* Posts by Charles Manning

3509 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jun 2007

Apple investors fall for CEO Cook's product-presentation prank

Charles Manning

Biggest?

"you can't quibble with "biggest""

It depends on your definition of "biggest".

Most widgets moved? Nope.

Most employees? Nope.

Biggest offices? Nope.

The following spring to mind:

Biggest users of hyperbole. Certainly.

Biggest patent numpties. Maybe.

Biggest mark up? Doubt it.

Most profitable? Perhaps.

Flying fondleslab causes injury after plane hits turbulence

Charles Manning

All Apple's fault

Apple should have patented turbulence then nobody else would experience it!

- or -

Maybe it's because flight mode isn't working properly....

These agencies are pretty stupid. Anything to get in the news.... Briefcase/duty free bottles fall out of compartment is not news, but iPads are...

But... you work in IT... Why aren't we RICH?

Charles Manning

So why did you stop wearing bell-bottoms and platform shoes then?

They still work as clothing items, but they're not trendy any more so you threw them out an bought whatever the other kids buy.

WTF is popular because it's popular. Gotta be in with the cool kids (or whatever the new cool word for cool is).

How a Facebook post by blabbermouth daughter cost her parents $80,000

Charles Manning

Re: Something doesn't add up here...

The critical bit is "out-of-court".

If it had been an in-court settlement, then the terms would have been public record.

With an out of court settlement, all we know is the action stopped. We don't know if that was because they paid him or he had a change of heart.

Two in five Brits cough up for CryptoLocker ransomware's demands

Charles Manning

Any system that expect people to be perfect is broken

When you design a system of any sort, you design in all the environment in which that system operates.

In many cases, particularly computer systems, the environment includes people. The person is designed into the system.

If your computer system depends on power - which it probably does - you don't depend on it being perfect. You expect it to fail occasionally and therefore install UPSs etc.

Same deal with the people: you're designing people into the system. People fail. Design for that.

Microsoft chairman John Thompson: Redmond looks 'like IBM in 1990'

Charles Manning

"The monopoly is under attack"

Dumb move boyo.

It is one thing to be accused of being a monopoly, but publicly claiming to be a monopoly is another thing. There are laws against such things.

Attack is a word suggesting the problem is due to outside hostiles that need to be repulsed.

That is surely wrong.

MS primarily has interal problem, not external ones. Microsoft is rotting from inside.

Prime the canon to do batlle will not stop water seeping through the the woodworm holes.

Google Glass: Reg man tests tech specs

Charles Manning

Re: Why are there so many Luddites on the Reg forums?

Having played with this stuff, people want their real Planet Earth lives back.

In the past, for the most part, our technology was limited and that prevented it from interfering in our real lives. Now the technological limitations are either gone or are going at a remarkable rate. Society has to develop etiquet to deal with technology, and that takes time.

After a few months of Facebook, many people realise this is cutting into their real socialising - a few mates in a pub having a couple of beers and a bit of banter. Even that is not what it used to be with constant texting and any decent discussion being wrecked by people looking up what Wikipedia has to say on the subject.

Woman claims she was assaulted in Google Glass 'HATE CRIME'

Charles Manning

Re: "throwing wet bar towels at her"

Now, now, that would have been quite upsetting.

The bar towel wasn't even made from organic cotton!

Charles Manning

"Please don't be creepy or rude with our product"

This is a very odd statement to make. Do Google expect the glasses to mainly appeal to social misfit numpties who will go out of their way to annoy people?

I can't think of any other product that carries a statement like this.

Do short dresses have a label saying "Please show some decorum when wearing this dress." No.

Nor do iphones say: "Please don't annoy others by having long conversations with Siri."

Google obviously expect these glasses to have great twat appeal and they're probably right.

Software needs meaty cores, not thin, stringy ARMs, says Intel

Charles Manning

FUD, certainly

Intel have actually made their products remarkably better, but there are inherent limitations in the x86 that limit how far they can push things. It is absolutely amazing what they have been able to achieve, but it is not enough to compete.

