* Posts by Henry Wertz 1

3137 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009

4K-ing hell! Will your shiny new Ultra HD TV actually display HD telly?

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Sony and OTA

"Some of the 4K sets that have shipped already have HDMI 1.4, though Sony for one is promising upgrades. Whether it will deliver is another matter."

Yeah I'll believe it when I see it. My friend got a (early model) Sony DVD player, labels all over it stating that it is software updateable. Once he got some DVDs that would not play on it (due to software incompatibilities), he goes to ask Sony about the update. "What update? Just buy a new DVD player". It was software update*able* but Sony did not release a single update for it.

As for 4K itself... I think it's pretty useless personally, it seems like this'd need quite the large screen for it to possibly make a difference. But, if people are interested in buying, they can go ahead.. That said, it seems logical if Netflix can get a 4K stream into 15mbps, that OTA it should be doable in ~15-20mbps. (I won't say 15mbps, necessarily, because an over the air broadcast should expect a much higher data error rate, and so have more error correction, compared to an internet stream.)

Google, Netflix ready next weapon in net neutrality battle: The fury of millions

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

The lie of the big ISPs

I don't know specifically what Verizon Wireless' plan is -- if they plan to put the screw job to people, or if they are just trying to get out from under the 700mhz C band throttling prohibition (when Google started bidding, they got the FCC to put this "no touching the data" prohibition onto the C band specifically.) VZW is using 4G LTE on this band -- VZW's throttling on 3G on other bands only kicks in when the cell site is loaded enough your usage is actually slowing down other users, not 24/7; a few users on howardforums reproted using 500GB-1TB *a month* on this so I could see mere usage-based throttling being not that big a deal, even for these heavy users. On the other hand, if VZW cripples their internet access by pretending Hulu, Netflix, Youtube, etc. are something either they or I should pay extra for, I will quit paying for this service on the spot.

On the other hand, AT&T has been downright WHINING that Youtube and Netflix are "freeloaders" -- conveniently not mentioning that they pay BIG BUCKS for their physical connections to internet exchange points, AND pay for the traffic already as well (if traffic is even in both directions, typically there is little or no charge as it's a wash -- but if traffic is mostly in one direction then they get a nice fat bill already.) This is what Google should mention if they aren't already, that they do pay for their internet connections just like everyone else.

Two guilty over 'menacing' tweets to feminist campaigner

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Fair enough

I'm glad CPS didn't stick with their previous "Meh no big deal" stance. All kinds of general abuse and name calling? Trolls do abound. Threats of violence as she received? That's another matter entirely and I'm glad they did something about it.

Amazon, Hollywood, Samsung: PLEASE get excited about 4K telly

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

When seeing demos, don't forget they are demos

When seeing demos, don't forget the demo-makers KNOW people will be looking at how sharp they are. They will therefore make their videos exagerratedy sharp, and usually screw up the contrast to make things look "vibrant" too. Obviously the 4K TV *will* be sharper, but you really can't compare a demo video to what you typically watch on any TV.

Before my parents (non-HDTV) CRT TV died, their neighbor came by... this ad for a TV came on, she got all excited and said "Look how sharp the picture is on that TV in the ad!" I had to break the news that the ad is being displayed on their EXISTING television. They were just cranking the contrast and sharpness up for the TV ad.

Optical Express 'ruined my life' attack site wins Nominet takedown battle

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Am surprised - the libel laws being what they are in the UK - that this hasnt gone further."

For libel laws to apply a statement has to be false. If information is damaging to your business, but true, then no dice.

My question, (allegedly... I don't want anyone getting in libel trouble!), do these clinics have an unusual failure rate, or have they found the dozen failures out of numerous treatments (I assume quite numerous if they are at 15 minute intervals!)

I found the one post on there particuarly troubling where the LASIK (or LASEK? I didn't know they were different...) machine failed mid-treatment, and they ended up with a crease on their eye. I would hope A) These machines would not fail mid-treatment, period. B) Does the "crease" mean that the machine moved the laser to a "safe" position WITH the laser on, burning eyeball as it went? I would hope any fault it'd immediately turn off the laser.

At any rate... *shrug*. They are not violating the domain rules, so that's that.

