* Posts by Steve Knox

1972 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jul 2011

Google scientists rebel over company's support for 'climate-hoax' Senator

Steve Knox
Holmes

Re: Unbelievable

Do you think anyone would be able to get any kind of funding to produce such a paper?

Sure. Any "scientist" willing to shill for the deniers can start their search for sympathetic funders here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial#Private_sector

Boffins: We have FOOLED APPLE with malware app

Steve Knox
Headmaster

Re: Objective-C runtime

...you can define a new class at runtime and then insatiate it

Yeah, I hate it when those malicious coders create classes that simply won't stop eating and eating...

Egad! Could Samsung be cheating in Galaxy benchmark tests?

Steve Knox
Facepalm

They do

The processors are 1.2GHz. 480Mhz is the GPU speed.

Oh, and clock speed is not the sole predictor of performance. The processor architecture and design have a great deal of impact.

Steve Knox
Holmes

Of course it is.

Here's a li'l fairness v. bias test we suggest you might find personally illuminating. Read the story above one more time, except each time you see the word "Samsung", substitute "Apple".

Then ask yourself: "Is my response any different?"

Sure is.

With Samsung, my response is "Poor Samsung got caught doing what all major Android manufacturers are doing these days, because their market is saturated with people who take these benchmarks seriously. Stupid but understandable."

With Apple, my response would be "WTF Apple? Your target customers don't read benchmarks! They come to you for shiny and cool. Why'd you waste resources trying to game a system you don't depend on!?"

All-flash Hitachi array grabs silver in benchmark race - by a whisker

Steve Knox

Space

It's important to note that the Kaminario as priced and tested has a measly 1.1TB of storage, and the IBM Storwize just 1.5. The VSP has 11TB and IBM's DS8870 has 56. Once you calculate $/IOPS/TB, the VSP is more in the class of the DS8870 than the Storwize.

It's a little silly of me, I know, but I expect an article about storage to include information about, you know, the storage.

First burger made of TEST-TUBE MEAT to be eaten on August 5

Steve Knox
Alert

Re: Totally disgusting

If i want meat ill go at my butcher...

Wow.

That's a different kind of meat than most of us want, methinks...

(or about half of us if you read it another way...)

Apple: 'Average' iPad toiler does a mere 46-hour week

Steve Knox
Pint

Re: 48/ 66 hours - you lucky bastards,.....

Bet "those of us in corporate IT" aren't doing the physical labor they're doing either. Bet you're on a slightly higher pay scale as well.

I'd take a 96-hour work week, if it involved the right "responsibilities" for the right pay.

Responsibility, or pay, whatever --->

Microsoft introduces warning on child abuse image searches

Steve Knox

False Choice

"If CEOP give you a blacklist of internet search terms, will you commit to stop offering up any returns on these searches? If the answer is yes...:"

Then you've fallen prey to the false choice between child abuse and wholesale censorship which is being offered.

"If the answer is no..."

Then you've fallen prey to that same false choice, but have decided on the other side.

If the answer is no, but you'll warn searchers of the dangerous waters they tread, then you're on the right track. Make sure to provide a way for suspect search returns to be investigated and blocked completely if found to be illegal, and you're doing it right.

If Cameron had suggested these reasonable terms, he might have earned some respect, but a call to "commit to stop offering up any returns" on an arbitrary list of search terms is unambiguously excessive censorship.

Hankering for a Nobel Prize? EAT MORE CHOCOLATE

Steve Knox

Re: Uhm... slow day?

The BBC article only references the Messerli study (whence came the graph) -- not the Golomb study. Re-read the Reg article, and you'll see it's primarily about the newer study.

Steve Knox
Trollface

Obvious Confounding Variable.

The Swiss have the most award recipients, and eat the most chocolate. The next several countries in both categories enjoy relatively open borders with Switzerland, enabling cross-pollination opportunities.

Check your genealogy: if you have Swiss blood in you, you may be prone to eating a lot of chocolate, or to performing extraordinary tasks solely for small quantities of metal and a sizeable quantity of dosh.

IT Crowd thesp eyes giant hot-air-filled FLYING SCROTUM

Steve Knox

A full pound minimum?

In days past, they'd have started the donations at two bob!

