* Posts by Steve Knox

1972 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2011

How the FLAC do I tell MP3s from lossless audio?

Steve Knox
Meh

Re: "Everything between sample points is lost"

There is no error there: it stands to reason that if you are ignoring the input at any given point what happens during that time cannot be passed through to the output.

This is true if and only if there is no deterministic relationship between the samples and the unsampled data (i.e, there exists no function f where f(s) = u.)

Cut-off North Sea island: Oh crap, ferry's been and gone. Need milk. SUMMON THE DRONE

Steve Knox
Coat

Re: Relief from above

Juist in time?

Yahoo!... Our Alibaba stake's worth BILLIONS. Oh – our shares are in the toilet

Steve Knox

Re: That's what makes horse-racing

There are those who think the market is always right. They just may, in the long run*, be correct but many of us will not live that long. One only needs to look at the day-to-day fluctuations to know that on a shorter time frame, valuations may be wrong. Sometimes, the net asset value of an issue is greater than the price. We call that a bargain, and those with patience and perspicacity often benefit.

I think you've got that exactly backwards. The market is always right, but only in the immediate term. The current market price cannot be more or less than the aggregation of current valuation by potential stakeholders at the given point in time.

Calling any of those individual valuations right or wrong presumes a fully objective valuation method, which doesn't exist. Some individuals base their valuations on short-term goals and others on long-term goals. Some base them on careful analyses, whilst others are completely irrational. The market doesn't care. There is no objective method for calculating an intrinsic value of an organization; the value always comes back to the subjective desires of the individual stakeholders.

What you call a bargain is simply a difference in strategic opinion.

Good grief! Have you seen BlackBerry's square smartphone?

Steve Knox
Coat

"Oh and it comes in black and white."

Really? Rather retro, don't you think?

Are there people out there who don't want a colour screen?

Huawei prez: A one-speed internet is bad for everyone

Steve Knox

Re: The difference is not traffic priority....

Exactly.

The camp that is most guilty of ignoring this fact is the con-net neutrality camp.

Because they know that if they let on that the ISPs already can and do prioritize traffic based on technical requirements, they lose the argument that the ISPs "have to" do their prioritizing based on source and/or destination.

As Andrew showed with the RFCs, the internet is already built to allow traffic to be prioritized based on need. What the ISPs want to do is to change it to allow traffic to be prioritized based on greed.

Apple iPhone 6: Looking good, slim. AW... your battery died

Steve Knox
Coat

Grammar!

As Sir Jonathan Ive mused on 2012’s iPhone 5...

Shouldn't that be "As Sir Jonathan, I've mused on 2012's iPhone 5..."?

; )

Poverty? Pah. That doesn't REALLY exist any more

Steve Knox
Childcatcher

Re: The measure of Poverty

Actually, the US government doesn't base the two major poverty definitions it uses on median income at all. They're based on the cost of food for a particular agricultural program in 1963, multiplied by 3 (to account for costs other than food), and then multiplied by the Consumer Price Index.

They are neither pre- not post- tax, nor are they gross or net. They are simply raw values. What they are compared to depends on the definition of the specific program they are applied to.

In short, like many statistical measures established by popularist fiat and then filtered through bureaucratic "efficiency", US poverty figures are not really a good absolute measure. They are essentially unproven arbitrary figures perpetuated beyond their relevance and applied inconsistently.

For more detail and links to a lot more information, see US Department of Health and Human Service - Frequently Asked Questions Related to the Poverty Guidelines and Poverty

A spin of roulette in the sporty Ford Fiesta Black

Steve Knox

There is another reason to buy a particular car

If you look at numbers and depreciation, you buy a BMW...

It's interesting how brand value propositions differ region-to-region.

Here in the States, for example, people who buy BMWs are, as over there, not deciding with their hearts. Generally they are not, however, deciding with their heads, either.

Well, not the heads you're speaking of, anyway.

Stray positrons caught on ISS hint at DARK MATTER source

Steve Knox

Re: "Stray positrons"

... are there any negatives to owning one?

No, just a very small positive.

JINGS! Microsoft Bing called Scots indyref RIGHT!

Steve Knox

Re: Surely the release of this apparently "reliable" prediction could influence the result?

The more the prediction is percieved to be credible...

No, this is Bing we're talking about.

Hate Facebook? Hate it enough to spend $9k fleeing it? Web 'country club' built for the rich

Steve Knox
FAIL

Security? We've heard of it...

...have to swipe an on-screen bar to get in, something Touchi-Peters thinks will fend off automated attacks.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Sure, because nobody's ever found a way to programmatically inject input into a process before.

T-Mobile US goes gaga for Wi-Fi calling, AT&T to launch in 2015

Steve Knox

Re: Why?

...when you have access to an 802.11 network but no cellular...