Coca Cola slurps millions of MAC addresses

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"When will someone tell America that Coca/Pepsi Cola is just water with sugar, fizz and marketing added.

It is not a national institution, to be defended."

Normal Americans don't view cola as a national institution. That's the 'Mercans from places like Texas that believe that. Those weirdos refer to any carbonated beverage as "Coke".

So, I still don't know why Coca Cola Corp. needs MAC addresses -- won't they be using IP (hopefully IPV6) anyway? Whatever random vendor provides ethernet chips will already have plenty of MACs.

IBM hid China's reaction to NSA spying 'cos it cost us BILLIONS, rages angry shareholder

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

IBM supports the NSA

"I really can't see how that suit could succeed given that corporations are not allowed to reveal that they even have dealings with the NSA in the first place."

It isn't about that. It's about 1) IBM failing to reveal their horrible sales drop in a timely manner.

2) (per the article) "IBM lobbied the government in favour of a bill that would allow it to share customers' data with the NSA,"

I think they are taking the piss with #1, if IBM had revealed months ago their sales had plummeted, the stock would have just dropped then instead of now. #2 is a valid complaint though, IBM is effectively being hostile towards their customers with a move like this, and therefore hostile towards shareholders.

Given this information, I would never buy an IBM product -- I know "everyone" is probably tied in with the NSA, but I really don't need to support companies that actively lobby for further NSA involvement.

Apple fanbois warned: No, Cupertino HASN'T built a Bitcoin mining function into Macs

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Re: Pwn n00bs

OK, he gets into this system (his own) and the first thing he does is delete system files? That is pretty funny, he really did get what was coming to him 8-)

(N.B. for anyone who is wondering, although 127.0.0.1 is standard localhost address, 127.x.x.x all actuallly connect to localhost.)

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Really?

I thought "sudo rm -Rf /*" was the command that magically made iphones waterproof. (Yes some idiots a few months ago believed -- I think because people on 4chan said so -- that some ios update would magically make their non-waterproof iphones waterproof.)

Anglo-Australian cricket brawl spills over into coding clash

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Yeah...

Yeah, to me (from the video) it looked like the *game engine* was working well enough, but the game tuning and player behavior was incomplete. (I'd guess the falling over might have been due to excessively slick grass?) If it's as poopypants says, that some developers walked out, that plus not enough time for the remaining developers to "get up to speed" could really explain all these problems. edit: That said, I have not used Unity, so I can't say how easy or hard to use it actually is. From what I've heard, some game engines over the years were pretty hard to use (even if the results ended up being pretty nice.)

Weird PHP-poking Linux worm slithers into home routers, Internet of Things

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

">But the security company warns that ARM and MIPS flavours of the Linux worm may be available,

What does that mean "may" be availabe ? There "might" also be a new supervirus capable of destroying mankind. There "may" also be no need to purchase anything from Symantec.

"

I took it to mean the exploits of PHP are not relying on code injection or stack smashing or the like that is platform-specific, and the x86 ELF binary it is currently pulling also is not doing anything x86-specific. So, the exploit could just as easily try MIPS and ARM binaries as well.

We're making too much say CryptoLocker scum in ransom price cut

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"My own suggestion remains integrated multi-round anti-spammer tools that would allow volunteers to disrupt every part of the spammers' infrastructure and pursue ALL of the spammers' accomplices. "

You already can disrupt the spammer's infrastructure, if you have the skill to break into it, and are perfectly free to pursue their accomplices as well. I'm sure not going to stop you. Here in the US, you are even allowed to DIRECTLY take them to court and demand damages (instead of reporting them to the FTC and having the FTC do nothing with spam reports, which is what most people do.) If they are stupid enough to spam from the US (and don't pay the settlement), you can then send martials out to take their stuff until you get enough to cover the settlement; if they don't have enough stuff you can put liens on their buildings and vehicles.

Anyway *shrug*. My Gmail doesn't seem to get much spam (other than EBay's psuedo-spam... why would I want to be told "There are 179 items I may be interested in this week". Umm, no, shotgunning out hundreds of products is not a way to get anyone interested in anything.) I started running a Bayesian filter on my other E-Mail account over 10 years ago and it works great too. And I'm, you know, NOT RUNNING WINDOWS so I am not succeptable to worms and viruses.

