* Posts by Number6

2293 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009

HP: We're axing 29,000 workers? Add another 5,000 to that

Number6

Re: HP SCanner software

If the scanner is supported by Sane then chances are it can be done under Linux. In some ways, having limited support from manufacturers has resulted in a much more consistent interface across a wide range of scanners, simply because all the effort can go into reverse-engineering the drivers to just plug in to the existing applications.

Number6

HP started losing the plot when they decided to be a computer company and sold off the test equipment under the Agilent brand. It's all been pretty much downhill from that point, although sometimes the gradient has been steeper than others. I was later to the party than Neill Miller above, but I still have a Laserjet 4 and Laserjet 5Si - they just keep working, just replace the toner cartridge as needed and occasionally renew the rollers.

What is the difference between a drone, a model and a light plane?

Number6

Re: Not quite

The Hurricane has a fabric-covered fuselage. Early versions had fabric-covered wings too, but they were later replaced by metal clad ones that allowed faster dives due to withstanding the stresses a bit better. There were quite a few Hurricanes in WW2.

Get lost, fanbois: Nokia pulls HERE Maps from Apple's App Store

Number6

Back when I had an E71, I was impressed with the Nokia map offering, where one could pre-install map data for an area so that it wasn't necessary to be on-line while on the move - really useful if you're going abroad and don't want the hassle of roaming charges. I did that a few times, including a trip to Hawaii. that's the one thing you don't get with Google Maps that would be nice - the ability to use it without a connection to the outside world. Of course, they couldn't track you so easily then.

However, it didn't impress me enough that I'd go buy a Windows phone.

Lyrics upstart Rap Genius blacklisted by Google for Justin Bieber SEO scam

Number6

Re: The geniusing remains the same

Perhaps they're doing a public service if the net result is that it helps Google remove even more crap.

Number6

when teenage girls searched for the deep meaning in the androgynous Canadian pop star's lyrics

Surely that should result in an empty page of results?

Samsung: Men, our Gear smartwatch will make you a hit with the sexy ladies

Number6

Re: Well when you can't nick others R&D...

+1 for the Pebble, I was given one as a gift last week, having not worn a watch for the past 20 years. Nice bit of kit.

Mosquitoes, Comets and Vampires: The de Havilland Museum

Number6

I have a picture of my son stood in front of the Memorial Flight Hurricane at Coningsby, we were given the chance to wander where tour groups normally don't go. The guide who took us there pointed out that there are quite a lot of airworthy Spitfires around, but only a dozen Hurricanes, so it was the better picture to have.

Number6

Re: The Mossie

The B17 was heavily armoured because it had to fight its way through in broad daylight against the massed ranks of the German fighter squadrons. The Lancaster was intended as a night bomber, so it had a lot less armour. Probably not all squadrons, but 617 was flying without a mid-upper turret and then with only the tail gunner as they took out the front guns too, because they needed to reduce the weight to get the 6- and 10-ton bombs a decent distance.

You also need to consider the psychology of giving the aircraft a means to shoot back. Even if it was mostly useless, it probably made the crews feel marginally better.

Number6

Re: DH.89 Dragon Rapide

I've been on the Duxford Dragon Rapide. I was amused by the fact that the emergency exit was a circle of fabric in the roof. I got to fly a Tiger Moth that day, too, sitting in the front seat. Impressive descent rate sideslipping down over the M11 (which is the local dual-carriageway from Cambridge to Duxford) to the runway.

Number6

Re: Mosquito

The longevity of the Meteor engines comes back to the genius of Frank Whittle. He built a centrifugal flow jet engine, which in most respects is inferior to the axial flow engine that was on the Me262 and is the basis of all modern jet engines. To increase the power of a centrifugal engine, the cross-sectional area increases, so there's the issue of diminishing returns with air resistance, unlike the axial flow, where you just add another compressor disk to the shaft.

The genius is revealed in his answer when he was asked why he'd picked the centrifugal engine, and he remarked on the inadequate materials available for the axial flow engine and the high stresses incurred, compared to the centrifugal approach. He knew about the axial, but also understood why its time had yet to arrive. This is why the Meteor engines just worked, and the Me262 ones kept failing.

El Reg's contraptions confessional no.4: Yamaha retro synth, valve oscilloscope and more

Number6

Re: Old kit....

I have seen a procedure for reforming old electrolytics, and it uses a high-wattage resistor and a tin box. You're supposed to remove the electrolytic from its resting place, put it in the tin box in series with the resistor and put a DC voltage across it. The box is an attempt to protect life and property should it decide to expire anyway. If you try this, don't forget to subsequently discharge the capacitor, preferably via the resistor. I was eleven when I learned that a charged capacitor can bite (valve radio with no bleed resistor across the capacitor).

