Weight
Any danger Lohan has been overeating as well as overheating?
Have your boffins done the lift calculations?
Posts by Gordon 10
3872 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2009
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Plucky Playmonaut bails out of smoking Vulture 2
Marc Andreessen: Edward Snowden is a 'textbook traitor'
Women found just TWO out of every HUNDRED US tech startups
Thursday 5th June 2014 11:11 GMT
Re: Yet another Picketty-style retardation (YAPSR)
"Why should "percentage of tech startups founded by women" be an interesting number?
Why should it be a more important number than "percentage of houses painted in green"?
Coz you dont get grant/corporate sponsorship money for studying green houses?
Boffins publish SciFi story to announce exoplanet find
Thursday 5th June 2014 10:44 GMT
If you are referring to Star Carrier 3 singularity - apart from the vague connection with Kapteyn I'm not sure what your point is.
Reynolds is high end Hard-ish Sci-Fi.
Keith/Douglas - seems more Journeyman Mil-sci fi from a quick google.
ie totally different sub-genres.
Would you complain about every book that mentions alpha centuari?
Deploy a fake Bitcoin wallet to save your own
Thursday 5th June 2014 10:35 GMT
Re: Bitcoin...
I think its more likely that $GREED and $STUPIDITY are more likely to scupper it.
So far the Bitcoin "Industry" has totally failed to demonstrate stability and safety that would persuade the public it has any future.
Ironically the lack of a $POWER who is willing to ram through past the teething troubles looks like its going to be its undoing.
Protecting code's secrets wins ACM prize
Thursday 5th June 2014 07:47 GMT
Exactly - you just move the inspection point from the binary source to a stream monitor post decryption.
Not saying it would be easy but since you would have full control of the machine the code is running on - you would be the ultimate man in the middle.
The whole PC code base from firmward upwards would have to be globally encrypted for this to be fully secure.
Edit:Foxyshadis made the same point below but with better in depth knowledge.
US escalates Stingray mobe-snooping secrecy battle as judge unseals evidence
Thursday 5th June 2014 07:17 GMT
But but but
Does it also handshake and forward calls/texts/data to the real network - or does everyone on the same network who connects to this fake cell (presumably at least ~1/2 mile radius to cover a building) get no calls/texts/data for the duration?
And if it does forward calls/texts/data what logging does it do? How are these managed and destroyed?
Im hoping this is just a basic bit of kit that does just enough to capture a phone signal - ie basic challenge response on the network level. The cynic in me suggests it could be much more complex.
Surely this is the same as any other bit of police kit - the public have a right to know that its safe and used legally.
Indie record labels to haul YouTube before the European Commission
TrueCrypt hooked to life support in Switzerland: 'It must not die' say pair
Oh, wow. US Secret Service wants a Twitter sarcasm-spotter
Piketty thinks the 1% should cough up 80%. Discuss
Wednesday 4th June 2014 13:29 GMT
I would agree with this. I think the 2 biggest crimes commited by the last 2 governments were Educational
1. Labour convincing everyone they had the right to get a McDegree regardless of whether they have any benefit to society or the economy.
2. ConDem's ramping tuition fees to £21,000.
(3. allowing Michael Gove anywhere near anything important the gobshite)
Wednesday 4th June 2014 10:01 GMT
Politics of Envy
Isnt this a very simple argument at the end of the day.
1. Its always been very easy to get the mob riled up with the right rhetoric.
2. If that rhetoric is "Capital Inequality" (hello new socialists) or "Immigration" hello UKIP.
3. The are only 3 fundamental choices:
a) Aspire to be on the right side of the in-equality.
b) Look around - be content with your lot.
c) Eat the rich/immigrants or do something else to drag them down to a level that pleases the mob.
Now c) has a whole range of responses ranging from mild taxation tweaks to public flogging, but lets not pretend we are doing anything but dressing up Envy in fancy clothes or "economic debate".
Fact of the matter is there is a certain level of inequality that a society will tolerate, but there are plenty of people who will magnify that in-equality so they can get power.