That cleverness comes at a huge price though:

Intel needs to add extra layers of processing and pipelining to get good performance. All these extra layers make the chips far more expensive to produce. The most cracker ARMs only use half the transistors of an Atom.

Then extra layers have extra transistors that must be toggled. Toggling transistors eats power. Hence, the Intel CPUs chomp through batteries.

Intel need to use the most gee-wizz manufacturing processes to remain competitive. That makes the manufacturing equipment very expensive. The ARMs, on the other hand, can still do great things with more mature processes meaning they can be made cheaper.

It would be interesting what Intel could achieve if they threw their manufacturing might and technology into the ARM ring. However Intel probably could not survive in the low-margin game where ARM parts thrive.

All that is left is to keep spreading the FUD and try to keep some of their existing high-margin business.

Fukushima radioactivity a complete non-issue on West Coast: Also for Fukushima locals, in fact

Charles Manning

NOOA: shame on you!

Surely, as a federal body, it is NOOA's job to disseminate information and not alarmism?

If I lived in the USA I would be far more concerned about the remnants of testing in Nevada - less than 100 miles from Vegas and 300 miles from LA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_fallout_exposure.png

Perhaps NOOA should draw a map with flames coming out of the desert. That would at least show the people what the true risks are and would actually be informative: ie : "You were subject to this much, now you're subject to this much." That would at least give people a point of reference.

Another climate change myth debunked by proper climate scientists

Charles Manning

That's the problem with all this cool new NASA data

In the past we had a few blokes taking measurements a few times a day at specific points, or bobbing about in boats measuring ocean temperatures.

Now we have satellites measuring the whole planet's data 24/7.

The problem though is that until there is at least 30 years of consistently gathered data we really have nothing from which to actually make any good predictions. Now the NASA satellites are up there we need a long wait until the data set is big enough.

It is not at all suprising that we have alarmists being able to get away with the looming ice-age predictions of the 1970s and the predicted overheating of the 2000s.

Climate change will 'cause huge increase in murder, robbery and rape'

Charles Manning

Re: I know this one.

"Not as weak as a total lack of correlation, surely?"

You have that wrong.

Correlation on its own will often set you off on completely the wrong path. That is often far worse than being left in the same place looking for more proper evidence.

FAs a flippant example, if you look at the cars in the KFC parking lot you will see a lot of real bangers. There is a high correlation (at least in NZ anyway) between eating KFC and having an unroadworthy car.

The immediate evidence suggests that eating fried chicken causes your car to become unroadworthy. We can then jump the gun and start acting on this evidence and end up with crazy govermnent policies (vouchers for tyre discounts with every bucket of chicken).

That is one of the problems with the really fancily names epidemiological studies - they only identify correlation and not causation. Often ideological biases of the researchers then make the leap to suggest causation.

The Sun ERUCTATES huge ball of GAS at 4 MILLION MPH

Charles Manning
Boffin

What does X mean?

"X2 flare being twice as intense as an X1, and so on". That really tells us nothing.

is X a linear scale? X4 is twice as big as X2 and 4 times as big as X1.

or, like many things such as earthquakes, is X exponential. ie. each step in X being double. ie. X2 is double X1, X3 is double X2, so X4 would be 8 times as big as X1.

Goggles: you need them to look at the sun!

Samsung and Apple BEWARE: Huawei is coming to eat your lunch

Charles Manning

Re: Shame?

"Most of the big brands had excellent opportunity to reach a mass audience but preferred to remain elite? No?"

They're after the profitable end of the market and diluting your brand with the lower end can reduce your margins. For example, Mercedes could easily make a shitbox car for everyone, but then the badge would be less exclusive and they would have a hard time convincing someone to pay $200k for a top-end vehicle.

Nokia used to sell both low-end candybar phones (making them maybe a dollar or two per handset) as well as the top end phones. For a big company it is not getting out of bed for some of these markets.