Also worth noting that some old electrolytics seem to have been designed with a deliberate leakage current at high applied voltages so they would act as a crude voltage stabiliser.

Crooks target Target: 40 MILLION bank cards imperiled in cyber-heist

Number6

Re: lol, magstripes.

That's only useful if your bank has issued you with a chip and pin card.

I just checked, unfortunately I bought something at Target in the dodgy window so I'll be one of those keeping an eye on things.

Drawers full of different chargers? The IEC has a one-plug-to-rule-them-all

Number6

While not generally an Apple fan, their magsafe connectors are quite good and I can see why they might not want to give them up. I can't quite see the industry agreeing to pay them royalties for it be a universal standard either.

Perhaps the answer is to have a connector on the charger body, then apple can provide a proprietary lead with a magsafe connector on one end and everyone else can provide a lead with standard connectors on each end.

Android antivirus apps CAN'T kill nasties on sight like normal AV - and that's Google's fault

Number6

Re: Wait,

Other than Google provided services, I don't have a single social network application on my Android phone as they want ridiculous capabilities.

I have the FB app on mine, mainly because it was pre-installed and I can't remove it, but I partly fixed that by not giving it any information in the first place. However, it's disturbing to find it running occasionally when I look through my list of running processes. I didn't ask it to start.

Apple CEO Cook breaks YEARS OF SILENCE, finally speaks to El Reg hack

Number6

Re: don't mess with baldness.

For some of us, that doesn't appear to be possible without the use of glue. Mine is vanishing, and based on observing my father's progressive hair loss, I might have to become a manager if I end up looking like Dilbert's PHB. In the meantime, I can't see it so I try not to let it bother me.

Microsoft now using next-gen Roslyn C#, Visual Basic compilers in house

Number6

Re: re: Several minus points to MS for the term "dogfooding".

Fortunately it seems to have passed me by until now. "Eating your own dogfood" is fine and has been around for some time, but converting nouns to verbs I find irritating. The language may evolve, but I'm going to sit here and be a Neanderthal.

Number6

Several minus points to MS for the term "dogfooding".

Microsoft tarts up software licensing to fend off 'a few clicks and a credit card' rivals

Number6

Re: Voting with my feet

I actually had a vanilla VM move yesterday that resulted in a properly licensed Windows 7 Pro system claiming that the license had to be validated again

Interesting, mine did that when I last fired it up. Told me a driver had changed or something, which is nonsense given that it's a VM running on the same config as last time. Fortunately mine happily re-validated itself on-line. I think if it had insisted on more than that I'd have reverted to a snapshot in the hope that it would stop being stupid. I hate phone calls, especially to large call centres.

Number6
Linux

Re: I'm making it simpler in my business...

I just installed VirtualBox on my Windows desktop machine and did most of my work on a Linux VM. That way you can interact with the corporate world when necessary but otherwise stick to Linux. Ideally I'd do it the other way round, have a Windows VM that I fire up when necessary, which is how I use it at home. Mostly I just fire it up once a month to download updates.

What it really needs is for some of the Windows-only software houses to produce Linux versions of their software. Just make sure it works on RHEL and Ubuntu LTS distros and make it available as an rpm and a deb for easy install and you've picked a reasonable starting subset to support that will attract a lot of people. Those who want to use Debian or Slackware or other distros are probably smart enough to get it working on their own.

Microsoft's cloudy chief: Azure reliability knocks your own kit for six

Number6

Who's reading your data?

They still have the problem that being an American company, you never quite know who's reading your data. Even with non-US cloud providers there's still some doubt.

At least if it's your own server you have a better idea on that score, unless your network security is lax.

Apple iWatch due in October 2014, to wirelessly charge from one metre away – report

Number6

Re: Not convinced

The credit card would have to resonate with the coil... a bit like how an opera singer can shatter a wine glass, but not a beer bottle or spectacle lenses.

It wouldn't be working the same way - if you're transferring power then resonance improves things. If you're just encouraging the little magnetic domains to wobble back and forth and stick at random as the field strength drops, that takes very little power at the receiving device. However, it has to be quite a powerful field, and I doubt if it would upset the magnetic strip even if you put the card on the transmitter, given that there's probably a thickness of plastic and air between the card and coil. The field strength might be enough to fry the NFC side of things though, so it wouldn't be all bad :-)

Number6

Re: iWatch ? I cannot believe

Now if I could have a Thunderbirds video watch (remember them? Good old 60s technology) I'd probably go for it. Otherwise I just rely on my internal clock most of the time, which is usually accurate to within 15 minutes and is good enough for most things. If I really need a more accurate reminder then yes, the phone in my pocket can be told to alert me at the correct time. I haven't worn a watch for many years, ever since the battery in it went flat (and the watch itself is 30 years old.)

