* Posts by Adam 1

2545 publicly visible posts • joined 7 May 2012

LA air traffic meltdown: System simply 'RAN OUT OF MEMORY'

Adam 1

Re: Recursive programming

See replies to IdeaReforecasting.

Microsoft blinks, extends Windows 8.1 Update deadline for consumers

Adam 1

Re: It's not the user's fault if you hide the updates.

Not just that but it won't install unless your 8.0 install is completely updated. Er, that will be another 875 MB from my factory image as of May thank you very much.

Adam 1

Re: What a mess

It is possible to upgrade without a Microsoft account, though they do their utmost to bury that option behind the I can't be stuffed I give up where is the darn thing barrier.

If you haven't found it yet, you need to go into the create Microsoft account button After upgrade and in there you will find the option to keep your regular account.

$180,000 buys you lunch with Tim Cook as charity auction ending

Adam 1

What a bargain. To think you can be the first one to walk on the moon, win the tour de France on seven consecutive attempts and now be at the helm of the worldwide leader in drinking coasters and yet no lunch. Just shows kids why you shouldn't do drugs.

Quick Q: How many FLOPPIES do I need for 16 MILLION image files?

Adam 1

Ironically, I still have my old zip drive in the garage but no recent PC or laptop with the necessary parallel port to plug it into.

Adam 1

Re: 5 1/4 ins floppies

Civ is still one of the best games ever made.

Japanese cops arrest man with five 3D printed guns at home

Adam 1

Re: In Japan, no guns means children are safe!

A diisrbed person wielding a knife will do less damage than the same person with access to a firearm. Safety is clearly a relative concept. Until you can adequately address the reasons people inflict violence upon each other (substance abuse, mental health, jealousy, rage, etc) then you can limit the damage they do by controlling access to weapons and ammunition.

Most would argue that the general public should not be permitted to carry biological weapons. It would be ridiculous for me to assert that because people kill each other with guns anyway that there would be no benefit to banning such weapons.

Stricter gun control does reduce murder and suicide rates. You can look at these rates in Australia are and post 1996 when certain classes of weapons were banned. It isn't the only factor (see USA cc Switzerland) but it is a bit mind numbingly crazy to think that there is no link at all against the available evidence.

Adam 1

Re: Boot strapping

Dear future lifeforms,

This is how skynet started. Beware!

Adam 1

There may be insurance implications if the death occurred in the commission of a criminal act.

Goodbye, Mr Dong: Samsung Galaxy S5 boss disappears through trapdoor

Adam 1

Come on reg. You can do better than that.

Wobbly Dong fails to stir target and pulls out.

Adam 1

Re: S5 needs more internal storage

FYI, I had an similar problem with my old SE which only had 384MB internal storage which was low even at the time. I had an app I think called app2sd or something similar which while didn't completely remove the limit at least got a little more apps installed.

How Google's Android Silver could become 'Wintel for phones'

Adam 1

Re: How does this affect patents and extortion by Microsoft/Apple?

Good point, at least on the software stack. Not going to stave off the rounded corner violations though.

Adam 1

Re: Huh?

> But on the whole they don't actually do it (and if they do, are they not likely to be quickly outed as malware?)

Possibly, but it would be easy enough to hide if you truly cared. Many applications have legitimate reasons to contact the internet and you can't tell what is in an encrypted packet. Just google search for how many of your favourite freeware applications bundle OpenCandy into their installer. Now it is not necessarily spyware but it does look at what is installed on your computer and phones home so the boundary gets pretty blurred. And it gets installed with everything from uTorrent, Daemon tools, Foxit Reader and PDFCreator. It is nearly impossible to install an application these days without some hidden checkbox in some screen on your installer that installed some ask toolbar.

And diagnosed by Malware by whom? Seriously most AV companies are just as bad. Adobe tries to install McAfee whenever you update something.

Adam 1

Re: Huh?

Applications running as pleb users in windows, Mac and *nix still have read access to your personal files in my documents or home. They can all in default configuration establish outgoing collections and do whatever they want. The only difference between wintel land and the mobile space here is that if you want access to the APIs that return that data or establish those connections then you are forced to disclose it.

Symantec: Antivirus is 'DEAD' – no longer 'a moneymaker'

Adam 1

Re: It won't be missed

Whatever happened to them? I mean in the mid 90s they were to techos what sysinternals is today.

Speeddisk. Diskdoctor. Awesome batch file extensions. But now the best advice is to avoid their rubbish.

Adam 1

Re: Maybe he's right but he's also short-sighted.

You are kidding right?

Norton has enough trouble uninstalling ITSELF.

Laser deflector shields possible with today's tech – but there's one small problem

Adam 1

May the fourth be with you.