This does leave openings for those motivated to fill the slots - something Huawei has done very effectlively.

Charles Manning

Re: Huawei

I bet Huawei don't care how you say their name right now. In time you will learn. They're already sponsoring football teams (albiet very minor ones) and such.

As I've been saying for the last year or so, the spat between Apple and Samsung is like two little kids fighting over being the tough guy in the sandbox. Huawei will outstrip them both within a year or two.

It is like watching the Japanese companies in the 1980s and 1990s, but just faster, as they relentlessly shot up the value chain. A typical profile was first sell the ceramic used to make chip packages, then start assembling chips for others, then start making chips for others, then start making licensed chips to sell under your own brand, then designing your own chips, then start selling finished products under the same name.

Huawei have slowly worked up the value chain and now supply more telecom equipment than anyone else. Thus far it has mainly been infrastructure stuff outside the public eye and carrier-branced phones .... and now they're pushing their own brands hard.

Huawei spend about the same on R&D as Apple, but their per-employee costs are far lower. That means they're likely doing far more R&D than Apple is.

That they will eat everyone else's lunch is a given.

Ford to dump Microsoft's 'aggravating' in-car tech for ... BlackBerry?

Charles Manning

"what can these people have been thinking?". Easy: free software & development services and subsidised hardware.

Most of them did not choose Microsoft as such. MS chose to "partner" with them. MS would have had a hand in designing the hardware, the software, the UI etc.

From MS's point of view this is a showcase for Microsoft. That it might be part of a Ford or whatever is secondary.

Result: you get touch screens and other gee-gaws where they are not appropriate.

Charles Manning

Re: QNX is Blackberry by name only

"I don't really understand why MS's automotive offering has gone so badly wrong."

Well I think I do know...

I spent a few years developing Windows CE systems from the ground up (writing the drivers etc). This was back in 2000 or so. At the time, WinCE was being pushed for multiple different roles including hand held, automotive, industrial etc.

The actual WinCE development and marketing team was tiny (it got that I knew a lot of them by email) and many of the offerings (eg. WinCE for automotive) were really little more than a two sided glossy pamphlet.

In the first 10 years or so, WinCE was never profitable for MS. Nor did they really invest enough in it to build it into anything useful. They just kept it alive.

On top of that they were not painting a clear road map for potential customers. They pushed PowerPC and SH3 support in their first release, but excluded ARM. x86 was for simulation only.

Then they dropped PPC and SH3 support, allowed x86 and ported to ARM. This road map confusion and erratic behaviour was very worrying for many potential customers.

Many of the products that they did get were highly subsidised "design wins" to try to promote WinCE. These tend to be driven by MS wanting to showcase themselves, rather than by the customers wanting to deploy their features. Net result is product that just does not really do what it should.

As a consultant, I still have some customers using WinCE but many of those are worried and are looking for exit strategies to Linux. They have little confidence that MS will support WinCE into the future and most of them want out.

Charles Manning

QNX is Blackberry by name only

QNX is a fantastic RTOS with a 30 year history in the high reliability sector. Full networking and distributed processing has been part of the OS from the start.

Using this as a car RTOS is an absolute no brainer.

Apple, Symantec, other tech heavies challenge anti-gay legislation

Charles Manning

"Oh yes, it's because we have laws against discrimination."

Oh no we (well, you, since I am not American myself) don't.

Only some sorts of discrimination are illegal.

Affirmative action. Discrimination. Legal.

We (you) have thousands of companies and organisations that claim to be both equal opportunity and affirmative action employers. The mind boggles as to how you can be both simultanously, but they claim this.

One of these is Motorola. I once emailed their HR people and asked them how that statement could be logically consistent and, surely, affirmative action was racist. They replied saying that racism only applied to minorities being discriminated against. Any other -ism was fine.

What's up with that WhatsApp $19bn price tag? Answer: Voice calls

Charles Manning

Free, free, free...