Steve Knox
Childcatcher

Re: Embedded YouTube clips

So? What are you waiting for, man? Contact < corporate helpdesk name > immediately and get them to unblock YouTube, as you have a clear business need!

I mean, it's not like you can wait to watch the video from home when your employer isn't paying you to work. That would just be foolish. No, stand up, Stand UP, I say, for your right to watch giant balls on your employer's dime!

Jackboot dangled over NSA's throat for US spy dragnet outrage

Steve Knox
Thumb Down

On the contrary: Representative Amash is trying to undo a previous blunt-force approach.

By using the same tactics.

Look at the recent history of legislation in the US. From 9/11 to the financial and automotive industry bailouts, from the debt ceiling to gun control, from health care to budget to immigration reform, every cause is treated as an "emergency" because those involved want to minimize rational debate.

THAT is a much greater national problem than any phone spying the NSA has been doing.

Steve Knox
Thumb Down

It was the blunt approach after 9/11 that gave us the PATRIOT act to begin with, when congress showed all the collective backbone of a jellyfish, preferring instead to cave in to fear and panic, and that was hardly informed, open or deliberative either...

Agreed. Are you now arguing that they should do the same again?

Reread Representative Amash's own words. They are clearly designed to inspire the same type of fear and panic (albeit directed elsewhere) that, as you rightly point out, caused this mess in the first place.

Shouldn't our governance be driven by more rational words, thought and behavior? Or do you believe we should fight fire with fire until the whole country burns?

Dell shareholders head in for second vote on Big Mike's plan

Steve Knox
Devil

RE: open market

Well, to play devil's advocate, the mere existence of the $13.65/share offer is probably keeping the current price from rising significantly above that value, as there are very few who would like to buy a share only to have it bought back a few days later at a lower price.

SkyDrive on par with C: Drive in Windows 8.1

Steve Knox
Facepalm

Re: ?

@Steve - You're dead wrong. You just described an archive.

No, an archive is storage of old data (which may or may not exist any more anywhere else) usually with an eye toward preservation.

Steve Knox
Mushroom

Re: ?

Backup is automated, scheduled and versioned

NO NO NO NO NO.

Automatic, scheduled, and versioned backups are automatic, scheduled and versioned.

Backup is simply the storing of data in more than one location. Anything more depends on your needs and wants.

Quit trying to define backup for everyone based on your personal prejudices.

Ubuntu forums breached, 1.8m passwords pinched

Steve Knox
Happy

MMMmmmm

Salted hash....

Surface RT: A plan worthy of the South Park Underpants Gnomes

Steve Knox

Microsoft failed to see their competition.

Apple had no real competition with the iPad because it was successfully marketed as a new gadget rather than a replacement for a laptop or a competitor to an existing product. They continue to succeed because they compete with the market leader (their previous version product.)

Android tablets do okay because they recognize their competition is the iPad (and each other) and so compete with those both on features and price.

But Surface RT entered a different kind of market. Sure it had Android and iPad to compete against, but there was also a third competitor to beat: Microsoft's own PC ecosystem. I'm currently typing this on a Windows 8 laptop that cost $500 -- less than Surface RT did when it came out -- and I could have bought one that would still beat an RT tablet for $300 -- less than Surface RT costs now -- but I wanted a little more power. Microsoft's Surface tablets are simply not able to compete with Windows laptops on features or price.

(Other Windows tablet manufacturers have seen this problem,and tried to make less expensive tablets or ones with special features, with middling success. But many of them make laptops and Android tablets as well, so they have no real drive to help Microsoft succeed in tablets in particular.)

Microsoft couldn't compete with their own ecosystem, yet they priced their new, untested (by the market) product which has little in the way of feature differentiation, at the top of the market, effectively refusing to compete with rivals' tablets on features or price.

PORNAGEDDON: Sexy bloggrs stung by Tumblr smut smackdown

Steve Knox
Mushroom

Over on Deviant Art they have a Muture Content filter.

And Google, Bing, et al have "safe search". But this isn't the semi-sane web we know.

This! is! Yahoo!

(with apologies to anyone who has actually had to sit through 300 -- or browse via Yahoo!, for that matter)

AMD fools Wall Street, posts smaller loss than expected

Steve Knox
Happy

It depends...

on what you're looking for.