HEADS UP, text-flinging drivers! A cop in a huge SUV is snooping on you

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Re: It's really sad

Radio is electronic. Are we allowed to change stations?"

Well, if it's one of those stupid touch screen setups, you really shouldn't be. These are defective by design and really should not be permitted on the road. Mine? Buttons and knobs, I don't have to look down to change it.

Anyway, I think quite simply they should just have a blanket "distracted driving" law that is enforced rather than these specifics. They can then just make it clear that texting is covered under the definition of distracted driving, instead of making numerous specific laws. I do hope the parking lot and rest stop thing doesn't include *parked* cars. Not parked? Yeah, they should be ticketed, as they are still not paying attention to where they are going.

I almost feel that they should not bother with the unmarked vehicles -- distracted drivers are usually so distracted they would not notice a full-blown marked SUV anyway, and this in and of itself is clear evidence they were very distracted.

These are just details though, distracted drivers are highly dangerous and should have very stiff penalties.

Guess which major US telco ISN'T cracking down on premium SMS spam?

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"> In most of Europe, as far as I am aware, it is strictly "who initiates the call, pays for it."

In the UK there are "Reverse Billing" systems (generally for adult services) whereby you text a number and receive a certain number of texts back which can be charged up to £1.50 each IIRC. But it's not somethng that's forced on you, you have to opt in by texting them in the first place and you can opt out at any time."

That's how it is in the US too, people are supposed to sign up to a service first, then get billed for the texts they receive back. I think in some cases, people simply do not pay attention and sign up for something not realizing it costs. But, in other cases, the companies are simply committing fraud, and fraudulently claim you signed up for their service. Of course, the cell cos are all to happy to scoop up your info for the NSA, but will not use the exact same records to make sure you actually texted a premium rate SMS provider before they start billing you (apparently, preferring to get rid of the whole mess. Which is fine with me.)

As for being charged for sending or receiving SMS in general? Not really a problem, the cell cos here in the US have such bad pay-per-use rates (25 cents a text or more?) that people who don't text generally have texting disables, and everyone else buys a big bucket of texts or unlimited texts. Verizon for one is also quite aggressive about tracking down and suing text spammers.

Company selling you out? You've been TUPE-ed

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

You guys are lucky.

You guys are lucky. Here in the US? No rights whatsoever. You are transferred, nothing is guaranteed. The only IT union I know of here is in Las Vegas, so that doesn't apply here. If your small company is being bought out, this is probably good for you. Otherwise? Not so much.

Outsourcing? Heh, the outsourcing and temp agencies here are one and the same. The company holds on to at least 75% of what they are paid, and then provide a pittance of benefits. (When i worked a while as a temp, I had a few vacation days -- unpaid -- and an offer for me to pay for worthless health insurance* (they wouldn't chip in a penny) so they could technically say they offered insurance.)

*How worthless was the offered insurance? $1,000 deductable, then it'd only cover the NEXT $1,000. No coverage for glasses, medicine, or dental coverage. I think it even exempted hospital stays. It was so poor, when I looked at the terms it was actually PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to get back more in covered medical treatment than you were paying them in insurance premiums.

Sonos and I: How home media playback just gets SO FRUSTRATING

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Does your TV not have audio out connectors?

First... your TV probably has audio out connectors. Why don't they just make a little box that takes that and pipes it -- wirelessly -- to the speakers? I do realize it's not as cool as being 100% wireless, but it does make the wires like a foot long rather than running wherever to the speakers. Even if a TV has wifi, I do not expect it to support proprietary wifi systems... these speakers are, after all, proprietary. I do, however, expect it to have speaker out jacks.

Secondly... I don't know why you are having problems with products that send video and audio to the TV? 1) just run the audio cables somewhere else, or 2) run the audio out from the TV to wherever you want the noise to go. (See paragraph above.) Given how ugly things tend to get when wifi is kludged into an otherwise wifi-less product, I for sure would not want wifi support grafted onto most of the stuff I have that makes noise.