/here all week

NBN Co must wait until mid-2015 for fast cable modems

Adam 1
FAIL

Vertical Integration

The problem with Telstra is that they were vertically integrated providing back-haul, connections to the premise as well as the retail side. This is an inherent conflict of interest making it more difficult for retail competitors to negotiate access to the connections.

Electricity market is a better example, where you have a single company responsible for "wires and polls" that purchases energy from a set of "generator companies" which is retailed by a set of retailers. You get benefit of competition at the generation and retail ends without cost of duplication at the wires and polls side. That the grid overspends on wires and polls putting multiple times the impact of the carbon tax on prices over the past few years relates to a silly lack of foresight by the government who make it in the companies financial interest to "gold plate" (unnecessarily upgrade or replace) the polls and wires. By illustrating that they are investing in the infrastructure, they are permitted to charge more at wholesale which means the retailers pass this on; but that is a problem for another day.

The NBN is still much better value for money under this sort of model because you don't need to pay for TPG fibre running side by side with Telstra, Optus, iiNet and customers can move from provider to provider without being told there is no room at the exchange.

Adam 1
Unhappy

Re: These words don't belong in the same sentence

I beg to differ; the Liberal National Party has made good progress at wrecking the speed of the NBN whilst still spending 3/4 of the amount.

SpaceX: We NAILED the Falcon 9 landing! The video, on the other hand...

Adam 1

Re: Not much hope

Maybe they need these guys?

FCC seeks $48K fine from mobile phone-jamming driver

Adam 1

But my first amendment right to free speech in 3..2..1

Tim Cook: Apple's 'closer than it's ever been' to releasing new product range

Adam 1

Re: Technically correct

Are you suggesting that they have invented time machine?

/grabs coat

DeSENSORtised: Why the 'Internet of Things' will FAIL without IPv6

Adam 1

Like any 'scarce' resource the market will set a price. When they run low then anyone who really needs one will have to pay more than now and no doubt many companies and institutions who are currently sitting on addresses they don't actually need will 'realise' the value of that asset.

Adam 1

Re: Security through transparency

>I don't want every hacker on the internet to be able to address every light bulb and every sensor in my house individually.

Oh don't worry about that. All comms will be completely secured using openSSL with session keys generated by Dual_EC_DRBG. Try to keep up.

Boffins claim machines now beat humans at face-matching

Adam 1

Re: Abstract Mathematics

It depends what you mean by source. Compiled executables are pretty much source code written in assembler. Then you have the JIT compiled stuff like Java or MSIL produced by .NET.

You actually have to go through reasonable effort to obfuscate your code during the build process if avoiding others copying the logic is important to you.

But in most applications the GUI is only a small (relatively speaking) component of the application. I am not sure that the suggested approach would do a great job at reversing out the business objects or DAL or the logic contained in any stored procedures.

Otherwise you are basically looking at a screen recorder.

Adam 1

One thing's for sure, they are not using this for face matching on my Nexus 5.

Leaked photos may indicate slimmer next-generation iPad

Adam 1

Re: 2x the thickness

Stop with this nonsense!

I need a tablet that can double as a cheese knife.

Feast your PUNY eyes on highest resolution phone display EVER

Adam 1

Re: Laptop resolutions...

One of the most popular in use versions of a IDE that is commonly used in business applications screws up anchored points for visual components when you use screen scaling. The newer versions don't but they require substantial rework to support.

I won't mention names but I did get a chuckle out of the irony of your handle.

Adam 1

Re: Pixel wars

>If a manufacturer wanted to really revolutionise the world of tablet and mobile phone screens, they'd make non-reflective ones.

To be fair, Samsung have finally copied a real work useful feature from Sony in the s5 with it apparently now able to survive a drop into a kitchen sink.

Such blatant copying hasn't been observed since they stole swipe to unlock from Sony's 1980s walkmans.

Android engineer: We didn't copy Apple or follow Samsung's orders

Adam 1

Re: 1.07billion in lost profits??

Look, no one ever claimed that unenlightened folk can understand © math. You wouldn't try brain surgery at home so what makes you think you are remotely qualified to look at this stuff?

Adam 1

Whilst you are right that the penalty of any offence is by design more costly than doing something the right way to begin with, the punishment is the job of the court not the plaintiff. Apple are free to mention damages due to lost licencing revenue or alternatively due to lost profit if they did not intend to licence it out. They can even do some sums and claim the higher of the two figures. But if the court finds Samsung guilty then the court will take such damages into account as well as any disincentives (including any disincentive to frivolous lawsuits that seem increasingly necessary).