Yes, if you're looking for the current state of affairs, or to compare two different companies, GAAP is the best figure. But if you're looking for an indication of future direction of an individual organization, some GAAP costs (such as restructuring costs) can be misleading.

So as long as the companies provide both figures, and an explanation as to why they're different (as AMD did here), you're free to choose the one that best fits the questions you're asking.

Top secret spook court agrees to release 2008 PRISM docs

Steve Knox
Trollface

RE: Can we stop the childish "!" thing?

You do realize that one of the primary reasons it continues is because of comments like yours, right?

As for respect, there's a vast gulf between disrespect and piss-taking.

IQ test: 'Artificial intelligence system as smart as a four year-old'

Steve Knox
Thumb Up

Re: "common sense"

So LISP was what 1963? 50 yrs to get to 4.

And how long did it take for the human race to evolve beyond knuckle-dragging...? About a hundred thousand years or so?

I've been quite harsh on "AI" stories here in the past because they were almost all "faster recipe crunching" or "bloody great database search" stories. It's good to see some are still trying (and some are still evaluating) AI in the real conceptual and intelligence realm. It's a bloody difficult problem, and getting to 4 in 50 years is an amazing accomplishment.

Fanbois get Outlook app for iOS, but only if they sign up for Office 365

Steve Knox
Trollface

"Our goal is to help our customers remain productive anytime, anywhere. "

That's why we're making sure our Exchange customers who have iPhones continue to use the perfectly acceptable mail client on the iPhone by crippling our Outlook app so it won't work with their servers. That way they won't be tempted to waste time installing an app that for the most part just reproduces functionality already on the phone...

Microsoft DENIES it gives backdoor access to Outlook encryption

Steve Knox
Meh

Re: We Want to Tell the Truth

The sad thing is, there's a good chance that the truth is that the US government can't instantly get their hands on all the data everyone thinks that they can, and that they want to continue the gag orders specifically because they don't want people to know how little they actually can do.

Dear Linus, STOP SHOUTING and play nice - says Linux kernel dev

Steve Knox

Re: Different people respond to different things

You are assuming that I am making a mistake every time. You are also assuming that shouting works because someone doesn't like something.

How many times has Torvalds gone off like this when someone didn't make a mistake? That's the key question here, in my book.

Amazon button leaked user traffic

Steve Knox
FAIL

Re: Why do people install these things?

More to the point, why do browser publishers continue to allow these abortions to exist at all?

"Browser extension bar" == GIANT SECURITY HOLE.

Microsoft: 'Google's secret government meetings let it avoid import ban' - Report

Steve Knox
WTF?

Re: Microsoft should keep its mouth shut

I find it far more likely some patriotic idiot in the agency simply doesn't think ITC bans apply to US companies...

The ITC is a US organization...

LG's curvy telly and Samsung's Galaxy camera seen in the wild

Steve Knox
FAIL

Glossy Finish?

Is that, as it appears, a glossy finish on that curvy screen? If so, the net effect is going to be to amplify glare from any light source in a wide arc behind the viewers.

Be still, my quivering atoms: Here's a new way to count a second

Steve Knox

Re: Measuring Time

We know that this is off by so many seconds in so many millions of years based on what? ephemeris time?

No, based on known flaws in the measuring system. A caesium second is defined as 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation corresponding to the transition between two energy levels of the caesium-133 atom.So to work flawlessly, the system would have to capture all of those cycles (or at least synchronize with them.) Signals from other atoms, temperature fluctuations, and a whole range of factors beyond my ken can all interfere with that. Scientists use those flaws to calculate the probability of a system missing a cycle or counting an extra one, and then adding up that probabilistic effect to see how long it would take to be off by as much as a second. In the case of the UK's NPL-CsF2, that's about 138 million years, or roughly one missed or extra cycle every 5.5 days (net; errors in opposite directions would offset.)

So what we're talking about here is actually expected inaccuracy, not empirical inaccuracy.

Apple builds flagship store on top of PLAGUE HOSPITAL

Steve Knox
Paris Hilton

So....

An electronic chip is a male flea....? (flea-male...?)