'Scientists are coming to space with USBs which are infected'

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

They specify Windows machines aboard ISS

They specify Windows machines aboard ISS, I thought the Russians had been using some Linux or BSD. Anyway, it seems the current supplier for the US side at least supplied machines with XP (for personal use.) The ones for any control use run Solaris. Since XP is going out of support, the vendor plans to replace the XP systems with Debian.

Sony's new PlayStation 4: Early faults ENRAGE some buyers

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

What proportion are HDMI problems?

I wonder what proportion are HDMI problems? Those, the solution can be to simply have the manufacturers finish the ports off straight away rather than leaving them all jagged, hopefully Sony starts having them do that ASAP. At least it sounds like people with port problems can clean the port up themselves. If you take out HDMI problems, are the other ones frequent? I don't know.

Schiller: 'Almost everyone' at Apple works on iPhones - not Macs or anything

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Apple being Apple?

Well, it's Apple being Apple (phrasing things in ways that imply things they didn't actually say.) I mean, what he said is that most people at Apple are working on the iPhone *in some capacity*. To me, the "in some capacity" makes this virtually a null statement, as someone who works on some other project, but spends like a minute a week playing^H^H^H^H^H^H working on a iPhone, is then working on it "in some capacity".

Singaporeans THANK government for BANNING IaaS site

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Not your usual freedom-loving, personal responsibility arguments, are they?"

No but Singapore is not a particularly freedom-loving country. *shrug*

Classic telly FX tech: How the Tardis flew before the CGI era

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

XVideo

Just a FYI, XVideo (and the Windows equivalent depending on the video card) use a window with a chroma key color. Usually it's all seamless but I dragged some text window over a video once and the font antialiasing must have used lots of blue, it bled through like crazy.

GPU secrets unveiled for student cluster warriors

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Standards?

Standards? NVidia drivers support OpenCL (which is what ATI also uses). NVidia CUDA is not standard, but makes it easy to find some C loops, wrap them a bit, and have them run on the GPU instead of CPU. This was NVidia-specific back when I played with it, I don't know if it still is or just emits some OpenCL.

Privacy warriors haul NSA into court, demand swift end to mass call snooping

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

". And, indeed, it is upon the carriers that the warrants are served"

But, there are not even warrants for this, data is collected in bulk then analyzed. FISA themselves found this style of program unconstitutional in 2008 (the NSA just disagreed and kept doing it.) Now in 2013 FISA claim it's fine. A recent audit (2012) the NSA did on themselves (Snowden leak) found 2,776 FISA violations in one year, just in the DC area operations alone. On the positive side this does indicate they audit use of these systems.

Watch out spooks: STANDARDS GROUPS are COMING AFTER YOU

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Plenty of standards...

There are plenty of standards, encryption for http, encryption for e-mail, and encryption at the IP level via the likes of IPSec, and probably plenty of other standards. Few are used. IETF just needs to come up with best practices for what is most practical and effective.

Feedly coughs to cockup, KILLS Google+ login as users FLEE

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Re: How to succeed in business

"WTF? They only thought the transition would be 'simply mechanical'? Nobody could be arsed to try it to make sure? With an internal culture like that, its a wonder Feedly are still in business."

I assume they all already have Google+, and so saw no problem during testing. I have not enabled Google+ on my account that's for sure 8-). At least they did not do the "Well, we've decided this so suck it up" I've seen now and then. They realized they f'ed up and fixed it same day.

REJOICE! Windows 7 users can get IE11 ... soon they'll have NO choice

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"However, on a number of interactive websites like Gmail, it was dog slow compared to Chrome."

Weird. I just thought GMail would not be heavy enough to slow down any browser.

Why no IE11 for Windows 8? I think it is due to lack of a proper package manager -- without a defined set of files that IE "owns" as opposed to other bits of Windows, the more Windows versions IE installs on, the more sets of updates they must produce. They would have had to produce later updates for Win8, Win 8+IE11, Win8.1 and Win8.1+IE11 otherwise, as it stands they eliminate Win8+IE11. Are they going to release more Win8 updates *at all* or insist on Win8.1? Honestly curious.

KRAKOOM! iPad Air explose in fireball, terrified fanbois flee Apple store

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"The only part of my Orion that ever worked was the Fuel Computer. Every other piece of electronics in that mobile pile of rust didn't work properly. Fuel leaks."