E.g, when you're a T-Mobile US customer.

Net neutrality protestors slam the brakes on their OWN websites

Steve Knox

What's in a Name?

What's Battle Forth Enet supposed to mean?

Look out, world! Space Station satellite cannon has A MIND OF ITS OWN

Steve Knox

Re: Skynet?

More like MPU.

Heads up, Chromebook: Here come the sub-$200 Windows 8.1 portables

Steve Knox

Re: re: There are also many who aren't happy with the limitations of Windows

AC: " '...iPad?' We're talking about buying cheap hardware..."

The 'Apple tax' on the $280Cdn iPad Mini (non-retina) versus the $280Cdn Google Nexus 7 is approximately ZERO.

Now you're just comparing Apples to Apples, which would be fine if Apples were the subject of discussion. But we're discussing Lemons here.

To paraphrase that into the literal, Google Nexus is a prime brand in the Android ecosystem, as Samsung is, as Microsoft is in the Windows tablet ecosystem, and as Apple is in the iThing ecosystem.

But we're talking about Acers and the like here, devices which have much the same features, but usually lower-power CPUs/GPUs, maybe a little less RAM, etc. For 7" tablets, these generally retail in the $100-$175 range, far lower than the prime brands.

These entry-level Windows netbooks fall into that category as well, as they are below average spec for the Windows portable ecosystem in all respects.

The Chromebooks they compete with actually don't fall into that category, though, because they are the average spec for their ecosystem.

Not even CRIMINALS want your tablets, Blighty - but if that's an iPhone you're waving...

Steve Knox

Re: Lots of stats, but...

Really? Just out of curiosity, what would such a pattern tell you?

BBC: We're going to slip CODING into kids' TV

Steve Knox

Re: If you arew going to teach coding

Yes and no.

BlueGreen, John G Imrie said nothing about a full course in logic; he said a primer. An understanding of the basics of logic (Boolean algebra especially) is absolutely a requirement for even the simplest of programming tasks.

However, I think it would be a mistake to separate the principle and the practice in early courses, as the practice in this case is the best way to illustrate the principle. The ideal would be a series of programming projects which illustrate the different Boolean operators and principles of precedence while allowing students to create applications relevant to their interests..

EE fails to apologise for HUGE T-Mobile outage that hit Brits on Friday

Steve Knox

Re: Where???

Actually, the way you formatted the sentence makes it read like the updates were only posted for those customers who had repeatedly apologised to EE.

Which perversely makes sense, given their general customer support attitude.

If you think 3D printing is just firing blanks, just you wait

Steve Knox
Thumb Up

PROGRESS!

A cursory glance at my back catalogue of product reviews through the 1990s and 2000s reveals I was extremely critical of digital photography and inkjet printing in their early days, and look where they are today.

Yes, in the former, you have "professional" models which start at hundreds of pounds (or dollars) more than the "snapshot" models solely because they have interchangeable lenses (which themselves merit a second mortgage), and in the latter, you have cheap, efficient machines which work wonders provided you can put a third mortgage on your house to supply them with ink.

Alienware injects EVEN MORE ALIEN into redesigned Area-51 gaming PC

Steve Knox

Re: Slanted hard disk bays???

Those aren't hard disk bays -- they're video cards. There are no hard disks or recognizable bays for them in the shot of this side, and no shot of the other side. So we have no info on how they're mounted.

Love XKCD? Love science? You'll love a book about science from Randall Munroe

Steve Knox
Happy

I love it

When my two favorite web sites converge, if only for a brief moment.

Ninja Pirate Zombie Vampires versus Chuck Norris and the Space Marines

Steve Knox

Re: I fear for the future

Oh, and why are so many uninformed crazy folk suggesting that Daleks should be lumped in with robots? Don't you crazy people realise that there is a living creature inside a Dalek?

To be fair, El Reg itself is already lumping cyborgs, including Cybermen, in with robots too, even though cyborgs run the gamut from electronically-enhanced creature (e.g, Johnny Mnemonic, Captain Cyborg) through living brain in a machine body (e.g, Darth Vader, also roughly where the Daleks would fall on the scale -- technically there's more than a brain inside there, but depending on where exactly in the series you take them from, the organism's actual capabilities vary) or living body with an electronic brain, all the way to organically-enhanced machine (e.g, T-800 Model 101 [NOT T-101, BTW])

Steve Knox

Re: I fear for the future

More likely, as this is a "who would win in a fight"* type study, the less deadly-seeming ones were voted against in an attempt to avoid extraneous low-level rounds against lightweights.

Me, I'm an empiricist. Just because something appears to be wimpy doesn't mean anything; they need to be tested in battle.

