Posts by Number6

The Mail Still At It

Based on a blog post doing the rounds, the Mail is still at it:

http://www.wonderlandblog.com/wonderland/2011/08/the-daily-mail-knowingly-and-commercially-used-my-photos-despite-my-denying-them-permission.html

The Military

One assumes that US military GPS kit is built properly, otherwise LightSquared wouldn't have made it this far.

It is rather tricky trying to receive signals at -160dBm if there's something nearby radiating +30dBm, I challenge anyone to build a useful filter that would let one pass and attenuate the other by 160dB.

I'd say the fault is in letting the frequency bands be reallocated from satellite service. Had the relevant people understood the technical arguments and stuck to their guns, the US wouldn't be stuck with the argument.

Found it

I have to admit I bumped into the new settings a few days ago. I didn't think much about it at the time, apart from automatically unticking all the permission boxes. I didn't think to check back through the stuff they send occasionally to see if it was actually announced, but I guess I wouldn't have found anything if I had.

Quick (but not cheap)

Why not stick a helium balloon on the top of an Atlas V?

Don't forget music

The record company did beat them to the name (and in court), although since iTunes caused a rematch, who knows what has happened.

Good Timing

Interesting how the death penalty comes to the fore right when corruption in the judiciary and police is also in the news. Would you give the power of life and death to a bent copper?

Soup?

So where's the soup dragon?

Incentives?

So if I volunteer to pay for the electricity to power one of their wifi boxes, will they give me a free upgrade to a higher bandwidth package on the understanding that I'm guaranteed the original bandwidth and can make use of the rest if it's not being used by the general public?

Good name

I like that name - truck nuts. Far less offensive than the UK equivalent (a.k.a. Ed Balls)

Did anything happen?

Having discovered that his constituents had a low opinion of him, has he improved at all? If so, it was a worthwhile exercise and of benefit to the electorate.

Meanwhile, back in the real world...

(you need a winged pig icon)

All I want

Unlike a lot of people, it seems, I'm happy with a basic smartphone. If it's got a decent IMAP email client with encryption and a sane web browser and can do texts and phone calls, that's enough if the price is low enough. A few bells and whistles such as Google Maps (or even Ovi maps if they continue to exist), an IM client and a stopwatch (one of the few apps I use on my existing phone) and that'll be it.

I don't need Android or iPhone with their dodgy tracking and booby-trapped app stores, I just need a basic tool, so if Nokia will oblige with a low-enough price, I might buy one before they wreck their line with Windows.

Turbine + generator

Reduce the engine size a bit, and have a turbine powering a generator/battery combo with electric motors to drive the wheels. Chuck in some regenerative brakes and it might turn out to be fairly efficient. If the turbine is designed along the lines of the old Meteor radial jet engines then it could even be low stress and last a long time.

Neighbours from Hell

The same goes if you've got one of those neighbours. If you file a complaint with officialdom then you're obliged to declare it if you try to sell the house and it may adversely affect your chances of selling.

Software patents?

If that's a software description, can't the world just agree to drop the brain-dead US system and let the rest of us implement HTML5 because software patents don't apply (yet) elsewhere? That's the best way to make the point, let the US stew in its own juices until the citizens demand decent patent reform because the existing system adversely affects them. Corporations might be able to deliver campaign dollars to DC, but it's the people who deliver the votes.

Biters Bit

Given what the previous government tried to do with our privacy, there's a bit of schadenfreude here. The only real difference between them and the journos is that the politicians merely changed the law so that what they wanted to do was legal.

Remember Gordon, if you've got nothing to hide then you've got nothing to fear.

Newborns

All newborns are prone to produce copious amounts of vomit without warning.

Carry-on

I take all electronics with me in my carry-on because as I'm not allowed to lock my bag, I refuse to put anything in there that I don't want to lose. My checked luggage consists of clothes (possibly worn and smelly if on the way home), local food items that are not easily available at home and are legal to import and a few cheap souvenirs. Irritating if lost, but not too bad. They're also items that are less likely to be stolen in the first place.

Similarly, if I'm ever unfortunate enough to have something placed in my luggage (and I've had a few TSA 'your bag was searched' notices in there), one theme of my defence would be that because I can't lock the bag, I am not responsible for what is found in it once it has left my possession. Probably wouldn't work in most places though :-(

Positive Spin

The KSC people at the visitor centre had a very upbeat attitude to it last week. Low Earth Orbit is now routine and can be left to the commercial people, NASA is going to concentrate on harder stuff.

Assuming someone gives them the money, of course.

standard whinge

They didn't include my local exchange. I wonder how many rural exchanges where there's long bits of wet string out to most customers are in the list? I'm guessing almost none, and yet these are the ones that would benefit the most from FTTC because 3+km of cable would be replaced by a few hundred yards at most. You probably wouldn't find the locals complaining about the large cabinets either.

Domicile?

Perhaps I can put up enough photos and claims of not being in the UK for enough days to exempt myself from UK tax altogether?

I bet their web-bots are selective and would avoid any site that might lead to such a conclusion...

14 Days

I can see them holding onto the information for 14 days, because that's the time limit for sending a NIP to the driver. After that it's too late.

Even so, as others have mentioned, it doesn't really do anything but note the existence on the roads of a vehicle with a particular plate, and with the prevalence of cloning of plates, they don't necessarily have proof it was the real one anyway.

Knocking on the door

The way to address the scaling of servers, assuming each phone has a fixed IPV6 address, is for the phone to register once with a server and exchange keys. Then if the server has traffic it can fire off a ping with its ID and something encrypted with the key to a defined common port on the phone. The phone then looks at the packet, checks its validity and notifies whichever application(s) on the phone have registered to receive notifications from the server, at which point they can connect and you've achieved the same as polling. The overhead of authentication each time is probably less than the overhead of all those polling packets flying back and forth. There is nothing to stop multiple registrations to multiple servers which can all send their packets to the common port. Telcos can continue blocking inbound stuff to mobiles provided they let through packets (in a standard format) to that one port.

There we are, unless someone has patented it already, it's in the public domain so go use it.