Wait, did it actually account properly for the fuel leaks? 8-) Just kidding haha

Anyway, seeing the fixit page on this, well... the ipad air and air notebook both looked like the battery was kind of a bag of, I guess, lithium ions that is squished into the unit and glued in place. I would expect a higher rate of damage (either during assembly or after) compared to a more conventional rigid battery case.

"Ok, fine, you've got to call the fire department in a retail shopping area, that's fair. But people ran away from an 'exploding' iPad? Lame."

Burning electronics put out nasty fumes. Plus if the store employees are busy dealing with this burning ipad, they can't attend to the customer or sell them stuff anyway. I mean, I wouldn't go to an Apple store to begin wtih but I'd leave pretty quickly if this happened.

The TRUTH behind Microsoft Azure's global cloud mega-cock-up

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Wow...

It seems odd to me that if this system can only have a single front end... it's doing something else (scheduling or moving jobs maybe) that is not really the job of a front end. Hopefully it's not an indicator of further architectural faults.

I was going to insert a Microsoft bash, but *shrug*. It's true, it takes time to work out the bugs on complex systems. IBM mainframes are reliable as can be *now* (and probably the last 30-40 years), but they apparently also had crashes aplenty through the 1960s and 1970s.

Your kids' chances of becoming programmers? ZERO

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

I'm not seeing the problem...

I mean, this is a problem that some normal PC does not have much to program with out of the box. But, I've seen people who did miss out on all the 8-bit machines that will throw linux on, start using shell script, start using python, and start using other languages. There aren't many computer clubs, but with forums, web sites, IM etc., these meetups are simply not as vital as they were back in the day. I've still seen plenty of amazing programmers that are too young to have used 8-bit PCs, or the 16-bit Amiga or Atari ST etc. either.

US soldiers preparing for civilian life taught coding skills by Microsoft

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

I didn't know Microsoft's products supported GIT

I didn't know Microsoft's products supported GIT. Anyway, Visual Studio indeed does via some plugin or other. Eclipse of course does too.

Anyway, this is fine by me. I kind of agree with Thorne actually, it might be trial by fire compared to using a nicer API (if they are using Visual C or C# in VS, which seems likely.). But, *shrug*. Once you've learned to use one language it's much easier to learn other ones later, the techniques generally apply. (Well in general... I mean, C or .NET programming will not really prepare someone for the likes of LISP, but not much will.). I do all my programming for Linux and Android myself (C,Python, shell script). I've done some on Windows programming too; I found the API to be a real unholy mess in comparison but I got it to do what I needed.

The Schmidt hits the Man: NSA spying on Google servers? 'OUTRAGEOUS!'

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

I'm assuming...

I'm assuming there may have been a little sarcasm there? I mean, the NSA has been doing whatever they want. I'd assume Google analyzes their own logs well enough they (and so Schmidt) would have known if the NSA was actively trolling through their systems. But, I would have been more surprised to find out the NSA *wasn't* tapped into Google's lines to the wider internet, given their zeal for taps.

Verizon to Intel Media: Hey chip-fryer. Guess who can help you with OTT TV?

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Blah..

Video over Verizon Wireless? Blah. I have grandfathered unlimited data, but I think very few will pay like $5 or $10 a month, AND effectively pay $5 or so a show for the data itself (they charge $30 for just 2GB, and $10 a GB for overage... they have some higher data plans, but none get you below $10 a GB.)

Have you reinstalled Windows yet? No, I just want to PRINT THIS DAMN PAGE

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

The joys of Windows

Ahh the joys of Windows. Just an FYI, if I install a printer on my Ubuntu systems, IT STAYS INSTALLED! ("Installing" a printer only really being necessary for network printers -- if I plug in a USB one, it just shows up as a printer choice without my doing anything.) The only printer-related problem I've had, HPLIP (the add-on for some HP printers), the little tray utility loads (EVEN if I set it not to), then after about a minute it falsely decided it *hasn't* loaded and pops an error message complaining about it failing to load (however everything works, it even complains when ink is low.) Scanning? Check. Printing? Check. So long as a printer, scanner, or combo device works to begin with, *it just keeps working*.