It's too bad the comments are being voted against; I was hoping to nominate such luminaries as:

Charles Bronson (makes Chuck Norris look like the mewling pretty-boy he is)

The Vogons (not so hot with weapons, but the things they can do with a properly authorized requisition form [or more to the point, the things they can not get done for lack of the proper paperwork]...)

Betty White (seriously, do NOT cross her.)

*Although that in itselft might say something about our proclivity for violence as a race...

Community chest: Storage firms need to pay open-source debts

Steve Knox

Half of the Story

It's not just a debt owed to the open source community. It's also a responsibility to your customers. This side of the story doesn't even depend on whether the software is open- or closed-source.

OpenSSL [Heartbleed] is a good open-source example of what can happen when many parties rely on a particular bit of software, but don't invest in the maintenance of that software. The best closed-source example might be Microsoft's unending train of patch management, often fixing bugs in decades-old software, because in the past they didn't take security seriously enough.

With closed-source software, your options are pretty much limited to paying license fees for the software and hoping that the developer uses those fees wisely in development and support.

With open-source software, there are more options, including direct involvement in development, code review, testing. Even a good bug report is a boon to developers.

Long story short: Open-source software (or even prebuilt closed libraries) isn't a way to build something for free: it's a way to build it fast. You always pay, whether it's in license/support fees, community involvement, or in lost reputation and income because your customers lose data or can't secure it properly with your systems.

We need less U.S. in our WWW – Euro digital chief Steelie Neelie

Steve Knox

One of the European Commission’s targets at the IGF is to move it on from being “a mere talking shop”.

“The time is ripe to produce outcome documents, such as policy recommendations for voluntary adoption,” said a Commission source.

So rather than making statements that nobody pays attention to, they'll be producing documents that nobody pays attention to. PROGRESS!

Oz biz regulator discovers shared servers in EPIC FACEPALM

Steve Knox
Trollface

The Solution is Obvious

Look for new rules requiring every site to have a unique IP address soon.

Galileo! Galileo. Galileo! Galileo frigged-LEO: Easy come, easy go. Little high, little low

Steve Knox
Facepalm

Schadenfreudean Slip?

... a stricken sad-nav.

IT blokes: would you say that lewd comment to a man? Then don't say it to a woman

Steve Knox

Re: This article's about the minority

No, you should be offended by those people (men and women) who are pigs. As the article says:

This isn't about gender wars: it’s not about men vs women, this is about acting like a grown up at a professional conference.

The author's examples are of being harassed by men, because she's been harassed by men. But her point is that such behavior is unprofessional regardless of source or target.

Brit Sci-Fi author Alastair Reynolds says MS Word 'drives me to distraction'

Steve Knox

Re: @ Khaptain (was: Personally ...)

BSD and Linux (and Minix, Coherent, et alia) were written in vi...

Remind me again which of those is a science fiction novel?

Fast And Furious 6 cammer thrown in slammer for nearly three years

Steve Knox

What about the people who filmed it originally?

They're the ones who should be jailed...

Cult of T-Mob US wants you to INDOCTRINATE your friends and family

Steve Knox

So have they...

fixed the massive holes in their coverage yet?

Get ready: The top-bracket young coders of the 2020s will be mostly girls

Steve Knox
FAIL

"You can look at the results for ICT as well as computing below."

If you want to strain your eyes looking at an incredibly small, blurred screenshot.

Hi-ho EVO: VMware eyes TWO new hardware-flavored trademarks

Steve Knox

Funny

I thought EVO was an SSD line from Samsung...

Intel's Raspberry Pi rival Galileo can now run Windows

Steve Knox
WTF?

Re: Standard Windows timings

Wait, you've done one Windows install (two if you count the repeat), so you feel qualified to generalize how it installs on any hardware?

EU justice chief blasts Google on 'right to be forgotten'

Steve Knox
Facepalm

Re: Sauce For The Goose...

"Try working in local government before you rattle on about how corrupt/wasteful/secretive it is."

Straw man argument - I didn't single out local government for criticism, but don't let that interfere with your right to feel offended.

So you pick out one sentence of a longer, more complicated post, and use a technical discrepancy between that sentence and your post to try to invalidate the poster's entire argument...and you call their argument a straw man?

Please learn about logic before posting again.

UK fuzz want PINCODES on ALL mobile phones

Steve Knox

Re: we need the public to become educated in the tools they are using and what can be installed

"Unlike El Reg and its commentards, not everybody devotes their whole life to being a tech expert. IMO, pins set by default would help those normal people."

And not everyone becomes a car mechanic, but we still expect them to be able to change a tyre, replace a fuse/bulb, check pressure/oil/water etc. This is no different.

Oh goody, the automobile analogy. Let's run with that one:

Does your auto dealer sell you a car with no door locks and an arcane document telling you how to install your own? 'cos that's essentially what you get with phones today.