How I poured a client's emails straight into the spam bin – with one Friday evening change
Monster croc 'the BALROG' tussles with mighty Titanoboa snake
AMD tops processor evolution with new mobile Kaveri chippery
Wednesday 4th June 2014 09:44 GMT
Re: The delusions of marketing
Oooo lots of downvotes but no-ones arguing with the basic point.
Face it Peak desktop/laptop was reached years ago, the average home and enterprise use cases have barely changed bar a bit more VC, and the only thing driving the need for more performance is the latest cruft filled blob from Microsoft be it office or windows.
So typical El Reg users aside - since most of us fall into some sort of power user cagegory - which gives me more utility? A laptop that sips power with all day battery life for workshops/meetings/commute and that starts instantly or one that can run a massively parallel data visualisation that I will never do.
Note Im not saying that AMD's arent as good as Intel in these use cases - frankly I havent a clue - but there is no point in AMD Marketing pointing out USP's for which there is a only tiny market.
Wednesday 4th June 2014 08:28 GMT
The delusions of marketing
Isnt it funny when all you've got is a graphics core everything looks like a graphics problem? (ok a bit harsh but you get my point)
Sounds like AMD's boffins have hit the spot on their design briefs - I just question how much of that design brief covers real world usage.
Will my outlook searches, excel and word docs run faster on AMD or Intel? All this visual stuff is a red herring for 90% of use cases. The only grudging point I will give them is more video optimisation in this realm of skype calls is always good, although given the low-ish res of most non-dedicated VC feeds I suspect the peak of tuning for them was reached years ago.
Will they do "instant on" as well as haswell? Do I have week long standby power?
Dear AMD less TLA and FLA nerdgasms more real world use cases please.
Plugging the gaps in today's Macs: Elgato Thunderbolt Dock
Revealed: GCHQ's beyond top secret Middle Eastern internet spy base
DevOps is actually a thing – and people are willing to pay for it
Tuesday 3rd June 2014 10:21 GMT 
All about maturity
I presume this is tightly linked to having a mature agile development and automated testing processes in place?
Is anyone doing this with short bursts of waterfall?
I find the concept intruiging - Im not sure it can be any worse than 3 months of impenetrable shite going live all at once. I presume it all depends on development and testing discpline. If you fudge your SIT and UAT (as so many do) you will be screwed no matter what.
Does anyone have any feedback to how well userland adjusts to these kind of cycles?
Whats the typical end to end from requirement to go live?
Apple: Scrubbing may not yet have cleansed iThings of BLOOD
Friday 30th May 2014 17:55 GMT
Re: Not just BLOOD, Enviromental Issues Too!
Newsflash commentard Apple doesn't source from any of the smelters directly - its their suppliers suppliers suppliers.
Also has it not occurred to you that the smelters are placed near to where the resources are - whilst I'm sure there are a few in the west too - it just depends on the distribution of the relevant ores.
SpaceX 'Dragon V2' rocket podule can hover-land on Earth - or MARS
The British are coming! The British are coming! And they're buying Surface fondleslabs
SPB's mountaintop HQ menaced by wolves
100% driverless Wonka-wagon toy cars? Oh Google, you're having a laugh
IT'S ALIVE! ISEE-3 responding to commands
Friday 30th May 2014 09:29 GMT
I'll say one thing for NASA
They know how to build a damn spacecraft!
It does make me wonder if there is a quality vs quantity debate to be had in the future of space exploration - i.e. once a certain level of technology is reached is one big instrument package on 1 big spacecraft the way to go, or is there mileage in the swarm/microsat concept.
For example is any work being on sats that have the sensor equivalent of the Square Kilometer Array. Say for example a network of low cost Camera's attached to a fairly widely dispersed set of microsats.
Snowden never blew a whistle, US spy boss claims
Thursday 29th May 2014 22:45 GMT 
Hmmm on balance
I suspect that the Yanks may be telling the truth on this one - however I would expect them to smear him in any event so the point is moot. If I was Snowden and already planning to collect this stuff there would be no way I would draw attention to myself by rocking the boat....