That's what the pigs think too when the farmer brings their slops: Look at this great guy who brings us FOOD for FREE, no rooting and digging required. Just eat all this free food. How great life is! Then next day the truck comes loads the pigs and takes them for slaughter.

Here's the hint people. When you get free stuff on the interwebs, you're being farmed. Little Zuckerboy is in out back doing deals with the data and eyeball buyers to get a good price for his bitches and their data.

DARPA wants help to counter counterfeits

Charles Manning

xenophobia maybe?

Sure ten years ago there were a lot of really dodgy components, particularly on the grey market.

Most of them were made in China, more ore less performed the intended function, but had high failure profiles. Often the only way you could tell a good 'un from a bad 'un was by xray or such.

Things have moved on now. The Chinese have learned a thing or two about designing devices and are increasingly designing devices that are sold legitimately under Chinese branding. These are increasing in value and complexity. You just have to look at all those really cool ARM parts coming from AllWinner (http://www.allwinnertech.com/en/) and others like them to see what the trajectory is like.

Providers like these are making great devices at really low prices. No wonder the US chip-makers are worried and are devising a program to keep these suppliers out. Right now they're using the FUD of these parts being inferior (like the US car industry did with European, then Japanese, cars in the 1970s and 80s).

Will it last? Not likely. Things move too fast these days.

MtGox MELTDOWN: Quits Bitcoin Foundation board, deletes Twitter

Charles Manning

Seen this sort of pattern before

This is the sort of pattern you'd see in various Latin American and African countries during the 1970s:

* High living. rich, influential leaders suddenly brought down and deposed.

* Massive devaluations.

* A smoldering pile where once was potential and wealth.

History is just the study of patterns of human behaviour.

Kim Dotcom extradition hearings delayed

Charles Manning

Embarrassment, NOT

Most of us in NZ are getting really tired of this media-hogging show-pony. Any party that got him shipped offshore would get a major boost in popularity. If anything that would be a coup, not an embarrassment.

KDC tried to launch a political party here, but it fell over before it even started.

For all this twittering, KDC really does know the truth: The NZ judicial system is largely separated from the NZ political system. Politicians really don't influence the slow grinding of the machine that oversees his extradition.

Pony up: Botnet succesfully targets Bitcoin

Charles Manning

Ponies, heists,... what next

Maybe stage coaches, sheriffs and lynchings?

This bitcoin stuff is looking more like the wild west and gold mining every day.

As it was with the gold rushes of yesteryear, a few miners made a ton and most lost everything they had. The only people that always did well were the barmen, hookers and shovel salesmen.

Nokia launches Euro ANDROID invasion, quips: 'Microsoft knew what they were buying'

Charles Manning

Quite

MS have excellent resources. Instead of reinventing the wheel, and only coming up with something meh, they could add their efforts to Android or whatever... and make something that people would actually queue up to buy.

Microsoft asks pals to help KILL UK gov's Open Document Format dream

Charles Manning

Now here's the really sad part...

Microsoft has never tried to compete by producing better product. They have always tried to compete by body-slamming any competition. Rather than put their efforts into brilliant engineering and marketing, they put the effort into lawyers, FUDmeisters and other negative tactics.

MS have amazing resources. If they pointed those resources in a positive direction they could generate some astounding software that would blow away the competition and could compete on a level palying field. Stuff worth buying, at full ticket price. But no, they're so obsessed with trying to screw the competitors that they are no longer being of service to their customers.

As Ballmer has sometimes said: "We're taking the fight to Google." Well Mr Ballmer, why not ignore Google and just focus on brilliant customer service - that would bring customers to you and you would not have to worry about Google. Google only get a foot in the door because you're such a bunch of dicks to the customers. Cusomers now have choices and "assume the position" is not something they want to hear anymore.

It is sad that a company with such resources, that could be a force for good in the software tech world, has chosen to underdelivers and be so destructive.

