Posts by An ominous cow heard

"Cellular is much, much, MUCH more efficient in how many users can be conducting simultaneous conversations (and using data comms) at the same time over a particular channel allocation."

Perhaps in the same way as DAB is much more efficient at allowing more adverts to be delivered over the same bandwidth as the preceding technology?

But in general DAB seems to fail wrt coverage (especially in fringe areas) and fail abysmally wrt battery life. Probably others too. Shame ESN didn't see it coming.. Lessons will no doubt be learned.

Re: Cloud du jour

Surely you mean "dot con", which I see is now the title of a book.

Re: Don't connect it to the internet and you're opted out.

"TV's that don't start up if they can't phone home..."

My Samsung TV does that. Couple of years old. No more Samsung for me. Shame really, I've bought Samsung monitors and then TV/monitors since the days of the Samsung SyncMaster ten or so years ago.

Re: SNAFU

"Cases are irrelevant, it's deaths that matter - just like the flu."

So "Long CoVID" isn't a real thing then? I'm glad you've cleared that up for us.

Re: Leyland Tiger (1981) replaced the Leyland Leopard.

Thank you. I thought I was a nerd, but chickened out from actually posting something along those lines :)

Anyway, as this is El Reg, here's the necessary citation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyland_Tiger

See also the Leyland Tiger Cub

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyland_Tiger_Cub

Trainspotter? Who, me?

Re: For now, it doesn't matter yet

Cost may not be a factor in the SPEC benchmark suites, but cost does appear in other widely recognised benchmark ratings - for example the TPC benchmark family, including for example the TpmC benchmark and the associated Price/TpmC number.

Readers who already know everything won't need this link, but others might find it (and others related to it) interesting:

http://www.tpc.org/tpcc/results/tpcc_advanced_sort5.asp

Readers who look *really* carefully may find there's even a specification for "energy" too, in terms of (e.g.) Watts per thousand TpmC

edit: the CoreMark benchmark family also has "energy efficiency" as part of the options to be measured.

Sometimes there's more to life than SPEC.

Tick tock (not tik tok)

"How portable are the chips at moving to different fabs that use different processes? I don't know, but would suspect they are designed to use the processes that the target fab uses."

Certainly Intel used to like people to believe that close architecture/process co-operation worked in their favour.

"Tick tock" advances used to be a key marketing message from Intel: alternate process improvements and architecture improvements:

"A Tick Advances Manufacturing Technology

In every "tick" cycle, Intel introduced advanced manufacturing process technology to help deliver the expected benefits of Moore’s Law to users.

A Tock Delivers New Microarchitecture

In every “tock” cycle, Intel introduced manufacturing process technologies to introduce the next big innovation in processor microarchitecture. Intel® microarchitecture advancements seek to improve energy efficiency and performance as well as functionality and density of features such as hardware-supported video transcoding, encryption/decryption, and other integrated capabilities."

from https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/silicon-innovations/intel-tick-tock-model-general.html

Tick tock was publically abandoned around 2016 when it became apparent that Intel's 10nm process wasn't what it ought to have been, see e.g.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/9447/intel-10nm-and-kaby-lake

Intel tried to continue the link by describing their new approach as "Process - Architecture - Optimisation" but sooner or later people will notice that the new products aren't available as planned.

@aaashy: Why no link?

A post submitted earlier did contain a link to the mailonline article and has finally arrived here now but had previously sat awaiting clearance for a lot more than ten minutes, during which time I had already posted a briefer, link-free, version in the expectation that folk might use their favourite search engine to find the actual article. Sorry about the delay, ambiguity, and wasted time.

Re: Court admin

"The CPS has to get lists of witnesses, trial dates, etc. to [administrators] in good time so they can contact the witnesses (and there may be dozens) and also update victims on the progress of a trial (defendant's plea, verdict, sentencing, etc.)."

So a well run court admin automation system would be a useful asset, and a failing one would be a bit of a problem?

Anyone know what the state of play might be with such a system in England/Wales?

Re: Ah yes ...

"Extremely curious as German leaves much less room for ambiguity."

That's why the UK economy is so dependent on lawyers and other related parasites, and why Germany in general just gets on with the job as specified.

Re:Now what are you going to worry about?

Blipverts, and/or their targeted Interweb equivalent?

Or maybe this:

"What do you want?"

"We want information."

"Well you won't get it."

"By hook or by crook, we will"

"I am not a number. I am a free man. I will not be pushed, profiled, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! I will not make any deals with you. I've deleted my account. My life is my own!"

(manic laughter)

Be seeing you.

Re: How oh how

I understand many folks might not like doing business with a company called Tracker Software (I'm surprised it's not been trademarked elsewhere), but I've not used Acrobat for years, I've been using PDF Tracker (recently renamed PDF Xchange) and it's doing what I need for PDF viewing and OCR, at what seems to me a very acceptable price (zero?) and with remarkably few CVEs (one???)

