Posts by A Non e-mouse

Re: Umm...

The other issue is what MS forces you to buy. Under our license deal with MS, you have to buy a certain number of core licenses, even if you want fewer.

What MS gives with one hand, it takes with the other.

This was also the time when Intel were saying that there wouldn't be a 64-bit version of the x86 processor architecture as the Itanic would be Intel's 64-bit roadmap.

That lasted until Intel saw AMD stealing a lead with their Athlon 64 processors....

Re: Targets Vs Cost

Also, the late running targets are only measured at the terminating station, not any intermediate station, so you can be as late as you want everywhere except the last stop without any problem.

I seemed to recall this was being clamped down on, as train companies were adding unnecessary time on between the final two stations to try and "catch-up". You had the anomaly that the inbound journey could take two or three times longer than the outbound journey due to this padding.

Re: In case you didn't know

The land registry currently makes a modest profit that goes into government funds, so is not a 'cost' at all

From the Land Registry last annual report, they made an operating surplus of £36 Million on an income of £297 Million. That's a surplus of around 12%.

Re: I'm glad my cell phone isn't smart...

Anyone who buys a fitness tracker doesn't understand that resistance training (picking up heavy shit), not cardio is the core of actual fitness, which doesn't need tracking so long as you can count up to 10.

Everyone is different. Some people, like yourself, like picking up heavy shit. Some people, however, like cardio work (Running, cycling, swimming, etc) and would like to keep track of their workouts.

Re: FOI

FoI only applies to public sector bodies. Experian are private sector so immune to FoI.

You might be better off using the Data Protection Act(s) to get them to tell you what they know about you. How much meta-data they give you (e.g. where they got the data from) is another mater.

@AMBxx Re: Roaming - just don't care

Sounds like you're on a really naff O2 tariff. On our O2 business contract, cross-net mobile calls are the same as O2<>O2 mobile calls and are included in our bundled minutes.

Are you sure you're not calling any 07 personal numbers? These do cost an arm and a leg and usually aren't included in any bundles.

@tim Re: Kill it with fire!!!

What needs to happen is browsers need to start a connection to a server with only TLS 1.5 (assume a time traveler with from 2020), then when that fails, drop back to 1.4 and so on..

This is why sysadmins are encouraged to disable old protocols (SSL, TLS 1.0, etc) as a downgrade attack would force you to use a know broken channel. All you're replacing is TLS 1.4 for TLS 1.0 (for example)

Or someone's had *too* much coffee...

I think the argument is that because Google is showing the image, the original website can't use Javascript to try and block Save As, or earn advertising revenue from the visit.

Re: Daily reboot...

Mitel phone systems have a default to reboot once a week at three in the morning.

Re: This points to use of some pretty specialized equipment

Or the FBI were so desperate to get into the phone, they paid the silly amount of money the hacker asked for.

Supply & demand...

Re: Physically picking locks is nothing new.

It seems a lot easier to find a way to steal the key, no matter how sophisticated, and make a mold of it.

Obligatory XKCD cartoon: xkcd.com/538/.

Re: Sex Education

Marriage is a long-term commitment that usually ends in misery. Sex is fun and enjoyable

You're right, sex is fun and enjoyable. But what about spending the rest of your life dealing with the unplanned aftermath of those 15 seconds of fun? (i.e. children)

Re: Units !

If only there was a link to "Send Corrections" to El Reg...

I wonder if any of these institutions are aware of the Stanford Prison Experiment? I think that an understanding of that experiment should be compulsory for anyone in a police-type role.

Re: Windows?

Er, according to the article, CVE-2016-0128 is the Windows one. '2118 is the SAMBA one.

I always thought it was 1.21 Jigawatts...?

Re: Since users too often click through those warnings.

My home router uses a self-signed SSL certificate. I think Dell DRAC (lights-out module) does too.

And these can be replaced with CA signed certs.

@Golcd Re: Conversely though

I think we need to ask: Exactly what have we been getting in the last few iterations of x86 CPUs?

At first, it was easy to see what you got from a new CPU: Faster clock, more bits (16, 32, 64) and maybe some instructions (Protected memory, virtualisation, floating point maths in hardware). This was easy for most people to understand. Then they hit the thermal wall at around 4Ghz, and had to start being smarter about the architecture.

Now, the focus is more on power efficiency (which is good), but there's less actual speed boost. Sure, more cache and cores helps to a limited degree, but does ten cores verses four cores really help the average person who uses Word, Excel or Internet Explorer?

CPUs are getting lots more baggage around them: integrated I/O, integrated graphics, more niche instructions (anyone remember the VAX CPU?), systems management, etc. But the core of a CPU is the ALU, and none of these features are going to help improve the speed of the ALU. All we're getting is (roughly) the same throughput for less energy.

Intel are being squeezed. At one end, ARM is doing (very) low power for good enough performance. At the high end, GPUs are doing the heavy parallel number crunching. What's left for Intel? They're now looking to integrate FPGAs onto the CPU die. How many people will need that?

Which is ironic as the thick client isn't exactly responsive and smooth

But it's better than the Flash behemoth...