Well, the drivers keep working at any rate -- obviously this doesn't help garbage inkjets quit jamming constantly, or printers in general run out of ink or toner at the least convenient time. 8-)

Indestructible, badass rootkit BadBIOS: Is this tech world's Loch Ness Monster? VOTE NOW

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

I thought he was probably mistaken.

This could be possible, targetting a specific type of USB stick and BIOS. General-purpose BIOS infection? I'm not going to say "impossible!" but I'm just not seeing it.

The ultrasonic transmission could be possible using the PC speaker (which, usually routes out through soundcard speaker on systems that don't actually have a PC speaker any more). But, what about the mic? Desktops usually don't have a mic at all (and I don't THINK the hardware supports reading the PC speaker bit to do input....), and for laptops you'd need sound device support -- would they just build some "AC97/Intel HD Codec" driver in and assume it'll work for most devices maybe? This seems very difficult at best.

So, a virus that does both? It just seems highly unlikely. I guess we'll find out in a few weeks! ;-)

'It's a joke!' ... Bill Gates slams Mark Zuckerberg's web-for-the-poor dream

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Working landlines are very different from mobile Obama phones. Try news stations instead of lunatic left echo chambers."

So-called news sources are not the place to get information on programs like this. Due to the US's broken political system (with two nearly-identical parties which people swear are polar opposites), the news coverage of political programs is poor at best. That said:

1) Calling subsidized mobile phones "Obama phones" is ridiculous, the universal service fund, subsidizing phone service for the poor, as well as for people too far out in the sticks for the phone co to provide service otherwise, has been around for DECADES. Obviously they were not handing out bag phones in the 1980s, it did not make technological or economic sense. But nevertheless the cell phone program is an extension of these same programs.

2) *CELL PHONES COST LESS THAN LANDLINES*!!!! If I want a BASIC landline from the CenturyLink, it's like $20-25 a month, with no long distance. The companies providing "free" cell phones are getting about $10 a month in subsidy. So, if they buy the higher minute plan, the person getting the phone service chips in $10 and the subsidy $10.

3) Employability. The people that speak against these phones, that say a landline is good enough (ignoring point 2), are usually also the same ones that want people off subsidies as fast as possible (i.e. back to work)... which is definitely a good goal. Well who is more employable? Someone who the potential employer dials up and it rings through to their cell? Or the other person with the landline, where it just rings and rings if they happen to be out looking for work, or buying groceries, or whatever (landline service does not include voicemail, and as a broke individual they probably won't have an answering machine!)

------------------------------------------------

Back on topic -- I've read about startling changes in some of these countries from technology. A few have seen great economic growth, they effectively did not have banks out in the sticks, or any way to hold onto money (they'd probably be robbed eventually if they just had all this cash around), which made any kind of normal economy impossible. Now, it's done via phone banking, they can store their wealth, business all accept phone transfer, and there are places they can locally get some of that on-phone money turned into hard currency when they'd like. In places where there's some farming, better contact between producers and sellers so they can find out which markets are providing better pricing. Rural people are getting medical information they never had access to before.

That said, I do think it's naive to assume these people will be making widespread use of PCs and using these services similarly to how they are used in the US. Even Japan uses services radically differently than here. Google's plan seems a bit naive.

I think what Gates is doing is very important too. I just won't dismiss people who think they can bring about change via better communication either.

Google barge erection hypegasm latest - What's in the box?

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Re: Showroom?

"Why would a company which sells mostly non-tangible products need a showroom?"

Some people do like to see some of example of the tangible assets (i.e the actual racks of machines). Plus it's a party boat.

FIERY DEATH awaits all who stroke mobes mid-flight? Nope, says FAA

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Actually making calls on a mobile from an aircraft is still banned"

Also it won't work. Once you are high enough, a GSM device will be unable to receive an intelligible signal due being in line of site of dozens or perhaps hundreds of cell sites. For CDMA (both Qualcomm CDMA and WCDMA 3G), the network typically will determine a device is interfering with excessive numbers of cell sites and boot the device off the network.

We'll build Elon Musk's Hyperloop ... if you lob us ONE-MEELLION dollars

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Of course it won't work!