Am I holding it wrong?

Re: when you start digging into it.

"Because TV Licensing _limited_ - the privately owned company which is responsible for actually collecting TV licence fees - is a wholly owned subsidiary of the BBC which then contracts operations out to Crapita and IBM.

That's not quite how it works, according to published information. Maybe your description is equivalent, maybe no one has challenged it for the last few years, but here's an extract from an official description:

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/about/who-we-are-AB4

" 'TV Licensing' is a trade mark of the BBC and is used under licence by companies contracted by the BBC to administer the collection of the television licence fee and enforcement of the television licensing system.

The BBC is a public authority in respect of its television licensing functions and retains overall responsibility.

Responsibilities of TV Licensing contracted companies

Capita Business Services Ltd Administration and enforcement of the TV Licence fee.

PayPoint Plc Over-the-counter payment services in the UK mainland and in Northern Ireland.

[continues]"

If there was an actual "TV Licensing Limited" I would expect to see evidence somewhere (ultimately, official records at Companies House. Have you got any?

The big-picture concept of contracting this stuff (collection AND enforcement) out to organisations like Crapita and friends still stinks. As it often does elsewhere. But sometimes details matter, as well as the big picture.

Re: GPU, video and audio on car or embedded hypervisor?

"If stuff goes wrong - and they always do - the error can be trapped and you can fail the system in a controlled manner."

Do you think that particular capability needs a hypervisor? If so, why?

Proper multi-tasking OSes with proper memory protection, user/supoervisor modes, etc (not just RTOSes) have offered that "error-trapping and controlled failure" capability for decades.

It's only since Apple and Microsoft software and business practices came along that the ability of a simple error in one ordinary piece of code to take down a whole system became widely acceptable practice.

Even then, once WinNT and the Apple equivalent came along, there was no need for an error in some random non-kernel software to be permitted to cause a BSoD and bring down a whole system.

HYPErvisors address a different set of requirements.

Re: Capitalism? Corporatism? Kleptocracy? Education?

"They've got corporatism with added kleptocracy.

That's simply the degenerate case the capitalism converges on, as it concentrates wealth in smaller numbers of hands"

Yes and no. Concentrating wealth (and *power*) in smaller numbers of hands? Absolutely yes. The recent shorthand for that is "the 1%", and in principle it seems to accurately describe recent history.

On the other hand, some (many?) clearly capitalist countries are really a long way from being as corporatist or kleptocratic as the US and the UK. A true capitalist state would have let the US auto industry fail, rather than rescuing it with the TARP program.

2001: 1400x1050 on a laptop. 2011: ??? 2017: ???

Back in 2001 or so, in the dying days of W98SE and Pentium III, Compaq would sell you an Armada E500 laptop with a 1400x1050 display. I actually thought mine (which was very usable, albeit not very light) was 1600x1200, but the readily available quickspecs says 1400x1050 on the top of the range model.

Re: IP

" If you want to commit several years of your life to creating media content then give it away free under a Creative Commons licence, no one will stop you. In fact many will applaud your bravery and there are several people/organisations doing just that."

Right.

But there's a world of difference between your "feed the struggling artists" argument, and the reality.

Of any given revenue stream in the content distribution industry, how much actually reaches the writers, performers, what have you? And how much is sliced off along the way before it reaches the actual creatives, sliced off by the card processors, the big-brand distribution companies, and so on.

Let's see some realistic numbers rather than generic handwaving and *then* we can talk.

There used to be some interesting numbers on Tom Robinson's website, where his back catalogue was freely downloadable, about where iTunes revenue went, but last time I checked, they'd gone (both the free downloads and the iTunes analysis). Perhaps not entirely unrelated to his back catalogue being newly available through iTunes at that time.

Re: Roundabouts...

"1630 driving through Kings Heath :(

I only commuted back that way once. After that I always just went north to get onto the M5 then round to the M42."

Working as intended then, though some drivers still manage to miss the point, that slower traffic is generally safer traffic in urban areas [1]. The locals get used to the queues, regulars find another more appropriate route (as you did). Some even use public transport (the 50 route through Kings Heath is said to be one of the busiest in Europe [2]).

Of course the abuse of Kings Heath's narrow side streets (e.g. the one adjacent(ish) to Asda/Safeway/Presto directly opposite the route 50 bus stop outside the Cross Guns) which are barely big enough for anything bigger than a Volvo estate but are frequently blocked by HGVs delivering to the shops and also blocking the High Street at the same time, just adds to the fun.