Oh please, PLEASE bring back Xbox One's hated DRM - say Xbox loyalists

Steve Knox
Black Helicopters

Re: Cannot see replies to petition

My inner cynic thinks they were working for Microsoft.

No, seriously. I find it hard to believe Microsoft have the capability to make all of the changes involved in turning off their DRM system in a reasonable timeframe.

I wouldn't put it past them to engineer this petition as a way of weaseling out of a promise they couldn't keep.

Dead STEVE JOBS was a CROOK – judge

Steve Knox
FAIL

Did Apple Hire 6-Year-Olds for Lawyers!?

...the remedy for [Amazon's alleged] illegal conduct is a complaint lodged with the proper law enforcement offices or a civil suit or both.

Translation: Don't take the law into your own hands/two wrongs don't make a right.

"Another company’s alleged violation of antitrust laws is not an excuse for engaging in your own violations of law. Nor is suspicion that that may be occurring a defence to the claims litigated at this trial."

Translation: Just because the other kids are doing it doesn't mean you should do it too.

Seriously, Apple's lawyers should be disbarred for attempting a defense that was thoroughly refuted in elementary school.

Texas teen jailed for four months over sarcastic Facebook comment

Steve Knox
Unhappy

This is Texas

The one state I would dearly love to see secede from my country.

The Three Amigos offer sanctuary to cornered NSA leaker Snowden

Steve Knox
Black Helicopters

Re: Three Amigos

"don't have a great record on human rights"

Quick! Name a nation-state that does have a great record on human rights!

Run for your (private) lives! Facebook's creepy Graph Search is upon us

Steve Knox
Headmaster

Re: Creepy

Just got a whole lot more creepier.

No, it didn't. There's no such thing as "more creepier."

Fedora back on track with Schrödinger's cat

Steve Knox
Trollface

Re: Schrödinger's cat

Yes, but you don't know which functionality you get until you open the box, at which point the distro collapses into a single C function...

French snooping as deep as PRISM: Le Monde

Steve Knox
Big Brother

Re: And in Egypt...

Anonymously?

No, not really. The relevant metadata has been stored.

Apple files patent for 'Waze-plus'

Steve Knox
Thumb Up

Re: You've got to be kidding me

Thank you, El Reg, for not implementing <blink>.

Whilst I agree with ratfox's sentiment, I will defend to the death the decision to disallow that particular expression of it.

Irish gov refuses to haul Google, Apple into MPs' tax inquiry

Steve Knox
Boffin

Re: 'aggressive' tax planning

The appropriate response to reading or hearing a word with multiple definitions is to evaluate the context of the word and choose the meaning which is most relevant. In this case (based on the definitions on dictionary.com, since that's what we've been using) the second definition is clearly more relevant than the first, since tax preparation is not generally associated with "unproved offensives, attacks, invasions, or the like".

In some cases, there may be multiple definitions which are relevant in different ways; this is the basis of the pun. However, that is simply not the case here.

I don't need to find another definition to suit my argument; I can simply stick with the first definition I selected, as it is clearly superior to your choice. "Duelling definitions" is simply not necessary.

The fact that you selected definition 1 merely serves to underscore my premise that the cause of your offense is your own inference.

Steve Knox
Headmaster

Re: 'aggressive' tax planning

I thought all journalists (except for those at the BBC, The Guardian and The Telegraph) were supposed to be unbiased.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. No.

But in this case, the wording you mentioned is not biased. In this context, "aggressive" means "making an all-out effort" (Dictionary.com, 2nd definition). There is no inherent moral judgement there.

Any negative connotation is your own introduction.

Steve Knox
FAIL

Backwards

"Given the fact that multinational corporations have appeared at committees in Britain and the United States to give evidence about their tax affairs in Ireland, it is ridiculous that politicians here in Ireland would vote down a proposal for them to do the same here," he said in a statement after the vote went against him.

No, what's ridiculous is that after decades of politicians dragging corporate representatives before government panels, berating them for taking advantage of poorly written tax codes, and then doing nothing to change those codes, you think the solution is more of the same.

Samsung and Apple finally divorcing after years of court battles

Steve Knox
FAIL

How sure is this?

"Reportedly" 3 times in the first 3 paragraphs?