The Wright brothers took to the air in 1903, achieving what most people said was impossible. 65 years later the first Jumbo Jet flew.

The simple lesson from history is that engineers regularly achieve the impossible."

I don't think it's a matter of anyone thinking this is physically impossible. It's a matter of thinking the cost estimate is WAAAAAY out of whack. (Not the $1 million for a demo... but the full tunnels.) I mean (from skyscrapercity.com -- and this thread's from 2006 so not even counting the last 7 years of inflation!):

"Seattle Central Link Univeristy Extension

$1.7 billion / 3.15 miles = $540 million/mile"

"New York 2nd Avenue Subway

$16 billion / 8.1 miles = $1.975 billion/mile "

They do comment a lot of this cost is from land acquisition and also because NYC has very hard ground to bore thorugh.

"In Minneapolis, a 1.38 mile (7,300 ft) twin-tube tunnel (bored) was built recently for the Hiawatha LRT line. Earth-pressure-balanced methods was the type of boring used (not sure what that means). The cost was $110 million. So that's about $79.7 million a mile."

"In New Delhi (India), 65 km of metro/subway has been built so far at the cost of $2 bn.. $30 mn/km.

In Mumbai, metro construction is begining for a 146 km network by 2021 at estimated cost of $5 bn.. $34 mn/km. "

(This comes to $48 million a mile for New Delhi and about $55 million a mile for Mumbai).

I just can't see these guys making a maglev, vaccum-sealed tunnel while also cutting 75% of the cost of a conventional tunnel.

Need a job? The 'Internet of Things' WANTS YOU

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

So.. what actual use cases does this have? I mean, I've been in buildings with thermostats, temperature sensors, steam heat converted to be computer controlled, all fed into HVAC controller.

Why would any of that need to go outside the network running to the HVAC controller? Even if I wanted to remote control say a home version of this, I'd still want the HVAC controller to be my single point of access, not every valve and sensor. For traffic management, the sensors and street lights can be as "smart" as the local roads department can afford to make it. Some towns clearly don't even try to synchronize lights or anything. But beyond that I think there are rapidly diminishing returns on investment except in very congested areas.

Why would this any of this need massive network upgrades? How much data would a sensor produce anyway?

Why does this need new IT skills. If someone can decide what they want a so called "internet of things" to actually do (like an actual use case where something does something useful....) then I'm quite sure it can be put together right now. But vaporware alone does not make a produceable product.

Salesforce's data-center design: 'Go for web scale, and build it out of s**t!'

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

btrfs has an option for that

btrfs has options where it'll have an index like this, for supporting data duplication (triplication? 8-) ) and deduplication type stuff. I wanted to use it just for deduplication, but found the index's overhead is quite high. This type of tech is quite effective though to ensure data integrity.

FREEZE, GLASSHOLE! California cops bust Google Glass driver

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Agree, good

Nobody should be wearing google glass while driving. If it's off, it's useless to be wearing it. And if it's on it's a distraction. It'd be interesting if glass had a speaker loud enough to use it in a speakerphone mode (i.e. it's sitting on the seat or whatever and you can give it voice commands.)

DON'T BREW THAT CUPPA! Your kettle could be a SPAMBOT

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Pretty obvious from that picture that the device isn't going to do what it's claimed to do. The minimum size would be like around the mini pcie wifi cards + some extra gubbins for processing + extra for dealing with the power."

Minimum size would be a single chip -- it's easy to put wifi and ARM onto a single die. The power circuitry to supply well under 1 watt is also small too (I doubt they put it on-die).

Email-sniffing Linkedin Intro NOT security threat, insists biz network

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Yeah I wouldn't do this...

Calling this a Man In The Middle *Attack* is pretty sensationalist, since a) It's not malicious and b) The user requested the mail go through the "man in the middle", rather than "the man in the middle" being there surreptitiously.

That said, I probably wouldn't go for this. But if I was into LinkedIn... *shrug*.

Moto sets out plans for crafty snap-together PODULAR PHONES

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

OK...