At one stage there was a half-brained proposal to put a road tunnel under Kings Heath. In nearly forty years in B13 and B14, I've never been to a public meeting as overcrowded as the first one where that proposal was discussed (and massively rejected).

[1] Fatal case of "sorry mate I didn't see you":

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/hope-fennells-killer-driver-jailed-5849881

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Midlands_bus_route_50

Re: "For full coverage" link goes to FaceBook?

This is the URL I get under "for full coverage":

http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=%22EMC%2FDell+deal%22&advanced=1&psite=0&author=&date=the+dawn+of+time&site=0&results_per_page=20

No obvious Facebook there, nor in the first few results it returns.

Firefox, Windows 7, no blockers (for this experiment).

Re: that Welsh tourist board ad in full

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkQwB7LzzGE

An advert that I'd watch voluntarily (and sometimes did).

Industry please note.

But surely you don't need an "SEO expert" to tell you that it's really quite special, and that adverts like that are not universally applicable?

Re: Has anyone ever bought german-market electricals?

"a little piece of paper stating that the product meets/has passed all relevant regulatory requirements of <list of german regulatory agencies>, undersigned by a named member of the senior management team of whichever company has their name on the packaging."

Guess what, that's pretty much what a proper Declaration of Conformity has too, although the 'senior' bit may be replaced by 'authorised'. After all, Seniors often have far more important things to do than be held responsible for anything.

The DoC is supposed to be available with the product, directly (e.g. in the destructions) or by contacting the product supplier (e.g. the authorised European representative, if the product is manufactured outside Europe).

The idea that a supplier, when asked for a product's DoC, can legally just say "eff off" (or even just politely ignore the request) is laughable.

" in circumstances such as these you could just phone up the relevant individual and ask them exactly what went on, and haul them into court if necessary.

And that appears to be the *intention* behind the CE/DoC rules here too.

Obviously that kind of thing (like suppliers following product liability legislation) is completely impermissible in the UK.

Re: self certification

There is clearly a problem with abuse of self certification. However, what's actually in the rules is stuff like:

"'You must keep certain documentation once you have placed the CE marking onto your product. This information can be requested at any time by the Market Surveillance Authorities to check that a CE marking has been legitimately placed on a product."

The idea presumably being that in circumstances such as these, anyone who has been fraudulently misrepresenting what went on can be held accountable for it. Not that it ever happens.

Re: my guess...

"Maybe he or she doesn't want end up as Dr Kelly?"

Fair comment.

Plus for all we know the hints may have been "submitted and awaiting moderation since [forever]" or the original post may have been removed without trace or whatever. It's the Interweb, it works in mysterious ways.

Re: Daily Mail on the case before you know it

"the "Daily Mail" informs its readers that the IOT is "BAD"."

May be closer than you think.

The hardcopy Daily Mail front page headline today is

"Fraud alert over new tap and pay bank cards: Thieves use scanners to steal account details - even when contactless card is in your wallet"

Couldn't find it via the Mail's own website but Google News found it for me:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3171431/Thieves-use-scanners-steal-account-details-contactless-card-wallet.html

As reported here on El Reg at

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/23/contactless_card_fraud_risk_which/

Re: Harrier was ... Harrier *is*

"Now *there* was a engineering marvel AND beauty."

Not was, is.

Still flying, still being updated, but not in the UK.

F35? Will it still be around in fifty years?

Re: not rocket science

""Checking the design and implementation for things like arithmetic overflows isn't exactly rocket science either." (me)

But it is aerospace system engineering" (you)

It sure is, and one might hope that its importance was widely recognised. Does experience generally match the theory?

In the "systems engineering" department I'm most familiar with, the importance was recognised in name but not in reality. There was one actual systems engineering graduate and a variety of "systems engineers" from other backgrounds. Good people to have on the team, but not necessarily real "systems engineers".

If the department was desperate enough for manpower, almost anybody (of whatever background) from almost anywhere in the company could become a "systems engineer" overnight.

Is that really an approach that the industry should be adopting?

Re: Attack Vectors != vulnerabilities

That EDN article (actually series of articles, with reader comments) on Toyota vs Barr should be compulsory reading for:

* anyone involved in the business of safety critical embedded software

* anyone affected (or likely to be) by safety critical embedded software

* anyone thinking about buying a Toyota

* anyone wondering what happened to the days when Toyota were a leading light of the engineering industry (e.g. Toyota Practical Problem Solving, etc)

That's quite a few people.

http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyota-s-killer-firmware--Bad-design-and-its-consequences

Re: "we haven't worked out what to do with the nuclear waste"

"it’s a storage system that is more than 100% efficient.

That line, on its own, should ring every alarm bell in existence..."

Indeed it should, in general. Which is why I put it in, for the amusement of the smarter reader.

It's justified in the rest of the text, feel free to go read it.