Same story that's been recycling for 3 years now?

Tethered and vulnerable: Hotspot password FAIL not just in iPhones

Steve Knox
Meh

Re: I'm not sure it counts as brute force

Punching someone in the face only takes a second. When you're using a ring of GPUs to do your cracking, that's brute force.

The question is, how useful is it? Are smartphone hotspots usually used as temporary access points, as they were designed to be, or is there a lot of de facto infrastructure being built with them?

If I'm creating a hotspot to use for a few hours, and the next time I do it will be at a different time in a different place with a new password, there's not much opportunity here -- unless you want to lug a powerful workstation around, following smartphone owners around in the hopes that they'll decide to do some tethering.

But if users are creating these hotspots and keeping them open for days or more without changing the password, then there's some risk -- about the same risk as that posed by all the public wifi networks out there.

Rise of the machines, south of Milton Keynes

Steve Knox

Re: Tremendous place, this museum

Not just men: http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/video-example.rhtm

Steve Knox
Coat

Pretty cool...

...but no mention of the use of Colossus in the advancement of Numberwang?

NASA to flip ion engine's 'OFF' switch after brilliant 5.5 year burn

Steve Knox
Boffin

Re: Mass of NEXT and power source ?

Actually, now that I think about it, there's no way these thrusters will ever reach 1g.

If we assume absolutely no payload, no fuel mass, and no power supply mass, each thruster masses 60kg and produces 235mN of thrust.

That's 0.000 401g. Adding more thrusters increases the mass and thrust linearly and proportionally, leaving the g-force constant.

So that's your absolute theoretical maximum g-force produced by any size bank of these thrusters.

Steve Knox

Re: Mass of NEXT and power source ?

I couldn't see any reference to the thrust produced by the engine. Is it just my reading skills, or wasn't it mentioned?

Not in the article or press release. But the first paper I linked to has the maximum thrust per thruster at 236mN.

I was idly wondering how many of these you would need to produce 1g of thrust.

One g ~= 9.8 N per kg of mass. Going back to our 10,000kg example (yes I know it'd actually be more than 10,000kg but it's an easy starting point) that would be 98,000N of force needed. At 236mN per thruster, that would nominally be ~415,536 thrusters required to produce 1 g -- except, of course, that many thrusters will significantly increase the mass, significantly increasing the amount force required to reach 1 g, leading to a runaway situation which makes the conundrum of escaping Earth with a chemical rocket look like child's play.

Steve Knox
Boffin

Re: Mass of NEXT and power source ?

A quick calculation suggests that over 8kW of electrical power is needed...

From the NASA press release:

"The 7-kilowatt class thruster could be used in a wide range of science missions..."

So, same order of magnitude.

Also from the press release:

"...the engine consumed about 1,918 pounds (870 kilograms) of xenon propellant, providing an amount of total impulse that would take more than 22,000 (10,000 kilograms) of conventional rocket propellant..."

So, the engine + powerplant mass could be up to 9,130 kilograms (20,086 pounds) more than the mass of a comparable rocket thruster and the entire system would still be less massive for the 5.5 year mission.

According to http://esto.nasa.gov/conferences/nstc2007/papers/Patterson_Michael_D10P3_NSTC-07-0014.pdf (Section III table II), a single thruster string is about 56.3kg. Add in the High Pressure Assembly and you get a total of 58.2kg. Call it 60, and there's still 9,070kg left over for the solar array.

According to http://www.asertti.org/events/fall/2011/presentations-workshop/Landis.pdfthe ISS solar arrays have a total mass of ~1,000kg, and according to http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/onthestation/facts_and_figures.html, they produce 84 kW.

Assume we need this extra solar panel mass because the probe is heading to the outer solar system, and we still have over 8,000kg of mass savings or additional payload available.

Idaho patriots tool up to battle Jihad with pork bullets

Steve Knox
Boffin

Re: So much for respecting the religious beliefs of other people.

However didnt Buddhism produce some of the finest warriors of their time (the Japanese samurai)?

Yes, but they weren't fighting for Buddhism (or more to the point, against other religions)-- they were fighting for their nobles. The question wasn't which religions are pacifist, but which are tolerant and respectful of other religions.