I do doubt this will be something where you can get a phone and just keep putting newer and newer parts on. However, I do like the idea of, if say my keyboard wore out (full keyboard please?) that I could just like unsnap it and snap in a new keyboard, versus the labor-intesive process required on a conventional phone. If I had a choice of a conventional smartphone, and one that is DYI like this, I'd get the DYI one.

Anonymity is the enemy of privacy, says RSA grand fromage

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Wow...

Wow, this talks me into not buying products from RSA. I mean, with this view, it seems almost guaranteed they would put backdoors into it. The fact of the matter is, there ARE security researchers that disrupt meeting places for illicit activities, botnets, and so on. They can't physically arrest them unless they screw up due to anonymity, this is true. But the realistic fact is the agencies that the RSA head honcho expects people to not worry about and give up their privacy to, are running amok with no checks and balances whatsoever.

Surface 2 and iPad Air: Prepare to meet YOUR DOOM under a 'Landfill Android' AVALANCHE

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Not that bad....

The thing with the "landfill android" tablets is they are comparable in spec to a nice tablet from a year or two ago. A few of my relatives got some a year or two ago that had like a 500mhz MIPS... they were like $90, they were pretty slow but my relatives got lots of use out of them. Now? The Hudl, for instance, has 1GB of RAM and a *quad core* 1.5ghz processor. That is not shabby!

Digital radio may replace FM altogether - even though nobody wants it

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Single standard?

You want a single standard? OK, FM.

In all seriousness... DAB is using an even older standard than MP3, so compression ratios are relatively poor -- also, they do put too many channels on a multiplex, so you end up with all those low-bitrate streams (which will sound even worse than an equivalently low MP3 stream.) The error correction support is also poor.

It turns out (as you all know), people do not want a system with poorer than FM radio quality and poorer than FM range. Go figure.

At the very least, they should all use DAB+ (which is using a form of AAC audio called HE-AAC+), which is like triple the efficiency of MP2.

The Reg explores technology in a remote aboriginal community

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

squid alone helps...

Even without any tweaks, I found squid on a Linux box does get higher speeds than an XP system will get directly. Not much to do about latency though -- the speed of light delay for a ping and reply is 500ms or so, and 1000ms or so is typical due to other delays of satellite access. And, as with any link, this latency will spike up further with channel congestion.

PFSense is a pretty nice firewall setup... you load PFSense into a PC with some network ports (whatever type; it's runs on FreeBSD, but FreeBSD supports virtually all cards just like Linux) and it's like a wireless access point style web interface but with way more options. A word of warning, I installed squid3 on this and would have squid fail to restart after power failure, UFS filesystem interacts poorly with squid in this regard. I think swap.state gets corrupted, a "rm /var/spool/squid3/swap.state" before squid starts should force a (fairly slow unfortunately...) cache rebuild.

In a meeting with a woman? For pity's sake don't read this

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

"Ignoring People is Rude, Shock Study Reveals "

But, the thing is I've seen people that seem to have no problem holding a conversation and texting at the same time (or short E-Mail or IM). So it doesn't bother me a bit if someone is on the phone a bit. I think it is likely more men come to this conclusion than women.

Where I work we're all tech geeks and would certainly check any texts that come in. However, we have a few clients that check texts any time they get them, and they clearly don't mind a bit if I check a text. But in general, I do ignore texts and E-Mails while I'm actually meeting with people.

Why did Nokia bosses wait so long to pop THAT Lumia tab?

Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

Maybe

"When Microsoft finally completes the acquisition of Nokia’s 32,000-strong mobile unit it will boast 120,000 staff in all. Surely there’s one in there who can find a way of explaining RT to the so-far uninterested masses. Thanks largely to Nokia, RT is looking less of a basket case and something with a bit of potential. "

My response to this: Maybe. Without seeing even a review or anything of this tablet, I expect Nokia will end up with a better tablet than the Surface RT... but, if the Nokia is also running RT (8.1 I suppose), will it be good enough? No matter how good the hardware is, it doesn't help if the software is dodgey. I have nothing against them so I hope it's good, but.....

Second, will this also have a locked bootloader? I don't trust Microsoft to not just try to do a combined RT/Windows Phone thing, but then not port it back to Surface and the Lumia 2520... at which point RT will be essentially a dead platform, and I'd want to put a 3rd party firmware on there.