It's Mackay (who iirc is a Cambridge physics professor of some repute) playing with words. Basically he's saying that courtesy of the tides, you can put (say) 2GWh of electricity in and get more than 2GWh of electricity out, by adding some tidal energy too. The detail is in the linked doc.

He's not proposing zero point energy extraction or perpetual motion or similar.

Have a read; here's the link again:

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/Lagoons.pdf

phy.cam.uk: that'll be the Physics dept at Cambridge Uni.

Re: "we are unlikely to run out of oil any time soon"

As Mr Worstall points out, the extraction has to make economic sense.

If it costs more in energy to get a barrel of oil out of the ground than the energy that barrel of oil will provide, the price in dollars is irrelevant, oil (for energy) stays in the ground. Look up EROEI (energy return on energy invested).

Oil as a petrochemical feedstock starts to get unaffordable too around that point.Which might be inconvenient.

Re: 30 comments in and no one has asked

"Start, System Manager, <organisation>, Global Settings, Message Delivery, Properties, Defaults,

Recipient Limits, "Maximum (recipients)"

That'll be " IT departments have got worse since then." won't it.

Or in Cisco's case, got non existent?

Re: F**K Google

"when a bunch of Bailiffs and cops turn up to impound their equipment and seal their offices."

I look forward to seeing coverage of that on Google News and Youtube.

(One of the UK daytime TV bailiffy type series once showed some chaps turning up at Fujitsu with a warrant to seize kit to the value of a non-trivial debt the courts had found proven. Unfortunately I didn't see how it ended.)

Meanwhile, anyone know any good online adbrokers?

No, you're right, it's a contradiction in terms.

Re: VMS?

You're trolling.

Any competent VMS sysadmin knows how to do a "conversational boot" to break into a system, given physical access, and they don't need a docset (on paper or on CD or on the web) to do so.

It's *very* disruptive ("boot" is a hint).

"privileges were seriously annoying to achieve."

Exactly. It's secure. Not perfectly secure, but better than its alleged successors.

Re: All well and good...

"Intel does not enter a market unless it sees a profitable future in it .."

Maybe so, but the future is hard for even Intel to predict, whereas Intel's historical track record outside their x86 comfort zone speaks for itself - a lengthy list of failures, including those I just listed in my reply to Ken Hagan.

Is an x86 "SoC that isn't an SoC" in their comfort zone?

Re: For sale: "Still have good selection of management types."

Should read "Still have the usual selection of corporate management types."

Surely the good ones are long gone?

Re: "Air France 447 was never resolved"

In the case of AF447, a selection of allegedly very improbable things happened on the same flight at roughly the same time. Some of them were so improbable that the regulators and airframe builders considered they could be ignored (e.g. the chance of flying through rough weather rather than round it was considered negligible, not waking up the Captain when things started getting rough:negligible, identical failures of two out of three pitot tubes:negligible, iirc). Which is a shame for the friends and family involved.

Negligible doesn't mean won't ever happen.

Re: So I can now legally import and sell GPS jammers, etc?

"using ethernet devices that have cables conneted that do not conform to the cable standards are at fault because of the cables."

Have you ever bought a device supplied with an ethernet cable with a lump on it near the end of the cable? I have.

Have you ever bought a device with a power block with a lump on it near the device power socket? You probably have.

That lump is a choke, an RF interference suppression device, included so that when the device is connected to its power source, the innards of the device do not end up radiating RF down its power lead/aerial. The vendors do this because if they didn't, they'd fail to meet the relevant emissions regulations.

If powerline devices had these chokes on them, they might meet the regulations too. But they wouldn't sell many, because they wouldn't work, because they wouldn't be able to transmit (or receive).

Re: Mmmm shiny.

"The original science is fine."

Is it though?

I happily agree a great deal of it is fine (I did a physics degree and have had a subsequent passing interest in sensors and signal processing).

But then (based on recollection from last time I looked at this) some of the papers start talking about the *phase* of light in this picture.

If these folk expect light sensitive devices to be able to work meaningfully with phase in situations using normal (not coherent e.g. laser) light then either I've missed something fundamental or they ARE pulling the wool over people's eyes.

For comparison, working with phase in "sound field" exercises is relatively trivial.

"when you're in a large(r) business/enterprise environment Exchange is pretty much it"

People used to say things like that about ProFS or All-in-1 once upon a time (look them up). They were silly people. Things can change.

Exchange may be pretty much it this week. Things may not be the same a few years from now, especially the way MS are looking really rather clueless at the moment. At least for now they still have their supporters in the IT department and elsewhere. But that too may not last forever

"It's actually easier to sync my calendar to my mobile and manage it there."

Exactly. So someone will notice this and start something using the same methods so the corporates can do proper calendaring with or without Exchange.