion card with an SIO, another CTC, plus a D/A and A/D converter (ZN426/428, I think).

Amazon workers in Delaware reject trade union membership

Number6

Everyone should have the right to join a union, but no one should be forced to. I grew up in 70s Britain, where union power was being used to the long-term detriment of everyone, including the members. The closed shop is equally as bad as banning unions, if not more so because you end up a bit like a dictatorship with the leadership claiming to represent people who have no choice but to be represented even if they vehemently disagree. Lorry drivers often had to show a union card before they'd be allowed ot go about their trade, it was all intimidation and threats.

This has sort of biased me against ever joining a union, but it also encouraged me to go for a career where I didn't need a union to protect my interests.

Unions do have an important role to play in protecting employee welfare, but they should stick to that and act in the best interests of the members, not the leadership. It's all about balance - 70s Britan was clearly off to one side, and I'd say that places like Amazon and Walmart are clearly off to the other side.

Hosting outfit goes PERMANENTLY TITSUP after 'lifetime' plans kill biz

Number6

Some twit will no doubt try to launch a class action lawsut against the company, being totally oblivious to the lack of cash to pay any possible settlement. Hopefully the legal profession will be smart enough to not play ball, unless said twit is prepared to pay cash up-front.

Even 'Your computer has a virus' cold-call gits are migrating off XP

Number6

Missed Out

I've never had a call from these scammers, although my tendency to ignore the phone if I don't recognise the number probably helps me avoid them. I think I'd start by asking which IP address was causing the problem so I could determine which machine I needed to work on. Or I'd try it the other way around and ask if it was the one with the address 192.168.1.4 that they could see misbehaving on the internet.

THOUSANDS of UK.gov Win XP PCs to face April hacker storm... including boxes at TAXMAN, NHS

Number6

Re: The Elephant in the Firewall @AC 11:24

I've been given a laptop at my new job. It's lived on my desk apart from a couple of visits to the lab. I see no need to bring it home.

Number6

Because IT departments are lazy and rely too much on the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" mantra.

Or (b) the IT department highlighted this a couple of years ago but no one gave them the budget to actually do anything about it.

Number6

Re: IE8?

Except a dodgy USB stick can render all of this moot.

In theory you can disable such things. Obviously someone didn't, or at least not properly.

Report: Prez Obama kicks Healthcare.gov contractor to curb for web disaster

Number6

Re: English translation needed

Actually, curb has a longer history, the kerb variant seems to have appeared later in proper English to refer to the line of stones along the edge of a road. The implication behind both is that they're restraining the edge of the road (curbing/kerbing it).

Connecting Gmail to Google+ is SENSELESS, says Digg founder

Number6

Re: Not seeing the problem here

How was anyone supposed to know they'd been sent an email? E.g. like many here, my Gmail account has never been actively used. It's been used occasionally to access Google Play and the like.

To some extent that's less of an issue. If you don't use the account for email then for the most part you're not going to be bothered by random messages from Google+ users. I never check the email attached to the account I use for Google Play - on the occasions I want a new app, I browse the Play store while signed out, then once I find what I want, I'll get the phone to go get it directly.

Of course, there's always the risk of offending some clueless type who sends you a message via that mechanism expecting a reply. I counter that by having a really obscure Gmail account name that you wouldn't associate with me.

Number6

Re: Not seeing the problem here

While it obviously doesn't help when emailing someone with an outsourced email account, I run my own SMTP set-up and stuff travels from my home server directly to the published MX for the recipient. Most servers now operate with tls so that hakes it harder for people to eavesdrop. If the MX is on the recipient's local network, that keeps things fairly secure.

Thought sales were in the toilet before? Behold the agony: 2013 was a PC market BLOODBATH

Number6

I don't know if PCs purchased as a discrete set of parts counts as a PC sale, but if so, I did my part to help boost sales in 2013. A desktop with a decent monitor (or two, or three...), keyboard and mouse is still superior to a tablet for many purposes.

Europe MPs: Time to change our data-sharing policy with US firms

Number6

Disclosure

There should be a disclosure requirement imposed in all civilised nations. If the state sees fit to acquire your data, then it should either present it as evidence in a court case or inform you in writing of what it collected[*] and why no later than two years after it was collected. With court oversight, perhaps this can be extended ot five years if there's something that takes that long. Once disclosed, they should delete it.

[*] If collected but not read, they don't need to read it in order to tell you what it was, merely that it was (for example) emails between you and party X between certain dates.

Number6

Re: Oh Dear ...

For an EU politician it makes a difference whether it's us doing it or the US doing it.

Why 2014 might just be the year of the Google Chromebook

Number6

OS Swapping

It would be good to know which, if any, Chromebooks are suitable to be upgraded to a Linux distro. Obviously there needs to be enough RAM and local storage present for that to work, but given that a Raspberry Pi is capable of a fair bit with its limited resources, I suspect the process of upgrading the OS is as important as what system resources are available.

Number6

Re: Don't think so.

I think the problem was the people who expected desktop or high-end laptop performance from a netbook.

I use mine (Aspire One) for general stuff that doesn't need too much CPU grunt. I'd love to be able to refresh the form factor with a new CPU, given that five years is a long time in computing. Anyone want to produce a motherboard with a newer Atom CPU to replace the one I've got?