Microsoft, you could be so much more than this.

Charles Manning

Re: There's a serious error in this article everyone has missed

"Nope - only paid shills, many of whom frequent these very forums."

As of this reply there are 8 downvotards who have identified themselves as shills.

Microsoft may slash price of Windows 8.1 on cheap 'slabs

Charles Manning

Don't they listen to Darwin?

The theory of the free market is that it gives people the best outcomes. It is just like evolution: the fitness function is whether people are prepared to pay ticket price for the product to make it financially viable.

When you fiddle with the fitness function, you get poor outcomes. Feed the weak sparrows that should be weeded out by a hard winter and you're just breeding weak sparrows instead of strong ones. But no, we feel sorry for the sparrows, feed them and do them a disservice as a species.

Microsoft has such enormous cash reserves it can, and does, give products life support. As a result, crap products that should die, and be replaced by better ones, are instead kept alive for ideological reasons. In the long run this will make their offerings, and ultimately MS as a whole, weaker.

Harvard student thrown off 14,000-core super ... for mining Dogecoin

Charles Manning

Re: I'm begining to wonder

You're certainly not the first person to have these doubts.

If you have them, and others have them, then it is virtually guaranteed that there are others who **are** doing this.

Ever wondered wtf those CPU black holes like anti-virus software are eally doing?

Charles Manning

Re: Big fat juicy target

"His mistake was to be sneaky about it."

Well, yes, he could commit fraud.

The problem with that approach is that if you construct an elaborate smoke screen and get caught, then you can't pull the "oops, sorry" argument. It is most definitely a well sonstructed frad and opens you up to far more serious charges.

'Polar vortex' or not, last month among the warmest Januaries recorded

Charles Manning

It's not just the money and the funding

Sure there are many scientists with a very vested interets in keeping things alive to secure their funding.

There are also scientists that go into various areas with a preconceived ideology. For example, a few years ago I spoke with a young scientists (geograopgy is a science right?) who was going to work with NIWA (NZ's tiny equivalent of NOOA) because of global warming. People like that are not impartial and data driven. They are idealogically biased and cannot hope to perform as scientists should.

Lastly, there are many scientists who have made a certain field their life's work. They are the most influential. They got their PhD on their findings, they have a whole lot of ego wrapped up in it.

Scientists are supposed to welcome any fresh data when striving for the truth, but how receptive are they when the data might rubbish their research papers and undermine the findings in their PhDs?

The Climate Community (for want of a better phrase) is under extreme pressure (political, financil/funding and prestige) to present a consensus view to the public. Data, however, is always messy and there are always doubts. Any concensus is contrived, and it means true science - the impartial data driven quest for knowledge - goes out hthe window.

To expect impartiality from such scientists is a fool's errand. You might as well ask a priest to say there is no god and embrace Darwanism.

Facebook pays $19bn for WhatsApp. Yep. $45 for YOUR phone book

Charles Manning

This absolutely confirms

that we ARE the product.

This aquistition does not provide the users with any services. All that it does is enhance the data mining potential for FB's true customers, whomever they might be.

Microsoft slaps fresh paint on code-free Windows Phone dev tool

Charles Manning

Print As...

Why don't they just make something like that Print As PDF? You, know: Print As W8 App.

We need more programmers. Obama said so. Perhaps we can raise armies of programmers this way.

Actor who played Rogue Two in Star Wars dies aged 67

Charles Manning

Shirley..

Orbit, not Obit

Angela Merkel: Let US spies keep their internet. The EU will build its own

Charles Manning

It's a global world out there

It is bollocks to think you can build a Made in $COUNTRY_OF_YOUR_CHOICE product any more...

I have some Cisco gear here. Cisco is American right? Well not this stuff.... The main development team is in Norway, the products are made in Poland. Some specialised software for it is developed in Germany and it runs u-boot and Linux (which come from everywhere). The CPUs are designed in USA using IP cores and ASIC development software from USA, UK, Europe and elsewhere. Other chips come from everywhere as does the various development tools used for the software.