Number6

Re: Just add crystals for healing

I was doing that several years ago. Horrendously inefficient as you increase the distance though.

'Disruptive, irritating' in-flight cellphone call ban mulled by US Senate

Number6

Re: Easy fix

Charge $$$ for voice calling, and introduce significant latency for data[*]. That ought to allow web browsing but make speech near-impossible. Hopefully only those on expense accounts and flying in the posh seats up front would be using voice calling, leaving the rest of us crowded in the back in relative peace.

[*] There's a chance that if it's satellite-based, there's already a significant latency, about 230ms out to a geostationary satellite and back plus whatever other processing time is required.

Number6

Re: Mobile Calling Area

My thoughts were running along the same lines. Creative insertion of a soda can might be the last resort.

Ghosts of Christmas Past: Ten tech treats from yesteryear

Number6

My father still has one of the Atari game systems and a handful of games for it. I don't remember all of them, but I know Frogger is one. As far as I know it still works.

US mobile telcos: All right, ALL RIGHT, FCC! We'll redo phone unlock rules

Number6

They should automatically unlock the phone once the contract term is completed, it shouldn't even be necessary to ask. The customer should just get a text message informing them that it has happened.

Number6

This is where buying the phone separately has a lot going for it. You also don't get stuck with all the telco's apps on the phone, either, and you get timely software upgrades rather than having to wait for the telco to decide to roll them out.

Of course, the downside is that it is necessary to pay in full up front, which is not insignificant for a modern smartphone.

Thought of in-flight mobile calls fills you with dread? Never fear, US Dept of Transport is here

Number6

Re-purposed toilet

Perhaps the airline could refit one of the toilets with cellphone capability and arrange that it only worked if the door was locked tight. That way, the rest of the passengers wouldn't be disturbed, and hopefully all the other sad people desperate to talk on their phone on the flight would be put off by having to wait for the first sad person to finish.

Why America is no longer slurping electricity from Russian nuke warheads

Number6

Musical Coincidence

My music playlist just started on Blondie's Atomic.

Oz couple get jiggy in pharmacy in 'banned' condom ad

Number6

Well, it's got to be a lot cheaper than a TV ad campaign, and probably provides a better boost to sales...

TPP leak: US babies following bathwater down the drain

Number6

Definition

Negotiations (US-style): Reasonable discussion on the subject at hand followed by complete agreement with whatever I said in the first place.

(With apologies to Sir Winston Churchill, I believe he came up with something like that)

How UK air traffic control system was caught asleep on the job

Number6

Re: Redundancy

Redundancy means having a duplicate system - hardware wise that's easy, software wise do you really mean they should maintain a completely parallel system with distinct config at all times? I appreciate the trite answer to this could be yes - but in a real situation (which has to interact with external parties) that can quickly become utterly pointless.

Don't modern telephone exchanges do this? Run two sets of hardware each tracking the entire exchange context, so that one half can have an upgrade applied without losing calls. Presumably the upgraded half then reloads context from the running half and at some point is given control so that the other half can also be upgraded.

Number6

Re: Let (s)he who has failproof software cast the first stone.

If it is so resilient then why is it on version 5.1?

Several answers to that - one is that it's resilient now because the bugs have been fixed, another is that it's been introducing features (rather than bugs) with each new release.

Number6

Re: One million lines of code

Thinking about it, I would much rather it failed big-time and was really obvious about it than having a subtle little bug somewhere that allowed aircraft to collide. I'd also like to add the feature that it only fails on days when I'm not due to fly in the following week.

OM NOM MON NOM, address et D.O.B: Twitter lets admen chomp users' cookies

Number6

Re: So I've been thinking...

What it needs is a significant number of users who are prepared to clamp down on third-party cookie usage even if it means they no longer visit certain sites because they don't work. If the primary users see a drop in traffic then one would hope that they'd redesign their sites to work properly without all the extraneous cookies. I delete my cookies fairly regularly anyway.

As for sponsored tweets, I work on the principle that if I see one of them, the sponsor goes on my shit list and I don't buy what they're pushing.

Ford says Microsoft CEO target Mulally not going anywhere

Number6

Re: cars are not computers

Square steering wheels are old technology, I once owned an Austin All-aggro with one.

SHOCK! US House swats trolls, passes patent 'extortion' bill

Number6

Ah well, explains the cold weather. Some small part of Hell just froze over.

Calling Doctor Caroline Langensiepen of Nottingham Trent uni

Number6

Re: Ok, Tom.

You're not AC from the Reg journos, only the rest of us.