How to kill trolls and influence Apple people: A patent solution

Number6

Re: Change the incentives of the patent office

Part of the problem here is that "obvious" is very subjective. I have before now, been working on a project, an issue comes up and the immediate thought is "just do X". Then you find that X is patented and one has to wonder about the "non-obvious" requirement for a patent. Admittedly the novel and non-obvious aspect might be in asking the original question, but if something comes up and a large number of people skilled in the art propose the same solution then it's not non-obvious, and probably not novel either.

Anatomy of a 22-year-old X Window bug: Get root with newly uncovered flaw

Number6

Re: smiles for the 'goto'

There are occasions where it produces more readable, and sometimes more efficient, code than trying to do a bunch of conditionals to achieve the same thing.

Linksys's über-hackable WRT wireless router REBORN with 802.11ac

Number6

Re: Is this good or what?

My WRT54G has an external PoE adapter on it, so it doesn't need the power supply and I don't have to site it near a power socket. Provided they've kept the consumption of this one under 15W there's no reason why the same trick can't be tried on it. However, $300 is a bit eye-watering.

Microsoft's next CEO: Who it WON'T be – Ford turn-around chief Mulally

Number6

Practice

I've been working on my chair-throwing skills. The folding chair goes quite a distance now, I'm fairly respectable with the office chair but need more work before I'm happy with my distance with the sofa.

Guess what happened when T-Mobile US's boss trolled AT&T's CES party

Number6

Keeping Score

So far, I think T-Mobile are winning the PR battle. Of course, it hasn't finished yet.

Intel ditches McAfee brand: 'THANK GOD' shouts McAfee the man

Number6

Except I'm reminded of the Russian tampon advert.

Bay Area plots Googlebus tax after local residents riot

Number6

Re: So they make a profit...

I'm sure that if the city offered to provide equivalent-standard transport at a cost lower than what Google and the other companies could afford to do themselves then they'd have the offer accepted. The only question then would be whether it would be a private hire run by the city or a public service for which employees of the tech companies would be provided pre-paid tickets but could otherwise be used by anyone. I don't see it unreasonable to charge private vehicles to pick up from public stops, it helps with the maintenance costs.

App to manage Android app permissions

Number6

Open Source FTW

This is the sort of app that the EFF needs to commission and then open source so we know exactly what it's doing. They'd probably pick up funding for it from a kickstarter. Any sort of proprietary app claiming to do security is always going to be subject to doubt, especially given the creeping permissions of all those apps that have started all benign and slowly added others (such as the FB app).

Mars One's certain-death space jolly shortlists 1,000 wannabe explorers

Number6

Write-In

when it comes to the public vote, are we allowed a write-in ballot to nominate people for a one-way trip to Mars?

AT&T takes aim at T-Mobile with $450 cashback lure

Number6

US mobile and internet services are a rip-off compared to some parts of the world. It's basically large corporations screwing the consumers because they can. People might complain about VirginMedia, but it's interesting that for the same amount (+/- exchange rate fluctuations) that Comcast charge in California for internet and phone, VM throws in their XL TV too. I think the VM broadband speed is faster, too.

For light users, T-Mobile's US offering is more expensive - the all-you-can-eat tariff is fine if you make (or receive, such things are chargeable in the US) a lot of calls but less so if you're an occasional user. The prepaid/PAYG market is primitive, they still have minutes that expire based on time, rather than simply imposing a requirement to demonstrate the number is still in use often enough that they don't reassign it.

Good on them for shaking things up a bit, corporate America has gotten too used to imposing the rules rather than providing what the customer wants.

Ten classic electronic calculators from the 1970s and 1980s

Number6

Re: Novus

Now, of course, an RPM calculator is what you use to determine which other software packages you need to install on your RedHat system before you can install the one you actually want...

Number6

Re: Simpler days...

2 and 5 are easy to remember, especially if you're involved with electroncs. 3dB is x2, so log(2) is 0.3, and you can remember 5 because it's 10/2, or (1 - 0.3). The 3 can't be deduced from simple short-cuts, so you have to remember it's 0.477.

Number6

Re: TI-59 memories

I have a TI-58 somewhere, it worked last time I tried it, although the rechargeable batteries will need replacing. It had one bit error in its RAM, somewhere near the top, I had to make sure that when programming, I only stored even op-codes in that location.

I got it to play noughs and crosses - it could have been invincible but I deliberately left one way it could be beaten.

Coca Cola slurps millions of MAC addresses

Number6

Re: Invasion

I'm sure the Scots are quite capable of seeing off an army of Sassenmechs.

Number6

A Standard Allocation

Vulture South imagines the latter is a more likely scenario, as the company has reserved about 16 million MAC addresses.

The way it works is that you apply for an allocation and pay the fee, which gives you the first three bytes of a 6-byte MAC address, then you can allocate the 2^24 combinations, about 16 million, for the last three MAC bytes to your devices. Once you're close to exhaustion of your MAC allocation, you simply apply for another one. The IEEE seems to do its best to only allocate as needed, so it's not officially possible to acquire more than one active block at a time. Those companies with more blocks have either put more than 16 million devices in the field, acquired part-used blocks as they've bought other companies, or were using multiple blocks before it all got formalised and so were allowed to keep them because it wasn't really practical to withdraw and re-assign part of a block. This is probably why there's a bunch of allocations that aren't in the consecutive sequence.