On the "trained spy" bit - true or Assange-like ego trip, although if he had some kind of black hat training it would help explain the extent of his p0wnage.
Tesla's top secret gigafactories: Lithium to power world's vehicles? Let's do the sums
US DoJ to appeals court: Haha, no, seriously – Apple totally inflated ebook prices
Wednesday 28th May 2014 17:50 GMT
Re: Irony @ac
I'm sure you'll also be taking the first opportunity to moan when your favourite authors start bailing out if Amazon crush the publishers as the are trying to do.
2 wrongs don't make a right but investigating one wrong by apple and ignoring whopping wrongs by Amazon comes into that category too.
Help. Mailing blacklists...
Microsoft swats away FBI request for Office 365 subscriber data
Privacy International probes GCHQ's mouse fetish
Friday 23rd May 2014 07:12 GMT
Re: Amazon ?
Just imagine the fun you could have if you mentioned to the NSA that copies of the Snowden files had been found on AWS, Googledrive or Skydrive.
If I worked for one of the cloud minnows I'd be tempted to start that rumour :D
Assuming of course that the NSA doesnt already know exactly what clouds have copies of the Snowdon docs. Im betting there are multiple NSA spiders crawling around the Interwebs right now looking for Hashes associated with the Snowden docs.
Friday 23rd May 2014 07:08 GMT
Re: Errrrm....
I suspect this is someone ultra ultra paranoid with little engineering background badly extrapolating from the old Van Eck phreaking from CRT's and the equivalent effect thats been shown to work at a CPU level.
I forget what the second effect is called but it was reported on El Reg a couple of years ago.
Friday 23rd May 2014 07:04 GMT
Re: This is very puzzling
exactly. If they had bothered to spend 10 mins googling with the knowledge of the original PC the component came from they could have either found an image or a cheap spare part online and then got the serial numbers of the components involved.
Admittedly thats a bit of a stretch for a non-techie but you really need to get a second opinion on this type of stuff to use as a baseline if/when the manufacturers come back to you.
China to become world's No 1 economy. And we still can't see why
Thursday 22nd May 2014 11:29 GMT
Re: The Govt. has screwed us
Whilst agreeing with your sentiment its kinda hard to agree with your somewhat lazy and crap examples.
1. Planning permission - provides a useful service to stop your neighbour building a mini-shard 2" from your kitchen window.
2. Council funding - this is just swings and roundabouts - the councils that apply the tax brush in a stupid manner sooner or later realise what the concequences are - empty high streets, no tax revenue from empty Theaters etc.
3. Labour laws and Minimum wages stifle production - really - how many offshored IT jobs were minimum wage?
No such luck: Apple, Samsung say peace talks are off – way off
Wednesday 21st May 2014 13:50 GMT
Re: If, just if...
agree Corporate squabbles with companies (and their groups) with over 100m dollars turnover should be paying the court the SUM of each sides legal fees. Then maybe the public courts and public defenders could get a chunk of that cash. Judges to be the sole arbitors of whether the company is worth 100m or not and what the lawyers are worth if they try a pro-bono dodge.
MacBook Air 13-inch: If you squint hard enough, you'll see a lesser-spotted Apple Price Cut
Wednesday 21st May 2014 13:42 GMT
Slightly schizophrenic review
Its shit - crappy display - lots of ultrabooks do it better.
Its great battery life is amazing.
Its outdated but as an all round package its still as good as anything else out there. Especially if you have to remove Win 8 first.
Dislaimer - unashamed MBA 11 convert form 2 months and havent looked back even though I missed the price cut and would have liked a retina version. Although I find the mutiple desktops paradigm in MacOS and Unix a pretty good substitute for a bigger screen when compared with Win.
Biggest downside that pesky @ and " being substituted and Cmd being too close to the space bar for Copy/Paste etc. yes I know you can remap them easily enough - but Im refusing to be beaten by my own muscle memory.