Apple patents facial recognition tech for mobile log-in

Number6

Scary thought, thief mugs you, grabs your phone, forces you to look at it to unlock it and then quickly disables the facial recognition. I think a PIN is more secure than that.

Darth Vader outs self as iPhone fanboi

Number6

AC @4:54 Well, we know he's certainly legs-free.

He's probably disturbed by the lack of faith shown by the iTunes store which is refusing to allow his Dark Side application because it competes with Apple's business.

Drone expert: Amazon's hypetastic delivery scheme a pie in the sky

Number6

Bears with Arms

So is a country where it's considered a basic right to own a gun the best place to operate a drone fleet? I wonder how many they'll lose to gunfire? I'd think it would be open season if you lived near a distribution centre and these things were forever flying over your house. Even a piece of rope with a weight on each end would probably do it, and would be far more fun and challenging, too.

Top comet-watcher pens ISON's emotional obituary

Number6

I think xkcd did the best take:

http://xkcd.com/1297/

I thought I was being DDOSed. Turns out I'm not that important...

Number6

Well, it makes it more difficult for the NSA or anyone else to read my mail without asking me or breaking into my house. They can still do it, but it means they have to try that little bit harder and use another method. It's all where I get at it, I can easily keep backups and I don't get bothered with adverts if I read it using webmail.

I use a Sheevaplug for my mail server too, although mail is stored on an external USB hard drive, I wouldn't trust the SD card for that (had a few of those go down due to bit rot).

Of course, it's fun to learn how to set it all up and make it work, knowing how to run such things can be useful on occasion. I run two DHCP servers and two DNS servers on my home network too, in a master/slave arrangement so if one goes down, everything falls back to the other one. Sheevaplugs are good for this, extra resources, low power consumption.

Number6

Re: Stop wasting the Police & your ISP's time

Pretty much anything giving backscatter now is poorly configured. Your average spam zombie machine doesn't bother trying to send rejected mail to the fake From: address, it just drops it on the floor[*] because it knows it's probably fake and not worth wasting bandwidth. The backscatter is from systems that accept the initial mail and then fake a bounce based on subsequent processing, which is not a particularly net-friendly behaviour. Either reject it immediately or just eat it, preferably the former. The only exception to this is a secondary MX, which might not have access to the list of valid users at a site and so will accept it to forward ot the primary MX - it's possible that a spammer has worked out that he can unload a lot more messages that way.

I remember once adding a tweak to my spam filter software to pick out the backscatter that helpfully told me I had a virus and auto-forwarding it to postmaster@site pointing out that I didn't and that they really ought to fix their software to stop spamming me because I never sent the original.

[*] Admittedly this is based on observing stuff supposedly from me to me being given a 5xx by my mail server, and then never seeing an attempt to return to the sender.

How your data loss prevention plan is killing your business

Number6

Use of Backups

Understanding what might be needed and why is also useful.

Thre's the obvious disaster scenario, total equipment loss at the primary site, in which case you'd want a complete copy of everything from the day before (assuming daily granularity).

Then there's a partial data loss, where one or more disks fail, but as you can't predict which data might be lost, you'd still like everything from yesterday to be available.

Then you get onto audit trails and archival storage. I'm sure most IT people want to be elsewhere (except the BOFH) when someone asks if it's possible to recover a file from last week/month because they've only just realised that's when they broke it. Then there's the need to haul up old versions of documents for other reasons - software people are hopefully already using version control and can reconstruct any version of a file, but other parts of the company are more likely to have just overwritten a previous version.

If it's needed for tax or accounting purposes then it should have been properly archived and so probably isn't taking up 240x the storage.

Asus Transformer Book T100: Xbox One? PS4? Nah, get a cute convertible for Christmas

Number6

Re: Its a Netbook with a lid that comes off.

My Aspire One was built better than that, five years old and the lid is still properly fixed on.

DEATH-PROOF your old XP netbook: 5 OSes to bring it back to life

Number6

Re: replace xp with...

Yes, definitely. Linux Mint 13 (so long-term support) XFCE edition runs just fine on my Aspire One. I did subsequently install LXDE (a trivial process) because I preferred it to XCFE in trials, but they are but two examples of lightweight window managers - avoid KDE/Gnome/Unity and all the other modern stuff only suited to systems with reasonable grunt (which an Atom N270 is indeed lacking).

As for Minecraft, you just have to go download the jar file from the Minecraft website once you've logged in. I vaguely remember Mint 13 comes with a working Java engine without having to try hard to get it to go. I managed to install it first time on an old Celeron-powered laptop from 5000 miles away and it worked first time. However, it will probably have a dire performance on old and underpowered machines, the Celeron (eight years old) couldn't cope, and I suspect a 2008/9 vintage netbook would similarly fail in the speed department when rendering all those blocks.