We all know that software can be back-doored, but it is becoming increasingly viable to back-door silicon. Intel, Qualcomm or whomever are in less control of their chip-building than they ever were. Gone are the days of the 8080 when the whole device was taped out at the transistor level. Now they are designed by software using bought in IP cores. Nobody really knows what's deep inside that ethernet controller IP, or whether the ASIC design software is "linking in" some naughty stuff - Stuxnet style. These days the cores are getting more and more intellignet. Ethernet controllers can have embedded smarts and have have full access to the system bus. It would be trivial to insert something into an Ethernet controller IP core that allows full r/w access to a computer's RAM, and hence full access to the running OS. Send it a magic packet and you own the computer.

Most of these IP cores and ASIC design software come from places with some bad history for spying: USA, UK, Isreal...

If the Germans (becuase that's what the EU really is) want a fully trusted system, it will have to be designed from the foundations up using trusted German engineering. One mole and it all goes to hell.

The bottom line is that there are so many potential vectors that thinking you can slam down an EU (or USA, UK, or whatever) ring of steel is naive. Makes for good politcs in front of the Great Unwashed though.

Apple patents touch-sensitive controls for MacBook

Charles Manning

Cmon Apple

Just patent gravity. Then all the competition will have to ship their products with glue to keep them on the desk.

Google warns Glass wearers: Quit being 'CREEPY GLASSHOLES'

Charles Manning

Re: Photographs / Recording Video

Record this $H1+**FG***#R* N #R#$R Q#R.

You want to record me then I'll say what I think right into the mike.

And make sure you zoom in on the people loudly swapping glasshole jokes in the corner.

Sure we might not be able to stop them legally, but we can make it unpleasant for them to infringe.

The rules of good society just need to catch up a bit.

Reports pump fuel into iCar gossip: Apple in 'talks' with Tesla

Charles Manning

Re: Secret to success?: Don't do what you don't know

I gave you an upvote for effort. Outstanding vitriol.

Did someone make your cat into biltong or something?

Microcoding is actually making something of a come back. It is essentially what is used to code many DMA engines and communications co-processors and the like. Some ideas are so old they're new again.

Charles Manning

Perhaps electronics people should stay away from cars

Just look at Clive Sinclair:

Brilliant bloke. Some great electronics... Lots the plot in the 1980s and started making daft cars.

Charles Manning

The details will get you every time

"Using a battery as a buffer". Well that would work if batteries were efficient. Unfortunately they are not.. Using a battery as a buffer means you get whacked by the charging inefficiency and then the discharging inefficiency of the battery + the inefficincies of any control electronics that go around this (considerable when dealing with 10kW in a domestic setting). You're lucky if you see 70%.

Yes, there is spare capacity at night, but from some back of the envelope calculations I doubt it would be enough.None of it is going to be renewable either. As we get more green pressure on generation, the shift is towards more PV which does not generate at night. Hydro depletes lakes, therefore the slack would have to be taken up by coal, nukes, etc.

Charles Manning

Grid charging sucks

Grid charging is fine while electric cars are just used by a few. However massive problems emerge when you try scale up the usage.

The generation and distribution could not cope with the added load of having, say, 20% of cars being electric.

It does not mater how smart the Tesla charger is, or how cool it looks, the leccy has to come from a generator some where and through some wires to get there.

Pretty much all generation is maxed out world wide. There is no surplus generation. Thus, the only way to get extra capacity is to build more generation.

Oh, btw, a couple of solar panels on the roof won't do it either. First off, you'll want to charge at night and the moon is not very useful. Secondly, to provie the juice for a 10kW "slow charger" needs about 150 m^2 of solar panels.

So basically we're talking about yuppie toys, not practical transport solutions.

Charles Manning

Re: The loss of efficiency for hydrogen is huge

" That and you need a hugely expensive fuel cell to convert it back to electricity."