JJ Abrams and Star Wars: I've got a bad feeling about this
Wednesday 21st May 2014 12:55 GMT
Re: If not JJ Abrams, then who else?
@lee h o
"Did Jos Whedon ever write or direct any films or TV that was any good? In the genre?"
Ahem - Avengers Assemble ring any bells? Arguably a sub-genre of the SciFi/Fantasy movie.
I believe he ruled himself out of the SW running early on - (although so did JJ until the moola was increased no doubt). Also I may be getting my timelines muddled not sure whether the grosses were in for AA at that point.
Wednesday 21st May 2014 12:45 GMT
A little pedantic imo
The only one slightly comparable to Star Wars in that list is 2001 - and even that is at the other end of the spectrum - its pretty damn opaque for the average movie goer.
The rest are undeniably great movies but very much of their time and therefore difficult to compare to the new Blockbuster era ushered in by Messrs Speilberg and Lucas and of which only SW and 2001 are examples of that canon.
Wednesday 21st May 2014 12:39 GMT
Alien Resurrection. 3 was not too bad
I actually liked them both equally in a not a patch on the first 2 way! Its just that 3 had so many false starts and rewrites and it almost made David Fincher's brain explode. Google Alien 3 wooden planet for a hint.
I just felt 3 was a bit of an Alien rehash with the generation of british character actors prior to all those currently appearing in GOT. Also I've never quite gotten over the disappointmnent I felt when Hicks and Newt were killed off - offscreen. That still makes me sad :(
Wednesday 21st May 2014 09:51 GMT
Overly Harsh
I'm not a great JJ fan but he is pretty good at telling a movie story for the generation below the average age of those that remember the original star wars films from the cinema.
Like it or not Hollywood has moved on and so has the audience leaving us just as a 1 small segment of a much wider one. We probably aint the biggest movie going demographic anymore no matter how much we would like to think we are.
On balance the nerd in me was horrified by the bastardisation of the Star Trek back catalogue in his 2 versions - but taken as standalone and switching off the nerdy part of my brain leaves me actually reasonably satisfied with both. Star Trek improves with repeat watching, and I expect the sequel will too. God knows they are far superior to some of the dross in the series such as the Final Frontier, Insurrection and Nemisis springing to mind.
As to the TV list GreggS lists out above - that other Darling of the Nerds (counting myself among them) Joss Whedon - doesn't actually have that great a record - whats the point of appealing to the nerds with Firefly and Dollshouse if you can't appeal to the general public as well, and Im not even going to mention Agents of Shield (shudder). Whilst we're on that subject he's going to be lucky to have Age of Ultron hit the same mark as Assemble!
Movie sequels generally suck - for every Godfather part II or Aliens or T2 there is an Alien 3 or a Terminator Resurrection.
On balance I think we're being a little hard on a guy that has an almost impossible act to follow as he's not up against a Movie but a whole piece of culture and mythology and as long as they are mildly better than the second trilogy and contain no JarJar I'll be reasonably happy.
Brits to vote: Which pressing scientific challenge should get £10m thrown at it?
Wednesday 21st May 2014 10:09 GMT
The Govt priorities are Fuscked up
£42Bn on HS2.
vs a couple of Bn as our part of ITER.
Imagine a future where the UK was the first to generate self sustaining fusion by pumping £42bn into a UK only ITER, and became a net Energy and Energy Technology exporter to the WORLD.
With a bit of vision we could actually have been the next Energy exporting state with a worthy replacement to North Sea oil.
Weather forecast: WiFi storms make meteorologists look mad
Tuesday 20th May 2014 12:21 GMT
Re: Blame the ISPs
Thats hardly a fair accusation in this case. How many cheapo ISP specced routers are 11a or 11ac compatible? According to Wiki the BT Homehub only started covering the 5 Ghz bands in 2013.
What proportion of those compatible routers actual have the 5gz channels in use?
I will lay good odds that even as 11ac becomes widespread most people either wont have the equipment (laptops, dongles, desktops) etc or the Nouse to use it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