Five-year-old discovers Xbox password bug, hacks dad's Live account

Adam 1

Re: What an amazing coincidence!

Er, if the father was a golf pro then there would be no coincidence.

El Reg's Deep Outback XP upgrade almost foiled by KILLER ARACHNIDS

Adam 1

>How do we identify which sheep are OK and which aren't?

That is the wrong question if you ever plan a trip down under. You must always start with the premise that any animal or plant will cause you a violent death. Too many tourists pay the unfortunate price...

Adam 1

They are pretty harmless unless you pick them up or sit on the bog without checking. Nothing like this which infests the Vulture South offices or worse still one of these. At least some of the sheep are OK.

Dropbox nukes bloke's file share in DMCA brouhaha – then admits it made a 'HASH OF IT'

Adam 1

Re: Hope they're using a good hash

Put it another way then, if collisions were not possible then you would have a very effective compression algorithm.

The number of unique hash values is 2^size of hash. So for md5 that is 2^128 possible target values. So given a source set containing 2^128 + 1 unique pieces of data, at least 1 must clash.

The challenge posed by the OP requires you to not only find a collision but to do so in a way that preserves the image information and doesn't make your cat picture contain 500MB of nonsense in its EXIF detail. That is the unfeasible part.

Adam 1

Re: Hope they're using a good hash

Whilst collisions are possible and indeed information theory tells us necessary for a mapping to a hash of a fixed tiny size, what you suggest is computationally unfeasible. It would be orders of magnitudes cheaper to lobby for "improved copyright protection"

Boeing, Cupertino to 'explore weaponisation of Apple technologies'

Adam 1

This is just a cover story. We already know that the NSA already uses secret flaws to push iTunes into their unsuspecting victims PCs in Operation Killmenow.

No, Minister. You CAN'T de-Kindle your eBooks!

Adam 1

Bad analogy. It is more like the book is locked to your particular brand of reading glasses. The point is that a customer should retain the right to read that book in the future even if their glasses manufacturer goes bust or simply because I now prefer another brand.

FTC: Do SSL properly or we'll shove a microscope up you for decades

Adam 1

Does this also cover goto fail implementations?

iFixit boss: Apple has 'done everything it can to put repair guys out of business'

Adam 1

There are also exemptions for obviousness and prior art when applying for a patent, apparently.

Planes fail to find 'credible' candidate for flight MH370 wreckage

Adam 1

Re: Mobile phones don't have remotely enough range

>I still don't understand why they had enough time to turn the jet but not enough to radio a distress

There is a possibility that whatever incident also took out their radio or the pilots were overcome before they could take that sort of action.

MH370 airliner MYSTERY: The El Reg Pub/Dinner-party Guide

Adam 1

I sure hope the air crash investigators have the good sense to check the forums on el reg or they may end up looking in the wrong spot.

China's annual TV smear segment drags Nikon's name through the mud

Adam 1

Irony cannot be lost on having your public broadcaster named CCTV.

iOS 7's weak random number generator stuns kernel security – claim

Adam 1

Re: iOS 7

No. It is a string.

Adam 1

Question for the cryptographers here. If I have two RNGs, one "good" and one compromised and I XOR them, does this result in another "good" RNG or is it slightly or wholly compromised by the input that is compromised? To me on the surface it would seem to still be "good" but I don't know why I think that.

Assuming for a minute that I am right here, surely the best available RNG would be basically an XOR across as many RNG streams as you can access?

Adam 1

Obligatory

http://xkcd.com/221/

Behold, the TITCHY T-REX that prowled the warm Arctic of long ago

Adam 1

Clearly this must have formed part of the Australian mainland during the cretaceous period. Probably killed off by the drop bears.

Five unbelievable headlines that claim Tim Berners-Lee 'INVENTED the INTERNET'

Adam 1

Re: Yes but

Just for clarification, proper spelling doesn't mandate the use of a 'u' in between every instance of 'o' and 'r'.

NZ bloke's drunken poker bet ends in 99-letter name

Adam 1

Were they from Taumata­whakatangihanga­koauau­o­tamatea­turi­pukakapiki­maunga­horo­nuku­pokai­whenua­kitanatahu per chance?

Boffins build bendy screen using LEDs just THREE atoms thick

Adam 1

Since when is an atom a unit of measurement of height? For a start, are you referring to the 32 pm helium atoms or the 200+ pm caesium atoms? Why stop at atoms? Protons are a lot smaller at 1.7 fm but I digress.

2D exists only as an abstract concept to help us to work with surface areas and planes. Just because something is abstract doesn't make it any less useful (see √-1 for example).

So small; yes

impressive; yes

Could be considered 2D for many purposes; of course but so can a piece of paper.

2D; nope