Hugely inefficient too. Only 40% or so will turn into leccy,

Of that only 90% will make it through the power control electronics.

Of that only 80% or so turns into mechanically useful power in the electric motor.

That's only 28% efficinet.

Going back and multiplying by the leccy->hydrogen efficency (40%), we're down to about 11% effiiency for leccy->hydrogen->fuelcells->motor->

Of course real numbers would be lower since hydrogen is a bastard to handle and store (~90% efficient) and cars are not the best environment for fuel cells. So if you get 10% efficincy you're probably doing pretty well...

And we have not yet even taken into consideration the inefficiencies in generation and distribution.

Makes that 25% efficiency of an ICEbased system look pretty good.

Robots demanding equal API rights? It's just a matter of time

Charles Manning

Re: When was a toaster not

It depends what you mean by "mechanical". Do you mean something closer to the original "machine" roots of the word, or a broader definition closer to that of mechanical engineering which involves heat transfer etc.

If you mean the former, then the original (pre-pop-up) toasters were just forks that you used to hold the bread over the fire, or later those diffusion toasters that live on as camping toasters these days. They were not machines and thus were not mechanical by the first definition.

A modern pop-up toaster is obviously a machine and mechanical by any definition of the word.

Ericsson and Kodiak in Europe WALKIE-TALKIE-style push-to-talk push

Charles Manning

Who cares what the kids want?

It is not about fashion or what looks cool or hip (or whatever the cool/hip words are for cool/hip today).

Surely this is all about a functional comms system. So why even care what people outside the market think.

What next? Perhaps Zimmer frames are going to replace their frames with a skateboard version because kids think it doesn't look cool to walk with a frame.

Charles Manning

Not just servers...

Anything with servers in it is definitely a poor idea for any safety critical comms function. What an oil rig, hospital, etc certainly does not need is one bang knocking out all local comms.

But so is any comms medium that requires Wifi or such.

First prize is to replace current walkie-talkie architecture and augment that.

At short range (say 1-2km) , devices should be able to talk peer-to-peer without any extra kit. No Wifi AP, cell tower, whatever.

Longer ranges can be covered by repeaters (eg. Wifi AP/routers) and even longer ranges by VOIP backbone.

Russian cybercrooks shun real currencies, develop private altcoins

Charles Manning

Honour amongst thieves

No wonder there is huge trust, the enforcement and the Terms And Conditions are very different.

If you lose your shirt in bitcoinland and try to get your money back in court, some bloke with a wig will point you to the T&C and tell you that you were a muppet.

The Russian mob-coins are administered by blokes called Yuri carrying baseball bats and cleavers. It these blokes want it to work and be trustworthy, then they can, and will, make it so.

From 0 to ERUPTION in 60 days: You thought that volcano was COLD?

Charles Manning

Correlation != causation

It is not the temperature that causes it to blow. Rather the temperature is a symptom of the local activity.

Even just the friction caused by magma movement under such huge pressures is going to lead to the magma heating up.

Drilling into the magma is unlikely to help. As soon as the stuff flows enough to relieve pressure, the "peanut butter" is under ligh pressure and any holes you drill will be bunged up pretty smartly.

Korean boffins launch K-Glass for hands-free Google Glass-ery

Charles Manning

Re: Because I'm a liberal...

Liberals are all about rights, but not the responsibilities that should come with those rights. Instead the responsibilities are imposed on someone else. You know what I mean... " I want babies, but is the taxpayer's job to pay for them."

That is very different to libertarianism which puts both the rights and responsibilities on the same person.

Will you protect the rights of people to wear twatty eyewear when they do irresponsible things with them?

Charles Manning

Augmented != virtual

Augmented reality and virtual reality do not mean the same thing. One is a special case of the other.

Augmented reality means adding an overlay of information over a real backdrop. You can still see the real world.

Immersive virtual reality replaces the real world entirely.

Both are flavours of virtual reality.