Take the shame: Microsofties ADMIT to playing Internet Explorer name-change game

Steve Knox

Re: Condition

"and omit the ActiveX support."

That's rarely an issue these days. Over 90% of desktop / laptop exploits in the last year involved Java....

...which in IE is implemented as an ActiveX control...

Time to ditch HTTP – govt malware injection kit thrust into spotlight

Steve Knox

Re: Well, but in this case HTTPS wouldn't help

Most governments already run their own CAs which means they can easily issue fake certificates which will be accepted by the browser.

Only if your browser is configured to trust the government-run CA. If you don't know how to change the CAs your browser will trust, google <your browser> manage certificates.

Visual Studio Online goes titsup as Microsoft wrestles with database

Steve Knox
Coat

So how long until...

Cortana goes titsup...?

(The dirty mac, please.)

It's time for PGP to die, says ... no, not the NSA – a US crypto prof

Steve Knox
Headmaster

"...which it difficult to print them a business card..."

That's not a typo on my part (or El Reg's for that matter); that's a direct copy from his blog post.

Sigh.

Flash could be CHEAPER than SAS DISK? Come off it, NetApp

Steve Knox
Paris Hilton

What!?

... the extrapolated trend would show TLC NAND costing the same as SATA disks after 2070.

Did you just try to extend a technology-specific trend line out for 50 years!?

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Apple, Intel, Google told to stop being tightwads and pay out MORE in wage-fix settlement

Steve Knox
Happy

Re: A US Judge has smited an attempt

Yes, but an even better phrasing would be:

Apple, Google, et al. smitten by Judge Lucy Koh.

IBM boffins stuff 16 million-neuron chips into binary 'frog' brain

Steve Knox

Re: Reinventing the flat tyre

That's what it's designed for. See the PRNGs in the diagram? They're there to provide the unreliability*, essentially.

* Specifically, they're there to add noise to the spike thresholds for the neurons. The desired effect is neurons may fire before their threshold is reached (?intuition?) or may not fire when they "should" (?anyone got a good term for this -- ironically, I can't think of one!?).

Citrix reveals product design methodology, asks YOU to use it

Steve Knox

Given the quality I've seen from Citrix of late...

$100 sounds about right.

CryptoLocker victims offered free key to unlock ransomed files

Steve Knox
Facepalm

Re: The real question is "who is really behind Cryptolocker" ?

No, these are well-known security companies who participated in the recent takedown of some C&C servers. The tool didn't appear like magic; it's pretty well explained in the article.

The truth is known, you just don't want to accept it.

IBM can't give away its chip business: report

Steve Knox
Headmaster

Re: "Big Blue is believed to leak a billion or two dollars each year"

<pendant>

....

</pendant>

Well? Don't leave us hanging!

SCORE: Rosetta probe hits orbit of duck-shaped comet

Steve Knox
Coat

Title

Europe space team scores WORLD FIRST

Comet first, shurely...

Google on Gmail child abuse trawl: We're NOT looking for other crimes

Steve Knox

Re: slippery slope or lawsuit magnet?

At no point did I suggest that Google was breaking the terms of its contract.

I didn't say that you did. I was pointing out that what you said was "not Google's job" was also not prohibited, and so your using that to rebut AndyS's argument that law enforcement properly obtained their warrant was specious.

I was suggesting that this kind of data mining is not in the long term interests of society (although I am very persuaded by the postcard argument).

I think you need to be more specific about "this kind of data mining". Do you mean specifically what Google did to find out about these images? Does "this kind of data mining" extend to what the NSA's doing? What about to what Assange, Manning, and Snowden did? That was data mining, too.

As to the slippery slope, what is fallacious about it?

The presumption that one instance will necessarily lead to another, which is necessarily worse. That's the definition, and the flaw, of a slippery-slope argument.

Steve Knox

Re: slippery slope or lawsuit magnet?

It is the job of the law enforcement agencies to approach Google with a warrant, not for Google to approach law enforcement agencies and suggest that they might want to take a warrant out on one of their clients.

But it is not illegal for Google to do so if they tell the client they might do so and the client agrees. When you sign up for gmail, you are agreeing to let them do all sorts of stuff with your data.

If you're a witness to a crime, you are not necessarily required by law to report it, but that doesn't mean it's wrong for you to report it.

I concede that, in this case, the right outcome was achieved - but I worry that this will make it harder for the right outcome to be achieved in the future, and that it could result ...blah blah blah.

Do you have an argument that isn't based on the slippery slope fallacy?

Something along the lines of, maybe, "Google's terms and conditions don't adequately spell out that they'll be scanning your images for child abuse images" or "<insert locality privacy law here> prohibits Google from performing this scanning" would be appropriate, if borne out by the evidence.

I don't have a gmail account, so I can't be arsed to research this, but I think you'll find that Google has. They've been wrong before, though.